It was odd how differently he felt about foods now that he was a human being. He had been going cautiously, since his bad experience of the first night in the restaurant. He had eaten only fruits and bread, and sometimes a sausage on a roll. But in time he expected to do all things human beings did, even to eating the wet brown messes he saw on his neighbors’ plates.
He picked up his cup, experimentally flexed the muscles of his lips and drank. He was proud of this accomplishment, which had cost him much effort.
The last few drops rattled noisily as they went in, and one or two people nearby glanced at him with raised eyebrows. Evidently this was not a sound that one made. He set down the cup in some embarrassment, and consulted his wristwatch: it was just eleven.
He restrained himself from checking the time by his other wristwatch, which was in his pocket. He had observed that human beings did not wear two at once, perhaps because the watches were so accurate that no checking was required.
A pattern of bright lights flashed for an instant on his section of the counter. He glanced upward automatically, as he had done the time before, and the time before that, and saw only a fading starflower of red sparks in the machine overhead. They dimmed and went out. A moment later they flashed on again, making him blink and jerk his head back. The bright chrome and glass ring of the revolving display case slowed, stopped. Directly in front of him, a square black hole appeared, and a transparency lighted up. The young man read, EMPTY PLATES, PLEASE. He pushed his empty cup and saucer, and the plate with the remnants of his buns, obediently into the hole, which closed-on it with a metallic snap. The transparency blinked, shimmered, and lighted up again: THANK YOU.
With a warm feeling for the polite machine, the young man stood up and left the lunchroom. As he passed the entrance, where a crowd was waiting to get in, he found himself once more face to face with the same darkhaired young woman.
She stared at him, apparently as shocked as he was. Neither moved for an instant. Then the young woman, without a word, raised her hand and slapped him in the face.
The blow was so unexpected and painful that the young man was unable to move for a few moments longer, while the young woman turned and walked away People standing around wen staring at him; some where whis, pering to each other.
No one had ever struck him before. With one hand to the curious numbness that was the pain in his cheek, the young man turned away.
He spent the rest of the day wandering the store half-blindly, shivering a little. His pleasure in the bright colors and varied shapes around him was dimmed almost to extinction. He was waiting for it to be time for him to climb to his hideaway in the tower. Beyond that he did not think.
EVENTUALLY it was eight teen-thirty. The crowds wen beginning to flow toward the exits. The young man moved across the elevator plaza, vaguely aware that the crowds were heavier and somehow more anxious than usual tonight. He passed a man with a camera, then another. Two in a row. He had sometimes amused himself by counting men with cameras, or fat woman, or crying children, but now he had no interest in games. There were a lot of uniforms in sight, too: not only the blue store police, but white uniforms, red ones, gold-and-white ones …
He passed two blueuniformed men who were standing together, looking intently around them. One stepped forward, glancing at the young man, then at something he held in his hand. “One moment, sir.”
The young man sidestepped, anxious not to be touched again.
“Stop!” cried the store policeman, reaching.
The young man whirled and ran for the grille. Bells were ringing on all sides; footsteps pounding after him. He sprang, caught the grille, began to climb.
Halfway up, he glanced back. No one was climbing after him, but there was a great deal of activity at the base of the grille. Blueuniformed men were clustered around a bundle of something gray, unrolling it. There were others, in gleaming white uniforms, with feathers on their hats, but these were not doing anything, only standing with feet apart, staring up at him.
He went on climbing. As he neared the top of the grille, two heads appeared over the edge, then a third.
The young man paused. The three men wore blue uniform caps - they were store police, not merely the clerks who lived in this upper level. While he was wondering what to do, the three heads ducked out of sight, then reappeared. The shoulders and arms of the three men came into view. Something cloudy and gray seemed to float down toward him.
The young man ducked, but it was too late. The cloudy thing settled around him with a solid thump, and he discovered that it was a net of grayish cord. It pulled tight around him when he attempted to swing away to the side. There were ropes attached to the net, and the men above were holding them.
Panicked, the young man tried to climb down. The ropes held him back, then slackened a little; but when he paused to try to remove the net with one hand, they tightened again.
Down below, two men in graystriped uniforms were pushing up a sort of tall ladder on wheels. The plaza was full of motionless people now, and the men in white were keeping them back.
The ladder was in position almost directly under him, and now a white-uniformed man began to climb it.
The young man saw that in another moment all his chances would be gone. Taking a deep breath, he swung himself violently away from the grille, tearing with both hands at the net that held him.
The great room revolved massively around him. His back struck the grille hard, knocking the breath out of him. He kicked himself away again, still tearing wildly at the meshes of the net. The man on the ladder was very near. The net gave a little; he had found an edge. His head was out, then his shoulders.
The grille struck him again. The man on the ladder leaned out and reached for him. Then he was falling.
VI
SPRAWLED on the couch in his room, the biped read: “The bipeds of the Great Northern Plateau, although the most interesting life-form on Brecht’s Planet, are a vanishing species. Their once numerous herds are no longer seen in the vicinity of the Earth settlements. Only scattered groups of three to five are occasionally met in the mountains and foothills to the north. These animals, prior to the development of Brecht’s Planet by man, possessed a complex herd organization and communicated by vocal signals. Their mating ceremonies, held in the spring of the year, are said to have involved barbaric cruelties to the females.”
He closed the book thoughtfully. That might account partly for Emma’s attitude, he supposed - if she had witnessed something of the kind before being captured and brought to Earth as an infant. However -
He thumbed the book open at a different place. “The knob or crest,” he read, “appearing only as a vestige in the male, is a conspicuous purplish-red ovoid in the female. The function of the crest is unknown, but it is thought to be a secondary sexual characteristic. Erhardt (6) has suggested that it functions as an organ of display in the animals’ natural state, but Zimmer (7) has pronounced it to be merely a hypertrophied pineal eye. The organ is vulnerable, as attested by the large number of older females who have lost it through accident or in conflict with other bipeds.”
The biped closed the book again and tossed it irritably onto the floor. He was reading “Brecht’s Planet: Riddle of the Universe” for the second time, out of sheet boredom, since it was the only book he had in the back room: but the parts that were full of footnote references reminded him too much of the work he copied every day for Griick and the other staff members.
In another two hours or so it would be closing time, and he could go into the living room without exposing himself to all those meaty red faces. This time he would remember to bring some reading matter into the back room, enough to last him a few days.