“Worthy! I’m a nobody. You’re a genius!”
“In certain respects I am, by your definition. But emotionally I am a moron. I do not know how to win your love.”
Lida suffered an unkind revelation. “Is this why you don’t initiate sex?”
“I am unable to urge you to do a thing you do not wish to do.”
She considered that, and dissolved into tears. She had never been really interested in sex for its own sake, but now it was a measure of her success with him and she wanted it to work. It was like getting a paycheck: a reward for sometimes-dreary employment. She could see why that did not turn him on. She was not treating him right.
“If I have hurt you, I regret it,” he said, plainly out of sorts.
“It’s not you, it’s me.” Cliché, but absolutely true in this case.
Later, alone, she talked with Aliena. “What am I to do? The fault is mine, but I can’t unlove Quincy.”
“I am in a similar situation,” Aliena replied. “Brom taught me to love him. Then I had to leave him. I had to give him to another woman, and was glad when he accepted her. I still love him, but I know I can never be with him in that manner again. I need to move on, emotionally, yet am unable. This is painful.”
“Oh, yes!” then Lida thought of another aspect. “How did you come to love Brom, given that it doesn’t come naturally to your kind?”
“He was nice and kind to me. He helped me learn human ways—the things my handlers had not. He cared for me. He loved me, even after he learned my nature. I had to respond.”
“If he had known your nature from the outset, would he still have loved you?”
“I fear he would not. He thought I was human.”
“Whereas I knew Gloaming was inhuman from the outset.”
“Your path is more difficult than mine.”
That did not help. “When was the breakthrough, for you? I mean, when did you know you loved him?”
“That was in two stages. The first was when he took me to the sea. We are sea creatures; we miss it. I dived in. I was so thrilled I sang.”
“Sang? Not in the ordinary sense?”
“Not,” Aliena agreed. “This is different. You might call it ululation.”
“That’s howling!”
“That is wolf singing. We do it by a single high sustained note. It is the way we express joy. We do it when we truly make love, though it is not limited to that.”
“Gloaming has never done that with me.”
“He would if you loved him.”
And there it was again. The ball was in her court. “Maybe I should take him to the sea.”
“Not until you love him.”
Lida sighed. “It is said a man gives love for sex, and that a woman gives sex for love. I have been giving sex without love.”
“And he is unable to give love for that.”
Lida was about to tear up again, this time in frustration. She fended it off with another question. “You said your love came in two stages. What was the second?”
“When he learned my nature, and still loved me. Then it was real.”
“I’ve got to get over this!” Lida lamented.
“You do.”
“Yet I can’t give Quincy up, in my heart.”
“There is a thing I had to tell myself, to enable me to let Brom go despite loving him.”
“Oh?”
“If I had two children, and lost one, would I not still love the other?”
“Well yes, of course! But this isn’t that.”
“It is that love is not exclusive. I still love Brom, but I am also glad that he is with Star. She does for him what I can no longer do. And I am free to move on and find a new love, without ending my love of Brom.”
“You’re saying I should continue loving Quincy, but also love Gloaming?”
“Yes. And allow Quincy to do the same with respect to you.”
Lida nodded. “The path is clear. But this is something my mind is more ready to accept than my heart.”
“Yes. It is hard for me also.”
Later she talked with Gloaming again. “I talked with Aliena. I now have a better notion of the problem. The fault is with me.”
“I find no fault in you.”
She kissed him. “You’re sweet. I—I think the time will come when I can love you. Meanwhile I’ll give you as much as I can.”
“Lida, there is no need.”
“Yes there is.” She kissed him again, and bore him back onto the bed, where she had savage sex with him. She knew he liked it, even if it wasn’t love.
The day of the first presentation came. Lida played, and Gloaming sat in the filled audience, watching her. The opera was a success; the applause was loud and long. Lida was only a member of the orchestra, largely unnoticed by the crowd, but the music was, of course, essential to the production.
Thrilled by that success, that night she had at Gloaming again. It wasn’t love, but it was emotion, and that was a fair portion.
The next day she was inexplicably careless and spilled hot gravy on her left hand. She suffered a bad burn, and had to have her hand bandaged. It would recover in a few days. But her performance in the opera was now, and she couldn’t play. Her left hand was vital, fingering the strings.
“Dammit!” she swore tearfully.
“This I can do for you, if you wish,” Gloaming said.
And he did. He took her place in the orchestra and played flawlessly. A few days later, the bandage off, she resumed. He had spared her the loss of her position.
Almost, she loved him then. She clasped him at night, holding him close, not even bothering with sex, knowing that this was the best way she could thank him. He did appreciate it, relishing the closeness of almost-love.
There came a hiatus of two weeks in the opera, for technical reasons. “Now it is time for you to tour the space station,” Aliena said.
Lida hadn’t even thought of it, being so wrapped up in her own challenge. “That’s right! I must visit Quincy.” She felt guilty for not thinking of it before.
It was a considerable trip. Maple joined them, alone, serving as an additional guide. “But why you?” Lida asked thoughtlessly.
“To see Mom.”
She was Aliena’s human child! She had lost the mind of her mother and had to live with her mother’s body with the mind of another alien, but she still loved Aliena. “Oh, yes!” Lida exclaimed, hugging her.
“Yes, it’s like that,” Maple agreed.
The car took them to the airport, which in turn took them to China, where they caught a private train traveling into the desert. Lida was amazed. “Isn’t this somewhat roundabout?”
“It’s an international project,” Sam explained. “They needed a guaranteed private base on Earth, and China had it.”
“The train, also, is secure,” Martha said. “Protocol requires us to be with you, but we’re essentially off-duty now.” She lifted an eyebrow toward Sam.
“My cue,” Sam said, and went with her to a private compartment.
“They have a thing,” Maple said wisely. “You can go too. I’ll play a game.” She turned on a video player.
“That’s our cue,” Lida said. She led Gloaming to another compartment.
“You are wonderful, in every respect,” Gloaming said as they stripped for the bed.
“Every respect but one. But I’m working on it.”
“If I could give you back your husband, I would.”
“If you could, I would take him. But you can’t.”
“If I could win your love by doing that, I would.”
She laughed without mirth. “If you won my love by doing that, you still couldn’t have it, because you’d be gone. As Quincy is now.”
“It is ironic,” he agreed.
“Hold me. Kiss me. Enter me.”
He obeyed, but of course she was still the one really doing it.
They came to the subterranean spaceport and boarded the flight. Then suddenly they
were in free-fall.
“It’s the stasis,” Maple said. “You don’t even feel it. Mom was in it for a hundred years.”
“So was I,” Gloaming said.
“Oh, I forgot!” Maple said, laughing.
They connected with the space station orbiting the moon, and their weight returned. Maple knew the way, and led them into the station and along its halls. Lida knew she should be paying better attention to the remarkable details of the excursion, but she was distracted by the knowledge that she was about to face Quincy. In his new body. How should she react to that?
“I must report to the machine doctor,” Gloaming said. “It is a required examination. You should go to meet the others.” He stepped into a box that resembled an old-fashioned telephone booth.
“This way,” Maple said eagerly.
They came to a chamber whose main wall was glassy, with greenish water on the other side, like an aquarium. There was a giant five-pointed pink starfish.
“Mom!” Maple cried, flattening herself against the wall.
The starfish lifted arms to touch the wall as if embracing the child. “Maple!” her voice came from the wall. She couldn’t be speaking in air; it had be efficient translation, both ways.
“Aliena?” Lida asked uncertainly.
“Yes,” the glasses answered. “In my natural body. You have not yet encountered my former human host. You will want to walk a little farther to meet Quincy.”
Lida walked farther. There was a blue starfish. “Hello Lida!” it exclaimed. “You are lovely as ever.”
She fought against being weirded out. “I—I’m not sure I can say the same about you.”
He laughed, and it was Quincy’s laugh. “I have Gloaming’s body. It’s a good one.”
“You—you know his name?”
“Aliena told me. She’s been training me in. I’m a moron compared to her, compared to any of them, but she’s very patient. I’m learning.”
“So—so am I.” Then she burst out with it. “Oh, Quincy! I’m supposed to love the alien male in your body! But I still love you!”
“And I still love you, Li.” Now he was using his pet name for her, which she knew she had not mentioned to anyone else. It truly was him. “But we both have to move on.”
She forced herself to make her confession. “I’ve been giving him sex. But I haven’t climaxed myself.”
“Then you’re not giving him love. I know you, Li. You’re holding back.”
“He’s not you!” she wailed.
“Li, you have to move on. We both do. I agreed to this exchange to save my life, and it’s an amazing experience. But you have the harder role. You have to love him.”
“Aliena—she’s with me via my glasses—used an analogy. If I had two children and lost one I’d still love the other. But that doesn’t mean I can love another man instead of you.”
“But you can love him in addition to me, as you would have loved both children. You have to do that. As do I, in my venue.”
“You—you have a prospect?” she asked, not completely pleased.
“Prospect? Probably not. But I have a kind of crush.”
“Who?” Lida demanded jealously.
“Aliena.”
Pieces started coming together. “You’ve been working with her.”
“Yes. And it’s stupid, because I’m like a monkey and she’s like a genius. She’s got no use for me. She’s just doing her job, to get me oriented. Then she’ll move on. But there it is. I’d like to twine limbs with her. I’d rather do it with you, of course, but I know that’s over. I might as well have died and let you be all the way free.”
“Oh, no, Quincy! I’m doing this to save your life.”
“I know it, honey. You did save it. But you need to have a life of your own, and I know the star man is not a bad sort. Love him, Li; love us both, but be with him. That’s the way it has to be.”
“And let you be with Aliena?”
There was a pause, and she wished she had not let that out. Didn’t she want him to be happy with someone, if it couldn’t be with her?
“Oh, damn, I’m sorry, Quincy! I shouldn’t have said that. I’m being selfish and jealous and mean.”
“You were never any of those things, Li, and you’re not now. You’re just being realistic.”
“And now you’re being kind to me. Damn damn damn!”
“Oh, Li, let it go. Please.”
But she was tumbling through her own special hell. She ran from him, cutting off the dialogue.
“You are not being fair to him,” Aliena said.
“I don’t need you to tell me that, Jezebel!” Lida ripped the glasses off her head and hurled them to the floor. Then she came to the end of the hall and sank to the floor, sobbing.
It was the child, Maple, who came to her, as she had before. “I felt like that too, when they told me to be with Star. But I got over it. Most of the time.”
Lida reached out and tearfully hugged the child to her. “So will I, I think.” If Maple could lose her mother and accept another person in her mother’s body, surely Lida could do something similar. Once she got over her temper tantrum.
They cried together for a while. Then Lida remembered something. “Aliena! Your mother. I threw her on the floor!”
“She understands.”
“I hope so. I wronged her. I wronged them both.”
“You can make it up to them.”
Maybe she could. Lida got to her feet, walked back along the hall, and found the glasses. They were unbroken. Was there something symbolic there? She put them on. “I abjectly apologize,” she said.
“No need. I’ve been there myself.”
“And really, if you should want to—to be with Quincy, I can’t think of anyone more deserving than you. But do you want to be with him, instead of with a male of your own kind? He says you’re way more intelligent than he is.”
“And he is way more feeling than I am. I’m still learning. It was hard for me to learn love, and harder to give it up. I have to stay away from Brom, lest I freak out as you did. I was left with a desire for human company. That means Quincy—and you. By your leave.”
“Oh, you have it! And I will try to love Gloaming.”
“That is best.”
“See?” Maple said, though she had heard only Lida’s side of the dialogue. “I knew Mom would forgive you.”
“Let’s hope Quincy does.” They walked on to where the blue starfish waited, and Maple returned to the pink starfish. “Dear—”
“Kiss me.” He lifted a limb.
She leaned forward and kissed the wall opposite the tip of the limb. That seemed to cover it. Except for one thing. “I was jealous of you being with any other female. Even though I’ve been giving sex to another male. That’s crazy, and I’m sorry. And if you want to be with Aliena, you have my leave. She’s a fine creature. As you said, we have to move on.”
“I will always love you, Li.”
“And I you. That won’t change.”
“It won’t change,” he agreed.
“I will visit you again.”
“I will be glad to see you.”
That was it. Visiting hours were over. She knew because the lights blinked briefly.
“That’s a nice thing you said to Mom,” Maple said as they returned to the box where they had left Gloaming. “I don’t like her being lonely.”
“You do know she can hear you now?”
“Sure. The starfish can hear everything in the station, anyway. Hi, Mom!”
“Hi, Maple,” Aliena said. Lida relayed the message.
Gloaming emerged from the box as they approached. “Physically I am in good health,” he reported. “Emotionally, mixed.”
“We’re working on it,” Lida said, momentarily amused.
“There is something I should know?”
Lida made what she hoped came across as an obscure smile. “Not yet.”
They rejoined Sam and Martha, who were playing poker
with a male and female robot. They were evidently winning, as they had good piles of poker chips. How was that possible?
“Machines aren’t good at bluffing,” Sam explained.
“But they’re learning,” Martha said.
They left the chips behind. Evidently they were only markers, not real cash. It had been a game for fun. Did advanced alien robots have fun? Lida decided not to inquire.
They entered the shuttle, and a seeming instant later were back on Earth. That stasis was remarkable!
Back on the train out of the desert, Sam and Martha retired again. Maple set up another computer game. “I am tired, having had an emotional workout,” Lida told Gloaming. “I imagine you are too. I will give you sex if you want it, but all I really want for myself is to hold your hand and sleep.”
“That will do,” he agreed. If he was disappointed that she did not speak of love, he concealed it.
“But I think it is coming closer,” she said as they lay on the bed. She did not need to say what.
The day of the resumption of the opera came, and Lida was there in the orchestra with Gloaming in the audience. Minutes before the opening curtain, there was a hurried conference. “There may be a delay,” the director explained quietly to the orchestra and others. “Our lead singer’s plane was diverted because of a bomb threat, and landed in another city. He will not be able to get here until tomorrow. We don’t have a backup for that role; it’s too complicated. We may simply have to postpone it and refund today’s tickets. We hate that.”
“I know someone who just might do it,” Lida said before she thought it through. She got up and faced the audience. She caught Gloaming’s eye, which wasn’t hard to do as it was always on her, and made a small nod.
Gloaming got up and made his way to her. “They need a phantom. Can you do it?” Because he had been watching the rehearsals and the performances, because of her, and had an eidetic memory for music.
“Yes.”
She led him to the director. “This is my husband. He—he is a musician and he knows the opera. He can play the part.” But her knees were quaking. Could he really do it? This was a three-hour performance, and he had had no rehearsals.
The director looked extremely doubtful, as he had every right to be. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Gloaming said simply.
Aliena Too Page 4