by Rebecca Ore
The gym was a long hall with mirrors and video displays on the walls. Some Karst II species used ultrasonic feedback, but I just watched the mirror and the monitor and tried to move as I should.
Furry and remote, Barcon instructors prowled around. Once or twice a week, one would come up and move my joints through their range of motion.
The hall was cold, about 50 degrees American. Some species had no sweat glands. Other aliens, even if they did, exercised all bundled up.
Sometimes the barbell collars were wet, and the whole gym rank with un-Earthly odors.
We all watched each other, but nobody was friendly.
Granite Grit took the cover off his terminal, filing down a rod to fit the screws like Warren did.
“Is there any information not available to your computer?” Granite Grit asked me.
“Can’t get anything on Earth on my terminal,” I said, not paying much attention as I tried to figure out why Amber’d scheduled a Gwyng ceremonial game session for me.
“Could you ask some questions of your terminal and I’ll ask mine of Earth?” Granite said, moving his bed down to floor level.
We tried, but the computer got very coy: Accesses to all computers in this area are cross-restricted.
Lifting his hocks high, Granite went to his cubicle for components. He tried to fit them in my terminal, cursing in bird with his nictitating membrane half covering his eyes.
“Stop,” I told him. “I need my terminal for study.”
I got back up in the biology program and hammered on.
“Does studying and work all the time bother you?” Granite asked.
“Sure,” I said. “But…” He’d come over to the central area, and when I looked at him, he sank down on his hocks and twisted his hands together.
He looked so concerned. Shit, I was lonely. But tomorrow I had hateful remedial chemistry, a whole lab of it with three instructors, so I switched programs, studied while Granite Grit tried to fit a scanning wand system to his terminal. Finally, I went to sleep tangled in valences, bonds, weights, and coils and coils of carbonaceous matter.
The next day, I came back to find camera units fixed to all our computers.
Gypsum said, “You sneaking shits,” pivoted on his heel, and thereafter only came to the room to sleep.
As I watched some weird Gwyng exchange of small pebbles in patterns I couldn’t follow, I wondered what Black Amber would do if one day I didn’t go through the schedule. Just stop for a day, fool around. What did they do here for playing hooky? Maybe they’d throw me out on the primitive range? Yeah, and maybe I don’t give a shit. I never saw Black Amber or Tesseract after the party—weeks, months maybe, had gone, by.
So the next day, I ran the track, ate the alien breakfast, and went down to the lake where we’d swum stoned, alien differences obliterated. Great drug, I thought, they need to improve it so we can dose out every day. I’d seen a fish jump then, so now brought a pin and string. Grubbing under some rocks, I found a live alien thing—like an earthworm but with a crown of Cilia. Reddish brown. I threaded it on the bent pin.
The bass-sort-of-fish came up with a bulging belly. As I grabbed it, I felt squirming. Silver babies fell out the belly and swam away, or flapped on the bank.
God, even the fish are alien! I threw the mama back and trembled.
Under trees with tiny silver-bottomed leaves, I sat, then lay back and napped restlessly, as though I could dream my way back to Earth’s familiar jails.
After my nap, I wandered over to the memorial walls and found a new name added. Looking at the names, I stood, trying futilely to put my hands in non-existent pockets. A cool alien wind tapped my face and shuffled plate-size leaves until they squirmed on their almost muscular stems arid rolled up. Damn alien tree didn’t want to shade me.
Mica’s name wobbled as my eyes filled with tears—not crying for him. He wasn’t getting teased for being hick. Same bullshit as before, for what? The chance to let aliens shoot at me? Some glory for less than five dollars’ worth of gold on a granite wall.
Maybe, I thought, I should volunteer for some really impressive mission—go down in altered face and foul the horrid plots of some truly offensive alien.
And live.
But I didn’t heal fast enough, I’d been told after my medical evaluations here.
Goddamn stuck here, hungry, with all the hassles. I thought about going for lunch, but I’d be back on the computer. They might catch me before I ate. I had a few vending machine tokens in my tunic pocket, so I walked hunched down to a building with snack machines, watching so I could turn if an alien I recognized came by.
All the weirdest aliens were out today—one bird, then several pug-faced ones like the hospital receiving clerk, pairs of Barcons who walked like the secret lords of us all. A Gwyng female strutted by, trailed by three Gwyng males with nostril slits clapping open and shut.
And here I was, eating alien crackers filled with unsweetened jelly that was maybe poisonous to me.
All afternoon, I walked from one courtyard to another, up by the Rector’s glass and stone lodge, down by the main gate where I saw alien peddlers out beyond it, over by each of the main towers, stopping to sit on stumps of fried ancient walls.
Even with all the towers, I finally got lost, but found the lake around sunset, planet roll-around time. I surrender! I went back to my eating hall.
I was so hungry. The crackers hadn’t been enough for all my walking. “Where have you been?” a tablemate asked.
“Out,” I said, punching in my choices.
Code flashed across the table display. A Barcon came out of the kitchen area, headed straight for our table, “Cadet Red Clay, I will walk you back to your dorm.”
“I’m so hungry,” I said, almost whining.”
As my tablemates looked from him to me, the Barcon replied, “You may finish your meal.”
I almost choked on the food when the little bear brought it.
The Barcon stood, waiting. As I got up, the Barcon moved in close behind.
“No trouble,” I said. “I’m heading back for my dorm.”
I walked across campus, trying to pretend I wasn’t aware of the furry giant following me. The Rector’s Man Tesseract and a hugely angry Black Amber were waiting at my room.
“He appears anxious, but not excessively so,” the Barcon said. Tesseract looked relieved, but Amber re-grouped her face muscles toward disgust. Tesseract sat down in one of my chairs, looked from her to me, and smiled faintly.
“Did you have fun?” he asked.
“No.” I sat down on my bed and began to finger the controls.
“One shouldn’t throw out schedules unless one is going to have fun, Cadet Red Clay,” he said.
“Yes, Rector’s Man Tesseract,” I said, not trusting to smile myself. We all paused there a moment. “I want a pass for Red Clay tonight, so we can see what happens to those who can’t/won’t cope with our system,” Black Amber finally said.
“Black Amber, I read that you tried to introduce him to the primitives,” Tesseract said. “Red Clay, we seem to have similar ancestors, if that’s kin of yours.” He looked at the Old Tree Shrew poster on my wall. “Males of your species find it hard to fit in with a new group?”
“Yes, Rector’s Man Tesseract.” I looked at Amber, whose face twitched toward an oo, very slightly. “I’m sorry I ignored my schedule today, but I was so tired. I just keep studying into the night. I don’t know how I’m doing—no report cards. I feel stupid in chemistry. People make fun of me, my planet, my species. I don’t have friends.”
Black Amber sat down. Tesseract began, “Red Clay, you’ve picked up the necessary basics of comparative sapient behavior. Considering that you’ve had to learn all new terms and you lack the chemistry, you’re doing reasonably well in biology. The gym observers have made no complaints. Your reading shows an interesting curiosity. Unfortunately, the computer shows you do nothing but study. No dances, gallery visits, casual discussion groups…”
/> “I’m a goddamn refugee.”
Black Amber looked from the Tree Shrew poster to me, then said, “Tesseract, I do monitor my cadet’s progress. Cadet, are these studies too difficult/demanding for you? We’ll bring back more of your species if you are a successful cadet here. I met several prospects for your breeding/social group when I was on your planet.”
“What do I need the dumbshit chemistry for?”
“You need the chemistry to understand weapons classes, astronomy, biological and medical systems.” Black Amber was bloody implacable.
“Yes, chemistry, then. But what kind of English do I need to know anyway?”
“My dear Red Clay,” Tesseract said, “how will your people like to have their species represented by a hick when they finally come to space? Your English has improved.”
“I speak with an alien accent, thanks to all the surgery. You’re alienizing my English even more.”
“Red Clay,” Black Amber said smoothly, “a slightly alien accent would be more desirable (sexually/socially) than a backward one.”
“Oh-fucking-kay,” I said.
“But your reading is a trifle disorganized,” Black Amber continued. “Thank you, Tesseract, Quad-duty Barcon, I’ll deal with him now.”
“He has done well for an isolate” the Barcon rumbled as it turned to leave. Tesseract winked at me and followed the Barcon out.
“If you have my future Earth friends picked out, then I suppose you have some fucking aliens to shove down my throat, too,” I said to Black Amber in English.
“I can easily get a translation of that,” she said, drawing back from me a little. “I have an excellent memory for random-pattern sounds. If you have my future E’th frientz pigged out, then I suppose you h’ve some fuckin aliens to shove down my throat, too. You should tell me what that means.”
“You have my Earth friends picked out? Who do you plan to have as friends for me here?” I asked more calmly.
She looked thoughtful for a Gwyng. “Cadmium should be back fairly soon. Rhyodolite had a rough time and isn’t on Karst now.”
“I’m not a Gwyng, you know.”
“Yes, you’ve made that clear/plain with traces of obnoxious behavior. But I want you to be perfect of your kind. I will take you to see something tonight. Academy failures live there if they can’t get passage home.”
Thinking of Calcite, I said bitterly, “Why not? It’s been an awful day. Nothing could make it worse.”
We drove in her car, the one she’d loaned Rhyodolite the night of the party, me sitting grumpily beside her as we left the campus, passed some institute buildings in stone and glass, and then headed north up toward the slums.
To me, coming from the rural dumps, Karst’s back streets—plastic windows and streets with ruts in the plasphalt—weren’t so bad, being well lit with heavy grates over vapor lights.
Then I noticed a young slick-skinned officer grab the crotch of a furry female in a short tight tunic. She reached into a bag she had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a glass ampule. Arousal pheromones. “She couldn’t handle her classes,” Black Amber said as the blue-clad officer rumpled her head fur and led her away. “Or her ancestors couldn’t.”
The bright lights dangling from the tough chromed poles suddenly seemed garish. Black Amber looked for one special horror among all the aliens hawking stuff from the sidewalks or out of the little ragged shops.
“Unsuccessful of your kind,” she said, pulling up to the curb by some people dressed in coarse wools and cheap synthetics. The men looked up—they were like the man who’d been dragged in earlier to meet me. These humans led heavy-furred creatures with humps and strange horns—not quite cows. Never saw a cow that furry, or carrying packs, either.
One of the men spat down on the sidewalk in front of Black Amber as he passed, leading his beast.
“The sapients smell just like you,” Black Amber said. “For centuries they’ve wandered between the hills and Karst City. Free trader families, also your species, sell grains, milk oils, and weavings for them.”
“They don’t like me already,” I said.
“Ah, but some of their women might,” she said. “They think they are in hell. We try on occasion to train them.”
“Why don’t you people clean this slum up?”
“Deal with your studies better, then you can become a City Committee member and reform this area yourself.” She started her car. “Perhaps we should hire you a female.”
“Damn you, Black Amber.” I looked back and saw one man point to the car. The others laughed. “You want me to fail? Get shot by crazed aliens if I don’t?”
Black Amber didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and squeezed her nostrils shut. But when we were close to the Academy, she said softly, “You can go to a more remedial chemistry class.”
After a terribly silent ride through the Academy grounds, she dropped me off at my dorm and didn’t look at me as I closed the car door.
The Ewit was furious at both Granite and me. “Both shits for roommates/forced to take,” Gypsum said. “Gwyngs watch the refugee; Jereks the bird. Horrible.”
The bird lowered his bed and stepped toward Gypsum, huge threatening steps. “Listen to your milk-piss speaking tapes, monstrosity, and leave us alone.”
“I can’t bring my friends to this room,” Gypsum squalled in Karst II.
“Shut up, mouse, or I’ll eat you.”
I asked my terminal for the survival rate among cadets, wondering again what I’d gotten myself into.
Out of five contact teams and linguistics missions, generally one member will be held for questioning or interrogation for more than five days. Casualties range from one to three individuals, including non-official actions, per three mission years.
Terrific.
The next morning, Tesseract, through my computer, invited me to a three-day visit at his country place. Rather than sound desperate, I asked if the weekend after the four-day rotation would be fine.
Low-rent chemistry, one step away from patched plastic slums. We were all embarrassed to be there, ill-educated first-generation cadets and refugees. The teacher was a thin gentle fuzzy who seemed weary the whole class period. Chemistry, I realized by the break, was a lot like drug-making—that’s probably why I hated it.
That night, Gypsum was out as usual, so the bird and I moved in on the music system.
The bird and I went through the music tracks, me hating some he liked okay, Granite hating some I could stand to listen to, but both agreeing on the hideous.
Granite went back to his cubicle and came back wrapped in a sheet, even over his head. He scratched some around his ear holes, then began to play some cuts over and over, teaching me what to listen to in weird un-Earthly stuff.
“They think I’m likely to mess up,” I said, “because the only others of my species here are savages or something.” I wished I had some mountain music here, or some blues like black church people do on the piano between hymns.
“Pressures may drive me insane,” Granite said, sitting down on his hocks, with a cushion for his elbows. “Some hideous force controls this Federation; I must identify it.” His naked skin shuddering a little under the sheet, he put on another disc. “My planet…” As the music played, he closed his eyes, first the nictitating membranes, then the regular eyelids, from the bottom up.
I asked, “Your planet?”
He hissed, “Yes, hush…” When the songs stopped, he stayed down on his hocks staring at the disc player, staring at it. “Red Clay, are you ever afraid? Seriously afraid.”
“Of here?” I asked back. “Like I joined an army and didn’t know people got killed doing contacts?”
“Of me?” He turned his head toward me, beak tucked down, brown eyes open wide. Pin feathers had sprouted around his ears. Then he slowly stood up, beaked head over me, and dropped his sheet.
We stared at each other. “A little,” I said.
“Well, now I’m ugly. You should see me when I’
ve got feathers. They’re beautiful.”
“What’s it like, growing feathers?”
“They tickle—bigger coming in than your hairs. I have a stone in my toilet cubicle to scratch against.” He raised his head slightly—more relaxed?
“Could I see?”
Granite shrugged one shoulder. “Yes, if I can see your toilet cubicle.” He wrapped the sheet over his shoulders again.
“Sure.”
His was weird—a dust shower with ultraviolet lights, a slot in the wall. I guessed he was like a Gwyng or a chicken and didn’t separate shit and piss, just backed into the gray plastic depression around the slot.
He did have the same small basin with the mirror over it—Karst standard, always with the water temperature set on the dial. He liked his hot.
I looked inside the shower at a rough black stone like a five-foot-tall pumice footstick. He’d rubbed skin flakes off on it, and even bits of feet scales, arm scales. I wondered what the ultraviolet lights did.
We both came out almost embarrassed—at least I was. “Don’t you get cold from the water shower?” he asked.
“They gave me a dial for warm control.”
“Ah, I’d like that for the dust.”
“Bet they’d do it if you asked.”
“You’re more their kind of alien than I am.”
“Karriaagzh?”
“Problem with non-hard-wired brains—they mop up influences, go weird. As a bird, he’s an imposter.”
“I sure don’t think of him as a mammal.”
Granite sighed and stalked back to his bed, rode it up high, then had to come back for his home-planet music disc.
Gypsum abandoned the room except to sleep, so Granite Grit wrapped up in a sheet each evening and played music, sitting like a humongous nestling, his scaly elbows propped up on a red-lacquered stand.
“You seem sad,” I said one day after hearing the same home music disc over and over.
“I was forced to come here.”
“Oh.”
“Let me test your ears on this,” he said. “I can’t go out without the hateful uniform”