Quozl

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Nothing serious. Mostly they’ve been a joy to me and mine.” She gazed around the hearing room. “Without their help I doubt I’d be here today.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Greenley. Tell me something. What have they asked of you in return for all their help?”

  Chad could see that the opposition wanted to object to this line of questioning, but they were slow to see where it might be leading. So they made the mistake of saying nothing, waiting like everyone else in the room to see what might develop.

  “Not much. Just to share my roof, play their music, and raise their young-uns.”

  “Do you think they’ve been as friendly and helpful as any normal couple?”

  “Your honor, we object.” The opposition’s chief counsel was on his feet.

  “Overruled.” The presiding magistrate surveyed the room expectantly. Everyone was tense, on edge, eager to see what might happen. The puzzled opposition counsel sat down, muttering to his colleagues.

  “Please answer the question, Mrs. Greenley.”

  “Oh, they’ve been more than that. They look after me just like I’m one of their own.” She had to raise her voice to make herself audible over the sudden whir of camera autowinders as alerted reporters began snapping pictures like crazy.

  “So in all the time you’ve lived together,” the government attorney concluded, “you’ve had no serious arguments with these live-in friends, no fights. You have contracted,” and she stared pointedly at the opposition’s scientific advisor-in-residence, “no unusual diseases from living in intimate proximity to them.”

  “Nope.” The old woman was utterly unperturbed by the lights and her surroundings. “In fact what with them to help with the heavy chores I’m probably healthier than I’ve been in my life. It’s hard up north in the winter, when the sun don’t shine much and an old lady gets lonely.”

  “If you had to characterize your friends briefly, Mrs. Greenley: what they’ve meant to you, how you’ve come to think of them after all these years, what would you say?” As she concluded, Seams entered the room, sniffling guardedly.

  She didn’t have to think long. “Same thing I’d say about my grandkids: that they’re a blessing from the Lord.”

  The government attorney looked sated. “Thank you, Mrs. Greenley.” She turned to the back of the room. So did everyone else, those with difficult angles craning their necks in hope of a better view. “Would the members of Mrs. Greenley’s family please come forward.”

  Underscored by a rising murmur from those in the chamber, a cluster of figures shuffled into view. There were a young man and woman accompanied by several children. There were also unseen figures clad in light overcoats with hoods. Such attire looked out of place in Southern California.

  So did the cloth wrappings which swathed oversized feet.

  Seven were so dressed. By now the oversized feet had been noticed by many in the crowd, but that didn’t lessen the gasp of surprise that filled the room when all seven divested themselves of their overclothes.

  Runs-red-Talking and Seams-with-Metal were not the only Quozl in Los Angeles after all.

  “The old woman came forward voluntarily,” the assistant attorney informed Chad and Mindy in an excited whisper. “Naturally we didn’t believe her at first. Since this started, our office has been bombarded with nut calls. But because we’re a government bureau we’re obligated to listen to all of them.

  “The longer she talked the more convinced we became that she might have something, though we weren’t sure what. She knew stuff that hadn’t been made available to the public at large, things you couldn’t just pick up from watching tv. So on a hunch, Ellen,” and he nodded in the direction of the beaming, triumphant chief government attorney, “sent somebody from the office up to check out her story.”

  A second assistant chimed in enthusiastically. “Old lady Greenley had been following all the news reports. You might not think it to look at her, but she’s got her own satellite dish. Seems like everybody in that part of the world has one. When this bunch decided to try and seal off the Quozl, she decided she had to come forward. She wanted to help.”

  The other assistant thought to add an apology. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the uproar that had engulfed the hearing chamber.

  “We kept it from you two because Ellen wanted it to be a complete surprise, and because they,” and he indicated the seven Quozl assembled before the bench, “insisted on doing it that way.”

  Amidst the pandemonium Runs and Seams stood quietly, gazing across at the equally silent cluster of Quozl. Greetings had already been exchanged by means of hand and ear gestures. The aliens ignored the babbling humans as the court administrator vainly attempted to restore a semblance of order to the hopelessly excited audience.

  Runs addressed himself in high-speed Quozl to the grizzled male who was clearly the patriarch of the group. Of those near enough to overhear, only Chad and Mindy understood any of what was being said.

  Runs and the old Quozl began by complimenting each other on their appearance and jewelry. Then the Elder said, “You see, new friend, that the Council of Elders was and always has been wrong. All this might have been avoided.”

  “That is no certainty, Most Honored of Elders.” Runs was correctly deferential to a Senior even though he happened to be the greatest criminal in Shirazian Quozl history. “The time was not deemed right by the Council.”

  “Though you felt otherwise.” This from the patriarch’s companion, a female of equal age. “You felt instead much as we did.”

  “No.” Runs protested strenuously with both voice and ears. “Unlike you, I did not flee the Burrow. I sought no contact. It simply happened. What followed was something I did not and would not have initiated.”

  The female made an impolite gesture with one ear. “Your posture betrays you. Your mind does not out-argue your spirit. There is too much life in your Sama.”

  The young couple which had accompanied the two old Quozl into the room stood silently off to the side, corralling their children and waiting patiently.

  “You should not be alive, High-red-Chanter.” Runs still found it hard to believe he was really talking to the infamous renegade of recent history.

  “If not for the old human female, both Thinks-of-Grim and I would not have survived through the first cold season.”

  Chad addressed them in Quozl. “If you could speak in English, it would be helpful. You’re going so fast I can hardly follow you, and no one else in the room knows what is going on. Do you know English?”

  “Exceedingly well,” High-red-Chanter declared.

  When the Quozl turned to English it grew suddenly silent in the room. Arguments ceased as everyone turned to listen. Reporters, politicians, police, and legal aides sat and watched enraptured.

  “I am High-red-Chanter,” the old Quozl announced in as stentorian a voice as any Quozl could muster. “This is my mate, Thinks-of-Grim. These are our offspring, and their offspring.

  “Almost immediately after we settled on your world I determined to free myself of the monolithic social structure under which all Quozl labored. I felt myself stifled by a restricted environment maintained by unsupportable rationale when an entire new world beckoned. I did not have the courage to leave until I encountered a potential mate who felt similarly.”

  “Dead,” Seams-with-Metal was murmuring. “Both should be dead.”

  “I don’t follow,” Chad said.

  Runs tried to explain. “These are the legendary renegades who abandoned First Burrow many cycles before I crawled to my mother’s pouch. It was assumed that they had been killed by the elements or by hostile surface carnivores.”

  “Such would have been the case,” High-red-Chanter admitted freely, his exceptional sense of hearing allowing him to overhear every whisper, “if not for the aid freely rendered us by Most Honored Elder Greenley.”

  “They were freezing,” the old woman explained. “I didn’t know what they were, but that di
dn’t much seem to matter at the time. They needed help, and I never turned anybody away from my door, no matter what they looked like. After they warmed up and we got to tryin’ to talk, they just seemed to want to stick around for a while. Little Cindy liked ’em right away, and they took to her. She learned Quozl before she learned English.

  “Me, I was glad of the company. Lonely after Willie died. They told me some of what they was and where they’d come from. When Cody James there married Cindy, she told him. They came to live with me and we all kept the secret. Thinks-of-Grim there, she helped raise Cindy, and she and High helped raise my grandkids.”

  The shy young woman spoke up. “It was good, always easy. Many’s the time when I was carryin’ my last one, Judity, I wished I coulda borrowed Thinks-of-Grim’s pouch. Don’t have to hold a baby or wash it when she’s safe up inside you.”

  “The Quozl may look funny,” said Cindy’s husband, “but they’re just regular folks. We’ve lived with ’em, farmed with ’em, and my kids have played with them for a long time now.”

  Mrs. Greenley was nodding approvingly. “That’s my family. Kids and grandkids. Some of ’em got long ears and some of ’em don’t, but they’re all kin.” She looked defiant. “Ain’t nobody gonna tell me where my grandkids can and can’t live.” A jaundiced, experienced eye fixed on the opposition’s chief counsel. “Is this still a free country, bud, or what?”

  The chamber dissolved in final chaos as reporters streamed out to file reports and rush videodiscs to the nearest transmission facilities. For a while the presiding magistrate pounded his gavel on his desk and attempted to restore order. Eventually he put the gavel aside and relaxed. It was much more fun to watch the young Quozl playing with their human counterparts.

  So in the end it was not the wandering explorer Runs-red-Talking or his friend Chad Collins or the Council of Elders that cemented the success of the first widespread human-Quozl contact, but the old renegade musician High-red-Chanter and a bunch of prepubescent humans and Quozl. The reasoned arguments of the opposition could not contend with video images of human kids and Quozl cubs playing happily together.

  Chad congratulated Runs, Mindy almost hugged Seams before remembering that the gesture might precipitate a fight instead of delight, and the government attorney accepted the adulation of the press. The xenophobes in the audience stormed out spouting defiance and vowing to refile, but nobody paid them any attention. They were too busy taking pictures of the impromptu playground the children of both races had established in front of the magistrate’s desk.

  Most of the reporters had fled to file their reports. Only a couple remained, representatives of small local papers that could not hope to compete with the giant syndicates or the networks. They hoped for an exclusive detail or overlooked item that might be worthy of a story later.

  One was aimlessly interviewing Cindy Greenley for lack of anything better to do, even though he knew the real news of the day was already burning modems from L.A. to Tokyo. Still, there might be something. Occasionally patience was rewarded, even though the young woman seemed more inclined to talk about her family and the berries and fruits she’d canned for the upcoming winter than about her newsworthy friends, the Quozl.

  She was combing the long blond hair of a stolid little boy of six while keeping an eye on the rest of her brood. Off to their left the two youngest Quozl danced and wrestled with the two elder Greenley grandchildren. The Quozl were much faster, but the human kids were stronger.

  Searching for an angle, the reporter asked what it was like before she married her husband, before he came to live on the land with her mother and the Quozl. He expected a simple, bucolic response because that was the only kind he’d received thus far.

  “Quiet, mostly.” Cindy Greenley brushed at a persistent cowlick. “I liked Cody right away, though. He was just like me and Mom; country but liberal, ready to try anything once.” She added offhandedly, as though she was still talking about her canning, “Mom was right about it being lonely up on the farm, but it got better after High and Thinks snowed up. High’s a very good lover. Made the winters pass a lot easier.”

  Chad had been listening indifferently. Now he turned sharply. Mindy had retired to the women’s lounge. Arlo was outside, entertaining lawyers, offers, and reporters. The older Quozl chatted seriously with Cody James while the children of both races played off in a corner. There was just Cindy Greenley, her little boy, and the reporter, with himself standing nearby.

  Why had the woman kept her maiden name?

  The reporter’s expression was unreadable. “Excuse me, ma’m. I don’t think I caught that last part.”

  “You mean, about the winters passing easier?”

  “No, no. Before that.”

  “Oh, You mean about High being a good lover.”

  “Yes.” The reporter was very, very alert now. “You mean that in the platonic sense, of course. Because the Quozl were good with the children, and helpful in times of difficulty.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. There was a time when I would’ve found something like this hard to talk about, but living with Quozl for a while you just naturally come to understand certain things. Suddenly what used to confuse and trouble you doesn’t anymore.

  “When I said that High was a good lover I meant exactly that. It was before Cody and I tied the knot.” She smiled beatifically. “Far as that goes, ask Cody what he thinks of Thinks. She can play more than that funny flute of theirs.” A frown creased her face and she looked meaningfully around the room. “You mean what with all that’s come out, nobody’s realized that humans and Quozl are sexually compatible?”

  The reporter smiled. “No. Somehow that little item has managed to be overlooked. Mrs. Greenley, are you sure about this? You’re not making something up just to tease me?”

  “I don’t tease, mister.” Her smile changed. “If you ain’t sure, go have a little private chat with Thinks-of-Grim or Seams-with-Metal.”

  “Thanks, not right now,” the man replied, though a stunned Chad saw him glance involuntarily in Seams’s direction.

  Chad remembered the time when the Quozl biologist had chased Mindy, remembered the looks he’d received from female Quozl study team members. He’d put it all down to normal scientific curiosity, and perhaps a great deal of that had been involved. But if Mrs. Greenley was telling the truth, there was much more to it than that. Much more.

  “Perfectly safe, of course, if you follow my meaning,” the young wife was saying, as though it were the most natural thing in the world instead of the greatest scientific-social revelation since the arrival of the Quozl themselves. “I don’t pretend to understand how it all works, except that they’re not all that different. Cody’s done more looking than I have and he says that their works are more adaptable than ours. I guess they’re just a lot more, well, flexible in such things than we are.”

  “Didn’t you find it—unnatural?” The reporter’s eyes were the size of Ping-Pong balls.

  “Mister, on a cold night when it’s pitch-dark you don’t find anything warm and reassuring unnatural. If everybody made love in the dark there’d be no prejudice in this world.” She paused. “The only thing you really notice right off is all that fur. After that you just stop thinking.”

  “Is this for publication?”

  Chad hurried over, looking around wildly to see if anyone else had overheard. “No, it’s not for publication. You can’t.”

  “The hell I can’t.” The man pocketed his recorder and skittered toward the exit, dodging Chad’s halfhearted grab. Not that he could really stop him.

  A gentle hand came down on his arm and he turned to find himself staring into the bright green eyes of Cindy Greenley.

  “Really, it’s okay. Why shouldn’t everyone know? They’ll find out sooner or later.”

  He slumped, envisioning the screaming but decorous headlines. What would the general reaction be? Calm and accepting like the Greenleys’, or would it give fresh ammunition to the
xenophobes?

  “I mean,” she was saying in her soft, almost Quozl-like voice, “they are mammals. Intelligent and caring. Cody and Momma and I came all the way down here to help people realize how happy humans and Quozls could be together. We’re compatible, Mr. Collins.”

  “Compatible, yes, but …”

  “It is for the best.”

  Turning, he found himself less than a foot from Seams-with-Metal. “As the woman says, it must all come out eventually.”

  “Sure. After free travel for all Quozl has been approved. After you’ve been made citizens. After the colony is so dispersed you can never be locked up in one place again. Once this hits the wire services, the sensationalism, the fear will …”

  “Fear of what?” Cindy Greenley sounded genuinely puzzled. “Fear of infection? Fear of rejection? Fear of a new kind of life? I should think the knowledge will make the Quozl more popular than ever, not less.”

  “Humans will have to invent a few new words, reflect on new concepts. We will help. Willingly. That is what humans want. That is what humans have always wanted,” Seams said with assurance.

  Chad gaped at her. “You knew. You’ve known all along.”

  “My specialty was human studies.” An ear bobbed and earrings jangled musically. “We had the old specimen, then good recordings of you and your sibling. The differences were clearly not insurmountable, to put it precisely. The Burrow Masters know, as do the senior members of my department. The rest of the colony does not. If they did it would be impossible to enforce the law against surface visitation, for curiosity’s sake if no other. They will have to be informed.”

  “But who would’ve thought …?”

  “It is not something a human would consider, but it is of primary interest to Quozl. Until we reached Shiraz we were convinced we were the only intelligence in the universe. We were shocked to discover it was home to intellectual if not social equals. It was far less surprising to learn that we are compatible in other ways.

  “There will be great astonishment on Quozlene when the news is carried there. To do that we must build another ship. That is the sign of Burrow maturity. Azel did it, and Moszine, and even Mazna. Shiraz too will send out its ship, only it will carry back the greatest news of all. The news that we are not alone, that we have friends. Compatible friends. It is a secret we will share with you. Humans will accompany Quozl on the long journey back to Quozlene. Perhaps your grandchildren. Perhaps mine thrice-pouch removed.