James Van Pelt - Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille

I’ve been among the humans for years, “sleeping together” numerous times. Never have I discussed my matters of importance. We have no middle ground.

“Sleeping together” does not involve sleeping. It is sex, often times on a bed (which is used for sleeping too!) but one female told me we’d “slept together” when we didn’t make it past the clothes closet. Fortunately the scanning equipment covers the entire area equally well.

I was part way through a salmon steak, which I’d developed a taste for, when the woman sat at my table.

“I hate to eat alone, do you mind?” she said. Blonde hair cut short. Dark eyes, hard to see the color in this light. According to human conceptions of physical beauty, I guessed that she didn’t have to eat alone often. She was almost six feet tall, my height. Slim. Plain, blue shirt worn loose. White pants. White boots tucked under the pant’s legs. Not standard dress for a singles place, but the Sleepy Jean wasn’t typical, as I said. Two motorcycle types at the bar watched her for a moment before turning back to their drinks.

“Not at all,” I said. “Have you ordered?”

She brushed hair off her forehead. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Normally, meeting a woman is not this easy. Even though the bars exist for social interactions, humans are wary at first. They don’t trust each other. It seemed clear to me, though, that this one was bound for my apartment, so I field-scanned her. A tiny unit on my wristwatch would tell me if she’d been tagged before and give me an overview of her suitability for our studies.

She was Trosfrillan , one of the other extrasolars, which explained her height. How they got a nine-foot tall, six limbed creature into this package amazed me. My modifications, painful as they were, were not as drastic.

“Damn!” she said, looking at her own watch.

We didn’t speak for a while. The Trosfrilla study humans in much the same manner as we do. They are interested in travel patterns. Mating rituals. Work/recreation ratios. Sleep/wake cycles. Biochemistry. The normal field data for any species. Past difficulties prevent us from sharing our findings, though there is now some effort to consolidate the work. Our races evolved on different planets in the same system. There had been wars in our past. We were competitors.

I looked around the bar again. The motorcycle guys hunched over their beers. A couple shot pool at a table at the bar’s far end. Beneath me, the floor moved subtly, responding to the river’s flow.

“My name’s Arlyss,” I said. My Lasarént name would damage a human throat.

“Trudy,” she said. “Have you been down long?”

“Off and on for thirty-some years. I haven’t been off-world for eleven years now.”

The waiter came by and took her order. I ate more salmon. The mimicked human gestures came almost naturally to me, often times revealing my emotions in ways I would never display when in my Lasarént body. I found myself smiling. It had been a long time since I had talked to someone without pretending. “Yourself?” I said, when the waiter left.

“Only five. I’d been doing Seleneological surveys when this opportunity came up. It was a change.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m uncomfortable in this form.”

I nodded. Gravity was wrong. Not all that different, only 1.2 heavier, but it was wrong . A different molten core beneath me. A different wash of magnetic influences. The stars at night, wrong.

She didn’t wait for her meal. “I have to go. Quotas.”

I felt a unfamiliar urge within me as she rose. A few more people had entered the bar, taking other tables, all humans who could never know who I was. Their faces moved strangely, in their human way: too many horizontal lines, when they closed their mouths or eyes, the eyebrows, the hair line, all oddly horizontal. It frightened me to recognize their feelings in their faces—that I couldn’t really remember what a Lasarént face looked like. I wanted her to stay. She wasn’t Lasarént , but we shared a sun. “Why did you come here?” I said. The bar was small. Even when it was full, it would be as unlikely a place for her work as it was for mine.

She pushed her chair under the table. I noticed her fingers. Their sculpting was perfect, nails exactly human-like. The Trosfrilla have six fingers on their manipulating hands. She lost part of herself for this transition too. “The river reminded me of home.” She floated her hand away and indicated the whole bar. “The light—did you notice?—it’s like Trosfrilla. ”

“I saw,” I said, but she was already striding away. The bikers watched her again.

Clearly I made her uneasy. If she wanted to scan and tag a human, she would be as successful here as she would be anywhere else. It wasn’t the quota that drove her away. It was me. I wondered about Trosfrillan morality. Did she consider her work embarrassing? Was this a perversion in her eyes?

Bestiality: Sexual relations with an animal. Humans consider this to be of the lowest sort of behavior. The background for this revulsion is untranslatable. Is there a Trosfrillan equivalent?

As it turned out, I made a contact that night, a woman playing pool by herself. I put quarters on the rail, shot eight-ball with her until closing.

Pool is an elegant game, maybe one of the best of the human recreations. I get lost in the velocities and angles, the cue in my hand, the felt’s smooth plain, the ball’s muted click. We played evenly. She set up for a shot then stood back each time, as if she were shooting it twice. Called her bumpers. A rhythmic pattern she never varied. She clicked her tongue appreciatively when I made a good shot. After a while, I got the impression she didn’t care about the score. She watched the rolling ball like I did, as a physics demonstration. Something beyond personality. Humans startle me sometimes with their depth, and I wished I could talk to her about myself. Last call for drinks surprised me.

We left together, and she said, “Where’s your car?” I’d scanned her earlier. Twenty-seven years old. She showed evidence of having borne children. Impossible to tell more until she was at the apartment, where the equipment was better.

She didn’t talk as we drove away, but she looked out the window. Her unsmiling reflection flickered in the streetlights. Her breathing was even, hands still in her lap. “You have protection?” she said when we pulled into the parking lot.

I nodded. Of course it was designed not to interfere with my measurements or the placing of the tag. Human diseases didn’t threaten me, and I sterilized myself between encounters to not spread contagions. I’m the definition of “safe sex.”

Later that night I drove her back to the Sleepy Jean. After she shut the car door, she leaned in the window. “My name’s Margaret.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m Arlyss. I forgot to ask.”

“I thought you should know.”

I stayed in the parking lot, listening to the river. It started to rain. Big drops slapped against the windshield and splattered on the upholstery. A stream of muddy water crossed the parking lot to empty into the river between the anchored boat and the shore. The lights had been turned off, but the beer signs still glowed, glinting redly in the rain pools. I hadn’t thought of Lasarént for years, not like this.

I once read a bumper sticker on a truck parked outside a Chicago dance club: “Save time: go ugly early.” No translation available.

The next night, at Shatterday’s, a huge singles lounge in north Sacramento, I saw Trudy again. She was on the crowded dance floor, as far as I could tell, by herself. Now that I knew she was Trosfrillan , I could see it in her movements. Their backs have twinned vertebrae. Even in her near perfect human form, she danced distinctly. People gave her room. More than a few watched her, men and women.