by Paul Corey
“Is there so much harm in my seeing and believing, Ello?” I asked.
“You invade our privacy.” She shook her head slowly and came over to the couch and sat down. “I’m not quite sure what that means. Doctor Mun says that you invaded the privacy of our bedroom area on the way to Lonwolt and thought what went on there was bad.”
“No. No. Not at all,” I protested. “I was surprised. That was all. Believe me. Look—” I hesitated. “Consider this. I’m not used to living with transparent walls. On Earth, walls are opaque, except certain sections which we call windows. All you have to do here is make your walls opaque or at least translucent. Then your privacy can’t be invaded.”
“Opaque? Translucent?”
I took a deep breath. How do you make a blind person see? “Make walls that eyes cannot penetrate.”
She considered that. “Walls like that would be too expensive,” she said. “Our people couldn’t afford them. It’s cheaper to isolate our animals.”
“I don’t wish to invade anybody’s privacy anyhow,” I said. Then I realised that it didn’t matter how beautiful she was, how much I might want her, I had to get away. “All I want is to get back to my ship and return to Earth. I have something very important to do there. I must right a wrong.”
“You have committed a wrong on your planet?”
“Yes, but I didn’t realise it until you people tested me. My tests on Earth have sent many Terrans into segregation, one young man in particular, just because they could not test special faculties. In the same way, your tests can’t test my special faculties and you want to segregate me.”
“But you have committed a wrong on your planet? You are a criminal then?” she said.
“No. No. I’m no criminal—” She didn’t let me finish.
“That fits my father’s theory,” she said. “He feels that you are obviously not intelligent enough to be a member of any species with technical knowledge to reach the stars. He thinks that you are a little smarter than most of the animals on your planet, and that you stole the spacerover belonging to the real Director of TERRA-TESTING and ran away.”
That stumped me for a moment. Then I said, “In that case why don’t you just send me back to Earth? Or, better yet, communicate with Earth and have them come and get me?”
She smiled. “That’s what Father wants to do. But Zinzer won’t hear of it. He says Earth will not miss you and you will make a fine new specimen in our animal collection. Doctor Mun hasn’t made up his mind yet. It’s the space ship that’s the problem.”
“Return it and keep me,” I said off-hand.
“But Earth might want you back for punishment if the return of your ship indicates where you are.” She faced me and shrugged her beautiful shoulders. “That presents a moral problem. What is the right thing to do? Meanwhile, I have persuaded them to let me keep you until they reach a decision. I want a chance to add you to my animal studies.”
“Well, thanks for not letting them bundle me off to some wild place,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
I really appreciated it. My gratitude got a little the better of me and I let my hand gently caress her back.
She gave a gasp and sat very still. I repeated the caress and took my hand away. It was trembling.
“I’ve never had an animal treat me like that,” she said in a low voice.
My courage grew. “All right, you’ll have a chance to really add to your research. And I would like to convince you that my story is true.”
She seemed to be pondering what had happened.
I pushed on. “The only real difference between you and me is this special sensory field of mine made by this pair of sensitive bulges on my face. On my planet we have some species of fish that live in pools deep inside caves. They have no eyes—no such orbs. We have a nocturnal flying beast called a bat that has practically no vision. Those two species are mammals, vertebrates, and they have the same and only sensory fields that your people have.”
She made no comment.
“However, neither of these species has intelligence that will compare in any way with that of the people of your planet If one of you were to come to Earth, we would not condemn you to a pool beneath the surface of the planet or to the darkness of night. We wouldn’t, simply because we could see and believe that you were a superior species.”
63
She faced me. “I wish that I could see just once,” she said in a quiet little voice.
“Yes, if you could only see just once.”
But I could see. And I repeat, she was lovely even without eyes. Suddenly an idea struck me. How would she look with eyes painted on the skeletal expanse above her nose?
SEVENTEEN
Among the many things in my survival kit was a compact, simple paint set. Once, to get rest and relaxation, I had taken up painting. When I had my survival kit organised, I had this paint set included. Part of the business of surviving a bad situation, especially in space, is oftentimes just finding something to do. I felt that a time might come when painting would provide me with a time-killer.
“Here is where your eyes would be if you had them,” I said.
I ran my fingers gently over the space between her brow and the base of her nose.
How about letting me make the outline of eyes on your face?”
“Outline? What is that?”
“With a soft little brush and several heavy liquids of different vibrations I will make on this area of your face”—I touched the spot—“a—a pattern of eyes. That will be as near as I can come to giving you the sensation of eyes.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Not a bit. You will feel the touch of my brush and sense the vibration of the colours I use. But that will be all. I’m just hoping that it will give you some little notion of what having eyes is like.”
“All right,” she said. “Give me eyes.”
I got my paint set, tilted up her head and went to work.
Once she said, “It tickles.”
Her lips were so inviting. I forced myself to pay attention only to what I was doing.
As I worked, I noticed that the touch of the brush indicated circles on each side of the base of her nose where the flesh was soft with no bone structure behind it. I felt out the margins of these areas—definitely like eyesockets covered with skin. Amazing. Could it be possible that there were vestigial remains of sight beneath that layer of skin?
“Do you know the evolution of your people?” I asked. “Is there a theory about their development?”
She laughed lightly.
“Oh yes. We have a wonderful history. Many thousands of years ago, we are told, God created Grenda and placed on it a male and female of each species. They were all animals with orbs for invading privacy. They all lived in a beautiful garden filled with flowers and fruit, trees for shade and protection from heat and rain. Life was easy and pleasant. Privacy was invaded all over the place.
“Do you like my story? We used to have a religion based on it.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a beautiful story. It sounds vaguely familiar to me.” I painted furiously, bringing definition to her eyes. “Please go on.”
“One day a serpent offered the female of my species an apple. It was hard and round and with a vibration of 760 millimicrons.”
“That would look bright red to me,” I said.
“Bright red,” she repeated thoughtfully, then continued, “But God warned the female that this ball held the knowledge of good and evil and she was not to play with it. Like all females, she didn’t hear what God said.
“She took the bright red apple—see, I’m making my story fit your idiom—and showed it to the male.”
“ ‘What is that?’ ”, he asked
“ ‘Good and evil’ ”, she answered.
“ ‘Let’s break it open and learn what good and evil are’ ”, he said.
“But the female of the species refused. She did not want her bright red apple despoiled. Instead, they just
played with it. They tossed it back and forth catching it. They saw the apple and they believed that it contained good and evil, but they did not know that it contained good and evil and did not understand what good and evil were.”
“Then one day, when they played with the apple, they started throwing it high into the sky and catching it when it came down. All the other animals ran away and hid because God had said not to play with the apple.”
“But the male and female of my species threw the apple higher and higher. Then, one time, they threw it to a very great height. There was a terrific explosion. The male and female of my species were thrown down and a great heat destroyed the orbs in their heads.”
“From that day on, they knew and understood good and evil because they could no longer see and believe it.”
My job was almost done. Never, in any previous try, had I painted such beautiful eyes. As I stood back to look at them and moved from side to side they seemed to follow me.
But I wanted to keep her talking still. The sound of her voice contributed to the illusion. I asked, “But where and when did the idea of sight as an invasion of privacy get started?”
“Oh, that followed the bursting of the apple quite naturally. Because the other species had all hidden, they still had their orbs and could see and believe. Therefore they could penetrate our lives in a way that we couldn’t theirs. That was an invasion of privacy—our privacy—and we had to stop it.
“For many years, whenever our species caught any of the other species, we removed the orbs from their heads.”
I shuddered at the thought.
“You’re right. It was pretty horrible,” she said. “And it didn’t seem to solve the problem. Every new generation of the other species was born with eyes just as always. It was finally considered a cruel thing to do. The practice was abandoned and we created refuges for the species with orbs to segregate them from the chosen species.”
“And none of your species have ever been born with orbs?” I said.
“Oh, there are stories of an occasional such deformity,” she said. “Just like any other physical malformation, I guess.”
I had finished. I felt an exultation beyond anything I had ever known in my life before. “You have eyes now, Ello.” I reached down and took her hands and lifted her up. “But you cannot see.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
We were standing so close and she was so beautiful that I could hardly breathe. This was too much for me. I bent down and kissed her on the lips. Then ten sexless years caught up with me. I took her violently in my arms. It’s a wonder I didn’t crush her. I was out of my mind.
She didn’t resist. She could have sent that old cord vibrating through me if she had wanted to. Then I felt the tip of her tongue on mine. Her arms came up around my neck, and that kiss was like the flame of a nova.
Still she did not struggle, but she gently withdrew from my arms, looking up at me with her sightless, painted eyes.
Mother of the Milky Way! What had I done? She had acted as if she had liked it. But how must she feel now, knowing that she had been embraced by an animal?
She stood there a moment, so lovely. Then all that had happened got through to her. She gave a little gasp, that might have been a sob, and ran through the wall.
EIGHTEEN
The best of all possible universes seemed to collapse around me. When she told her father and the others, especially that stinker Zinzer, what had happened, how an animal had made ruthless advances upon a sightless young woman . . . Great Galaxy!
The sun burned a notch in the mountains. I suddenly realised that I was terribly hungry.
But the thought of food brought other ideas. I saw myself in top place on a Grendan menu. “Broiled Terran steak.” Or “Roast Terran au jus.” They might only handle the whole thing as a scientific experiment. I might be the subject of a paper: “The Taste of Terrans”.
No executioner came.
At dusk, Lal brought my supper again.
“Tonight you are having a steak,” he said. “I believe that is what you call a piece of cow on your planet.”
It smelled delicious, but my taste for meat had been somewhat impaired by my recent thoughts. However I ate enough to convince him that my appetite had been good.
He said, “Good night, Doctor Stone,” when he got ready to split out.
“Good night, Lal.”
I didn’t feel like playing the old buzz game with him. From his unchanged manner I concluded that word hadn’t reached him that I was a low-score, maybe even a criminal.
I stretched out on my couch. What a mess I was in. There must be an intelligent way out of it. How was I to get back to Earth and tell Karen how wrong I had been and start getting Talcott Jones out of the ceranium mines?
My thoughts came back to Ello. Just the memory of that kiss burned. I told myself that she liked it too. All right then, why shouldn’t I marry the old scientist’s daughter? And just what would the old man’s reactions be to such a proposal—that his beautiful daughter marry an animal? Probably just what mine had been to the idea of my beautiful daughter marrying a moron.
But on Earth, I assured myself, I got Jones sent only to the ceranium mines. I still recognised that he was a human being, not a lower order of a different species.
This angle of thinking seemed hopeless if not downright dangerous. My thoughts plunged about hunting something else. Then I remembered Ello saying, “I wish I could see.” She had said it so simply. Just like a little girl wanting something so much.
I thought about that. What chance did she have of seeing? Not any. Not a glimmer.
There was, I was certain, vestigial evidence of eye-sockets in the cranial area where I had painted her eyes. I remembered the evidence of eyebrows on the guards. If the unsightedness on this planet was evolutionary, did there still remain hidden in the Grendan skull the seat of some optical centre? Perhaps there still existed an unused end of an optical nerve.
Suppose there was. Would it be possible to reactivate that sensory spot?
Somewhere in the process of kicking this idea around, I fell asleep.
Lal awakened me for breakfast. He acted as if he had swallowed one of their trick beams and it had turned prickly on him.
“What’s bothering you, Lal?” If word had got to him, I figured I might as well know it right now.
“I am not in the habit of serving animals,” he said. “My union is not going to approve when they find out.”
“Why are you doing it then?”
“Miss Ello asked me to.”
“I think we have a problem,” I said. “I’m a stranger here. Where I come from people show me the same respect you show the scientists you serve. I didn’t ask to come here. All I want now is to get back to my planet, Earth. I don’t want to put you in a false position. What does it matter whom you serve, animal, mineral, vegetable? What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“That’s a very poetic thought, sir.” He fidgeted. “Are you sure you are not a poet? Tell them you are a poet. Poets get away with about anything on Grenda. If you’ve got orbs, they might even let you keep them and not be classed as animal if you just say you’re a poet.”
“But I am not a poet, Lal. Why are you telling me this?”
“You’re a nice animal. I don’t dislike you. You can invade my privacy. To serve a poet is one thing. To serve an animal is another. It’s a matter of principle.” He shrugged. “For the time being I shan’t tell my union.”
“Thank you, Lal. I’d like to be friends with you.”
He left then. No one else appeared. I ate my breakfast.
The warmth of the rising sun coming through the greenish ceiling felt loaded with vitamins. I watched that golden disc climb the sky just as our sun does on Earth. Perhaps today, I thought, they’ll make up their minds to let me go. This would be a day of decision.
I went to the bathroom and shaved. When I returned my razor to the kit, my sun-
glasses fell out. Before putting them back, I checked for any breakage. They were sound. I noticed just casually that the dark lenses were held in by snap-rings. When I finally put them away, I rearranged the position of one of my cameras to make more room.
A quick look through the walls told me that no one had entered the laboratory in the Science Building. Inactivity and ignorance of what was going on out there began to irritate me. I did a stint on the exerciser. But that didn’t seem to be enough. I began pacing about my quarters.
Once I stopped near one of my guards. I could see him standing there, with his back to me, just through the wall. He slouched a little as if bored.
Very gently I ran my finger down the wall surface just behind his head. He snapped about. There on his brow, where I have eyebrows, were two scraggly lines of hair. I waggled a finger at him but he remained deadpan. I drew two circles with my fingers on the wall right in line with the spot beneath those scraggly lines of hair. His face broke into a grin—yes, you could call it a grin.
And what the devil was he grinning about, I wondered.
The sensitivity of these people was phenomenal. They could perceive almost anything physical in great detail. I returned to pacing. But they were not able to grasp a pictorial image.
Suppose a set of light vibrations were concentrated and focused on a vestigial remains of an optic centre; what might happen? I remembered a case on Earth. It was history. A girl named Rosa Kuleshova could read print and pictures with her finger tips. It was discovered that she had a fine network of nerve endings that were sensitive to light.
Then an idea practically jerked me out of my annis-hide boots.
I rushed to my survival kit, rummaged out my two cameras and my sun-glasses. It took only a moment to remove the lenses from the cameras and the glasses. Then I inserted the lenses from the cameras into the frames of the glasses. The fit was so close that a little pressure-sensitive tape held them in firmly.
