A Theory of Gravity

by Wycroft Taylor

  When the creatures that had taken her out of Peter’s room got the bed on which they had placed her into position beside a much narrower and somewhat shorter bed at the center of the room, they bowed to the six lined up against the wall and said to them, “She seems to be doing fine. She seems to have successfully passed through phase one. Phase two is about to begin.” Then the creatures that had carried Sylvia into the operating room bowed to the ones that filled the room, exited the room with the bed they had pulled into it, and closed the door behind them.

  Even before the group that brought Sylvia into the room had left it, the six creatures standing against the wall turned around so that they faced the wall which Peter noticed had a number of nozzles poking out of round disks.

  Then, moving very quickly, each one of the creatures grabbed one or two nozzles, turned around, and, pulling the nozzles and the tubes to which they were attached along with them, rolled forward, surrounded the narrow bed on which Sylvia had been placed, and began attaching the nozzles to various parts of her body. Nozzles were attached to skin above her mouth, the skin below each of her eyes, the nipples of her breasts, her forehead (three nozzles were placed on each side and at the center of her forehead), her belly (above, below, and on each side of her belly button), her upper arms (midway between her shoulders and elbows), and her legs (four nozzles were attached to the outer edge of each of her legs with one being put just below her waist, another put midway between her waist and knee, another put just below the knee, and a fourth put beside her ankle.

  After this was done, one of the creatures rolled back to the wall, pulled open a drawer that was set into it, and pulled out a translucent rectangular box filled with little lighted squares that Peter recognized as being very similar to, though slightly smaller than, the keyboard the teacher used during their classes.

  The creature with the keyboard set the keyboard on a platform built into the front of its cart and began immediately to push the tips of six of its limbs onto and through the transparent rectangular case.

  The creature operating the case moved very quickly. It swayed backwards and forwards, always staring intently into the box. Like the teacher, this creature moved like a virtuoso pianist. The tips of its upper four limbs moved so quickly that, at times, Peter was able to see a semi-transparent gray sheet-like substance where the limbs had been. It was like looking at the blades of a fan running on high.

  Almost immediately, Sylvia, after glancing quickly around the room and, spotting Peter standing as close as he dared to her bed, whispered, “Hi.” But, even the effort of uttering just that one syllable seemed to be take more energy than she could spare. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to smile the smile of one lost in a pleasant dream. “Hi,” Peter said though he knew because of the way she smiled that she could no longer hear him.

  He felt so helpless. He longed to be the one to get her through this. It bothered him that he had to stand back while the creatures took control. It bothered him that they were able to gain such intimate familiarity with her body. It bothered him that they had the power to do whatever they wished to do with her, for good or for ill. It bothered him that he had to place his trust in them.

  One of the creatures standing around the bed, the one that stood behind Sylvia’s head, looked in Peter’s direction and said, “This may take a while. Why don’t you go out of the room for a while? It would be best if you did. Your presence distracts us and, being distracted, we might not do what we need to do as quickly and as well as we must.”

  When Peter hesitated to comply, another creature, one who was standing at the foot of the bed and had begun rolling back the hem of Sylvia’s robe, turned to face him and said, “Go ahead. It would be best. We will take care of her. The birth will go well.”

  Reluctantly, he agreed to go. When he got to the door, he found that he did not even have to push on it—the door opened automatically and automatically closed after he walked out of the room.

  Once outside of the room, he noticed that a lot of creatures filled the large room, both those with motorized carts and those without. He wondered what was going on. The large room had been nearly empty before; now, it was quite full.

  He noticed also, on the raised platform, the king sat on his throne, turning occasionally from one of its escorts to another and saying something that Peter could not quite make out because of the din that resulted from so many of the creatures whispering to whatever other creatures were nearby.

  Peter felt the excitement in the air. This was something like the festivities that accompanied the surrendering and commandeering of motorized carts awhile before. Obviously, there was a lot of excitement in the air. But unlike that other festival that verged on the raucous, this one was solemn and hushed.

  He realized that the creatures had begun a festivity for celebrating something they had never celebrated before and might never celebrate again—the birth of a human baby.

  Realizing that the commotion and the gathering had to do with Sylvia’s giving birth, Peter got very nervous. His sense of the enormity of what was about to happen or was in the process of happening struck him more forcefully than it ever had before.

  He walked to the door of the operating room, intending to go back in there regardless of how uncomfortable the creatures attending to Sylvia would be.

  He grabbed the door’s handle and tried turning it but found it would not turn. He tried pulling on the handle and then pushing on it, but the door would not open. It was locked. They had locked him out. He banged on the door with his open fist and yelled, “Let me in there. What are you doing to my sweetheart?” But no one opened the door from the inside. His yelling and pounding only had the effect of causing the creatures around him and behind him to make buzzing and clicking noises which were comments like “poor little man” and “tell him they know what they are doing” and tell him “this is all for the best” and tell him “just be patient…you will see.”

  There was nothing he could do to unlock the door. He turned around with his back to it and looked sheepishly around the room which suddenly grew silent.

  Nobody even came to crack the door open and talk to him. Flashbacks to his time in the maze came back to him. Just as he had to do when inside of the maze, he now had to stand behind a locked door and wonder what was going on. He was tempted to yell one of the appeals he made when trapped in the maze: “Is someone there? Sylvia Ridgeway, are you there? I’ve come to rescue you.” But he did not do that. Looking around, he realized that yelling something like that would embarrass him too much. He did not want these creatures to think that at a time like this he’d play the fool.

  Instead of standing helplessly behind the door, the subject of pitying comments, he began pacing back and forth in front of the door that led to the room where Sylvia was. All of the creatures except one that had rolled or crawled over to the floor and walls close to the door behind which Sylvia lay backed away from that area when Peter began pacing. They seemed to sense his nervousness and sense also that this pacing was a way this human (and presumably all other humans) dealt with nervous anxiety. So, out of consideration for his feelings, they cleared a space for him so that he could pace undisturbed.

  The one creature that did not back away was a young one, about half the size of the adults, who had crawled half way up the wall to the left of the door. It clung to a part of the wall that was just a foot or so beyond the farthest distance to the left of the door that Peter paced.

  On his third transit, Peter saw the creature’s eyes dart as far forward on their stems as he supposed was physically possible. It also pushed its upper torso away from the wall as if it was doing vertical pushups. It did this to clear a passage for the slits on its belly to push enough air out to make communication possible. It spoke to Peter. It said, “Don’t worry. We have all been assured that everything will be fine with Sylvia, with the baby, and with you. This is a great day for us too. Do not worry.” Peter thanked it for helping him withstand
what was happening by means of its encouraging words and good wishes. “Imagine,” the creature then said, “A human infant—an actual human infant. Everyone here is excited. We can’t wait to see it.”

  An adult creature, one of the ones that was in possession of a motorized cart and was propped up in it, seeing the child talking to Peter, rushed up and whispered something to it. Immediately, the young creature turned around on the wall so that it faced the floor, crawled very quickly to the floor, and scrambled across the floor until it reached creatures that had piled one on top of the other, making a little mound. It crawled on top of the mound and then burrowed down through the piled up creatures until it was lost to sight.

  In the meantime, the adult that had reprimanded it, apologized to Peter for the interruption, and then scooted across the room until it reached the raised platform. It said something to the king and then, turning around, joined a number of others who surrounded the raised platform with their backs to it, as if part of a phalanx that had been hastily assembled to add to the impressiveness of the improvised routine of the ceremony that now was unfolding.

  Noticing that every other one of the creatures that stood in that line that made up that phalanx had musical instruments strapped to the slits on their chests, Peter realized the music was to be a big part of this festival just as it had been with the festival of the change of carts.

  Chapter 58: Flashback

  Peter had no sense of how much time had passed while he paced back and forth along the part of the wall that included the door behind which Sylvia lay. While pacing, he stopped being aware of his surroundings, of the big room, of the crowds of creatures, and of his sense of awkwardness combined with resentment for having been made unwelcome in the room where Sylvia was. Though he had been worried that the creatures might somehow harm Sylvia or might somehow turn their child into one of them, he even got to a place where he was even able to leave those worries behind.

  While pacing, he began remembering a time back on Earth when his own mother had become pregnant and had given birth to a little girl. Even then, he was excluded from the hospital room. He remembered sitting on a big, soft chair covered with brown vinyl. He remembered swinging his legs back and forth. He remembered reaching for a magazine that sat on the top of a table that was beside him. He remembered turning the pages and seeing pictures of zebras, ancient caves, octopi, and yellow birds. He remembered watching his father pace back and forth across the room, sometimes stopping to smoke a cigarette.

  He remembered asking his father to sit beside him but being rebuffed. His father did not even bother to answer him. He just gave him a look of disgust. He remember doing his best to pretend he had not gotten that reaction by looking more intently than before at the magazine he was holding. He flipped pages without reading anything and without even looking at the picture.

  Something in his mind worked to isolate that incident as much as possible and forget it as soon as possible. He was so good at doing those things that he was able to sustain the illusion that he had a loving father for quite a long time. He had to pay a price for the illusion, however, for every time he got rebuffed or insulted came as a surprise to him. His hurts were always fresh.

  Years later, for some reason, his mind stopped doing what he was doing and let him interpret what was going on correctly and let him remember a few, if not a lot, of the times when his feelings got hurt and his sense of self-worth got injured. Then and not before was he able to confront his father who, by that time, had been putting on an act of amiability for so long that he had come to believe he was amiable. It was his turn to act hurt and surprised. “Why,” he said, “I cannot understand why you are acting this way. I was your best friend. You were my best friend.”

  “You sicken me,” Peter said and just walked out of the room and forever after kept his distance from the man despite the fact that others, who had fallen under the spell of the act of amiability, kept urging him to “be reasonable.” He was the bad guy. He was the one with the problem of not being able to forgive. And the way others felt got to him after a while enough to make him wonder if perhaps he should not forgive.

  But forgiving turned out not to be necessary, not even as an act, because his father died of cancer of the esophagus about that time. At the funeral, his last words to his father—you sicken me—came to mind.

  Not too many people came to his father’s funeral but the few who did agreed that his father was such a nice man. And he wanted to condemn them all for being taken in by the last disguise of the terrible man. He wanted to say to all the so-called mourners, “You sicken me.” He did not say a word to anyone however. He decided just to keep his own counsel.

  His mind took him back to the incident at the hospital and how, true to the way his mind worked then, he let himself be surprised by the disgusted look. And then he forgot it ever happened. He forgot so completely that a little while later he asked his father to sit down beside him. “You’ll feel better,” he said. But for that overture he got only the disgusted look again plus these words, spoken meanly, “Let me alone. Stop bothering me.”

  He remembered a doctor walking through a door and putting his arm around his father and whispering something to him about the baby being sick and not likely to live very long but that the mother (his wife) was doing well—“as good as can be expected.” Then the doctor said, “Don’t worry too much. There’s always another time.”

  When the doctor left, he ran up to his father and asked him what the doctor said. His father said only, “Leave me alone,” and pushed him back in the direction of the chair where he had been sitting but pushed him so hard he lost his balance and fell on the floor near the chair, hitting his head on the front part of the chair.

  An aunt, his mother’s younger sister, watched this and, after his father resumed his pacing, sat down beside him, took his hand, and whispered this into his ear, “I am going to whisper something to you that has to be a secret between you and me. Do not tell anyone what I am about to say. Do you promise?”

  He looked up at her and nodded yes. “Okay, then,” she said. “It is time you learned that your father is not and will never be a friend of yours. Something that happened when he was younger and has tried ever since to bury comes to the surface whenever he sees you. I don’t know enough to know why that is but I know enough to know that it is and is likely always to be. I think the best thing you can do is keep away from him. If he seems to change, know that deep down inside he is not changing. Be on your guard all the more. Watch out for him.”

  Those words too he quickly forgot because, remembering them conflicted with that other game his mind was playing with him. Still, perhaps those words, after sinking down deep in his consciousness, came to the surface years later and got him to see his father for what he was.

  She too was at the funeral. She did not talk about how nice his father was like the others. Just the opposite. Whenever she heard anyone say it, she grimaced. She’d also look at him and wink. Later, at the reception, he reminded her of what she said years before when the two of them sat together at the hospital. She put her finger to her lips and said, “Remember that what I said was meant to be a secret between you and me. I still feel that way.”

  He was thinking about what his father had done and what his aunt had said when eerie music began playing in his head at first softly but increasing steadily in volume until it got quite loud—so loud that he got up off his chair in the hospital’s waiting room, walked to the closest window, and looked out onto the street. He expected to see a band full of musicians dressed in strange costumes go by. But there was no band.

  Turning around, he found himself standing in a large room surrounded by the tick-like or mite-like creatures who were making strange buzzing, clicking, and whistling sounds to one another, creating a great din that filled the room. Also, strange music played. He had been so transported by his reminiscences that he had forgotten where he was and, though not frightened, was puzzled and amused by the presence
of strange tick-like and mite-like creatures sharing a strange room with him. Then he snapped out of it. He remembered.

  He looked towards the raised platform and saw the creatures that had musical instruments strapped to the slits on their chests rolling forwards and heaving away at their instruments, making buzzing and clicking and wheezing sounds that, though akin to the spoken language, was different enough to be counted as music.

  The door opened. The first to come out of the room were two creatures riding motorized carts and pushing an egg-shaped object that had a metallic strip wrapped around the bottom out of which jutted six little wheels. The creature rolled the thing across the floor. Behind them came two creatures that had yellow boxes sitting on platforms attached to the fronts of their carts. Behind them came two creatures, then a bed with Sylvia laying on it, and then two more creatures.

  The atmosphere in the large room turned chaotic. The ambient noise became so loud and persistent that it nearly deafened Peter. Wondering what might be in the egg-shaped object and thinking it might be his child, he ran over to it just as the transparent sections at the top of it slid first outwards and then downwards, exposing a sleeping infant covered by a soft white blanket and lying on a soft white mattress. Its little hands clutched the top edge of the blanket.

  Peter breathed a sigh of relief because, though he knew it didn’t make sense, he was worried that Sylvia might give birth to a mite-like creature. He had had nightmares about that, but now he saw that his worries and nightmares were unfounded. The child was human.