Homegoing

Chapter 14

Good seaports make great cities, but seaports have one inescapable flaw. They are inevitably located at sea level. With the swelling of the oceans New York City has gotten wet. Of the five boroughs the Bronx has suffered the least; the heights around Inwood and Riverdale still stand proud. Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island are mostly shallow shoals, apart from the stretches left over from the long glacial ridge, the scrubbings of the last Ice Age, that made their few hills. The island of Manhattan is somewhere in between. Where it rose in hills, even minor ones like Murray Hill, it is still dry. But the Wall Street area is a new Venice. Blue water fills the streets between its skyscrapers. The great bridges rise from water and return to water. Across what used to be the Hudson River—now just a brackish extension of the Lower Bay—the Palisades still tower above the sea, and that is where Hudson City has grown. It has two qualities that make it an important metropolis. One is the salvage industry it supports, for there are treasures still to be rescued from those flooded buildings of downtown New York. The other is sentiment. No former New Yorker could possibly accept a world in which there wasn’t any New York City, even if it had to be in New Jersey.

The blimp landed at Hudson City while Sandy was still asleep. He missed the first sight of what once had been, or once had thought it was, the central city of the human race. He was still bleary eyed as they drove through Hudson to their hotel. Even though he was both sleepy and abstracted, he could not help noticing that Hudson City was orders of magnitude huger and busier than Dawson had been, but the puzzlement in his mind drowned out the curiosity about this huge, human place.

Their quarters weren’t two separate rooms this time. Instead they had a “suite” of three linked rooms, a bedroom apiece and a larger sitting room between. As soon as they were alone Sandy followed Polly into her bedroom to confront her with what Marguery Darp had said.

Predictably, her response was belligerent. “Lie to you?” she cried. “What sort of statement is that? Of course our Major Seniors did not lie to you. Is your mind disordered and not functioning clearly because you are so obsessed with prospect of amphylaxis with that Earth female?”

Sandy made a fist and slammed it against the nearest wall. The wall shook, and Polly giggled in alarm. “Stop talking about me and the Earth female!” he shouted. “Answer the question! What she said was true. I don’t remember the ship visiting that other star. Do you?”

Polly hesitated. “Perhaps not very well,” she admitted. “But what does that prove? Earth people don’t know anything about time dilation, do they? When we get back to the ship you can ask the Major Seniors to clarify your understanding.”

He glared at her. “Who says I’m going back to the ship?”

“Well,” she conceded, “perhaps you are not. I do not know if that has been decided.”

“Perhaps I definitely am not. In any case, who asks the Major Seniors anything?” he growled in English.

“Well, then you can ask ChinTekki-tho by radio. I must call him this morning; when I am finished and not at any earlier time you can speak to him yourself. And speak Hakh’hli to me and not that Earth language,” she finished.

He blinked at her. “What is purpose of that?” he asked, but obeying.

Polly looked sulkily righteous. “You simply have not been using your senses, Lysander. Earth people are observing us at all times. Look in your room. Look here—” She pointed at a lighting fixture in the ceiling. “Do you see that lens? It is a camera. Cameras are in all rooms. I have seen them all along and not now for first time.”

Sandy stared at the tiny, barely visible disk of glass. “Do not look at it so!” Polly ordered. “Do not let them see we have discovered their secrets.”

He looked away. “In all rooms?” he repeated.

“Certainly in all rooms and not just this room,” she said severely. “As you should have observed for yourself. Earth people watch us at every moment, even sleeping. Now you must go away and not return for a twelfth-day—” She paused, consulted her watch, and corrected herself. “For some eighty-five Earth minutes, so that I may speak with ChinTekki-tho in private and not be overheard.”

“Why in private? Why do I have to leave?” Sandy demanded.

“You must leave because you are directed to and not for any other reason,” she said firmly. “Now go. Do not keep the Earth female waiting.”

When Sandy got to the hotel lobby the first thing he saw was Marguery Darp, looking fresh and desirable.

Just the sight of her came close to mending Sandy’s mood, but when he told her that Polly was staying in her room with the radio her expression, too, clouded over. “But Ham Boyle wants to take her to meet some space experts. They need to talk about the conference,” she said. Sandy shrugged. “Well,” she went on, “I suppose that can wait. Everybody’s got Perth on their minds, anyway. Maybe you’d just like me to show you around the city for a while?”

“I am tired of being shown things,” he said bitterly.

She looked at him speculatively. “I guess you got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she offered.

He said. “I understand that figure of speech. You mean to say that I am in a bad mood. That may be true. It may be that the reason for that is that I am suffering from what is called ‘culture shock.’ There is every reason for that, after all.”

She put her hand on his arm. “Of course there is, Sandy. Well, what would you like? There were some people that wanted to meet you, but I suppose that can wait.” She thought for a moment. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

“Walk where?”

“Anywhere you like. Just around the town, maybe. I’ve got your hat and sunglasses in the car.”

He pursed his lips. “Without being questioned by these people who want to meet me?” he stipulated, and Marguery laughed.

“Sandy, hon,” she said, “it’ll just be the two of us. I won’t promise I won’t ask you any questions, but whether you answer or not, you know—that’s entirely up to you.”

“It is?” he asked, astonished at the thought. “Well, I suppose we could at least try it.” And it was only then that he thought to ask, “What’s ‘Perth’?”

Perth, Marguery reminded him as they strolled through the streets of Hudson City, was a city in Australia, and the reason people had it on their minds was that one 150-ton monster piece of space junk was in the process of deorbiting itself. Unfortunately, its orbit took it right over the city of Perth, in Australia; and since the moment of impact could not be predicted very precisely, the people of Australia were jittery. Which made everyone else jittery.

“I suppose,” he said, as they stopped at a little park that overlooked the swollen river and bay, “that I too am ‘jittery.’ ”

Marguery said comfortably, “You’ll get over it. That’s what’s nice about this place. Looking at large bodies of water is soothing to the nerves.”

“It is?” He considered the thought and decided that it was true that he was feeling more relaxed. He pointed at the skyline across the water. “Is that New York City over there?”

“It’s what’s left of it,” she said. “You can see that parts of it are flooded. They tried diking all around the city when the sea level started to rise, but that only worked for a while. Then the storm surges just came right over the dikes. We can visit it if you like.”

“Now?” he asked, surprised.

“Whenever you want to,” she promised.

He thought about Polly’s call to ChinTekki-tho. “Not right this minute,” he said, looking at his watch, reassured to find that they had been gone only half an hour. He leaned out over the parapet and gazed down. Boats were moving silently up and down it, far below them, and just under them was a strip of sand. People in skimpy costumes were sitting or lying by the water, or actually splashing around in the water itself. “What are those people doing down there?”

She looked over the railing. “Just swimming,” she said. “Would you like to try it?”

“Me?” He gave her a doubtful look, then turned to gaze down at the people by the water. “I don’t know if I can,” he confessed. “I’ve never done that.”

“There’s nothing easier,” Marguery assured him. “I don’t suppose you have a bathing suit, but we can pick one up for you easily enough.”

“Not right this minute,” he said again, temporizing. He looked around at the peaceful scene below and the vista of the old city. “Maybe after lunch,” he finished. “There’s something I need to do at the hotel. Let’s start back.”

“All right,” Marguery said; but as they turned away a young woman in glasses, sun hat, and shorts approached them, holding a notebook and a pen out to Sandy.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but you’re the man from the spaceship, aren’t you. Can I have your autograph?”

When Sandy got back to the hotel room he was far too late to talk to ChinTekki-tho. The radio in Polly’s room was silent, and the table was littered with scraps of her midday meal. Polly herself was snoring stertorously in stun time.

“Oh, turds,” Sandy said aloud. But then he looked more closely at the scraps Polly had left on the meal cart. They smelled attractively familiar, after a few days of trying the exotic Earth foods. He chose a few fragments, piled them onto a silver dish that had, until then, held a vase of flowers, and took them back to his own room.

When he had finished he gazed out of the window for a while. Then, sighing, he sat down once more and began to sketch out another poem.

This one, he decided, would be a real human poem. Well, not rhymed—he wasn’t sure enough of himself for that—but anyway like a human poem, meaning not twisted into the shape of a significant object. By the time Polly came grumpily yawning into his room to complain that he had missed his appointment to talk to ChinTekki-tho, Sandy was smiling again.

Polly was not. “You were late and not on time,” she said accusingly in Hakh’hli.

Unrepentant, Sandy counterattacked. “Did you ask him about why we didn’t remember visiting Alpha Centauri?”

“Why should I have? You could have been here to ask him yourself.”

“But did you?”

Polly said in triumph, “Of course I asked him. And he gave me an answer. He said, ‘Such things will be discussed when Major Seniors decide it is time to discuss them and not before.’ ”

The “people who wanted to talk to Sandy” were gathered in the hotel’s ballroom when he came down in response to Marguery’s telephone call. “There are so many of them,” he said, displeased, peering in at the nearly a hundred human beings who were sitting there, talking among themselves.

“It’s just what we call a press conference,” Marguery said. “The people just want to get to know you, that’s all. After all, you’re a celebrity.”

“I am?” he asked, pleased.

“Of course you are. Can’t you tell? Why else would people be asking you for your autograph?”

So he let himself be led into the room without protest. He stood at a lectern on a platform at the front. Lights went on. Cameras began winking red-eyed at him. Marguery Darp said a few words of introduction, and the questions began. What did he think of Hudson City? Had he enjoyed his afternoon at the “beach”? What was the Hakh’hli, Hippolyta, going to tell the Earth’s astronomers? Were any more Hakh’hli going to land from the ship? and when? and how many of them, exactly?

The answer to most of the questions was, really, “I don’t know,” but Sandy did his best, aware of Marguery Darp sitting quietly behind him on the platform. But some of the questions made Sandy swallow hard. “Where do you want to live?” for instance. He turned to look at Marguery for help, but she didn’t offer any. “I mean,” the reporter persisted, “will you stay here in Hudson City? Or, actually, are you going to stay on Earth, or will you go back with the Hakh’hli ship when they leave?” A hard question. Sandy had not until that moment considered the probability that indeed the Hakh’hli ship would leave some day for another star. Thinking about it made him furrow his brow. And then, came the question that was hardest of all, because it was the one he had least expected. “If you stay on Earth, what will you do?”

Sandy blinked into the lights. “Do?” he repeated uncertainly.

“I mean, what kind of job will you have?” the woman persisted.

Sandy thought hard for a moment. It had never occurred to him to think of it. Really, what could he do, that would constitute an Earthly “job”? He ventured, “I can pilot a Hakh’hli landing craft.”

There was a faint chuckle all around. “But we don’t have any Hakh’hli landing craft,” the reporter pointed out. Then, at last, Marguery came to his rescue.

“Mr. Washington has any number of skills,” she told the reporters, “but you have to give him time to decide how he wants to use them. Anyway, I think we’ve imposed on his good nature long enough for this session . . . and besides, I’ve promised to take him swimming this afternoon!”

In Marguery’s little car, Sandy tried to tell her why that question was so hard. “I’m not used to having to decide things like that, Marguery. The Hakh’hli don’t pick where they’re going to live or what jobs they’re going to do. The Major Seniors decide that for them.”

She patted his hand reassuringly. “We do things differently here,” she told him. Then she pulled the car into a parking space and turned to look at him before opening the door. “You are going to stay with us, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, that’s definitely what I want to do,” Sandy said.

“And what about the Hakh’hli?” she pressed. “Are they going to go on with their voyage?”

He scratched his cheek. “I suppose they will,” he said.

“You don’t sound very sure,” she pointed out.

He shook his head. “As far as I remember, I don’t think that question ever came up. But what else would they do?”

Marguery nodded soberly. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Anyway, here’s the beach.” She leaned back to reach a package in the rear seat of the car. “I picked up a bathing suit for you in the hotel shop; hope it fits.”

“Thank you,” he said absently, beginning to unbutton his shirt.

“But you don’t undress here,” she said quickly. “There are changing rooms for that. I’ll meet you when you come out.”

That presented another mystery to solve, but a simple enough one this time. He copied what he saw other men doing, aware that they were looking curiously at him, as well. He didn’t think about it. His mind was filled with all the questions Marguery had raised and kept on raising.

There were plenty of questions. What was in very short supply was answers.

For twenty years everything had seemed clear to him: He would come back to Earth, as a gift from the Hakh’hli to the human race, and that would be that. He had never considered the possibility of an “after”—either for himself, or for the Hakh’hli ship.

When Sandy left the row of cubicles marked “Men” he was properly garbed in a pair of bathing trunks that did, just about, go around his considerable girth. Then the unanswerable questions vanished, because there was Marguery, waiting for him at the section marked “Women.”

He swallowed hard. Marguery Darp in ordinary clothes had stirred his passions. Marguery Darp in a bikini took his breath away. She had a loose, thin, nearly transparent robe over her shoulders, but it hid no more than the bathing suit did. “But you’re beautiful,” he told her.

She laughed out loud. “Well,” she said, “you’re certainly good for a person’s vanity, Sandy Washington.” Then she frowned. “I forgot to get you a sun robe, so we’d better not stay out too long. Come on. Let’s get our feet wet!”

And they did, and the experience of entering the water drove all other thoughts out of Sandy’s mind.

He was aware that people were staring at him, but they were smiling encouragingly, taking pictures. He grinned happily at the other bathers. It was fun! To be almost immersed in a liquid that supported, or very nearly supported, his weight! It was like flying—except that when they waded out to waist depth, Marguery holding his hand, and he tried lifting his feet off the bottom under her tutelage, he sank.

He got his feet under him and came up, gasping and snorting and laughing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t swim at all. I think the average density of my body’s a lot more than water.”

She pursed her lips. “You’re pretty solid, at that. Well, that’s not a big problem. We’ll get you a life preserver or something, if you want to try. And I’ll be right with you, all right?”

“Maybe another time,” he said cautiously. “Is it all right if we just, what do you call it, ‘wade’ for a while?”

“Whatever you want.”

He splashed about, thoughtfully. “The water isn’t very cold,” he said.

She laughed. “It isn’t always like this. You should have been here last winter. The whole bay was frozen over!”

Lysander gazed around, perplexed. “You mean ‘ice’? Frozen water? But why?”

“Just because it was winter, of course,” she said, and then had to explain what a “winter” was. “The old people never had freezes like this around here, she said with a certain amount of pride.

“But you said it was warmer now, not colder,” Lysander said humbly. “How could warming up make the air colder?”

“That cold air around here last winter wasn’t any colder than usual,” she explained. “It was just in a different place than usual.” She frowned up at the hot sun overhead. “But it isn’t winter now,” she said, “and I’m afraid we’re getting too much sun. Let’s sit in the shade for a while and dry off.”

He followed her up the little beach to where canvas awnings sheltered the bathers from the ultraviolet. “Be back in a moment,” she said, and disappeared in the direction of a refreshment stand. When she came back she handed him a paper cup with a fizzy soft drink in it. “Do you like it?” she asked, watching him taste it experimentally. “It’s called ‘root beer.’ ”

“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding. Like everything else on Earth, it did not taste at all the way he had expected, but he enjoyed the way it tingled at the back of his nose. “Listen, Marguery,” he said. “I remembered something about winter. When I was little MyThara told me that the Hakh’hli once visited a planet where it was winter all the time.”

He had her sudden full attention. “Really?” she said, waiting for him to go on. But he couldn’t go very far.

“I don’t remember very much about it,” he said. “It was a big disappointment to them for some reason. The Hakh’hli don’t like to talk about disappointments—I guess they’ve had too many of them. But it did happen, MyThara said. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago.” He stopped to think, then shook his head. “That’s all I remember. I could ask ChinTekki-tho about it, next time I talk to him. He’d know. Would you like me to do that?”

“Yes, please,” said Marguery. “I’d like that very much.”

When they separated to get dressed again, Sandy discovered the paper in his pocket. He had completely forgotten about it. It brightened his mood, and when they got back into her little red car, he pulled it out for her.

“I’ve got something for you, Marguery,” he said, smiling tentatively.

She saw what he was doing. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Another poem?”

“A human one this time,” he said proudly. He didn’t hand it to her. He held it up and began to read aloud.

“Tenuous fragile creature

Deliciously lacking a tail,

Without great springing legs

But only long, smooth, slim, sweet ones.

I want to climb those legs, dear lovething,

I want to climb them to the place where you and I join,

For you are the other half of me,

And I want to make us whole.”

She gave him a long look and then took the paper away from him. She read it over carefully before she spoke.

Then she put it down and stared at him. “You really get right to the point, don’t you?”

“I’m trying to do it right,” he said apologetically.

“Well,” she said, “frankly, maybe you’re doing it right enough, but you’re also doing it too fast. If you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” he admitted sadly.

She laughed out loud. “And I don’t know exactly how to teach you,” she said. “Oh, Sandy!” She was thoughtfully silent for a moment. Then she asked, with an abrupt change of subject, “Would you like to see the real New York City?”

He blinked at her, then waved his hand toward the skyline across the river. “Am I not seeing it right now?”

“I mean see it close up. Maybe even do some scuba diving, if we can find water wings or something to keep you from sinking. We can go underwater and see the actual streets themselves.”

Sandy scowled, thinking it over. He couldn’t see how that related to the previous conversation. He had a vague notion of what “scuba diving” was like from films of that old Frenchman, Jacques Cousteau. It had seemed quite frightening, watching them on the screen of the cohort quarters back on the Hakh’hli ship. But if Marguery were with him—especially if she were wearing, as she certainly would be, that wonderful bikini bathing suit . . .

He smiled up at her. “I’d love it,” he said.

She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. “I hope you will,” she said, and left it at that.