by Rebecca Ore
“They tease, especially the little one, but…”
“Bring me my bag,” she said. “Under the other bed.”
I got up, and Rhyodolite crowed, “Used, a male used organ.”
Furious, worried about what they might do to Yangchenla, I pulled on my pants and rushed to her room. She’d brought a scuffed leather satchel, full of clothes, papers, and a hand calculator. Something like a metal penis on a chain dangled off the handle.
When I got back, they were sitting on the foot of the bed, humming at Yangchenla, who giggled when she saw me.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Get them out of here,” she said.
Rhyodolite moaned. Cadmium Gwyng-talked sternly, and Rhyo said, “But, Tom. Only fun. Shy ape shit.”
Cadmium spoke again. Rhyodolite stiffly put his legs on the floor and said, “Had almost forgotten pain and death agonies until you hurt my feelings.” His nostrils clapped open and shut as he hobbled out.
“Is he serious?” I asked Cadmium.
“We don’t like being excluded from our friends’ social lives,” Cadmium said stiffly, “but if your primitive woman is a xenophobe, then we’ll release our tensions by mobbing the Yauntry.”
“Cadmium, please. She can’t understand you, so…”
“Not that serious. Don’t become upset, lose erection. But remember, you watched Gwyngs.”
“No, I didn’t; Black Amber took them to another room. Shit.” I explained to Yangchenla, “To them, sex is a social occasion. Since they’re my friends, they think we should include them. I was at another Gwyng’s house during her breeding season. But, of course, the Rector was trying to get me so I’d sleep with a Yauntry woman, be bait for the Yauntries.”
“You need friends,” she said, “on the History Committee.”
The Gwyngs shrieked in the hall about Red Clay and Yaungchoochoo having sex. Yangchenla, suddenly shy, around me even, held the sheet up around her collarbones as she fished out a long dress, brown cotton-looking, and a stretchy knitted band. She pulled them under the sheet and wiggled around, then stood up to straighten the dress and find the right belt for it. I realized she’d wrapped the knitted band around her breasts, and blushed some.
“Do you plan to re-pay your sponsor quickly?” she asked, tying the belt.
“I didn’t even know I was going to get a cut in Yauntry tariffs for being in the First Contact group until Hargun told me.”
“You must ask questions,” she said.
I began going through the clothes the Gwyngs had brought in. “Do your people make clothes like this?” I said, holding up a corduroy suit.
“You can buy cloth like that all over Karst City,” she said, “but I guess they don’t let cadets out much.”
The Gwyngs had brought in suits, jeans, tops, belts, two coats, underclothes—all from Berkeley, California, stores. I felt weird that some alien in surgically shifted human face had gone around shopping for me…
Yangchenla pulled out her pocket calculator and totaled the prices, me translating them to Karst numbers. She asked, “How much is 3,698 dollas in Karst credit?”
“I could have lived for a year on 3,000 dollars if I’d owned my farm and didn’t wear anything but jeans,” I said.
“What budget does this come from?” she asked, spreading her hands over the clothes.
I couldn’t answer her. After I dressed in jeans and a Lacoste shirt, I slipped on the Swiss shoes as Tesseract knocked on the door and asked, “Are you both dressed?”
“Tesseract? No Gwyngs? Come in.”
“Karst is trying to seem less militaristic to Yauntra,” he said when he came in, “so we’re sending you out in species costume.”
“I’m not familiar with this,” Yangchenla said.
“Chenla, you might want to go out to the porch and have breakfast with Ammall., I’d like to talk privately to Tom.”
She picked up her bag as she left.
“Well,” Tesseract said, “was it too embarrassing?”
“She thinks I’m naive.” I sat down on the bed and stroked the satin lining of one of the suit vests. “I guess I am. I want to ask you some pretty hard questions about Karst, Yauntra, about what cadets and officers do.”
“Most of our work is less exciting than what you’ve been going through.”
“Hum.”
He smiled, knowing that much Yauntro, and rubbed his crest, which was still pale. “Hargun’s decent, if the Yauntra governing group trusts him now…”
“Chenla said I should support Karriaagzh or Black Amber, pick a side and make sure it won.”
“Tom, if you must pick a side, help us keep two very intelligent, capable individuals from destroying each other. Karriaagzh and Black Amber…”
“I feel odd about Yangchenla.”
“We wanted it to be a pleasure for you.”
“Well, it was…”
“…and it wasn’t,” he finished in English.
“She makes me nervous. But I feel more human,” I admitted.
We went out to the porch for breakfast and found Yangchenla talking gravely to Edwir Hargun, who looked over at me with his round inhuman eyes before turning back to her and answering. “We’ve been told we could send cadets if we join the Federation. Perhaps your species hasn’t joined the Federation yet,” Hargun said to her.
“So polite,” Rhyodolite said, pulling his straw out of his throat.
Yangchenla and Hargun seemed pleased not to be able to understand. Granite and Feldspar came out, seeming sleepy.
“Would you have preferred privacy, Red Clay?” Granite asked in Karst II, looking at Yangchenla.
“It would have been nice,” I said.
Cadmium said, “We meant no harm.”
Yangchenla and Hargun discussed various oils, butters, and the flavors of grains. Yauntra had much cold land, so she thought tsampa, whatever that was, might grow there.
“Perhaps I can sell you seed stock,” she said.
“Free traders,” Rhyodolite commented, “are always freeing trade.” He stuck his broad straw back down his mouth and began pumping away with his tongue muscles.
“We’re leaving this afternoon,” Granite Grit said, “all of us except you and Yangchenla.” He spoke in Karst I this time so she understood.
Mid-morning, I stood with Yangchenla and Ammalla on their veranda to watch the planes rise up into the engineered air.
“Tom just came from the planet you say my people came from years ago?” Yangchenla asked Ammalla.
“Five hundred years ago, to be exact.”
“He’s in the Academy. Not one of us who has been here for five hundred years has been accepted.” Yangchenla’s dress fluttered as the plane carrying the birds and Gwyngs took off.
“Tom is a test of humans. Your family is another test. We don’t take the murder of Rector’s People lightly—even if it happened five hundred years ago and the killers were terrified. Humans were lethally xenophobic then. Tom, I’m sorry.”
“Did Tesseract know a human had killed a Rector’s Person when he came to Earth?” I asked.
“He knew when you came in with Granite Grit that time.” Ammalla smiled slightly.
Poor Tesseract—Granite freaking and me from a species with a history of lethal xenophobia.
“Murder’s against our religion,” Yangchenla said.
“We’ve heard that before. Karriaagzh wants to contact all language-users, but so many would die—cadets, officers, Rector’s People, terrified primitives themselves.”
Some near-lethal xenofreaks lived right down the road from our old farm, I thought.
Yangchenla sullenly sat there, staring down. “But,” she said, “we have no status, no place.” She got up and stretched, displaying her body to me, I sensed. The body was wonderful, so wise on its own terms. I wished a bit that complex Chenla wasn’t so much in control of it.
“Cold, Tom?” Ammalla asked gently.
I was shivering.
&nbs
p; “All that distance between here and our planet,” I said, although that didn’t really explain things.
Yangchenla went to the porch rail, grabbed it, and hissed through her teeth. Ammalla touched her gingerly. “I hate pass-carrying,” she said. “Slimy come-ons.”
“I’m sorry,” Ammalla said, rubbing the human girl’s back.
“Him. You only feel sorry for him. Prize cadet.”
“Tom is our first concern,” Ammalla said, “but perhaps sex-giving makes you feel vulnerable.” She turned Chenla around carefully—half afraid for herself, I thought, embarrassed that my species had such a xenofreak record. But had I hurt Yangchenla?
Yangchenla stared rigidly at Ammalla and whispered, “Tell Tom to go away.”
I nodded to Ammalla and slipped into the house, hearing Yangchenla weeping as I crossed the entry room.
God, let there be beer. I went to the kitchen freezer, pulled one out, popped it open, and drank. Yangchenla and Ammalla came after I’d drained it. “I’m sorry, Tom,” Yangchenla said. She went to the sink and dialed cold water to wash her eyes.
“Maybe we should have eased into this.”
Yangchenla got her eyes back in the shape she wanted them and turned to look at me. She looked older than early twenties then. “I never wanted to use my sex-giving, but you were so tempting.”
“Naive? And sexually lonely?”
“The Barcons put in the child-preventive sticks, but I don’t have my children anymore,” Yangchenla said.
“Didn’t your ex-husband take them when he left you?” Ammalla asked.
“Worse for our men in Karst City,” Yangchenla said. “Tom, help me.”
“He can’t help you yet,” Ammalla said.
Yangchenla crossed her arms in front of her and gripped each upper arm with the opposite hand. “I should have gone back with the others.”
“Tesseract’s coming back tonight,” Ammalla said, leaning against a counter. “My poor sink has seen lots of tears—yours, Rhyodolite’s—these few days.”
“What does a wrinkle-face have to cry over?” Yangchenla said, loosening her fierce handholds on her arms.
“Some near-kin broke his legs—and none of us had any idea that the Gwyngs were trying to poach a contact.”
“Poach a contact?” I asked.
“Some Federation sapients feed primitive cultures scientific information—get them out into space and make the First Contact, get the First Ccontact shares and sometimes even the linguistics team shares.”
“Oh,” I said. “He told me they were just watching.”
“Naive,” Yangchenla said.
That afternoon, we heard a plane coming in. Ammalla smiled and fixed a tray of beers and nut cookies loaded with vitamins that Ahrams needed—whether humans needed then or not. Before she carried the tray to the porch, she rubbed her small crest ridge and said, “We need time alone.”
Yangchenla and I began talking as if we’d just met and weren’t sure the date arranger had paired us up intelligently. “So you were born in a free-trader family.”
Yangchenla nodded as she groped around the freezer, asking, “Have you heard of the Gwyngs who lure stray males into robberies using an in-heat female and her consorts?” She handed me a beer.
“I like Gwyngs,” I said, hoping Ammalla and Tesseract were having more fun than we were.
“And you’re going to another planet, with those people who were prisoners here.”
Slowly, I sipped the beer, dodging any attempt to even think out an answer to myself. Finally, I said, “I’m assigned to do it. Being a cadet’s not as neat as you think, Free Trader. We get shot at.”
“Transfer to Institutes if you’re afraid,” she said.
I felt odd, standing there in my human jeans and Lacoste shirt like I was a college kid. I remembered Hargun’s eyes watching me in the van from the free side of stout wire mesh. “But they’re more afraid of us.”
Yeah, we’re out here and we do not look like you.
Yangchenla re-folded her arms in front of her breasts and said, “Some individuals, species aside, are problem characters.”
That afternoon, we played chess with folded paper chessmen and a board Yangchenla drew up. The rules had changed somewhat in five hundred years, if I’d remembered correctly what I’d read earlier, bored and fiddling through the Floyd County high school’s encyclopedia. She beat me until I learned to think out moves in advance.
Tesseract and Ammalla came out briefly to make sure we weren’t killing each other. But we stayed polite, sexual energies drained off by both my tension over returning to Yauntra and the mad one night we’d already had together.
In the morning, Tesseract, wearing a shift that seemed to be the uniform tunic’s ancestor, looked at me as though he hadn’t quite planned for me to be there. He looked more alien, as though he’d never talked English. “Ammalla told you we had trouble with humans earlier.”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” I said. Yangchenla looked tensely from the chessboard, crouched over it.
He sat down heavily on the sofa. “When you came in with Granite Grit…” His voice faded.
“After I’d cut classes. Bet you wanted to deal with one crazy cadet at a time.”
He smiled. “I talked a long time with Hargun. We’re three different social types, you, me, and the Yauntries, regardless of how much we look alike. They beat each other up, by groups like your nations, but then assimilate very quickly. Ahrams—we’re more independent even than humans. Odd.”
I thought about the Civil War—blacks. Yeah, we’re not good assimilators. “If you Ahrams are less social, then how come you got to space before we did?”
“Accident.” He laughed slightly. “Let’s not talk about species. Tell you this, though. Black Amber thinks you’re good luck. She pouched a nymph.”
“Has it been fifteen weeks?”
“Five months. You were on Yauntra quite a while.”
“Cadmium and Rhyodolite must have been excluded from the mating scene again. That’s why they were such assholes.”
“Is it hard to keep up with all the different manners?” Tesseract asked, sinking deeper into his chair.
“Yeah. Want a beer?” I replied.
“You humans read minds?” he asked. Ammalla came out in a long shift, looking tired and sleepy.
I got out four beers, and we all sat around the frosted-glass holo tank watching Ahram movies, the behavior not quite human enough to follow emotionally, but Tesseract and Ammalla looked so wasted I didn’t have the heart to ask them to explain the obscure points—why did the heroines trade children when their men were killed?
The next morning, Tesseract, dressed in his Rector’s Man clothes, woke me. “Pack all of it,” he said. “Here, I’ll help you.”
When we left the room, Yangchenla was waiting on the porch with her bag. She looked a bit fragile, a lone woman making her way in this world.
Nah, she had family. I was the lone human here; the men of her people wouldn’t accept me. That’s the way humans and chimps are—hard to break into a new social group.
We loaded our things in the plane and sat down behind Tesseract to go back to Karst City.
Suddenly I was exhausted. I wished I could relax a few days more with people I knew, human people.
Yangchenla looked out of the plane windows, her eyes fixing on each hill range, then looking over the plains to the next set of mountains. “I’d like to keep in touch with you,” she said to me. “Perhaps you’d tell me what has happened to my people since we left?”
“Tibet,” Tesseract said. “Got conquered in a war. Many fled to India, became religious leaders in Tom’s country, but he probably doesn’t know about that.”
“No, I don’t,” I said glumly.
“Does our kind have planes now, computers?” she asked. “I know they don’t have space gates, but holo tanks?”
“No holo tanks,” I said, “but planes and computers.”
“Perhaps I should try for
an interplanetary trade contract,” Chenla said, almost to herself. Slumped down in her seat, she was quiet awhile. “I think,” she finally said, “that other sapients’ opinions bother me too much. I’m not like you Ahrams. “
“Worse for the Yauntry on that, Yangchenla. For them there’s terror in either making us monsters or trying to merge with us,” Tesseract said. “Humans can be bothered by alien opinions without wanting to be like all of us.”
“You must have a place where you can be an Ahram among Ahrams, but we can’t escape being primitives.”
“Being a refugee,” I added. “Expendable, ripe for the name wall.”
He reached back and thumped my shoulder. “Tom, was being a parolee better?”
I shut up, body swaying with the little motions of the plane, tired, tired, tired.
When we landed, Yangchenla refused help with her bag and walked by herself toward her bus. A guard asked to see her I.D.—suddenly, I remembered seeing a black guy carded at a bar, no one else, just the black guy.
Primitive…refugee…nigger. I felt sorry for both of us, but my cadet uniform got me by the guard without a twitchy glance. Tesseract in Rector’s Rep colors was right beside me.
Yangchenla waved timidly from the bus steps, as though she wasn’t sure waving had kept its meaning for five hundred years. I shouted, “I’ll see you again.” She smiled and waved back more vigorously through the bus window by her seat, and I flapped my arms at her as her bus pulled out. “But what’s next?” I asked Tesseract.
“I need to talk to you, in my office.”
“Yes, sir,” I said in English.
“Don’t take that tone with me, son,” he replied in the same language. I sort of laughed.
We loaded the bags in the car and drove up to the chrome pillars of the Rector’s offices. I wondered what I’d feel if I saw Karriaagzh. Such a monster—no wonder the Yauntries thought he ruled us. “Leave the bags in the car,” Tesseract said. I walked with him to his office.
A little bear sapient with short all-over curly body hair had one of Tesseract’s relax-’um teas waiting. Tesseract sat down in the armchair near his desk. I sat on a wood seat and pulled a little table close for my teacup.
