The Toynbee Convector

The alien song. He wished he could understand. He wished that he had the ability that some of his own people often had, to project the mind, to read* to know, to interpret, instantly; foreign tongues, foreign thoughts. He tried. But there was nothing, she went on singing the beautiful, unknown song, none of which he could understand:

“Ain’t misbehavin’, I’m savin’ my love for you...”

He grew feint, watching her Earth body, her Earth beauty, so totally different, something from so many mil lions of miles away. His hands were moist, his eyelids jerked unpleasantly.

A bell rang.

There she was, picking up a strange black instrument, the function of which was not unlike a similar device of Sio’s people.

“Hello, Janice? God, it’s good to hear from you!” Sio smiled. She was talking to a distant town. Her voice was thrilling to hear. But what were the words?

“God, Janice, what a hell-out-of-the-way place you sent me to. I know, honey, a vacation. But, it’s sixty miles from nowhere. All I do is play cards and swim in the damned canal.”

The black machine buzzed in reply.

“I can’t stand it here, Janice. I know, I know. The churches. It’s a damn shame they ever came up here. Everything was going so nice. What 1 want to know is when do we open up again?”

Lovely, thought Sio. Gracious. Incredible. He stood in the night beyond her open window, looking at her amazing face and body. And what were they talking about? Art, literature, music, yes, music, for she sang, she sang all of the time. An odd music, but one could not expect to understand the music of another world. Or the customs or the language or the literature. One must judge by instinct alone. The old ideas must be set aside. It was to be admitted that her beauty was not like Martian beauty, the soft slim brown beauty of the dying race. His mother had had golden eyes and slender hips. But here, this one, singing alone in the desert, she was of larger stuffs, large breasts, large hips, and the legs, yes, of white fire, and the peculiar custom of walking about without clothes, with only those strange knocking slippers on the feet. But all woman of Earth did that, yes? He nodded. You must understand. The women of that far world, naked, yellow-haired, large-bodied, loud-heeled, he could see them. And the magic with the mouth and nostrils. The ghosts, the souls issuing from the lips in smoky patterns. Certainly a magical creature of fire and imagination. She shaped bodies in the air, with her brilliant mind. What else but a mind of clarity and clear genius could drink the gray, cherry red fire, and plume out architectural perfections of intricate and fine beauty from her nostrils. The genius! An artist! A creator! How was it done, how many years might one study to do this? How did one apply one’s time? His head whirled with her presence. He felt he must cry out to her, “Teach me!” But he was afraid. He felt like a child.

He saw the forms, the lines, the smoke swirl into infinity. She was here, in the wilderness, to be alone, to create her fantasies in absolute security, unwatched. One did not bother creators, writers, painters. One stood back and kept one’s thoughts silent.

What a people! he thought. Are all of the women of that fiery green world like this? Are they fiery ghosts and music? Do they walk blazingly naked in their loud houses?

“I must watch this,” he said, half-aloud. “I must study.” He felt his hands curl. He wanted to touch. He wanted her to sing for him, to construct the artistic fragments in the air for him, to teach him, to tell him about that far gone world and its books and its fine music....

“God, Janice, but how soon? What about the other girls? What about the other towns?”

The telephone burred like an insect.

“All of them closed down? On the whole damn planet? There must be one place! If you don’t find a place for me soon, I’ll ... !”

Everything was strange about it. It was like seeing a woman for the first time. The way she held her head back, the way she moved her red-fingernailed hands, all new and different She crossed her white legs, leaning forward, her elbow on a bare knee, summoning and exhaling spir its, talking, squinting at the window where he, yes, he stood in shadow; she looked right through him, oh, if she knew, what would she do?

“Who, me, afraid of living out here alone?”

She laughed, Sio laughed in cadence, in the moonlit darkness. Oh the beauty of her alien laughter, her head thrown back, the mystic clouds jetting and shaping from her nostrils.

He had to turn away from the window, gasping.

“Yeah! Sure!”

What fine rare words of living, music, poetry was she speaking now?

“Well, Janice, who’s afraid of any Martian? How many are left, a dozen, two dozen. line ‘em up, bring ‘em on, right? Right!”

Her laughter followed as he stumbled blindly around the corner of her house, his feet thrashing a Utter of bottles. Eyes shut, he saw the print of her phosphorous skin, the phantoms leaping from her mouth in sorceries and evocations of cloud, rain and wind. Oh, to translate! Oh, gods, to know. Listen! What’s that word, and that, and yes then, that!? Did she call out after him. No. Was that his name?

At the cave he ate but was not hungry.

He sat in the mouth of the cave for an hour, as the moons rose and hurtled across the cold sky and he saw his breath on the air, like the spirits, the fiery silences that breathed about her face, and she was talking, talking, he heard or did not hear her voice moving up the hill, among the rocks, and he could smell her breath, that breath of smoking promise, of warm words heated in her mouth.

And at last he thought, I will go down and speak to her very quietly, and speak to her every night until she understands what I say and I know her words and she then comes with me back into the hills where we will be content I will tell her of my people and my being alone and how I have watched her and listened to her for so many nights....

But...she is Death.

He shivered The thought, the words would not go away.

How could he have forgotten?