Ellen Datlow: Alien Sex

Mary Ann was surprised to see her.

“You’re back so soon. Musta been a bust.”

“It was… incredible.” She sighed, radiant.

“No kidding. Well, I hope so. Earl called. He wants your ass home. Now .”

“Really? Oh, this is perfect. I feel great and Earl’s gonna be terrible jealous when he sees all the hickies I got. I’ll see ya!”

Terri was almost outside, stopped, then turned back and grinned.

“Take good care of my friend Paul if he comes in for breakfast. He should have a hearty appetite. And by the way, not all small guys are… you know. Some of ’em have more than you could imagine.”

She winked at Mary Ann and was gone.

Mary Ann shrugged and looked at her watch. She had a break coming in twenty minutes. Maybe he would be rested by then. She would just have to go find his room. Yup. She would.

Memories serve in the genesis of most writers’ stories, and this story is no different. At the age of nineteen, I hitchhiked up to Washington from Los Angeles to escape my parents’ divorce. I found myself with an entire evening to kill and no place to stay. The all-night diner I stopped in to eat seemed as good a place as any to hang out until dawn, so I slipped into a booth. The drama that unfolded that night was not unlike the tale just told. This gal’s name was Dandy, her runaround husband’s, Bob. Her friend behind the counter, Priscilla, came around from time to time to give me unsolicited updates on the woeful condition of Dandy’s marriage and state of mind. It wasn’t an alien who came in and took the edge off Dandy’s anger, but he was plenty strange. It was Priscilla’s comment about this man that stuck in my mind and spawned this story. She said, “That guy’s got to be from another planet to get involved with Dandy and her problems. “Who knows? Neither one of them ever came back in that night….

When “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” was published in 1971, it was commonly assumed that the author was male. When James Tiptree, Jr.’s, first collection Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home was published in 1973, this was still the assumption. Not until 1977 did Alice Sheldon admit that she was Tiptree, that she was born in Chicago, was the daughter of a well-known geographer and travel writer, was an experimental psychologist, and that she worked for the American government, and for some of that time in the Pentagon. Tiptree and her husband died tragically in 1987, but she left a legacy of fiction that ranged from anthropological SF to space opera and some of the most astute perceptions on male/female relationships that have been written about, including the classic reprinted here.

HE WAS STANDING ABSOLUTELY still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the Orion docking above us. He had on a gray uniform and his rusty hair was cut short. I took him for a station engineer.

That was bad for me. Newsmen strictly don’t belong in the bowels of Big Junction. But in my first twenty hours I hadn’t found anyplace to get a shot of an alien ship.

I turned my holocam to show its big World Media insigne and started my bit about What It Meant to the People Back Home who were paying for it all.

“—it may be routine work to you, sir, but we owe it to them to share—”

His face came around slow and tight, and his gaze passed over me from a peculiar distance.

“The wonders, the drama,” he repeated dispassionately. His eyes focused on me. “You consummated fool.”

“Could you tell me what races are coming in, sir? If I could even get a view—”

He waved me to the port. Greedily I angled my lenses up at the long blue hull blocking out the starfield. Beyond her I could see the bulge of a black-and-gold ship.

“That’s a Foramen,” he said. “There’s a freighter from Belye on the other side, you’d call it Arcturus. Not much traffic right now.”

“You’re the first person who’s said two sentences to me since I’ve been here, sir. What are those colorful little craft?”

“Procya,” he shrugged. “They’re always around. Like us.”

I squashed my face on the vitrite, peering. The walls clanked. Somewhere overhead aliens were off-loading into their private sector of Big Junction. The man glanced at his wrist.

“Are you waiting to go out, sir?”

His grunt could have meant anything.

“Where are you from on Earth?” he asked me in his hard tone.

I started to tell him and suddenly saw that he had forgotten my existence. His eyes were on nowhere, and his head was slowly bowing forward onto the port frame.

“Go home,” he said thickly. I caught a strong smell of tallow.

“Hey, sir!” I grabbed his arm; he was in rigid tremor. “Steady, man.”

“I’m waiting… waiting for my wife. My loving wife.” He gave a short ugly laugh. “Where are you from?”

I told him again.

“Go home,” he mumbled. “Go home and make babies. While you still can.”

One of the early GR casualties, I thought.

“Is that all you know?” His voice rose stridently. “Fools. Dressing in their styles. Gnivo suits, Aoleelee music. Oh, I see your newscasts,” he sneered. “Nixi parties. A year’s salary for a floater. Gamma radiation? Go home, read history. Ballpoint pens and bicycles —”

He started a slow slide downward in the half gee. My only informant. We struggled confusedly; he wouldn’t take one of my sobertabs but I finally got him along the service corridor to a bench in an empty loading bay. He fumbled out a little vacuum cartridge. As I was helping him unscrew it, a figure in starched whites put his head in the bay.

“I can be of assistance, yes?” His eyes popped, his face was covered with brindled fur. An alien, a Procya! I started to thank him but the red-haired man cut me off.

“Get lost. Out.”

The creature withdrew, its big eyes moist. The man stuck his pinky in the cartridge and then put it up his nose, gasping deep in his diaphragm. He looked toward his wrist.

“What time is it?”

I told him.

“News,” he said. “A message for the eager, hopeful human race. A word about those lovely, lovable aliens we all love so much.” He looked at me. “Shocked, aren’t you, newsboy?”

I had him figured now. A xenophobe. Aliens plot to take over Earth.

“Ah Christ, they couldn’t care less.” He took another deep gasp, shuddered and straightened. “The hell with generalities. What time d’you say it was? All right, I’ll tell you how I learned it. The hard way. While we wait for my loving wife. You can bring that little recorder out of your sleeve, too. Play it over to yourself some time… when it’s too late.” He chuckled. His tone had become chatty—an educated voice. “You ever hear of supernormal stimuli?”

“No,” I said. “Wait a minute. White sugar?”

“Near enough. Y’know Little Junction Bar in D.C.? No, you’re an Aussie, you said. Well, I’m from Burned Barn, Nebraska.”

He took a breath, consulting some vast disarray of the soul.

“I accidentally drifted into Little Junction Bar when I was eighteen. No. Correct that. You don’t go into Little Junction by accident, any more than you first shoot skag by accident.

“You go into Little Junction because you’ve been craving it, dreaming about it, feeding on every hint and clue about it, back there in Burned Barn, since before you had hair in your pants. Whether you know it or not. Once you’re out of Burned Barn, you can no more help going into Little Junction than a sea-worm can help rising to the moon.

“I had a brand-new liquor I.D. in my pocket. It was early; there was an empty spot beside some humans at the bar. Little Junction isn’t an embassy bar, y’know. I found out later where the high-caste aliens go—when they go out. The New Rive, the Curtain by the Georgetown Marina.