Being Alien (37 page)

“Work with me on English,” Agate said.
“Laid, lay, lie,
those words of imparting.”

“Not all of them are imparting. Some of them are self actions.
I am going to lie down.”

“Now?”

“Yes, I can still talk to you. I’d rather rest between contractions.”

“But
she lays out the speculum.”

“Don’t remind me.” Marianne tried to laugh. She sat up and removed her headband, then lay back down. "The problem is remembering that the past tense for one is the same as the present tense for the other.”

“Same sounds, but not the same words, and not even in the same linguistic class. A word of self movement compared to a word of imparting.”

“We call them both
verbs,”
Marianne said.

“Common bound morphemes?”

“Except for the irregular ones.
Shit.”
Marianne sat up groaning, and gripped her knees while Agate punched her chronometer again.

“Count the breaths.”

“Not…
damn…
meditation.” Marianne floundered to her feet. I rushed up to help her.

“Hurts.” She said. “Really hurts.”

“Should we check again?” Chalk asked.

Marianne stared at him, then at Agate. “I want to go home.”

“Marianne, try to relax in the early stages,” Agate said.

“Our womb musculature is alike. I’ve delivered…”

“You don’t know that much about humans.” Marianne said. “I want to…oh.” She gripped my arm, shifted her hand to my shoulder and pulled. “Leave me with
Tom.”

The Barcon said, “You need to trust us more.”

“Let’s not make an issue of it now,” Agate said. “We’ll be in the delivery room. We have to monitor you.”

“Agate, I’m sorry.”

Agate lowered her nose very slightly, then said, “I need your trust. You’re going to deliver my child.”

“Stay with me then.” Marianne found Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
and put the disc on. We listened between her contractions. Agate rubbed away Marianne’s face sweat with the furry backs of her hands.

Then Black Amber did show up. She stood with a hand on each side of the door, webs spread and throbbing as she watched Marianne. She was dressed as a Gwyng, just the neck straps and the long front piece to cover the pouch holes and genitals, ribbons to hold that against her body.

“I am/was concerned,” she said.

Chalk came out of the delivery room fast when she heard Black Amber’s voice. “We’re not having visitors yet.”

“I’m her sponsor.”

“Sub-Rector, I don’t think you really want to see this,” Chalk said.

Marianne said, “Feed her the
fucking
placenta.”

Black Amber’s webs pulsed in waves not too unlike the muscles rippling on Marianne’s belly. “Don’t understand hostility/hurt. Difficult for me/I overcome distaste for. I’m trying to support (unGwyng to associate with pain).”

“UnGwyng?”Marianne said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but couldn’t. Groans tore through her throat as she squatted. When the contraction passed, she said, “Agate, the pain. Painkillers?”

“I don’t think you’ve been in labor that long,” Agate said.

“Damn you,
it hurts.”

“Come in here, we’ll check. Black Amber, we’ll let you visit later, okay.” Marianne went in with Chalk.

“You go look, too,” Black Amber said.

“I don’t want to see her organs when she’s going through this.”

“Hurt sex drive, Red Clay?” Black Amber asked. She oo’ed slightly.

“I don’t want to discuss it with you, Black Amber.”

Chalk came out and said, “She’s halfway dilated.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Your son’s going to arrive soon.”

I could hear Marianne scream, then say “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” chanting that over and over.

Black Amber collapsed on the floor. For a second, I thought, God, Amber’s a real bitch attention distractor, then I saw that she was oozing from every orifice—eyes, thumb glands, pouch, cloaca.

The pregnant Barcon came out, pulled a phone out from the cabinet by the fireplace, and called other Barcons, then knelt over Black Amber to feel her neck.

“What happened?” Marianne asked.

“Black Amber fainted,” the pregnant Barcon said. Other Barcons came with a gurney, muttering to each other in Barq as they strapped Black Amber into it. I was relieved to see that she wasn’t bleeding—all the secretions were clear, oily. But she seemed unconscious.

One of the Barcons pulled a strap down over Black Amber’s ankles and said to me,
“Uhyalla
still can surprise us with freshly observed behaviors.”

In the delivery room, I heard Agate murmuring to Marianne, who answered her back in a slurred voice. Then Marianne cried out, “Tom.”

“I’m coming.” What had happened to Black Amber? I’d have to find out later—my wife wanted me. I went in and saw her standing between the two smaller Jereks, her arms around their necks, leaning into Agate, who herself was paler in the face skin, that T of naked flesh was dark grey, not black. I quickly went to take Agate’s place.

“Urn, standing between two men,” Marianne said her eyelids down, eyes dull. “And finally they gave me painkiller, Tom. They’re not sure what’s going on.”

“Rapid deliveries are unusual for the first child” Chalk said. I knew his loyalties were to Agate.

The contractions came rapidly, more rapidly. Marianne seemed lost in her body, sweating, muscles standing up in ridges in her legs, along her back. Her nipples oozed fluid. Finally, Agate said, “Get her to the chair, if she can still stand.”

I felt her. Heart racing, tired muscles spasming beside me, I wondered if we shouldn’t use the table, call in the surgical Barcons, take her quickly to a hospital on Earth. Marianne said, “Would hurt to lie down.” She squatted suddenly, not falling, pulling against us. Quickly, Chalk, I, and the female Barcon maneuvered her to the birthing stool, spread her knees on its supports.

Marianne began screaming full out with each contraction. I was horrified, couldn’t look down there, held her hand between my hands and rubbed her face with my thumbs, stroking over and over. Agate tore away the lower part of the tunic—a shocking rip,
she’s torn Marianne,
I thought for a second,

Then we were just dealing with it. The baby’s head, all slick and bent, came sliding out into someone’s hands, while I continued to hold Marianne’s head, watching her eyes suddenly widen. She shuddered, went, “aagh,” and I heard the baby cry for the first time.

Everyone cheered.

Marianne had to look at him, cuddle him. “He’s beautiful,” she said.

Actually, he looked like a tiny old man who’d just wiggled out of a hot wet cave where he’d been trapped for nine months. He was wrinkled, blotchy, but so alert, staring at Marianne as though he’d been hearing her for months and finally got to see what she looked like.

Agate and Chalk and our Barcon didn’t look so alien now, visibly exhausted, rumpled fur. Chalk had a scratch across his nose—Marianne must have done it flailing around, but he’d never said anything. I said “Thank you so much.”

“I hope Marianne’s well enough soon to help with me,” Agate said. “It is beautiful, even if difficult.”

After Marianne and the baby were sleeping, I went out to see what happened to Black Amber. The Barcon woman told me the other Barcons had taken her to another Institute building across from the birth building.

When I came in, I remembered when I’d first seen her rebuilt as a Gwyng after being surgically shaped to look human. She wasn’t cut and stitched up this time, no surgical tubes sluiced liquids under the clear plastic bandages, and she was sitting up in the bed, but she looked wounded. I said, “We’d be happy to have you come visit now. Marianne’s son was born—eight pounds six ounces.” I said the weight in Karst One figures.

She closed her eyes as though shutting me out.

“I’m sorry if Marianne was rude to you, but she was hurting.”

Without opening her eyes, Black Amber said “Horrible to volunteer for such pain.”

“What happened to you?”

“Conceptual overload. Embarrassing in a Sub-Rector.”

“You could have chilled out.”

“Time couldn’t turn away her screaming voice, the parasite child distorting her body."

“In the end, it was beautiful.”

“Hormones washing the brain. Hormones I and other Gwyngs don’t have.”

I wondered how many pregnancies a Gwyng had in her lifetime, if they could even be called pregnancies compared to what other species went through. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I suppose,” she said. Her eyes opened, focused on me, closed again. I left.

10
Time, Bound With Ceremony

As Marianne held our son, Karl David, against her in the elevator going up to our apartment, I thought, everything about families is forever. We’d be parents even after he was grown. Reeann smiled down at Karl, two damp places over her breasts, and he rubbed his eyelids with tiny fists, then cried a thin cry. Maybe
why am I here?

Marianne grimaced, almost a smile, milk coming out of her breasts again, and said, “Sam and Yangchenla found a place near us. I asked her if she wanted to put her girl in the play group. At least there’d be one other human baby for Karl."

Yeah, and the real life of the universe is built from sticky soft stuff, sperm, women’s gooey insides, milk, and baby shit. All this was making me feel uneasy—the milk dripping from Marianne’s breasts, the feeling that behind Karl’s eyes was a soft baby brain taking up impressions that would affect him in ways that I couldn’t fathom. He’d never grow up completely human here. I didn’t tell Reeann what I was thinking, just said. “That’s nice.”

The elevator door slid down and we got out. Karl’s eyes looked around. “See,” Marianne said, “it’s your home."

He stared back at her and groped for her breasts, nuzzled them through her blouse. I felt jealous, then fierce, my woman, my child. “Kids are a bit embarrassing,” I said, instantly regretting I’d said that.

Marianne just laughed, looked at me, then laughed again. Karl looked up at her face and blinked. She said, “He’s going to think Daddy’s embarrassing soon.”

I felt myself blush, remembering my parent’s locked door and Warren laughing as he led me away. Child witnesses came with being a father.

“Oh, Karl,” Marianne murmured. “Oh, Karllet.”

I checked my mail through the computer as Marianne carried Karl to her bedroom to change his diaper.

I WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE BARCONS—WARREN

BARCON CHARGE OF YOUR BROTHER NEEDS YOUR HELP—INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE.

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SON—CADMIUM.

I NEED TO SEE YOU NOW—WARREN.

YOUR BROTHER
THINKS
HE IS HIDING FROM US—INSTITUTE

OF MEDICINE.

Warren and the Barcons weren’t doing well, obviously. I put a WE’RE HOME message in the computer and went back to check on Marianne and Karl.

He was lying on her bed, one hand grasping her finger. She was sitting beside him, looking at him. When she noticed I was there, she said, “He’s going to be different from us, learning Karst One as a first language."

“I thought about that.” We were both speaking in Karst ourselves.

In English, Marianne said, almost to herself,
“It’s a bit scary.”

“Warren’s upset with what the Barcons are doing to him,”
I said in the same language. Karst One demanded an attitude modifier, and I didn’t know quite how I felt, but didn’t want to admit that so definitively, with the implication of being confused in the root of the no-attitude modifier.

“Warren,”
Marianne said, then switched back to Karst, “Is he doing drugs again?”

“I didn’t know he could find drugs here,” I said.

“Some people can find drugs anywhere.”

“Fortunately, they can’t reduce his rank if the Barcons test him out positive.”

Marianne, not commenting, bent down and nibbled Karl’s belly.

A Jerek sterile, fur patchy as if she’d been in combat recently, came up to me when I went down to the Gwyng store. “Red Clay,” she said, looking around, the T of face skin wrinkled, flaking around the nose, “Warren wants to see you.” She didn’t wear leather loin straps, but instead, canvas, some sort of synthetic fiber.

“You want to take me to him.”

“Yes.”

I’d thought that Warren didn’t find the Jerek steriles sexually attractive, but now he was hanging out with one.

“Let me call Marianne.”

“Don’t.”

“I have to.”

“The medical beasts.”

Come on, I thought, he only thinks he’s hiding from them. “How long will this, take?”