Stranger in a Strange Land

Jill had one arm over the edge of the pool and Smith knew that she had been down under, checking on his safety. He had been aware of her when she had done it… but now he knew that she had not alone been worried about his safety; Jill felt other and greater trouble, trouble that was not relieved by knowing that her charge was safe under the water of life. This troubled him much and he considered going to her, making her know that he was with her and sharing her trouble.

He would have done so had it not been for a faint feeling of guilt: he was not certain that Jubal wanted him to walk around while his body was in the pool. He compromised by telling himself that he would share their trouble — and let them know that he was present if it became needful.

Smith then looked over the man who was stepping out of the air car, felt his emotions and recoiled from them, forced himself to examine him carefully, inside and out.

In a shaped pocket strapped around his waist the man was carrying a gun.

Smith was almost certain it was a gun. He examined it in detail, comparing it with guns he had seen, checking it against the definition in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Yes, it was a gun — not alone in shape but also in wrongness that surrounded and penetrated it. Smith looked down the barrel, saw how it must function, and wrongness stared back at him.

Should he turn it and let it go elsewhere, taking its wrongness with it? Do it before the man was fully out of the car? Smith felt that he should… and yet Jubal had once told him not to do this to a gun until Jubal told him that it was time.

He knew now that this was indeed a cusp of necessity…. but he resolved to balance on the point of cusp until he grokked all — since it was possible that Jubal, knowing that a cusp was approaching, had sent him under water to keep him from acting wrongly.

He would wait… but he would watch this gun. Not being limited to eyes, being able to see all around if needful, he continued to watch gun and man while he went inside the car.

More wrongness than he would have believed possible! Other men were in there, all but one crowding toward the door. Their minds smelled like a pack of Khaugha who had scented an unwary nymph… and each one held in his hands a something having wrongness.

As he had told Jubal, Smith knew that shape was never a prime determinant; it was necessary to go beyond shape to essence in order to grok. His own people passed through five major shapes: egg, nymph, nestling, adult — and Old One which had no shape. Yet the essence of an Old One was patterned in the egg.

These somethings seemed like guns. But Smith did not assume that they were; he examined one most carefully. It was larger than any gun he had ever seen, its shape was different, its details were quite different.

It was a gun.

He examined each of the others just as carefully. They were guns.

The one man still seated had strapped to him a small gun.

The car had built into it two enormous guns — plus other things which Smith could not grok but in which he felt wrongness.

He considered twisting car, contents, and all — letting it topple away. But, in addition to his lifelong inhibition against wasting food, he knew that he did not grok what was happening. Better to move slowly, watch carefully, and help and share at cusp by following Jubal's lead… and if right action was to remain passive, then go back to his body when cusp had passed and discuss it with Jubal later.

He went outside the car and watched and listened and waited.

The first man to get out talked with Jubal concerning things which Smith could only file without grokking; they were beyond his experience. The other men got out and spread out; Smith spread his attention to watch them all. The car raised, moved backwards, stopped again, which relieved the beings it had sat on; Smith grokked with them, trying to soothe their hurtings.

The first man handed papers to Jubal; they were passed to Anne. Smith read them with her. He recognized their word shapings as being concerned with human rituals of healing and balance, but since he had encountered these rituals only in Jubal's law library, he did not try to grok the papers, especially as Jubal seemed untroubled by them — the wrongness was elsewhere. He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once — impossible as that was for any but an Old One.

Jubal and the first man walked toward the pool, with Anne close behind. Smith relaxed his time sense to let them move faster, keeping it stretched just enough so that he could comfortably watch all the men at once. Two men closed in and flanked the group.