Alienation
by Bryony Marsh

In the back yard, Molly whined and I went to see what had upset her. When I opened the door, she ran through my legs, dashing inside to seek the comfort of her basket.

A small grey alien with huge, placid eyes stepped out of the shadows. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I still haven’t learned how to reassure canines.”

“Rielk! I…” I made a made a bubbling sound in my throat, as best I could. He’d taught me it long ago, telling me it meant something like ‘In my home, the traveller is welcome in peace.’

He replied with a liquid trill that rose and fell: Good health and prosperity to the gracious host.

I stepped aside, holding the door open for him.

“Helen!” I called, giddy with excitement. “Guess who showed up!”

She came to my side, smiling broadly. “After all these years! Rielk… where have you been? You didn’t go home, surely?”

“Not home,” he said, his immobile features somehow conveying anguish. “Long story, actually.”

She did the steepled-finger gesture, or as near as a human can manage. “Welcome,” she said gravely. “Won’t you come and have a drink?”

I remembered my duties as host. “You’ll have your usual London dry gin, I assume?”

“Would you have any… rosemary?” Rielk asked, almost reverently.

“We always keep a supply of rosemary,” Helen said. “Just in case you should stop by.”

Rosemary is like catnip to Rielk’s people. It doesn’t seem to have a narcotic effect, but they really like it.

Helen poured a glass of the strong spirit, rolling a sprig of the herb vigorously between her palms before dropping it into the drink.

I still had half a beer. Helen had been drinking mint tea, but it seemed she’d decided the occasion warranted something stronger, fetching a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I knew better than to offer a seat: our visitor’s knees didn’t work in quite the same way as our own and he could stand indefinitely.

“Looking good, Rielk,” I said, unable to think of anything more appropriate. “How long’s it been… fourteen years?”

“I should warn you that I’m a fugitive,” he said gravely.

“Same old, same old,” Helen said with a smile.

Rielk seemed agitated, which was unusual. He stalked around the room, finishing up by the bookcase. “You’re still studying flying saucers and little green men, then,” he said.

“I prefer to think of it as studying the people who believe in flying saucers and little green men,” Helen said, a trifle defensively.

Rielk took down a book and leafed through it. As always, it was disconcerting to see how fast he could read and it made me feel more than a little inferior: he could absorb a typical book, not merely committing it to memory but also thinking through the implications that it raised, in three to five minutes.

Part-way through the book, he puffed out his cheeks in way that I knew signified tremendous mirth.

He passed the book to me, one slender finger marking the place that he wanted me to examine. I had time to register that the book was ‘The Price of the Stars’ by Carol Donaldson, but he gave me no time to read.

“The energy requirement for an interstellar probe would likely bankrupt even an advanced civilisation,” he quoted, as if to explain the joke. “What does this writer think space is made of, exactly?”

“She probably thinks of it as a near-perfect vacuum,” Helen said, with the tone of one inviting our visitor to prove otherwise.

“Quaint,” was all that Rielk said. Next, he studied the photographs on the mantelpiece. “Still there are just two of you? I had hoped to find the foundation of a mighty clan!”

“No, it’s… still just the two of us,” I said.

Helen reached for my hand. I turned to see her regarding me carefully – perhaps a little sorrowfully.

“We’re trying to save the planet, Rielk,” she protested. “We’ve been busy –”

“I’m aware of your work,” our visitor said. “Six patents in the area of clean energy, now? You’ve done well.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And we’ve done it all on a not-for-profit basis, just like we promised.”

He bowed, to signify agreement. “I knew you’d do extraordinary things.”

He’d never revealed the means by which he could judge a person’s character and potential so accurately, but I don’t think he ever made mistakes in such matters. He’d first revealed himself to us when he’d needed our help. We hadn’t betrayed him to the government, and later he’d shown up again, in time to cure Helen’s cancer and leave her better-than-new. The trust that we’d shared since then transcended the species boundary.

“Even so,” he said, “I thought you’d find time to start a family.”

Helen snorted. She was always kind to me, but I’d had to accept the truth a long time ago: she was the brains of the outfit. We were both registered as partners in Infinergy LLG, but my dogged lab work could only test and validate her far more brilliant ideas. It was Helen who was on the cusp of demonstrating how to transmit electricity over great distances without losses, with a stack of cheap ceramic discs.

“C’mon, Rielk,” she said, “you know how things are: nobody would’a taken us seriously if I was pregnant. It’s still a man’s world: they’d all’ve assumed I was worrying about grazed knees and runny noses and pinning shitty drawings on the refrigerator. No thank you!”

I allowed myself a very small sigh. Helen glanced at me and I decided it wasn’t the time to raise the matter again. Better to change the subject, I decided:

“Why’ve you been gone so very long?”

“I ran into some… difficulties,” Rielk said, apparently embarrassed. He took a sip of his drink and gave one of his rare, side-to-side blinks. “Oh, that’s nice,” he said.

“Fourteen years,” Helen prompted. “What sort of difficulties?”

“I got captured,” Rielk said.

I stared at him, appalled to think what our countrymen might have done. “How’d it happen?”

“I was having trouble with my engine,” he began. “At the time, I assumed it was a simple malfunction, although subsequent events caused me to question that. Perhaps there was some kind of beam that interfered with the normal running of the engine: I don’t know.”

“Then what?” we both demanded.

It was strange how the immobile features of our friend could still convey a scowl, as he continued his story:

“I opened the engine compartment and tried to diagnose the fault, only to find myself caught in a dazzling beam of light, coming from high above.”

It was a classic abduction scenario, we both knew.

“Were you in a scout ship?”

“No,” Rielk clarified. “Volkswagen camper.”

“Oh,” I said. “So… that’s unusual.”

“The bad guys were in a helicopter. There wasn’t much vegetation around, so I decided that running away was pointless. Besides, they might’ve had snipers.”

I grimaced. “You allowed them to capture you, then.”

He bowed his head. “Indeed. They took me off to Area Fifty.”

“Not Area Fifty-one?”

He puffed out his cheeks. “Please: that’s just for the tourists.”

“Is it?” Helen was frowning.

“Yes! Classic misdirection: close to the truth, but not quite – and if I understand your culture, odd numbers are always more sinister.”

I considered this. “Are they?”

Rielk took another sip of his drink. “Sure! From ‘unlucky thirteen’ to ‘the thirty-nine steps’… odd numbers are always spooky. Hence Area Fifty-one. All the heavy lifting gets done at Area Fifty – as I was to discover.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. What did they do?”

“Nothing good,” he said, swallowing hard.

“I’m so sorry –” Helen began.

“It was bad science,” Rielk said, too loudly. “That’s what I can’t forgive: if you find yourself face-to-face with a representative of a starfaring species for the first time, wouldn’t that be something you’d want to put your best people on? Approach it with care; get it right?”

“Sure,” I said. “So what did they –”

“The interrogation was amateurish at best,” Rielk said. “I endured it for a long time, but I could see no end in sight and none of the people who were brought to see me seemed trustworthy, so I decided to play dead.”

“What do you mean?” Helen asked.

“I slowed my metabolism to a rate that would have been undetectable: just two or three heartbeats a month. In that state, they could no longer question me – but they went straight to dissection instead. It was monstrous! Barbaric!”

Horrified, I stared at him. “They cut you, without anaesthetic?”

“Never mind that,” Rielk spat. “Who the hell performs experiments without establishing a control group?”

“I… never really thought about that,” I had to admit.

“Absolute imbeciles to a man,” Rielk gave his assessment of the scientific establishment. “Paranoid, primitive primates! What about my inalienable alien rights, eh?”

“I’m… not sure you have any,” Helen said. “I mean, you should – but I don’t think that’s in the Constitution.”

“But you escaped,” I pointed out, wanting him to offer a happy ending to the episode. “Surely you used your superior mental powers on them and escaped?”

Rielk sounded tired. “Well… yes and no.”

I topped up his glass and Helen crumbled more rosemary into it. After another sip, our visitor continued his tale:

“I slipped away. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? There I was, spreadeagled on the operating table with this bespectacled oaf trying to excise my thirdbladder with a scalpel – and I mean a literal sharp piece of metal: no lasers in sight – so I dropped the meat body.”

I frowned. “You did what?”

“I discorporated. As your philosophers worked out, right around the time they started doing interesting things with mud bricks, the body is just a vessel – one that you’ll set aside at least once in your life.”

Rielk had never managed to cultivate a human sense of proportion. Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect that of him, but for all his proficiency with our language, he never seemed to understand how the statements he made would be received. He could say something about how pollen stains your clothes with the air of one revealing the secrets of the universe… or, as now, he could confirm the existence of the afterlife as if merely discussing yesterday’s weather.

“You don’t look like a ghost to me,” Helen objected.

He swirled his drink, inhaling its vapours through the two tiny slits that serve him in place of a nose. “Ah, your point is valid! I picked up a replacement body. I knew there was an old scoutship embedded in a coal seam somewhere in Kentucky. It took me quite a few tries to find it, you understand, what with my having no physical form with which to construct some kind of detector, but there it was! Those older ships always carried a spare body: I slipped into it and warmed it up.”

“Welcome back, then,” I said.

He said nothing.

“Ten out of ten for escaping,” Helen said, “and they won’t be looking for you.”

“Yeah,” he said, staring into his drink.

“What… what’s the problem?” I asked him.

“It’s this,” he said, gesturing. “It’s better than nothing, of course, but this isn’t me. I’m seventy-four light years from home with no possibility of rescue for decades, and I’m stuck in… this.”

Helen and I exchanged a glance. She was smart enough to say nothing, but I wasn’t.

“You literally look identical,” I told him.

“What?” he demanded. “I don’t! This body is female!”

Helen made a face. “Sorry,” she said, “but to us, you’re… the same as always. You’re Rielk: a dear friend.”

The alien paced up and down. “I don’t like this,” he (perhaps she) said at last.

“Does it really have to be a problem?” I asked.

He (she) drained his (her) glass. “No,” Rielk said, in a voice brimming with insincerely. “It’s fine. Really.”

Helen looked contrite. “Is there anything we can do?” she asked.

“Can I stay for a few days?” the alien asked, almost fearfully.

“We’d be delighted,” I said. “For as long as you like.”

Helen nodded, setting down her beer. “I’ll make you up a bed in the guest room,” she said.

“Harbouring a fugitive alien,” Rielk warned. “Are you certain?”

“You’re family,” she insisted. “Of course you can stay.” She left the room, to fetch some towels and the like.

“How – in fact why – does one embed a starship in a coal seam?” I asked.

“I don’t suppose it was a coal seam when they landed,” he said. “Probably more of a swamp.”

I whistled. “You guys certainly play a long game.”

He made the hand gesture that I knew to be the equivalent of a human shrug. “That was before my time,” he said – though I thought he did so with the air of one who felt the need to clarify the point.

“So,” I said. “You can move from one body to another at will? That’s a neat trick.”

“It’s not that much more complex than moving all your files onto a new computer,” Rielk said. “Of course, not all computers are created equal,” he added, bitterly.

“I’m sorry, old friend,” I said. “I truly had no idea –”

“Perhaps it’s good for the soul,” he mused. “Walk a mile in another person’s shoes, sort of thing. Not that I wear shoes.”

I grinned. Helen and I always struggled to follow the looping, tessellating thought patterns of our alien friend, but he (or she, now) never seemed in any way put out by our stumbling contributions to the conversation. Perhaps he (she) wasn’t just super-smart but super-wise, too.

“Actually,” he (she) said, “that gives me an idea. I wonder…”

I raised an eyebrow. Perhaps just to showcase one of the few things that I can do, but which remains impossible to Rielk.

“Let’s wait for Helen to come back,” the alien said.

“Won’t you give me a hint?” I asked.

“Your language contains many wonderful idioms,” Rielk said. “One that has always been intriguing, to me, is… ‘misery loves company’.”

I regarded him carefully. “I’m not miserable,” I said.

“No?” He (she – that was going to take some getting used to) looked at me calmly, with all the patience of a species that builds spacecraft to last through geological time.

Helen came back into the room. “That’s all set for you,” she said.

“You needn’t have adorned the washroom with small blocks of surfactants on my account,” Rielk said.

Helen frowned. “How –”

“It’s a distinctive smell,” the alien explained. “Quite pleasant, actually.”

“Try it,” Helen invited.

Rielk rocked back on his (no: her) heels. “While I’m female, I should embrace such things, is that it?”

Helen smiled broadly, but said nothing.

“About that,” the alien said, “an idea has occurred to me.”

“What’s that?” Helen demanded.

Rielk regarded us with those serious, dark eyes that never let you know quite where they’re looking. “Please, have a seat,” he invited.

Helen sat.

“Helen, you want to do great things in humanity’s scientific domain,” Rielk said. “Paul wants to raise a family. I can perceive a way that means neither outcome has to preclude the other.”

“I really don’t see –” Helen began

I saw, or thought I did. “Wait, don’t do anything rash,” I begged.

There was a roaring sound in my ears and I think I blacked out for a moment, or did something similar. I feared that I might have slumped from my chair onto the floor, but when my vision cleared I saw that I had only drooped a little way and then caught myself.

But I saw this from outside: I saw all of myself, my mouth gaping open in shock as I stared across the room, at me. Me in Helen’s clothes; Helen’s body.

Rielk held up a placatory hand. “Try it for a year or two,” he said. “Unlike me, you can always swap back if you hate it. Meanwhile, Helen can be Paul and do ‘alpha male’ things in the boardroom – and Paul can he Helen and can pop out some babies.”

I stared at him, not trusting myself to speak. Rielk had saved Helen’s life, once, when I thought I was certain to lose her. Now it seemed that he was offering us a chance to have a family and I didn’t know what to say.

His (her) face was as immobile as ever, but I could sense the benevolent smile, just the same.

“You and I are gonna have to see if being a female has its compensations,” the alien told me.

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2,800 words © Bryony Marsh, 2023

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