Gillian Boardman

Gillian Boardman’s significance lies in the practical and personal work of making contact with Valentine Michael Smith. A nurse and later his translator and guide, she first approaches him out of curiosity, then becomes one of the people he trusts most. Her care is not merely medical: she learns how his Martian ideas shape trust, helps him navigate unfamiliar human institutions, and remains close as he makes choices that reshape both their lives.

Identity and Introduction

The narrative introduces Gillian as professionally competent in nursing and regarded by her male colleagues as capable in wider fields. Her reputation among some women is less favorable, while the narrator notes her interest in men. When she hears that the patient in special suite K-12 has never seen a woman, she doubts the report; once persuaded, she resolves to visit him. The mixture of professional confidence and personal curiosity sets the terms of her first encounter with Smith: she approaches as a nurse, but also as someone intent on understanding a singular human situation.

At the hospital, Smith is not simply an ordinary patient who can be interpreted through familiar medical categories. His body is weakened by the unfamiliar conditions he has endured, and he can enter a state in which he appears unresponsive. Dr. Nelson has seen this condition repeatedly during the journey back and demonstrates its unusual character by lifting Smith’s arm and letting it remain suspended where he left it. A medical colleague tentatively calls the episode shock, but Nelson warns that this is not a reasonable case. Gillian’s role takes shape in the gap between institutional diagnosis and the patient’s distinctive capacities: she must communicate with someone whose condition and understanding do not fit ordinary expectations.

From Hospital Nurse to Trusted Intermediary

Gillian’s effort to reach Smith soon exceeds routine nursing. She attempts to place a listening device in the empty room adjoining his suite, first deciding that she cannot risk putting it in his room again. She obtains the pass key, an action that shows her willingness to cross the limits of her formal duties in pursuing information about the case. The book presents her as observant and active rather than as a passive witness to Smith’s arrival.

Her encounter with Smith also gives her a place in the unusual vocabulary through which he understands human relationships. When he examines questions put to him, their inclusion of Gillian is initially confusing; he interprets it as possibly expressing a wish to cherish and grow close. His affirmative response signals that contact with her is not simply a clinical transaction. Gillian’s presence helps make communication possible, but it also enters the new system of trust and connection that Smith is building on Earth.

That trust becomes concrete when Gillian explains why she can move Smith when others cannot. She says that she was already his water brother, as Jubal Harshaw is, and describes Smith’s belief that he can trust utterly anyone with whom he has shared water. With a water brother he is docile; with others he can be stubborn. She adds that this had been true the previous week, while cautioning that Smith is changing very quickly. The detail establishes both the practical importance and the limits of her position: the bond grants access, but Smith’s development means that the rules of their relationship cannot be treated as fixed.

Escape and Care at Harshaw’s Home

When Gillian helps Smith leave the hospital, she becomes a direct participant in his escape. At a house under threat, she waits by a locked door while a voice fails to answer. Heat concentrates around the lock until the area glows, the mechanism gives way, and two men enter looking for Smith. Gillian is present at the point where the danger becomes immediate, and her earlier decision to help him has carried her beyond the protected routines of hospital care.

After the escape, Gillian drives a car carrying Smith to Jubal Harshaw’s home. He is still rigid and folded into himself when they arrive; Larry and Jubal help get him from the car and place him on the grass beside the pool. Gillian kneels and gently works to straighten his limbs. When she succeeds, she cradles his head in her lap and calls him by name, identifying herself as his water brother and asking him to wake. The scene makes her care visible in small, deliberate actions: she tends to his body, uses the relationship he recognizes, and tries to bring him back into contact with those around him.

Later, she asks Smith what happened when two men were in a room with them and then disappeared. She makes clear that the event frightened her at the time, though she is no longer afraid, and asks whether he can explain what he did. Her response combines emotional honesty with a desire to understand his abilities. She neither treats the disappearance as an ordinary event nor withdraws from Smith because of it; instead, she seeks an account from him and continues to address him as someone with whom she has a relationship.

Guide, Partner, and Religious Teacher

As Smith prepares to enter the wider world, Gillian is chosen to accompany him. He says that he needs someone because he does not yet know how people do things and still makes mistakes. He wants Gillian to go because she wants to keep learning Martian, while acknowledging that another companion could serve if Jubal prefers her to stay. His choice casts their relationship as reciprocal: she will help him navigate human life, and her interest in his language and culture continues through that work.

Gillian later describes teaching beginner classes in Martian and helping novice brothers. She and Dawn Ardent are both High Priestesses of the Church of All Worlds and, as well-known Fosterites, work together to show fellow Fosterites that membership in Smith’s church need not conflict with their existing faith. Gillian shows Ben Caxton the mark of Foster’s kiss and explains its meaning, as well as the companion mark placed by Smith. Her role therefore extends beyond private companionship: she teaches, interprets religious signs, and helps negotiate the relationship between two religious communities.

Her own account of bodily and emotional well-being also reflects change. A trait she had regarded as a psychological abnormality now seems to her either normal or not abnormal in her own case; she feels healthy and happy, and describes a striking absence of the minor illnesses that had once been familiar. The evidence connects this reassessment with her changing experience, without reducing it to a clinical explanation. Gillian is not only the nurse who observes Smith; she is also a person revising her understanding of herself.

Relationship and Narrative Role

Gillian’s relationship with Smith develops through repeated acts of trust: visiting him in the hospital, communicating with him, helping him escape, calling him back from withdrawal, and accompanying him as he enters society. Her description of him as a water brother identifies a bond that, in his understanding, carries a stronger promise of trust than ordinary acquaintance. The relationship also changes quickly, as Gillian herself recognizes when she notes that Smith is not the same as he was a week earlier.

Her place in the story is consequently both intimate and mediating. She helps Smith cross from an isolated hospital suite into the human world, but she does not simply translate him into familiar terms. The episodes involving his unusual bodily control and disappearance abilities show how readily ordinary observers reach for established medical explanations or fear; Gillian instead remains close enough to ask questions, offer care, and learn. In turn, Smith’s developing religious and social life gives her work as a nurse a wider reach, making her a guide, teacher, and participant in the community he creates.