Being Alien

by Rebecca Ore

  “Marianne, don’t you need me?”

  “I said I did. I just wondered about Domiecan males, why you don’t talk about him.”

  Agate said, “We all have different ecologies. Human and Jerek babies are helpless.”

  “I’m glad Domiecan babies aren’t,” the pregnant pugface said. She crooned, “Baby baby,” and stuck her huge belly up off the chair and laid her hands over her navel.

  Was she going into labor now? I felt like I was the alien and they were all of a species: pregnant females, a single word, not two in Karst One. I stood there in my officer’s uniform wondering if Jereks and Domiecans had morning sickness. “Are you all having males?” I asked, sounding dumb in my own ears. Marianne knew about the fifth month that she was carrying a boy.

  “No,” Agate said. She stood up, belly breasts squashed down against support cups in her hip leathers, smashed by her pregnant belly.

  I wondered how much pregnancy alone hurt, much less labor. “I think I’ll go back to my bedroom, or would you rather have me go out for something, Marianne?”

  “It’s all right, Tom” Marianne said. “We’re still the same people we were. You could talk to us before, sit down and chat now."

  “We delivered her baby,” Marianne said after she’d helped with the Dorniecan’s labor. “And it got up and walked around. Tom, it was weird—a baby walking two hours after delivery, walking up to Bir and finding her breast, then sniffing at us. She had to call it off.”

  “Pig babies are like that,” I said.

  Marianne shuddered so hard I thought she was going into labor. She said, “You forget they’re not human.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They aren’t human. They aren’t really our kind of mammals.”

  “It’s all right, Marianne.”

  “Her hip bones came apart, but they snapped right back together again. I thought she…” Marianne laughed, shuddered again, and sat down beside me, not reaching for me but rather huddled against me. “Tom, be there for me.”

  “When you have our baby?”

  “Yes. Yangchenla’s off with the Tibetans.”

  Oh, not that I’d sired the baby, but that I was the same species, a second human in the birth room. But then, that’s why I got involved with Yangchenla when I was the only modern human around. I hugged her and said, “Sure,” somewhat uneasy.

  “Do you ever want to go back?” she asked, her body relaxing, curving up against mine. Her shoulders were thin and bony, very odd over her pregnant belly.

  “Sometimes I wish I could change a lot of things.”

  “I want to go back. Karriaagzh said we could, for a visit, just a visit,” Marianne said, “after the baby’s born.”

  “When did you talk to Karriaagzh?”

  “Last week, when you were out. I wanted to go back for the delivery, but Karriaagzh insisted that I work with the pregnancy group. Tom, we are a bit xenophobic. You haven’t been to see Ersh.”

  “Xenophobic? You and Me? With Karriaagzh and Black Amber in and out of the apartment? You might be uneasy; that’s natural for pregnant creatures.” Wrong thing to say. I felt her stiffen.

  “Karriaagzh is so concerned,” she said, “his throat glands are developing. I visualize him regurgitating into my child, Tom.” She said in English, “Not into my human baby.”

  I said, “We’ll go to Earth then, as soon as Karriaagzh and Black Amber let us, for a few months, maybe.” I became uneasy as soon as I promised that.

  “You withdrew from the other sapients, too, Tom, when contact with Isa and Wrengee went wrong. Humor me.” She sighed as she got up, pushing off from the sofa with her hands, awkward, and went into her room. I heard her crying and felt helpless. Warren’s head being rebuilt by the Barcons, Marianne going to be delivered by nonhuman females. And I hadn’t been to see Ersh. More than little twinges of xenophobia.

  I went with Marianne to the Institute of Medicine where the Barcons organized and monitored the pregnancy groups. The Institute building for midwifery was cream colored, with faint blue and green marbling to it. Inside, the floors were synthetic mats, soft underfoot, running down wide white halls. Marianne said, “Here,” and we opened a door to the room where her group met. Bir, the pugfaced Domiecan, stood with her child, cunning as a dog, on a leash. An olive colored bird like Travertine held a bundle of fabric, her utterly helpless baby that couldn’t even keep its own body warm. She pushed her beak down into the bundle and hummed. Then her throat surged. The still pregnant others, Agate and a Barcon female among them, sat in chairs, or reclined on floor mats.

  “You want to help?” the Barcon female asked me.

  “I’d prefer just to help with Marianne. It’s a custom among our culture groups. Not mine, but Marianne said California radical fathers helped with deliveries.”

  They looked at each other, almost the way contact and diplomatic teams tended to do after leaving the new species they’d worked with, eyes checking out eyes to see how we’d all taken the deal. The Barcon female rumbled, “Marianne is upset with us, our involvement in her pregnancy. She needs us to help her get over this fear.”

  “Yangchenla had hers with just human help,” Marianne said.

  “Dangerous, the Barcon said. “We often have to repair primitive wombs. The babies die, or are murdered if the family wants a different sex baby.

  “Her little girl is fine,” Marianne said.

  Agate said, “Since Chalk will be at my delivery for the first milk, let’s allow Tom to be with Marianne.”

  Black Amber watched Marianne as though my human wife was a most strange creature, swollen up in the belly, still the same person, but tired all the time now—almost as tired as she’d been during the first three months when the fetus was locking his connections to her womb.

  “You/Linguist have been invaded,” Black Amber said, her hand stretched toward Marianne’s belly, the fur on the long fingers sweaty. “Wombs protect from the placental construction your nymphs build. Placentas run wild in unwombed bodies/space.”

  “If I’m so disgusting now, why do you keep coming over? Surely you’ve seen pregnant placentals before.”

  “You need host wombs.” Black Amber licked her fingers with a dry tongue. I looked down at my sponsor’s own belly—pregnant yourself, twice, Black Amber, and no one’s going to take the nymph this time.

  “Want to look at it?” Marianne said to Black Amber. She reached for her tunic hem, lifted it up. Her navel was protruding now on top of her blue veined belly, a small mound on top of a great one. Black Amber touched her own belly, shuddered, and ran her hand down inside her tunic pants, stroking her Gwyng birth hairs below the pouch hole. Amber’s eyes opened so wide I thought she’d pulled back the bone plates around the sockets. Marianne dropped her tunic top as the baby squirmed inside her.

  Black Amber said, “I’ve seen those bellies before, but not so hairless/colorless. Hostile to show(question).” She wrapped her arms around her body, webs making ridges against her uniform top. “But I am not hostile to you.” Her eyes grew glossier with the oil Gwyngs lubricate their eyes with, cry with.

  “You want to see me in labor?” Marianne said.

  “No/yes/no/confusion.”

  “I don’t want you to see me in labor.”

  “Early stages will be done at home/monitoring my protégés as sponsor,” Black Amber said. “Linguist, I, you, pouch kin through my hurt/wounding (on your planet). Many years ago, yes/true, but ah, my little placental, you reject/hurts.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marianne said, “but I’d like you to leave now.”

  First from one hand, then the other, Black Amber smeared thumb gland secretions on Marianne’s forehead, finally just furious with my human wife. I grabbed Black Amber by the left elbow as she pulled away. Marianne began sneezing as she stumbled into a chair, sat down heavily in it, then went to the stranger’s bathroom. We heard water running,

  “Frustrating,” Black Amber said, her elbow still in my hand.

 
“Why did you mark her face?”

  “To put my hands on her where she thinks,” She pulled herself away and called for the elevator, stood facing the door as if she’d left already. I watched her a second, then programmed our door to lock after she left and went to Marianne.

  “Monitoring me,” Marianne said. She reached down for the soap again, lathered her hands, and scrubbed her forehead again.

  “If you keep the thumb gland secretion on, Gwyngs will avoid you.” I heard the elevator doors opening for Black Amber out in the main room.

  “She’s going to show up when I’m going into labor; she’s monitoring me—Tom, do something.”

  “She wanted to touch you where you thought.”

  “That was hostile. I’ve studied Gwyng physiology.”

  She sneezed. “Tom, she doesn’t even try to keep her babies alive.”

  “She doesn’t want healthy pouched nymphs to die.”

  “Why doesn’t she brood it herself in her own fucking pouch then? Or are Gwyngs too parasitical to mother their own children?” She stared around at all the strange fixtures for other species in this guest bathroom and said, “Cloacal bitch, pisses through the birth canal.” Then she laughed and said, “What would one more uhyalla pregnant or postpartum female matter? Let her see me. I’ll freak her out. She’s xenophobic about placentas—let her eat mine.”

  “Marianne!”

  “That’s what alternative birth centers in Berkeley do, serve up fried placentas to the mothers and birth guests.”

  She began laughing so hard I thought I ought to hit her to calm her down, but she was pregnant. I grabbed her shoulders and then went side to side against her still muscular flank, hoping she didn’t know this was a Gwyng embrace. Strands of her long hair were plastered to her face. When I pulled them away, she said, “Oh, Tom, I’m so tired of being pregnant. I wish it were over."

  Yeah? After the baby was born, we’d be parents forever.

  Our apartment was great for pacing with the atrium hall, the kitchen in back, the big room in front. Marianne could pace in circles or back and forth or pretend she was going to the kitchen for tea or milk, or even actually go fix tea and come pacing back with the teacup warming her hands. The Barcons forbade her group the use of caffeine or alcohol, so Marianne drank peppermint tea, lots of it, then paced until she had to use the toilet, often, since the baby cramped her bladder.

  I didn’t know whether to stay with her or leave her alone those last weeks, but I figured I’d get in less trouble if I kept her company. Agate and Chalk, both sets of breasts swollen over their loin straps, stayed with her a few nights. Marianne was teaching Agate English.

  “Whof nesht? “Agate asked in what she tried to make English.

  “Next? Maybe we’ll go into labor together? What happens then?” Marianne said, continuing to talk English.

  “Bosh…both…group big enough…split.” Agate said.

  “But I want you to be with me,” Marianne said. I wondered if she meant it, then realized she’d learned Karst One from these people when she was first a stranger here.

  Neither Jerek sat up straight now, but lounged in their chairs, spines curling their bellies and breasts forward. Agate was not so hugely pregnant as Marianne. Jereks, I thought, must be born tiny if she’s as far along as Marianne.

  “It’s odd,” I said. “All over the universe, do all sapients give birth as do other creatures?”

  “Except Gwyngs,” Chalk said.

  “Nobody’s made artificial wombs?”

  “Yes, but they’re so expensive, prone to mechanical problems, very expensive. Only very decadent Jereks use them,” Agate said.

  “We also have some cut from male babies,” Chalk added, “when the female dies and ova are saved.”

  “It can be done with humans, too,” Agate said as though I ought to volunteer now. “The baby makes the placenta on the abdominal wall. The male belly must be supported by sling clothes, then the baby is cut out and the placenta scraped away.”

  “Not customary for human males,” Chalk said to Agate. Marianne was smiling at me as if to say, now you know how weird it can be in a birth group.

  When the Jereks left, Marianne began pacing again. I asked, “Do you want to take a walk outside?”

  “No, Tom. Do they really know anything about human childbirth?”

  “The Barcons work on everyone.”

  “They destroyed the pigment cells in Karriaagzh’s skin.”

  I said, “Ask the Tibetans if the Barcons have ever delivered one of their women or patched up a human womb.”

  “I want to go to a human hospital. I never believed in home deliveries.” She tried to giggle. “I feel like I’m constipated. I’ve got a blood tester here. Tom!” Her voice—she was in labor now.

  “Where is it?”

  “In the top drawer of my dresser.”

  I went and found a steel grey box with a hinged cover and brought it to Marianne. She opened the cover. Inside were panels of diodes and a plastic-capped needle. She pried off the plastic and stuck herself with the needle, held her fingers on it for a few seconds. The machine clicked, then was as silent as a battery watch. The second diode from the top lit up.

  “I’ve got oxytocin in my blood stream. This is it.” She pulled her finger off the needle. “Tom, start timing my contractions.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, well, I guess that’s the first one.”

  I looked at my watch, then said, “why don’t we call your birth group coordinator now.

  “Not yet. Tom.”

  “Was that another contraction?”

  “No, I’m going to try to go to the bathroom.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?

  “Tom, I’ll leave the door open, okay?” She sounded annoyed. I noticed when she stood up again that the pregnant bulge had dropped. She saw where I was looking and put one hand under her breasts, then the other hand under it. “Definitely dropped.”

  While Marianne was in the bathroom I typed messages to Chalk and Agate, both at the Rector’s Offices and at their residences. She came out arid looked at me funny, her face sweaty, her hair in tangled black strings. “My water broke.”

  “Oh?”

  She went to the computer and flicked it to voice mode, called her birth group. Then she said, “Tom, contraction.”

  “Is that fast, fifteen minutes?”

  “Shit. I’m calling the birth center for transport.” She started pacing again, in circles on the big room’s rug. I knew not to suggest that she sit down—pregnant creatures were restless. Even on the farm, I’d learned that.

  The elevator stopped on our floor—two women from Marianne’s birth group, Bir and the Barcon, came out with a gurney. I was relieved not to see Bir’s precocial son. Marianne wailed, “Where’s Agate?”

  “She’s coming,” Bir said “‘She’s going to be there.”

  “Get on the stretcher or walk down with us,” the Barcon said.

  “You’re experimenting with me.”

  “We’ve worked with human women enough on repairs to know what should be,” the Barcon said, “and one of my species had done some human obstetrics while on your planet.

  “No real experience,” Marianne said. “I’ll walk into that elevator.”

  “Fine,” the Barcon said, as if she had tranquilizers ready in case it wasn’t. Bir made what Domiecans must consider to be soothing noises, like a purring bulldog, the noise fluttering out of her bent-up face.

  Marianne braced herself against the elevator’s back wall, hands on her knees. She went pale. Still fifteen minutes apart. “We better hurry,” she said.

  “First birth, human females generally labor for up to sixteen hours,” the Barcon said.

  “Well, I’m not going to,” Marianne said. She straightened unsteadily. I got in and held her shoulder.

  The elevator door slid up. Marianne’s eyes wobbled in their sockets as if she were looking at the door most closely.

&
nbsp; We got into the electric ambulance—Marianne refused to lie down so, the other women loaded the gurney on the roof and raised the back seats.

  At the birth building, I saw Chalk and Agate waiting with a vase full of flowers. Marianne smiled and walked up to Agate, said, “Thanks. What kind of room did you get me?”

  “One with human comforts, come on now,” Agate said, taking Marianne’s hand. Marianne looked behind at me to make sure I was following.

  The birth place was a suite, opening up on one side to a medically outfitted surgical room that it shared with two other birth suites. The birth suite proper had two small rooms—one for labor, one for delivery The labor room was a miniature Earth living room with a fake fireplace, newly installed ceiling beams like Marianne had had in her Berkeley house’s bedrooms, two leather couches like Warren bought with drug money. The Barcon opened a refrigerator and put a pitcher of cracked ice on a walnut table half the size of a card table. One corner was blocked-off with a toilet cubicle. There was no door between this room and the labor room—I could see several obstetrical devices—a table with stirrups and an obstetrical stool, the gleaming metal speculum, an incubator. Still, even the delivery room had homey touches, wooden walls, an overstuffed chair in one comer, drapes. Marianne had told me earlier all of it was sterilized.

  Bir left. The olive bird female wheeled in an incubator with her own baby in it, lifted him up, wrapped him in a blanket, fed him, his tiny arms flailing around her beak, then took him into the toilet box.

  “She licks him clean,” Marianne said. The, bird came back out, tucked her baby back in the incubator, on his belly. He looked very much like a newly hatched chick, except for the size and the arms.

  “Tom,” the bird said, "I am Mercury. I will help.” She looked over at the incubator. Her baby twitched his eyes and looked back at her.

  I wondered where the father was, if the males of this bird species helped with the young, but I didn’t say anything, just looked at Chalk.

  Agate took Marianne into the labor room to check her cervical dilation. When they came out, Marianne was wearing a tunic down to her calves, snapped up the front, her nipples puckered up under it—fear, not arousal.