by Geoff Rodkey
“I do not think this is a good idea,” said Leeni. “The television will only make you emotional.”
Mom ignored Leeni’s advice. We all sat on the couch and watched the broadcast again. To be fair, Leeni was right—it was the fourth or fifth time I’d seen it, and every time I did, the report made me more upset and angry.
“That last clip isn’t even real!” I told Leeni when it was over. “It was from a movie!”
“What is a movie?” Leeni asked me.
“It’s entertainment. A made-up story. For fun. That clip of the woman getting killed was totally fake! She was an actor—she didn’t even get hurt in real life!”
Leeni fixed his big compound eyes on me. “Humans find it entertaining to watch each other die in horrible ways? That is fun for you?”
When he put it that way, I did have to admit it sounded a little questionable.
“Leeni,” Mom said in her most calm, gentle, I’m begging you to help us voice, “this news report does not tell the full truth about humans. It’s not even the full truth of what happened today. Kalil was innocent—the supervisor attacked him. And outside my workplace, hundreds of Zhuri protestors screamed horrible things and tried to spit venom at me as I came and went. Why does your television not show any of this?”
“The Executive Division believes it is not responsible to show disagreement by Zhuri on television,” Leeni said. “It causes emotion.”
Hearing that, Ila blew up. “What the—”
“Ila, please.” Mom reached out a hand to settle her down.
Even though I kept my mouth shut, I was every bit as upset as my sister. It wasn’t that I thought humans weren’t violent at all. We had a bad side—I’d seen it myself during those last hours on Earth and even after that, when the food riot happened on Mars. But we weren’t all bad. We had a good side too. And it was infuriating to get called violent and primitive by a bunch of people who’d attacked us in a mob the second we set foot on their planet, then tried to pretend they were the peaceful ones.
Mom was mad too. But she kept her voice low and steady. “Leeni, if I saw these images and knew nothing else about humans, I would fear us too. Do you see how unfair this is? How the television is creating this fear and hatred?”
Leeni rubbed his wings together awkwardly. “I agree the television does not seem to show a complete picture of the human.”
“How can we change this? Can we appear on this program and explain ourselves?”
“I am sorry,” Leeni said. “The Executive Division controls the television news.”
“Can we ask someone in the Executive Division about doing an interview?”
“The Immigration Division has made this request several times. The answer was no.”
“Isn’t there some way we can change their minds?”
“I am sorry,” Leeni repeated. “The Immigration Division has discussed this at great length with the Executive Division. Their choices about how to portray the human on television will not change. But…”
He stopped talking, pressing his wings together so hard that I could hear them scratch against each other.
“But what?” Mom asked.
Instead of answering, Leeni flitted to the door. “I am sorry—I must leave now.” He turned to look back at Dad. “I hope your injury heals quickly, Kalil. And I wish you all a peaceful evening.”
Then he left, briefly letting in the “HUMANS GO HOME!” whine of the distant protestors before the door shut behind him.
“What do you make of that ‘but’?” Mom asked us.
Ila was sitting next to Dad, her hand on his back. She snorted. “What does it matter? Look what they did to Dad!”
“Ish not sho bahd,” he slurred.
“Yes, it is!” Ila insisted. “Listen to the TV: ‘Everyone agrees’ they’re going to kick us out of here! They hate us!”
Mom shook her head. “Not all of them. When they say ‘everyone agrees,’ it’s not true. They don’t all agree. They’re just afraid to disagree out loud. I had a Zhuri coworker today who was, like…” Mom deepened her voice, imitating a Zhuri translation. “ ‘Everyone agrees the human cannot stay!’ But when the others weren’t around, he was like”—she lowered her voice to a half whisper—“ ‘but some people think they can.’ ”
“My teacher’s like that,” I said. “He’s really nice to me—but he’s quiet about it, like he doesn’t want people to hear him. And he said the same thing today: ‘Some people think humans can be peaceful.’ ”
“The question is,” Mom asked, “how many people think that?”
Ila shook her head. “No. The question is, why does it matter what a couple of people are whispering to us when hundreds of them scream ‘Humans go home!’ every time we leave the house?”
“It matters,” Mom said in a firm voice, “because we have to start somewhere. We can make this work. I know we can.”
* * *
—
MOM’S CONFIDENCE MADE me feel a lot better than Ila’s doom and gloom. It had been a long, sometimes horrible day, and it took me forever to fall asleep that night. But every time one of the bad moments raced across my mind—the screaming protestors, the awful question-and-answer session in class, Dad’s injury, the TV news—I forced myself to be positive like Mom, and to think about one of the good things instead. The principal’s welcome, my teacher’s quiet encouragement, Iruu’s kindness when Ila was freaking out, the weird but mostly friendly visit from Marf and Ezger…I didn’t know what they all added up to, but it had to be something.
Mom was right: it was a start. I just had to stay as positive as she was.
I lay awake so long that eventually I had to get up and pee. When I got to the bathroom, the door was locked, and I could hear muffled sobbing on the other side.
I knocked hard on the door. I was about to open my mouth and yell, Ila! Go bawl in your own room!
But then a voice answered my knock, and it wasn’t Ila’s.
“Just a minute!” I heard Mom say, sounding ragged and embarrassed.
I stood there in the hallway for a moment, too stunned to answer. Then I scooted back to bed as fast as I could. A minute later, I heard my door open softly.
“Lan…?” Mom whispered.
I pretended I was asleep, and she tiptoed away. I knew she’d come to try to make me feel better, but I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted to forget the sound of her sobs coming through the door.
The trouble was, I couldn’t.
THE NEXT MORNING, the swelling from Dad’s venom attack hadn’t gotten better. He couldn’t eat or open his left eye, so he stayed home from work.
Ila stayed with him. “Somebody has to take care of Dad,” she said, lying curled up on the couch as she watched a Krik cooking show.
“How are you going to take care of him when you’re lying on the couch?” I asked.
“I’ll get up in a minute.”
It seemed unlikely, but I didn’t want to make Mom and Dad upset by fighting with my sister. So I packed some Chow for lunch and went outside with Mom to wait for our pods.
“Get my screen back from that Ororo!” Ila snarled at me as we left.
“I’ll try!” Even though we had two spare screens, Ila was furious with me for letting Marf steal hers, because it had twenty Birdleys episodes and all her old Pop Singer performances on it. There were copies of them in the server library up on the transport, but the download speeds to Choom were lousy, and being separated from those Pop Singer clips of the greatest moments of her old life was making my sister even more crabby and difficult than usual. It made me suspect she was probably still watching them whenever she was alone, which was really irritating. Sulking over the past wasn’t going to help us win over the Zhuri, and we needed all the help we could get.
A few dozen protestors were out
side the fence at the far end of the subdivision. When they saw Mom and me walk onto the lawn, they started their “HUMANS GO HOME!” chant.
“Would you rather go back inside to wait?” Mom asked.
“It’s fine,” I said. “There aren’t enough of them to bother me. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it.”
Mom gave me a little hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for going to school today. I know it’s not easy doing it alone. And, hey, I’m sorry about—”
“So what’s your job like?” I blurted out. I knew by the sound of her voice that she was about to bring up the bathroom incident, and I didn’t want to go there.
“Hmm? Oh. It’s pretty unpleasant. They’ve got me working in a morgue.”
“Is that as bad as it sounds?”
Mom let out a dry chuckle. “It might be worse. But I’m not complaining.” She looked up at the green sky. “There’s a thousand humans up there, counting on us to help them get off that ship. That’s what really matters right now.”
“I owe Naya a video,” I said.
“You can talk to her live when they’re on this side of the planet. Just make sure you stay positive.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t want to talk to her live.”
“Hey, Lan: I want to explain—”
“It’s okay, Mom. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“We do, though. I’m sorry about last night. I was having a…less-than-brave moment. And I’m sure it was scary for you to hear that. But do you remember what I said to you when we got on the shuttle to come here?”
“ ‘Buckle your seat belt’?”
“Probably that too…But I told you it’s okay to be scared. And we can be scared and brave at the same time. That’s true for all of us. This is a frightening situation. If we weren’t afraid, we’d be doing it wrong. And sometimes that fear seems overwhelming, even to me. But it’s not. We can do this. We just need courage. And courage doesn’t mean we ignore our fear. It just means we move through it. Okay?”
“I am not afraid,” I said. “ ‘Everyone agrees’ I am not afraid at all, Mom human.”
She smirked. “ ‘Some people think’ you are afraid, Lan human.”
“ ‘Everyone agrees’ that is not true. I am not making a fear smell. I just have bad gas.”
She hugged me tight. “I love you, kid.”
“I love you too. Quit hogging the bathroom at night.”
* * *
—
THE PODS SHOWED up, and I said goodbye to Mom. When I got on mine, there were two guards inside.
“Good morning, sirs.” I gave them a halfhearted smile. It was getting harder to stay golden-retriever friendly all the time.
“Where is the other human?”
“She’s not coming to school today.”
After they found out only one human needed guarding, they spent the rest of the pod trip arguing about which one of them should get the rest of the day off. It was pretty amusing to listen to—since there were only two of them, nobody could play the “everyone agrees” card, so the argument went on forever.
* * *
—
HOOREE AND IRUU met me just inside the school lobby. When Iruu found out Ila wasn’t coming, he looked disappointed. Hooree was just offended.
“This is very rude of your sibling,” he said. “Attending school is a great honor. She insults us by staying home.”
“Speaking of insults…” My voice trembled a little with nerves, but I’d already decided I had to call him out on his interview. “I saw you call me primitive on the TV yesterday.”
“That is not an insult,” he told me. “It is the truth.”
My heart thumped faster. “I don’t think I’m primitive. I think I’m just new here.”
“If you can’t even understand fum, you are definitely primitive.”
Iruu rubbed his wings together like he had a bad itch. “Everyone agrees we should get along,” he whined.
I felt my face turn hot. No matter how bad Hooree was, fighting with one of the only Zhuri who was willing to talk to me was probably a stupid move. “I agree!” I said, trying to smile. “I am sorry if I offended you, Hooree.”
He ignored the apology. “Do not make me late to class,” he said. Then he turned and flitted off.
“Have a nice day, Iruu!” I yelled over my shoulder as I ran to catch up with my jerk of an escort. The guard who’d lost the argument in the pod followed me down the hallway. So did the stink of fear. It wasn’t as bad as it had been on the first day, but it seemed like every Zhuri kid I passed let off at least a little of it.
Hooree moved so quickly that I almost lost sight of him in the crowd. I picked up my pace to a trot, and when he ducked into our classroom, I followed him through the door a little too fast and wound up bumping into him.
“Do not touch me!” he shrieked, so loudly that the whole classroom turned to stare at us.
“I am so sorry!”
I backed away as fast as I could, tripped over an empty stool, and wound up crashing to the floor in a fall that I made even uglier by flailing my arms as I went down.
Zhuri voices erupted all around me.
“Did you see it?”
“Did you see the human fall?”
Before I could even stand up, a smell hit my nose—the same sugary, baked-doughnut scent that I’d caught a whiff of from Iruu when I’d imitated a Nug before the dinner party.
“Are you injured, Lan human?” Yurinuri flitted over to stare down at me with what must’ve been concern.
“I am fine!” I scrambled to my feet and managed a smile. “I am sorry if I caused a problem!”
“Accidents are never a problem,” said Yurinuri. Then he swiveled his head back and forth to take in the whole class. “Clear the air, children,” he said. “Everyone agrees smell is not polite.”
A moment later, I was in my seat, and the doughnut smell was gone, leaving me to wonder what the heck it meant.
It seemed like they’d been laughing at me. Was that possible? Did the Zhuri laugh? Hooree and Leeni had both said people should not make jokes. But Iruu had said that some people thought it was okay. And Marf had said that only the Zhuri government didn’t like jokes. Maybe that meant some of the Zhuri did like jokes?
And that doughnut smell meant they were laughing?
The lesson started, and I had to quit wondering about the smell, because I was too busy trying to figure out what Yurinuri was trying to teach us. It had something to do with urm, which he said should be easy to understand, because it was “the companion of fum.”
Since I had no idea what fum was, this didn’t really help.
After a while, Yurinuri started writing what must’ve been equations on the wall screen, then asking kids to come up and solve them using a laser marker. It was entertaining to watch, because all the Zhuri kids acted the same way. They’d lope up to the front of the class with their bendy-legged, absurd-looking walk, then shake their heads in a little wriggle before they started to scratch out an answer.
If they got the answer right, Yurinuri congratulated them. As they bounced back to their stools, their wings would twitch, and they’d flit up a few inches off the floor in what I guessed was either pride or happiness. But when they got the answer wrong, Yurinuri would thank them for trying, and they’d hang their heads as they silly-walked back to their seats.
Watching the Zhuri kids, I felt a weird urge to imitate them. But I wasn’t sure anybody would get the joke. And even if they did, I wasn’t sure if they’d appreciate it. Would any of them laugh? Or would they just get offended?
I didn’t know. There was so much I didn’t know.
* * *
—
WHEN YURINURI DISMISSED us for lunch, I tagged after Hooree to ask him about the smell.
“They should not have made smell. It was very rude of them.”
“But what was it?”
“I told you. It was rude!”
“I know. But I mean, what kind of emotion were they making?”
“The only thing more rude than making smell,” Hooree said in an even higher-pitched whine than usual, “is talking about smell.”
As we approached the lunchroom, I started to worry about what would happen when I saw Marf. She’d stolen Ila’s screen, and I needed to get it back. But what if she denied stealing it? What if I confronted her and she attacked me? She didn’t seem violent, but even her friend Ezger said she was a criminal. What if she sat on me? Or told Ezger to bite my head off?
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry. Marf and Ezger were waiting for me in the corner where I’d eaten lunch with Ila the day before. As I walked over to them with Hooree, Marf held up Ila’s screen for me to take.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I accidentally left your house while holding this in my hand.”
“That was not an accident!” Ezger snarled at her. “You stole it.”
“Be quiet, Ezger. I am trying to be polite.”
“I’m just glad I got it back. Thank you for bringing it to me!” I put Ila’s screen in my bag, pulled out my lunch, and sat down next to Marf. She was taking up four Zhuri-sized stools.
Hooree stared at Marf with his giant compound eyes. “You went to the human’s home?”
“Yes,” said Marf. “We are plotting a very daring robbery of Choom’s largest bank.”
Choom has banks? I thought as Hooree drew his head back in what looked like horror.
“It’s not true!” I said quickly. “She’s just making a joke.”
“People should not make jokes,” Hooree whined. “It causes smell.”
“I don’t make smells,” Marf told him. “And people should not sit near me if they don’t like jokes. Because I tell a lot of them.”
