Human to Human (17 page)

The morning after I killed Hurdai, I woke up to find that my hands ached. Was that psychological, or had I sprained my fingers on Hurdai’s throat? I went to my terminal and read:
GO TO RECTOR’S OFFICES AT 10:30 AM TESSERACT, RECTOR’S MAN
.

For several years now, I hadn’t seen Tesseract for more than a few minutes here and there. He was the first Ahram and second alien species that I’d met ever, one of the darker Southern Ahrams I found out later, with a very prominent crest, huge body, jaw like an
Australopithecus robustus.
Weird that he’d counsel me on the killing, I thought, when I haven’t kept in real touch with him.

And an odd hour to schedule the meeting—not so soon that I could get it over with and go to the rest of my day. The wait made me nervous, was designed, I suspected, to do precisely that. I ran cold water over my fingers, flexing them.

Then I went in to check on Cadmium, who was sleeping under a light sheet in a cool room. The Gwyngs downstairs suggested that we let him hibernate at least a week, put time between him and Rhyodolite’s shattered skull. Cadmium looked dead, but the biomonitor on his wrist showed he had a temperature five degrees over the room temperature and a pulse of eight beats a minute.

Nothing I can do here, I thought, as I looked down on him, the eyelids slightly open, his blond-streaked hair rumpled, something dark on his head where he fell. Oil maybe, or dirt, not something to wash off right now. Not something that would kill him.

Would the heat from my hand bother him if I touched him? Then I wondered if just being near him I would radiate enough heat to rouse him. By his bed was a heater and a flagon of olive oil. He’d burn considerable fat coming out of hibernation.

“Take care of yourself,” I said softly, then went to the back room for breakfast. Marianne, Molly, and Chi’ursemisa sat eating; the boys were gone. They all looked up at me, and I wondered if being female brought creatures more together than species itself.

“I go in to talk to Tesseract at ten-thirty,” I said, giving the Karst One equivalent time.

Chi’ursemisa said, “I need to talk to Drusah.”

Marianne spoke to her in Sharwanisa, touched her wrist bone gently…

“I’ve got a long wait,” I said, going to
the stove and fixing scrambled eggs and toast. The Federation had not wanted Terran yeast here at first, but we finally got it in so we could bake. I thought about the Tibetans and centuries of no bread. “Tesseract told me
I
was one test of humans. Yangchenla’s family was another. I guess I failed.”

“Hurdai,” Chi’ursemisa said. Her voice jerked when she said that. “Our lives in your house paralleled the war outside.”

I wondered if it would be better for all of us if Chi’ursemisa and Daiur left. “Sorry,” I said. A flash of Rhyodolite’s empty skull, face blown away, hit me. Not that sorry, Chi’ursemisa, but….

It was the local equivalent of eight-thirty. I wished I had something to plug into my brain to blank me until ten-thirty. I asked, “Chi’ursemisa, do you need to talk?”

“I will.”

Marianne said, “Daiur’s taking it well.”

“Not really,” Chi’ursemisa said. “Sorry, Tom.”

I wondered what I’d do if Daiur hurt Karl. Karl was bigger, so unless Daiur got his hands on a gun…. The image was incongruous: fuzzy little golden Daiur with a big black pistol, both his little hands wrapped around it. But not funny. I shuddered slightly, utterly unwilling to admit out loud to envisioning that.

Chi’ursemisa said, “It is terrible to wait.”

I felt worse—they’d waited months behind the polycarbonate. I looked up at Chi’ursemisa’s yellow eyes. The iris muscles flexed, and her pupils expanded.
Don’t be happy to see me, Chi’ursemisa.

“Well, I won’t sit waiting around here. I’ll walk over there. That should take some time.”

“Catch a bus rather than be late,” Marianne said. Molly’s lips twisted, then she looked over at Chi’ursemisa, and her chin jerked slightly.

“I’ve got to leave now if I’m going to walk.”

Marianne said, “I’ll go with you to the elevator.”

While we waited for the elevator to come up, I kissed Marianne on the mouth. Her tongue came out a bit but didn’t play. We looked at each other, then she kissed me on the forehead the way she kissed Karl. The elevator door slid down, and I, suddenly very lonely, got on.

Today the sky outside was gray. Tonight it would rain, maybe sooner as the weather effects aren’t absolutely predictable. I hadn’t gotten two blocks before a Jerek and a Barcon stopped me, ran a computer detector against my ear.

The Barcon said, “You really are Red Clay.”

“Wriggle your nose,” I said to him

He did—really a Barcon. The Jerk looked at a screen and said, “This isn’t the best idea, walking.”

“I have a counseling appointment at ten-thirty,” I said.

They looked at each other, then the Barcon said, “Take the bus and walk around the Academy.”

“You mean I’m not safe here?”

“I haven’t accounted for all Sharwani body traces in the last glider,” the Barcon said.

“We can walk him,” the Jerek said.

The Barcon began pulling his wrist hair. Maybe I should take the bus, I thought, and see if I could talk to Black Amber before I went in to see Tesseract. “Yes,” the Barcon said, “we could walk with him.”

So we continued down the street. I felt strange, almost juvenile again, caught being bad. The Jerek’s face skin wrinkled over his pointed nose when I looked at him.

We were passing the open-floored bird buildings, those of the olive and brown people like Travertine. The landscaping plants looked particularly happy under the clouds, bursting with green sap, huge leaves.

“They get too much light here,” the Barcon said.

“The plants?” I asked.

“And the birds. They complain that they never have to raise their feathers.”

We walked on through an area with some small shops and music clubs, some on terraces, some indicated with signs. “Wait,” the Jerek said. We stopped by a building with a sunken entrance connected to ground level with a ramp. The Jerek went down the ramp and came back with a sweet roll. That’s what it smelled and looked like. “Here,” he said to me, “the chemistry suits you, and I thought you might like to eat something.”

Because I was nervous. “Thanks,” I said. “Do most people like to eat when they’re nervous?”

The Barcon said, “Some like to sleep.”

Cadmium,
I thought. “We should have waited for the Control Squad,” I said.

They, being Control, didn’t say anything. I felt awkward again, and we walked on in silence by the shops that catered to the Institute and Academy students. I recognized the place where Granite Grit and I had seen I our first semi-illegal xenophobia movie. The Jerek saw me staring and lowered his nose slightly, then whistled softly—his laugh. The Barcon wriggled his nose, then rubbed it still with his hand.

We went in through the Academy gates and toward the Rector’s Offices. I checked the time—I had to be there in about ten minutes. The little Jerek male sat down on one of the ancient war-melted chunks of wall and said, “Well, you can’t take a bus from here, so you’d better hurry.” He rubbed his legs and wrinkled his face skin, then said something to the Barcon.

“Thanks for walking with me,” I said.

“We thought it would be wise,” the Barcon said, and I realized then that they’d been waiting for me, that probably another Control pair had watched the bus, or been on it. I must have looked a bit hurt, because he said, “And we did want to make sure you were our Red Clay.”

I said, “Thank you” more formally and hurried away toward the tower that was closest to the Rector’s Offices. When I could see the white tile front and the chrome pillars of the building itself, I slowed down until I was breathing normally and then went in.

Black Amber came down the stairs into the entrance hall with two Barcons as though I’d been announced. She looked old now,
stooped,
the webs more wrinkled. One eye pupil was slightly greyed. A cataract? She came up and ran her furred knuckles down my upper arm. The nails were thick, crumbling like an old woman’s toenails. Had I just not noticed before?

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“The Bird Rector brought the killing to us.”

She and the Barcons turned to go with me up the stairs. Did Tesseract have the same offices? How many years had it been since I came here with Granite Grit when we were both cadets? More than thirteen years. Karl was eight, almost nine, now. Suddenly, the past shrank behind me—not a kid anymore, my elders were old. Before I walked in here, I knew I was thirty-four, but I’d forgotten that I’d spent all of my adult life with aliens. Fourteen years of good service, and now this.

A Gwyng said, “Tesseract and Karriaagzh will see you now, Red-Clay.”

I looked at Black Amber; she’d gone glassy-eyed. Stiffly she turned and went away. The other Gwyng opened the door into Tesseract’s office. Karriaagzh stood beside Tesseract’s desk; Tesseract sat behind it.

Tesseract said, “Well, Tom.” He, too, looked much older. His face had wrinkled slightly, and the skin over the skull crest seemed looser. Had the muscles in the crest shrunk?

I bowed my head slightly and said, “Rector’s Man, Tesseract and Rector Karriaagzh.” Tesseract looked first at Karriaagzh, who settled down on a suede leather mat, then at me. I realized as I watched his face go impassive that he had little love for human beings, that I’d been his charge once, and now I’d killed. The Federation didn’t approve of killing sapients, and my kind had a bad rep for doing precisely that.

Karriaagzh said, “Chi’ursemisa said she would have had to kill Hurdai if you hadn’t.”

I said, honestly, “I feel terrible about killing him, but when the control box didn’t work…we should have waited for control.”

Tesseract sighed and put three different tea bags in as many cups, one a bird cup. On the bag he’d taken out of one, I saw a transliteration for
human
and a number code. Would this tea melt the truth out, both what a human was willing to admit to himself and what he lied to himself about? Karriaagzh pulled his head back and looked at Tesseract before taking his spouted bird cup like a miniature teacup. Could, would a Rector be questioned under drugs? What all was this about?

We sat for a minute, letting the brews steep. Then I took my cup and sipped the bitter tea out of it—alkaloids, not as hot as I’d expected. Karriaagzh ruffled his headfeathers, put his cup down, then picked it back up and drained it in one swallow.

Tesseract shifted his gaze to me and sipped from his own cup. The cups, made of a heat-sink material, had been prechilled just enough to cool the tea after the minute of brewing. I wondered how fast-acting these alkaloids would be.

Man enough to take me.
Tesseract had never trusted humans. My fond memories of him were a joke. I looked into Karriaagzh’s yellow eyes with the bone ridges over them, then at Tesseract’s bone skull crest with the age-atrophied muscles running down across his skull to his jaws. Then I seemed to move out of my body and saw myself sitting there with them, imagined it, perhaps. A small nervous creature who killed. Kills. Like the Sharwani. Tesseract put his teacup down and looked over at Karriaagzh, then pushed a button on his desk.

Karriaagzh was swaying slightly. Another Ahram, Warst Runnel of the History Committee, entered followed by a young female Gwyng, not Wy’um, Black Amber’s now dead lover, but his replacement on the Committee. The Gwyng’s feet twisted as she walked.

Tesseract said, “Red Clay, were you furious when you strangled Hurdai?”

I said, “He killed Rhyodolite. I couldn’t stop him.”

Who was Hurdai? Not
what
was Hurdai, but who inside? We’d captured him, held him prisoner with sensory deprivation—that plastic slab, that bare room. His mate didn’t support him; his child was seduced into playing with killer apes. “I feel sorry for him now, but you aren’t fair.”

How so not?
Warst Runnel looked at Tesseract, then back at me, brow wrinkles going at steeper angles than they did on human faces. I remembered Alex in Berkeley, trapped in human form without his skull crest. Once humans made contact with the Federation, we’d turn him over to the humans. It wasn’t fair. “You sacrifice us for History Committee goals.” But then I left Earth, hostile to my own kind as Alex had pointed out. “I don’t know.”

Tesseract wrote something on his pad, then said, “Karriaagzh, Black Amber said she would see your position as less hypocritical if we contacted your own people again.”

“You allowed my former people to turn you down. They were wrong, but…”

“Tom, do you know anything about Black Amber’s travels?”

“No,” I said.

“So you weren’t under any special strain,” Tesseract said. “She taken some long normal-space flights recently. Or so we were told. Red Clay, you claim not to know anything about those?”

“No.” And why were they asking me?

The new Gwyng History Committee person said, “Red Clay/Rector Bird/parallel species self-hate (more excusable in Red Clay). Must cure both.”