No, there was more wrongness. A man was just stepping out of the air car, one foot about to touch the ground, and Jubal was running toward him. Smith could see the blast of icy anger that Jubal was hurling toward the man, a blast so furious that, had one Martian hurled it toward another, both would have discorporated at once.
Smith noted it down as something he must ponder and, if it was a cusp of necessity as it seemed to be, decide what he must do to help his brother. Then he looked over the others.
Dorcas was climbing out of the pool; she was puzzled and rather troubled but not too much so; Smith could feel her confidence in Jubal. Larry was at the edge of the pool and had just gotten out; drops of water falling from him were in the air. Larry was not troubled but excited and pleased; his confidence in Jubal was absolute. Miriam was near him and her mood was midway between those of Dorcas and Larry. Anne was standing where she had been seated and was dressed in the long white garment she had had with her all day. Smith could not fully grok her mood; he felt in her some of the cold unyielding discipline of mind of an Old One. It startled him, as Anne was always soft and gentle and warmly friendly.
He saw that she was watching Jubal closely and was ready to help him. And so was Larry!? and Dorcas!? and Miriam! With a sudden burst of empathic catharsis Smith learned that all these friends were water brothers of Jubal - and therefore of him. This unexpected release from blindness shook him so that he almost lost anchorage on this place. Calming himself as he had been taught, he stopped to praise and cherish them all, one by one and together.
Jill had one arm over the edge of the pool and Smith knew that she had been down under, checking on his safety. He had been aware of her when she had done it? but now he knew that she had not alone been worried about his safety; Jill felt other and greater trouble, trouble that was not relieved by knowing that her charge was safe under the water of life. This troubled him very much and he considered going to her, making her know that he was with her and sharing her trouble.
He would have done so had it not been for a faint, uneasy feeling of guilt: he was not absolutely certain that Jubal had intended to permit him to walk around while his body was hidden in the pool. He compromised by telling himself that he would share their trouble - and let them know that he was present if it became needful.
Smith then looked over the man who was stepping out of the air car, felt his emotions and recoiled from them, forced himself nevertheless to examine him carefully, inside and out.
In a shaped pocket strapped around his waist by a belt the man was carrying a gun.
Smith was almost certain it was a gun. He examined it in great detail, comparing it with two guns that he had seen briefly, checking what it appeared to be against the definition in Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, published in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Yes, it was a gun - not alone in shape but also in wrongness that surrounded and penetrated it. Smith looked down the barrel, saw how it must function, and wrongness stared back at him.
Should he turn it and let it go elsewhere, taking its wrongness with it? Do it at once before the man was fully out of the car? Smith felt that he should? and yet Jubal had told him, at another time, not to do this to a gun until Jubal told him that it was time to do it.
He knew now that this was indeed a cusp of necessity? but he resolved to balance on the point of the cusp until he grokked all of it - since it was possible that Jubal, knowing that a cusp was approaching, had sent him under water to keep him from acting wrongly at the cusp.
He would wait? but in the meantime he would hold this gun and its wrongness carefully under his eye. Not at the moment being limited to two eyes facing always one way, being able to see all around him if needful, he continued to watch the gun and the man stepping out of the car while he went inside the car.
More wrongness than he would have believed possible! Other men were in there, all but one of them crowding toward the door. Their minds smelled like a pack of Khaugha who had scented an unwary nymph and each one held in his hands a something having wrongness.
As he had told Jubal, Smith knew that shape alone was never a prime determinant; it was necessary to go beyond shape to essence in order to grok. His own people passed through five major shapes: egg, nymph, nestling, adult - and Old One which had no shape. Yet the essence of an Old One was already patterned in the egg.
These somethings that these men carried seemed like guns. But Smith did not assume that they were guns; he examined one most carefully first. It was much larger than any gun he had ever seen, its shape was very different, and its details were quite different.
It was a gun.
He examined each of the others, separately and just as carefully. They were guns.
The one man who was still seated had strapped to him a small gun.
The car itself had built into it two enormous guns - plus other things which Smith could not grok but which he felt had wrongness also.
He stopped and seriously considered twisting the car, its contents, and all - letting it topple away. But, in addition to his lifelong inhibition against wasting food, he knew that he did not fully grok what was happening. Better to move slowly, watch carefully, and help and share at the cusp by following Jubal's lead? and if right action for him was to remain passive, then go back to his body when the cusp had passed and discuss it all with Jubal later.
He went back outside the car and watched and listened and waited.
The first man to get out talked with Jubal concerning many things which Smith could only file without grokking; they were beyond his experience. The other men got out and spread out; Smith spread his attention to watch all of them. The car raised, moved backwards, stopped again, which relieved the beings it had sat on; Smith grokked with them to the extent that he could spare attention, trying to soothe their hurtings.
The first man handed papers to Jubal; in turn they were passed to Anne. Smith read them along with her. He recognized their word shapings as being concerned with certain human rituals of healing and balance, but, since he had encountered these rituals only in Jubal's law library, he did not try to grok the papers then, especially as Jubal seemed quite untroubled by them - the wrongness was elsewhere. He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once - impossible as that was for any but an Old One.
Jubal and the first man turned and walked toward the pool, with Anne close behind them. Smith relaxed his time sense a little to let them move faster, keeping it stretched just enough so that he could comfortably watch all the men at once. Two of the men closed in and flanked the little group.
The first man stopped near the group of his friends by the pool, looked at them, then took a picture from his pocket, looked at it, and looked at Jill. Smith felt her fear and trouble mount and he became very alert. Jubal had told him, 'Protect Jill. Don't worry about wasting food. Don't worry about anything else. Protect Jill.'
Of course, he would protect Jill in any case, even at the risk of acting wrongly in some other fashion. But it was good to have Jubal's blanket reassurance; it left his mind undivided and untroubled.
When the first man pointed at Jill and the two men flanking him hurried toward her with their guns of great wrongness. Smith reached out through his Doppelganger and gave them each that tiny twist which causes to topple away.
The first man stared at where they had been and reached for his gun - and he was gone, too.
The other four started to close in. Smith did not want to twist them. He felt that Jubal would be more pleased with him if he simply stopped them. But stopping a thing, even an ash tray, is work-and Smith did not have his body at hand. An Old One could have managed it, all four together, but Smith did what he could do, what he had to do.
Four feather touches-they were gone.
He felt more intense wrongness from the direction of the car on the ground and went at once to it-grokked to a quick decision, and car and pilot were gone.
He almost overlooked the car riding cover patrol in the air. Smith started to relax when he had disposed of the car on the ground-when suddenly he felt wrongness and trouble increase, and he looked up.
The second car was coming in for a landing right where he was.
Smith stretched his time sense to his personal limit and went to the car in the air, inspected it carefully, grokked that it was as choked with utter wrongness as the first had been? tilted it into neverness. Then he returned to the group by the pool.
All his friends seemed quite excited; Dorcas was sobbing and Jill was holding her and soothing her. Anne alone seemed untouched by the emotions Smith felt seething around him. But wrongness was gone, all of it, and with it
