“To undo a lock.” Prrittica wrote this time. “In a human house.”
Susan blinked and wanted to sit down. She felt rather shaky still from the abrupt appearance of the alien on her path home from school, and now it was asking her to burgle for it.
“Won’t the owner be unhappy?” She didn’t want to insult the alien, maybe it didn’t understand humans like their privacy.
Now there was a trill of chitters, from both sides of its body. She could see the little appendages unfold and retract into the edges of the vast shell covering the back side of Prrittica. It sounded musical, and in a very minor key, so to Susan, it sounded sad. With the larger pincers, the bug wrote. “She is dead.”
“Oh.” Susan pondered this for a moment longer. “This was your teacher, wasn’t it.”
Prrittica nodded.
“Is she...” Susan gulped, now she had plenty of spit. “Still in the house?”
Prrittica shook her head.
“Ok. Lead on.” Susan didn’t think she could deal with a dead body. But an empty house wouldn’t be scary.
Prrittica went straight off the path through the brush, the branches gliding over its curving back and threatening to smack Susan in the face. She fended them off, and wondered why she had agreed to follow an alien to a dead woman’s house. Curiosity, which, as her father so often assured her, was what had killed the cat. Usually followed by his cupping her cheek and calling her Kitten.
Most human women Susan knew - and this didn’t include her mother, who had died shortly after Susan’s birth - would have run screaming at the sight of Prrittica. Then their husbands would have shot the big bug. The few women who wouldn’t run, would have shot the alien themselves. So the one who had decided that Prrittica was not only intelligent, but had taken the time to teach reading and writing to an effectively mute being must have been extraordinary, and Susan was curious.
Of course, she knew what a cat was, and had met one once. It was very soft. Cats hadn’t made it on the colony planet Susan had been born to. Something seemed to have found them delicious in the night, and very few had survived those first years of building. Dogs did better, but even they were uncommon. Pets were a luxury even now, three generations into the settling of her world. Susan was familiar with the concept, through picture books from Old Earth. So her father’s saying made sense to her. She wasn’t as happy with being called cute and fluffy as a kitten, though. She preferred to think of herself as having sharp claws.
Susan appreciated Prrittica’s slow pace through the woods. They were deep enough and the underbrush had thinned enough to keep her from having to dodge twigs constantly. She wasn’t sure where they were going, except away from the cleared land and fields of the settlement. She was sure that when Prrittica wanted, it could move much more quickly than she possibly could.
They were further from home than she had ever walked, and her legs were aching a bit, when Prrittica stopped with an agitated chitter. Susan couldn’t see the motion of tiny legs associated with the sound, but she was learning that the sounds meant something. Carefully, she maneuvered through the thicker brush and up to Prrittica’s head. There, she could see they were on the edge of a small clearing.
In the centre of the break in the woods, stood one of the original buildings of the colony, only Susan had never seen this one. She had thought - been taught in school, actually - that all of them lined the main street in town, twenty-four little houses and the big community building that towered at the end of the street. They were dome-shaped, like this one, and made of shot-crete. The later buildings had mostly reverted to what Susan knew was Old Earth Architecture, squares and rectangles, and Old Man Gurney’s octagonal house.
The little round house was partly buried in gardens, a riot of flowers pouring over it in a wave of purples and pinks and yellows. Old Earth climbing roses, native prickly paws, and others she couldn't immediately identify. Prrittica, at her side, was rocking back and forth slightly.
“What’s wrong?” Susan was only guessing that the bug was sad, but the minor chord it was sounding seemed to make it a good guess. Out came the notebook.
“Memories. I am reluctant to go closer.”
“What am I looking for in her house?” Susan remembered Granny Dellucca’s house. It had been packed floor to ceiling with stuff. The originals had hated to throw anything out, remembering the years of scarcity at the beginning, when no replacements were to be had for the precious Old Earth materials and items. If this little house were that full...
“I want to know why she died.”
Susan stared into the glowing eyes, wishing she had more cues to read. Was the alien serious, and did it think that just because she was a human, she could do this?
“Prrittica...” She took a breath. “You know I am not an adult, right?”
The big triangular head-node cocked sideways slightly. Susan went on. “I’m still in school. What we call highschool? You know what that is?”
It nodded. Susan kept talking. “I don’t know how to tell why a person died. Not even with a body to look at. There’s not a body here, is there?” It had said there wasn’t, but she had to double-check.
Prrittica shook its head slowly. Susan had a horrible thought cross her mind, and she blurted it out before she could stop herself. “You didn’t eat her, did you?”
Prrittica shook its head emphatically and wrote on the notebook.
“No,” Susan read. “Sky-burial is as the custom of my people. Far away, where she will rest in peace.”
Susan wasn’t sure what it meant by a sky-burial, but ‘my people’ resonated with her. “Are there more like you?”
The alien nodded. Susan contemplated this. “Will your people fight with my people?”
Prrittica did that head-tilt thing again, accompanied by the interrogative trill.
Susan sighed. “Um, never mind. Anyway, I can try to get in the house, but I might not find anything. Do you understand?”
Prrittica nodded, and Susan walked into the clearing, toward the house. The sun felt warm on her face after the cool shade of the forest. It had been afternoon when the alien stopped her, and it must be early evening by now. She was beginning to regret her impulsive decision to follow the bug. Depending on how long it took her inside she might not be able to get home by dark. The first thing she would look for was a communicator link, and call her father.
Which she should have done before. He wouldn’t yell at her, like some of her classmates parents did. He just looked at her, with disappointment. Maybe it would help that she had just rediscovered an alien race, but she doubted it. Anyway, it wasn’t like she had done anything except go skipping off into the forest like a complete dimwit. Susan slowed as she got close to the house.
How long ago had this person died? There was a bush growing in front of the door, for goodness sake. It had pretty purple flowers, and something smelled sweet, but... how was she supposed to get in? She looked around the garden. There was a worn path off to one side, that looked like it looped around the house, through a batch of low plants, She recognized some of them as herbs, and changed her mind about the keeper of the garden. Maybe it was Prrittica, but someone was weeding. One of her jobs at home, so Susan knew how fast it got out of hand.
The path led around back of the house, and here Susan found a large lean-to shed that had been built against the house. Against the house wall was a big shelf full of books. She stopped dead and stared at it. It wasn’t that she had never seen books before, but never this many. There must be... she counted a shelf and did a quick estimate in her head based on the twelve shelves. There were at least five hundred books out here! In a shed open to the weather!
There was also a big bench with no back, worn and stained with something that smelled oddly acrid, and familiar. She had just found Prrittica’s schoolhouse. The bug-alien could stretch out here, and these were the books his teacher had used for her class of one. Susan shook her head. She couldn’t assume it was one. There might be
others.
The door was closed, and the knob, when she tried it, was stubbornly locked. She hadn’t really expected otherwise. Susan didn’t know how to pick a lock, but she had an idea where a woman from Old Earth would keep a spare key, because she had been Granny Dellucca’s favorite. A couple of minutes overturning flowerpots scored her the shiny key. Susan’s house didn’t have a locking door, but her father had explained that the old settlers hadn’t been thinking about isolation when they packed the colony ship full of house parts.
She stood in front of the door for a long time, a little afraid to open it and see what was inside. Then she turned the key in the lock and stepped inside. There was a strong smell that made her wrinkle her nose and leave the door open behind her to air the house out. The house was nothing like Granny’s.
It was clean, mostly. There was a little clutter, she found as she peeped into the bedroom. Like someone had been sick, and not washing dishes nor doing much laundry, she realized as she walked quickly through the house. It made her feel weird and twitchy to know the woman who had been sick had died. Even though she was sure she hadn’t died inside or Prrittica wouldn’t have been able to bury her.
Susan sighed. How was she supposed to know why the woman had died? The curving walls held little art, mostly drawings and paintings on paper that had been tacked up with the curve, nothing in frames. She didn’t even know what the Teacher had looked like. But she could call her the Teacher, Susan decided. She liked things to have names.
A sudden movement made her jump. The book cases that lined the inner, straight, walls, held a soft stranger high atop one of them. His tail twitching quickly, a large grey cat regarded her with brilliant blue eyes. Susan stared back at him, captivated.
“How did you get up there?” She asked him softly, and he answered by leaping half way across the room to another book case, and also showing why there was nothing on the top of the packed cases. With no hurry, she followed as he strolled and leaped from shelf to door to another bookcase, leading her to the kitchen.
Susan took the hint and looked for food, finding a can of potted meat and hoping he would find it acceptable. Reluctantly, with his fur slightly inflated, a phenomenon she found fascinating, he descended to the floor and the bowl. With tail twitching furiously, he ate quickly, and she realized he must have been starving to death slowly.
“Poor guy. I’m sure she didn’t mean to leave you.” Susan sighed. He was going home with her. And that reminded her to look for the communicator link.
Part of what Granny had called the living room in her house, and which had been filled mostly with paper that Susan recalled, was a long desk and on it, the communicator link. It looked rather out of place in this room, the only piece of ‘tech besides the doorknob Susan had opened to get in. She pushed the power buttons, wondering if it worked. Maybe that was why the Teacher had died alone.
While she waited for it to boot up and let her log in, she looked around. The windows that lined the front of the house were curtained from the outside with flowers. This house, unlike Granny’s, had round windows. Granny’s had been square. The front door had a small couch in front of it. Susan wondered why the woman had stopped using it. If she had a round door, she would definitely use it.
The computer chirped, and she paid attention to it. It was a bare-bones system, like the one she used at school. Susan logged in and sent a message to her father.
:Are you home?: She typed.
The answer came a few seconds later. :Yes, where are you?:
She pinged him for a video chat and the window expanded to show her his concerned face. His skin was pale, showing his freckles prominently where they weren’t covered in red beard.
“Susan, where are you?” He leaned forward to peer past her, and she realized it was getting darker outside and she hadn’t turned any lights on.
“I’m not sure. Dad...” Susan broke off with a squeak as the big gray cat landed in her lap. He was skin and bones, weighing almost nothing, but she wasn’t used to being jumped on. Her father focused on the animal.
His eyes widened. “That’s... Waterfall. Are you visiting Tamara?”
“Is that what her name was? I’ve been calling her the Teacher in my head.” Susan felt better knowing her name. It was a pretty name, too, not like her own very old-school moniker.
The man on the other side of the screen shook his head. “Was? And how did you get all the way out there?”
“We walked. Dad... there’s something you need to know.”
“Can it wait until I get there? I’ll bring the chopper.”
“Can you land it here? There’s not a lot of room?” Susan hadn’t yet learned to fly it, herself, but her father was an expert.
“Of course, I have before. I’m on my way.”
“Dad, wait!” But she was too late, he’d gone from in front of the screen. She had worried him more than he let on. Susan cuddled Waterfall, who was doing an internal vibration while curled up on her lap. She found it a soothing sensation.
She was no closer to finding out why Tamara had died, but her father would be a big help there, if Prrittica didn’t object to her having called him. Well, it wasn’t like the alien had kidnapped her. She walked to the back door, holding Waterfall.
Prrittica was reclined on the bench, staring at the books. Waterfall stiffened in her arms, hissed loudly, and jumped down, running back into the house. Prrittica wrote on the notebook.
Susan read it aloud as she had become accustomed to doing. “The cat is afraid of me.”
She looked behind her, seeing Waterfall was up on a bookcase again. That was why he liked it up there, above Prrittica’s head height. She looked back at the alien.
“I called my dad, and he is coming.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable. “He is worried about me, I’m responsible to him, you know?”
Prrittica nodded, and wrote. “We do not have a childhood as you do, but I know the concept.”
“You’re really smart, you know?” Susan told him, and was rewarded with a little trill from his sides. Maybe that was bug for laughing. He wrote again, and held it for her to read.
“She wrote, too? You think there’s like a journal?”
The big alien nodded. Susan said, foolishly, “Wait here.”
She didn’t really want to go in Tamara’s bedroom. It felt like an invasion of privacy, but if the old lady had been writing in a journal, this seemed like where she had been sick, and it would be. It was.
Susan found it on the nightstand, which appeared to have had everything knocked off of it onto the rug by the bed, and the journal, with a piece of paper on it, was the only thing there. She read the shaky letters on the paper.
“Oh...” Susan looked around the empty room helplessly. She had no idea where to find gloves, to be honest. The only ones she could think of were when she went to the doctor. Which gave her an idea. The one room she had not entered was the bathroom.
It reeked, because this was where Phantom had overfilled his personal bathroom box, she discovered. But she found what she was looking for under the sink. And they were mostly stiff and old, but she found a pair without holes, finally. Wearing the latex gloves, she returned to the journal. Susan knew she should wait for her father to come, but she was curious, and after all, Prrittica had asked her, not Dad, for help.
It was getting very dark inside, and Susan picked the book up carefully, leaving the paper with ‘wear gloves’ written on it on the nightstand. She walked outside, and sat on the chair facing Prrittica’s bench. Opening the book carefully, she started reading silently. She wasn’t sure what she would find. It started with a date about a year before. Most entries were in a sort of shorthand, written in ink, with a neat cursive. Susan flipped to the end. Here the entries were in pencil, and the letters printed, shaky, and hard to read. She sniffled and tried not to cry on the paper, surprised by her reaction.
There were times, she had decided, that being in an adolescent female body w
as the worst. She knew what was happening, she had asked her Dad after a bad bout of crying one time. Hormone fluctuations, he’d explained, and showed her some of his medical books. Susan had spent some time studying endocrinology after that, but the fact she couldn’t control it was endlessly frustrating.
Now, she was reacting to the death of a woman she had never met, or even knew existed, although it seemed her father had. All Susan knew was that an alien and a cat were grieving Tamara’s death. Now she was, too. She found the entry where the handwriting started to deteriorate.
“She thought she had stomach flu, and lamented that her hair was falling out.” Susan told Prrittica. She kept reading, half-listening for her father in the chopper. Maybe Dad knew about the alien, too? He hadn’t told her about Tamara.
A few entries on, Susan realized she was going to have to be careful what she said out loud to Prrittica. Tamara thought she had been poisoned by the big bug. Not on purpose, but the toxins he used as an ink were chemical defenses he naturally produced, and over time the woman who taught him had been exposed over and over... Susan shivered, and was glad she had never touched the alien, or the book.
“She didn’t know.” Susan closed the book, and told a big white lie. She was afraid the alien would hurt her, if she told the truth, that it had killed its teacher and friend. And she wanted to be kind, not hurt it with the truth. “She wasn’t sure what was killing her, just that she was very sick, and glad you were here to check on her.”
Which explained not at all why Tamara hadn’t called Susan’s father, the settlement doctor. There was no entry in the book saying she had, anyway. Prrittica looked away and up into the sky. Here was Dad, now.
“My father is coming. Have you met him?” She asked the big bug.
Prittica looked at her, inscrutable, its eyes glowing more in the falling dark. Beyond him, she could see the landing lights of the chopper coming in. She really wanted more time, to read the journal, and find the others she was certain Tamara had recorded all kinds of secrets in. What she had just read was confusing, and made no sense. Maybe the old woman had been insane, at the end.
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