The Metrognome and Other Stories

NORG GLEEBLE GOP

When I began reading science fiction, women's issues generally referred to what brand of washer-dryer to buy for the house or whether one's habitation suffered from the dread waxy yellow buildup. The latter always suggested to me some insidious, infectious alien disease (is there a story there?).

My, de times how dey do change.

1 never had any problem with equality, as it were, perhaps because from the start so many of my editors, not to mention my agent, Virginia Kidd, were women. Just to prove it (largely to myself, l suppose), I made the protagonist of my second novel female. A character I would have enjoyed meeting.

Much more difficult than writing a character who happens to be of the opposite sex is trying to do a story in which that character has to deal with a problem particular to his or her gender. It's as if C. L. Moore had tried to do a story dealing with Northwest Smith's fear of impotence.

The only way, I believe, that a writer can handle such a difficult situation is to discuss it with members of the opposite sex. Even then, there is always the fear that you're treading psychological water instead of getting at something real.

"It's just that they're so cute," Deering said. Her friend and fellow xenologist AI Toney disagreed. "The Inrem are a primitive, utterly alien race that we still know next to nothing about, which is why SA has gone to the trouble of sponsoring this expedition. Although the attitude of the natives toward us thus far has, been friendly, we don't know nearly enough about their culture to start making generalizations. 'Cute' qualifies as a generalization, Cerice, and not a very scientific one at that. These people are hunter-gatherers who have developed a complex social structure we are just beginning to understand. Their language remains incomprehensible, with its floating internal phrases and switchable vowel sounds, and their rituals no less confusing."

Cerice Deering leaned back in her chair and stared out the glass port at the surface of Rem V . The sun was slightly hotter than that of her home, the atmosphere thick and moist. And it boasted that rarest of all discoveries, a native intelligent race. How intelligent remained to be determined. She considered herself fortunate to be counted among those designated to do the determining.

Not only was being a member of the expedition exciting and enlightening, it could be a career maker. If she could come up with something spectacular. The competition to be first with a breakthrough was keen among the expedition's scientists. As one of the youngest, it would, be hard for her to make a mark for herself. Or so her colleagues thought. She smiled a secret smile at her private plan. Fortune favors the bold, or so the old Latins claimed. She intended to find out.

She could not confide in Toney. While he was a friend, he was also a competitor, and he certainly would have disapproved of her intentions.

"Where's your sense of adventure, Al?" she asked, teasingly.

"In the scientific method. In the careful filing of observations for collation at a later date, at which time the real discoveries are made. In learning patiently and assuredly. This isn't a play, Cerice. The Inrem are not special effects. You don't plunge blindly into an alien culture. That can be dangerous."

She couldn't keep from laughing aloud. "The Inrem? Dangerous? Are we talking about the same aliens, Al?"

"Never trust appearances. That's a truism from human; anthropology that applies just as well to aliens."

"So we squat here and pick up a useful datum or two a day. Science at a snail's pace." She put her long legs up on-the table, knowing it would distract him. "Take this Gop ceremony they're having tonight. How the hell are we supposed to study it if we're forbidden to attend?"

Toney looked uncomfortable, partly because of the question, partly because Deering was wearing only shorts and a halter. Rein V– was a hot world and getting hotter, he reflected.

"We can't study it. We'll have to wait until we're invited in or until Dhurabaya and his people crack this ridiculous language and we learn how to ask permission property."

"It's not ridiculous. The Inrem don't realize that to us their language sounds like baby talk."

"I know. But it's still hard to keep a straight face when the local chief waddles up to you and says with all seriousness something like 'Neemay goo ga weebte fisk,' or whatever it was he told us yesterday. "

"That's one reason why I think they're so cute."

"He might've been cursing me out."

"Bull. You're paranoid, Al. The Inrem have been downright hospitable ever since we set up camp here. They've been curious and helpful every time we're asked them for something-except for excluding us from the occasional ceremony."

"You've got something on your mind." Toney looked up at her sharply.

"Who, me? I'm just a junior researcher. Half the senior scientists on this barge don't think I have a mind." She pulled one knee back to her chest and locked her hands around her ankle.

Toney swallowed, staring, and forgot about the warning lecture he intended to inflict on his associate.

Night and the creaks of an alien world. Whistles and hoots, squeals and buzzes assaulted the encampment. Deering wasn't worried as she slipped out of camp and made her way through the forest toward the big Inrem village where they'd been conducting their field studies. The expedition had been on Rem for six months, and nothing bigger than a biting bug had challenged them. Violet leaves caressed her thighs. Webbers scurried out of her path, their big fluorescent eyes glowing in the light of her glowtube.

It was about a mile and a half over level, relatively dry ground to the village. She could hear the steady susurration of the chant long before she located a good place to make her observations. The Inrem were very big on ceremonies, performing at least one a week. They politely permitted the visiting humans to study most of them. Only a few had been declared off limits, such as this Gop ceremony tonight.

Deering knew it was an especially important ceremony, but she and her colleagues had not been able to determine why. Much of the interspecies communication between human and Inrem still took the form of signs and gestures as the expedition's linguists struggled to crack the complex if silly-sounding native tongue.

She was breaking a taboo as she set up her recording equipment on the little rise overlooking the village, but she wasn't frightened. An expedition botanist had accidentally killed an Inrem adolescent two weeks ago, but even that hadn't been sufficient to provoke their anger. They seemed to respond with understanding and even compassion for the distraught visitor.

The village consisted of stone and wood longhouses arranged in a circle around a central square. There were small openings in the ground in front of each longhouse. As near as they had been able to discover, the openings led to an intricate complex of tunnels of unknown extent. They were too small to admit humans (the Inrem averaged about three feet in height), and so what studies they had been able to carry out had been done only with instruments. The consensus so far held that the caves served to store food and provide private links between longhouses. They were not for defense. There was no war among tile Inrem.

The ceremony was already under way. There was no carved image, no deity to be worshiped. The Inrem rituals remained an open book, attendant upon multiple interpretations. She hoped tonight's work would allow her to make several. If nothing else, merely recording the forbidden ceremony would be a real feather in her cap.

She was just inserting a new cube in her recorder when half a dozen armed Inrem materialized from the trees behind her. Eyeing them warily, she moved to put the recorder between the natives and herself. She had a small pistol with her, but using it on a native, even in self-defense, would result in her being censured and sent home in disgrace.

Nothing in the Inrem's expressions or movements betrayed a hint of hostility, however. The senior warrior stepped forward. Like all of his kind, he walked on a pair of thick, stumpy legs. His squat body seemed to have been fashioned from gray putty. There was no neck, only a tapering of the torso that was called a head. His short tail twitched as he sniffed at her with his flexible trunk and its rosette, fringed tip. The teeth in his mouth were blunt, and something akin to a squashed derby decorated his bald pate.

"Si mokle reerip ba boovle," he declaimed. "Norg gleeble gop."

As always, Deering had to repress a smile. Not that the expression would have meant anything to the Inrem. "Look, I don't mean to intrude." The words were for her own benefit, since no native could understand a word of English. She turned both hands palm up in a universal gesture of conciliation. "I just want to watch." Now she did smile. "I'll leave if you insist."

The Inrem had built-in smiles, like porpoises. "Norg gleeble gop," the senior repeated.

"Oh, okay, whatever. 'Norg gleeble gop.' "

This appeared to please the warriors no end. Apparently she'd said exactly the right thing. Poor Toney and his paranoia. A pity he and the other old fogies weren't here to witness this minor triumph of improvised interspecies communication. You just have to go at it boldly and with the right spirit, she reflected.

The senior uttered another delighted "Norg gleeble gop" and gently took her hand to lead her down to the village. No one objected as she picked up her still functioning recorder. She felt gratified and exhilarated. This was what science was all about, the rush that came from making a breakthrough discovery, the thrill of observing what none had seen before her.

A few of the villagers paused in the middle of their clumsy but high-spirited dances as she was led into the square. For the first time she sensed something akin to hostility, until the senior warrior escorting her raised a hand and declared loudly, "Norg gleeble gop! Sookle wa da fookie!" Then the performers were all smiles again.

No one bothered her as she set up her instruments, angling them on a group of elder Inrem females. The species had three sexes: male, female, and neuter. Behind her the alien music rose to a deafening din as a cluster of musicians pounded, tootled, and plucked furiously at their instruments. It was by far the most impressive performance so far witnessed, and Deering concentrated on her recorder. There was a driving, atonal beat to the music that was distracting and fascinating.

With a cry, the performers and dancers scattered. Normally this signified that she ceremony was at an end, but the Gop was different. Instead of the chief matriarch retiring to her longhouse, she gathered her favorite male and neuter around her and joined the rest of the population in forming small groups in front of the numerous cave openings. Deering adjusted her angle from narrow to wide, trying to include as many groups as possible.

Then she gasped and looked up from the eyepiece of the recorder.

Something was coming out of each of the holes in front of the longhouses. Slowly at first, tentatively searching, each pale pink worm was as thick as a man's arm. They tapered to points and were innocent of features: no eyes or ears, no mouths, no nostrils. The worms swayed back and forth as if in time to the now silent music that had called them forth.

Occasionally a worm world touch one of the chanters, whereupon the individual so blessed would tumble onto its back and begin writhing in ecstasy. Deering worked her recorder frantically. Here was some kind of solemn symbiotic relationship no one on the expedition had so much as suspected. What the Inrem derived from the, worms was a matter for future speculation. Their mere existence, not to mention their special relationship to the natives, would cause pandemonium among her colleagues. She had slipped secretly out of camp seeking something unique and had been rewarded beyond her wildest dreams.

The worms were now swaying low over the twisting, jerking bodies of the blessed, doing something-it was difficult to see because the standing members of each group blocked her line of sight. She shoved another cube into the recorder.

Something touched her lightly in the small of her back.

Whirling, she found one of the worms not a meter from her face. Despite its lack of eyes, it seemed to be studying her curiously. Probably had a highly developed tactile sense, she told herself, breathing hard. It leaned forward. As she stood frozen to the spot, it brushed her right forearm. She held her ground. There were no teeth to defend against, no poison. Only a thin, pleasantly fragrant secretion of some kind.

Moving slowly so as not to alarm it, she adjusted her recorder for close-up work. All around her the worms were lightly touching and swaying over fallen villagers. A truly wild thought came to her.

What if the worms were not individual creatures but merely the tentacles, the limbs of something much bigger that pulsed and lived beneath the village? She envisioned it rising in response to the Gop musk, digging its way surfaceward from unimaginable subterranean depths to gently caress and commune with those who had summoned it forth.

The worm touched her again, startling her this time. She felt herself quiver all over, almost as if she'd received some kind of injection. That was impossible. The worm(tentacle?)-had nothing to inject with. But it-had left a glistening patch of that perfumed secretion on her arm. Suppose it could be absorbed through the skin? For the first time she felt uneasy. She was out there alone, surrounded by delirious aliens and giant pink worms. She'd learned enough to ensure herself a commendation. Better not push her luck.

A warm sense of tranquillity and well-being was spreading through her. She started to collapse the recorder. "I-I think I'd better be going now," she said to the Inrem nearest her. It smiled back up at her placidly.

"Norg gleeble gop?"

"Yeah. Norg gleeble gop."

She hoisted the recorder and turned. She made it to the edge of the forest before she collapsed.

She awoke in a bed in the camp infirmary. Chief Physician Meachim was staring down at her. Disapprovingly, she thought.

Since nothing was holding her back, she sat up.

"They found you just outside the camp perimeter." Meachim was frowning to himself. "Your cubes have been played back. Everyone's arguing with everyone else. The biologists are going crazy."

She touched her forehead, her temple. She felt fine. Better than fine; she felt terrific. "I must've passed out. It was pretty exciting. I'm okay?" '

Meachim shrugged. "You look great to me, but that's nothing new. Funny thing, though. I tried to bring you around with Compol and Damrin. Your system rejected both. But your vital signs stayed perfectly normal, so I didn't press it. You started to wake up about five minutes ago. The monitor notified me. Now you sit up by yourself with no apparent ill effects. Trying to put me out of a job?"

She slid off the bed, did a few experimental jumping jacks. "Sorry, but there's nothing wrong with me, Meachim. Know what? I'm going to be famous."

"That's what everyone's saying. The captain would like to have you drawn and quartered, figuratively speaking, but the scientists won't hear of it. They're slavering over your recordings and can't wait for you to lead a full-scale survey group back to the village. I imagine –they figure you've got a special in with the Inrem."

"All it takes is guts, in science the same as everything else. I can go?"

"This infirmary's for sick people, Cerice. You aren't sick." He turned and gestured. "Someone waiting to see you."

A1 Toney entered. "You ought to be shot. Instead, I think they'll canonize you. You've made a discovery that's more important than everything we've learned about the Inrem to date."

"I know."

He shook his head. "I wonder if you have any idea how lucky you were."

"Luck had nothing to do with it, Al. I just had the Inrem figured right. Cute, remember?"

"I guess so. Oh, Dhurabaya's made some progress. Maybe when we go back to your village-that's what everyone's calling it now, your village-we can ask the right questions."

"You don't have to know how to ask the right questions if you've got the right attitude. The Inrem know empathy when they feel it."

Toney nodded, looked thoughtful. "Silly-sounding speech they have, but logical once you work out the roots. That's what Dhurabaya's people say. Take 'Norg gleeble gop,' for instance. The Inrem have been using that phrase over and over for months." He started toward the door. She went with him, anxious to bask in the admiring stares of her envious colleagues.

"I remember. They were using it quite a bit during the ceremony."

"Really? Maybe that explains what kind of ceremony it was. 'Norg gleeble gop' means 'pregnant.' "