by John Boyd
“Mother, I’d like for you to meet Kyra Lavaslatta from the Planet Kanab.”
“Welcome to the farm, dear. Is Planetkanab in Saskatchewan?”
Mrs. Breedlove was eyeing Kyra’s hair discreetly and suspiciously as she asked the question.
“It’s nowhere, Mrs. Breedlove,” Kyra answered. “Its sun blew up and destroyed it.”
“How dreadful. But I’m glad you’re safe.”
“She’s telling the truth, Mother. She’s been traveling for thousands of years, earth time.”
“Then you must be hungry. But we’ll have lunch shortly.”
“How was the weather on your planet, Kyra?” It was a farmer’s question from the senior Breedlove, and Kyra answered graciously.
“Much like yours, but probably milder. My planet’s axial tilt was not so great as yours.”
The group moved toward the house, a white, two-story frame structure shaded by maple trees. His parents, Breedlove realized, were clinging to the forms of polite hospitality just as Peterson had steadied himself with the ritual of official behavior, and they were adapting to the girl with more success than Peterson had managed, but they had no UFO sightings on their official records.
“John, I’d like to requisition about thirty gallons of gasoline,” Peterson said.
“No problem, Pete. Kyra, have you really been traveling for thousands of years?”
“Yes and no, Mr. Breedlove. I’ve been traveling for thousands of years your time but only a few months my time.”
“You certainly look young for your years,” Mrs. Breedlove commented. “What is your beauty secret?”
“Speed, ma’am,” Kyra said pleasantly, surprising Breedlove with her use of “ma’am.” “The faster you go, the slower time becomes.”
“You must have been traveling from east to west,” Mrs. Breedlove said. “John and I left New York one morning just after breakfast and got to Spokane before lunch.”
“Kyra’s talking about relative time, Mother,” Breedlove interjected.
“Oh, relative. You know, Tom, except for her coloring Kyra reminds me of your cousin Mary. If we had known you were coming, Kyra, we would have dressed for you.”
“You look better than I do, Mrs. Breedlove. This is your son’s idea of a fashionable creation.”
“I’m sure that our daughter, Matilda, has clothes to fit you, and I have a new supply of panty hose.”
Since his mother was larger than Kyra, Breedlove asked, “Will your panty hose fit her?”
“They’re stretch-fits,” his mother explained.
“But do stretch-fits shrink?”
“That’s not your department, Tom,” his mother answered, and turned to Kyra. “Matty has several bras. She’s rehearsing her graduation ceremonies at school this morning, but I’m sure she’ll not mind if I select one for you.”
“Mother, I know she can’t wear Matty’s bras.”
“Now, just how would you know that, Son?”
It was a question he left unanswered. His mother had old-fashioned ideas about behavior between the sexes.
They entered the kitchen, and Mrs. Breedlove said, “Come upstairs with me, Kyra, and we’ll find you something to wear.”
Peterson went to the living room to telephone Seattle. John Breedlove went upstairs to change for lunch, and Breedlove went into the sun parlor to type out orders detaching him to duty away from the Selkirk Ranger Station. Peterson’s signature on his orders would be certification enough for his sanity, he realized, and the classification of Kyra as exotic fauna, while not compromising the Park Service, which dealt routinely in such matters, would offer later officials a credibility escape clause in dealing with the girl, in short, a convenient avenue along which the buck might be passed.
After typing the orders in quadruplicate, Breedlove took them to the living room, where Peterson, having completed his call to Seattle, sat talking with John Breedlove, who had rejoined his house guest.
“I’m not saying you have to hide her, John. Just cover her hair and don’t talk about her after she’s left here. Remember what happened when Orson Welles broadcast the invasion from Mars. I don’t think the country would scare as easily today, but if word got out that a spaceship was parked there, the Selkirk Wilderness Area would be ruined. For all I know, women’s groups might start lobbying to keep her on the planet, but Kyra wants her people off. If they stay here they’ll become habituated to the climate, as she put it, and it will make it harder on them to leave. If that happens, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“I don’t see why,” John Breedlove demurred. “Apart from her hair she’s like any other woman, a mite prettier than most and no doubt more intelligent, but such a friendly creature.”
“You hit the nail on the head with the word ‘creature’. She’s not human, and we’ve got problems enough on this planet with the yellows, reds, browns, and blacks. Throw in a few silver-skinned green hairs and we’ve had it. Besides, they’ve evolved beyond human beings, and it’s a law of evolution, she tells me, that the better-adapted species drive out the lesser-adapted. They can gather energy with only a minimal demand for vital minerals, and they don’t really need shelter, since they can hibernate in extreme cold.”
The extent of Peterson’s knowledge amazed Breedlove. Kyra had not “told” him anything in the helicopter. He must have got the information during their private conversation on the meadow.
“What have you got for me, Tom?” Peterson turned to Breedlove.
“My orders. Sign here.”
Peterson had recovered sufficiently to read the orders before he signed them. He signed and handed the original back to Breedlove, saying, “You’ll be on a per diem, so watch your expenses.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the morning the man from Immigration will come to take Kyra into custody. His name is Aloysius Kelly, and he’s a nice guy, but he’s something of a con artist. It’ll be up to you to out-con him, because he might not like the idea of a man from the Park Service intruding on his turf. He might try to squeeze you out, but your authorization is as good as his. Visitors from other planets aren’t covered by immigration regulations, and Kyra’s not seeking citizenship. All she needs is a visitor’s permit. She doesn’t come under the Bill of Rights, but she does have rights as a threatened species, and that’s where I’m concerned. Besides, you have another ace up your sleeve: you’re the only human being who has seen the inside of her spaceship. Keep that ace hidden until you’re ready to play it.”
“Didn’t you tell him she’s from another planet?”
“Not over the telephone. All Kelly knows is that she’s a VIP and an unregistered alien. You can fill in the details. I’ll admit I’m passing the buck to you, but I have a feeling this is one buck everybody’s going to be grabbing for. The best way to handle Al is to get him confused. He’s an ex-military pilot and his mind works from a checkoff list. Throw him a few nonroutine ideas and he’ll be asking you what to do. Now, John, I’d like to pay my respects to Kyra and your missus, get the gasoline, and get out of here.”
Peterson did not have to leave the living room to pay his respects. In tight jeans with a tighter blue-denim shirt and loafers with bobby socks, Kyra danced into the room, leaping and pirouetting in a riotous display of controlled energy and grace, saying, “Breedlove, what would you and Euclid think of me now, with all my bare beauty covered?”
Entering behind her, Mrs. Breedlove whispered accusingly to her son, “She’s wearing my bra, and I had to take it in only two notches.”
He barely heard his mother’s revelation. He was remembering Kyra’s remark that the women of Kanab had discarded dresses as being too provocative. Not merely dresses, he amended. He had never before suspected to what heights of fashion a pair of jeans and a denim shirt could be exalted.
“Put one of my old Glenn Miller records on, Tom,” John Breedlove said. “I’d like to teach this little girl to jitterbug.”
“John,” Mrs. Breedlove snapped, “
aren’t you supposed to get the gasoline for Pete?”
As he moved to do his father’s bidding, it occurred to Breedlove that although his mother was not his father’s leader, she commanded, and his father obeyed. When the music began, John Breedlove and Peterson had gone. Kyra came and stood before him, saying, “Then, you teach me to jitterbug, Breedlove.”
Embracing her, he swirled her onto the floor, feeling her lightness communicate itself to his movements, and he thought of Goethe who had written of “the eternal feminine.” In the coquettish laughter of the green eyes beckoning him to dance, he had seen more than the eternal feminine, he had seen the universal feminine. Kyra’s lure was cosmic.
Chapter Four
At a lunch Peterson left too early to share, there were crosscurrents from which Breedlove was sure Kyra elicited subtle concepts of the human condition.
He knew his mother had accepted Kyra when she commented, “Your green hair looks perfectly natural, Kyra. It’s becoming.”
“I met a lady in Tacoma, once, with purple hair,” John Breedlove volunteered. “After a while it began to look natural.”
“John, what were you doing around a purple-haired woman in Tacoma long enough for her hair to look natural?”
“She was a saleslady, Ellen.”
“Retail or wholesale?” Mrs. Breedlove inquired sweetly. Breedlove saw Kyra’s eyes reflect amusement at the jest. She could not have caught the double entendre, but in the exchange, he sensed, she elicited concepts of jealousy and possessiveness, and her own behavior was merging into human patterns rapidly. After observing the others, she handled her knife and fork with the ease of a girl from a finishing school.
After lunch she went to the kitchen to help Mrs. Breedlove bake a cake. Breedlove stayed as close to her as he could unobtrusively manage, to share her joy of discovery. A world was opening to the eyes of a very perspicacious child, and she greeted it with silent shouts of glee, finding marvels in the commonplace. The scent of vanilla enchanted her. She gazed with adoration on the shape of an egg. She marveled at the rise of beaten egg whites, was entranced by the lightness and whiteness of sifted flour, delighted in the whorls her ladle formed in the yolk-yellowed batter, whose smooth sweetness enthralled her tongue. The placing of the cake layers into the oven she saw as a solemn ritual.
After the cake went into the oven, Breedlove invited her into the living room to view the world’s high fashions in Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Sprawled on the living-room rug, she could not read the words, but she grew ecstatic over the pictures.
“Breedlove, would you buy me this gorgeous dress when we get to Seattle?”
He looked down at the illustration she pointed to, a line drawing of a two-piece dress with a boxy tunic that had jutting, padded shoulders with a flaring below-the-knees skirt. No descriptive copy extolled the features of the dress, just these words in bold type, “AN EXCLUSIVE POLINSKI CREATION, AT $720.00.” Beneath the announcement in small type were listed the stores that carried the dress.
“Kyra, the dress costs seven hundred and twenty dollars, more money than I earn in a month. You pay twenty dollars for the material and seven hundred dollars for the name of a designer, Polinksi, you and I never heard before. Find something you like in Ohrbach’s basement for twenty dollars, and I’ll buy it for you.”
“Is Polinski a height-of-fashion designer?”
“You’ll have to ask my sister.”
Through the window he saw the school bus stop at the end of the lane and excused himself. He walked out to meet his sister, ambling up the lane with her books dangling from a shoulder satchel, and when she saw him she ran to meet him, greeting him with a shy but happy embrace and an accusation, “You didn’t answer my letter.”
“When I got it, Peterson flew me home so we could explore your options without me having to write a book.”
“You’re too late. I’ve decided to go to nursing school.”
“I’m glad that’s settled. Now I have a surprise for you. I brought a guest home with me.”
“Is he six foot two with eyes of blue?”
“It’s a she, and she’s wearing your jeans. I found her stark naked in the woods and Peterson flew her here.”
“That’s neat. Does she have a brother?”
“Ask her. She’s got green hair, and it’s natural.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Yes, and I believe her. Her name’s Kyra Lavaslatta and she’s from another planet.”
“Fantastic!”
In the entrance hall Matilda laid her books on a table and walked into the living room, where Kyra was sprawled, looking at the illustrations.
“Kyra, this is my sister, Matilda. We call her Matty.”
Kyra stood and said, “You’re as gorgeous as Breedlove.”
“Wow, where’d you get that green hair? It’s crazy. And those jeans never looked like that on me.”
“Do I look the height of fashion, Matty?”
“You look out of this world, which is where Tom tells me you’re from. Were you really naked up there in the woods?”
“Until Breedlove rescued me.”
“Way out! If I had your figure I’d go naked too. Why did you land on this crummy planet?”
“To get a spoonful of uranium.”
“Uranium? This is getting crazier by the minute. Wait’ll the kids at school hear about this. What planet are you from?”
“Kanab, but it is no more. Its sun exploded.”
“Exploding suns. Fantastic. Did you get to watch it?”
“I could see it on my viewing screen. It was gorgeous. One moment the star was a black hole in space, then, wham, it was a huge blob of light, a bright, fantastic supernova.”
“That must have been neat. Did you bring a brother with you to earth?”
“No.”
Matilda’s exuberance skidded to a halt against Kyra’s flat negative, and the silence gave Breedlove the chance to speak.
“Matty, I don’t want you telling the kids at school or anybody else about Kyra until the government makes the announcement. She’s top secret, but she’ll have to appear in public tomorrow, and I wonder if there’s anything you can do about her hair and skin coloring.”
“Easy. There’s a terrific new hair rinse out called Silvery Platinum and a flesh-toned cosmetic the kids are using to cover their acne, but why fool with her skin? It’ll match her platinum-blond hair. If you’ll drive to the drugstore, I’ll tell you what to get. And get some color film for the Polaroid. I’ll take some before-and-after pictures for my scrapbook. And while you’re gone I’ll take Kyra horseback riding. Would you like that, Kyra?”
“Terrific!”
Bemused by the turn of events, Breedlove went about his chores, considering how Kyra had come in a starship from an abyss of space to find refuge in a farmhouse on an alien planet to confront a female of her own organic age who spoke the language the visitor had acquired in precisely the visitor’s same breezy style. When he returned from the drugstore he took the afternoon paper from the porch into the living room. The girls were still out riding, but he had no reservations about their activity, since Matilda had lent Kyra a scarf to cover her hair and they would be riding on a stretch of desolate hills behind the farm. Matilda was an excellent horsewoman, and Kyra, with her agility, could easily be a rodeo rider.
He was reading the sports section when his mother came down from her afternoon nap to join him. She took the headlines and went to her favorite chair beside the window. Looking over, he noticed she was not reading but gazing out the window.
“What are you thinking about, Mother?”
“About the girl. She is strange.”
“Do you mean ‘stranger than strange’?”
“I suppose. She’s very inquisitive about us, but she tells very little about herself or her own people or the way they lived. It’s not that she’s evasive. She’s just not volunteering any information. She’ll answer if you ask, and then fly off onto some ot
her subject. I’ve learned very little about her family.”
“She’s sensitive,” he said. “The subject’s painful to her.”
“She doesn’t always sound sensitive. I asked her about wars on her planet and she said they used to have tribal fights. I asked her if they had peace treaties between the tribes like our Indians, and she said no, because they fought until one side was exterminated. She didn’t seem one bit horrified. So I guess I did learn something about her family. They weren’t exterminated; they were the exterminators.”
“Why were you so interested in her family, Mother?”
“Because of you. I noticed how you looked at her at the table. I’ve never seen you so attentive before. You may be falling in love with her, and we know nothing at all about her family.”
“You’ll have to admit she’s a very unusual woman,” he said lightly. “In fact she’s so different a human probably couldn’t mate with her.”
“She’s not that different. I saw her upstairs. I can’t understand why she has no navel. Of course, you’ve seen as much of her as I have, and no doubt you noticed she has no navel. She might be a test-tube baby.”
“If she was, all her companions were also,” he said. “But don’t worry about any romance between us. As soon as she gets the uranium she’s leaving earth.”
“A woman’s been known to change her mind.”
“You don’t seriously think we’d run off and get married?”
“That’s one way she could get her citizen’s papers, and she’s a lot older than you. Older women can twist a young man around their fingers. Then what would my grandchildren be, piebald?”
“So you don’t think your future daughter-in-law’s family is acceptable?”
“She may be foreign royalty for all I know. Sometimes she behaves, well, queenly, as someone who expects to be treated as a lady of distinction. Sometimes I catch myself on the verge of calling her ‘ma’am.’ ”