A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

“Why won’t you talk to them?” said John, later. “I could get the network footage later for my documentary.”

  “Documentary?”

  Chagrined, he looked down. “I’m doing a vid about us all. About the alien and all. I’m doing, like, an inside view.”

  Morgan couldn’t decide between fury and resignation. This one was such a guy. Such a boys-and-their-toys egoist.

  “Goodness,” she said, “I haven’t thought of that expression in a decade and a half. That’s so weird!”

  “What?”

  “Boys and their toys. Do you have releases from us? Otherwise, I’m afraid, there’s no use shooting another byte of vid. And the network stuff? Permissions cost too much.”

  “Oh, permissions!” said John in such a dismissive manner that Morgan decided for anger.

  “Yes, permissions,” she said. “It may escape your notice, but it doesn’t mine, that everything we do is being recorded out there. Dammit, I’ll subpoena the records that show you don’t have our consent and sue your trendy little britches off if you don’t get permissions. We’re getting fucked over enough without date rape too.”

  “Fine,” said John, as if the negotiations had come out his way, “I’ll get permissions.”

  “You do that,” said Morgan.

  voicemail greeting:

  Hello, this is Morgan. If you want a conversation that might not be monitored by CSIS, leave a number and I’ll call you back from somewhere else. If you don’t care, press one. All media calls will be screened out, so you may as well give up now.

  “Knife and fork for you?”

  Morgan and Blue—who was today in a very pale version of pinkface and looked like a rather exotic Asian/Caucasian mix, in an androgynous business suit and with hair pulled back—shook their heads in unintentional unison. “No thanks; I can use chopsticks,” said Morgan. “Me too,” said Blue, and smiled ingratiatingly. It was the alien’s first house visit.

  We should have started by going to visit someone we knew, Morgan thought apprehensively, but here they were, a visit accomplished only after the initial media scrum had subsided, and Blue Suit and the grey man had worked out protocols for dodging the persistent videorazzi and the automated camera-eyes. Their solution was simple—they had let it be known that one more person came often to the house, creating a virtual person with a surprising resemblance to Blue in pinkface. Then they had run decoy ops daily for a week, enlisting the willing and pliable Aziz to enter disguised as this “frequent visitor” while Blue showed up at various windows for a few seconds—and though the whole thing seemed like a crude vid plot to Morgan, when Robyn and Aziz arrived today and then she, Robyn, and Blue had emerged, there had been almost no interest in them among the camera operators with their lenses fixed to a third-floor window that Morgan knew lighted a small storage room.

  Twylla’s brother Kee was a chef, but his grandfather, the herbalist, was doing the cooking. His grandmother insisted on setting knife and fork for Morgan but, after considering Blue for a moment, set a bowl and chopsticks. Twylla returned to the room with her parents, introducing them to Morgan and then standing back, at a loss, to let Morgan explain her companion.

  “This is my friend Blue,” said Morgan simply.

  “Blue?” said Twylla’s mother Ada. She walked around the table behind her mother, changing the cutlery for bamboo; Morgan would have returned her grin if she hadn’t been so worried about Blue’s answers.

  “I’m named after my hair color,” said Blue ingenuously.

  “Oh, are you a performance artist too?” said Twylla eagerly. “Robyn told me that Jakob Ngo—oh, I can never pronounce it—lives at your place. That’s so cool!”

  “Ngogaba,” said Blue, as Morgan said, “Yes, he does.” So as the elders prepared to serve the meal they all talked about Jakob’s work, Delany, Russ and John, and the cats. You can get lots of mileage out of cats, Morgan thought. The Tsangs had four. If all else fails, it’ll be a dinner conversation full of cat stories.

  “And what do you do for a living, young man?” Twylla’s father Peter asked Blue.

  “What she said,” said Blue, gesturing at Twylla. “My art is my life.”

  Morgan stifled a giggle. Blue would be fine. She settled down to enjoy the meal.

  “I liked the petting zoo best,” said Blue.

  Delany playfully echoed the childlike tone. “I liked being able to go on the bus.” They had taken the rapid transit to the west end terminal, then a rickety but still accommodating “kneeling bus” to the zoo. Delany, the not-so-blue Blue, and Morgan felt like escaped prisoners.

  Two women had followed them everywhere. They must be the minders. Morgan figured they would probably get an earful from the Boy Wonder or Blue Suit after this for not taking the official car, but she didn’t care: two women had, after all, followed them everywhere, the day was bright and unseasonably warm for fall, the wind felt wonderful, and Blue was deliriously happy, bubbling like a child. And Blue was a child, she thought; even if the head was full of data and the mind synthesized well, the emotions and interactions of this lovely being were just a little over a year old, and growing up more slowly than the information-rich intelligence.

  Home, Blue peeled off the pinkface solemnly, but the edges were stubborn around hairline and neck.

  “You look like you have a weird sunburn,” said John, and Blue giggled. Jakob, sprawled on the couch with his head in Aziz’s lap, leaped up.

  “Which animals did you like?”

  “Little ones that scuttled and oozed,” said Blue. “The slow loris. It was very funny.”

  “Show me,” said Jakob.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Move like the animals moved. Was it like this?” and Jakob made a Pink Panther pussyfoot across the living room and into the dining room.

  “No, like this,” said Blue, and climbed the double-doorframe adagio.

  Morgan drew in her breath. The alien must be far stronger than she had thought, to be able to cling like a rock-climber to the oak mouldings. She had lifted Blue, so she knew Blue was no lighter than any of them. The motion was uncannily like the small beast at the zoo who had crept fluidly but with almost-agonizing slowness across the web of branches in its enclosure.

  Blue let go of the center of the doorframe and dropped to the floor feetfirst like a cat, with a soft thump. Dusting off fingers, the alien grinned. “And there was a very silly bird there too,” and suddenly was prancing across the living room like a flamingo, all style, no substance, eerily silent and avian. John was laughing, but Jakob was struck silent with, Morgan realized, the same kind of shock she felt.

  Jakob moved quietly beside her.

  “We never thought to teach him to dance. But look at that. I have to choreograph something. It’s phenomenal.”

  “In the accurate sense of the word,” murmured Morgan. “Blue is certainly a phenomenon.”

  “We’ll start in the studio tomorrow.” And they did.

  It was another one of those rare warm days of late autumn that should have been winter, but wasn’t yet, and Morgan and Delany had come down into the park. The chair was always slow and whiny on the withered grass, and today it had seemed even jouncier: Delany had sworn at it several times.

  “I remember when I realized I would have to be in the chair for the rest of my life,” Delany said. She looked across the valley and shivered.

  Morgan didn’t ask if she was cold.

  “I felt,” said Delany slowly, “as if that moment would be the most important one in my life, forever. As if each moment were going to be defined by that one change. Before then, I was somehow on the side of the able-bodied. After that, I had crossed the line forever. But … .”

  “Mmm?”

  “But memory fades for a reason,” Delany went on, “and you know, Morgan, my dear, I can hardly re-create that indignation any more, though at the time I called it anguish. Too many other things have happened to me. That was—what, twenty years ago?”

&nbs
p; “That long?”

  “Yes, it was when I was fourteen. No, perhaps I had just turned fifteen. You see? I thought I would remember everything about that night forever. And I can’t even remember if it was before or after my birthday.”

  “Which is when?”

  “May thirty-first, but never mind. It must have been July—school was out. Fifteen, then, I was fifteen. So not quite twenty years ago.”

  “A long time. And yesterday.”

  “Yes, but not quite yesterday. I am not one of those unfortunate people to whom life all happens forever, in the moment.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Where everything is alive to them forever. Perhaps a good memory is a curse.”

  Morgan laughed. “I have a good memory,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you!” Delany seemed flustered.

  “Well, mean it or not, you described me. I remember everything that ever happened to me—no, I believe I remember everything that ever happened, which is a bit different, and more accurate. I run the risk of holding grudges forever. I live in that eternal present, the immanence of memory, and I know exactly what you mean. I’m only sorry that I don’t know how to change it. I would rather be forgetful and free.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Delany, but said no more, and the moment passed.

  A few moments later Blue and Russ joined them, and Morgan walked back to the park entrance and sat down on the bench there, looking out over the valley. After contemplating the rotation of the galaxy for an afternoon, Morgan was dizzy. She thought this might be the time vertigo won out. She was afraid to get up from the park bench. She was afraid of entropy. With an effort, she turned from the vertiginous sky and looked back down the length of the park.

  Blue was walking toward her with Russ and Delany. Morgan saw them like a silent apparition bearing down on her. Russ was pushing Delany’s chair through the heavy grass so that even the motor was silent. He must be strong to do that, Morgan thought idly. Blue was wearing a loose sweater, designer pants, and leather boots, and strode confidently, hands in pockets and head thrown back, wind through the strange hair, eyes squinted against the bright sun. Except for the blue skin, the image could have been straight from a Vogue magazine or Gentlemen’s Quarterly fashion feature.

  I wonder what Vogue would do about makeup for blue skin? thought Morgan, then, how beautiful that one always is, and how immune. The skin tight over the fine cheekbones. It would be too linear, too simplex, to fall in love. With some strange blue chameleon-like being? (She deliberately ignored the parallel with falling in love with beautiful, non-standard Delany. ) Even lust was pointless. And would she always suspect her own Pygmalion impulse ?

  Life’s too short, thought Morgan roughly, overruling the catch at her heart that Blue’s windswept beauty always made.

  The concert had been advertised in the Womoncentre newsletter, and Morgan, remembering the Ferron records (yes, records) to which her mother and father had loved to listen, and remembering sitting as a child on the hill at the Folk Festival and listening to the smoky, low voice weave its beautiful magic, decided that she and Blue should attend. When the singer walked out on stage, leaning heavily on her handcarved cane, and sat down to pick up her guitar and sing, Morgan was struck again with deep despair at the march of time, at entropy’s erosion of beauty and power. Yet the concert was enthralling, the music as strong as she remembered and then some, and Morgan felt a reluctant sense of wonder too, at how the music, the artistry—and the woman herself—stood so strongly against the flood.

  Morgan wondered how strongly this performer, who seemed to have so gracefully let the years drape her with enigma and sexual richness, had actually fought entropy, in her heart. The recent songs were as fiery as any of the earlier work, but with a darkness Morgan recognized too well: the darkness of loss in the midst of love, the darkness of too many questions answered by no. Morgan selfishly wished that her darkness had taken her more creatively, but, looking at Blue’s rapt pinkfaced visage, she thought, perhaps it had. Perhaps it had.

  It was Jakob of all people who took Blue climbing at last, and spelunking too in the eerie Cadamon caves: Jakob whose passion for movement, for dance suited him well in the convoluted wilderness. Lithe as a ferret, he seemed to cling and flow around and across the jumbled, cracked, crazed cliff face as he led Blue higher and higher, while Morgan, below in the base camp, catching occasional glimpses of them in their brightly colored climbing clothes, thought they looked like tropical lizards darting randomly across the face of the world. She tried not to think about Blue falling, what the implications might be. Blue is all grown up now, she admonished herself—grinning all the while at the trope—and you have to let go.

  Despite the F/X face, which was dark brown this time (“I want to be Jakob’s sibling,” Blue had said; they’d settled for “sister”), Blue returned tanned. Morgan was shocked by the deepening Delft of the alien skin. She railed at the advisory committee meeting : “Why didn’t you tell me Blue had a melanin process? We should have been using sunblock, and a hat!” but they hadn’t known either. Blue, who even before attaining speech had already fought like a tiger against having any medical sampling done, so that the benchmark samples had been attained at the cost of much human and alien blood, sweat, and tears, refused again—this time politely—the polite request for blood tests and a small tissue sample.

  “I liked what you said we looked like,” said Blue as they watched Morgan’s slides and recordings of the camping trip. “Like the lizards in that film.”

  “I’ve never been in the tropics,” said Morgan. “But I hear that real lizards dart across the sidewalks there.”

  “Can we go?”

  The answer was no, of course: Morgan looked at Blue’s rebellious face and said, “Don’t run away again. We’ll find a way, or we won’t.”

  “And if we don’t?” Blue said.

  “Then you will be just like the rest of us. Unable to do what we want if it costs too much, or is too risky, or we can’t get a holiday from our job …”

  Blue was silent. Morgan watched the pliable face cycle through the emotions.

  “I’m sorry. It’s how life goes.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” said Blue. “I was being—immature. I should have known that wanting is not the same thing as being able to get. It is an—elementary learning. I am ashamed.”

  “Shame is useful for a time, but don’t get stuck there.”

  “You are very protective.”

  But Morgan did not feel protective. Blue’s innocent arrogance had echoed uncomfortably the desires that low income had always thwarted in her own heart. She had never been to most of the places around whose virtual landscapes she guided Blue’s computer learning. She had wished, but never been able to hope, to go. The few travels she had done, on her own continent, so many years ago now, on that brief holiday from university studies, had only whetted a desire that her life, her always-low salaries, and the recent political realities had meant would never be fulfilled.

  When she realized the power that teaching Blue created, she had hoped to parlay that power into mobility: shouldn’t the alien have every experience the world had to offer? She soon found out that the alien was restricted to the safest places Canada had to offer: preferrably close to “home”—even rock-climbing had been battled out so strenuously that the negotiations had taken months. The final blow to her dreams had been administered by the knowledge that there were twelve other “empty aliens”, kara-i-ti (“empty-ET”) as they were called in Japan, scattered around the planet. The composite portrait of Earth was clearly to be built up like a living jigsaw puzzle, and it would not be necessary to conduct a Grand Parade around the globe.

  Despite herself, Morgan wished it weren’t so.

  She as always was surprised to find desire stirring, even desire for good scenery.

  Having to teach Blue that one wants and cannot get would have been easier, she reflected bitterly as she y
et again did dishes it was not her turn to do, had she been able to do so from a detached, Zen-like lack of desire—even if it was that lack of desire her recent despair had made seem reasonable. But in her the empty orchestra played again, and the hollow spaces rang with its wistful strain.

  She had always hated karaoke when it was the fad of birthday parties of her childhood friends. Now she knew that she had hated it not just because her family couldn’t afford to rent the machine. It had been a jealous dislike, unworthy of a mature person such as she wanted to teach Blue to be, and it burned within her still. She wanted to be a star, and tour the world. She wanted to win the lottery. She didn’t want to mouth someone else’s lyrics to someone else’s background music.

  Only later she remembered that some people did win the lottery and still never traveled—and that wanting as intense and generic as hers sometimes produced from the universe a completely different answer than expected. She did, after all, have Blue.

  Morgan lay in the darkness, hands clenched between her thighs. She could taste her loneliness, a cuprous flatness on her tongue. She was a stone.

  She could feel the alien, in the other room, like a nightlight, like phosphorous on the night ocean, glowing. Like radioactive elements, glowing through the walls and through her skin. Making her transparent.

  It was not longing like she longed for a leg between hers, grinding against her lust in the dance, or like she longed for a form beside her in bed right now, to whom she could turn in passion, for release. It was a longing to be somewhere outside the reality, the loneliness, the out-on-a-limb feeling, among all these people. It was a longing to know something new and real and intimate and other-worldly.

  Today she had found herself staring at Delany with a desire so intense she was sure it vibrated the air. Wanting to make that glowing beauty glow for her. She could not understand the wanting, after years of friendly intimacy and bodily indifference; was it some kind of titillation to wonder whether that thin body could feel, could respond, could reach Morgan in turn?