Aliena Too (7 page)

“I can think of something,” Lida said, plowing ahead since she had started it. “Suppose the two envoys met and interacted, such as in a brief duet, unannounced? And that duet was for the benefit of the boy?”

Sam refrained from rolling his eyes. “What duet?”

“Or any song they can do together.” Lida opened her songbook and spied an old one she liked. “Kiss Me Quick And Go.”

“Lovely,” Aliena said. “I will see to it.”

“Aliena says she'll handle it,” Lida said.

So it came to pass. Gloaming diverted briefly from his tour, and Star diverted from hers, where they happened to come close to each other. They converged on an inconspicuous house at dusk, two cloaked figures and two partners. “What is the song?” the female figure asked as they came together. Lida handed her a page with the music and words. She glanced at it for perhaps two seconds and handed it back. Was she rejecting it?

The door opened as they approached; they were expected. Aliena had indeed seen to it. The woman retreated, disappearing upstairs. Only the little boy remained standing on the stairway.

The cloaked figures went into the small living room. Lida and Star's companion Brom remained near the stair, which led down to the living room.

“Hello, Jeb,” Lida said. “I am Lida. We are going to do a little song, and you have a part. When you hear the words ‘We heard a footstep on the stair,' you tap your foot. Okay?”

He nodded shyly.

Lida went to the living room doorway. “Ready?”

The two figures had doffed their cloaks and now stood as Gloaming, handsome in jeans and shirt, and Star, almost breathtakingly pretty in sweater and skirt. They sat together on the couch, his arm around her shoulders, like a loving couple.

Without preamble, Gloaming sang. “As I was out one evening sparking/ Sweet Terlina Spray/ The more we whispered our love talking/ The more we had to say./ The old folk and the little folk we thought were fast in bed/ We heard a footstep on the stair—/” He paused.

Lida signaled Jeb. Jeb lifted his foot high and delivered a resounding STOMP! that shook the walls, smiling naughtily.

Both singers were visibly startled, but Gloaming continued without hesitation. “And what d'ya think she said?”

Then Star sang. “O kiss me quick and go my honey/ Kiss me quick and go./ To cheat surprise and prying eyes/ Why kiss me quick and go.”

She hadn't rejected it; she had memorized it in two seconds, and sang it absolutely perfectly. The way she looked and moved was marvelously evocative. Lida realized that if there was a musical match on Earth for Gloaming, it was Star. What beauty! What a voice! What acting!

Then they kissed, briefly, and Gloaming got up and left, pausing only to glance at the boy. “Don't tell!”

Jeb nodded gravely. Then Gloaming was out the door, and in a moment, so was Star. Their little act was done and they had to be on their separate ways before anyone else caught on. And of course Lida's glasses had caught it all, recording everything she had looked at: boy, couple, song, kiss.

Now Lida stood on the front step beside Brom. “This has been a spot presentation to raise funds for Jeb's treatment,” Lida said, speaking for the record. “Proceeds will go to the family, so the boy can have required surgery. Bidding for exclusive broadcast may commence immediately, at the Starfish Website.”

The two of them paused, waiting for confirmation. “So we meet at last,” Brom said. “The two humans married to the two starfish. I love her. Do you love him?”

“Yes. But it's not always easy.”

“I know. I had to give up my first love, as I think you did too.”

“That was Aliena?”

“Yes. If you are in touch with her, give her my regards.”

“Do it yourself.” She handed him her glasses.

He put them on, and his face went rapt. “Oh, Aliena,” he breathed. “I wish—”

Suddenly she knew what Aliena was telling him. Lida stepped close to him, offering herself. He put his arms around her, closed his eyes, then kissed her on the lips. Now she heard the sound: Aliena was humming through the glasses, her Song of Joy, for him. He was kissing her, Aliena, in his mind. It was something he could not do directly any more.

Then he drew back, returned the glasses, and walked swiftly to their car. There had been tears in his eyes; he was too choked up to speak.

Lida put the glasses back on. “That was very nice of you,” Aliena said.

“Well, I owed you.”

“It was nice regardless, for me as well as for him.”

“You're welcome.”

The bidding on the 35-second edited recording turned out to be fierce. It was the only instance of the two starfish coming together, and not only that, they had sang jointly, and kissed. It was absolutely beautiful. But little Jeb's naughty foot-stomp stole the scene. It was settled within the hour: more than two million dollars for the first global broadcast rights. Little Jeb would have his treatment.

“We owe it to you,” Gloaming told Lida. “This was good positive publicity.”

“It's empathy,” she said. “I hurt when I saw how Jeb was hurting. I had to try to help him.”

“Empathy,” he agreed. “The function of mirror neurons. We lack them.”

“How did you make a civilization without them? Without understanding the way others feel?”

“We do understand, intellectually, and act accordingly. We just don't
feel
it. But I am learning. From you.”

“It is hard to imagine me teaching you anything. You have vastly more intellect and talent than I do.”

“These are mechanical things. They hardly relate to emotional feeling. In that you are the master.”

She smiled. “Or the mistress.”

“A female master, also a sexual partner,” he said, working it out. “This is humor?”

“Humor,” she agreed. “I am your teacher in this respect, but also your sexual partner, so the two coincidental meanings overlap, making it amusing.”

“Humor,” he repeated. “An illustration of a fundamental absurdity in a situation or in human nature.”

“You've got the dictionary in your head. But the essence of humor is something we can't properly define. It's what makes you laugh.”

“Laughter. That is another thing we lack. But we are learning.”

Lida had another revelation. “It's like a hand of cards. Starfish have all aces and kings. They can memorize and perform perfectly in an instant, as you and Star do. But by the same token they are missing the sixes and sevens we call emotion. Love, hate, laughter. Geniuses without compassion.”

“Compassion.”

“That is what I felt for Jeb.”

“Though you were not personally acquainted with him.”

“Yes.” She thought of another thing. “Do starfish have art?”

“This is the representation of people and objects in symbolic manner? We do have diagrams used in the construction of machines.”

“The opera,” she said impatiently. “That's art. Music is an art. So is dance.”

“Music,” he echoed thoughtfully. “We do have that. But with us it is a tool. It is integral to our machines.”

“That accounts for that, then,” she said, bemused. “It is a survival skill. Using it for pleasure is a coincidental corollary for you, not an end in itself.”

“Yes, of course.”

“With us, the arts are ends in themselves. Oh, there are those who make a living from them, but they can do so only because the great majority of us appreciate performances for their own sake. And so do you, sometimes.”

“Do we?”

“Your Song of Joy.”

He considered, and nodded. “You evoked that in me.”

That triggered another thought. “Gloaming, we're married, at least before the world. We are having sex, or more recently making love. I think it is time for me to stop taking the Pill.”

“The pill that renders you infertile? That is your choice. But why?”

“So I can have your baby.”

“It would be Quincy's baby, the fruit of his body, not mine.”

“That will do. You will accept it?”

“I will accept anything you prefer.” He was speaking literally. His immense potential was subject to her whim. She tried hard not to abuse that power. For one thing, it complicated Sam and Martha's job of protecting them.

“Then I will stop the Pill. It is time.”

“It is time for Star, too,” Aliena said. “I will tell her.”

This brought Lida up short. “What does Star's reproductive policy have to do with mine?”

“She needs to have the experience of a baby, as I did.”

“But there is Maple.”

“Maple is mine. She must have her own.”

Lida nodded. “Maybe that's right.”

Gloaming had waited politely for her dialogue with Aliena to conclude. “Now let's make love.”

“Your will is mine,” Lida said, laughing. How he had changed, once she had come to love him! But this was good.

He hesitated, then laughed with her. He was beginning to get it.

Two months later it was confirmed: both Lida and Star were pregnant.

“This is new to Star,” Aliena said. “She wants to be with you.”

“Me? She'll have a bellyful even without me!”

Aliena laughed. She was ahead of the other starfish in this respect, picking up on the literal and figurative meanings. “She wants your emotional guidance, so that she can treat her baby appropriately. This does not come naturally to her. It was difficult for me too. That is why I enlisted the Smythes. They will, of course, help. But you will have a special understanding, being not only in the same condition, but fully human.”

“But what of the danger of having the starfish together? Because if I join Star, Gloaming will come too.”

“I will,” Gloaming agreed.

“The security apparatus has been refined. The public now accepts the starfish. The incident with Jeb helped; in the popular mind the starfish were credited with having the empathy to provide for him. It should be feasible now.”

Lida was satisfied to let the starfish have the credit for her idea; they had done a nice job animating it. Lida had seen Star hardly one minute, yet her presence had been magnetic and her voice spectacular, and Lida liked her. But did she really want to associate with her on a daily basis? It would mean life even more in the limelight, not something she had been accustomed to. But she was now a part of this project; what could she do but lend her further support?

“If Star wants my company, I'll grant it,” she concluded aloud.

It was promptly accomplished. Star simply moved back to the bunker where she had once lived. The neighbors already knew her, though they confessed to thinking of Aliena when they saw her. She curtailed her global travels, on the valid pretext of her pregnancy. Gloaming also stopped his, because of Lida. Thus the bunker became the grand central base for the starfish.

They did practice community relations. Both Gloaming and Star attended the local nondenominational church and sang both solos and in the choir, not displacing anyone else; it was strictly supportive. The two women went shopping together, and Lida was surprised to receive almost as much attention as Star did, perhaps being considered more approachable. She subtly guided Star, as she did Gloaming, in the nuances of human social interaction, so that the starfish generally made a good impression in the little ways, apart from being world famous. Sam and Martha were always nearby, along with other guards, and no crazy ever got close to the starfish or their companions. They got along, in part because Lida was now experienced in relating to starfish, and Star genuinely appreciated the guidance.

And Star was lonely. She was the center of global attention, one of the world's most beautiful women, respected by almost all people, with enormous power at her beck and call. She had a husband who loved her. But she was the only starfish in woman form. She had come from another planet and parked her own body to become the brain of an alien host, and had assumed a highly public role. She needed a kindred soul, and Lida, married to a starfish and similarly pregnant from a cross-marriage, was it. Lida could be trusted, and she understood. What could she do but provide that companionship? The story of the millennium was the compatible contact between two completely different sapient species, but beneath it was the simple need of one person for a friend. Empathy came hard to starfish, but Lida had it in abundance, and it bound her to Star.

Their next visit to the space station was together, along with Maple, leaving the husbands behind. The starfish robots were as interested in their pregnancies as the human media were, perhaps for a different reason: they wanted to be sure that there would be no defects in the babies. In Star's case, that there was no triggering of the immune response that had taken Aliena out. Aliena herself was pleased; Maple was hers, and she wanted Star to have her own. Quincy, knowing that Lida's child was genetically his, was completely supportive.

Time passed, and the babies were due. Lida bore hers first, by a few hours, and named him Quill, as close as she cared to come to Quincy. Star's was a girl she let the Smythes name, as she was their granddaughter by blood and Maple's little sister. They chose Bliss. The news media went into a frenzy of discussion, pictures, and speculation, as if the children were royal. Would they grow up to marry and found a new dynasty? When the two women went out for a public walk with matching prams, one baby in blue, the other in pink, it was as if a new world had been created.

Lida thought this was a lot of foolishness. But she realized that she was satisfied with it. She finally had what she had wanted at the outset: a loving husband, friends, and a child. Only the details differed from her expectations.

Part 2

Alien Host

Quincy woke somewhat blearily. Was it another immune attack? It felt different, but no less strange. Then he remembered: he had volunteered to exchange bodies with an alien creature, because the alternative was death. Lida had agreed, for his sake, though it meant that she would have to be married to the alien. He did not care to dwell on that aspect.