Trang (26 page)

For his part, Philippe tried to
talk the Magic Man into allowing George to give him a physical examination. The
Magic Man didn’t seem to even understand the suggestion, however, and
introducing him to the doctor didn’t help.

Other than the unrealistic
suggestion that they capture the Magic Man, the Union responded to the attack
on Philippe in a measured way, appearing to accept his contention that a
counterattack or significantly heightened security was unnecessary. Like the
SFers, the Union brass seemed almost relieved—something bad had happened, to be
sure, but it wasn’t the catastrophe all had feared.

The only real change was that the
Titan station sent the manned supply ship more often after the attack, whereas
before they had relied almost entirely on unmanned drones to ship supplies and
mail. Now the SFers saw Cheep and Pinky a couple of times a week, which was a
welcome diversion. Everyone was allowed to go on the ship while it was docked,
but much to George’s amusement, the pilots had what he called “medically
illiterate” orders not to set foot on the station. As a result, the SFers
brought their ration bars onto the ship and took their meals there in order to
get the latest gossip from Titan.

Along with mail, supplies, and
tittle-tattle, the ship carried Sucre and Mo back and forth to Titan for their
counseling sessions. Apparently, three counseling sessions were mandatory for
an SF soldier after a fatal incident. Someone on Titan suggested that, since
Sucre and Mo did not kill a human, they did not require the sessions—a
suggestion that infuriated the SFers, who apparently viewed three counseling
sessions as a right granted by God to all members of the Special Forces that
was not to be abrogated under any circumstances. Sucre and Mo did not appear at
least to Philippe to be particularly traumatized, and they had to stay in
quarantine while on Titan (Cheep and Pink were never quarantined, however,
which amused George to no end), but they were more than willing to suffer the
inconvenience in order to receive their rightful due.

Shanti asked Philippe if he wanted
counseling, too, but he declined—he had too much to do. Among his other duties,
he was trying to decipher what the Magic Man had said to him in the infirmary.
The alien’s strange speaking style, with its absence of inflection, frustrated
Philippe’s attempts to understand. He listened to the speech over and over to
no avail.

Finally, he converted the speech to
text and ran various styles of auto-punctuation on it. That helped somewhat. In
his brief initial conversation with Philippe, the Magic Man had suggested that
humans “join the body,” and as well as Philippe could figure, it seemed like
the humans hadn’t yet joined it—but that the Cyclopes had, which was
interesting.

With that little understanding,
Philippe went to Max and asked if the Hosts had ever explicitly entered into a
formal alliance with the Magic Man. Max said no, and in response to Philippe’s
other questions, said that there was no formal ceremony that aliens underwent
once they came to the station and no formal alliance that any of the species
had formed.

“We have the rules that you already
know, and we ask only that people abide by them,” said Max.

“Maybe it’s a time thing?” said Shanti,
when Philippe brought up the puzzle to her. “Like, if he’s known you for a
certain amount of time, then he considers you part of this alliance, this
‘body.’ In any case, it sounds like he’s got some kind of mutual-protection
society going on in his head. If you’re in it, he’ll protect you. If you’re
not, he won’t, even if he wants to.”

Philippe sat for a moment, looking
at his scroll, which displayed the text of the Magic Man’s remarks. “So, if the
protection is mutual, then you can’t attack him either, right? Maybe that’s why
he seems to be saying that I was the target, not him.”

“He thinks that?” asked Shanti. “It
looked like that Cyclops was shooting at whatever was out in the open.”

“Here,” said Philippe, “‘—if you
had not realized that that one was not attacking one of the body, but instead
attacking one not of the body, particularly you.’ Why would he think he wasn’t
the target?”

“Maybe because he knew it couldn’t
hurt him?” Shanti said. “If it’s a time thing—do you know how long everyone’s
been on the station? When did they all come?”

Philippe didn’t know. They tried to
look it up, but it was not contained in the information the Union had provided
before they arrived at the station.

“I mean, they were only talking to
the aliens for five fucking years,” said Shanti. “You can’t expect them to get
some pretty fucking basic information in that short amount of time.”

“They weren’t actually talking for
most of that time,” Philippe replied. “They were teaching the aliens English.”

She glared at him.

“OK, they probably should have
asked
that,
” he acceded.

They talked it over and decided to
ask Baby to find out when the various species came to the station. “I want to
keep this unofficial,” said Philippe.

“It shouldn’t be a problem for
her,” Shanti laughed. “I think the aliens are going to elect her Miss
Congeniality.”

Baby’s transponder put her in the
infirmary, so Philippe said that he would talk to her later. Shanti, however,
was not one to allow considerations of medical privacy get in the way, so she
commed Baby and determined that the younger woman was, as suspected, “yapping
with George again.”

Philippe joined her and George in
the infirmary. After he filled in Baby on what he wanted, the conversation
moved on to other topics, and Baby and George wound up inviting Philippe to
join them in their daily workout. The two of them were practicing aikido, which
to Philippe’s understanding was a style of fighting. But Baby insisted that it
was “a totally nonviolent martial
art,
not fighting really,” and George went
on a long ramble about how practicing aikido might prove really meaningful to
Philippe because it was simply “a physical means of resolving conflict.”

Philippe liked both Baby and George
and wanted to be social, so he refrained from pointing out that fighting was
also
a physical means of resolving conflict. In any case, it didn’t sound like they
would be beating each other up, so he agreed to join them.

He met Baby and George in the gym
the next day. It was one of the few places where the soldiers did not wear
lonjons—not that they couldn’t, George pointed out, since lonjons absorbed
sweat and contributed only minimally to overheating.

But the idea of sweating into one
was not very appealing, even to George, so the three of them were just in
regular workout gear. George was wearing a low tank, and Philippe noticed to
his shock that the doctor had the SF cat logo burned onto his chest.

“Did you—is that a brand?” he
asked.

“Oh, no,” George replied. “It’s
tattooing. It just looks like a brand. They can do all kinds of crazy things
with tattoos nowadays, keloids and the like. But you know, when I joined the
SF, a lot of people actually got brands—if you can believe it. They had a big
crackdown on it a few years ago, though, so now everyone just tattoos.”

Because tattooing your
employer’s logo on your body is totally normal,
Philippe thought to
himself.
Especially when you make the tattoo look like a brand.

“Have you seen Shanti’s?” asked
Baby. Philippe shook his head.

“Oh, you have to—you ain’t never
seen nothing like it,” she said, her eyes widening with enthusiasm. She started
to slap her chest, but then realized that she wasn’t wearing her com mike.
“Just give me a sec. I think I know where she is.”

She scampered out and ran back in a
few minutes later, pulling Shanti by the hand. “Philippe wants to see your body
art!” she exclaimed.

“You know, I’ve got shit to do,”
said Shanti, as she unceremoniously unbuttoned her uniform shirt. As she took
it off, she caught a glimpse of Philippe’s doubtless alarmed expression, gave
him a look of annoyance, and turned her back to him. She grabbed the neck of
her lonjons with both hands, and with one firm motion, pulled the suit down
almost to her waist.

Philippe gasped.

All across her back and shoulders
were sparkling studs: some were silver, but most were faceted gems of amethyst,
crystal, and jet.

She had a pattern of suns and stars
encircling each upper arm, but her back was the main canvas: A glittering bird,
its wings outstretched and beak pointing upward, spread across her back on a
field of stars. It emerged from a line of silver flames that curved up out from
the lonjons still covering her lower back.

“It’s beautiful!” Philippe
exclaimed. He looked a moment longer, and then a realization dawned on him.
“Those are your scales, right? The ones the Pincushions were talking about.”

She turned her head over her
shoulder and smiled. Her body turned a little, too, and Philippe could see that
the sun-and-stars pattern continued across her collarbone. “I think so, yeah,” she
said. “But it’s not scales. It’s a phoenix.”

Philippe was swimming slowly in the warm, blue
Mediterranean waters. The sun was shining, hot against his skin, and the warm
ocean enveloped his body.

He turned on his back to float
and looked around him. There were vacationers frolicking on the beach. In the
water, some kids were bodysurfing, while the more leisure-oriented adults
lazily bobbed about on inflatable rafts.

“
Good day, Philippe!” several
voices piped up from the water.

Philippe looked down, and there
were a dozen colorful Little Swimmers frolicking in the water around him.

“
Good day, my little
cauliflowers! How is it going?” he said, delighted to see them.

“
It goes well!” said one with
zigzagging blue-and-yellow stripes. “Hey!”

Another one, with red-and-white
splotches, had squirted water on him.

“
Oh, the cow!” said Philippe,
making them all giggle.

“
Philippe,” said a serious
voice.

He turned around. There was a
Host, the color of gold, bobbing on a blue inflatable raft behind him.

“
Hello, Host!” said Philippe,
treading water and putting his hand over his eyes to shade them from the Host’s
glare.

“
Oh, shit,” said the Host,
looking at the Little Swimmers around Philippe. “You know these things?”

“
Yes, I do—they’re called Little
Swimmers. I’m not sure where the big ones are.”

“
God, I was hoping they wouldn’t
do things this way. Fucking bastards! They don’t understand anything! Shit!”

Philippe was shocked that the
Host would curse in front of the Little Swimmers. But then he realized that the
Host was speaking English, so with any luck, the French-speaking Little
Swimmers couldn’t understand him.

“
Excuse me, my friends?” he
asked the little guys. “Can you tell me where your big cousin is?”

“
He is . . .  there. And
now he’s coming over here!” said one. “Who is your friend who is full of
light?”

“
He is a friend from far away.”

“
Are you and your friend
speaking English?”

“
Yes, we are.”

“
I speak English!” exclaimed
another Little Swimmer. He paused for a moment to think. “Hello! Good-bye!
Candy!”

“
Very good!” said Philippe. “You
speak English very well!”

The Little Swimmers went back to
squirting water on each other.

“
There’s the Big Swimmer,” said
Philippe, pointing to the dark shape coming up underneath him in the water.
“He’s tickling my feet.”

“
Look, this is all very nice,”
said the Host. “But there’s going to be a lot of trouble soon, and you’re the
only person I can communicate with. Hey. Hey! Are you listening?”

Philippe’s eyes had begun to close
as the vibrating tentacles traveled slowly up his legs.

“
Look, damn it, you have to
focus, OK?” snapped the Host. “You have to pay attention. This is your mind,
it’s not mine, and you need to take me seriously. You can’t be flying around
and forcing me to laugh—that really hurt, by the way. This is important, and
you can’t treat me like I’m some figment of your imagination. I’m
real.
”

The water suddenly went cold,
and Philippe opened his eyes. There were dark clouds over the sun, and the wind
was blowing. The Big Swimmer withdrew, and the Little Swimmers—sniffling and
weeping—suddenly dived under.

Run,
thought Philippe.
Run
away.

“
I’m sorry,” he said. “You
deserve better than what happened to you.”

“
All right then,” said the Host.

“
I’m sorry I let you down,” said
Philippe, beginning to cry.