Human by Choice Read online

  It was fascinating to watch. Some of the terminal tentacles divided again and again, becoming smaller and smaller in the process until I could no longer see them, but I suspected they had become microscopic in size and were delving into the very body of the motionless creature. Before long, the exploratory tentacle appeared to be satisfied with all but the missing portion of the alien's legs. It bifurcated and each part settled over a limb, with the smaller parts of it making a mesh over where its legs had been caught in the wreckage and inadvertently dissolved along with the rest of its craft. I thought the tentacle from the box must be starting a healing process. In time, I was proven correct, for the feet were slowly reconstituted, growing back into six slim toes forward and two larger ones at what would be the heel in a human. Those folded back under as if designed for that position while at rest, sort of like the arm had folded against my chest while carrying it in.

  A tingling in my feet brought me back to reality. I glanced at my watch and was startled to see that almost an hour had passed since I heard the noise of the spacecraft hitting the earth outside the house. After hauling its passenger inside, I had been standing all that time as if mesmerized, and in a sense I suppose I was. I had bought the house out in the country, barely in range of even the local electric co-op, in order to get away by myself for a while. Then to have something like this interrupt my solitude—well, it was more than ironic; it was the height of absurdity, and I guess that's how I reacted.

  After the death of Lyle, my twin brother, I lost my wife Gwen, the only woman I've ever truly loved. I found that I was having all kinds of problems adjusting to life without her. My intent had been to take a year's sabbatical from research and writing and live alone, where I could drag my soul out in the open and examine it. There was just all sorts of touch feel shit that I felt I needed to figure out or wad up into a tight ball and bury it away, never to think of it again. I wanted to find out whether a life without Gwen and my brother was even worthwhile. Gwen's death had come while I was still grieving over the loss of Lyle. We had been close, as only identical twins can really appreciate, and his illness had been hard to take. He died slowly, in great pain, from some kind of incurable tropical disease he caught on a trip to Africa. He suffered and cried for six long weeks while it ravaged his body, and I cried with him. Toward the end, he begged me to help him end it and I did, with Gwen's support and without consulting anyone else.

  After losing the only two people in the world I loved deeply and without reservations to an uncaring universe, I had to get away, from everybody. Everybody. I wanted to think deeply on this and other matters, like where humanity was going with its burgeoning, ever-expanding technology that was growing at almost logarithmic rates but still couldn't stop a microbial onslaught to my womb-mate. I was questioning life and hating life and even wondering whether all of humanity even had much of a future. And if it did, was it one that I cared to be part of? The conflicts of the world were almost more than I could even consider at that point in my life. My mental and emotional state was a total wreck. I was, plainly put, a mess.

  But in order to avoid thinking about the picture that really mattered then, namely me, I avoided it by thinking and worrying about more global issues enveloping humanity. What could I do about it, anyway, and did I care to, if I could? It appeared to me that the conflict between fundamentalist and secular Islamic practices was going to be decided in the fundamentalists’ favor. I could see that coming as plainly as any good historian, even if our leaders seemed blind to the fact. And in opposition, hard-core Christianity was seeing a revival to brighten the hearts of any suspenders-snapping Baptist preacher or Pentecostal dogmatist. Even the Catholics, and Hindus with their pantheon of Gods, were falling prey to evangelical moralizing.

  The isolation I'd sought had barely begun, less than two months ago, but I thought I might be coming to terms with my present life sooner than I'd imagined, although it was by no means certain yet. It was Gwen's loss that was so brutal to my sense of well-being and happiness. I'm not much of a socializer and certainly had never thought anyone as lovely and intelligent as she would ever look my way, but she did—and my real life started then, as if I had been only partially existing before meeting her. She made me happier than I ever thought possible. Just being in her presence was a continuing delight. I don't know to this day how I ever got through that awful night when a police officer showed up at the door and told me Gwen was dead, the victim of a drunk driver. I saw the world through a haze of grief and unutterable loneliness after that until I finally exiled myself to the country, hoping I could somehow use the isolation to get my life back on track. And now this.

  I thought about a drink but decided to keep my mind clear and set some coffee to brew. While it was dripping, I began pacing the confines of the big living room, loosening up my cramped leg muscles and aching hip and feet and trying to decide what I should do. With every circuit around the room that went past the bar separating the kitchen from the rest of the room, behind the two easy chairs and back again, I glanced at the alien still lying quietly on the couch. Apparently the healing process was nearly complete. The leg with the least damage was already back to normal and the amputated leg had grown back. The stump where long flexible toes with what looked like sheathed claws should be was beginning to sprout buds front and back.

  I poured coffee and sat down in one of the easy chairs where I could watch my uninvited guest and sipped the hot brew, trying to decide what to do. Should I call the authorities and report it? That's what most people would think of doing, I knew, but I also knew what would happen should I make that call. The alien and its two boxy possessions would be spirited away by either the military or some security arm of the government and never heard from again. In fact, as I considered my options, I decided there was a good chance I would be taken away as well, and stuck in some out-of-the-way place the rest of my life. Some of the agencies might even think it safer to simply have me eliminated and be done with it. The terrorist mania was causing congress to pass outlandish laws governing homeland security and the Supreme Court wasn't objecting very strenuously. But suppose the wounded craft had been tracked to earth? I thought about that possibility for a moment, then decided it hadn't been; otherwise, helicopters and patrol cars and men in black suits would probably already be swarming around, taking control and enjoining me to silence at the least, and wiping me from the face of the earth at worst. No, I wasn't going to call anyone, especially as the alien's equipment appeared to be taking adequate care of it. Once it awakened, if it wanted to apply the age-old cliché “Take me to your leader,” then I'd help it do so, but only after warning it of the probable consequences—assuming we were eventually able to communicate with each other, of course.

  On the other hand, it was possible the descending craft had been detected and even now the government was cordoning off the area before moving in. The thought bothered me. I voiced the big screen on the wall into action. It was already set to a news channel. I watched for a few moments, especially the scrolling text along the bottom of the screen but nothing untoward appeared to have happened. Just to be sure, I went to a news search and tried several different combinations of wording to see if a meteor or crash of an aircraft or anything at all resembling what actually had happened was being reported. I found a couple of suspicious sources but after going back for some in-depth reporting found that they were all innocuous happenings, easily explained. Then I got smart and changed channels to one I liked to peruse in idle moments, Strange Events. And there I did find two items. First was a report of some sort of unexplained astronomical event that was ‘being studied'. The other item told of an area in Scotland that had been cordoned off and where a news blackout had been put into effect. I got a satellite view but the area was covered with clouds and neither infrared nor other wavelengths told me anything new, except that what looked to be a large tent had been erected near the center of the excluded area.

  I found a couple of other places where s
ome incident had triggered the Strange Events monitor but I couldn't find out much more than I had from the first one. And right then it hit me, and damn my stupid mind for not thinking of it earlier. Maybe I should have had a stiff drink right off and got some of my brighter neurons to functioning. My God! Have more than one of these spacecraft come down? Were we being invaded and had the vessel that landed in my yard simply malfunctioned? No, that didn't make sense. An invasion wouldn't start this way, not the kind we'd been envisioning in literature and movies ever since H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was published, well over a hundred years ago. But if there was more than one ... hell, I just didn't know. Better to wait until I had more data before getting into wild speculation. Gwen used to tell me I had thought patterns resembling a drunk physicist when I got going good.

  I got up again and resumed pacing, unbearably anxious for the rejuvenation process the alien was undergoing to be finished. Absent-mindedly, I began straightening the room here and there, then sat down to go through yesterday evening's mail. I had left it lying on the kitchen table where I usually sorted it before taking anything important into the room I was beginning to turn into an office. Halfway through the stack of mostly junk, I found my own face staring back at me from the cover of a trade journal. It looked as if the picture had been touched up a bit. I had more gray in my dark brown hair than that and the scar above my right eyebrow had been smoothed over. The end result made me look almost handsome except that I was a little thinner now than when the photo had been taken, making my high cheekbones inherited from a Cherokee ancestor visible. Beneath the photo was a caption: Kyle Leverson, Making Science Intelligible.

  I had one of those odd professions that pays well but that hardly anyone knows anything about, or has even heard of in most cases. I've been freelancing for years, taking science articles and rewording them into intelligible English. You'd be surprised at the number of high grade geniuses in the science fields who can hardly tell a verb from a vampire and need people like me to rewrite their papers for them. That means I have to do a lot of research, keeping up with the latest in studies in such diverse fields as amoebic diseases and how atmospheres form on other planets and so forth, but I've always been a science bug anyway, so that was no hardship. That doesn't mean I'm an expert in any of the professions like zoology or molecular biology or genetics or particle physics and the like—just that I know enough about them, or can find out enough, to transcribe the authors’ gibberish into something readable by their peers. I also was well known (in professional circles) as a pretty fair science writer for the masses: everything from Sunday supplement type articles to more serious ones in national magazines and on the internet. With my disability income from the army, the result of gunshot wounds to the shoulder and hip, and what I earned freelancing, plus the payoff from the insurance company of the drunken driver that killed Gwen, I was very well off economically. I still got the pension even though the old wounds didn't bother me too much now, so long as I was very careful and assiduous with my non-impact exercise programs. The only thing I had regrets about is that I could no longer practice karate. It was just too much for the mess the bullets made of my shoulder and hip.

  I had just finished another circuit and was pouring a second cup of coffee when I heard a noise over the newscast I had left on. I turned around and the alien creature's eyes were no longer covered by that membrane; their bisected orbs were clearly turned in my direction. An old soldier's instinct washed over me for a fleeting second, an impulse making me want to run for my pistol.

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  Chapter Two

  What do you do in a situation that no human has ever experienced before? I sure as hell didn't know, but while I stood there like a dunce, the alien moved its upper trunk and switched its gaze toward the big screen on the wall. There was no possible way to gauge its reaction. All I could do was try to picture how a human from another epoch might act in a similar situation, say like a Cro-Magnon with a time traveler dropped in front of its cave, and even then the circumstances could only be remotely compared. They would at least have their humanity in common, while we were two wildly different species. I might have been nothing more than technologically advanced kibble to this thing.

  Luckily for me, the alien took charge. It levered itself upright and leaned against the cushioned backrest of the couch. Its gaze left the screen and traversed the room in a slow arc, as if studying each object in the room—including me, for that's where its eyes rested after the circuit around the room. Only momentarily though, for then it pointed one of its fingers—it had six on each hand, along with two opposable thumbs—and the box sitting on the floor opened just as it had done earlier, prior to the healing of the amputated foot. The gun idea was still twitching at the back of my mind as an inch-thick fiber uncoiled from the depths of the box. The fiber was topped by a small globe no more than a couple of inches in diameter. Evidently it was some kind of interpretive device, for the alien began speaking to it and it answered, but in a gabble that made no sense at all to me.

  This went on for several moments while I brought my fresh coffee over to the easy chair and set it on the side table. I started to sit down but then wondered if my alien guest might be hungry or thirsty. I went over to the refrigerator and poured a glass of cold water. Very slowly, so as not to alarm it, I crossed the room and held out the glass.

  There was no hesitation on its part. It took the glass and raised it to the lipless, bifurcated mouth. A tongue as pink as my own lapped at the water at first, then somehow formed a tube and suctioned the rest of it up. It held out the glass to me, a clear signal that it wanted more. I set the glass on the coffee table and fetched the water pitcher. I demonstrated how to pour, probably an unnecessary gesture. I watched as it drank almost the whole pitcher of water. After that it placed its mouth over the globe at the end of the upright fiber that had risen from the box. It made swallowing motions, leading me to think it was probably taking in some nourishment, or possibly medicine. When it seemed to be satisfied, I decided to get busy.

  “Kyle,” I said, touching my chest like Tarzan as I uttered my name.

  It repeated my action and said, “Cresperian,” speaking slowly. If it had said, “Take me to your leader” instead, I would have headed for the nearest funny farm and checked myself in faster than a cat having sex. At that point a piece of useless knowledge popped into my head about tomcats. I was lost on the thought that a tomcat has barbs on its penis and ejaculates in less than ten seconds. Then I cringed, thinking about the sight of a poor pussycat being mounted. I've got more useless facts like that running around in my mind than are in Wikipedia. Gwen used to show me off at parties, having people ask me odd questions, the odder the better. Sometimes stress causes nonsense like that to just pop to the front of my brain. Perhaps I developed it early on as some sort of coping mechanism to make up for being shy.

  “Kyle.” The alien snapped me out of my wandering trivial pursuit by pointing in my direction and repeating my name.

  I didn't intend to try putting over the fact that humans usually went by two, and sometimes three names, but even so I confused it. By the time I realized it was speaking of species while I had given my individual name, it took several minutes and finally showing it a picture of a crowd before it got the idea. After that the session went easier, even though I learned later that they had no permanent names of their own, but changed their designation as they changed professions or specialties. Nevertheless, we began making rapid progress, I by talking and demonstrating, and it by what turned out to be an eidetic memory and use of its boxed assistant that seemed to have as many functions as the contents of a woman's handbag, maybe more.

  Time passed and eventually I played out, while it appeared content to continue the language and culture lessons indefinitely. It was midnight by then. We hadn't gotten around to discussing sleep but I was really feeling the need. Finally I hit on a bright idea. I had already managed to explain t
he idea of what a computer was, so I showed it the basics on my spare (not being willing to risk a neophyte with the main one). It caught on quickly, and we had already gone over the association between words and the text in books. I left it with a dictionary, a connection to one of the simpler encyclopedias on the net and a general science site to play with, and Google, and then I pointed out the bathroom in case it had needs along those lines. I lay down on the couch, instead of my bed, to sleep. I wanted be nearby in case it needed me.

  For the time being I was calling it Jerry, for no particular reason other than it sounded like the first couple of syllables of what it gave as its designation when we decided it needed a name in English, and it seemed satisfied with the shortened form. After I'd sleepily watched Jerry for a while, I thought he could navigate by himself (herself? We hadn't gotten into that yet, but I decided on him for the time being) and closed my eyes at last. Just as I was dozing off I heard a cat “raoow” out behind the shed, causing me to dream of an alien tomcat mounting a poor little kitty.

  * * * *

  A sunbeam making its way through the shade of the big pines around the house woke me well after sunrise the second day after the alien's arrival. Jerry was still at it, apparently as happy with what I had given him to play with as a pup with a roomful of squeaky toys, and to all appearances he had been busy the whole time I slept, breaking only once to engage me in conversation when I woke up for an hour. Occasionally while I was awake, I saw him take a drink of water or sustenance from the case still sitting on the floor, which I had concluded must be the lifeboat survival kit. When he heard me yawn and sit up, he turned around.