Part 3 (1/2)

In the morning Wyatt went out alone, to walk in the sun among the trees, and he found the girl he had seen from the s.h.i.+p. She was sitting alone by a stream, her feet cooling and splas.h.i.+ng in the clear water.

Wyatt sat down beside her. She looked up, unsurprised, out of eyes that were rich and grained like small pieces of beautiful wood. Then she bowed, from the waist. Wyatt grinned and bowed back.

Unceremoniously he took off his boots and let his feet plunk down into the water. It was shockingly cold, and he whistled. The girl smiled at him. To his surprise, she began to hum softly. It was a pretty tune that he was able to follow, and after a moment he picked up the harmony and hummed along with her. She laughed, and he laughed with her, feeling very young.

_Me Billy_, he thought of saying, and laughed again. He was content just to sit without saying anything. Even her body, which was magnificent, did not move him to anything but a quiet admiration, and he regarded himself with wonder.

The girl picked up one of his boots and examined it critically, clucking with interest. Her lovely eyes widened as she played with the buckle. Wyatt showed her how the snaps worked and she was delighted and clapped her hands.

Wyatt brought other things out of his pockets and she examined them all, one after the other. The picture of him on his ID card was the only one which seemed to puzzle her. She handled it and looked at it, and then at him, and shook her head. Eventually she frowned and gave it definitely back to him. He got the impression that she thought it was very bad art. He chuckled.

The afternoon pa.s.sed quickly, and the sun began to go down. They hummed some more and sang songs to each other which neither understood and both enjoyed, and it did not occur to Wyatt until much later how little curiosity they had felt. They did not speak at all. She had no interest in his language or his name, and, strangely, he felt all through the afternoon that talking was unnecessary. It was a very rare day spent between two people who were not curious and did not want anything from each other. The only words they said to each other were goodbye.

Wyatt, lost inside himself, plodding, went back to the s.h.i.+p.

In the first week, Beauclaire spent his every waking hour learning the language of the planet. From the very beginning he had felt an unsettling, peculiar manner about these people. Their behavior was decidedly unusual. Although they did not differ in any appreciable way from human beings, they did not act very much like human beings in that they were almost wholly lacking a sense of awe, a sense of wonder. Only the children seemed surprised that the s.h.i.+p had landed, and only the children hung around and inspected it. Almost all the others went off about their regular business--which seemed to be farming--and when Beauclaire tried learning the language, he found very few of the people willing to spend time enough to teach him.

But they were always more or less polite, and by making a pest of himself he began to succeed. On another day when Wyatt came back from the brown-eyed girl, Beauclaire reported some progress.

”It's a beautiful language,” he said as Wyatt came in. ”Amazingly well-developed. It's something like our Latin--same type of construction, but much softer and more flexible. I've been trying to read their book.”

Wyatt sat down thoughtfully and lit a cigarette.

”Book?” he said.

”Yes. They have a lot of books, but _everybody_ has this one particular book--they keep it in a place of honor in their houses.

I've tried to ask them what it is--I think it's a bible of some kind--but they just won't bother to tell me.”

Wyatt shrugged, his mind drifting away.

”I just don't understand them,” Beauclaire said plaintively, glad to have someone to talk to. ”I don't get them at all. They're quick, they're bright, but they haven't the d.a.m.nedest bit of curiosity about _anything_, not even each other. My G.o.d, they don't even gossip!”

Wyatt, contented, puffed quietly. ”Do you think not seeing the stars has something to do with it? Ought to have slowed down the development of physics and math.”

Beauclaire shook his head. ”No. It's very strange. There's something else. Have you noticed the way the ground seems to be sharp and jagged almost everywhere you look, sort of chewed up as if there was a war?

Yet these people swear that they've never had a war within living memory, and they don't keep any history so a man could really find out.”

When Wyatt didn't say anything, he went on:

”And I can't see the connection about no stars. Not with these people.

I don't care if you can't see the roof of the house you live in, you still have to have a certain amount of curiosity in order to stay alive. But these people just don't give a d.a.m.n. The s.h.i.+p landed. You remember that? Out of the sky come G.o.ds like thunder--”

Wyatt smiled. At another time, at any time in the past, he would have been very much interested in this sort of thing. But now he was not.

He felt himself--remote, sort of--and he, like these people, did not particularly give a d.a.m.n.