Майкл Салливан - Deep Magic. Fourth Collection

“Before we go, class,” Prof said while we all stared at the clock in a concerted effort to will time forward, “does anyone have questions about the upcoming exam?”

The felnim girl raised her furry hand. Everyone stared. Prof cleared his throat. “Yes . . . uh . . .” He glanced down at the papers on his desk. “Ms. Vasa, is it?”

“Vas’tca,” she offered. “That’s fine, though.” She spoke surprisingly good English, but her voice bore a thick accent, a sort of rumble at the back of her throat like distant thunder on the plains. “Uh, can you t’ell me sh’ere I can get notes?” She seemed to have trouble with w ’s.

“Well, I don’t have anything worked up . . . perhaps one of your classmates would offer?” He glanced around the room. I dipped lower in my chair, hat over my eyes. The lack of response aside from shifting noises hinted that everyone else did similar. Prof let the uncomfortable silence drag on a few seconds longer before clearing his throat. “I’ll see what I can print up for you, Ms. . . . Vasa.”

“Th’ank you.”

It was weird just how human she sounded.

“I hear they’re planning to move whole families in over the next year.” Carla slurped a spaghetti noodle as we sat at a round table outside the college’s main cafeteria. Luke, Ben, and February filled the other seats, our usual Thursday lunch study group. Yes, her name is February. Carla waved a fork for emphasis. “And not just the felnim either. I hear we’ll need to integrate more of each member species throughout the country if we want to join the coalition.”

“Even the creepy amoeba people?” Ben asked. He shuddered theatrically. Ben did everything theatrically. “Have you heard the stories about those things? We’ll be lucky if half of us aren’t replaced by blue Jell-O monsters before spring semester.” I mentally winced. Thanks, Ben, now I’ll never enjoy Jell-O again. “Whose bright idea was it to plant dangerous extraterrestrial life-forms we barely know anything about right in the middle of a college campus , anyway?” Ben whined on. “Does nobody in the government watch movies?!”

Feb’s eyes stayed locked on her sketch pad. “And to think, last year you were all excited about us finding alien life.” She tilted the paper for a better drawing angle.

“Well—! That . . . that was before I knew they were going to be living here with us!” Ben sputtered. No one spoke, but I knew what we were all thinking. It was what everyone had been thinking since the aliens landed: aliens would be more exciting if they were a lot less, or a lot more , advanced than we were.

And if they didn’t get too close.

While Ben and Carla debated whether the centaurs, the blue shapeshifters, or the red Ferengi wannabes were stranger, I stared into the distance, trying to ignore everything and remember the location of my physics notebook. Luke had probably kicked it under the—

Luke sneered. “Oh great , don’t look now.” Everyone looked as the alien girl exited the cafeteria, her four legs weaving her gracefully between the crowded outdoor tables. She had an absolute mountain of food stacked high on a red plastic tray, which stayed nicely balanced while she looked for a spot to sit on the grass that surrounded our concrete eating area. She settled under a tree.

“Talk about being ‘hungry as a horse,’” Carla snort-chuckled.

“Fantastic,” Ben complained. “First they take our dorms, now they’re eating all our food.”

We watched for a while, as did most of the student body. A few jeers and insults wafted on the breeze; I could see her pointed, furry ears tilting like satellite dishes, but she pretended not to notice. Just like she “didn’t notice” the fluttering “INVADERS GO HOME” poster stuck to the wall less than twenty feet from her lunch spot. Who even was this girl? Nothing fazed her. Maybe people on her planet were unfamiliar with the concept of disproportionate hostility. I felt a little jealous at the thought.

I’d forgotten we had ornamental pear trees on the campus grounds. A rotten pear, launched through the air like a football, reminded me of this as it smashed into the alien’s pile of burgers, salad, pizza, panini, milk, and veggie lasagna. Laughter rippled across the courtyard, Luke and Ben’s included. Feb and Carla had the decency to look disgusted, although I wasn’t sure if it was because of the callous food vandalism or the fact that—calmly, with only a slight heave of her backside to indicate a sigh—Vasa used her thick front legs like arms to scoop food back onto her tray, and kept right on eating.

“Man, what a freak,” Luke muttered. “Add gross hygiene to its résumé.”

“Her,” I muttered. Luke narrowed his eyes at me, which I carefully didn’t notice. As we watched, the felnim turned her head, glancing over the crowd of jerk humans. I swear her eyes locked onto mine for a second when her gaze passed our table. Like she recognized something. Her eyes were blue.

I don’t know why. I couldn’t help it. I tilted my head at a point to the left and nodded. Just for a second.

People were still laughing and shouting advice as Vasa picked up the rotten pear from the mess, sniffing it carefully. They went dead silent when she suddenly winged the pear back the way it had come with the accuracy of a bullet. There was a squishy sound and a squawk from the corner of the building, and then the sound of running feet.

“Oooo,” Feb said, finally looking up from her drawing. “I think I like her.”

A few people in the lunch crowd actually cheered. Luke was full-on glaring at me now, a good clue that I’d forgotten not to grin. I just gave him that blank stare that he never knew what to do with until he got distracted by Ben theorizing about the digestive needs of a species with the physiology of two large mammals. Some of the tension left my shoulders then. But not enough.

I shot one more glance around before telling the others I needed something from my dorm and hightailing it out of there as casually as possible. My hat went low over my eyes, my insides like Jell-O. What was I doing getting involved? She could handle all those eyes being on her. She didn’t need my help.

I told myself not to worry as I speed walked across campus toward the safety of my dorm. Nobody had noticed, no harm done. Stay away from her, and you’ll be fine.

She caught me as I was walking down the sidewalk by Building 3 one evening. I nearly jumped out of my sneakers at the sudden low, rumbling voice from the bushes to my right. “You! Wait! Can you h’elp me?”

After assuring myself that I had not actually experienced a heart attack, I turned and stared into the bushes. It took me a second to spot the raccoon-mask face hiding in the leaves. I should have kept walking. “Uh . . . what’s wrong?” I cast a quick glance around to make sure we were alone, but the lawn was empty, the sidewalk lamps starting to come on. Probably safe enough. I took a few steps closer as her head and blue-shirted torso rose above the bushes. Her face was all scrunched up. She looked . . . embarrassed?

“C’an you please get that down?” She pointed. I looked. I squinted. What was that? Something big and bulky hung in the tree branches. It wasn’t even that high. I glanced back at the centaur, searching for an explanation, when I noticed . . . huh. Something was different about the shape of her horizontal half. I moved a little closer, and she immediately sat down in the bushes.

“Please don’t l’ook.” She sounded even more embarrassed. Understanding hit, and I hastily turned my red face back to the tree. It took a few minutes and some painful scrapes to get up there and pull the big, bulky belly strap/saddlebag thing out of the branches where it had been very purposefully tangled. It wasn’t as heavy as I had expected, although dang, that girl carried a ton of textbooks. I may have dropped it. She didn’t comment on this further mishandling of her things. I occupied myself with climbing the rest of the way down and studying the campus architecture while the shufflings of a felnim dressing herself rustled behind me.