The Human Division
Page 46
“And that’s not complicated?” Sorvalh asked. “In its own way?”
Tony shrugged. “You know, this is actually my second job,” he said. “I went to school in business, got an MBA and spent ten years being one of those finance pricks who make everyone else miserable. I had a lot of fun at first and then near the end there I felt every day like I either needed to get drunk or start a fight with someone. So I uncomplicated my life. And here I am, with a churro stand. And now I’m happy most of the time. Because no one’s unhappy to see the churro man.”
“You’ll never get rich being the churro man,” Sorvalh said.
Tony smiled and opened his arms wide. “I was a finance prick! I’m already rich! And anyway, as I said, business is good. In fact, here come some new customers.” Tony pointed down the Mall, where a gaggle of eight-year-olds, herded by a pair of harried-looking adults, were heading chaotically churro-ward.
Sorvalh followed Tony’s pointed finger to look at the children. “Hopefully not all theirs,” she said.
“I would guess not,” Tony said. “More like a school outing to see the monuments.”
“Should I step back?” Sorvalh asked. Not every human was comfortable around ten-foot aliens. She didn’t want to get in the way of Tony’s business.
“You might,” Tony said. “If they were all adults I’d tell them to get a grip, but these are kids and you never know how they’re going to react.”
Sorvalh nodded and walked a bit away, toward a bench near the stand. Her body shape and height wouldn’t have made it comfortable for her to sit on, but for some reason it was less awkward for her to unfold and sit on the ground near a bench—a designated sitting area—than it was anywhere else. Sorvalh was sure if she thought about it enough, she could figure out where she had picked up this particular quirk of hers, but the fact of the matter was she was much less interested in that than she was in her now-cooling churros. She started applying herself to them while Tony’s stand was overrun with screaming, tiny humans, excited to cram fried dough into their gullets. She looked the other direction for most of that.
After a few minutes of quiet contemplation of her churros, Sorvalh turned to see one of the human children not too far from her, staring up at her solemnly. Sorvalh stopped chewing her churro, swallowed, and addressed the child directly. “Hello,” she said.
The child looked behind her, as if expecting that Sorvalh was speaking to someone else, then turned back to her when it was clear she wasn’t. “Hello,” the girl said.
“Enjoying your churro?” Sorvalh asked, pointing to the churro in the girl’s hand. The girl nodded, silently. “Good,” Sorvalh said, and moved to go back to her own.
“Are you a monster?” the little girl asked, suddenly.
Sorvalh cocked her head and considered the question. “I don’t think I am,” Sorvalh said. “But maybe that depends on what you think a monster is.”
“A monster fights and wrecks things,” the little girl said.
“Well, I try to avoid doing that,” Sorvalh said. “So maybe I’m not a monster after all.”
“But you look like a monster,” the girl said.
“On Earth I might look like a monster,” Sorvalh said. “Back home on my planet I look quite normal, I promise you. Maybe a little taller than most, but otherwise just like anyone else. On my planet, you would be the one who looks strange. What do you think about that?”
“What’s a planet?” the girl asked.
“Oh, dear,” Sorvalh said. “What are they teaching you in your school?”
“Today we learned about Abraham Lincoln,” the girl said. “He was tall, too.”
“Yes he was,” Sorvalh said. “Do you know what the Earth is?”
The girl nodded. “It’s where we are.”
“Right,” Sorvalh said. “It’s a planet. A big round place where your people live. My people have a place like it, too. But instead of calling it Earth, we call it Lalah.”
“Hannah!” One of the adult humans had figured out that the girl had wandered away from her group and was talking to the big, scary-looking alien sitting by the bench. The human adult—a woman—came running up to retrieve her charge. “I’m sorry,” the woman said to Sorvalh. “We don’t mean to bother you.”
“She’s not bothering me at all,” Sorvalh said, pleasantly. “In fact, we were reviewing basic astronomy facts, like how the Earth is a planet.”
“Hannah, you should have known that,” the woman said. “We learned that earlier in the year.” Hannah shrugged. The woman looked over at Sorvalh. “We really did cover the solar system earlier this year. It’s in the curriculum.”
“I believe you,” Sorvalh said.
“It says it’s from a planet called LAH LAH,” Hannah said, overenunciating the name, and looking up at her teacher. “It’s in the solar system, too.”
“Well, it’s in a solar system,” Sorvalh said. “And I’m a woman, just like you are.”
“You don’t look like a woman,” Hannah said.
“I look like a woman where I come from,” Sorvalh said. “We look different, is all.”
“You’re very good with children,” the woman said, noting Sorvalh’s responses and tone.
“I spend my days dealing with human diplomats,” Sorvalh said. “Children and diplomats can be remarkably similar.”
“Would you mind?” the woman said, gesturing to her main gaggle of children. “I know some of the other kids would love to meet an alien—is it all right to call you an alien?”
“It’s what I am,” Sorvalh said. “From your point of view.”
“I just never know if it’s a slur or something,” the woman said.
“It’s not, or at least I don’t think it is,” Sorvalh said. “And yes, you may bring the other children over if you like. I’m happy to be an educational experience for them.”
“Oh, okay, great,” the woman said, and then grabbed Hannah by the shoulders. “You stay here, honey. I’ll be back.” She rushed off to get the other children.
“She seems nice,” Sorvalh said to Hannah.
“That’s Mrs. Everston,” Hannah said. “Her perfume makes me sneeze.”
“Does it,” Sorvalh said.
“It makes her smell like my grandmother,” Hannah said.
“And do you like how your grandmother smells?” Sorvalh asked.
“Not really,” Hannah admitted.
“Well,” Sorvalh said. “I promise not to tell either your grandmother or Mrs. Everston.”
“Thank you,” said Hannah, gravely.
Presently Sorvalh found herself surrounded by a gaggle of small children, who looked up at her expectantly. Sorvalh glanced over at Mrs. Everston, who also looked at her expectantly. Apparently it was all on Sorvalh now. She suppressed an inner sigh and then smiled at the children.
Some of them gasped.
“That was a smile,” Sorvalh said, quickly.
“I don’t think so,” said one of the children.
“I promise you it was,” Sorvalh said. “Hello, children. I am Hafte Sorvalh. Have any of you ever spoken to an alien before?” There were head shakes all around, signifying “no.” “Well, then, here’s your chance,” Sorvalh said. “Ask me anything you want to know.”
“What are you?” asked one of the children, a boy.
“I am a Lalan,” Sorvalh said. “From a planet called Lalah.”
“No, I mean are you like a lizard or an amphibian?” the boy asked.
“I suppose that to you I might look a little like a reptile,” Sorvalh said. “But I’m not really like one at all. I am more like you than I am like a lizard, but I admit I’m mostly not like either. It’s better to think of me as my own thing: a Lalan.”
“Do you eat people?” asked another boy.
“I eat churros,” Sorvalh said, holding up her now-neglected treat. “So unless churros are made of people, no.”
“You can’t eat churros all the time,” this new boy pointed out.
“Actually, i
f I wanted to I could,” Sorvalh said, taking the opposite position of her earlier comment to Tony. “It’s one of the perks of being a grown-up.”
The children seemed to pause to consider this.
“However, I don’t,” Sorvalh said. “When I am on Earth, I usually eat your fruits and vegetables. I particularly like sweet potatoes and tangerines. I only rarely eat your meats. They disagree with me. And I don’t eat people, because I wouldn’t want people to eat me.”
“Are you married?” asked another child.
“My people don’t get married,” Sorvalh said.
“Are you living in sin?” asked the same child. “Like the way my mother says my Aunt Linda is?”
“I don’t know about your mother or your Aunt Linda,” Sorvalh said. “And I’m not sure what ‘living in sin’ means here. My people don’t marry because that’s just not how we do things. The best way to describe it is that we have lots of friends and sometimes as friends we have children together.”
“Like my Aunt Linda,” the child said.
“Perhaps,” Sorvalh said, diplomatically as possible.
“Are you pregnant now?” asked another child.
“I’m too old for that now,” Sorvalh said. “And we don’t get pregnant anyway. We lay eggs.”
“You’re a chicken!” said the first boy, and there was laughter to this.
“Probably not a chicken,” Sorvalh said. “But yes, like your birds we lay eggs. We tend to do this all at the same time, and then the community cares for them all at once.”
“How many eggs have you laid?” asked the latest child.
“It’s a difficult question to answer,” Sorvalh said, guessing that Mrs. Everston probably wouldn’t want her to go into great detail about Lalan reproductive matters; humans were known to be twitchy about such things. “It’s probably best to say that I had four children who lived to adulthood, and two of them now have had children of their own.”
“How do you speak our language?” asked a girl, close to Sorvalh.
“I practice it,” Sorvalh said. “Just like anyone does. I’m good with languages, though, and I study yours every night. And when I go to other countries, I use this.” She held up her PDA. “It translates for me so I can speak to other humans and they to me.”
“Do you play basketball?” asked another child.
“I don’t think it would be much of a challenge for someone of my height,” Sorvalh said.
“How do you get into rooms?” asked a different child.
“Very carefully,” Sorvalh said.
“Have you met the president?” asked a different little girl.
“Yes, once,” Sorvalh said, recalling the event. “I liked visiting the president because I can stand up easily in the Oval Office. It has high ceilings.”
“Do you poop?” asked a boy.
“Brian Winters,” Mrs. Everston said, severely.
“It’s a valid question!” the boy said, protesting. He was apparently the sort of eight-year-old boy for whom it made sense to have the phrase “it’s a valid question” in his repertoire. Mrs. Everston said something else to Brian while Sorvalh quickly looked up the definition of “poop” on her PDA.
“I apologize for that,” Mrs. Everston said.
“Not at all,” Sorvalh said, smoothly. “It’s not the worst question I’ve ever been asked. And to answer your question, Brian, no, I don’t poop. At least not like you do. I do excrete waste from time to time, and when I do, it’s otherwise very much like going to the bathroom is for you. Next question.”
“Do you know any other aliens?” asked another girl.
“Whole planets’ worth,” Sorvalh said. “I have personally met people from four hundred different races of intelligent beings. Some of them are as small as that,” she pointed to a squirrel running frantically toward a tree, “and some of them are so large that they make me look tiny.”
“Do they poop?”
“Brian Winters,” Sorvalh said, severely. “That is not a valid question.” Brian Winters, unused to being reprimanded by a ten-foot alien, shut up.
“Will more aliens come here?” asked a boy.
“I don’t know,” Sorvalh said. “More have been coming recently, because my government, which is known as the Conclave, has been talking to the governments here on Earth. But I think a lot will have to happen before they are so common that you don’t notice them anymore when you walk down the Mall.”
“Are we going to have a war?” asked Hannah.
Sorvalh turned her head to look at Hannah directly. “Why do you ask, Hannah?” she said, after a minute.
“My dad said to my mom that he thinks there’s going to be a war,” Hannah said. “He said that it’s going to be the humans against everyone else and that everyone else wants a war to get rid of all of us. You’ll fight us and then when we’re gone you’ll live where we live and no one will know we were here.”
“‘A monster fights and wrecks things,’” Sorvalh said. She looked out at the children and saw them quiet, waiting for her answer, the two adults standing silently as well, patient.
“I can’t say there will never be a war,” she said. “We can’t make promises like that. What I can say is that I am a diplomat. What I do is talk to people so we don’t have to fight them. That’s why I’m here. To talk and to listen and to find a way all of us can live together so that we don’t fight, and we’re not scared of each other.” She reached out and gently touched Hannah on the cheek. “It’s my job to make sure that none of us has to see the other as a monster. Do you understand what I mean, Hannah?”
Hannah nodded.
“Good,” Sorvalh said. “Then you can tell your dad, from me, that I don’t want a war either.”
“Okay,” Hannah said.
“All right, kids,” Mrs. Everston said, clapping her hands together. “Time to say good-bye to Mrs. Sorvalh now. We still have to walk to the Washington Monument.”
“Get a picture!” one of the kids said. “No one will believe us if you don’t.”
Mrs. Everston looked over. “Is it okay? I know we’ve imposed a lot on you today.”
“No you haven’t,” Sorvalh said. “And yes, it is.”
Five minutes later the pictures were done, the children were organized as much as a passel of eight-year-olds could be, and the entire crew was headed toward the Washington Monument. Sorvalh watched them go. As they walked, Hannah turned to look at Sorvalh. Sorvalh waved. Hannah smiled and turned back to her group. Sorvalh looked at the cold remains of her churros, tossed them into a nearby trash can, and went to get fresh pastries.
Tony was waiting for her with a bag of churros already gathered up.
“You are good,” Sorvalh said, taking the new churros. She reached for her money pouch.
Tony waved her off. “On the house,” he said. “You earned it today, Señora.”
“Thank you, Tony,” Sorvalh said, and pulled one out of the bag. “I think I did at that.” She smiled at her friend and then took a bite.
OTHER NOVELS BY JOHN SCALZI
Agent to the Stars
The Android’s Dream
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
The Old Man’s War Novels
Old Man’s War
The Ghost Brigades
The Last Colony
Zoe’s Tale
About the Author
JOHN SCALZI is the author of several SF novels, including his massively successful debut, Old Man’s War, and the New York Times bestsellers The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, and Redshirts. Scalzi is a winner of science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; he won the Hugo Award for Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, a collection of essays from his popular blog, Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com). John Scalzi lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE HUMAN DIVISION
Copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
“After the Coup” copyright © 2008 by John Scalzi
All rights reserved.
The chapters in this book were previously published as individual e-books.
The Human Division #1: The B-Team copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #2: Walk the Plank copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #3: We Only Need the Heads copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #4: A Voice in the Wilderness copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #5: Tales from the Clarke copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #6: The Back Channel copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #7: The Dog King copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #8: The Sound of Rebellion copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #9: The Observers copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #10: This Must Be the Place copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #11: A Problem of Proportion copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #12: The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
The Human Division #13: Earth Below, Sky Above copyright © 2013 by John Scalzi
Cover art by John Harris
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Scalzi, John, 1969–
The human division / John Scalzi.—First edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3351-3 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-4668-0231-5 (e-book) 1. Space colonies—Fiction. 2. Science fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.C256H86 2013
813'.6—dc23
2012049551
e-ISBN 9781466802315
First Edition: May 2013