A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  She put her hand on his. He scooted his chair even closer to hers than it already was. He grabbed both her hands in his and separated them and kissed each one. She rested her head on his shoulder. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, relishing the moment, glad to feel the welcome weight of her head on his shoulder.

  After a while, she sat up, turned her chair so that she was facing him, and said, “I want to go on with my story. There is still a lot to say, and I still haven’t gotten around to talking to you about a choice we both have to make.”

  He perked up when she said that. He remembered her alluding earlier to a choice they had to make. He wanted to ask her about that then. Now that she mentioned the choice a second time, he wondered if now might be the best time to question her about that. But, once again, he had to put his curiosity aside as she went on with her story. And her story fascinated him. He felt strangely connected to her. What she experience, he felt he also experienced. And what he experienced, she experienced. But he had forgotten that part of his experience that she experienced and therefore welcomed getting that blank space filled in. He figured that they would have plenty of time later to talk about that matter of the choice.

  She said, “After the snail, I found huddling against a wall a small four-legged hairy animal like a baby goat. Its eyes were wide open. It bleated pathetically. I went up to it though I was suspicious regarding what it might actually be and why it was there. I sat down next to it and tried to comfort it. I ran my hand against its soft back and along its drooping head and muzzle.

  “I said, ‘Now, baby, don’t be sad,’ time and again, as if I was speaking not only to the creature but also to some part of myself, some childish and very vulnerable part that wanted to know why it was stuck in a ramp inside of an asteroid millions of miles from Earth, a ramp that seemed to descend endlessly. I wanted to know why I was so alone.

  “I kept petting the creature that looked like a baby goat and kept saying, ‘Now baby, don’t be so sad.’ I laid my head down on the creature’s back and began caressing its feet and belly. I suppose all of this comforting and caressing relaxed some part of me that, until then, had been very tense. I fell asleep. And, just as had happened with the snail, when I woke up, the goat was gone.

  My head was supported by my hands and upper arms. I looked for the goat. I called to it but it was nowhere to be seen. I wondered what became of it. I wondered if there were hidden doors on one side or the other of the ramp. I looked for doors but found none. Perhaps they were there but hidden from me. I suppose there had to be doors there somewhere.

  “Did I tell you that the ramp down which I walked had stairs in only two places? In the two places, there were not many steps—just two each time. I know that you found a lot of steps and sometimes spent whole days climbing or descending stairs but it was not the same for me. I had only a total of four steps.

  “Instead of steps, I had to deal with changes in the angle of decline of the ramp which happened frequently. Sometimes there would be a gradual descent which I could easily handle by walking with my back tilted backwards and my legs spread apart a little bit. Other times, the angle of descent was so steep that I was afraid I’d start running and then, going ever faster, fall forward.

  “There were never any handrails I could use to brace myself. So I had to get close to a wall and sit on my rear end and move downwards slowly by bending and then straightening out one leg after another while pressing my hands against the floor and an adjacent wall. I kept looking for places on the surfaces of the floors and walls where there might be enough friction to help in the slowing of my descent. In that way, I made slow progress down the ramp through I never was entirely free of the fear of just being unable to slow my descent enough to keep from falling downwards with such force that I’d die hitting some part of the ramp farther down where the angle of descent was shallower or flat.

  “Those were scary times,” she said. She actually shivered just from recalling what she had had to undergo. He saw her shoulders and arms shake. He felt the hand clasped in his get colder. He felt the hand shake.

  She passed off the effects of the recollections quickly however and then resumed her narrative where she had left it off, saying, “Anyway, giving up on ever finding the goat, I continued walking down the ramp and found inscribed on both sides of it symbols that probably resemble the symbols you found. Beneath the symbols inscribed into the wall on my left side was a notebook inside of which had been placed a pencil. I did what you did: I decided to copy the symbols. I figured that, if I ever got back to Earth, someone would want to see and, if possible, decipher what was inscribed on these walls.

  “The notebook was not the same as the one I had in my knapsack. Nevertheless, I picked it up, pulled the pencil that had been stuck between two pages out of the notebook, and began copying. You can imagine how surprised and delighted I was when I saw the films of you copying inscriptions too. Seeing you copy inscriptions, I felt that a great bond existed between us. You were like me. I was like you. I regard myself as someone highly motivated to do what I deem to be my duty, and therefore I felt that wanting to copy the inscriptions was something I needed to do. I saw that you were the same kind of person as me and answered to the same sense of duty as I did.

  “Even as I made the copies, I realized that other astronauts might not feel the same compulsion to help others back on Earth try to solve the mystery of this place. Most, I think, would have looked at the inscriptions, found them interesting, regretted perhaps not having a camera, and just moved on. When I saw you make copies, I felt such a sense of camaraderie with you despite the fact that I barely recognized you and hardly knew you back on Earth. I thought, ‘Here is a man after my own heart. He is like me. I am like him. I hope they let me meet him. I cannot wait to meet him.’

  “I stared and stared at the videos of your doing the drawings, and, when the screen went blank, I sometimes walked up to the screen and touched it because doing that somehow made me feel even closer to you. The creatures noticed what I was doing and began buzzing and clicking among themselves even more than was natural for them. I think they had insight into how I was feeling and what I was doing and were excited to see how the details played out.”

  He said, “Sometimes I felt that making the copies was crazy. I did it anyway out of a sense of duty and also out of curiosity thinking that, if I did somehow manage to get back to Earth and succeeded in getting my drawings to the right people and therefore contributed to the decipherment of these hieroglyphs or script or whatever it is, I’d have made a significant contribution to the understanding of these creatures, their history, and generally the nature of extraterrestrial life that is also intelligent.”

  She nodded, “I felt the same way—the same way exactly.” She put her arms around him and hug him and pressed her body against his. He put his arms around her so that her body could get closer to his and so that he could feel the wonderful contours of her upper torso.

  Chapter 39: Soup

  Just then a bell rang three times, startling them both and making them feel like naughty schoolchildren and causing them to pull self-consciously away from one another. “What was that?” he asked her. “You’ll see,” she answered and then looked at and pointed towards a certain door on the far wall.

  Even as she pointed, the door opened and out came a number of the beetle-like or tick-like creatures riding their peculiar motorized vehicles. The first creature had something like bagpipes on him with one end of each of a number of cylindrical tubes strapped to its chest (where the six slits were) and the other end of each of the tubes dangling over its shoulders and down its back.

  The tubes widened towards their ends so much that the part dangling over the creature’s back somewhat resembled a cluster of barnacles.

  The creature with the contraption on its chest and back expanded and contracted its chest while also extending and retracting the tubes that connected its eyeballs to the opening in its shell out of which the
y came. Sounds came out of the contraption. But these were not the sounds that bagpipes make. Instead the sound was that of a high-pitched whistling intermingled with a deep roar like that which one hears when near an ocean.

  Behind the creature with the musical instrument came two creatures moving side-by-side through the large room with shiny silver covered bowls standing on little stands that had been attached to the fronts of their motorized vehicles. Behind them came one creature with the front end of a table fastened to the back of its cart. That creature was followed by another creature with the back of the table attached to the front end of its cart. Two others followed. These had woven baskets colored blue attached to the front of their carts.

  “What a stately menagerie,” Peter Philby commented quietly enough so that he was able to believe that only Sylvia Ridgeway could hear him. She smiled and grabbed his hand, lifted it to her lips, and kissed it.

  The troupe circled around the raised platform that sat in the center of the room, once, twice, and then three times. They came to a double-wide door that opened as they approached. They marched inside and disappeared from sight though not from hearing because Philby and Ridgeway both heard a lot of sounds of pinging, scraping, and banging.

  She turned to him and said, “That is the dining room where I’ve been taught to go these last few months for sustenance. They feed me creamy soups. That’s all I get: no bread, no wine, no water, and no salad. There was no main course and no dessert—just warm creamy soup. I get it once a day about this time.

  “I don’t want you to think I am complaining, and I don’t want you to dread the experience. Surprisingly, the soup is always really good. The texture is wonderful. It is wonderfully seasoned. It is just warm enough, never too hot or too cold. I always looked forward to that ringing of the bells and then that stately and comical procession emerging from that door and parading around and then entering the dining room and finding a table set with one chair pulled up to it and a big bowl and a tureen of soup and a silver ladle and a silver spoon.

  “Sometimes the soup would be green and sometimes white and sometimes blue and sometimes yellow and sometimes pink and sometimes deep red. Corresponding to each variation in color was a variation in taste.

  “I couldn’t exactly tell what was in it though I imagined that things back on Earth out of which soup was made that was similar in color were some of the ingredients. For instance, I imagined peas being behind the green soup and milk and clams or perhaps milk and cauliflower being behind the white soup. It was a game I played. I imagined foods I knew back on Earth being here. I tried guessing at the ingredients.”

  Another bell rang three times. Sylvia stood up and held out her hand to Peter and said, “They’re telling us the meal is ready. Shall we go?” With his hand clasping hers, he stood up and followed her to the room with the double-wide door.

  Inside the room was a table set on which a tureen of steaming soup sat on a white doily. At either end of the table were bowls. Silver spoons and napkins were to the left of each bowl. A large ladle sat on the doily. The creatures were lined up silently on either side of the room against the walls.

  Sylvia pointed out that she had been coming to this room for soup for more than two years now and that, always before, there was only one chair. Now, there were two chairs set on either side of the table. “How thoughtful of them,” she commented wryly. Philby said, “Now, we won’t have to sit on each other’s laps and take turns sipping soup from the same spoon.” He added, “Not that I would mind if that was the case.” “It would be fun,” Ridgeway said and nudged him as she said it.

  They sat down on the chairs. She pointed out that, since she had been in the habit of sitting on a chair set at the far end of the table, it might be best if she continued sitting there; otherwise, she explained, the creatures might get confused and upset.

  After they both sat down, one of the creatures rolled up to the side of the table in its motorized cart, leaned first in the direction of Sylvia and then in Peter’s direction and made some of the clicking and buzzing and wheezing sounds while doing so. Sylvia translated for the creature, speaking in a whisper as if not wanting to disrupt the proceedings. “He hopes we enjoy our little meal,” she explained.

  “I found a bowl of green soup waiting for me in a side room of the maze. I was famished. It tasted good. That was the only food they gave me in all that time. Of course, I had some food and water in my backpack but, when I got separated from that, I was worried I might starve. Then that soup showed up and took the edge off my hunger during the whole rest of the time I spent in there.”

  Sylvia nodded. “The soup is incredibly satisfying and nourishing,” she said. “I’ve asked for the recipe but have so far been rebuffed. I asked for a tour of the kitchen but was told that would not be possible. I asked at least to meet with the chef but that request too was turned down. For some reason, the way they make food and the contents of the food are big secrets with them.”

  In the meantime, the creature lifted the lid off the tureen with its two top thorny limbs and carefully set the lid down on the table, upside down, next to the tureen. Clouds of steam wafted out of the tureen and carried a nice clean aroma with them.

  The creature then reached first for Sylvia’s bowl and then for Peter’s, filling each one up with the ladle once it got the bowl close to the tureen. It then returned the bowls by sliding them across the slippery table top. Then, it placed the ladle on the table next to the tureen, picked up the lid of the tureen, turned it over, and set it down carefully on the tureen.

  When the creature finished doing all of that, it leaned again towards them, first towards Sylvia and then towards Peter, and slowly backed away from them, returning to its place against the wall.

  Peter began fingering his spoon and was about to take a taste of the soup which this day was pink. He imagined it to be cream of tomato soup, knowing that his imagination might actually work to make the soup appear to him to be actual cream of tomato soup; at the same time, he knew the soup might have been made out of substances altogether new to him but not dangerous and probably delicious.

  Peter dipped his spoon into his steaming bowl and raised it to his lips and began blowing. He was about to take his first sip when he noticed that Sylvia sat quietly watching him, her spoon still resting on the table. “Pardon me for being so rude,” Peter said as he let the soup pour out of his spoon and put the soup down on his napkin.

  Sylvia said, “You were not being rude. It is just that I am in the habit of reciting a short poem or part of a larger poem before eating. Would you mind if I did that now?” “Of course not,” he replied. “Go ahead,” he added.

  She lowered her head, obviously trying to sum up the memory of a poem and the exact words. Like a fisherman dipping a baited line into a pond and coming up with a fish, she dipped the baited line of the wish to recall into a pool of memory and came up with a poem.

  “I think I found one,” she said. Then slowly she commenced to recite a poem that she had either written herself or found somewhere during the course of her reading while back on Earth. This is what she said:

  “When one wonders about a thing & imagines possibilities,

  One makes (what amounts to) pictures

  And if one keeps such pictures in one part of the mind

  So that there is room for observation & comparison,

  Then one is in a position to discover something new.

  “Think of the pictures as being in a book; then,

  When seeing something new, flip through all the

  Pages. Go to the very last one. Do not skip any.

  Who knows where the best match might be?

  Think of the flipping through the book & the process

  Of observation as two different voyages of discovery

  That from time to time come together.

  “Think of the pictures as being stacked together,

  Like playing cards well shuffled; then

  When seeing somethin
g new, go through every one

  Without skipping a single one & without drawing cards

  Randomly. Wonder: Who is to say

  Where the best match might be?”

  Peter listened to the recitation, thought about what the words meant, and realized that, regardless of the meaning of what was said, putting off eating at the sight of food and listening to a poem instead was a really nice thing to do. He appreciated her for thinking of that. He liked the poem.

  He said to her, “That was really nice. Reciting a poem is a great way to set a certain formal tone for a meal. I am glad you did that. I’d be glad to adopt the same custom from now on though I’m ashamed to admit that I’m neither a poet nor one who reads much poetry let alone remembers much poetry. We’ll have to rely on your memory for the time being when doing this. Maybe, after a while, I’ll remember something. Maybe I’ll even take a stab at writing some poetry myself.” She smiled at him when he said that. She said, “I’m glad you liked it.

  By the way, who wrote that?” Peter asked. She answered, “I’m not sure. I think I did.” “Well, it was beautiful and interesting,” Peter said. He added, “Shall we eat before this gets cold?” She answered him by picking up her spoon and taking the first sip of soup.

  He did the same but stopped just as the full spoon was poised before his open mouth. He looked at her and said, “I don’t suppose this could be poisonous to us. Could it be?” “I doubt it,” she said. “They seem to want to keep us alive and give us a chance to make the choice I talked to you earlier about. Besides, I’ve been drinking this soup for such a long time and it hasn’t seemed to harm me in any way that I can tell. And you also had your bowl of soup and didn’t get sick, did you?” “No, I didn’t.”

  He then swallowed the first spoonful of soup and found it to be delicious. He lowered and raised his spoon and swallowed a second and third and fourth spoonful of the soup.