Human to Human (11 page)

He said “
Okay
,” in English. I helped her with her coat and squeezed her shoulders. Karl put his coat on, then stuck his hand in hers and said, “Let’s go. Let us go.”

When I locked the door behind Marianne and Karl, I said, “I didn’t think you liked humans.”

Travertine, still down on his hocks, said, “You’d be terribly dangerous with the Sharwani.”

“Oh, so that is it.”

He rubbed his beak again and said, “No. I want to understand humans. Were you afraid of my countryman Xenon when you two served on the Gwyng’s ship? Both you and the Gwyng snubbed him.

“Rhyodolite was. I didn’t know any better.”

“I don’t understand humans,” he said. “I don’t expect to understand Gwyngs, buy you build your languages out of signals. When I close my eyes and listen to you when we talk Karst One, you could have feathers.”

I said, “As far as the way I acted toward Xenon, I’m terribly sorry. Stupid, but I was young. Rhyodolite was following Black Amber’s attitudes then. He’s more reasonable now.”

Travertine said, “Perhaps I should go back now.” He looked around the apartment, then wiped around his eyes with a knuckle, finger folded at the joint where fine little black scales stopped and the softer palm and digit skin, black and moist, began. I remembered Xenon’s hands.

“Do you want to stay in our apartment until we go?”

“I want to, but it would not be best.” He rose and added, “I have some sleep medicine in my room. I’ll gate back now—so nice that iron survives in so many dimensions.” He levered himself up and went into the closet. He leaned against the wall, facing away from me. His head swiveled around 180 degrees again, and he said, “I’ll send the transit unit back.”

“We’ll be down late morning.”

“Close the door after I seal up.”

I did. A second later, I saw the blue flash, then waited until I saw the blue flash of the empty capsule returning.

Marianne and Karl came back with two extra cones. I wrapped one extra cone in plastic wrap and popped it in the freezer. Then we all cuddled in bed together, Karl between us, sucking on ice cream.

Marianne said, “I wonder what happens when we do achieve full contact. I’d be terribly sorry if it does hurt you.”

I said, “If a Terran government wants me back in jail, I suspect they’ll get me. If they don’t, I can stay with the Federation. If a Terran government wants to hire me, it’s up to me, but the Federation will probably suspect that I was hired even if I wasn’t.”

“Karriaagzh said as much to me, except that he didn’t say anything about surrendering me to the other humans.”

“Thoughtful of him to omit something that might interfere with your mission.”

“Oh, Tom, do you hate your own kind so much that you’d rather not see them in the Federation?”

I said, “Travertine’s afraid of how nasty we’d be if we teamed up with the Sharwani,” and felt mean. I patted Karl’s back as he lay between us. So I was selfish. I liked being unique, the Federation’s highest-ranking human, no jail threats.

As we drifted off to sleep, I realized I couldn’t be so sure about my rank, as I wasn’t sure what Marianne’s rank was at the Institute of Linguistics. I felt instantly guilty about not knowing that, about my attitude to humans, and jerked completely awake, listening to Marianne and Karl breathing. Would she leave me if she had a greater choice of men? Finally, I felt mybody jerk again—the sleep twitch—and dreamed about prison.

On the long trip back, Marianne and I taught Karl his first official English lessons. I was resigned to eventual contact with Earth. Good for Karl. Good for Marianne, who could show her dissertation director how well she’d done. I’d manage.

When we went back into our apartment, Marianne and I went into her room to read our messages on her terminal. Karl went to his room to get back in touch with his nursery group. I held Marianne’s shoulders while she hit her hand on the keyplate. We had two messages.

First:
INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE, OFFICER FOR LANGUAGE OPERATIONS: THE ADULT SHARWANI ARE STILL RECOVERING FROM THEIR LANGUAGE OPERATIONS. WILL RETURN TO YOU IN A TENTH YEAR OR LESS.

Next: AGATE AND CHALK, RECTOR’S OFFICE: HRIF’S TRUE OWNER WOULD PREFER THAT YOU BUY A YOUNG QUARA TO BE BONDED TO YOU IF YOU FEEL YOU STILL NEED A PROTECTIVE ANIMAL
.

Marianne said, “I’m glad we don’t have to deal with Chi’ursemisa right away.” She stood up, my hands slipping from her shoulders, went to her bags and began throwing her clothes on the bed. I wondered if I should help her or start unpacking my own things.

Marianne threw her head back and squeezed her eye­lids tight. “The Sharwani will capture Earth,” she said. “We’re too divided among ourselves. Is this the way you felt when the Wrengee didn’t want to join the Federation?” She went into her toilet, then came out with makeup remover pads and wiped her eyes.

I never quite understood what makeup did for her eyes—the lashes were dark, her skin not quite as dark as a Mexican’s but darker than most white people’s. She looked more masked in makeup than more beautiful.

Now taking off the makeup made her seem both older and younger.

“Can I have a few days here without any interruptions?” she said.

“Do you want me and Karl to…”

“Leave? Don’t. I’m sorry.” She added in English, “
Oh, man, I just feel wounded, s’all. Maybe it’s my period coming on.
”

Menstruation and the mood swings before it sometimes seemed like a female trick. I said, “Didn’t the Barcons design a Pill for that?”

“Yes, but I…” She got up and threw the makeup remover pad in the trash, then washed her face in the bathroom, leaving the door open. When she came out, we went to the front room where she put on a recording of Sam playing Bach’s
Goldberg Variations.
We sat huddled on the sofa staring at the speakers. Karl joined us, looked at me, then sat down on the floor, knees drawn up against his body, arms hugging his shins.

Karl finally said, “I’ve got a package in my room I can’t open. And I want to go out and play.”

“Get your father,” she said.

I was nervous about leaving her alone, but decided watching her might make her angry, so I nodded to Karl. We went back to Karl’s room, and I saw a narrow crate with Italian printed on it—CAMPAGNOLO, ATALA, NIPPON—leaning against his bed.

I went back to the kitchen for bone shears and a stout knife, then cut the plastic straps and pulled the bubble pack away. Someone had sent him a child’s racing bicycle from Earth—nothing saying who it was
from,
just the bike and several spare chains, freewheels, and tires.

Marianne came in as I straightened the handlebars and said, “I bet it was Karriaagzh.”

“Or maybe Travertine?” I said. The pedals were in their own separate bag. I opened it, saw the pedal wrench packed with them, and fitted them to the crank arms.

Karl said, “How fast can I learn?”

I wished I’d thought about buying him human toys while we were in Boston. Whoever sent him this had been more thoughtful “You can learn fast, I’d imagine,” then I repeated in idiomatic English, “Pretty quick, I bet.”

He said, “Mother, come watch, please?”

Marianne said, “Sure, I guess.” She moved her back, curling it from the shoulders down, as if it hurt. “I wanted to take a bath, but…” She shrugged like a Jewish mother. But then she was Jewish, wasn’t she, if the radical life didn’t cancel that out. She put her hand on the small bike saddle and said, “We should have done more for you on Earth, Karl. Taken you to a ball game, the zoo.”

“It was fun enough,” Karl said. “Will you get me bicycling clothes like yours, shoes with plastic slots?”

“
Sure
,” I said in English.

Marianne said, “Oh, go by yourselves. I…”

Karl’s face went rigid, then he smiled slightly at Marianne—a scary control in a kid his age—and wheeled the bike over to the elevator, leaned it against the wall, and pushed the button. I decided not to bring my
own bike. He’d need me to hold him up.

When the elevator door closed, I said, “Your mother wanted to have more contact with Earth.”

“It was okay, but I missed my friends,” Karl said.

“Do you really want to learn English?”

He sighed and said, “You both talk in it to keep me from knowing what you say.”

“Actually, we thought you’d grow up better if you learned Karst One first. But you ought to learn something about the planet you come from.”

“I’m learning Tibetan from Tracy.”

The elevator doors opened, and we wheeled the bike out through the lobby. Several of our neighbors were shopping in Awingthin the Gwyng’s store. One of them, a Shiny Black named Silver Thirteen, said, “We’re breeding.” Her husband, one of those equal-sized males that behaves almost like a female and stays mated for life, smiled and smiled at Karl as if he wanted to practice fatherhood on my son.

I said, “Great,” as Karl showed his bicycle to another kid who lived in the building, a Jerek girl younger than the Jerek in his nursery group. Her fur was blond with black streaks, and the bare skin across her face at the eyes and down the nose was a shiny brown, not black as in most Jereks. Her parents, Gouge Rock and Slipzone, both light-brown Jereks with bleached forearm fur, came out of the store and stood a second for politeness before taking her away.

The sky was beautiful—blue with stars and the small sun shining through high cirrus. Some leaves had died and fallen, but nothing like a Terran fall. Before I could stop him, Karl stood over the bike and tried to pedal, but fell over.

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll hold you until you get the hang of it.” I grabbed the left crook of the handlebar under the brake lever with one hand and the seatpost with the other, my hand under the quick-release seatpost bolt.

We pushed along until one of two identical olive bird-types, Travertine’s conspecifics from the wall-less houses, said, “Lower his seat, and he can push and catch himself with his feet.”

It was obvious once he’d suggested it: make the thing a scooter. I opened the seatpost lever and slid the saddle down. Karl could reach the ground on tiptoe with the seat run all the way down, but he shoved off down a slight grade, and put his feet on the pedals. Fortunately, they didn’t have toeclips—he floundered off, pedaling, oversteering, catching himself.

I asked the bird couple, “How did you figure that out? Can you ride bicycles with your joint configuration?”

“If one has the proper cams in the chainring and pedal, it’s like swimming,” the one who suggested lowering the seat said.

“It exposes the knee differences too much,” the other one said. “We appreciate your thanks, but we’ve got an errand to run.”

As Karl walked the bike back up to me, I realized I’d forgotten that we humans were exotics.

Then I spotted Thridai, our Sharwani defector, walking with his hands deep in his tunic pockets, a hood over his head. Not part of the uniform, hoods. He stopped farther away from us than I would have, a distance that left me feeling slightly estranged. We’d been crowding the Sharwani if this was a polite distance for acquaintances.

“Thridai, how are you?”

“I moved into Lucid Moment. Do you mind?”

“No, come over. Your fellow Sharwani will be back from the language operations soon.”

“Not my
fellow
Sharwani.” He came closer, nodding his head slightly, but not a threat nod the way it
would have been if a Gwyng did it. “How are you doing, Karl?”

Karl said, “I’m learning how to ride a bicycle. You’re Thridai, right? You like the Federation?”

Thridai came closer and began feeling the bicycle with his fingertips, not minding the grease, rubbing that between his fingers, also. “It’s new.”

Yes, somebody gave it to me—Karriaagzh, I think.”

“Ah, yes, the bird who thinks we all belong together.” Thridai pulled rough-textured cloth out from his pockets and wiped the grease off his fingers. “You have a good machine.”

“Thank you,” Karl said.

Thridai said to me, “I hope you don’t mind that I moved near your family.”

Odd sound to that, I thought. He pulled the hood with his left hand, holding it closed around his chin, covering the fur over his cheekbones.

The day after I talked to Thridai, two Barcons from Control came to my apartment while Marianne was out. One laid a read-out plate over my skull computer while the other took Karl aside.

The Barcon that stayed behind with me pulled out a piece of plastic that looked like a skull bone—someone’s language computer—and plugged a lead from it to his own head, then stared at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Comparing you to what Thridai saw.”

“Thridai?”

“He was killed. We’re still investigating. Your Sharwani may come back after the investigation.”

“What did Thridai see?”

“We’re still investigating.”

Karl and the first Barcon came back. Looking puzzled, Karl said, “Daddy, we were playing with the bike early yesterday morning, weren’t we?”

The Barcons spoke their language, then the one who’d viewed the skull computer record said, “We’re going to recommend free time for a week, but stay here.”

I was a suspect.
Why?

At the end of the week, someone in the vast Karst computer net sent us a message:
SHARWANI THRIDAI’s MEMORIAL SERVICE BY THE WALLS AT SUNRISE. YOUR SHARWANI ARE COMING BACK IN FOUR DAYS
.

Marianne came into my room—I must have made some odd sound. She read the screen and asked, “Do they think our Sharwani know anything about it?”

I entered:
DO THE SHARWANI COMING BACK TO US KNOW?

The unidentified creature—probably someone from the Institute of Control—replied: THEY
WILL BE TOLD. WATCH THEM.

Marianne said, “You shouldn’t go to the memorial service.”

I leaned against her, feeling the warmth, and asked, “Why?”

“Don’t you remember how numb you were…” She didn’t finish but meant…
for days after Warren killed himself.

I almost said,
But he’s an alien
! “I can take it.”

Marianne said, “When did you see him last?”

“The day before he was killed. Karl and I ran into him when I took Karl out with the bike.”

We got another message, from our Rector’s People, two Jereks who were our supervisors and parents of a Jerek boychild in our nursery group, born a month after Karl. AGATE HERE. IF YOU THINK SHARING SPACE WITH HURDAI AND CHI’URSEMISA WOULD PAIN YOU NOW, LET US KNOW.

I almost said
Yes,
but entered: WE CAN MANAGE. I TAKE IT THAT I’M NOT A SUSPECT ANYMORE. Then I went into the kitchen to fix an herbal tranquilizer tea. As I heated water in the flash kettle, Marianne put a mint tea bag and some alien honey in her own cup. The water boiled; I poured, then she reached across my arm and stirred my tea for me, an odd little gesture.

“Thanks,” I said.

We heard the elevator chime. I toggled the intercom and asked, “Who’s there?”

“Your neighbors.” Gouge Rock, the Jerek woman, I guessed by the voice. And the elevator intercom picked up the sounds of other bodies shuffling, breathing. I opened the door. The whole elevator was full of neighbors and my bird friends Granite Grit and Feldspar with their son Alchir-singra.

Karl giggled when he saw Alchir-singra.

Granite said, “We now live on the eighth floor here.”

And Travertine was behind them. He came out of the crowd sideways, stared up at Granite and half-closed his eyelids, squinting to keep from pulling his transparent eye membranes between himself and the larger bird species. He said, “We thought Marianne and you should have company.”

The Jereks and the Shiny Black said, “Yes,” while the Gwyng female, with her younger pouch kin, cupped her hand and brought it down.

Silver, the Shiny Black female, said, “We thought you should know we trusted you.”

“Thanks,” Marianne said. “Would it be polite to offer tea? Food?”

The elevator went back down and brought up the rest of our neighbors—creatures who’d lived here for the past seven years, others who were new to the building.

I knew some of them—none well—and now they’d come to see us. And then Travertine didn’t live in the building. I asked him in English, “Why now?”

He said in the same language, “We thought you might appreciate that you are not alone with your Sharwani.” The Jereks heard him talking in the alien language and lowered their noses an inch, slight challenge faces.