Becoming Alien (24 page)

Thinking of Calcite, I said bitterly, “Why not? It’s been an awful day. Nothing could make it worse.”

We drove in her car, the one she’d loaned Rhyodolite the night of the party, me sitting grumpily beside her as we left the campus, passed some institute buildings in stone and glass, and then headed north up toward the slums.

To me, coming from the rural dumps, Karst’s back streets—plastic windows and streets with ruts in the plasphalt—weren’t so bad, being well lit with heavy grates over vapor lights.

Then I noticed a young slick-skinned officer grab the crotch of a furry female in a short tight tunic. She reached into a bag she had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a glass ampule.
Arousal pheromones. “She
couldn’t handle her classes,” Black Amber said as the blue-clad officer rumpled her head fur and led her away. “Or her ancestors couldn’t.”

The bright lights dangling from the tough chromed poles suddenly seemed garish. Black Amber looked for one special horror among all the aliens hawking stuff from the sidewalks or out of the little ragged shops.

“Unsuccessful of your kind,” she said, pulling up to the curb by some people dressed in coarse wools and cheap synthetics. The men looked up—they were like the man who’d been dragged in earlier to meet me. These humans led heavy-furred creatures with humps and strange horns—not quite cows. Never saw a cow that furry, or carrying packs, either.

One of the men spat down on the sidewalk in front of Black Amber as he passed, leading his beast.

“The sapients smell just like you,” Black Amber said. “For centuries they’ve wandered between the hills and Karst City. Free trader families, also your species, sell grains, milk oils, and weavings for them.”

“They don’t like me already,” I said.

“Ah, but some of their women might,” she said. “They think they are in hell. We try on occasion to train them.”

“Why don’t you people clean this slum up?”

“Deal with your studies better, then you can become a City Committee member and reform this area yourself.” She started her car. “Perhaps we should hire you a female.”

“Damn you,
Black Amber.” I looked back and saw one man point to the car. The others laughed. “You want me to fail? Get shot by crazed aliens if I don’t?”

Black Amber didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and squeezed her nostrils shut. But when we were close to the Academy, she said softly, “You can go to a more remedial chemistry class.”

After a terribly silent ride through the Academy grounds, she dropped me off at my dorm and didn’t look at me as I closed the car door.

The Ewit was furious at both Granite and me. “Both shits for roommates/forced to take,” Gypsum said. “Gwyngs watch the refugee; Jereks the bird. Horrible.”

The bird lowered his bed and stepped toward Gypsum, huge threatening steps. “Listen to your milk-piss speaking tapes, monstrosity, and leave us alone.”

“I can’t bring my friends to this room,” Gypsum squalled in Karst II.

“Shut up, mouse, or I’ll eat you.”

I asked my terminal for the survival rate among cadets, wondering again what I’d gotten myself into.

Out of five contact teams and linguistics missions, generally one member will be held for questioning or interrogation for more than five days. Casualties range from one to three individuals, including non-official actions, per three mission years.

Terrific.

The next morning, Tesseract, through my computer, invited me to a three-day visit at his country place. Rather than sound desperate, I asked if the weekend after the four-day rotation would be fine.

Low-rent chemistry, one step away from patched plastic slums. We were all embarrassed to be there, ill-educated first-generation cadets and refugees. The teacher was a thin gentle fuzzy who seemed weary the whole class period. Chemistry, I realized by the break, was a lot like drug-making—that’s probably why I hated it.

That night, Gypsum was out as usual, so the bird and I moved in on the music system.

The bird and I went through the music tracks, me hating some he liked okay, Granite hating some I could stand to listen to, but both agreeing on the hideous.

Granite went back to his cubicle and came back wrapped in a sheet, even over his head. He scratched some around his ear holes, then began to play some cuts over and over, teaching me what to listen to in weird un-Earthly stuff.

“They think I’m likely to mess up,” I said, “because the only others of my species here are savages or something.” I wished I had some mountain music here, or some blues like black church people do on the piano between hymns.

“Pressures may drive me insane,” Granite said, sitting down on his hocks, with a cushion for his elbows. “Some hideous force controls this Federation; I must identify it.” His naked skin shuddering a little under the sheet, he put on another disc. “My planet…” As the music played, he closed his eyes, first the nictitating membranes, then the regular eyelids, from the bottom up.

I asked, “Your planet?”

He hissed, “Yes, hush…” When the songs stopped, he stayed down on his hocks staring at the disc player, staring at it. “Red Clay, are you ever afraid? Seriously afraid.”

“Of here?” I asked back. “Like I joined an army and didn’t know people got killed doing contacts?”

“Of me?” He turned his head toward me, beak tucked down, brown eyes open wide. Pin feathers had sprouted around his ears. Then he slowly stood up, beaked head over me, and dropped his sheet.

We stared at each other. “A little,” I said.

“Well, now I’m ugly. You should see me when I’ ve got feathers. They’re beautiful.”

“What’s it like, growing feathers?”

“They tickle—bigger coming in than your hairs. I have a stone in my toilet cubicle to scratch against.” He raised his head slightly—more relaxed?

“Could I see?”

Granite shrugged one shoulder. “Yes, if I can see your toilet cubicle.” He wrapped the sheet over his shoulders again.

“Sure.”

His was weird—a dust shower with ultraviolet lights, a slot in the wall. I guessed he was like a Gwyng or a chicken and didn’t separate shit and piss, just backed into the gray plastic depression around the slot.

He did have the same small basin with the mirror over it—Karst standard, always with the water temperature set on the dial. He liked his hot.

I looked inside the shower at a rough black stone like a five-foot-tall pumice footstick. He’d rubbed skin flakes off on it, and even bits of feet scales, arm scales. I wondered what the ultraviolet lights did.

We both came out almost embarrassed—at least I was. “Don’t you get cold from the water shower?” he asked.

“They gave me a dial for warm control.”

“Ah, I’d like that for the dust.”

“Bet they’d do it if you asked.”

“You’re more their kind of alien than I am.”

“Karriaagzh?”

“Problem with non-hard-wired brains—they mop up influences, go weird. As a bird, he’s an imposter.”

“I sure don’t think of him as a mammal.”

Granite sighed and stalked back to his bed, rode it up high, then had to come back for his home-planet music disc.

Gypsum abandoned the room except to sleep, so Granite Grit wrapped up in a sheet each evening and played music, sitting like a humongous nestling, his scaly elbows propped up on a red-lacquered stand.

“You seem sad,” I said one day after hearing the same home music disc over and over.

“I was forced to come here.”

“Oh.”

“Let me test your ears on this,” he said. “I can’t go out without the hateful uniform”

I turned off my display screen and sat cross-legged on the other side of the music player. He stared at my legs. “How did you fold them?” he asked. “Show me again. I stood up and sat back again. “Very strange. What this music does is twine pitches in our scale. I hope you can hear the entire sound range.”

He taught me alien bird music, and I was not so lonely. But, four nights later, another bird, olive and brown like Xenon, came in with two Barcons. Granite hunched down, clinging to his sheet.

“We need your help,” the other bird said. “Another one of your species, Academy name of Sulphur…”

Granite got up with a hop-spring from those backward knees. “You didn’t come for me then?”

“We don’t deal with conflicts between species and Federation,” a Barcon said. “Can you help us with Sulphur? He’s xenofreaked.”

Granite dropped the sheet and pulled on his black uniform, saying, “Don’t report me for not wearing…”

“Hurry,” the Barcons said, their hands on his sloping shoulders.

Granite was gone until after uniform change hour. When he came back, I saw a huge bruise beside his beak. He didn’t say anything, but brought the bed down and stripped his uniform off, disappeared into the toilet cubicle for a while. His shoulders were bruised, too.

When he came out, naked, he collapsed, awkwardly, on his bed and flicked his nictitating membranes back and forth across his eyes, not bothering to raise the bed. A clear fluid drooled off the tip of his beak.

“What happened?” I asked. Granite gestured no and drove the bed up. I heard his fists slamming against the mattress, over and over. Gypsum came in and asked, “They tell him not to stuff his computer full of spy chips?”

“Leave us alone,” I said, “or I’ll beat your ass if he doesn’t.”

“I’m moving completely out,” Gypsum said, headed out the door.

In the morning, Granite shook under sheets—I saw his yellow-skinned hand convulsively gripping and twisting his thin sleeping mat. I pulled on my pants. “Granite?” I asked, going up, but keeping back some.

“Mammals have squishy minds,” he said.

“Granite,” I said, “you need help?”

“Couldn’t the Barcons be quick in their killing?” He stared down at me with eyes half covered by membranes, like a sick cat.

I didn’t know what to do, so I typed in my computer that my roommate was shaking and not getting out of bed, accused me or mammals in general of poisoning Sulphur.

The computer flashed:
Enter cadet name and general type. I typed Granite Grit, bird.

“Sulphur…lost control,” Granite said, “utterly. All aliens terrified…we, too, aliens, not feathered. The Rector came…held him down while the Barcons… The Barcons were sorry.”

A chip voice came out of my terminal:
Is Granite Grit able to communicate with other species?

Granite almost stopped breathing and stared at the machine. I said, “Yes, but he’s upset due to what happened to his con-specific.” Then I said, “Granite, can you communicate?”

“Mammal brains. I want to go outside the wall, run, just run.”

Barcons will be over
, the computer’s voice said.

“No!” He tore at the mattress with his scale-backed hands, breaking his fingernails back to the thick part.

The voice of the computer changed. “Red Clay, this is Tesseract. We can excuse you from classes if you think you can help Granite Grit. Barcons will not enter the room. See if you can bring him to the Rector’s complex.”

I was a little under six feet and not sure how my muscle insertions compared to the bird’s. “Granite, I can’t drag you out. If you don’t want to bring the bed down, I’ll have to tell them I can’t help.”

“I’m scared. I don’t understand mammal thinking.”

“When I was coming here from Earth, I got scared like this. Come on with me. If you faint, I can’t hold you up.”

Tesseract spoke again through the computer, “Red Clay, what’s happening?” The bird jumped.

“Don’t talk out loud,” I said. “And please give me time.”

“I suppose I’m a nuisance,” Granite Grit said, hands on the bed control, but not bringing it down. “Can he promise me that the Barcons won’t dose me with the drug that paralyzed Sulphur?”

Granite’s computer whirred. I read,
We will be more careful.

“They’ll be more careful. Do you drink tea? Tesseract’ll make you a nice cup of tea at the Rector’s office. He gave me tea on the ship.” I spoke softly, still not getting too close to him.

“Don’t talk to me like I was…one in down.”

“For Christ’s sakes, get your bird-ass down here then,”
I said in frustrated English. I realized he was worse than a bit nuts, and an alien who outweighed me. “Look, I want you to be all right.”

“We’re trapped by the Academy. Zoo sapients.”

The computer whirred again.
Tell him that if he comes in and talks to us, we may, stress may, give him a pass to run outside if he allows us to accompany him. Us can be you or Barcons, whoever he feels comfortable with.

I had the machine print this out and went to hand the paper up to Granite, who reared back, glittering eyes narrowed. I flinched, turned my head sideways so he couldn’t blind me if he struck.

“Red Clay!” He sounded almost shocked. One of his hands went up to massage around his beak while the other one took the paper from me.