Being Alien (35 page)

“Or you could abandon us to them,” Ersh said. “Perhaps that would be proper. We are nobody’s parallel here.”

“No,” I said, “we don’t abandon anyone,” Travertine looked at me and raised his shoulder feathers.

“I am to be killed if captured by the Sharwan,” Ersh said. “May we stay with you? I’ve brought many texts. Between us both we know all our major languages.”

The Federation people stared at one another, then Wool said, “If we get back soon, we can put you in language operation group next week. Refugee cadets can be very useful.”

Ersh’s scales shook slightly, but he had no rings in them to jangle. His con-specific said, “The whole universe has collapsed in on us.”

We gated the whole station into the Karst Oort Region and transferred to a smaller transport.

“This is fast,” Marianne said, her knees between mine.

As soon as we gated into a Karst terminal, three waiting Barcons began punching bioassay holes in Ersh and his companion. Wrengee? Isaian? What would they call their species? One of the Barcons fingered Ersh’s mouth tissue.

As we watched, Black Amber came in and said to Marianne, “Why didn’t you stay in Karst City like most (hint of sensible) pregnant placentals?”

“I’m not most pregnant placentals,” Marianne said. “And I like the work. I’m going to continue to do it. My child will be part of it.”

Black Amber said, “I’ll drive you home, I want to be with you both (intense undifferentiated feeling).”

“I need to translate for Ersh,” I said.

Wool came up, stopped ten feet away, one knee bent, his fingers picking through his fur. “Sub-Rector,” he said as though identifying her, not greeting her.

Black Amber said to Wool, “I need want Red Clay (and his pregnant one). You translate for those.” She curled up a foot at Ersh and his companion.

We went to Black Amber’s beach house, but all the children were older now and very aware that we were never going to be Gwyngs. Two days later, Marianne said that she missed our apartment and our neighbors, and so we left Black Amber. When we said goodbye, she stalked out toward the ocean, not speaking.

We took a bus home—home, yes.

* * *

Marianne’s birth group was a bunch of high-powered women of whatever species, all amazed that they couldn’t just high-power along now.

“Pregnancy,” Marianne announced when she came back from the first meeting, “is why women don’t do as well as men. We lose energy in pregnancy. It adds up, especially over a thousand years or so.”

I was feeling queasy myself and didn’t think much of her theory right then. Was she going to make me feel guilty the whole time? “I’m not going to take advantage of whatever’s going on with your hormones.”

“Hormones?” For a second, I thought she’d explode; her eyebrows went up like a mad cat’s back, and her face around the lips looked like a shucked clam, white and all the rest of the metaphor. She shrugged and went to the terminal. “Yangchenla’s not in a birth group. She’s got Tibetan midwives. Agate’s in my group. It’s weird, Tom. Really weird. They seem even more alien now, like some human maternal defense program has kicked in, but we’re all having babies the hard way."

Black Amber came over a week after Marianne’s first pregnancy meeting, almost slinking around Marianne. Black Amber finally sat down on one of our sofas, legs curled under her, arms hooked together at the thumbs, a nervous Gwyng for some reason. I looked at Marianne; we twitched our eyebrows at each other. Black Amber’s brow hair rose slightly, then she said, “Linguist, why risk yourself/the nymph?”

“I’m back now.” Marianne wrapped her arms around her own waist, low as if protecting her womb from Black Amber’s eyes or ultrasonic voice.

Black Amber muttered to herself in Gwyng and walked around Marianne, then said, “Linguist, couldn’t you have had a primitive human bear it for you. The Barcons can do gamete implants.”

“I wouldn’t ask other women to carry Tom’s and my child.” But Marianne looked distressed as if she’d never known she had an option.

I said, “I didn’t know we could do that.”

“Not now/too late,” Black Amber said.
“Shershee mink
in cooler?”

Jersey milk? “Yes,” I said. Black Amber went back to the kitchen.

“She acts like she owns us,” Marianne said.

“I thought you liked her.”

“Tom, did you know that I could have hired one of the Tibetan women to bear my child?”

“No. Would you want to do that next time?”

“No, of course not. No. But I wanted to know. I didn’t want you making decisions about this for me, okay.”

“Marianne…”

“You wouldn’t cooperate with Yangchenla.”

“She was manipulative.”

“Black Amber approves of me, and didn’t approve of her.” She smiled bleakly for all that Black Amber didn’t know about Trung’s gates.

“She accused me of having sex with Black Amber.”

As I said that, Black Amber ambled toward us with milk in a glass. She rolled her tongue into a tube and began sucking at it noisily. When she paused, she said, “Red Clay too stinky for sex. Loyal in body to you—mind to me. We who share should be friends.”

“Honest, I didn’t know about gamete transplants.”

Marianne said in English,
“It’s all right, Tom. I’m going to go through with it.”

“Not to exclude with language,” Black Amber said.

But Marianne didn’t translate.

About two months into Marianne’s pregnancy, I tried to get assigned out. “Rector’s Man,” I said to Chalk in his clammy tile walled office, “I’m going through what Marianne’s going through—vomiting in the mornings."

“Not everything as much as she, though,” Chalk said. I noticed him scratching his lower belly. His breasts were swelling. “Wouldn’t it be inappropriate for you to go on watch now? Doesn’t she need you?”

“She’d be jealous, but…”

“Better stay with her. The Barcons aren’t sure whether you’re competing with her or sympathizing with her.”

I said, “I’ve never heard of a human male getting morning sickness.”

“The Barcons say your condition is described in the human anthropological literature.“ Chalk whistled slightly and raised his nose. “So, you may both study. And you both can help me with cadets.”

At least I didn’t develop breasts, I thought as I stared at his, the way Barcon and Jerek men did.

One day during Marianne’s pregnancy, I brought home a third-year cadet, a pugfaced male with a barrel-round body and pied head hair. We’d been talking about the impact species had on each other, beyond the technological changes, and I invited him to come home with me.

The elevator door rose, and I saw Marianne slouched on a sofa by the window and around her, in the dimly lit room, two other shapes—Agate’s shiny face skin caught the elevator light. The other one groaned. They were all huge bellied—Marianne, the nonhuman women. I asked, “Is it all right for us to come in? I’d asked a cadet…”

The cadet said, “I think we can talk another time.” His face was moist around the eyes, as though he had sweat glands only there.

Marianne looked at me—face pale, her baby visibly moving her belly. “We were saying about men…”

The one in the chair interrupted, “But you don’t need them after impregnation.” She turned into the light—another pug face. The cadet closed the elevator and went down.

“Marianne, don’t you need me?”

“I said I did. I just wondered about Domiecan males, why you don’t talk about him.”

Agate said, “We all have different ecologies. Human and Jerek babies are helpless.”

“I’m glad Domiecan babies aren’t,” the pregnant pugface said. She crooned, “Baby baby,” and stuck her huge belly up off the chair and laid her hands over her navel.

Was she going into labor now? I felt like I was the alien and they were all of a species: pregnant females, a single word, not two in Karst One. I stood there in my officer’s uniform wondering if Jereks and Domiecans had morning sickness. “Are you all having males?” I asked, sounding dumb in my own ears. Marianne knew about the fifth month that she was carrying a boy.

“No,” Agate said. She stood up, belly breasts squashed down against support cups in her hip leathers, smashed by her pregnant belly.

I wondered how much pregnancy alone hurt, much less labor. “I think I’ll go back to my bedroom, or would you rather have me go out for something, Marianne?”

“It’s all right, Tom” Marianne said. “We’re still the same people we were. You could talk to us before, sit down and chat now."

“We delivered her baby,” Marianne said after she’d helped with the Dorniecan’s labor. “And it got up and walked around. Tom, it was weird—a baby walking two hours after delivery, walking up to Bir and finding her breast, then sniffing at us. She had to call it off.”

“Pig babies are like that,” I said.

Marianne shuddered so hard I thought she was going into labor. She said, “You forget they’re not human.”

“Yeah.”

“They aren’t human. They aren’t really our kind of mammals.”

“It’s all right, Marianne.”

“Her hip bones came apart, but they snapped right back together again. I thought she…” Marianne laughed, shuddered again, and sat down beside me, not reaching for me but rather huddled against me. “Tom, be there for me.”

“When you have our baby?”

“Yes. Yangchenla’s off with the Tibetans.”

Oh, not that I’d sired the baby, but that I was the same species, a second human in the birth room. But then, that’s why I got involved with Yangchenla when I was the only modern human around. I hugged her and said, “Sure,” somewhat uneasy.

“Do you ever want to go back?” she asked, her body relaxing, curving up against mine. Her shoulders were thin and bony, very odd over her pregnant belly.

“Sometimes I wish I could change a lot of things.”

“I want to go back. Karriaagzh said we could, for a visit, just a visit,” Marianne said, “after the baby’s born.”

“When did you talk to Karriaagzh?”

“Last week, when you were out. I wanted to go back for the delivery, but Karriaagzh insisted that I work with the pregnancy group. Tom, we are a bit xenophobic. You haven’t been to see Ersh.”

“Xenophobic? You and Me? With Karriaagzh and Black Amber in and out of the apartment? You might be uneasy; that’s natural for pregnant creatures.” Wrong thing to say. I felt her stiffen.

“Karriaagzh is so concerned,” she said, “his throat glands are developing. I visualize him regurgitating into my child, Tom.” She said in English,
“Not into
my
human baby.”

I said, “We’ll go to Earth then, as soon as Karriaagzh and Black Amber let us, for a few months, maybe.” I became uneasy as soon as I promised that.

“You withdrew from the other sapients, too, Tom, when contact with Isa and Wrengee went wrong. Humor me.” She sighed as she got up, pushing off from the sofa with her hands, awkward, and went into her room. I heard her crying and felt helpless. Warren’s head being rebuilt by the Barcons, Marianne going to be delivered by nonhuman females. And I hadn’t been to see Ersh. More than
little
twinges of xenophobia.

I went with Marianne to the Institute of Medicine where the Barcons organized and monitored the pregnancy groups. The Institute building for midwifery was cream colored, with faint blue and green marbling to it. Inside, the floors were synthetic mats, soft underfoot, running down wide white halls. Marianne said, “Here,” and we opened a door to the room where her group met. Bir, the pugfaced Domiecan, stood with her child, cunning as a dog, on a leash. An olive colored bird like Travertine held a bundle of fabric, her utterly helpless baby that couldn’t even keep its own body warm. She pushed her beak down into the bundle and hummed. Then her throat surged. The still pregnant others, Agate and a Barcon female among them, sat in chairs, or reclined on floor mats.

“You want to help?” the Barcon female asked me.

“I’d prefer just to help with Marianne. It’s a custom among our culture groups. Not mine, but Marianne said California radical fathers helped with deliveries.”

They looked at each other, almost the way contact and diplomatic teams tended to do after leaving the new species they’d worked with, eyes checking out eyes to see how we’d all taken the deal. The Barcon female rumbled, “Marianne is upset with us, our involvement in her pregnancy. She needs us to help her get over this fear.”

“Yangchenla had hers with just human help,” Marianne said.

“Dangerous, the Barcon said. “We often have to repair primitive wombs. The babies die, or are murdered if the family wants a different sex baby.

“Her little girl is fine,” Marianne said.

Agate said, “Since Chalk will be at my delivery for the first milk, let’s allow Tom to be with Marianne.”

Black Amber watched Marianne as though my human wife was a most strange creature, swollen up in the belly, still the same person, but tired all the time now—almost as tired as she’d been during the first three months when the fetus was locking his connections to her womb.