“Very good!” he exclaimed. He touched the tips of his sniffwhips together and slowly spread them into a V, saying, “This slow spreading of my sniffwhips, the slow drawing apart of them, could represent ‘very’ as our first V-word. For ‘good,’ just touch your sniffwhip to your mouth and then place it across your other sniffwhip.”
“Very good,” she signed.
“Very good!” he signed and said. “This is fun.” He flicked the base of one sniffwhip with the tip of the other. “Fun.”
“Fun,” she signed. “Very good fun,” she signed.
He laughed. “This is easier than I thought it would be.” He brushed a sniffwhip upward against another several times in quick succession. “Easy.”
“Easy,” she signed.
“Your turn to make up a sign for a word,” he offered. “How would you do ‘I,’ meaning yourself but also the letter I?”
She needed only a moment to come up with the idea of the tip of a sniffwhip pulled down close to her face and held up in a vertical position like a little i. He signed it after her.
“And ‘you’?” he asked.
“Even easier,” she signed, and simply pointed the same sniffwhip at him for “you.”
He crossed the lengths of his sniffwhips and drew them to his chest as in an embrace. She was transported by apple fritter, he by ginseng. “This is the sign for ‘love,’” he said. Quickly, without thinking, she imitated the sign for “love.” He made the sign for “I,” he made the sign for “love,” he made the sign for “you.”
“I,” she signed. “Love,” she signed. She hesitated. “Not very easy,” she signed.
He blushed, abashed at himself for his audacity. They made up new words, new letters, tried them out, created sample sentences of safer declarations and questions. A question mark is easy: a crooking of the tip of the sniffwhip to describe the figure of the question mark, or both sniffwhips to be emphatic: “??” An exclamation mark is even easier, a stiffening and straightening of the sniffwhip high overhead: “!” Double sniffwhips are twice as exclamatory: “Watch out, there’s a scorpion behind you!!” He was only kidding, and frightened her, but she forgave him, and, entering into the spirit, became the inventor of the combined question and exclamation: “Now why would you have scared me so?!”
Their communication became articulate, their gestural statements prolonged and increasingly complicated. They even reached the point where she could tell him about her belief in Fate-Thing. The sign devised for “thing” was a mere shifting and dropping of one extended sniffwhip, but “fate” was so difficult that, like many of their words, it required not the sniffwhips and touchers alone but also a gitalong or two, a shifting of the body, a semaphoring of the tailprongs.
Tish “talked.” Sam “listened.” The night passed. Their conversation was slowed by the need for stopping to invent a new sign for a word here and there. They were so caught up in their dialogue that neither of them noticed the Clock strike “BUN” or even “TART.” When they had nearly exhausted the subject of the Fate-Thing, she asked him again her original question, “Why The Bomb?” and he attempted as best he could to explain it to her in signs. He even seized upon her conception of the Fate-Thing to support his own theory: that someone or something, perhaps the Fate-Thing, would prevent Man from destroying the earth with The Bomb.
“TRIFLE,” said the Clock.
Sam and Tish “talked” so much their sniffwhips began to ache, a rare occurrence for their species, who keep their sniffwhips in motion anyway all the live-long night, and even, often, during the day, in their sleep.
Tish realized she had “talked” more with Sam than with anyone in her whole life, and when the Clock said “FUDGE,” Tish used her new sign language to express astonishment and dismay and to sign, “Yellow fireball will rise up any minute now.”
“Yellow fireball,” Sam repeated the sign after her. He realized he had not spoken for hours; although she could easily hear him, he was talking only in the language they had invented for him to “hear” her.
“I must go,” Tish signed, “or I shall get caught in daylight.”
“You will get caught in daylight anyway if you try to go now,” he pointed out to her. “Stay more and spend the whole day.”
She thought he was making the polite but insincere formality, the traditional ritual of dialogue translated into signs, and she returned these signs: “Best be getting on down back. Come go home with me.” She realized how ridiculous the invitation was, to ask a Squire Ingledew to come to her rotten log, but she knew he knew she didn’t mean the invitation.
“Better not,” he signed. “You just make yourself pleasant and stay the whole day.”
“Time to light out for home,” she signed. “Come and keep me company.”
“Not this morning, thank you, Tish. Why don’t you just move in here and have you some vittles?”
Oh, if only he meant it! “Can’t do that, I reckon,” she formally signed, reluctantly. “I am a mind to get on home.”
“No, you are not,” he signed. He was breaking the rhythm! He was interpolating! “You are a mind to stay more, and you are going to do it.”
“Huh?” she signed, surprised at his extemporizing the formalities. “What?!”
“You heard me,” he signed.
“But,” she signed. She wondered what to sign next. She tried signing “but” once more, and yet again. She felt she was stuttering in sign language. “But my forty-three brothers and sisters will fear that I have been westered by a bird, chicken, or other fowl.”
“If you leave now,” he pointed out, “you will be westered by a bird, chicken, or other fowl.”
The yellow fireball rose above Dinsmore Mountain, not yellow but orange and huge and hot. Through the screen door of the Woman’s bedroom came the sound of the lifting of the morning breeze and then of birds, chickens, and other fowls reciting their matinals. Through the glass of the face of the Clock, Tish could see the Woman Herself turn over in Her bed and waken, then slowly swing Her feet off the bed to the floor.
“Behold,” signed Tish. “The Woman, goddess of Parthenon, awakes and rises up.”
“Yes,” signed Sam. “Notice how she touches the flat surface beneath her bed with her left gitalong first.”
“Why does she do that?”
“Maybe,” Sam signed, smiling, “it is a superstitious propitiation—” the big words gave him trouble “—to the Fate-Thing.” Then he finger-spelled, or, rather, sniffwhip-and-toucher-spelled, the Woman’s name. “Her name is Sharon. S-H-A-R-O-N.”
“Sharon,” repeated Tish. “I have heard Man call out to Her.” She watched as the Woman removed her nightgown and put on the red flower-print shirt and blue jeans that she would wear that day. “She is so beautiful, pretty, lovely,” signed Tish.
“And lonely,” signed Sam. The sign for “lonely” is to draw the very tip of the right sniffwhip down over the lips, almost as in making the “Shhh” sign for silence, implying “silent and alone.” Sam offered, “Shall I tell you a story about Sharon?” Their sign for “story” had begun as a linking and pulling apart in quick succession several times the tips of the sniffwhips, but now that they had used the word several times between them they found that unconsciously they were joining the tips of one another’s sniffwhips in order to sign it.
“Oh, please do tell me a story!” Tish requested, grabbing at the tips of his sniffwhips with her own.
Sharon, Sam explained, was the granddaughter of a demigoddess named Latha, who once had lived here but now lived east of Stay More. Latha was very old but even more beautiful than Sharon, and during the time of her life that she had dwelt in Parthenon, eons ago, she had lived alone too, and had been lonely, and yearning, and Parthenon had been filled with the luck-bringing scents of yearning. A Man from out of her past, whose name was Every, as in each and every, a different Man not related to the present Man of Stay More, whose name is Larry, had returned to town and become involved in the most fabul
ous of stories, which Tish must remind Sam to tell her, but not now.
This is the story of Sharon, who decided to move back to Stay More, where She had spent most of Her adolescent years, and not only to move back but to move into the very Parthenon. Was Sharon also expecting a Man from out of Her past to come to Her? If so, was that Man the same who now lived here, Larry? If this was true, why did Sharon refuse to have anything further to do with Larry?
“Yes? Yes?” signed Tish. “Go on. Go on!?”
“That’s all we know, right now,” Sam signed. “The story is continuing. Like the story of you and me.”
If Tish caught the insinuation of this series of gestures, she did not let on. She seemed to sign to herself, “So ‘Larry’ is the name of our Man?” Having an actual name for Him seemed somehow to belittle Him, although thinking of the Woman as Sharon did not belittle Her. Tish watched Sharon, who had entered a small room leading off Her bedroom and sat upon a stool of gleaming white porcelain.
“What does She do?” Tish signed a question.
“She sits upon what is called a toilet,” Sam explained in signs, with some hesitancy, as if the process bothered him. “Listen,” he told her. Although he was deaf, he could remember when his hearing was good and he could hear the sound. Tish listened and heard it: a tinkling, as of rain. She looked at Sam in puzzlement, and Sam signed, “She is making water.”
“Oh, water!?” Tish exclaimed in signs. Then Tish signed a question, “Has She ever had a rock-a-bye?”
Sam mulled the possibility. Although he had once thought of Sharon as his own mother, he had long ago given up the possibility that he had hatched from an ootheca laid by Her. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “If she had rock-a-byes, none of them have ever come to Parthenon.”
“How,” Tish wondered aloud, signing absently, “do Man and Woman twist and pound rock-a-byes?”
Sam was charmed by her question and the artless gestures she used to ask it. How, indeed, did humans make babies? He remembered the one night, or rather early morning, when he had observed the Woman with Larry in Her bed. Had they been engaged in a baby-making thing? If so, the Woman had not had a baby as a result of it. “I suppose,” he signed, “it is not too awfully different—” he crossed and uncrossed his sniffwhips, for different “—from the way that roosterroaches do it.”
She laughed uproariously. Perhaps her embarrassment contributed to the excessiveness of her laughter, he thought.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, speaking aloud for the first time in hours, but then he signed it: “What’s so funny??”
She signed: “Just the way you sign ‘roosterroach.’ I recognized the sign, although we have not used it before. I never thought of roosterroaches that way before. I guess you have to see everything in a different language to understand it.”
It was his turn to laugh. He repeated the signs after her: You have to see everything in a different language to understand it. Then he signed, “I love that.” He loved this girl. He loved her so much that his tergal gland began to leak a drop of affy-dizzy. He backed away from her, but not quickly enough, not far enough. She sniffed the heady male aroma. No vanilla custard, no apple fritter on earth, can equal it in attraction. She was tantalized, and involuntarily made a step in his direction, causing him to back into a corner of the Clock.
The Woman left Her toilet room, recrossed Her bedroom to another door. From another room came the sounds of pots and pans rattling.
Sam realized his back, all along the underside of his wings, was lathered with affy-dizzy.
Had hours passed since Tish had stuffed herself on fritter? She felt her appetite returning with a gush and whispered with timid signs (if signs can whisper), “Just a taste.”
Now, there is no such thing as “just a taste” of the irresistible nectar of love which is called affy-dizzy. Like a bee drawn to a flower, a female is held by it, is lured to climb the male’s back so that she can reach the fount of the affy-dizzy and greedily lap it up, the taste of which, unlike even the finest crumb fallen from Man’s (or Woman’s) table, is the most delectable substance ever to reach her touchers and her lips, and it stimulates her appetite to consume all of it, every droplet, and each taste of it excites her more.
Because no female had ever lapped his affy-dizzy before, but because he had in his dreams, and night fantasies too, imagined the procedure, Sam was surprised to take leave of his body, or, rather, to observe his body take leave of him: once the female has been maneuvered into position to reach and taste the affy-dizzy, one of three specialized clamps in the male’s genitalia reaches up and seizes one of three specialized latches in the female’s genitalia. This clamp will remain firmly manacled to this latch for at least two hours.
When the clamp and the latch were firmly affixed, in an instant, Sam attempted to sign, “Oops!” but could only spell it, and Tish was too distracted to notice.
The intricate anatomy of the mechanisms of reproduction is astonishing: there are not one but two phallomeres, and it is the right one which first probes the female.
“Sam!” she cried out, and then attempted to spell it, “S-A0M-!-!” but he could not see her; their bodies were already turning into the opposed position, end to end at 180 degrees.
The second clamp, whose function is titillation as well as coupling, clinched a second latch and began tickling and was tickled in return. The third clamp grabbed the third latch.
The sunlight coming into the room, into the face of the Clock, brightly blinded both of them, clamper and latcher alike. Above them rolled the ancient ceaseless workings of the Clock; within them rolled the classic machinery of their sex, in which the complexities of movement were no less involute, convolute, and revolute. The Clock would scream “SCONE!” and then it would groan “SUGARPLUM!” before Tish and Sam were finished. Tish had wanted to know a simple answer to a simple question, how Man and Woman twist and pound their babies. Indeed, for humans it is comparatively simple; for the species of Sam and Tish, it took hours, and inward constructions beyond all imagining.
INSTAR THE THIRD:
The Rally
Chapter fourteen
When Tish awoke, not to any inner biological clock but to strange sounds, it was already beyond gloaming. She required more than a minute to determine not only the source of the sounds but her very location: above her head were not the familiar rotting grains of wood in her sleeping cranny at the log, a homey sight her eyes had seen every waking evening of her life, but instead the smooth wooden-toothed edges of gears and wheels, like a magnified daymare of the interior of some creature’s gullet and gizzard, grinding away at her who had been swallowed whole. She tried to stifle a cry, the choked squeak escaping without disturbing the deep sleep of her companion, who, she suddenly remembered, was deaf. She stared at him, waved both sniffwhips over him to perceive the depth of his slumberscent, and determined that he was indeed far away in dreamland. There was a smile at the edges of his handsome mouth. But the sounds he was making! He was snoring. She had heard her late father snore, particularly during days after he had consumed too much Chism’s Dew, but nothing like this, the snores of a feller who could not hear himself snore! It would have been bearable except that each of his twenty spiracles was snoring in a different pitch, so that the effect reminded her of an assembly of cicadas drumming and shrilling in discord.
She jumped, not simply in response to the grating sounds but in sudden recollection of the activity that had consumed most of her morning. She felt a fullness in her abdomen which was…it was quite pleasant, even wonderful, nothing at all like a stomach ache, but strange and somehow conclusive, final, as if to say to her, That’s all there is to it. Her sense of immeasurable gratification and satiety was tinged with a certain sadness, a feeling of loss, not simply the loss of her innocence and virginity but the loss of all her life that had led up to this event, as if the adult cecropia, designed for love alone, discovers after the act that love was not worth all that bother and metamorph
osis. Her expectations were not entirely disappointed, save for the gnawing realization that it could have consequences in the form of sixteen passengers in an easteregg. She licked her lips and could still faintly taste the affy-dizzy. Had it all been worth the taste?
And now she was hungry again! Not for more affy-dizzy, but for solid food, for breakfast. She explored Sam’s larder, the row upon neat row of crusts and crumbs of every conceivable provision, more a hoard than a pantry. Her touchers told her that all of these items were arranged and catalogued not only according to variety and sugar content but also according to age, as well as to crustiness and crumbiness, and many of them were older than she, even older than he! She selected a bit of well-ripened Twinkie, consumed it with gusto, and followed it up with an assortment of dabs of pudding, bits of candy, flecks of frosting, and specks of meringue. She noticed that one wall of the Clock was hung with the six cast-off moults of the owner, Squire Sam: the moults ranged in size from a first-instar scarcely larger than her head to a sixth-instar as large as she, which would almost still fit him. Why had he kept them? Not to eat, surely. Souvenirs of his childhood?
Tish stepped out of the Clock to take her bath, and gave herself a thorough washing on the edge of the mantelshelf, while she surveyed the room, the Woman’s bed-and-sitting room, which did not have Sharon in it at the moment. Everything looked cozy and comfortable, as Tish had noticed the night before—had it been only one night before? It seemed like ages.
A terrible noise almost knocked Tish off the mantelshelf. It was not the Clock. The Clock had said, almost politely, a few minutes ago, “NOUGAT,” and Tish was becoming accustomed to the things the Clock said. This was a shrill noise coming from a gigantic black insect perched upon a small table beside the Woman’s bed. The insistent tintinnabulation lasted for a full second before abruptly ceasing, but Tish scarcely had time to retreat within the safety of the Clock before it roared another long burst of the same skirling cry. She stood transfixed, staring at the creature, the like of which she had never seen, unless it was two creatures: a huge carpenter ant mounted across the back of a huge rhinoceros beetle. Yes, perhaps the ant was killing the beetle, and it was the wailing westering howls of the beetle that were making such an urgent, horrible jangle. The howls did not waken Sam, but of course he was deaf. Tish was tempted to shake him awake. A third time now the big beetle screamed for mercy, and the Woman Sharon Herself came into the room and seized the huge ant and plucked it off the beetle’s back. But then, instead of comforting the stricken beetle, She held the ant against Her cheek tenderly and spoke to it, saying, “Hi, Gran.” The ant was Sharon’s grandmother?!? The ant spoke to Sharon, but Tish could not hear the ant’s words. Sharon sat down on the edge of Her bed, still holding the ant against Her cheek, and listened to it for a long moment, then said, “Oh, the radio said that too, but we haven’t had a sign of it yet, have we?” Then She listened to more of the ant’s words, and said, “I tried oiling it, but still it sticks.”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 134
