Exile from Space Read online

with me, andshowed me which cabin it was, and asked was everything all right?

  It looked all right to me. The room had a big bed in it, with sheetsand a blanket and pillows and a bedspread, just like the ones I'd seenon television. And there was a chest of drawers, and a table with moresmall drawers in it, and two chairs and a mirror and one door thatwent into a closet and one that led to the bathroom. The fixtures inthere were a little different from the ones they'd made for me topractice in, but functionally they seemed about the same.

  I didn't look for any difficulty with anything there except the bed,and that wasn't _her_ fault, so I assured her everything was justfine, and let her show me how to operate the gas-burner that was setin the wall for heat. Then we went out, and she very carefully lockedthe door, and handed me the key.

  "You better keep that door locked," she said, just a little sharply."You never know...."

  I wanted to ask her _what_ you never know, but had the impression thatit was something _every_body was supposed to know, so I just noddedand agreed instead.

  "You want to get some lunch," she said then, "there's a place down theroad isn't too bad. Clean, anyhow, and they don't cater too much tothose ... well, it's clean." She pointed the way; you could see thesign from where we were standing. I thanked her, and started the car,and decided I might as well go there as anyplace else, especiallysince I could see she was watching to find out whether I did or not.

  * * * * *

  These people are all too big. Or almost all of them. But the manbehind the counter at the diner was enormous. He was tall and fat witha beefy red face and large open pores and a fleshy mound of a nose. Ididn't like to look at him, and when he talked, he boomed so loud Icould hardly understand him. On top of all that, the smell in thatplace was awful: not quite as bad as the drugstore, but some wayssimilar to it. I kept my eyes on the menu, which was full ofunfamiliar words, and tried to remember that I was hungry.

  The man was shouting at me--or it was more like growling, I guess--andI couldn't make out the words at first. He said it again, and I sortedout syllables and matched them with the words on the card, and then Igot it:

  "Goulash is nice today, miss...."

  I didn't know what goulash was, and the state my stomach was in, withthe smells, I decided I'd better play safe, and ordered a glass ofmilk, and some vegetable soup.

  The milk had a strange taste to it. Not _bad_--just _different_. Butof course, this came from cows. That was all right. But the vegetablesoup...!

  It was quite literally putrid, made as near as I could figure out fromdead animal juices, in which vegetables had been soaked and cookedtill any trace of flavor or nourishment was entirely removed. I tookone taste of that, and then I realized what the really nauseating partof the odor was, in the diner and the drugstore both. It was rottenmeat, dead for some time, and then heated in preparation for eating.

  The crackers that came with the soup were good; they had a nice saltytang. I ordered more of those, with another glass of milk, and satback sipping slowly, trying to adjust to that smell, now that Irealized I'd probably find it anywhere I could find food.

  After a while, I got my insides enough in order so that I could lookaround a little and see the place, and the other people in it. Thatwas when I turned around and saw Larry sitting next to me.

  He was beautiful. He _is_ beautiful. I know that's not what you'resupposed to say about a man, and he wouldn't like it, but I can onlysay what I see, and of course that's partly a matter of my owntraining and my own feelings about myself.

  At home on the ship, I always wanted to cut off my hair, because itwas so black, and my skin was so white, and they didn't go together.But they wouldn't let me; they liked it that way, I guess, but _I_didn't. No child wants to feel like a freak, and nobody else had hairlike that, or dead-white colorless skin, either.

  Then, when I went down there, and saw all the humans, I was still afreak because I was so small.

  Larry's small, too. Almost as small as I am. And he's all one color.He has hair, of course, but it's so light, and his skin is so dark(both from the sun, I found out), that he looks just about the samelovely golden color all over. Or at least as much of him as showedwhen I saw him that time, in the diner.

  He was beautiful, and he was my size, and he didn't have ugly roughskin or big heavy hands. I stared at him, and I felt like grabbing onto him to make sure he didn't get away.

  After a while I realized my mouth was half-open, and I was stillholding a cracker, and I remembered that this was very bad manners. Iput the cracker down and closed my mouth. He smiled. I didn't know ifhe was laughing at the odd way I was acting, or just being friendly,but I smiled back anyhow.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I mean, hello. How do you do, and I'm sorry ifI startled you. I shouldn't have been staring."

  "_You_," I said, and meant to finish, _You were staring?_ But he wentright on talking, so that I couldn't finish.

  "I don't know what else you can expect, if you go around looking likethat," he said.

  "I'm sorry...." I started again.

  "And you should be," he said sternly. "Anybody who walks into a placelike this in the middle of a day like this looking the way you do hasgot to expect to get stared at a little."

  The thing is, I wasn't used to the language; not used _enough_. Icould communicate all right, and even understand some jokes, and Iknew the spoken language, not some formal unusable version, because Ilearned it mostly watching those shows on the television screen. But Igot confused this time, because "looking" means two different things,active and passive, and I was thinking about how I'd been _looking at_him, and....

  That was my lucky day. I didn't want him to be angry at me, and theway I saw it, he was perfectly justified in scolding me, which is whatI thought he was doing. But I _knew_ he wasn't really angry; I'd havefelt it if he was. So I said, "You're right. It was very rude of me,and I don't blame you for being annoyed. I won't do it any more."

  He started laughing, and this time I knew it was friendly. Like Isaid, that was my lucky day; _he_ thought I was being witty. And, fromwhat he's told me since, I guess he realized then that _I_ feltfriendly too, because before that he'd just been bluffing it out, notknowing how to get to know me, and afraid _I_'d be sore at _him_, justfor talking to me!

  Which goes to show that sometimes you're better off not being _too_familiar with the local customs.

  * * * * *

  The trouble was there were too many things I didn't know, too manysmall ways to trip myself up. Things they couldn't have foreseen, orif they did, couldn't have done much about. All it took was a littlecaution and a lot of alertness, plus one big important item: stayingin the background--not getting to know any one person too well--notgiving any single individual a chance to observe too much about me.

  But Larry didn't mean to let me do that. And ... I didn't want him to.

  He asked questions; I tried to answer them. I did know enough at leastof the conventions to realize that I didn't have to give detailedanswers, or could, at any point, act offended at being questioned somuch. I _didn't_ know enough to realize that reluctance or irritationon my part wouldn't have made him go away. We sat on those stools atthe diner for most of an hour, talking, and after a little while Ifound I could keep the conversation on safer ground by asking _him_about himself, and about the country thereabouts. He seemed to enjoytalking.

  Eventually, he had to go back to work. As near as I could make out, hewas a test-pilot, or something like it, for a small experimentalaircraft plant near the city. He lived not too far from where I wasstaying, and he wanted to see me that evening.

  I hadn't told him where the motel was, and I had at least enoughcaution left not to tell him, even then. I did agree to meet him atthe diner, but for lunch the next day again, instead of that evening.For one thing, I had a lot to do; and for another, I'd seen enough ontelevision shows to know that an evening date was likely to be prettylong-drawn-out, an
d I wasn't sure I could stand up under that muchclose scrutiny. I had some studying-up to do first. But the lunch-datewas fine; the thought of not seeing him at all was terrifying--as ifhe were an old friend in a world full of strangers. That was how Ifelt, that first time, maybe just because he was almost as small as I.But I think it was more than that, really.

  * * * * *

  I drove downtown again, and found a store that seemed to sell allkinds of clothing for women. Then when I got inside, I didn't knowwhere to start, or what to get. I thought of just buying one ofeverything, so as to fill up a suitcase; the things I had on seemed tobe perfectly satisfactory for actual _wearing_ purposes. They werequite remarkably--when you