Becoming Alien by Rebecca Ore

unstrapped my head. I was surprised that I wasn’t bleeding, but they’d been tiny little needles. Still nervous, I ran back over my memories of the last two years and found them almost more vivid—Mica/Alph dying on the kitchen table—than I would have wanted.
    “High cadet average,” the Barcon said slowly, index finger tracing lines on a computer’s flat screen.
    Black Amber looked at me and said, “How did you do it?”
    I shook tension out of my wrists and forearms. “I score real high on human tests. No test anxiety, teachers claimed. But I guess I’m just a bright guy because I sure was damn tense this time.”
    The Barcon’s nose wriggled as she handed me a towel to mop off the sweat.
    “Whatever the test, I don’t want you on Karst,” Black Amber said. Her human body, especially her head, looked distorted, as though the flesh were trying to heal back to Gwyng form again. “You’ll remind me that Mica died horribly, in great fear.”
    When Tesseract came in, they all talked alien awhile, and the Barcons led Black Amber off. “Come see the transport,” Tesseract told me.
    I hadn’t been in an alien ship since Warren and I stripped Mica’s wreck. The aliens had padded the floor and walls with rubbery stuff and set chairs contoured for various species near black glass display panels. Tesseract motioned for me to go through a door.
    A small compartment—the autopsy room, just a little bigger than the table. Mica’s corpse lay so cut up I could barely recognize him. I shuddered, pitying him, scared for myself.
    “Would you pledge on his body that you meant him no harm?” Tesseract said, a small box, probably a recorder, whirring between his hands.
    “Yes, and…” I was about to say, I’m not lying to get the space academy gig either, but did I have a choice in that? Or did I even want that, with Black Amber hostile to me?
    Tesseract bent his head forward a bit and waited. I didn’t know what to swear by—the head was opened, the body cavity. The shoulder, I decided. So I laid my hand on his cold wet shoulder, the stench of formaldehyde almost crippling my lungs, and mumbled, “I never meant to hurt him, or let Warren hurt him. I would have saved him if I’d only known how.”
    Tesseract said, “We will teach you.” The box stopped whirring. Me wondering and afraid, we stared at each other across species and star distances.
     
    Tesseract left the next day in his little ship. The Barcons left and came back. “We told Mr. Jenkins we were social workers and psychologists,” the female said, “called in by relatives who thought you were going into the same craziness that got Warren.”
    Black Amber koo’ed like a giant demented dove. Bat bitch was as sensitive to emotional undercurrents as Mica’d been.
     
    I still made my egg contracts, driving to Christiansburg with one of the Barcons first; then the Gwyngs went with me, always with the belt on, an alien on the trigger box.
    “Tom, we need to stop and get beer for the Barcons,” Rhyodolite said during the second trip. “They complain about being stuck with us.”
    We stopped at a store where I could cash a check, and I got out with a black Gwyng and a blond Gwyng, both dressed in jeans and hippie shirts, alien enough for Christiansburg if they had been what they looked like.
    One of the locals asked, “Black girls better, Tom?”
    The woman-faced Rhyodolite, placed a smile on the false lips, and said, “No, I’m with this blond man.”
    Another old boy, in dirty overalls, red clay clotted on his steel-tipped shoes, looked around the store carefully and asked me, “Law off your tail yet? Know a man needs a good helper.”
    The Gwyngs, six-packs in their arms, looked at us.
    “No, I don’t make ’ludes no more,” I said loudly.
    The girl-faced Rhyodolite started to pay for the beer, but the clerk asked for I.D. Cadmium leaned over with adequate plastic. As we started for the door, the old guy in the steel-tipped shoes said,