Being Alien (34 page)

Marianne looked at the thick glass against three of the bulkheads. “Holograms,” I said, looking in the usual karst standard watch station place for the buttons. “They’ve given us New York City, Mabry’s Mill, clouds, savannah with riverine jungle.” The bunks were like square cells against the fourth wall.

Marianne came over to look at the buttons and said, “I’ve always thought lawns and shrub borders said a lot for where humans grew brains.” She pushed the button for savannah and riverine jungles.

Two Abrams were in the bunks. One of them, male judging by his crest, rolled over and blinked at us, then watched us through half open eyes as we checked out our double bunk under an empty one.

Finally, the male Ahram muttered, “We’re getting a large Wrengee delegation, if we're doubling Karst species in a room now.”

Marianne said, “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Red Clay, isn’t it? Red Clay, you can’t react if she’s threatened. Ree, from Linguistics?”

“Most of my training,” she said, “was at Berkeley, on my home planet.”

“Refugees.”

Marianne didn’t answer that. We both got into our double bunk and seethed for a while.

Cooking and food storage, for those of us who heated food or chilled it, was in one central area. We tracked in, following a map Wool printed for, us. In the kitchen sat two guys of a species I’d never seen before, a couple of very roughly bear-stock creatures, about six feet tall, slender, furry with protruding eyes. They’d both crossed their legs so their ankles rested on opposite knees. The brow hair on one kept falling into her eyes. They were drinking steaming liquid from porcelain cups.

Marianne said, “Hello.”

They looked at us and said, in Karst Two, “Awake or sleep after your meal?”

“Awake.” I began looking through the food lockers and found Homo sapiens’ basic rations—grain mix, some greens labeled “edible for Humans, Ahrams, Hiveo, Barcons,” and six gallons of Jersey milk.

They sighed and said, “Small sleep period coming. Intermittent sleepers/us.”

I could tell by the big eyes. “Have you heard anything more about the Sharwan?”

“Sharwhang?” The two crepuscular people talked to each other. Finally, the female said, “The ones who’ve been disrupting contacts. We’re many gate changes away from them/guarded, too”

The male went over the refrigerator and pulled out some of the greens—they were Hiveo. I’d never met Hiveo before. Already, they seemed very nice since they hadn’t called us refugees.

“Not so long wait now,” the female said. “So far these people seem nonxenophobic. Why didn’t they join the Federation at first contact?”

“The Sharwan threatened them.”

“People who threaten will exploit,” Marianne said.

“Tom, what do we do with this ration?”

“Grind and microwave it in milk,” the male Hiveo suggested.

“Ersh asked for you. He’s embarrassed, though,” Wool said.

Marianne didn’t say anything—she sighed and found a laser disc and earphones and began saying odd sounds under her breath. I recognized the odd sounds in a few minutes as another language of Station 467 Charge Species, Isa Planet species. Marianne’s pronunciation improved phenomenally during the next seven hours.

“The Sharwan radio and comm pod traffic has been heavier,” Travertine said. Marianne, still listening to the tape, reached out and tweeked his long olive belly hackles. He rubbed her awkwardly around the nose.

I suddenly wished Marianne hadn’t come here—risking herself, risking my child. We waited, the gravity nets on higher than usual power, gate detection probes thrust out by the mass driver coils. A television transmission from Wrengu said that Equirew Research Facility had been closed off.

“Maybe the Federation should contact a new species when it sends out satellites,” Marianne said.

“No,”
Travertine said in English.
 
“the Voyager naked schematics aren’t enough.”

“
I’m
not sure most humans are ready for contact, Marianne.” She turned to me, her face so placid I knew she was angry.

We didn’t say more, just listened to the radio bursts of coded messages. Wool turned on a computer programmed to lock onto face images in over a million possible raster and scan frequency patterns. I watched images flicker on the screen—and saw us watching as the aliens.

“Some people go eat,” Wool said, “or sleep. We don’t need to be craving either when Ersh and the others arrive.”

Marianne said, “Tom, I am hungry.” Yes, what she ate now was serious for the baby. We went off to the eating area. When we were alone, she said to me, “Why don’t you want humans to be contacted?”

Self-pity? “I’d be a parole jumper loser again.”

“Tom, they’d forget about that. You could help so much.”

“I didn’t turn you in to Black Amber, did I? Marianne, I’m just not sure about humans in space. We’re such an intense species, xenoflip-flops.”

“We didn’t invent xenophobia movies.”

“And we haven’t passed the space gates test.”

“Trung. . .”

“He imitated.” I cooked a stew of the grains and bean grits in the pressure microwave while Marianne tossed a salad.

“Black Amber said I was working through the linguistics curriculum as fast as anyone with a provincial education, not that my Berkeley mentors would like that label.”

I said, “I hate humans sometimes.” She watched me while she ate, as if she really had to plan her answer to that. I felt guilty. Finally, after we finished our stew, I said, “Your parents were Weather people. You were a radical.”

“Tom, my kind of radicals believe people are basically good."

“That wasn’t…I thought, the radicals in Floyd were a bunch of elitist snobs. Something not for rednecks.”

“Oh, the Hip Drugs Klan,” Marianne said, “but I’ve never been religious, understand.”

In English, I said,
“But you were a grad student.”

“Tom, sometimes you can be ridiculous.”

“We’ve got a contact to work,” I said. “And I do love you. Whatever you and Trung do…” I knew I couldn’t turn them in.

Marianne rubbed her eyes with her palms, the heels of her hands, thumbs pointing outward, fingers curled. “What do you think it’s going to be like?”

“Ersh didn’t seem impressed with us the first time.”

We put the bowls in the ultrasonic cleaner, then ran them back through the microwave to dry them before we put them up. The ultrasonic cleaner fluid didn’t get recycled often, so I liked to microwave my station dishes after I used them.

Marianne asked, “Why don’t we use paper plates?”

“Storage,” I said. We went back into the station center and found a long cushion. I sat down on it, legs crossed tailor-fashion, and cradled Marianne’s head against my thighs and belly. She twined her left hand’s fingers through mine.

“Good,” Wool said. “Your quarrel has abated. Please don’t reactivate it.”

“I’ve never quarreled with Tom,” Marianne said, neck going stiff as she rolled her head to look up at him. Wool voided pungent anal oil. Marianne sniffed and said, “Okay, I lied.”

“We’re all tense,” Wool said.

The Barcons shambled in as if drawn by the anal gland odor. One of them sprayed the air; the odor disappeared.

For the next hour or so, nobody said much. Wool showered and came back with a portable drier in one hand. He ran it over his body while he lifted tufts of fur with the fingers of his other hand. When a gate probe alarm rang, he yanked out the hair he had between his fingers.

“Let’s make sure it’s Ersh,” Travertine said.

Wool wiped the hair off his fingers and said, as he pushed a button on the console, “ReContact for Planet Station 467.” Travertine was speaking Wrengu through another microphone. Wool put earphones on his small round ears. Marianne sat up, still holding my hands.

“Is it Ersh?” Wool asked.

Travertine said, “Yes.” His head feathers rose, then settled. He blinked all of his eyelids across both eyes, one eyelid at a time. “He wants to speak to Tom.” Travertine’s upper bill rose, muscles between his eyes tight, bulging, then it fell in a soft click, not as loud as Karriaagzh’s anger clap, just a snick sound like a ballpoint pen point being retracted.

“Well, let’s bring them in,” Wool said.

Travertine said, “They’d prefer that we try to speak only their languages, but I explained that some of us don’t know them.”

Marianne said, “Tell them I’m eager to learn from them directly.” She said something choppy in the language she’d been studying.”

“Better be,” Wool said. “He’s here.”

“Now?” I asked.

Travertine sent docking procedure schematics. Finally, he said “In about three and half minutes. They’re gating a capsule into our station. Ersh and one other.”

We walked back to the capsule receiving area. The air turned blue, then the alien capsule popped into our space.

The capsule was white with a sealed door not unlike our own capsules. The creatures inside pushed the door out and it fell on the deck, tilting and rocking.

When it stopped rocking, Ersh and the other dinosauroid stuck their heads out, arms behind them. They stared at us, their ear wattles pale, then they stepped out, knees bending like human knees. The second one forgot to leave his gun in the capsule, stared down at it as if his hand was embarrassing him, if that’s what a sudden earlobe wattle blush meant.

Marianne said, in soft Wrengu,
“Hello.”
Ersh went up and cautiously loosened her headband, then ran scaled fingers through her hair, lifting it at right angles from her head.

“It drapes,” Ersh said as Marianne laughed. He still held Marianne’s hair out. “Do you breed for this?”

“Do we breed for what?” I said.

Not completely understanding Wrengu yet, Marianne asked, “Did he want to know if we bred for long hair?”

“You must,” Travertine said. “It’s an ecologically unreasonable amount of hair.”

I signaled
yes
flippantly.

The other Wreng ran his finger up Wool’s tunic sleeve and asked, “Why do filamented ones mask their bodies?”

“You need help, Ersh?” I asked, trying to get the Wreng on track. For a creature who’d been so blunt before, Ersh wasn’t bringing up issues now. “You embarrassed to have allied with oppressors?”

“Yes, I’m not here to play with strange hair. Help us now, Red Clay. We made a mistake, but still don’t know if you represent a worse one”

The other Wreng laid a hand across Marianne’s waist and whispered in her ear. She said something in the other language. He whispered again. She, paler than usual, moved his hand a bit lower and gestured
yes,
then murmured.

“Are the Sharwan on your planet? “ I asked.

“Yes,” Ersh said. “We want them off.”

Wool said, “Control doesn’t like to fight house to house.”

Marianne and I both were sent to bed after twelve duty hours, regardless of the continuing discussion. Ersh was obviously amused, wriggling his mouth flaps at us as we shuffled off to bed.

When Marianne woke up, she vomited hard as if her body had been invaded by something she could expel this way. “I don’t understand. I want this baby.”

A Barcon opened our toilet door and said, holding out a package of dry crackers, “Don’t drink liquids in the morning.

“I feel sick, too,” I said.

“Not uncommon,” the Barcon said, squatting down beside us. She touched me; my skin was clammy. “Many males acquire nausea when mates are pregnant.”

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked Marianne.

“Yes. Let’s go talk to the feathered lizards.”

“They are warm-blooded,” the Barcon said.

We went out to the meeting room. Ersh asked, “What can you do for us?”.

“Do you want to have us kill them all?” Wool asked.

I knew it was a testing question, but Marianne stiffened.

“No,” Ersh said, “some don’t steal from us. And, worst, some of us help them steal.”

“What’s your status on your home planet?” Marianne asked. She’d memorized questions in Wrengu or else picked up the language fast. I was a little intimidated.

“My own status now—affected by coming to you.”

“We can’t get rid of the Sharwan instantly now that they’re in your system,” Wool said. “Not without destroying all of them. We think we can persuade them.”

Ersh’s face flushed red, blue, yellow, then he said, “If we’d gone with the Federation, a barricade would have been simpler?”

“Much simpler,” Wool said.

“They’ve bombed us more anyway.”

“Changing their minds will be a long process. Are they exploiting you that badly? We dislike direct attack. Conflict creates its own dynamics.”

“I can give you contacts with those of us who are resisting.” Ersh said, “Red Clay, I apologize.”

“Apologize to his wife,” Wool said, “because you’ve probably committed her womb’s child to help you. It will be a long struggle. Maybe not that many of your people are resisting?”