Becoming Alien (44 page)

Silently, since I was supposed to have cleaned him earlier, he showed me how to spread preening oil. This close up, I saw patterns of lighter and darker gray on his body feathers and upper limbs.

“Red Clay, do you like knowing things that no
human
who mocked you as a
parolee
will ever know?”

“That’s not why I came to Karst,” I said, a bit hotly. “And Amber’s right about real primitives. Calcite, another refugee, freaked out. Barcons killed her personality to keep the body alive.”

He didn’t reply, just combed himself where he could reach, then handed me the combs. “I thought you weren’t so tactile,” I said when I began to comb his back, him crouched with half-closed eyes between my feet.

“We don’t gather information with fingers.” He opened his eyes and looked at mine in the mirror again. “Tug on the new feather sheaths, don’t force them off,” he said, shutting his eyes and crooning softly to himself as I worked.

“I think I’ve finished.”

He opened his eyes, bottom lids dropping slowly, head very heavy, and turned around. “Good work for a novice.”

Stiffly, I backed away, sure I’d get the tedious jobs this trip. He asked, “Would reciprocal grooming be polite?”

“I owed you after today.”

“Why did you tell them about my pleasure reflex? It made me seem terribly strange.”

“They thought you wanted to eat the Hargun children, so I had to explain.”

“Rhyodolite took you to spy on me. Gwyngs can be hateful. And
you were
aroused by Black Amber’s mating.”

He took my arm and sat me down between his spread-out toes, poured oil on his hands, which were softer than I’d expected, and chopped the soreness out of my neck.

“I know a bit about mammal back muscles.” He rubbed a bit lower. “Many creatures strengthen social units with reciprocal grooming. Only sapients create social grooming analogs—trade, tourism, storytelling.”

“Barcons? They’re not so social.”

“Pairs and families—brain parasites on their home planet make strangers affectionate. We’re lucky they don’t think us infected with brain worms and kill us.” His thumbs mashed down on either side of my spine. Even if a woman had done it, the massage was too rough to be sexy, but it hurt good.

“You’ve been quite tense?”

“Of course,” I said.

“I’d like you to stay on Yauntra.”

“No.”
Yangchenla!

“If we surrender someone, they’ll have proved they’re lords of their own planet,” he said.

Not me!
All my muscles coiled up again, my stomach burning. We both stood up, and I wished him good night. He settled back down on his suede-covered mat.

Two days later, Karriaagzh brought the Karst people to his room and told us, “You’re now under Yauntra inter-corporate treaty and criminal laws. Contacts with Yauntries who suggest illegal activities must be reported to me and either Edwir Hargun or the Encoral Sim within six hours. No texts can leave Yauntra without releases signed by the Encoral Ragar Sim. Don’t speak to each other in analog Karst II.”

Carbon-jet leaned back, mouth slightly open, tongue flickering over sharp teeth, face skin crinkled.

“Red Clay, Carbon-jet, Sim suggested immunity for the others if I would surrender you both on past espionage conspiracy. I refused. Hargun was also opposed, on Tom’s behalf.”

“One question, Rector-who-has been-suspended,” Carbon-jet said. “Why are
you
here? I thought you had clout enough to avoid a potential embarrassment, and Yauntra may be quite embarrassing to you.”

“If I did overreact, then I should settle the problem I started, Rector or not. And, Carbon-jet, I save my political credit for really important matters.”

“Yes?”

“Carbon-jet, I tell you to stay away from the corporate crests.”

Edwir Hargun called to ask me if I was ready to begin trade work. “I hope,” he said, “that you weren’t offended by what I said on the video.”

“Nah,
I figured that was just politics.” I felt weird talking to Hargun; his boss, maybe even mine, wanted me jailed. Jail again—far away and very alone, this time. But Hargun had defended me.

That afternoon, we worked at the estate. Hargun brought a Yauntry computer—old
fluist—
to
read our non-graphics trade list. Each offering had been current when we left Karst.

The room was plain, white, like an ex-kitchen, with the Yauntry equivalent of roller blinds, a table for the computer, and unpadded wooden chairs for us.

Both of us moved around the room stiffly. Hargun knew almost too much about me: he’d seen me shaking with terror after the Yauntries shot Xenon; he’d been at Tesseract’s when Yangchenla visited me. If Tesseract and Ammalla had paid her to fuck me, maybe he knew. After Hargun set up the operating system, I loaded the first non-graphic card. “Push this,” Hargun told me. “The operating system varies some from spoken Yauntry.”

The list began to scroll—and went scrolling on, our monster. The first day, first Hargun watched it, jotting down frame numbers, then me, mumbling the items, noting whatever caught Hargun’s interest. Intimidating Federation—technology beyond my dreams, from planets utterly more advanced than Earth.

That afternoon, Hargun stopped the machine. “We must be primitive! What are Jerek sterile entertainers? What are Llammash space net matrices? Biochips, core-riding plasma containers, deep space mining tori!” He yanked the card out of the computer and stared at it. “Don’t be insulted, but I’m glad you’re not from one of those planets. How much more primitive are you compared to us?”

I thought a bit—I hadn’t seen either Earth’s or Yauntra’s most advanced technology. “Say, twenty years behind you.”

“And our computer,” Hargun stabbed viciously toward the computer screen, “doesn’t intimidate you?”

“On Karst,” I said, “the teaching computer works in our regular languages, one non-linear. And lines per inch, scan dot sizes—all that changes to fit the graphics you want.” I sounded dazed.

“What is the capacity of your teaching computer?”

“Main storage is on a crystal discontinuity, semi-liquid iron crystals, with microgates, like the ships. Your computer here looks like
Earth
ones, bit more sophisticated ROM storage.” I leaned against the wall, suddenly awed by my pet terminal on Karst.

Hargun got up out of the operator’s chair and asked me to key in
fluist/
computer.
Over thirty planets offered computer plans—molecular chips, crystal-discontinuity storage with microgates, laser crystal matrixing—more advanced than what Yauntra had.

Hargun yanked the card and asked me to let him have the chair. He ran an economics model program. Let lithium be high—Yauntra would be less affected, but might not get the highest-tech computers. Let lithium be low—local industries were suddenly obsolete. He stared at the screen, stabbing keys.

“You can’t tempt us like this. Cruel.”

“You’re blaming Karst if the technology tempts you?”

“Impacting technology. Sim asked me to check computers.” He put the trade list back up and scrolled through computers again, then pulled a printout.

“Not my fault,” I said.

A night later, Carbon-jet asked me into his room to watch Karriaagzh on television. As I came in with a quilt, C-j lay on his mattress looking up at Karriaagzh’s image. The Rector, dressed only in feathers, explained, “I’m really lighter than I appear, about twenty percent lighter per volume area than a mammal would be.”

“Yeah, filled with hot air. And he seems so helpless,” C-j interjected, “when he closes his eyes, the bottom lid so hurtly sliding up. Red Clay, do you think birds are less calculating because they’ve got wired-upside-down eyelids and because they weigh twenty percent less than a seven-to-eight-foot mammal would weigh?”

I shrugged and wrapped the quilt around me. On-screen, Karriaagzh and the Encoral Sim agreed that Yauntra would control its own solar system.

“We’ve always said,” Sim commented, “that the satellite was not launched to leave our solar system, but was rather a deep probe to investigate our hydrocarbon reserves.” Karriaagzh, hunkered down on his shins, admitted that the Federation infringed by entering the system.

Neither Karriaagzh nor Sim mentioned the Federation blockade. “The Encorals promise Yauntra that satellite thieves can’t force trade concessions damaging to the local corporations,” Sim said.

“Oh, shit,”
I said as Karriaagzh asked for a translation of the Yauntro term “force concessions.” Repeating the phrase, accent shifting across the syllables in several politeness forms, Karriaagzh puffed up his feathers and hauled out his eye shields, much, I guessed, to the utter fascination of all Yauntra.

Settling the feathers back with a jerk, he said, “Karst would be liable under its own laws if it forced Yauntra to buy off-planet products. We don’t force you to join the Federation. My own people didn’t join.”

C-j rolled over and bit his mattress.

“Will we get interstellar space drives?” the interviewer asked Karriaagzh.

“You’ve developed them since discovering from our ships that they were possible. How much you need our technology, I leave to your corporations and central government to decide.” Karriaagzh shuffled face feathers. “We could help you improve.”

C-j had buried his head in his mattress cover, but finally he rolled his furry body over and stared, sniffing, at Karriaagzh’s image.

Karriaagzh said, “Yauntra seems more civilized than some planets, with wonderful music and fine educational institutions.”

“Our computers fascinated Edwir Hargun,” I said.

“The bird would give away our technology for their stupid music.”

“Don’t bet on it, Jerek.”

The announcer continued, “We see you don’t wear clothes these days. Do you feel dressed sufficiently in feathers?”

“I use an arm sheath for papers and currency—the scales keep it from sliding down my arm. I do feel more comfortable this way. On Karst, some mammals fear birds, so we hide our feathers. Fortunately, your people are less prejudiced.”

The Encoral Sim spoke: “He’s honest with us, shows us what he really is. No more disguises. We’re going hunting at my country place, to get to know each other better. My gunsmith fitted a stock for him to one of my finest guns. After months of hard negotiations, we need a break.”

“Is this live?” C-j asked.

“They left yesterday,” I said.

“So if someone tries to entrap us, where’s your Edwir Hargun? Here Karriaagzh is, off-planet, having you fix those poor matted feathers he uses to make Federation mammals feel so guilty. For some xenophobes, he preens? Trash bird.”

“Hey, the Federation sent him out during a molt. Molting’s stressful, so he needs a break from negotiations.”

“He keeps everything from
me,”
C-j said before heading for the toilet. When he came back, he circled the room, touching furniture.

“Isn’t scent marking a bit primitive?” I asked him as stink filled the room.

“Get out, refugee,” C-j said. He fleered back his lips and threw a urine-and-musk-soaked swab at me. “Didn’t tell me. Don’t know where he is, what he’s doing.”

A strange Yauntry asked me to come walk with him, “if you’re not afraid.” He reminded me of the anonymous guys connected to the Atlanta investors—no badge on his shoulder, a Yauntra knit hat pulled down over all his hair, colored contact lenses.

We walked out toward the pond. “We can get you back to your planet,” he said. “You liked things on Yauntra that were like it, so you must miss it.”

I didn’t explain that I’d skipped parole. “I can’t talk to you,” I said, turning back to the house.

“To know you have faster computers and quicker atmospheric battle planes makes your Federation a challenge and danger to us. I can promise your safety if you help.”

“I’m just here to talk to Hargun.” The man didn’t follow me back to the compound, but Hargun wasn’t there. Neither was Carbon-jet.

Karriaagzh and the Encoral Sim slaughtered a quarter ton of mixed birds and mammals between them, shooting some on television. They’d wagered the three Yauntry operas against a Federation molecular data chip over who’d kill the most game.

I finally saw Hargun again in the computer room more than twelve hours after the Yauntry had approached me. “I’m pissed at you, Edwir,” I said. “You were obviously gone so I couldn’t report the approach in the time limit. I’ve had it with Yauntries trying to mess me up with the Federation.”

Hargun pulled his dizzy eyes away from the detailed mobile graphic computer ads from the bubble storage packs and asked, “Is Carbon-jet a special friend of yours?”

“Are you trying to catch Carbon-jet in something illegal?” I asked. “And me?”

“No,” he said, but I suspected he could keep as good a face around a lying tongue as any Terran drug dealer.

“Hargun, I don’t want to hurt Yauntra, or get hurt.” I caught myself trembling.