The Captain in the Land of the Eyeless

Softly, as one might stroke a lover or a peach, the Eyeless Ones felt the Captain all over his body. Some of their fingers moved up his body, while others moved down, and as the Eyeless Ones felt the Captain's body with their delicate fingers, they gurgled softly to themselves.

“Is this quite necessary?” the Captain asked abruptly. He was normally tolerant of foreign customs, but molestation irritated him. He shuddered violently, and the fingers fell away.

“If we don't feel you, then how do we know you're real?” the Eyeless Ones asked.

“My voice. It has to be coming from somewhere.”

The Eyeless Ones laughed. “Sometimes when we hear voices, we reach ourselves forward and our fingers come to no resistance. But why should we expect otherwise? Sound is not of this world; no one can hold a voice in his hands. But feeling—feeling is believing.”

The Captain was silent. This was true. How could he explain eyesight to a race of the Eyeless? Those poor creatures. They did not—and could not—understand what they were missing. And yet, they were happy to stumble around in their flat, safe land, sensing food and objects by touch, and recognizing other Eyeless Ones by their soft and constant gurgling.

The Eyeless Ones held out their arms and spread their fingers. Then they touched the Captain all over his body. The Captain did not shake them away. He looked at the nerves inside their deep, black eye sockets.

“Thank you,” said the Eyeless Ones, as they returned their arms to their sides. “Please, feel us.”

“I don't really have to do that,” said the Captain.

“No, we insist.”

“But I don't need to. It's hard to describe. I can feel you without actually feeling you.”

“How is that even possible?”

The Captain decided to perform a demonstration. He reached out, and for half a second he touched one of the Eyeless Ones on the arm. Then he said, “You are four feet tall; the first two fingers on your left hand are cut off at the second knuckle; you have small ears and big hands; and today you've been digging in the sand marshes.”

“Alexandra?” an Eyeless said.

Alexandra said, “He felt me once on the arm, but he did not feel me anywhere else.”

The Eyeless Ones were astonished. Who was this stranger and what powers of extrasensory perception did he possess?

The Captain tried to explain that a certain kind of wave permeated the space around them, and when these waves bounce off objects, he could sense the waves and feel the objects without actually feeling them with his fingers.

But the Eyeless Ones would not believe him—not until they could feel and hold these waves in their hands. They moved toward the Captain as if to feel him once again, but their faces were hard like bone. Even so, their hands could grasp nothing; no matter how fast they flailed their arms, they could not make contact with the Captain; they collided only with one another. If the Captain had been trying to escape from them, surely he would have had to feel them many times, but he did not; it was as though the man they had felt only minutes ago had turned into a voice, a sound that called to them from a new direction every time they rushed toward it.

“You must be a god!” the Eyeless Ones said at last; and to them, he was.