Redshift Part 6

"I don't know, I just don't know. I think maybe we believed that it would all be, well, over sooner. I mean, who could have imagined, years without other people, without civilization.

How long until we get our lives back?" A smacking sound against wood. Then his mother's voice.

"Honey, it's not that simple. How long until we figure them out? I know the situation is strange. Yes, it's lonely out here. And Tommy. I admit he's not what we would have expected.

What we might have wanted. But this is what we got, and the Froggies need us. They were just living, going about their business; they didn't invite us down for a visit. We're the ones who decided to invade their home. It's not like Tommy got a vote, is it? G.o.d, Dave, too bad you had to marry a xenoanthropologist!"

Tommy hated the hysterical note in her voice. He didn't understand what they had said, but he knew it was about him and that his father was still mad at him. But Mommy wasn't making it better, she wasn't making Daddy laugh and calling Tommy to start a game of hop-and-catch. He decided he didn't want to hear any more. He hopped morosely back to his room and crawled into bed.

Soft. Warm. Deep, buried safe. Rubbing skin against skin, neighbor bristles poking his tender underbelly flesh, ow. Poke, poke, squirm, nestle down, deeper. Push aside slippery limbs, slide over brother-backs and sister-backs, around and through the tangle of skin and bristles. He breathes in gingery musk of contentment and peppery hunger, finally food-smell, he burrows inward to the source. Gleaming warmth in the center of the depression, it smells of wet and orange. He bites, sucks, ah.

Sunday morning, when he came downstairs for breakfast, his father was gone. "Daddy had to go away for a little while, he needs to get important things for us," his mother said. "I've got to talk to Amanda and Gillian today; they're coming over for lunch. You can play with little Heather and Erin. But no digging in the garden, you hear me? Your father was quite upset about the damage to his plants. You know how hard-" She stopped talking and started rubbing hisback. "-I guess we didn't tell you about it, did we? Those plants Daddy made, they're special.

He's been studying Minervan biochemistry for six years now, and he thinks he's starting to recognize which protein sequences control the regeneration functions. Do you remember when we talked about biochemistry?"

Tommy wrinkled his nose. He really liked it when his mother talked with him about science-things, because she got so serious and excited, both at the same time. He didn't know what any of the words meant, but just a few months ago he'd figured out that if he nodded his head up and down and said, "How does it work?" every time she paused, she would keep talking for a long time. So he said, "Yes, I remember," and she kept talking, words that sounded fun on the tongue, like multicellular and unprecedented and embryonic and miraculous. That last one was particularly juicy. "Mommy, how does miraculous work?"

Her delighted laughter washed over him, and he rolled over onto her legs, reaching up to tickle her ribs with his midhands. "Where did your midhands go, Mommy? Did you lose them when you were little? Will something happen to mine?"

"Shh, you'll learn all about it when you're older." He didn't know why she sounded so sad, but she sent him off to study before Heather and Erin came over. He went to his room obediently, but he couldn't concentrate. Those dreams, they were so yummy, but so strange.

Everything was different in the dreams. When he heard the rumbling of a land-rover through the trees, he hopped down quickly, running to meet his friends.

Heather and Erin hooted out greetings as they bounded to meet him. "h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, no school today, yippee, yea!" "Let's go digging, Tommy-Tom, digging, dig, yea!" Erin pounced, and landing on his back, grabbed his ears. "Ride 'em cowboy," she squealed. He could smell her excitement, and reaching back a midhand, he snagged her foot to flip her off him. He got her wrestled to the ground, but then Heather landed on his head, covering his ears and nose with her tummy. Unable to hear or smell, he kicked his legs in the air helplessly while the girls tickled him. Trying to squirm out of Heather's grasp, he suddenly remembered that dream last night. He bucked his legs until he was free, and grabbed each of them by their upperhands.

"Hey, you guys ever, you know, dream? Like, like this? Us, touching, food-smells?" He trailed off uncertainly. Heather smelled like confusion, but Erin rumbled with impatience.

"Who has time for dreams, let's dig us a nest!" and she bounded away.

"No, no no no no no!" Tommy hopped frantically after her. "No digging, Daddy says no!" He quivered, worrying she'd already started making holes. Maybe she was hurting one of the bushes right now.

"Erin, stay away from the p.r.i.c.kly-bushes. They're special, Mommy says special, be careful!" He caught up to her, sighing when he realized she was still poking around the underbrush, looking for a nice spot to dig.

"Hey, lookee here, Heather-Tommy started a nice hole, feel the soft squishy dirt right here."

"No, Erin! Daddy filled it in, he says no more digging. C'mon, let's go exploring." He had to distract her, and he knew she wouldn't be able to resist a challenge. "I found a bush I couldn't crawl through, follow me, I bet you can't get through it either."

He led the girls into the forest, away from Daddy's bushes, to the funny hard bushes he'd found last week. The branches of these bushes all ran into each other, as high as he could reach, and never had any break in them.

The three children pushed into the branches, squirming their arms into the tiny holes, but thestrange branches held firm. Heather tried digging under the bush, but she couldn't find any roots, just dirt so hard they couldn't break it up.

Erin tried to jump over, but it was too high.

Tommy scrambled up and down the branches. "Erin, Heather, try this, it's fun." They played, running all over the wide flat surface, up, down, around. But when they climbed too high, the upper branches were too sharp to touch.

"Ow." Erin discovered that the hard way. And they couldn't swing properly, like they did from regular trees, moving through the forest without ever touching the ground. The branches didn't sway and bend, or extend toward the other trees.

They decided to go home and tell their mothers about the fantastic plant, so monstrous big and tough. But when they got back to Tommy's home, their mothers were busy talking, didn't want to listen to the kids.

"Erin, sweetie," her mother said, "don't worry about the funny bushes. Why don't you go get a snack in the kitchen? I bet Tommy's mommy has cookies."

That night, Dave returned from his supply run. Jo-ann stroked the bright fabrics, the rich yellows and orangey-reds that didn't exist in Minervan nature. They watched the sun set, lilac in a pistachio sky. While they sorted out clothes for Amanda and Gillian, Jo-ann told her husband that the children had discovered the fence around the compound. "I think they know something is wrong."

"They'll be asking hard questions soon. It won't be much longer now," he said. "And the pressure is coming from the other side as well. When I was Out There, I saw the flashes of incoming ships breaking hy-pers.p.a.ce. Big flashes, probably heavy-duty cargo haulers."

"G.o.d, they're stepping up the schedule. How much time do you think we have?" She couldn't seem to stop chewing on the edge of her finger.

"It can't be soon enough. I want to get back to civilization. Don't you?"

"Dammit, don't you care what happens to them? This has to work."

Tears ran down her face. 'You know how much the children, the Froggies need us."

Dave put his arm around her, pressing into the knot of tension in her shoulder. "I know, honey, but I want my life back. Why do we have to give up so much for them when they won't even admit we're here? Sometimes I hate them."

She jerked out of his embrace, stood rigid facing away from him. "Don't ever say that!

They're the victims. You can't forget that. We have to fight for them, whatever it takes. They deserve to get their planet back!"

"Even if they don't know we've taken it?"

"Even then." She couldn't make herself turn around.

Dave didn't say anything more.

One year later "Mommy, Mommy, I had the strangest dream last night. You were in it, and I was in it, and Erin and Heather, but we were big, bigger'n you, and the smells, I never breathed such smells before, excitement, and something spicy, strong, kinda scary, we were pressing in, pushing into you, and you were scared, you got smaller and we were pushing you between us, andsomebody was angry, someone different, with a big nimbly voice like Heather but more, stronger I think. I didn't like it, Mommy!" He wrapped all six limbs around her and squeezed, first the right three, then the left, right, left, rocking her in his distress.

Jo-ann tried not to panic at being enveloped. A hug that had had a certain weird charm when he had been less than three feet tall felt different now that he'd grown so much. She stroked his back, murmured, "There, there, it's okay."

Then his words registered. "Honey, what did you just say? What was the nimbly voice like?

Was it Heather?"

"No, I said, bigger, stronger."

"Like Daddy?"

"No, like us kids, we all sound different from you, you know, squeaky and deep, with the undersounds and the oversounds you can't hear. But different from us, too. Like, more, more tones. You know, like all three of us at once. But one person. I don't know . . ." His voice trailed off, uncertain. She rocked him sideways, smoothing down his bristled mane, thinking furiously. "Honey, I'm just going to call Heather's mommy, I'll be right back. Would you like it if Heather came over today?"

Jo-ann slipped into her office, making sure the door was closed before she activated Amanda's monitor.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Amanda, you're not going to believe this! It's incredible, this is it, what we never understood, it's dreams! They talk in their dreams! Quick, get Heather, bring her over to my place, I'll call Gillian and get them here, too; we've got to find out what they've been dreaming." Jo-ann rocked back and forth on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, talking way too fast.

"Whoa, Jo-ann, slow down, will you? What're you talking about, dreams?"

"Has Heather mentioned any of her dreams to you? Ever, anything? Like, about the Froggies." Jo-ann found herself whispering the last word, and looked guiltily over her shoulder.

"No, I don't think so. You know, Jo-ann, it's something we try not to discuss. In fact, if you recall, we agreed to steer our exercises and games away from any mention of, um, well, them. I still can't believe we've kept the charade going as long as we have. Sometimes, after Heather has been sitting near me, touching my skin, I see her stroking her own skin, stroking the smoothness. I know she's wondering."

"But the dreams, what about her dreams? Find her now, ask her! They're talking to the children in their dreams! Tommy just told me about a "big" voice, a mult.i.tonal voice, with subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies."

"I don't know, that could be some kind of racial memory. We still don't have any idea how their minds work. It's a G.o.ddam miracle that they're prewired for verbal language acquisition.

The Froggies never seem to 'talk' to each other, and they sure as h.e.l.l don't listen to us!"

"But wait, I didn't tell you the rest of his dream. Tommy said there were three of them, bigger than me, surrounding me, pushing me. Me! That's no racial memory."

"I don't know." Jo-ann could hear the doubt in Amanda's voice. "Maybe he's got the racial one mixed up with his own experience. You've got to be careful about how you apply ourstandards to them. Haven't you heard of going native?"

They both laughed, a little. We can still laugh, Jo-ann thought. That's something.

"Just get Heather and come on over." Jo-ann breathed deeply against the tension in her chest. She suddenly needed to be done with all the subterfuge and misdirection. Closing her eyes, she tried to relax the tight skin of her face. "We need to be straight with them if we're going to sort this whole mess out. It's time we end the experiment."

When Amanda and Gillian arrived with Heather and Erin in tow, they gathered in Jo-ann's living room. She asked Tommy to tell all of them what he'd just told her. She and Amanda and Gillian watched the two "girls," trying to guess their reactions to Tommy's dream. Six years, and they were still guessing at the body language. Distress was easy, ears flat against their noses. The xenoanthropologists had certainly seen enough of that in the early years. But also sensual pleasure, ears swiveled back, nose flaring, a little rippling along the back where the midhands were joined to the rib cage. And frustration, a curling of the tail along with a sharp scent, something like sun on rotting leaves. They'd had to come up with a whole new vocabulary to describe these things, the smells and the body language. She wondered about the sounds outside human frequencies, but it was too difficult, finding the time to review the recordings, with no idea what she was looking for. So frustrating, n.o.body to talk to, to compare notes with, just each other. Some days Jo-ann longed to let her old thesis advisor in on the secret. He would have such great insight. But she knew better than to entangle him in this crazy scheme of hers.

Heather and Erin were definitely interested in Tommy's dream. Jo-ann was pretty sure she saw recognition in Erin's stance, but Heather was harder to read. Her posture was something Jo-ann hadn't seen before, spine arched to the left, right midhand curved inward to the rib cage, mane bristles fanning outward, throat-sac swelling. Jo-ann wondered whether Amanda might be right, that "Heather" was actually a male.

Jo-ann looked over at Gillian, twitched her shoulder toward Erin.

"Erin, sweetie," Gillian said, "did you ever have a dream like that? This is very important."

"Ye-es," Erin said slowly. "I think so. I'm in the forest, and there's lots of people there. We all smell like this," Jo-ann breathed in, caught a suggestion of cuc.u.mber and tar. Maybe we should kidnap a professional perfume-maker, she thought, squashing an unsteady giggle. But Erin was still talking. "We're in the sunshine, it's very hot, our backs hurt, the echoes between the trees are big, like lots of trees are gone. The ground is hard and lumpy, uneven, deep holes.

But not nests, not soft dirt and smooth walls and level floors. Just holes all hard and twisted, no shade, no resting. Everyone is moving around, making the noises you can't hear. I think they're angry."

Amanda was looking at Gillian's "daughter" with narrowed eyes. Jo-ann saw a slight tremor in her knee; she must realize that the time of the children's innocence was ending. Oh, how I wish we could just tell them about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. She waited for Amanda to look up at her, saw the watery brightness in her eyes, nodded. "Heather, do you dream?"

Amanda asked softly, blinking. Heather turned her head between Erin and Tommy, extending her nose flaps and breathing in the smells of her siblings. She straightened out of her crouch, and she made small curving motions with her mid-hands, as though to gather them in to her. But when Amanda repeated, "Heather, Heather," she swiveled her ears toward her mother.

"No, Mommy, no dreams. Tommy and Erin, they're sad. But it's exciting, too. Mommy, whatare the dreams?" Erin and Tommy came over to her, each extending a midhand to Heather so that the three of them made a chain, facing the women. Jo-ann braced herself.

"Children, we have to tell you something very difficult. This is a sad story, and you aren't going to be very happy with us after we've told you, but it's very important. It's a story where you have an important job to do. So listen carefully. You know we've told you that there are people out in the jungle, people who look different, people who don't talk like we do. But there's more to it." G.o.d help us, there's a lot more to it, Jo-ann thought to herself. "There are people, people like Amanda and Gillian and me and Tommy's dad, only they aren't like us, either. They want to exploit the mineral resources of this planet. Tommy, you remember when we talked about geology, right?"

Jo-ann looked hopefully at Tommy, who whistled his confusion. "Honestly, Jo-ann, you don't think they actually understand all that science you lecture them about, do you? They're only six years old, and we don't even know what that means, really." Gillian stared at the children, tapping her fingers and squinting in concentration. "Let me see," she muttered. "Okay, kids, try this. You know how you like digging those holes, those 'nest' thingies of yours? And you remember how Tommy's dad got mad when you were digging in his yard? See, you wanted nests, but your nests interfered with his plants, so you couldn't have your nests and his plants in the same place. So what did you do about it?"

Erin was focused on Tommy, who had drifted into the corner as Gillian spoke, but Heather answered. "Now we dig in Erin's yard, not anywhere near Uncle Dave's magic plants."

"Exactly!" Jo-ann started to feel hopeful as Amanda took up the thread. "There are two groups of people, and one group wants to let the plants be, and the other group wants to dig up lots of holes. But there's a problem, because they both want to be in the same yard. Do you see?"

Erin finally raised her head. "Why? Can't they just go away? Don't they know they're not wanted?"

Jo-ann shivered as she listened to Erin's words. They might have sounded naive, but there was a quality to her smell that made Jo-ann wary. She wondered whether Erin had made the connection between herself and the Froggies in her "dream." She took a deep breath. This was as good a place to start as any.

"Erin, do you know who it is in your dream? You know, don't you? You know why your mommy and I don't have midhands, why we can't hear all the noises you make." Her mouth was dry, and she had to concentrate not to look over at Tommy. She knew he watched from the corner ears swiveled forward almost touching his nose. She wanted to stroke his back, but she kept her eyes on Erin.

"They're people like me and Tommy and Heather. But not like you. Or you, Mommy. You're not my mommy, are you?"

After a moment, Gillian said, "No, I'm not."

At Gillian's quiet answer, Erin crumpled. She lay curled in a little ball, pressing her upperhands and midhands against the floor, left, then right, then left. Gillian stepped toward her, then hesitated.

The hairs on Jo-ann's arms stood up. She suspected that Erin was making some noise in the ultrasonic. She knew she ought to do something, but for a moment, she just stood there, looking at Tommy.He lay curled in the corner, shivers rippling up and down his spine. He keened in the top of his range, knowing his mother wouldn't hear. He wanted her to hear, but he wanted her to hear him for real, hear the sound he was making now. He didn't want to make her noises, the flat weak noises she made. He wanted her to know his voice, the voice of the people in the dream.

Why couldn't she understand? "You're my mommy," he wailed in that voice, "you have to listen to me. How could you hurt me like this, I want to hurt you, I want you to hurt, too."

Under his keen, he heard Mommy talking to Heather's mommy. 'Yes, yes, of course we could show the board video of them talking. h.e.l.l, we could probably convince them to go and talk to some experts appointed by the board. It would take some prep time, and it sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't be easy, but eventually I'm sure we could convince the board that these three are capable of speech."

Erin's mommy said something, but he didn't care. He rocked himself back and forth. He tried to stop keening, but he couldn't. Mommy not Mommy? He couldn't think. He kept rocking, hoping it would all stop. But Mommy was still talking, and everything stayed the same.

"The Hugonaut Corporation will argue that Froggie society is pre-verbal, that although they bear the capacity for speech in their vocal cords, they have not yet developed a language. No language, no sentience. That argument won last time, and it will win again. And they'll make the kids out to be circus freaks. While they're still this young, and so confused about their ident.i.ty, they won't make the most convincing amba.s.sadors. No, Gillian, in order to get those d.a.m.n miners off the planet, we have to prove communication among the Froggies. Dream communication. And for that..."

"We need the children," finished Gillian reluctantly.

The girls lay huddled in little b.a.l.l.s. Amanda crouched next to Heather, talking urgently.

Heather's throat-sac vibrated-she was probably rumbling in the subsonic. Gillian rocked with Erin, rubbing her head along the side of Erin's jaw. Jo-ann wasn't sure if Erin was responding to the touch.

After an eternity, Tommy's quiet drew her to him. She breathed, trying to slow her heartbeat, and looked into the corner. He was huddled in on himself, ears completely flat alongside his nose, everything tucked under.

"Tommy, come here. Honey, I'm sorry." She reached out, hesitated, touched his head, stroked his back. She picked him up, like she used to when he was little, and carried him outside. They sat in the garden for a while, Tommy on her lap. Dave came out and sat down next to them.

"Why, Mommy? Oh, not-Mommy. Not. Why do I live here if you're not my Mommy?"

Always before, she knew the words to answer his questions. But not this time.

"We came here, before you were born, Tommy. Me and Amanda. Daddy was here already, studying the plants, so Amanda and I came to meet the Froggies."

"What is Froggy?"

"People like you and Heather and Erin. Lots of them, all over the planet. But they wouldn't talk to us. I tried and tried. Amanda tried, and Paul, people you never even met. No matter what we did, they just ignored us." The years-old frustration choked in her throat.

"Froggies?" At least he had stopped rocking, and his ears were starting to swivel back."Yes, like you but bigger."

"Not like you?" The ears rotated forward, hovered just over his nose.

"No. Not like me at all."

"You mean, I have another mommy somewhere? A real mommy? Where? Tell me where!"

He squirmed out of her lap and hopped in place, little hops that barely disturbed the dirt.

She felt the crushing weight of his hope as he stumbled back into her lap. "I don't know, exactly."

"Didn't you meet her?"

"No, I, um, didn't."