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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58721 ***
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+                          UNWELCOMED VISITOR
+
+                          BY WILLIAM MORRISON
+
+        _Xhanph was the fully accredited ambassador from Gfun,
+              and Earth's first visitor from outer space.
+           History and the amenities called for a tremendous
+           reception. But earth people are funny people...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1954.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+All the way over, all through the loneliness of the long trip, he had
+consoled himself with the thought of the reception he would get. How
+they would crowd around him, how they would gape and cheer! All the
+most prominent and most important Earthlings would rush to see him,
+to touch their own appendages to his tentacles, to receive his report
+of interplanetary good will. His arrival would certainly be the most
+celebrated occasion in all the history of Earth....
+
+He was coming in for a landing, and it was no time for day-dreaming.
+He brought the ship down slowly, in the middle of a large square, as
+carefully as if he were settling down among his own people. He gave
+them a chance to get out from under him before making contact with the
+ground. When the ship finally rested firmly on the strange planet, he
+gave a sigh of relief, and for a few long seconds sat there motionless.
+And then he began to move toward the door.
+
+The increased gravity did not affect him as badly as he had thought it
+would. For the dense atmosphere, with its high oxygen content, he had
+of course been prepared. He injected another dose of respiratory enzyme
+into his bloodstream just to make sure, and then swung open the door.
+The inrush of air caused only a momentary dizziness.
+
+Then he climbed over the side and stared about in surprise.
+
+No one was paying any attention to him.
+
+Their indifference was so enormous that it struck him like a blow.
+Individuals of both sexes--he could easily distinguish them by the
+difference in their clothing--were going about their own business as
+if he simply were not there. A small animal running about on all fours
+had its forepart to the ground. It trotted from one place to another,
+making a slight noise with an organ that he felt sure was used for the
+intake of oxygen. When it came to him, it sniffed slightly, without
+any especial interest, and then ran off to more important business. No
+other creature paid him even that much attention.
+
+Can it be, he asked himself incredulously, that they don't see me?
+Perhaps their organs of vision make use of different wave lengths.
+Perhaps to them I and the ship are not pink and gray respectively, but
+a perfect black which fails to register. I must speak to them, I must
+make myself known. They may be startled, but I must take the chance.
+
+He rolled over to an individual who towered over him a full _spard_,
+and said gravely, "Greetings! I, Xhanph, bring you greetings from the
+inhabitants of the planet, Gfun. I come with a message of friendship--"
+
+There could be no doubt that the other heard him. And saw him too. He
+looked straight at Xhanph, muttered something, probably about a pink
+monster, which Xhanph could guess at but not really interpret, and
+moved on impatiently. Xhanph stared after him with an incredulity that
+grew by the moment.
+
+They didn't understand his language, that he realized. But surely
+they didn't have to understand in order to be interested. The very
+sight of his ship, a mere glimpse of _him_, the first visitor from
+interplanetary space, should have been enough to bring them flocking
+around. How could they possibly greet him with such disinterest, with
+such faces which even to a stranger seemed cold and chilling?
+
+When you have traveled as far as he had traveled, you don't give up
+easily. Another, a shorter individual, was coming toward him, and he
+began again, "Greetings! I, Xhanph--"
+
+This time the individual didn't even stop, but muttered something which
+must surely have been of the nature of an oath. And hurried on.
+
+Xhanph tried five more times before he gave up. If there had been the
+slightest indication of interest, he would have kept on. But there
+wasn't. The only feeling he could detect was one of impatience at being
+annoyed. And he saw that there was nothing else to do but go back to
+his ship.
+
+For a while he sat there, brooding. One possible solution struck
+him, although it didn't seem at all probable. These people were not
+representative of their kind. Perhaps this entire area he had taken for
+a city was nothing more than a retreat for the mentally disabled, for
+those who had found the strain of living too much and had sunk back
+into a kind of stupor. Perhaps elsewhere the people were more normal.
+
+At the thought, he brightened for a moment. Yes, that must be it.
+Convincing himself against his own better judgment, he lifted the ship
+into the air again and set it down a few dozen _grolls_ away.
+
+But there was no difference. Here, too, the faces looked at him
+blankly, and people hurried away impatiently when he tried to stop them.
+
+He knew now that it was useless to pick up the ship still another time
+and set it down elsewhere. If there was some rational explanation
+for such irrational behavior, it could be found here just as well as
+anywhere else. And explanation there must be. But he would have to look
+for it. It would not come to him if he simply sat there in the ship and
+waited for it.
+
+He got out and locked the ship so that in case some one finally did
+show curiosity, no harm would come to it. Then he began to roll around
+the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everywhere he met the same indifference as at first. Even the children
+stared at him without curiosity, and went on with their games. He
+stopped to watch--and to listen.
+
+They bounced balls, and as they bounced, they recited words. When
+something interrupted the even tenor of the game and they had to begin
+again, they went back to the start of the recitation. Surely, they were
+counting. Listening carefully, he learned the fundamentals of their
+system of numerals. At the same time, for the sake of permanence, he
+made pictorial and auditory records.
+
+Every now and then the game would be interrupted by a quarrel. And a
+childish quarrel, of course, was sure to be full of recriminations.
+You did this, I did that. He learned the names of the objects with
+which they played, he learned the words for first and second persons in
+their different forms. He learned the word for the maternal parent, who
+seemed to stand in the closest relation to the young ones.
+
+By evening he had acquired a fairly good child's grasp of the language.
+He rolled back in the direction of the ship. When he came to the place
+where it should be, he had a sudden feeling of panic. The ship was gone.
+
+They must have dragged it away. Their whole pretense of indifference
+must have been a trick, he thought excitedly. They had waited until
+they could tamper with it without his interference, in order to learn
+its secrets. What had they done with it? Perhaps they had harmed it,
+possibly they had ruined the drive. How could he ever get off this
+accursed planet, how would he ever get back to Gfun?
+
+He rolled hastily over to the nearest man and tried to put his newfound
+vocabulary to use. "Where--where--" He realized suddenly that he didn't
+know the word for ship. "Where galenfain?"
+
+The man looked at him as if he were crazy, and walked on.
+
+Xhanph did some swearing on his own account. He began to roll
+madly around the square, becoming more desperate from moment to
+moment. Finally, just when he thought he would explode from rage
+and frustration, he found the ship again. It had been dragged to
+a neighboring street and left on a vacant lot, surrounded by rusty
+cans, broken bottles, and various other forms of garbage and rubbish
+indigenous to this section of the planet.
+
+Relief mingled with a feeling of outrage. Xhanph swore again. The
+indignity of it was enough to start an interplanetary war. If they ever
+heard of it back on Gfun, they would want to blast this stupid and
+insulting planet out of existence.
+
+He hastened into the ship, and found to his joy that there had been
+no damage. There was nothing to prevent him from taking off again and
+getting back to Gfun. But the mystery of his reception still intrigued
+him. He could not leave without solving it.
+
+He rolled out of the ship again and stood there watching it. Evidently
+they had regarded this miracle of engineering as nothing more than so
+much rubbish. They would probably leave it alone now. He could let it
+remain here, and in the meantime carry on his investigating as before.
+
+Things would go more rapidly now that he understood some of the
+elements of human speech. All he had to do was keep his hearing
+appendages open and interpret the key words as he heard them. It
+shouldn't take him long. One of the reasons he had been selected to
+make the trip was that he had a gift for languages, and a day or two
+more should suffice to establish communications.
+
+He left the ship again, and began to roll around the city. He listened
+to traffic policemen directing the flow of helicopters, he stood
+by unobtrusively while boy talked with girl--these conversations
+turned out to be very limited in scope, as well as uninstructive in
+syntax--and he even managed to get into a place of amusement where
+three dimensional images created in him a sense of nostalgia. From his
+slight knowledge of the language, he could perceive that the dialogue
+was so stale that he himself could have supplied it from stories
+written long ago on his native planet. After a lapse of many hours, the
+majority of the people disappeared from the streets, and he decided it
+was time to return to his ship and suspend animation.
+
+In the morning he set out again. By the end of that day he felt he
+could understand the spoken language well enough. What next?
+
+To learn the language in written form might take too long, and besides,
+to solve his mystery he would have to waste time in digging up the
+recorded forms that contained the necessary information. No, he would
+have to find some one to talk to, some one who would have the necessary
+information at his tentacle-tips, or as they called the appendages
+here, finger-tips.
+
+He began to approach various people again, undiscouraged by their
+cold and impolite replies. Finally he found the informant he had been
+seeking, an old, white-haired individual who was walking slowly, with
+the aid of a cane, along one of the wider and quieter streets.
+
+The man looked at him with calm lack of interest as he approached.
+Xhanph came to a stop, and said, "Greetings! I, Xhanph, bring you
+greetings from the inhabitants of the planet, Gfun. I come with a
+message of friendship."
+
+"Very glad to make your acquaintance, sir," said the old man politely,
+but still without genuine interest.
+
+At last some one who had answered! Xhanph started his portable
+recording machine going.
+
+"I wish for information. Perhaps you can give it to me."
+
+"Ah, my young fellow, I have seen a great deal and know a great deal.
+But it isn't very often that you young ones want to find out what we
+old folks know."
+
+"Perhaps I have not made myself clear. I am an inhabitant of the
+planet, Gfun."
+
+"Yes, indeed. Do you intend to stay here long?"
+
+"I have come with a message of friendship. But I have found no one to
+receive it."
+
+"Mmm. That's unfortunate," the old man said. "People are very impatient
+nowadays. Time is money, they say. Can't spare the money to stop
+and talk. Couldn't spare it myself, not so long ago. I'm retired
+now, though. Used to run a stereo store, up around Mudlark Street.
+Biggest store in the city. Everybody used to buy from me. Jefferson J.
+Gardner's my name. You may have heard of me on--where did you say you
+come from?"
+
+"Gfun. However, I wish to make clear--"
+
+"Never sold any stereos to any one on Gfun. Probably don't get good
+reception up there. Sold 'em to everybody else, though. I'm well known
+here, Mr.--"
+
+"Xhanph. But before you go further--"
+
+"Got into the stereo game when they first came out. Went like hotcakes
+in those days. Although I don't suppose you know what a hotcake is.
+Quality didn't count. Only thing that counted was size of screen and
+strength of the three-dimensional effect. Mr. Gloopher--he was Mayor
+then--Robert F. Gloopher--had a daughter who went in for acting...."
+
+Not for the first time, Xhanph cursed this damnable planet. The only
+man he had found willing to talk was senile and his conversation
+rambled wildly like a feather in a strong and particularly erratic
+whirlwind. Still, he told himself with a touch of philosophy, I have
+wasted so much time, I can afford to waste a little more. Sooner or
+later this individual will tell me what I want to know.
+
+Half an hour later, however, when Jefferson J. Gardner began to repeat
+himself, Xhanph realized that he couldn't just wait for the old man to
+talk himself out. Different tactics were needed.
+
+He interrupted rudely. "Why don't people pay any attention to me?"
+
+"Eh? What's that you say?"
+
+"I come from the planet, Gfun. I thought that as an interplanetary
+visitor I would be received with tremendous enthusiasm. Instead I find
+myself disregarded."
+
+"I recollect that back in the old days--"
+
+"Never mind that. Why don't people pay any attention to me?"
+
+"Why should they?"
+
+"That is no answer!"
+
+"But it is, sir," said the old gentleman with dignity. "They don't find
+you out of the ordinary. Why pay attention to you?"
+
+"You mean that you are accustomed to visitors from space?"
+
+"No, sir, I mean nothing of the kind. What I do mean is that we are by
+now thoroughly accustomed to the idea of you. I remember--"
+
+"Never mind what you remember!"
+
+"When I was a child, stories about visitors from Mars or Venus were
+already trite and stereotyped. What could a visitor do? What might a
+visitor look like? All the possible answers had already been given,
+and we were familiar with every one of them. We imagined visitors with
+tentacles and without, with a thousand legs and no legs, with five
+heads and seven feet, and eighteen stomachs. We imagined visitors who
+were plants, or electrical impulses, or viruses, or energy-creatures.
+They had the power to read minds, to move objects telekinetically and
+to travel through impossible dimensions. Their space ships were of all
+kinds, and they could race along with many times the speed of light
+or crawl with the speed of molasses. I do not know, sir, in which
+category you fall--whether you are animal, vegetable, mineral, or
+electrical--but I know that there is nothing new about you."
+
+"But you are familiar merely with the ideas. I am a _real_ visitor!"
+
+"Young man, I am a hundred and ten years old, and the idea of you was
+already ancient when I was eight. I remember reading about you in a
+comic book. You are not the first visitor who has pretended to be real.
+There were hundreds before you. I have seen press agent stunts by the
+dozen, and advertising pictures by the hundreds about Mars, about
+Venus, about the Moon, about visitors from interstellar space. Your
+pretended colleagues have walked the streets of innumerable cities,
+until now we are weary of the entire tribe of you. And you yourself,
+sir, if you will pardon the expression, you are an anticlimax."
+
+"Your race must be insane," protested Xhanph. "For all you know I may
+come with great gifts which I wish to confer upon you."
+
+"We have been fooled before. And in view of the fact, as I have
+reminded you, that time is money, we do not wish to bankrupt ourselves
+by investigating."
+
+"But suppose I'm here to harm you!"
+
+"If your race is capable of it, we can hardly stop you, so it is no use
+trying. If incapable, you are wasting your efforts."
+
+"This is insanity, genuine racial insanity!"
+
+"You repeat yourself. The fact is, we have become blasé," said the old
+man. "Thanks to the efforts of our science fiction writers, we have
+experienced in imagination all there is to experience in interplanetary
+contact, and the genuine article can be only a disappointment. I am
+reminded of an incident that occurred when Gerald Crombie, who was City
+Councilman at the time, ordered a twenty-five inch stereo set...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Xhanph rolled away. He had his answer now, and he couldn't stand
+listening any longer to the old man's babbling. He rolled aimlessly, up
+one street and down another. And he thought of how they would receive
+his answer when he went back to Gfun.
+
+Was it him or the planet that they would consider mad? Almost
+certainly, they wouldn't believe him. He could imagine the exchange
+of wondering glances, the first delicate hints that the long trip had
+deranged him, the not so delicate hints later on when he persisted in
+sticking to his story. He remembered the high hopes with which he had
+departed, the messages with which he had been entrusted by the Chief
+of Planetary Affairs, the Head of the Scientific Bureau, the Director
+of Economic Affairs, and countless others. And he could imagine the
+reception he would find when he reported that he had been unable to
+deliver a single message.
+
+How long he rolled in this aimless fashion he did not know. After a
+time he seemed to come to his senses. It was no use trying to run away
+from reality, as he was doing. He had to go back to the ship and
+return to Gfun. Let them believe him or not, his report would tell the
+truth. And the pictorial and auditory records would confirm his story.
+
+What a planet, he thought again. Of all its hundreds of millions,
+its billions of inhabitants, not one had the curiosity, the ordinary
+intellectual decency, to be interested in him. Not one had the
+imagination, the awareness--
+
+"Pardon me," said a shrill voice, "Excuse me for reading thoughts, but
+I could not help overhearing--I am a visitor here myself."
+
+He swung around. The figure before him was strange, but an aura of
+friendliness came from it and he knew there was nothing to fear.
+Nothing to fear--and much to be thankful for.
+
+With a heartfelt double sigh, while disinterested passersby spared
+them not even a glance, pink tentacles and green streamers clasped
+in a gesture of friendship that spanned the millions of miles of
+interplanetary space.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Unwelcomed Visitor, by William Morrison
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58721 ***