Homegoing

Chapter 8

One of the reasons the planet Venus is so hot is that its atmosphere contains vast quantities of carbon dioxide, which traps the heat from the sun. One of the reasons Mars is so cold is that its atmosphere is very thin; there isn’t enough carbon dioxide to do the same thing. The Earth’s air is intermediate between them, but the human race has been changing that. Every time they exhale they breathe carbon dioxide out. Every time they burn fuel to run their engines and heat their homes (which is always) they make more of it. So the Earth gets warmer and the ice melts. (There is a reason why the policewoman laughed when Sandy said his home was in Miami Beach. The only present inhabitants of Miami Beach are jellyfish, crabs, tarpon, and bonefish, because Miami Beach, like most of the low-lying coasts of the world, is underwater.) There is more. Because the atmosphere is a heat engine, the more the air warms the more energy there is to express itself as storms, air-mass movements, scouring winds . . . in short, as hurricanes.

Even the word “hurricane” was unfamiliar to Sandy. It was one of those words you heard on old TV weather broadcasts, but there was nothing like a hurricane on the Hakh’hli ship. But on the way to the police helicopter he saw there was a corner of the cowshed that was bent out of shape, and a tree down in the courtyard, and he remembered the other great trees he had seen uprooted in the storm. And the word “hurricane” came back out of his subconscious.

He would have liked to ask the two police officers about it, but they didn’t seem to want to talk. If they had names, they didn’t tell them to Sandy. They didn’t look much alike, apart from the uniforms. The male one was shorter than the female, and his face was flatter and skin darker; he looked quite a lot like the animal herders. The female was paler and thin, like the picture of Sandy’s mother, though neither as young-looking nor as pretty. (Nor, for that matter, as undressed.) They escorted him, politely enough, to their “helicopter” and sat him down in the right-hand front seat.

Sandy tensed when the female one buckled straps around him. Partly it was that she, a female Earth human, had touched him and his startled glands throbbed. Partly it was because they were binding him like a prisoner! He made himself relax when they assured him the straps were only for his safety when the helicopter took off. Anyway, Sandy had no doubt that if things turned bad he could snap those straps in a moment.

What he would do after he snapped them was another question. The male sat next to him, at the controls; but the female was in the seat right behind, and the metal thing she carried at her side was a “gun.” Sandy’s knowledge of guns was perfect, obtained from any number of recorded Westerns and cop shoot-em-ups. He knew that if anyone fired a gun at anyone else, the target fell over in great and often terminal pain. He also knew from the same sources that a uniformed person with a gun had the right to fire it at any “suspect” and splat his brains out.

Sandy didn’t want his brains splatted out, especially by a human female—not a young one, to be sure, but very probably still capable of breeding. He turned his head as far as he could to smile at her.

She didn’t smile back. She only said, “Please sit straight, sir.” And then she leaned forward so that he felt her breath on the back of his neck. “Did you say your home was in Miami Beach?”

“That’s right,” Sandy said, sticking to the script. “I’ve been traveling—hitchhiking—and I guess I lost my way in the, uh, storm.”

There was a skeptical snort from the woman. “Then where are your gills?” she asked.

Sandy frowned. The woman meant something by that, but what?

“Let it rest, Emmons,” the male police officer ordered. “The captain will sort all this out.” And he did something with feet and fingers, and the slow flut-flut-flut of the rotor overhead picked up speed as the helicopter lurched off the ground.

Then Sandy’s big problem wasn’t solving the puzzling conversation, it was trying to keep from vomiting again.

The helicopter did not shudder and leap as the landing ship had when it was bumping through the atmospheric entry. The helicopter’s motion was slower and more tantalizing. But it was equally bad. Hurriedly the woman behind him pushed an air-sick bag at him. Sandy thought that, barring the tiny morsel he had swallowed at the cow farm, his stomach must be empty. But he surprised himself. He used the bag.

Then, sick or not, he had to look out the window. There were more trees down on the slopes around them, and some of the standing ones looked distinctly unhealthy—bare branches or yellowed leaves, some of them with their branches stripped away and nothing but straight, dead poles remaining. No matter. This was Earth! He thrilled to the recognition of that all-important fact. He was home!

The helicopter swayed as it lifted to clear a ridge. Then, as it went through a pass, Sandy could see a road below him—no doubt the very road he had failed to find in the stormy night. He could see that the storm had passed this way, for on the flanks of the mountains still more trees were down in windrows.

The flight covered the distance that had taken him six stumbling, zigzag hours in less than five minutes. Sandy was just beginning to wonder whether he would need the bag again when the pilot said, “There it is.”

There it was. The Hakh’hli landing ship. It squatted peacefully on its skids on a gentle grassy slope, its pale landing lights still on though the sun was high.

The lander looked astonishingly small, squatting in its meadow. It even looked pitiful, because the trip and the storm had not been kind to it. The thin foil that took the sting out of the micrometeoroids in orbit was punctured and wrinkled. The netting the Hakh’hli had tried to string over the craft after the landing, to hide it, had been shredded by the winds. The lander looked hard used.

But what caught Sandy’s eye at once was that it was no longer alone. Five other flying machines surrounded it. Human machines. They were helicopters more or less like the little police craft Sandy was riding in, except that most of them were a good deal bigger. And people, human people, were standing about in clusters. Some of them had television cameras pointed at the landing craft, or at each other, or most of all at the Hakh’hli.

All six of the Hakh’hli had come out of the lander. Two of them—they looked like Polly and Bottom—were talking into the television cameras. A couple of others were hunched possessively beside the ladder-stick to the door of the landing craft. And a couple were vigorously, joyfully showing off for the human spectators, leaping, with the extra strength their muscles gave them in the feeble Earth gravity, over each other in the game the Earth children he had seen on kiddy television shows called leapfrog; and froggy the Hakh’hli indeed did look.

As Sandy got out of the helicopter, Tanya came bounding toward him. The two police flinched away. Their hands strayed toward their holstered guns; but they didn’t draw them, and Tanya, weeping an affable tear, cried in Hakh’hli to Sandy, “You have done badly and not at all well, Lysander. Speak cautiously to these Earth creatures until you have learned new orders!”

Startled, Sandy demanded. “What new orders? You speak confusingly and not with any clarity.”

But she didn’t answer in Hakh’hli. She only patted him in playful reproof, and then turned and bounded away again, crying in English, “So follow me, Sandy! We are all being ‘interviewed’ on ‘television’ by these wonderful Earth people!”

Sandy frowned in bewilderment at the two police officers. The male one shrugged. The female one said, “I guess that’s what you ought to do, sir.”

So he tailed after Tanya, looking around.

His spirits began to rise. In daylight the world was more beautiful and more frightening than Sandy had ever imagined. There was so much of it! Never in his life had he been able to look for more than a hundred feet in any direction. Now there were horizons a dozen miles away—with mountains! and rivers! and clouds! and, brighter than he had dreamed, so bright that it hurt his eyes to look at it, the Sun!

The second most startling thing was the sight of Polly, weeping good-naturedly as she squatted on a flat, sun-warmed rock before half a dozen television cameras. She certainly was not obeying the directives of the Major Seniors. She wasn’t making any secret of their presence on Earth. She was, in fact, advertising it! As Sandy approached, the people with the television cameras turned away from Polly to aim their lenses directly at him, and Obie and Helen loped toward him.

“Welcome to Earth!” called Obie—in English.

Helen, in Hakh’hli, added sorrowfully, “Oh, Wimp, you’ve really screwed it up this time.”

Sandy blinked at her. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Speak Hakh’hli!” Polly commanded, leaping off the rock and waddling toward him. “Because of your folly and incompetence everything has to be changed now!”

“My folly?”

“Yes, and incompetence,” Obie put in, looking reproachful. “You failed to carry out your mission properly. They knew at once you were lying and not speaking truth.”

“Well,” Sandy said reasonably, “all right, but I certainly didn’t tell anybody about the big ship, did I?”

“Don’t argue!” Polly ordered. “We have to attend to these people now and without delay! I have been in contact with the ship. The Major Seniors are very displeased with you, Lysander. However, facts are facts, eggs cannot be unlaid, and so we have new orders. We are to speak openly to these people of our purpose here.”

“Speak openly?” asked Sandy, dazed.

“Oh, please behave in Hakh’hli fashion and not any more in that of a hoo’hik than you must, Lysander! Just follow my lead. Smile. Let them welcome you home. And listen attentively to what I say to them!”

Then she turned to the cameras and spoke in English, weeping apologetically. “Please forgive us. We were simply worried about our dear friend, Lysander. Now can we go on with the ‘interview’?”

Neither Sandy nor any of the Hakh’hli had ever been “interviewed” before. But they had seen it done often enough on the old Earth television shows, and Polly was behaving like a talk-show veteran. She pulled Sandy to her side, with her hand firmly and affectionately tucked into the belt at his waist, as she spoke into the cameras. If Sandy had not been so busy staring around at the human machines, the human people, the grass and wildflowers and very rocks of the human world, he would have admired her poise. She spoke clearly and persuasively.

“Yes, we are the Hakh’hli, a race of highly technologically advanced people with a recorded history that goes back some sixteen thousand eight hundred of your years. We have come here to share our wisdom with you. Also to return the human, John William Washington. (We call him Sandy.) He is the son of two of your astronauts, whom our ship rescued when they were stranded in space, due to a war you were having, fifty-six of your years ago. We have brought him up as one of our own. The little story he told your food-animal herders was a harmless little deception. We only wanted him to be able to move freely among you, so that the first shock of his return to his native planet could be as gentle as possible, before the inevitable ‘publicity’ that would accompany the news of his real identity. Also, to be sure, we felt it necessary to be cautious in our first approach, so that we could find out what conditions were like in order to decide how best to make ourselves known to you. We wanted to spare you the worst shocks of encountering a race of truly superior beings.” She blinked affably at the cameras for a moment, and then added, “And now, if you will excuse us, we have to go back in the ship for a while, because it is time for our midday meal. We apologize for this necessity, but because of the excessively long day of your world we can wait no longer. Are you coming, dear Lysander?”

Once the Earth humans had been made to understand that when a Hakh’hli wanted to eat his big meal he wanted it, they hospitably offered to feed them out of their own stocks. Of course, the Hakh’hli rejected that proposal out of hand. They were too hungry to prolong the discussion, and so the entire cohort climbed back up the ladder-stick into the landing craft and closed the door.

As soon as they were inside Sandy burst out in Hakh’hli, “What has happened? Why are plans now different and not the same?”

“Because you screwed up,” Obie chortled in English.

“Speak Hakh’hli and not Earth language!” Polly thundered. “Who knows what listening devices Earth creatures have? But Oberon is correct and not in error, Lysander-Wimp. You failed and did not succeed. Those Earth creatures penetrated your ruse at once. How could you have been so foolish and not at all wise, Lysander?”

And Tanya, hurriedly loading the food cart at the far end of the chamber, chimed in, “Your incompetence has endangered our entire plan, Lysander.”

And Helen added, “Major Seniors are displeased and not at all happy.”

And even Oberon opened his mouth for a denunciation of his own, and Sandy might have had a great deal more recrimination to endure, but Tanya was already pulling their midday meal out of the warmer. The Hakh’hli abandoned Sandy for more rewarding fare.

In the confined space of the lander there wasn’t room for all six of them to attack the food at once. As always, Sandy didn’t even try, but waited for the feeding frenzy to subside. Even Obie, the smallest, was pushed out of the way. He tried to squeeze past Polly, but ducked back as she reached to pinch him, bumping into Sandy.

He winced as Sandy glared at him. “I’m sorry about what I said,” he offered. “Only it’s all so very confusing here. They do stare at us so!”

Sandy snorted. “Now you know how I’ve been feeling for the last twenty years,” he said, pleased at the role reversal—mostly pleased, anyway, although it was not altogether pleasing to find that he was no longer the unique center of attention.

Polly, mouth full, turned to glare at them. “I told you to speak Hakh’hli and not Earth language!” she said thickly, chewing. “It is in any case natural that Earth creatures should stare. It is clear in Earth history that such things happen, when primitive savages are suddenly visited by their technological and intellectual superiors; no doubt they think we are ‘gods.’ ” And, godlike, she shoved Bottom out of the way for another go at the meal.

That made room for Obie to squeeze his way in, which he promptly did, leaving Sandy to wait outside the noisy, violent knot. Sandy didn’t mind waiting. Actually, he was mildly repelled by the sight of his Hakh’hli cohort at their food. In the kitchen of the human food-animal herders things had been quite different. No one had been chewing and tearing at the meal there. Why couldn’t the Hakh’hli be as—well—dignified about their eating?

There was another thought that was troubling him, and it was even more somber. How was it possible, he asked himself, that their elaborate first-contact plan had gone so wrong so rapidly? How had the Earth humans discovered the landing ship so fast?

After all, the whole plan had been devised by the Major Seniors themselves. It was their own decision that the landing ship should remain hidden while Lysander, as the human member of the party, reconnoitered with the human beings to make sure that everything was safe before the first Hakh’hli-human contact occurred. Certainly the Major Seniors couldn’t have made an unworkable plan—could they?

But the fact was that the plan had gone wrong from the very beginning; which meant that the Major Seniors had failed to take all the factors into account.

Which was impossible.

The Hakh’hli were beginning to go slack and empty-eyed. As one by one they staggered to their seats Sandy moved soberly to the food cart. He made a selection of what was left and descended the ladder to eat it in the glorious Earthly sunlight.

In just the few minutes he had been inside the lander a new and bigger helicopter had arrived. It was white and powerful-looking, and the side of it bore the cryptic legend InterSec. Its rotors were still turning as its door opened and half a dozen new human beings jumped out.

They approached Sandy as he climbed onto the sun-warmed flat rock to eat his midday meal. The people with the television cameras, and even the police officers who were still hanging around, watching everything, seemed to defer to them. “Hello, Mr. Washington,” one of them called. “I’m Hamilton Boyle.”

Sandy stood up, careful not to spill the tray with his meal. He extended his hand in the approved Earth fashion. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Boyle,” he said, in his well-rehearsed way.

“Glad to know you—” Boyle began, and then ended with a grunt of pain. He pulled his hand back, rubbing it. “You’ve got some grip,” he said, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” Sandy said at once, annoyed with himself. “I forgot how much stronger I am than you are. It’s because of the one point four gravity environment on the ship, you see. Would you—” He hesitated, trying to remember what was appropriate behavior; but surely offering food was a friendly gesture on Earth? “Would you like to try some of this?” He extended a handful of wafers.

Boyle took one and examined it carefully. “I think not, just now,” he said doubtfully. “What is it, exactly?”

One of the female human beings was wrinkling her nose. Sandy wondered what the matter was. “This meat,” he said, holding up the slab in his left hand, “is hoo’hik. That’s a kind of meat animal. The ground-up stuff in the wafer you have is tuber. The things in it are bits of a kind of animal that lives in water—I don’t know what you’d call it, but it’s almost solid meat, except for the shell—no bones, and the internal organs come right out—”

“Like a shrimp, you mean?” one of the humans hazarded.

“I don’t know what a ‘shrimp’ is,” Sandy apologized. “Anyway, that’s what the wafers usually are made of: dried ground tuber flour mixed with protein things. They’re very good, really. Are you sure you don’t want to try some?”

The human looked tempted and repelled at the same time. He sniffed the wafer carefully.

“I’d watch it if I were you,” a female human said.

“They do smell kind of fishy,” the man named Boyle agreed. “But you eat it, don’t you, Mr. Washington?”

“I’ve been eating these things all my life.”

The female human laughed. “Well, you look healthy enough,” she said, looking him over. “Not to say, well, scary.”

Sandy felt pleased. He was almost sure that was a compliment. It was quite clear that he was far stronger than any of the Earth humans—the other Earth humans, he corrected himself—and he was nearly certain that that was a selective breeding advantage in the eyes of human females. He wondered happily when he would have a chance to try it out. Not right now, of course. He knew well that humans did not do amphylaxis in public, as a general rule. But soon! “What?” he said, brought back from his tempting musings.

“I asked how you got your vitamins,” one of the females repeated.

“Vitamins?”

“Chemical substances that your body needs to function, and minerals, and so on.”

“Oh, I’m not your best witness on that,” Sandy apologized. “You’d have to ask Bottom. The food experts arrange all that. They know exactly what we need, and they control the content of the midday meal accordingly. It has everything anyone needs for a day’s nutrition. The cookies and milk don’t, though; they’re just a, what you would call, a ‘snack.’ “And then he had to explain “cookies and milk.” “We usually have them six times a day,” he said, “but here on Earth, with your longer day, probably we’ll have them more often. I don’t know what we’ll do about the midday meal; I don’t know if they’ll want to have stun time more than once . . .”

And then, of course, he had to explain “stun time” to them. The man named Boyle sighed. He took the wafer, which he had been holding all that time, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and stuffed it in a pocket of his suit.

“Is it all right if I keep this, Mr. Washington?” he asked. “I know our food chemists would love to study it—and maybe any leftovers from the rest of the meal?”

“Sure. If there are any leftovers, I mean,” Sandy said obligingly. “They’ll probably be coming out in, let’s see—” He consulted his watch and did a fast mental conversion from Hakh’hli time. “—in about forty-seven and a half of your minutes.”

He paused as he heard a racket from the sky. The small, dark woman turned to look and then said to Boyle, “Marguery’s coming in now.”

“Good,” said Hamilton Boyle, not taking his eyes off Sandy. He was a tall, lean man. Although Sandy had no good way of guessing human ages, he was sure that Boyle was one of the least young around the ship. He was a serious man, Sandy was sure, although he smiled frequently. “Mr. Washington,” he said, “we’re going to need to talk to your, ah, friends as soon as we can. That’s a V-tol coming in, and we’re hoping you’ll all allow us to take you to a more comfortable place.”

It bothered Sandy to have two questions clamoring for answers at once. He passed up the “What’s a V-tol?” in favor of, “I don’t know what you mean by more comfortable, Mr. Boyle. We’re pretty comfortable here.” He had to raise his voice as the ship appeared, dashing through the sky toward them, then almost stopping in the air as thrusters and wing flaps rotated to new positions and lowered it gently toward the ground. Its jets screamed. It was not a helicopter; it had wings almost like the spaceship lander they had come in.

The ear-piercing jet roar stopped abruptly. “I meant to a city,” Boyle said persuasively. “There’s nothing here for you, just farmland. We’d like to welcome you properly, in a more civilized place.”

“We’ll have to ask Polly,” Sandy said, but he wasn’t really listening. The V-tol door had opened. A tall female human was coming out of the aircraft, which had the same InterSec legend stenciled on its side. The human female strode toward them with determination, looking Sandy up and down.

“My,” she said admiringly, “you’re a big one, aren’t you?”

“So are you,” whispered Sandy, gazing up at her. She was not nearly as solid or thick around the waist as he, but she was a good head and half taller, as tall as any of the males; and his heart was gone. And that was how Sandy met Marguery Darp.