The Terrans

by Jean Johnson

  Kit bag over her shoulder, suitcase at her feet, she pressed her palm to the front door’s security panel. She hadn’t even approached this specific door in the block of five townhomes until the hovercab had lifted off and soared away, engine thrumming quietly. The lock looked new; she hoped her palm-print profile had been transferred to it. The machine sat there silently for a few seconds, making her sweat in the humid warmth of the night . . . then it buzzed and unlocked the front door. A soft chime rang through the stone-and-plaster house, announcing her entry; it accompanied the gust of delightful coolness from the air-conditioning system. Hefting her suitcase handle, Jackie stepped inside, grateful her sister and brother-in-law had kept her profile on hand.

  Thumping footsteps came down the stairs. “Lani-Lani, Lani-Lani!” Jackie had barely enough time to set down suitcase and kit bag, and had to brace herself telekinetically as the young girl flung herself at the psi. Wrapping her arms around her aunt’s belly, Alani Haunani Bennington squeezed with palpable strength. “Auntie Jackie Lani! Makua kane! Aunt Jackie is here! Lani-Lani, Lani-Lani . . .”

  “Lani-Nani, Lani-Nani!” Jackie chanted right back, grinning. She lifted the twelve-year-old off the ground in a bear hug aided by a touch of telekinesis while the door swung shut behind her, relocking itself, then—making her niece giggle—opened her arms wide, letting go as soon as Alani let go. The young girl wafted up and hung in the air, supported half a meter off the floor by her aunt’s mind alone. “It’s so good to see you, Alani! Look at how big you’ve flown!”

  Alani giggled, happy to be held aloft.

  “E komo mai, Jacaranda Leilani,” her brother-in-law called out, descending the steps at a slower pace, his tone slightly chiding. “You’re late; we were tucking the kaikamahine into bed.”

  Alani pouted and crossed her arms; her legs and torso, wrapped in dark blue shorts and sleeveless top, were caught in her aunt’s grip and could not move, but the rest of her could. “I’m twelve. I should be allowed to stay up.”

  “It is nine o’clock, and you still need a lot of sleep, so you can grow up big and strong like your mama,” Maleko Bennington admonished his daughter. He started to point up the stairs, then sighed and flicked a hand. “Oh, fine. You can stay up half an hour. Only half an hour,” he added, as his daughter squealed and clasped her hands together. “Then you go right to bed. Put her down, Jackie. You fly her around the house, she won’t go to sleep for hours.”

  Jackie complied, doing her best to ignore the soft, pouty “Awww!” from her niece as her bare feet touched the stones of the floor.

  “I’ll go surfing with you tomorrow,” she promised her niece. “I’ll be here for a week, probably—thank you for putting me up, by the way. Sorry about being so late. I was hounded at the airports.”

  “Eh . . . aloha kaˉua,” her brother-in-law relented, giving her a hug as well as the warmer greeting. “Not your fault you couldn’t keep your apartment,” he said, letting go so he could pick up her bags. “Hm, you’re traveling light this time, no bricks packed inside . . .”

  “I can carry those myself, Maleko,” Jackie told him, following him toward the downstairs office that doubled as a makeshift guest room. It had a daybed couch that was comfortable for napping or sleeping, and to get to it, one had to go through the family room.

  Her nephew, eighteen and tall and lanky, pushed up from the couch and came around, arms outstretched. “Hey, Blue-Butt!”

  “Ahe!” his father reprimanded. “Be nice.”

  “Hey, Tuna-Breath,” Jackie shot back, not at all offended. Jacaranda trees were renowned for their blue flowers, and she’d sort of started the nickname-calling years ago. Ahe, which meant “soft breeze,” was a play on the slightly similar-sounding ‘ahi, which referred to either the bigeye tuna or the yellowfin tuna fish. She hugged her nephew, until he dug his chin into the top of her head. “Ow!”

  “Short squirt,” he teased, shifting from using his chin to using his hand, mussing what he could of her braided curls. “You look like you shrank at least three centimeters in space from your last visit.”

  “And you just flunked astrophysics,” his father, a biology and life sciences teacher, shot back. “People grow taller in space, not shorter, when their spines decompress from the lack of constant gravity.”

  “That, and it’s more like you grew a couple centimeters while I was gone,” Jackie retorted, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “It’s only been two months, you know.” She got attacked again from behind as her niece Alani wrapped her arms around Jackie’s waist.

  “Are you gonna tell us about the malihini, Lani-Lani?” Alani asked, mind boiling with curiosity, forcing Jackie to tighten her mental shields.

  “Are we going to get to meet them?” her nephew asked more pointedly. “That’s more important.”

  “They’re not coming here, are they?” her brother-in-law asked with a touch of alarm, looking up from tucking her suitcase and kit bag inside the office door. “I don’t want a whole bunch of gawkers trampling all over the lawn.”

  “Not to the house, though we’re thinking of giving them a proper beach lu’au so they can experience casual Terran life, not just formal tours and such,” Jackie reassured Maleko first. She eyed her nephew next. “As for meeting them, Ahe, you might be able to, or you might not. Nothing’s completely decided yet. I can bring a few special guests to the formal reception at the capital, but I have a long list of relatives all demanding tickets, and only a small handful to give. I might have to do it as a lottery.”

  Ahe huffed a breath and folded his arms, slouching in disappointment. His father eyed him, then smacked him lightly on the bicep. “Stand up straight. Be calm and composed like an adult, not pouting and pubescent. Alani, you, too. Hyacinth should be home soon; she had a town meeting tonight, about the strangers coming and what it might mean to tourism for the area, to have a bunch of strange Humans from a distant world showing up.”

  “Town meetings about tourism? Already?” Jackie asked, quirking her brows. “It’s going to be years before that becomes common.”

  “Which is all the more reason, given the general laziness of Earth Humans, to get started on making plans now,” Maleko reminded her.

  “Terran Humans. The Council has decided to call us the Terran United Planets, to differentiate us from the V’Dan Humans,” Jackie told him. “Speaking of the V’Dan, I did bring a couple gifts.”

  “You did? From them?” Ahe asked, raising his dark brows. Like a lot of Polynesian young men in the current era, he had left his hair to grow long, almost waist long, but had taken to trimming his eyebrows to make them look sleek and stylish, not bushy. “I thought they were rescued from some sort of alien prison and didn’t have anything.”

  “Rumor has it they were naked,” Alani added in singsong.

  “They were, and be respectful, both of you. Ahe, you were telling me at Christmas that you still needed something to do for a senior sciences project,” Jackie reminded him. “For you and your father, I’ve brought printouts of medical data—the declassified common stuff, with their permission—from three of the V’Dan, from the dark-skinned kane with the blue crescents, Ba’oul; from the dark-haired wahine with the two tones of stripes, cream and green on tan, Dai’a; and from the tall blond with the long spiral stripes in hot pink, V’kol.”

  She started to say more, but felt a touch of telepathic familiarity against her mind. It wasn’t the first time today, either; at Sonam’s suggestion, she and Li’eth were going to keep checking in with each other, to see how far a casual telepathic contact could reach before actual effort was required.

  (Jackie? The banquet is over, and I’ve been shown to my quarters. They’re very small, compared to quarantine, and I have to share with V’kol and Ba’oul. I could almost wish we were still on the, ah, Katherine Gee.)

  (They would be. That’s the original Lunar Dome you’re staying in. On the bright side, you’re near the Sea of Tranquility, and the Mankiller Site, so your tours won’
t take too long getting there.)

  “You were saying something?” her brother-in-law prompted her. “Or did you get lost in your own thoughts?”

  “Someone else’s,” she quipped. “Just a little telepathic conversation. I was about to say I also have written down copies of children’s stories from the V’Dan culture for Alani to present a paper on at her school,” she said, reaching behind her to ruffle her niece’s hair since Alani was still clinging to her from behind in a comfortably slouched hug. Since her niece was simply thinking happy thoughts about listening to Auntie Jackie talking about the alien Humans, the prolonged contact was bearable. “Maleko, I figure you can use the data I brought for your son to discuss microflora divergence and evolution over thousands of years, plus the potential health concerns and consequences, and the steps one can take to ameliorate the risks in your biology and life sciences courses.”

  “What does ameelee . . . uh . . . something mean?” her niece asked, letting go of Jackie’s waist so she could peer up at her father.

  Her brother moved around behind Jackie and plucked his equally slender but much shorter sister fully off the ground. Biceps flexing, he curled her belly-up. “Ameliorate is a big fancy word that means to make things better. And raspberry is a word to—”

  “Eeeee! Nooo!” Alani shriek-giggled, squirming in Ahe’s grip as he tried to lift her belly into range.

  “No shouting indoors, both of you,” Maleko warned his kids. Ahe lowered his sister out of raspberrying range with a mock-sigh.

  Jackie stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it. “The last time I heard anything that loud and high-pitched, it was a test of the emergency claxons on the station.” She started to say more, but her stomach rumbled and gurgled. “Sorry, but I haven’t had anything to eat in about nine hours. Can I raid the kitchen?”

  “I’ll do you one better; I’ll cook you up a meal,” Maleko offered. “I was going to anyway, once Alani was in bed. Hya will be wanting something when she gets home.”

  “So what will you be doing while you’re here for a week?” Ahe asked, following them. He had shifted his sister into a piggyback carry on his back, with her hands fisted in his age-worn tee shirt and his arms under her knees.

  “Well, I was supposed to go with the V’Dan on their tour, but I’m also still scheduled to perform with the Honolulu University Hula Team at the Festival,” Jackie allowed, moving to sit on one of the barstools on the far side of the cooking island from the kitchen proper in the back room. The back room was kitchen, dining room, and conservatory in one, built with a greenhouse-like glass wall that let in sunlight—or starlight and citylight at the moment—and had screened window sections that could let in cooling breezes now and then. “So I’ll be practicing with them tomorrow.

  “That is, in the afternoon,” she amended. “I’ll be going surfing in the morning since I checked the tide reports, and they looked good for it—and I’ll also be spending time sharing the V’Dan language with other polyglots all week long. Some will be official translators for the Department of Transcription Services, but particularly with the other telepaths who know how to do language transfers. They’ll be flying into Honolulu all week long. I’ll be spending my energy either practicing with the university team, or using one of the linguistics department’s conference rooms to teach people the new language. Also . . . a couple days from now, I have a very important meeting with the Premiere.”

  Her brother-in-law eyed her carefully as he pulled back from the refrigerator, ingredients balanced in his arms, but merely shrugged. “Sounds like a busy start to the week.”

  “After that . . . it all depends on how the meeting turns out. I’ll probably have more stuff to do with the Psi League, and more meetings, and more practices . . . and more surfing,” she joked, careful to keep her tone light and playful, rather than hinting at any of the gloom of possibly losing her position and her job up ahead. “But most of the later-in-the-week bits depends on my Tuesday meeting with the Premiere. And no, I cannot talk about it.”

  “But after that, we can meet the V’Dan, yes?” Ahe pressed, his brown eyes alight with eagerness. “I’d be the envy of everyone at school . . .”

  “I will make no promises at this time other than that I will see if it can be done,” she replied calmly.

  Machinery rumbled somewhere nearby, and Alani squirmed to get her brother to let her go. “Momma’s home! Momma’s home!” As soon as she had her feet on the ground, she pounded off toward the hall that led to the basement garage, calling out, “Aloha kaˉua, makua hine! Daddy’s letting me stay up ’cause Auntie Lani-Lani’s here . . .”

  “Alani, she can’t even hear you yet, if she’s just now pulling in!” her brother called out after her. Ahe sighed and settled onto one of the other barstools. “Children . . .”

  Jackie chuckled. Reaching over, she ruffled his hair. “You were just as excitable at her age, or close to it, when I was voted onto the Council.”

  He nudged her hand away, she tried to fuss with his hair again, he countered it, and the two of them exchanged mock-attacks and blocks until Maleko cleared his throat. “No fighting in my kitchen.”

  Subsiding, Ahe and Jackie attempted to look innocent. In the back of her mind, she felt Li’eth reaching for her again. (Oh! That makes sense—I was wondering about that . . .)

  (About what?) she returned.

  (Robert just explained that the name of the ship carrying us, the Katherine G, is short for Katherine G. Johnson, a scientist who plotted the mathematics involved in your earliest space explorers’ reaching this place. I think that’s a wonderful thing, naming your military ships after famous persons. Ours are all about sounding tough and fierce, and thus are boring in comparison because there is no deeper meaning.)

  (Oh, we have ships like that, the Valiant and the Victory and so forth . . . but any ship with a person’s name is usually named after a tough-warrior type or an important civilian whose efforts should not be forgotten. Like how MacArthur Station is named after General MacArthur from a major war a couple hundred years back.)

  Ahe changed the subject while she and Li’eth were thinking at each other, seizing on what his aunt had said. “Now that’s something I don’t get. I thought everyone liked you as Councilor for Oceania, Auntie. Even my political sciences teacher said you’ve been very conscientious, a model modern politician. Why did you step down? Everyone was poised to vote for you. You didn’t talk much about it at Christmas when you visited.”

  Jackie shook her head, fingers intertwining and playing over each other. She answered while watching as his father started paring and slicing several vegetables, two fruits, and some scraps of fish, preparing to fry them up in a spicy-sweet sauce with Japanese characters all over the label. Plum sauce, probably. “That’s because there wasn’t anything to talk about. Now I know that it was because the precogs were all having glimpses of the coming days, and that my face was present in several of them, working alongside the V’Dan.”

  “Oh. I suppose that makes sense . . . Aloha, makua hine,” he added as his mother came into the room, Alani trailing behind. “Did you have a good meeting?”

  “We did.” Hyacinth, an older, slightly plumper version of Jacaranda but with a bit more of their mother’s features in her face, went straight to her sister and hugged her even before Jackie could stand up from the stool. “Aloha, kaikaina. You’re here for a week?”

  Jackie nodded. She realized her hands were fiddling together, twining and untwining, clasping and twisting. That wasn’t like her; she gestured—everyone gestured when they talked—but she didn’t normally fidget. Pulling them apart, she dismounted from the stool and embraced her sibling. “Aloha, Hyacinth. Yes, I am. I’ll be commuting a lot, so I’d like to borrow one of your hovercycles while I’m on O’ahu. It’s cheaper to park it at the university or at the airport than a whole car.”

  “You can take Ahe’s,” her brother-in-law offered.

  “Hey!” Ahe protested, frowning.

&nbs
p; (It is time to sleep, here. I am glad we can still communicate from this far away,) Li’eth told her. (The others are good company, but it feels strange to not have you here.)

  “You, young man, have midterms to study for, so you have no reason to go flying around town,” his mother reminded him, poking her son lightly in the arm. “Taking the school bus won’t kill you, either.”

  (Agreed. Sleep well, Li’eth,) she told him.

  “It could ruin my social status,” Ahe argued back. “Having to take the bus?”

  (And you.)

  Not able to let that one go unanswered, Jackie scoffed at her nephew. She was used to multiple conversations taking place on different levels, and even in different languages, though thankfully there were only two to follow at the moment. Or rather, just the one now. “Hardly. Not when you have actual data on the V’Dan. You’ll be beating off the science geeks with your surfboard by the end of the week. Girls and boys.”

  He blushed. His mother eyed him, then hugged him with an arm, pecking him on the cheek. “Go help your sister get ready for bed.”

  “Awww, but makua!” Alani whined.

  “Don’t ‘but mother’ me. Off to bed with you. If you want to go surfing with your auntie in the morning, you will need your sleep,” Hyacinth told her child.

  “He’e nalu ‘apopo, yaaaay!”

  “I suppose you’ll need a proper papa he’enalu?” Ahe asked, nudging his sister toward the front of the house and the stairs to the upper floor. “I got that new one for Christmas, so you could use my old ’board. If you’re going to use my hovercycle, you might as well use my ’board. “

  “I was going to ask you if I could,” Jackie agreed. “Thanks, Ahe. Aloha po,” she added, as the pair disappeared down the hall.

  “Aloha po, Auntie!” Alani called back before they vanished from hearing range as well as sight.

  Maleko exchanged a look with his wife. The spatula in his hand danced through the diced vegetables, fruit, and bits of fish in the lightly oiled pan, filling the air with a fruity, spicy, seafood scent. Jackie’s stomach rumbled again. Her sister moved to fetch her a glass of juice, poured it, and set it on the island counter, and looked at her husband.