Being Alien (17 page)

“Drive us up a few blocks before letting us out,” the larger one said. “You’ve got a tail.”

We drove on to Williamsburg that night and checked into the cheapest motel we could find, then explored the next day. Marianne hadn’t been this far south before or this far back in American time. “Quechuan past, yes, Anglo, no.”

“You don’t think of it as your past.”

She gestured at her handbag, her handwoven top. “No, my people didn’t land before 1890. We didn’t even fight to end slavery here.”

I saw a couple of guys in leather aprons working with a spinning wheel and dye pots and led her there “Your sister does this.”

“Bet this is probably more alien than what you see on modern planets a hundred light years from here."

We went into a house that from the outside looked like a replica Williamsburg house in the good part of any small town. Inside, the ceilings were lower, everything was slightly uneven. I felt vertigo, like I was in a fake fake, and said, “It’s not real.”

“No, it’s a reconstruction.”

“Isn’t it odd to be so concerned about the past.”

“Maybe,” Marianne said. “Most human cultures have myths.”

“You’ll get along fine where we’re going,” I said, mindful of the possible tail.

Marianne looked at her tourist map and said, “There’s a graveyard, here.”

We walked there and Marianne looked at the graves, counting the children who’d died before five, the mothers who’d died before thirty-five. She fingered each date as though blind, as though memorizing an essential fact about humanity. I began to worry about her, as though she was already pregnant with my child. Barcons would deliver her baby as though she were an exotic animal, but they were technically superb medics. She stared back over the eroded tombstones at me, as if we’d suddenly become mere humans together in a huge inhuman universe. She began walking toward me by the old graves, her loose hair swaying over her breasts. I thought of all of us, quick and dead, struggling to stay alive in our times. For her sake, I’d try to love my kind.

“You know what I was thinking when we were in the graveyard?” she said on the plane after takeoff.

“No. I know what I was thinking, though.”

“We’re utterly important and nobody knows it. We’re representing our planet, our species,

“I was thinking that we’re both human in a basically inhuman universe.”

“Not cruel, though, is it?”

“Sometimes I think humans are assholes. Takes brains to be cruel. Takes more brains not to.”

“We’re not cruel people. Not even your brother.”

I’d never thought of myself as a representative human.

Down below us the Mississippi glinted in the sun. Marianne leaned over my shoulder to see it. "I bet no planet is as beautiful.”

“You’ll see.”

“Tom, I’m leaving all my connections behind, good ones, bad ones. Now all I’m going to be is a raw human.”

“You’ll make new connections, Reeann.”

“But I
want
to see what it’s like to be a raw human.

We landed and transferred from bus to bus to bus back to Cedar Street. In Marianne’s mail was a note from Alex, telling us he’d be over on August 1. That was two days away.

Reeann, Molly, and Sam went out to Tillman Park to talk about the move, while I went back to my apartment to print my research notes on Japan. As I watched the printer whisk across the sheets, I wondered about minimum social units for different species. For humans, maybe six to eight—we were going to be claustrophobic as a social group unless we brought someone for Warren. Too late for that.

After all was printed, I had a stack of folded sheets four feet high. I put the sheets back in the two empty boxes and taped them up.

The phone rang. “Your reservations for the JAL flight 405 to Tokyo on the shuttle are confirmed for August second,” a woman’s voice told me. “Will you pick up the tickets for your party or do you want to give me a card number?”

“I’ll pick them up.”

“If your visit will be less than two weeks, a consular officer will stamp passports at the airport. If more then you’ll need to contact the consular office. You know the currency restrictions?”

“I’ll check” I said.

“We thank you for making your reservations with JAL,” she said and hung up.

A cover, I hoped. I was ready to get back to Karst.

On August 1, Marianne called. “Alex is here with a moving van.”

As I walked down Cedar I saw a grey car parked next to a restored Volkswagen. Don’t duck, I told myself. They didn’t seem to notice me. Alex and Sam were moving the harpsichord into the moving van. I went up and looked in. Already they’d gotten Molly’s spinning wheel and looms in, plus six trunks and three suitcases.

Alex said, quietly, “Austin’s Miniwarehouse, Block six, unit thirteen, in Walnut Creek. Meet us there.”

I looked at Sam. His eyes were glazed; he’d been tranquilized. He mumbled, “Don’t hurt my piano, my flute, my harpsichord, my sitar, my…”

“Alex? What’s wrong with Sam?” Molly asked.

“He was nervous,” Alex said. Molly herself was sweating. “Molly, if you need sedation, it makes the transition easier for humans.”

Molly said, “I guess we never had any choice, did we?” Alex didn’t answer, just went into the house with Sam. I left to rent a car.

In Richmond, two black women snatched my brother from the front stoop of the halfway house. Later, I saw the article from the Richmond
Times Dispatch.
Even though he’d been carried off screaming, he couldn’t be found. The police dragged the James and sent a SWAT team up to our old Floyd County house, but Warren wasn’t on Earth by then.

Karst had sent a transport pod to the mini-warehouse that fit nicely—we sent Sam and Molly across first so Sam could unload the harpsichord. The second load was equipment, the harpsichord, Molly’s loom. Third load Warren, unconscious on a stretcher, and me, with my bicycle and all my Earth clothes. Marianne came through last.

“Alex said he’s going to see to it that we can get back to Berkeley from time to time,” she said as she stepped out of the transport pod. “Are we on Karst yet?”

We were inside one of the outer transport stations, in Karst’s Port Region. I looked down at my brother on the stretcher. “Not quite yet. Take a look outside.”

Her sister and brother-in-law stared out already at the massive cargo containers and the tiny space-suited aliens moving over them, the global clusters off the ecliptic—metal glints in the far distance.

Marianne walked to the window and hugged Molly and Sam, didn’t let them go as she looked out, too. They didn’t notice as an olive-feathered bird and two Barcons entered the station room.

The Barcons took Warren off on his stretcher. Marianne turned around as they talked in Barq. Her pupils were dilated, then she focused on the bird who crouched slightly and looked away from her, his tan hands flexing slightly. “It has no wings. Can you say you got used to this?” She swung her arm stiffly at the viewport, then at the bird.

I said, “I could arrange for us to take a chemical rocket into Karst if you think you’d like to get there more slowly.”

“I don’t know if I want to or not.”

“It might be hard on the musical instruments,” the bird said in perfect English. “I’ll bring tea. My Federation name in your language is Travertine.”

5
Fresh Imported People

Marianne and the other two hunched on the bottom of the transport pod as it lurched through the final transition to Karst. They trembled and stank like captured animals, and I didn’t know how to comfort them. As someone outside began unscrewing the hatch, Marianne kept her eyes fixed on me.

Black Amber opened our transport hatch. Her long fingers held onto the door as though she wasn’t sure she should let us out. “You can stay/remain together for eight rotations,” Black Amber said. “Tell her/your human woman I was John Amber.”

I reached out and stroked Black Amber’s fuzzy hands with the backs of my knuckles. “Marianne,” I said, “it’s John Amber, what she really looks like.”

Molly half sobbed and half giggled, then stuck her fingers in her mouth. Sam asked, “What is that hanging under its arms?”

“Vestigial wings,” I said. Black Amber drew her lips back and pumped her hands once. I saw her through their eyes—the wrinkled face, broad forehead with the eyes set in saucer-sized bone protrusions, the tiny chin at the bottom of the muzzle, nostrils deep slits like a goat’s.

In the back of the huge receiving loft, a second transport popped through in a haze of blue light. The hatch opened and Travertine said in English,
“
The looms and music instruments rode through perfectly.”

Sam swung his head around at the sound and helped Molly up. Together, his arm around her shoulders, they went to check their work tools, running their hands over the loom frame and the harpsichord legs.

Marianne asked, “Female?” Meaning Black Amber.

“Yes,” I said. “Black Amber has a neat little son.” Black Amber oo’ed, then gently reached her hand out, fingers bent at the first joint, and brushed her knuckles across Marianne’s upper arm.

Molly and Sam kept their hands on their equipment even as small fuzzy guys loaded it into a trailer. “It looks just like a truck trailer,” Molly said, tears oozing down by her nose, eyelashes stuck together in clumps. Sam walked with the movers, one hand pressing the harpsichord keyboard cover as if to prevent aliens from opening it.

“Yeah, the shape’s ergonometric for lots of
uhyalla,”
I told her.

“This building is square,” she said, making “square” sound like an insult. I translated for Black Amber.

“Tell them that the plants are green,” Black Amber said in Karst Two. I blushed, remembering how awed I’d been when I got off and saw blue skies, green plants, and flower-colored flowers, and actual dust on the plastic runway.

Reeann stood, her head turning in quick jerks. Then she asked Black Amber, “Can we go somewhere and be alone with Tom?”

“She doesn’t understand English anymore,” I said before I translated.

Black Amber replied, “No, I’ll go with you; rough out xenophobe edges. Need to reduce fear/hostility with humans before facing the killer.”

“Warren, where is Warren?” I asked.

“I prefer not to face him.” Black Amber folded her arms and hooked her thumbs behind her neck. The elbows snugged in against her sides at about waist level. I noticed then that she was swollen slightly around the pouch.

“It may die,” Black Amber said, noticing where I looked. “Beyond breeding permit. Barcons sterilized my herds. Have to find host on Gwyng Home/difficult gossip about Wy’um here.”

“Maybe it won’t pouch,” I said before I realized the swelling was higher than usual, larger.

“But it
has
pouched (agony to me),” she said.

Gwyngs traded babies to build ties between groups, but if nobody would take this one and her own host herds were sterile… I wondered then how many true children Black Amber had placed with other Gwyngs, and moved to embrace her side to side.

Marianne watched, then asked, “What’s the matter?”

“She may have to have an abortion.” That saved the explanation for later. “We’re only allowed to reproduce ourselves here, otherwise Karst would become too crowded.”

Marianne said, “Tell her I’m sorry.”

“Marianne’s sorry.”

“Appreciated/acknowledged,” Black Amber said, "but she wants you to step back from me, thinks sexual.”

When I did as Black Amber suggested, I noticed that Marianne’s spine unstiffened and curved into a shallow S. Black Amber oo’ed, then muffled a koo against her high shoulder.

The moving crew backed in a truck-cab, with two long bench seats that swiveled to fit various body-types, and hitched it to the trailer. “Tom, your social group has a floor in a building between the Academy and the Linguistics Institute,” Travertine said. He picked at a cracked scale at the base-of his right thumb. Then, as he lowered the driver’s seat to the floor, he added, in English, “You can all ride in the cab. Except for Warren, who will go the hospital with the Barcons."

Black Amber flexed her feet in her soft, skin slippers. “I’ll ride beside Travertine,” I told her. She bared her teeth at me slightly, then the lump between her chin and throat bounced. I looked at Molly and Sam. If they freaked, they could get us from the backseat. “Are you all okay, Marianne?”

“I want to ride with my ’sichord,” Sam said, voice slurred still from the drugs.

“No, no, come in with us,” Travertine said in English. He ruffled facial feathers as if frowning with the skin under them.

Molly helped Sam into the back seat of the cab. I saw Travertine check a knob on the dash and figured that we had some sedation control. My, but this was getting embarrassing. “Shit, folks, climb in. We’re going to have a whole building floor to ourselves.”

“And I will teach them Karst One, all except Marianne,” Travertine said, his nails clicking against the steering wheel. “Marianne will have the language operations.”