Nothing made contact with his hand. Then he felt soft digits flailing against his own. Getting as good a grip as he could manage, he pulled. The creature rose slowly until a grimacing Chad was able to sit up and get his other fingers around the alien wrist.
The long-eared head burst the water like a leaping dolphin’s, coughing and spitting and choking exactly as Chad would have if he’d been stuck underwater for too long. Chad realized that the creature hadn’t been lying there on the bottom of the pool for fun and relaxation.
Clinging to the thin wrist, he started working his way across the rock toward dry land. Still expelling water, the creature dug at the surface with its right hand, trying to help.
Once clear of the water, Chad got both arms beneath the alien’s and heaved. It was much slimmer than he was but surprisingly heavy. The tight clothing it was wearing left its arms and legs bare, with a reinforced slit in the back to permit the small tail egress. Heavy earrings dangled from the drooping ears. Brightly colored lengths of fabric hung soggily from thighs and upper arms. Its saturated fur made it heavier than normal.
“We gotta get you over by the fire.” Chad spoke between clenched teeth, struggling with the alien’s weight. “Come on, help me. Stand up.”
The huge sandaled feet impeded their progress as Chad half dragged, half carried the creature through the grass to his campsite. He lay the heavy alien on his sleeping bag and left it there as he went to try and coax the remaining coals back to life.
Water continued to dribble from one corner of the creature’s mouth. It lay with both arms at its sides, sucking air in a ragged, broken rhythm that gradually grew smoother. It was definitely alive and improving. The huge eyes remained shut. Lying there vomiting water it was not half so impressive as Chad remembered it, but then very little is as impressive at thirteen as it is at eight.
“Hang on.” He worked furiously with the fire. He was delighted and not a little surprised when the twigs and dry pine needles he kept adding burst into flame. He kept adding fuel until he could feel the heat. Then he took the bottom of his sleeping bag and dragged it and its load as close to the fire as he dared, turning it sideways so the alien would receive the maximum amount of heat. Unpacking a granola bar for breakfast, he sat and nibbled on it as he waited.
“I hope that makes you feel better.”
The huge eyes finally opened. “It does.”
“So you can talk, I didn’t think I’d imagined that, either.”
“I’ve been studying your language for a long time. It’s not difficult. Only the volume is hard to deal with.”
“Yeah, you do talk awful soft.” Chad immediately dropped his voice to a whisper. “I guess with ears like that you don’t need to shout, huh?”
The alien’s left ear kinked in a certain manner, but Chad was oblivious to the humorous significance of the gesture. “Thank you for lowering your voice.”
“You’re welcome. You sure looked funny lying on the bottom of that pool, kicking like crazy and going nowhere. Why didn’t you come up? Did you want to drown?”
“Drown?” The creature seemed to hesitate. “No, not drown. I was …” A long, slim arm lifted to gesture in the direction of the fire. “I saw your camp. You were sleeping and I intended to study and depart, but I thought I recognized you by the light of your fire.”
So it was the same one, Chad thought. He didn’t know whether to be gratified or disappointed.
“I wanted to be certain,” the alien was saying, “so I tried to find a place where I could view you more clearly without exposing myself. I walked into shallow water, thinking to conceal myself within, but I failed to pay sufficient attention to where I was stepping.”
“Hey, don’t feel so bad. I’ve done that a lot myself. But why didn’t you float?”
“Float? We do not float as you Shirazians do. We sink. Our body density is such that in proportion to our air retention capacity we …”
“I get the picture.”
“It was a most peculiar sensation. As you can well understand we do not voluntarily immerse ourselves in water over our head unless we have at hand a means for instantly raising ourselves above the surface. We have studied your sport called swimming. It does not relate to us.”
“I’ll bet. You called me what?”
“A Shirazian. That is our name for your world.”
“Kinda nice.” Chad rolled the alien sounds around his tongue. “Has more flavor than ‘Earth.’”
“You must not think very much of your world to call it dirt.”
“Hey, I didn’t name it. Don’t get on my case. Don’t you guys ever take baths? You are a guy, aren’t you?”
“I am male, yes. We have other means of cleansing ourselves.”
“You sure know a lot about us.”
“We’ve been watching your television broadcasts and listening to your radio for some time,”
Chad laughed and Runs-red-Talking drank in the peculiarly distinctive sound. “Mom’s always telling me there’s nothing educational on tv. I always knew that was a crock.”
“When I was lying on the bottom I tried to call to you.”
“All I saw was bubbles, and my ears aren’t as big as yours.”
“Yet you correctly identified the situation and saved me. I am eternally in your debt. I will meditate many times for you.”
“Yeah, well, forget it. Look, I know you’re from another world. Which one, huh? Not from the solar system, I bet. There’s nothing habitable in the solar system. No matter how big your ears are.”
“Truth, I am from much farther away, but I cannot tell you exactly where.” Regardless of his savior’s youth, Runs knew such questioning skirted dangerous territory. He made a weak attempt to adjust his attire.
“Are you alone, or are there more of you here?” Chad was looking past the sleeping bag and its half-drowned occupant, his eyes scanning woods and river beyond.
Runs-red-Talking was beginning to realize that despite the debt he owed this young Shirazian there was much more at stake here than an individual friendship. He would have to watch what he said from now on. Go cautiously, advised the Samizene. Go with care.
“I am the only one here now,” he replied truthfully. To change the subject he asked, “Why are you here alone?”
“I could ask you the same question. I think we might get the same answer.” Chad used a long branch to stir the fire. Bits of flame ascended to oblivion. “I like being on my own, exploring on my own.”
“Exploring?” The alien’s ears twisted sharply. “You are right. I feel much the same way. My Elders, however, do not approve of such things.” He wasn’t sure “Elders” was the proper word to use in this context but it was the best he could think of.
“Yeah, my ‘elders’ aren’t too hot on the idea either.”
“You must not tell them about me,” Runs said solemnly.
“I tried that before, the first time we ran into each other. They wouldn’t believe me then and they wouldn’t believe me now. So why should I tell ’em?”
The response was nearly too facile, Runs reflected, but what else could he do except believe and trust? He sensed no guile in the youth. He would have been more certain of his feelings if the Shirazian had been a tree. Trees never emitted false emotions.
“My name’s Chad. Chad Collins.” He extended a hand. Runs studied the five fingers, hesitated, then reached for the boy’s face with his own hand. Chad intercepted the gesture and shook entwined fingers.
“Don’t look so weird. It’s a greeting.”
“Slightly different.” The chill was slipping from the Quozl’s bones as the fire continued to warm him. “But why do you display your teeth in a hostile gesture?”
Chad continued to grin. “It’s not a hostile gesture. It’s a smile.”
“Smile, yes. A concept I did not encounter except in the abstract. It is much more difficult to deal with in the flesh. Among my people the showing of teeth is considered a threat.”
“Like with dogs, huh? Okay, I’ll try not to smile too much. What’s your name?”
“I am called Runs-red-Talking, as near as I can translate into your tongue.”
“Weird.”
“No, what is ‘weird’ is that none of your names appear to mean anything. How can you have a name that is just a sound, signifying nothing?”
“A name’s just a name.” Chad shrugged indifferently. “What else can you do with those ears?” The organs in question bent forward sharply as Runs held them stiffly parallel to the ground. They then described a perfect pair of arcs, meeting behind his head and pointing directly backward.
“Rad. Where’s your spaceship? Somewhere around here?”
“No. Not around here.” Traditional Quozl skills of verbal circumlocution served him well in his conversation with the native without forcing him to lie. Truthfully enough, the Sequencer wasn’t “here” but several valleys and ridges to the west. “Here” had the virtue of being by its nature an imprecise geographical term.
“You live near here?” Runs inquired.
“Not really. We come up for a couple of months every summer. Nobody actually lives here. The government won’t allow it. This is all wilderness area. Nobody’s allowed to build a house or even bring in a car. Our cabin’s an exception because my grandfather built it before the government declared this area wilderness, see?”
“Not really.” Runs was dubious. “You are going too fast for me. I have trouble enough with your language without having to comprehend complex concepts as well.” Besides which I must look horrible, he thought, untangling an earring.
“Sorry. Our home, the place where we live, is in Los Angeles. That’s a big city way south of here.”
“I know Los Angeles.”
“You talk like a girl with a sore throat,” Chad commented unexpectedly. “What do you do? Are you in school?”
“Everyone is always in school.”
“I don’t think I’d like living with you guys.”
“I work at repairing things that break.”
Before either of them realized it they were deep in conversation over the virtues of continuing education.
“To stop learning is to die,” Runs insisted.
“I’m not talking about stopping learning. I’m talking about getting out of school,” Chad shot back.
“To leave school is to leave life.”
They argued and talked away most of the day, until Chad realized that he was really going to have to hoof it to make it back to the cabin before dark. He could have risked remaining out for another night but he knew his mother wanted him back the second day the first time he camped out alone, and he was going to need her goodwill in the weeks to come.
The idea that he was totally dependent on his parents’ permission for movement was utterly foreign to Runs-red-Talking. Even at a very young age the Quozl had unrestricted access to all the Burrows. How else was one expected to learn one’s surroundings if you were not allowed to explore them? Chad fully agreed, but as he explained, “I’m human, not Quozl.”
They agreed to meet at the same place in a week’s time with the understanding that if either did not appear they would try again on each day thereafter. To Chad’s surprise it sounded as if his alien friend might have more difficulty making the rendezvous than he, for all his talk of freedom of movement.
The meeting was managed, however, and many subsequent to that, not only that summer but in those to come. When the floatplane began its dive toward the lake each July Chad was hard-pressed to restrain himself. To his parents he seemed more enthusiastic than ever, perhaps due to his growing ability to remain out in the forest for longer and longer periods of time.
“Our city boy’s turned into a real woodsman,” his father remarked as he went about his fishing.
Human and Quozl watched each other’s growth and maturation with mutual fascination. While at first Runs was taller than Chad, the teenager quickly outpaced him, until he stood a full head higher than his alien friend.
“Our development proceeds differently from yours and does not encompass your unsettling variations. When I was a new youth I knew almost exactly how tall I would be when I reached adulthood. It was very reassuring. Your disparities of size promote competition among you.” An ear dipped in a gesture of consolation. “Were I you I would find it very unfair. You place unsupportable values on mere size.”
“I agree with you, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
These days they had ample time to talk. By now Runs-red-Talking was one of the most respected repair specialists in the Burrows. His work was much in demand. For one who spent so much time engaged in extensive meditation he accomplished a great deal. He was careful not to vary his routine even during the cold season when he never visited the surface. It would not do for someone to observe that his piety was seasonal.
At seventeen Chad no longer needed his parents’ permission to camp out for four or five nights at a stretch. They were convinced he planned to climb every mountain in the region. In reality he learned only enough about the land surrounding the lake to answer the occasional question and thus maintain his protective cover.
During their meetings Runs-red-Talking revealed little about himself, and that only gradually even though he’d come to trust his human friend. He knew that had he so desired, Chad could have exposed him many times over the previous cycles. That he had not done so was a source of personal satisfaction to Runs. When he returned to the Burrow he had difficulty containing his amusement at the pontifications of the surface study teams. They had only confusing and sometimes garbled transmissions to work with. Unlike him, they could not seek clarification of some supposition from an actual native.
Despite this he remained humble. One brag would bring him down. But oh, how he longed to correct many of the “experts’” misconceptions!
Chad was told that his friend lived in a Quozl colony, though Runs said nothing about its location or size. Chad accepted his friend’s reluctance to disclose additional information with equanimity. He listened intently to what was proferred and forced himself to be content with that, realizing that were he to try and pressure Runs the limited supply of information might cease altogether. For his part Runs sensed his friend’s burning curiosity and applauded his restraint. In that respect he was very Quozl.
“If it was known that I had met with you and told you even this much,” he explained one morning, “I might even be killed.”
Chad tucked at the hem of his flannel shirt. “I thought you told me that your people no longer believe in violence.”
“Oh, we believe in violence, but only in the therapeutic, abstract sense. In art and conversation and music. Physical contact, even moving too close to another person, is forbidden. Except during coupling and mutually agreed-upon moments, of course. It would not be regarded as violence, or even as killing, but rather as a cleansing. I do not wish to be cleansed.”
“No shit.” Chad sat thoughtfully. “If they found out how much I knew, would they ‘cleanse’ me too?”
“An interesting question.” The position assumed by the Quozl’s ears indicated internal debate was taking place. “The philosophical and moral barriers that would have to be surmounted to permit such an act are extensive. They would also realize that you would be missed by your parents, if no one else.”
“Not necessarily. My parents might think I fell into the lake, or off a mountain.”
“But my people would not think that way.”
Chad digested that. “How long do you think your people can keep this up?”
“Keep this up?” Sometimes human language could be as full of unique and incomprehensible similes and analogies as that of the Quozl.
“Keep knowledge of the whole colony secret from the outside world,” Chad explained.
“That is a problem for the Elders and for the Burrow leaders, not for you or me. You are the only human who knows of our existence. No others even suspect. The secret has been
kept for nearly half a human century.”
“Why’d you tell me about the colony?”
“I could not keep it from you forever. You are intelligent. Sooner or later you would have divined I could not exist here by myself.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’d have stayed stupid and believed you if you’d told me you were some kind of interstellar hermit. Maybe,” he said thoughtfully, “you wanted to tell me.”
“That question is for the philosophers. Ah, look!”
Chad followed the arm movement. A doe and fawn had come to the stream edge to drink. Now they paused to stare in the direction of the two bipeds. The moment stretched into multiples, the four mammals regarding each other intently. Then there was a faint crack from the forest: a pinecone falling or a clumsy burst of speed by an unseen rabbit. The doe whirled with a startled leap, the fawn skittering awkwardly in her wake.
“Deer,” commented Runs-red-Talking. “Female and offspring, also female.”
“I guess.” Chad eyed the woods dubiously. “How can you tell the fawn’s sex at this distance?”
“It is something we are predisposed to recognize.” He turned back to Chad. “We have never yet discussed coupling.”
“Coupling?”
“Sex. Intercourse. The reproductive process. Though we have learned much about you this is one subject your broadcasts deal with only inconclusively. Tell me please, Chad, how many times a day do you normally couple?”
His friend looked elsewhere. With interest Runs noted the startling and unexpected shift in facial skin tone. “Have I offended you?”
“No. It’s just that, well, I never actually have.”
“Have what?”
“Coupled, dammit!”
“Ah, I have offended. You appear sexually mature for your species. Have you an injury?”
“You people are real subtle, aren’t you? No, I don’t have an injury. We just mature differently than Quozl, I guess. I mean, physically everything’s there and ready, but emotionally it’s different with us. Not to mention socially. I can tell that much. How many times do you do it?” he finished aggressively.
“It depends on one’s work schedule. A normal frequency for someone of my age and position would be nine or ten times.”