Through Alien Eyes

by Amy Thomson

  “We did good work today, Ukatonen,” Teuvo said. “I’ve never seen two horses learn to move together that quickly. Look at them now. They’re even grazing in sync.”

  Ukatonen nodded, watching the two horses eating in precisely the same rhythm.

  “You linked with them, didn’t you?” Teuvo asked.

  “I synchronized their body rhythms while I was leading them,” Ukatonen told him. “It is a thing my people do when they need to work together. It will wear off in an hour or two.”

  Teuvo shrugged. “It’s a little spooky, watching them. Do you think it’ll make a difference tomorrow?”

  “We will both find out. This is a new thing. I’ve never tried it before. I won’t do it again, if you don’t want me to.”

  “Just tell me first.”

  They stood silently together watching the horses.

  “I wish they weren’t going back to the outer level after we’ve finished with the harvest,” Teuvo said with a regretful grimace. “It’s so much more convenient working with them here. And I’m getting too old to deal with the gravity out there.”

  “I don’t understand getting old, Teuvo. What’s it like?”

  Teuvo looked at him, one white eyebrow raised. “From what Juna tells me, you know a lot more about it than I do.”

  “We grow older but we do not”—Ukatonen paused, searching for the right word—“age as you do. Our bodies do not wear out. Unless we are unlucky, we get to tell our bodies when to die. Here it is your bodies that tell you when you will die. What is that like for you?”

  “Our lives have a rhythm to them, Ukatonen. At first we are young and active– our lives are full of exploration and discovery. Then we mature, and have children. Then we get old. We have some time to enjoy the fruits of our lives, and watch our children and grandchildren grow up. There’s nearly ninety years of experience inside this head. That’s a lot of good memories. I like being able to look back on a broad sweep of time. Soon it’ll be time to let go, let the next generation come up to take my place.”

  He sighed. “But as nice as all that sounds, I don’t want to die yet, Ukatonen. I like the life that I have. I built this vineyard, planted those grapes. Now it’s doing well, and I want to enjoy that. I want to see what happens to my children and grandchildren. I’m not ready to leave yet, but I know that no matter what, my body is going to continue to decline.

  “To tell the truth, growing old is mostly unpleasant. Everything hurts. You get tired more easily. Every time you forget something, you wonder whether your mind is going.” He sighed again. “That’s what I worry about most, you know, my body keeping on going while my mind is gone. Though the other option, having an intact mind while my body doesn’t work, is pretty bad too. I don’t want to wind up like– ” He paused.

  “Toivo?” Ukatonen prompted.

  Teuvo nodded and looked down at the ground. Ukatonen watched him, wishing he understood human expressions as well as Moki did. Clearly Teuvo was saddened by his son’s injury, but he sensed that there was more to it than that.

  “There were times when I wanted Toivo to die,” Teuvo confessed. “I actually wanted my own son to die.”

  “I don’t understand you humans,” the enkar said. “A Tendu crippled beyond healing would have chosen death. Why do you humans try so hard to live?”

  “I think you said it yourself, Ukatonen. The Tendu choose when to die, and we humans have death forced on us. As a result, we cling to life, even when it is easier and sometimes better to die. Toivo did try to kill himself once. We managed to save him.”

  “Why?”

  “When Toivo was injured, we didn’t know if Juna was still alive. I thought that Toivo was the only child I had left,” he said. “Besides, there wasn’t much time for thinking about it when we found him. We got him to the hospital immediately.” Teuvo looked back at the horses, still grazing in sync. “After he got out of the hospital, he left for the zero-gee satellite. Being,here broke his heart, I think. Every day he was reminded of all the things he couldn’t do anymore. I’m still amazed that he came back to see Juna. I guess he hadn’t said goodbye to her yet.”

  They stood silently in the morning light, watching the horses.

  “How soon will Toivo be well again?” Teuvo asked.

  “We’ll be done with our work in a week or so. It would be faster if Juna weren’t pregnant, but we have to be careful about the baby. After we’re done, then Toivo will have to learn to use his body again. That could take months.”

  “Could I—?” Teuvo began.

  “Yes, Teuvo?” Ukatonen prompted.

  “I wanted to know what it was like. Linking, I mean. Perhaps I could help when Juna gets tired?”

  “Thank you,” Ukatonen said, “We’d be honored to have your help. It will make the work go much faster.”

  They gathered up the bucket of treats and the lead rope and headed back to the barn.

  “I’m worried about Moki,” Teuvo remarked as they put their gear away in the tack room. “He wants to try to work things out with Bruce, to ‘achieve harmony’ as he puts it. I don’t think he understands how irrational we humans can be when it comes to our children. I’m afraid that he’s going to get hurt. Keep an eye on him, please.”

  “I’ll try,” Ukatonen promised. “I would like to achieve harmony with Bruce, too, but I will keep your words in mind when we speak to him. Tell me, what would be the best way to approach this?”

  “To be honest,” Teuvo admitted, “I don’t think you can work this one out, Ukatonen. Bruce has made up his mind that this is a bad idea. If I thought I could stop Moki from interfering, I would, but he’s such a determined youngster.”

  Under the muffling confinement of his warm suit, Ukatonen rippled amusement. “Determination is what Moki’s best at,” he agreed, remembering the little one’s dogged pursuit of Eerin through the forest, determined to either be adopted or die.

  “Well, Ukatonen, enough playing with horses. It’s time to get back to work,” Teuvo said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Same time tomorrow, eh? and we’ll see how well those two work together.”

  Ukatonen nodded, a pale blue flicker of affection appearing on his skin as he watched Teuvo head to the winery.

  Moki didn’t have a chance to talk to Bruce until after lunch, when he went out for a walk.

  “Can I show you the forest?” Moki asked. “It’s beautiful, and very quiet. I think you’d like it.”

  Bruce accepted, and the two of them walked in silence through the vineyards and the orchards. The leaves on the trees and vines were bright red and yellow, as though the plants were angry at the cold weather. Moki mentioned this to Bruce, and he smiled and shook his head.

  “You say the damnedest things, Moki. What makes you think they’re angry?”

  “Yellow and red are the colors for irritation and anger,” Moki explained. “If the trees were Tendu, that’s what they’d be feeling.” He looked up at Bruce. “What makes you think I would harm your daughter?”

  Bruce let out a long sigh, and stopped walking. “Moki, I’ve just spent all morning going over this with Juna and that damned lawyer of hers. I came out here to get away from all of that shit for a while.”

  Moki turned contritely tan all over. “I’m sorry, Bruce, but it’s important for me to understand what you’re thinking. I don’t want to be out of harmony with a friend.”

  “Moki, I– Dammit Moki, if it weren’t for the Tendu, I wouldn’t be in this mess!”

  “That’s true,” Moki observed, “and if it weren’t for Juna, I would be dead. We can’t change the past, Bruce, we can only live with what is. Adopting me has made my sitik’s life more difficult. Even so simple a thing as having a child is a struggle for her now. That shames me, because a bami is supposed to make a sitik’s life easier. But we care about each other, and that helps.”

  “If Juna cared about me, she wouldn’t be putting me through this!”

  “But if you cared more about Eerin, perhap
s you would understand why she is doing this,” Moki replied. “Eerin wants this child with her whole heart. She was willing to be put in a cage for this child. She is willing to be out of harmony with the Survey, and with Population Control and even with me. She is frightened by how much she wants this baby. It is a human thing. I do not understand it, but I wish to learn. I wish to understand something that is so precious to Eerin, and to you. It is important, because it will help me understand my atwa.”

  “Your what?”

  “My atwa. An atwa is a piece of the world that we are responsible for. It is our job to keep that piece of the world in harmony with everything else. Every Tendu elder has an atwa. My atwa will be to understand humans. I will be the first Tendu ever to practice this atwa. It will be hard, and I have a lot to learn before I’m ready.”

  “What about Ukatonen?” Bruce asked. “I thought he was here to learn about humans. Doesn’t he have one of these at-thingies?”

  “He is an enkar. His atwa is the Tendu. I will be something different.” Moki shrugged. “But I don’t know what that will be yet. Your daughter will be something new, like me.”

  “I don’t want my daughter to be something new,” Bruce told him. “I just want my daughter to be happy.”

  “I don’t understand. What does being happy mean?”

  “Don’t you know what it means to be happy?”

  “I know what it means for me. I know some of what it means for my sitik and for Ukatonen, and even a little for Eerin’s family. But I don’t know what happiness means for you, and I don’t understand how you can know what happiness will mean for your daughter. She isn’t even born yet.”

  Bruce opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. “Moki, did anyone ever tell you that you have a knack for asking hard questions?”

  “Is that good?” Moki wanted to know.

  “It’s not a widely appreciated skill,” Bruce observed. “I want to be left alone. I don’t want to be pushed around. That’s what would make me happy.”

  “I don’t understand,” Moki said. “How are you being pushed around?”

  “I have no say in what happens to my daughter. That lawyer’s telling me what I can and cannot do about my own flesh and blood.”

  “What do you mean by ‘flesh and blood,’ Bruce?”

  Bruce looked impatient. “The baby, Moki. She’s my daughter.”

  “Why are you talking about her as though she were like your arm? She isn’t part of your body,” Moki pointed out.

  “Half of her genetic material came from me. That makes her partly mine.”

  “How can you own another person?” Moki asked, his confusion growing.

  “Moki, I’m her father, I should have a say in how my daughter is raised.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s right that I should,” Bruce snapped.

  Moki’s head was whirling. He was beginning to understand his sitik’s difficulty. This argument was like being sucked into a whirlpool; you went round and round and each circle drew you further down into it. There was simply no way to get Bruce to see another point of view.

  “Bruce, can’t you see beyond yourself? This child could make a real difference both to your people and to mine. Please, let your daughter belong to herself. Give her the chance to know the Tendu and decide what she wants to do with her own life.”

  “Moki, stop trying to make me give in. She’s my daughter, and I don’t want her raised by aliens, not even you.”

  “I’m not trying to make you give in,” Moki said quietly. “I’m trying to find out how to bring us all into harmony. Everyone else involved is in harmony with Eerin’s desire to raise this child with the^help of Ukatonen and myself. You don’t want this because your daughter might grow up to be different from you. Is my understanding incomplete? Is there another explanation?”

  Bruce was silent for a long while, scuffing the fallen leaves with his toe. At last he shook his head. “Moki, this is a human thing. You wouldn’t understand, and I can’t explain it.”

  Sadness clouded Moki’s skin. He couldn’t get Bruce to see the path to harmony that stretched out at his feet. All he had to do was to turn his gaze outward, and he would see.

  “It pains me to be out of harmony with you, my friend,” Moki said, looking up at Bruce. “I have done what I can. The rest is up to you.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Moki turned and walked away through the drifting rain of angry leaves. Despite his warmsuit, the chill in the air seemed to have settled in his bones.

  Juna drove Bruce to the shuttle station. He settled resentfully into the passenger seat of the truck, waving a grudging goodbye to Juna’s family and to the aliens. They drove through the orchards and the fields of golden stubble in tense silence.

  “I wish we could have come to an agreement, Bruce. It bothers me that we* re still so far apart on this,” Juna said as they pulled up to the station entrance.

  “She’s my daughter too, Juna,” he said, as he climbed out. He was glad to be leaving. He was tired of this endless wrangling that went nowhere. He stole a longing glance at the door to the station.

  “I know, Bruce, and I’ve done everything I can to include you, but you keep shutting us out. If you want to be part of our daughter’s life, you’re going to have to accept the fact that Moki and Ukatonen will be part of her family.”

  Brace’s lips tightened in frustration as he pulled his bag out of the back of the truck. “I guess I’ll see you at the hearing, Juna.” There was simply no more to be said. Juna was adamant about having the child, and he was equally adamant that the child should not be raised by aliens. There was no foothold for compromise.

  “I’m sorry that you got dragged into this, Bruce,” Juna told him.

  “I know,” Bruce said, and picked up his bag and walked away, feeling the weight of dissension slide from his shoulders as he entered the terminal. He glanced back at Juna one last time as the doors swung shut. She was standing by the truck looking after him. He thought of those aliens, with their wet, clingy skin holding a child of his and shuddered. It must not happen.

  Juna stood looking after Bruce for a minute, wishing there was something she could say to make things right between them, but it was impossible. Still, she had been among the Tendu so long that the inability to reach harmony was almost a physical ache. She got back into the truck, leaned back, and closed her eyes, wishing somehow to make it all right. Then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and started the engine.

  Juna sat down at the comm unit and told it to get her mail. She had neglected her mail since she got home, at first because she was on vacation, and then because she had been too busy. Lately she had caught herself avoiding her comm because of the enormous backlog that she knew would be waiting for her.

  The accumulation was even bigger than she had imagined. There were over two thousand messages, far too many for a download of her personal mail, especially given the tightness of her filters. Why was there so much mail? She sorted the messages by subject heading, and found that there were about one hundred and fifty personal messages, and thousands of proposals of marriage.

  She scanned the proposals, shaking her head in amazement. Some were only a few sentences long, inviting her to visit them and consider their offer of marriage, but many were elaborate proposals, some with graphics of their house, grounds, and families. She replied to the proposals, with a polite notice that she was not accepting marriage offers via E-mail, and set her filters to auto-reply to any other proposals with the same message.

  She was being foolish, she knew. In her condition, she should look through these offers, but this was not how she wished to be courted. If they wanted to marry her, let them come in person to make their offers.

  “Oh, little one,” she said, rubbing her belly. “What am I getting you into?”

  Perhaps, she thought, I could contact a marriage broker when my leave is up. They could filter out the people I wouldn’t be interested in. She sat down o
n the bed, tears filling her eyes. She didn’t want to do that either. She knuckled the tears out of her eyes, and pulled on a shirt. It gapped open over her breasts. She sighed and pulled it off and put on a larger shirt. She needed to get some new clothes. Now that she was pregnant, nothing fit right anymore.

  The proposals dealt with, Juna got herself a cup of coffee and settled in to deal with the rest of her mail. She dispensed with several dozen trivial messages, and composed a personal letter that went out to another twenty-odd friends. Another batch was sent to Analin to deal with. There was a note from Mark Manning, to her and Moki.

  I went to Snyder Research Hospital, and had my lungs checked out by the doctors there. They said that my lungs were in remarkably healthy condition. You know, I really think the Tendu should consider working with some medical researchers. If you’d like, I’ll pull a few strings to get you posted to Snyder. There’s several beautiful parks with lots of big trees for Moki and Ukatonen. And you could do so much good for so many people.

  Juna smiled, and printed the letter out for the Tendu. They would be glad to hear from Manning. And working at Snyder sounded like a good idea, at least until they had a chance to work out a more permanent assignment. Healing people would improve the Tendu’s public image, and she would be near the courthouse where her Pop Con hearing would be held. It was definitely worth thinking about.

  There was also mail from the Survey. They wanted to discuss her next assignment with the Tendu. Juna sent back a polite request for a conference with the Survey personnel in charge of the Tendu, and suggested Snyder as a possible short-term assignment.

  That done, she turned off the comm unit, and headed out into the bright autumn sunlight to show Manning’s letter to the Tendu, and to discuss her plans with them.

  “Well?” Toivo asked after Ukatonen finished his examination.

  “The bones have set nicely. We’re ready to do the final work on your spinal cord. Is that all right with you?”