Free Human to Human by Rebecca Ore Page B

room with his gym bag and said, “Why can’t Daiur go?”
    Daiur came out and said, “I swim, too. Please?”
    Yangchenla stared out our windows as if challenging me to make the right decision. She looked both prosperous and slightly absurd in her Western clothes. Marianne just grinned at us. I felt a weird sexual tension building and said, “if it’s okay with Yangchenla.”
    Yangchenla said to Daiur, “If you promise to be good.”
    Daiur said, “I won’t duck and bite.”
    Tracy looked at me and said, “Will you swim, too?” I nodded at her Western human style, and went quickly to my room for my suit. We’d swim outside on such a beautiful day, in the pond by the gym. When I came back out, Yangchenla had gone, so recently I could hear the elevator moving.
     
    Daiur said, “We have to wait for the cab to return.”
    Tracy looked over at him and said, “You’re pretty.”
    I pushed for the elevator, then embraced Marianne as though I wouldn’t be back soon. She smoothed my hair back and looked at me as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t.
    Chi’ursemisa came out then and said, “Daiur, so then you get to go?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    She raised her eyebrow hair, the Sharwani gesture parallel to a single lifted human eyebrow. Then she went over to a table between two chairs, opened a drawer and brought out herbal cigarettes and a gnarly but polished jade slab. As she sat down, her thumb rubbed the stone.
    Daiur looked at his mother and dropped his head down, his arms away from his side. He whined and Chi’ursemisa looked up at him but didn’t move. As we got on the elevator, both Tracy and Karl poked at Daiur, then back at Chi’ursemisa, stroking her stone, then Karl said, “Mom, come too.”
    Marianne said, “I can’t. Karriaagzh and Thridai are coming.”
    Daiur said, “Karriaagzh broke my mother’s wrist. She’s still stupid in that hand.”
     
    We took a bus down to the Academy. I worried about Daiur, but his little throat bo’inged every time we passed young aliens or a particularly ornate building. I asked, “Are you enjoying this, Daiur?”
    “Oh, yes.” Being kidnapped and taken out to a strange planet had happened to him young enough for it to seem normal. “Do you like the nursery group?” I asked him.
    He lifted his little hand and signaled yes, the fingertips swollen as though he wanted to touch everything.
    Karl grabbed his left hand and nibbled gently, a game familiar to both of them, it seemed. Tracy sat like a demure steel spring, her legs crossed at the ankles, her eyes forward, moving as she read the street signs and the route sheet over the driver’s head. She turned her head only very slightly, not showing the boys much attention. I smiled and she shrugged. Yangchenla’s daughter for sure.
    Daiur rose up on the seat, fingers splayed over the windows, and said, “Wow, look at that one!”
    “It’s a Wreng,” Karl said.
    “I never got to see them when we were there,” Daiur said. “They’re weird. Think about feeling the scales.”
    Tracy said, softly, “It might be rude.”
    Daiur said, “We let them feel us.”
    “I suspect fur is as odd to them,” Karl said, shaking his head at Tracy, “as scales and bristles are to us.”
    Tracy pulled out a reading tablet and began skimming. I noticed tiny loops through her earlobes when she pushed her hair back and began twisting it around her finger.
    We got off the bus at the main gate. Daiur didn’t want to walk, so I carried him on my shoulders, his hands gripping my head right over my ears. As we went into the gym to change, Karl and Tracy walked around each other as if in attractant/repellent orbits, finally splitting up at the women’s changing room. I took Karl and Daiur into the men’s changing room.
    Daiur wouldn’t let us see him naked and changed in a privacy cubicle. Karl whispered to me, “It doesn’t hang out. He really didn’t want to see yours. I told him it could get as big as Hrif’s