The Human Division (58 page)

Harry looked over to Schmidt. Schmidt looked at him with something akin to raw terror on his face. It took Harry a minute to figure out why.

Oh, right,
Harry thought to himself.
I’m supposed to lose
.

Harry sighed and stopped juicing the Korban, letting the leg go. The Korban, still in pain, eventually sat up and looked at Harry, with a look that Harry could only imagine was complete confusion. Harry walked over and knelt down into the Korban’s face.

“You have no idea how much it
kills
me to do this,” Harry said, reached out to the Korban’s face and made a grabbing motion. Then he stuck his thumb out from between his index and middle fingers and showed it to the Korban. The Korban stared at him, not comprehending.

“Look,” Harry said. “I got your
nose
.”

The Korban swung a haymaker straight into Harry’s temple, and the lights went out.

*   *   *

“That’s really not the way we expected you to do that,” Schmidt said.

From his bunk, Harry tried very hard not to grimace. Facial expressions hurt. “You asked me to keep it close, and you asked me to lose,” he said, moving his jaw as little as humanly possible.

“Yes,” Schmidt said. “But we didn’t think you’d make it so
obvious
.”

“Surprise,” Harry said.

“The good news is, it actually worked for us,” Schmidt said. “The Korban leader—who, incidentally, you caused to get drenched in fruit juice when you kicked your competitor into the stands—wanted to know why you let your competition win. We had to admit we told you to lose. He was delighted to hear it.”

“He had money on the other guy,” Harry said.

“No,” Schmidt said. “Well, probably, but that’s not the point. The point was he said that your willingness to follow orders even when winning was in your grasp showed that you could make short-term sacrifices for long-term goals. He saw you almost winning as making a point about CDF strength, and then losing as making a point about the value of discipline. And since he seemed quite impressed with both, we said those were indeed exactly the points we had wanted to make.”

“So you have brains after all,” Harry said.

“We rolled with the changes,” Schmidt said. “And it looks like we’ll come out of this with an agreement after all. You saved the negotiations, Harry. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry said. “And I’ll bill you.”

“I have a message for you from Ambassador Abumwe,” Schmidt said.

“I can’t wait,” Harry said.

“She thanks you for your service and wants you to know she’s recommended you for commendation. She also says that she never wants to see you again. Your stunt worked this time but it could just as easily have backfired. All things considered, you’re not worth the trouble.”

“She’s welcome,” Harry said.

“It’s nothing personal,” Schmidt said.

“Of course not,” Harry said. “But I like the idea that I had choreographed having the crap kicked out of me down to that level of detail. Makes me feel like a genius, it does.”

“How do you feel?” Schmidt said. “Are you okay?”

“You keep asking that same very dumb question,” Harry said. “Please, stop asking it.”

“Sorry,” Schmidt said. He turned to go, and then stopped. “It does occur to me that we know the answer to another question, though.”

“What’s that?” Harry said.

“How well you can take a punch,” Schmidt said.

Harry smiled, and then grimaced. “God, Hart, don’t make me smile,” he said.

“Sorry,” Schmidt said again.

“How well do
you
take a punch, Hart?” Harry asked.

“If this is what it takes to find out, Harry,” Schmidt said, “I don’t want to know.”

“See,” Harry said. “I told you you were soft.”

Schmidt grinned and left.

Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today

Hafte Sorvalh, alien, walked the Mall in Washington, D.C. toward Antonio Morales, proprietor of Tony’s Churros, a small stand parked not too far from the Lincoln Monument. She had completed her morning meetings, had a couple of hours before her afternoon engagements, and had a craving, as she usually did when she was in D.C. for hot Mexican pastries.

Tony had her standard order of a half dozen cinnamon churros ready by the time she approached the stand. He handed them to her in a bag, smiling. “You knew I was coming,” Sorvalh said to Tony, as she took the bag.

“You are ten feet tall, Señora,” Tony said, using the Spanish honorific because he knew it charmed Sorvalh when he did; Morales had lived in the D.C. area his entire life and struggled through Spanish in high school. “It’s hard not to know you are coming.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Sorvalh said, paying for her pastries. “And how are you, Tony?”

“Business is good,” Tony said. “But then business is always good. People like churros. Are you happy? Have a churro. Depressed? Have a churro. About to go to prison for embezzlement? Have a churro before you go. Just got out of prison? Churro time.”

“Truly, the miracle food,” Sorvalh said.

“You come to get them every time you’re in town,” Tony said. “Tell me that I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” Sorvalh said. “Although a sentient being cannot live on churros alone.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Tony said. “In Uruguay, they make churros filled with cheese. That’s lunch right there. I may experiment with that. You can be my test subject the next time you come round.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Sorvalh said. “I like what I like. I am a creature of habit.”

“Your loss,” Tony said. “And how have you been, Señora? How is the diplomatic whirl?”

Sorvalh did her version of a grimace at this. Things had not been going well at all; since the destruction of Earth Station, things had been a real mess. Although the Conclave, which she represented, had nothing to do with its destruction, the loss of the station had put the entire planet into paranoid, angry mode at anyone who was not in fact a human from Earth. Consequently, her meetings with human diplomats and officials in Beijing, Moscow, Paris and the Hague were less like discussions and more like therapy sessions, in which her human counterparts vented as she sat there, cramped in their tiny offices (when one is nearly ten feet tall, all human offices are tiny), practicing what she hoped the humans involved would interpret as a sympathetic expression.

“It could be better,” Sorvalh admitted.

“That bad,” Tony said. He was getting used to reading Sorvalh’s physiology, and correctly guessed that there were many things Sorvalh was choosing not to say at the moment.

“It’s a complicated world we live in, Tony,” Sorvalh said.

“It’s a complicated world
you
live in,” Tony said. “I make churros.”

“And that’s not complicated?” Sorvalh asked. “In its own way?”

Tony shrugged. “You know, this is actually my second job,” he said. “I went to school in business, got an MBA and spent ten years being one of those finance pricks who make everyone else miserable. I had a lot of fun at first and then near the end there I felt every day like I either needed to get drunk or start a fight with someone. So I uncomplicated my life. And here I am, with a churro stand. And now I’m happy most of the time. Because no one’s unhappy to see the churro man.”

“You’ll never get rich being the churro man,” Sorvalh said.

Tony smiled and opened his arms wide. “I was a finance prick! I’m already rich! And anyway, as I said, business is good. In fact, here come some new customers.” Tony pointed down the Mall, where a gaggle of eight-year-olds, herded by a pair of harried-looking adults, were heading chaotically churro-ward.

Sorvalh followed Tony’s pointed finger to look at the children. “Hopefully not all theirs,” she said.

“I would guess not,” Tony said. “More like a school outing to see the monuments.”

“Should I step back?” Sorvalh asked. Not every human was comfortable around ten-foot aliens. She didn’t want to get in the way of Tony’s business.

“You might,” Tony said. “If they were all adults I’d tell them to get a grip, but these are kids and you never know how they’re going to react.”

Sorvalh nodded and walked a bit away, toward a bench near the stand. Her body shape and height wouldn’t have made it comfortable for her to sit on, but for some reason it was less awkward for her to unfold and sit on the ground near a bench—a designated sitting area—than it was anywhere else. Sorvalh was sure if she thought about it enough, she could figure out where she had picked up this particular quirk of hers, but the fact of the matter was she was much less interested in that than she was in her now-cooling churros. She started applying herself to them while Tony’s stand was overrun with screaming, tiny humans, excited to cram fried dough into their gullets. She looked the other direction for most of that.

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation of her churros, Sorvalh turned to see one of the human children not too far from her, staring up at her solemnly. Sorvalh stopped chewing her churro, swallowed, and addressed the child directly. “Hello,” she said.

The child looked behind her, as if expecting that Sorvalh was speaking to someone else, then turned back to her when it was clear she wasn’t. “Hello,” the girl said.

“Enjoying your churro?” Sorvalh asked, pointing to the churro in the girl’s hand. The girl nodded, silently. “Good,” Sorvalh said, and moved to go back to her own.

“Are you a monster?” the little girl asked, suddenly.

Sorvalh cocked her head and considered the question. “I don’t think I am,” Sorvalh said. “But maybe that depends on what you think a monster is.”

“A monster fights and wrecks things,” the little girl said.

“Well, I try to avoid doing that,” Sorvalh said. “So maybe I’m not a monster after all.”

“But you
look
like a monster,” the girl said.

“On Earth I might look like a monster,” Sorvalh said. “Back home on my planet I look quite normal, I promise you. Maybe a little taller than most, but otherwise just like anyone else. On my planet, you would be the one who looks strange. What do you think about that?”

“What’s a planet?” the girl asked.

“Oh, dear,” Sorvalh said. “What are they teaching you in your school?”

“Today we learned about Abraham Lincoln,” the girl said. “He was tall, too.”

“Yes he was,” Sorvalh said. “Do you know what the Earth is?”

The girl nodded. “It’s where we are.”

“Right,” Sorvalh said. “It’s a planet. A big round place where your people live. My people have a place like it, too. But instead of calling it Earth, we call it Lalah.”

“Hannah!” One of the adult humans had figured out that the girl had wandered away from her group and was talking to the big, scary-looking alien sitting by the bench. The human adult—a woman—came running up to retrieve her charge. “I’m sorry,” the woman said to Sorvalh. “We don’t mean to bother you.”

“She’s not bothering me at all,” Sorvalh said, pleasantly. “In fact, we were reviewing basic astronomy facts, like how the Earth is a planet.”

“Hannah, you should have known that,” the woman said. “We learned that earlier in the year.” Hannah shrugged. The woman looked over at Sorvalh. “We really did cover the solar system earlier this year. It’s in the curriculum.”

“I believe you,” Sorvalh said.

“It says it’s from a planet called LAH LAH,” Hannah said, overenunciating the name, and looking up at her teacher. “It’s in the solar system, too.”

“Well, it’s in
a
solar system,” Sorvalh said. “And I’m a woman, just like you are.”

“You don’t look like a woman,” Hannah said.

“I look like a woman where I come from,” Sorvalh said. “We look different, is all.”

“You’re very good with children,” the woman said, noting Sorvalh’s responses and tone.

“I spend my days dealing with human diplomats,” Sorvalh said. “Children and diplomats can be remarkably similar.”

“Would you mind?” the woman said, gesturing to her main gaggle of children. “I know some of the other kids would love to meet an alien—is it all right to call you an alien?”

“It’s what I am,” Sorvalh said. “From your point of view.”

“I just never know if it’s a slur or something,” the woman said.

“It’s not, or at least I don’t think it is,” Sorvalh said. “And yes, you may bring the other children over if you like. I’m happy to be an educational experience for them.”

“Oh, okay, great,” the woman said, and then grabbed Hannah by the shoulders. “You stay here, honey. I’ll be back.” She rushed off to get the other children.

“She seems nice,” Sorvalh said to Hannah.

“That’s Mrs. Everston,” Hannah said. “Her perfume makes me sneeze.”

“Does it,” Sorvalh said.

“It makes her smell like my grandmother,” Hannah said.

“And do you like how your grandmother smells?” Sorvalh asked.

“Not really,” Hannah admitted.

“Well,” Sorvalh said. “I promise not to tell either your grandmother or Mrs. Everston.”

“Thank you,” said Hannah, gravely.

Presently Sorvalh found herself surrounded by a gaggle of small children, who looked up at her expectantly. Sorvalh glanced over at Mrs. Everston, who also looked at her expectantly. Apparently it was all on Sorvalh now. She suppressed an inner sigh and then smiled at the children.

Some of them gasped.

“That was a smile,” Sorvalh said, quickly.

“I don’t think so,” said one of the children.

“I promise you it was,” Sorvalh said. “Hello, children. I am Hafte Sorvalh. Have any of you ever spoken to an alien before?” There were head shakes all around, signifying “no.” “Well, then, here’s your chance,” Sorvalh said. “Ask me anything you want to know.”

“What are you?” asked one of the children, a boy.

“I am a Lalan,” Sorvalh said. “From a planet called Lalah.”

“No, I mean are you like a lizard or an amphibian?” the boy asked.

“I suppose that to you I might look a little like a reptile,” Sorvalh said. “But I’m not really like one at all. I am more like you than I am like a lizard, but I admit I’m mostly not like either. It’s better to think of me as my own thing: a Lalan.”