The Best of Science Fiction 12

"And we — " I answered. "No, no," I corrected myself — at the time, I could give the responses only by rote. "One begs pardon. And You — "

It was hard. At home of course, collectively we referred to ourselves as Ours, not too far afield from the practice here. But if One of us encounters One of us, the form of mutual address remains One. There is no transmogrification into 'You-ness'. The rule to remember for Us — She commented later that the very sound of it soothed the irritations of this world — is that One and One are One ... We have Our plural, but singly we are the same. Never, never, does One and One make Two.

"Oh, la, la!" She said. " One begs pardon?" Over the intercom there came a mutter: Comme c'est chic, ça, perhaps not intended to be heard.

"We beg pardon," was my limp answer. Oh, it's all very laughable, once one has the language of any Elsewhere as completely as you will have noted yours is now mine; how I can skip flealy from uppercase to lower, in the pronoundest sense of any occasion. But memory still pains. Those first tingles of the singular!

"Come, come," said the intercom, but softly. She was ever kindly. "N'ayez peur, mon vieux ... mon fils ... ma soeur ... ?" There was even a giggle. After all, there were certain perplexities on her side — what, after all, was my gender? And I could not help her. If we in Ellipsia have gender, or once had — there is a myth to the effect that we once had, and that it still may be recovered — it lies deep to-down the inconscious. I know that there is hope — that just as the crustaceans regenerate limbs lost to the sharks of time, so we — But I could not help her then. I did not know.

"Come now."

To say what was next expected of me took more than a moment, in which the very veils of my finer flesh rent themselves ... or congealed? Then, our rote habits and disciplines being very useful here, as they knew, I was able to say it: "I."

This was the crux of it. Even now I sometimes lose the ego-ness that is needed to make that feeling — that moment when the One rouses from the everslump of curve — and stands up straight . When the One becomes: a one. Even now, I am prone to give the old, collective answer.

" I beg pardon," I said dutifully.

"Bon," She said. "So far, so good. But it would be even more perfect if you say, " 'I beg your — ' Eh?"

As I had soon learned, She is never quite satisfied — this is why they make good teachers. Though this may give them trouble when they visit us, much as they may think from here that they will want to move forevermore only in the Circles of Satisfaction. Once, when I had questioned her very seriously She had answered: No, to be fair, not to be satisfied was a characteristic of both halves of Them. Though it would not have been polite to tell her so, I was glad to have some slight fears allayed. For consider: even at home I had after all been One not content with Our circle — and if that should by any chance be an indication of gender, then — No, I did not wish it, somehow. And somehow, I did not think — No, I couldn't be. Good God — Marie had taught me that phrase. Good God — suppose I should be a Marie!

"Oh, sorry!" I said now, absently. "That's what I should have said of course. 'I beg your — ' But I'm afraid I rather lost the train of thought. Please remind I. What was I begging pardon for? "

I never knew where in that great glass house their side of the intercom was located, being more than content to keep to the room specially prepared in advance for me. This was more on my part than a natural contentedness of disposition. For, until I had undergone the full program, including — besides dispensing entirely with the electrical barrier we switched off only secretly at home — Weightfulness, Visibility, and above all how to reduce Instantaneity — it was dangerous for me not to; language was only the first stop. So I was quite reposed to be where I was, learning their seasonal changes, snow to sprout, as I could view them in the great woodpile that pressed against the glass, accustoming myself to this uneasily irregular countryside, after Our calmly monolisting Ovaloid — I had no idea how half-cognate you and we are, until I saw your Sea. But at the time, I couldn't get over now stock-still, relatively speaking, everything seemed to be here. In the one non-glass wall, there were shelves holding books of instruction in an electro-braille not unlike records we have preserved, plus some enormous blown-up photostats of the greater carnivores and herbivores, all this to serve until my inner gyrations reduced themselves to the needs of print. Now and then, animals and insects of the minor domestic sort were patrolled across the glass, in a reverse of zoo — or perhaps, in order to show me the causality here, they were let fly to dog me of themselves. For, after Two-ness, there comes the other great thing to learn about a variable world in a state of semi-decontrol — that they here cannot wholly distinguish between the tides of causality and accident. Even when dealing with objects, one has to distinguish between these two hallmarks very carefully, since matter here comes in such an onslaught of forms. So, as yet they have not learned how to so classify events here. That is why, at home, every effort is made to have Events take a circular continuity. For, neither have we.

At this moment, for instance, there was such absolute silence over the intercom that I even wondered whether, in the daily sessions where my pair of mentors, working together from the office, had me practice how to plod timespace as they do, slowly, courting every possible friction instead of avoiding it — whether, by intent or not, they hadn't drained so much instantaneity from me that they were already gone.

"Mentor." I said. I had never had this feeling before; of course, most that they have here, I have never had. Loss? A kind of fleshly desolation. "Mentor!" I said again, and then, pleading, the word that she had now and then let me use on a Saturday. "Mère!"

Silence. It hurts — the vacuum's first, puckering awareness of what it is. I began to understand more of what it would mean for a One to try to become a 'one', or even to live in that world. To grow all the feelings I would need, could I do it; could I bear it? All these to be coursing undictated, tiger after lamb, lamb after tiger, through the beautiful, flickering glades that the beings here must have inside them? — It had not yet been thrust upon me that, according to my needs, these pains would be thrust upon me. According to my needs.

Then the intercom vibrated, stuttering under the timbre of the message it carried. The walls of the room, being non-conductive glass, held me fast, bordering my instantaneity, else what a vast, electrical spreading might not have occurred? As it was, Her words went right through me.

"Chéri." She said. "Chéri."

Yes, the words went through me, and dispersed themselves. And somewhere within, a little of their irradiation clung Little by little, by such exercises, is weightfulness learned.

" Chéri, I suppose you know what you've done?"

"What?" I could not have phrased it, but I already knew. That too is a feeling!

"You've learned it. You've done it. You 'ave said it as we do, without thinking. The 'I' ... "

When a 'one' of the beings here first begins to suspect that he is acquiring a character, or as you like to say, firming one, the first thing he asks himself to do is to test it, in order to find out what it is. And in my progress toward becoming one of you, I was no exception. Since, at home, character is unmixed with gender, I was perhaps under even direr need to do so, being totally unable to distinguish between them. Perhaps both were acquired at one strike here, which would certainly be by far the most economical, I found myself dunking, then scalded myself for hanging on to an idea which was far too much like Us — such was not the style in which they would handle things in this marvellously spendrift world. They would certainly be more haphazard about something so important here. And there must be some prescribed one of their hazards which would be the proper test for what I now had.