Free The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller Page B

age, we wouldn’t have been. He said I was the first of our kind he’d seen in years. He said when he first saw me he couldn’t believe I existed, especially since I’d jumped down from the trees right in front of him. He said, “What better way to meet somebody?” That was when we lay close to each other, wrapped tight in our sleeping bags. I was watching his profile with the stars behind it. Even then I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t dare. There were times I could see in his eyes that he wanted to kiss me, too. Youpas used to look at me with a kind of glare, accusing me of not loving him. Youpas would have kissed. In fact he tried every now and then, but I wouldn’t let him. Lorpas was the opposite. He always looked at me with a shy glance full of a sort of slow kindness. As if there was all the time in the world to enjoy getting to know each other. But there wasn’t.
    I used to wish that our Neanderthalish faces were like the natives. I wanted a small sharp nose and thinner eyebrows. I wanted fuller, more shapely lips. I wanted to be willowy. I especially wanted a less lumpy forehead, but when I first looked at Lorpas, lying there sleeping at the edge of the Secret City, right away I changed my mind.
    I should feel good here where everybody looks like us. I mean their faces. Nothing else about them does, what with those crazy clothes, though I haven’t seen much. I wonder if I’ll miss the natives’ faces, though once we got up to the Secret City I hardly saw them anymore except in picture books. In the beginning we had old movies too, but they got worn out. For a while we could run the projectors, and we could recharge batteries by hand or foot pumps, but that all gave out.
    F INALLY THE TWO MEN COME F OR ME . (I KEEP thinking men, but I’m not sure. The clothes don’t give me any signals I know of and everybody looks so soft and chubby.) I guess I’m presentable. By now it’s darker out. Of course there’s the glow of the dust. I know from my parents that it never gets really dark. Maybe I’m not as presentable as I think, since they waited till this twilight time to take me out.
    We get onto one of those wobbly porches hanging from nothing, and swing off slowly. In a way I’m scared and in a way I’m not because everything is so fascinating. Besides, would they really put me in danger after they took all the trouble to get me back? I hardly pay attention to my fear except to hang on tight. I stare at the buildings. They’re all exactly the same. When I look out over them from the high point of the porch’s swing, it makes me think of a field of huge shiny blades of grass. As we start down I stare at the ground where a few people stroll. Not a single one walks fast. There are no streetlights. They’re not needed. Nothing is lit except inside the windows. The dust rings and the moons—both at the half-moon stage—are enough so that no lights are needed.
    The blue one looks to be a lot farther away than the red. Or is it just smaller? And does one always follow the other like it seems to now?
    We touch down a few minutes later.
    So far the men haven’t talked to me—just to themselves. I think the language has changed some since our parents left fifty years ago, but I understand a lot of it. They’re not talking about me but about the colors of something—colors of music, I think they said.
    For sure these are males, their voices are gravely. I wonder if they’re the ones undressed me and dressed me when I was drugged.
    They take me to one of those slim towers. They say, “This is where you’ll….” Something or other. Seemed like “collide” or “fall down.” Maybe, “crash.”
    The room is on the twelfth floor. I think twelfth. I’m not sure of our numbers. The elevator comes up the middle so that when we get out there are windows on all sides. I know they have elevators back there, too, but last time I was in one I was eight years old so it’s as scary as the porch. All the