“No, no! I’m going to stay here and talk to Marguery about New York New York—Times Square, Harlem, Wall Street—” Weeping, he leaped away, singing to himself.
Marguery stared after him. “What did he mean about your real names?” she asked Sandy.
He shifted position, trying to follow Obie as he leaped happily around the almost-empty sun deck. “Well, the Hakh’hli names tell a lot about the person,” he began, and explained about the way the name reflected lineage and status in the Hakh’hli society; and how the numbers that followed the names reflected the egg batches in storage, which led inevitably to the Hakh’hli habit of freezing eggs as soon as they were laid, so as not to overburden the ship’s carrying capacity.
“And Polly says that if you human beings had done that,” Obie called from three tables away, “you wouldn’t have got yourselves into all this trouble.”
“Thank her for her good advice,” Marguery said, which caused Sandy to give her a sharp look. The words and the tone had not matched.
“That’s irony, right?” he asked.
She started to answer, then sneezed instead. Sandy, startled, asked, “Are you all right?”
“Just say gesundheit, all right? I’m fine. What were you asking me?”
“I said—”
“No, now I remember what you said,” she interrupted. “Yes, Sandy, that was irony. There’s something about your friend Polly that gets my nose out of joint.”
He stared at her. “Your nose out of—?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I just mean she irritates me. I’m sorry about that.”
“Why would you be sorry? She irritates me, too. She irritates all of us; she’s always been the bossiest one in the cohort.”
“Oh, really?” Marguery seemed to relax. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad to hear that. I wouldn’t like to think that all the Hakh’hli were as snotty as she is.”
“ ‘Snotty’?”
“Mean, uh, well, unlikeable. As a matter of fact,” she added, looking to the far end of the terrace, where Obie was practicing high jumps, “I do like Obie. He’s a little, ah, youthful, isn’t he? But he’s cute.”
“He’s my best friend,” Sandy said. He thought about asking exactly what “cute” meant in that context and decided against it. “He and I, well, we’ve been together all our lives, you know—” And he yawned.
“Aren’t you getting enough sleep?”
“I just can’t sleep as long as you people do,” he said defensively. “We only sleep two twelfth-days, back on the ship, and it’s hard to stay in bed longer than that. Anyway,” he added, “I was awake last night doing something.”
“Oh?”
“It’s another poem,” he said, and passed the paper over to her.
This
is to
my
dearest Marguery
whom I much love
with all my sins
of which I do hope
there will be shared
great numbers, jointly
undertaken with Marguery
herself, happily and often
Love Yes!
Love Yes!
Love Yes!
Love You!
Yes! You!
She gave him an ambiguous look and thought for a moment before speaking.
“Well, I guess you got the gender right this time, anyway,” she commented at last, handing it back.
Sandy had hoped for more. “Don’t you like it?”
She looked at him with fond exasperation. “Well, hell, of course I like it. Kind of. You do come right to the point, don’t you? But anybody would like having a poem written to her, wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t know. I hoped so.”
“Well, she would. I would. Only—” She hesitated. “Only, look, Sandy, this is all very confusing, you know? I’ve got a job to do, and I don’t want to be mixed up.”
“No more kissing, you mean?” Sandy asked doubtfully.
She laughed, and then ducked as Obie landed near her. He peered over her shoulder and then said, “He finally showed the poem to you?”
“He showed it to me, all right.”
“I think it’s a really good poem,” Obie said loyally. “For one in English, I mean. He could write a lot better in Hakh’hli if you wanted him to.”
“Why don’t you leave us alone?” Sandy demanded. Obie gave him an injured look but leaped away. Sandy said apologetically to Marguery Darp, “He’s pretty excited about going to New York.”
“It isn’t exactly ‘New York’ any more, Sandy—”
“Well, York, then. Or whatever you call it. Anyway, we’ve seen so many old films about it . . . and, really, he’s quite young, you know.” And the funny thing was that when he heard himself say that he realized that he had been thinking it for some time. Marguery’s comment had been right on target. The Hakh’hli of his cohort, with all their rambunctious, playful, heedless, sometimes sulky ways were really rather childish—not at all like John William Washington, who was not only adult but, something no Hakh’hli would ever understand, “in love.”
But Obie heard him. “I am not a child,” he cried, “Look how far I can jump! Could a child do this?”
And, eyes on Sandy, he launched himself to the top of the elevator housing and squatted there, grinning down at them.
“I guess he is a little young,” Sandy said apologetically.
Marguery nodded without comment. Then she looked over Sandy’s shoulder. “Oh, there it is!” she cried. “See it, off to the left there, just above that cloud? It’s our blimp! It’ll stay here overnight, and then we’ll get on it tomorrow for the trip to York.”
Sandy craned his neck to see, delighted. From behind him he heard Obie call, “Here I come!”
And he jumped—his eyes on the blimp, and not on the parapet he was aiming for.
That was a mistake. He misjudged his trajectory—just slightly—too much. He did hit the railing, but he didn’t stop there. Marguery screamed; Sandy shouted and jumped up to reach for the Hakh’hli, but it was too late. Obie, legs scratching in terror as he tried to stop himself, hit the parapet. He bounced and kept right on going, over the edge. They could hear him squealing all the way down to the ground.
Chapter 12
A person falling off the top of a twelve-story building hits the ground at a speed a little faster than seventy miles an hour, and that is easily enough to kill him. A Hakh’hli falling the same distance strikes the ground at the same velocity. True, a Hakh’hli is used to a gravitational force forty percent higher than the Earth’s. A Hakh’hli can survive decelerations that would cripple or kill any Earthman, but even for a Hakh’hli there is a limit. In relative terms Obie’s fall was only as though he had fallen, say, seven or eight stories. But a fall of seven or eight stories is enough to kill either human or Hakh’hli, anyway, and the impact was quite enough to do the job.
“But he was my friend,” Sandy wailed. He could not get out of his mind the picture of Oberon splatted on the sidewalk of Dawson, the eyes wide and empty and the body simply burst open. Twelves of human beings had crowded around to stare, fascination and revulsion mixed. They had no right to gape at Obie, so exposed.