A Paradigm of Earth (29 page)

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Authors: Candas Jane Dorsey

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BOOK: A Paradigm of Earth
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“Very funny,” said Morgan, and stalked into the house. At the door she turned. “Thanks,” she said grimly, waving the present at him.
“You’re welcome,” said the grey man, chuckling in the sunlight. Clearly an escape from tension, she thought, but still annoying. She ran up the dim steps to her room.
They all gathered around the table in the dining room in postures that ranged from alert to sulky. Blue and John were the sulky ones: John had been prevented by the grey man from filming their meeting.
“One camera, fixed, that’s all,” he had begged.
“In your dreams,” said Mr. Grey. “Siddown.”
Delany wheeled in last. “Sorry I’m late. The elevator was being weird.”
“Okay,” said Morgan. “Now. Blue. You first.”
“John said you were tired of me,” said Blue sulkily.
“I did not,” said John. “I said Morgan must be tired after the last year of working day and night. That’s all.”
“It didn’t sound like that. It sounded like Morgan was just my friend because of work.”
Saints, bodhisattvas
,
and angels preserve us
, thought Morgan. Aloud, she said, “I’m sure it did sound like that to Blue. I’m not ‘working’, sweetie.”
“You get paid,” said John, tone neutral.
“You get paid,” said Blue accusingly.
“Parents get paid,” said Mr. Grey. “That doesn’t mean they don’t love their kids.”
“Morgan’s not my mother,” said Blue, just as Morgan said, “Blue’s not my kid.”
“Well, Blue is
my
kid,” said the grey man unexpectedly, “so deal with it.”
“I got paid for working in the Atrium,” Morgan persisted, looking at Blue. “Now you are my friend, and you live with me in my house, and I get an allowance for that. The government pays your room and board. Same as they do Delany’s disability payments. She told you about those.”
“I want a job,” said Blue sulkily.
“You have a job,” said the grey man.
They all looked at him. He was not smiling. “Technically,” he went on, “you work for us. Administratively, you are on the payroll. You receive a salary. Morgan receives about half of it for rent and food. The rest is in trust. Whenever she has to buy something for you, or we do, we use the money in the savings account.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Morgan.
“Live and learn,” said Grey sourly.
“What is my job description?” asked Blue, still on edge.
“To learn as much as you can about Earth and represent us, particularly Canada, to the people who sent you here. And in that vein, where did you go while you were away?”
“It’s a secret,” said Blue. “And I stole something too.” The alien looked down at the bag at its sneakered feet. “It was for your birthday. But if I have money in the bank I will send some of it to the place I got this. Maybe. Stealing it was interesting. Maybe I shouldn’t repent.”
Morgan sighed. Blue looked at her. “What’s the matter?”
“I really cannot think of a thing to say. You know what I have taught you.”
“
You
ran away. You danced and then you had sex with Nancy. You didn’t get in trouble.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Not this much trouble.” The alien imitated Maybelle Murphy’s voice: “He says to tell you, verbatim, ‘You’re a pain in the ass. Next time you want to get laid, let us know. We’ll run a proper bodyguard op.’” Then Morgan’s: “Did he throw things?”
“Throw things?” said Mr. Grey.
“That’s enough,” said Morgan.
“You told me the grey man was making a joke.”
“He was. That didn’t mean I wasn’t in trouble.”
“You told me that you didn’t like upsetting Mr. Grey but that there were times when a person had to act according to their own internal necessity. You read me out of Annie Dillard about ‘perfect necessity’ and living like weasels. So I needed this. I really needed …” A long pause, worthy of Beckett or Pinter.
“What?” Morgan, Grey, and Jakob spoke in a ragged chorus. “Living like weasels?” said John at the same time, and was ignored, except by Delany, who leaned over and murmured to him, “It’s the name of an old essay. We studied it in university.” Then everyone waited.
Finally Blue broke the silence.
“I needed something different. I don’t know. I needed to think that I didn’t need to have a minder all the time. A shepherd like I was a ‘silly sheep.’ I needed to look at the sky without power lines across it. I needed to find out how fast I could walk if no-one was with me. I needed to see if what you told me about stealing was true. See what is true. I needed to be alone. All by myself, and do something and prove I knew how to do it.”
“Shit,” said Morgan. “You’re right. You did need that. I’m sorry. We should have given you—”
“You don’t give things like that,” said Blue. “If someone gives it to me it’s just another field trip. I don’t have as much time as you people do. Sometimes you forget that and treat me as if I can do things later, when no-one is watching, when no-one cares any more. But everyone always watches, and soon I have to go back up in the sky and meet the people in the mothership, and what was that you said?” In Mr. Grey’s voice for the quote, then reverting to normal: “‘Between two and five years.’ I think it’s closer to two than five, and two are almost over. In two months, two of them are over. Counting from the very beginning,” the alien said to Morgan. “Before you met me.”
There was a difficult silence. Morgan struggled with her thoughts, as Blue clearly had done and was doing. After a few moments the alien spoke again.
“I thought about this all night,” said Blue, “and then another night. Last night I remembered it was your birthday, and I thought I had better come home. And I didn’t really steal this,” and from the bag the alien drew a brown paper bag. “I just told you that to make you mad. Really, I told the lady I didn’t have any more money but I would bring some back, and she trusted me. And she didn’t even know I was an alien,” Blue said ingenuously.
Morgan felt like she was watching something explode very, very slowly, and drench everything around it with blinding light.
“Thank you,” she said gently, taking the little bag. “What is it?”
“It’s—”
“It’s a joke, sweetie. Thank you.”
She opened the bag and drew out a small, silver-framed mirror, clearly made by an artist. She looked into it, then up at Blue.
“It’s so you can see me when I’m gone,” said Blue.
“All I can see is myself,” said Morgan stupidly.
“No,” said Blue. “I will show. You will see. And I am not your kid.”
“I know,” said Morgan, grasping Blue’s hand warmly. “Thank you. For the present.”
“Well, to me you’re a kid,” said the grey man, “and in that spirit, the whole bunch of you are grounded for a few days. No trips of any kind. No escapes. No guests. And if Blue won’t get an inbuilt chip again, no more trips at all. Losing Earth’s best alien is not my idea of how I want to end my career.” He got up and walked out. Morgan, still holding the mirror, stared after him in shock.
“Oops,” said Blue.
“I told you he could lie and cheat,” said Kowalski.
“It can come back and tell the truth too,” said Mac.
“He’s not trustworthy,” said Ko.
“Neither are you,” said McKenzie, “but I am trusting you anyway. Do the numbers.” And he closed his office door between them, but once he was alone, he bowed his head tiredly. For all the alien denied being a child, the grey man had the same kind of intense headache he had had when Salomé was thirteen after she had run away for two weeks.
I’m tempted to throw things
,
all right
, he thought grimly, and grabbed his ’phone.
Morgan answered on the first ring. “They want to have a party Friday,” she said instead of
hello
. “They want to take me and Blue out to a show.”
“It’s not polite to leave out the salutations,” he said. “And it’s ‘Blue and me’.”
“Well?”
“No.”
“We’ll do it anyway.”
“We’ll arrest you.”
“We’ll tell the media.”
“From jail? Give it a miss.”
“We’ll squid the vid. John can squid any vid.”
“Any of you can squid. So what?”
“Friday.”
“Fine. But not because you threaten. Because I already overheard you all at dinner. And I was calling to say we’d try it.”
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not. And I am. I can’t keep you all locked up forever, much as I want to. Well, I can, actually, but it wouldn’t be politic.” He cut off the call, and tossed his ‘phone down on the desk. Should he indeed start throwing things? She seemed to provoke it, almost require it. He picked up the ’phone and called back.
“
What?”
she answered.
“Let’s start again,” he said. “Hello. How are you. I’m fine. You can plan a party Friday night. Pinkface for Blue. An implant chip. As many of my people as I want.”
“No chip.”
“You lose. Sorry.”
“No you’re not.” This time, she hung up. He was sorry, actually. But.
Morgan dreams that she looks in the mirror and Blue’s face looks back at her.
You created me in your own image,
says the alien’s voice.
That’s a religious image and not appropriate,
she says.
Or else
it’s about parenthood and I am not your parent
.
I told you that.
No, says
Blue’s resonant voice,
you are not
.
But what are you? What are we?
Morgan looks down and sees that she is blue all over, and Blue has turned a lovely shade of tawny dark flesh-gold that seems to embody all Earth’s skin tones.
Aliens,
she says, wishing she could take off her pinkface and walk free—
—and woke sweating.
 
 
Vespers
 
A party they did have, eluding the media the following Friday night and taking Blue out in pinkface with the household to the best restaurant in town, then inviting everyone they knew to one of the clubs to dance and watch drag queens, then home to continue the festivities with a midnight buffet dinner and more dancing.
Spilling into the house, laughing at everything, at the new CSIS guard’s scowl as they passed the gates, at Blue’s reaction to the fashionable gear once the alien got inside the house, at Delany’s zany wheelchair dancing, which she carried on from the van to the door and through the hall into the living room, at Jakob’s crazy capers, at John’s drunken attempts to record the scene on the video camera of his mind (with hand signals to match), at Russ’s laughter (for that deep laugh could raise a laugh in return, every time). Morgan was turning extravagant and irrelevant phrases, and getting higher and higher every time someone thought one was funny, or topped one with another even more outrageous.
“I’ll send a metaphor and have you brought ’round!” she threatened Jakob.
“Is that anything like going home in a huff?” called out John from across the room.
The doorbell rang; it was two of the women from the dance, Mimi and Vance, and Kyla with a new conquest she introduced as Anne. Meanwhile here was Nancy with one of the turbanned
nouvelle jeunesse
, who partially unwound from some of its androgynous wrappings to reveal as a nut-brown youth with sloe eyes who might, Morgan thought, have a penis somewhere under there, though it was hard to say for sure.
“You need a drink,” cried John.
“A drink! A drink!” echoed Anne.
Blue was beside her. “This must be fun!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I see there is enjoyment. I feel it. So, ergo cogito sum, quad erat demonstraturn, fun!”
“You’re bombed.”
“
Au contraire
. I have what you have called a ‘contact high’. Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine. Besides, I’m not sure I can metabolize it. Do you know the chemical formula?”
“Hell, no. Hey!” Morgan called, “anyone know the chemical formula for alcohol?”
“C
12
H
18
O
6
?” Anne guessed. She was laughing, but also staring at Blue, who was peeling off the cosmetic mask strip by strip, the blue face coming clear.
“Ethanol is C
2
H
5
OH,” said Delany firmly.
“C U later, H U drunk yet, O U devil!” John yelled.
Anne had stopped laughing, was almost pale. “You’re …”
“Blue, this is Anne. Anne, Blue. Yes, Blue’s our favorite Martian. Do you need a drink?”
“I think so,” Anne said. Blue laughed. Anne was startled, though she had watched that being laugh all evening with a different-color face, and Blue laughed harder. “Tell me about your planet,” Blue said, an instant before Anne said, “Tell me about—” and stopped.
“Blue, don’t tease her, she’s a friend of Kyla’s. Not that it would be okay to tease her if she weren’t a friend of Kyla’s either … . Here, Nancy, you’re the Southern Comfort and tequila freak, right? I knew I remembered. Anne, here’s your wine. Drink up and tell Blue all about your planet.”
“I thought you knew all that.”
“Oh, that’s
our
planet that we’ve talked about. Everybody lives on a different one. The more Blue collects, the better marks the cosmic professors give. So talk away.”
John, having retrieved his real camera, pulled Blue around for a moment, to take a picture while there was still some cosmetic mask clinging. “Pull it off,” he was saying. “I want an action shot. I see this as a montage over which I’ll superimpose …”
The doorbell rang. It was the grey man.
“Am I invited?”
“I left you a voice-mail.” Morgan was still not quite ready to enjoy his company again, though he was smiling at her with his signature charm.
“I can only stay a few minutes.”
“I think I can stay mad at you that long,” said Morgan.
“Don’t put yourself out.”
“Have a drink?”
“I’m going on duty …”
Morgan motioned him in, finally smiling. “Oh, loosen up. There’s
lots
of juices and stuff. And there’s lots of food. Help yourself. Take a care package with you. Whatever.” He headed toward the buffet, smiling at Blue, at Delany and at John on the way. John was filming, but the grey man gently turned the camera away before John could train it on him. Morgan watched his graceful progress. He sure knows how to work a room, she thought.
Anne tugged at Morgan’s shoulder, whispered, “Is Blue a male or female?”
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t know what sh—an alien would want to hear.”
“And you’re maybe wondering if we’re sexually compatible?” Anne blushed; Morgan had guessed well. “Sure we are,” Morgan continued, “and if you can put a name to what sex that one is, let me know.”
“She’s been studying me since we got here, trying to find out, but I learned to wear clothes just before she sent out an exploration team,” Blue said unexpectedly in Anne’s ear. Anne jumped and Morgan was laughing too, though flushing too at Blue’s steady gaze, so out of tune with the words.
“Cut that out,” Morgan said. “Anne’s your source of inspiration tonight.”
There was another source of heat somewhere she wanted to find, and it was not in this room, though Blue was a burning brand. In the kitchen she poured more ginger ale into a tumbler, slightly unsteady so she anointed her hand, and followed a murmur of low deep voices into the darkened spare room. Jakob and Russ were standing, one hand each, palms together, clasped with the other’s, looking out into the trees and into each other’s eyes alternately, heads bent together. Russ’s other hand rested lightly on Jakob’s hip. They turned their heads slowly to her, unstartled. Russ was smiling a way she had seldom seen before; there was a light shining between them. She could feel the heat they generated settle in her belly.
“You two.”
“Yes, us. You were wondering?” Jakob was always so cocky about his rights.
“I was hoping. This is a lousy place—everyone who’s coming to the party knows there’s another room here. Go on upstairs.”
“No, I don’t care,” said Russ, the private person. “I can handle a little interruption.”
“I want to thank you for this, Morgan,” said Jakob, and letting go Russ he came over to her, took her hand, drew her toward them. Their arms both around her and each other.
“Me?”
“You saw I haven’t done any dope since the night I dreamed with Blue.”
“Yes.”
“You never said a word.”
“No.”
“But never mind. You brought a karma into this house.”
“I brought an alien into this house.”
Russ: “What he said, isn’t it? Never mind. A hug for our sister.”
And they hugged her, kissed each side of her face, Jakob’s cheek soft and Russ’s beard prickly. “Our sister, with whom we are well pleased.”
“You two, I love you. Let me get out of here so you can get down to business. Next time, though, I want to watch! I cannot
imagine
how you are going to actually
do
this Azalea Trailmaiden, Russ. He
never
takes those scarves off!”
“Scarves can be very useful,” said Russ clinically.
Laughing, gingerly escaping from their hug, giving them a smile from the door, she said, “Thanks for the party, friends.”
“You’re welcome,” said Jakob, and she closed the door on their smooth rotation back into each other’s gravitational field.
In the kitchen, Blue was talking to the grey man. “She is very assertive, that one.”
“She wants to make love with the alien,” he said.
“I am so different from my people.”
“What do you mean, different from your people? You have no idea what your people are like,” Morgan chimed in.
“No. But I think they must be cold, to send us so empty, knowing what might become of us, not caring. I was empty. I have thought a great deal about what that might have been for.”
“What have you decided?” asked Mr. Grey.
“I know nothing. I guess many things. I dream many things. Perhaps my guesses and dreams come from, are, palimpsests under my current knowledge.”
“So all this Klaatu mystique …” Morgan prompted.
“ … was my first joke, I suppose. Knowing I can never tell you about the home planet of my people because I can’t remember it. They wanted something they could send to be an information sponge. So they made one. Out of me. I don’t even know if I existed before I woke. I might have been a—a clone, I wonder. Or a—criminal, somehow reshaped. Or a whole new thing. I didn’t even have—toilet training, I am to learn humanity by becoming. So all of them in the Atrium, and you in this house, have been my guides, like parents, only more strange. Like rehabilitation for amnesiacs.”
“I’m going to forget to go to work, at this rate,” said Grey. “Good night. Thank you for letting me come to your party.” He ducked out the back way.
“Goodbye,” Blue said after him, then turned to Morgan. “He likes you too. He really has been like a parent. I am sure he treated his own child as nicely. But you, Morgan, you are more.”
“What am I?”
“You are my paradigm of Earth. My … model? Mentor? Partner in creation? When you let me dream you, that is the final piece of humanity. Because with you, I can give as well as take. All of them, they are the human race. But you, I knew when I first felt you that you were like me. You were all scrubbed clean inside.”
“Mr. Grey once said, ‘
Hell would look like a lord’s great kitchen without fire in’t’.”
“Tourneur,
The Revenger’s Tragedy.
Yes. Though I feel human, I cannot be human, humans are my foster parents. Also I cannot be my race, they are my—my handlers. My killers. But you are like me.”
“Am I? Am I? But you will go back.”
“I must go back. I will be hurt to go. This is my home now.”
“Dammit, Blue, how can they? You can’t call anywhere home!”
“Is that so strange? Isn’t it the same for you?”
“I had a dream. You were in a bag. Vacuum-packed. I had another dream. You were in a cage with others, chained so you could not touch anyone but were only a fraction of an inch away.”
“Those were true dreams as you can have them. But let me dream you, and we will make something new.”
“Someday soon. But all in my own time.”
“I have all the time. They leave me until I am complete, I think.”
“Then if I don’t want them to take you away, I will refuse to give you what you need.”
“No. You could never be that lonely.”
“We’ll see.”
“You saw Jakob and Russ in there?” Gesturing to the door with a gesture Morgan recognized as hers.
“Yes, they seem to have finally discovered each other. They’re probably already making love.”
“Yes, they are. I can hear. I will go and see them.” Blue softly opened the door, went in, and closed it behind.
Morgan sat down at the table, tired all of a sudden, feeling the bruise on her foot where John had stepped on it in the dance. Anne coming in for a drink said, “That Blue is really something, isn’t she?”
She had quit fighting the pronoun battle. “Yes, indeed.”
“Just came in for some orange juice. Sarah and Silvio are here, and Daphne. Dave and Duane are coming, and Lome will be here later, after work. Peter and Pete just drove up. Steve is here already. Where’s Blue?”
Without waiting for an answer, Anne went out like a whirlwind. As far as Morgan knew, Kyla had just picked Anne up tonight: how the hell did Anne know all Morgan’s friends? Maybe she was a quick study, or Morgan was losing her memory.
After a moment, Blue came out of the room, closed the door carefully. “They are hot for each other.”
“Good use of idiom. Anne’s hot for you. She’s decided you are a woman.”
“I’ll go with her, I think. I’m curious.”
“There was a movie.
I Am Curious
,
Yellow
. My parents told me. They used to say, with their friends, I am curious but yellow. Yellow is cowardly. A joke, you see?”
“Yes, I see.” Blue paused. “I wonder about love, Morgan. How do you know … ?”
“So do I, Blue. I wonder about love all the time. I’m not sure that we ever really know … but we figure some of it out, I hope. It’s one of those things that are synthesized out of learning and experience. You know about it already in lots of its many forms.”
“I imagine that is so. But the synthesis, the catalysis, is not come yet.”

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