by Geoff Rodkey
Our translators had converted the whole conversation for the soldiers to hear. One of them finally spoke.
“The fence will not break,” he said. “The gathering is very small.”
“See?” I told my sister. She just shook her head and grimaced.
There were at least a hundred Zhuri, but they weren’t as riled up as the ones at the airport, because none of them hit the screen and got zapped as we stepped out of the pod and walked to the building. Even so, their shrieks were so loud and angry that I felt shaky with fear as we approached the huge front door, where three Zhuri were waiting for us.
Two of them turned out to be Hooree and Iruu. The third, much taller one introduced himself as “Hiyew, the chief educator of the Iseeyii Interspecies Academy.” I figured that meant he was the principal.
“Welcome,” the principal said over the shrieks of the protestors. “The mission of Iseeyii is to promote peace and agreement among all species. We are eager to have the human join us. Please, come inside.”
After Ila and I gushed our thanks, and I smiled so big that I practically sprained a muscle in my cheek, we followed him into the building.
The armed soldiers walked in behind us. They stood just a couple of feet from Ila and me, prong weapons at their sides, as the principal pointed out his office just off the big honeycomb-shaped lobby.
“Hooree and Iruu will be your guides until you no longer need them,” he said. “If you have problems they cannot solve, please come to my office. I will be happy to help you at any time. Everyone agrees you are valued members of our community, and some people think you may contribute greatly to our common education. Do you have questions?”
“No, sir,” said Ila.
“No, sir!” I chimed in. “Thank you! We are very excited to learn, and to meet our fellow students!”
I cringed a little inside after I said it. There was a fine line between incredibly friendly and just plain annoying, and I was pretty sure I’d landed on the wrong side of it. But the principal just nodded.
“I am very glad to hear this. Iruu and Hooree will escort you to your classes now. They have already begun, so you should go quickly.”
“Yes, sir! Thank you!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll see you soon,” I told Ila as I gave her an awkward goodbye hug. We’d never really been the hugging types, but she looked like she needed it—and even though she stiffened up for an instant, she quickly relaxed and hugged me back. Then she followed Iruu down one of the two wide hallways leading out of the lobby, while I went with Hooree down the other.
The soldiers split up, with one following each of us. Apparently, we were going to have bodyguards while we were in school. I wondered if they were supposed to protect us from the Zhuri, or to protect the Zhuri from us.
The hallway was open all the way to the skylit roof, three stories above. On the upper two floors, I saw narrow hallways on each side, lined with honeycomb-shaped doors to what I guessed were classrooms. The place might have reminded me of a shopping mall, but with an armed guard at my heels, it seemed more like a prison.
I had to practically run to keep up with Hooree. His wings were flitting in a sort of half walk, half fly.
“This is a very nice school!” I told him.
“Please move faster,” he said in his crabby-old-lady voice. “Our class has started.”
Two-thirds of the way down the hall, he stopped at a door and led me inside.
I wound up in the back corner of a room full of about thirty students, all sitting on stools and holding screens. Most of them were Zhuri, but along the back wall, five Krik sat in a row.
The Zhuri teacher stood at the front of the room, using some kind of laser marker to add to a jumble of unreadable writing on a big wall-mounted screen. When he saw us enter, he stopped writing.
“Welcome to Education Room Six None Six,” he said. “I am Learning Specialist Yurinuri. Please, human—sit down.”
“Thank you, sir!”
I looked around for a seat. Hooree had already taken one, blending into the group so fast that I was no longer sure which one he was. The soldier stood against the wall next to the door. I only saw one empty stool, near the middle of the room.
I walked over to it, trying to ignore the stink of fear rising up from my new classmates. When I sat down, I heard the skrrrrtch of stool legs scraping the floor as they all tried to move as far away from me as possible.
By the time they stopped, there was about six feet of no-man’s-land surrounding me in every direction, and the rest of the class was crammed elbow to elbow along the walls.
The sour-milk smell was getting heavier by the second. So far, this wasn’t going very well.
Yurinuri stared at me with his unblinking eyes. “How do you wish to be called, human?”
It took me a second to understand what he was asking. “My name is Lan Mifune!” I told him, grinning like an idiot.
“Lan Mifune. Very good: Room Six None Six, please welcome the Lan Mifune to our group.”
“WELCOME, THE LAN MIFUNE,” everybody said.
“Please, Room Six None Six—clear the air of your smell. Everyone agrees there is nothing to fear from the Lan Mifune. Move back into the middle of the room.” Yurinuri gestured with his hands for the Zhuri kids to get closer to me.
There was a lot skrrrtch-ing as everybody made a show of pushing their stools closer. But by the time they were finished, I still had several feet of empty space around me.
Yurinuri’s head swiveled as he looked around the class. “I think it is best,” he said, “if we give the Lan Mifune a chance to tell us more about itself. Since none of us has ever seen a human except on our television screens, I am sure we have many questions for it. Lan Mifune, do you agree to this?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Good.” He beckoned to me with his long, sticklike arm. “Please come to the front of the room.”
I got up and walked over to stand next to him, facing the class. The group was shaped like a horseshoe, with the Zhuri in two thick clumps on either side and the Krik along the back wall. My stool sat alone in the empty center of the horseshoe.
“Tell us about yourself,” Yurinuri told me.
They all stared at me with their alien eyes: the Zhuri’s huge and unblinking, the Krik’s red and fierce. My stomach felt like there was a black hole in it, sucking up all my energy.
“My name is Lan,” I said, trying to smile through my fear. “I used to live on a planet called Earth. But humans can’t live there anymore. So we’re, um, hoping we can live on Choom. We are very peaceful! And we, um, want to agree with you!”
The Zhuri seemed big on “agreement,” so I figured I’d throw it in. After that, I didn’t know what else to say.
I was also getting dizzy, because I’d forgotten to breathe. I tried to smile while I took a few deep breaths.
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
Finally the teacher rescued me. “Does anyone have questions for the Lan?” he asked. “I am sure you all want to know more about the human.”
One of the Krik at the back of the room raised his hand. I pointed to her. “RZZZRR GRZZZZR?” she growled as my translator beeped the “unknown language” warning.
“Arkzer, that question is not appropriate,” Yurinuri scolded the Krik.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My translator doesn’t understand Krik accents. What was the question?”
“It is not important,” Yurinuri said.
“I’m happy to answer anything!” I said, trying to seem cheerful.
“She asked what you tasted like.”
Oh geez. The Krik who’d asked the question had teeth like razors, and she seemed to be drooling with hunger. My heart started to race even faster.
“Oh! Wow. I do not taste good. D
efinitely not. Especially my feet. Like, these shoes I’m wearing? They belonged to, like, five other people before me. And they smell horrible. So do my feet. So…yeah. Not good eating. At all.”
I was trying to be funny. Then I remembered the Zhuri didn’t like jokes.
Oh geez.
“I have a question,” Yurinuri said. “The part of you that smells bad and is not yours—what was that word again?”
“My shoes?”
“Yes. What are shoes?”
“Oh!” I pointed to my dirty blue running shoes. I’d gotten them from the clothing exchange, and they were so old that the soles were coming apart. “These are shoes. They’re like clothing for your feet.”
“Do all humans wear shoes?” Yurinuri asked.
“Most of them.”
A Zhuri kid raised his hand. “What is clothing?”
“Oh—it’s, um, the things we wear on our bodies.” I plucked at my shirt and pants to illustrate. “Like, this is clothing.”
“Do all humans wear clothing?”
“Most of the time, yeah.”
“Why?”
“They, um, keep us warm. And we like to cover our…private parts. And, uh, we think it looks good.”
“It does not look good,” the Zhuri kid told me.
“Oh. Okay! Thank you for your feedback!”
Several hands had gone up. I pointed to one of them.
“How do you make your body garbage?”
Oh geez. I didn’t expect that to come up.
“We have, uh…holes. Down below. Like I think the Ororo do? And maybe the Krik have them too?”
Another hand. “Can we see the holes?”
My face turned hot. “No! I’m sorry. That’s kind of why we wear clothes. Because humans don’t like to, um…it’s private. Do you have privacy? Do you know what I mean by that?”
They looked at each other and whispered.
“We have secrets,” says Yurinuri. “Is that what you mean?”
“Kind of? But it’s, um…it’s different. Never mind!” I tried to remember to smile.
Another hand went up. The Zhuri pointed between his eyes. “Are the holes in your face for body garbage?”
“What? No…” I pointed to my nose. “These are for smelling things.”
“Is that also how you make smell?”
“We don’t really make smell. Except…” For a moment, I wondered if I should explain farting. Then I decided that was probably a bad idea. “Um, no. We don’t.”
“You do not have a smell gland?”
“No. We don’t make smell. Not on purpose.”
They looked at each other and whispered.
“Students…,” Yurinuri warned. “Remember your manners.”
Another hand went up. “If you do not make smell, how do other humans know when you are having feelings?”
“They can see by our faces. Like, when we’re happy, we smile.” I gave them the biggest grin I could manage. “Or we just tell people how we feel. Like, we’ll say, ‘I’m sad.’ ”
“The Krik and Ororo also use facial expressions in this way,” Yurinuri reminded the Zhuri kids, gesturing toward the cluster of Krik students in the back. A few of the Krik nodded, but it didn’t seem to make me any less strange to the Zhuri kids. They were still staring at each other and muttering as they shook their heads.
One of the Krik had his hand up. “BZZRLZRRR?”
I looked at Yurinuri.
“What do you eat?” he translated.
“Oh! We used to eat a lot of different things,” I tell the Krik. “But lately we’ve just, um, been eating this one thing? Because we ran out of everything else. But—oh! We love Ororo food!”
The Zhuri all drew their heads back like they were disgusted. All five of the Krik had their hands up. As I called on them, Yurinuri translated.
“GZZRREE?”
“Is the thing you eat alive?”
“No.”
“HRRZZZRR?”
“Is it an animal?”
“No.”
“HRZR MZZRZR?”
“Do you eat Ororo?”
“No!”
“MRRRZZR HHRR?”
“Do you eat other humans?”
“No! We definitely do not eat other humans.” The Krik were all waving their hands in the air. It was a little terrifying how interested they were in talking about eating people. I glanced over at the soldier near the door, hoping he was close enough to step in if somebody tried to eat me.
He didn’t seem to be paying much attention. Fortunately, there was a Zhuri in the front row with his hand up, so I called on him next instead of another Krik.
“Hi! Yes…?”
“Why do you kill other humans?”
The question felt like a punch in the stomach.
“I don’t,” I said. “I’ve never killed anybody.”
“But all humans kill,” the Zhuri kid said.
“No, they don’t.”
The sour-milk smell of fear was spiking up again.
“Yes, they do. I have seen it on television.”
I could feel myself getting shaky. “No,” I said. “Most humans are peaceful.”
I tried to smile, but my face wouldn’t cooperate.
Another hand went up. “How can you be peaceful when you destroyed your whole planet?”
“I didn’t—it wasn’t us! It was just a few bad people.” There was a lump rising in my throat. I hadn’t cried about Earth in ages, and I definitely didn’t want to start again now.
“Why did you let them do it?”
“We didn’t—they just—they had powerful weapons, and—”
I stopped in mid-sentence and took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears.
Half the hands in the room were up now, and they all reeked of fear.
Not just fear. I smelled anger too.
“Children!” Yurinuri whined. “Clear the air! Everyone agrees there is no place for smell in this class.”
But the smell stayed, and the questions kept coming. “Did you bring your explosion weapons to our planet?”
“No! We don’t have any weapons! We’re peaceful!”
“When you lived on Earth, how many humans did you kill?”
I started to cry. I really, really didn’t want to. I couldn’t help it.
“I’ve never killed anyone!” I used the back of my hand to wipe the tears off my cheeks. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I’m peaceful! Humans are peaceful.”
“Children! Clear the air! Please!” Yurinuri scolded them. I looked over at him, my eyes begging for help.
“You seem to be a peaceful human,” he said. “When the other humans tried to kill you, how did you defend yourself?”
“No one—they didn’t—everyone who’s left is—” My mind suddenly flashed back to the food riot on Mars, when the angry mob showed up outside our living compartment and tried to bust down our door.
That opened the floodgates. I started to sob.
Quit crying! Get a grip! Make them like you!
I couldn’t help it. I was coming apart.
“Perhaps you should sit down now,” Yurinuri told me.
I stumbled back to my seat. My nose was running, I was still ugly-crying, and I had to wipe my nose with the bottom of my shirt, because I didn’t have anything else. As Yurinuri returned to the lesson he was teaching when we first walked in, I heard two kids whisper to each other somewhere off to my left:
“Look at the liquid on its face.”
“Is that how it makes its body garbage?”
AFTER I MANAGED to quit bawling, everybody ignored me for the rest of the three-hour morning lesson. I tried my best to pay attention, but I didn’t understand a thing. The lesson was about
something called fum, which I suspected was math-related, but my translator had no idea what it meant. The teacher repeated the word about fifty times, and each time, the translator just beeped helplessly with an “unknown word” message.
Eventually the lesson ended, and all the kids headed for the door for what I figured must be lunch. As I started to follow them, the teacher approached me.
“How was the lesson for you, Lan Mifune?”
“Good! Thank you, sir!”
“Did you understand it?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “But I’m sure I’ll understand more as time goes on, sir.”
“If you have questions, you may ask me.”
“Thank you, sir! I will do that!” The class had emptied out by then, except for my soldier and Hooree. They were both waiting by the door.
“I am sorry you became upset during the questions,” Yurinuri said. “In the future, I will try not to let that happen.”
“Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it.”
“Everyone agrees the human is violent,” Yurinuri said, and my stomach dropped a little. But then he lowered his voice and continued, “But some people think you can evolve to be peaceful.”
He seemed like he was trying not to let Hooree and the soldier hear him. I answered as quietly as I could. “I’m not violent, sir. I’ve never been violent. All the humans I know just want to live in peace.”
Whatever you do, don’t think about the food riot. I didn’t want to start bawling again.
Yurinuri lowered his voice even further. “As I said, some people think this is possible. Some even think the human has positive things to offer our society. I am wondering—do you wish to explain more to the class about the human? Perhaps you can make a presentation that will help us better understand your species.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir! I could definitely do that.”
“Good! I am happy to help. If you have questions, you can ask me when class is not in session.” Then he raised his voice to a normal level again. “Now—you should go to your midday nutrition! I am sorry to delay you and your guide.”
“Thank you, sir!”
* * *
—
WHEN WE EXITED the classroom, the long hallway was mostly empty. I could hear the whine of hundreds of Zhuri voices coming from the far end. Hooree led me toward the sound as the soldier tagged along behind us.
