Becoming Alien (3 page)

I froze and looked at Warren. The alien lay the drawing on Warren’s lap.

“What egg?” Warren said, even though he knew Alpha couldn’t understand English. He slowly tore up the drawing. On the television, humans were shooting aliens.

Alpha looked at the screen, then set his shoulders back and rocked on the balls of his feet, staring at Warren. Warren laughed and threw the little bits of paper into the air. “Thing, you want your egg? Tom, turn off that space movie; it’s giving Thing bad homesickness.”

I quickly switched off the TV. Alpha looked from me to Warren, then rubbed his eyes with the back of his long hand.

Warren said, “Heard from Roanoke that strange folks in California asked around about the location device. I wanted this one to see what we humans do to bad aliens.”

The alien singsonged at Warren, an unhappy song. Warren rose off the couch, took one skinny hand, and pulled it down to the floor. Alpha gave a sharp cry but bent at the waist and knees, let Warren guide his hand.

“You stand in my clothes,” Warren said as he forced the alien to pick up the paper, “eat my eggs, and you want to bring the whole universe down on my farm? Egg gone. Tom, you said he knows
yes
and
no
from head moves, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

Warren held out his hands as if he was cupping the egg between them, and shook his head no. “No. No.”

The alien stepped back and threw out his arms, crying out one strange sound, the tones almost like
no.

“No,” Warren said again.

“Nuyngh,” Alpha replied, crumpling to the floor.

I started toward him, but he scrambled to his feet, wrapped his arms around himself, and ran stumbling to the room we’d put him in.

“All since you showed him the egg, Warren,” I said, “he’s been expecting his people.”

“Fool. I just wanted to know what the egg was.”

The next morning, Alpha lay sprawled in bed, the webs spread out, his body cold.
Dead,
I thought, until I held my finger on his throat, and felt the vein throb once, then again five seconds later.

“Warren!” I cried. Half naked, barefooted, he rushed in and laid his hand against Alpha’s throat.

“Dying,” Warren said. “Just as well.”

Alpha stayed tranced out the rest of the day, no colder than five degrees above room temperature, heart going twelve times a minute.

While I sat with the cool, stiff alien, I wondered if his people made movies about beating off hordes of attacking Earthlings.

Warren and I didn’t say much to each other all weekend, expecting those spaced-out heartbeats to finally stop. But Sunday, the alien’s pulse beat a little faster. At breakfast Monday, before I caught the school bus, Warren said, “You gonna trust me not to barbecue your alien or what?”

“He’s upset. He could have had hope…”

“I don’t want some space freak dividing the family. You trust me to take care of it if it wakes up, or not?”

“Okay, Warren, I trust you won’t hurt him more.”

“What do you mean, ‘more’?”

“Warren, I’ll miss the bus,” I said, gathering up the books I needed and stuffing them in my pack.

“Well, don’t miss the damn bus. The Atlanta guys’re upping my production schedule, by way of threatening to break your legs, but I guess what happens in the basement’s no damn concern of yours.”

At lunch, I called Warren on the school pay phone in the hall. “How are things?” I asked him.

“Cool,” Warren said.

“Cool?” I asked.

“Yeah, cool, just like you left it. Okay. You’ve got school business to tend to, don’t you?”

“Yeah, physics.”

“Chemistry’d be better use,” Warren said. “Bye now.”

I hung up, wondering if Alph was still alive, or if Warren’d said that to keep me from worrying. Then Roose Dexter came by and asked, “Them hens gonna keep you too busy for baseball again come spring?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Them hens.” And I walked off to physics class, wondering how my buddy alien got from wherever to here.

“Can’t go faster than light?” I asked. “Won’t we learn ways around that?”

The little-guy teacher took off his glasses and wiped them clean on his shirt. “Well, Tom, mass would be infinite at light speed, so you’d need infinite fuel. That’s the universe. Can’t go faster than light. The stars are out of human reach.”

I knew that wasn’t so. “No way?”

“I realize what this does to your science fiction fantasies, but right, no way.”

Bullshit, I thought, and Alpha is from creatures smarter than us, but we’re killing him, Warren and me. I pulled out a bit of knife blade from my wallet and started cutting on my desk.

“Tom!” the teacher cried out, looking nervous, because I was taller than him, and country-built from heaving chicken shit and feed.

“Right, sir,” I said, hopping up to hand over the bit of knife blade. Doesn’t do to take a good knife to school, so I grind down something I find broken, whittle with it.

Then algebra—so beautiful and inhuman, math problems, without taints of human social bull. But today, the numbers just jerked around in my mind.

When I got home, the alien still lay on the bed, but his arms were sprawled different. “Alpha?” I said, and his chest jerked. Slowly, he pulled his arms close to his body, then spread them slightly. The veins throbbed, and he pulled his arms close to his sides again, and shivered violently.

All the cats who’d deserted him when he was cold started back in as Alpha moaned and shuddered.
Maybe he’d like a hot bath.
I drew him a tub, then mixed some hot salt water in a glass as he climbed, still quivering, into the tub. Alpha took the glass in his palms and lay back in the water, sipping the hot salt solution.

Warren came in. The alien gasped, spread his arms, veins pulsing in the webs, and started to slow down his breathing, but I called to him and pushed his arms down against his body.

Warren touched the strange pointed chin. He said, “You were okay until you asked about the egg.”

Alpha levered himself out of the tub with his long arms, found a towel, and dried off. He looked at both of us and wrapped the towel around his waist. Strange to see him tuck the end in, just as I did. He beckoned us to follow him to the kitchen. There he handed Warren a knife and raised his head, baring his throat.

Warren slowly touched the creature’s throat with the knife, saying to me, “Maybe he wants it. Maybe he’s going crazy.”

The alien looked little and sickly, his long arms quivering, goosefleshed under the hair. Warren slowly lowered the knife and shook his head no.

The alien then wrapped the towel tighter, found his paper, and drew a circle with funny splotches on it. From where I sat, the circle looked like an Earth map, but he’d drawn it upside down and fuzzy. Then the alien drew two eggs, one smashed. And the question sign. )(.

“Warren,” I said, “he wants to know where the egg is, smashed or not.”

Warren grimaced. “Doesn’t give up, does it?” He pointed from the undamaged egg to the circle, running his finger around the whole circle. “Still on this.”

The alien wrapped his arms around himself, webs strained over his chest, then drew the egg on all the continents, then in the oceans. He drew another circle, put Europe and Asia on it.

Laughing a snappish laugh, Warren pointed at the egg in the ocean and shook his head. “Okay, space thing, the egg’s on land. I ain’t gonna tell you any more.”

The alien sighed, gave Warren the knife again, tried to wrap Warren’s fingers around the hilt. Warren shook his head, said, “No,” sharply.

Alpha leaned down, laid his head and arms on the table top. Warren took all the map drawings away and turned back to scratch Alpha’s fuzzy back. Alpha pushed Warren’s hand away, got up, and walked to the door.

“Follow him, Tom,” Warren said.

I went out and saw the creature sprawled on the porch, arm web spread to the sun, those eyelashes, so much like ours, beating down tears.

A grey tabby mewed and bumped the alien’s nostril slits until Alpha sat up and cuddled the cat while it licked around the creature’s eyes.

For dinner, the alien melted butter and pumped it up with his tongue curled into a tube.

When the school bus stopped to let me off, I saw Warren standing, waiting with a “don’t talk” smile curved into his face. The bad guys on the bus grinned at Warren. Hands deep in his corduroy pockets, he didn’t react, just waited until the bus pulled off down the road.

“Your alien’s gone. Stole my day pack,” Warren said when the bus had pulled farther down the road, “couple pounds of butter, eggs, jar of honey.”

I wondered if Warren’d hurt or killed the alien. He saw doubt turn my face and pulled his fists out of his pocket. “Really, Tom, I didn’t hurt it. Creature bollixed the alarm. Right smart creature, but…”

“Did he take a gun?” I asked as we walked back to the house.

“No,” Warren said. “I checked.”

“Gonna get cold tonight,” I said.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. He’ll die and rot to bits in the woods before human or thing figures out where he was, or what he was,” Warren said as we stepped up onto the porch.

The cats had left, too, but around dinnertime, I saw the big gray tabby slink back, then her favorite black tom, followed by others, all ears back, tails low. After dinner, I went to feed them and saw a little yellow cat limping. When I saw it worry its hind leg with teeth and tongue, I realized it’d been shot.

Alpha’d been shot, too—I knew it. Warren said, I’ll go to town and see if anyone’s seen anything.”

Warren heard plenty. “Folks thought one of the hippies got the jump on Halloween, going off like a monster and carrying cats around. Your star-buddy got all the way to Pannell Knitting before old man Hendricks used bird shot on him.” Warren took his jacket off while I got a fire going.

“He’ll freeze tonight,” I said, setting the kindling on fire, “this late in October.”

“Better he be dead, and not linked to us. I keep thinking how he can’t talk, but the bastard sure can draw faces and maps.”

Warren was right for Warren, but I slipped out about midnight, leaves crunching like little bones under my feet. When I was good and away from the house, I turned on the flashlight, kept it low, looking for tracks, broken twigs; but the night was so cold and dark. About two miles out, I realized how hopeless searching was and went back to the house. Coming up to it, I saw lights.

“Damn, Tom,” Warren said, putting his Uzi machine gun aside. I gaped at the Uzi—I didn’t realize he had such weapons around.

“If I had an ultrasonic dog whistle,” I said.

“Get
to bed.” He stood over me, skin tight around his eyes.

I didn’t sleep and heard Warren fussing around until dawn. Sunrise, he stepped out on the porch, and said, “Damn you, stupid.”

I got up, threw on a robe, and went out there. The alien, legs-bloody, sat on the steps.

Warren peeled his day pack off Alpha’s back. Alpha opened his arms and moaned, then curled down, scrabbling at his legs as though the bird shot itched. “Tom, take care of him,” Warren said, heading out for the car.

I spread papers to catch blood around a kitchen chair, then helped Alpha. He’d walked at least fifteen miles since he’d snuck away—socks worn off, heels bruised bloody. I wiped up where he’d put his feet and then gave him water.

Better get all that bird shot out, I decided, going to the bathroom for tweezers. When I worked the tweezers around in a shot hole, Alpha jumped, so I held the first pellet up for him to see. He rolled the shot around on his palm; then touched my shoulder gently. I moved the tweezers back down to his legs. He said, “Dus,” for
yes,
but kept his hand on my shoulder and squeezed when the tweezers got particularly painful. Finally, I thought to ice the holes to numb them.

After I helped him to bed, the alien grabbed me and just held on, alien heart going faster than a bird’s, hot body up sideways against me, ribs rolling against my ribs. I could have pulled away, but realized how utterly alone Alpha was, so I sat, stroking the alien’s shoulder, saying quiet dumb things like,
we’ll both escape, find an alien biologist, speculative guys like Carl Sagan.

Me just babbling—the alien really stuck here.

His heart finally slowed down, but not so much that he chilled off again. When he yawned, I saw that dark red tongue curl, tiny nipping teeth gleaming. So human, so Earth-like, to yawn; but such an alien mouth. He arranged the bedclothes in lumps again and called the cats, who hopped up on the bed to check him out.

The alien slept, the cats curled against him, their finer fur blending in with his leg and arm hair. He moaned after a while, kicked a leg free, unsettling the gray tabby, and shifted the pillow against his belly.

I realized I’d missed the school bus.

I said, “Why don’t we just drive it up to D.C. and drop it off with the Smithsonian?”

Warren was cleaning his hands and clothes after working in his bunker. He looked up from the sink and said, “I suspect, if it can navigate around in the dark like it did last week, it would figure out where we kept it, even if we locked it in the back of a truck.”