His Little Earthling

by Katie Douglas

  As Ral left the girls on their own. Sarah smiled to herself that even in the future, where there were rainbow floors and buildings poured from volcanic glass, people still couldn’t find a pair of scissors when they needed one.

  “I love your top, Rie-Rie. Can I try it on?” Laila asked.

  “Sure. We should all swap clothes!” Riela said, looking down at her sparkly top with a colorful blue and yellow butterfly on it. “It would be so funny; when Ral gets back, he won’t be able to tell us apart!”

  “I’ll wear your clothes, Rie.” Laila was still ogling the top. Sarah looked between them with a feeling of dread. There was no way she fit into anything they wore. She didn’t want to say something because then they’d see how much bigger she was than they were. Instead, she just sat in silence and waited for them to see the obvious problem with this activity.

  “Hey, Sarah, look! I’m Riela!” Laila wore Riela’s clothes and Sarah saw they were slightly baggy on her, where Laila’s clothes only fitted Riela at a stretch. Riela and Laila were much closer in size than Sarah was to either of them. She was annoyed at how thoughtless they were being.

  “You know what? I didn’t want to wear any of your stupid anorexic clothes anyway!” Sarah snapped, and stomped to her room. If there had been a door to slam, she would have slammed it.

  Flopped face down on the bed, the first thing she noticed was Ral’s hand on her back.

  “I’m a hippo!” Her face was buried in the mattress, so her voice was muffled.

  “If you insist on comparing yourself to extinct Earth animals, at least find an appropriate one. The Scottish wildcat, for example. Or the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger.”

  She lifted her head and muttered, “Narwhal.”

  Ral raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “They’re a subspecies of aquatic unicorn. Also, you’ll find they’re not extinct. A hundred years ago, they got introduced to the seas of Parathos, a deadly predator planet, and narwhals thrived there against all odds.”

  “How can they be a subspecies of a mythical creature? Wouldn’t Earth’s scientists know?”

  “I don’t think people from your time knew as much as they thought they did.”

  “But unicorns… they’re not real. And anyway, even if they were—and I’m not saying I believe you—they would be a type of horse, surely.”

  “I had three unicorns of my own when I was a boy. This is why you go to school, Sarah, to find out all the things people knew about then, and to replace them with things that we know about now. I’m sure if I went to the future I’d have to do the same, except that there would be more archaeology in three hundred years’ time, so presumably more scope for employment. And returning to the point at hand, you are neither a narwhal nor a hippopotamus. You are a young lady. A beautiful one. And your shape and size are perfect.”

  Sarah felt a rush of emotion as she realized no one had ever called her perfect before. Then she remembered something else from her past.

  “I had a husband,” she said in amazement.

  “What?” Ral nearly jumped away from her like she was a hot potato.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t think he was very important.” She knew she’d divorced her husband, and she wished she could reassure Ral that she didn’t care, but she needed to figure out what had bothered her about that memory. It had seared her heart for some reason.

  “I knew there had to be something,” Ral sighed, and Sarah felt slightly guilty.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll explain when I’ve had a chance to figure it out.” There had been no opportunity to tell him about her earlier revelation yet, and Sarah wanted to think it all through before she talked to him.

  “I look forward to it. In the meantime, you have two friends in the sitting room. How do you feel about returning to them?”

  “Sure.” She nodded, still slightly dazed from the memory about the unexpected husband. Sarah stood up and went back to the sitting room. Laila and Riela were sitting on a beanbag together, looking sheepish.

  “Are you okay?” Laila asked. “I’m really sorry I upset you.”

  “Me too,” Riela said. For some reason, Riela looked like she’d just driven over a cat or something.

  Sarah nodded. “I’m feeling a bit better now. Let’s not swap clothes, please.”

  Riela nodded fervently.

  “I’m sorry, it was a stupid idea,” Laila said ruefully.

  The three girls watched the rest of The Little Mermaid, then Ral came back.

  “That’s bedtime for three young ladies. The shower is through there, take turns, and when you’re done, I’ll show you where you’re all sleeping,” he told them. “Sarah, why don’t you show the girls where we keep the towels?”

  Sarah nodded and led the way to the linen closet. She held the door open and waved at the towels.

  * * *

  Sarah was sleeping on one of the huge beanbags, which had been moved into her room for the night, while Riela and Laila were sharing her bed. When she was having a nice dream about buying ice cream on Earth, someone pinched her arm. She awoke, and the pinching sensation went on. Looking around the dim room, she startled when she saw the outline of someone, and she jumped, falling off her beanbag in a heap.

  “Shh! It’s just me, Laila!” Laila whispered. A hand covered Sarah’s mouth and she rolled her eyes. “We’re going to get a midnight snack,” Laila added, as she removed her hand.

  Sarah put the backlight on her tablet and the room lit up dimly, then she snapped on the area lamp next to the bed.

  “That’s so not how you wake someone up,” Sarah grumbled in a whisper. She saw Riela sitting on the bed looking dazed. Her face was covered with a white fabric face mask.

  “You went to sleep in your face mask?” Sarah wondered.

  “Yeah, um, it’s so all the vitamins get in,” Riela replied.

  “I’m pretty sure skin doesn’t work like that,” Sarah observed.

  “Who cares? Midnight snack!” Laila interrupted in a louder whisper. She got to her feet and bounced on Sarah’s bed a couple of times before Sarah stood up and led the way to the kitchen, trying her best to be quiet.

  One of the most amazing things about Ral’s rainbow mosaic floor, Sarah reflected, was that it didn’t creak or squeak when anyone sneaked around late at night. She got to the kitchen area before she planted her face in a pan hanging almost above the worktop. It smacked into another pan with a clang.

  “Oh, no,” Laila whispered. Sarah gripped the pan tightly with both hands in a feeble attempt to get it to stop resonating, but when she saw the space above Ral’s room light up, she knew she’d awoken him.

  “I’m such a klutz! Quick, back to bed!” Sarah turned to return to her room but before they’d finished crossing the sitting room, the main light illuminated them and Sarah, Laila, and Riela froze as Ral stood near the coffee table, looking stern.

  “Why are you three out of bed?” he demanded.

  Sarah quivered, then Laila elbowed her hard in the ribs and whispered, “Say something!”

  “Um… there… was… a… bee?” Sarah hazarded. Laila and Riela groaned.

  “Young lady, bees were already well on their way toward becoming extinct before you were frozen. I’m quite certain that you know that. Additionally, the air conditioning units purify the air and have filters which prevent the entry of unwanted pests, so even if there were any similar bugs on Minos Kerala—which there are not—they would be unable to enter this apartment. Try again; why are you three out of bed?”

  “We, uh… that is… possibly… midnight snack,” Sarah mumbled in a small voice, staring at a particularly yellow mosaic tile and wishing she’d never listened to Laila.

  “Sentences usually contain verbs. I’m going to assume that you intended to acquire and consume a midnight snack, yes?”

  Sarah nodded mutely.

  “And instead you made so much noise that I am now awake and wondering why I ever went to bed in the first place.”


  Sarah looked up and met his gaze.

  “We only wanted a little nibble,” she tried to explain.

  “Back to your beds, all of you, and if I hear, see, smell, or otherwise detect any evidence that late night eating has taken place, I will spank you, Sarah, in front of your friends; Laila, I will have to inform your daddy, because he said you only had permission to stay if you behaved yourself; and Riela, you will not be allowed to stay overnight in the future. Do not test me again tonight, any of you. I am an archaeologist; I know how to interpret the contents of a dustbin, particularly when it’s combined with used plates, crumbs on worktops, and items missing from the fridge. I will know.”

  Thoroughly chastened, Sarah scurried back to bed as fast as she could. It couldn’t have been many minutes later, when she was drifting on the edge of slumber, that she heard Laila whisper, “But I’m hungry!”

  Sarah threw a pillow in her general direction then went to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  Ral awoke and found three young ladies slouching on beanbags in his sitting room, passing a box of Breakfast Bites between them.

  “You know what I really miss about my life before I came here?” Sarah was saying to the other girls, as Ral stood to one side and listened. “TV. Like, there was something special about being able to get out of bed, go downstairs in my jimjams, and put on cartoons. I’m sure my brain takes twice as long to wake up without them.”

  “A cartoon? Like in a film? You could put a movie on your tablet,” Riela suggested.

  “It’s not the same. A cartoon was about fifteen minutes long, sometimes even shorter, so you got a complete story in the time it took to shovel breakfast into your face. At weekends, I took it slow and watched more of them. I even left them on while I cleaned my apartment, so chores were fun. What’s similar? I mean, what do any of you do when you want to distract yourself from boring tasks? You don’t even have MP3 players.”

  “I guess we finish the boring things so we can spend more time on the fun stuff,” Laila replied. “I never really thought about it before.”

  “We use our imaginations,” Riela said. “You know, sing songs, turn things into games, give ourselves treats when we finish.”

  Ral moved into the room more noticeably as Sarah started singing something that the Speakeasy chip seemed to struggle with. In general, it wasn’t great at translating music, which was one reason, along with literature, why different languages still existed at all. While computers translated literature quite easily, it still meant that everyone had to learn one written language so they could read anything. As an astro-archaeologist, he had learned snippets of several different languages, although most of them were dead.

  “…And never give us barley water.” Sarah’s singing made no sense to Laila or Riela either, because they exchanged a look, then burst into a fit of giggles. Ral headed for the kitchen and wondered how he’d gone from living alone to having a house full of adult little girls.

  After a slow breakfast, Laila’s daddy came to the door.

  “I’m here for the noisy one,” Basil quipped, but when Ral stood aside to invite him in, they both saw three young women jumping onto the various beanbags shrieking with giggles. Ral shook his head in amused disbelief; he had only looked away for a second.

  “Girls?” he interrupted. They froze on the spot; Sarah had her feet on two different beanbags that were very slowly sliding further apart.

  “There’s lava on the floor!” Sarah explained, as her feet continued to get wider.

  “And sharks,” Laila added.

  “That would be the famous thermophilic sharks from the planet Selachio, whose seas of lava are filled with tiny magma fish which the sharks can eat? I believe tourists travel there occasionally from the hotter planets so they can swim in the lava flows.” Ral kept his face deadpan as he said it. Basil caught on quickly, and added, “Indeed, I believe the molten rock is particularly good for helping cleanse the pores and ease breathing conditions such as Zirconian lung. Don’t they serve those sharks up as a special delicacy in the finest restaurants in Pombos?”

  At this, Laila must have worked out that it was a joke, as she shrieked with laughter.

  “There’s no fancy restaurants on Pombos!” she exclaimed, “All the wealthy people have dinner parties so they can complain about one another’s servants afterwards!”

  “Well, that means everything else we said must be wrong as well,” Ral said, still trying to keep a straight face.

  “That’s a logical fallacy and you know it, Daddy!” Sarah cried, her legs still drifting further apart. Riela nodded emphatically.

  Ral threw his hands up in mock defeat.

  “In which case, the tickle monster says get off those beanbags before you’re doing the splits, Sarah.” He advanced on Sarah with his hands out and his fingers wiggling.

  “Wait, what’s a logical thingummy?” Laila asked the room in general.

  “I’ll explain it to you later, Laila,” Basil said from behind Ral, but Sarah chose that moment to try to step off the beanbags, and somehow managed to tumble. Luckily, there was an area rug that softened her fall and she collapsed in a fit of giggles. Ral waited for her to take a breath, then he helped her up.

  “And that’s why you shouldn’t try to stand on two beanbags at the same time,” he pointed out. Sarah giggled again. He loved it when she laughed, and he resolved to make her do it at every appropriate opportunity. And some inappropriate ones.

  After Sarah’s friends had left, Ral noticed she became quiet and withdrawn. He made her a hot chocolate and placed it on the table, then he sat down beside her.

  “Want to talk to me?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “What’s to talk about? I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine,” he persisted. Why wouldn’t she just tell him?

  “I guess sometimes people’s faces don’t match up with their feelings,” Sarah replied.

  Ral decided a distraction was in order.

  “Did they have ice cream in your time?” he asked. She looked at him coldly for a long moment before she nodded.

  “We invented it,” she explained petulantly.

  “Would you like to go out and get some? Most ice cream stands also sell crunchy frittatas and fried Calassian savory pears, if you prefer to try something different.”

  “Meh.” Sarah rolled her eyes and looked out of the window, as if there was nothing of interest in the room. She was headed for a spanking and Ral wanted to give her more opportunities to calm down.

  “Put your shoes on, we’re going for a walk,” he told her. If it wasn’t optional, she couldn’t spend the day in a funk.

  Sarah looked through him, then slowly got to her feet. Was she really this sad that her friends had left? Ral suspected there was something deeper going on.

  When they got outside, Ral led the way to the beach; it was only a few blocks away. There was a sort of viewing platform with a safety rail and a ramp that went sideways down to the level of the beach. Sarah stood at the rail and gasped in amazement.

  “This… it’s nothing like any beach I ever saw!” she exclaimed. “How is the sea that color?”

  “Look at the sky then think about that really hard.” Ral smiled to himself. She kept telling him she understood science; here was an opportunity for her to apply it to a new puzzle.

  “The sky is sort of purple, the sea is sort of purple. Does one cause the other?”

  “Yes. The sea has its own color but it’s also highly reflective. So it reflects the sky.”

  “Oh, of course it does. It’s beautiful.” Sarah gazed out into the landscape. Ral was glad he’d brought her out, she seemed more tranquil now.

  “Have you noticed the sand?” Ral asked. Sarah regarded it, then went down the ramp to get a closer look.

  “It’s pink. And the pebbles are pink and sparkly as well! Why is it so pink?” She picked up a handful of the candy-pink sand and watched as it ran through her fingers. “Wait…” She st
ared at the sand thoughtfully. “Sand comes from rocks that are ground up by erosion and weathering, doesn’t it? Which means… the sand is pink because the rocks are pink. And that’s why they’re both pink!” Sarah looked pleased with herself as she figured it out. Ral was proud of her, too.

  “Well done. Now do you want to try and figure out how the ice cream stays cold in the ice cream stand?”

  Sarah looked at the little carts dotted along the beach. Ral almost saw the cogs whir as she tried to get to the bottom of the mystery.

  “It’s quite warm, so the ice cream should really melt. Unless they all have secret underground cables that power freezers. But they’re on wheels, so the cable would have to be retractable. Or maybe in the future there’s some sort of metallic elastic that electrons can flow through…”

  Ral decided to put her out of her misery. “See those awnings that protect the food from any rain or sea-quacks? They have solar panels in them.”

  He saw the realization register on her face and she nodded, like he was revealing a complicated magic trick.

  “Want to go and investigate up close? There’s chocolate sprinkles,” Ral suggested. Sarah nodded again, and they went to the nearest ice cream stand and bought two of the little tubs.

  “What would you like on yours?” the vendor asked Sarah. Her eyes lit up as she glanced over the row of toppings.

  “Can I please have some sprinkles? Oh, and some of that red sauce. And, some of those silver bobbly things, please. Also, can I have some of the crushed wafers on top too, please? It’s such a shame you don’t have any amaretto to pour over it.”

  “Wow, lady, you gonna eat all that?” The vendor looked to Ral as if he were checking she was allowed to have so many toppings. Ral nodded emphatically.

  “Whatever she wants,” he said. After all, what was a treat if it was really a compromise?

  Ral just had chocolate pieces with his. It was far more of a delight to watch Sarah eating her ice cream, trying different combinations of toppings on the same spoon, and getting it all over her face as she ate. He had a sudden mental image of her in a dress with a huge mushroom-shaped skirt and with her hair tied up in ribbons, holding a soft toy and looking up at him demurely, with the faintest twinkle of mischief in her eyes.