Shelton Bryant is an artist living in North Carolina. He does work for alternative progressive magazines which includes the Independent Political News and The Cultural Survival Quarterly. His art was previously featured in a Strange Horizons gallery. To see more of his work, visit his Web site.
Carol for Mixed Voices
By Madeleine Rose Reardon Dimond
12/10/01
In memory of my Clarion suitemate Tina M. Spell, 1967-2001.
Part 1 of 2
Marley was dead on her feet to begin with, but she still ran all the way from the underground parking lot up the stairs of the Wyndham-Mark hotel. Why had Curtis picked today, of all days, to end up in the principal’s office? He’d already proven he could manage it any time.
The sight of the Lamar Ballroom doors gave her the energy for one last sprint, but a security guard grabbed her arm and yanked her to a stop. She cried out in frustration.
She tried to reach for her First Contact Team identification, but another guard helped the first hold her immobile. In the party room, a salsa band swung into a well-meaning attempt at “Hail to the Chief.” A childish fury blazed through Marley. Her delinquent son’s antics had cost her not only hours off work and her dinner, but her chance to see the President in RL.
The ballroom doors slammed open. More security scurried out, reminding Marley of the time Curtis poked a fire-ant hill with a stick. In the middle strode President David Fordham, hero of the Middle East war and protector of North America. Marley shrank against the wall and held her breath, as much to avoid his angry glare as to allow passage.
In seconds, Fordham and his swarm disappeared. Her arms freed, Marley displayed her credentials, but the guards had lost interest and waved her into the holiday party. Her heart pounding with the merengue beat of “White Christmas,” Marley, suddenly weak, leaned against the door. She shouldn’t have run. She hadn’t regularly exercised in a year. For that matter, how long had it been since she’d eaten? She remembered only half a donut around dawn. Now that the anger, shame, and fear she’d been feeding on had seeped away, she became aware of her stomach, painfully constricted around a vast vacuum. She felt too wobbly to walk, but she had to eat immediately.
She set out towards the most likely location for solid refreshments: behind the biggest cluster of people at the far wall. The party looked like the inside of Curtis’s anthill. Half the guests were streaming past Marley towards the door; the other half jiggled about in fierce Brownian motion, careening off each other and into the 12-foot Christmas tree.
The ballroom had shed its workday character as the FCT’s conference room and blossomed into diversity-crazed holiday splendor. Marley tried not to laugh as she passed under Chinese wedding symbols hanging from Christmas lights looped around garlands of Hanukkah dreidels and Kwanzaa corn. Token Solstice moons and stars littered the ceiling.
As she struggled upstream through the crowd, she heard scraps of conversation like chittering insects on a Houston summer evening.
“Can you believe it?”
“Is it safe to stay?”
“You can’t tell what they’ll do.”
Startled, Marley looked around for the Eridanians. The aliens stood, as serene as ever, exchanging greetings with the European Anschluss Ambassador at the opposite end of the room from the band. People seemed to be giving them a wide berth that had nothing to do with the military guard surrounding the festivities like a menacing Nutcracker army.
“Don’t they look evil?”
“Just like bugs, aren’t they? Great big carnivorous bugs.”
Marley flinched. The Eridanians had been called “Bugs” since their first transmissions had arrived, nearly two years ago. Beings with six limbs, huge eyes, and flat, noseless faces could expect nothing else from humans. The individuals who arrived in May had been dubbed Red, Green, and Blue, based on slight tinges to the gray skin. Marley was embarrassed when the Eridanians adopted the names too, but she refused to call them Bugs. Naturally, Curtis did so when he was annoyed, which was whenever she saw him these days.
She couldn’t see any of her First Contact Team co-workers among the politicos, glitterati, and others who’d cadged an invitation to the event. For some reason, the crowd’s excitement over the Eridanians’ first public reception had turned to fear, but since it didn’t look like the Eridanians had suddenly started eating the guests, Marley continued her quest. She couldn’t see the food tables, but as she approached the main cluster of people, the holiday smells strengthened into something nasty. The chatter around her crescendoed.
“What’s the President going to do?”
“He ought to blow them back into space.”
“Let’s leave before they get violent.”
Marley had just snagged a plate when the head of her department, the eminent and publication-encrusted Dr. Winthrop Scofield, appeared in front of her. “Where were you? We needed you.”
Though she knew exactly how Dr. Scofield manipulated language to control the hired help, Marley became tongue-tied whenever he spoke to her. She always felt hardly more than a translator. “I had to … my son … I thought you were going to translate.”
He scowled at her. Wondering what had gone wrong, she bit her lip. Party amenities should have been within the scope of Dr. Scofield’s skills, even with the Southern drawl that lay over all his speech.
“First thing tomorrow, I’m putting you on High Eridanian.” He didn’t wait for an answer.
“Merde, not High Eridanian.” They’d only begun to crack Blue and Green’s native language. The grammatical structures seemed totally different and the words layered with extra meanings. Marley felt sick as the odors threatened to overwhelm her. She lunged towards the food.
“Hey, Marley, you missed the fireworks.” Kevin Bates, Army xenobiologist, blocked her way to the meatballs. He carried his omnipresent camcorder under one arm to leave his hands free for macaroons.
Marley didn’t even like coconut, but she eyed the cookies longingly. She shifted in her long-unused party shoes, now pinching like a vise. “What happened?”
He tossed one handful of sweets into his mouth and pulled out the camcorder. “Not real sure,” he mumbled around the macaroons. “I mean, it’s all here—” He handed her an earphone and pointed to the viewer, where a tiny President Fordham, still recognizable by his granite chin, stumbled through a greeting in Eridanian. The Eridanians chittered together.
Marley covered her eyes.
Kevin asked, “What are they saying, word wizard?”
“They’re trying to understand why our leader would address them in half obscenity, half nonsense,” she snapped.
Red used the Eridanian language that Marley knew best. “I will speak to him. I have heard such speech at our lodgings by those who attend our comfort.” The alien switched to AmStandard and said, “And the same thing with your mother!”
Kevin shook his head. “That went over big. So how come you understood so quickly? Took the others fifteen minutes to come up with anything.”
Marley flushed. “The language the Eridanians chose to teach us is tonal. It helps to have a tonal native language, like Chinese.”
Kevin glanced at her face. “Regular melting pot, aren’t you? Funny, you don’t look…”
“More of a gumbo, actually, since my father’s family comes from all over the Caribbean. My mother’s from Ohio, but her mother was the daughter of a missionary and one of his Chinese converts. Grandmother always spoke Chinese with me.”
“We need you on the front line. Should have finished that doctorate, baby girl.”
“I was a single mother with a young child to raise,” retorted Marley. Finishing a terminal degree in communication science had seemed a pointless mockery when Josh left her for a woman who really understood him. “What else happened? We have translation snafus all the time.”
“Usually not with the whole world watching. Look at Fordham, ready to burst. Then old Blue steps out…”
The largest alien stretched out his arms and declared in fluted AmStandard, “I am Blue, child of they who smote their enemies with such force that they never lived again, but lie buried, children and adults, in the sands of Eridan.”
Marley gasped. Even through the party din, she could hear the swell of voices on the recording.
The President drew himself straighter. He put on his Commander-in-Chief look and glared at the aliens for a long moment. Then he said, “I am David, he who drove back the terrorists that now lie buried in the Eastern sands.” As usual, he worked in having seen the World Trade Center collapse with his brother inside, his subsequent change of college plans to include West Point, his Middle Eastern war record, and his vow to defend America against all threats.
“All threats,” he repeated as he glared at each alien. “No matter where they originate.”
“It kept going downhill from there.” Kevin sighed. “He never did want the Eridanians here.”
“But he did! He insisted! He’s tried to keep other countries off the FCT!”