Alien Tongues (37 page)

My head buzzing with such woolly thinking, I held Ben's hand as the cabin door swung open.  The light was blinding even though I had remembered to put on our sunglasses.  The sound of the band and the cheering, already audible from our internal speakers, burst in like a canyon flooding.  We walked hand-in-hand towards what was just white light.  First I could make out rows of soldiers in dress uniform lining a red carpet, snapping their weapons just as we exited.  The roar was now hurting my ears. The air felt fresh and I instinctively shook my hair.  I realized I was beaming a huge smile, but had no idea at what.  At the end of the red carpet was a line of people, all of whom wore some gong of office.  The anthem continued, this time into a symphonic variation.  It carried a hint of Dust Belt country.  Wow, someone must have composed this especially for the occasion.  I started shaking hands.  Ben stood behind me but I kept him in my left hand.  I didn't know why – was I making some point?

At the end of the row of hand-shakes I could see a podium a short walk away.  Below that stretched an endless sea of people, shimmering with the waving of small flags over their heads.  I continued to hold Ben's hand but with our arms stretched somewhat, as if we were the lead cros and fem actors in a play, ready to take our bows.  There was no suggestion of romance, just the warm collaboration of attractive colleagues.  Then I saw the pair of us on a giant screen.  I realized my choice of outfits had been inspired.   We now redefined Space Girl and Boy.  Anything else would now seem too elaborate or too casual.  Our suits twinkled in the morning sunlight, and my blonde streaks tumbled about my shoulders in defiance of regimen.  Ben looked so handsome, clean cut and pure that I could bet any fem that day would have paid their working wage to win a hug from him.  The camera closed in on my face and my pale-pink lipstick suggested passion controlled by devotion to duty.

Enough steps away from the dignitaries with gongs, the anthem went deeper into country.  The melody has changed and this was no longer an anthem – it was slow rock.  Then the pace picked up and now it was unmistakably
Daughter of the Dust Belt
, the perennial foot-tapper that might be described as an anthem for all the single fems who packed a rucksack in frustration and headed for the sins of the Center or the voids of the highways.  As the lyrics said, you can take the fem out of the Belt, but not the Belt out of the fem.  It was hard to walk normally with the rhythm inside your head.  For a while, the song had made famous a simple line-dance, and its steps were very close to what I had shown Ben the other evening.  In a moment of pure daring I decided not to resist the urge.  I gave Ben's hand a small tug then glanced from his face to my feet and back.  Then I dipped my left leg and went forward on my right.  Ben copied me without even appearing to look at our feet.  I brought back my right, did a cross-step with my left, and we were into the routine he knew.  On the big screen it looked impromptu, spontaneous, and also slick and effortless.

The crowd seemed to explode.  I had signaled I was a country fem at heart, and now they knew this glittering Space Girl was one of them, simply with greatness thrust upon her.  It felt like a tsunami of love, and in return I felt something new also.  For the first time I realized it was possible to love a crowd, like it was some kind of unified, organic creature.  This must be politics, I realized.  I had just snorted my first line of democracy and I wondered if I was hooked.

Just below the podium was a box for journalists, perhaps thirty of them seated.  Many more journalists thronged below at the crowd level, and I assumed those in the box were the ones Al had hand-picked to ask questions.  I spotted Al among them, and he waved up at me.  He gave me a signal that it was OK to start speaking at any time.  I let go of Ben's hand and approached the main microphone bank.  The crowd noise dropped somewhat.  I held up my hands, there was a sudden cheer, then the sound dropped further.  "Thank you!"  I repeated twice.  The first got a cheer and applause, then finally I had enough quiet to speak.

"I cannot express," I said, "the wonderful feeling that your welcome has given me.  You know, transporting raw materials around the Galaxy is so essential for all our lives, but it can be a lonely way to make a living.  Sometimes when you are out there for long stretches, you wonder about your choices in life.  But now I am here and feel your warmth around me, suddenly everything is worthwhile.  I feel love and purpose and strength."

I waited for the upsurge in cheering to die down.  Today, creating happiness was easy.  Surely that was a good thing?  I continued, "Now, I'd love to tell you all about my amazing experience but, as you know, my employer – well, shall we say the company's had quite an expensive week?"  Appropriate laughter.  "There's going to be some meetings involving lawyers and claims adjusters and regulators and judges, and I don't want to make some off-hand remark in front of billions which is going to make their lives more complicated than they already are.  So please forgive me if this press conference is a bit limited in scope.  Hopefully next week I'll be able to say more to Zac Lyon."

Screams of delight after this reference to the top chat-show host.  Their darling fem pilot was going to keep herself in the spotlight and reveal more and more about her private life.  I could see Al selecting the first journalist, a fem.

"Jen Spry of the Globe," she said into her microphone.  "Pilot Moon, could you describe how it feels to have a Brain Bang?"

"You mean, so you can recognize the difference between a Bang and a nervous breakdown?" Laughter.  "I'm kidding a bit, but not entirely.  To be honest, I don't yet know if I had a "synaptic symphony" as someone described it on the news yesterday.  That period of time you see on the video feed where Ben is pulling switches and pressing buttons?  I try to recall those moments and it feels like a blur to me.  I hope to be of assistance to cognitive scientists who seek to understand these mental processes."  I paused.  "Boring answer, huh?  I wish I could say it was like the Dusters scoring a ten-pointer to take the lead in injury time."

Mixed with the laughs was some chanting from what must have been a section of Belt migrants.  "Si Long of the Orbit," said another journalist, a cros.  "You mentioned Zac Lyon.  Then I think you have several more guest appearances in the coming weeks.  Do you think you'll ever go back to trucking?"

I pulled a face.  "Well, you know we fem truckers.  We party until the money runs out, then we sign away another chunk of our lives to Outer Space.  It's kind of like a tradition in this sisterhood."  There was some fem whooping amid the chuckles.  "Si, it all depends.  I became a trucker because I thought that was the best use of my talents.  Then something odd happened this week.  Who knows.  Maybe I can contribute something else to humanity.  I'm in no rush as long as my agent doesn't screw up my book deal."

"Pam Lay, Sentinel," said another fem journalist.  "Meg, your mal is so good-looking, isn't he?  As the song says, what advice do you have for the rockin' daughters of the Dust Belt?  Married life or swinging single with a mal in tow?"

Now it was getting a little spicier.  A few more whoops from the crowd.  There were some distant cries of 'single forever!' and 'who needs a cros?'  I needed a careful path through this one.  There was no point at this stage alienating anyone.

"Pam, I've had a good life so far, no doubt about it.  Yeah, Ben's the cutest mal I've had aboard my trucks. The loneliness out there can eat you up sometimes, and Ben has been a wonderful companion. But life on the planets is different, and sometimes we need a partner to help us think life through.  If it turns out I'm not going back out there, maybe I got some genes worth passing on."

Now it was the turn of the traditional fems to shout their approval – a prodigal daughter was thinking about reforming.  Yet I had not abandoned the Sisterhood.  Splendid isolation with their dream mal remained an option for all of them, as the demand for lonely truckers always outstripped supply.  And no one was ever going to hear me say there was anything immoral about it.

I could hear a chant from the distance growing louder.  It was an expression you read often in the news, "Fem Choice!"  Basically, it was the slogan of women who objected to the social stigma often associated with mal cohabitation, but it was nowadays being used in the context of choosing children.  The counter-slogan was "Fam Values!" which stood for family values or the traditional family structure.  Sure enough, elsewhere in the crowd this second chant became audible as a reaction to the first.  The unity of the masses' joy in welcoming home their heroine trucker was starting to show cracks.  Were there deliberate agitators starting this?  Perhaps Al should have tried to prevent such media questions.

I could see concern on Al's face as he stared out into the crowd.  There was some confusion in the journalists' box as to who should be now taking the microphone.  It was grabbed by a young, thin fem with close-cropped black hair.  She stared up at me with an excited expression.

"Pia Key,
Action Now
," she announced.  "Pilot Moon, were you aware that Professor Bo Lan of Red Band University has done an extensive analysis of the audio on the digital feed and also your lip movements.  He states that you used a wide range of abusive words to your mal while he was in the act of saving your life.  Can you comment on this?"

The chanting stopped.  There were a few moments' silence, then some jeering and booing.  Some objects were thrown at the press box. But still a million eyes remained fixed on me.  And this, despite all the blame I could heap on Al for allowing it to happen, was what I deserved.  I had seized an opportunity for which I felt not the slightest credit in my heart.  I could now choose between three possible answers to her question.  To save the press conference I could flat-out deny the allegation, but then only to be contradicted by the evidence later.   I could say I couldn't be sure what I said, which was a safe response but one that would deflate the mood horribly and probably be tomorrow's headlines ("Moon doesn't deny abusing her mal during quick-matter panic").  Or I could admit the truth, that I recalled using just such words.  My agenda had been to help mals in order to help Ben, and I was to be famous for mal-abuse within minutes of landing.

I stared at my accuser, wondering who was this young fem, both able and motivated to bring me down in front of millions?  Then I noticed her gaze had shifted to one side of me, and in fact everyone's gaze has done so.  I turned in the same direction to see Ben pulling a sketch-pad from his satchel.  He tore sheet after sheet from the pad and laid the down in a pattern on a table beside him.  An overhead camera zoomed across and the sketches appeared in gallery fashion on the big screens.  One was the picture I had seen that night while he slept.  The rest were a sequence of related moments during Ben's time at the console.  In each one, my face was a picture of calm but determined composure, my hands delivering detailed instructions, while Ben stared in my direction with his hands on the controls.  Each was beautifully and dramatically drawn, and you could hear sighs from the crowd.  Suddenly, the band struck up my anthem.  Everyone started clapping off-beat to the music.  It was a joyful and emotional sound.  Some groups of young fems started dancing.  The band played through again to
Daughters
and the vast sea of people started to sing the chorus.  Ben and I led them in a line dance which stretched as far as the eye could see.

What had happened?  Ben had laid out proof to dispel any question of my abusing him. This beautiful young man had shown not just loyalty but initiative that most people never imagined a mal to possess.  And he had brilliantly depicted me as a thinking and resourceful leader.  Some unprincipled tabloid had tried to spear me at my maiden press conference and had instead got speared itself.  The vast majority of these people wanted me as their role model and saw Ben's sketches as their own victory over poisonous attacks.  I was the beneficiary of extraordinary luck, and my luck was called Ben.

I didn't get the chance for a
post mortem
with Al or Jo until that evening, following a cocktail reception for local celebrities in the city where I had landed.  Ki Land, a famous comedian, did a routine to entertain us during the buffet dinner.  Impersonating a well-known newscaster, he announced, "Today at her news conference, Meg Moon, the famous pilot who was kind enough to test cold propulsion for humanity while passing through a death-spiral on her way to delivering iron ore, was accused of mal-abuse.  Apparently, after he had accidently overcooked the dinner, she forced her pet mal Ben to watch reruns of the Fifi Shanks Amateur Talent Show."

"I think Mr Land neatly summed up the legacy of
Action Now's
little plot today," Jo remarked as he sat with Al and me in lounge chairs on an upper balcony, sipping coffee as a young cros singer crooned on stage below us and a couple of hundred people shuffled around the dance floor.  Both my suitors were charmingly dressed in black tuxedos, while I had upgraded to one of my braided, shiny buttoned uniforms.  "Anyone seriously questioning the accepted narrative is going to appear both mean and paranoid."

"While fully agreeing with you, I will continue to beat myself up about how this happened," Al commented.  "Meg, if you can ever find it in your heart to forgive me, I can at least offer some more explanation as to how this bizarre event ever occurred in the first place.  That fem – Pia Key she called herself but for sure that's not her real name – stole the press pass off the journalist from the Herald after possibly drugging her over breakfast in their hotel.  Why on earth would anyone go to such lengths?"