Damon Knight: Orbit 17

“Impossible.”

“In a pure sense. But if we’re aware of our biases, we can allow for them.”

“All right. I’m aware of my bias, Layton. Are you aware of yours?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jamison’s theory.” “You’re wrong.” “Am I?” Robert turned to go.

“Wait a minute, damn you. All I ask is that you refrain from projecting into these creatures an intelligence they may not possess.”

“If I don’t possess the intelligence, I can’t very well project it into them, can I? And if I do, then so do they.”

“You can see in them traits you have learned, but which are inherently human.”

“What makes you believe I think so much of humankind that I would want tricephs to be the same? No, it’s not similarity I’m looking for, it’s difference.”

“Difference, or superiority?”

“Superiority is a value, and as such, is relative to a given culture.”

“What if their intelligence is very similar to ours, Robert, but lower? Will you spend the next two years trying to hide the truth, from us, and from yourself?”

The pattern never varied. They arose and moved on, searching for food. It wasn’t difficult to find. And then they began another structure.

“Today is a special day,” Robert informed them. “Today is our first anniversary.” And today he would once more report to Lay-ton that he had failed to achieve any insight into the triceph culture. The one theory he had offered, a year ago, was beginning to seem no more than a child’s dream. Someone handed him a vine to add to the structure. “No, I can’t today. I have to report to Layton.”

“Mommy, can’t he come? We’re building a tree fort.”

Tree forts are my specialty, you know. It’s the one area in which I excel.

Was that the essence of triceph intelligence?

“Someone is coming to see you.”

A Dr. Jamison, no doubt.

A high-pitched whistling sound penetrated a forest that was too green, and a sky too blue to seem truly alien. The tricephs moved back and watched impassively, as one day’s structure was utterly demolished.

Exhausted, Robert moved away from the wreckage and squatted, panting. He became aware of the sheer childishness of his act. For the first time in months, he remembered the robosensor, and his shame deepened.

The tricephs sat facing him, as if immobilized by the unpredictable.

The unpredictable.

Robert arose, excited.

“Layton,” he called to the robosensor, “I’m conducting an experiment. I’m going to put our meeting off a week.”

Next day the tricephs built another structure. And Robert destroyed it. Methodically, this time, but quickly and completely. And next day they built again.

At the end of the week Robert kept his appointment with Lay-ton. As he had expected, the scientist was against his interference with the pack. But since he had no alternative except to pull Robert out of the experiment altogether, he reluctantly agreed.

At the end of a month the procedure had not varied. Robert destroyed the structures at various stages of their development. The tricephs waited until he was finished and began again, leaving Robert with the old questions. Did they lack the emotion of frustration, the intelligence to solve the problem, or the experience of problem-solving? He began to suspect that they simply did not care.

That night he dreamed once more of the picnic. And this time he awoke with a loneliness greater than any he had experienced before. “Am I homesick?” he asked them. And the silence was his answer. The irony was too much for him. “Damn all of you.” he shouted. “Can’t you give me anything of my own?”

Robert followed the pack to a place where three rivers met. There they began another structure. He sat on the bank and watched. He had ceased to destroy their work, but he felt reluctant to help them again. Around midday another pack arrived. In his time with the pack, they had passed other tricephs, but no group had remained near any other. Today, however, the new pack joined in the building of the structure. A third pack arrived around midaftemoon, and joined with the others in the building. According to the observers’ records, three packs would leave tomorrow, but only after so thorough an interchange of members that they could no longer be identified as the same packs. And by tomorrow morning, the mating would begin. Robert felt no desire to take part in triceph sexual intercourse, and there seemed little likelihood of his being forced into the act. Nevertheless, he watched from a little farther back that day, and that night he slept outside the huddle. His dreams took on a new quality, but when he awoke, he forgot them. In the morning the pack divided into three, roughly the same in number. A process of choice seemed to be involved, and the goal appeared to be exchange and equalization. Yet their movements lacked the hesitation human beings associate with decision. In order to do his part, he chose the smallest pack and followed it along the river. By midmoming they were working on a structure. But the work force was greatly diminished; the mating was well under way. Robert watched from the other side of the river. This seemed to him the final alienation.

That night he lay awake, trying to concentrate on the simple intensity of the sky. Tomorrow he was quitting. He would return to Earth, where, if he could not be happy, at least he had a family to help fill his emptiness.

A creature appeared against the stars. As ugly as Robert, but no more so, it stared down at him, waiting. And as suddenly as that, a desire filled Robert, more intense and more delightful than anything he had known before.

In the morning the triceph left, taking with it the blindness of ecstasy. Robert opened his eyes and was overcome with self-loathing. He could not forgive himself for having mated with an animal.

The tricephs moved on down the river in search of food. Robert watched them go, his skin crawling with a new revulsion. When they were out of sight, he turned and left the river.

Robert lowered his heavy body into the pond and half-floated in a deep peace. He would lay an egg soon, and carry it in his pouch. What had his mother said? It was as good a way as any to be born. He wondered idly about a question he had once asked her. Why, since he was of two sexes, had he been given a man’s name? His mother had tried to pass over the question lightly, saying that they had flipped a coin. But Susan had said it was because mankind defined a person according to sex, and men were more respected than women. His mother had said nothing, but her expression was an answer, and Robert began to see the world from Susan’s perspective. She was right. And he realized now that their home had been made a refuge from the rest of the world. Here neither sex nor bodily shape defined one’s personality or role. But ultimately the world beyond the home dictated their lives, and where the rest of his family could blend in, he had stood out, an alien.

Robert felt his belly. It held the raw material for a thinking, feeling being. Today he was due to meet Layton. He had little idea where this pond was in relation to the meeting place, and no intention of finding out. The robosensor had followed him, but he had destroyed it soon after leaving the pack. He would keep no more appointments with any race. He was growing something, and it was his own.

He heard them coming, and since few creatures on this planet moved in groups, he assumed it was a passing pack of tricephs. Out of idle curiosity he climbed higher among the tangles of the forest to watch unobserved. His revulsion had worn away with time and the hatching of his child, but he would not meet them. When the group came into sight, Robert clutched impulsively at his baby in its pouch. Five human beings were moving in his direction, following a robotracker. Robert recognized Layton and Johnson, but was surprised to find that he had already forgotten the names of the other three.