by John Boyd
“Look, Tom,” Kelly said, “it’s Sunday. It’ll be late afternoon before we get her to Seattle. The medical examiners won’t schedule her before Monday morning. For security reasons she’d better stay at my house. I have a wife and two daughters—”
“Not a chance, Al. I’ll see that she’s registered in a hotel at Park’s expense. This is for your sake, Al. Kyra has a very unsettling influence on men’s wives.”
Kelly glanced wistfully at Kyra and nodded. “I understand. I’m willing to go along with you, Tom, for visiting rights after she’s cleared quarantine. But as long as we’re going to cooperate, why don’t you show good faith and give me back my Alien Registration Form.”
“Certainly, Al.” Breedlove removed the paper and handed it to him. “Now come meet my family. They’ve all been sworn to secrecy, and they want to tell Kyra goodbye.”
On the local flight to Seattle, which touched down at Tacoma, Breedlove was mostly left alone to doze intermittently and awaken to strange confusions. Kyra wanted a window seat, and the two men wanted her there to guard her from casual conversations with people in the aisle. Kelly shouldered past Breedlove to take the middle seat beside her, saying, “You’ll have her all this evening. I want her for the flight.”
She had brought along the fashion magazine, which lay unopened in her lap as she studied the landscape below, asking “Al” about landmarks and place names. In less than five minutes she had been calling Peterson “Pete,” yet she always called him the formal “Breedlove.” Now she sat huddled with the solicitous Irishman, and for all the attention he was getting Breedlove could have been in North Dakota.
A vague hurt roiled him, like none he had felt since high school, when he had blurted out an invitation to the girl he wanted to take to the prom and found her already promised to a football star. Stretched out on the seat, a pillow under his head, he regurgitated the sour aftertaste of adolescent rejections and tried to ignore the chattel beside him. He feigned sleep so successfully he dozed until he was aroused by a new note of excitement in Kyra’s voice.
Apparently they were flying over clouds, for Kyra’s attention had turned to the magazine on her lap, and she was showing Al the Polinski Creation.
“I see it’s sold in Seattle,” Al was saying, “at Mason’s department store. If the Jolly Green Giant will let me have you for lunch after you’re out of quarantine, I’ll take you shopping. Maybe I’ll buy you that fantastic creation.”
“Terrific, Al. I’d love you to death for that little number.”
Breedlove was twice disturbed. A married man such as Kelly on a government employee’s salary would not be buying a girl a $720 dress for altruistic reasons, and nice girls did not accept such expensive gifts from married men. Kyra would have to be lectured discreetly on this subject.
On the ground in Seattle, Breedlove was brought back into the party when Kyra took his arm possessively on the way to baggage pickup and asked, “Does my Jolly Green Giant feel refreshed after his wholesome rest on the plane?”
He didn’t particularly care for Al’s cute expression, but his only indication of disapproval was in the restraint of his smile.
Kelly drove them to the Federal Building in his 1973 Plymouth coupé he had left at the airport. At his office he called the medical facility at the Navy base and arranged with the duty officer for Kyra to report Monday at 0800 for her physical examination. At the same time he arranged for Breedlove to escort her onto the base and to the sick bay. He called a family motel near Lake Washington to reserve two suites for them, then he carefully filled in a new Alien Registration Form, with Breedlove’s assistance, which the ranger witnessed.
Since the offices were closed for Sunday, Kelly had no secretary, and it took the two men almost an hour to fill out the form. Once during the session Kyra excused herself to go to the women’s lounge, and Kelly took advantage of her absence to advise Breedlove: “Tom, you strike me as a sensible young man, not one to go overboard with the hanky-panky, but remember, Kyra has not passed quarantine yet. As pretty as she is, she might be carrying some exotic disease fatal to human beings.”
Breedlove accepted the advice, but he was not deluded. He had the definite impression that if Kyra had any communicable diseases, Kelly wanted to be the first to catch them.
After signing the forms, Kyra was a registered resident of the U.S.A., whatever else her status, and Kelly wasn’t done. He took them to the basement garage and assigned Breedlove a Lincoln automobile usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. As he drove the car from the basement with Kyra beside him, Breedlove felt life within him turning to a pleasant tension it had not achieved since the strings snapped in the high-school-prom debacle. He was looking forward with a teenager’s enthusiasm to a night on the town with the prettiest girl in the school.
The motel where Kelly reserved their rooms was a two-story Spanish-mission-style structure built around a swimming pool in its completely enclosed quadrangle. One of a California-based chain, the motel retained a California flavor even to two artificial palm trees overhanging the pool. After they checked in, Breedlove, mindful of Kyra’s love of twilights, suggested they drive to the campus of the University of Washington to watch the sunset.
On the campus few students were abroad on a Sunday afternoon, and he took her on a tour, showing her the various buildings where his classes had been, talking of professors and of student escapades. Passing the library, she remarked, “You must teach me to read, Breedlove.”
She listened to his stories with a grave serenity so different from her usual animation that he asked, “Why are you so pensive, Kyra?”
“You are remembering an old happiness, and such memories are sacred. Breedlove, I wish I could have shared your happiness.”
Her vivacity revived near the stadium. A group of young athletes emerged from the field house, four whites and three blacks, and as they approached Breedlove and Kyra the emanations of their libidos seemed to crest ahead of them. Coming closer, they moved from the path politely to skirt the ranger and the girl, but once past they looked back and whistled their admiration.
“They approve of you, Kyra.”
“You earth men come in all sizes, shapes, and colors, and there are so many of you.”
A boy and girl passed, holding hands and oblivious of all save themselves. The couple elicited Kyra’s first question of the outing, “Did you have a sweetheart when you were here?”
He told her of the botany student he had courted and the ambiguous end of the affair.
“Did you suffer pangs of unrequited love, Breedlove?”
“No, I’ve only been panged twice in my romantic career, and the first was the worst.”
Suddenly to his surprise he was telling her of the senior prom and about the shyness that kept him from asking the girl of his choice to the dance until it was too late.
She listened with absurd gentleness, as a mother might listen to some tale of a childish wrong, and said, “Poor Breedlove, too shy to make out.”
“You learned that expression from Matilda.”
“Yes. She has a tremendous vocabulary.”
As twilight drew closer he walked with her to a bench beneath a spreading tree, and they sat in silence as the shadows deepened around them. The old brick buildings grew more scarlet in the dying light.
“What a beautiful planet.”
A sadness in her voice transmitted her desolation to him and her wistful longing for home. Above them pale stars were beginning to flicker, and he thought with a feeling of dread of their boundless reaches awaiting her. Reaching out, he took her hand in a gesture of human concern and said, “Kyra, even if it means the personal end of me, I wish you would stay.”
“It would never mean the personal end of you, and if I could not return your love for me I would stay.”
She clung to his hand, and her words, though paradoxical, held connotations of a truth he was only beginning to admit to himself.
“Are you speaking of your capabi
lity to feel love, or are you making a more… personal statement?”
“I speak of both, but for you my feeling is private. You have always been my lover, Breedlove, and you will always be my lover. I am the summer and you are the flower.”
Moved by the quiet dignity and conviction in her voice, he asked, not in doubt but in curiosity, “How do you know I love you?”
“You tell me in a language without words.”
It could be that she was confessing that she could read his mind, and he said, “I’d like to explore that remark over dinner with you tonight at the Space Needle Restaurant.”
She dropped his hand. The vivacious, bantering girl had returned. “There’s nothing more to say, Breedlove. I know when your second pangs of love struck—while you were faking a snooze on the airplane.”
“But you weren’t even looking at me.”
“I saw your leg muscles tense up.”
For her first night out on earth, Kyra chose a dress on which Matilda had penned a note, “For dinner and cocktails. Wear with pearl choker.” Burgundy-colored velvet underlaid an outer skirt of voile, which flared from her waist to slightly below her knees. Crimped and sitting snugly, the tight, high waist forced her wide-cleft breasts upward to swell above the low arc of her neckline. Around her neck three strands of pearls gleamed to match the highlights of her hair.
He felt clumsy and earth-bound around her and drew comfort from the knowledge that her aura of femininity and lightness would have made the most epicene escort appear graceless. His self-consciousness left him, however, when they followed the headwaiter to a booth in the soaring restaurant. He became both anonymous and proud, for her entrance was a royal progress drawing all eyes from him.
Her hair caught the attention of the diners, her eyes, luminous in the glow of the table lamps, held it; and her swaying walk drew the gazes after her. They were seated and he ordered martinis. The drinks came, he toasted her, and she lifted her glass in abstract acknowledgment of his salute. The panorama of city and harbor lights held her enthralled.
She tasted the drink, then sipped it, and continued to gaze in wonderment at the lights. Her enchantment communicated itself to him, and he sat in silence, covertly watching her as she watched the slowly revolving landscape.
“Weren’t there city lights on Kanab?”
“None like yours. We lived in tribal communities which followed the springs and autumns from one hemisphere to the other, sowing in one and reaping in the other.”
“You were migrant farmers, then?”
“We didn’t plow or tend herds. The continents of Kanab were vast arboreal parks. We tended our forests and they fed us.”
Distracted by the lights, she gave only partial attention to his questions, answering with no trace of the melancholy that memory sometimes stirred in her.
“What did you fly in?”
“Vehicles that could hover, as your helicopters. Entire families moved in them. But they were made in parts and easily assembled, so there was no need for great manufacturing centers… Oh, it was a joy to be soaring over the great forests, to settle and plant and prune. We ate only nuts and fruits. We became a race of vegetarians.”
“You seem to enjoy the meat you’ve eaten here.”
“In the early days we were meat eaters. It’s surprising how appetites hang on. Tonight I’d like a thick, juicy steak, rare.”
“If you had no herds, where’d you get meat?”
“From other tribes. In ancient times, when the planet grew too crowded and the forests could not support us all, we fought over territory. After we learned to fly and developed seasonal methods of birth control, we reverted to a vegetable diet.”
“You mean the victors ate the vanquished in your tribal wars?”
He knew the answer from his mother, but he wished to judge her attitude for himself. She answered easily, “Of course. Otherwise the flesh would have been wasted.”
“That’s cannibalism.”
“Don’t sound so shocked. If you have a name for it, you’ve done it. You’d make a terrific pot roast, Breedlove.”
Her attention was focusing on him now. He called the waiter and ordered a Chateaubriand, rare.
“What was this seasonal birth control?” he asked.
“Our biological urges were controlled by the angle of our sun. When the planet’s tilt brought deep summer, our mating season began, so we tricked nature by flying to the winter hemisphere… Tell me, Breedlove, why is such a handsome man as you shy around women?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I don’t understand them, or maybe they don’t understand me. I was born too gentle in an age in which even the women have macho.”
“What’s macho?”
“Hubristic masculinity.”
She cocked her head and studied him intently. “Maybe women don’t understand you because you use such big words.”
“Could be.” He laughed. “I was never good at small talk.”
“You don’t seem tongue-tied around me.”
“This is not small talk. Besides, when I’m with a highly intelligent woman I feel relaxed. Even so, I don’t seem to have scored with you. I noticed you were calling Peterson ‘Pete’ and Kelly ‘Al,’ but you never call me Tom.’ ”
“On my planet, Breedlove, when a girl calls a boy by his family name it’s to honor him. It’s her way of telling him he would be acceptable as the father of her race.”
The complaint had flown from his martini, and he regretted its juvenility the moment he uttered it, but her words reshaped his mood.
“Would that be possible with us? After all, we’re of different species.”
“We’ll let your doctors give their opinion tomorrow, but if I had another martini I might be willing to try tonight.”
“Then, by all means, let’s have another martini.”
“Not with the fate of the world in the balance, my dear. Besides, your wordless words are getting too saucy.”
It was a delightful evening. From his loosened tongue extravagant compliments flowed. Her eyes glittered to his witty and flirtatious small talk, and she was not the passive recipient of his unleashed social charms. As if atoning for all the proms he had missed, she lent an appreciative ear to his conversation. The steak pleased her. She never once referred to him as a Jolly Green Giant. Their talk, however, concerned only the customs and traditions of earth.
When the hour grew late, he drove her back to the motel, and as he stood in the doorway of her suite he gave her his final lecture on the customs of earth.
“When a man takes a woman to dinner, it’s the custom for her to award him with a good-night kiss.”
“What’s a good-night kiss?”
“It’s best defined by demonstration. Put your arms around me and tilt your face.”
He was being more playful than ardent. When his arms went around her he intended to give her only a brotherly kiss, educational for her and historically significant for mankind, but Kyra’s intuition immediately grasped the romantic symbolism of the gesture. Her lips clung to his as if she sipped the nectar of his admiration. Feeling the warmth of her arms around him, the play of her fingers on the nape of his neck, the thrust of her upturned breasts and the inward arc of her thighs against his palm, he forgot the historical implications of his act and pressed her closer. Even as she yielded easily to his strength she bound him closer with her lightness.
It was a woman not of earth but desirable above all women of earth who pressed herself to him, frankly reveling in the sensuality of their embrace, but a blitheness in her voluptuosity gave it the innocence of a kitten at play and aroused his protectiveness. His delight in her nearness further annulled his desire,—she stirred him, but to a wild imagery. From her lips he sipped an elixir of springtime compounded of the fragrance of violets and bird song, the blossoms of trees and the hum of bees, all of spring’s bright cornucopia dissolved in a distillate of sunlight. Drunk on her lightness, he felt his psyche levitate and begin to
soar in tightening circles toward a beckoning, dazzling sun.
She pushed him away.
“That’s a terrific custom, Breedlove. Now, first thing in the morning, I want you to teach me to read.”
Smiling, she closed the door.
In his own room Breedlove sat on the edge of his bed wondering about her. As the Pied Piper had led the children of Hamelin to the mountain cave, she had led him to the gates of Wonderland, and, as the Piper had done to a little lame boy in the legend, she had closed him out. For one shimmering moment he had experienced an unforgettable view, but of what? Of an ideal romance? Of a perfect woman? Had she lured him to the gates with the beckonings of an unearthly feminine appeal, or had she used necromancy? Whatever his vision had been, he knew that Kyra had cast her spell around him, that he would never again walk completely free of her brightness and wonder, that he on honey-dew had fed and drunk the milk of Paradise.
Chapter Six
Over orange juice Monday morning in the motel dining room, Breedlove read Kyra a caption beneath a photograph in a copy of an outdoorsman’s magazine he had bought in the lobby, pointing out each syllable in the words he read. She listened, her eyes registering the open and relaxed fixity he had first noticed on Jones Meadow, and then she asked him to write her name in English script. She copied his scribbling once, and he considered her handwriting superior to his.
When breakfast came, her attention shifted to the pancakes he ordered. She questioned him about the milling of grain. With the authority of a wheat farmer’s son, he discussed the processing of flour and the history of pancakes. When he had finished his dissertation, she glanced back at the magazine and asked, “What’s a falcon?”
She had read the word in the magazine, and it led him into a discussion of birds of prey. After coffee, while the waitress totaled their check, she said, “Test my reading, Breedlove.”
Haltingly she read a caption under the photograph of a hunting dog she pronounced “set-ter,” and asked his assistance on two words, but it was an exceptional demonstration of intellectual ability, and he complimented her.