Fugitive From Asteron (8 page)

Startled, I dived into the bushes.
The plane was directly overhead! It was searching for me, I feared. My heart was
pounding to match the motor’s roar. What was I to do? If I tried to flee, the
plane could shoot me down. If I remained where I was, it could land and deploy
guards to catch me. I waited for the plane to hover, to land, to shoot, to be
joined by other aircraft, but none of these things occurred. Instead, the
little red ship did something most unexpected.

It flew upright, then inverted. It
rolled like a leaf tumbling in the wind. It looped to form vertical rings, then
it carved a perfect figure eight, executing smooth rolls and quick spins along
its path. The pilot raised the nose, climbing straight up to a point of zero airspeed,
and then he began spinning in a spectacular vertical descent. At an altitude
that seemed too low for recovery, he suddenly stopped the rotations, coming out
of the spin in time to avoid the ground. The pilot performed these maneuvers
with such balance and grace that I thought of the alien music Reevah had sung
to me. I hummed the melody while I traced the aircraft’s flowing loops, rolls,
and spins. The pattern of the flight matched the rhythm of the music so well
that the craft seemed to be dancing through the sky.

I realized that the plane was not
looking for me or anyone else but merely for an open field over which to perform.
The graceful ship seemed concerned with nothing beyond its own exciting
movements. Watching it fly with ease through its skillful sequence, I
remembered the time I had performed similar maneuvers in my plane, the day I
was caught and . . . A sudden fear stopped my humming. Had
this pilot swayed from his regimen? Would he be punished for his behavior?
Would he be beaten—or meet a worse fate—for the superb patterns he traced in
the air? “No!” I cried. “No!”

The plane began a vertical descent,
a graceful red object hovering in a blue sky, slowly falling to the ground. I
ran to the edge of my field, crossed a paved road, and climbed up a grassy hill
to the nearby area where the plane was touching down. It landed in front of a
domicile of some kind, but one that did not look large enough to house a
multitude of people. I wondered about the security problems posed by its glass
doors, large windows, and outdoor porches. It looked like a place too easy for
inhabitants to escape.

Concealing myself in the bushes
surrounding the small building, I watched to be sure that the skillful pilot
was safe. I vowed to smash anyone who would punish him. Just as the door of the
small craft opened, a stout male humanoid who looked like an Asteronian
approached the plane. He wore a brown uniform and carried a large shovel, its
scoop raised high and ready to strike. It was a primitive weapon indeed for a
commander, but one that could crush the pilot’s skull in one blow.

The pilot emerged wearing a short,
zippered jacket over pants. To my surprise, the flier’s slim lines and gracefulness
in jumping to the ground were unmistakably female. She removed a hair band, and
a rush of brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. In the morning sun, her hair
glistened with streaks of red like burnished wood. The pilot shook her head
briskly, as if to remove the tangles of her hair’s confinement. Then she
smiled, an effortless gesture that seemed as buoyant as the loops of her plane.
I guessed her to be a bit younger than I was.

Was she in the military as I had
been? Had she stolen the plane? I eyed the commander brandishing the shovel. He
was a full head taller than the flier and about three times her weight, and his
neck was of gargantuan thickness. His big steps quickly advanced him to within striking
distance. Jumping out of the bushes, I lunged in front of her to face the
monster that I could match in height but did in no way equal in bulk. I grabbed
the shovel from his hand and gestured to the pilot. Although I did not expect
aliens to understand me, my words spilled involuntarily.

“You will not strike this female!
You will not hurt her!”

The commander raised his eyebrows.

“Just what do you think you’re
doing?” said the female.

“You speak my language!” I gasped
incredulously.

“You speak
ours
.” She
grabbed the shovel from my hands and gave it back to the commander! However, he
did not move to strike either of us.

“Now, who are you, and what do you
think you’re doing, kid?” said the commander. He dug the blade of the shovel
into the ground, clearly not intending to hit anyone.

“I think I was mistaken,” I said.

“What business do you have coming
here?” the pilot asked.

“I am lost.”

“Where are you from?”

“Another place. Where am I now?”

“You’re trespassing on private
property,” she said.

“What is that?”

“My father owns this land.”

“You
know
who your father
is?”

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

I hesitated. With Feran in pursuit,
I did not want to give any Asteronian name or hint of my origin. I knew only
two alien names, and, although I had favored Reevah using the title, I did not
want to be addressed publicly as Honey.

The female persisted. “Well? What’s
your name?”

“Alexander. My name is Alexander.”

“Is that your first or last name?”

I had no reply.

“Or do you have only one name, like
some of the aliens?”

“My name is Alexander.”

“Why are you trying to rescue me
from my gardener, Alexander?”

“What did you say he was?”

She gestured around us, pointing to
mounds of freshly turned soil along a pathway up the hill and to two robots
working the ground. The man in the brown shirt and pants was apparently the
commander of a robotic grounds crew. “He’s a gardener, someone who plants
flowers, Alexander.”

“You plant flowers?”

“Excuse us,” said the oversized
alien.

He grabbed the pilot’s arm. My
fingers instinctively seized his wrist before I could stop myself.

He gently removed my hand and then
held up both of his to show he was not dangerous, and he spoke to me softly,
the way one addresses a child. “Now, nobody’s going to hurt anybody. You just
wait here a minute while the lady and I have a little chat.” He smiled, moving
a few steps away from me with the pilot.

I heard a smattering of words,
sufficient to understand. The gardener said something about my needing medical
attention. He reached for a pocket phone and uttered the word
police
.
Knowing that word’s meaning quite well, I prepared to race down the hill and
vanish from their sight forever. But the pilot stopped him, presenting a
different theory about me. She thought I was an alien from Cosmona, a place
from which a spacecraft apparently had just landed with refugees looking for
work. Because I could not pretend to be from this bizarre new place, could not
divulge I was from Asteron while Feran lurked, and did not intend to deal with
the police, I thought I would encourage the pilot’s hypothesis.

“I mean no harm,” I called to them.
“I am a stranger here and unfamiliar with your customs. I am in possession of
my faculties, but I know nothing of my whereabouts. I am lost, so perhaps I can
ask a few questions and then leave.”

The pilot turned to the commander
of flowers. “It’s okay, Jack. I’ll handle this.”

“If you’re sure, Kristin.” He eyed
me suspiciously as they stepped toward me. “We don’t get around much to the
primitive planets—no offense. So we don’t know how things work where you come
from, but if you want to live here, you should know one thing.”

He paused, still staring at me.

“We don’t stick our noses in other
people’s business.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to go, then stopped. “Oh,
Kristin, I almost forgot what I was going to ask you.” He glanced at me as the
cause of the interruption of his thoughts. “I was wondering how much your
father wants me to trim back the shrub roses on the east border. Did he leave
for work yet?”

“He’s away on business, Jack.” I
detected a touch of sadness in her voice. “He doesn’t seem to have time for the
garden, so why don’t we decide?”

“You know how particular he is
about his roses. Maybe I should wait till he gets back.”

“Lately he’s had business matters
on his mind, so it’s hard to get his attention,” she said with disappointment.
“I’d say to trim them down to four feet.”

“Okay,” said the gardener.

He glanced at me suspiciously once
again, then took his shovel and walked away.

Incredulously, I eyed dozens of
trays filled with tiny blossoms sprawled along the hilly path from the street
to the domicile. The short, headless robotic gardeners had rectangular bodies
with various pockets to hold small tools. They seemed well suited to working
the ground. Each robot’s four arms were engaged in digging holes with their
trowels, lifting tiny plantings from their trays, and settling them into the
ground. I breathed in the sweet scents that the wind tossed at me. A sudden
aching made my mind wander to a place by a lake where a tall, delicate figure
with golden curls placed a flower in her hair, a rare blossom that I had to
search to find. I imagined her seeing the spectacle of color and fragrance
before me, and her laughter became almost audible—

“Alexander . . . Alexander.”

I realized the young female named
Kristin had called me several times. “Yes?”

“I’ve got to grab breakfast.” She
pointed to the curiously small quarters near us. “Then I’m going to work. If
you’re just arriving from Cosmona, there’s a place a little north of here
called the Center for Alien Orientation. Take the road outside my house to
Evergreen Avenue, then east on Evergreen to Sanders. The center helps aliens
find work here, and they put you up temporarily in housing and feed you.”

“Is that where I am required to
report?”

“You’re not
required
to go
there, no.”

“But how does a person receive food
and other rations?”

She cocked her head, looking
puzzled by my questions. “You
buy
them, so you need money.”

“You mean they are not provided for
free?”

“Why, no.” She looked surprised by
my question.

“How do I obtain money?”

“You take a job and get paid for
your work. The Center for Aliens is run by a group of local employers. They can
help you find work with their companies, or you can get a job on your own.
Whatever you choose.”

“You mean I can . . . choose . . . my
work?”

“Of course.” Kristin looked at me
curiously.

“Where am I?”

“In Rising Tide.”

“Where is that?”

“It’s a city in California.”

“Is California the name of the
planet?”

She smiled. “No. You’re on Earth. Planet
Earth.”

The name sounded familiar, but I
was sure that I had learned nothing about Earth, or Cosmona, in school. I figured
from my education that I was on a primitive planet where people were still in
the grip of what my teachers called the idolatry of money.

“What kind of humans live here?”

“Earthlings.” She smiled. “By the
way, you never answered my question, Alexander.”

“What question?”

“Why did you try to rescue me from
the gardener?”

“I saw you perform the most
skillful maneuvers in your plane. I thought you had stolen it from the
military, and you would be punished. I thought the gardener was a commander.”

“Hmm, I see. I think I see. That
plane doesn’t belong to the military.”

“Who else could it belong to?”

“It belongs to
me
. And as
long as I’m not endangering folks—say, by practicing my aerobatics over
populated areas—I can do what I want in my plane. No one can stop me—least of
all the gardener.” She tried to suppress a laugh. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to
make fun of you.”

“I am relieved you were not in
danger.”

“Actually, my life’s never been in
danger.”

An astonishing state of existence
that I could hardly imagine.

“No one ever tried to save my life
before.” She looked up at me, scanning my face.

“The way you fly, you might be in
danger. I did not think you would come out of that last spin. You were almost
aground before you finally decided to apply opposite rudder.”

She raised her eyebrows in
surprise. She sounded stern but looked ready to smile. “Evidently, there are no
gardeners where you come from, but there are aircraft. And evidently you have
opinions about my safety in the air as well as on the ground.”

I had those opinions, indeed—such
as about the risk of her blacking out from the dizzying maneuvers she
performed—but I thought it best to keep those views to myself. I studied her
face as she stared at mine. The steady gaze of her translucent brown eyes
looked like that of an adult, while the splatter of freckles on her nose made
her look a bit childlike.

“Want to go up with me, Alexander?”

I looked at Kristin’s sleek, red
craft shining in the morning sun. “Oh, yes.”

“I promise I’ll fly easy, so I
won’t shock you.”

“Nothing can shock me.” More
correctly, my only shock was that I was still breathing.

“Why don’t you come back? I’m
usually playing with my plane early in the morning or late in the day before
sunset.”

“What did you call what you were
doing?” I asked astonished.

“Playing.”

How odd it seemed to use that word.
On Asteron only small children played, and only up to an age when they could
perform useful work for the people. But that word . . . 
playing
 . . . seemed
to describe perfectly what I was doing when I flew my plane beyond my
commander’s protocol.

“Kristin, may I trespass again on
this . . . you called it . . . property?”

“You have my permission, so it
won’t be trespassing.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to run now.”