Becoming Alien (22 page)

“Should I let Rhyodolite go?”
I asked Tesseract in English.

“Okay,”
he said. “
I'
ll watch him.”

When I let loose of Rhyodolite’s arms, he slumped down on the stairs and put his hands behind his neck, arms at his sides, just like Black Amber had done when she sat in her swing. “Too many new species, all at once,” he said. I rubbed his shoulder a bit, ready to grab him again.

Cadmium came down and Gwyng-talked to Rhyodolite, moving him off the staircase. Then he said to me, “Black Amber is making us edgy tonight, but I can’t explain.”

“She showed Wy’um a glass vial, and someone said she was in heat.”

Cadmium shrieked softly at Tesseract. Tesseract stiffened, anger a Gwyng could read. Hargun said, “You told us we could return to our planets tonight.”

“Tell Hargun I’m miserable/sorry,” Rhyodolite said. He nibbled at his thumb bases, then offered his hand to Hargun, who just stared at it. “He apologizes,” Tesseract said. “He nibbled any anger secretions out of his thumb glands. Their politeness gesture is to touch fingers lightly.”

Hargun said, “Piss on their cheese.”

After the alien ambassadors left, Rhyodolite, Cadmium, and I went back to the food tables. “Sorry, Red-Clay-mobbed-by-aliens,” Rhyo said, “such a tense night. Black Amber and Wy’um (pre-mating) want to argue down Karriaagzh…”

Cadmium said, “Stop, Rhyodolite-nasty.”

But Rhyodolite continued, “Black Amber and Karriaagzh will/must continue their ritual argument. Then the bird will feed the toilet—his way of kicking out tension.”

Cadmium said, “I’ve seen him feed the toilet, Rhyodolite. No interest.”

“Red Clay is impressed by the bird/vulture.”

“I don’t need to see him dead drunk, throwing up in the toilet,” I said. I was impressed by any creature so alien, so isolated, who could live among the rest of us. I, at least, knew of another couple humans tucked away on some primitive range. But Karriaagzh was
drunk
tonight.

“Not drunk throwing up. He feeds his baby-bird-faced toilet. In the main facility for males. Like sex/body pleasure,” Rhyodolite said.

“Where are these facilities?” I asked, since by this time I needed to use a urinal myself.

“More spectacular male facilities you’ve never seen,” Cadmium said as they led me to the door. Rhyodolite hummed and flung it with his shoulder, banging it against a door-stop. The huge room echoed from water falling. Some males spray into waterfalls—here were quiet falls and bubbly falls—whatever your alien bladder craved.

“Without running water,” Rhyodolite said, “some people would void in a sink.”

Sand boxes, holes in the tiled floor, posts that smelled slightly. “Some species,” Rhyo said, after whoofing and closing his nostrils, “need to leave marks.”

Holes in the rock walls and fake tree limbs. In the center of the room, I saw rows of open toilets like Earth’s toilets, but with different angles and heights for different posteriors—plastic, not porcelain. And for the shy, closed stalls.

Cadmium rolled a rheostat to dim and brighten the lights. I was almost too amazed to piss, but went over and used a waterfall while Rhyodolite and Cadmium used fake tree holes.

“I’ll watch the meat and tell you if I see the bird chuck up,” Cadmium said before he slipped out.

“This is the bird’s,” Rhyodolite said, showing me a toilet—red inside with a red lid—set so someone inside the stalls could see it in the basin mirrors.

We looked at each other. “Too many species,” Rhyodolite said, sitting down on the floor. “We pollute/warp each other. You usually do not void in waterfalls. The Rector-bird should never lie on his back. Too many new aliens, even for the bird (but he won’t admit it).”

“And Gwyngs usually don’t kick nervous aliens,” I said.

“Ah, Red Clay, I never had a cadet of mine killed before. Worse it was a bird (almost good…).” He sniffed his thumb glands and washed his hands. “Punishment for kick comes.”

“Could you go back to the Gwyng planet?” I asked.

“Bored there with babble about sky functions and plastic collections. Terrified of accidents on missions. Life is a paradox, no/yes?”

“What species uses each of these things?” I asked. He walked me around, explaining.

Soon Cadmium stuck his head in and said, “The bird Rector gulps meat. He has his special stones in his gullet.”

Rhyodolite dragged me into a closed stall as Cadmium withdrew. We both waited, peering through cracks at the mirrors.

Eventually, Karriaagzh came in, crooning softly. The front of his neck where it met the body surged and his crest swayed from side to side as he balanced unsteadily on his huge legs. He seemed to stare once into the mirrors—I ducked back.

Rhyodolite was right—the bird got off on this. I guess sapients had to get pleasure from feeding their young this way, or else no 10 million years of history. Why get your beak all messy throwing up into a baby unless there’s pleasure in it?

Karriaagzh swayed, hands massaging his crop, dangling his tongue, reflected in all the mirrors. Rhyodolite motioned for me to climb up to the stall top, but I thought surely the Rector would hear us.

Oblivious, the Rector bent over his toilet, crest feathers dangling around his eyes, and ran his hands over the bowl. He heaved rather solidly into it—one time, two times, three. Between heaves, he murmured to “baby hole,” in ironic tones.

Then he reared back to stare at the toilet bowl before vomiting out more liquid vomit. Slowly, he raised up on his legs, closed the toilet lid, and flushed.

Rhyo and I slid down into the cubicle. I heard a beak strop itself on wood, then rustling paper and running Water.

Then a huge tearing sigh filled the place, as though all the air in his bones, if he had hollow bird bones, rushed out through a tight, hurt throat. That sigh sounded so lonely and painful.

Then I looked over at Rhyodolite. His face was rigid, wrinkles carved of coal; his fingers were arched anti twitching. He turned his head and stared back at me with bat eyes, animal-dumb.

After Karriaagzh stumbled out, I said softly, “Rhyodolite?” I watched his throat, his legs, those curved long fingers with the hairs standing on end.

Slowly, intelligence re-entered his eyes. “I am very tired of your human boots,” he said, as though Karriaagzh’s strange performance at the toilet had happened weeks earlier. “Need drugs. Time to blow neurons/nerves to cool black space.” He dropped to the floor of the stall and added, “Barcons have a drug for Gwyngs that makes awareness of species differences go/merge/blend. Like bird fantasy of all alike. Unfortunately cuts motor control.”

Before we left the male facility, Rhyodolite rinsed his webs with alcohol and held his arms up, spreading the webs to let the alcohol evaporation cool them. “Drugs, drugs,” he muttered as he stood there, arms out, “tasty drugs.”

“How safe are these drugs?” I asked. He oo’ed faintly.

∞ ∞ ∞

When we pushed our way by blithering aliens to the drugs, we saw Cadmium standing belly against the table, throat lump contracting slightly, almost throbbing. He was staring at a gray box, like a small copying machine with a glass plate and mirrors under the glass. “You put your hand here,” Rhyodolite said, pointing to the glass, “and speak your cadet name and I.D. number, and the drug number, so.”

A Barcon behind the table said, “We hear you need some 496 very badly, Rhyodolite.”

“I’ll cooperate.”

“496 blurs species differences? That’s the drug?” I asked.

“Illusions of oceanic togetherness,” the Barcon said, preparing the dispenser box. “You also, Cadmium?”

“Haven’t used any drugs for this quota period. They can be scary, but this time, yes.”

“What for me?” I asked. “I want to party with them.”

By some Karst variation of 2
a.m
., Rhyodolite, barefoot at last, took off his uniform top and began his best vampire imitations, rolling his eyes so I could see how huge they were under the lids and skull protrusions.

Too bad, I thought, Gwyngs wrinkle so early, show old age in babyhood.

Waving his webs—like diagonals of black crepe paper—Rhyodolite clicked his teeth at my neck, hooting. I sank to the floor, laughing, but still not so stoned that I’d dare point out that five-foot-two-inch vampires looked silly. “How nice, Rhyodolite,” I finally managed to say, “that you’ve changed into something almost human.”

The tri-colored girl I’d talked to earlier came up. “Help me,” she ordered as she pulled out a piece of plastic with what looked like round Band-Aids in it. Cadmium and she began talking seriously as he applied one of the sticky circles to her inner elbow.

Wonderful drugs, I decided. “No aliens here, just a lot of protoplasmic ooze,” I told Rhyodolite.

“You’re doing nicely,” he replied.

Life fuzzed up and soon I was riding with Cadmium, the tri-colored girl, and Rhyodolite in the little two-person electric car. The Gwyngs kept saying
things
—squares,
oblongs, funny swirls. I didn’t know whether it was the drugs or the way they were babbling, cutting visuals on in my skull computer. Finally, Rhyodolite said clearly, more or less, “We must swim.”

“Swimming in the gym would be boring, Rhyodolite,” Cadmium said, “when we have a starlit pool.”

“But, Cadmium, the gym is open. For Jereks and other night pests—but if I saw one now…”

“Get suits for swimming. Officer’s card.”

The girl shrugged and looked hard at me while Rhyodolite climbed all over himself getting out of the car. He came back with four male brief suits.

No, lady,
I thought in English,
I won’t touch you. Best we could do would be make a mule.
Thinking that reminded me of Calcite and cut my drug high, but the mood rolled right over and we were four great guys having a great time together on a super planet.

And besides, I knew in my bones that the girl’d mastered fighting styles humans couldn’t have imagined even in Japan. So we swam under that glowing alien sky—
stars so red and blue I can see them up close.

“I wish (sometimes),” Rhyodolite said, floating on his back, “that we could be like this with each other forever. But the drug spoils the brain. Maybe Karriaagzh’s brain self-generates a safer illusion drug than this—Barcons should check.”

“Shut up, Gwyng,” the girl said, swimming around us.

For decades, it seems, we floated in the starred liquid, four people together. I said, “I wish Karriaagzh and Black Amber could do this together.”

Rhyodolite dropped his legs and turned in the water to look at me. “Horrible to come out of it the next day, have double sense of birds, friendly terrors. I have enough guilt.”

Eternity in the floating stars, until Rhyodolite wanted to touch the girl’s breasts, explaining earnestly that he had breasts once, but he doubted Barcon fakes felt like the real things. He sounded more lonely than horny. “Just let me place a little fingertip on one?”

“Time,” Cadmium said ominously, “is coming back. (Painful) tomorrow patterns the sky.”

As the planet turned to face the sun again, we all dressed, dripping wet, in our uniforms and sashes. And then we looked at each other, in low-angle sunlight that accentuated the differences between us. My nerves jangled from the hangover, from sleeplessness.

More and more brutal light. Rhyodolite managed to drive—fortunately few other cars were out. The girl-alien sat on my lap, her leg muscles squirming as though she was trying to sit lightly. She yawned and grinned at me, her eyelids bouncing up and down—short dense eyelashes in two colors of hair.

At her dorm, she crawled off my
legs and climbed over Cadmium to get out. “Watch your pouch kin,” she told Cadmium in passing.

I managed to fall out of the car when we reached my dorm, and sat on the pavement laughing at the weird creatures who’d driven me home. They started koo’ing, then Cadmium punched Rhyodolite in the shoulder to get him driving again.

As my roommates were getting dressed, arguing about what it meant that I wasn’t back, I walked in, shedding uniform, headed straight to bed.

The bird wanted to see my sash. I’d left it in Rhyodolite’s car. Arggh. My computer spoke, “Red Clay, sleep until noon. Then physical education evaluation, remedial chemistry, and English classes…”

Damn Black Amber, I thought, driving the bed ceiling-ward, wrapped in Karst’s best imitation polyester sheets. Gypsum set an alarm, I noticed, as my eyelids started sticking shut.

After
the Barcons finished running me on a treadmill collecting my carbon dioxide or something, after various aliens condemned me in chemistry, and after Tesseract’s erudite English chatter about Charles Dickens and his specific significance as a human explainer, I came back to my room stiff, half woozy, to discover the furniture had arrived. Minus the Earth-from-space shot—I got a note about avoiding planet chauvinism.

Instead, they’d hung a large photo-poster of a little mouse with almost-human ears. “It’s a tree shrew,” Gypsum told me, his face twisted with humor, “your most distant traceable kin.” Old Tree Shrew made a nice accent—humble beginnings, like the old log cabin photos people’d have in their mobile homes.