Human to Human (15 page)

“I just…” No, I felt odd about her with him.

“He’s going to get beaten up. Cadmium might, just might, come to help. Of course, Cadmium doesn’t approve of interspecies sex, either.
Damn
hypocrites, species isn’t supposed to be important,” she said with an English
damn.

“You’re dealing with a creature who doesn’t even understand your basic semiotic system without brainwork.”

“Signs were enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hate the tension here between Hurdai and Chi’ursemisa. But if Rhyodolite’s going to be with that
bitch
downstairs, I’m staying.” Karst One didn’t seem to have curse words strong enough for her today. Her face relaxed as she bent over the weaving, fingers adjusting the old warp thread, then catching the tail of the new one. “And they won’t let me use a fly shuttle.”

“Who?”

“The inspectors. Handwoven, completely, with handspun.” She pointed to a wire with a plastic seal at the edge of the cloth. “One came by this morning, see? I can’t use an electric spinner, either. And it has to look slubby,
the pigs.
Like
junkie
spinning. The buyers want handspun authenticity visible from ten
fucking
meters away.”

I didn’t say anything; she began weaving again. Hurdai came out with Marianne, who held her hand close to her sternum—controller there under her blouse, obviously. Hurdai’s face muscles pulled into vertical ridges, then he ambled over to the VCR screen and sat down, watching. He must have trouble seeing the patterns in the lines with his fast eyes, I thought. “Where’s Chi’ursemisa?” I asked.

“In my room. I found out how to lock my door from the outside,” Marianne said. Hurdai looked up at her and corrugated his cheek and brow muscles again. I wondered if the two adult Sharwani had faked a quarrel to put us off-balance. If that was the case, then Chi’ursemisa was in no danger.

Marianne said, “Granite Grit and Feldspar are coming down. They said they could take Hurdai and Daiur out for a walk.”

Hurdai began opening the controls on the VCR and sent the picture rolling. He adjusted it back, saying, “I’m very bored.” He sounded almost like Hrif, an animal forced into speech.

We stood waiting for Granite and Feldspar, just looking at each other, Molly weaving away, sucking threads every few minutes. I realized I was standing and sat down on the couch, still looking at them all. Marianne was about to sit down herself when the elevator bell finally chimed. She opened the door.

Granite said, “But I saw you in the park.”

“Who?” I said, but he’d looked straight at me when he said that.

Granite said, “I must look more closely.” He stepped out of the elevator in his gaudy feathers, followed by Feldspar. Both of them circled me, then Granite pulled out a pen-thing and ran it through my hair at the left ear. “You are you.”

“Is it a better imitation, then? You said you could tell the other one from me.”

Feldspar said to Marianne, “Punch through to the Institute of Control.”

Hurdai rolled the VCR picture again, humming down in his throat. His cheeks and forehead rippled again. Marianne went to her room, came back carrying a small portable terminal, which she jacked into an outlet in the front room. She said, “Control says to stay on line.”

The terminal speaker beeped; Marianne laid her palm on the keyplate in back. Then Karst One letters flashed on the screen:
STAY INSIDE
.

Everyone looked at me as if it were my fault. The message continued:
INSTITUTE OF CONTROL WILL CHECK EACH FLOOR
.

Down below on the street, we heard trucks coming in. Chi’ursemisa, locked in the spare room still, began banging on the door.

Hurdai said, “I’d be a fool to hurt her with all this force present.”

Marianne seemed to count all of us before she left to release Chi’ursemisa. Someone on the street was speaking through an amplifier. I couldn’t make out the words from up here. Chi’ursemisa and Marianne came out, Marianne talking to Chi’ursemisa about the search. When Hurdai reached for the VCR controls again, Granite snapped his beak like a book being slammed shut. Hurdai flinched for the first time since I’d known him. His fur over the cheekbones and his head hair slowly rose; Granite’s nictitating membranes slid out from his eyecorners, half-covering his eyes.

The elevator door chimed. I opened it, almost expecting to see a gang of my distorted doubles, but Rhyodolite stepped out with three Jereks wearing Institute of Control neural whip insignia on their tunics. Sharwani could imitate Jereks fairly easily, I thought, but couldn’t build a fake Rhyodolite.

Unless they can really speak Karst Two.
Bird-kinds could have brains that worked both ways. If Sharwani brains were as complex as their eyes…

Rhyodolite squeezed his nostrils shut and said, “Fake Clay imitation out there—you’re the real stink-ape.”

One of the Jereks set up a retinal scan, unplugged Marianne’s computer, and plugged in the eye scanner. He said, lowering his nose at Rhyodolite, “The Gwyng was downstairs, but said he’d like to come up with us.” Rhyodolite said, “I saw the fake Red Clay—couldn’t didn’t stop (unsure).”

The Jerek put the scan cup over my eye and said, “He’s Red Clay Tom Gentry; now the others please.”

We were all us.

Hurdai seemed more bored than ever; Chi’ursemisa was more agitated. Their son said, “Karl, are we going to play with the others soon?”

“What did the man that looked like me say to you?” I asked.

“You gave me a present for my mother,” Daiur said. “I threw it away because it was nasty.”

“What?” Chi’ursemisa said.

Hurdai said something to her in a language none of the rest of us knew. The Institute of Control people taped their sounds out of our skull computers and told us, “We’re sealing your door.”

Molly, still weaving, said in English, “
What kind of a police state is this
?”

This version of me killed two Barcons and another Sharwani defector, then committed suicide.

That shook me more than I could have imagined. I wondered if my duplicate knew about Warren.

The Sharwani did begin imitating Jereks. A real Jerek couple caught one in the slum district. The smell was wrong.

I knew from my own past that we’d get tired of being scared. If one is not paranoid, one does finally stop worrying. At least, if one is human.

Or Sharwani. Chi’ursemisa and Hurdai began to talk in their other alien language when we were with them. All they said went out to the Institute of Control on cable.

I came home one day, and the Sharwani weren’t in. Marianne was in the kitchen tearing up salad leaves. I came up behind her and kissed her neck.

She said, “Your doubles and the fake Jereks came in on two radar-transparent gliders. Bone tests showed they’d been weightless for a while. Control says all body traces are accounted for. They’re screening nearby space for a launch ship.”

“And Chi’ursemisa and Hurdai?”

“Control said let them out. They’re watching them.”

I said, “Oh,” and sat down beside her to help. “Isn’t Chi’ursemisa afraid of Hurdai anymore?”

“She said they both realized they weren’t in positions to affect policy.”

I munched on something like a juicier carrot, then asked, “Where are Molly and Rhyodolite?”

“Downstairs. Awingthin was lonely.”

Three other Gwyngs wasn’t enough. “Maybe we need to see Molly more?”

Marianne said, “And Yangchenla and Sam.”

My mouth puckered slightly, gone a bit dry despite the juicy vegetable. “Might be a bit provocative to have us all together.”

She asked, “Not both couples on the same evening?”

I laughed, not wanting her to think Yangchenla still made me nervous.

She said, “It’s just like Berkeley squared or to the third power. Tom, it is funny how living here becomes the old daily life. I’m even beginning to get used to Chi’ursemisa and Hurdai.”

“Maybe we can only take in so much alienness,” I said.

Marianne said, “Karriaagzh told me that accommodation, not absolute understanding, was all that’s really critical.”

“And Black Amber thinks we need to work on knowing each other better.” Marianne’s face went rigid when I mentioned Black Amber.

During all this, Marianne and I continued our ordinary officers’ duties. My memories of Hurdai and Chi’ursemisa living in my house are almost seamless, but my memories of the classes, seminars and trade discussions are fragments, as though my ordinary duties happened at another time.

Shards and fragments of being ordinary:

…a young bird cadet gawky in bald skin and mammal clothes reminded me of Granite Grit when we first met…

…one afternoon Karl and I walked down to the pond on the Academy grounds. I caught a fish for him so he could see the babies spill like silver coins out of her belly, but none of the fish were that pregnant. I realized that even if he had seen the fish, he wouldn’t have known how alien live-bearing fish the size of bass were….

…another isolated time, Marianne and I sat in an audience of mostly first-year cadets, their feathers and hair half grown out. We all listened to Sam Turner playing music fitted to Marianne’s and my private pulse beats. Karl wasn’t there; he was in a dressing room playing with Tracy and two of her aunts.

When we’d brought him in, Yangchenla’s eyes locked with mine, then she looked away and asked Marianne if we wanted Karl to play with Tracy backstage. But, the first memory I always recall of that night is sitting in a dark hall listening to Sam, with Marianne, my arm around her waist, forgetting that the musician was married to my former lover, intently and only a human listening to human music.

About two weeks after we’d heard that all the disguised Sharwani who’d landed in the two gliders were accounted for, a Jerek came to the seminar room as an Ahram and I displayed behaviors we did and didn’t have in common. Our cadets, bird- and carnivore-based, looked at the Jerek, who watched for a second then said, “Officer Red Clay, could we talk?”

I, suddenly terrified for Marianne, came out of the room with him. He said, “Chi’ursemisa and Hurdai fought. Both are safe, back at your house, but Daiur is missing. Perhaps you should finish the seminar so as not to disturb the cadets.”

I went back and finished the seminar. As we moved, the Ahram’s crest, the skin and muscle over the bone skull ridge, went pale.

After the session ended, I said, “We’re having trouble with our Sharwani guests.”

The Ahram said, “I could tell you were upset. I was almost frightened of you.”

I said, “I’m sorry,” and wished I had a faster way home than bus or hired car. Hired car, probably, but the bus would be by soon and I didn’t know how quickly a hired car would arrive, unless I could get Black Amber’s private car and driver—perhaps not politically correct. I walked quickly out to the bus gate and caught the one that came closest to my neighborhood.

Beyond the bus windows, Karst City suddenly seemed more alien, as alien as the day I’d cut classes years ago and spent the day in an almost xenophobic funk. We—on the bus, outside the bus—were all aliens masked in clothes that tried to make us look identical, which made it even easier for the Sharwani to insert their doubles among us. Was everyone on the bus non-Sharwani?

As I got out, I suddenly remembered Thridai’s ambush, not far from here, and felt naked under the floppy tunic, my knees disguised—even, almost, the flat shape of my shoulders. I could imagine someone watching me from above, a small blue-clad body with a shaved face, half the visible skin sparsely haired, pointed nose, bushy eyebrows, an ex-brachiator scurrying for cover.

I got onto the elevator with the two Shiny Blacks and looked at them carefully. The female, Silver, took out a small plastic lump and laid it, ticking, over my left ear. She said, “It is Red Clay.” She laid the device over her own ear and the ticking continued. “I’m still Silver.”

I said, “I think I could have recognized the difference.”

“Pays to check. Those who imagine that we do see our friends, not the species, are more prone to self-deception.”

That sounded alien to me then. I cupped my hand and signaled assent. They got off the elevator at their floor.

I got off at my own and saw Granite, sitting on his hocks like a giant nesting bird, staring at Hurdai and Chi’ursemisa. Marianne was sitting beside Rhyodolite’s tube sofa where Rhyodolite had so deeply embedded himself that I could barely see him.

Chi’ursemisa’s face was bloody—from wounds or rage-burst blood vessels around the eyes, I couldn’t tell right away. I looked at Hurdai. He was holding a cloth against the side of his head. When he saw me looking, he pulled the cloth away. Half his ear was missing. I looked down at Chi’ursemisa’s hands, which clenched and unclenched slowly, over and over, nails broken but clean, except for possibly blood gone brown under two nails.

Marianne said, “The Barcons will grow him a new ear if he wants.”

Hurdai said, “No, thanks.”