Human to Human (30 page)

I said, “Are we going back to Karst now?”

“No, days with me (my final negotiation/request).”

Marianne said, “Black Amber told me you really didn’t sleep with her.”

I said, “I told you that, too. Let’s go.”

“You drive,” Black Amber said.

“Why, to keep me from screaming at her?” I had been hurt on the trip when I believed Marianne had fucked Karriaagzh, but then half the time, I’d denied it, believed Karriaagzh had lied. Now, seeing Marianne admit it, I was furious.

We didn’t speak to each other except when Black Amber gave me directions. As we pulled up to the house, one of Wy’um’s younger sisters came out and stared at us. Black Amber wailed—sensing something only apparent to a Gwyng. My skull computer hadn’t even squealed. Then Amber said, “I won’t outlive the gray bird, but I’ve made sure he won’t stay Rector.”

I looked at Marianne as though we were still a team in this. She said, in English, “Black Amber knows she’s beginning to become senile.”

I asked, “Did you distract Karriaagzh for her?”

“Tom, you aren’t even hearing me. Why are you acting like this jealous hillbilly?”

Part of me wanted to strangle her; part of
me was crying. “Was it so important to you?”

“What is this, Tom? Be reasonable. You look like you’re about to choke.”

We were still talking in English. Wy’um’s younger sister, the surviving heir to the house, said, “Not to be rude, but could you stay outside with the quarrel scent until we get a human scent disruptor?” Her nose slits writhed.

I said, “Where’s Karl?”

“At Agate and Chalk’s.”

“How’s he taking it?”

“Taking what?”

“Your affair with Karriaagzh.”

“Karriaagzh didn’t tell any children.”

I imagined my little self trying to beat up Karriaagzh, laughed, then said, “He told people?”

“Yes, he… Are you going to hit me or try to beat up him?”

“Human beings seem to fuck every alien around.”

“Tom, I’m not having an affair with Karriaagzh anymore. Listen to me.”

I wondered what he did to her, how big his cock was. Cock bird, his sneaky fingers, his frayed feathers spread out over her, obscene images of her breasts, his scaly arms. I said, “I need to take a walk.”

“I’ll come with you.”

I wanted to throw her down on the sand and rape her, smear her with my sweat, jam my seed up her. She looked younger for a second, afraid, maybe aroused, or was I reading myself into her? I walked down the beach, and she followed behind me. More humans were coming in; perhaps we should split up, find new people. She could marry another linguist, someone as smart as she was. I could…I didn’t know. I stopped and said, “Marianne, I need someone who’s going to be faithful to me.” I heard the desperation in that just after I spoke it and sat down on the sand, hugging my knees, my heart trapped between spine and leg bones, hammering.

She sat down near me, almost as if she knew I could be dangerous to her, and didn’t say anything.

I don’t want to cry in front of this bitch…I don’t want to cry in front of this bitch.
 .  
My eyes began leaking.

She said, “I didn’t expect you home so soon. Tom, would you hurt me physically?”

The impulse collapsed. “Oh, Marianne.”

“If you’re going to be suspicious and jealous forever, then maybe I should move out.”

“You make me feel terrible, then you try to make me feel guilty for feeling terrible.”

She said, “Let’s not hurt each other.”

“Woman, I don’t dabble around on the side.”

“It’s okay if you want to.”

“Marianne, I don’t want to. Have we been drifting apart? Was having prisoners in the house so terrible? What was it?”

“I felt sorry for him. He was so alone. And, Tom, he was persistent. And lonely. And I was the only person who’d bothered to learn his language.”

“So you fucked him while Black Amber went to get him conspecific company.”

“Even she began to feel sorry for him.”

“He horrifies her.”

“Not just because he’s a bird. Because he was so asocial. She could never understand a creature that alone.”

Sob, oh, sob for Karriaagzh.
I raised my hands like I was playing a violin. Marianne turned her head toward the ocean. I saw her wrinkles, gray hairs, her skin thicker, really noticed for the first time. Maybe she’d been seeing the aging signs earlier and went to a creature who’d be more fascinated than appalled. I said, “If you don’t plan to grow old with me, let’s start looking for new partners now.”

She burst into tears. I started back toward the Gwyng house, not caring whether she followed me or not, determined to get back home to Lucid Moment District one way or another. The district name now seemed rather ironic.

Black Amber was waiting for me on the porch, standing on the sides of her feet, her hair brushed. “I’m dying, she said.”

I stopped, feeling Marianne behind me more than hearing her. “What can I do to help?” I said. Many years ago, she wanted me brain wiped, or was that just hysteria? Then she wanted me to become Mica.

She oo’ed slightly, looking over my shoulder. “Take care of me in an artificial pouch.”

I wasn’t sure whether she was making trouble for me or not. “Will you be happy?”

Her eyes oiled over as she raised her head and stared out to sea. Swimming until she died was the other option. Marianne said, in English, “Tom, can we talk about it?”

“Do you know what happens to old Gwyngs?” I said to her in Karst One. Black Amber lowered her eyes and sat down, elbows against the ground. She stroked her nostril slits with the fuzzy backs of her fingers.

Marianne said, still in English, “I feel manipulated, Tom.”

Black Amber said, “Eye fee mamipoo ated, T’m.”

I said in Karst One, “She’s my sponsor. I don’t have any living genetic relations except Karl. It’s not my fault that every adult on Karst knows you had sex with Karriaagzh.”

“Tom, I didn’t know it would be so
fucking
important to both of you Karriaagzh…” She sputtered.

Now I spoke in English. “
I can’t stand another suicide
.”

“She’s manipulating you.”

Black Amber said, “The tongue lunge, manipulating you. I forgot the tongue lunge.” What she said wasn’t exactly in English, but it was close.

Marianne said, in Karst One, “What will you do if Tom won’t take care of you?”

Black Amber said, “End me. What are you/Linguist sacrificing if Red Clay does take care of me? You want him to share your genital skills.”

“What happened to Wy’um?” I asked.

“Swam away,” Black Amber said. She hugged her knees and rocked sideways. “Red Clay, Rhyodolite is dead. Did you mourn? Cadmium will be Rector. Will you mourn me? I ate my terror—the birds, the birds. Red Clay, so many birds. While the Rector Bird stole your mate, I forced the other bird…ah, Linguist, you can be Rector’s People apart from each other.”

I’d been wondering about that. Marianne said, “So you want to steal my mate?”

“Are we still mated?”

“Tom, let’s not discuss this right now.”

“I do not steal genital skills,” Black Amber said. She rose to her feet and wobbled, then sucked on her thumb glands. “I ask…affection.” Affection for the aged wasn’t natural for Gwyngs, but I remembered a pouch host beast who’d cared.

“Okay. I’ll look like a creep if say no,” Marianne said. She sounded like we still had enough of a relationship that she’d have a say in the matter.

“Well, if Black Amber gets in your way, Marianne, I’m sure now that we have more humans and birds coming—”

“What is this? Just how long do you intend to fuss over what I did? I stopped. We have a son, Tom.”

Black Amber said, “Don’t say more, Linguist. Your speech etches our brains now (stress).”

Marianne came up and sat down beside Amber and awkwardly hugged her. “Black Amber, why does he want to make me feel so bad?”

Black Amber said, “Don’t answer (Red-Clay)/No answer (Linguist).”

I was about to say, if she wanted an answer,
she wouldn’t have asked you,
but my mind threw me a sudden memory of Marianne in the elevator with Karl, milk leaking through her bra. “I’m off time here. I need to sleep.”

Black Amber said, “Three (of us). On a mat.”

Marianne said, “I’m not at all sleepy. I’m going to take a walk.”

Black Amber and I went into the house and sat side by side on a mat. I said, “I need to be alone.”

“I need not to. I still outrank you.” She touched my chin gently. “I did well to sponsor you.”

You almost didn’t, I thought.

“Cadmium said for me not to split the pair bond with the Linguist if it still existed. He wondered if it would be possible to order you to be reconciled.” Cadmium, too, outranked me.

“Give me some time. Don’t force it.” I bumped my elbow against hers. We were odd people, all us Karst City types. Being alien together, not my mating with Marianne, was the most powerful bond.

Marianne and I didn’t quite break up after I got back from Earth, but we insisted on being trained separately as Rector’s People. When Black Amber disposed of her household and moved in with us, I bought a tube sofa refitted to keep a senile Gwyng warm and clean. About a week after Black Amber arrived, Marianne invited Alex and Anne Baseman to live with us while Alex healed from his recresting surgery.

It was like a damn zoo. Black Amber lay dying in the heated tube sofa in the living room, Chi’ursemisa and Daiur came back from Chi’ursemisa’s skull computer surgery and slept in the room next to mine, now restored to its original solid wall. Karl took the room next to theirs and began to be incredibly rude to all of us. Marianne and her friends had the whole other hall. She and her dissertation director rigged one room up with oscilloscopes, terminals, recorders for esoteric language play.

Alex grumped around with his bandages and bruised eye, then, a month later, he called for the elevator just before we were all going to have supper together. He held the elevator door down with his foot. I was rigging Black Amber’s sofa with wheels so I could roll her back to join us in the kitchen. “Tom,” he said, “the Barcons were right. I’m a little crazy.”

I realized that he was leaving for good.

After the elevator took Alex down, the dinner together fell apart. Anne and Marianne went into their office and stayed for hours. I tried to listen outside the door, but heard nothing, not even breathing, scuffling shoes. When they came out again, I looked inside and saw that they had soundproofed the room sometime when I had been out.

Weeks went by. Then one morning, when Anne, Chi’ursemisa, and Drusah had left for the day, Marianne came into the living room while I was feeding Black Amber and said, “If you can forgive Black Amber for wanting to brainwipe you when she first found you, then why can’t you forgive me for sharing sex with Karriaagzh?”

“You’re not dying,” I said. Black Amber lay in her tube couch, the electrically warmed one that she’d had me get for her senility. Her food pump had emptied by now, so I pulled the nipple away from her mouth.

“She collapsed rather fast after you agreed to take care of her until she died.”

Black Amber opened her eyes then, milky white, blinded, all those elaborate Gwyng neurons and optical processors either as badly decayed as her corneas and lenses or trapped under dead tissue. Her nostril slits fluttered. I went over to her and touched her forehead. Her long arm and spidery hand reached out for me. I took her hand and felt the dry skin, the bristly fur on the fingers.

“Linguist,” Black Amber said, my skull computer barely able to transform the sounds into Amber’s term for Marianne.

Marianne stiffened as if a spider had spoken, then came over to us and took Black Amber’s other hand.

“Linguist (no visual)?”

“Couldn’t the Barcons fix her eyes again?”

I didn’t say anything. Marianne asked, “Black Amber, are you in pain?”

“Linguist. Confusion (pain?). No more eyes.”

I said, “They could fix the eyes, but there’s more.”

“Linguist, Red-Clay, Mica. Mica. Mica.” Black Amber’s fingers twisted against ours. I released the hand I’d been holding, and she felt my face, pulling at my nostrils slightly as though they should be longer.

“Tom, I want to talk to you alone.”

“When Black Amber goes back to sleep,” I said. Marianne pushed Black Amber’s other hand at me, sighed, and sat down on the human couch.

“Should have swum,” Black Amber said, with almost a mean tone to it. “Killers.”

Marianne said, “Do you mean us?”

“Bird. Bird who covered you. You.”

I said, “Don’t get her excited.”

Marianne said, “Black Amber, I need to talk to Red Clay in private. Would you mind if we left you for a half hour?”

Black Amber said, “No spare moments.”

“Tom, she’s turning you into some kind of old-maidish martyr.”

“Go take spare moments/deprive socially.”

Before I could say,
That’s the most coherent thing she’s said this week,
Marianne said, “She needs social friction to keep her more alert.”

Black Amber’s lips rounded. “Castrate the bird/solve problems.”

Marianne said in English, “Come on, Tom. Talk to me.”

I said, “You can speak in that language in front of her.”

Marianne looked nervously at Black Amber, then said, “Okay, Tom, what I did with Karriaagzh was fucked, but why are you still giving me such grief about it?”

“Am I? I simply thought you might want to reconsider the relationship now that you…” I realized as I talked that I didn’t want to suggest that she might prefer another human mate. Or other human mates, using that California casual cunt of hers. I tried to talk as properly and formally as I could. “…you might…”

“Might what, Tom?”

“You’re a Californian, radical. Look at Anne.”

“And you’re being a prig, Tom. I felt sorry for Karriaagzh, and I was curious, but it didn’t do either of us any good. He forgot he couldn’t put in brag claims and send you a challenge.”

“Charming mating rituals he has.”

“He wants to see you, Tom
.
Everyone thinks we should get back together.”

“Do
you?
Would you want to marry me with permanent vows?”

“Tom.”

“A real marriage?”

Black Amber said, “Argue noise, but smell sad, both.”

Marianne slumped further into the couch and put her fingers against her temples, then cried. I felt stupid, like a jealous hick. “Tom, damn it, I’m trying to make sense of this. You’ve been so mean for the last four months, but you haven’t kicked me out.”

“You could betray me so easily now. With any human, any creature at all.”

“Tom, stop speaking like you learned English as a second language.”

I was startled. “So Karriaagzh wants to explain?”

“He just wants to see you. Take your shotgun if you want to.”

Black Amber murmured, “Killer bird sound. Broke fear over millions of them.” She sounded proud of herself. “Don’t have to see ever again.”

Marianne said, “Maybe the blindness is psychosomatic?”

“Look at her eyes,” I said. “They’re filmed over.”

“Will you go see Karriaagzh?”

“Yes, and I’ll leave the twelve-gauge home.” Marianne moved her body tentatively in a little breast jut, hip wriggle, not so much that I felt invited, enough to remind me.

Black Amber’s nostril slits moved out and in.

“Good,” she said; then she wriggled herself deeper into the tube sofa and closed her eyes.

Marianne said, “Tom?”

“Yes.”

“Anne thinks you and I have good synergy.”

I didn’t quite know how to take that. “Thanks.” She came up and kissed me, her tongue darting out a fraction of an inch. Then she twisted away from me and pushed the elevator button, back hunched, arms bent away from her body, knees slightly bent. The serious
Don’t Touch
human posture. Before the elevator took her away, she said, “See Karriaagzh first.”

I sat down at my terminal, sweating a bit, not sure whether I should be angry or fearful, and typed:
TO KARRIAAGZH, EX-RECTOR. I UNDERSTAND YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME. RECTOR’S MAN RED CLAY (TOM GENTRY
).

The computer was waiting for me. A pre-sent message flashed on my screen:
TO RECTOR’S MAN RED CLAY. YES, COME TO THE RECTORS LODGE IN THE MORNING FOR BREAKFAST. WE WILL MAKE TIME FOR YOU. CADMIUM RECTOR, KARRIAAGZH EX-RECTOR
.

Weirder yet, I thought. Chi’ursemisa came by with Drusah and asked, “Are you well?”

“Chi’ursemisa. Drusah?”

Drusah said from his scarred face, “We are well.”

“I’ve been invited to have breakfast with Cadmium and Karriaagzh.”

“We can feed Black Amber,” Drusah said.

“You just put the formula in the pump and stick the nipple in her mouth, then press the button and hold the pump steady.”

“I’ve watched,” Chi’ursemisa said.

“Where’s Daiur?”

“We sent him to his father’s people,” Drusah said.

I suddenly felt embarrassed, although I couldn’t spot anything overtly sexual in their postures. Drusah’s vocal cords thrummed, roughly, as though he’d been tortured out of his pure Sharwani laugh, too.

Chi’ursemisa said, “Glad you understand.”

Drusah rubbed his scar and imitated one of my smiles, which fit oddly under his cheekbones, one pointed, one broken.

I wondered when they planned to move out. They did plan to move out, didn’t they? They followed me out to the living room, and we sat around Black Amber’s sofa, not saying much. It seemed as though we all, including Black Amber, wanted company, but weren’t sure whether we needed to be with aliens. Amber stirred in her tube and moaned.

“Is she in pain?” Chi’ursemisa said.

Drusah said, “Better in pain than dead, perhaps.”

Black Amber turned her head, our computers humming as she echo-located Drusah and looked toward him with her blind eyes. Habit? “No pain,” Black Amber said. “No sex seizing.”

Drusah got up and came over. He knelt by the tube and rumpled Black Amber’s head hair. “Do you like that?”

“Touch always.”

“Why don’t you come out of the tube?”

“Cold.”

“Feel inside the sofa, Drusah,” I said.

He reached in by Black Amber’s shoulders and drew his hand out quickly. “Artificial touch,” he said. “Artificial womb.”

“She wants to die this way.”

“Dead already, comfortable,” Black Amber said.

“What does she mean by that?” Drusah said.

“By Gwyng standards, she is dead, socially, but she didn’t want to be so quickly dead, really.”

“So she crawled into a fake womb,” Chi’ursemisa said.

“Do you drug her?” Drusah’s head hair flared, then smoothed down. He sounded angry. “Does she have full dignity?”

“She has full dignity.” I didn’t completely lie. Black Amber’s bones were softening, and the Barcons gave me a specific neurotransmitter blocker for Gwyng pain nerves.

Marianne and Anne came in then, and I said, “I’m going to have breakfast with Karriaagzh and Cadmium in the morning. Anne, this is Drusah with Chi’ursemisa.”

“Great,” Marianne said in English. Anne hadn’t seen Drusah before, and she stared at his scars.

He said, touching his ruined cheekbone, “The scars are all honorable.”

Marianne said, also in English, “Where are they going to live?” I said, also in home talk, “They haven’t said yet.”

Chi’ursemisa said, also in English, “Isn’t here okay?”

Marianne almost said something, probably no, then closed her mouth and smiled at me.

“Talk (tickle ears),” Black Amber said.

Drusah reached out and tickled her ears with his fingers. Black Amber thrashed slightly, then koo’ed. I couldn’t have done that myself; I’d known Amber when she was Sub-Rector. The Gwyngs were partially right; this senile thing wasn’t completely the Black Amber I had known.

Anne said, “Do you take care of your old ones well, Drusah?”

“We love them like children,” Drusah said, a warm enough sentiment until I remembered that he and Chi’ursemisa sent Daiur back to Hurdai’s people.

“I know how difficult it is to take care of the elderly, Tom,” Anne said.

“The tube couch cleans up after her,” I said. “All I’ve really got to do is give her a bath at night, dump the waste pouches, and wash the tube out.”

Anne said, “You have such patience, Tom.”

Chi’ursemisa nodded. Marianne smiled, but muscles twitched in her cheek. Anne looked at her and said, “Really, Marianne, he does.” Then they all left when I had to slide Black Amber out of the cocoon-like sofa onto a plastic sheet. Her arm bones bent slightly. She lay shriveled and grey on the plastic while I sponged her off, wiping inside the pouch, cleaning her like a sick puppy.

She brought me to this, I thought, uncertain as to whether
this
at this point was good or bad. Then I rolled her over, washed her back, and dried her off before helping her wriggle back into the tube. “Thanks,” she said, rubbing my eyebrows with her furry knuckles. “Not alone.”

In the morning, I dressed in my green uniform and asked Chi’ursemisa if she’d wash and feed Black Amber while I went to see Cadmium and Karriaagzh. Marianne came up to us and said, “I’ll do it.”

Oh, do make yourself indispensable even if you screw around,
   
I thought, but I said, “Certainly, Marianne.” Indirect, sneakier, she was so different from Yangchenla. If Marianne couldn’t believe I was patient it was because she was patience squared. I was going to give up, fall back in love with her, and ignore whatever she did. She patted my cheek with nails at right angles to the skin.

Chi’ursemisa laughed, bo’ing, bo’ing. I picked up my wallet and tucked it in my tunic pocket, then looked back at Marianne as I pushed the elevator button. She didn’t look like she’d won a victory. Maybe I am being a prick about this, stingy with my sexual affections, I thought. The elevator arrived. Our Shiny Black couple with their new baby stared out at us as though we were a theatre tableau. I looked back at Chi’ursemisa and Marianne, saw Chi’ursemisa lay her hand on Marianne’s shoulder before I got on the elevator.