Alien Earth (24 page)

“I see.” Tug’s voice was grave. “I had never reflected
that the brevity of a planet-bound Human’s existence would affect you. But now that I consider it, I see it must be so.”

“Yes.” There was too much to think about. She didn’t want to talk anymore, only think. How hadn’t she noticed? John had had all the symptoms, but spread out over so much time by Waitsleep that she’d thought they were simply a part of his personality. The irritability, the sudden bursts of aggression and territoriality, even his unwillingness to concede any authority or expertise to Tug on anything.

Tug was blundering on cheerily. “Is it, perhaps, of some comfort to you that you and John are of an age in this? Does it confer some sense of kinship?”

“What do you mean? Tug, I’m of a different generation from John. My change won’t come for years.” Connie felt stung that Tug would even suggest such a thing.

“You’re certain?” Tug seemed perplexed. “From my observations of your growth and new confidence, I thought … but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“I’m sure you are. I’ve always been large, both for my age and for my generation.”

“Oh.” Disappointment. “I had rather hoped you would both change at the same time. The opportunity to witness sexual interaction between newly mature adults would be enlightening. I can’t recall that I’ve ever had a pair of pubescent humans of mixed sexes aboard at the same time. So much of your poetry deals with mating rituals, and my lack of firsthand observation makes it difficult for me to interpret it correctly. Of course,” he hastily added, as if fearing Connie might think such a reason trivial, “it would apply to my study of the mysteries. Sexual attraction, or jealousy, or lack of sexual faithfulness was so often a motive in those works. I confess, I fail to understand how a mating drive could be so maddening and debilitating.”

“Well, don’t ask me. It’s something I’ve never understood. Humans aren’t that way anymore, anyway.”

“Of course not,” Tug replied soothingly. “Of course not.”

They were probably
talking about him, right now. The thought shattered his concentration on his reading. He tried to decide why it bothered him so much. It was inevitable that
Tug would find times to exert his influence on Connie. Inevitable that they would talk, even if his orders prevented any solitary Wakeups for her. He’d never expected to be able to keep her totally isolated from Tug, only to use his wakefulness as a way Connie could avoid conversation with Tug. If she chose to do so. He supposed he had believed she would choose his company more often. She hadn’t. And it bothered him. Perhaps because it made him feel outnumbered and vulnerable when Tug and Connie shared casual conversation that revealed their friendship. He envied that easiness; it was something he didn’t share with either of them. He felt an odd pang at the thought.

He was in his bunk, his feet propped comfortably against the bulkhead. He ignored the reader screen in his lap and glared instead at the short dark hairs now clearly visible on his ankles. Every time he woke up it was more obvious. Waitsleep could slow it down, but nothing stopped it. Damn puberty. It was a complication he didn’t need just now, not when he needed complete control of his emotions and full use of his intellectual faculties. Everyone knew puberty shot all that to hell. The Conservancy might deny it, might insist it treated all its citizens equally, but no one protested the way sexually active adults separated themselves from the normal population. They lived differently, ate differently, listened to different music, kept strange hours. Twenty years of madness, someone had once told him. Only a snap of the fingers for normal humans compared to their life spans, but for John it would be extended by the now-dubious benefits of Wakesleep. He supposed he should be grateful that science had been able to reduce the sexual span of life to a mere twenty years or so, but in his present situation, he couldn’t stir up much gratitude.

He swung out of his bunk and studied himself in the mirror. Taller. Rangier. He straightened himself deliberately. That was better; with his shoulders back, he could see the delineation of muscle in his chest. Better schedule more workouts for himself. He’d need muscle on this mission. He ran his eyes over his reflection. Despite his misgivings, he wasn’t entirely displeased with the changes.

Of course, he could tamper with his nutritional programming, reset the level of inhibitors in his food to try to delay
the change. He shook his head at himself. It might slow it, but it wouldn’t reverse it. And all the manuals warned strongly against such action. Nature could only be staved off so long, and in most cases a Mariner was already pushing the limits simply by the time spent in Waitsleep. To try to hold it off longer could set off all sorts of biological reactions. No, he’d have to go through it. But dammit, it wasn’t going to be like all that stuff he’d read. He was going to run his life logically. No wild hormones were going to unbalance him. As for sexual drives, well, he’d control them. He’d heard of ships where the captain’s change had wreaked havoc on all concerned. Jamaica on the Constantine was damn near a legend. Her ruthless exploitation of her crew had led to total Readjustment for her and a career change, and to a Conservancy hearing on crew rights that added a clause that specifically forbade captains from initiating any sexual activity with crew members.

Not that John would ever have that problem. What he was starting to feel for Connie was no more than protectiveness for someone he suspected had once been treated very badly. And a certain companionability for someone who was starting to share a few of his interests. He was pleased she was enjoying the things he made her learn, pleased to see that the physical workouts were making her, well, stronger and more fit. And she liked him well enough to get him a cup of stim now and then. That was all. He felt no sexual attraction to Connie at all. Masturbation would more than suffice for this trip, and if he required more than that when he got back to port, he’d go to a professional. Go to someone who was trained to handle it rather than take a chance on ruining a good friendship with physical stresses. He remembered a few trips back, when Amy of the Armadillo had approached him to ask a “favor.” They’d always been friends, and so she’d thought he’d be able to take care of a little urge she had.

It had been a disaster. Amy had been more disappointed than he was; he still didn’t understand why she made such a big difference between his hand and his penis. All the instruction he’d received had emphasized end result rather than apparatus used. But she’d cried afterward and bitterly complained that she had wanted “the real thing, from a man, not a grope from a kid.” He’d told her to get some Adjust
ment counseling for her attitude problem, and she’d stormed off, flinging back at him that she should have gone to a professional in the first place. They hadn’t communicated since then, not that they were in the same port at the same time all that much. Still and all, it had been an interesting experience, touching a matured woman. He could still remember the soft heaviness of her breasts, nearly filling his hands. And the ways she had touched him….

He glanced down at himself and sighed. It probably wasn’t going to be as easy as he had planned.

She held a cool rag
against his forehead. He eyed her warily, but allowed her to touch him. He was much too weak from his injuries to resist her, anyway. She brushed the damp hair back from his forehead. “Who are you?” she asked him gently. He flinched at the sound of her voice, couldn’t comprehend her words. Overhead, stars were shining through the interlaced limbs of the birch trees. Night had come, while he had lain unconscious and she had tended to him. He felt the cool touch of her fingers as she traced the old scars that showed shiny against the deep tan of his arms. “What kind of a wild man have I found for myself?” she pondered aloud. And once more, he did not understand her words, but her tone …

[Wild man?]

Raef reluctantly drew back from his dreaming. Yeah, wild man. A man living like an animal, like a wild beast, remember.

[Doing only as he pleased. Not harmonizing.]

In a sense. Surviving the old way, without technology. Interacting with the natural environment, like wild animals did. An old kind of harmonizing, a wild kind.

[Wild harmonizing.]

Yeah. Filling the old place in the world, being part of the natural world instead of trying to master it or control it.

[This is a pretense.]

Yeah, now it is, I guess. Once, it would have been possible, but now it’s a pretense.

Mother’s voice was silent. Raef drew a deep breath, willed himself back, started the slide back into the real dreams….

[Pretense it for me.]

What?

[Pretense it for me. I am unable to pretense for myself, but I wish to do it.]

Raef was jolted. He came awake enough to be aware of the womb around him. A slow tickling of wariness went through him. The mother voice had always been with him, part of the deep dreaming. She had been an intermittent questioner, a witness to his dreams. He’d never questioned that she was a part of himself that surfaced in the deep dreaming. He’d never given it serious thought; probably it was just memories of his mom, an effect of his isolation. But lately her interruptions had come often, and the questions had been peculiar.

[Please. Pretense for me, make me different.]

Uh, okay. What do you want?

[Want?]

What shall I pretend you are?

[I do not know. I do not know how to do this. Pretense me something you like.]

Raef tried to make sense of what she was asking him. Pretend her to be something he’d like. He’d liked his mother. Did she think he hadn’t loved her? Sure there had been times when he’d wished she’d been different, wished she could be a stay-at-home mother, like other kids had. But she’d been there for him as much as she could. Still, sometimes when he’d come home from school, and taken the key from his neck, as he’d turned it in the lock, he’d pretended …

[Yes?]

“Door’s open, honey! I’m in the kitchen.”

Raef followed his nose, homing in on the rich melting scent of hot chocolate-chip cookies. He pushed open the kitchen door and she was there, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with green and pink fluorescent palm trees on it, not her grungy old waitress uniform. And she didn’t have on her thick white shoes that he hated, she was barefoot. She was smiling, looking only a little tired. Her blond hair was loose to her shoulders, not in that stupid net she had to wear to work around food.

“Get yourself some juice, hon. You can have three cook
ies now, but no more than that. Don’t want to spoil your dinner.”

[Stop. This is not the pretense for me. You are still doing the pretense for yourself. Be me. Pretense it for me.]

For a long moment, Raef was stymied. He felt his eyelids twitch, and he came perilously close to breaking out of the dream entirely. How to do it? Be his mother? He couldn’t. How could he know how it had been for her? He couldn’t.

But he knew how he wished it had been. That he could do.

She smiled down on her son as she brought the cookies to the table. She set them in front of him, put a folded red paper napkin by his plate, just as if he were an important customer. Her son. He looked up at her and she could tell he’d had another bad day at school. The other kids were so damn cruel to him. No matter how many times she complained to the teachers and school, nothing changed. But he was home now, and she could take care of him and protect him. Nothing could hurt him while he was in her care. She reached across the table to ruffle his soft hair. She loved him so much, it brought tears to her eyes.

“Hey, kid! Guess what?” she said quickly, to cover her brimming emotions. “Daddy’s coming home tonight. He’s gonna eat dinner and take a nap, and then we’re all going to pile in the car and go to the drive-in movie. How’s that sound?”

“Great!” Raef looked up at her with a cookie in his mouth and a ring of juice around his lips. She …

[touches his hair again. That is a good pretense, the feel of it.]

Okay.

She ruffled his hair, feeling the softness of it under her fingers. He reached up suddenly and hugged her, hard. “I love you, Mom,” he said abruptly. “I know how hard you try. It’s not your fault you can’t make things easier for me.”

For a minute it hurt her to realize just how badly he got hurt sometimes, but at least he knew how hard she tried to make it better. She bought him the right kind of jeans, the right kind of shirts, his sneakers were just like everyone else’s at school, the other kids shouldn’t have picked on him.
But they did, no matter how she complained. But here at home, at least …

[I will protect him, I will take care of him. No one will hurt him here. I touch his soft hair again. We smell the cookie smell together and hug again. He is safe with me.]

Go ahead. That’s right, you’re doing it. Go ahead.

[He likes my hair long and loose. He likes me to be home and not a worker in a food place. What is home?]

The kitchen was not big, but she kept it very clean. The cupboards, the frig, and the stove were all big and white. The tiles on the floor were yellow, and she had cut out yellow flowers from some old Contac paper and put them on the corners of the cupboards. She grew plants on the windowsill, little plants with soft fuzzy leaves and purple flowers with little yellow centers, African violets. She had tin canisters on the counters, white with flowers on them, and yellow lids. They held flour, sugar, coffee, and tea bags. There was a cookie jar, too, shaped like Big Bird, and she started to put the cookies in it.

[The rich-smelling chocolate-chip cookies.]

Yeah. They’re still warm, and a little chocolate stuck to her fingers. She licked it off.

[This is taste? Taste is good. I can eat a cookie, like Raef?]

Yeah, of course, she ate a cookie. Hell, she took the whole cookie jar to the table and they sat down together and ate cookies and drank juice. Eat as many cookies as you want. No one cares if you get fat. It’s only a dream, Mom. We can do anything we want to in dreams.