"Pack," Jamie repeated. "What, are they sending us home in that thing?"
I furrowed my brow. "Why would they do it this way? I mean, granted, our ship is a little...busted up, but you'd think they'd just, you know, fix it and send us on our way, right? It's not like the earth is that far away..."
She looked unconvinced. "Maybe they just want to give us a choice on where we get dropped off."
Gertie had the look of someone waiting in line for a popular new movie they'd never heard of. "We should ask them to drop us off in Thighland. I've never been there."
"It's Thailand, Gertie," Jamie corrected. "And it's probably not a good idea for us to visit populated areas, especially ones that might not be a democracy. In the South Pacific, though, it would be warm all the time. We could go swimming..."
"Again with the S.S. Minnow!" I mockingly whistled the opening bars to the show.
"But what about hurricanes? Or volcanoes?"
"Gertie, don't be a party pooper. I'm sure it'll be perfectly safe."
The look on my sister's face disagreed.
I crossed my arms. "C'mon, guys. We don't even know where we're going yet. Let's just get our things together."
Jamie peered through a hatch. "It looks like a greenhouse in here!"
"You probably shouldn't go in there yet," I warned. "They might get the wrong idea and take off."
"You think they'd...just do that? Without you?"
"I...dunno. It looks like there's other ships."
Jamie quickly stepped back. "Guess we'll be seeing the inside soon enough anyway, right?"
We walked back up the path at an awkward pace. The excitement of a new adventure made us hurry, but the uncertainty, doubt and dread of being placed somewhere where a government could lock us up forever made us lag and slow down.
The other aliens awaited us at our vehicle. One took initiative, floating our food basket down the trail.
Colzest offered me the ear snail. I put it in.
We are sorry we treated you shamefully, he said with gurgling sounds. His companions bowed their heads in agreement.
We have seen how your species behaves toward nature, and each other. Your people have sciences devoted to murder. You imprison animals in large buildings and slaughter them by the million. Worse, you have created atomic weaponry and biological agents for the purpose of destroying each other. We did not want to allow any of that violence or aggressiveness to travel to Jufuceri.
"What did it just say?" Jamie asked me.
"They're...saying...we're violent, and they wanted to see if...we'd attack if provoked?"
"Can't say I wasn't thinking about it..."
"I was only thinking about running away," Gertie pouted.
Jamie rolled her eyes. "That explains so much!"
Please understand that we did not enjoy abusing you. Oznobli's shoulders sagged. By doing this, we ourselves have become diminished. We just feared that, if sufficiently provoked, perhaps even by words, you would lash out against us with violence.
We should not have thrown rocks and soil at you. In doing so, we prompted you to fight. Urdorla looked sad. We do not deserve to return home.
We read your dreams while you were sleeping. You enjoy violent `entertainments.' Soldiers and A-Teams that do hurtings and karates, and make large booms with weapons, or vampires and scary monsters that kill. Oznobli pantomimed stabbing with a knife.
Colzest nodded. You failed the test. But we realized that this is not your fault. You are still young. You merely need to be taught that there are alternatives. Tolmina and Rilquza are wise beyond their years. They will teach you Vuxbapi, the way.
My eyes widened in shock. "You mean we're actually going to Jufuceri?"
Urdola bowed her head. You risked life and limb to save Vorxora. This is the least we can do.
Colzest's expression turned grave. You are no longer safe among your people. It saddens us to further separate you from your family, but we do not know how else to help you. I need not remind you that Vorxora nearly died last time he encountered your people. Our powers are just not as strong on your world. Something is wrong with the air...
Jamie didn't catch a bit of that. "What did they say now?"
"...They say they're sorry we can't be with our families, but they can't stop those people who are after us. There's...too much pollution or something."
We stuffed our things into backpacks, clothes, the flashlight, Gertie's tape deck...`toiletries'...we hadn't brought that many things, and since our food had gone missing, even less than that. I frowned at our homemade oxygen scrubber. "You think we should bring that stuff along too?"
Jamie put her hands on her hips. "Why? These guys obviously breathe the same stuff we do."
"Yeah, but, I dunno...What if we run into some kind of situation—"
"Okay, so take them..." To herself she muttered, "I would have liked to take more clothes..."
With the backpack slung over my shoulder, I lugged my aquarium down to the aliens' ship.
Tolmina stared. That's a nice plant sample you have there. What are all those objects you've stuck to it?
"Breathing equipment."
She scratched her head. Did you intend to explore the volcanic rift? If so, I am...not certain your equipment is adequate for the task...
I sighed. "You're right. I don't know what I'm doing. I'll take it back."
No. Please bring it along. It is a curious artifact. The method of manufacture is fascinating, and the plants seem to be well maintained. They could be an important food source for you, and our researchers will enjoy the sample.
I gave her an incredulous look, but went ahead and brought it into the craft.
The ship did resemble a greenhouse.
The entire vehicle had been built around a large tree, peppered with consoles of glowing crystals and glass mushrooms. In a fashion similar to `Sukkot', food bearing plants covered much of the walls and ceiling. A big large window, invisible from the exterior, looked out from the cockpit. Red octopus sucker buttons framed a hexagonal computer screen.
I expected an alien spacecraft to have a lot of metal in it, but like ET's ship in my vision, the bulkheads on this one consisted of glowing, pulsating plant matter, broken up here and there by smooth divider sections reminiscent of the interior of a pumpkin seed. The floor itself had the texture of the meat you get after scraping the guts out of a pumpkin.
I nearly tripped over a soup can.
The aliens had stockpiled our missing food supplies around the entry hatch. I guess they hadn't been sure where we wanted to store them. Even if we ran out of the aliens' crops, we'd have the food situation covered.
"Their computer looks like a pizza," Jamie joked as she climbed aboard with the scuba tank. She glanced down. "So that's where they took our stuff!"
"What are you doing with that?" Tolmina asked when I brought in the diapers. Once I explained their function, she laughed and showed me the ship's toilet.
"Great! I was hoping we wouldn't need them."
It didn't take us long to pack what remained of our material possessions.
I didn't know my sickly flower counted as such until Oznobli floated it up to me. Someone had dug up and potted the pathetic thing I'd tended. "Care."
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed it.
The aliens brought Jamie and Gertie their plants as well.
We said our goodbyes to the aliens. I and Jamie just kinda shook hands with them, gave them a deep nod, sort of like a bow of respect, but Gertie was a hugger. You may wonder how someone who got pelted with rocks could hug her attackers, but when she hugged them, I could hear her mutter, "I understand now. You really didn't like what you had to do. We can still be friends," things like that.
Her actions prompted the other aliens to give me and Jamie hugs, or touch glowing hands to our faces in a gesture of affection.
A crew had already been assigned for us: Rilquza, Colzest and Tolmina. Rilquza and Tolmina took command chairs at the front computer, directing us to sit in the organic moon chairs behind them. Colzest, in the meantime, occupied himself with crystals around the tree.
It seemed we had another companion for this journey. As the ship's hatch closed, the strange fish thing came flying in.
"Charlie!"
The creature nuzzled my sister, settling into her lap.
The aliens activated the hexagonal screen with their minds, displaying symbols I, Jamie and my sister had become thoroughly familiar with during the construction of the thunder road.
Other than a slight hum at ignition, the ship made no sound as it slowly rose into the air, flying out of their `vehicle bay' and into the jungle. Outside the window, the other Qulpari waved to us, some smiling, a few even appearing to cry.
'You think they're happy to see us go?" Jamie asked.
Gertie shook her head. "I think some of them smile because they know we'll always be in their heart."
"I saw Tolmina doing that fingertip thing with Urdora and Ozgoblin. You think they're related?"
"I don't know."
Tolmina turned around in his seat. "Oznobli and Urdorla and Niztogi my Kemreb." She touched her chest.
I nodded. "Oh! Family."
"No, no, not family. Kemreb."
"Okay, fine. Kemreb." I said this only to humor her. To Jamie, I muttered, "Kemreb is family."
"Yes," Tolmina agreed. "But it is not always."
We just had to scratch our heads about that one.
As the alien ship passed through the iris hatch, entering the outer cave that served as their airlock, we took one last wistful look at the Thunder Road, our little piece of history, and home.
The second iris opened. Our vehicle shot out of the darkened crater, into space.
"I can't believe it," Jamie breathed. "We're actually doing this."
Gertie tapped the shell on my ear. "You didn't give it back."
"No one said I couldn't keep it. I might need it later."
It is yours, Colzest said. Few of our kind can speak your language.
My sister looked at it eagerly. "Can I wear it?"
Jamie grimaced. "That's gross."
"What? It cleans out your ears..."
As if understanding, the Jandaga bit me. I coaxed it out of my auditory canal, handing it over.
Gertie stuck the creature in her ear. "When are we going to see Mars?"
All I heard was a gargling sound. "What did he say?"
"We're...in the wrong part of the orbit? They say our models are too simple. The planets only...align...once every...five hundred years?"
More gargling sounds.
"She says we might see Saturn and Your Anus."
"It's yoo-ran-us, Gertie," Jamie corrected.
"Yeah...oh, and we'll see the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter."
Charlie flapped himself airborne, perching on Gertie's chair.
"Do you always turn into something like Charlie when you die?" She asked the aliens.
Now I wanted the translator back, or one of my own, because I only got a bunch of noise.
"Well?" Jamie prompted.
"They can only...zaywoj...once in a lifetime...and they need a pool. It's... taken them a long time to grow the right stuff to make the one on the moon work. Zagiwra means 'healing,' I think. Makes sense because the water made my bruises feel better."
"So it's like a Lazarus pit in a comic book."
Gertie asked the aliens if we'd get to meet Yoda or Spock or Chewbacca, but you can guess the answer to that. She might as well have asked to see Cookie Monster or Montgomery Moose from the Get Along Gang.
"Are we going to see anything scary? Like that alium that comes out of people's chests?"
They didn't exactly say no. "They... said not to eat everything you see, or drink water in certain places, and, and... and be careful where you step barefoot."
Jamie furrowed her brow. "I'm not sure they're talking about the same thing. That sounds like what they tell you about parasitic infections."
"The movie was technically about a parasite," I pointed out.
Colzest brought out a beaded sash, giving a long speech in his language. Gertie reacted about the same as if someone had read her a Torah portion.
"What's all that?" I whispered.
She shrugged. "Vuxbapi lessons."
I had placed my flower among the other things along the bulkheads, but now Colzest offered it to me.
"No thanks."
I got gargled at. He pantomimed...stroking the leaves...singing to it.
"Seriously?"
Gertie giggled. "Remember that Sweet Pickles book about the gardener bunny? They thought he was crazy because he played records to his plants, but they grew bigger than the other guy's..."
Jamie was smirking. "I have heard that the vibrations of your voice, and music might affect plants."
Rolling my eyes, I held flower, staring at the petals. "This is ridiculous. It doesn't know anything." Just to humor the alien, I said, "Hi, plant."
Jamie and my sister ended up holding their plants, too. Gertie loved to talk to hers.
Much to me and Jamie's chagrin, the aliens had us babying our plants all the way to our destination.
Gertie grabbed several bananas off the wall, gobbling one after another.
"Keep eating those," Jamie joked. "And you'll start looking like a monkey!"
"Great! I wanna have a tail just like Rilquza. It's so pretty."
Rilquza laughed because the translator was still in.
"How come ET's spaceship looks like a big red Christmas ornament but this one looks like a seed?" Gertie asked.
The aliens' answer: Vorxora's spaceship was designed to transport large plants and animals. Ours was more like a family sedan.
"What's it like on your planet?"
She got a long series of noises in response. The translation, "They...don't have violent...or...aggressive sports. The most popular game is like...golf. They...catch and throw a birdie with a scoop, and run to a base to drop it in...but it's not a base `cause it's got ten holes, and...a skeeball thingy at hole eleven. And there's trivia...And, and, in the market nothing's hom-hom-homo-genized. No cash registers, either."
"Sounds like a flea market," Jamie groaned. "With the barter system."
Gertie seemed a little confused about that too, but the aliens kept talking. "And they have something called a Takofuea, kinda monastery place, except you...crawl through tunnels."
Jamie rolled her eyes. "Whee fun."
"Anyways, they said you won't really get a good picture until you see it yourself."
"How come they don't show us pictures then? I'd like to see this...`game.'"
Gertie asked, and the aliens put on a holographic program where the Qulpari floated in zero gravity, herding color coded animals into corrals. Not the same game.
My sister had dozens more questions. "Is it hot or cold there? Do we need coats? Are there nice places to swim? What kinds of foods do you have? Anything sweet like candy? Do you still have dinosaurs? Is that hologram thing just for sports? Do you have anything like TV? How do you make babies? Do you have any fun holidays? Do you have kings and queens or just a president? Do you have rock stars or movie stars? What kind of animals do you have there? Are any of them really dangerous? Do you have TV shows of your own or do you just watch ours?"
Rilquza chuckled, rattling a response off that seemed shorter than the others, but a little longer than my sister's translation.
"Boy, that was a quick answer for all that!" Jamie remarked.
"He only said I'll find out when we get there."
Gertie asked the aliens what their names meant. It didn't exactly surprise me to find out they all had something to do with plants. They actually had some Tolmin and Colzite growing in a delicately maintained vault near their burial chambers.
"Do you have any bad people?"
The answer: Some, but most they reformed by placing them in the Takofua and teaching them Vuxbapi. Also, translates to `value.'
"What does your God look like? Do you have any pictures of him?"
The aliens answered that their god was not a he or a she, it was an it, and they didn't have a picture because it was unknowable.
Colzest gurgled something to her, apparently a question.
"He looks like an old man, of course. What do you think He's supposed to look like?"
Colzest's noises of response almost sounded offended.
"Well I don't know! It's what I've always been taught."
Tolmina gargled. I asked for a translation.
"Um, I don't know. I guess they're saying we limit the idea of God too much by saying it's male or female? It doesn't have sex feelings...and the important thing is it still loves you very much?"
"Yeah..." Jamie rubbed her chin. "But by calling Him Father, you identify him as family. It's much more personal that way."
Gertie talked to Colzest for a moment.
"He...says it can still be personal, like how you love ET."
That seemed okay with me. "I guess we kinda do that with stepfathers and stepmothers. Sometimes you don't call them mom or dad, but maybe `Joe' or whatever, you know, first name basis."
Jamie crossed her arms. "Except God doesn't have an official name, except maybe I Am."
"Well..."
Our theological discussion got cut short by Vorxora appearing in the middle of the ship. I rushed out of my chair to hug him, but I discovered he was only a hologram.
ET smiled at me. "Elliott!"
"ET! We're coming to see you!...We didn't pass the test, but they're taking us to you anyway."
"Be good," my alien friend answered.
I swallowed. "About that...we accidentally killed one of your friends. I hope you're not mad at us."
He looked like he understood, but then growled something.
"Let me talk to him." Gertie explained the situation in his language. "We didn't mean to kill him. It really was an accident."
Charlie perched on her shoulder, making sounds, but I don't think they were words.
ET looked saddened but gave her a nod, muttering something back.
"He says it's okay. You didn't do the killing from hate."
My girlfriend rushed up to meet him. "I hope you really wanted me to come along, because I'm here."
The wrinkled face did not reflect surprise. "He...loves... you."
Jamie suddenly looked uncomfortable. "So you were playing matchmaker."
ET seemed annoyed, but his response wasn't in English, leaving us confused.
"You didn't have to run away from home," I said.
Her face flushed red. Guess I said the wrong thing.
A plump Qulpari with birthmarks resembling that of a Jack Russell terrier nuzzled its face into ET's neck, muttering something to him.
ET gave me an apologetic smile. "I will see you on Jufuceri."
He gargled something else to Gertie then vanished.
Jamie stared. "He's got a girlfriend?"
"Dunno." My stomach flip flopped at the jumble of emotions I felt. Jealousy, envy of what he had, sadness, but of course I also felt happy for him, glad to see him again, excited about seeing his world. "Guess there's some things we don't know about him...You think that was just his sister?"
"Elliott, I think all this playing pretend family has gotten to you."
`Pretend family.' That hurt, and it took me a moment to even understand why. "If...we're not brother and sister, what are we exactly?"
"Elliott, I never said I didn't love you, even though your alien friend did arrange the whole thing...I don't know, it just feels like I'm in a..." She stopped herself.
"In a what?"
Jamie only shook her head. "Never mind. Can we talk about something else, please?"
I really didn't want to let it go, but Gertie spoke before I could pry any deeper. "The other aliyum just told ET it's his turn to warm the egg."
"See?" Jamie said. "Not his sister."
Gertie seemed unconvinced. "Why do you say that? A boy at my school helps his mom bottle feed his baby brother."
Jamie smirked. "I guess you could have a point. We don't know much about their culture."
Swallowing, she looked me in the eyes like she expected me to say something.
Puzzled, answered with an expression that kinda said `What.'
Jamie blushed and looked away quickly.
I turned my attention to my sister. "Gertie, I heard ET saying something to you before he disappeared. What was it?"
"Nothing," she sighed. "He just said he's sorry I don't have a boyfriend."
We really hadn't gotten a good sleep for several days. When the aliens caught us nodding off, Colzest directed us to some beds below deck. In a zero gravity situation like ours, the Venus flytrap beds actually made sense. Once it closed, you were secure, little chance of getting thrown into anything when the ship accelerated or hit something.
I dreamed I was the moon, and I kept drawing further and further away from the earth and the sun. The Earth's core broke apart, the planet crying and crumbling to pieces.
The sun grew cold and died. Mercury fell away. I awoke from the dream with tears in my eyes.
I got out of bed, climbing into a moon chair up front. Gertie had taken the snail thing with her to bed, probably would have slept with it in, had it not started nipping at her ear canal. I didn't want to wake her, so I sat up with the aliens and tried to figure things out without a translator.
They listened to music, a holographic symphony presentation. One musician played a thing like a Japanese koto, but you blew into it like a bagpipe, another you waved your hands around like a theramin. They used a didgeridoo thing you squeezed accordion-like on the sides, a shō with wiggling tentacles, and an octopus-like pipe organ thing. The leader made a moaning cat sound as he clapped sticks together, all sounding terrible, at least from a human standpoint.
Certain musical phrases got repeated too many times to be pleasant, the long 'rests' made you think they were done playing, and sometimes the notes got held too long or too short. I wondered if someone would soon run their nails across a blackboard to add variety.
"Is someone murdering a cat?" Jamie asked when she joined me at the control pod.
"I think it's music."
Gertie came up to us, the snail thing held in one hand while she rubbed her eyes with the other. "Whatcha doing?"
"Watching the Martian philharmonic," Jamie joked.
My sister must have been pretty tired, for she just accepted the statement at face value. "Oh."
She offered Jamie the snail. "You wanna try using Mr. Q-Tip?"
My girlfriend visibly shuddered. "That's...okay. Give it to Elliott."
"Why? You scared? I tried it and nothing happened to me..."
That didn't change her mind any.
Words like `breakfast,' `lunch' and `dinner' lose meaning when you don't have a clock or the sun. After enduring the aliens' dreadful symphony for what felt like forever, all three of us humans decided we were hungry again...for some meal.
We sat in a little dining area, at a table made of that pumpkin seed substance. The table and mushroom-like chairs grew out of the floor. The table itself didn't stand that tall so we had to squat around it, Chinese style. FYI: Artificial gravity.
The aliens gave us bean burritos. I thought, for a moment, they had given us actual meat, but no.
We argued about it.
"It doesn't taste like a mushroom," Jamie said. "It's definitely meat."
"What? Like fish or something?"
"They never asked us anything about eating fish. Maybe that's okay with them."
"I don't know. I mean, you really think there's a fish that tastes like steak?"
"They do have something called `tuna steak.'"
"That doesn't actually taste like steak, any more than a sea cow would taste like steak."
"Catfish tastes like chicken!" Gertie supplied unhelpfully.
Jamie got so annoyed that she snatched up the snail thing and stuck it in her ear, to ask our hosts directly.
Me and Gertie stared, chuckling a little.
It turns out the Qulpari actually developed a chewy sort of yeast and soy mixture that I couldn't really distinguish from real beef. I guess the consumption of living (or semi-living) microbes didn't offend their consciences that much.
I don't have much of anything else exciting to tell you about the events of the next few hours. It's like a person taking a two day train ride through Russian tundra. You're in a thing, full of strangers, you have very little to talk about, and the scenery doesn't change that much.
As stated previously, not a `fly by' of every planet in the solar system. Like Venus in Earth's night sky, other planets were just little glowing dots in a sea of glowing stars. When the aliens said the tiny glowing things were our planets, we had to take their word for it.
We watched a very long, dry sort of movie about Qulpari farmers. It seemed like something an amateur director would come up with if they had no deadlines, a huge special effects budget and no concept of pacing or editing.
The aliens' cooking proved to be rather hit or miss. They tended to put refried beans and tofu in a lot of stuff. All sugar free.
For our breakfast meal, we had sort of...pies, or empanadas with beans and bits of fruit in them, or tofu and bits of fruit. For liquid refreshment we received bottles of that bitter organic juice stuff. After our `test', none of us complained.
Colzest and Tolmina gave us language lessons, to tell the growling apart from the gargling. The parts of words that required glowing fingers, that would be a little tricky.
On little handheld devices, they showed us some holographic programs about their planet, the animals, plants, and...culture, I guess. We learned some about the language from this too.
They trained giant...pterodactyl things to carry them around and move bushels of produce, winged crocodiles took to the air, dolphins with large dragonfly wings. Dog-like things that inhabited the grasslands, that, when lying down, perfectly camouflaged as an unmowed patch of grass. A bear-like thing resembling the prehistoric Megatherium stalked about, Parasaurolophus with eyestalks splashed in rivers with clusters of tentacles it used in water.
Entertaining, yes, but it's like someone handing you a couple Russian books and a magazine on that very long trip. Your eyes glaze over after awhile and you end up just blankly staring at your weird fellow passengers again.
Colzest used to be a fire fighter for his tribe on Jufuceri. The Neldabax, which translates roughly as `Lifeform Preservation Coalition' came by his village, telling him how they needed help with saving animals from destruction on "Some obscure little planet called earth." They didn't have to ask him twice. He just felt like it needed to be done, so he left his family to do it.
Rilquza, an orphaned egg, had been discovered by Qulpari on the planet Wuxrinus. The aliens incubated and hatched him, so repaid them by volunteering for the Neldabax, ascending the ranks of one of the head positions.
Tolmina, of course, having grown up on the moon, didn't have much of a history. She mentioned that she and the others might have some issues with their muscles and bones under Jufuceri's earth-like gravity.
The ship had some exercise equipment in the lower level. At first I questioned the waste of air, water and such, but the aliens said we shouldn't let our bodies atrophy.
The machines, odd looking all-in-one devices designed to work several muscle groups at once, had height adjustment things on them on account of aliens like Rilquza. The only inconvenient part was the prehensile tail related equipment.
We flew through Mars' asteroid belt. Not quite as exciting as movies depict. The rocks were stretched pretty thin.
Roughly a day later, our pilot roused us out of sleep to show us Saturn. Pretty nice speed, if you think about it. NASA probably would have taken at least a year just to get to Mars, and that's being optimistic.
Our ship passed a few `planetoids' at the known end of our solar system, then a nebula a few hours later. Otherwise we saw a lot of nothing.
Jamie chuckled. "You know, as bad as this is, I'd much rather stare at space than some of the crap they put on daytime TV. I'm never going to miss Arthur." Noting my puzzled look, she added, "The movie about the rich drunk guy."
"Oh. Yeah, that and Dallas."
Me and Jamie were still kind of...working things out, though nonverbally, up until this point. Now, with nothing much to look at but each other, I felt something had to be done to break the long silences. "You...still...have feelings for Roger, don't you? You love him more than me."
"Elliott," she sighed. "Look. I do love you, but you have to realize what we've both given up. There's only going to be you and me for, I don't know, forever? There's no choice anymore, neither one of us can exactly 'play the field'."
The conversation went over Gertie's head. "Why is it going to be just you and him? I want to be there too!"
Jamie rolled her eyes. "We're talking about girlfriend and boyfriend, Gertie."
She still looked worried. "You're... not leaving me behind?"
Me and Jamie both laughed.
"Of course not! We're just—"
My sister's eyes widened. "You're trying to decide if you want to get married!"
Jamie smacked herself in the face. "I... wasn't going to say it because..."
My mouth got dry as I waited for her next words.
Something completely different came out of her mouth. "I dunno, it kinda feels like we're already married. The moment we got in that ship and left earth, maybe before then, even, I had to say goodbye to the idea of dating anyone else ever again, and what is a marriage but officially joining yourself to someone else's family? It makes me feel like I'm in an arranged marriage, and ET set it up. I mean, I admit it's cool, going to space and seeing aliens and stuff, but..."
It kind of felt like I'd been slapped. "I'm sorry, I..."
"Don't be!" Her face flushed red. "It's okay, I mean, it's not, but it's not your fault."
In some ways, this felt worse than a simple rejection, for now I was confused about her level of interest. "What do you want me to do?"
She looked flustered. "Nothing. forget it."
Out of respect for her feelings, I gave her some space.
Instead of clearing the air between us, it kinda made things more awkward. In a spaceship you have nowhere to run away, it's like after a bad date with a co-worker in an office.
We resorted to retreating from each other mentally. As a side effect, I ended up studying the aliens' language and other stuff a lot more, and Jamie had that snail thing in her ear more often, asking the aliens about their world, and how to turn a brown thumb into a green thumb, horticulturally speaking.
We didn't even talk at meal time, except with one exception:
The aliens had made us a flat bread with cheese, onions and tomatoes.
"Pizza!" Gertie exclaimed.
"That's focaccia bread," Jamie corrected. "You can leave it out on a shelf without it spoiling because there's no meat."
After a bite or two, I commented, "No sauce either."
Then me and Jamie resumed our silence.
Gertie gnawed a bite from her flatbread. "Why aren't you talking? Did you stop liking each other?"
"Gertie..." I scolded.
Jamie, red faced, gave her a more diplomatic answer. "It's complicated."
"I'm not going anywhere. I have plenty of time, if you want to explain it to me..."
My girlfriend got redder. "Sorry, Gertie. I don't really want to, okay? It's private."
Gertie looked disappointed. "You think you'll talk later?"
Jamie snorted in amusement. "Maybe."
Only around bedtime did Jamie and I figure out something to say to each other.
"Elliot..." she began. "I chose to run away. I ...I really do love you, and I don't want to play this stupid silence game just because I'm afraid...I mean, you're a special guy. And all this alien stuff...a girl would envy me in this situation. So if you really want to marry-"
My face got hot. "I .. . I don't want to force you into anything. We can just be pretend brother and sister. We're only kids, you know?"
Jamie responded by pecking me on the lips. I'd call it a 'chaste' kiss, but she didn't aim for my forehead or cheek, which only added to my confusion about our relationship. "Thank you."
"Daddy said I shouldn't try to have babies until I'm twenty one," Gertie said.
Jamie laughed. "My mom said not to have any until you got a job or a man to support you, preferably both." She stared at me in worriment. "Everything we've been taught up to this point...It's all going to be useless, isn't it? I mean, if we're really never going back, all that stuff about careers we learned in school, science, economics...it's all junk. We're going to be like dropouts from, from, Starfleet Jedi school! I mean, what are we going to do for a living? I don't know how to fix a starship engine or a robot, or even make pancakes!
I rolled my eyes. "C'mon. I know we're not doing that!"
Jamie didn't look so sure. "You can't seriously expect them to wait on us hand and foot for the rest of our lives, do you? We'd have to do something to earn our keep! These guys are mostly bald! I can't even do hair!"
My sister smiled. "I bet we could make Rilquza look pretty."
The comment didn't improve Jamie's mood.
"I'm sure ET will be able to figure something out."
She still wasn't convinced. "Good Lord, we're not gonna just...farm forever, are we?"
My facial expression told her before my mouth did.
"Gee, slave labor and an arranged marriage! I'm starting to wonder if I were better off being whisked away to a government facility!"
"Jamie, I-"
She rubbed her face in frustration. "I know. It's not your fault."
"Jamie, we don't even know that much about their economy. There could be plenty of interesting jobs to do. We just don't know about them."
"I hope you're right."
Although the conversation did nothing to make her any happier, she did start talking to me again. Like a sister.
Unlike many human beings, the aliens cared little for entertainment. Despite having a sport, music and movies, they actually preferred to sit together and talk about things for hours. We humans found this boring and very frustrating, but also somewhat...healing, in terms of our emotional well being.
They learned more about us than we learned about them, fascinated by how family members could drink beer and sit in front of a TV and ignore people for most of the day. Even more fascinating: How we tended to think a person had no value if they weren't some kind of celebrity, or didn't look like a celebrity.
Since celebrities did mean so much to people, my little `family' spent a lot of time explaining the importance of all kinds of things, like The Monkees, recordings of the 1985 World Series, Entertainment Tonight with John Tesh, Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, a bunch of westerns, and The Bozo Show.
I asked if they read our dreams a few hours ago, but they said they'd left that equipment on the moon.
With the exception of a few comets and another nebula, it seemed like forever before we actually saw anything interesting out the windows. In fact, with the strange vantage point, we couldn't even tell Ursa Major from Corona Borealis, or where those stars were exactly. We tried to ask the crew, but Qulpari have their own names for constellations, and they drew completely different patterns. I couldn't imagine what their horoscopes were like.
We passed a purple planet with yellow spots and a ring. The aliens said it had a lot in common with the Planet Pluto.
We seemed to be nearing our destination. Jamie nervously clenched my hand.
ET's planets didn't align straight across either. The next thing appearing at the window, hours later, was Jufuceri itself.
Big, green, swirling purple-green, two moons, one larger than the other. Little glowing things that looked like jellyfish floated in and out of the planet's atmosphere, orbited the planet.
Welcome home, ET's voice said in my mind.