Except that I’m going to cap my reporting of mundane occurrences with the account of an extraordinary event that took place just this afternoon. Also, I’m going to compress time to suit my own artistic/scientific purposes.
At dawn the Asadi return to their football fields. For approximately twelve hours they mill about in the clearing doing whatever they care to do. Sexual activity and quirkish staring matches are the only sort of behavior that can in any way be called ‘social’ – unless you believe milling about in a crowd qualifies. Their daylight way of life I call Indifferent Togetherness.
But when the Asadi engage in coitus, their indifference dissolves and gives way to a brutal hostility. Both partners behave as if they desire to kill each other, and frequently this is nearly the result. (Births, in case you’re wondering, must take place in the Wild, the female self-exiled and unattended.) As for the staring matches, they’re of brief duration and involve fierce gesticulation and mane shaking. The eyes change color with astonishing rapidity, flashing through the entire visible spectrum, and maybe beyond, in a matter of seconds.
I’m now prepared to say these instantaneous changes of eye color are the Asadi equivalent of human speech. Three weeks of observation have finally convinced me that the adversaries in these staring matches control the internal chemical changes that trigger the changes in the succeeding hues of their eyes. In other words, patterns exist. The minds that control these chemical changes cannot be primitive ones. The alterations are willed, and they’re infinitely complex.
Ole Oliver Oliphant was right. The Asadi have a ‘language.’
Still, for all the good it does me, they might as well have none. One day’s agonizingly like another. And I can’t blame my pariahhood, for the only things even a well-adjusted Asadi may participate in are sex and staring. It doesn’t pain me overmuch to be outcast from participation in these. To some extent, I’m not much more of a pariah than any of these creatures. We’re all, so to speak, outcast from life’s feast . . .
Unlike every other society I’ve ever read about or seen, the Asadi don’t even have any meaningful communal gatherings, any festivals of solidarity, any unique rituals of group consciousness. They don’t even have families. The individual is the basic unit of their ‘society.’ What they have done, in fact, is to institutionalize the processes of alienation. Their dispersal at dusk simply translates into physical distance the incohesiveness by which they live during the day. How do the Asadi continue to live as a people? For that matter, why do they do so?
Enough questions. As I mentioned earlier, something extraordinary took place today. It happened this afternoon, and, I suppose, it’s still happening. As before, this strange event involves the old man who appeared in the clearing over a week ago. It also involves the huri, his blind reptilian companion.
Until today I’d never seen two Asadi eat together. As an Earthman from a Western background, I find the practice of eating alone a disturbing one. After all, I’ve been eating alone for over three weeks now, and I long to sit down in the communal mess with Benedict and Eisen, Morrell and Yoshiba, and everyone else at base camp. My training in strange folkways and alien cultural patterns hasn’t weaned me away from this longing. As a result, I’ve watched with interest, and a complete lack of comprehension, the Asadi sitting apart from their fellows and privately feeding – as if, again, they were merely an alien variety of chimpanzee or baboon.
Today this changed. An hour before the fall of dusk, the old man staggered into the clearing under the burden of something damnably heavy. I was aware of the commotion at once. Like last time, every one of the Asadi fled to the edge of the jungle. I observed from my lean-to. My heart, dear Ben, thumped like a toad in a jar. The huri on the old man’s shoulder scarcely moved; it appeared bloated and insentient, a rubber doll. During the whole of the old man’s visit it remained in this virtually comatose state, upright but un-moving. Meanwhile, the aged Asadi – whom I’ve begun to regard as some sort of aloof and mysterious chieftain – paused in the center of the clearing, looked about, and then struggled to remove the burden from his back. It was slung over his shoulders by means of two narrow straps.
Straps, Eisen: S-T-R-A-P-S. Made of vines.
Can you understand how I felt? Nor did the nature of the old man’s burden cause my wonder to fade. He was lowering to the ground the rich, brownish-red carcass of an animal. The meat glistened with the failing light of Denebola and its own internal vibrancy. The meat had been dressed, Eisen, and the old man was bringing it to the Asadi clearing as an offering to his people.
He set the carcass on the dusty assembly floor and withdrew the straps from the incisions he’d made in the meat. Then, his hands and shoulders bloodstained, he stepped back five or six steps.
Slowly, a few of the adult males began to stalk into the clearing. They approached the old man’s offering with diffident steps, like thieves in darkened rooms. Their eyes were furiously changing colors. All but those of the old man himself. I could see him standing away from the meat, and his eyes – like unpainted china saucers – were the color of dull clay. They didn’t alter even when several of the Asadi males fell upon the meat and began ripping away beautifully veined hunks. Then more and more of the Asadi males descended upon the carcass, and all about the fringes of the clearing the females and the young made tentative movements to claim their shares. I had to leave my lean-to to see what was going on. Ultimately, I couldn’t see anything but bodies and manes and animated discord.
Before most
