Being Alien by Rebecca Ore

said.
    “I knew the accents were odd,” Reeann said. “You’re not recombinant DNA experiments. You’re not humans.”
    “I went camping with you, for two days,” Carstairs said softly to Alex.
    “Prisons here could hold us all, I think,” the chief male Barcon said, leaning on his elbows, his hands shredding napkins on the table.
    Alex lurched up and said, “I have to go to the bathroom.” One of the Barcon males followed him. I told Reeann, “I’d go back to prison, if the State of Virginia found out. I broke parole.”
    She shook her head slightly, real fast, as though a bee’d buzzed her. “You, then, are human?”
    “Yeah.” I felt ashamed,
    “And you’ve been in jail, for drugs, and aliens took you away and did what with you?” Her voice got edgy; she heard her own hysteria rising and grimaced.
    “They trained me to make contacts with other sapients,” I said. “I’m good at that .” But I fuck up with my own species. I remembered Yangchenla’s harangues on how I never questioned what was done to me.
    She said, reaching for my hand, “Is it difficult, being back?”
    “Yes, but the Federation wants me to be as good with my own kind as I am with others.”
    The Barcons were watching Reeann and me intently Carstairs seemed bored, writing something on his napkin. When Alex and the second Barcon male came back, Carstairs shoved the napkin at Alex who said, “I don’t know.”
    “Or can’t tell me,” Carstairs replied.
    The Barcon chief picked up the napkin, looked at it, and said, “You’re thinking along the right lines, but I suspect you have been all along, or Alex wouldn’t have been so interested in you. Perhaps we can tell you when you’re right. So better to keep showing us your theories, stay away from the FBI. Does that help?”
    “How close? Could we make contact with you next year if I tried this?” Carstairs took the napkin back, scribbled on it, and shoved it back at the Barcon.
    “Not that way either, but…”
    Carstairs carefully folded his napkin and put it in his wallet.
    Alex stared at a waitress until she swung by the table. “Four pitchers of beer,” he ordered. She brought them promptly and he swallowed two mugs-full in about three breaths, deliberately trying for a drunk. Then he leaned back from the table and shuddered.
    “They don’t kill you for breaking cover?” Carstairs asked. His glasses were askew again; his face looked pasty, as though the skin was loaded with sweat about to bead through his pores.
    “You think we lied about not hurting you. You wonder if they’ll kill you for finding out?” I asked. The sweat slickened on Carstairs’ face.
    “You can’t prove a damn thing,” the chief Barcon said. “You’re a notorious drug user. You want an exclusive on the physics. Why should you betray us?”
    “What about me?” Reeann asked. I felt her body shift, shoulders squared, as though she’d die fighting if the answer was wrong.
    “Will you mate with Tom?” the smaller female asked.
    For a second, there was no sound, no air. Then Reeann’s eyes seemed to spin. “Mars wants women,” she said before collapsing on spilt beer, choking on the laughter, legs thrashing under the table.
    She settled down breathing hard, tears in her eyes, then looked over at me.
    “I said something wrong,” the female said, jaw flexing.
    Reeann fled to the ladies room. Carstairs looked at us and bit into his hand, teeth really in the flesh, sparkling eyes surrounded by the black-rimmed glasses. The waitress came by and mopped up the beer, face utterly impassive with curiosity.
    “I guess I’ll never be good with humans,” I said. “You’re fuck-ups,” Carstairs said. “Not machine-brained invaders of superior ruthlessness.”
    “It’s a hardship post,” the female told him.

 
    3
Alien Landscape With Woman
    Marianne—I dared not walk by her house after that night in the bar. The Barcon couples left the bar quarreling between pairs, solidarity in