The Worshippers | Page 5

seat past first one level and another, and the twittering voices
burst around him like the stars of a Fourth-of-July rocket.
This was the fifth village they had visited since the bug things had
found him wandering in the mountains. At the first one, he had been
probed, examined and twittered over interminably; then the aircar had
arrived, they had strapped him into this ridiculous seat and begun what
looked very much like a triumphal tour. Other aircars, without the
revolving arm, preceded and followed him. The slowly floating cars
and their riders were gay with varicolored streamers. Every now and
then one of the bug things in the cars would raise a pistol-like object to
fire a pinkish streak that spread out, high in the air, and became a
gently descending, diffusing cloud of rosy dust. And always the
twittering rose and fell, rose and fell as Weaver revolved at the end of
the swinging arm.
One had to remember, he reminded himself, that Earthly parallels did
not necessarily apply. It was undignified, certainly, to be revolving like
a child on a merry-go-round, while these crowds glared with bright

alien eyes; but the important thing was that they had not once offered
him any violence. They had not even put him into the absurd revolving
seat by force; they had led him to it gently, with a great deal of
gesturing and twittered explanation. And if their faces were almost
nauseatingly unpleasant--with the constantly-moving complexity of
parts that he had seen in live lobsters--well, that proved nothing except
that they were not human. Later, perhaps, he could persuade them to
wear masks....
* * * * *
It was a holiday; a great occasion--everything testified to that. The
colored streamers, the clouds of rosy dust like sky-rockets, the crowds
of people lined up to await him. And why not? Clearly, they had never
before seen a man. He was unique, a personage to be honored: a visitor
descended from the heavens, clothed in fire and glory. Like the
Spaniards among the Aztecs, he thought.
Weaver began to feel gratified, his ego expanding. Experimentally, he
waved to the massed ranks of bug things as he passed them. A new
explosion of twittering broke out, and a forest of twiglike arms waved
back at him. They seemed to regard him with happy awe.
"Thank you," said Weaver graciously. "Thank you...."
In the morning, there were crowds massed outside the building where
he had slept; but they did not put him into the aircar with the revolving
arm again. Instead, four new ones came into his room after he had eaten
the strange red and orange fruits that were all of the bug diet he could
stomach, and began to twitter very seriously at him, while pointing to
various objects, parts of their bodies, the walls around them, and
Weaver himself.
* * * * *
After awhile, Weaver grasped the idea that he was being instructed. He
was willing to co-operate, but he did not suppose for a moment that he
could master the bird-like sounds they made. Instead, he took an old

envelope and a stub of pencil from his pocket and wrote the English
word for each thing they pointed out. "ORANGE," he wrote--it was not
an orange, but the color was the same, at any rate--"THORAX. WALL.
MAN. MANDIBLES."
In the afternoon, they brought a machine with staring lenses and bright
lights. Weaver guessed that he was being televised; he put a hand on
the nearest bug thing's shoulder, and smiled for his audience.
Later, after he had eaten again, they went on with the language lesson.
Now it was Weaver who taught, and they who learned. This, Weaver
felt, was as it should be. These creatures were not men, he told himself;
he would give himself no illusions on that score; but they might still be
capable of learning many things that he had to teach. He could do a
great deal of good, even if it turned out that he could never return to
Earth.
He rather suspected that they had no spaceships. There was something
about their life--the small villages, the slowly drifting aircars, the
absence of noise and smell and dirt, that somehow did not fit with the
idea of space travel. As soon as he was able, he asked them about it. No
they had never traveled beyond their own planet. It was a great marvel;
perhaps he could teach them how, sometime.
As their command of written English improved, he catechized them
about themselves and their planet. The world, as he knew already, was
much like Earth as to atmosphere, gravity and mean temperature. It
occurred to him briefly that he had been lucky to hit upon such a world,
but the thought did