Stranger in a Strange Land

lacking.
                She assumed her professional manner. "Well, how are we today? Feeling better?"
                Smith translated and examined the questions. The inclusion of herself in the first query was confusing, but he decided that it might symbolize a wish to cherish and grow close. The second part matched Nelson's speech forms. "Yes," he answered.
                "Good!" Aside from his odd lack of expression she saw nothing strange about him-and if women were unknown to him, he was certainly managing to conceal it. "Is there anything I can do for you?" She glanced around, noted that there was no glass on the bedside shelf. "May I get you water?"
                Smith had spotted at once that this creature was different from the others who had come to see him. Almost as quickly he compared what he was seeing with pictures Nelson had shown him on the trip from home to this place-pictures intended to explain a particularly difficult and puzzling configuration of this people group. This, then, was a "woman."
                He felt both oddly excited and disappointed. He suppressed both in order that he might grok deeply, with such success that Dr. Thaddeus noticed no change in the dial readings in the next room.
                But when he translated the last query he felt such a surge of emotion that he almost let his heartbeat increase. He caught it in time and chided himself for an undisciplined nestling. Then he checked his translation.
                No, he was not mistaken. This woman creature had offered him the water ritual. It wished to grow closer.
                With great effort, scrambling for adequate meanings in his pitifully poor list of human words, he attempted to answer with due ceremoniousness. "I thank you for water. May you always drink deep."
                Nurse Boardman looked startled. "Why, how sweetl" She found a glass, filled it, and handed it to him.
                He said, "You drink."
                Wonder if he thinks I'm trying to poison him? she asked herself-but there was a compelling quality to his request. She took a sip, whereupon he took the glass from her and took one also, after which he seemed content to sink back into the bed, as if he had accomplished something important.
                Jill told herself that, as an adventure, this was a fizzle. She said, "Well, if you don't need anything else, I must get on with my work."
                She started for the door. He called out, "Not"
                She stopped. "Eh? What do you want'~"
                "Don't go away."
                "Well I have to go, pretty quickly." But she came back to the bedside, "Is there anything you want?"
                He looked her up and down. "You are ... 'woman'?"
                The question startled Jill Boardxnafl. Her sex had not been in doubt to the most casual observer for many years. Her first impulse was to answer flippantly.
                But Smith's grave face and oddly disturbing eyes checked her. She became aware emotionallY that the impossible fact about this patient was true: he did not know what a woman was. She answered carefully, "Yes, I am a woman."
                Smith continued to stare at her without expression. Jill began to be embarrassed by it. To be looked at appreciativelY by a male she expected and sometimes enjoyed, but this was more like being examined under a microscope. She stirred restively. "Well? I look like a woman, don't I?"
                "I do not know," Smith answered slowly. "How does woman look? What makes you woman?"
                "Well, for pity's sake!" Jill realized confusedly that this conversation was further out of hand than any she had had with a male since about her twelfth birthday. "You don't expect me to take off my clothes and show you!"
                Smith took time to examine these verbal symbols and try to translate them. The first group he could not grok at all. It might be one of those formal sound groups these people so often used . . . yet it had been spoken with surprising force, as if it might be a last communication before withdrawaL Perhaps he had so deeply mistaken right conduct in dealing with a woman creature that the creature might be ready to discorporate at once.
                He knew vaguely that he