Being Alien by Rebecca Ore Page B

fingerless gloves, strapped the helmets tight. I swung one leg over the bike and stood straddling it while I watched her put one cleated shoe in her left pedal, wiggle it until the cleat slot went down over the pedal bar. She pulled up and tightened the strap. “Leave one strap loose, so you can yank that foot out. Make it a habit to leave the left or right loose—just one side all the time.”
    Could you give me some books on this?” I felt weird taking instructions from a woman, especially one I was sexually attracted to.
    “Tom,” she said like both she was sorry and I was a jerk. She pushed a stray hair under her helmet strap and looked at me with her gloved right hand knuckles against her left cheekbone, elegant inside her weird clothes. I did as she said and felt trapped on the bike, pulled the strap yight and then lifted my foot. She pushed down on her raised pedal and swung her foot up into the other toe clip. I tried to imitate her but ended up with my foot on the wrong side of the pedal, the clip dangling underneath.
    “Keep pedaling. When you build up momentum, flip it with your toe”
    I pedaled like a crippled man, flailing at the pedal with my toe. Finally, I slid my foot in the clip, and began pedaling furiously. The bike went smoother the faster I went.
    “Fun, isn’t it?" Marianne said from beside me, her bike going without little jerks from side to side.
    We began giggling. Like normal teenagers, I thought, having never had normal teen times. All the languages I knew zinged through my mind making up epitaphs for her —karrer zullila, op wul, lost bossy bitch, frantul”— I decided. I wanted her as all of them. She took me away from my fear of being trapped as the parole breaker, alien sympathizer. We were just two kids on bikes, anonymously zinging by suburban yards now, too fast for our ages to show. Still giggling. Then she said, breathing hard between, phrases, “Alex…really terrified of jail? You sent here…to urge him to be more discreet.”
    Well. Probably. “Nothing…is done…on Karst…for just one…species’s…reasons.” I noticed there was more air gulping between my phrases than hers. Suddenly I felt what had to be my liver, metabolizing lactic acid that burned back. “Slower.”
    She tightened her lips and sat up on her bike, coasting. I said, when my lungs settled down, “I hate talking about jail. My brother got me into drug making.”
    "Where’s he?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Shouldn’t you find him?”
    “I couldn’t, but maybe someone else could.”
    “Is he dangerous?”
    “Not to a woman.” I guessed that was a safe answer.
    “You were pushing the pace, Tom,” she said. “Is this more comfortable?”
    “Yeah.” Yeah.
    “What do you do for your…Federation, is it?”
    “I arrange trade contracts, watch non-contacted sapients’ television programs. I’ve learned two non-contacted languages as best we could extrapolate them. I study contacted sapients behavior and history. If two species are quarreling, a lot of times a third species can figure out how to solve the problem.”
    About a mile down the highway, we passed other bike riders going back toward the parking lot. They waved at her, she at them. Then, just as I’d decided she wasn’t going to respond, she said, “I wish I could do that. I’m a linguist, but primitive tribes are so glicky. Really, fleas, leeches…do I sound bigoted?”
    “Leeches are…glicky?” I’d never heard that word before.
    “I’m never going to do shit on a bike.” She bent down and loosened her toe straps “And I’m whining again. Don’t kidnap me. I’d miss my sister.”
    “She could go, too.”
    Marianne’s bike swerved. “And Sam?”
    “Yeah, they want a human social group.”
    “And your brother. We’re all wasted on Earth, no?”
    “Yeah.” I didn’t tell her she’d be Support, not Officiator.
    “Is there something horrible up there that you’re not telling me about?”
    “Other humans.