The Strangers of Kindness (9 page)

“He’s just not as fast in the tight maneuvers,” Manny muttered. “Okay, everybody, this is it—” and he aimed due west again and shoved the gearshift into overdrive. Theo looked back, terrified they were scattering kids behind them onto the sand, but Surgeon and Jennifer and Curt had hold of the others and were bravely hanging on, clawing at the truck’s rusty bed.

Their engine drowned out the helicopter’s pounding. Dust flew up all around them so Theo couldn’t see the patrol car any more.
Doesn’t matter now, whatever’s going to happen will happen: wind and dust and ice cold sweat.

Manny let out a blood-curdling yodel, bouncing up and down on his seat. “Welcome to Nevada, Mr. Dahl!”

Theo wrenched around right and left, looking for the cops. The chopper pulled its nose up and circled back east, receding. The Highway Patrol car skidded sideways in an explosion of sand and dirt, and sat still, the sun winking off its chrome through the eddies of dust.

Theo’s throat felt funny. “You did it? We’re there?”

“You bet. You done emigrated.” Manny let up on the gas gradually, letting the passengers in the back get safely collected. He turned toward the cluster of buildings.

“My old friend Gino runs this place. He and his lovely wife Moira. Their kids are grown, too. We get together every other week for a little international bridge game.”

The buildings resolved themselves into multiple units, all stucco painted sunset pink. As the kids jumped out of the back of the truck and Theo and Manny got out, the front door of the Starbright Motel opened and a large black-haired man in white jeans and T-shirt came out. His grin curved wide and white in his olive face. “Manny! What the heck you doing here? Who’re your friends?”

“Gino. This young man’s name is Theo Dahl. He and his, er, family here just got in from Utah. He’ll have to introduce everybody.”

“Utah, eh? Wouldn’t have anything to do with those airplanes we’ve been seeing the past couple of days? Or that chopper that just banged its nose up against the border?”

“Gee, Gino, I don’t know. Hey, Moira!” Manny called to an enormous auburn-haired woman coming out to join them. Her green eyes sparkled in her florid face. She wore an ivy-print dress and a cook’s apron.

“Manny! Who 
“ Then she saw the kids. “Gino! Whose children! Hello, little tulip, how are you?” She bent over defying physics and greeted Sissy, who giggled and ran to bury her face in Theo’s dusty leg. “Why are you keeping them out here in this heat? Look at them, the poor things, they’re baked. Come in, come in, we’ve got the best iced tea in the country.”

* * *

The next morning Theo sat in his motel room vacantly watching the Nevada Sports network. Someone knocked on his door.

“Morning, Glory,” Jennifer said, pushing a cart filled with breakfast goodies. “You hungry?”

“Morning. You ever known me when I wasn’t hungry?”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like I’d never sinned in my life.”

“Me too. I was up late reading all those brochures, though.” Alongside the kiosk in the motel lobby that offered the usual tourist information, there was another labeled “Opportunities Abound in Nevada!” She’d taken one of each of the two dozen or so.

Theo turned off the TV and opened the curtains. Outside the kids were already splashing in the motel’s pool. Surgeon sat on the side and dangled his legs, teasing the others.

“It’s great to see them so happy, isn’t it?” Jennifer said.

“Yeah.”

They sat down to dig in. “I was talking to Moira, Theo, and she thinks Gino would be willing to put up collateral for a loan for a farm for me.”

“Really? That’s great.”

“They’re irrigating the canyon up and down from Las Vegas now, and offering low-interest loans to anyone who can farm it. I think I could do it, Theo. There’s a little town twenty miles out, they’ve got a pretty good school system . . .”
 

The kids had all wanted to stay with Jennifer, work on her farm. She’d informed them that they would not be farmers, they’d be students. Theo had stayed out of the conversation.

“She says the National University of Nevada Las Vegas is building a terrific rep for its new medical school. They’re always looking for promising students. The country is in desperate need of doctors. I know Surgeon could do it.”

“No question.”

She studied his face for a moment. “Theo, what are you going to do?”

His eyes followed Joseph chasing Sissy around the pool. “I don’t know. Go to Vegas, go to work for a hotel or restaurant or something I guess.”

“Is that what you really want to do?”

“I don’t know what I want to do.” He stirred unhappily. “That’s a lie. I do know. I just don’t want to say it.”

“Why?”

He looked at her sadly. “Oh, I don’t want to say that either.”

“Haven’t we been through enough together to talk honestly? I’d trust you with my life, Theo.”

He tapped his fork in an awkward rhythm. “Well, you think you could use a farm hand on your place?”

Her face brightened. “You’d come and work on my farm?”

“Sure. You’re a pretty good boss.”

She got serious. “You don’t have to do farm labor. They need teachers, too, and their rules are different. You have to pass a test—you could teach English, with your knowledge of books.”

“You think so?” His expression changed. She saw hope germinate. “Teaching . . . I’d like that, I think. And—maybe it’d leave me some time to try writing.” He glanced outside at the kids in the pool. “Somebody should tell their story.” His eyes were fierce. “Somebody should tell it all, what the New U.S.A.is doing. Think I could do it?”

“I know you could. You can’t waste yourself digging dirt. Besides, Theo . . . I don’t want to hire you.”

“Oh.”

“I want to marry you.”

He boggled at her. “I thought you didn’t want to get married.”

She appealed to the ceiling for help. “God, why did you give them such great eyelashes and such weak eyes! I didn’t want anybody else telling me who to marry! Men are like pumpkins,” she added, smiling sidelong. “I want to pick my own.” She doodled with her finger on the table. “So, what do you say?
 

The Wedding Present

“. . . sank to the bottom of that
awful
green sea, my dears, the very bottom. All I saved were five
nalshas
, fortunately the best one among them,” the speaker concluded, retracting its siphon from the communal tea bowl with a sigh to gesture at the survivor. It was a little, fat, clear glass bowl with an iridescent green film limning its inner surface. The molecules of the film were patterned to resonate with its maker’s spirit.

This Waiting Party for the tale-teller Pasha Sands, as it was known on Earth, enjoyed the most sanctified and spectacular hilltop on their home planet. High above them the leaves of the orange-fly trees pattered together with a music like chimes. The bald knob of hill crowned by the Attendance Pavilion looked over a vast valley of purple, red and orange vegetation, woven through with flights of arrow-birds, alive with the calls of myriad plants and animals.

A path wound from the open-air, marble pavilion, down the hill and around a curve. Past their view, the path ended in a clump of blue fur trees. There nestled Geilsharah’s Temple where traditionally Geilsharah would receive the
emppakka
offering and pass judgment upon it.

Each of Pasha’s three friends sensed the pleasure it felt at their loyalty, its distress at having no offering, and deeper still in its vibrations, a puzzling excitement and joy.

The guest to the left swirled a tendril around in the bowl and waved a cynical eye-stalk at the tale-teller. “But you lost the
emppakka
offering.”

Pasha Sands beamed at them, avoiding the somber interruption. “It took no time to adjust my buoyancy to the water,” it continued smugly, patting its bulbous middle with affection.

“Yes, yes, we all know you keep yourself in shape—”

“And surprisingly little time for the waves to wash me and my
nalshas
ashore. And you’ll never guess! The sea was lined with silicon!”

“No.” Bald astonishment.

“Silicon?” Suspicious. “What form?”

“Granules. Acres and acres. A wide, lush, undulating ribbon, and deep to the core of the planet. Well,” Pasha Sands amended, “Many spans deep, anyway. I could have lived out my entire life right there and never known a moment of hunger.”

“Well,” the skeptical one cut in. “But what of quality? Not very good, I’ll bet.”

“Almost as good as the dunes of Alkassimbri,” Pasha Sands averred. When no one challenged this astounding statement, it went on. “But, aside from that, the best thing was—it was a living planet! Not only vegetated—oh, no; not only alive with creatures large and small—but there was an intelligent native species!”

Gasps all around, and eager prodding.

“What are the odds of that?” one guest wondered.

“Infinitesimal. But it was so. And the really strange thing was, all of the life forms are—carbon-based!”

“Carbon? And intelligent?”

The communal tea bowl was forgotten. Pasha Sands had them in its
bululla
once again. It smiled both inside and outside, and the
nalsha
gave off a sympathetic hum.
 

“The side of the planet I’d crashed on was turned away from the sun at the time. No one observed my arrival. I took my
nalshas
and hid them, and concealed myself in some thick vegetation immediately, not knowing what kind of creatures or phenomena I might be confronted with. But all was quiet as the planet turned, until the sun lit the sky again.

“Quite soon, then, I heard noises. I peeped—ever so carefully—through the branches, and there they were—a dozen bipeds, sliding right off the nauseous green water onto and across the silicon, as though they had no interest in or regard for such delicious bounty. As indeed, they didn’t, for as soon as they had climbed out of the bowl they’ d ridden across the water, they just marched across the silicon like it was nothing.”

“Bowl?”

“Well, not anything like our
nalshas
, dear,” Pasha Sands said condescendingly. “Not lovely smooth silicon. Some other material. I found out later it was made from some of the largest vegetative life forms: named trees. Sliced and molded to make a bowl shape. Almost. They call them boats. Anyway, they walked across all that lovely silicon and up over a little hill, and disappeared. I followed them, very discreetly, of course. Really I was quite amazed at the lushness of the vegetation. Apparently our scientists are mistaken about the vigor of carbon-based vegetation.”

“Pooh on the scientists! Did you catch up to them?”

“Oh, no. I wasn’t attempting to. I just wanted to observe and to listen to them. Their speech is quite as primitive as their bowl. It’s entirely physical! I couldn’t believe it at first, but there were absolutely no theta-harmonics at all. Once I realized that, it was simple to learn their language, such as it was.

“After a night of walking along a densely-vegetated river, we came to a largish concentration of the creatures, a town of fine buildings constructed of blocks of lesser-grade silicon. Contaminated with a great deal of clay, presumably that’s the only way they know to get the granules to stick together. It was a pleasant place, though, with the morning sun shining sideways on it. All rose and purple and coral, and blue shadows stretching across the little dirt streets. Laid out in regular squares.”

“Regular?” the skeptical one asked sharply.

“Not so regular,” Pasha Sands amended. “It wasn’t a
hive
. I tell you these are intelligent creatures. You’ll see.”

“Yes, but what do they look like?” Fat One had its tendril in the tea again.

“Bipedal, as I said. Close in mass to us. Flattened dorsal-ventrally. Bilaterally symmetrical—two legs, two ‘ arms’ , one head on a thick stalk, top center. Funny filaments thick on top, mostly, where it grows very long on some. But this ‘ hair’ grows all over them, I saw later—you’ll see. Be patient.” They felt its interior smile again.

“I watched the town for several passings of the sun, watched the people. Gradually I fashioned quite a good morph, if I do say so myself. They cover much of their bodies with vegetative and animal fibers—I didn’t realize the coverings were separate at first, I thought it was normal variations in their integument. And wasn’t it interesting, the day I discovered that!

“In watching the town I came to understand that it was going to take a great deal of work to rebuild myself a
nalsha
-cradle to get off the planet again. When my disguise was sufficient, and my mastery of the language became adequate, I ventured into the streets at night, when few people were about. They keep a goodly number of inferior animals around their dwellings, one kind in particular with four legs and far too good a nose, tended to be very curious about me, but they proved friendly and most of the time I made my night-time investigations with a regular troop of wag-tail comrades. I was able to flit about unseen and I soon learned that their technology was exceedingly primitive.

“When I had seen enough I went back to the edge of the sea where I’d first arrived. With such an abundance of silicon granules, and having learned by observing that the vegetative matter could be burned to a temperature nearly equal to our
varrs
, I had a plan already. I set to work making bowls, using an open fire near the deserted beach where I’d swam ashore.