Becoming Alien

by Rebecca Ore

  Tesseract rubbed his crest and then drank, both hands on the cup, a huge draught of tea. “The situation on Yauntra,” he began, but didn’t say more for a few moments, staring into his teacup until the little bear brought the teapot over, but Tesseract waved him away. “Tom, Yauntra’s corporations don’t want their trade balances destroyed by new alien technologies. That’s what Hargun told me. Be careful. Stay with Hargun or Karriaagzh. Unorthodox the bird may be, but he’s not stupid.”

  “It’s gonna be dangerous.” I started speaking in English.

  “Now come with me, you’ll spend the night in the dorm.” By myself? I didn’t ask, though, just followed Tesseract out to the car again, feeling like a pawn from the chess games I’d played with Yangchenla. I must have sighed, because Tesseract patted my shoulder.

  He carried one bag; I carried the other, back into empty dorms, our footsteps echoing in the long hallway, no sounds of anyone else around. Seems they could have put me up at the Lodge again, but I guessed Karriaagzh wanted to remind me I was just a cadet.

  Alone again. I opened the door.

  “Surprise,” Rhyodolite and Cadmium said. All sorts of young aliens stood up for me. I came in dazed while Tesseract took my suitcases and pushed through the crowd to put them in my alcove. Gwyngs, birds, Ewits, Jereks, two pairs of shiny black people, and a pair of Barcons with a drug dispenser.

  A curly-haired bear-stock person came forward. “I’m Dioran Ferrite 4, your hall monitor. Sorry I didn’t help you more, but the authorities around you intimidated me.”

  All the cadets looked pointedly at Tesseract.

  “Have a nice party,” Tesseract said, leaving. “We’ll pick you up in the morning, Tom.”

  After Tesseract left, Cadmium said, “We have a song for you. Tesseract suggested.”

  “Our brains must be overridden, but it’s for you,” Rhyodolite added. They put curved plastic plates, almost like Carbon-jet’s memory enhancer, over the computers in their artificial skull bones, and began singing, in English.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Gentlemen songsters out on a spree,

  Lost from here to Eternity,

  Lord, have mercy on such as we,

  Baa, Baa, Baa.

  Chills ran up and down my spine—that’s what cadets were, and greatly in need of mercy. I wondered if Tesseract had translated the song for these other cadets. “Any others going out?” I asked.

  “Gypsum’s coming back from Ewit home,” another Ewit said archly.

  “The rest are friends-of-friends,” Feldspar said in Karst II, “or went through the operation with you.”

  “Or will preserve order,” a Barcon on the drug box said.

  Cadmium and Rhyodolite twisted together when I came around to them, and Cadmium said, “Black Amber told us you did not witness. She asked that we apologize.”

  “It’s okay.”

  They rolled me between them, and said to the party at large, “And we can sing his throat.”

  I looked at Rhyodolite’s little wrinkled face, the nostril slits quivering in and out as he breathed, felt both Gwyng hearts beating in their bodies. We’re all in this together, I thought, then said in Karst, “We’re all aliens together.”

  Granite and Feldspar came over, their long feathered thighs lifted high, hocks bumping people who weren’t used to the way birds walked. Feldspar rubbed her nares against Rhyodolite’s chin. He didn’t flinch, but reached up to tickle the thick golden flesh around her nostrils. I was proud of him and felt much less lonely.

  Lost from here to Eternity.

  Lord, have mercy on such as we.

  One of the other Gwyngs said, “Bird presence always increases the pulse, but we can re-interpret that physiological reaction.”

  “They’re exciting to be around,” Cadmium said.

  Gypsum came in, babbling in Karst II and Ewit. He looked around at the party and threw his baggage on his bed. “We’re all refugees here,” he said.

  “Ewit home do something to you?” another Ewit, dressed in officer blue, asked.

  “Yeah, they aren’t too fond of brain-contaminated colonials.”

  The Barcon at the drug box said, “I recommend Terran hash oil for the Ewits.”

  We filled all three alcove floors and most of the center section with mats from the vacant rooms. They were covered with sleeping cadets and young officers—too emotional, too wasted to go back to their separate rooms.

  “Red Clay. So they had a seeing-you-off party.” The harsh voice didn’t seem too thrilled. I opened my eyes—Karriaagzh, with an injection cube in his hand.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Sober you up,” he replied, “if you need it.” I saw Edwir Hargun standing by the disc player, staring at the alien bodies. “I only did alcohol last night,” I said, blinking. A couple of the others sat up grumbling, but went very quiet when they saw Karriaagzh.

  “The Rector,” someone in the back murmured.

  “Your bags still packed? Shower, change into a uniform, and come with us.”

  “Could you wait outside?” I asked.

  “Yes, we’ll wait outside. I remember these parties, dimly.” After I had a shower, I realized I did have a headache, which got worse when I changed to fresh clothes. I found a uniform, my sash folded on top of it, and dressed in the whole works. My dirty clothes—jeans, shorts, shirt—I wrapped in a sheet and stuffed in a suitcase.

  When I came out, Karriaagzh said, “Bit much,” fingering the sash, “but why not?”

  “My head does hurt,” I admitted to him.

  Squinting his yellow eyes, he pulled up my tunic sleeve. Hargun cringed as Karriaagzh pinched my human flesh in his bird fingers and pushed the cube against it.

  “Ready now,” he said, throwing the cube into a hall trash can.

  “Yes.” Hargun and I both looked at Karriaagzh, huge and gray beside us. Those yellow eyes could have been amused, but they were totally unfathomable to us mammals.

  Hargun took one of my bags, which surprised me a second. Karriaagzh ruffled his face feathers slightly, but didn’t stop his long strides down the hall toward the exit.

  “Everyone else is at the ship,” he said when we reached his large gray car with the back seat removed.

  10

  Us and Them

  After Hargun, Karriaagzh, and I boarded Karriaagzh’s ship, Karriaagzh handed me computer cards and bubble storage packs. “Trade possibilities.”

  “If those are Yauntry fluist compatible, we’ve got weeks of work, Tom,” Hargun said.

  “Yes,” Karriaagzh said, settling down on his hocks and pulling up a tripod for his elbows. “Weeks—probably months—of work.”

  Mirror—space—mirror—space, then we orbited Yauntra. Near the atmosphere’s edge, as we began a planet-fall path, we got an escort of Yauntry shuttles. When the ships had atmosphere enough to fly aerodynamically, the escorts moved in front to lead us to a landing field far north of where I’d been before.

  “Remember,” Karriaagzh said to me in English, “what we really are—hostages.”

  A cold wind hit us when the ship ramp went down. “Wait,” Karriaagzh said. “Let the Yauntries out first.”

  Under a thousand camera lenses, a boy and girl threw themselves at Hargun, crying in Yauntro, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  I felt alien, slightly guilty. Karriaagzh touched my shoulder and nudged me down the ramp, then away from the outrageously happy Yauntries.

  A Yauntry officer came up and said, “We say now that Edwir Hargun went to space to clear up a misunderstanding between Yauntra and the Federation of Planets.”

  I translated. Karriaagzh replied, “This welcome seems to belie that.” He added in Yauntro, moderate politeness level, “I understand.”

  Hargun’s wife, face wet with tears, walked up toward Karriaagzh, who told the Barcons to let her through. She froze. He crouched slightly as she said, “Thank you for bringing him back alive.”

  I translated. “Tell her, very politely
, that I had no desire to do otherwise,” the bird said.

  When Hargun and his children came up, Karriaagzh sat down on the cement runway and eased his arm out of his jacket. The girl, with quivering fingers, traced the scales down to the back of his hand. Karriaagzh murmured, eyes half closed, “Very tactile,” and slowly lifted his body up again.

  The two children gaped at his height. His crop surged, his crest went slack, and he wriggled his fingers, stroking the air.

  “Do my children make him uncomfortable?” Mrs. Hargun asked, her voice tight.

  “Tell her I’m used to the investigative ape fingers.” He winked his left nictitating membrane and opened his beak slightly, eyes fixed on the children.

  The children skittered to their mother and pressed against her. Karriaagzh sighed, almost bitterly. He said, “Your weather is out of phase with Karst. We have adapting to do.”

  Winter—so cold I wished I’d worn my wool suit and lined overcoat. The boss Yauntries called for our vehicle—a van—as I shivered beside Karriaagzh, whose clothes puffed out as he raised his feathers under them.

  In the back of the van, Carbon-jet sat beside a Yauntry with a gun. “Karriaagzh!” he cried. “Why you? Why here? The planet’s hostile.”

  “Carbon-jet, they think birds rule,” Karriaagzh said as he looked at the van’s floor and judged how he’d best fit in. The bird grabbed the doorframe and settled, feather to fur, by Carbon-jet. “This proves that I can be ordered around by mammals.”

  Carbon-jet stuttered, then asked, “Who ordered you?”

  Karriaagzh didn’t answer, but said, a few miles down the road, “I’ll simply outlive her.”

  C-j caught my eye and pursed his lips in the Gwyng oo—Karriaagzh meant Black Amber. A bit later, Karriaagzh scratched under his feathers. His fingers brought out a thumbnail-sized message pod, pushed it into Carbon-jet’s shoulder fur. The Yauntry guards didn’t notice.

  The Yauntries put us on an estate like a giant landscaped park. I was exhausted—more from being on crazy Yauntra again than from the trip’s quick flashes of space and mirrors—but Karriaagzh wanted to walk. A Yauntry official told us, “Walk, then, in the fields by the main house, and don’t cross the plowed strip in front of the fences.”

  Carbon-jet seemed desperate to sleep in a cold room. (I suspected he wanted to check his message pod), and the Barcons had to test the local food for Karriaagzh, so the bird and I went out alone. Is he really just a fat lonely bird? Brittle leaves crackled under his claw boots and my Swiss shoes as we walked out to a pond skimmed with ice, broken to show water rippling here and there. Karriaagzh bounced a bit on his big legs as his eyes followed a road to the horizon.

  It was almost obscene to think of him as lonely. “Now, you’re here, too,” I said. The weather suited him; cold air to cool his hollow bones if he ran. His head swayed on his feather-muffled neck, eyelids rising and falling; he seemed ready to bolt now. “Can we check to see if they’d mind your running?” I asked.

  “Am I so obvious?” He tightened his neck feathers. “I’d appreciate it if you asked.”

  “Yes, Rector.”

  He roused feathers under his eyes. “Call me Karriaagzh. Black Amber is Acting Rector while I’m here. She gave Wy’um a son.”

  We ate dinner buffet-style; some Yauntries used tiny chair-side tables. Karriaagzh gorged on meats. “I’m a bit indisposed,” he said. The Yauntries wanted one of their medics to help him, but I noticed his crop—surging a bit, eh Karriaagzh—and the slack crest of feathers, and said that the Barcons would help if he needed assistance.

  He raised himself unsteadily and left. Hargun stared at me and said, “Shouldn’t a Barcon go with him?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said.

  Finally, feathers drooping, nictitating membranes edged out in his eyes, Karriaagzh came back. I watched too knowingly as he blinked the eyelids and membranes several times. He tucked three large stones, freshly washed, into a napkin and then into a pocket and waggled cheek feathers at me. We are both gentlemen of the universe, he seemed to tell me, so don’t say anything about my disgusting pleasures, and I won’t mention that Black Amber sexually aroused you.

  “Do you feel better, Rector Ambassador Karriaagzh?” Edwir Hargun asked.

  Karriaagzh filled his bird cup and poured watered wine on his hot crop. “Much better.”

  After dinner we all escorted Karriaagzh to his room, which had thick drapes over the windows and a red suede-covered mat, ten feet square, on the floor. Karriaagzh looked sharply at Carbon-jet, who must have told the Yauntries what Karriaagzh slept on. Beside the mat, on a table, was a bowl of gravel and a handmade ceramic bird cup.

  Edwir Hargun asked, “Does the room suit you?”

  Karriaagzh pulled the drapes aside to expose chain link mesh behind the glass, “Could you arrange,” the bird asked, “a dust bath? A sand pit would be adequate, although I do have a heated dust shower in my ship. Or Tom Red Clay could clean me by hand, if you gave us sawdust and feather combs. And the reading light. I’d be more comfortable with more blue in the spectrum.”

  Hargun asked, “Is that all?”

  “Enough for today,” Karriaagzh said, looking away from all the round eyes. He roused his feathers, shook, and leaned awkwardly against the table to get his boots off.

  So, after you ran my testosterone up so I’d be good Yauntry bait, I’m to be your servant? Karriaagzh wriggled his strange toes free of his left boot. The Yauntries stared at his feet, like distorted parrot feet—two big club toes in front attached directly to each ankle. The heels were short toes in back—not one, like a Gwyng, but two per foot—only slightly longer than a human heel.

  Then he looked at us all, feathers on his head almost helplessly slack, body feathers puffed slightly under his uniform—still Rector’s clothes, even if Black Amber was acting Rector—and sighed, looking at us mammals as though we all were his captors.

  In the morning, I woke up early and stayed in bed, worrying. An hour after sunrise, Hargun buzzed me on an intercom to say, “I need time with my family. When I’m ready to talk to you, I’ll let you know.”

  I got up and found Carbon-jet in an informal kitchen. “Come walk,” he said to me. Two Yauntries came with us.

  “I hate having my life in that crazy bird’s hands,” C-j said in the language we get from the computers when we listen to Karst II speakers. One of the Yauntries switched on a recorder.

  “He’s manipulative, but not crazy. I know crazy.”

  “No? Black Amber’s right; he wastes Federation personnel. Federation pilots died to set up the blockade. The bird rescues you, takes hostages, and leaves twenty-six people behind defended by a Barcon squad and anal-gland non-lethal stun guns.”

  “The Yauntries didn’t kill you. And the Gwyngs have been landing on a pre-tech bat planet. Three got their legs broken—had to be rescued by Barcons and birds.”

  Carbon-jet stared off into space as if searching for the unlikely planet where this happened. “Gwyngs,” he said, “…rescued by birds? Karriaagzh’s behind that.”

  “Granite Grit rescued Rhyodolite because Rhyodolite was my friend.”

  “Black Amber’s Rhyodolite?” Carbon-jet squealed and whistled when I cupped my hand.

  The two Yauntries said, “No more secret talk,” and turned us back around toward the main estate building.

  As we came back inside, we passed the negotiators in the hall. Karriaagzh said, “I can show you the display in my ship. It only looks three-dimensional.” A Yauntry who spoke Karst translated and all the Yauntries tightened their lips, not quite smiling.

  What display?

  “Crazy,” Carbon-jet said. “Consummate refuse.”

  That afternoon, five Yauntries rode up on the local horse-parallel, burro-looking but with little nub horns, leading a riderless one. “Karriaagzh runs. You translate,” one said, motioning for me to mount the riderless animal.

  Karriaagzh ran, and we followed as closely as our mounts would go. Wh
en we stopped, the bird tried to come up. Finally, after puffing at Karriaagzh from enlarged nostrils, a tough male beast let Karriaagzh touch his neck.

  “All brachiator-derived bipedals ride something,” he said. “Is it a modified hunt, predator on prey-back? Or re-creation of tree-swinging? You ride long after inventing engines. Red Clay’s people say, ‘Nothing like the outside of a riding quadruped for the inside of a sapient ape.’”

  After I translated, the Yauntries kicked their beasts into a trot and aimed them at the stables. Probably they thought the weird alien bird teased them. But when I looked down at my shadow, tall on a “horse,” I thought, Modified hunting behavior, swinging, why, he’s right.

  The beast jerked his head toward my thigh and bared big ugly yellow teeth.

  When we got back, we were sore. Karriaagzh called for his Barcons and spoke to them in their language, avoiding their eyes, which seemed to relax them. He sat down and cupped his hands over his mandibles and nares. The senior Barcon began massaging Karriaagzh, reaching in with his fingers around feathers and quills on the bird’s upper legs.

  “And you?” another Barcon asked. I signaled yes without looking at him and tentatively put my hand over my mouth. The Barcon wriggled his nose. The Yauntries watched uneasily as he pushed an electric deep heater down my thigh. Almost too hot—as if it microwaved my muscles.

  Something buzzed, and the Yauntries left. Karriaagzh stood, roused all his feathers, and went for a water shower.

  When he came back, Karriaagzh stretched one side of his body, then the other, bird-style, drying his shabby feathers in front of his dryer.

  A Yauntry came by with Carbon-jet. “He’s awfully old, isn’t he?” the Yauntry asked.

  Carbon-jet whistled softly. “Wearing clothes,” I answered, “doesn’t help his feathers.”

  The Yauntries brought in truckloads of native delicacies for our formal reception dinner the second night. I dressed in my wool vested suit and went to the reception room’s double doors. Two Yauntry girls, one giggling slightly, the other stern-faced, swept the doors open toward me. I saw Yauntries, Yauntries, and more Yauntries around braziers and tables of food.