Adaptation: book I (9 page)

“Mother, no! You don’t understand. I have to go back to Earth!”

“Even now you only care about that planet, when I am telling you that your behavior has been poor. You should be focusing on your attitude and behavior, Bilal!”

“I will. But give me another chance.”

“Bilal! You speak like a human! It is done. You, above all should know that decisions like this are not arbitrary. I cannot take it back. It has been decided. You will focus on your position as a dignitary within our own kind.”

Bilal knew her words were true.

He had fucked up.

~***~

“What is the
problem Bilal?” Lawrence asked. “Man, I gotta tell you that you’ve been stranger than normal lately.”

Bilal, Raj, Lawrence, and Lawrence’s girlfriend-of-the-week were in Lawrence’s house.

Bilal shuddered and gave Treya a long look until the human female made an excuse to leave. She didn’t like him anyways. Bilal wished that Lawrence would date Lydia again. She was friendly, touched him without fear, and allowed him to touch her. Treya once threw up when he’d wrapped a tentacle of greeting around her wrist. He didn’t like her.

“I have a problem and it’s huge.”

“Uh oh,” Raj said.

“I’m banned from returning to Earth.”

“Dude, I’m not surprised,” Lawrence said. “You’ve been going there every two weeks. I have no idea how much alien pod-ships cost to refuel, but I’m imagining that it’s not cheap.”

“Why did you get banned?” Raj asked. “You didn’t get caught with those dandelions, did you? Bilal, you really have to watch that shit. You could turn into a Centaurian junkie, and I’m not doing the whole intervention thing with you.”

“Um …” Bilal’s skin turned black. “I did something …”

Raj stood, his face pale. “Did you do something to that woman on Earth? Fuck, Bilal.”

“No!” Bilal shouted. “I mean, yes, but …”

Lawrence looked horrified. “You didn’t rape her did you?”

“No! I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Oh my God,” Raj said. “What did you do, Bilal?”

“You don’t even have a dick,” Lawrence said.

Raj gave Lawrence a withering look. “He can form a penis the way he forms tentacles.”

“
No!
” Bilal shuddered. “I didn’t do that! But I did make her pregnant.”

“You did
what?
” Raj roared, his bronze skin red with anger.

“I didn’t want her to be alone so I made her a baby. I know, yes, it was not well thought out. I was stoned.”

Lawrence smiled. 

Raj was less than amused. “How did she react?”

Bilal remained quiet.

“Bilal, please don’t tell me that she doesn’t know.”

“It’s not like I could tell her! She carries a gun and she would just shoot me.”

“Oh wow,” Lawrence said. “Even I know that’s fucked up.”

Raj closed his eyes as if he was meditating. When he opened his eyes he looked at Bilal. “How far along is she?”

“Eleven weeks, but she is much further along in Centaurian terms. In human terms she is more like fourteen weeks.”

Lawrence frowned. “Human, Centaurian … What the hell are you talking about? Ugh, um, Bilal … No. You didn’t.”

Raj stared at his friend. “You impregnated her with
your
… sperm, DNA—whatever?”

“Not exactly,” Bilal said. “I don’t have sperm. I needed a vehicle to host my DNA.”

“Dear God,” Raj said, turning a brighter shade of pale.

Bilal felt horrible, but he had to confess what he had done. “I used yours, Raj.”

Raj staggered. He bent and placed his hands on his knees while he tried to catch his breath.

“I’m sorry Raj. I was wasted when I did it, and I’m not sure what I was thinking. Somehow it seemed right, but I know it’s wrong.”

Raj spun around and punched Bilal—not that it did any harm. It was like punching a bucket of Jell-O. Raj then stormed out of the house.

Bilal’s body formed a small ball.

Lawrence stared at him, shaking his head. He reached out and rubbed his friend’s mottled black flesh. “Bilal, man, you gotta know that you just did something horrible. You hijacked your friend’s sperm. Although I’m not quite sure why you chose his over mine. But regardless, you mixed two species together. It’s like mixing a dog and a cat. You can’t do that kind of thing just because you know how. What’s worse is that you didn’t even ask her,
and
she doesn’t know she’s carrying a monster inside her!”

Bilal’s form lengthened. “He’s not a monster! He’s my son.”

Lawrence grimaced. “You are nuts, and you have to tell your parents.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you need to get back on Earth, and you need to tell that woman what you did. You need to take it out of her.”

“I can’t, it’s too far along.”

“Bilal, yes you can! And you will.” Lawrence’s blue eyes narrowed. “You created a genetic mutation that will think and speak, and that is a horrible thing to do. You
will
un-create it.”

After a moment, Bilal nodded. Lawrence was right. And he would have to tell his parents why he had to return to Earth.

And after I tell them,
Bilal thought,
they might want to un-create me.

At first
she thought she was just picking up a bit of extra weight. Lately she was insatiably hungry. She couldn’t stop the hunger pangs, and her clothes didn’t fit so well anymore. Fried green tomatoes never tasted so good. She had to ration her intake of tomatoes to two a day and even then she had run out. She had driven to nearby farms in search of abandoned gardens in the hopes of finding more tomatoes.

Also he also couldn’t get enough lemon pudding. She found boxes of the mix and made lemon pudding every day. She could barely tolerate eggs and hated wasting them, so she found creative ways to bake with them. Lemon meringue pie became a daily indulgence. She made cheese and ate it in handfuls. She drank glasses of chilled milk, preferring it cold.

When her period stopped coming, she realized there was something going on much worse than weight gain. Her breasts hurt, and she sweated during the night. Was it menopause? But how could she be going through that when she wasn’t even forty?

One morning she climbed out of bed and felt something strange and more frightening than even the idea of menopause.

Something fluttered in her stomach.

Carmella froze and gasped. She pressed her hand to the flutter and waited, but it didn’t reoccur. She kept pressing her stomach and felt a lump that wasn’t fat. She shook as she pressed and prodded then stripped out of her nightclothes and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her belly was slightly rounded.

A tumor.

Dear Lord, she had cancer.

~***~

“Child
, if your
reason for calling this meeting is to convince us to change our minds,” Mama-Baba said, “then you are wasting your time and ours.”

Bilal pulled himself up until he was tall. “I’m no longer a child. I’m an unmarried adult.”

Mama-Baba’s skin flushed yellow. “Of course.”

“Why did you call this meeting?” Father-Nile asked.

Bilal had practiced but still had a difficult time getting the words out. He reverted to Centaurian, which did not use words but waves. He explained about finding the female human, about the attack on her, and how he had repaired her. No one interrupted him, which surprised him. He explained about returning to make sure she was okay and how she had broken down in grief and accused him for her loss.

“Humans can not accept responsibility for their own self-destructive nature,” Mama-Baba said, “and yet we are the scapegoats for all that has gone wrong with them.”

“Well, in all fairness, we are responsible their end,” Father-Nile said.

“Yes, we are, Nile,” Mama-Baba said. “But they were in sad condition before we ever arrived, and now they aren’t. Do we ever get credit for that?”

“Please continue with your story, Bilal,” Mother-Mina said.

Bilal’s body expanded as he explained about the dandelion tops and how he had consumed so many of them that it sounded like a good idea to give the human a child to take the place of the one lost to her.

Father-Tom became agitated. “You should have brought her here, Bilal. Had you brought her here, then she could have mated properly. I am very displeased with you.”

“I’m sorry, but there is more. I used Raj’s sperm without his permission. And I … spliced my DNA into the fertilized egg.”

There was absolute silence.

“That is impossible,” Mother-Mina said.

“No, Mother. The mother ship helped me to adapt my DNA into theirs.”

“And you successfully implanted the embryo?” Father-Nile asked.

“Well, yes.” They weren’t angry? “She is in her second trimester.”

“And the child is healthy?” Father-Tom asked.

“Yes, but I haven’t been far from the human for long ... until now.”

“I see,” Mother-Mina said.

“You will bring her here,” Mama-Baba said.

“There is yet another problem. She doesn’t know she is pregnant. I failed to tell her.”

There was quiet.

“What you did was unconscionable,” Mama-Baba said. “The human has never been processed and has been living alone on earth for over twenty years. She obviously hates Centaurians, and in your wisdom you decide to impregnate her with one? Did you want to become a human so badly that you tried to create one?”

Mother-Mina stopped her with a tentacle. “Bilal was wrong in the way that he carried this out, but not for what he did. We adapt. That is what we do. When our cells merged with humans it caused their deaths. But this—”

“Madness!” Mama-Baba interrupted. “You always take his side, even when he does something like this!”

Father-Tom placed a reassuring tentacle on his partner. “Baba, please …”

“No!” Mama-Baba pulled away and moved across the room. “We should not mix with humans. Why would we want to combine with a lesser species? We should aspire toward higher life forms and not lower ourselves!”

Mother-Mina quivered. “You’ve made your dislike of humans quite evident. Your dislike clouds your reason. Adaptation is not based on personal preference but on necessity. Humans can procreate easier than Centaurians can, and they are highly evolved. They are the most intelligent species that we have found.”

“I think that it is time that Bilal is told about the origins of the mother ship,” Father-Nile said.

“Of course,” Mama-Baba sputtered. “Tell him. Why not?”

Bilal looked at him curiously, ignoring his Second Mother. “Tell me what?”

“Do you know what the mother ship is?” Father-Niles asked.

“A living organism. We sustain each other.”

“Yes,” Mother-Mina said. “But there is more to it than that. Many centuries ago our world began to die.”

Bilal knew this story well, so why was she giving him a history lesson?

“Needing a way to travel to other worlds, we began to develop the mother ship,” Mother-Mina said. “But what you don’t know is that the mother ship is a Centaurian who allowed himself to adapt to our needs.”

Bilal froze. “What?”

“The ship is one of us,” Mother-Mina said. “A Centaurian made the supreme sacrifice to adapt for our needs. And because he did, he saved the life of thousands.”

“But … how?”

“We helped it to become something that could meet our needs, and then the most daring of us joined with the Centaurian who is now our mother ship.”

Bilal was bowled over. He could have never known that such a thing was possible. He looked around and ran a tentacle along the familiar walls. “But why was I never told?”

“Because it is possible—though not advised—but we can adapt to be whatever it takes to meet our own needs,” Mother-Mina said.

Bilal’s tentacles explored the interior walls of the mother ship. “But Centaurians have a lifespan. The mother ship has never died. How is this possible?” It would be three times older than the oldest Centaurian.

“We keep it alive,” Mother-Mina explained. “So you see, young one, adapting is what we do.”

“You will have to return to Earth and bring the human to the mother ship for processing and monitoring,” Father-Tom said.

“Why?” Bilal asked.

“Why?” Father-Nile would have sputtered if he could have. “We can’t leave her on Earth with a child as important as the one she carries. She may do it harm.”

“Maybe he can take the child from her body and bring it to the ship,” Father-Tom suggested.