Stranger in a Strange Land

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 pooi 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