Human to Human, page 10
Now taking off the makeup made her seem both older and younger.
“Can I have a few days here without any interruptions?” she said.
“Do you want me and Karl to…”
“Leave? Don’t. I’m sorry.” She added in English, “Oh, man, I just feel wounded, s’all. Maybe it’s my period coming on.”
Menstruation and the mood swings before it sometimes seemed like a female trick. I said, “Didn’t the Barcons design a Pill for that?”
“Yes, but I…” She got up and threw the makeup remover pad in the trash, then washed her face in the bathroom, leaving the door open. When she came out, we went to the front room where she put on a recording of Sam playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. We sat huddled on the sofa staring at the speakers. Karl joined us, looked at me, then sat down on the floor, knees drawn up against his body, arms hugging his shins.
Karl finally said, “I’ve got a package in my room I can’t open. And I want to go out and play.”
“Get your father,” she said.
I was nervous about leaving her alone, but decided watching her might make her angry, so I nodded to Karl. We went back to Karl’s room, and I saw a narrow crate with Italian printed on it—CAMPAGNOLO, ATALA, NIPPON—leaning against his bed.
I went back to the kitchen for bone shears and a stout knife, then cut the plastic straps and pulled the bubble pack away. Someone had sent him a child’s racing bicycle from Earth—nothing saying who it was from, just the bike and several spare chains, freewheels, and tires.
Marianne came in as I straightened the handlebars and said, “I bet it was Karriaagzh.”
“Or maybe Travertine?” I said. The pedals were in their own separate bag. I opened it, saw the pedal wrench packed with them, and fitted them to the crank arms.
Karl said, “How fast can I learn?”
I wished I’d thought about buying him human toys while we were in Boston. Whoever sent him this had been more thoughtful “You can learn fast, I’d imagine,” then I repeated in idiomatic English, “Pretty quick, I bet.”
He said, “Mother, come watch, please?”
Marianne said, “Sure, I guess.” She moved her back, curling it from the shoulders down, as if it hurt. “I wanted to take a bath, but…” She shrugged like a Jewish mother. But then she was Jewish, wasn’t she, if the radical life didn’t cancel that out. She put her hand on the small bike saddle and said, “We should have done more for you on Earth, Karl. Taken you to a ball game, the zoo.”
“It was fun enough,” Karl said. “Will you get me bicycling clothes like yours, shoes with plastic slots?”
“Sure,” I said in English.
Marianne said, “Oh, go by yourselves. I…”
Karl’s face went rigid, then he smiled slightly at Marianne—a scary control in a kid his age—and wheeled the bike over to the elevator, leaned it against the wall, and pushed the button. I decided not to bring my own bike. He’d need me to hold him up.
When the elevator door closed, I said, “Your mother wanted to have more contact with Earth.”
“It was okay, but I missed my friends,” Karl said.
“Do you really want to learn English?”
He sighed and said, “You both talk in it to keep me from knowing what you say.”
“Actually, we thought you’d grow up better if you learned Karst One first. But you ought to learn something about the planet you come from.”
“I’m learning Tibetan from Tracy.”
The elevator doors opened, and we wheeled the bike out through the lobby. Several of our neighbors were shopping in Awingthin the Gwyng’s store. One of them, a Shiny Black named Silver Thirteen, said, “We’re breeding.” Her husband, one of those equal-sized males that behaves almost like a female and stays mated for life, smiled and smiled at Karl as if he wanted to practice fatherhood on my son.
I said, “Great,” as Karl showed his bicycle to another kid who lived in the building, a Jerek girl younger than the Jerek in his nursery group. Her fur was blond with black streaks, and the bare skin across her face at the eyes and down the nose was a shiny brown, not black as in most Jereks. Her parents, Gouge Rock and Slipzone, both light-brown Jereks with bleached forearm fur, came out of the store and stood a second for politeness before taking her away.
The sky was beautiful—blue with stars and the small sun shining through high cirrus. Some leaves had died and fallen, but nothing like a Terran fall. Before I could stop him, Karl stood over the bike and tried to pedal, but fell over.
“Wait,” I said. “I’ll hold you until you get the hang of it.” I grabbed the left crook of the handlebar under the brake lever with one hand and the seatpost with the other, my hand under the quick-release seatpost bolt.
We pushed along until one of two identical olive bird-types, Travertine’s conspecifics from the wall-less houses, said, “Lower his seat, and he can push and catch himself with his feet.”
It was obvious once he’d suggested it: make the thing a scooter. I opened the seatpost lever and slid the saddle down. Karl could reach the ground on tiptoe with the seat run all the way down, but he shoved off down a slight grade, and put his feet on the pedals. Fortunately, they didn’t have toeclips—he floundered off, pedaling, oversteering, catching himself.
I asked the bird couple, “How did you figure that out? Can you ride bicycles with your joint configuration?”
“If one has the proper cams in the chainring and pedal, it’s like swimming,” the one who suggested lowering the seat said.
“It exposes the knee differences too much,” the other one said. “We appreciate your thanks, but we’ve got an errand to run.”
As Karl walked the bike back up to me, I realized I’d forgotten that we humans were exotics.
Then I spotted Thridai, our Sharwani defector, walking with his hands deep in his tunic pockets, a hood over his head. Not part of the uniform, hoods. He stopped farther away from us than I would have, a distance that left me feeling slightly estranged. We’d been crowding the Sharwani if this was a polite distance for acquaintances.
“Thridai, how are you?”
“I moved into Lucid Moment. Do you mind?”
“No, come over. Your fellow Sharwani will be back from the language operations soon.”
“Not my fellow Sharwani.” He came closer, nodding his head slightly, but not a threat nod the way it would have been if a Gwyng did it. “How are you doing, Karl?”
Karl said, “I’m learning how to ride a bicycle. You’re Thridai, right? You like the Federation?”
Thridai came closer and began feeling the bicycle with his fingertips, not minding the grease, rubbing that between his fingers, also. “It’s new.”
Yes, somebody gave it to me—Karriaagzh, I think.”
“Ah, yes, the bird who thinks we all belong together.” Thridai pulled rough-textured cloth out from his pockets and wiped the grease off his fingers. “You have a good machine.”
“Thank you,” Karl said.
Thridai said to me, “I hope you don’t mind that I moved near your family.”
Odd sound to that, I thought. He pulled the hood with his left hand, holding it closed around his chin, covering the fur over his cheekbones.
The day after I talked to Thridai, two Barcons from Control came to my apartment while Marianne was out. One laid a read-out plate over my skull computer while the other took Karl aside.
The Barcon that stayed behind with me pulled out a piece of plastic that looked like a skull bone—someone’s language computer—and plugged a lead from it to his own head, then stared at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Comparing you to what Thridai saw.”
“Thridai?”
“He was killed. We’re still investigating. Your Sharwani may come back after the investigation.”
“What did Thridai see?”
“We’re still investigating.”
Karl and the first Barcon came back. Looking puzzled, Karl said, “Daddy, we were playing with the bike early yesterday morning, weren’t we?”
The Barcons spoke their language, then the one who’d viewed the skull computer record said, “We’re going to recommend free time for a week, but stay here.”
I was a suspect. Why?
At the end of the week, someone in the vast Karst computer net sent us a message: SHARWANI THRIDAI’s MEMORIAL SERVICE BY THE WALLS AT SUNRISE. YOUR SHARWANI ARE COMING BACK IN FOUR DAYS.
Marianne came into my room—I must have made some odd sound. She read the screen and asked, “Do they think our Sharwani know anything about it?”
I entered: DO THE SHARWANI COMING BACK TO US KNOW?
The unidentified creature—probably someone from the Institute of Control—replied: THEY WILL BE TOLD. WATCH THEM.
Marianne said, “You shouldn’t go to the memorial service.”
I leaned against her, feeling the warmth, and asked, “Why?”
“Don’t you remember how numb you were…” She didn’t finish but meant…for days after Warren killed himself.
I almost said, But he’s an alien! “I can take it.”
Marianne said, “When did you see him last?”
“The day before he was killed. Karl and I ran into him when I took Karl out with the bike.”
We got another message, from our Rector’s People, two Jereks who were our supervisors and parents of a Jerek boychild in our nursery group, born a month after Karl. AGATE HERE. IF YOU THINK SHARING SPACE WITH HURDAI AND CHI’URSEMISA WOULD PAIN YOU NOW, LET US KNOW.
I almost said Yes, but entered: WE CAN MANAGE. I TAKE IT THAT I’M NOT A SUSPECT ANYMORE. Then I went into the kitchen to fix an herbal tranquilizer tea. As I heated water in the flash kettle, Marianne put a mint tea bag and some alien honey in her own cup. The water boiled; I poured, then she reached across my arm and stirred my tea for me, an odd little gesture.
“Thanks,” I said.
We heard the elevator chime. I toggled the intercom and asked, “Who’s there?”
“Your neighbors.” Gouge Rock, the Jerek woman, I guessed by the voice. And the elevator intercom picked up the sounds of other bodies shuffling, breathing. I opened the door. The whole elevator was full of neighbors and my bird friends Granite Grit and Feldspar with their son Alchir-singra.
Karl giggled when he saw Alchir-singra.
Granite said, “We now live on the eighth floor here.”
And Travertine was behind them. He came out of the crowd sideways, stared up at Granite and half-closed his eyelids, squinting to keep from pulling his transparent eye membranes between himself and the larger bird species. He said, “We thought Marianne and you should have company.”
The Jereks and the Shiny Black said, “Yes,” while the Gwyng female, with her younger pouch kin, cupped her hand and brought it down.
Silver, the Shiny Black female, said, “We thought you should know we trusted you.”
“Thanks,” Marianne said. “Would it be polite to offer tea? Food?”
The elevator went back down and brought up the rest of our neighbors—creatures who’d lived here for the past seven years, others who were new to the building.
I knew some of them—none well—and now they’d come to see us. And then Travertine didn’t live in the building. I asked him in English, “Why now?”
He said in the same language, “We thought you might appreciate that you are not alone with your Sharwani.” The Jereks heard him talking in the alien language and lowered their noses an inch, slight challenge faces.
I wondered if they were with the Institute of Analytics and Tactics, our alien CIA. I asked, in Karst One, “What does anyone know about Thridai’s murder?”
The Jerek female, Gouge Rock, said, “Several Sharwani told us they’ve been contacted by a disguised Sharwani, given messages in something like your blindcode, braillee?”
Travertine looked from them to me as if he’d been the Terran specialist who’d discovered humans used blindcode. “Braille,” I pronounced correctly. “Were either Hurdai or Chi’ursemisa contacted?”
“They said they weren’t,” Slipzone said, “but do we trust them?”
Marianne said, “Are you asking us, as neighbors not to bring them back here?” She sat the boiling pot down and looked around at everyone. The Gwyng shopkeeper, Awingthin, her brow hair flaring, went to the window with her males and stared out. The others looked at each other. Granite Grit said, “No, unless you feel…”
Gouge Rock lowered her nose at him.
I said, “We felt like we were making progress with them.”
Slipzone closed his eyes, the skin over the eyes just as shiny as his eyeballs, and said, “Perhaps they really weren’t contacted. And we don’t know how good the surgical disguises are.”
Karl said, “I like Daiur. I was more afraid of Hrif.”
Awingthin, without turning from the window, said in Karst Two, “(Perhaps) Support should have no say?”
Granite Grit and Feldspar hunkered down on their hocks. Alchir-singra said, in the same language, “Perhaps Gwyngs are afraid.”
“Hush, Alchir,” Granite said. He grabbed Alchir’s scaly wrist and pulled him down.
The Gwyng shopkeeper said, “I feed you. True, doing that supports me as well (but…apprehension). (Anxiety) I won’t fuss (more).” She walked away from the window and got in the elevator, her pouch kin trailing behind her. She pushed for her shop floor and, as the doors closed, said, “No insult/back with foods.”
No one said anything for a second, then Travertine said, “I understand why she might be nervous, but Red Clay and Ree the Linguist are most likely to have problems.”
“Dealing with xenophobia is our profession,” Gouge Rock said.
Granite Grit said, “Tom, the Institute of Control gave Feldspar and me lessons in fighting Sharwani. Our biostructure gives us good leverage over them.”
Plus the fact that he is over seven feet tall, I thought, and can open a creature’s belly with his bare toes.
I said, “I should have invited you over more, Granite.” Did it embarrass me that Granite and Feldspar had witnessed my fights with Yangchenla? Yes. Then maybe I reminded him too much of his own freak-out time when we were cadet roommates? But he was a bird; mental states that didn’t lead to action tended to be as forgotten, for birds, as unrealized dreams.
Then I wondered if Gwyngs remembered everything—all language logged to time embedded in it.
Marianne, thinking more of the present than I was, said, “Thank you all. Perhaps we should have neighborhood parties more often.”
The Gwyng shopkeeper and her pouch kin came back with food carts. Everyone chatted at us as though we were going off on a dangerous mission.
Silver took me aside and told me, “The Institute of Control has implanted Hurdai and Chi’ursemisa with stun devices much like control bracelets. You and the Linguist Ree can control them.”
I remembered Chi’ursemisa’s fingers splayed over the polycarb and wondered how deep the Sharwani tactile sense might go, if they’d feel the implants. I shook my head slightly, thinking about plastic temporal bones that housed skull computers. But they wouldn’t have that, now—just the biochemical reversal of some language-center cells to the childhood condition. And stun implants.
The computer housing under my skin and scalp muscles, under my left ear, balanced perfectly with the real bone on the other side. Or else I’d forgotten what real bone there felt like.
Karl came up to me and said, “I’m glad you’re teaching me English.”
“Yeah,” I said to him in that language. The Sharwani would know Karst too well now for us to talk privately in that language.
Ersh, my first Wreng contact, and I met as we walked toward the Walls for Thridai’s memorial service. The feathers around his ear holes were matted, as though he’d been twirling them the way a girl will play with her hair with her fingers. He was wearing blue with a green cord—officiator for the Rector now. Big belly scales rustled against the tunic when he saw me. I wondered if his eyelids were still tattooed, but he didn’t flick those at me. He said, “Red Clay, Tom,” as though not sure whether to use my Federation name or my species name at funerals.
“Ersh.” I remembered when we’d met Thridai, our informant, smoking his herbal cigarettes.
“I feel awkward.”
“Did you talk much with Thridai?”
“No.”
An Ahram stonemason, big and sweating in a leather apron, came up with a handheld chisel and hammer—a primitive custom, to memorialize on walls, done with primitive tools. A bear-stock creature with grey and black fur held the gold-leaf book and an adhesive pot on a tray. All the alien plants trembled around us as the Ahram chiseled out Thridai’s name on the latest granite slab. Sweat ran down his skull crest, down by his ears and along his massive jaw. I looked around; not many of us were here for Thridai—his Institute of Analytics handler, a couple of olive birds, Ersh, me. Then the bear type, who held the gold and adhesive pot, swiveled his ears under his head fur. Karriaagzh came stepping up, feathers covered by the Rector’s green that glittered with gold threads, alone as always, his beak chipped as though he’d been biting metal.
“Ersh, Tom, good,” Karriaagzh said as he settled down, thighs on lower legs, hocks splayed behind him. I looked at Ersh’s cord again, wondering if he were in training to be a Rector’s Person. A bit jealous, yes, I was, if Ersh was going to be trained for that. Karriaagzh looked at me and said, “Ersh works for my office now as a researcher.” I felt foolish, caught being out-of-line ambitious.
The Ahram wire-brushed the chiseled-out name and began laying in the gold. We stayed until he’d burnished it. Gold wasn’t terribly valuable here, just something that didn’t tarnish in the stone grooves.
Having thought my thoughts about Thridai, I waited until someone would leave first. The work crew started out, then Karriaagzh stood up and stretched, reaching his arms up so straight that the tunic sleeves fell down below the scales on his forearms. The tissue around the yellow eyes seemed puffy.
