by E. M. Foner
“Uh, excuse me?” asked a voice from behind her.
The ambassador turned to see that Hannah and most of the other women who had expressed an interest in being kidnapped by aliens had remained behind.
“Yes?” Kelly asked. If she could salvage some professional pride by keeping this group from adding to the chaos in the hall she was resolved to do it, even if it meant contacting Glunk and asking him if he had any Drazen workers who were interested in carrying off a human woman.
“Was all of that true, what you said, or were you just trying to make us go way?”
“It’s true,” Kelly replied as gently as she could. “Most aliens aren’t interested in, uh, all of that, and the human workers on the alien worlds I’m familiar with live in their own communities. The only exceptions I can think of are mercenaries and domestic servants, and even they have their own quarters. We may be able to breathe the same air as some species, at least with minimal filtering, but we have so little in common outside of the economic necessities that you only see widespread mixing on Stryx stations. Even there, we mainly live on our own decks.”
“Then the books are all full of lies,” Hannah said tearfully, and made a violent gesture on her tab’s screen. The unit blinked once or twice, and then the message, “Your device has been reset to the factory defaults,” appeared. The other women looked equally disappointed, but Kelly didn’t see any of them flushing their libraries.
“Don’t think of it as lies,” Kelly said, patting Hannah’s shoulder. “Think of it as poetic license. Just because something isn’t so doesn’t mean you can’t imagine it.”
“You sound just like Aisha,” one of the women commented, and the others all nodded in agreement.
“You all watch ‘Let’s Make Friends?’” Kelly asked in surprise.
“It’s the only show with aliens that isn’t all about war or disasters,” Hannah said. “However inaccurate the books are, at least they’re not as depressing as the broadcasts from the Grenouthian archives.” She looked at her tab as if she was having second thoughts about having wiped out her collection. “How difficult is it to get permission to visit a Stryx station?”
“You don’t need permission,” the ambassador told her. “You just have to buy a ticket. Most humans who leave Earth for alien worlds sign a long-term labor contract in exchange for having their travel and living expenses paid, but there are plenty of jobs on the stations if you’re willing to work. Just keep in mind that it’s not for everybody. The stations attract humans who are comfortable seeing, smelling and hearing aliens every day. And if you’re spooked by nosy artificial intelligence, don’t even think of visiting.”
After that, Kelly spent the remainder of the session responding to mainly reasonable questions about life away from Earth and relations with other species. A few of the less angry alien conspiracy theorists drifted back into the room after finding out they couldn’t disrupt the other sessions, and the remainder were removed by hotel security for occupying common space and not buying anything from the concession stands. When the time was up, Hannah lingered behind in the room, and sensing that she wanted a private word, the ambassador waited with her until the others left.
“My family all hate everything about aliens,” Hannah said in a rush. “When I tried signing up for a labor contract, I couldn’t find anybody who would accept me after the background check showed that my brother was arrested for attacking a Dollnick tourist in the street. I was the only kid I knew whose parents wouldn’t let her have a teacher bot, and since I left home, it’s been a struggle just to make ends meet. Is there any way I could get to a station for less than a thousand Stryx creds? I’ve seen ads for cruises, but everything costs ten times that, and then you need money for every world they stop at.”
“You seem like a hard-working, intelligent young woman to me,” Kelly said. “I’m sure you could find work on a station once you get there. Have you looked into traveling on a freighter?”
“How does that work?”
“Some of the alien freighters have cabin space for travelers, but you have to make sure to bring enough food for the trip, since they likely won’t have anything humans can eat,” Kelly explained, smiling as she pictured telling Donna that she had met somebody who knew less about travel arrangements than herself. “We came to Earth as passengers on a Vergallian freighter and it was really a pleasant trip. Some of those passenger liners are just too busy, and the constant service and the pressure to participate in gambling pools get to be tiresome after a while. Traveling on freighters is more like camping out.”
“I am so going to do it,” Hannah declared. “I know there’s a whole galaxy out there to see and I’m through kidding myself that an alien prince is going to come along and kidnap me. Thank you for everything, Mrs. Ambassador.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Kelly replied. And thinking about it on her way to the session about trade negotiations with species that didn’t recognize humans as sentient beings, she realized that it was true.
Twelve
“How come Spinner doesn’t have to do the stretches?” the Dollnick child complained. It had already struck him as unfair that he had to stretch four arms while the other children only had to stretch two, but the little Stryx simply floated in place and spun around while watching the other cast members follow Aisha through her simplified yoga routine.
“The Stryx don’t have to do anything they don’t want to,” the Horten girl told him.
“Not even eat purple fungus?” the Frunge boy asked.
“Even I don’t have to eat purple fungus,” Mikey replied in defense of his metal friend.
“I don’t eat anything,” Spinner finally spoke up, his voice coming out as a nervous creak. “Is that wrong?”
“Spinner isn’t biological, so he doesn’t have to eat,” Aisha said, judging it was time to insert herself into the discussion. “He doesn’t do the stretching exercises because metal can’t stretch.”
“Yes it can,” the Frunge boy and the young Stryx said simultaneously.
“Metal stretches,” the Verlock girl asserted two seconds later in her ponderous speech.
“I guess I meant to say that stretching wouldn’t be good for a young Stryx. Is that right, Spinner?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never been stretched.”
“We could pull on your pincer,” the Drazen boy suggested helpfully. “Maybe stretching will help it grow, like hanging from your tentacle.”
“Do your parents let you hang from your tentacle, Pluck?” Aisha asked, not wanting to give any young Drazens watching the show the wrong idea.
“My mom picks me up so I can grab the bar in the closet.”
“I’d like to try,” Spinner said, extending his pincer towards the Drazen child.
“Make sure you don’t pinch him,” Aisha cautioned the young Stryx. Pluck wrapped his twelve fingers around the jaws of the pincer and pulled. Spinner floated forward and sank downward, so the Drazen boy ended up sitting on the floor on his backside, looking surprised.
“If you just move towards me, it won’t work,” Pluck reprimanded the young Stryx.
“Sorry,” Spinner rasped. “I’m not very good at staying still. Can you hold me, Mikey?”
The boy wrapped his arms around Spinner’s metal casing, and said, “Ready.” The Drazen boy pulled, and this time, there was very little movement.
“There,” Pluck said with satisfaction. “If we pull on it every day it should start to grow, but my mom says you have to begin slow.”
“Thank you,” the little Stryx replied, and restarted his patented spinning from side to side. “Did that count as stretching, Clume?” he asked the Dollnick boy.
“I guess so,” Clume responded after a moment’s thought. “Maybe me and Krolyohne should stretch you next time since we’re the biggest.”
“Force equals mass times acceleration,” the Verlock girl asserted.
“That might be a bit advanced for the other chil
dren, Krolyohne,” Aisha informed the young mathematician.
“But it’s true,” Spinner said. “Isn’t it, Mikey?”
“What’s ‘times’ mean?” the boy asked.
“Multiplication,” the Stryx explained.
“I don’t think we’ve had that in school yet.”
The alien children looked at the human as if he had admitted that he still required help putting on his shoes, but Aisha welcomed the opportunity to make a smooth transition to the next segment of the show.
“Thank you for bringing up school, Mike. Since we’ve never had a young Stryx on our show before, I thought it would be a good idea if we all told him something about the schools we attend. Who wants to go first? Vzar?” Aisha suggested, turning to the little Frunge boy.
“Stryx don’t go to school,” Vzar declared. “They already know everything.”
“Do not,” Spinner retorted.
“Do too,” the little Frunge said.
“Do not,” Spinner reasserted, though he sounded less certain the second time around.
“Double do too,” Vzar stated confidently.
“Leave Spinner alone,” Mike shouted, sensing that his friend was becoming confused
“Children, children,” Aisha pleaded. “Is this how we behave when we’re trying to make friends?”
“But everybody knows that the Stryx know everything,” the Horten girl said. “They made the station and the tunnel network.”
“But Spinner is only six years old,” Aisha pointed out. “Do you know everything that the older Hortens know, Orsilla?”
“No,” the girl replied. “But Stryx are different.”
“Am not,” Spinner protested weakly.
“We’re all different,” Aisha interjected, cutting off the possibility of another circular contradiction contest. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Krolyohne is better at math than I am, even though I’m a grownup. Verlocks have a greater gift for math than humans.”
“Do you really go to school?” the Drazen boy asked the young Stryx directly.
“Yes,” Spinner said, slowing his nervous rotation while he spoke. “I’m in Mikey’s class in Libby’s school.”
“What do you do there?” Clume wanted to know.
“Make pictures, learn the alphabet, and sing,” the little Stryx responded.
“And Libby teaches us to barter,” Mike added.
“Don’t you learn to build anything?” the young Dollnick inquired. “My class is constructing a colony ship out of Joopi sticks.”
“What’s a Joopi stick?” Pluck asked.
“You know, for eating frozen Bizzle juice.”
“You must mean popsicles,” Aisha surmised. “You should all try to remember that the other children probably haven’t heard of the foods you eat at home. What are you learning in school, Orsilla?”
“How to make Joopi sticks,” the Horten girl replied. “Our school sells them to the Dollnicks for creds to buy games.”
“Good business,” Krolyohne intoned.
Aisha heard a muted bell sound over her implant, and she looked towards the assistant director, who was counting them out. “We’ll be right back with the new cast after this commercial message.”
“The camera light is out,” Vzar said, pointing at the front immersive camera.
“Yes, and the Grenouthian standing next to it will count us back in before they turn it on again. This is a short commercial break, so we only have another fifteen or twenty seconds.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Clume said.
“Me too,” Pluck chimed in.
“Go quickly. The Grenouthian with the droopy ears will take you,” Aisha added. She pointed the two little aliens in the direction of the show’s intern, who immediately began praying that the children were already familiar with the equipment in the all-species bathroom. The Dollnick and Drazen scampered off the set as the assistant director counted the show back in.
“Welcome back to the first show with our new cast,” Aisha addressed the front immersive camera. “The children are just getting to know each other, and I hope you’ll come to know them as well. Yes, Krolyohne? You have a question?”
“For Spinner,” the Verlock girl replied.
“You don’t have to check with me before asking one of your new friends a question,” Aisha told her. The Verlock children were often self-conscious of their slow speech and avoided talking more than necessary on the show, so Aisha was pleased to see Krolyohne taking the initiative.
“How fast can you rotate?” Krolyohne asked Spinner.
“I don’t know,” the young Stryx replied. “It depends on the atmosphere and stuff.”
“Really fast,” Mike said, proud of his friend’s ability. “Show them.”
“I don’t know if…” Aisha began to object, but Spinner was already rotating so quickly that the little lights on his casing looked like solid lines and his pincer disappeared in a blur. She felt something tugging at her dress, and then she noticed that Vzar’s hair vines seemed to be drawn towards the spinning Stryx. “That’s very fast,” she called to Spinner, hoping he could hear her while he was going around and around. “Can you show us how you slow down?”
The children were now all leaning away from the Stryx, whose high speed rotation was on the verge of starting a mini-tornado in the studio. Some of the lighter odds and ends on the set slid across the floor towards the whirlwind, and then started circling, like water swirling around a drain.
“Jeeves!” Aisha cried, looking out at the studio audience. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” the Stryx said from behind her, popping himself into position next to Spinner. “He can’t hear you because the wind breaks up your sound waves. I’ll just rotate in the opposite direction and slow him down gently.”
“Is that really necessary?” Aisha asked. “Can’t you just tell him to stop?” If Jeeves could hear her through the airflow he was whipping up himself, he didn’t let on. The set was buffeted by turbulence, and the slender Horten girl grabbed Aisha around the legs to avoid being sucked into the maelstrom. Then it was over as quickly as it had begun, with Jeeves and Spinner floating motionless side by side.
“In answer to your question, of course I could have told him to stop, but I thought it was an interesting opportunity to demonstrate your Newton’s Third Law for the children,” Jeeves continued unperturbed. “For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
“That sounds like Wyrlath’s Corollary,” the Verlock girl said. “Could you show the proof?”
“That won’t be necessary, Jeeves,” Aisha gritted out from between clenched teeth, inwardly seething at the unnecessary display of force that had disordered the set. “We were just about to play a game, so thank you, and, uh, see you later?”
“But I love playing games,” Jeeves objected. “I can fill in until Clume and Pluck return from their secret mission.”
“They went to the bathroom,” Vzar informed the Stryx.
“They SAID they were going to the bathroom,” Jeeves replied mysteriously. The remaining children immediately picked up on the implication and began speculating on where the young Dollnick and Drazen might have gone.
“They could be eating,” Orsilla suggested. “I saw a vending machine with frozen Bizzle juice sticks in the corridor.”
“I think they’re hiding somewhere and we have to find them,” Mike speculated, looking around the studio.
“Maybe they ran away because they don’t like me,” Spinner said, and began rocking forwards and backwards.
“I’m sure they’ll be right back,” Aisha comforted the young Stryx, though she did wonder what was taking the little aliens so long. They could hardly have gotten lost with the intern riding herd. “Alright. Jeeves can stay until our absent cast members return. We seem to be running a little behind today, so let’s try a game that you all know from watching the show. How about the ‘I’m thinking of…’ game. Do you all remember how to play?” Nobody den
ied knowing, so the host continued. “I’ll start it off. I’m thinking of something rectangular.”
“The picture frame on the mantel,” Jeeves blurted out before any of the children could even ask a question. “Now it’s my turn.” Aisha was so surprised that he had guessed correctly without asking any questions that she was momentarily speechless, allowing the Stryx to take over. “I’m thinking of something hard,” he said.
“Is it metal?” Vzar asked immediately.
“No,” Jeeves replied.
“Is it stone?” Krolyohne guessed.
“No, not stone.”
“Is it on the set?” Mike asked.
Jeeves gave a little bob and answered reluctantly, “Yes.”
“Good question,” Spinner congratulated his friend before asking the older Stryx, “Can biologicals see it?”
“Not directly,” Jeeves grumbled.
“Is it making friends with scary aliens?” Orsilla asked.
“Maybe,” Jeeves admitted, sounding completely miffed. Aisha almost felt sorry for him after the experience of having her own secret guessed much quicker than she had expected, but the children often surprised her with their insight.
“How did you know?” Mike asked the Horten girl. “You’re really smart.”
Orsilla blushed bright blue, reminding Aisha of the girl who ate too many sweets in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Can you think of something for us to guess?” Aisha asked the girl.
“I’m thinking of something funny,” she said.
“Is it a joke?” Jeeves asked. “Is it something that happened?”
“Jeeves!” Aisha scolded him. “That’s two questions, and the person who has their secret guessed goes last in the next round. Don’t answer him, Orsilla.”
“Is it a joke?” Spinner repeated.