Vaygay seemed to be doing well, despite the dearth of cigarettes. “Have you tried opening the door?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Xi replied.
She stepped back again, admiring the apparition. “It looks like something by– What’s the name of that French surrealist?” Vaygay asked. “René Magritte,” she answered. “He was Belgian.”
“We’re agreed, I take it, that this isn’t really the Earth,” Devi proposed, her gesture encompassing ocean, beach, and sky.
“Unless we’re in the Persian Gulf three thousand years ago, and there are djinns about.” Ellie laughed. “Aren’t you impressed by the care of the construction?”
“All right,” Ellie answered. “They’re very good, I’ll grant them that. But what’s it for? Why go to the trouble of all this detail work?”
“Maybe they just have a passion for getting things right.”
“Or maybe they’re just showing off.”
“I don’t see,” Devi continued, “how they could know our doors so well. Think of how many different ways there are to make a door. How could they know?”
“It could be television,” Ellie responded. “Vega has received television signals from Earth up to—let’s see–1974 programming. Clearly, they can send the interesting clips here by special delivery in no time flat. Probably thereto been a lot of doors on television between 1936 and 1974. Okay,” she continued, as if this were not a change of subject, “what do we think would happen if we opened the door and walked in?”
“If we are here to be tested,” said Xi, “on the other side of that door is probably the Test, maybe one for each of us.”
He was ready. She wished she were. The shadows of the nearest palms were now falling on the beach. Wordlessly they regarded one another. All four of them seemed eager to open the door and step through. She alone felt some…reluctance. She asked Eda if he would like to go first. We might as well put our best foot forward, she thought. He doffed his cap, made a slight but graceful bow, tinned, and approached the door. Ellie ran to him and kissed him on both cheeks. The others embraced him also. He turned again, opened the door, entered, and disappeared into thin air, his striding foot first, his trailing hand last. With the door ajar, there had seemed to be only the continuation of beach and surf behind him. The door dosed. She ran around it, but there was no trace of Eda.
Xi was next. Ellie found herself struck by how docile they all had been, instantly obliging every anonymous invitation proffered. They could have told us where they were taking us, and what all this was for, she thought. It could have been part of the Message, or information conveyed after the Machine was activated. They could have told us we were docking with a simulation of a beach on Earth. They could have told us to expect the door. True, as accomplished as they are, the extraterrestrials might know English imperfectly, with television as their only tutor. Their knowledge of Russian, Mandarin, Tamil, and Hausa would be even more rudimentary. But they had invented the language introduced in the Message primer. Why not use it? To retain the element of surprise? Vaygay saw her staring at the closed door and asked if she wished to enter next.
`Thanks, Vaygay. I’ve been thinking. I know it’s a little crazy. But it just struck me: Why do we have to jump through every hoop they hold out for us? Suppose we don’t do what they ask?”
“Ellie, you are so American. For me, this is just like home. I’m used to doing what the authorities suggest– especially when I have no choice.” He smiled and turned smartly on his heel.
“Don’t take any crap from the Grand Duke,” she called after him.
High above, a gull squawked. Vaygay had left the door ajar. There was still only beach beyond. “Are you all right?” Devi asked her. “I’m okay. Really. I just want a moment to myself. I’ll be along.”
“Seriously, I’m asking as a doctor. Do you feel all right?”
“I woke up with a headache, and I think I had some very fanciful dreams. I haven’t brushed my teeth or had my black coffee. I wouldn’t mind reading the morning paper either. Except for all that, really I’m fine.”
“Well, that sounds all right. For that matter I have a bit of a headache, too. Take care of yourself, Ellie. Remember everything, so you’ll be able to tell it to me….ext time we meet.”
“I will,” Ellie promised.
They kissed and wished each other Well. Devi stepped over the threshold and vanished. The door closed behind her. Afterward, Ellie thought she had caught a whiff of curry.
She brushed her teeth in salt water. A certain fastidious streak had always been a part of her nature. She break-fasted on coconut milk. Carefully she brushed accumulated sand off the exterior surfaces of the microcamera system and its tiny arsenal of videocassettes on which she had recorded wonders. She washed the palm frond in the surf, as she had done the day she found it on Cocoa Beach just before the launch up to Methuselah.
The morning was already warm and she decided to take a swim. Her clothes carefully folded on the palm frond, she strode boldly out into the surf. Whatever else, she thought, the extraterrestrials are unlikely to find themselves aroused by the sight of a naked woman, even if she is pretty well preserved. She tried to imagine a microbiologist stirred to crimes of passion after viewing a paramecium caught in flagrante delicto in mitosis.
Languidly, she floated on her back, bobbing up and down, her slow rhythm in phase with the arrival of successive wave crests. She tried to imagine thousands of comparable…chambers, simulated worlds, whatever these were–each a meticulous copy of the nicest part of someone’s home planet. Thousands of them, each with sky and weather, ocean, geology, and indigenous life indistinguishable from the originals. It seemed an extravagance, although it also suggested that a satisfactory outcome was within reach. No matter what your resources, you don’t manufacture a landscape on this scale for five specimens from a doomed world.
On the other hand…The idea of extraterrestrials as zookeepers had become something of a cliché. What if this sizable Station with its profusion of docking ports and environments was actually a zoo? “See the exotic animals in their native habitats,” she imagined some snail-headed barker shouting. Tourists come from all over the Galaxy, especially during school vacations. And then when there’s a test, the Stationmasters temporarily move the critters and the tourists out, sweep the beach free of footprints, and give the newly arriving primitives a half day of rest and recreation before the test ordeal begins.
Or maybe this was how they stocked the zoos. She thought about the animals locked away in terrestrial zoos who were said to have experienced difficulties breeding in captivity. Somersaulting in the water, she dived beneath the surface in a moment of self-consciousness. She took a few strong strokes in toward the beach, and for the second time in twenty-four hours wished that she had had a baby.
There was no one about, and not a sail on the horizon. A few seagulls were stalking the beach, apparently looking for crabs. She wished die had brought some bread to give them. After die was dry, she dressed and inspected the doorway again. It was merely waiting. She felt a continuing reluctance to enter. More than reluctance. Maybe dread.
She withdrew, keeping it in view. Beneath a palm tree, her knees drawn up under her chin, she looked out over the long sweep of white sandy beach.
After a while she got up and stretched a little. Carrying the frond and the microcamera with one hand, she approached the door and turned the knob. It opened slightly. Through the crack she could see the whitecaps offshore. She gave it another push, and it swung open without a squeak. The beach, bland and disinterested, stared back at her. She shook her head and returned to the tree, resuming her pensive posture.
She wondered about the others. Were they now in some outlandish testing facility avidly checking away on the multiple-choice questions? Or was it an oral examination? And who were the examiners? She felt the uneasiness well up once again. Another intelligent being–independently evolved on some distant world under unearthly physical conditions and with an entirely different sequence of random genetic mutations– such a being would not resemble anyone she knew. Or even imagined. If this was a Test station, then there were Stationmasters, and the Stationmasters would be thoroughly, devastatingly nonhuman. There was something deep within her that was bothered by insects, snakes, star-nosed moles. She was someone who felt a little shudder–to speak plainly, a tremor of loathing– when confronted with even slightly malformed human beings. Cripples, children with Down syndrome, even the appearance of Parkinsonism evoked in her, against her clear intellectual resolve, a feeling of disgust, a wish to flee. Generally she had been able to contain her fear, although she wondered if she had ever hurt someone because of it. It wasn’t something she thought about much; she would sense her own embarrassment and move on to another topic.