*****
Involunteer
Mr. Oussiar had no intention of becoming what the news media of our world promptly dubbed a “dimension-naut”. He was a small, quiet man, near retirement age; and he was taking what his society regarded as a routine interstellar trip.
It was not routine to Mr. Oussiar, for he had never before been off his home planet of Abdak, in spite of being a translator for inter-species business conferences. He was taking this trip to Morarr to visit his granddaughter’s family, which had settled there and grown wealthy, and had invited him to spend his retirement years with them in greater comfort than his own means would permit. They were providing the trip so he could see how he would like the situation before he decided.
It was a slack time at the Abdak Departure Centre, and the staff there gave him kindly extra attention to expedite his hesitant progress through the formalities. Within a few minutes he was stepping into one of the transmitter cars – deligs, as they were called, after their inventor. Clipped to Mr. Oussiar’s jacket was a ticket to Morarr and in his hand he gripped a carry-on bag. Draped across his shoulders was a honiope, a six-legged, fluffy, cat-sized animal named Cayanan, native to the planet Linznaliat.
Mr. Oussiar found he had the car to himself. He settled on one of the two upholstered, facing benches, slid Cayanan onto his lap, and bent to tuck his bag under the seat. A red light went on over the door, telling him the delig was now sealed and the trip in progress.
He absently stroked the honiope, and thought about turning on the book in his pocket. It was an exciting story about a psionics engineer who gimmicked a delig to carry him into another universe instead of just across space; and Mr Oussiar, whose own life had known no excitement greater than occasional displays of temperament by his clientele, was eager to read more. But there would hardly be time to get into the book again, unless there were some overcrowding delay in the docking at Morarr Arrival Centre. Even while he was mentally locating his place in the story, the red travel light changed to the blue arrival one and the door opened.
He retrieved his bag and stepped out, then looked around in astonishment. He was not in an Arrival Centre, but on the lawn of a three-story wooden building that sat in isolated splendour amid greenery and flowers. Mr. Oussiar’s reaction was not a joyful sensation of adventure-at-last but a sinking realization that something-had-gone-wrong. He clutched his bag and the honiope and thought, with horror this time, about the universe-exchange theme of his story.
The house at which Mr. Oussiar gazed so fearfully was occupied by Cheyne Forrester and her daughter Jackie. Cheyne was a freelance software designer whose skill supplied a financially comfortable life for her family in a renovated Victorian country house and permitted her husband Bob to remain, with a clear conscience, in an underpaid job as a scientist. He was currently in the Antarctic, competing for krill against their natural predators, in a lengthy study of marine ecological systems. Jackie, a postgrad student in the fledgling discipline of psionics, was spending the summer at home developing computer programs to provide unbiased guidance of parapsychology experiments.
At the time of Mr. Oussiar’s arrival, Cheyne was engaged in the low-tech job of repainting the gingerbread fretwork that decorated the front porch. Jackie was leaning out an upstairs window, trailing wires from a psionics band around her head, trying to broadcast the familiar home scene to her father, who had promised to try to receive at this hour. The two women stopped in mid-brushstroke and mid-viewsweep respectively, and stared at the little man with his luggage and his animal, standing in front of the two and a half meter high rounded cube he had just exited.
His shape and face were human, though he stood not much more than a meter and a half tall, was hairless, and had golden leathery skin. His posture and expression clearly showed fright and bewilderment.
For a moment the tableau of disbelief on both sides held; then it was shattered by the Forresters’ dog, Batty, waking from his snooze at the side of the lawn. Batty knew a chasable animal when he saw one, whatever its shape, and here was one being carried practically onto his own doorstep. With his most ferocious bark, he hurled his seven kilograms of guardian muscle toward it.
The honiope was equally adept at recognizing a chase scene. It streaked for the nearest shelter, the house, and reached the top of the porch in one leap and a scramble, and a moment later was up the remaining house wall to the roof.
“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Oussiar.
“Six legs?” said Jackie, craning up at the animal that had passed her window.
“Batty!” called Cheyne. With practiced skill, she scooped up the little dog and shoved him through a one-way animal flap into the cellar, where his voice was muffled. “I’m so sorry,” she told Mr. Oussiar.
They all looked up at the honiope, and Mr. Oussiar tentatively called, “Here, Cayanan.” Cayanan clung to the ridgepole and looked down with patent distrust, ears pricked toward Batty’s indignant, if faint, barks.
“Maybe it’ll come down if we wait quietly,” Cheyne suggested. Mr. Oussiar looked at her blankly, and she realized that he could not understand her words, though she had unconsciously guessed at his. She gestured at him and herself and pointed to the chairs on the porch, then gestured the sun moving across the sky and the honiope descending. Mr. Oussiar gave an assenting tilt of his head to the right and followed her onto the porch.
By this time everyone had forgotten to be frightened (except the honiope) or incredulous. Cheyne called to Jackie to bring some lemonade and cookies, and settled Mr. Oussiar in a chair, with a cushion behind his short body. He gestured her to keep talking, tapping his head to try to tell her he had a biocomputer implant that would soon store up a vocabulary of her words as he identified them. By the time Jackie came out, the other two had exchanged names and identified their animals and were settling down to a language lesson.
“Mom, when that thing arrived – ” Jackie pointed to the transmitter car.
“He calls it a delig, dear.”
“When the delig came, my psionics equipment really worked for a minute. Not just sort of and maybe, but definitely. The gauges recorded, and I saw Dad’s view, and he said, ‘Hey, it’s working’ to me. Then everything cut off again. Do you think the delig brought in psionic energy and gave me a boost?”
“Could be. It must have some sort of tremendous power. If I’ve understood him properly, Mr. Oussiar was going on an interstellar trip in that little thing.”
“Well, hurry up and teach him some more words. I want to ask him some questions!”
“You won’t be the only one,” said Cheyne thoughtfully. “Phone your father’s office and tell them to send every biologist in the company over here. Don’t tell them why – they won’t believe it. Just say I give my word it’s a matter more urgent than that lost data I retrieved for them last year.”
Mr. Oussiar was reluctant to move indoors away from his delig and honiope, but he did take a quick look inside when invited to do so. Cheyne demonstrated a computer to give him some indication of the level of technology her world had, and he managed to convey to her an intimation of his implant. She called up a course in basic English, downloaded it onto a portable unit, and soon had Mr Oussiar back in his porch chair, reading through the course and storing its contents in his augmented memory.
But before he could finish, the interruptions began.
The Forresters’ house was on a little-used side road, but there were occasional vehicles passing. A couple of neighbours who had time to spare were curious enough at the sight of the delig to turn into the lane to make inquiries. Another, seeing the delig and cars, stopped to see if help were needed on some project. One, too hurried to stop, carried mention of the scene into the village a few kilometers away, and as soon as he had time, the local policeman drove out to see what was going on. His radioed report about “a sort of flying saucer” (a blurted analogy that embarrassed him for years) brought prompt reinforcements of police and eventually an army tactical unit in
helicopters.
The three biologists who had come out from Bob Forrester’s office (happy for an excuse for an outing but muttering, “It had better be something important!”) arrived shortly before the military and just after the press. One close look at Mr. Oussiar left the biologists first speechless, then babbling.
After hearing the story, and seeing how worried Mr. Oussiar was about his animal, the most athletic of the biologists, a young man named Ramsey Quong, climbed from an attic window to the roof and carried down the honiope, which submitted patiently to the handling and made no objections to the descent, now that Batty had gone to sleep in the cellar, worn out by his magnificent defense of the property.
The biologists cooed over the six-legged Cayanan; the neighbours gawked at Mr Oussiar; the police tried to establish some order in the growing crowd that simply ignored them, and the two reporters tried to interview everyone there, including Cayanan. Mr. Oussiar wondered if he should try to say he was pleased and honoured to be there, even though he was not.
Suddenly everyone was drowned out by the army copters which hovered around the property, discharging troops. The soldiers formed into a ring and closed in on the house at a run, weapons at the ready. Batty, wakened by the noise, added his own.
Some of the crowd rushed for cars, some for the house. Cayanan streaked back up to the roof. The biologists – in what they later agreed was the most foolhardy thing they had ever done in their lives – without a pause for consideration, gathered defensively about their remaining treasure, Mr. Oussiar, ready to defy anything from guns to gods to keep him.
The main group of soldiers reached the centre of their circle and stopped, rather uncertainly, looking at the worried and bewildered people they had herded into a knot in front of the porch. Another circle of soldiers, with more firmly levelled weapons, held the unresisting delig at bay, while a nominal group surrounded the house, which also put up no fight.
A smaller chopper landed on the lawn, letting out a Major and two aides. The senior officer announced his name as Loave, and told the two reporters to turn off their cameras or have them confiscated.
One of the reporters sang out, “No way, soldier-boy! This is going out live, so don’t even think about trying to muzzle the press!”
The Major’s brow darkened. Losing hope of secrecy, he ordered the local police to sort out the people who didn’t belong at the house and send them away. The biologists claimed to be legitimate invited guests and the reporters would not stir, even under threat; but the rest were gradually forced out onto the road. By the time he was able to start questioning the remaining people, Loave was simmering; and the answers he got did not soothe him.
As he saw it, there were three possibilities. Either the Forresters were perpetrating a hoax, which was wasting manpower and equipment, and therefore ought to be punished, or something they had done with their confounded computers and psionics had genuinely brought some out-of-this-world things into it, which could prove dangerous, or else Earth was being deliberately invaded, and the Forresters had failed to report it. Whichever way, they were guilty of something.
Furthermore, everyone kept telling him the alien couldn’t speak English; but he had caught him exchanging words with the Forrester woman; and he was clutching a portable computer with English words on the screen. Loave didn’t trust a one of this bunch, and he’d see to it they didn’t get away with whatever they were up to!
“Take that man – or whatever he is – into custody,” he ordered his sergeant. “And have your best marksman knock that animal off the roof.”
The reporters happily recorded the biologists’ screams of protest. Ramsey Quong, the athletic scientist, was eventually allowed to fetch Cayanan again, and to go along with the animal to the army base, while one of his colleagues went to fetch a suitable cage from their supplies.
Mr. Oussiar was taken away, while a chopper lifted the delig, dangling in a cargo sling, and flew off. Loave then ordered some of his soldiers to search the Forrester house, and to confiscate all the electronic and psionic equipment there.
Cheyne, by now as angry as Loave, snarled, “You touch one piece of our equipment without a court order and you’ll trade your commission term for a jail term! Our house is run by the computers and I use them in my business. My daughter’s university work depends on them. You have no evidence for your notion that our equipment ‘pulled’ the delig here.”
Loave, who considered all electronics the province of nerds and therefore unmanly, would have been delighted to order the equipment not only removed but destroyed, but he was painfully aware that he had no evidence against the Forresters; and there were those blasted reporters waiting to show him damaging a civilian’s business. He compromised by sending for some experts to examine the equipment, and forbidding the Forresters to touch it in the meanwhile.
Cheyne promptly called her lawyers. When Loave tried to stop her, she remarked to the reporters, “I’ve got programs in there that I haven’t marketed yet. Nobody is going to mess around in it!”
Loave was forced to retreat again. When he eventually withdrew, leaving only a token guard on the property, he was grimly determined to get satisfaction out of the alien.
Cheyne was silently vowing to rescue Mr. Oussiar from him.
The army moved fast. A quarantine unit was emptied and Mr. Oussiar was whisked into it, surrounded by guards and scientists. He was stripped of everything he owned: his suitcase, his ticket to Morarr, his clothes, and his unfinished book. He would have liked to see how the engineer in the story got back, or coped with the situation. It might have helped him believe that he too might survive his experience; but his polite protests and requests were ignored.
But Cheyne’s lawyers – Dunbarton, Khoury, Ohama, and Atkov – recognizing a spectacular case as readily as Batty and Cayanan did a chase, moved equally fast. The army was stopped in its tracks until Mr. Oussiar could learn enough English to give his informed consent to any testing. Everything he had brought with him was declared his property and likewise inviolate except as he permitted. The one victory the army gained was the right to keep him separated from his possessions.
It was not long before Mr. Oussiar was able to bargain, under the guidance of D, K, O, and A. He accepted continued observation and agreed to undergo reasonable physical tests provided Cayanan was spared any. He failed to get the animal returned to him, and suspected the honiope was being kept as a hostage for his good behavior. He did get an agreement that Dr. Quong, the biologist who had been protective of the honiope, would be allowed onto the team looking after it, which relieved his mind a little.
He was allowed to select a few personal items, such as pictures of his family, from his suitcase, in return for giving the rest of its contents to the scientists to analyze. He asked for his book back long enough to finish it. But Loave, now a colonel and in charge of Operation Alien, distrusted the gadget. Moreover he was no reader and could not understand a liking for fiction, so he told Mr. Oussiar to ask the scientists investigating it how the story turned out, if that was really all he wanted it for.
Nor would Loave let him near the delig. Aside from not trusting the alien not to produce a weapon from it somehow, he also objected to Mr. Oussiar’s avowed purpose of trying to return home in it. A successful attempt would end Project Alien, not to mention Loave’s new prestige. He did agree to preserve the delig and the ticket to Morarr, provided the army’s scientists could attempt to use them.
Mr. Oussiar gave reluctant permission. The delig was his only hope of returning home, he had to keep the experimenters from harming it. But if they should find a way to work it, there was no guarantee they would exchange universes as he had, or go to the right one, or to his own part of that one, and even less that they or anyone else could come back for him.
A number of attempts were made, by groups and by individuals, who sat in the delig for hours, carrying Mr Oussiar’s ticket (and sometimes his book, since he had incautiously admitted that the delig op
erated psionically, and that he had been thinking of the book’s premise of inter-universe travel when the glitch had occurred), while assorted fields of energy were provided around the delig, which contained neither power source nor connection for one. The delig remained just a metal compartment with two upholstered bench seats in it.
Meanwhile, having rapidly mastered English, Mr. Oussiar willingly shared his broad but very superficial knowledge of the eighteen known inhabited worlds of his universe and his precise but subject-limited knowledge of their ten major languages. Linguists got much, sociologists little, and technicians next to nothing. Mr. Oussiar knew how to work switches, but he had no idea what happened between the switches and the light, sound, movement, or other action of the machines.
Though they found both Mr. Oussiar and the delig useless, the army officials hung on to both, for fear someone else might somehow get more out of one or the other than they had. They did, however, relax the tightness of their guard on him, and Cheyne was finally allowed in to see him, under observation.
“I have much to thank you for,” Mr. Oussiar told her, in fluent, if somewhat clumsy, English. “The lawyers told me how you mounted a public awareness campaign, and enlisted the help of influential people you knew through your work, to back the lawyers’ demands on my behalf, all of which was needed, they said.”
“I hope I’d have done it anyway; but after the way Loave treated all of us, I enjoyed the fight. But I wish we could figure out how to get you home, or at least find a way to get you released from here.”
“They treat me well now, though I admit it’s lonely, in spite of the number of people around. Having you visit helps... I wish they’d at least let me have Cayanan back.”
“Had you had him long?” Cheyne asked with quick sympathy.
“No, I just got him at the Departure Centre. He’s not even from my own world, but he is from my universe.” Mr. Oussiar sighed. “My great grandchildren would have enjoyed seeing him. They’ve never travelled, either.”
Mr. Oussiar told her about his family. Since the expansion into space had started a century before, families were allowed three children, and he had had the full quota. With his parents, and his wife’s, there was quite an extended family, especially by the time you counted the grandnieces and grandnephews. They all stayed in touch, even the ones who had moved to other planets, even his in-laws, though he had been widowed for a decade. He missed them all terribly, the few pictures he carried with him being poor substitutes.
“I wish I could show you my world,” he sighed. “People are so much more mature than so many I’ve met here. If I could just get back, I’m sure our scientists could figure out what happened, after all, they know all about deligs, and then we could set up a travel service to here.”
Cheyne, to force down a lump in her throat, said grumpily, “You’d have to set up strict immigration laws, otherwise someone like Loave might go there and louse things up.”
“Don’t worry. We have good psychiatrists.”
Cheyne grinned, hoping that that had gone clearly onto the automatic recording and that Loave would see the transcription, without authority to delete anything before it went to higher ranks also. “Well, perhaps someday I will be visiting you at your home,” she said as she took her leave. “Don’t give up hope.”
“I won’t,” Mr. Oussiar assured her, though he looked as if he already had.
Cheyne took images with her as she left: Mr Oussiar’s worlds and his society; the touch of brave hope he had held in his face and voice till the end of their meeting; and the despair that had claimed him when their time was up. The images kept circling in her mind, and a vague feeling grew that she had missed something important. Was it something Mr. Oussiar had wanted her to know, but had not dared to say out loud? Something he had hoped she would somehow guess? Was that why he had drooped at the end?
She went over and over her memory of the meeting, and gradually she focused on something. Could it be that he didn’t trust the military to know, for fear they would snatch from him his last tiny hope of someday getting home? It was a wild guess. And what could she do about it, anyway? Well, if it would possibly get little Mr Oussiar home – not to mention blacking Loave’s eye – she would find something to do about it!
By the time she got home she had an idea; but first she sought out Jackie’s opinion on the psionics of her guess.
“Well, yes, it’s conceivable,” responded her daughter. “No reason why it should be so, but no reason why it shouldn’t. So how can we find out?”
“We can’t. And we don’t dare try, anyway. It would alert Loave’s gang. We just have to act on the assumption we’re right.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see the TV producer we worked with in our awareness campaign. Then we may have to get our influential friends to apply pressure again.”
The producer was delighted with the idea of filming a re-enactment of Mr. Oussiar’s epic journey. After sufficient pressure had been applied at the right levels, grudging permission was received from the authorities for Mr. Oussiar to take part in the show.
Mr. Oussiar was rather startled at first by the idea of acting a part, even that of himself, but he quickly became interested in the idea, especially when he learned that Cheyne was behind it. He co-operated in the long conferences with the production staff.
Eventually a set, constructed to resemble Mr. Oussiar’s description of the Abdak Departure Centre, was erected on the Forresters’ side lawn, out of camera range from the arrival point of the delig at the front. On filming day the delig itself (prompted by Cheyne, the producer had insisted on having every possible thing authentic, as part of the selling point of the program) was brought back and plunked down in the Departure set.
Soldiers again infested the property, but until it was their turn to act out their arrival, they were employed mostly in keeping extraneous people out of the way. There were enough legitimate self-actors and TV personnel to crowd the area as it was.
Mr. Oussiar was brought along – accompanied by guards watching against escape or attack – at what they intended to be the last minute. A couple of delays necessitated a wait after all.
He was dressed in a visual replica of the clothes he had worn when he arrived – the originals having been lost to analysis. His ticket to Morarr was again clipped to his jacket, and beside him stood a suitcase that looked like his own, packed with clothes and few souvenirs he had acquired on Earth. He appeared nervous and anxious as he peered around at the bustle and crowd.
Loave was arguing with the producer and director about the suitcase; he wanted it empty, or filled with bricks. “If I have to let him near his machine, I’m not letting him take anything he’s chosen into it.”
The director lost his temper. “What do you think he’s going to do, convert his You-Are-Here tee-shirt into a superweapon as he gets inside? We’re trying to help him feel natural, and you want him to lug bricks! Colonel, you’re out of your tree! If you insist on this nonsense, we’ll open that suitcase in the middle of the scene, show the bricks, and tell the public about your idiocy!”
While everyone’s attention was on the noisy quarrel, Cheyne slipped close to Mr. Oussiar and murmured, “Good luck!”
“Where’s Cayanan? They said they’d have everything just as it was...”
“They’re bringing him now, in that cage, see? They had to check first that Batty was out of the way until the arrival scene. Don’t worry, you’ll have the chance to see your pet.”
Mr. Oussiar swallowed. “He’s...”
”I know,” Cheyne interrupted him. “Pets are important, especially at times of crises. Don’t be nervous. You’ll do all right.”
“If I do, I know it’s thanks to you.”
There was another delay, as Loave decided he didn’t trust Mr. Oussiar out of his sight for even a few minutes, and insisted on getting into the delig too, necessitating a slight change of camera angle, so that he would not be
visible as Mr. Oussiar got in.
Dr. Quong, still faithfully guarding Cayanan, brought the honiope over and draped it around Mr. Oussiar’s neck. Cheyne gave the animal a stroke and stood back, smiling and shaking her head when Mr. Oussiar seemed about to say something more to her.
The director signaled, and Mr. Oussiar walked onto the set as steadily as he could, hiding the trembling of his hands and controlling his desire to run and fling himself into the delig. He concentrated on acting out his original movements as he climbed in, speaking thanks to an actor who was playing the part of one of the Abdak Departure staff.
Ignoring Loave’s sour glance, Mr. Oussiar settled himself and Cayanan, and shoved his bag under the seat. The door swung shut. He wished he had been able to finish his book, so he could imitate the hero’s way of returning, if he had. All he could do was think about the story and Morarr, and his craving to go there. The rest was up to the psionics system.
The red light went on.
The red light! He was going!
Unless the TV people had rigged it for some reason?
“What’s taking them so long?” grunted Loave from the other seat. “They’re supposed to carry this thing over to the arrival point. Or do we have to get out while they do it? Weak-backed lot they have in TV!”
The red light went out, and the blue light came on.
The door opened.
Mr. Oussiar let out the breath he had been holding, and tears blurred his vision. It was Morarr Arrival Centre, with its sign, in the right language.
He climbed out, followed by a suddenly speechless Loave, who stood staring around with his mouth goldfishing soundlessly. Mr. Oussiar crossed to the check-in counter and handed in his ticket and the honiope, that psionic catalyst that triggered delig travel, and went on out.
Because he was a kindly person, Mr. Oussiar would go back in a few minutes to rescue Loave from the Customs and Immigration and ticket people now questioning him in languages incomprehensible to him. But because he was human, or its equivalent, he would wait those few minutes.
Also by Sansoucy Kathenor
Puss in Bytes
A fast-paced high-tech adventure that cat-fanciers will love!
*****
In Memoriam
Sansoucy Kathenor (Walker)
SF Canada member Sansoucy Kathenor (Walker) died peacefully at her home in Ottawa on Saturday, November 5, 2005. She had been in ill health for the last year.
Her publications included a book of poetry, Temple into Time, and short stories such as “The Cinderella Caper”, a Writers of the Future runner-up in 1985 (and apparently taught in a university class on creativity and archetypes); “Mirror” and “A Spell in Time” in Fantasy Book; “Invasion” in the anthology Arc of Ice; and “Murder Undone”, coauthored with Andrea Schlecht, in the anthology Over My Dead Body. At the time of her death she was working to complete a long novel.
In Ottawa, Sahn was the founder of the Lyngarde writers group, which is now in its third decade. Her writing had wit and deftness. Her criticism was direct and often penetrating. She could be eccentric and obdurate, but also kind and funny, and she is dearly missed by those who were close to her.
- John Park
*****
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