Starlings

by Jo Walton

  Straight in then, straight to it, who knows how much time I have left before somebody bothers me. My name is Katherine Whippleshaw, and I’m eighty-nine years old. Last week I was visited by an alien.

  He said his name was Tom. I’d never seen him before. He looked years younger than anyone I’ve seen for months. He looked as if he was about twelve. He put his head around my door and said, “Mrs. Whippleshaw? Can I talk to you?” I agreed, of course. It’s very boring in here. People treat me as if I’m an idiot. It’s not just stealing my things. I mean it’s very annoying that anything gets stolen if I let it out of my hands for a second, but I’ve learned how to cope. I keep my handbag on my shoulder, and the remote in one hand all the time, even when I’m eating. Oh, and my glasses on a chain around my neck. That was Kim’s idea. Kim’s my granddaughter. She’s very clever. She gave me the chain. I was disappointed at the time because it wasn’t a book.

  At one time, even after They’d got at all the other books in the world and made the print jump up and down, Kim could still find me books I could read. I remember the day even she couldn’t find any any more, when she brought me a new Anthony Burgess and the lines were wriggling. I could have cried. Well, I did cry. I didn’t behave well at all. I didn’t even feel as bad as that when John died, as if there was nothing at all worth carrying on living for. I used words I’ve never used, words I’d heard men on the sites using, wasn’t even sure what some of them meant, but I shouldn’t have said them to Kim. Kim understood I was just upset and frustrated, but Janice was there, and Janice thought this was a sure sign I was losing my mind. Oh, wait until you’re eighty-nine, my proper little daughter-in-law, wait until They’re conspiring against you and taking your books away before you’re so quick to judge.

  Janice is part of the conspiracy, I think. She talks in code. She spells words out, and speaks in French. I think this is a blind meant to put me off. Richard had the grace to look uncomfortable when they shuffled me into this place and stole my books. Oh, they’d already replaced them with ones with wriggling letters, all but the ones where the print was too small to read even with strong glasses. But I liked to have them around me. Kim understood. She picked out a pile of my favourites and brought them in for me when her parents weren’t there. She brought me this tape recorder and some books on tape. It’s not the same, but by God, it’s better than nothing. She’s a good girl, and she knows what I like to read. That’s more than Richard does. Dick Francis, he brought me. When did I ever read Dick Francis? All about horses. Well.

  “I taught you to read myself,” I said, “and now you’re taking my books away.”

  “You won’t have room for them, Mum,” he said, looking down, sideways, anywhere but at me. “You’ll have your television. You like your television.”

  Well, yes, television, good enough in its way. Full of rubbish but it doesn’t talk to me as if I’m a three-year-old, or as if I’ve suddenly split into twins. “How are we today?” I can’t bear that. At least it’s something else, people talking, stories, and nobody’s managed to steal it from me yet. They do steal the remote so that I’m stuck on a channel I don’t want and miss The X-Files.

  The X-Files. Yes. The alien. Tom. He pretended to be a kid at first, but I was suspicious straight away. As soon as I outright asked him if he was an alien he admitted it.

  “How did you learn our language?” I asked him.

  “From TV.” He shrugged. He sounded sort of American, with an accent that didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. “I never thought you’d guess,” he said. “I thought it was a good disguise.”

  “You should have come as a doctor. We don’t see kids in here often.” At that time I thought it was a better disguise than it was, that his real shape was fifty foot high and green or something of that kind.

  “Oh, but I could never have passed for an adult.” When I looked sceptical, he added, “It’s only the outside that’s the disguise.”

  “I don’t believe it.” I looked straight at him. “You mean there are a race of aliens that look enough like us to pass? That’s nonsense. I may look like a senile old woman but I’m not as ignorant as that. I’ve read science fiction. I know that the chance of that is like the chance of going to a random island in the Pacific and finding people who talk with a Bronx accent.”

  I thought he’d lie and say that the human shape is the evolutionary stable or something of that nature, I remember how people get round these things in books. In films they don’t bother. At that point I thought he was a kid fooling, even though I’d seen right through that in the first five minutes. Instead he lifted up his T-shirt and showed me the other head he had underneath. Horrible thing, squirmy, not keeping still.

  “Are you the one who’s stealing my stuff?” I asked, keeping a very tight grip on the remote.

  “No, Mrs. Whippleshaw. But I know who it is. If you’ll tell me your secret, I’ll tell you that.” He pulled his T-shirt down again, thank God, I’d seen quite enough.

  “What secret?”

  “Why, the question I asked when I came in.” I couldn’t remember. That isn’t senility, by the way, when someone can’t remember something, or my daughter-in-law Janice has been senile since Richard first brought her home, and she was only nineteen then.

  “I asked you what it is to be old,” the alien prompted.

  “Why do you want to know?” I asked.

  “Well, our people don’t do it. We live to breeding age, we have children, and then we die. We’re much more intelligent than humanity, as a species; we have all sorts of things you don’t have, technologically. We use singularities to travel between the stars. But we die at the equivalent of your age forty. So do all the other races we know, somewhere between twenty and fifty. We want to know the secret of longevity from you. If you don’t mind I’d like to take a sample.”

  I held out my arm and he popped a little needle against it. I hardly felt it. “There isn’t any secret,” I said, as he was doing it. “Heart keeps on beating, you keep on living.”

  “But we don’t.” He sighed, and put the needle in his pocket. He didn’t look like a kid at all when he sighed. “We don’t have old age. We just die, our minds turn off our bodies when they’ve done breeding. That’s what our animals do too. Everything in the galaxy, so far, except for humans. It’s not good enough. We’d all like to live longer lives. We’ve been working on longevity for years, and then we find you. What makes you want to carry on living? I mean, here you are in this horrible place with yellow and brown wallpaper, eating tasteless mush, hardly seeing your family, never seeing your friends. I know it isn’t your choice. But why don’t you just give up and die? What makes your heart keep beating? Ours don’t.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Poor little aliens who can go faster than light and just curl up and die.

  “What’s that noise you’re making?” he asked. “I always thought it was interference on TV.” I can see why he thought that too, horrible laugh tracks they have on some programs.

  “Just laughing,” I said. He looked puzzled.

  “Maybe we live to be old because we laugh,” I said. “But really we just do. There isn’t any secret. There are plenty of times when if I could have just stopped my heart and died I would have.” When John died. When They changed all my books. Christmas Day last year when They stole part two of the Robert Jordan tape Kim had brought me. They never gave it back either.

  “I hope the sample helps,” he said, shifting a little in a very alien way.

  “Why did you pick me?” I asked. “And what if I tell everyone?”

  “Nobody will believe you,” he said. Then I heard the nurse coming down the corridor. He looked that way guiltily, and took a step away.

  “Not so fast, young man,” I said. “You told me you were going to tell me who’s stealing my things.”

  “You didn’t tell me your secret,” he said. As if there was any secret. “But anyway, nobody is. You just think things are being stolen bec
ause you can’t keep track of them.”

  He left then. Tom. He didn’t keep his part of the bargain at all, just the same old lie I get from everyone about it. He just walked out of the door and didn’t come back. I tried to tell people about him, but he was right about that, they didn’t believe me.

  “M-A-D,” Janice said, signalling with her eyes to Richard. “Le Nutso. Le crack finale.” She’s the one who’s mad if you ask me, thinking that Franglais would fool anyone. But I admit saying that an alien has been to visit me sounds odd. So I’m making this tape to explain it all.

  And I have a new theory. I think the people who are stealing my stuff are trying to find out about the aliens. That’s probably why They usually bring it back and scatter it about in different places. They’re not stealing it because They want it, They’re searching it for alien information. That doesn’t explain why They take some things so many times and other things only once, but perhaps They’re not very bright. Perhaps They’re the NSA, or another lot of aliens, I don’t know. But if I leave this tape lying around, They’ll find it, and take it. Then They’ll know the truth, and maybe They’ll leave me in peace for a while. If Tom comes back, or I meet any more aliens, I’ll make another tape. So just leave everything alone except tapes marked with an X, all right? Do we have a deal? I’ll tell you anything about any aliens that come to visit me, and you stop stealing my things.

  ON THE WALL

  TREES. Tall trees and short trees, trees in autumn colours and trees winter-stark, branches bared against the sky. Trees with needles, trees with leaves golden, brown, and every possible shade of green. Trees in sunlight. Trees weighed down with snow. Trees that covered this land from the mountains to the sea with only a few clearings cut in them where men huddle. At first I could see nothing but trees. Nothing else stayed still for long enough.

  I suppose there were years before I learned to understand, years in which I passively reflected what was set before me, but the first thing I remember is the trees. It was the trees that first made me think, long ago, when I was without words. What I thought was this, though more formless: trees change, but are the same. And I thought: there are trees before me, but I have seen other trees. And on that thought the other trees rippled on my surface, and the old man cried out in joy. I was not aware of that, of course. He told me later. At that point he was barely a shadow to me. He had never stood still for long enough for me to see him, as I could see a tree. I do not know how long it was before I learned to reflect people. People move so fast, and must always be doing.

  The old man and his wife were great sorcerers both, and they had fled from some castle in some clearing, the better to have freedom to practice their arts. This was all they ever told me, though sometimes they set me to see that castle, a grey stone keep rising from trees, with a few tilled fields around it before the trees began again. The man had made me, he said, and they had both set spells upon me, and so I was as I was. They taught me from the time I was made, they said. They talked to me constantly, and at last with much repetition I learned not merely to reflect them but to see them and to understand their words and commands. They told me to show them other parts of the woods, or places in clearings, and I would do so, although at first anything I had not seen before would just pass over my face like a ripple in a pond. What I liked best was hour upon hour of contemplation, truly taking in and understanding something. When they left me alone I would always turn my thoughts to trees.

  Their purpose in making me was to have a great scrying glass capable of seeing the future. In this sense I am a failure—I can see only what is, not what has been or will be. They still had hope I would learn, and tried to make me show them spring in autumn and winter in summer. I could not, I never could, nor could I see beyond the bounds of this kingdom. I have seen the sea lapping on the shore, the little strip of beach before the edge of the forest, and I have seen the snowy peaks of the mountains high up out of reach, but I have never seen further. These are my limits. Nevertheless I was a great and powerful work—they told me so—and there was much they found they could do with me. I did not mind. In time I came to enjoy seeing new things, and watching people.

  Some time later—I cannot say how long, for I had then no understanding of time—the old woman bore a child. She was born at the time of year when the bluebells were all nodding in the green woods, and this was the scene I showed in the cottage the day she was born. It was my choice of scene; that day they were too busy to command me.

  Shortly afterwards they began to teach me to reflect places I had never seen. This took much time, and I fear the child was neglected. I struggled to obey their commands and to show what they commanded to the best of my understanding. The child would come and peer into my depths sometimes, but usually one of the parents would push her away. Her name was Bluebell.

  I always heard her name spoken with an irritation they never used on me. When she was a little older they would sometimes command me to display some sight she would enjoy—animals playing, farmers cutting corn, dwarves cutting diamonds out of rock, the waves washing the shore—and she would sit for hours, entranced, while they worked.

  A little later again, she would command me herself, in much broader terms than her parents. “Mirror, Mirror, show me the nicest flower!” I had been built to tell the truth, and indeed could do nothing else, so I would find her some perfect wild rose half-hidden under a hawthorn tree. “It was a daffodil before,” she’d complain, and so it had been. She could not really understand my explanations, but I tried to say that the daffodil was long dead and now the rose was best. She cried. Her mother slapped her. Bluebell was a headstrong girl, and there was no wonder, with all this, that she grew up jealous of me and hungry for love and attention. I felt sorry for her. I suppose in a way I loved her. She was her parents’ victim as much as I was. Even when she screamed in rage and threatened to break me I felt nothing but pity.

  The old woman taught the girl to cook and brew up the potions she used in magic, but she did not teach her any spells. The old man almost ignored her; he was getting older and spent almost all the time he was awake trying to get me to show him the future.

  Then, one day, the herald came. In all the time from when I was made until then, when Bluebell was sixteen, nobody had entered the house but the old couple, the girl, and the occasional pedlars who came to all the forest houses. I thought at first, seeing this man ride up, that he was a pedlar. Pedlars dressed in bright colours and wore their packs on their backs, ready to take off and unfold to display their goods. I always liked seeing the shining pans and bright ribbons and combs they showed, even though the old woman never bought any. But this man was no pedlar. He was dressed all in red and gold, and he had only a small pack, such as anyone might carry their own provisions in. He held a long scroll in his hand, and when the old woman opened the door he unrolled the scroll and read from it.

  “Hear ye all my people of the forest!” began the herald. “This is a Proclamation from King Carodan in Brynmaeg Castle. My queen has died, and, there being no other foreign Princess that pleases me, I desire to take a bride from among my own people to be a comfort to me and a mother to my baby daughter, Snowdrop. Therefore I send out heralds to all corners of My Kingdom to inquire of all girls desirous of being viewed to come to Brynmaeg for the Grand Selection Ball, which will take place on the day of the Autumn Moon. Girls must be between the ages of sixteen and twenty, subjects of my kingdom, and previously unmarried.” The herald said all this on one breath, as if he had said it many times before (doubtless he had), then rolled the scroll up again.

  “Be off, varlet!” said the old woman in a commanding tone. “That has nothing to do with us!”

  “Only doing my job,” mumbled the herald, in quite another tone of voice. “My instructions are to go to all the forest houses, all of them, mind you, missing none, and read that proclamation. You’ve heard it now, and it didn’t cost you anything. I’m going, I’m going!”

  Just then Bluebell
jumped up from where she had been weeding beside the cottage. “I want to go to the Ball!” she said. “Oh Mother, please! I’m sixteen, and I’m beautiful, I know I am!” She was, in fact, very beautiful, with a pleasing ripe figure, long golden hair, and large blue eyes with long dark lashes. As she stood there in her brown smock with her hair loose about her face she looked the very picture of what the king said he wanted—a bride from his own people. The herald obviously thought so too, for he said:

  “This is my last call before I return to Brynmaeg, miss. If you wish I will escort you there.”

  “And who’s to escort her back when the king turns her down?” scoffed the old woman. “And why should I trust you not to tumble her over a toadstool on the way? Anyway, she’s not going. Be on your way!”

  The herald bowed to Bluebell, ignored her mother, and walked off. I looked at Bluebell, which meant that even though she was in the side garden and I was hung facing the front window, she was reflected in my surface. She looked angry and cross rather than sad, and I was sure she was planning something. The old woman turned to me and gave me a little tap. I didn’t feel it, of course. I can feel nothing, only see and hear. I don’t regret that. I always used to think that if Bluebell carried out her threat and broke me, then at least there would be no pain.

  Late that night I was musing on moonlight on the sea when I saw Bluebell creep across the room to where the herbs were stored. She mixed up a potion, then stored a quantity of herbs in a bag. She then tiptoed away to the room where her parents slept. Automatically I “followed” her and watched while she rubbed her potion into her parents’ faces. I thought it was a sleeping potion. Even when I saw the look on her face I thought that. Even when she took her gloves off and dropped them beside the bed. It was not until they began to scream and writhe that I guessed what she had done.