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Perry's first walk through the village

By the light of day, Perry could see around the small bedroom where
he had slept off his exhaustion. There were no pictures in the room
or any ornaments at all. The room was very simple, but somehow it
seemed far from gloomy. There were only a chair, a small single-sized
bed, and a small table with shelves underneath—all were
made of some baked tan-colored clay, and padded with a cotton-like
fabric. He remembered he had placed his old scratched glasses on
one of the shelves in the dark the night before. He noticed now that
he could see more clearly than ever—but his glasses were still on the
shelf. It was an eerie feeling to have his eyes function so comfortably
in this alien place. Was he only dreaming?

A room with so few decorations on Earth would seem like a
prison cell, but this room gave Perry no sense of barrenness and
was in no way dreary. It was cheerful in some unexplainable way, to
the extent that it would be overkill even to hang a picture. Plain
simplicity but complete expression—I’ve been depressed in more
dressed up surroundings. This place is refreshingly honest.

On the bed’s frame of hardened clay was a mattress constructed
of several layers of a very strong but soft fabric. Underneath the
mattress was a web of what appeared to be interlaced strips of tree
bark. The bed felt to be the same combination of soft and firm
comfort he had experienced in the chair upstairs the night before.

He recalled his own confusion while sitting in the chair. He had
seen nothing in the darkness but the moving stars through the
transparent ceiling and the glowing eyes of the beings around him.
So far, his hosts had shown no signs of intending him any harm.

The sounds of the people moving around him, their shadowy forms
gliding through the darkness, had not unsettled Perry at the time.
Even in the daylight, he still was as disoriented, as afraid.

The air seemed to be the purest ever—judging from a thoughtful
sniff of it. What incredible events of the past few days! The cosmic
storm had indeed taken him to a very hospitable planet, with trees
and animals. The evidence was all there. I’ve landed somewhere in
South America, Perry thought. All I need to do now is find my some
people and make my way back home. I know enough Spanish to
do that.

The short-lived sense of elation returned as the voices at the top
of the ridge came to mind. An unnerving wonder set in at the
sound of people walking on the busy street outside, their soft voices
speaking their unearthly language. This is pleasant but different
from anything I’ve ever heard. Although the surroundings were
unfamiliar, they were oddly unthreatening.

Perry felt the wear of the stress from his incredible ride through
space. It had ended, but the rhythmic throbbing continued to
reverberate in his head. "Go away, storm," Perry drawled at the
throbbing. "Go away!" He still harbored vain hopes of soon
returning home, somehow. He would tell no one about this place,
since they would not believe him anyway.

The present intruded into consciousness with an unmerciful
abruptness. Hope faded at the consideration of the surroundings of
the moment. The voices and people walking on the street outside
were not human. Perry realized he was not on Earth, but he was
not yet reconciled to his new reality. Looking first out of the window
toward the street, and then toward the house next door, Perry saw
that the day already was well advanced. The sun was moving down,
not up! The daylight had progressed so quickly the day before—I
must take advantage of what is left of the present day.

Perry walked out into the hall. In the daylight he saw that it was
as simple as the bedroom. The walls were dried bleached bark,
smooth and natural. The floors were of some type of baked clay
tiles. Perry slowly walked down the hall, peering cautiously into
each of the three rooms on each side. In one room someone was
sleeping soundly. The person was completely nude, and Perry did
not stay to stare at him.

Hunger pangs raged with increasing obtrusiveness—there must
be something to eat here. The stairs lay at what seemed to be the
back of the house—they were small but navigable on the way up.

He began to recall he had been this way the night before. This time
he was in more control of his entry since, in the daylight, he could
see clearly and did not stumble on his way up, as he had done
before even with the help of his hosts. It was reassuring to sight the
large bowl of pinkish green leafy stalks on the table in the middle
of the room, and the clay faucet running into the sink below it;
clean clay mugs, of various colors and designs were stacked upside
down on the small counter next to the sink. The shadow from one
of the ribs supporting the transparent walls and ceiling swept with
visible movement across the sink and mugs; shadows from other
supporting ribs similarly swept across the table, chairs, and clay
tile floor.

As Perry entered the room, a woman, sitting in the same chair
where he nearly had fallen asleep in the dark, turned and smiled at
him. Like the two men whom Perry had met at the top of the ridge
the day before, she had huge beautiful eyes. The exposed parts of
her eyes took up almost all of the area of the fronts of her eye
sockets; her irises took up almost all of the exposed parts of her
eyes, leaving visible very little of the white parts of her eyes. Her
irises were closed down to pinhole size in the daylight, revealing a
luscious brown color punctuated by sharp streaks of yellow
radiating evenly from the centers to the edges. The woman was
petting a small animal, which looked like a cross between a rabbit
and a squirrel; the creature was in her lap purring like a cat. From
his upstairs vantage point, Perry noticed several other of these small
creatures wandering about in the streets below.

Perry looked back at the woman and returned her smile. He
nodded her the best greeting he could express without a common
language. The woman gestured invitingly to a bowl of grain stalks
on the table where she was sitting and to the water sink and mugs
in the corner at the top of the stairs. Perry helped himself to both
and sat down on a chair across from her.

As Perry ate, the woman, still with the purring animal in her lap,
wrote on what appeared to be a type of paper on the table between
them. Instead of writing across or down the page as most Earth
languages are written, the woman wrote what appeared to be a
word on one part of the page, and then, the next word somewhere
else on the page away from the word she had just written.

Occasionally, she would write another word close to one of the
others, but the order was not apparent to Perry. The movement of
her writing disturbed the animal to the point that it jumped down
and came over to Perry; it jumped up and began purring in his lap.
Perry caressed it carefully, examining it as discreetly as he could. Its
fur was long, thicker than cat’s fur but as soft.

While they were sitting there, two other women and a man came
into the room and greeted them both. By gesturing as they spoke,
they asked Perry to stand up. They began to measure him, as a
tailor would, from head to toe, around his calves and thighs, around
his waist and chest, and along his arms. Perry flinched when they
measured from the front of his waist, through his crotch to the back
of his waist. They gestured for him to remain seated there,
indicating that they would return, apparently soon. Both Perry and
his hosts were becoming proficient at communicating with each
other by gesture and were refining a type of sign language based o
obvious motions. I wonder if they know I can talk at all?

A short time later the threesome returned with a set of clothes,
which had been made for the alien according to the measurements
they had taken of him. They motioned to Perry to follow them. The
four of them left the woman to resume her writing at the table and
went downstairs and into the street. They headed through the
bustle of the foot traffic and a few hand pulled wagons toward the
end of the village, where there was a small hill with a larger hill
behind it. Much larger hills were visible in the distance. The houses
all seemed to be made of the same clay materials as the furniture—
even the streets seemed to be paved with a similar type of clay.

As they walked, the people all around seemed to be going about
their daily business, and the small purring creatures were
scampering everywhere; occasionally, someone would bend down
and pet one, which the creatures seemed to enjoy.

...

On his own again, Perry stepped out of the house. He walked past
several two-story buildings with glass-enclosed porches for their
second story. All of the buildings had transparent roofs, and Perry
could see that in many houses there were people sitting in what
appeared to be comfortable chairs, like the one in the house where
he was staying, just gazing at the sky or the distant countryside.

The glass for houses and roofs was made in curved segments of
about three meters square, and fitted on an assembly of hardened
opaque glass frames. The upper levels of all the houses, where the
apparent combination living room, dining room, and kitchen area
was located, were transparent all around. Everyone outside could
see in, and everyone inside could see out.

From Perry’s Earth oriented perspective, the inhabitants of this
planet seemed to be a very open people to whom privacy was a
non-issue. Nobody seemed concerned whether or not Perry or
anyone else was there, although he was sure that he must appear
strikingly different to them. He considered that an alien on Earth
would be captured, and poked, prodded, tested, analyzed,
interrogated and, if not protected by the authorities, mobbed and
murdered by a terrified population. Nothing like that had
happened to him here. Perry reflected that he had seen nothing
that appeared to be a weapon of any sort, but he kept an open
mind on the matter.

Perry considered that things could be much worse. If this is not a
dream, it is he who is the space alien here. He recalled the
numerous stories on Earth of hypnotic abductions by sinister alien
beings that perform hideous biological experiments on their human
victims. But Perry saw little sign of anything technological around
him, not even any evidence of electric power or anything like it.

Being conscious during his entire trip to this place, he was confident
he had not been abducted at all; he kept thinking how it seemed
instead like some natural event. Other than their huge eyes, with
their irises closed to pinhole size in the sunlight, the people he saw
appeared to be very similar to him in general physiological makeup.
So it seemed.

As he was looking around in every direction, Perry watched in
fascination and wonder, as the once clear blue sky became instantly
very dark and cloudy. Almost as suddenly, it began to rain. The rain
started as a steady light rain coming straight down with no wind,
then increased in intensity and became a steady downpour. To
Perry’s surprise, no one sought shelter; they did not even seem to
mind the rain, even though they were all drenched. He found
himself gawking at them, his mouth hung open in amazement.

Several people looked over at Perry as if he were crazy to be
concerned about the rain. Perry decided to continue walking as it
continued raining; after all, that was what everyone else was doing.

Perry passed several people on the street as he walked. Other
than the few who earlier had helped him, none of them spoke to
him, or acknowledged his existence as a fellow intelligent being. He
entertained the idea that he was dreaming or had been in a bad
accident and would either wake up in a hospital room or be dead.

To test this idea, Perry tried speaking to an approaching person.

"Hello," he said in a voice he was sure was loud enough to be
heard.

The person, walking on the opposite side of the street, turned
and looked at him only for a second or two and then turned away
and continued walking as if Perry were not even there. The person
seemed to have neither fear nor malice, but merely took in the fact
with his large eyes that Perry was there. Perry’s words seemed to
have no meaning to these people, and he felt meaningless as a
result. It was disconcerting to think that they might be
fundamentally different—it made butterflies in his stomach.

Perry then stopped, reached down, and picked up a stone, just to
see how many of his senses would become involved with the action.
He could see it, feel it, smell it, and chose not to taste it. He rapped
his knuckles with it to see if it would hurt. It did. The rock is real—
this is not a dream. The rocks had several strange colors to them.
This one was brown with purple specs in it. All parts of the rock,
including the purple specks, seemed to be a type of compressed
sandstone. He tossed the rock back to the side of the street.

Wandering out of the village, Perry passed what now appeared in
the daylight to him to be a large community winepress. The night
before, when he first arrived in the village in the dark, he recalled
hearing several people walking on something which made
squishing noises and the dripping, pouring sounds of an extracted
substance, which sounded too thick to be wine.

Perry proceeded on and followed a road out toward what
appeared to be the same type of grain fields where he first met the
inhabitants of this planet. This wheat, or whatever it was, seemed
to be growing in the wild everywhere. Perry plucked a stem of the
plant and began munching on it as he had learned to do from
watching the villagers. Its taste was somewhat nondescript, but not
unpleasant. It did fill him up, and he had experienced it provided
more than sufficient roughage. He also had noticed that the people
here seemed to be very healthy, and he suspected their diet had
something to do with that.

The planet’s sun in front of him was setting and moving so fast
Perry could see the shadows move with its progress. I’m not sure I
want to walk very much farther. The night before there was no
artificial light in the village. There was no moon visible on the
approach this planet in the cosmic storm. There is no hope of being
able to see at night here without some type of local lighting. As the
sun rapidly began to set, the visible movement of the shadows from
before with the moving sun became increasingly apparent.