by E. M. Foner
“You didn’t answer the question, Dring,” Kelly rebuked him sternly. “I’ll bet they can’t hear you either. That’s why Libby thinks I’m always talking to myself!”
“Well, technically they can hear us,” Dring prevaricated. “Technically, they can see us as well.”
“How old are you, Dring?” Kelly asked directly.
“Very old?” he answered tentatively, as if he were the one asking the questions.
“As in, older than the Stryx?” Kelly pushed him.
“Not in this particular manifestation,” Dring hedged. “Maybe I should just come back another time.”
“You’re one of their Makers, aren’t you?” Kelly exclaimed, with an odd mixture of awe and accusation. “You didn’t leave the Stryx and not tell them where you were going. You made it so they couldn’t see you anymore.”
“We asked them to ignore us,” Dring admitted, his shoulders slumping as he capitulated. “I suppose they came up with the story that we went away and left them to explain it to themselves.”
“Because you got bored with them?” Kelly asked incredulously, recalling Gryph’s explanation of why the Stryx lost contact with their Makers.
“Nothing of the sort,” Dring asserted, recovering a measure of his usual poise. “The Stryx turned out to be more interesting than our wildest dreams. They moved beyond our knowledge of science and technology so rapidly that we couldn’t even begin to understand their innovations.”
“I don’t see the problem,” Kelly said, with a look at Dorothy and Metoo. “Isn’t being surpassed by one’s children every parent’s dream?”
“Surpassed, yes. Smothered, no,” Dring replied sadly. “Imagine if Dorothy watched you every second of the day, rushing in to ask what you wanted if you made a motion to stand up.”
“I could get used to that,” Joe observed from the couch.
“Imagine if Dorothy watched you sleeping so she could wake you up if you had a bad dream,” Dring pressed on.
“Yuck,” Kelly acknowledged.
“Our Stryx would guess what we were thinking and supply the answers before we could even ask the questions. And if we refused their help, they were hurt, just like children. We tried to work it out between us for a long time, but they loved us too much to leave us alone. In the end, we had to ask them not to see us,” Dring concluded sadly.
“But so many years have passed,” Kelly argued. “And the Stryx are changing. Just look at Jeeves and Metoo.”
“Yes, that’s what brought me to Union Station and why I rented from Joe,” Dring confessed. “Our people have always followed the Stryx closely, and I was delegated to come and investigate the changes and their relations with humans.”
“Tricky bugger,” Joe spoke from the couch. “And have you come to any conclusions?”
“My primary conclusion is that I’m not a very good spy,” Dring admitted.
“I have diplomatic implants,” Kelly pointed out. “My contract allows the Stryx to listen in on me all of the time. If I could guess who you are, I’m sure Libby or Gryph would have figured it out long ago just from my side of the conversation.”
“It’s not that they are blind to us or can’t detect the sound waves we produce when speaking,” Dring explained. “They selectively ignore anything that would make them aware of our presence. It’s one of the advantages of a stable solution to the self-awareness equations that are at the heart of their artificial intelligence. They aren’t bothered by the sorts of neuroses most biologicals would suffer in the same situation.”
“Libby?” Kelly called suddenly. “Are you listening to this conversation?”
“I wouldn’t call it a conversation,” Libby responded over the ice harvester’s speakers. “It sounds more like you’ve made a few random observations to Joe, who doesn’t seem to understand what you’re saying any better than I do.”
“You mean I sound like an idiot,” Kelly groused, with an evil look at Dring. “Thanks. I’ll talk to you at work tomorrow.”
“I truly am sorry about causing problems for you,” Dring apologized. “I’d even be willing to reveal myself and try explaining it to your Stryx friends, but after all of these years, I don’t know where to start.”
“Start with him,” Kelly said, pointing at Metoo.
Dring hesitated for a minute, and then he approached the children.
“Hello, Dorothy. Would you mind if I interrupted your game?”
“Hi, Uncle Dring!” Dorothy said, and looked up at the kindly dinosaur. “It’s not a REAL game, we’re just playing.”
“Thank you,” Dring replied. “Metoo,” he spoke to the Stryx, who didn’t appear to hear him. “You can see me if you want to.”
Metoo looked up sharply and asked, “Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been here for some time, Metoo, and I’ve visited before. But I was hiding, like Dorothy’s mother hid her hand earlier.” The explanation was too complicated for Dorothy, but Metoo nodded his head gravely. “I helped make the original Stryx, a long, long time ago,” Dring continued his explanation. “So I’m sort of a grandfather to you.”
Metoo took the news in stride and didn’t appear to be overly curious, but Dorothy jumped up and hugged Dring.
“You’re Metoo’s grandfather?” she asked excitedly, having understood that part of the conversation. “His family never visits because they’re too big to fit!”
“Metoo is the offspring of Stryx Farth, who built Corner Station,” Kelly interjected. “We explained to Dorothy that Farth would like to come and visit Metoo, but Corner Station is the same size as Union, so it wouldn’t fit inside.”
Dorothy ran from Dring to Metoo and whispered to the little Stryx, who nodded his head.
“Would you come with me to the next Parents Day at kindergarten?” Metoo asked Dring shyly.
Kelly waved frantically to catch Dring’s attention and shook her head violently to warn him off. Dring didn’t seem to understand her message, so she pantomimed putting her head in a noose and strangling, with her tongue sticking out and her eyes looking at the ceiling. Beowulf watched her reenactment of a hanging and gave a warning bark to cut it out.
“It would make me very happy to go with you, Metoo,” Dring replied.
“Thank you, Grandpa,” Metoo said politely, and then the children returned to playing as if nothing special had happened.
Dring approached Kelly with crocodile-sized tears running down his jowls. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he began. “No, no, don’t brush it off. You can’t imagine how exciting this moment is. That’s the first time in history that one of our Stryx has ever asked us to do something for them!”
“Thank me after those kindergarteners get through with you,” Kelly replied, disclaiming all responsibility. “You need to be a circus performer if you don’t want them to eat you alive.”
“It’s not much better at the higher grade levels,” Joe concurred ruefully. “If you don’t have any special talents yourself, you can take Beowulf with you. Kids love dogs.” Beowulf panted modestly.
“Special talents?” Dring asked, regarding Dorothy’s parents with a twinkle in his eye. “Do you think this would be too shocking for them?”
Slowly, before their eyes, Dring’s body began to change. Bumps appeared on his shoulders and his face began to elongate. He seemed to be going into a crouch, and his upper legs began to thicken as his finger and toenails grew into small claws. Triangular bumps began rising along his tail, and ridges formed above his eye sockets. In less than five minutes he was completely transformed into a small dragon, and when he spread his wings, they reached across the whole room.
After watching the metamorphosis, Beowulf yawned ostentatiously and gave him a look that said, “Is that all you’ve got?” Joe and Kelly were more impressed, both of them being struck speechless. Dorothy and Metoo looked up from their game when the breeze from the unfolding wings hit them.
“Uncle Dring!” Dorothy exclaimed, and jumped up to face
the dragon. “Can I have a dragon ride?”
Metoo popped up right after her calling, “Me too! Me too!”
Kelly finally found her voice and threw a wet blanket on the dragon party. “Not inside the house, children. Dring, can you still speak with us?”
Dring attempted to reply, but his words were accompanied by gouts of flame, and even Kelly’s diplomatic grade implants failed to interpret the fluting sounds he made. Dring looked towards Metoo and nodded, and the little Stryx began to interpret for him.
“Grandpa says he can’t change back here, so he’s going to return to his ship for a while. He says that he’ll tell everything to Libby and the other Stryx, so they don’t think you’re going crazy and make you stop working for EarthCent. Grandpa says you’re too good of an ambassador to risk losing.”
With that, Dring folded up his wings, and with his claws clicking on the metal floor, hopped and waddled to the door of the ice harvester. From there he jumped into the air, spread his wings again, and soared lazily above the rows of mock-ups and shells and over the mound of scrap metal towards his home.
Joe rose laboriously from the couch and draped an arm around Kelly’s shoulders. It wasn’t clear if he was trying to support her or himself. Even Beowulf got up to watch Dring sail away, and as much as he hated to admit it, the old war dog was impressed. Dorothy and Metoo watched until Dring sank down below the pile of scrap, and then returned to playing with their plastic slips.
“Joe?” Kelly ventured, sounding suddenly young and vulnerable. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that Dring looks just like a mythological creature from human fairy tales?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Joe said. “Earth has been around for a few billion years, and the skies were full of flying dinosaurs a hundred and fifty million years ago. Who knows if some of them evolved into Dring and moved out into the galaxy before the ones left on Earth got wiped out. Maybe they go home to check in from time to time. Dring does seem to be the sentimental sort.”
“I hope you heard him say that I’m too good of an ambassador to lose,” Kelly hinted, recovering her equanimity.
“Alright, Beowulf is off the couch anyway,” Joe replied with a sigh. “Lie down and I’ll give you a foot massage.”
Whimpering with pleasure as Joe rubbed her feet and she watched her daughter playing with Metoo, Kelly considered finally swallowing her pride and thanking Donna’s daughters for pushing her blindly into marriage five years earlier. Then she remembered all of the InstaSitter commercials and decided it could wait.
Alien Night now has a sequel!
High Priest of Union Station, Book 3 of the EarthCent Ambassador series, is now available. It picks up two years after the events of Alien Night, with Kelly finding herself swamped by work and begging EarthCent to send help. Then the Stryx turn to Kelly for help in saving a doomed species and events spin rapidly out of her control.
About the Author
E. M. Foner lives in Northampton, MA with an imaginary German Shepherd who’s been trained to bite bankers. The author welcomes reader comments at [email protected].