Being Alien

by Rebecca Ore

  Jackie said, “Well, we won’t walk far. But you did want to ask questions, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to be more than Support?” Jackie asked.

  I realized the Barcons had bugged my apartment or listened to us through my skull computer’s link to my auditory centers.

  “What’s Support?” Marianne asked.

  “Support is not officer or investigator. Helpers. Married women who tend Karst businesses, raise children.”

  “Do I have any bargaining power in this?”

  “Tom’s first mate was unsuitable. He didn’t operate at maximum efficiency because of worries,” S’um said. The two Barcons discussed us in Barq. I heard fragments of my Academy name, “Red Clay,” and “Marianne” bouncing around in their speech, phonemes English rather than their own.

  “Your first mate?” Marianne said to me.

  “Yeah, Yangchenla. Tibetan ancestors. We were too different from each other.’’

  Marianne laughed.

  “Marianne, stop it. We were very different.”

  “And you and I aren’t?”

  “We’re both from the same country, same century.”

  S’um interrupted, “Marianne needs work in linguistics?”

  “Yes,” Marianne said, “Marianne needs work in linguistics. If Marianne is to bring a social group, then Marianne’s sister needs weaving work and her husband needs music gigs.”

  “So perfect,” S’um said. “No hidden agendas?”

  Marianne asked, “Must I bear children?”

  “You can if you wish, two without discussion.’’

  “No hidden agendas, then.” Marianne said. She sighed the kind of sigh you twist with your tongue, changed its pitch. “But I haven’t discussed this with Molly and Sam.’’

  I thought this was too easy. If they could promise Marianne an Institute position, then why couldn’t Yangchenla’s brother have gone to the Academy? We sat down and the Barcons began pulling squat cans—bare metal, no labels—out of their pack. S’um handed two with zip top lids to Marianne and me. S’um said, “We always eat out of cans."

  Marianne said, “Because they’re sterile.”

  Jackie pulled out a can opener and a Bic lighter, flamed a third can’s lid and the opener, then opened it. S’um put a fourth can in something that looked like a thermos, turned a knob. Marianne pulled back the top of the can and sniffed. She asked, “What is this?”

  Jackie said, “Complete human diet.”

  I pulled back the lid of mine and saw chunks of meat and lumps of white—noodles, dumplings, potatoes?—embedded in a glossy brown gravy. “I need a spoon,” I said.

  Jackie gave me a spoon, handle forward, then gave Marianne one. “Would you like them warmed?’’

  “Yes, please,” Marianne said, S’um took his can out of the heater and slid hers in. He wrapped it in a dish towel when he took it out. As she took her first bite, I handed him mine.

  “It’s Campbell’s Chunky Beef.” Marianne said.

  “Supplemented to be completely nutritious,” Jackie told her. “We would like to meet Molly and Samuel Turner. Can we come to your house?"

  Marianne said, “I suppose. Will you tell then you’re uhyalla, aliens, whatever?’’

  “We shouldn’t until we clear your agenda with Karst,” Jackie said, picking up the cans with tongs and putting them and the can heater in the pack. She handed each of us a square of foil and said, “Wrap your spoons in these please.”

  We did, and she put them in a larger foil pouch. Marianne said, “Do you need to be that sterile here?”

  “We don’t want to get into lethal habits.”

  “Okay.” She looked back at me. “When you come over, bring Tom.”

  “You trust Tom. Wonderful,” Sum said. We went walking back down toward the car, weird little quail with solitary feathers bobbing over their eyes flushing out from the brush as we passed.

  We left the Barcons’ car parked in my apartment parking place and walked down to Marianne’s. In bright light, the Barcons looked even more alien.

  Reeann opened the door and said, “I forgot. Molly and Sam went to the city to discuss a wall-hanging commission. But they should be back soon.”

  “May we see the house, then?” S’um asked.

  I was curious myself because all I’d seen had been the foyer with the staircase going up behind Molly and her husband when I dropped by before.

  “Sure. It’s an integral urban home from the early nineties. We compost our wastes and have a garden and fish pond outback.’’

  “We do much the same,” Jackie said.

  “The Clivus Multrum is a very efficient design. “You use a Clivus Multrum?”

  “We copied it on our planets,” the male said. “We’ll owe much for the design use when contact is made.’’

  “The kitchen’s in back,” Marianne said, sliding two paper-covered panels into wall pockets. The back of the kitchen was an attached greenhouse, full of black barrels and red clay pots with tomato vines sprawling out of them, mint, parsley. I saw three bins by the sink—metal, paper, organics. By the stove, a small metal can labeled meat scraps.

  “We recycle meat scraps through chickens,” Marianne said.

  The Barcons wiggled their noses and touched each other, showing more excitement than I’d ever seen from Barcons, chattering away in Barq. The male said, “Less outside system penetration this way?”

  “Less waste. We’ve got a solar hot water heater, passive solar with the black barrels and a blower system that stores heat in the basement in rocks.”

  “Where does the water come from?” the female asked.

  “From the Berkeley main water line, but I recycle water through the plants and then catch condensation from the greenhouse panes.” She walked into the greenhouse arid pointed to a trough and tubes. We collect it and run it out to the garden.”

  S’um looked at the sink, then went around back. From the sink drain, we heard his voice, “Do you only use your own composted shit manures on the garden?”

  “Visitors can contribute.”

  He said something in Barq and Jackie put the stopper back in the drain. After a while, he came out. “Our parasites won’t affect you,” he said as he washed his hands, “We compost most carefully,” he said, “and I’m sure you do, too, in a city.”

  “Do you want to see the solar hot water heater on the roof?” Marianne asked.

  “Can it run full boil?” Jackie asked.

  "I know of one design that can, if you have, sunlight enough.”

  “We’d like to see that design,” S’um said.

  “I never knew you all used composting toilets,” I said to the Barcons.

  “Mandatory to sterilize urine and shit,” he said, “before they leave the home space.’’

  “Would you like tea?” Marianne said. “We could make some from fresh mint, each gathering our own.”

  “You are quick to be understanding,” the female said. “Our security habits make most vr’ech nervous.”

  “I hope I’m uhyalla to you now.”

  “You have a good ear,” Sum said. The female said something to him in their language. He added, “But then you are a native linguist.’’

  They shambled out through the greenhouse door to the garden after her. While they gathered mint, I went into the living room where I saw a harpsichord. I’d read about them on Karst, in books smuggled there from Berkeley.

  I stood and looked at it, touched one of the keys gently, an odd sound; though I’d thought I’d heard it before. Not live, on tape, over the radio.

  The door opened, and Sam Turner came in. He looked at me and said, “The tracker who wanted to paste a note to the burglars on our door, ‘Hey, they’re not home at all.’”

  “Do you play this?’’

  “Yeah, does it surprise you? He came over, his hand like a blade in the air twisting to get me to move stepped aside, and he sat down and began to play Bach, something I�
�d recognized from PBS radio stations. One brushy eyebrow arched up as his thin, long fingers flexed across the keyboard, keys black and white in reverse of a piano.

  S’um came in. Beside Sam, the Barcon looked extremely alien—multi-jointed jaws, skin texture minutely pebbled, nose bulbous where even most blacks’ noses are thin, tight below the eyes. Sam looked up and asked, “What are you?”

  S’um looked at me. Jackie and Marianne came in from the kitchen. “Where’s Molly?” Marianne asked.

  “She stopped by Fiberous Distractions. Who are these people? CIA, FBI?” He reached slowly under the harpsichord strings.

  “We’re hard to kill. And I thought there was a metal block on the sounding board,” S’um said.

  “Cracker, do you have anything to do with these people being here?” Sam began to play jittery Bach, spider music.

  S’um spoke before I could. “We have a job offer. You can play music any way you want to with us.’’

  ‘‘They’re friends of John Amber’s,” Marianne said.

  Sam raised a single eyebrow again. Jackie flexed her jaw joints. Sam asked, “Illegal aliens?”

  “Not humans,” S’um said.

  ‘‘You’re not from outer space. We both know that’s impossible. You’re CIA."

  “We travel through space folds. That’s the simplest explanation.”

  “Yeah? You can’t let us walk around Berkeley saying, ‘We’ve been privately contacted by aliens and they’ve offered me a job playing harpsichord for them.’”

  “Yes, we can,” Jackie, the female Barcon, said. “Authorities will think you’re insane, which is convenient for us if you’re not willing to accompany Tom and Marianne back to the base planet.”

  S’um took the gun out from under the harpsichord strings and said, “Too small a caliber.”

  Molly, two huge bundles of fibers in her arms, came in the door about this time and stared from Sam to the Barcon Sum. The differences seemed utterly vast now—scars where the sixth fingers on both of them were removed, funny muscles in the face. She turned to me and said, “Why are you here?”

  Jackie looked at Molly’s skirt and said, “We’re looking for some volunteers in an exploration. You could earn the equivalent of $40,000 a year spinning and weaving.”

  “For aliens?” Sam said, almost choking. “Aliens wear handspun?”

  “It’s a luxury item with them,” I said.

  Marianne heard the teakettle whistle and went back to turn it off. Molly shuddered and followed her back.

  Sam said, “What do you want us for?”

  ‘‘To increase the human gene pool on our planet. Representatives were here about 500 years ago,” S’um said, not mentioning the space wars.

  “For a zoo?”

  ‘‘No, ask Tom.’’

  “I’ve been trained in diplomacy, making contact with new species, coordinating trade exchange.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve been trained in classical music.”

  “They let me use what I’ve learned.”

  For some reason that stung him. Sam began picking out jazz riffs on the harpsichord. His hands trembled.

  “May I play with you?” S’um asked.

  “Better not break down my bench.”

  S’um knelt down at the bass keys, huge fuzz showing down his collar as he bent his head. His body proportions were different than human—his legs shorter, torso longer. He spread his big fingers and laid them carefully on the keys, seeing if the tips would sprawl over more than one key. They fit, but barely. He wiggled his nose at Sam. The human, sweating now, arched both eyebrows and began to play with his right hand, his left curled up against his groin.

  The Barcon played the same melody but in a lower range, then reversed it.

  Sam shifted his lip corners slightly and brought his left hand up to the keyboard. He played and left the music dangling. S’um reached up the keyboard and completed the phrase, reduced the tension, musical and otherwise.

  Then he played a skittery piece, missed one note. His jaw wiggled and he corrected himself.

  Sam played something tentative; S’um transposed bits of it into something faster. They both began playing together.

  Arguing, the women came out of the kitchen, Jackie holding four teacups. Molly stared at the two males playing the harpsichord and said to me, “And are you alien, too?”

  “No, I’m from Virginia.”

  “You humans were wasting him,” Jackie said, setting the teacups down on a banged-up redwood burl coffee table. “This is okay for the cups?”

  “Sure.”

  Sum quickly ran his dark index finger along Sam’s sweaty jaw and sniffed his fingertip. “You’re still tense. Would beer help?”

  “You drink beer?” Sam got up and began to pace.

  Molly looked at Marianne.

  “Tom, go get beer,” S’um stood up and fished out a wallet. He handed me a twenty. “Olympia.”

  “God, they drink Oly,” Molly said, her voice harsh and wavery.

  I left, feeling weird, like a teenager who watches parents discipline children, knowing too much, identifying with neither. If I’d gotten involved with the counterculture in Floyd, I could have learned to live in an integral urban house, moved to Berkeley, lived a simple life among my own species. Too late for that now. Past Milvia and onto Shattuck, I went into the Co-op, the fluorescents cold overhead, the shadows harsh. As I fished four six-packs of Olympia out of the beer cooler, an image of Black Amber kicking a worshipful Molly off her knees rose to my mind. My kind, but I couldn’t blame them for being nervous. The checkout clerk put the six-packs in a box so I could carry them easier.

  I was nervous, too. I’d never seen a Barcon be personable. As I walked back down Cedar, I saw Alex’s car in my parking lot. He came out from the entranceway and waved for me to come over.

  When we could hear each other, I said, “We’re all down at the Schweigman sisters'."

  “All?” Alex asked, a pseudo pocket radio in his hand. He fiddled with the dial and answered himself, “Yes, all.’’

  “Come on down,” I said. “It’s getting weird.”

  ‘‘A party might be premature," Alex said. “Carstairs had his security clearance revoked.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Let’s go down and talk about it." Alex took the box from me and began striding off with it. I had to jog to keep up.

  When we knocked on the door, Alex stood by the hinges, away from the peephole, then came in when the door opened.

  “It’s the bigot from the bar,” Marianne said.

  “I’m not a bigot,” Alex said in English, then in Karst One, “This meeting is not a good idea. Carstairs lost his security clearance.”

  The two Barcons looked at each other, then at Sam, Molly, and Marianne, who’d moved together toward the kitchen. Jackie said, “We need your cooperation, please.”

  Marianne asked, “What about Carstairs?”

  “He was a Lawrence Lab weapons designer,” Alex said. He opened a beer and drained it. I noticed he had no Adams apple in his throat.

  “KGB-manipulated DNA recombinant creatures, then,” Molly said. “Fake aliens.”

  “No,” Alex said. “Can’t you believe we’re aliens? And we don’t need your piddling weapons. Jerry Carstairs is my friend. I…”

  “You weren’t trying to help him,” Sum said, folding his arms across his chest which was too rounded for human.

  Marianne’s eyes darted to me, to Alex, then to the door.

  S’um went to the phone, called a number, and put the receiver against his skull computer, then said, “Check.’’

  The phone whined, then went dead, and S’um hung it up. “Nothing on Carstairs that involves us. They probably revoked his clearance because he resigned from the weapons project.”

  “If Carstairs is your friend, bigot,” Marianne said, “I’d like to meet him.”

  “My name is Alex.”

  “Okay, Alex.”

  The Barcons p
icked up two six-packs. Jackie asked, “Is there a bedroom upstairs?’’

  “Yeah, I’ll show you,” Molly said.

  As they disappeared upstairs, Alex grinned and said, “They have to get away from us to get drunk.”

  Molly came back shortly, clumping down the stairs, and said, “They closed the door on me.”

  “Leave them alone for a while,” I said “Being around us is a strain.”

  “We need more beer,” Alex announced, taking another can. “I can get it.”

  Sam said, “No, I’ll go.”

  “Can I go, too?” Molly asked, getting up and standing close to her husband.

  Alex said, “We’ll still be here when you get back.” He got up and played what I recognized as an Ahram music motif on the harpsichord, but the notes were slightly skewed, as though the harpsichord wasn’t tuned for Ahram music.

  Molly and Sam hugged each other. Alex turned his head slightly toward them, then looked away fast. He said, as they opened the door, “Take your time.”

  “I’ll stay here with them,” Marianne said. Molly said, “Oh, Marianne, do you have to?”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Alex said. He sat down on a green velvet loveseat, sprawled out over the whole thing.

  Molly looked at all of us as Sam went out, then she practically jumped through the doorway after him. The front door banged closed, keys whizzing in the locks.

  Alex sighed. He told Reeann, “I’m not a bigot to human blacks."

  She said, “I like those two…”

  “Barcons,” Alex said. “The male is their top wild sapient tamer, brilliant.”

  “Don’t be nasty,” I said.

  “But he is and both institutes trained him. Don’t worry, this house isn’t bugged. Yet.”

  “Who trained you?”

  “Analytics. I watch a lot of late-night television, waiting for you to stop playing alien space horror movies.” He sighed. “And you think I’m a bigot.”

  Marianne squeezed her arms around herself and said, “I’m not a bigot. I’m not having hysterics, being in my house with aliens, outnumbered, huge.” She heard herself, laughed, then forced her arms to dangle.

  Alex pointed to the beer at his feet and said, “Drink.” I twisted two cans away from the six-pack, popped them, and gave one to Marianne. We both sat down, me on the floor, Marianne on the harpsichord bench. I asked Alex, “Can you get drunk?”