Becoming Alien

by Rebecca Ore

  “We have discs like that on Yauntra,” the young stranger told me. I saw his fingers twitch when Rhyo threw to Granite Grit.

  “Join them.”

  “Huh-na. They can’t talk, can they?”

  “Hum. I’ll translate your Yauntro.”

  “I was on the team—we’re all here—that shot your other bird. I remember kneeling down on him out there and feeling the webs give under my knees.”

  I’d wrestled a Gwyng—had a tactile flash of how web flexed under a knee. Real squishy. “Rhyodolite told me you guys captured the ship.” How had Rhyo remembered? Smell? Memory for patterns?

  Rhyodolite hobbled back toward us and yelled. “Come down, Yaungtri person. Red Clay (sometimes linguistically too plastic), translate honestly for me. Tell him if he hadn’t backed off my webs, I couldn’t have chilled down. Would have bit.”

  “He says he remembers and forgives you. Go down.”

  “Liar. Non-translator. I want to throw one into his neck,” Rhyodolite said, catching a toss from Cadmium and waving the Frisbee so wildly I thought he’d topple off his plastic-coated feet.

  “But watch your neck,” I added.

  The Yauntry smiled, just a lip twitch. I yelled for Rhyo to toss me the Frisbee, caught it, and handed it to the Yauntry, who turned it over, looking at both sides. “Handmade?” the Yauntry finally said.

  “Yes, we cut down some plastic.”

  “Umph,” he said as he went down the stairs to throw a fairly combative curve at the Gwyngs. Both grabbed for it, Rhyodolite almost tumbling into Cadmium, who steadied him before whirling the disc to the birds, who tossed it over the leaping Yauntry’s head back to me. I lobbed it, low and easy, to Rhyodolite, to see what he’d really do.

  As Rhyodolite threw the Frisbee so that it rose into the Yauntry’s chin, a Barcon came out. “The game should move back to the pool where the Gwyng can rest his legs in the water and not have too much throwing leverage,” the Barcon said. “Is the Yauntry happy?”

  Cadmium and the birds instantly agreed to move around back.

  “I’m amused a bit,” the Yauntry said when I translated the Barcon’s question for him.

  Edwir Hargun came hunting his man only to find the younger Yauntry playing around Tesseract’s pool with all the enemy aliens. Ammalla followed Hargun and suggested he come inside for tea. Hargun looked at the Yauntry soldier leaping after a Terran-model Frisbee tossed by a swimming bat, cheered on by two monster-show parrots and me, who looked like a deformed Yauntry. Without speaking, he turned and followed Ammalla inside.

  The Yauntry cocked the Frisbee toward Granite Grit. “Is he like the bird on the ship?” the Yauntry asked me.

  “Not the same species.”

  “If I was scared, then he was scared, too, wasn’t he?” the Yauntry asked me, still holding on to the disc.

  “We were all very scared.”

  “No weapons.”

  “No. Better the new species should shoot, maybe.”

  He lobbed the disc to Granite Grit. “You invaded our system. I feel awkward playing with you now.” He turned around and left.

  The rest of us continued playing in and around the pool until Rhyodolite complained of the cold. Cadmium and Granite reached down to help him out, but he splashed them.

  Granite shook, water spraying off his blue head feathers, then stepped closer and crouched. Rhyo heaved water at the bird with his webs. Turning his head, Granite grabbed and caught Rhyo’s arm.

  Rhyo squalled, as if he were being killed.

  Cadmium’s shoulder hair went erect. Barcons came running. Instantly, Granite dropped Rhyo’s arm and sat down at the edge of the pool, lay his wet head on his hands.

  “Grabbed him,” Cadmium told the Barcons. “Rhyodolite was throwing water at us.” Nervously, he smoothed down his shoulder fur, while Rhyodolite, gasping, treaded water.

  Granite made strangled sounds, then managed to say, “I didn’t grab him hard.”

  The Barcons looked at each other. Tesseract and Ammalla came down behind them. “Gwyng foolishness” the Barcons told them.

  Granite shook his wet feathers and told Rhyodolite, in Karst II, “Can’t stand being grabbed, don’t splash.” Rhyodolite looked up at him, shuddered, then swam to the pool rim and held on, bobbing up and down as he breathed in and out, his eyes squeezed shut. “Rhyodolite, I’m sorry if I startled you,” Granite added, very quietly.

  “Cadmium, help me out,” Rhyo said, eyes still closed. I helped Cadmium pull him onto the apron where he lay shivering, water soaked under the plastic splints. Rhyodolite opened his eyes and quivered his pupils at Granite nervously before easing himself to his feet. “Let’s go inside and get warm,” he said.

  As we walked to the house, Rhyo leaned against Cadmium. Granite moved tentatively toward Rhyo, but Feldspar touched his shoulder.

  Hargun watched from the porch, a deep smile on his face. As we passed, he said to me in Yauntro, “Not such a loving bunch after all.”

  After getting Rhyo out of his wet pants, we draped him in towels until Ammalla brought an electric blanket and hot butter. The two birds gingerly nestled down on either side of his chair, talking in bird over his knees.

  Rhyo asked wearily, “Why did you birds rescue me? I failed my own bird.”

  “You’re Tom’s friend.”

  “I feel death guilt now.” Rhyodolite drew back, arms tensing against the chair. The web veins throbbed once.

  Finally, Granite Grit said, “Rhyodolite, your fear instinct is unbecoming of a sapient.”

  “We want to help you with your fear. Can you stand us in your room at night?” Feldspar said.

  Rhyodolite wiggled and looked back over his shoulder at Cadmium, who gave an eye roll. “I suppose so. You’re as warm as we are. Cadmium finds my splints uncomfortable (two ways)—very restless/without sleep.”

  “We will stay with you quietly. You don’t splash,” Granite said, “and we won’t grab.”

  “I feel terrible about this.”

  The Barcons came in and re-splinted Rhyodolite’s legs with drier plastic.

  Before I went to bed, I checked to see how they were managing. Cadmium and the birds were asleep—the blond-streaked Gwyng curled under Feldspar’s breast feathers, muzzle touching Rhyodolite’s shoulder, one arm slung over him. Rhyo lay rigid on his back between the birds, his open eyes almost glazed.

  “If it’s that bad, just wriggle out and sleep in my room.”

  “I’ll be okay.” He looked at the birds on either side of him, then lifted Cadmium’s arm very gently and rolled over, closing his eyes.

  Feldspar stirred, dropping her eyelids, but with the nictitating membrane half veiling her eyes, barely awake. She rubbed her beak against the two Gwyng heads and rocked forward a few times to smooth her feathers, then looked, a bit more alertly, haws back, at me before settling her head back on her arms.

  Rhyo tucked his fingers under Cadmium’s shoulder.

  I felt odd, isolated, as I went to my room. My sleeping alone seemed almost a prejudice. I envied Gwyngs their ease with each other—no humans I knew had such physical closeness unless they were lovers. Maybe because we slept together after sex, humans, at least my kind of humans, had sexualized the bed.

  But, really, sleeping piled together on mat didn’t seem all that comfortable either, I thought as I felt my body twitch that sleep twitch.

  I had weird dreams: humans, Warren, Mica screaming. When I woke, I found blankets twisted around my legs. After I untangled the bedclothes, I went to see how the Gwyngs had managed under the birds. Rhyodolite was asleep on his belly, half covered by Feldspar’s and Granite’s puffed up feathers. Cadmium, dressed already, was spreading his face wrinkles open and wiping the grooves with a wet swab, watching himself in the mirror. Granite eased away from Rhyo and Feldspar and stretched first one leg and arm, then the others like a chicken.

  Cadmium watched Granite in the mirror as the bird shook his feathers, all puffed up, before twitching them down
. Turning back to his own reflection, Cadmium fussed with his service sash.

  I sat down beside Rhyo, smelling the faint chlorine Gwyng smell. Feldspar woke up and rubbed her beak through my hair, then looked down at Rhyodolite, who still slept, arms wrapped around himself. She moved her hand as though she wanted to stroke him, but stopped.

  Finally he sighed, turned his head toward me, and opened his large dark eyes. I felt a little embarrassed.

  “You’re not that cold-blooded, Red Clay, cuddle up,” Rhyo told me as he wriggled over on his back and looked up at Feldspar, who gently wiped congealed goo away from his eyes.

  He only flinched a little.

  “You’ll be okay with us eventually,” she said, rubbing around his ears.

  “Then I should tame myself with the Rector,” Rhyodolite said as he reached for her hand and pulled himself up. “You can tame Hargun. One Yauntry already fetches our plastic flying toy.” Rhyo looked for his luggage, carefully walked over on his splinted legs, and pulled out his uniform tunic. “I’m going to get the Barcons to take off the rest of the splints. I want a long hot salty bath, with bare legs,” he told us as he left.

  Cadmium stayed with us. “You birds would make great first-contact people or linguistics investigators,” he said to Granite, “if you weren’t so different from most sapients.”

  “For a linguistics team, shouldn’t matter,” Feldspar said in Karst II. We went silent a bit, thinking about first contacts—at least I was.

  “This Federation is wonderful,” Granite Grit said, preening what feathers he could reach with serrated metal combs and oil mist. “Your kinds (unjealously) admire us for our genetics work. Utterly surprising—we love alien attention.”

  “Do the other sapient birds admire you?” Cadmium asked.

  “Don’t know. They never bred for colors.” The two birds began to preen each other, and Cadmium and I went out to the porch for breakfast.

  “Very odd, Red Clay, sleeping beside great birds.”

  “Odd sleeping in piles the way you Gwyngs do.”

  “Why?”

  “Humans don’t,” I said before I thought.

  “Universe’s worst answer. Don’t you get lonely, trapped unconscious in your dreams—no one but you moving through them?”

  I shrugged at him, trapped in reality alone: “Non-conspecifics aren’t the company I want in bed.”

  Cadmium oo’ed.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  At breakfast on the porch, Hargun stood coughing, slowly eating from a bowl. He stared off at the plains, ignoring the birds and Gwyngs chattering in Karst II. The other Yauntries watched him.

  I said hello in Yauntro, second politeness, to the Frisbee-playing Yauntry. Instead of replying, he looked down at his food bowl, then at Hargun.

  Rhyodolite said, “Rather be fed in a cage than see us.”

  Granite replied, “Don’t be rude,” before he dropped a morsel, bill to bill, in Feldspar’s mouth.

  Edwir Hargun flicked his eyes at the birds before looking back at the horizon. Granite stepped closer to Hargun, bent his backward knees to be on eye level with the Yauntry, and asked in Karst I, “Do you like music, Ambassador?”

  Hargun’s face softened, then stiffened again. Hoarsely, he said, “You’re the birds who thought force held this thing together.”

  Granite rose stiffly erect. “Fighting between my people’s nations may continue—but why fight space? The others are competitive over different things.”

  Hargun coughed hard, then said, “You like us monsters?”

  “Stop. Do you like music?” Granite almost bounced.

  “What music could I have in common with a feathered lizard?”

  Feathers rose on Granite’s neck as he drew his head back, eyes covered by nictitating membranes. Feldspar very softly touched his neck. He flashed the third eyelids back into his eye corners and settled his feathers in nervous little jerks. Muscles tight around his eyes, Granite Grit said, “Tesseract’s house has lacked music lately, so I’ve asked for my discs.”

  “I’d prefer not to discuss music with you, bird.”

  At the comers of both birds’ eyes, membranes twitched. Granite crouched down low on his hocks and looked up at Hargun. “Music goes around walls, sir, so you will be forced to hear.”

  “Without facing us terrible monsters,” Feldspar added. They both stalked away, hocks raised high.

  Hargun coughed up phlegm, then asked, “Was I about to get attacked again?”

  Rather nervously, Cadmium moved away from Hargun and said, “Now I know why Rhyodolite kicked. Ask him why he’s being so stupidly insulting/insultingly stupid.”

  “Sir, you insult us, then wonder why we get mad. Why?”

  Hargun sat down in a chair, blew his nose, and wadded the napkin up on a plate. “Insults? I’m a prisoner. I hope you catch this virus. The Barcons told me mild viral infection, best to let run course…stress makes disease from resident viruses. Like I deserved it.”

  “I know what captivity’s like,” I told him. “At least you’ve got other Yauntries here. We won’t murder you.”

  Tesseract came out and told Hargun, “Ambassador, your species has asked us to send the Rector Karriaagzh to Yauntra for discussions. The History Committee has to decide whether the Rector is expendable.”

  Hargun sagged and began breathing hard. Then he said, “Expendable?”

  “Well…” Tesseract fixed his own breakfast and sat down close to Hargun, who backed up against the far chair arm. Tesseract ate some eggs, then asked, “Do your people know anything about Karriaagzh?”

  “He’s intimidating, stern…”

  “To you, Hargun. Karriaagzh, as an isolate, depends on mammal social flexibility. His own people won’t deal with us, and they’re too technologically sophisticated for us to kidnap a social group for him.”

  “Xenophobic.”

  “No, initially they were calm, according to the records. Karriaagzh came back with the First Contact team when his species refused to join the Federation. I’d enjoy seeing him negotiate with you. Birds have one-track minds. Consider how implacably the birds work to cure poor Rhyodolite of his fear of them.”

  “Am I going back? Soon?”

  “We’re still talking to your people. And we need to determine how severe your xenophobia is.”

  “I’m sicker from being held captive than I am afraid of you monsters.”

  Tesseract’s face stiffened, then he said, “Relax, listen to Granite Grit’s discs.”

  “Is the prisoner ordered to do this?”

  Tesseract asked me in English, “Tom, would your people still be so hostile? Most students with xenoreactions would be reasonable by now, except hard-wire cases.”

  “Tesseract, you’ve been dealing with too many kids. This one’s a fully grown-up man.”

  Tesseract smiled at me and said to Hargun, “Karriaagzh is right. One does get tired of being treated as though one were biologically wrong.”

  “We’re trapped here, Rector’s Man,” Hargun said. “Can we believe anything you’d say?”

  Tesseract began eating furiously, the skin over his skull crest flushed, then he threw down his spoon and said, “First I agreed to help the birds with the Gwyngs, then I’m assigned your group. Plus Tom.”

  “Tesseract,” I said, shocked to hear him angry.

  “Do you know how far away I am from everything I know, love?” Hargun asked. His eyes fluttered in his gray face.

  “I’m sorry. But Tom, Red Clay, is infinitely more isolated. Yet you baited him brutally. Then your people ask for Karriaagzh as a negotiator—another isolate. I only feel sorry for your squad men here. Let them fraternize with us monsters.”

  Suddenly, aliens nauseated me.

  Tesseract massaged his crest as if pushing the blood out of it. “I’m sorry, Tom, Edwir, if I was rude.”

  Granite Grit came out and bobbed down, watching Hargun a moment before he said, “Ambassador, your men are listening to the music. Please com
e in and hear my discs.”

  “Surely, Granite Grit,” Hargun said. As he passed by, I noticed his eyes were red.

  When we heard the music begin again, Tesseract led me to the back of the house, by the pool.

  “Yangchenla!” She sat in a deck chair, wearing an American dress the green of old Coke bottles, belted with a brocade scarf. Awh, she looked so good. I ran up to her.

  Smelling of musk and warm skin, she took my hand and said, “I was invited to the country for you.”

  Her hair was up in a bun—very glossy, as though she’d oiled it. “Are you used to these kinds of people?” I asked nervously.

  “I sell yak milk oils to the wrinkle-faces who can only listen, and handwovens. I’m not such a barbarian as some seem to think, those…”

  “Free Trader,” Tesseract interrupted, “perhaps you and Red Clay would like to take a walk. I’ll be in the kitchen when you come back. Let’s give Hargun time alone with Granite Grit and the Gwyngs—see what happens.”

  “Okay,” I said, heart jammed in my lungs.

  When Tesseract was almost to the house, Yangchenla said, “That one did not make corning here a raw sexual proposition, even if he dressed me like this.”

  “I didn’t ask for you directly, but it’s nice seeing you again.”

  We walked to see the riding stock, which was bedded down on dried ferns. She leaned against a wall and smiled slowly, watching my face, her smile deepening as I began to smile, too. “We ride things, too,” she said. “So much the same, despite the surface differences.”

  “Where are you staying tonight?” I asked.

  “The rooms are next to each other, yours and mine.”

  My face heated up. “Oh,” I said.

  “No double sex bed prepared as the Barcons did.”

  I had a double bed in my room. “See enough of the riding beasts?”

  “Yes, let’s go to the house. I’ve always wanted to see how the Federation authorities live.” She fluttered over some things my surgically contrived tongue and vocal cords got correctly.