The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  Cackling at that, Puddeck got out of the water, put on one of the bath­robes hanging nearby, and padded away. Momentarily, Gary and Galecki followed suit, drawn to the smell of barbecued steaks across the garden.

  “Can’t take a sexual fantasy at face value,” someone said.

  Brandon looked up, startled for a moment. Aratta was sitting a few feet away on the edge of the cedar deck, an amused look on his face. “All the same, such erotic fantasies sound awful, don’t they?” Aratta continued. “Inconsiderate, dominating, and utterly asocial.” He smiled at the young man amiably. “In short, they sound like the sexual realm. Or at least its biological constituent.”

  “Yeah, I figured something like that,” responded Brandon. “It’s confusing as hell, though.”

  “It’s because, as most people, you mash everything together. You must understand that what is referred to as a ‘person’ is an array of independent patterns, or realms. They overlay one another and have as little to do with each other as computer hardware has to do with the software overlaying it.

  “At its most benign expression, the social realm is permeated with kindness, collaboration, and fairness. It is the stuff of bonding, love, and commitment,” Aratta said. “Absent its social or intellectual constituents, the sexual realm is nothing of the sort. Unalloyed, the biologically-­driven sexual realm is one of submission and domination, of possession and tension, of power sparks and flares of light and of trickling sweat and darkness. It is also about cock teasing, physical mounting, and ruthless gene shopping.

  “It makes little sense to talk about the particulars or attributes of the mortgage contract residing on one’s computer in terms of the corresponding pattern of electrons coursing through the integrated circuits. Likewise, it makes little sense to talk about the biological realm in terms of the social realm; each of these patterns is a world unto its own.”

  He added, “By definition, you cannot synthesize these disparate patterns of existence. This also means no statement may be valid across all of them. What makes sense in one realm is often abhorrent or incomprehensible in another.”

  Aratta got up, smoothed his tie, and held out his arm by way of invitation. “Let us avail ourselves to some steaks before the grill is turned off, shall we? You have to enjoy the party while it still lasts, Brandon.”

  Chapter 27

  Another hour passed and some guests left. Others were spread throughout the mansion.

  Lee came to the smaller sitting room along with the two attractive young women whom Brandon and Gary had catcalled earlier. The two women had danced without letup and were spent. Now they were curious to talk to some of the natives, the Earth people, before they left for the night. The black tall woman was holding the infant Brandon had noted earlier.

  “I would like to introduce Jetro Lan and Lorraine Warr,” Lee told Brandon, Gary, and Susan. “I guess you could say they are special guests.” She glanced at the two of them. “Very special.”

  Gary was about to make a quip but stopped, looking unsure.

  “You see,” said Lee, “those two ladies are hiding in plain sight, as it were.” She reckoned it was rather clever of her. No one thought anything of girls dressed in exotic garbs in a costume party, or for that matter, of finding a man wearing a violet robe.

  Gary cocked his head slightly. “How do you mean?”

  “The costume party,” she replied. “What a better way to blend in if you stick out. Guys, they are not from down here.”

  “Hello,” said the young woman in leggings with a clear, pleasant voice. “I am Jetro Lan, and I speak your language, but Lorraine Warr only mastered the basics. Anyway, we are pleased to meet you. Thanks for having us over, Lee.” She said something to her companion. It was a series of vocalizations the like of which they’d never heard before. It sounded like a complex, incredibly dense combination of chimes, hums, and clicks.

  “Well then, where you guys from?” asked Brandon, fascinated.

  For a moment, Jetro Lan gazed at him. He was jolted by the smoldering eyes, which sent his pulse racing. For that brief moment, she gave him the once-over, but then looked elsewhere, uninterested.

  “Not from around here, Brandon,” said Lee.

  Gary squinted intently. “Give me three tries to guess your country.”

  “We don’t have countries,” said Jetro Lan immediately. The two of them came from the Earth-like planet of Tamaris, but they were unsure how much they were supposed to divulge.

  “Oh, okay,” said Gary. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Wait.” He put his glasses back on and looked at the surrounding faces. “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he admitted. He shot a glance at Susan and Brandon. “Do you get any of it?”

  “Please have a seat, guys,” said Lee to the two girls. From the next room, someone was calling her name. “Crap. You’ll have to excuse me, guys,” she said. “I have to go over some things with the caterers before they leave.” And she left the room. It was time. Fifteen minutes later, she was to leave with the catering crew. She wanted to be alone when midnight struck.

  Brandon sat there with a silly smile on his face, gazing at the two exotic-looking young women. He had noticed it before, there was something different about them. Really different. Somehow, they were from elsewhere. A secretive Mars colony, or a private island off the radar, or something. He could tell that the same possibility had just occurred to Gary.

  Susan regarded the two young ladies, not sure what to make of it. She was acquainted with Lee for many years. Lee would not pull a silly prank; if she said they were from somewhere else, it must have been so. A possibility occurred to her, but she pushed the thought away; it was too preposterous. She resolved to grill Lee later for details and get to the bottom of it.

  Brandon whipped out his cell phone. “Do you mind? I would like to have a picture of you guys.”

  “Sure,” replied Jetro Lan. She said something in her language to the other woman, who nodded in the affirmative. Brandon snapped some shots, and made Susan take some photos of the women posing with him. He studied the images briefly then put away the phone, satisfied.

  “You have a husband, Jetro Lan?” inquired Gary, obviously captivated with the two.

  “Husbands. I have two husbands. Well,” she corrected herself, “perhaps fiancés describes it better.”

  The Earth people exchanged glances.

  Gary was grinning from ear to ear. “Is this a typical arrangement where you’re from?”

  She shook her head. “Typically, it is two men and two women.” As she shook her head, tendrils escaped the heavy silk mass of raven-black hair and framed her cheeks.

  So four was the norm. Gary laughed out loud. And Jetro Lan eyed him curiously. “No, no.” He held out his hands. “It sounds great. How does it work? The guys take turns?”

  “Take turn hell. They do it at the same time.”

  General laughter greeted her answer.

  Jetro Lan rolled her eyes inwardly. Was that what passed for a sense of humor on Earth?

  The shiny stripes on her glistening leggings rippled as she parted her long legs. The movement caught Gary’s eyes, funneling them. For a brief moment, Jetro Lan glanced his way. And he immediately averted his gaze from where the stripes met.

  She obligingly extended her palm. A small holographic image sprung from it, showing the faces of two young men.

  Brandon stared in wonder. Advanced, secretive society of some kind. That was so cool!

  Gary waited for Jetro Lan to inquire into the marriage arrangement in the United States. But evidently, that was it. She lapsed into silence, apparently not interested to hear about local customs.

  It rubbed Susan the wrong way. “Here,” she declared, “it is strictly between one person and another.”

  Jetro Lan eyed her briefly.

  “In fact,
it is against our law to have a man marry more than one woman.”

  “Oh,” said Jetro Lan. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say. The interaction with the natives was not turning out to be as appealing as she had imagined. She smiled, partly in relief, at the sight of her other two team members.

  She got up, and Brandon caught the slight bounce of her breasts.

  “Everyone, this is Nero Maichan and Oreno Eire. I am afraid they don’t speak any English.” The young woman sat back down.

  “Ah, your husbands?” asked Gary.

  Jetro Lan shook her head, her black hair swayed about her bare shoulders. She hesitated for an instant. “Work associates. In fact, I’m the team leader.” She rapidly translated, and the two young men bowed their heads in acknowledgment then took seats. With their pointed-toe boots and their sleeveless button-down checkered shirts, they vaguely reminded Brandon of cowboys—if not for their long hair bound in pony tails.

  Gary engaged Jetro Lan, while the two young foreign men were content to lounge back, studying the Terraneans with interest.

  Brandon scooted closer to Lorraine Warr, trying not to gawk at her bare, full breast and intricate skin scarifications. “And you? Are you also married?”

  “Of course,” she laughed. “You saw children, no?” The woman was rocking her infant.

  “Well,” he said, “it’s possible to be a single mom.” From afar she was striking, but up close, she was even more. Lorraine Warr possessed a sense of presence and immediacy that was unsettling. He felt he could drown in the luminescence reflected in the green-flecked hazel eyes.

  She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. “How? I do not—” She sought out a word and eventually raised her left arm, a hologram sprung into existence, and she spoke something short. A few words materialized. “Reproduce asexually,” she completed the sentence and flashed him a friendly smile.

  “I mean, the father could leave.”

  Susan was listening in.

  “Leave?” Lorraine Warr asked, baffled. “Leave where? Why leave?”

  Brandon tugged at his pirate shirt collar, suddenly feeling awkward.

  “So, how far those scarifications go down?” he asked, gesticulating when it became apparent she did not understand the question.

  For a moment, the liquid-hazel eyes softly glowed. “All the way.”

  He smiled back. “When did you get them?”

  “When married. Fourteen.”

  “Wow. Young. I mean, the marriage age.”

  She studied him, not sure what to make of this remark. Her sister­-wife was of the same age. The husbands were two and three years older, respectively. The four of them got married a bit on the young side, but it was within the range of the typical on Tamaris.

  His eyes flicked over the soft fullness of her lips. “Children?”

  “Had boy almost…” she searched for the word, “immediately. And then Airelle Nareen. He is five months old.”

  But that must have meant…Brandon frowned. Her older boy looked to be about three. Lorraine Warr was considerably younger than he had assumed.

  “How old are you?” Susan asked in a tense voice.

  Brandon regarded the exposed breast of the young woman. And then it hit him. An image flashed in his mind of her breasts pressed in between metal bars and two nipples stand erect and accusatory. And he is standing behind the bars. The photo he had taken—beaming—next to her is nailed above the doorframe. The sexually-explicit photo. The underage-girl photo. The incriminating photo. Shit.

  Lorraine Warr felt the sudden tension among the Earth people. Some­thing was wrong.

  The team members exchanged glances and then focused on their leader.

  Jetro Lan held out her hands. “If we caused offense to your gods or customs...”

  “None was taken,” said Brandon. He was not smiling, though. “Please just tell us how old Lorraine Warr is.”

  “She is around 18.” She gestured disarmingly. “I am 17. She thought about it some more and then relaxed. Nero-Maichan over there is around 20, and Oreno-Eire is 21—”

  “Please,” said Brandon. “Is she older or younger than 18?”

  The smile of Lorraine Warr slipped. “They start to creep me out,” she said in their native language.

  “Hold steady,” Jetro Lan told her, keeping her eyes trained on the Earth people. “Did you already have your eighteenth birthday?”

  She shook her head. “It is four, no, five months away.”

  “I don’t know if this is supposed to be a good or bad omen among these people. In a bit, we are going to find out if the shit is about to backflow.”

  She informed the Earth people of Lorraine Warr’s age, and the woman in the white bun frowned with obvious disapproval. Not good then.

  But then the Terraneans ignored them.

  “Brandon, she is a child,” Susan said in an even, matter-of-fact tone. “You have committed a felony. Child pornography. For all I know, we both did as I took some of the pictures.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Lorraine Warr.

  “How the hell should I know?” snapped Jetro Lan. “Maybe they believe taking a picture with you steals their souls.”

  But Lorraine Warr was not listening. She rose to her full height, eyes suddenly diamond-hard. One word they had said finally registered. “Are they talking about my child?”

  Jetro Lan translated.

  “What? No,” gasped Brandon, regarding the dangerous gleam in the bright eyes of the mother. At that moment she struck him as female predator ready to pounce. “Susan here was just commenting that you are a…” The word died in his mouth, as he looked at the woman who towered over him. “She just…we just didn’t realize you’re under eighteen.”

  Lorraine Warr shot a quizzical glance at him. This must have been the most bizarre situation she had ever been in. “What exactly is the significance of this age in your society?” Jetro Lan demanded. “And why does it matter to you how old she is?”

  Brandon held out his hands. “I will explain. We mean no harm. None. I need to first take care of something, though.”

  “But of course,” said Jetro Lan evenly. She unzipped her purse, and in one fluid motion, had a handgun out and pointed at the general direc­tion of Brandon and Gary. “I guess all is indeed okay,” she said in a measured tone. “But until we know what the talk about a child was, the gun stays pointed. There is a definite limit to how far our indulgence of local customs is extended.”

  Brandon gaped at her, mouth suddenly dry. “Our, well, the people who make our rules do not allow us to take and possess photos of women with their nipples showing if they are under the age of eighteen. For doing what we did, we may be put in prison and also be marked for life.”

  Jetro Lan was first surprised and then openly shocked. But the ten­sion drained from her. This had nothing to do with the safety and well-being of her team.

  The gun was still pointing, though. “So what was this reference to a child earlier?”

  “No, nothing. It didn’t come out right,” said Susan weakly.

  “Very well.” Jetro Lan studied Susan for a moment, then Brandon. She locked the safety latch back on and put the pistol back in her purse. Her team visibly relaxed. Jetro Lan addressed them in their native language, “It appears they have some sort of totalitarian or theocratic society. They are scared they may have broken one of their commandments about taking photographs and will get into a serious shitpile over it.” Never again would she let herself get talked by her team members into mingling with the natives. She had been right in opposing it. Why again did she spend her time learning their language? She had some choice words for one of her husbands when she was to see him next.

  Brandon fished out his phone. “I am going to delete the photos,” he was telling Susan. She briefly nodded. He was not going to send it out
to the ether; he had as much to lose as she did.

  He pressed a few buttons, and momentarily the forbidden photos were deleted and with them, the evidence of the crime.

  Brandon leaned back. Lorraine Warr reached out to the obviously distraught man and hugged him, her breasts pressing against him. He turned bright red. Susan looked away. “You understand that her being topless next to us can result in a charge of endangering the well-being of a minor,” she said in French, addressing the wall in front of her.

  “What do you want me to do, exactly?” he demanded, answering in the same language. One time having a gun pointed at him was enough. Tentatively, awkwardly, he hugged her back, and Lorraine Warr finally withdrew.

  Jetro Lan reached out to a can of beer. “May I?”

  “Help yourself,” said Gary weakly. “It’s a fermented beverage. Alcohol.”

  “I figured that much, smelling it.” She drank some and laid down the can on the table with a thud.

  “Jetro Lan, it’s against our law for someone under twenty-one to drink this,” stated Susan. Enough was enough.

  Here it was again. “I am sure it is,” the young woman said dryly. “Shall we drink to this?”

  Gary and Brandon laughed nervously, and Susan just shook her head in disbelief. She was sitting next to one topless underage girl and next to another underage girl who was drinking. She thanked the Lord the nearest neighbor was over a mile away.

  Jetro Lan got up. A few minutes with the Earth people was more than enough to satisfy her curiosity. “Nice to meet you,” she said, louder than was necessary. She smiled inwardly, recalling one of the local idioms she had been taught, Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  It was one hour to midnight.

  Chapter 28

  Jetro Lan located Aratta outside, lounging by himself in one of the wood gazebos. She recounted what had transpired. “How is such a thing possible?” Jetro Lan asked in response to Aratta’s explanation. “You cannot keep a certain age group in isolation, can you?”