by Kate Moretti
“What is…?”
“Yes, as you can feel, I am not actually present. I hope this won’t affect the sacredness of your oath?”
Judy blushed then felt embarrassed about blushing, which, of course, caused her to turn even redder. It occurred to her that Dela was probably as bad at reading human body language as she was at reading alien, which made her stop blushing altogether.
“No, no, it’s fine. But what do you mean you’re not here?”
“I take it your planet has not yet developed holography?”
“Can’t say that we have. You mean you’re just transmitting your appearance, like a TV or a radio broadcast?”
There went that nose flare again. Judy decided it was a smile. At least it made her feel better to believe that it was.
“That is a very apt comparison.”
“Well, where are you actually?”
Dela’s hands darted to something that wasn’t there and pounded away as if she were working on a typewriter, though with some gestures and flourishes that didn’t seem to match any typewriter Judy had ever seen. She realized that the alien woman was working a machine in her real location. This was all so amazing. When she was finished, Dela held out the palm of her lower right hand, and a stunning image of the Earth appeared.
“Wooooow,” Judy whispered. “Is that what Earth looks like from space?”
“Indeed.”
“This is something no one from my world has ever seen. I mean, we’ve painted interpretations of it, but to really see it…”
“Yes, I can imagine that would be startling. Here, let me show you where I am currently.”
With two of her other arms, Dela pulled on the edges of the image, and it expanded from softball size to soccer-ball size. She spun the holographic globe slightly and then pressed her finger to a spot. Judy recognized North America and the U.S., so the alien wasn’t too far away.
Without lines on a map, it was tough to identify exactly where she was pointing. Judy knew her states, but she wasn’t used to looking at a topographical map instead of one with borders.
“Hang on just a second, would you?”
“Of course.”
She dove under the bed again and emerged a moment later with her social studies textbook. The first page, she knew, was the whole world with all of its countries. The next was a map of the U.S. She glanced back and forth between the map and the holographic image.
“Kentucky,” she said finally, “you’re in Kentucky.”
Dela inclined her head slightly, a gesture it seemed their species shared in common as indicating doubtfulness. “As you say.”
“Well, what are you doing in the Bluegrass State? Sorry, I know you don’t know what…”
“It’s fine,” Dela said.
She closed her hand, and the shimmering imaginary globe disappeared without so much as a puff or a flash like Judy would have expected from a stage magician. No, it simply winked out, like a TV turning off, except even a TV left that slight residual imagine in its vacuum tubes for a few seconds.
“My translator is very effective,” Dela explained. “Feel free to use idioms and the like.”
“Ohh,” Judy said, slapping her forehead with her palm. “You weren’t learning English that fast. Your machine was.”
“Correct. The only thing that it cannot translate is gestures, so please articulate what you wish to say. Do not nod, for instance.”
“Your species nods, too?”
There went that nose flare smile again. “No, we do not. My machine took a common gesture that my people use and translated it as a nod for your benefit.”
“What are your people called?”
“We are Clorofins.”
“Clorofins? Like chlorophyll? Is that why you’re green?”
Dela’s eyes blinked rapidly, and Judy guessed that was surprise. This game of guessing alien body language was fun.
“Indeed.”
“Animals with chloroplasts. God, I can’t wait to tell… oh. I can’t tell anyone. Ever.”
“That is correct,” Dela said, and this time, the words seemed to carry a certain sadness. Judy wondered if the machine was picking up on her tone of voice and beginning to shade its translations with emotion.
“Judy, I must ask something of you.”
Judy grabbed her chair, flipped it around, and straddled it. “Oh, yeah, of course. You didn’t come all the way from Jupiter or wherever to answer some dumb girl’s questions.”
“You do not strike me as dumb. In fact, quite the opposite.”
“It was just… never mind. Please, tell me what I can do for you.”
“My crewmate has been… wounded. By a domestic weapon that I do not recognize. He managed to escape the scene of the injury, but none of my medical devices seem capable of healing him. I suspect he has been poisoned in some way, but my scanners can’t identify it, and I know nothing about the local flora or fauna. I would need a native’s help to identify this poison and cure it, you see?”
Judy’s eyes went wide. Her jaw worked, seemingly of its own volition. She hoped she didn’t look too foolish to Dela, but of course, since she came from a planet that didn’t even have holography or space travel, no doubt the little green person looked on her the same way she would’ve looked on a baboon.
“Well, I… I’d love to help, but I don’t know anything about medicine. I could see if old Doc Dakota’s around, and—”
“Please, Judy, I do not want to involve more of your people than necessary.”
Judy folded her arms. “Oh, I see. Because if one solitary kook talks about aliens, especially if she’s a sixteen-year-old girl, nobody will believe her. But if an adult is involved, and a respected one at that, people might start to listen.”
“That’s exactly correct.”
Judy planted her feet on the floor and her hands on the back of the chair. That was surprising. She was used to guessing at the motives of adults, but whenever she did, they always denied it. It was nice not to be patronized for once. And as she thought about it, the little Clorofin was probably right. Humans were practically still at war. Russia and the U.S. were at each other’s throats, with nukes instead of knives. Throwing aliens into that whole mix wouldn’t do any good. Humans hadn’t even launched an artificial satellite yet. They were probably medieval by galactic standards.
She imagined a knight riding into Philadelphia. He wouldn’t be tilting at windmills like Don Quixote. He’d be tilting at traffic lights and probably innocent people. And it wouldn’t be long before he decided to joust with a bus and got splattered all over the pavement. Mankind would be lucky to be tolerated as backward by these star people. More likely, though, they would be annihilated.
“I understand,” Judy said. “I’m sorry I got offended. You’re probably taking a great risk talking to me at all. But honestly, I don’t know how I can help. I’m nobody. Just because I figured out your prime-number riddle doesn’t mean I’m a genius.”
“I don’t require a genius. I just require an intelligent life-form. I wasn’t certain there were any on this planet before you identified our signal.”
“I thought you said your friend was hurt by a weapon.”
“He was.”
Judy swallowed a lump in her throat. The Clorofins hadn’t even been able to tell humans were intelligent. Her people were less than medieval by Dela’s standards; they were apes with clubs and stone axes. It was up to her to prove that her people were better than that. She stood and rubbed her hands together.
“Okay, tell me what happened.”
“It would be much faster to simply show you.”
“Well, I can’t make it to Kentucky for hours. Days, maybe. I don’t even have a car. Are you coming here, you mean?”
“No, I can
’t transport my partner in his current state. But if you’ll grant me permission, I can project you holographically into my vehicle, the same way I’m projecting now.”
Judy didn’t have to glance back in the mirror to know that her eyes were shining with excitement. “Permission? Heck, yeah, you have my permission!”
Like flipping the channel on the television, Judy was suddenly not in her room. She glanced from side to side. The change had been so sudden that she hadn’t even had time to become disoriented. Her new surroundings reminded her of a submarine. She had never been in a submarine, but she imagined this was what it would have been like. The claustrophobia was intense. Her head was practically bumping the ceiling, so the corridors couldn’t have been much more than five feet high. A reasonable height, she reflected, for a species as tiny as the Clorofins.
Everything was dull chrome, and ladders seemed to lead up and down to various levels. Lights blinked along the wall. A console that looked like a futuristic typewriter but with more widgets jutted from the wall. Perhaps this was what Dela had been playing with earlier when she’d made the globe appear. Perhaps she had been using it the whole time to project herself. Judy approached and reached out to stroke it but was amazed to see her hand went right through.
“Oh, of course. I’m just a projection.” She jumped up and down. She didn’t pass through the floor, so the projector obviously had some concept of where her physical form should appear. When she reached down to touch the floor, though, her hand passed right through. She glanced at one of the nearby ladders.
I wonder if I can climb…
“Please, come this way.”
Dela stood at the end of the corridor, gesturing for her to follow. Judy walked, hunching nervously so she wouldn’t bang her head. When she finally did, she passed right through the solid steel ceiling. She laughed and stopped walking in a semi-crouch.
She found Dela in a chamber, which she could tell from the white walls, whirring machines, and overwhelming cleanliness was some kind of hospital room. On a slab protruding from the wall lay a second Clorofin, writhing in pain.
“Oh, thank the Overlord!” Dela’s friend said. “You found intelligent local fauna?”
“Well, I don’t mind ‘intelligent,’ but you can call me Judy if that’s faster than the ‘local fauna’ part.”
The patient fixed Dela with a stare. “You found a smartass one, huh?”
“Quiet, Velt,” Dela admonished.
Judy looked from goblin to goblin. To her, they looked identical, though Dela had called her wounded crewmate “him” and the translator had been pretty accurate so far.
“So you’re a male?”
Velt’s nostrils flared wide, and his ears pointed almost straight up. The smile, she recognized. The ears were a laugh perhaps?
“That’s what the hospitalist said when I was born. I haven’t checked since.”
“So you’re not just partners. You’re boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Yes, Judy, we’re mates,” Dela admitted.
Judy blushed and cleared her throat. She had half been expecting to be wrong. “All right, well, let’s take a look at this poison. Do you have some kind of rash?”
In her mind, Judy was running through what she knew about poisons. It wasn’t much. Her dad used strychnine to kill rats, but he kept it locked away, so she couldn’t even really have read the warning label before. Most of what she knew was about poison ivy and sumac. If it was just that, then Velt was in for no more trouble than a few days of discomfort. Unless, of course, Clorofins reacted differently than humans did.
“Yes, I have visible bumps. It feels like something’s under my skin.”
Velt turned on his side and lowered his coveralls to his waist. His body was quivering just a little bit from the pain. His skin was mostly smooth and a uniform shade of green. But an ugly splotch around his midsection, about the size of a baseball, was deformed with bumps of varying sizes. Where the skin was distended, it seemed to lose its healthy green color and take on a pale, almost ghost-like appearance. It reminded Judy of a head of lettuce gone white, which, if Clorofins got their color from the chlorophyll in their bodies, made sense.
She reached down to touch the affected area, but when her fingers brushed against the Clorofin’s skin, she remembered that she was nothing but a hologram. She shook her head grimly before remembering she had to articulate to be understood.
“I don’t recognize this,” she said. “What does it feel like?”
Velt groaned in pain and frustration. “Like a swarm of beetles trying to burrow their way out.”
“Thank you for looking, Judy,” Dela said after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps it’s best that I simply stabilize him as much as possible and return him to our own physicians.”
Judy looked from alien face to alien face. Despite only picking up a few scant bits of Clorofin body language, she could tell they were both extremely upset. “How long will that take?”
Dela said nothing.
“Tell her,” Velt said. “It’s not like I have any skin in the game.”
“Several days. Perhaps weeks. We are deep space explorers, very far from home.”
“You said he wouldn’t even survive the trip to Pennsylvania!”
Dela looked at the ground. “I did say that, yes.”
“Well, let’s not give up now! Velt, tell me about the weapon that hurt you. What did it look like?”
Velt pinched his eyes shut. His upper right arm and his lower left rose above his body to approximate a length. “It was like a cylinder, primarily. Perhaps dual cylinders. One half seemed to be hard plant matter. The rest was metal.”
Judy frowned. “A gun? So it was just a gun?”
“An explosive combustion firearm? How barbaric!” Dela said.
“Well, we’re a barbaric people.”
“I’m sorry, Judy. I didn’t mean…”
“Hey, I’m the first to admit it. We are barbaric. Cruel, even, sometimes. But this doesn’t make sense. People don’t poison bullets. They’re plenty deadly enough already. Is your species like allergic to lead?”
“No. Velt do you have a lead allergy?”
“Computer?”
“This patient has no diagnosable allergies.”
The two Clorofins seemed frustrated. Judy started to pace back and forth, wringing her hands. At least she could feel her own body parts, which was a great relief from the weirdness of passing through everything else she touched as if she were a ghost.
“Shot by a gun,” she muttered. “No allergies to metal. But he’s got bumps. You say the machine already tried to heal him?”
“Yes,” Dela said. “Our medical devices are usually foolproof. They regenerate skin, bone, blood, and flesh with equal ease.”
“Maybe there’s something wrong with the machine,” Judy said. “Maybe it’s got a wonky bit that’s making it stitch him up all cancery. No, wait!” She snapped her fingers and spun to face Velt. “Did you say the gun had two barrels?”
“Yes.”
“A shotgun! You never took the shot out!”
Judy knelt down by the alien visitor and reached out to poke his flesh. Of course her finger passed right through, but she saw now what she had missed before: the rash wasn’t random. Each bump was the size of a single chunk of birdshot.
“Your machine’s working fine. It healed all the flesh and everything. It just healed right over these solid metal chunks. Look.”
Dela didn’t have to kneel to see. When the Clorofin pressed on her mate’s side, he hissed in pain.
“Does it feel like a tiny metal pellet?”
“Yes.”
“Now do you understand? It wasn’t a single projectile that went through him; it was a burst of hundreds of tiny ones. And a few dozen are s
till here.”
“I’ve never heard of such a weapon,” Dela said. “Is it used for torture?”
“No. Just to knock squirrels out of trees and birds out of the air.”
“And visitors off the roof, apparently,” Velt grunted.
Judy stood, and as she did so, Dela looked up at her.
“What should we do about this?”
“You’ll need to cut all the pieces out.”
Almost with one voice, both of the aliens hissed, forming a teapot in stereo.
“That’s barbaric.”
“Well, you’re going to have to get a little bit barbaric, because I’m not really here. Otherwise, I’d have him cleaned and fixed up in a jiffy. Just find a knife or something sharp and cut all the pieces of metal out.”
“I don’t know if I can take that!” Velt said.
“And I don’t know if I can do it,” Dela agreed, blanching like a piece of wilting cabbage.
Knowing full well her body language wouldn’t translate, Judy nevertheless tried to put on her warmest, most encouraging smile—the sort of smile she gave one of her brothers when they came to her in the middle of the night, scared of a thunderstorm.
“You’ll be fine. You’ll both be fine. It’s not rocket sci—er, brain surg—well, it’ll be really easy, okay? Then you’ll run him through the machine again, and he’ll be all hunky-dory, right?”
“I suppose that’s true,” Velt agreed. “If I can endure the pain now, there won’t be any permanent damage.”
Judy clapped her hands together. “It’s settled, then!”
A distant, muffled explosion suddenly set all three on high alert. Judy turned instinctively in the direction of the blast. She could hear muffled voices speaking in English and realized the sound had been a shotgun discharging. She looked down at Dela, whose ears had drooped all the way to her neck.
“The natives,” Dela whispered. “They’ve found us.”
“These are the same guys that shot Velt?”
