by Rebecca Ore
I turned off my display screen and sat cross-legged on the other side of the music player. He stared at my legs. “How did you fold them?” he asked. “Show me again. I stood up and sat back again. “Very strange. What this music does is twine pitches in our scale. I hope you can hear the entire sound range.”
He taught me alien bird music, and I was not so lonely. But, four nights later, another bird, olive and brown like Xenon, came in with two Barcons. Granite hunched down, clinging to his sheet.
“We need your help,” the other bird said. “Another one of your species, Academy name of Sulphur…”
Granite got up with a hop-spring from those backward knees. “You didn’t come for me then?”
“We don’t deal with conflicts between species and Federation,” a Barcon said. “Can you help us with Sulphur? He’s xenofreaked.”
Granite dropped the sheet and pulled on his black uniform, saying, “Don’t report me for not wearing…”
“Hurry,” the Barcons said, their hands on his sloping shoulders.
Granite was gone until after uniform change hour. When he came back, I saw a huge bruise beside his beak. He didn’t say anything, but brought the bed down and stripped his uniform off, disappeared into the toilet cubicle for a while. His shoulders were bruised, too.
When he came out, naked, he collapsed, awkwardly, on his bed and flicked his nictitating membranes back and forth across his eyes, not bothering to raise the bed. A clear fluid drooled off the tip of his beak.
“What happened?” I asked. Granite gestured no and drove the bed up. I heard his fists slamming against the mattress, over and over. Gypsum came in and asked, “They tell him not to stuff his computer full of spy chips?”
“Leave us alone,” I said, “or I’ll beat your ass if he doesn’t.”
“I’m moving completely out,” Gypsum said, headed out the door.
In the morning, Granite shook under sheets—I saw his yellow-skinned hand convulsively gripping and twisting his thin sleeping mat. I pulled on my pants. “Granite?” I asked, going up, but keeping back some.
“Mammals have squishy minds,” he said.
“Granite,” I said, “you need help?”
“Couldn’t the Barcons be quick in their killing?” He stared down at me with eyes half covered by membranes, like a sick cat.
I didn’t know what to do, so I typed in my computer that my roommate was shaking and not getting out of bed, accused me or mammals in general of poisoning Sulphur.
The computer flashed: Enter cadet name and general type. I typed Granite Grit, bird.
“Sulphur…lost control,” Granite said, “utterly. All aliens terrified…we, too, aliens, not feathered. The Rector came…held him down while the Barcons… The Barcons were sorry.”
A chip voice came out of my terminal: Is Granite Grit able to communicate with other species?
Granite almost stopped breathing and stared at the machine. I said, “Yes, but he’s upset due to what happened to his con-specific.” Then I said, “Granite, can you communicate?”
“Mammal brains. I want to go outside the wall, run, just run.”
Barcons will be over, the computer’s voice said.
“No!” He tore at the mattress with his scale-backed hands, breaking his fingernails back to the thick part.
The voice of the computer changed. “Red Clay, this is Tesseract. We can excuse you from classes if you think you can help Granite Grit. Barcons will not enter the room. See if you can bring him to the Rector’s complex.”
I was a little under six feet and not sure how my muscle insertions compared to the bird’s. “Granite, I can’t drag you out. If you don’t want to bring the bed down, I’ll have to tell them I can’t help.”
“I’m scared. I don’t understand mammal thinking.”
“When I was coming here from Earth, I got scared like this. Come on with me. If you faint, I can’t hold you up.”
Tesseract spoke again through the computer, “Red Clay, what’s happening?” The bird jumped.
“Don’t talk out loud,” I said. “And please give me time.”
“I suppose I’m a nuisance,” Granite Grit said, hands on the bed control, but not bringing it down. “Can he promise me that the Barcons won’t dose me with the drug that paralyzed Sulphur?”
Granite’s computer whirred. I read, We will be more careful.
“They’ll be more careful. Do you drink tea? Tesseract’ll make you a nice cup of tea at the Rector’s office. He gave me tea on the ship.” I spoke softly, still not getting too close to him.
“Don’t talk to me like I was…one in down.”
“For Christ’s sakes, get your bird-ass down here then,” I said in frustrated English. I realized he was worse than a bit nuts, and an alien who outweighed me. “Look, I want you to be all right.”
“We’re trapped by the Academy. Zoo sapients.”
The computer whirred again. Tell him that if he comes in and talks to us, we may, stress may, give him a pass to run outside if he allows us to accompany him. Us can be you or Barcons, whoever he feels comfortable with.
I had the machine print this out and went to hand the paper up to Granite, who reared back, glittering eyes narrowed. I flinched, turned my head sideways so he couldn’t blind me if he struck.
“Red Clay!” He sounded almost shocked. One of his hands went up to massage around his beak while the other one took the paper from me.
“Don’t rear back like that. That’s the way birds on Earth do before they peck.”
He shuddered. “I didn’t realize.” Then he straightened himself out on the bed, legs tucked neatly under his body, and read the printout. He looked horrible—bruised face and body shaking. “I’ll go,” he finally said. His hand clutched convulsively on the controls as he lowered the bed. He fished his uniform out from under a wad of sheets on the floor, and sighed deeply before dressing.
“Tesseract, if you’re still listening,” I said, “he’s coming with me.”
“Great, Barcons will follow.”
Granite hissed something in bird that ended in Barcons and sat down on the floor, breathing hard.
“Would you rather go in a car?” I asked, wondering if he’d go claustrophobic. I wanted to touch him, but I was afraid to get too close just right now.
“Less embarrassing than having Barcons trail me across campus,” he replied, pressing his hands flat to the floor. His emerging quills went erect.
“The Barcons will drive. We’ll send a car. See them outside your door,” Tesseract said.
Granite shuddered and slowly levered himself off the floor. I saw muscles in his arms twitch. “Can Red Clay come with me?” he asked Tesseract through the computer.
Pause.
Long pause.
“The Barcons outside your door will make the final decision on that,” Tesseract said.
Skinny muscles quivering under his bruised skin, Granite looked at me and said, “I’m ready.” He looked like he was prepared to die, the haws slack in his eyes.
We walked to the corridor and saw four Barcons slouched against various walls, one with a speaker/talk button in his ear. Other student aliens gawked, hurrying by fast.
“You’re Granite Grit?” the Barcon with the speak/talk button asked.
“Yes,” he said sadly, “that’s what you call me. I’d like a ride to the Rector’s complex, please. And I need Red Clay’s company.”
The Barcon reached for Granite’s elbow slowly, but the bird’s head reared back. “We’d prefer that you accept some light sedation,” the Barcon said, “not what we gave Sulphur. We would not have hurt one of you deliberately while your species was under investigation.”
Granite closed his eyes and pushed out his arm, holding it out stiffly with his other hand. He had a twitch above one eye, just like a human with a tic. “Please don’t make it lethal,” he said. “You four could drop me if you wanted. Not without injuries. I could kill…” Granite shut up, still holding his arm ou
t, braced against the other hand.
“We want no more accidents. Your group seems very drug-sensitive.”
“I saw. Still you want to sedate me.”
“Maybe if I came,” I said, “he’d be calmer.”
Granite opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, “Red Clay must come.”
“Red Clay, sit in front. Granite Grit, you might shock out from fear if we inject you now. Sit in back between us.”
We went out to the Barcon’s car, a green mini-bus with a plastic carapace. Granite looked inside before he awkwardly stepped into the back, his hocks not quite fitting on the seat. “Maybe we should have walked,” he said, closing his hands tightly on the back of the front seat and twisting around between the two Barcons.
I reached back and stroked his fingers, feeling little scales on the first-finger joints. He clung harder to the seat. His eyes squeezed tightly shut, the muscles around them jumping.
We weren’t headed for the Rector’s lodge. I wondered if the Barcons were taking Granite straight to the infirmary. He felt my fingers tighten on his and looked at me. We pulled up to a white tile-fronted building with chromed pillars and black wood trim.
“Infirmary?” I asked.
“No,” the Barcon with the com ear button said.
“It’s not the lodge.”
“No, office,” the Barcon answered. Me picking up Granite’s nervousness, we walked into the hall. Granite looked at his naked feet as if he wished he’d worn his bird shoes. His nails tapped the hardwood floor like little pony hooves.
Stairs. He went up them sideways, as if terrified of losing his balance. At Tesseract’s office a scared Gwyng showed us both into the room where Tesseract was sitting behind a stout desk. Granite looked around at the seating instruments, saw a high padded stand, and jumped on it. Tesseract slowly got up from his desk and sat in an armchair.
“Would you feel more comfortable,” he said to Granite, who trembled on his perch, “if Tom Red Clay left?”
“No.”
Tesseract, one hand stroking his skull crest, looked at me with dismay, then watched Granite while Barcons waited in the doorway. Granite plucked the stand’s padding nervously with his broken nails, tensely crouched on his hocks, not down on his breast.
“Help me,” Granite finally said. “But no drugs.”
“Your species finds life here difficult,” Tesseract said calmly. “I think your government asked a lot of you. What can we do to help?”
“Stripping us of feathers, putting us in mammal clothes. You have open sex organs. We don’t.”
“Don’t rip the seat cover,” Tesseract said. “Could you trust us? Last night we heard another of you make some terrible threats. “
“You know what we’ve been doing here?”
“What you’ve been trying to do, yes. That’s not at issue now. You need help for this anxiety. Then we’ll talk to your home planet officials.”
“Your rector was an isolated bird. I don’t know how he survived.” Granite Grit looked tragic, eyes half covered by membranes, beak dripping.
Karriaagzh came up to the door and leaned against the frame, crest fully erect and bent up against the frame top. “Because I had to. Pull your shields back.”
Granite blinked fast and opened his eyes quite wide, shields back. Brown eyes with that ugly bruise under one of them looked into Karriaagzh’s baleful yellow eyes. “I survived,” the bigger bird said, “because my race was dying and I had to link it with others who’ll carry our memories and intelligence forward.”
“Rector, what force holds this Federation together?”
“Curiosity, trade links, the need for peace. Any race that can work the translocational geometries is impossible to kill off. Try, and in a thousand years the species becomes utterly ferocious. So the Federation was founded.” Karriaagzh’s crest settled, and his face feathers relaxed. “So, Granite Grit Ahlchinna, what makes you most uncomfortable today? Not your species, you?”
“Not being able to run and catch things.”
“What about the little aliens who think you plan to eat them? Make you nervous?” Karriaagzh then noticed me. “What is he doing here?” he asked Tesseract.
“I’m his roommate,” I said:
Karriaagzh’s head went back on what must have been a longish neck under those feathers. “Black Amber’s,” he said in Karst II. “You were to be tested with a bird after your misbehavior with Xenon. Well, this bird had his own agenda, didn’t he?”
Granite Grit said, “Rector, I wanted Red Clay’s company. He’s an oddity among these people also.”
“And didn’t spec a thing while you frinkled the computer.” Karriaagzh dipped into Karst student slang then.
“I’m not an informer,” I said.
“Rector,” Tesseract said.
Granite looked back at me and settled down on the high perch, not poised ready to jump anymore.
“Other species have learned to trust us,” Karriaagzh said.
“Rector,” Granite replied, “even you are alien to me.”
Karriaagzh asked, “Do you itch?”
“Yes,” Granite Grit said. “Very difficult to go through fledging again.”
The gray crest flicked. “I have something for you,” the Rector said. “Tesseract will get it from my office when you’ve settled down for his tea. His teas are not deadly.”
“I suspect we all should have some tea,” Tesseract said, sweating a little. He pulled out an electric pot and two mammal cups and a bird cup with a short spout. “And do you want any, too, Karriaagzh?”
The crest went up slowly. “I don’t need it,” Karriaagzh said and went back to his office. While the water was heating, Tesseract closed all the interconnecting doors.
“I don’t make Federation policy,” he said to Granite, “I just try to keep the students alive and studying. Tom Red Clay is coming to my house this weekend. Perhaps you would like to come along, too. We live near farmland and hills. If you’re calm enough, I think you could run there. Maybe later, we’ll bring a small group of your species to the farm.”
Granite watched Tesseract’s hands tremble slightly as he poured the tea. “You work under the…Karriaagzh.”
“Yes,” Tesseract answered. He lifted the lid of the bird cup and filled it with the tea, then looked at Granite Grit and dropped another tea bag in for a little extra strength.
“Like a zoo with intelligent specimens,” Granite said.
Tesseract smiled. “Precisely the way I describe it.” He took the tea bag out and handed Granite his cup.
Granite took it with both hands and looked at the spout, then tested some of the tea against his wrist. “You’re not afraid of him?” he asked Tesseract.
“I’m not afraid of him as an archetypical predator from ancestral dreams. I have…” Tesseract shut himself up, but he looked strangely at me. Then he grinned.
The bird said, “I hope you know, sir, that birds aren’t put at ease by what you mammals call humor.”
“I remember. Don’t, however, try to be too dignified. We find that hilarious in any species, even our own.”
The bird shot Tesseract a glance that needed no specialist in behavior to analyze, then poured tea down his throat. I almost smiled. Then Granite put the cup down and covered his face with his hands, which looked diseased, oozing patches around the scales, as though he’d been picking at them. Tesseract said, didn’t ask, “Still shaky.”
“Yes,” Granite mumbled, words slurred against those rigid lips.
“Tell me, Granite Grit, Tesseract asked softly, “what do I look like to you?”
Granite looked up and said, “A giant lactating monster.”
Tesseract sipped his own tea then, and asked, “What do you feel like in mammal clothes?”
“Ugly.” Granite drank more tea. “I don’t want my body to be seen by my people like this—gross, naked. To die like this…” Some fluid dripped off his beak tip, and Tesseract slowly got up and handed Granite a napki
n. Granite wiped his beak and continued, “I don’t want to die in a naked ugly skin. Please let me run. I feel so jumpy.”
“What if you panic while you run? We’d have trouble catching you without hurting you.”
“I won’t panic. I’m not panicking now.”
Tesseract’s intercom/phone lit up. He answered it and went back to his desk, going “um, um, yes” into the mouthpiece as he rifled through a desk drawer. He came back with a vial of little blue pills and shook one out onto his palm. “I’d feel better if you tried to rest now. The Barcons swear this would be safe for you. Another one of your guys…”
Granite’s eyes went wide. Tesseract moved toward him slowly, saying, “Mild, not like the injections. A muscle relaxant. You’re twitching all over.”
Granite held out his hand and gently took the pill off Tesseract’s palm, looked at it, and looked back at Tesseract. “In three days,” Tesseract said softly, “you can run, and Tom can follow you in a land cart or on a riding beast. It’s all right, just swallow it. You can run rather fast, I suspect.”
Granite swallowed the pill as if he didn’t care if it did kill him or not. Tesseract talked on in a soft monotone, “The Rector has beaten some of our smaller cars…you’re shorter, but I suspect you also run fast, have endurance. Bipedal is good for endurance, cuts speed a bit. I always enjoy watching your kinds run. And I’ve heard you’ll be very colorful when you’re in mating feathers—if it’s polite to talk about that. The sight of you running then will be quite special. You duel for females, and females duel for you, I’ve heard, except that there are genetic considerations.”
Granite was having a bit of trouble holding his head up. “If you don’t mind,” Tesseract added in a less hypnotic tone, “I’ll go to Karriaagzh’s office and see what he wants to give you.” Tesseract slipped out and came back with a squeeze bottle. “Makes feathers come in easier. He uses it himself—it wasn’t responsible for his feathers coming in gray. That was an earlier Barcon mistake.”
“I can rub it in,” I said. Granite’s eyelids blinked—lower feathered lids swinging up, which made him look fragile. “One of the Gwyngs did this for me when I was nervous, but without the lotion.” I poured the oil stuff on my hands and eased his uniform off his shoulders. The skin was mottled red in patches, bruised where the other bird had hit him. I saw the new quills coming in, and, when I smoothed on the lotion, I felt them like matchsticks under the skin, which was looser and thicker than I’d expected. Even deeper were nervous bunchy muscles I couldn’t massage hard for fear of breaking the quills.