Gazing through the liquid medium he breathed at the pale, soft-bodied creature before him, Mister Thoggosh shuddered. The varied, adventurous life he led threw him into contact with sapients of many species, yet sometimes even he felt overwhelmed by the unlovely appearance of his intimate associates.
This was among the worst. He was unaware that the revulsion he felt was akin to that experienced by a mammalian sapience at having turned over a rock to see what squirms beneath it. Where, he thought, were this thing's graceful, powerful manipulators, its firm shell, striped and colorful? Its stubbed limbs were obscenely jointed, terminating in a clutch of grotesque wrigglers that reminded him of the linings of intestines. Instead of a pair of large, thoughtful, bronze-colored eyes, slit-pupiled, with reflective retinae, two hard little buttons glittered at him from a death-white mallet of a face. Nothing about them, nor of the alien countenance they were set in, conveyed any hint of the intelligence he knewalthough at present he had difficulty feeling that he knewresided behind them.
His moment of revulsion ebbed as it had a million times before. Again he merely saw humanity sitting before him, no more inherently evil, stupid, or disgusting than any other sapience, every bit as capable of decency, brilliance, and nobility. He reminded himself that it was kin, albeit through some seven hundred fifty generations, to his dear friend Eneri Relda and that fearsome hatchling of hers.
It was the first chance he'd had to interview this particular specimen, although he'd wanted to from the moment he'd first heard of her. Until now, there simply hadn't been time. Complications seemed to arise of their own accord, one after another, in this enterprise he was attempting to direct on what some called "5023 Eris." Adding to his burdens was the difficulty of achieving a reasonable balance between kindness and justice in his relations with these beings who'd shown up on his property without having been invited.
Someoneperhaps his assistant, Aelbraugh Pritschhad informed him that Eris was an ancient human deity associated with confusion. That seemed appropriate. He'd immediately adopted the name for an asteroid which heretofore had only been known by a serial designation.
"I am a trifle curious about one thing," he continued a conversation which had been going on for several minutes without getting much beyond the pleasantries both species were accustomed to, "if you don't mind my asking . . ."
This small, frail-looking female was considered timid even by her own cosapients. He realized that he must be a rather imposing sight, resembling as he did "a giant squid with eyes the size of banjos." (He must remember to ask Aelbraugh Pritsch what that meant; it had been excerpted from one of the reports Gutierrez had sent Earthward.) Add to all of that his sinuous luminescent tentacles, not to mention an exoskeleton as large as a small personal vehicle of the previous century which his language software rendered "peoplecart," still greatly beloved by these humans for some reason. He was gratified (and surprised) that he didn't seem to frighten her.
"Not at all, sir." Perched on the edge of a wire-mesh chair, Toya Pulaski absently snagged a strand of floating hair and tucked it back into place. Her earlier misgivings, he thought, over breathing the oxygenated fluorocarbon filling his quarters (for the benefit of nonaquatic visitors, he remembered with a trace of annoyance), seemed to be subsiding. "The more we all know about each other the better."
Under a low ceiling, the walls of the long, wide room were lost in the low light he naturally favored, having evolved from abyssal organisms. Kelp plantings here and there gave the place a homey feel; he'd brought several favorite tactiles from his sculpture collection. Even to his own discriminating eye they appeared abstract, yet each was completely representational, playing on differences between touch and visionin a manner analogous to human art based on optical illusionto produce the kind of object he most enjoyed, that which appeared formless until physically engaged.
He laid one long tentacle over another. "I agree. And it occurs to me, Sergeant Pulaski, that our respective species have somewhat more in common than might first be expected. After all, I'm obviously a marine creature. And your species, of course, has a unique aquatic heritage all its own."
"Unique?" She sat up straight. "But Mister Thoggosh, all life on Earthon our Earth, anywaybegan in the sea."
"I refer, my dear sergeant, to the millions of years that your evolutionary predecessors spent paddling about the lakes and streams of Africahaving been driven from the trees by bigger, stronger monkeysbefore they became formidable hunters of the veldt."
Pulaski sat back with an expression of disappointment. "Elaine Morgan, The Descent of Woman. I'm afraid it's just an old theory, Mister Thoggosh, and not very"
"Ah, but look at yourself." He upturned another tentacle. "A mammal without fur except where it protects the head and shoulders from sunlight and water-reflected glareor prevents small swimming organisms from entering bodily cavities? A land animal with the subcutaneous fat reserves and respiratory reflexes of a cetacean? A female whose breastsmy dear, how can you stand naked before a mirror and doubt it?"
Pulaski blushed furiously. "I never stand naked before a mirror."
"What a shame," the giant mollusc lied gallantly. "Yet any appreciation for beauty in others must begin with"
"Mister Thoggosh, don't con me." She folded her hands. He saw her knuckles whiten, understanding what it implied. "I wonder what you really know about us, or whether you can even tell individual human beings apart. I'm not sure I can tell individual nautiloids apart. Don't we all look alike to you?"
Having dealt with members of her species long before Pulaski's ancestors had rediscovered bronze, he found he learned more about them by listening than by talking. His experience told him that somethinghe wasn't certain what, perhaps his very nonhumanity which made him, in her eyes, a nonjudgmental neutralwas about to plunge her into a self-revealing mood. He wasn't about to interfere with it; there was still too much to learn. Even had he been inclined to answer, he didn't get a chance as she rushed on.
"Well, we don't look alike to each other, and whatever anybody tells you, Mister Thoggosh, looks count. When I was younger I remember hearing Somebody-or-other's Law to the effect that no woman is ever satisfied with the size of her breasts. Those with little ones want big ones and those with big ones complain of the inconvenience. Those in the middleI don't know why I'm talking about this, but let me tell you, I would have been happy just to have more than what my dorm mates used to call `fried hummingbird eggs.' "
"As you put it yourself, Toyaif I maythe more we know about each other . . ." He laid a gentle tentacle atop her hands, which appeared to be crushing one another, gratified that she didn't flinch from his cold, molluscoid touch. "You're certain you don't care for something to drink? I'm having beer." As he withdrew (trying not to feel too relieved about it, himself), she shook her head, causing more of her fine, brown hair to float free.
"No, thank you, Mister Thoggosh."
To the left, his prized and beautiful songfish warbled sweetly in a cage suspended between floor and ceiling. He considered throwing something at it, wondering why he suddenly felt so irritable.
True, Pulaski was the subject of his next talk with Eichra Oren, but no one had forced him to ask Scutigera to delay the debt assessor so that he might have her flown here for a preliminary interview. Perhaps this was the source of his annoyance. Mister Thoggosh regarded himself as an essentially simple being (which would have amused anyone who knew him) who pursued his goals straightforwardly.
He sent his separable tentacle for beer, knowing, as Pulaski watched the specialized limb detach itself from his body, that it wouldn't be the shock to her that it had been to the first American, General Gutierrez, who'd witnessed it. As it swam to the wall-cooler where he kept his kelp beer and returned with a container trailing a long sipping tube, he pushed their conversation onto the course he'd planned earlier.
"Toya, I've studied several hundred of the entertainments you call motion pictures. They have equivalents among my people and tell a stranger much about the culture that created them." He sipped his beer, enjoying it as he always did. "Hence the trifling curiosity I mentioned earlier. With but rare exception, I've noticed that those among you with their reproductive anatomy hanging unprotected between their locomotory extremities"
Her face reddened. "You mean men?"
"nonetheless seem to prefer garments consisting of two fabric cylinders which don't properly allow for their anatomy. Not one cylinder, mind younot even three, which would make sense. Those among you without this anatomical liability, however, and who might better tolerate such attire, customarily wear only one cylinder."
Pulaski almost giggled, whether from tension or amusement he couldn't tell. She inhaled deeply, just as if she were breathing air. "There are Scotsmen, Mister Thoggosh. And women have been wearing trousers for quite a while, now." She brushed a hand down her patched and faded jumpsuit.
"Contrary to a verbal irrationalism in which you humans persist, exceptions neither prove the rule nor explain it." He took a sip of beer. Although his organs of speech and ingestion were independent, he'd acquired the useful habit of pacing his conversation from his air-breathing associates, and often wished he could smoke a pipe. "Similarly irrational, and vastly more hazardous, is this preference your male gender manifests for a wheeled transportation rack"
"Give me a second, now . . ." She frowned, then smiled. "You mean bicycles?"
"with a horizontal structural member in exactly the right position to inflict maximum damage to the most vulnerable part of their bodies." He shuddered, imagining it. "Analogous female conveyances, however, feature no such hazard."
Several heartbeats passed, his slow and ponderous, hers sounding to his acute hearing like the clatter of a small combustion engine. "I think it has less to do with . . . well, comparative anatomy than with the way men and women are expected to behave." She took a breath. "Traditionally, men are more active and aggressive. A man's bike needs that horizontal . . . member because harder use will be made of it. At the same time, a woman's bike has to accommodate the difference in clothing you spoke of."
"Rather than a difference in anatomy." He saw that his guess was correct: she was more at ease in his presence than she was among her cosapients. Curious about what caused such an attitude, he couldn't help wondering what advantage might be made of it. He lifted a tentacle in encouragement. "Kindly elaborate."
"As far as clothing's concerned, one cylinder might provide for the . . . difference. But it would catch on things and get in the way. Imagine a cowboy or a steelworker in a skirt." She giggled again. "And it's confining. Would you like a cloth cylinder wrapped around your" She stammered to a stop, clearly realizing for the first time that Mister Thoggosh was naked.
" `Tentacles' is acceptable, Toya." He set half a dozen wiggling before her face. "I'm no more embarrassed by it than you by mention of your fingers."
She swallowed. "I never visited before with anyone who had tentacles."
"I see," he replied with a tolerant chuckle, then let his voice assume a more serious tone. "You failed to mention the emotional discomfort your species experiences with regard to its reproductive function. One-cylinder garments conceal it. Two-cylinder garments disregard it altogether. An active male wearing one cylinder would be in constant danger of humiliating exposure."
She closed her eyes and grimaced. "I'm just about the worst person you could ask about this, Mister Thoggosh. In the first place, my primary interest is paleontology, not social anthropology, and in the second . . ."
"In the second," he observed, "discussing physical differences between the male and the female of your species embarrasses you."
"It does," she almost whispered. "It's just the way I am."
"It's just the way you were brought up, my dear, to deny the very aspect of your life which offers greatest gratification." He took a long draw on his beer, weighing his next words. "It's the same with many primitive cultures. Control that in a person, through repression and guilt, and what you call `society'religion or the Stateneedn't control one other thing about you in order to control you altogether, to bend you from your own healthy, natural inclinations toward its own, which are invariably less natural and considerably less healthy."
"People need direction," she protested. "You can't have them chasing any old selfish whimsy, living empty, meaningless lives. Isn't it better to serve some higher purpose, larger than yourself, than no purpose at all?"
"The concept of purpose," he replied, "is just that, Toya, a concept, an idea, a product of individual sapience. It didn't exist before sapience evolved. It's meaningless applied to a random, inanimate universe. Similarly, it's irrelevantlife having arisen from that randomnessto nonsapient organisms governed by simple tropisms and instincts generated in the trial-and-error process of mutation and natural selection."
"But"
"If you seek purpose, employ your own sapience to look within yourself. Your life has only one purpose, my dear, to be lived as you wish. Beware anyone who claims otherwise: the mystic, the altruist, the collectivist. One life isn't enough for him; he wants to live his own, and yours as well. His pleading and demands are baseless assertions thrown in the face of billions of years of evolutionitself without purpose, yet in response to natural law, invariably and inavoidably culminating in greater capacity, greater complexity, greater individuationthe very pinnacle of which, its crowning achievement and ultimate triumph over entropy, is self-directed intelligence.
"But this is small talk; I'd a more practical reasona purpose, if you willfor asking you here."
She appeared relieved and at the same time wary. "What's that?"
"Among other things, to benefit from the humanthe Soviet Americanpoint of view on a number of difficult questions which presently confront me." He lifted a tentacle in a negligent shrug. "For example, I'd like very much to know whether my guesses about your general's thinking are correct."
Now she frowned. "Why don't you ask him?"
"Because he's a busy sapient at the best of times and right now he has a headache on his hands. (Can you say that? What a remarkable language.) I must know what his people are thinking, how well they see his reasons for doing things. I demand no betrayal, Toya, you needn't answer unless you wish to. But just now, General Gutierrez is thinking about the future, isn't he?"
"I suppose," she nodded, beginning to be interested, "we all are."
"And foremost among his thoughts must be this." He took a last sip and set the container aside, resisting the temptation to send for another. "If the United World Soviet has truly abandoned you, what's to become of thirty-odd surviving Soviet Americans on 5023 Eris?
"After all, you're completely dependent on alien monsters."