Becoming Alien

by Rebecca Ore

  “Yes. Was anyone hurt on your first-contact team?!”

  “No, we prepared well. I even dyed my hair to look less alien to them.”

  “Is that…”

  “No, this is my normal color.”

  “Usually, are there casualties?”

  She looked around, then said, “Most first contacts are accidents—if we’d planned, did radio approaches first, we’d have fewer dead.”

  My first impulse had been to imagine sunglasses on her with that weird hair, but now I mentally jerked off the imagined shades and gave her professor glasses, so serious. “Right,” I said.

  She smiled. “You were with Rhyodolite 10?”

  “Yes.”

  “He uses Gwyng-heat scent poppers for sexual arousal with non-specifics. Watch him around your women.”

  “Little glass poppers?” I asked.

  “So he has them tonight.”

  “No, Black Amber…” Suddenly I realized I’d almost said too much, but I covered up, saying, “… told me about them.”

  She moved away from me, suddenly bored.

  Alone again. I saw Hargun staring at me.

  But in the middle of this alien party, I thought about me here—a parole breaker. Yeah, I should have asked my parole man if I could have gone star-hopping.

  I relaxed and realized how tense I’d been. No Gwyng was gonna bite my neck; no Barcon planned to microtome me down to slide specimens. And Hargun was at our party now.

  But Rhyodolite had abandoned me. That runt—hard to find such a tiny Gwyng in the crowd, but finally I spotted Cadmium’s blond streaks. Rhyo was with him, back at the fried blood. As I came up, Rhyo oo’ed and grabbed me, offering me a chunk of blood cake on his fake fingernail. “He’ll eat it,” Rhyo told Cadmium. I obliged. “Would he eat it with honey on it?” Cadmium asked.

  “Sure. He’ll drink it raw with honey. After all, his species invented cow juice oil.” Rhyo poured a glass of watery blood and looked for the honey. Cadmium had an oo poised on his blond-streaked face; his wrinkles tightened and shifted.

  I gagged on cold blood and honey. Rhyodolite dipped his fake nails into a stoneware jar and pulled out a grub.

  “No, Rhyodolite,” I said, trying to sound firm, not hysterical. “I didn’t dish it up. You go ahead and eat that yourself.”

  “But, Red-Clay-with-maggots-crawling-on-it, I don’t like this flavor.” Rhyodolite nodded to the grub as though it had annoyed him. But Rhyo had a little oo poised on his muzzle.

  “Let Cadmium eat it, if you’ve injured it already.”

  “I tell you, let’s feed it to the alien Y’ngtree. The one you were with. So polite. Ewing Haring. So stupid,” Rhyo said as he waved the grub around.

  “Rhyodolite-with-a-sexually-delinquent-pouch-mother,” Cadmium said as he took Rhyo’s flailing wrist and guided the grub to his own mouth. “You know Red Clay isn’t a real person and won’t eat proper food.”

  “Don’t you bats ever eat vegetables?” I asked.

  “Clots the cock. Makes webs stink and shrink.” Cadmium asked, “Didn’t that happen to you?” They chattered in Gwyng talk I couldn’t follow.

  “Red-Clay-with-blushing-neck,” Rhyodolite said. “Relax. I’ll show you the Rector feeding a toilet. Black Amber said they’ve discussed/argued about first-contact procedures half day. When the bird gets tense, he relieves himself…”

  “A female cadet said we approach slowly.”

  “Topaz, my mission,” Cadmium said. “Very good ideas. But neither Black Amber nor Karriaagzh approves. Too many new aliens for Black Amber. Too few new birds for the Rector Karriaagzh.” He coughed out the bird’s name.

  But I wanted a tomato. Where were the vegetables? Where were the big vegetarian guys? Ahrams couldn’t disappear in the crowd like a little Gwyng.

  “Stay,” Rhyodolite said. “Made you honorary Gwyng, and you don’t appreciate it.”

  But I’d spotted some Ahrams and plunged into the crowd.

  “Okay,” Cadmium said, “we’ll watch you.”

  While I ate raw vegetables, the Gwyngs commented on the downright perversity of stealing food from the lovely cows who would so willingly turn all this rubbish into milk and oil for me.

  “And there he goes,” Rhyodolite commented, “biting into another vegetable sex organ.”

  Then they saw something. Cadmium picked up the platter of red and yellow things, and said, “Follow…follow,” hustling the platter and me upstairs into a turret room with a huge bay window facing the city—traffic glitter and starry sky visible through black tree shapes.

  Cadmium and Rhyo deposited me and the vegetables by the door and cruised casually up to Black Amber, who greeted them again with full sideways body slams. The Gwyng History Committee Member, Wy’um, stood right by her, flicking his eyelids up and down. Rhyo and Cadmium glared at him.

  Karriaagzh stalked in and settled slowly on his hocks—an odd sight, the body resting on the upper legs. The Gwyngs moved away from him.

  A short bear-type alien eased its way through the crowd with little soft hoots, passing out oily or alcoholic drinks. Karriaagzh took a glass, opened his beak, and flung the liquid in.

  People had heard that the big guys were here, and the room filled up fast. Edwir Hargun and the two other alien ambassadors hung back beside their Barcon translators. Warst Runnel and another Ahram with a cup of hot tea in his hand came in. Tesseract?

  Yes. He came up, seeming mildly dazed by some nice abuse substance, and said, “So space wasn’t so horrible that you turned down your blacks.”

  “Do I call you Tesseract or Rector’s Man here?” I asked, not sure of the etiquette. “Black Amber’s introduced me to History Committee Man Warst Runnel and the Gwyng History Committee Member.”

  Warst Runnel smiled. Tesseract looked at him and then back to me, saying, “Black Amber’s on pheromone suppressants isn’t she, the bitch?” He slurped a bit of his tea as he spoke, and his skull crest reddened. “Call me Tesseract here.”

  “Edwir Hargun, the Yauntry representative, thought the Rector was very impressive.”

  The two Ahrams exchanged broad grins. Tesseract said, “I told you to think of him as the Sesame Street Big Bird. But he is impressive on first sight. And he doesn’t age. When a Rector is seventy, one expects signs of change. Same ideas for decades—wants to expand—link all intelligence in a huge mental conglomerate.”

  “Big Brain Bang Theory,” Warst Runnel said. “Karriaagzh loves contacts. But we can’t drag primitive people into the Federation. Too intimidating.”

  Tesseract added, “Bundle the universe right up. Many terrified primitive cadets, many Rector’s People and Barcons hurt or killed by xenophobes. Like the Calcite you knew, Red Clay. Right?” He traded his tea for a cold drink off the little bear’s tray. “A fabulous creature, our Karriaagzh. Loves legacies. You keep doing the crazy things that got you in contact with us in the first place.”

  “I didn’t do anything right. I just tried,” I said. “And you, sir, were very kind to me on the ship.”

  “I’m still kind. Listen to gossip. It’s almost 88 percent correct. Wonderful living here, on Karst, if you avoid sudden walls.”

  “Memorial walls?”

  “Ah, Warst Runnel, Mica picked well. Sharp refugee. Red Clay, don’t you just love the intrigue? Like Black Amber’s body bribes.”

  “No. Mica should be here now.”

  Tesseract’s crest skin flushed again. “I’m sorry, Tom. And not all those names died on first contact, either. Some people kill across species lines years after first contact.”

  Warst Runnel moved off, closer to Karriaagzh. Tesseract put down his drink and took a deep breath. He sighed and picked up a vegetable slice off the plate I held and ate it. “I am sorry. Gwyngs are conservative, don’t want expanded contacts, but they’re probably making planet landings to leak technology to their primitive parallels. Karriaagzh is rigorously moral, but he’d sacrifice any of us to his dreams.”

  I e
dged away from Tesseract and stared out the window. Looking at the thousands of suns out there, I shivered a bit, feeling isolated, then turned back to the party.

  Black Amber was in a hanging seat with counterbalance weights touching the floor—as high as she could go. Under her, the Rector was stretched out on a mat and cushions, lying on his back like a mammal, weirdly, all eight feet or so of him. He propped himself up on his elbows as though they were furniture he could lean against all night.

  Wy’um attached another swing seat to a pulley ring near Amber. As he rose toward her, pulling himself up, the two senior Gwyng officials blinked slowly, little oo’s and quivering nostril slits on their faces.

  Heat? Not like a dog’s or cat’s, but something was going on. The young Gwyngs and Karriaagzh stared at them. Warst Runnel, who seemed totally unaffected by the Rector’s almost reptilian length on the floor, asked, “Don’t mind, Rector, if I step across you?”

  “Go ahead.” The Rector took another drink from the liquor tray, tossed it down, and re-folded his arm behind him. When he saw me, his crest lifted a bit and he wriggled some face feathers, but then the crest went absolutely slack, feathers slopped off to one side, as though the liquor hit his brain right then.

  Tesseract sat down under Black Amber’s swing chair, while I found a place for myself near enough to hear, but away from the power guys.

  Once everyone was settled, Karriaagzh said, “Would one of our guests tell us an origin myth? I always like to see how Mind works in a new species.”

  Two of the new aliens said they’d rather hear our myths first, but Edwir Hargun, perhaps bolder because he’d held Karst people captive, moved away from the sheltering Barcons and said, “I’ll try to tell my myth.”

  “Is it of life or time?” Black Amber singsonged from her swing. Karriaagzh translated to Karst I for Hargun.

  “Life, I think.” Eyes down, Hargun groped for words in our alien language. “Start. Our planet was hot. The waters dense, thick with…chemicals. Air physics shook these waters and chemicals until they…made chains. Chains chained other chains. First, chains didn’t use the gas that bums with another gas to make water, gas that aids fire. But other chains made this gas and poisoned out the first variety of chains, except for airless places. Not exactly chains.” He made spirals with his hands. “Other chains turned to use this fire-gas. Skins developed, and ate the earlier chains…” Hargun broke off, sweating, and sighed. “I’m sorry I don’t have the words in Karst for my story. We have much to study of Karst on Yauntry, lest we become like the non-fire-gas chains.”

  “This is the theory of the accidental jarring together,” Karriaagzh said, straightening and tightening his face feathers. “I don’t approve of this theory. If life came from things being jarred together, then life could be jarred apart. If we are just accidents…I prefer to think that life is matter’s inevitable expression. All matter drives toward life, for sentience, sapience. We’re chemical mobiles, what all sulphur, hydrogen, carbons long to become.” Karriaagzh paused and stared at Black Amber until she squirmed, hanging in the air like she was.

  Hargun slowly turned red. “Black Amber,” Wy’um said in Karst II, “perhaps you should tell a Gwyng tale, having been born on our home planet. We should be reminded of what we lose if we civilize our new contacts too quickly.” Wy’um seemed the most sober of the lot.

  Amber hooked her arms around her neck. Longer than human arms, they fitted nicely, curved to her sides. If she’d hung upside down, she indeed would have looked like a bat. Her eyes unfocused a bit, then she chanted:

  Time began between footsteps, with awareness of walking. Time reached backward to the black Giant Death, whose face no one sees, but who eats the children of Time and Space both.

  …Time is the giant we walk inside, but Death, his great father, tracks us. Death catches those who stumble, those who lose their time…

  No one translated for Edwir Hargun and the other aliens for a while, then one of the Barcons seemed to explain Amber’s story quickly to Hargun in his own language. The other new aliens sat watching our faces.

  Black Amber continued:

  As we, warm, moved and made steps in Time, Death had found our tracks. The Gwyngs gambled with Death, to stop him, but forgot what Death was, the first terrible chill of him behind the ones crawling across Space. So Death lured the Gwyngs into gambling again. They lost, but Death promised to be greediest before Gwyngs stepped on two feet to make Time solid, or to wait until Memory dissolved, leaving only Death corning behind, when the people were feeble, searching for the black inside of Space again.

  She paused. “Hard to tell it in Karst II, and I think you don’t understand Time if you think in Karst I. In the real Gwyng, we have it all in three linked patterns. We see a universe most of you are blind to: sound structures, light-sky-patterns. Like when the sky patterns, the planet rolls to night. But you’re blind to that, aren’t you?”

  “And you have no concept of history,” Karriaagzh said.

  “We’ve learned,” Black Amber said. “But Time-future is a very odd concept.”

  “For you,” Karriaagzh said in Karst II.

  Hargun’s Barcons weren’t translating this.

  “Gwyngs aren’t inflexible,” Wy’um said. “Now Karriaagzh, your people worshipped the future and spent all their energy (as a life form) leaving messages to it. You [emphatic] tell us your tales. We will see what kind of thing you are.”

  Karriaagzh stared up at the Gwyngs as though sizing them up as meat, then took another drink. After he gulped, he thought a moment, then said, in Karst I, “I’ll tell the story of a man who invented gunpowder.” He continued on in Karst I, speaking slowly:

  Two thousand years after paper writing began, Azzark sat in his family estate. The juveniles crested up, the scholars translated the old words, the barely fledged fed the babies. But his enemies gathered to destroy Azzark, his records, and all his lineage, so the future would hold no trace of him.

  He called on his lineage in sleep and intoxication. Day and night, Azzark called on his lineage, through dreams and old writings. Then in his dreams, one in shaft-broken feathers said the lineage would guide him through rocks and trees of his home. The rocks and trees of his home would save him.

  Azzark asked trees what he should do. A half-burned tree in his stove by the young babies, a half-burned hard tree and a baby spoke beyond reason and years— “Powder the trees caught between wood and ashes.”

  He went to his herds where the juveniles spread yellow rock dust against mites. He knew the dust melted and burned, so he took it back and slept with it dusted through his head feathers. The ancestor spoke in his dreams and said, “Azzark, this rock and the half wood/half ash make an ink to write you in history if you add salt that is not a salt of the ocean;” Azzark sent juveniles to a salt cave for baskets of salt-not-salt-of-the ocean.

  And Azzark made his air ink with fine milling stones, and built an iron pen, to write Azzark forever with thrown steel nibs. And Azzark was revered and remembered for 4 million years.

  Karriaagzh twisted his face feathers near the joints of his bill—his smile, I guessed—and said, “Azzark didn’t realize that gunpowder had been invented in several locations on our planet thousands of years earlier.”

  “I understand that fable,” Edwir Hargun said hotly.

  “No,” Warst Runnel said to Hargun, then he turned to the Rector. “Karriaagzh, the Federation is large and intimidating. Now you’ve told these newcomers a fable that makes you sound militaristic. History proves that military solutions don’t work across species lines. The Academy and Federation want to help species trade peacefully. And besides, didn’t all your history tie your species up in knots?”

  Karriaagzh’s feathers bristled. Instantly, he sprung upright on his hocks, bouncing slightly. He stuck his fingers between his mandibles, in the joint comers, and champed down. Slowly he took his fingers out of his mouth, raised his head, lowered some of the feathers, and said carefully, “
Individuals do die. Species do die. Mine will die out relatively soon. Two of the species that founded the Federation are already extinct. We might have different biologies, different moralities. But intelligence does converge, despite…no, through all our diversities.”

  Trembling, Karriaagzh nestled down on his hocks and withdrew from the party, off in an alien mental space.

  Nobody moved or spoke for a terrible number of minutes. Then Tesseract coughed. Karriaagzh slowly re-focused his eyes and imitated Tesseract’s cough. Tesseract nodded—a signal had been exchanged—then drew the alien ambassadors aside.

  Cadmium and Rhyodolite reached for Black Amber’s ankles, talking to her in Gwyng, not Karst II, but she kicked them away and batted her eyelids more at Wy’um.

  “Red Clay (come/where are you?),” Rhyodolite cried suddenly. “Distract us.”

  I pushed toward them as they stepped nervously by Karriaagzh, who gaped his beak lips slightly at them. Rhyodolite flinched, but Cadmium twitched his irises.

  “Back downstairs,” Rhyo said. “Fun is over for us.”

  We started down the stairs. At the bottom, Hargun turned from Tesseract and looked up at me with his gray alien face, with those green round eyes. He was the captive now—I remembered very clearly what being a captive was—from both Virginia and from Yauntra.

  “They don’t do physical violence,” I said, as simply as I could. “And the people here are more than weird non-Yauntra-looking creatures.”

  “More to damage than simple physical beating,” Hargun said.

  Rhyodolite edged between me and Hargun, toddling down the stairs in his re-built jackboots. Hargun stared at Rhyodolite’s hands, then at the wrinkled wide-eyed Gwyng face, and said, “The rude hands again. Two others plotting tonight, both in wyn.” He mimicked the eye blinks.

  Wyn must have been Yauntro for swing or heat. For a second, Rhyodolite stood four risers above Hargun, astonished, then he said, “Stop!”

  “Why? We killed your bird and you don’t charge us like real…”

  Rhyodolite cried an almost ultrasonic shriek. Tesseract, when he saw Rhyodolite’s throat tense for the cry, swung Hargun around so that Rhyodolite kicked into Tesseract’s massive side, not the Yauntry.