Why not use it? To retain the element of surprise?Vaygay saw her staring at the closed door and asked if she wished to enter next.
`Thanks, Vaygay. I've been thinking. I know it's a little crazy. But it just struck me: Why do we have to jump through every hoop they hold out for us? Suppose we don't do what they ask?”
“Ellie, you are so American. For me, this is just like home. I'm used to doing what the authorities suggest— especially when I have no choice.” He smiled and turned smartly on his heel.
“Don't take any crap from the Grand Duke,” she called after him.
High above, a gull squawked. Vaygay had left the door ajar. There was still only beach beyond. “Are you all right?” Devi asked her. “I'm okay. Really. I just want a moment to myself. I'll be along.”
“Seriously, I'm asking as a doctor. Do you feel all right?”
“I woke up with a headache, and I think I had some very fanciful dreams. I haven't brushed my teeth or had my black coffee. I wouldn't mind reading the morning paper either. Except for all that, really I'm fine.”
“Well, that sounds all right. For that matter I have a bit of a headache, too. Take care of yourself, Ellie.
Remember everything, so you'll be able to tell it to me… next time we meet.”
“I will,” Ellie promised.
They kissed and wished each other Well. Devi stepped over the threshold and vanished. The door closed behind her. Afterward, Ellie thought she had caught a whiff of curry.
She brushed her teeth in salt water. A certain fastidious streak had always been a part of her nature. She break-fasted on coconut milk. Carefully she brushed accumulated sand off the exterior surfaces of the microcamera system and its tiny arsenal of videocassettes on which she had recorded wonders. She washed the palm frond in the surf, as she had done the day she found it on Cocoa Beach just before the launch up to Methuselah.
The morning was already warm and she decided to take a swim. Her clothes carefully folded on the palm frond, she strode boldly out into the surf. Whatever else, she thought, the extraterrestrials are unlikely to find themselves aroused by the sight of a naked woman, even if she is pretty well preserved. She tried to imagine a microbiologist stirred to crimes of passion after viewing a paramecium caught in fla-grante delicto in mitosis.
Languidly, she floated on her back, bobbing up and down, her slow rhythm in phase with the arrival of successive wave crests. She tried to imagine thousands of comparable… chambers, simulated worlds, whatever these were—each a meticulous copy of the nicest part of someone's home planet. Thousands of them, each with sky and weather, ocean, geology, and indigenous life indistinguishable from the originals. It seemed an extravagance, although it also suggested that a satisfactory outcome waswithin reach. No matter what your resources, you don't manufacture a landscape on this scale for five specimens from a doomed world.
On the other hand… The idea of extraterrestrials as zookeepers had become something of a cliche.
What if this sizable Station with its profusion of docking ports and environments was actually a zoo? “See the exotic animals in their native habitats,” she imagined some snail-headed barker shouting. Tourists come from all over the Galaxy, especially during school vacations. And then when there's a test, the Stationmasters temporarily move the critters and the tourists out, sweep the beach free of footprints, and give the newly arriving primitives a half day of rest and recreation before the test ordeal begins.
Or maybe this was how they stocked the zoos. She thought about the animals locked away in terrestrial zoos who were said to have experienced difficulties breeding in captivity. Somersaulting in the water, she dived beneath the surface in a moment of self-consciousness. She took a few strong strokes in toward the beach, and for the second time in twenty-four hours wished that she had had a baby.
There was no one about, and not a sail on the horizon. A few seagulls were stalking the beach, apparently looking for crabs. She wished die had brought some bread to give them. After die was dry, she dressed and inspected the doorway again. It was merely waiting. She felt a continuing reluctance to enter.
More than reluctance. Maybe dread.
She withdrew, keeping it in view. Beneath a palm tree, her knees drawn up under her chin, she looked out over the long sweep of white sandy beach.
After a while she got up and stretched a little. Carrying the frond and the microcamera with one hand, she approached the door and turned the knob. It opened slightly. Through the crack she could see the whitecaps offshore. She gave it another push, and it swung open without a squeak. The beach, bland and disinterested, stared back at her. She shook her head and returned to the tree, resuming her pensive posture.
She wondered about the others. Were they now in some outlandish testing facility avidly checking away on the multiple-choice questions? Or was it an oral examination? And who were the examiners? She felt the uneasiness well up once again. Another intelligent being—independently evolved on some distant world under unearthly physical conditions and with an entirely different sequence of random genetic mutations— such a being would not resemble anyone she knew. Or even imagined. If this was a Test station, then there were Stationmasters, and the Stationmas-ters would be thoroughly, devastatingly nonhuman. There was something deep within her that was bothered by insects, snakes, star-nosed moles. She was someone who felt a little shudder—to speak plainly, a tremor of loathing— when confronted with even slightly malformed human beings. Cripples, children with Down syndrome, even the appearance of Parkinsonism evoked in her, against her clear intellectual resolve, a feeling of disgust, a wish to flee. Generally she had been able to contain her fear, although she wondered if she had ever hurt someone because of it It wasn't something she thought about much; she would sense her own embarrassment and move on to another topic.
But now she worried that she would be unable even to confront—much less to win over for the human species— an extraterrestrial being. They hadn't thought to screen the Five for that. There had been no effort to determine whether they were afraid of mice or dwarfs or Martians. It had simply not occurred to the examining committees. She wondered why they hadn't thought of it; it seemed an obvious enough point now.
It had been a mistake to send her. Perhaps when confronted with some serpent-haired galactic Stationmaster, she would disgrace herself—or far worse, tip the grade given to the human species, in whatever unfathomable test was being administered, from pass to fail. She looked with both apprehension and longing at the enigmatic door, its lower boundary now under water. The tide was coming in.
There was a figure on the beach a few hundred meters away. At first she thought it was Vaygay, perhaps out of the examining room early and come to tell her the good news. But whoever it was wasn't wearing a Machine Project jump suit. Also, it seemed to be someone younger, more vigorous. She reached for the long lens, and for some reason hesitated. Standing up, she shielded her eyes from the Sun. Just for a moment, it bad seemed… It was clearly impossible. They would not take such shameless advantage of her.
But she could not help herself. She was racing toward him on the hard sand near the water's edge, her hair streaming behind her. He looked as he bad in the most re-cent picture of him she had seen, vigorous, happy. He had a day's growth of beard. She flew into his arms, sobbing.