Becoming Alien (20 page)

“Why did you let us go?” I wondered if the Yauntry version differed from the Karst version.

“No weapons on you. Other ships did not hurt, but sent electric pictures.” He sighed, frustrated with his minuscule Karst. “And you…so young, despite the strange
s’kos
face.” He smiled faintly at me and said, “Satellite stealer.”

Rhyo cocked his head and said, “Ah, the flesh-eating apes can talk to each other, but don’t translate that, Red Mud, or I’ll imitate vampire tonight.” He buzzed a visual through the computer—little bat with a human face and fangs like miniature tusks.

“The one who spoke was the one your people captured with me,” I told Hargun.

Hargun turned to Rhyodolite and said, “Your Federation is an enormous thing to fight. An intimidating alliance of mammals and birds.”

Black Amber looked sharply at Hargun. The Yauntry smiled back as though his face had turned almost to glass.

Rhyo pulled Cadmium aside and talked some Gwyng language to him that my skull computer couldn’t work out. Cadmium, annoyed, bobbed his head, bounced his pied body against Rhyo, and plunged off into the crowd. Wrinkles deepening, Rhyo looked wistfully after him.

Black Amber extended her fingertips to Hargun as she moved her body forward in a fluid roll. He started to touch her palm with his, but she only allowed her long, furred fingers to brush his, knuckle to knuckle. “Please explain,” she said to me, “that Gwyngs are more sparing of friendly hand gestures than former brachiators/tree creatures.”

I added that he shouldn’t nod at Gwyngs either, since they tended to do that when they were annoyed. Rhyodolite nodded slightly and tried to edge Black Amber away from us. She arched her body at him and raised her brow fur. Both went off into the crowd and left me with Hargun.

“Are they angry with me?” Hargun asked.

“No.” I looked around and noticed lots more Barcons than I’d been aware of—all blended into the background. The two who’d brought Hargun up to me stood behind us, observing, not socializing.

“Wonderful at your age,” Hargun tried to say, “to know about strange…people.” He stared down at his shoes as if he’d run completely out of vocabulary.

Why did the Gwyngs leave? I wondered.

The room noise choked off as the old bird Rector Karriaagzh entered, yellow hawk eyes with fierce bone ridges swaying over the rest of us.

Hargun turned and stared at the Rector. Man, Karriaagzh was one truly impressive and alien, alien for a space novice to see. Hargun murmured, “Your regulator?”

“More or less.”

“Birds regulate you? Now I understand…a bird’s death.” His voice trailed off as Karriaagzh stalked closer, dressed in russet with real gold worked through the cloth.

I was too awed by Karriaagzh and didn’t catch until later the implications of what Hargun said.

The Rector’s uniform was undone to show some of his ridged breastbone—his comment, perhaps, to us mammals that he was different. Disdaining entourages, alone, he moved with backward knee strides through the crowd.

Slowly, talking his way from alien to alien, he made his way to us. “Red Clay Tom, you aren’t such a xenophobe as Black Amber feared. Edwir Hargun,
shiwi-la, hum, u Federation-bhlu
. I hope my Yauntro is not too impossible.”

Hargun’s eyes went hugely round, almost like balls, and Karriaagzh eased back and bent his knees, to make himself less tall. The bird gave us his whole attention—neither eyelids nor nictitating membranes moved. Karriaagzh breathed in rhythm with Hargun, first quickly. When the bird breathed slower, Hargun’s breaths slowed, too, as though the bird’d hypnotized him.

My mouth opened a little. Karriaagzh moved his facial feathers and said, “I would like both of you to be at the tale-telling later.”

As the bird moved on, Hargun’s eyes tracked him. “I know people who spoke for…a…people.”

“Diplomat?” I suggested. “Representative.”

“Bird-like things should not be able to speak Yauntro. And I didn’t come with full…not my idea. But I know a master. This…grasping for words fools me. Difficult to seem sapient without proper words.”

Karriaagzh, having gone through the crowd like a master politician, stepped up on a dais and said, “First contact takes courage and initiative on both sides. We honor our guests tonight.”

Hargun trembled slightly—xeno reaction, I thought. His Barcons eased him up against a wall, so aliens couldn’t crowd in on all sides as they came over to congratulate us.

“Stay with him,” one of the Barcons told me. “You know him from the contact.”

“And you have so many amino acids in common,” the other added.

Hargun braced his body against the wall, tense, ready to fight if necessary. Where was Tesseract and his calming teas? I’d thought of Tesseract when I saw another Ahram enter the room, with a Gwyng, both dressed in handspun tweedy clothes. The alien crowd whispered, “History Committee.”

Black Amber suddenly appeared by my elbow and moved me toward the slow chatty path they took through the crowd.

“Is this?” the other Gwyng said to Black Amber, indicating me.

“Mica’s legacy, Red Clay. Red Clay, this is History Committee Member for the Gwyngs Wy’um.”

“History Committee Member, I am honored to be here tonight…” What should I say to this bipedal bat whose hand was sliding up and down Black Amber’s stomach? I didn’t know what the History Committee was, but these guys arrived late and grabbed more attention than Karriaagzh.

The other History Committee Member, the Ahram, with reddish skull crest skin, smiled. “Cadet Red Clay, I’m History Committee Member Warst Runnel, of the Ahrams, like Tesseract, no?”

Wy’um sniffed the air delicately. Black Amber blinked slowly and showed Wy’um a little glass capsule. I felt tension in the air, as if some illegal drug was in that vial, ready to spin brains when cracked and sniffed. He oo’ed. The Ahram’s crest skin flushed even redder, and he looked at Black Amber as though she were a whore.

Black Amber stared me into silence and thanked them, saying she’d see them both later.

Then the History Committee aliens moved on.

“Who,” I asked Amber, “were they?”

“History Committee determines Karst and Federation policies, holds us together with good history. Wy’um S’fee I’e is the first
male
Gwyng to hold the position.” She raised her brow hair slightly and twitched her lips, then headed over with her rolling gait to the food table.

Look, I told myself as Black Amber eased away, you speak the language—mingle. So what if the Barcons wanted me to stay with Hargun. He made me nervous.

I looked for other cadets, but black suits were scarce. Finally, I spotted a young female ape-type, with multi-colored head hair, like a punk tri-colored collie.
Why not,
I decided as I went toward her,
she’s shorter than me.

Funny chin, no dent between it and the bottom lip, even if it’s not rounded like Hargun’s, I thought. Her face and nose-angles were a bit broad, but the eyes were okay, getting quizzical as I stared. “I guess we’re two of the youngest winners,” I managed to get out. “I’m Red Clay.”

“Topaz 17. I understand your species is new here. First contact and first contacting, all so suddenly.”

“Yes. Was anyone hurt on your first-contact team?!”

“No, we prepared well. I even dyed my hair to look less alien to them.”

“Is that…”

“No, this is my normal color.”

“Usually, are there casualties?”

She looked around, then said, “Most first contacts are accidents—if we’d planned, did radio approaches first, we’d have fewer dead.”

My first impulse had been to imagine sunglasses on her with that weird hair, but now I mentally jerked off the imagined shades and gave her professor glasses, so serious. “Right,” I said.

She smiled. “You were with Rhyodolite 10?”

“Yes.”

“He uses Gwyng-heat scent poppers for sexual arousal with non-specifics. Watch him around your women.”

“Little glass poppers?” I asked.

“So he has them tonight.”

“No, Black Amber…” Suddenly I realized I’d almost said too much, but I covered up, saying, “… told me about them.”

She moved away from me, suddenly bored.

Alone again.
I saw Hargun staring at me.

But in the middle of this alien party, I thought about me here—a parole breaker. Yeah, I should have asked my parole man if I could have gone star-hopping.

I relaxed and realized how tense I’d been. No Gwyng was gonna bite my neck; no Barcon planned to microtome me down to slide specimens. And Hargun was at
our
party now.

But Rhyodolite had abandoned me. That runt—hard to find such a tiny Gwyng in the crowd, but finally I spotted Cadmium’s blond streaks. Rhyo was with him, back at the fried blood. As I came up, Rhyo oo’ed and grabbed me, offering me a chunk of blood cake on his fake fingernail. “He’ll eat it,” Rhyo told Cadmium. I obliged. “Would he eat it with honey on it?” Cadmium asked.

“Sure. He’ll drink it raw with honey. After all, his species invented cow juice oil.” Rhyo poured a glass of watery blood and looked for the honey. Cadmium had an oo poised on his blond-streaked face; his wrinkles tightened and shifted.

I gagged on cold blood and honey. Rhyodolite dipped his fake nails into a stoneware jar and pulled out a grub.

“No, Rhyodolite,” I said, trying to sound firm, not hysterical. “I didn’t dish it up. You go ahead and eat that yourself.”

“But, Red-Clay-with-maggots-crawling-on-it, I don’t like this flavor.” Rhyodolite nodded to the grub as though it had annoyed him. But Rhyo had a little oo poised on his muzzle.

“Let Cadmium eat it, if you’ve injured it already.”

“I tell you, let’s feed it to the alien Y’ngtree. The one you were with. So polite.
Ewing Haring.
So stupid,” Rhyo said as he waved the grub around.

“Rhyodolite-with-a-sexually-delinquent-pouch-mother,” Cadmium said as he took Rhyo’s flailing wrist and guided the grub to his own mouth. “You know Red Clay isn’t a real person and won’t eat proper food.”

“Don’t you bats ever eat vegetables?” I asked.

“Clots the cock. Makes webs stink and shrink.” Cadmium asked, “Didn’t that happen to you?” They chattered in Gwyng talk I couldn’t follow.

“Red-Clay-with-blushing-neck,” Rhyodolite said. “Relax. I’ll show you the Rector feeding a toilet. Black Amber said they’ve discussed/argued about first-contact procedures half day. When the bird gets tense, he relieves himself…”

“A female cadet said we approach slowly.”

“Topaz, my mission,” Cadmium said. “Very good ideas. But neither Black Amber nor Karriaagzh approves. Too many new aliens for Black Amber. Too few new birds for the Rector Karriaagzh.” He coughed out the bird’s name.

But I wanted a tomato. Where were the vegetables? Where were the big vegetarian guys? Ahrams couldn’t disappear in the crowd like a little Gwyng.

“Stay,” Rhyodolite said. “Made you honorary Gwyng, and you don’t appreciate it.”

But I’d spotted some Ahrams and plunged into the crowd.

“Okay,” Cadmium said, “we’ll watch you.”

While I ate raw vegetables, the Gwyngs commented on the downright perversity of stealing food from the lovely cows who would so willingly turn all this rubbish into milk and oil for me.

“And there he goes,” Rhyodolite commented, “biting into another vegetable sex organ.”

Then they saw something. Cadmium picked up the platter of red and yellow things, and said, “Follow…follow,” hustling the platter and me upstairs into a turret room with a huge bay window facing the city—traffic glitter and starry sky visible through black tree shapes.

Cadmium and Rhyo deposited me and the vegetables by the door and cruised casually up to Black Amber, who greeted them again with full sideways body slams. The Gwyng History Committee Member, Wy’um, stood right by her, flicking his eyelids up and down. Rhyo and Cadmium glared at him.

Karriaagzh stalked in and settled slowly on his hocks—an odd sight, the body resting on the upper legs. The Gwyngs moved away from him.

A short bear-type alien eased its way through the crowd with little soft hoots, passing out oily or alcoholic drinks. Karriaagzh took a glass, opened his beak, and flung the liquid in.

People had heard that the big guys were here, and the room filled up fast. Edwir Hargun and the two other alien ambassadors hung back beside their Barcon translators. Warst Runnel and another Ahram with a cup of hot tea in his hand came in. Tesseract?

Yes. He came up, seeming mildly dazed by some nice abuse substance, and said, “So space wasn’t so horrible that you turned down your blacks.”

“Do I call you Tesseract or Rector’s Man here?” I asked, not sure of the etiquette. “Black Amber’s introduced me to History Committee Man Warst Runnel and the Gwyng History Committee Member.”

Warst Runnel smiled. Tesseract looked at him and then back to me, saying, “Black Amber’s on pheromone suppressants isn’t she, the bitch?” He slurped a bit of his tea as he spoke, and his skull crest reddened. “Call me Tesseract here.”