“Do you think she will file a report? What a topic to discuss over dinner,” Thanera said with a laugh.
“Not a topic for polite discussion, I agree. And no, I do not think you’ll be forced to finalize a report.” Yolunu placed her hand upon Thanera’s as she, too, laughed.
#
Enrico was tired and his missing foot hurt, but Tracy looked so alone when he wheeled past her bed. He couldn’t resist offering to play a game. Hide and seek had been her idea, one that Gerry quickly agreed to. And now, as he tried to move quietly without the aid of his chair, he knew he had made the right decision. He could see the younger boy smiling in the reflection of the room’s single window as he hopped past the hidden children, and searched in the farthest corner.
“Freedom!” Tracy shouted in English, and grinned as she supported most of her small compatriot’s weight.
“Three times, little seniorita!” Enrico said in English with his own laugh as he moved toward the center of the room. “It is your turn to search for me, amigos.”
“Sure,” Tracy said, and Enrico watched as she and the small boy, Gerry, hid their heads in their arms and began counting aloud. Tracy’s voice was the only one he could hear, piping clear and loud. She was seven she told him, with a confidence he doubted but wished he could imitate. The other boy looked around four, but without a common language, Enrico could not be certain.
Tracy’s counting sped up, and he realized she was about to finish. With a painful hop, he managed to hide behind the bed of the fourth child in the room before Tracy shouted twenty and went silent.
Gerry was the first to make a sound, a soft giggle that hinted at his discovery. But the younger children moved in the other direction, and Enrico relaxed for a moment.
The breathing sounds of the fourth child soon masked the noises of pursuit.
Enrico risked a peek over the top of the bed and was rewarded with a glimpse of Tracy boosting Gerry up to check the corner countertops. Kneeling down once more, Enrico brushed against the hand of the child whose bed he was hiding behind.
The hand had fallen out of the secured blankets when he bumped the bed.
A girl’s hand, he thought as he tucked it back into the blankets. A girl my age, and he moved to look over the top once more, to see where his pursuers had chosen to look next and to see the face of the girl the doctors said would never wake up.
The two children were busy digging through the closet he had hidden in the last time.
The teenage girl was still, pale and bruised, and looking very much like what he kept telling himself death should look like. Not the swollen, black, cracked look he knew too well.
The human doctor had come and looked at her while he was still confined to his bed. The doctor told the human woman the girl was dead, her body just didn’t know better. Enrico remembered seeing the woman nod her head and leave. The girl was still there with them, and he wondered when her body would discover its fate.
“Tag! We got you! We got you!” Tracy shouted from one side of the bed. Enrico looked to see a smiling Gerry blocking the other side of the bed.
“Oh yeah. Roar! Roar!” he laughed and shouted as he lunged forward at the girl. Grabbing her, he started to tickle her, Gerry moved to them and started pounding feebly on his shoulders and adding his own laughter to the mix. Enrico was the only one to notice the attention their play was drawing.
“Has anyone called a team?” Enrico heard a nurse ask in the alien’s language from the room’s open doorway.
“I, my Lady. I thought they were playing.” The younger medic still clutched the lunch tray she was bringing to the children to her chest, food and liquid staining her banners.
“At hunting each other?” The older nurse demanded.
“They are alien, my Lady. They bare their teeth for pleasure. Our Lady Morganea said so. I thought they were playing until she shouted and grabbed the little one. I called for help,” the medic said, and her grasp on the tray tightened, and several more liquids ran free and down her front.
“Well, child. I hope they get here soon,” was the other’s response as four Sansheren dressed in green appeared. The two in the doorway moved out of the way.
“Where?” was the comment from the new team’s leader as Enrico watched her fit a small dart into a hand weapon.
“Within, it is killing one of the others, you can see. Strange, I thought it would have been the small one to lose its bearing, she does not even have a language yet,” the older nurse said and moved from the doorway.
Enrico wondered if those outside the nursery room could see him watching them as he played; Tracy and Gerry were on the floor rolling and fighting him and each other. The new Sansheren listened to the younger children’s squeals and screams.
#
“One should leave decisions of regression to the nursery staff, thank you.” With that comment, Aldera shook her head at her assistant and holstered her still loaded weapon.
Aldera clapped her hands together twice as she entered the room of the three children, who rewarded her with silent, frightened looks.
“You have caused enough trouble for today, now get in your beds and be good.” She used her father’s voice, soft and reassuring. Hoping it was something their two species had in common. Loving parents.
Making eye contact with each child, she pointed to a bed at random, and was rewarded with small giggles as the youngest two climbed into opposite beds. She saw terror in the eyes of the youngest one as she helped her pull her blanket up. The middle child was afraid, but had control of herself, Aldera was pleased to note. She stroked the child’s long hair, once.
“And why do I get the feeling you know better?” Aldera asked as she moved to help Enrico climb into his bed.
“I know lots,” Enrico said in barely understandable Sansheren. “Better what?” he grinned, showing most of his discolored teeth.
Aldera stepped away from his grin before the meaning of his words registered.
“Better than to pretend to hunt, better than to scare your elders.” Aldera moved back to his side as she chastised him.
“I do not understand, eat what? I do not understand, know older?” the child asked. He quit smiling, and she realized he was trying to understand her. He spoke with an accent she was unfamiliar with, and she realized he must be having far more difficulty with her own accent.
“You hunt to eat. Elder – older? An elder is older than you and takes care of you.” Aldera found herself speaking slower and watching Enrico’s face for small signs of comprehension.
“Hunt eat, same word, not…” Enrico paused, and she could see him unfocus his small eyes as he tried to express what he understood. “Not same word time! Older, old. Elder, older family!” he declared and glared at her. “I no family.”
“Word time is tense,” Aldera said, and wondered at the moisture that filled his eyes, threatening to overflow. “An elder does not have to be family, an elder is one who takes care of you, helps you, heals you.” She wanted to touch her finger to his chin as he clenched his jaw tight and glared at her.
“I no family, no mother, no father!”
He continued to glare as she compromised and moved her hand to touch his arm where the blanket and his shirt did not meet.
He did not move away.
“As you wish,” she said, not breaking eye contact.
“Hunt to eat?” he asked, and she thought he might be focusing on the words he wanted and not the feelings he didn’t. “Tracy, Gerry friends, amigos. Why hunt? Why eat?”
“They were afraid you had regressed, had become an infant.” Aldera gestured for the small crowd still gathered at the door.
“I do not understand? Infant – not older? Know mother, father, family. Know infant not older understand waa. Waa!” Enrico demonstrated rocking something in his arms while crying.
“We are not the same, you and I,” Aldera said, and tried to understand just how different he was. “Human infants may go waa,” and she, too, pant
omimed rocking something. “But Sansheren infants go ROAR!” she lunged forward and made him cower. She was sorry even before she finished.
“Roar?” Enrico swallowed and Aldera and found herself skeptical of the tone of disbelief he tried to speak in.
“ROAR. I will show you,” she offered by way of an apology for frightening him.
“Roar. Safe? No eat, no hunt?” Enrico said, and she knew he was trying to bare his teeth in a human smile.
“Yes, it is safe. Here, let me,” Aldera said and reached for his blanket. She gave way when Enrico shrugged off her hand, and she let him struggle alone as he swung his legs free of the bed.
“I better,” he gave a sharp gesture toward his dangling leg. “No elder, no family.”
“No help then.” Aldera moved away while keeping her hip and leg behind the wheelchair to keep it from rolling. The young human she realized she was beginning to find attractive struggled, and she wondered when humans looked for mates.
“Are you ready to go?” she waved toward the door and they both smiled to see the small group of onlookers flinch and back away.
“Go? Yes,” he said with a grin that cleared the doorway and the hall of those who hesitated.
She looked down in time to see his lips come together.
“You should not bare your teeth to anyone you do not intend to hunt.” Aldera ended her sentence by baring her sharp teeth to Enrico.
“No teeth? No hunt? I understand teeth eat, hunt. Yes.” He moved his chair through the door she held open, pausing to aim a ferocious grin at the older nurse who had stood her ground.
Aldera resisted her own smile when the woman brought her hand to her chest and ran down the corridor.
#
“Where’d ya go?”
Enrico had started to fall asleep even before Aldera left the room. Tracy’s question roused him.
“The zoo,” he said, too loudly, before turning away from his young friend, and tried to recapture the exhaustion that had threatened to overwhelmed him before.
Wide awake, staring at the ceiling, he listened to the sounds of the hospital. Two people hurried down the corridor, speaking in Sansheren too soft for him to catch any words. His grasp of the language was limited but he found its small vocabulary easier to recall than English. He knew he often missed the inflections that turned a no into a yes, but even the enemy Sansheren he had encountered were willing to repeat themselves as long as he made the effort. A guard at the camp had spent hours explaining the variations of the single word thirst one day, and Enrico winced as the memory echoed.
Thirst, with a smile, is for the dryness of your mouth with a new lover. Thirst, with a laugh, is for desire of another. Thirst, when the eyes laugh but the mouth is sad, is for the memory of friendship and wine.
What about water? How say I thirst water?
Thirst. It is always there with the word.
He forced himself focusing on the murmur of machinery, noticeable in the quiet night. Thrum, thrum, he tried to put his mind into the sound, tried to hear only that while he saw only the ceiling. It isn’t working, he decided. And slowly opened his mind to the memory of the day.
The Sansheren had taken him to visit the children of its wife.
“Roar,” Enrico whispered with a smile that faded.
He thought back to the camp, to the night Sam burned the guard. He understood, finally, and wondered if he would ever see his friend again. To apologize for what he had thought.
“Hey, you awake?” Tracy barely mouthed the words.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“Why’d he take you to the zoo?” she asked, and he heard her rise.
“To show me his kids,” he answered as he continued to stare at the ceiling. “It wasn’t a zoo, just a nursery.”
“Oh,” she sounded almost disappointed, Enrico thought as she lay back down.
“They’re green, with lots of teeth,” he offered, more to tell her he hadn’t been mad earlier when he turned away, only tired and a little afraid.
“Really? Neat.”
He smiled at the enthusiasm in her voice. “Not really, they hunt. Like wild dogs. Lots of blood.” He didn’t want her to go through the shock he had experienced.
“Cool,” her voice was muted, and he thought she might be drifting to sleep.
“That’s why everyone’s afraid of us; they think we’re still wild.” Enrico lowered his voice as he spoke and was rewarded by a soft murmur from Tracy in response.
“Don’t bare teeth at anyone you don’t intend to eat,” he whispered to himself. The Sansheren wanted to teach him that today, and he had learned.
#
“What um, what you? Enrico. Enrico,” Enrico ended, pointing to his chest in what Yolunu thought to be frustration.
“Name. You are Enrico, I am Aldera. Name.” Aldera took Enrico’s hand and placed it on her chest when she pronounced her own name before moving their hands to his own chest.
“Name, understand. What you name?” Enrico pulled his hand from her as he turned toward Yolunu. He and Aldera were sharing an evening meal in the nursery when Yolunu arrived.
“Yolunu,” and anything she might have added was cut off by the shrill whine of Aldera’s communication unit.
“Where? It will take us a while to get there, go ahead and call Nogina. Right. As soon as I can,” Aldera finished as she stood to leave. She paused to kiss Yolunu’s cheek, saw Enrico, and stopped.
“I can take her back to the hospital,” Yolunu offered in answer to the panicked expression that flooded her wife’s face.
“Thank you,” Aldera smiled, patted Enrico’s hand, and left.
Yolunu listened to her running down the corridor.
“Aldera go, why?” Enrico asked, and once more Yolunu thought he was frustrated by his limited vocabulary.
“Someone must’ve found an infant,” Yolunu said, and didn’t try to keep the worry out of her voice.
“Hungry infant hunt, Aldera safe?” Enrico held her eye and Yolunu realized that he was also worried.
“They will feed the infant before they try to get close. She will be fine.” Yolunu did not meet his eyes as she told them both the same lie she told herself every day.
“Feed – eat? No hungry is safe?” he brought his hand to hers as he spoke.
“Yes,” Yolunu tried to reassure him by smiling; only to realize the young human would not recognize the expression. “Your lesson for today is in expressions,” she intoned with mock seriousness.
“I do not understand,” he left the sentence hanging in the air.
“I know,” Yolunu said with a smile and a sigh. “See – I do not understand – is confusion. Like this.” First she pointed to her eyes and then his before trying to school her eyes into a confused or blank expression.
“I do not understand – confusion?” Enrico tried to mimic the expression.
He succeeded in looking dazed or drugged, Yolunu thought. “Right, now try this one, happy,” again Yolunu gave an exaggerated expression.
“What happy?” he asked.
#
“Enrico,” Tracy paused until he looked her way. “Can we go with you tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, senorita. I’ll ask, if you want me to?” he felt the silence build.
“It’s been days, and you don’t play anymore. It’s really boring when you’re gone. And you’re learning to talk like them,” she finished in a rush, and he tried to hear if she was crying.
“Hey, little princess.” He hopped across the room. “We’ll play tomorrow, and maybe I can teach you how to speak like them. Would you like that?” he stood beside her bed and pretended not to notice the tears she wiped away.
“Promise you’ll play tomorrow?” she sniffled while she waited for his nod. “Then I’ll let you teach me and Gerry how to talk like them.”
He smiled at her logic before patting her arm and moving back to his bed.
#
“Enrico, wake up,” someone said in
Sansheren.
A dark shape was standing over him in the night; Enrico screamed in terror as he pulled away, only to become tangled in his blankets. He felt strong hands catch him when he started to fall.
“Enrico, it is Aldera. Wake up.” Aldera’s voice was louder but still soft as she held his struggling, crying form. “Turn the lights on, Nogina, the others must be awake by now. It is Aldera, your friend. Wake up. I need your help.” The voice continued to shout in Sansheren as Enrico twisted in his blankets.
The bright light only served to further panic him and make his struggles more violent.
“Leave him alone!” He heard Tracy shout, and then a Sansheren cursed. “Help, Enrico, help!”
“Aldera?” Enrico whispered. Tracy’s voice brought him out of the nightmare and into the room instantly. He now stared, confused, first at Aldera, and then at his young friend.
“Let her go, Nogina,” Aldera said even as Gerry joined them by grabbing Tracy’s captor around the leg and trying to bite through the baggy pants.
“Confusion. I do not understand,” Enrico said to his Sansheren friend even as they both started laughing at the others.
“I need your help. Nogina needs your help.” Aldera found it difficult to speak through the laughter that continued to swell up.
The other Sansheren adult released Tracy only to have the girl turn and attack her other leg. With a child on each leg, the woman had fallen backwards and was leaning against one of the bed supports. Each of her hands was firmly against the chest of a child; the children looked as if they had been caught in mid lunge.
“Tracy, Gerry, it’s okay. Let him up,” Enrico called out in English, and schooled his expression before the two younger children looked his way. “Let him up,” he said again, this time more forcefully.
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