“Is—is she well?”
“Judging from the volume of her language, which we do not understand, I believe so, though I do not know how to interpret her odor. Will you come?”
“Yes, but—” She thought of trying to get past the guards, of the political ramifications.
She punched Kevin’s number into her wrist phone. “Kevin, do you know how to find Stephen?”
“Mmm. Minute.”
A different voice came on, mumbling through a yawn. “Grimsky here.”
“Get down to the hotel. Now. I need your authorization to get into their quarters. We have to resolve an incident.”
“Marley? Marley?”
“I’ll meet you in the FCT rooms.”
* * * *
They had just arrived in the FCT conference rooms when Green raced in, so fast that he seemed to fly. The two aliens consulted in high Eridanian. Marley gave up trying to understand and let her gaze wander. When she looked down, she saw Green’s feet dangling several inches above the floor. She blinked in surprise.
The door opened, admitting Stephen and Kevin, the latter fumbling his camera into action.
Marley blinked again. Nothing made sense tonight. “That was quick.”
“I’m staying at the hotel,” said Stephen. “We went to the penthouse first, to make sure the Bu—Eridanians were all right.” He stared at Green. “We were just talking to you there. You said—”
Kevin whisked in to settle his electrodes on Blue’s skull. “We don’t have any scans of you, just Red.”
“That doesn’t matter now,” Marley objected.
“Science always matters.” He tapped at the controls. After a moment, he whistled. “This can’t be right.”
Blue sat down in the chair Red normally took. “I will do science while you return to our rooms with Green.”
“What’s wrong?” Stephen asked Marley.
Kevin responded before she could frame a statement. “It’s so different from the other one. If this were your brain, you’d be seeing God and talking to angels.”
“Angels!” gasped Marley. “Roses. Levitation. Healing. Bilocation—they did visit the Pope and the monastery—that’s how they get around so fast. They’re not warriors; they’re saints!”
“Saints.” Stephen gulped. “The Pope sent a Christmas message, calling for peace. He sounded like he’d talked to them. I thought it was a bad translation.”
“Maybe we ought to take them to the Dalai Lama,” said Kevin.
“Maybe they’ve already been,” retorted Marley. “And we’ve got more problems than that. Acting on … a misunderstanding, they … rescued a baby.”
Stephen sat down and clutched his forehead. “Stealing babies. This kind of publicity could—”
“Save us, if it’s publicity our way,” said Marley. “Right, Kevin?”
* * * *
Red was desperate enough to climb into the van with only a little reassurance from Marley, who changed Carissa’s diaper and poured a few sips of formula into her mouth. Everyone sighed when the van gently rocked the child to sleep. Kevin drove slowly to counter the lack of an infant seat.
“In the pageant, the young people were acting out a story from long ago,” said Marley. “This baby isn’t the same one in the story.”
Blue looked at Red, then back at Marley. “Teaching story. You tell it to remind that such things must not happen again. As we do with stories of our ancestors. Even after our peace of ten thousand years, we must not forget what we are capable of.”
“Ten—ten thousand?” said Stephen. “You never mentioned it.”
“You requested our stories of shame,” Green said.
Marley shook her head. “You told us your worst; we misunderstood why and showed you a lot of faked merriment. But the sages were not real sages. They were young boys, pretending.”
“Wisdom must first be pretended,” said Blue. “We ask indulgence for our young.”
Green said, “Naturally children do not perceive as adults. They have not the same abilities. Releasing dimensions is long and painful, though necessary for maturity. We hope to see Red move lightly through the universe, with every place step away.”
“She can’t … move like you do? How did she get to the church?” Kevin called back. “And past the guards?”
“Watch the road,” snapped Marley. “Not you,” she told the obedient Blue and Green. Red stayed slouched down, and Marley noted that some body language crossed cultural boundaries.
Blue answered, “She used subterfuge to escape and ‘call a cab,’ I think you say. Many youth now say they will not mature. They wish to avoid pain. In seeking you, so like our young, we sought to better understand them. We need to know if cultures of those not matured can succeed.”
* * * *
As they crowded through her door, Marley worried about so many people in the tiny rooms. But when the Christmas cooking aromas—apple cider, baking cookies, and stuffed turkey—brought smiles to the human faces, she knew everything would be fine.
Bob was leaning over the oven. “Hi, I hope you’re ready for an early lunch. It’ll be done in an hour.”
“Already?” asked Marley.
“It’s tofu,” he said. “I’m vegetarian.”
Curtis and Tina sat by the gnarled excuse for a tree, listing farther off-center than ever with new burdens of hair ornaments and beads. Curtis was setting a foil star on top. He’d tried to twist it so that “Big Tex Burger” didn’t show.
Tina looked up and burst into tears. She sprang to her feet, tripping over the offended cat. “Carissa!” she sobbed, cradling the baby against her cheek.
Curtis’s eyes widened as he took in the Eridanians, Kevin, Stephen, and security guards. “Better get out the SPAM too.”
They weren’t reduced to that, though probably everybody would have an early supper. Kevin recorded the happy meal and presents under the tree as the Eridanians gathered close. Marley nearly cried over the bubble bath Curtis gave her. “You need to relax, Mom.”
He exclaimed over the space shuttle. “Mom! You remembered!” He was still reciting space statistics when Kevin herded them into one last group shot.
“Just wait till they see this one,” Kevin muttered as he posed Tina kneeling by her baby’s makeshift catfood-box crib. Curtis stood proudly over them. “Trust me, it’s traditional,” he assured the visitors. The humans stood close, with the adult Eridanians hovering slightly above. Red knelt in front of the crib to place the diapers and formula she’d bought. The cat moved in to sniff the formula.
Stephen smiled, relieved. “This should just about fix everything.”
Kevin murmured as he packed his camera, “You know, Drake and the natives of Nova Albion got on famously when they met.”
Marley smiled. “Paul Gauguin lived over ten years in Tahiti, his longest stint anywhere. And you know what an idiot he was.”
“Now that is a miracle.”
* * * *
The next day, Marley sat at the kitchen table, remembering. They’d taken the Eridanians to the animal shelter and then to a nursing home to sing carols, with Kevin duly recording.
Later, Bob had offered the teens his car and babysitting if they wanted to go to a movie. Curtis and Tina protested, “Not on Christmas!” and made all of them sit down on the couch to watch a suitable family movie, about miracles and angels. The President interrupted the broadcast with soothing holiday greetings. He forecast the dawn of a new era of “peace on earth and beyond.” Some of Kevin’s clips and stills followed.
Now Marley smiled, remembering Bob’s leg pressing against hers. He was coming over soon, Curtis and Tina having accepted today’s offer of a car. Tina had insisted on taking Carissa; Bob was bringing his son’s old car seat.
Tina and Curtis had their heads together by the window, carrying on a low-voiced discussion about the best film for a six-month-old infant.
Marley smiled and turned to her PDA. “Dear Josh,” she entered, “I’m so proud of Curtis…”
Copyright © 2001 Madeleine Rose Reardon Dimond
* * * *
A former Texan, Madeleine Rose Reardon Dimond is now freezing in New England. A veteran of Clarion ‘98, Viable Paradise ‘99, and several Turkey City workshops, she has sold several stories, including last year’s holiday story in Strange Horizons. For more about her, see her Web site.
Other Cities #4 of 12: Amea Amaau
By Benjamin Rosenbaum
12/17/01
Fourth in a monthly series of excerpts from The Book of All Cities.
Amea Amaau—or Double-A, or Dub, or Dub-Bub, or DB, or Popstop, as it is also sometimes called—is a new and gleaming city in a matrix of six hundred and forty-three thousand cities exactly like it, somewhere in the terribly exciting part of the world. The citizens of Popstop—but there are no citizens, for everyone who slept in Amea Amaau tonight will be moving on in the morning. They will roll out of silver water beds, vacuum the night’s spit and eye goo and wrinkles from their faces with the handheld vacuums considerately installed in every wall, leave the dwelling they arbitrarily chose for last night, embracing and saluting the companions they arbitrarily chose for last night; and they will go to the chute drop and each hop into a chute, any chute at all, to be swept off to do one of the very exciting things there are to do in the world, perhaps (just perhaps) in Double-A itself, but more likely in Fairlanes, or Kingdom X, or Paunax, or Olam Chadash, or Gopferdelli, or Sang Froid, or Triple-B or Marley or Snackpack.