Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

I pray to God, then. I say, God, please let her not be a fool. Please let her escape.

And I guess God heard, because when she’s just a couple of feet away she looks straight at me and smiles like she’s about to cry. “I’m sorry, Libs,” she whispers. “I love you. I just can’t let him take me again.”

“Pregnant one! Please drop your weapon and we will—”

And then she raises her gun and shoots.

My arm hurts. Goddamn it hurts, like there’s some small, toothy animal burrowing inside. I groan and feel my sister’s hands, cool on my forehead.

“They know the doctor,” she says. “That Esther that Bill told us about, remember? She’s a regular doctor, too, not just abortions. You’ll be fine.”

I squint up at her. The sun has moved since she shot me; I can hardly see her face for the light behind it. But even at the edges I can see her grief. Her tears drip on my hairline and down my forehead.

“I don’t care,” I say, with some effort. “I wanted you to do it.”

“I was so afraid, Libs.”

“I know.”

“We’ll get home now, won’t we?”

“Sure,” I say. If it’s there.

The terrorists take us to a town fifty miles from Annapolis. Even though it’s close to the city, the glassmen mostly leave it alone. It’s far enough out from the pipeline, and there’s not much here, otherwise: just a postage stamp of a barley field, thirty or so houses and one of those large, old, whitewashed barn-door churches. At night, the town is ghost empty.

Tris helps me down from the truck. Even that’s an effort. My head feels half-filled with syrup. Simon and the others say their goodbyes and head out quickly. It’s too dangerous for fighters to stay this close to the city. Depending on how much the glassmen know about Tris and me, it isn’t safe for us either. But between a baby and a bullet, we don’t have much choice.

Alone, now, we read the church’s name above the door: Esther Zion Congregation Church, Methodist.

Tris and I look at each other. “Oh, Christ,” she says. “Did Bill lie, Libby? Is he really so hung up on that sin bullshit that he sent me all the way out here, to a church…”

I lean against her and wonder how he ever survived to come back to us. It feels like a gift, now, with my life half bled out along the road behind. “Bill wouldn’t lie, Tris. Maybe he got it wrong. But he wouldn’t lie.”

The pews are old but well-kept. The prayer books look like someone’s been using them. The only person inside is a white lady, sweeping the altar.

“Simon and Sybil sent you,” she says, not a question. Sybil—we never even asked the woman’s name.

“My sister,” we both say, and then, improbably, laugh.

Amonth later, Tris and I round Bishop’s Head and face north. At the mouth of our estuary, we aren’t close enough to see Toddville, let alone our home, but we can’t see any drones either. The weather is chillier this time around, the water harder to navigate with the small boat. Tris looks healthy and happy; older and younger. No one will mistake her for twenty-five again, but there’s nothing wrong with wisdom.

The doctor fixed up my arm and found us an old, leaky rowboat when it was clear we were determined to go back. Tris has had to do most of the work; her arms are starting to look like they belong to someone who doesn’t spend all her time reading. I think about the harvest and hope the bombs didn’t reap the grain before we could. If anyone could manage those fields without me, Bill can. We won’t starve this winter, assuming reapers didn’t destroy everything. Libby ships the oars and lets us float, staring at the deep gray sky and its reflection on the water that seems to stretch endlessly before us.

“Bill will have brought the harvest in just fine,” I say.

“You love him, don’t you?”

I think about his short, patchy hair. That giant green monster he brought back like a dowry. “He’s good with the old engines. Better than me.”

“I think he loves you. Maybe one of you could get around to doing something about it?”

“Maybe so.”

Tris and I sit like that for a long time. The boat drifts toward shore, and neither of us stop it. A fish jumps in the water to my left; a heron circles overhead.

“Dad’s probably out fishing,” she says, maneuvering us around. “We might catch him on the way in.”

“That’ll be a surprise! Though he won’t be happy about his boat.”

“He might let it slide. Libby?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry—”

“You aren’t sorry if you’d do it again,” I say. “And I’m not sorry if I’d let you.”

She holds my gaze. “Do you know how much I love you?”

We have the same smile, my sister and I. It’s a nice smile, even when it’s scared and a little sad.

Naomi Kritzer has been writing science fiction and fantasy for twenty years. Her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won the 2016 Hugo and Locus awards and was nominated for the Nebula Award. A collection of her short stories was released in 2017, and her YA novel, tentatively called Welcome to Catnet , is forthcoming from Tor Books. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her spouse, two kids, and four cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.

So here is something a lot of people don’t realize: most companies that make sex toys are really small. Even a successful sex-toy manufacturer like Squishies (tm) is still run out of a single office attached to a warehouse, and the staff consists of Julia (the owner), Juan (the guy who does all the warehouse stuff), and me (the person who does everything else).

(You are probably wondering right now if that includes product testing. I make it a habit not to talk about my sex life with strangers but Julia requires that everyone she hires take home a Squishie or a Firmie or one of the other IntelliFlesh products and try it out, either solo or with a partner. I pointed out that if she ever hired an alien—sorry, “extraterrestrial immigrant”—the neurology doesn’t match up, and does she want to admit she discriminates in hiring? But I didn’t argue that hard, because hey, free sex toy, why not? Frankly, I found it a kind of freaky experience, having this piece of sensate flesh that didn’t really belong there, and after a little bit of experimentation I stuck it in a drawer and haven’t touched it since.)

Anyway, we outsource the manufacturing and the boxes of Squishies and Firmies get shipped to us on shrink-wrapped pallets and Juan breaks them down to re-ship in more manageable quantities to the companies that resell our products.

The original product were the Squishies, and Julia is not at ALL shy about people knowing about her sex life (we have an instructional video, and she’s IN it), so I don’t mind telling you that she came up with it because her boyfriend at the time had a fetish for really large breasts, we’re not talking “naturally gifted” or even “enhanced with silicone” but “truly impractical for all real-world purposes like breathing and using your arms,” and conveniently at the time she was working at a company making top-of-the-line prosthetics with neural integration. She made herself a really enormous set of breasts and after a lot of futzing with the neural integration she got them to be sensate. Then the boyfriend dumped her and she didn’t really need them anymore, but her friend who’d had a double mastectomy said, “why don’t you make me a smaller set?” and that, supposedly, was when it occurred to her that maybe she could make this product to SELL. She found a manufacturing facility and office space, hired me and Juan, and went into the Fully Sensate Attachable Flesh business.