Robert Silverberg - Those Who Watch

“What are you doing?”

Kathryn stood in the doorway. She wore a flimsy thigh-length nightgown that concealed nothing of her body, and her face was a study in outrage. Vorneen fought to focus his consciousness.

“My leg— testing it—”

She rushed to him. He was frozen where he stood, seven feet from the bed, unable to go back, unable to go forward, and rapidly losing the strength even to remain standing. Her arms were about him, steadying him. Relief flooded his system. She clutched him fiercely, and in the same instant he lost his grip on the chair and began to fall. Somehow Kathryn absorbed the full thrust of his and held him up just long enough for them to stumble three steps together and topple onto the bed.

Together.

He was nude, and she wore only a millimeter’s thickness of fabric. They landed in a confused heap, laughing and panting, Kathryn on top of him, and more by accident than anything else their lips touched, and suddenly, as if he had opened some immediate sensory conduit between their bodies, he felt the fire blazing within her and knew that she was his.

How did one make love to an Earthwoman? Where were the places of excitement?

Vorneen frantically summoned what he could recall of his theory.

It was no use; veteran of a thousand affairs though he was, he was baffled and flustered by this unexpected encounter. His hands surged across her. But where? Elbows, breasts, shoulders, knees, buttocks? He discovered it did not matter. Kathryn was aroused. She ripped her gown away. Her flesh was like flame against him. His body was responding, which solved one question that had perturbed him.

She covered him with her warmth.

He knew the anatomy, but not the method of effecting consummation. Very shortly he learned it. The next thing he did not know was the increment of pleasure: when was he supposed to stop? He learned that, too, when Kathryn cried out in ecstasy and his reflexes supplied the final answer.

Afterward she clung to him, weeping, kissing his cool skin.

After that, she drew back and lectured him for having left the bed. “You could have hurt yourself! What did you think you were doing?”

“Testing my leg.”

“You shouldn’t be walking for weeks yet.”

“I’m not so sure. My bone has knit. I ran into trouble because I got dizzy.”

“Healed so fast?”

“That’s right.”

“But that’s impossible! It couldn’t have — no broken bone could—”

“No human bone.”

“But you’re not“

“No.”

“Say it”

“I’m not human, Kathryn.”

“Yes. I wanted you to say it.”

“And if I hadn’t left the bed, you wouldn’t have come in and caught me, and we wouldn’t have—”

“No.”

“I’m glad, Kathryn. I don’t repent at all.”

“Neither do I.” Defiantly. “Only— I’m afraid, Vorneen.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know.” She took his hand and put it to her breasts. “What we did — what you are — if you aren’t human, how could you make love?”

“The people who built my body knew what they were doing, I guess.”

“Who built your body?”

“My outer body. My disguise. Inside it’s different.”

“Vorneen, I’m lost. Tell me—”

“Later. We’ve got a lot of time to talk. Not now.”

“I feel so strange, Vorneen. As though I’ve crossed a river into a strange land, a place I’ve never been before, and I don’t know where it is, I don’t know where I am.”

“Do you like where you are now, wherever it may be? ! “I think so,” she said.

“Then why worry? You can pick up a map of the country-side some other time.” She laughed. She embraced him. “Do you still feel dizzy?” she asked. Tor different reasons, now.”

“And your leg? You didn’t hurt it again while you were standing on it?”

“No.”

“Nor while we were—”

“No. Especially not then.”

He kept her close to him. He felt more relaxed than at any time since trouble had begun aboard the ship. And he had answered most of his questions about the body he wore. It responded; it could give pleasure. Functionally he was sufficiently Earthlike to meet the present needs. He found that quite remarkable. He found it even more remarkable how tempestuous Kathryn could be, once she allowed herself to show her emotions.

They got little sleep that night, and Vorneen learned a “good deal more about North American erotic techniques. Toward morning he heard Kathryn murmuring sleepily, “I love you, Vor, I love you, I love you!”

Well, that could be part of the ritual too, he told himself. He wondered if he should reply in kind and decided against it. As a being from another world, he was not required to follow the local rituals, and he might look too insincere if he tried. The successful seducer, he had learned in his youth, is always sincere . . . where sincerity is appreciated.

After that, Kathryn slept in his bed every night, and they were lively nights indeed. By day she helped him learn to walk again. She got him a stick to lean on, though he preferred to lean on her arm; he shook off his dizziness, rebuilt his muscles, began to move about with some assurance. His leg was still lame, but that would clear up. Kathryn gave him a robe to wear, evidently so that propriety would be observed in front of the child; Kathryn herself no longer seemed bound by any taboos whatever. He watched her become more radiant day by day, night by night.

She talked a good deal of how much she loved him. She talked very little of where he had come from and what he might be doing on Earth.

Vorneen accepted the talk of love casually, as part of the game. But then, somewhere, he discovered that he had unknowingly crossed a bridge himself, and what had been for him a sport had turned into an emotional union. He realized it when he considered that he might be returning to his own people at any time. That was splendid — and then he felt the unexpectedly powerful pang at the awareness that it meant parting from Kathryn. He did not want to part from her. He wished actively to remain with her. He looked with dismay on the idea of a separation. Which meant he had fallen in love with her.

How had it happened?

It was unthinkable. He was biologically different from her. He had gone to bed with her merely to find out if it were possible. Those thrustings and gruntings — how could they have created an emotional bond between an Earthman and a Dirnan? The whole idea was inexpressibly bewildering. He knew there were some Dirnans who would regard this relationship as perverse, while others would have him brainburned at once. He felt helpless in the fact of events. He had never meant this to happen at all.

In love? With an Earthwoman?”

The covenants did not specifically prohibit sexual relationships between the watchers and the watched, because those who had drawn the covenants had never entertained the possibility that such relationships might develop. Vorneen took small comfort in knowing that what he had done was not illegal, technically. Soon, he suspected, he would be leaving Earth. What would happen to Kathryn then? And to him?

The rescue mission consisted of six Dirnans, two teams of three. Each comprised a complete sexual group: male-female-female in one case, male-female-male in the other. They entered New Mexico the day after the explosion, and began to comb the state for the three possible survivors. The task would have been easier if they had had communicator signals to guide them.

All they had to go by were probabilities, plus one extremely distorted signal. The computers, weighing all the likelihoods, had decided that all three Dirnans must have come down approximately in the center of the state: one in the vicinity of Albuquerque, one closer to Santa Fe, and one west of the line connecting the other two, thus forming a vaguely equilateral triangle. But the best the computers could offer by way of actual locations was an area determination with a built-in error of + 20 miles. That was hardly encouraging.