Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  “Nee, nee, Miss Fowler, please to relax. You take too seriously these little unfortunates. These things happen.”

  “Mr. van Meyer, there was a riot—”

  “And is soon to be contained, dear girl. By morning, all forgotten. These things happen and is nobody’s fault. Piotr inform me of the incident and all your paperwork clearly state your intention. Your very good intention, ja?” A pause, like the stroking of his hand across her brow. She shivered. He said, softly, “But perhaps now you begin to understand, we are not friends with the bug.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “IBI exist for two purpose, Miss Fowler, and that is to tend the bug and to police the bug. When zookeeper tend to bear, he may feel affection, but is never to be forgotten the danger. Zookeeper is not friend of bear.”

  “Yes, sir.” She wondered if Sanford could hear van Meyer saying these things. She wondered if he could hear what she was agreeing to. His face gave her no clue as to his thoughts or feelings, but he watched her.

  “You have innocent idea to recreate among them, but you do not understand the mind of the bug. You are too young, perhaps, to remember that in beginning, we give bug more freedom, we offer visa to leave camps and begin integration in human communities. This we do, as you do, with very good intention, ja? But bug recreate violently. There are skirmishes in street with humans, there are cars overturned, there are killings. The bug is not a gentle traveler of peace and illumination, Miss Fowler. The bug is bottom-feeding slum-roach who recreate with riot. It is not his fault. It is our responsibility to provide security, nee? Structure. Routine.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ja, and you will remember this. I was very young once, Miss Fowler. I tried to be as you are, a friend to the bug, but bug do not need friends. They need control. Tonight, a sad thing. You have tried to do good work and it lead to a terrible fire. We should be grateful no one was caught in this one.”

  The words were a slap. She wondered if it was a deliberate reference to her parents, wondered how in hell he knew about that. Whether it was or not, it hurt.

  “For tonight, a good sleep. Tomorrow, you come after work to the office for incident report with Piotr.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This mistake you make, you make with best of intentions. Now it is done. I accept your apology and hope you do not let this terrible thing take you away from us. I should hate to lose you. You do very good work.”

  “Not yet,” said Sarah, wiping her eyes. “But I’m trying, Mr. van Meyer. I really am.”

  Which were probably the only honest words in the whole conversation. She hung up, stood in her robe next to the phone until she realized she was trembling slightly, and finally turned to trudge back and get dressed.

  Sanford had stood up and come silent as a cat into the living room. He watched her from the other side of the sofa. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Well?” she said dully. “Did I sound convincing?”

  He walked around the sofa slowly, his eyes on her like she was a deer he was trying not to spook. When he reached her, he did the weirdest thing yet: he cupped her elbows in his hands, fanned his mouth-palps slightly and exhaled on her face. Softly. Deliberately. And looked at her.

  Sarah blinked once, twice, and then burst out in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. ‘Oh jeez, kiddo, bipolar much?’ she thought, listening to herself in dismay, but wow, he breathed on her. What was she supposed to do with that?

  Sanford, thrown by what was obviously an unexpected reaction, backed up behind the sofa again and stood there, loudly clicking and buzzing to himself and looking thoroughly embarrassed. She wanted to apologize—God knew he was owed one at least as good as the one she’d given van Meyer—but all she could think of was to exclaim T’aki-style, ‘I like your breath!’ and that just sent her off in renewed giggles.

  Stammering something she hoped would at least sound contrite, Sarah clutched the neck of her robe and ran to her room, where she threw herself on the bed and smothered her face in a pillow until the hysteria had passed.

  ‘Dude breathed on me,’ she thought, wheezing her way to self-control. ‘First we fingered up each other’s hands and then he breathed on me. Oh, light the candles and break out the violins!’

  That got her going again. She laughed into the muffle of cotton batting until her stomach cramped and her face felt sweaty, and she had to either stop and roll over or die.

  She stared at the ceiling, breathing hard, arms and legs spread across her blankets, limp. She had an alien in the living room. She had another one running around in the backyard, playing with the dog and peeing on the fence posts. She could not stay here all night.

  Sarah sighed and got up. She tugged on a pair of shorts and a baggy old tee, whispering vehement admonitions under her breath to discourage further crazy behavior. Her hair was still wet; she finger-combed it over her scar, patted it down and sat on the bed until she was sure she could behave herself. Then she got up and went out to see how else she could screw up before this night was over.

  * * *

  The dog tired out before his son. He knew he should not take pleasure in that, but by the amazed tone of Sarah’s voice when the animal came panting inside, he had to. His son, born in Cottonwood and fed by the labors of the Heaps, and yet able to overexert a healthy dog.

  But T’aki’s own surrender was not long in coming, and soon after the animal had collapsed on the carpet to sleep, the boy came to where Sanford had found a way to crouch more or less comfortably over one arm of the sofa and watch television, and climbed up onto his lap. “I like this place better than our house,” he said. “Can we stay?”

  “No,” Sanford said. “We are fortunate to be guests here tonight. Tomorrow, Sarah will take us home.”

  She looked at him and in that look, he could see her trying to find a plan that would lead him and his son safely out behind IBI’s grasp forever, but she really was no good at planning. In the end, she said nothing, only paced away to another window and peered out into the empty streets. Waiting for IBI to come. He had already told her that if they meant to come, they would have done so by now and unless she gave them a reason to chase after her—if, for instance, she got into her van and tried to leave—they would likely leave her be, but she kept going back to the windows.

  “Come and sit with us,” he said now, knowing that if she’d just be still, she would realize how exhausted she was.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?” T’aki asked.

  She looked at him and then at Sanford, calmly stroking his son’s seams. She came to the sofa and sat beside him. T’aki stuck out his foot boldly; she took it in her hand without looking away from the monitor and held it. “You get enough to eat tonight, jellybean?” she asked.

  “Yes.” And at a warning glance from Sanford, added, “Thank you.”

  “Oh jeez, don’t thank me for that nightmare.” She glanced away, jiggling the boy’s leg carefully in her grip as she looked out the window and over the white containment walls, where smoke still rose in the distance. “I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better, that’s all.”

  They watched the television. A commercial advertisement interrupted the program: A human male gave shimmering stones to a female, to her evident surprise and delight. They pressed their mouths together. Sharing breath, he supposed, and thought of Sarah.

  “Where is your mate?” T’aki asked suddenly.

  She seemed as surprised by the question as the television-female by her stones. “I don’t have one.”

  “Did he die?” T’aki asked, and Sanford gave him a click and a sharp stare.

  “No, I’ve never had one.”

  “Never? Why not? Aren’t you grown?”

  Oh, tactless boy.

  “Sure, I’m grown,” Sarah said, smiling down at him. “I’m plenty grown.”

  “Are you too old?” T’aki asked doubtfully and Sanford clicked again, louder.

  “You�
��re never too old for love, jellybean,” she said, and hummed a little, looking at the television.

  “Father says there’s enough females for every human to have a mate. Sometimes more than one. I’ve seen pictures.”

  Sanford covered his eyes.

  “I don’t know, T’aki. I never really thought about it. I guess I just figured I had plenty of time. And then life got in the way.” She trailed off, looking at the monitor without really watching it, and stroking at the joints of T’aki’s toes while he chirred. “I guess…somewhere along the way, I just got used to being the sort of person who doesn’t have a mate.”

  “How do you get used to that?”

  “You get a dog,” she answered with a crooked smile.

  That was that for perhaps five minutes.

  “Is Fagin your only friend?” T’aki asked.

  Sanford clicked hard.

  But she smiled. “There’s always you, jellybean.”

  “Don’t you have a father?”

  Her smile became pained. Sanford clicked again and added a brisk tap to the top of the boy’s head.

  “Not anymore, baby.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Go to sleep,” Sanford said brusquely.

  “But I’m not tired!”

  “It’s okay, Sanford.” It wasn’t, anyone could see that, but she sighed and got up to fetch something from the small shelf above an unused fireplace. A picture, pressed under glass. Four humans. She sat down again and passed it into T’aki’s hands. “That’s me, about ten years ago. And that’s my sister, Kate. And this is my father and my mother.”

  “Mother,” T’aki murmured, running his fingers over the glass.

  “About two years after that was taken, there was a bad thing.”

  “Did the vans come?”

  Her face seemed to crumple slightly. She looked away again and finally back, composed. “No, nothing like that. But while Kate and I were away from the house, there was a fire and…both my parents died.”

  “Oh.” T’aki traced the uneven edge where the photograph had blackened and blistered, then gave it back.

  “The house burned down and just about everything was gone except some old boxes of junk in the basement and that picture, which was right on the living room wall.” She stood and placed it back on the shelf, turning it minutely back and forth until she had achieved the perfect angle. It stood alone, the only item in all this room that seemed to be for decoration’s sake alone. “Your toys were in the basement,” she remarked. “I guess that’s really why I kept them all this time. It’s not like I play with them anymore.”

  “Do you want them back?” T’aki asked. “I can give them…some of them back.”

  “No. Toys don’t want to be keepsakes, honey, they want to be toys. And I want them to be useful.” She turned around and looked at them, at the boy curled small in Sanford’s arms. She raised her eyes in a knowing and oddly fatherly way, to meet his, smiling. “Think you could sleep if you had to, jellybean?”

  “Well…” T’aki picked at a toe dolefully. “If I had to.”

  “Come on. I have a spare bed in here.”

  Sanford followed her down the short hall to a room easily twice the size of his home in Cottonwood. The bed would have occupied the entire space he used for working. Its sheets were white. He had not seen anything so white in years.

  Sarah withdrew while Sanford helped his son arrange a nest, returning in a short while with a glass of clear water and cushions. The dog came with her, but did not leave again when she did, electing instead to climb the mattress and curl itself possessively at the bed’s center, side to side with T’aki. Seeing the animal’s open mouth and sharp teeth exposed in a yawn unsettled him badly, but T’aki was not afraid to share the nest and Sarah seemed not to think the creature dangerous.

  Sarah had not thought IBI dangerous.

  “I’m sorry I made Sarah sad,” T’aki said softly, under the sheet. “I didn’t know she was all alone.”

  Sanford found a foot in the swaddles and stroked a pad.

  “She looks scared in this house.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sanford, thinking of the phone call, and what he had heard of the other voice, the dark voice.

  “I would be scared to live here, too,” came the next confession. “It’s too big.”

  “It only seems so because it is empty. My home on yang’Tak is even bigger than this one.”

  The sheets pulled back to reveal his son’s fascinated face. “Bigger?”

  “Much bigger, but—” He bent to share breath, which the dog reverently shared as well. “—even our home in Cottonwood is a home with a family inside it. I am you and you are me. Go to sleep.”

  “Yes, Father.” The sheets went up.

  Sanford returned to the sofa in the front room, and to the monitor where Earth’s stories were told. He’d seldom received as good an image on the monitors that fell into his hands in the Heaps, despite his best repairs, and he enjoyed watching it, if only for the one night.

  “You don’t have to sleep out here,” Sarah said behind him. “You can have my bed, if you want. I don’t mind the couch.”

  “I would be more comfortable with my son.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well…you know where everything is. If Fagin annoys you, just shove him out into the yard, he’ll be fine. If you need me for anything, don’t be shy about waking me up. Just get some sleep and tomorrow…”

  He waited.

  “Tomorrow…” She turned away, took a few steps, turned back. She glanced once at the door to the room where T’aki slept and lowered her voice. “I was thinking maybe we should just—”

  “You will take us back,” Sanford said.

  “I…don’t think I can do that.”

  “I don’t have the code-bank, Sarah. Even if you went in and fetched it out for me, it isn’t yet repaired. I need my tools to do that work. I need salvage. I am not ready. You saved us tonight, but one night is nothing.”

  “What if…” She checked the empty hall again and said, even softer, “What if it’s gone? What if they—Piotr and the rest of them,” she added hurriedly, although he could all but see the yang’ti rioters shining in her eyes. “What if they blew your house up? What if they burned it all down?”

  Just as if these thoughts had not already occurred to him, Sanford held up his hand to stop her flood of fears and said, “What is merely buried can be recovered. Tools can be replaced.”

  “But we’re already out! What if…” She raised and dropped her empty hands helplessly. “What if I can never get you out again? If tonight has shown me anything, it’s that I really suck at planning! If I can’t throw a barbeque, I sure won’t be able to mastermind an escape. It’s mind-boggling that I got you out tonight, I could never do it again!”

  “My escape only matters if it ends in the ship.”

  She raised one hand and brushed at her eyes. “Will you think about it?” she asked softly. “Please?”

  “Yes. Will you take us back if that is my decision?”

  “Yeah. God, I…” But that was all she said. She stared at the empty wall beside her and finally turned around again.

  “You think you won’t sleep tonight,” said Sanford, watching humans take enthusiastic bites out of the things Sarah called ‘burgers’. Now that he’d had one, their enjoyment seemed slightly less ridiculous. “But I hope you do. And I hope you understand that it has been a good day, in spite of everything.”

  “I’m sorry, Sanford. I just don’t think I can see it that way.”

  He watched her unhappy retreat until she put a door between them and then returned his attention to the television, switching through programs and waiting for sleep to settle on his own tight nerves. There were many different feeds, some of which addressed the problem of the bugs. Hatred and fear radiated from these humans, who kept them penned in as prisoners and who still accused them of spreading disease, of inciting riots, of engaging in criminal acts, of kidnapping and eat
ing children. Even those few who spoke on their behalf seemed to be capable of only condescending kindness—the bugs should be cared for, because human intervention was necessary to keep the bugs from their own inherently dangerous lifestyle. Much in the manner of stray dogs or cats, they should not be summarily destroyed, but rather rescued, neutered, and placed in adoptive homes where they could be more effectively domesticated.

  An idle thought: Sarah had never once used the word ‘bug’ in his presence. Like the names the humans had assigned him and T’aki, it stuck in her palps like a shard of bone and choked her.

  Sanford gazed broodingly down the dark hallway, listening to the television rant. No one must ever tell. These were the agreements made when Commander Tlee’tathk stood before them in that last terrible hour, with the humans at the door and colonists weeping softly throughout the hold: Protect the women and never admit to their existence; offer up no aid if asked to open the ship and never allow a weapon to fall into their alien hands; above all things, never speak of the homeworld or its people. Let the humans draw what conclusions they wished to draw, take whatever they could take, but give them no more power.

  Sanford moved through the channels, eyes fixed, listening only a few seconds to each program before moving on. He saw humans who were angry, who were laughing, who were sad. He saw tender parents with children, medics healing injured, the criminals engaged in murder and the soldiers who brought them down. He saw warmth and indifference and violence and hard work and games and pretend foolishness and deadly seriousness. He saw a world of people like any other people…and he was glad he saw it.

  ‘I gave her my breath,’ he thought suddenly, and clicked at himself in rueful amusement. Why had he done that? What had he expected, really? She didn’t know yang’ti ways.

  He scrolled through the channels on the monitor. Talking. Fighting. Laughing. Eating. Mating. Shouting. Singing. Even the contorted half-jumps and bouncing they called ‘dancing’. Human life, naked before him. Honest, as Sarah was honest.

  Idly now, lost in introspection, he dialed back several feeds to the program showing humans in copulation. Male and female, lying close together, mostly hidden in sheets, but plainly mating. He’d seen naked humans only in the pictures that came to the Heaps, and most of these were so unsavory that he could not stand to touch them even to recycle them, but he’d never given much thought to how they copulated. He hadn’t realized there would be so much movement. The touching, yes, but not the shoving, the biting and licking, the squeezing. They used their mouths, their hands, their chins and cheeks and thighs and maybe even more to touch each other everywhere. Because human skin could always feel everything, all the time.