James Gardner: Vigilant

Odd = sexual. My mother’s ongoing obsession.

My own sanity had its share of wobbles too, especially with a half-dead Oolom sprawled gaping above me. Ripe with the squirming creeps, I slid from my bed, threw on some clothes, and hurried out into the rain.

From the ground, I couldn’t see the Oolom on my roof — not with drizzle smearying my eyes and the woman’s chameleon scales already changed color to match the dome’s navy blue. (The chameleon effect was glandular, not muscle-driven; it worked no matter how paralyzed an Oolom might be.)

I didn’t waste time peering up into the rain; the woman couldn’t have gone anywhere, could she? Lifting my arm, I whispered to the control implant tucked skin-under my left wrist. "House-soul, attend. Faye’s room, dome field: access stairs, please."

The dome’s navy hemisphere quivered a moment, like silk rippling in the wind. Then it restabilized into the same shape, but with a flight of steep steps leading over in an arc, up one side and down the other. I climbed the steps two at a time till I reached the top and skittered over the slippery-smooth surface to where the woman lay.

She lifted her head… which is to say she tilted it half-askew, as if she only had working muscles on one side of her neck. "Good morning," she whispered, framing the words as best she could with only a thread’s control over her jaw. After weeks of tending patients in similar condition, I could understand her well enough. "A soft day," she said, rain trickling unhindered over her eyeballs.

"Very soft," I agreed. My hair was already sodden and streaming. In the pouring damp, I envied Oolom skins: tough and waterproof as well-oiled leather. On the other hand, human anatomy had its strong points too, especially in the design of ears. Ooloms hear with fluid-filled globe-sacs, fist-sized spherical eardrums mounted high on either side of the head. Usually, they’re protected by retractable sheath tissue, like eyelids that close around the ear-balls. Ear-lids you could call them — a thin inner one for day-to-day, plus a thick outer one to provide extra muffling against vicious-loud noises. Your average Oolom hardly ever opens both ear-lids, except when listening for whispers as faint as an aphid’s sigh… or when the muscles controlling the lids go limp with paralysis.

This woman’s ear-lids lay in useless crumples on her scalp, like sloughed-off snakeskins. It left her hearing-globes exposed and vulnerable: inflated balloons of raw eardrum, battered hard by rain.

Straightaway, I cupped my hands above her to shield her ears from the drops. Though her face scarcely had a working muscle left, I could see a clinch of tension ease out of her features, and she let her head relax back against the dome. The whish of soft drizzle might still sound like hammers to her — naked Oolom ears are so sensitive, they can catch a human heartbeat at five paces — but at least I’d ended any direct pain from the splash.

"Jai," the woman whispered: "Thank you" in Oolom. For a moment she lay worn-out quiet, just breathing softly. Then she added, "Fe leejemm."

I bowed in response. The words were Oolom for "You hear the thunder," a phrase of approval doled out to people who do what decency requires. The related phrase, Fe leejedd (I hear the thunder) got used in the sense of "I do the things that are obviously right"… or in the parlance of the League of Peoples, "I am a sentient being."

"My name is Zillif," the woman said in her whisper. "And you?"

"Faye," I replied, as softly as I could to avoid hurting her ears. "Faye Smallwood."

"From the family of Dr. Henry Smallwood?"

"His daughter."

Another knot of tension loosened on the woman’s half-slack face. "I deliver myself to you," she whispered. "I declare myself unfit to make my own decisions. Fe leejedd po."

Fe leejedd po. I cannot hear the thunder. I can’t trust myself to do what’s right.

Every patient in my dad’s field hospital mumbled those words from time to time. They seemed relieved when they could give up responsibility for their lives.

As delicately as my wet fingers could, I arranged Zillif’s ear-lids to cover her exposed globe-sacs. Sooner or later the limp skin-sheaths would slide off again; there was nothing holding them in place. But with a spit-coat of luck, they’d stay put the two minutes I’d need to carry her down to the Circus. There, Dads could suture-clip the sheaths into suitable positions: inner one closed for comfort, outer one open so we nursing folks didn’t have to shout ourselves hoarse to be heard. Every last Oolom under the Big Top had been rigged the same way.

When Zillif’s ear-globes were safe, I slipped my arms under her body and lifted. She weighed no more than a child, though she measured a full hand taller than I. Light Oolom body, low Demoth gravity. I, of course, was lifting with the glossy-hard strength of a Homo sap designed for full Earth G: "A strapping girl," as Lynn liked to tease me. "Prime Amazonian beef." Can I help it if I grew up tall and broad-shouldered? Not to mention, a doctor’s daughter is never allowed to skip (a) her monthly muscle-preservative injections, or (b) her daily twenty minutes of Home-G exercise in the simulator.

Still, just being strong enough to carry Zillif didn’t make the job simple. The woman flopped. She fluttered. She draped badly, with her glider membranes flapping against my legs like long, trip-hazard petticoats. And even though her four limbs were dysfunctional, they weren’t one hundred percent paralyzed. Zillif still had full power in the Oolom equivalent of the triceps muscle for straightening her right arm. She also had the instinctive Oolom urge to stay flat-on-the-bubble balanced, no yaw, no pitch, no roll. Whenever I tipped the skimpiest bit off level, she flailed out her one mobile arm and whacked me in the jaw with her elbow.

I’d taken similar clonks while tending other paralysis victims — automatic reflexes are, all very fine with a full set of muscles, but they can be the devil’s own nuisance when a single surviving muscle keeps firing with nothing to counterbalance it. As I began to trudge gingerly down the steps of the dome (smack in the jaw, crack in the jaw), I found myself wishing Zillif’s last muscles were frozen too.

Elbow whacks notwithstanding, we made it safe to solid ground. Once down, I took a moment to rearrange my burden into a more comfortable carrying position. The solid part of Zillif’s body was just a thin cylinder, no bigger round than one of my thighs; but the parachute folds of her glider membranes were as bulky as a load of laundry. A load of wet laundry, pressed soggily against me. My jacket made soft squishy-gush sounds when I shifted Zillif’s weight in my arms. Wrung-out rainwater spilled down cold on the flouncy "ladylike" clothes Mother made me wear.

As I started carrying Zillif along the edge of our fern garden, she murmured, "Your hands are warm, Faye Smallwood. I can feel them against my back."

"That would be the legendary human body heat, ma’am." Ooloms found it a source of rapture and delight that we Homo saps were so exothermal. Their own skin temperatures ran a dozen degrees cooler. Any human walking down the street in an Oolom town could expect Oolom children constantly underfoot, them patting their hands against your ass while they giggled, "You’re hot!"

"I have heard about human warmth from friends," Zillif said. "But experiencing it personally is… disturbing."

"If the heat is too much for you," I told her, "I can wrap my hands in my jacket."

"No, your temperature is quite pleasant," she said. "What bothers me is that I knew about human body heat and was still surprised by it. Such things are not supposed to happen to someone in my profession."