by Erin Grey
His fingers tapped and swiped across the panel.
I scratched my arm, searching for something to pick at, an imperfection I could tear away.
“Oh, you know you shouldn’t pick your skin, Jane,” said Gwendolyn. “It’ll scar.”
“Scars are cool,” said Sandy, and I traced the ones I already had along my arm—some from picking, some from cat scratches.
“So,” I said, closing my eyes. “How long will it take us to get there?”
“At least two quarlunations,” said Zhian. “That’s roughly two quarters of a month, Earth-time. A month is a complete orbit of the moon around the planet, correct?”
“Right.” I blinked. Two weeks. In an enclosed space.
“We do not have two weeks to spend travelling off to another world, Jane,” warned Jasper. “The new laws will be passed in two months’ time. If you do not get back and complete your plan in the next thirty days, there will not be enough time for your family to collect the insurance pay-out and get out of the country before the government takes everything. This is unacceptable!”
“What do you want her to do, genius, jump overboard and become space junk?” scoffed Sandy.
“Do not be ridiculous,” said Jasper. “A missing person investigation will cause nothing but further trouble for her loved ones. It can be years before someone is declared legally dead.”
“They’ll be so worried about her, not knowing where she is for weeks, not hearing anything,” said Gwendolyn, shivering.
“You think they’ll be happier hearing she’s dead?” asked Sandy.
“Death easier.”
“Shut up, Mitch!” snapped Sandy.
“We cannot afford to be emotional at this juncture,” said Jasper. “We must focus on the facts if we are to succeed.”
“Jane?” asked Zhian in a slightly concerned tone.
I realised I’d been silent for some minutes, focused on the debate going on in my head. “Sorry,” I stammered. “Did you say something?”
“You . . . uh . . . seemed to lose consciousness there.”
“Um, yes, sorry. I was just thinking—” An urgent need made itself felt, giving me something to say. “Does this …”—I cringed at the word— “… spaceship … have a loo?”
“A what?”
“A loo. A bathroom. A restroom?” I tried.
“Oh, yes. Through there.”
I moved in the direction Zhian gestured and opened the narrow door in the wall. The tiny room inside was similar in appearance to an aircraft lavatory, with the addition of a valve-lined cubicle I assumed to be a shower. I made a mental note for later. The note said, ‘showering is the least of your worries—figure out how the hell to get home!’
I leaned over the metal basin and stared into the plughole, wondering if I could disappear down it. What in the name of Jiminy Cricket1 was I supposed to do? I had nothing of any use with me, no phone, no internet, not even meds to dull the … Oh. Crap.
“No meds,” said Sandy. “Which means that, in a matter of hours, you’re going to hit a whole truckload of withdrawal fun times, which could be anything from month-long nausea to night sweats to sudden rapid weight gain.”
“Oh no,” said Gwendolyn. “She can’t get fat. All she has to wear are those jeans and T-shirt. And she already has trouble getting the jeans on.”
“Never mind her wardrobe,” said Jasper. “Without anti-depressants and anxiety medication, basic functioning will become exceedingly difficult. The situation is dire in the extreme.”
My head fell against the wall above the basin, and I banged it gently. Looking up, I was met with the complete absence of a reflection, there not being a mirror on the wall.
“There is only one way to handle this: logic, control, forethought.” Jasper was the king of cool, calm, and collected. “You can reason this through.”
>Available actions for advancing return home: None.
>Available actions for retrieving medication: None.
>Insufficient information for further action.
“BIOS has made it clear,” said Jasper. “The only thing you can do is find out more about your situation and see if there is another way out. It is imperative that you get to know your—”
“Captor?” interjected Sandy.
“Host,” said Jasper. “He has done nothing to prevent Jane from escaping.”
“Only by failing to point her in the direction of the exit,” said Sandy. “Because the only place to escape to is dark, deadly space.”
“That is beside the point,” said Jasper. “She must gain a rapport with Zhian if she is to have any chance of returning home.”
“She can do that. She’s always been a good conversationalist. ‘So, aliens, come here often?’” Sandy sniggered at her own joke.
I straightened up and gave myself a blind assessment, there still not being any reflective surfaces nearby, but I ran my fingers through my dark hair and re-tied it, then pulled my T-shirt and jeans into a neater arrangement.
“Don’t worry, you probably look about as good as a suicidal mental patient who has blacked out, somehow been transferred through space, had a panic attack, and is currently un-medicated,” Sandy assured me.
“Oh, and no make-up of course,” added Gwendolyn obligingly.
Which meant I’d be pale in general, red wherever I’d scratched at a blemish, and greenish-grey under the eyes.
“You could let down your hair,” suggested Gwendolyn. “It might hide some of your spots and frame your face nicely.”
She was probably right, but I decided I’d rather have my hair up and off my neck. I was flustered enough without the thick mop making me hot and sweaty, too.
When I got back into the main cabin, Zhian was still fiddling at the console. He spun around in his chair. “How are you feeling?” He looked me up and down. The effect must have been as bad as I thought because he frowned.
“Um, hard to categorize,” I said. “Nothing in my life up until now has prepared me for an unexpected sojourn on a spacecraft with …” I thought of his face when I’d used the word aliens, “… uh … non-Earth people. Reactions may vary.”
He nodded slowly, jaw clenched in empathy. “This must all be very confusing for you.”
I squinted at him.
“Is that not what you just said?” Sandy huffed out her irritation. “He may be pretty, but he’s definitely not the brightest spark around.”
“But try not to worry,” continued Zhian. “I’ll take care of you. You’re safe here.”
“Um, thanks.” I frowned. “But you don’t seem to understand how important it is that I get back. Like, right now.”
“I told you, that’s impossible. Our only chance is to find someone on my home world who can help.”
“How will you do that? Do you already have someone in mind?”
He shrugged. “I have contacts.”
“Well, then,” I continued through gritted teeth, “can’t you contact them from here?”
“It’s not that simple. We’re too far to establish a connection. Even when we are close enough, all communications are monitored.” He swivelled his chair so he was directly facing me. His eyebrows battled his jaw for supremacy of expression as he decided whether to continue speaking.
His jaw won, jutting out his chin in an effort to look authoritative. “Contact with Earth is forbidden. If it is discovered that you boarded this ship or that I brought you to Eorthe, we will both be prosecuted. And you will never see Earth again.”
1 I can’t use any really rough swear words because Jasper doesn’t like it. Or blasphemy. Or cursing. Unless it’s the kind of curse that goes, ‘I curse you with the piles of a thousand meat-eating couch potatoes!’ or something of that nature.
6
Gwendolyn
Little Jane is wild and free. She dances around, and her big sister laughs at her. She pulls faces at her big brother, and he smiles, calling her a ‘silly biscuit’.
She is three years old, an
d life is fun.
The visitors give her brother and sister grown-up presents: perfume and clothing and books.
They give the little girl a stuffed kangaroo.
She is humiliated. She wants the same things the others got.
She throws the kangaroo on the ground and yells, “I don’t want it!”
“Jane!”
The horrified cries frighten her. The faces are shocked, angry, disappointed, ashamed.
“You rude girl!”
“Spoiled brat!”
“Say thank you and go to your room!”
The little girl is scared. Why don’t they love her? Why don’t they want her anymore? She’s done something terrible, something unforgivable.
Gwendolyn comes to her in the dark, lonely room. “We have to be good,” she says in a mellifluous voice the little girl has never heard before. “Good girls are loved. If we’re good and sweet and never shout and always obey, they’ll love us again.”
7
The bit where I almost get a handle on things
“Why is contact with Earth forbidden?” I asked Zhian.
He shrugged. “It’s been the law for more than a thousand years. Earth humans don’t usually welcome aliens.”
Gwendolyn winced. “We shouldn’t have said that. It hurt his feelings.”
“Remember the plan,” said Jasper. “Become well acquainted with him and help him see the urgency of getting us home. We have approximately thirty days before we must be back on Earth.”
“Right, and the more attached he is to you, the less likely he is to toss you into the vacuum of space to avoid being prosecuted,” said Sandy.
“Wouldn’t be so bad—”
“MITCH!” Sandy shouted.
I snapped back to the world outside my head, checking Zhian’s face to see if he’d noticed me floating away again.
His frown told me he had. He clenched his fists. “You disappeared again.”
“I’m fine. I just get . . . distracted sometimes.” I sighed and glanced around the cabin. “What do I do in the meantime, while we’re traveling?”
“Take a seat,” answered Zhian. “If you need something, just ask.”
I scrunched up my forehead. “Two weeks is a long time to sit and wait. Isn’t there anything I can do to help? Maybe get us there faster?” I ran my finger over a panel of switches in the nearest wall.
Zhian jumped out of his seat. “Don’t touch that!”
I jerked my hand away, and Zhian’s shoulders and outstretched arm dropped.
“You don’t need to do anything,” Zhian said. “I’ll handle everything.”
I sagged. I couldn’t possibly sit here doing nothing for all that time. I needed a distraction from all the dreadful potential outcomes Jasper was gleefully calculating and cataloguing. All involved failure, death, and suffering for one or more people.
“Can you at least tell me something about where we’re going?” I asked Zhian.
“What do you want to know?” He folded his arms, giving me his full attention.
“You called it planet Eorthe.” I scratched my scalp nervously. “That sounds a lot like ‘Earth’, actually.”
“It’s just another translation of ‘Earth’,” he said. “They both mean the same thing: the planet on which we live.”
“Why would your word be similar to mine? Do they speak English on your home world?”
“No. But remember what I said about us sharing DNA. We must have originated in the same place. Or maybe our worlds interacted at some point in history and shared culture and language. Space travel has been a part of Eorthen life for millennia. Unfortunately, a lot of our recorded history was lost about a thousand years ago during a global war, so we only have theories about past contact with Earth. Your world has no clear record of us at all, so we can’t even compare notes.”
“There are theories about visitors to Earth,” I said.
“And reports of abductions,” said Sandy suspiciously. “In fact, there’ve been a lot of those lately.”
“Why were you so close to Earth when I …” I searched for the right word … I just didn’t have the vocabulary for this situation, “… arrived?”
His face turned sheepish again. Maybe even embarrassed.
“What? What were you doing there? Planning a kidnapping? Stealing intelligence?” The anger rose easily, even though Jasper made it clear I was jumping to conclusions.
“No, nothing like that. I was …” he really looked ashamed now, and he swallowed, his cheeks taking on a faint shade of rusty green.
“Is that his version of blushing?” squealed Gwendolyn. “Oh my, it’s adorable!”
“I was watching TV,” said Zhian.
>Answer does not compute.
“TV,” I echoed.
“Yes. We don’t have it on Eorthe.”
“No TV? No broadcasting?”
“Well, we have a broadcasting system, but not like yours. It only shows news and documentaries. Historical records. We don’t have fiction.”
“No fiction?” I tried to process what that would mean in real terms. “You mean no dramas, no stories?” I gulped. “No fairy tales?”
“No, nothing untrue. It’s viewed as lying.”
“Ok. So, what do you do when you’re trying to get a little kid to go to sleep? You don’t tell them a story?”
Sandy envisioned Zhian knocking a kid out with a bat, drugging a kid with dosed milk, pressing his thumb into that place on a person’s neck that’s supposed to make them pass out …
“Don’t say any of that out loud,” said Gwendolyn. “It will make you look disturbed.”
“We ARE disturbed,” said Sandy.
“Zhian doesn’t need to know that,” Gwendolyn hissed.
“We tell stories, but they’re all true,” continued Zhian. “Real historical events that everyone should learn. Or we teach the children about the world around them—the creatures and natural cycles.”
“A world where no one believes in things that aren’t real, like fairies and magic and pirates with peg legs and eye patches?” Gwendolyn was incredulous. “No imagination, no legends, nothing made-up? How can anyone survive in a world like that?”
“Rational people find it most soothing to deal solely with facts and logic,” said Jasper.
Sandy snorted. “Rational people can kiss my—”
“How did you find out Earth was different?” I asked Zhian quickly.
He paused a moment longer than the rhythm of the conversation demanded. “I was on a research voyage.” He licked his lips. “Then I picked up on a broadcast from Earth. It was fascinating. There was this giant ape, right? And it had somehow gotten into an urban area. But it had fallen in love with a female human, so it climbed this very tall structure to keep her away from its enemies. And then these flying craft tried to reach it and …”
“King Kong?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You got hooked on TV because you saw King Kong?”
“Well, yes.” He looked nonplussed. “Why not? It’s an excellent depiction of what would happen if a crazed primate developed emotions and entered human society.”
My narrowed eyes and pursed lips must have tipped him off to my incredulity. He changed direction.
“I didn’t realize at first that what I was seeing wasn’t real. But I wanted more. I’d never felt so exhilarated. I tracked the signals and moved closer into range.” His eyes took on a distant gleam, and I could see universes unfolding inside his head. “It was incredible. Like nothing I’d ever experienced. Different worlds and creatures and magic and emotions.”
He shook his head and stared at the floor. “At first I thought it was all true. Historical narratives or something. But the more I watched, the more I realized that most of it was lies. The shows about life on other planets and space travel, for example—I knew those definitely weren’t true. And that humans, Earth humans, watched that sort of thing for entertainment.”
He sat up, once again lookin
g me in the eye and momentarily distracting me with the copper shimmer of his irises. “Documentaries and Reality TV—that was one thing. But fiction … I was enthralled.”
“Poor thing,” said Sandy. “He thinks Reality TV is true.”
“Isn’t it?” asked Gwendolyn.
“Shoot, that’s two bubbles that need bursting.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked. “In the vicinity of Earth?”
“When I first came, I only had enough supplies for one lunation. When I returned, I made sure to stock up so I could stay a full annum. That’s about …”
“… a year in Earth-time?”
Zhian nodded.
“How did you know that?” asked Gwendolyn.
“I was able to make an educated guess based on my rudimentary knowledge of Latin,” said Jasper.
“A year watching TV?” said Sandy. “Alien boy can’t have much of a life back home.”
“It is peculiar, yes,” said Jasper. I was certain that, if he had a beard, he would have been scratching it. “One usually seeks entertainment as an escape from the trivialities or difficulties of real life. If Zhian is not lying and truly has no nefarious intent, then the question arises: what was he trying to escape? And why is he now so eager to return if the consequences are severe?”
“Ask him some more questions, Jane!” urged Gwendolyn.
“Yes,” agreed Sandy. “Find out what the hunk is hiding. Maybe it’s under his shirt.”
I tried to think of something relatively innocuous to ask. “You said they don’t speak English on Eorthe. How could you understand the broadcasts you saw?”
“I learned it,” he said.
“From watching TV?”
“Yes.” He was clearly puzzled that I found this noteworthy. “It really isn’t a very complicated language—”
“Not a complicated language? English.” I was so incensed, I actually huffed. “English, the language that has stolen words from so many languages it barely has any standard rules left? The language so full of contradictions that language students around the world balk at learning it?” I may have been exaggerating. “It might not be the most difficult language on Earth, but it’s certainly the most badly-behaved. You think you get it until you discover that nothing means what you think it means and spelling is a mystical conundrum solved only by … well, mystics, I suppose.”