by Geoff Rodkey
“Wait—is Leeni a ‘him’?” I asked. I’d been calling him “her” because of his squeaky-little-girl voice signature.
“I do not understand your question,” said Hooree.
“It’s like…in humans, there are mostly males and females,” I explained. “Males are ‘he,’ and females are ‘she.’ And, um…”
Iruu nodded. “When the male and the female mate, you reproduce, yes? The Ororo and Krik are also this way. But the Zhuri are not. Only our regents are female. The regents lay all the eggs for the hive. The rest of us are male.”
“That is very interesting!” I said. “Isn’t it, Ila?”
“Mmmm.” My sister had given up even trying to smile.
There was another awkward silence.
“How many people are in your hive?” I asked the Zhuri.
“Three thousand four hundred and seventeen,” said Hooree.
“That is a lot of people!” I said. “Is there a long line for the bathroom in the morning?”
Hooree and Iruu just stared at me. Then I remembered the Zhuri didn’t go to the bathroom.
“I’m sorry! I was trying to make a joke.”
“People should not make jokes,” said Hooree. “Everyone agrees jokes are not polite. They cause emotion.”
“I’m so sorry!” I repeated as my stomach did a flip-flop. “I didn’t know that.”
“It is true jokes are not polite,” said Iruu. “But some people think it is all right to make them sometimes.”
Hooree’s head swiveled to stare at the older Zhuri. “Who thinks this?”
“I do not know any of them personally,” said Iruu. “But I have heard that some people think this.”
“Those people are not correct,” Hooree insisted. “Making jokes is never all right. Everyone agrees this is true.”
I definitely liked Iruu a lot better than Hooree.
“Did Leeni say you go to a school?” I was surprised to hear Ila open her mouth without being told to do it.
“Yes,” Iruu replied. “We both attend the Iseeyii Interspecies Academy. It is the school where you would go if you were allowed to attend.”
“I would love to attend school!” I said, nodding my head excitedly. “I enjoy learning things and meeting new people!”
The Zhuri just stared at me, and I cringed inside. I was trying too hard.
Ila took a deep, shaky breath. “If we went to your school,” she asked in a trembling voice, “would the students spit venom on us?”
Both of the Zhuri drew their heads back. “Oh no!” said Iruu. “That would never happen. Making disagreement in that way is very bad. No one would ever do that to you.”
“They did do that to us,” Ila said. “When they swarmed us at the spaceport.”
“That was not a swarm!” Hooree whined. “It was an angry gathering!”
He and Iruu were both rubbing their wings together, which by now I’d figured out was Zhuri body language for This conversation is making us very uncomfortable.
“What’s the difference?”
“If it was a swarm, it would have been much worse,” Iruu told me. “But even so, everyone agrees what happened at the spaceport was very bad. And nothing like it would ever happen at our school.”
“If you are peaceful, there will be no problems,” said Hooree. “At Iseeyii, all three species study together without disagreement.”
“What happened to the fourth species?” I asked.
“There are only three,” Iruu told me. “The Zhuri, the Krik, and the Ororo.”
“But when we first talked to people on Choom, there were four. Those three, plus the Nug.”
Hooree and Iruu stared at each other. “I have never heard of this species,” said Iruu.
“It does not exist,” said Hooree.
“It did once,” I insisted. “Did you hear the adults? They were just talking about it. And I saw one in a video. It was really big and slippery, with this huge hole for a mouth. It moved like this”—I did my best imitation of a slithering Nug—“and it screeched, like ‘SKREEEEEEEEE!’ ”
Hooree backed away from me in what looked like horror, and his fear smell—which had been gradually fading away—suddenly came back.
But Iruu didn’t back away, and I caught a whiff of a different kind of smell coming from him. Unlike the gasoline anger and the sour-milk fear, this one wasn’t gross. It was actually pleasant—it had a sweet, almost tasty odor, like a fresh-baked doughnut.
Hooree shook his head. “You are wrong,” he told me. “If there was such a species, we would know about it.”
“That movement you made is very strange,” said Iruu. “Can you make it again?”
Before I could answer either of them, the front door opened. Dad called out:
“Kids! We’re sitting down to dinner now.”
* * *
—
I TRIED NOT to stare at the yeero plant flopping back and forth under the Krik’s hand as she pressed it against her plate to keep it from wriggling across the table. We’d all been served—there were ten different colors of Ororo food arranged in perfect cubes on my plate, and I couldn’t wait to dig into them—but we had to wait for the elderly chief servant to finish his speech about how important immigration was to Planet Choom.
All three of the drone cameras fixed their lenses on him from different angles as he spoke:
“Just as the Krik welcomed the Zhuri to Planet Choom one thousand and twelve years ago—and the Zhuri and Krik together invited the Ororo one hundred and ninety-six years ago—our Unified Government welcomes all species who seek refuge here. In return, we insist only that the refugees are peaceful and do not cause disagreement. Today we welcome the Mifune-Persaud human reproductive unit as temporary guests while we consider whether the human species can satisfy these conditions.”
Then it was Mom’s turn. She stood up, facing the chief servant across the table, and the drone cameras all turned to record her.
“We thank you, from deep in our hearts, for your kindness in welcoming us to Planet Choom. Following the darkest chapter in the history of the human species, your civilization is a light that has drawn us across the galaxy at your invitation. We wish only to live among you in peace, and to contribute in a positive way to Choom’s society.”
Sitting next to me—the Ororo-sized chairs were so wide that we were sharing one—Ila cleared her throat and shifted nervously. She’d agreed to sing for the group, and her big moment was coming up.
“As an example of the many gifts we have to offer,” Mom continued, “my eldest child, Ila, wishes to sing for you. Music is one of many human art forms that—”
“YEEEEEHEEEE—” The chief servant’s wings beat rapidly as he rose several inches off his chair, interrupting Mom in a harsh whine.
“TURN OFF THE CAMERAS.”
Along the far wall, the Zhuri in charge of the cameras flitted over to the control panel and hit a button. When he did, all three cameras fell from midair, clattering onto the floor.
“I am so sorry!” Mom said quickly. “Have I said something that offends you?”
The chief servant folded his wings, settling back into his seat. But the tone of his whining stayed harsh, and the smell of gasoline spread across the table. “You wish to force art upon us? We want nothing to do with art! Not yours, or anyone’s! The only purpose of art is emotion—and emotion is poisonous. Choom is a civilized society. We have evolved beyond such barbaric displays.”
Mom was so stunned that the smile left her face. “With all due respect,” she said, struggling to keep her voice pleasant and cheerful, “we believe some forms of art and emotion are very positive. In some cases, they represent all that is best in a species—”
“Nonsense!”
Mom somehow forced the smile back onto her face. “The Z
huri who first invited us here showed great interest in our art. They wished to—”
The chief servant interrupted again. “Those Zhuri were fools. They no longer lead us. And even they now agree that emotion leads only to chaos. In recent years, we have succeeded in removing all emotion from our society.”
The gasoline stink was rolling off him. I wondered how he could possibly say there was no emotion in Choom’s society when he reeked of anger himself.
Mom called him on it. She never stopped smiling, but her voice turned hard. “How is it that you claim to be free of emotion when hundreds of your people attacked us in a rage?”
“That was your emotion! The human caused that!”
The whine of his voice was getting much louder. Ila grabbed my hand under the table and squeezed it tight. When I glanced at her, she looked as worried as I felt.
“With all respect,” Mom replied, lowering and softening her own voice, “we did nothing to cause that. All we did was step off a ship.”
“Your very presence caused the emotion! And now you want us to open our workplaces and schools to you? To stir up still more emotion?”
The smell of anger was coming from more of them than just the chief servant now, and there was fear mixed in with it. I looked around at the Zhuri, wondering if one of them might puke venom on us at any second.
“Your government agreed to this,” Mom gently reminded the chief servant. “You invited us across a galaxy to work and study among you. We believe your people’s anger and fear is based on misunderstanding. We are only four humans. We have no weapons, and we pose no threat. If you let us enter your schools and workplaces, we believe your people will see for themselves that we are peaceful.”
The chief servant stared at Mom with his dead-spotted compound eyes. Then he turned to Hooree and Iruu, sitting on the far side of me.
“What do you say, children? What would you think if these humans attended your school?”
They both started to answer at once.
“I do not think they should—” Hooree began.
“It would be interesting to us!” said Iruu, talking over his classmate. “The presence of a new species would be educational. And the human children are quite weak. They cannot even fly. We are in agreement that they are no threat to us. Aren’t we, Hooree?”
“Of course, everyone agrees,” said Hooree in a low, defeated-sounding whine.
The chief servant turned to the Krik, who had gotten tired of waiting and had started to eat her wriggling vegetable. Her eyes were on her plate, and she didn’t seem to be listening to the conversation anymore.
“From the Krik perspective, what is your opinion about working alongside humans?”
The Krik looked up. Stray bits of tentacle slapped the outside of her mouth. Realizing she was being called on, she quickly swallowed.
“GZZRRRZZKKGZZRK.”
Nobody translated the Krik’s words for us. But the chief servant reared his head back like the Krik hadn’t told him what he wanted to hear. As they watched him, Leeni and the gruff-sounding Zhuri both rubbed their wings together nervously.
“The human has nothing that is useful to us,” the chief servant whined. “You are not as strong as the Krik, as clever as the Ororo, or as civilized as the Zhuri. If we allow you into our workplaces and schools, it will only be a waste of everyone’s time.”
“With all respect,” said Mom, “until we try, how can you know for sure? All we ask is that you give us a chance—the same chance you guaranteed us before we crossed the galaxy to come here. If the promises of your government have meaning, we beg you to honor them. Give us a chance.”
The old Zhuri picked up the glass of gray liquid that sat in front of him. He stuck his tubelike mouth into it and drained the whole thing with one long suck, making a loud slurpy noise at the end. Then he banged the empty glass down on the table. The anger smell was starting to fade.
“Very well,” he said. “The Unified Government honors its agreements, no matter how foolishly they were made. You will be assigned jobs that suit you, and your children may attend school. But everyone agrees this experiment will fail. As soon as it does, you will leave this planet forever.”
With that, he stood up and flitted out of the house.
The others followed him, although the Ororo tipped his plate into his mouth and ate his whole meal in one bite before standing up and waddling out. A minute later, the only nonhuman left in the house was Leeni.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I will send pods in the morning to take the children to school, and yourselves to your new workplaces.”
As I wondered if I should change Leeni’s voice signature in my translator to make him sound like a guy now that I knew he was male, Dad piped up. “May I ask a question?”
“Of course. It is my job to answer your questions.”
“What did that Krik say about working alongside humans?”
Leeni rubbed his wings. “She said that you seemed quite weak and helpless. And that if either of you caused problems, the Krik working with you could simply bite your heads off.”
Dad laughed nervously. “That was a joke, right?”
“It was not. Everyone agrees jokes should not be told. They cause emotion.”
My stomach did a flip-flop. For a planet that everybody claimed was peaceful, there seemed to be an awful lot of violence on Choom.
And so far, all of it was aimed at us.
“I DON’T WANT to go,” Ila told me.
“We have to go. And it’ll be good! Are you going to finish that purple stuff?” We were sitting at the table, eating Ororo leftovers for breakfast.
“Yes! Don’t touch it!” The purple stuff was everybody’s favorite.
My sister looked over to make sure Mom was still in the bathroom and couldn’t hear us, then shook her head. “It’s never going to work,” she said in a quiet voice. “They don’t want us here.”
“Some of them do,” I told her. “Those Zhuri kids yesterday were nice. One of them was, anyway. And we can win the rest of them over. We just have to be awesome.”
“What happens when they freak out and spit venom on us?”
“They won’t! They promised that wouldn’t happen at this school.”
“We got promised a lot of things that didn’t happen,” Ila muttered.
“Will you stop being so negative?” My sister was really getting on my nerves. I was plenty worried about going to school myself, but I felt like I couldn’t even mention it, because I’d just be giving her we’re all doomed act more ammunition.
Ila opened her mouth to fire back, but then Dad came out of the bedroom, and she held off. Like all of us, Dad had two sets of clothes. Unlike Ila and me, today he was wearing his more casual one—a faded blue T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts.
“Why the long faces? This is a big day!”
“Why aren’t you wearing your good clothes?” Ila asked.
“Because I got the sense they’re not exactly putting us in office jobs,” he said. “Besides, the Zhuri don’t wear clothes at all. They’re not going to get on my case for being underdressed. Is there any purple stuff left?”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Oh, come on!”
“There’s yellow stuff.”
“That’s almost as good. We’ve got to figure out how to get more of this food.”
I thought about making a Chow joke, but Dad was in a good mood, and I didn’t want to spoil it.
* * *
—
TWO PODS CAME at the same time, announcing their arrival with the usual thunderclap of the fence getting breached.
“What’s the point of having a fence if people can just fly through it?” I asked.
“They can’t,” Dad explained. “According to Leeni, the pods need some kind of clearance code to get thro
ugh. Otherwise the fence will shut down their electrical systems, and they’ll crash.”
Both of the pods were autopiloted, and they each had a pair of armed Zhuri soldiers waiting inside. Mom and Dad hugged us goodbye and reminded us to be our happiest, friendliest selves. Then Ila and I got into our pod. The interior was bland, plastic, and mostly empty, with benches along the walls that reminded me of a monorail I’d taken at an Earth airport once.
Ila and I said cheerful hellos to the two soldiers. They just stared at us in response, but I was relieved to see that my sister was at least trying to be friendly to the Zhuri. Then we flew off to school.
The flight took about fifteen minutes. Our subdivision must have been on the outskirts of the city, because when we started flying, there were lots of red lawns in between all the honeycomb-shaped beige buildings. As we kept going, the lawns got fewer and farther between, until finally there was almost no open ground anywhere. It was all low beige buildings, as far as we could see.
But then another red lawn came into view among the buildings, this one as big as a football field. Next to it was an equally huge three-story building. Our pod started to descend toward the big building, and there was a familiar, hair-raising BZZZZZT! as we passed through an electrical fence. It lit up in a blue half sphere that covered both the building and the giant field next to it.
After the fence lit up, there was a sudden blur of movement along one of the pathways just outside it, and I heard a familiar-sounding whine that made my stomach drop.
It was a swarm of Zhuri—or an “angry gathering,” whatever that meant. Our translators were already on in case the soldiers wanted to talk to us, and mine converted the crowd’s chant right away:
“HUMANS GO HOME! HUMANS GO HOME!”
“Oh no, no, no…” Ila put her hand over her eyes. “Not again—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “They’re on the other side of the fence.”
“The fences break!”
“This one won’t break,” I said, even though I had no idea if it was true. “We’ll be fine.”
