The Canyon of Wrong Turns

Goin hadn’t seen his younger sister, Jena, since she left Earth several years ago, after many squabbles with their parents, and on hearing from her that she was to marry a Gress in a few months’ time, he decided to visit her on her new planet. Not that he was close to Jena or felt any real desire to involve himself in her far-flung life on this new planet, but he had two weeks’ vacation from the Park Service coming, Jena had invited him with something like desire, and her acquired planet was known for its interesting, not to say unfathomable, scenery and people. 

However, on arrival, he got cold feet and decided not to call on Jena right away. Fortunately, he had dashed off a Web-note to her insisting that he would find his own place for the duration of his stay, rather than put her and her fiancé out to accommodate him, and left his arrival date somewhat hazy. This gave him leeway to book a room in a lodge in a tourists’ park near her residence without revealing his presence. 

He elected to go sightseeing before confronting little sis, to see how the Gress maintained their parks, and to hike through the famous Canyon of Wrong Turns, an interplanetary natural wonder. He signed up for an English-speaking guide bright and early his first morning, since it was forbidden for any but native Gress to hike the Canyon unaccompanied by an adult Gress. The Canyon’s twists and turns, and its concealed hazards, lying in wait for the unwary amid bewildering and dazzling scenery, had claimed lives and dealt narrow escapes to numerous hikers and explorers from Earth and other planets over the years—to the extent that the Canyon of Wrong Turns had become a byword. The phenomenon of nature maintained its name and reputation even after the park had begun to enforce safety procedures and, in several spots, erect protective barriers.  

According to articles Goin had seen, the Gress were the ideal guides along the Canyon’s deceptive trails because, paradoxically, their senses were deficient. They were blind to begin with, or more exactly, blind-sighted. Light brought information to their minds but did not bestow a visual field. Without seeing anything, the Gress knew to avoid cliffs and walls and even smaller hazards such as holes and snakes. As crucially, they navigated sure-footedly over colorfully mind-bending terrain, where other, sharper-sensed folk wound up confused and disoriented, to their peril. 

The Gress’ other main senses were like their blind-sightedness: they were deaf-hearing and numb-feeling. Vibrations in the air, and the tactile pressure on their hands from objects, caused no sensation, but did convey information, quite enough to navigate both a bustling modern city and the Canyon’s tricky paths through trees and hills that befuddled those with keener nervous systems. It would be an error, then, to call the Gress numbskulls or lumbering zombies, though some stunted intellects were guilty of such insults, since despite limited sensation the Gress possessed unimpeded intelligence and ample agility.  

The Gress also, according to certain rumors, looked stunted and deformed, with thick, calloused skin and coarse hair. In addition, they supposedly had sunken, rudimentary eyes like those of a mole, and nonexistent ears like those of a fish or snake—creatures that nevertheless navigated well in nature, Goin thought—and Goin, having only glanced at a few Gress since his arrival, all of whom looked approximately normal by his standards, anxiously awaited his guide, eager to compare them to the rumored physiognomy closeup and gather an idea of the citizen his sister would be marrying.  

He didn’t wait long; his guide appeared promptly, calling out his name in the lobby, empty except for him, as if it were a dentist’s waiting room. He was delighted to behold an actual Gress so near, in this case an alert, athletic-looking young woman of about his age, or perhaps a few years younger, closer to his sister’s age. Aside from a pair of dark, deep-set eyes, a somewhat too-prominent forehead, and stocky build, she resembled an Earth-girl. And far from being wiry-haired and earless, her ears stuck out like round seashells from short, smooth blonde hair. All this put to rest, so far, the rumors of deformity. Still, there was a play of interior shadows in those deep eyes that both deprived them of color and hinted at internal strangeness. Goin himself had a touch of walleye, giving the impression in some lights that he looked in two directions at once. If either he or his guide was a physical oddity, he felt it must be him. 

“Goin?” she asked briskly, and when he answered yes, “I am Bea. I know your sister Jena, I think. We worked together for a few weeks at a catering company. She sometimes mentioned you. I suppose you know she’s getting ready to marry a mutual friend of ours, poor thing.”

“Who’s the poor thing?” asked Goin cheerfully, “my sister or the mutual friend?”

“Both are saps for getting married,” Bea pronounced with good-humored finality, “but I like your sister a lot. She knows her own mind and doesn’t take any crap—not from bosses, and not from her fiancé’s family, or your family either, from what I gather. Pergo better be good to her or I’ll have his head. So, ready for our little stroll? I hope my English is good enough for you.”

“It’s great, and if you don’t mind me asking, Bea, are you fully Gress? You look like an Earth-girl.”

“And how is that?” She turned playful at once. “Am I beautiful, Goin? More beautiful than the drab dwarf you probably expected?”

“Most assuredly,” he said, already enjoying his tour. Enticing as she struck him overall, though, he might have responded that the drab part wasn’t far off. The too-close-fitting and mismatched outfit of a brown shirt, gray sweats, and grungy white sneakers, bisected by a thick green belt that holstered a bulky official phone and topped by an open-crowned pink hat with a frayed bill, hardly made her a fashion plate.    

“And what is beauty, can you tell me?” she asked. “We Gress have no such notion. You must tell me what beauty is or I won’t guide you. I’ll tell your sister you were horrible to me because you wouldn’t describe my beauty. You’ll be disinvited to the wedding.” 

“It’s a kind of judgment,” said Goin after collecting his thoughts. “Your looks please me and I like your nearness. Other than that, it’s hard to say.”

“It’s the same for me. And yet your sister talks of colors and proportions and sensual lines and so on, and all of those will probably appear in some form at her wedding. She once told me that Pergo had shoulders so broad and a waist so tapered that she swooned with desire. I look at the same man and try to understand her compulsion to bosom with him, but I see nothing. It’s as though I’m staring at him in an unlighted room and know only that he’s there, and that we’d be good together in the sack. Naturally, I leave him alone since he’s Jena’s man. There are other boys to bosom with.”

“Have you bosomed with many young men, Bea?” The word delighted Goin, and he would be sure to ask his sister whether she knew the expression. Then, too, he didn’t consider his question inappropriate with such a forthright young woman as Bea. 

“None of your beeswax,” said Bea, suddenly growing discreet. Perhaps he had miscalculated, but he sensed she was toying with him. “If we’re supposed to see the whole Canyon and arrive back here by dusk, pal, we’d best get going.”

Morning till dusk was evidently the usual timeline for the extended tour he had signed on for, but Goin wasn’t worried about when it might end.

“We’ll cheat and go around all the dangerous obstacles, won’t we?” he said amiably, falling in step beside her as she headed toward some trees—emble trees, as a pamphlet in the lobby had informed him. “You know, I work in parks too, on Earth, mainly pruning and planting bushes, and the greatest hazard I encounter is a protruding root, or maybe an angry jay.”

“We’ll skip all the hazards except the unavoidable ones. Of course they’re more hazardous to you than to me, since Earthers find them confusing, but I have to be careful, too. At least neither of us is a soft-skull; they’re the worst.”

“What’s a soft-skull?”

“I shouldn’t use that term, especially since I don’t like being called a zombie; it’s rude. But the people from Cri are known for their pliable brainpans, and when they touch their heads with their fingers, that little pressure changes all their sense impressions. They can be staring at a placid lake, scratch their temple, and suddenly they’re looking at a sandstorm. Out here, you have to keep an eye on them every second.”   

“I won’t be that changeable; my head is like an anvil.”  

“Well, hang on tight. Up ahead is your first challenge.” 

In a clearing beyond the embles yawned a wide and deep chasm spanned by a thin bridge of planks and rope, the rickety contraption swaying in the wind. It appeared impossible to bypass the gorge since it was surrounded on all sides by sheer rock cliffs, and at its bottom, a river raged. 

“This isn’t good,” said Goin. “I’m terrified of heights and swaying motions make me ill.”

“Just what I expected from an Earther, too sensitive,” said Bea. “Take my hand and I’ll lead you across. Step carefully behind me and don’t look down. Jena said the bridge made her dizzy, too, when we came here, and you take after her, I see. For me it’s no different than walking along a flat road; my body adjusts to the sway without me thinking about it.”

“Good for you,” said Goin, following her every step and clutching her warm hand. He managed not to become ill, but arrived ashen-faced and breathless on the other side. There they confronted a wall of thickly interwoven greenery that blocked their passage. Goin looked right and left, but the unbroken verdant wall extended both ways as far as his eyesight.  

“The trick here is to follow the lizards,” said Bea. “Where you see bunches of green lizards gathered on the vines, you’ll find a pathway through if you look hard.”

“What lizards?” said Goin. “All I see is vines.”

“It’s those fancy senses of yours again, dear heart,” said Bea. “The lizards fool you with their camouflage, but not me. I see no colors at all, as you and Jena know them, but still I know where the lizards are and where to enter the foliage.”

“But how do you know?” he asked, turning with her into the bush. The two passed through a parting and were soon treading easily along a lane of soft leaves within a pale green tunnel that blocked out the sky. 

“I just know,” she said. “By the way, don’t touch the lizards; they’re poisonous.”

The green cavern abruptly terminated before a lofty wall of gray stone, the likely base of a hill or cliff. A narrow shaft of sunlight revealed the entrances to two dark caves, the rest being sheer rock.

“Behold your next riddle,” Bea said as if daring him to proceed. “We must pass through one of the caves to the open field on the other side, but which one? You must take charge of our destiny now, Goin, and make the choice for both of us. A man shouldn’t be completely at the mercy of a woman, now should he? Look at the caves and pick one, but take your time and be smart about it.”

Goin saw Bea sit complacently on the soft green layer beneath them, observing him. He went up to the mouth of the cave on his left, peered at it and then vanished within. He called out, perhaps only wanting to hear the echo of his voice. Then he emerged.

“Not this one,” I think,” said Goin, who appeared unharmed. “I can’t see any light at the end, if there is an end, and there’s a smell of old carrion. Some beast may be lurking inside or catch us in his den.”

“So it’s the other, then?” asked Bea. Goin saw that she was lying on her back now, lazily gazing upward at the pale green roof of the vine cavern where the sun broke through.   

Goin checked on the other cave and found it identical to the first, as far as he assessed. He turned back to report to Bea that he was stumped, and found her still lying contentedly on her back. But now she lay naked except for her sneakers, her clothes and cap strewn in the leaves. 

“Let’s bosom,” she said to him, propping herself up on her elbows. “Don’t worry, we’re alone out here. I checked with the office.”

The two bosomed for a good while, until the sunlight that glanced off the stone around the cave entrances glared harshly, and the leaf roof over their heads became a deeper green. Goin happily reminded himself that he had no urgent appointment to keep that afternoon or evening and bosomed on, Bea showing him the Gress way of avoiding pregnancy. At last, they lay in an exhausted embrace, Bea tracing the ridge over his wayward eye with a slow fingertip. 

“Earth-girls are afraid of my eye,” said Goin. “They think it’s evil. Few will touch me.”

“And so they saved you for me, all but those few,” said Bea, “I only now noticed your eye; it’s nothing special.”

As insects of purple and green began to alight on him, and a fear of intruders grew inside him, despite her assurances that they were alone, Goin sat up and began to pull on his clothes. Soon dressed, he felt renewed as a man and suddenly decisive. 

“I’m not one to complain,” he said to Bea as she finished dressing herself, “but you tricked me. Either cave will lead us through.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asked, and, at her prompting, he entered the cave to their left, and she entered the one on the right. In a few minutes, they met, laughing, at the two outer mouths.  

The Canyon before them overwhelmed his senses: the multihued leaves of tall trees, cliffs of variegated stone, countless beams of light shooting from mirror-like specks in the cliffs, a billowing rainbow over the nearby river, whose mist wetted him and whose rush filled his ears. Tittering birds flew overhead, insects buzzed, and breezes swished in the trees. Above all that, the sky had become layers of orange and red, marking the start of sundown that, as Goin knew, arrived here earlier in the day than on Earth and might last a couple of hours. 

“What do you make of that scene?” Bea asked him as the two stood and observed it. “Can you see the path forward?”

“I’m lost in a whirlwind of impressions, as if I were standing in a blaze,” Goin laughed. “I’m glad to have you along, Bea. But tell me, don’t you see and hear and feel the things I do?”

“No,” she said plainly. “But I know what I’m looking at, and I know how to respond to it. Why do you keep asking? We’re different is all. Come this way.”

Bea took them along a path that soon placed them under a green canopy like the one they had encountered at the beginning of their walk. Their feet fell silently on a bed of soft leaves. 

“Soon, we’ll come to a clearing that marks the end of the main trail,” she said. “From there, we’ll double back toward home. Don’t worry, the way back is a lot safer and faster. We can still make it before the sky turns brown and green and then black. We should, too. I don’t see well in the dark.” 

“Never fear, I see fine at night,” said Goin, caressing her. Finding her acquiescent, they lowered themselves onto the velvety leaves for more bosoming.   

“I think that for all our differences, you find bosoming as pleasurable as I do,” he teased her as they began. 

“I don’t share your exact feelings, I’m sure, but it’s quite satisfying. Now stop talking.”

Afterward they slept a little. Sunlight still seeped through the roof of vines and leaves when they awoke, but the roof had turned a pale brown. 

“Look,” said Goin as they stirred. “I’m bringing home a token of my adventure in the Canyon, to prove to my coworkers that I actually did walk here. See for yourself.” 

He held out his cupped hands to Bea, then opened them to reveal a tiny green frog that, to Goin’s mind, bore an oddly square head.  

“Little critters camouflage themselves in the branches on Earth too, like they do here,” said Goin, “and I found this tiny devil. Does he thrive anywhere in the cosmos besides here?” 

“I don’t know,” said Bea. “Maybe not. But you can’t remove an animal from the park.”

At that, the green midge leaped from Goin’s palm and, at once, disappeared into the surrounding wall of plants, making Goin and Bea laugh to see it go. Bea told Goin to turn his gaze from her, and when he looked again, she had placed a tiny bristly something in his hand. 

“A lock of my maiden fur,” she said to his surprise. “Tell your coworkers that it only grows in and around the Canyon, and I’ll vouch for your story when they visit here. Come on, it’ll be dark in less than an hour. We need to go now if you’re going to meet your sister soon.  I’m guessing that’s your plan.”    

“Hold off,” said Goin, stopping her from donning her clothes. “I have a better idea.”

He did, too, and neither made a wrong turn.