Migration: Species Imperative #2

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The alien looked embarrassed. At least, that was how Mac interpreted the irregular pink blotches along his cheekbones. One never knew, she reminded herself. “Irrelevant,” he barked. “It’s time to take a break. Have supper. You ready to make some poodle, Kay?” To Mac, “This will be such a treat.”

  Kay’s upper eyestalks had developed a droop. The beers or time of night, Mac judged. Now they shot erect. “Is this the right time? I thought we were going to save it.”

  “Idiot! Save it for what? What better time than now? With what our new friend, Mac, will share at the Gathering about our enemy—not to mention your success with the canoe? Tomorrow will be soon enough for more words, words, words, words!” Fourteen bounced on the couch with each repetition. Mac, listening to the creaks of protest, hoped the old furniture survived the alien’s gusto. “Tonight, we party! We must have poodle!”

  Kay patted his middle, having tucked away his douscent . “I am a little hungry,” he admitted. “And I promised Mac a memorable supper.”

  So much for Human/alien relations, Mac decided, stopping her swing. “You really don’t have to go to any trouble for me,” she said cautiously. “Save your supplies.”

  “Idiot!” Mac supposed it was a positive sign that Fourteen now freely applied the term to her. “It is our duty to share with you the best of what we have brought.” His beady eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “Or are you not familiar with poodle?”

  Kay stood, smoothing his caftan and straightening the mass of hair tumbling over his face. “You insult our host, Fourteen. Mac is an intelligent, cultured being. Of course she’s had poodle before—no doubt prepared by the finest Human chefs. I will have to make an extraordinary effort to compare. Extraordinary.” With that, he strode into the cabin and Mac could hear his determined footsteps heading for the kitchen, presumably to be “extraordinary.”

  Mac glanced at Fourteen, who was looking insufferably pleased with himself.

  They ate her food. How bad could theirs be?

  Given her past experience with non-Human sustenance?

  Good thing there was a med kit in the cabin.

  “Humans didn’t invent outdoor cooking, you know.”

  Plomp. Mac’s stone hit a ripple and sank. “We were searing our meat on grills long before the first transect,” she countered.

  Fourteen took aim and launched his own pebble into the cove. Tic . . . tic . . . tic . . . plop. “Five!”

  “You can’t count the initial toss as a skip. Four.”

  They were sitting on the small stretch of sand that Mac’s father proudly called a beach, having been banished from both the kitchen and the brick barbeque in the clearing behind the cabin.

  It seemed “extraordinary cooking” required privacy and concentration.

  “Irrelevant.”

  Mac found a nice flat stone and tried again. “What’s irrelevant?” Tic . . . tic . . . plop. “Three.”

  “That your species has a long record of outdoor cooking. You originally obtained that technology from us, the Myg. Your own history tells of our visits.” Plomp. “Doesn’t count. That was a defective rock.”

  Mac snorted. “Let me guess. There was a brochure at the consulate.”

  Another of those sly looks. “Don’t you believe your own mythos? That aliens have been here before?”

  “Oh, those guys. They were looking for virgins in cornfields.” Tic . . . tic . . . tic . . . tic . . . Mac lost count and whooped triumphantly. “Beat that, Fourteen!”

  The alien made a show of shading his eyes and looking outward. “Beat what? I was watching this small creature dig in the sand. What do you call it?”

  Mac gently bumped her shoulder into the alien’s. “A beetle, and I win.”

  “Are there virgins in your fields?”

  “All the time. We call them heifers.”

  Laughing, Fourteen wiggled his bare toes. They were wider at base than tip, so they looked more like miniature fingers than the Human version. Mac noticed he used them quite readily to sift the sand for skipping stones. “You are joking with me again, Mac.”

  “Maybe so,” she said peacefully, resting back on her hands. “Tell me, Fourteen. What do you think of Earth? Of this place?”

  He joined her in gazing out at the lake. The sun was about to set, its last rays seeming to calm every ripple. Near the shore, the dark water was already glass-smooth, except where water striders—and skipping stones—briefly disturbed it. A series of expanding rings marked the rising of a fish. Black flies skimmed the beach; midges danced in self-obsessed clouds.

  As if on cue, the loon gave its throbbing cry. It echoed from the trees on the opposite shore, then faded to a waiting hush.

  “You don’t want to know what I think of it,” Fourteen said in a strange, low voice.

  Mac turned to look at him. There was moisture along his thick eyelids. Noticing her attention, he brought up his hands, as if to hide it.

  Not so alien, after all.

  “There’s an answer to the Dhryn,” she promised him.

  “I believe we will find it. I believe we’ll save our worlds—yours, mine, all of them.” Hesitantly, unsure if the gesture would be welcomed by a Myg, Mac put her arm around his broad shoulders.

  Fourteen’s hands didn’t budge, but she heard a muffled: “No external genitalia.”

  “No one’s perfect,” she laughed, then squeezed his shoulders lightly before letting go. “Shall we go and see if the poodle is ready?”

  The hands came down as Fourteen shook his head. “Waste of time. Wait until Kay calls us. If we go too soon, he’ll have us skinning the creature.” A sniff. “Trisulians don’t mind that sort of thing, but I certainly do.” He seemed to perk up. “At least he bought it already dead. If you don’t, they make so much noise—well, puts me off the meal, Mac, let me tell you. Then there’s all the jumping around you get with live poodles. It’s a mystery to me why Humans didn’t properly domesticate this food beast.”

  Aha! Mac hid her smile by reaching forward to collect a handful of stones. A game was afoot. She had to admit, these two had come prepared to do their part enhancing Human/alien relations.

  “First to seven wins,” she challenged.

  “So. This is poodle.” Mac swallowed. “Sorry to refute your lovely compliments, Kay, but I can’t say I’ve ever had it.”

  Two purple eyeballs, atop their stalks, and two beady eyes, within their fleshy lids, were locked on Mac.

  The table was beautifully spread. Kay must have gone through every cupboard to find serving platters, fluted glasses, and a wide, if inexplicable, array of cutlery. There had even been a candle, although tying twenty birthday-cake candles in a bundle had produced more momentary conflagration than light for dining. Once the fire was put out, leaving only a minor and hardly unique scorch mark on the tabletop, they’d settled to enjoy their repast.

  Repast was the word, Mac decided, admiring Kay’s ingenuity. Her mammalian anatomy might be a tad rusty, but even she conceded a resemblance between the mass of meat and bone in the center of the table and a small dog. If you pressed the animal flat and took other severe liberties with its skeletal structure. Four legs, similar in size but not quite, jutted proudly into the air at forty-five degree angles. Where there logically would be paws, Kay had affixed ones of foil. A nice decorative touch, Mac thought.

  There was no head. Perhaps that had been too tricky to reproduce. But there was a distinct tail, with a white pompom of what looked suspiciously like cushion stuffing at its tip. Complete with pink ribbon.

  Other dishes held an array of vegetables and fruits. Some, Mac recognized, some she didn’t—marking the latter down as to-be-avoided, tactfully, of course.

  It was a work of, if not art, then artistic determination. Mac did her best to look dismayed instead of about to laugh. Personally, she had no problem eating anything if hungry enough—being a biologist studying a carnivore who ate the same way tended to instill a certain “fits in my mouth” mentality.
r />   Her great-aunt, though, would have needed her new heart immediately, not next year.

  “Let me carve you the first piece.”

  “That’s not really necessary, Kay,” Mac said, her voice sounding appropriately strained even to her. If she didn’t laugh soon, she’d choke. “You go ahead.”

  Fourteen leaned over the table. “No, no, Mac. This is our thanks to you. Our treat. You must go first.”

  “Oh.”

  Kay took the sound as a “yes” and began sawing away at the carcass with the largest knife the kitchen boasted. He was careful to keep his facial hair away from the food.

  The “poodle” had a crispy skin that parted with a puff of steam and clear fluid. Mac sniffed surreptitiously but couldn’t smell anything over the nearby plate of yellow-spotted pickle-things.

  Kay carefully freed a large piece of meat, laying it on a plate with great ceremony. He passed it to Fourteen, who placed it in front of her.

  They waited, staring at her again.

  Mac gazed at the offering and pressed her lips tightly together. It was that or grin. “I didn’t realize poodle meat was white,” she managed to say.

  “It is ‘the other white meat,’ ” Fourteen quoted proudly. “As proclaimed by one of your famous twentieth century authors.”

  Before she lost all self-control, Mac took her knife and fork in hand. Moving very slowly, conscious of her rapt audience, she pushed the tines of the fork into the meat at one end and even more slowly cut a morsel free with her knife.

  Mac lifted the morsel to her lips and paused, looking at her guests.

  Kay’s eyestalks were bent forward as if that helped him see her better.

  Fourteen was quivering, as if he wanted to bounce but knew that might be hard to explain at supper.

  Mac smiled to herself and plopped the meat into her mouth, chewing vigorously. As she cut a second piece, she commented: “Tastes like chicken.”

  Absolute silence.

  “Mind?” Mac reached over and violently yanked one of the legs free. She tore off a bite with her teeth, chewed and swallowed, then glanced up at the others. “That would be because it is chicken,” she told them. “Or rather several. Nicely done, Kay.”

  “What do you mean, Mac?” that worthy blustered. “I bought this before we came. From a certified poodle dealer recommended by the consular staff!”

  Mac gestured a denial with her drumstick. “Chicken.”

  “Idiot!” shouted Fourteen. “You should have checked before telling me you had obtained this rare delicacy. Mac, I am mortified.”

  “Because it didn’t work?” she grinned.

  Both managed to look crestfallen, Kay by drooping eyestalks, Fourteen by sagging in his chair.

  “Don’t worry,” Mac assured them. “You would have fooled quite a few Humans with this—and any non-Human you wished. I have some expertise, you know.”

  Fourteen’s sigh was heart-wrenching. “ ‘Aliens Eat Poodles’ was number three on the Human-Alien Mythos list. I knew we should have picked something else.”

  “There’s a list?” she asked dubiously. “You aren’t still trying to trick me, are you?”

  “There’s a list, Mac.” Kay began carving meat for himself and Fourteen. “The consulate maintains an impressive collection of anecdotal and verified instances of Human presumptions about the non-Human. The funnier and more preposterous of those is put into a list. Any visitor to your system gets a copy. It’s partly for humor’s sake—”

  “And partly to improve understanding,” Fourteen finished, taking his plate. “How better to learn to tolerate an unfamiliar culture than by knowing its intolerance about yours?”

  Mac did her best to wrap her mind around the logic or its lack, then shook her head. “That list can’t flatter humanity,” she said.

  “Trust me, you aren’t alone. There are lists like this on most worlds,” Kay told her. “But I will admit an obsession with alien sex ranks uniquely higher on yours. Care to explain why that is?” His eyestalks gave a suggestive waggle.

  Fourteen belched. “She didn’t fall for that one either. Don’t waste your effort, Kay. Or your poultry-poodle.”

  The serious, albeit momentary, business of eating “poodle” began. As Mac expected, Kay was finished in the time it took him to fill and scrape his plate into his waiting douscent, with Fourteen a close second. As they stood, she pointed her fork at each in turn. “No cards. Dishes.”

  “But you aren’t finished yet, Mac,” Fourteen protested, his tone implying this was some adorable silliness on her part.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll keep eating while you tidy up.” As they looked to one another, then back at her, Mac firmed her voice. “Cabin rule. No one leaves this kitchen until it’s clean.”

  Efficient when they want to be, Mac thought moments later, helping herself to more mushrooms after checking them carefully for otherworldly origin. Kay and Fourteen were making quick work of their task, despite the quantity of dishes and implements Kay had used. The subject of almost constant complaint from Fourteen, of course. Whatever Mac hadn’t wanted to eat had gone in the chiller. The grill outside had been sprayed with enzymes to digest any attractive poodle bits before a bear came to explore.

  Mac yawned and realized she was not only full, but tired. Standing, she collected her things and added them to the pile beside Kay. “This is the last of it. Thanks,” she said, grabbing another towel from the drawer to help Fourteen dry.

  The three of them doing dishes might almost be Mac, her father, and Sam. She smiled at the memory. Sam would be talking about space; her father, his owls; and she—she’d listen to both and dream her own dreams.

  “This is a waste. You should install a recycler,” Fourteen commented.

  Kay nodded, shaking both head and hair. “Not that this isn’t charmingly archaic, Mac.”

  “A recycler requires power,” Mac explained serenely, taking the next dish. “We enjoy sharing a task. Sometimes, anyway.” She nudged Fourteen. “On vacation—a different pace and way of doing routine things.” Although this wasn’t what Kammie et al had had in mind, she thought happily.

  “Idiot. Better things than dishes.”

  Mac smiled and took a stack of dried plates to the cupboard. “We’ll need them tomorrow morning at least.” Fourteen had sent his signal; the answer about the lev’s arrival to pick them up had been the predicted “as soon as we know, you’ll know.” “Probably for lunch.”

  “You are more than kind, Mac, to keep us in your home,” Kay replied, his voice warm.

  “Least I can do,” she said. “If it’s going to be another day, are you sure you have everything you need? If not, we can canoe over to the store.”

  Kay shuddered, his mass of hair adding to the effect. Fourteen laughed. “A most excellent notion, Mac,” the Myg proclaimed. “We shall obtain more card games! Numbers! Numbers!”

  Mac didn’t ask her guests how much sleep they needed, sure that if they roamed around the cabin in the wee hours, it could hardly be any noisier than their snoring. They seemed content to bid her good night when she was ready for bed, both going to their respective rooms. Perhaps fresh forest air made aliens groggy, too.

  After checking that lights were off and window screens were secure, Mac walked through the darkened main room to the stairs, knowing the way. She put her foot on the lowermost step and stopped cold.

  “I’ll be back tonight.”

  She’d done so well, managing not to think of Nik until now.

  Of course, now was the worst possible time, when there was no one and nothing else to distract her.

  Mac considered knocking on one of her guest’s doors, then could almost hear Emily’s voice in her ear: Coward.

  Be that as it may, she wasn’t doing much good standing paralyzed at the base of the stairs, her heart pounding in her ears so loudly she’d never hear a door opening anyway.

  With a sigh, Mac brought her foot down. With this much adrenaline in her system, sh
e’d never fall asleep. She tiptoed across the common room floor and out to the porch. There, she snatched her towel from the line by the swing and headed for the lake. A cold swim should solve this.

  The walk didn’t. A rustle rustle seemed to follow her all the way down. Mac knew it was most likely a raccoon hoping she’d brought a midnight snack, but it made the hairs on her neck stand on end.

  When she reached the cove, she breathed a sigh of relief. The lake seemed waiting for her, its water calm, dark, and inviting. Mac checked the stars, although she was reasonably sure there wasn’t another stealth t-lev full of aliens about to land. And for a wonder, the mosquitoes were cooperating, showing a distinct lack of interest in her skin—which would likely change by tomorrow, given the way the evening air was growing warmer.

  She stripped and headed for the water, then froze. Rustle. Rustle. Without a second’s hesitation, she grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her middle, tight as a corset, then sat on the cold sand.

  What was she thinking!

  Mac picked up and threw a stone. Plop. The water even sounded welcoming.

  Not tonight, she told it. Not with Sir Nikolai possibly wandering the woods.

  “Never liked those movies, Em,” she muttered aloud. The ones where the heroine, regardless of anything else happening around her, would plunge naked into the first pond she could find and stay put until her prince arrived.

  Usually to plunge as well, given the seemingly irresistible allure of soaking wet heroine. Pushy, presumptuous, desperate heroines. Wet, pushy, presumptuous, desperate . . .

  Not that Mac didn’t fully appreciate the underlying rationale. Gods, her breath caught at the mere thought . . .

  “Official business.” She threw another rock and managed to miss the entire lake with it, hearing it thud against a log. “Stopping me from finding answers, from doing what I can. Keeping me locked away at Base while the universe moves on. He’s here to do his job. That’s it.”

  All of which was true, Mac thought. So why not take advantage . . . why not enjoy the night?