I didn't answer. I forced myself to meet his gaze.
"Don't worry about hurting my feelings, Jim. I don't have any. If you have anything at all to say to me, ever, then all I ask is that you tell me the truth."
I nodded. "All right."
"So, what's your question?" he probed.
I looked around, I looked at my shoes, I looked back at Falstaff, I looked back to Jason. I shook my head. "I don't like being held prisoner. "
"You'ro not a prisoner. You're a guest."
"If I'm a guest, then I should be able to leave whenever I want, shouldn't I? What would happen if I just started walking away from here? What would Falstaff do?"
"Try it and see," said Jason. "Go ahead." He pointed toward the road. "Go on."
"Okay," I said. "Come on, Falstaff. Let's go to the road."
Falstaff said, "Browr, " and followed me. His body humped and flowed.
We got halfway up the sloping dirt drive when Falstaff decided that was far enough.
"Nrrrt," he warned.
I kept walking.
"Nrrrr-Rrrrt," he warned me again.
I glanced back at Delandro. He was watching with an amused smile. He waved. I waved back and kept walking.
Falstaff said, "Brrrrattt," and flowed up beside me. One of his long gangling arms unfolded from his body, reached up and over toward me. The claw at the end of it came down and clamped gently, but firmly, around my shoulder. Still being gentle, Falstaff turned me around to face him.
He held me before him. I could have reached out and touched his face. He cocked his eyes, one up, one down, in a half-familiar, lost-Muppet expression. It would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been so terrifying.
He said, "Nrrr-Rrr-Rrrt."
I didn't understand the phrase, but I sure understood the tone. He was telling me no.
He slid his claw-hand down my shoulder. I thought it would feel cold and metallic, but it didn't. His hand felt like the soft pads of a dog's foot; a little rough and leathery, but warm.
I said, "I got it, Falstaff. Thank you."
I reached up to my arm and took his claw-hand in mine. He let me. I looked in his eyes, then I looked at his paw. It was a remarkable piece of biological machinery. I touched the soft part of it with my finger. There was pink fur growing between the pads, just like on a dog's paw. I spread two of the pads and looked at the dark flesh between. It was smooth. Falstaff giggled.
At least it sounded like a giggle.
"I beg your pardon?" I said. I looked at him. His eyes were huge and black and remarkably patient. He was a fascinating creature. If I had ever doubted it, there was no question about it now; the Chtorran gastropedes were far more intelligent than any of us had given them credit for. The best guess of the scientists at Denver was that the gastropedes ranked just above apes or baboons or dolphins. I suspected we'd been underestimating them. Again.
Falstaff took my hand then. He turned it over between his two claw-hands and examined the pads of my palm the same way I had examined his. He stroked the sensitive part of my palm with a touch as gentle as a feather-and I giggled at the softness of it.
I almost wanted to hug him. He smelled spicy.
And then the moment was over and I realized I was playing handsy-footsy with a half ton of man-eating worm, and I pulled back. "Come on," I said. "Let's go back."
Falstaff burped and purred and followed me.
At the bottom of the hill, Delandro was smiling proudly. "You did good, Jim. The very first step is the hardest, but it's the most necessary. You have to stop seeing the worms as your enemy."
I said, "And see them instead as my jailers?"
"Oh, no. Falstaff stopped you for your own protection. There are wild worms out there. They don't know that you're friendly. They'd kill you. Falstaff would let you go if he thought you'd be safe, but he knows you're not. His job-and Orson's too-is to protect the camp from marauders. You're our guest, so that protection includes you. You should talk to him more often, Jim, like you just did. Tell him thank you. He likes it. Good job, Falstaff. "
Delandro turned to the worm. "Gimme five," he said, and held out his hand. Falstaff slapped it gently with his right claw. Delandro laughed and hugged him fondly. He began scratching the beast vigorously just ahead of his brain-bump. Falstaff arched his back and made a rumbling sound.
"Go ahead, Jim, he loves to be skritched. Try it." He stepped out of the way.
I stepped up beside Falstaff. He looked as big as a horse. I began scratching his back gently. One of the claw-hands unfolded then, took my hand and moved it forward, just to the base of the eyestalks.
"He's showing you where he likes it," Delandro said. "He likes you, Jim."
"I'm-uh, flattered." I started scratching again.
"Harder. You can't hurt him: He likes it hard."
I was skritching Falstaff as hard as I could. He rumbled and burped. I recognized the sound as one of pleasure. Falstaff's flesh was thick and firm and felt like corded muscle. I began working my way up the eyestalks. The skin here was a loose furry envelope enclosing the two eyestalks-thus the silly hand-puppet effect of the eyes as they swiveled back and forth. I could feet the thick cartilage and supportive musculature like a framework beneath the skin. Both of the eyestalks were enclosed in this warm pillowcase of fur. There was an almost sexual feeling to the strength and stiffness of them, the way they were enclosed in this silky wrap.
One of Falstaff's eyes turned sideways and looked straight down at my hand. I had the feeling he approved. The eye turned and looked at me, studying-memorizing my face. Falstaff's arm unfolded and wrapped around my shoulders. It rested there while I skritched.
"All right, Falstaff!" Delandro slapped his flank. "That's enough; next you'll be wanting to climb into his bed, and I don't think he's ready for that yet." Falstaff unwrapped himself from me and pulled himself back to form a big pink meat loaf. He said something that sounded like "Barrruuupp."
"He likes you, Jim. You should be complimented."
"I am," I gulped. "I'm hysterical with joy. Or something."
"I know," Delandro said. "It's confronting at first. There's a lot of beliefs you have that you don't want to give up. You've got a lot of survival invested in those beliefs. It's not easy to discover that everything you know is wrong."
"Well, if somebody had told me that it's possible to play huggy-face, kissy-body with a Chtorran I sure wouldn't have believed it. I don't know how I could tell this to anyone else who hasn't seen it and have them believe me."
Delandro nodded. He put his arm around my shoulders then and began to lead me down toward a sheltered clearing. Falstaff huffed and puffed and followed us. "Jim," he said. "I know that a lot of what we do here is confusing to you. Because you're trying to filter it through a belief system that doesn't allow for the possibilities you're actually seeing. Look, I want you to understand just one thing." He stopped and looked into my eyes. His gaze was direct and penetrating. I felt impaled. "What happens out there-in what we call the real world-that's ordinary. People live ordinary lives. And what they call communication-that's like two TV sets yammering at each other. Both are making noise, but neither is hearing what the other is saying. What we're up to here is functioning on the extraordinary level. Do you know that results are produced only by functioning on the extraordinary level?"
"No, I don't know that."
"You go through life, from day to day to day, and you live your life in an ordinary way. Will you produce results? No. You'll just get older. But if you take a stand, if you commit yourself, if you create a context out of which to operate, then results are inevitable. That's the extraordinary level, a level that most people hardly ever reach, except in rare moments of anger and even rarer moments of joyousness that some people call love. What we're up to here is keeping ourselves committed to the deliberate and continuous creation of the joyousness of life. That's the level out of which extraordinary results are produced."