A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

  “Ah, Johnny,” she said, “who are you?” and was surprised when he started out of his reverie with hostility and said, savagely and automatically, “None of your business!”

  “Hey!” she said. “Calm yourself! This is me, Morgan here. No threat.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I was thinking of something else,” he said, awkwardly. “Look, I have to go work. The last few days … well, with all the fuss, I really haven’t got anything done at all.” And he left her there, wondering why a simple joke had made him so touchy. Touchier than usual, for she realized they had all gotten used to how difficult he really could be.

  He is not a very nice person, she thought, and then snorted at her prissy interior tone. But he wasn’t.

  Andris made one of his rare visits to the grey man’s office the day after Salomé started working on the recordings.

  “Any results on the tapes?”

  “They’re not tape any more, boss,” said Mr. Grey. “I keep telling you that.”

  “It’s a figure of speech,” said Andris. “Look at this.”

  In the center of the small stack of files he was holding was a red Eyes-Only folder. Out of it he took a document and tossed it to Mac. The grey man picked it up to find that it was in Chinese. “What’s this?”

  “It cost us a good deal, and then the guy who got it for us vanished. We think for good.”

  “Don’t be cute, boss. What is it?”

  “It’s an autopsy report,” said Andris. “On China’s alien.”

  “It’s a fine day,” said the grey man. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “It’s raining,” said Morgan.

  “It’s good for you,” he said. They strode out along the park and down the path into the valley. The grey man had an inadequate plastic rain poncho which snapped noisily in the wind, and Blue was wearing a bizarre fisherman’s slicker borrowed from Russ, which crackled and swished as Blue walked. “I need to ask you,” he said to Blue, “if you are able to listen to any of the other Visitors.”

  “To the house?”

  “To earth. Visitors like you.”

  “What do you mean, listen?” Morgan said.

  “You both know exactly what I mean. I’m cold and wet and I don’t have a lot of time. Can you hear them?”

  “No,” said Blue. “Well, sort of. Maybe. Yes.”

  “Which is it?”

  “There is a whisper. It sounds different than the city whisper. It is very far away. Things disrupt it. I don’t know, solar flares or Tesla rays or something.”

  “Look, don’t joke around with me. This is important. Could you tell if they were all still there?”

  “I don’t think … I haven’t …” Blue stopped and was silent for a moment. The grey man put a hand on Morgan’s sleeve to keep her quiet, but Morgan knew that expression. “Maybe … one is gone. Two. Two are gone. One is … very sick.”

  “Gone?”

  “Dead,” said the alien.

  “What happened?” said Morgan.

  “Even if I knew, I probably couldn’t tell you,” said the grey man. “We’ll see if we can do anything for the sick one, but I doubt it. I’m sorry, Blue.”

  The rest of the walk was silent. When they got back to the house Blue went upstairs and Morgan made the grey man a quick cup of tea to warm him. He drank it standing up, then said, “Sorry, I have to go back to work.” Morgan walked him out through the hall.

  Blue caught up to them at the door and said diffidently, “I have made something. Can I show you?”

  Morgan and the grey man, who seemed startled to be included, nodded, and Blue led the way back into the house and up to Jakob’s studio. The police seal hung broken from the door: the forensics team had pronounced that they were done with it the afternoon before, so Morgan ignored the grey man’s sigh.

  Blue set the lights and pulled the blackout curtains. “I think I have just learned what ‘shy’ is,” Blue said hesitantly. “Everything worries me now. I have made—a dance?”

  “Show us,” said Morgan gently.

  “I have not been working on it very long,” said Blue. “Jakob worked longer. Maybe it is not very good.”

  “Don’t worry. Just show us.”

  Blue began with an imitation of Night Through Slow Glass. A perfect imitation. Or maybe not. As it went on Morgan began to see that the tension Jakob had wound into the piece was being unwound, strand by strand, into an ever-increasing dissonance. Entropy was taking over. By the end of the piece, what would have been the end, it had almost completely unraveled—and then, at the point where the choir music stopped, and the dance Jakob had danced had dissolved into silence and chaos, Blue hovered for a moment in the final pose, then exploded into a wild storm of what could only be grief: a howl, a fury, an outcry of loss. In total, eerie, telling silence—and perfect motion.

  Then stood, panting slightly, looking at Morgan and Mr. Grey.

  “Did you understand?” said the alien.

  Morgan nodded, and to her shock, Mr. Grey simply opened his arms wide. Blue came into them, and bowed the tangled head against the grey man’s. Blue was taller, and graceful as a willow against Grey’s slight, suit-clad frame.

  “I miss Jakob,” said Blue finally.

  “We all do,” said the grey man.

  The attendance at the memorial service was going to be huge. Not only because Jakob had been far better known than any of them thought, but because the media knew he had lived in the house with the alien, and videorazzi and spectators alike hoped to catch a glimpse of Blue.

  The team considered pinkface and even worked up a credible imitation of Aziz. “I am Aziz’s brother,” said Blue wryly, looking at the results in the mirror, and Aziz, who was there to watch, blushed as they all chuckled.

  But Blue turned away from the mirror troubled. “Excuse me, but I do not want to go in disguise,” the alien said slowly. “I am thinking of this. Jakob was my friend. Morgan has explained this event to me and it does not seem right that I sneak into his memorial. It would be like telling a big lie. Also, I made a dance, and I am thinking it would have been something Jakob liked. So I am wondering. Could I go as myself and dance my requiem?”

  Kowalski, mute for once, looked at Mr. Grey. The grey man looked at Morgan silently and, it seemed to her, nonplussed for the first time.

  Finally he said, “I will ask.”

  “Andris,” he said, “scramble,” and when the encryption kicked in, the grey man went on, “Do we have the authority for a head-of-state operation?”

  “Why?” Andris’s voice sounded artificial after its journey through encription. “Oh, I see, Bryant is just putting the transcript in front of me now. ‘Teach me, O Lord, to be sweet and gentle in all the events of life.’”

  “Sir?”

  “Something my mother used to say. Look, I will call the Prime Minister’s office. Wait where you are. I’ll get back to you.”

  The grey man went back to the alien’s room, where Ko and Lemieux and Morgan and Blue were making up Morgan as an alien. The blue set off her raven hair and all she needed was a blue rinse to make her a pair with Blue. The grey man sighed silently.

  “We wait,” he said. “What does that stuff feel like?”

  “Come and we’ll show you,” said Lemieux, so that in the surprisingly short time if took for Grey’s cellphone to ring again, he was transformed into a small, neat, greyhaired alien. “It’s comfortable,” he said, surprised, just as the ’phone rang.

  On the other end of the line, Andris’s tinny, pixelated encrypted voice said, “We have a royal-wedding scenario. Or head-of-state funeral. Whatever. I would like you to know that the Prime Minister thinks this is the cat’s meow as a propaganda opportunity. We’ll be lucky if she isn’t issuing front-row seats to the news anchor teams by this time tomorrow. You are in charge. Enjoy.” He hung up.

  The grey man turned to his colleagues. “We’re on,” he said. He glimpsed himself in the mirror. There were three aliens among the pinkfaced people. He si
ghed again. He hated it when the world presented him with obvious metaphors. He reached up and began to tear the blueface off. “You can dance,” he said to Blue. “We’ll protect you. Ko, we have security to arrange. This stuff is sticky. Lemieux, put ten of your people in blueface. We’ll do a decoy shell game.”

  Blue was silent. When the others went out, the alien said to Morgan, “Now I am apprehensive. All those people will do all the work to get me there, and there will be so many watching, and what if I dance wrong?”

  “Jakob faced that every time he danced, honey,” said Morgan. “Welcome to the human race.”

  “You keep saying that,” said Blue irritably, “but where else have I been?” and went up to the studio to practice.

  Delany wheeled past just as Blue disappeared up the stairs, watched by Morgan leaning on the doorframe of the alien’s room, still blue of face and hands. “What’s up, girlfriend? Why are you so blue?”

  Morgan snorted. “Very cute. Blue’s dancing, all blue and natural, at Jakob’s memorial. My grey man has just taken all his people off to organize it as an affair of state.” Morgan, worried, looked at Delany, worried, and they both began to giggle.

  “Did you ever think your life would be like this?” Delany said, hiccoughing.

  “No way,” said Morgan. “What the devil is going to happen next?” Morgan began to peel the makeup off her face. It came off like a latex glove. She picked at her wrists.

  “Stop that,” said Delany firmly. “What’s happening next is we’re going to go to bed.”

  “It’s two in the aftern … oh,” said Morgan.

  “Saves electricity,” said Delany. “And latex. Leave those on,” and wheeled back to her own room.

  Morgan dreams that she, the grey man, Delany, and Blue float, blue of skin, in a huge pool. Blue holds Delany’s head, hovers over her, and from Blue’s mouth pours a sparkling silver stream the flow of which surrounds Delany and soaks into her skin. When it is completely absorbed, Delany looks like herself. There, says Blue’s voice in satisfaction. All ready to go now. Grey takes Morgan’s hands. His feel like velvet.

  Morgan woke smiling, then stopped smiling. It was the day of Jakob’s memorial.

  The memorial was exactly as difficult as Morgan had predicted, and for all the same reasons. Getting there, getting through the crowds, dodging the noisy videorazzi, trying to get John not to talk with them, sorting Jakob’s friends from the wannabes and impostors so that they could come into the central venue, getting Delany in her chair up the stairs, and then, the private difficulties of saying goodbye to a friend. Singing, short and long speeches of farewell and remembrance, flowers, draped scarves, Aziz playing Night Through Slow Glass, then Blue’s dance, all designed to break the controls on grief and let the tears flow, or so the last remaining cynical part of Morgan snarled to Mr. Grey, who stayed with them throughout, only occasionally murmuring inconspicuously to his throat mike.

  “Ah, but,” he said, then didn’t continue.

  “Strangely enough, I know what you mean,” said Morgan. She remembered her parents’ funeral, so different in taste and staging, so similar in purpose and in achieved function. She couldn’t cry at this one either, but at least now she knew why.

  Kid sat on the couch, knees drawn up and arms wrapped tightly against them, protecting her breath, hair untidy from hands running through it, face pale and drawn from a sleepless night. Morgan was laying out Tarot cards; it was something she was learning from Delany, but not very well. She referred constantly to a book, shaking her head. She looked up and sharpened her gaze on the young police officer.

  “Never mind this now; how are you? What’s the problem?” she said, and Kid shook her head.

  “Come on,” Morgan said, “it can’t be that bad.”

  “I’m quitting my job,” said Kid.

  “Oh, yes. And now what?”

  “She believes in it all!” Kid cried indignantly, forgetting her pose of defense and suddenly flinging her legs and arms wide. “She thinks they’ve got the right idea, and she’s out of step. Everything they hand her, she accepts. They find out she’s gay and let her stay on the force, she’s grateful. Grateful, for chrissakes! And now that she’s doing some really good work, they use her for all that’s worth, then find a reason to send her away from the thing she wants most to finish, and she just says, orders. I can’t believe it! And I can’t live with it. And I said so, and they said my career might be in jeopardy, and I said, you can’t fire me, I quit, and that was it. I’d probably be in custody if I hadn’t come inside here: Official Secrets Act shit. The ironic thing is that they probably think I quit out of love for her, some kind of perverse triangle, demanding that she choose me or promotion, and I wasn’t chosen, so I quit out of pique. But you know, I quit out of disappointment. I don’t even have erotic dreams about women; I think I’m unchangeably straight. But I thought I knew her, thought she was my friend.

  “And she turns spineless, collapses, turns into someone I don’t even recognize, counseling me about my job, my future. I thought she cared about me, and she turns around and puts in a report challenging my objectivity, my competence.”

  “Are you saying you think she saved herself at the cost of you?”

  “That’s how it feels.”

  “But what would you have done?”

  “When?”

  “What would you have done if things had gone on the same?”

  “I don’t know.” Kid turned to her own thoughts, and it seemed to Morgan that she had gone a long distance by the time she recalled herself, with Morgan still watching her acutely.

  “I would have quit,” she said, surprise in her voice. Morgan grinned and leaned back, put her feet up on the coffee table.

  “Why is that?”

  “I think you know.”

  Morgan said, “I don’t like to guess when I can ask,” and Kid leaned back too, relaxed now, and said to the ceiling, “I guess it’s Blue, really. You have to decide one way or another, if you hang around Blue long enough, and I don’t believe Blue’s the one who knows enough about murder to practice it that way.”

  “But the argument surely is that it was all unintentional, or that Blue tried it and for some perverse reason liked it. Then there must be a minority opinion that we’re all in some crazy conspiracy to teach Blue to be a revolutionary, and it has backfired on us.”

  Kid laughed. “Oh, they threw that one out after Jakob; they were sure he was the one fomenting armed uprising, but when he died their theories went nose-and-toes up. They tried on Delany, with her background, but all she does is paint. And she just isn’t strong, no matter how hard they wish. They want to suspect Russ, but no, he works for the government, he’s as checked-out as he can be after all—whatever he’s done in other countries, they vetted him before he got that job. But as for the rest, you’re right on. It’s the people back at the desks, of course. No one around here thinks that. Or thought that—Lord knows who’s out there now. Most of the squad have been recalled, you know, and Kowalski’s replaced them with a new hand-picked crew. This time—you’ll laugh—they’re mostly men. He’s hoping no more emotionalism is gonna intrude here. I thought Ace would stand up for what she thought. But she just let them ship her back to HQ, and Lord knows what she’s telling them now.”

  “Frustration does funny things sometimes.”

  “Frustration?”

  And then Morgan perceived the light came on in Kid’s thoughts, as Kid remembered huddling around the console in the midwinter security shack, listening to Morgan and Delany, Ace with the tears at the corners of her eyes, and Kid saying, “What is it?” (knowing, she thought, that it was the distance between her friend and her that couldn’t be bridged) and Ace surprising her by saying, “It’s not fair. Why should we stay out in this damned trailer, and they get to make history? No one will even remember our names.”

  “I thought they were making love,” Kid had said lightly, but Ace had said, “I don’t mean them. Sex is nothing.
An itch. I can scratch it by myself, if I have to. It’s the people who’ve been reading science fiction all our lives, waiting for something to happen to us, and it happens to them, and we have to watch. It’s indecent. Our part of it too. There’s never enough of anything to go around. Look at the third world. Food, ideas, money, fame, happiness—everybody wants some, and hardly anybody gets any, and the ones who have it think they don’t have enough. The world is hungry, and I am too.”

  “Yes,” said Morgan, “that’s what I mean.”

  I must have spoken aloud, Morgan saw Kid think, even as she knew she hadn’t, saw her for a moment utterly disoriented. She was reassured by the very ordinary surroundings, Morgan curling her feet up under her in the easy chair, flipping her hair back from her face with both hands. “What’s your name?” said Morgan, quickly, before Kid took any more notice of their momentary double mind. I must find out how to control that, thought Morgan, before Blue goes. The pang at the idea of Blue’s departure struck deeply, with surgical precision, to the heart of love, but Morgan could walk and chew gum at the same time: she was convinced her face showed nothing as Kid said, “Name?”

  “Constable K. I. Doucette is all I know. Kid.”

  “Katherine Ilene. Kid.”

  “But you’re an adult now.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. When you’re twenty-four and still called Kid, no wonder you aren’t a corporal yet.”

  “One of these days you’ll learn to say I.” Then, after a pause: “What are you going to call yourself?”

  “Just Katy. I’ve been Kid since I was nine. I think Katy would be nice. My mum calls me Katy; I always feel like I’ve been hugged.”

  “Welcome, Katy,” said Morgan, and smiled at her. “I changed my name too.”

  “Yes, I know. I helped compile your dossier, you know.”