Even after a year living among these people, she still didn't
understand them. They were certainly not human.
First of all, they were blue. Secondly, they were taller than
humans, with extra joints on their limbs, and a segmented torso.
Thirdly, they had multifaceted eyes - well, hexafaceted, really.
But that was only cosmetic, and initially she was sure that she could
get beyond that if they were willing to give her a chance.
And willing they were. She had come from the sky in an egg on a
pillar of flame and settled in the middle of a construction project
in their city. They brought her food and what she hoped were animals
and not their young (which she had not seen for the first few months).
She declined the animals, not knowing what they really were, but
accepted the blue vegetables gratefully. Little Egg's systems
processed the toxic cobalt out of the vegetables and converted it
into something she could eat. They built around Little Egg, and
beyond it, leaving open the paths she walked as she explored the
forest that surrounded the city. They brought her gifts - all
manner of things that they found in the forest, or that they had
made.
Sometimes they would bring her into their dwellings, through the
long twisting corridors and the communal living areas, to where one
had made some great piece of art, or for a concert. The paintings
and sculpture demonstrated vividly how different her perceptions were
from theirs; their visual spectrum was obviously different from hers,
and the faceting of the eyes did odd things to perspective. One
piece that they showed her was obviously her, standing in front of
Little Egg. They seemed to view it as Representational Art, while
to Sooty it was a prime example of Cubism, or perhaps Hexism was a
better term, all things considered.
Language turned out to be the real stumbling block. She tried to
learn the language, but failed, and they seemed equally unable to
learn English. She eventually decided that, like human languages,
there was a great deal of body language and intonation that helped
determine meaning, and she had absolutely no reference for what their
culture and biology might have dictated. But to make it more
complicated, some of it seemed to be chemical in nature, pheremones
that were transmitted via touch, so they touched a lot. And there
was a certain "hive-mind" quality to these people, who, though they
were all individuals (and it wasn't too long before she was able
to pick out her regular visitors out of the crowd), were able to
share information without words, without auditory, visual or tactile
contact with the other party.
And so they clicked and ticked and chattered at her, gestured and
touched and rubbed her, and she answered cheerily in English, and all
was well.
And one day she found a place where they brought their damaged
tools, their dead machines, and she brought them to Little Egg, and
she fixed them, and used them to build other tools and other
machines, and they took these gratefully, and then she felt less
guilty about eating their food. Finally, she could give something
back.
And some of the machines she kept, and worked on, and with the
aid of the Little Egg's computer and the core propulsion stoker,
what she ended up with looked a little like a Harley Davidson, and
she was dying to find a place to open her up.