Exile from Space

by Judith Merril

apoliceman asking to see my license, which always seemed to be thefirst thing they did on television, when they talked to anybody whowas driving a car. I got back in the car and wriggled my way out ofthe hole between the other cars, and tried to think what to do. Then Iremembered seeing a sign that said "Free Parking" somewhere, not toofar away, and went back the way I'd come.

  There was a sort of park, with a fountain spraying water all over thegrass, and a big building opposite, and the white lines here were muchmore sensible. They were painted in diagonal strips, so you could getin and out quite easily, without all that backing and twisting andturning. I left the car there, and remembered to take the keys withme, and started walking back to the drugstore.

  * * * * *

  That was when it hit me.

  Up to then, beginning I guess when I drove that little stretch cominginto Manitou, with the houses on the hills, and the children and yardsand dogs and chickens, I'd begun to feel almost as if I belonged here.The people seemed so _much_ like me--as long as I wasn't right upagainst them. From a little distance, you'd think there was nodifference at all. Then, I guess, when I was close enough to notice,driving through town, I'd been too much preoccupied with the car. Itdidn't really get to me till I got out and started walking.

  They were all so _big_....

  They were big, and their faces and noses and even the pores of theirskin were too big. And their voices were too loud. And they _smelled_.

  I didn't notice that last much till I got into the drugstore. Then Ithought I was going to suffocate, and I had a kind of squeezingupside-down feeling in my stomach and diaphragm and throat, which Ididn't realize till later was what they meant by "being sick." I stoodover the directory rack, pretending to read, but really juststruggling with my insides, and a man came along and shouted in my earsomething that sounded like, "Vvvm trubbb lll-lll-lll ay-dee?" (Ididn't get that sorted out for hours afterwards, but I don't thinkI'll ever forget just the way it sounded at the time. Of course, hemeant, "Having trouble, little lady?") But all I knew at the time washe was too big and smelled of all kinds of things that were unfamiliarand slightly sickening. I couldn't answer him. All I could do was turnaway so as not to breathe him, and try to pretend I knew what I wasdoing with the directory. Then he hissed at me ("Sorry, no offense," Ifigured out later), and said clearly enough so I could understand eventhen, "Just trying to help," and walked away.

  As soon as he was gone, I walked out myself. Directory or nodirectory, I had to get out of that store. I went back to where I'dleft the car, but instead of getting in it, I sat down on a bench inthe park, and waited till the turmoil inside me began to quiet down.

  I went back into that drugstore once before I left, purposely, just tosee if I could pin down what it was that had bothered me so much,because I never reacted that strongly afterwards, and I wondered ifmaybe it was just that it was the first time I was inside one of theirbuildings. But it was more than that; that place was a regularsnake-pit of a treatment for a stranger, believe me! They had atobacco counter, and a lunch counter and a perfume-and-toiletriessection, and a nut-roasting machine, and just to top it off, in theback of the store, an open-to-look-at (_and_ smell) pharmaceuticalcenter! Everything, all mixed together, and compounded with stalehuman sweat, which was also new to me at the time. And no airconditioning.

  Most of the air conditioning they have is bad enough on its own, withchemical smells, but those are comparatively easy to get used to ...and I'll take them _any_ time, over what I got in that first dose of_Odeur d'Earth_.

  * * * * *

  Anyhow, I sat on the park bench about fifteen minutes, I guess,letting the sun and fresh air seep in, and trying to tabulate andmemorize as many of the components of that drugstore smell as I could,for future reference. I was simply going to have to adjust to them,and next time I wanted to be prepared.

  All the same, I didn't feel prepared to go back into the same place.Maybe another store wouldn't be quite as bad. I started walking in theopposite direction, staying on the wide main street, where all the bigstores seemed to be, and two blocks down, I ran into luck, becausethere was a big bracket sticking out over the sidewalk from the frontof a store halfway down a side street, and it had the three gold ballshanging from it that I knew, from television, meant the kind of placeI wanted. When I walked down to it, I saw too that they had a signpainted over the window: "We buy old gold and diamonds."

  Just _how_ lucky that was, I didn't realize till quite some timelater. I was going to look in the Classified Directory for "HockShops." I didn't know any other name for them then.

  Inside, it looked exactly like what I expected, and even the smell wasnothing to complain about. Camphor and dust and mustiness were strongenough to cover most of the sweaty smell, and those were smells of akind I'd experienced before, in other places.

  The whole procedure was reassuring, because it all went just the wayit was supposed to, and I knew how to behave. I'd seen it in a show,and the man behind the grilled window even _looked_ like the man onthe screen, and talked the same way.

  "What can we do for you, girlie?"

  "I'd like to sell a diamond," I told him.

  He didn't say anything at first, then he looked impatient. "You got itwith you?"

  "Oh ... yes!" I opened my purse, and took out one of the littlepackages, and unwrapped it, and handed it to him. He screwed the lensinto his eye, and walked back from the window and put it on a littlescale, and turned back and unscrewed the lens and looked at me.

  "Where'd you get this, lady?" he asked me.

  "It's mine," I said. I knew just how to do it. We'd gone over thishalf a dozen times before I left, and he was behaving exactly the waywe'd expected.

  "I don't know," he said. "Can't do much with an unset stone likethis...." He pursed his lips, tossed the diamond carelessly in hishand, and then pushed it back at me across the counter. I had to keepmyself from smiling. It was just the way they'd said it would be. Thepeople here were still in the Mech Age, of course, and not nearlyconscious enough to communicate anything at all complex or abstractany way except verbally. But there is nothing abstract about avarice,and between what I'd been told to expect, and what I could feelpouring out of him, I knew precisely what was going on in his mind.

  "You mean you don't _want_ it?" I said. "I thought it was worth quitea lot...."

  "Might have been once." He shrugged. "You can't do much with a stonelike that any more. Where'd you get it, girlie?"

  "My mother gave it to me. A long time ago. I wouldn't sell it,except.... Look," I said, and didn't have to work hard to sounddesperate, because in a way I was. "Look, it must be worth_some_thing?"

  He picked it up again. "Well ... what do you want for it?"

  That went on for quite a while. I knew what it was supposed to beworth, of course, but I didn't hope to get even half of that. Heoffered seventy dollars, and I asked for five hundred, and after awhile he gave me three-fifty, and I felt I'd done pretty well--for agreenhorn. I put the money in my purse, and went back to the car, andon the way I saw a policeman, so I stopped and asked him about ahotel. He looked me up and down, and started asking questions abouthow old I was, and what was my name and where did I live, and I beganto realize that being so much smaller than the other people was goingto make life complicated. I told him I'd come to visit my brother inthe Academy, and he smiled, and said, "Your _brother_, is it?" Then hetold me the name of a place just outside of town, near the Academy. Itwasn't a hotel; it was a _mo_tel, which I didn't know about at thattime, but he said I'd be better off there. A lot of what he said wentright over my head at the time; later I realized what he meant about"a nice respectable couple" running the place. I found out later on,too, that he called them up to ask them to keep an eye on me; hethought I was a nice girl, but he was worried about my being alonethere.

  By this time, I was getting hungry, but I thought I'd better go andarrange about a place to stay first. I found the motel without
muchtrouble, and went in and registered; I knew how to do that, atleast--I'd seen it plenty of times. They gave me a key, and the manwho ran the place asked me did I want any help with my bags.

  "Oh, no," I said. "No, thanks. I haven't got much."

  I'd forgotten all about that, and they'd never thought about iteither! These people always have a lot of different clothes, not justone set, and you're supposed to have a suitcase full of things whenyou go to stay anyplace. I said I was hungry anyway, and wanted to goget something to eat, and do a couple of other things--I didn't saywhat--before I got settled. So the woman walked over