Metamorphosis by mosylu

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Alonzo had been out on the water all day, and all he wanted to do was sluice himself off and pass out. He wouldn't even particularly miss dinner, not if it resembled breakfast and lunch.

But Devon said, "Alonzo, I need you especially at this meeting."

Even over the flickery gear image, he could see the tension in her face. "What for?" he asked, working a hand through his hair. It crunched with salt and sand. He made a face. "Something happen while I was incommunicado?"

The gear didn't work especially well out on the water, and they'd all taken to leaving it behind and relying on hand and arm signals to communicate boat to boat. Most of the morning had been spent trying to teach their work group those signals, without a whole lot of success. They'd nearly wrecked one boat, and they’d lost a good portion of the afternoon’s catch when another had flipped over.

His hand knocked the headband of his gear off-kilter, and he pulled it back into place in time to hear, "--the Terrians into the hospital."

"Wait, I missed that. The Terrians came into the hospital?"

"Uly brought them."

"Uly? When was this?"

"Over the lunch break."

Alonzo moaned. If he'd been on another duty, he could have been around at lunch to help out, but everyone on fish duty had eaten on the beach, because it was too far to walk back.

"They're not happy," Devon continued.

"The Terrians or the colonists?"

"Either. Both. It doesn't look good. The Terrians are saying they're not going to come back, that the parents have to go to them now."

"What?"

"You didn't see it when they walked in," she told him. "It was pandemonium. People were terrified. The staff were hours getting the kids calmed down. They had to dose some of them."

"Why did Uly bring them in the first place? I thought we agreed to wait."

Devon looked away. "He was frustrated. He got tired of waiting. He went and got them on his own."

Alonzo kicked a tree, startling a passing colonist and sending a bird screeching into the sky. "Those talks took weeks! They said they'd--how can--" He took a deep breath. "Devon," he said. "I'm giving you fair warning. I'm gonna strangle your kid."

"Never mind that. Right now, we need some serious damage control. Julia and I tried explaining it today at the hospital, but they were all so upset that I don't think we got too far."

He took in a breath, then let it out, trying to think calmly. "Any chance the Terrians will come tonight?"

"I'm not so sure that would be a good idea. Look, the meeting's right after dinner. Just be ready to talk, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Hey, Devon, if you're trying to get them into a good mood, that cooking might not be the best way to do it."

That got a smile from her for the first time. "I'll let you tell that to Cameron," she said, and signed off.

Over dinner, or what was passing as dinner tonight, Julia managed to add a few details to Devon's report of the events at the hospital. Every one made the picture a little darker. Alonzo put his head on the table. "It was supposed to be easy," he said to the table top. "We got it all worked out and it was supposed to be easy and painless and I swear to God I'm gonna tie Uly to a tree and let Grendlers dribble on him."

"Stop that, you'll get splinters in your lips," Julia said. "Devon wants us to talk to the parents now, before the meeting. Some one-on-one. Like she’s doing."

Alonzo sat up and looked where Julia was pointing. Devon stood in the middle of the room, talking earnestly to a clump of parents. He couldn't hear what she was saying, but just reading the body language of her audience, she wasn't having a whole lot of luck.

The sight made him feel guilty. Besides, if he walked around, he might actually find the woman he’d been seeking for the past day and a half. "All right, let’s go."

The attempt only made his mood worse. He kept hearing words like monster, creature, disgusting, and he felt like smacking them all. Humans weren't any fashion plates to the Terrians either, who thought they were soft-skinned and barbaric and lonely. They were pretty close to right.

Even the parents who'd been on fish duty with him, and therefore hadn't seen the Terrians, weren't terribly receptive to reason. They'd all talked to their kids, and to other parents, and, if anything, were more terrified of the exaggerated horrors that were relayed to them. Alonzo poured on the charm and got a few of them to listen--a minor victory at best, but he'd take what he could get.

Something was up with Jules, though. She was okay talking to the parents, if a little stiff, but the minute they got within ten feet of another doctor, she clammed up. It wasn't like her. When he asked her about it, she said, "Nothing, Alonzo."

He thought about pushing further, but shrugged and scanned the crowd again before settling on another pair of suspicious-looking parents.

It was lucky for Uly that the worst of Alonzo's ire had been worked off by the time he found the kid. Devon's son sat off on his own, with his head hanging and his feet hooked around the legs of his chair, looking about as miserable as a kid could look. Alonzo sat down across from him.

"You're mad at me too, I bet," Uly said, still staring at the table top.

Alonzo thought about lying, but he said, "Yeah."

Uly heaved a sigh. "Join the freakin' club," he said, sounding so much like Danz that Alonzo had to bite the inside of his cheek. "Even the Terrians are PO'd."

That caught Alonzo's attention. "What for?" he asked as Devon started the meeting.

Uly said under his mother's carefully calm speech, "Because I brought them before anybody was ready."

"Were they insulted?" As far as Alonzo knew, it took a lot to insult a Terrian, but having a whole building full of aliens start screaming like you were the most hideous thing since Frankenstein might just do it.

"I dunno. But they said they wouldn't steal seeds again. They really mean it about the parents."

"I guess we hammered that into their heads good." Parents and children was a concept that had taken forever to explain. Even by the time the Terrians had agreed not to take children without parental permission, they'd remained politely puzzled over the idea. Maybe because they didn't completely understand it, they were determined to honor that tradition.

Up on the stage, Devon had been interrupted three or four times already and was showing signs of losing her cool. "The Terrians are our neighbors, not monsters. One of our advance crew, has been in contact with them since virtually the beginning of our time here. Alonzo? Why don’t you--"

"What do you mean, in contact with?" someone said suspiciously.

"Maggie, we’re holding our questions until the end," Devon said.

Alonzo answered it anyway. "The Terrians communicate through dreams," he said. "For whatever reason, they picked me to dream with, and I'm sort of an expert on them by now."

"Those things get in your head?" said someone else.

"Darla," Devon said.

Alonzo said, "Look, the last thing they want to do is hurt anybody. They can't hurt anybody. It's just not in their--their nature, you know? The only time I ever heard of Terrians hurting humans, they got thrown out of their tribe for twenty years."

"So they are capable of harm," a mother said angrily.

"So are we, but do we go around hurting innocent kids?" Alonzo shot back. "The only thing they're gonna do is help."

"What they call helping," a doctor said. "Messing with DNA--doesn’t anyone remember the mid-twenty-first century?"

"Apples and oranges, Dr. Morton," Devon said. "You can’t compare the two. For one thing, Uly’s alive. And normal."

"Normal?" a dad shouted. "He’s part alien! How can you call that normal?"

Devon snapped, "My son is not a witch, a monster, a freak, a half-breed, or any of the other ugly words I’ve heard thrown around today. He’s completely himself and completely healthy--"

"But not completely human."

"No," Julia said, standing up, "but mostly. Ninety-five, maybe ninety-six percent."

The doctors all looked at her like she was a traitor, or scum. Weird.

Devon said, "He’s a normal little boy. He just has . . . some extra gifts, that’s all."

A father said, "Well, he can keep them. I'm not giving Hari to those creatures."

"You're not giving--" Devon started, and a squabble broke out.

Uly stood up and said, "'Scuse me." When nobody heard, he climbed on the table and screamed, "SCUSE ME!"

What it lacked in dignity, it made up for in efficiency. The meeting fell into startled silence. Devon said, "Uly?" in a wary voice.

Still standing on the table, Uly said, "I'm sorry I brought the Terrians to meet you before my mom got the chance to explain about them. I'm sorry I scared everybody. But they're not what you're saying. They're not nasty creatures. They're not gonna hurt your kids, they're gonna fix them."

"Thank you, honey," Devon said. "He's right--"

"I'm not done, Mom," Uly said sharply, and she looked at him as if wondering who he was and what he'd done with her easy-going son.

His voice wobbled when he continued, "I heard all the names you called me. They're mean and wrong. I'm not exactly like you guys anymore, but I'm healthy. All the meds and therapies and operations that those doctors gave me before, they didn't work. Going with the Terrians did. If you don't want your kids being a little different instead of sick and maybe dead, then I don't know why you came here and you should just go back to the stations." He took another breath, then seemed to lose all his steam. "Um," he mumbled. "I'm done now." He jumped off the table and sat down, very quickly.

For a moment, the meeting was as silent as the aftermath of a bomb. Alonzo exchanged glances with Julia, marveling at how thoroughly and efficiently Uly had managed to insult ninety percent of New Pacifica. Current wisdom held that Uly had been a test-tube baby, and Alonzo wondered if it was remotely possible that Devon Adair had managed to buy some Danziger sperm.

Devon said into the silence, "My son is right, even if he put it a little bluntly. We brought our children here because it was the best chance for their restoration to health. Now I'm telling you that the Terrians are, again, your children's best chance at full health. I know it feels like a risk, but as Syndrome parents, we’ve taken bigger ones before. Not just coming here, but operations, drug trials, therapies. None of them were guaranteed, and some did more harm than good. But you took the chance. If you had the courage for those, you have the courage for this."

She walked to a big, wooden-framed slate board that was hung up directly across from the front door and picked up one of the chunks of native chalk that sat in a box. Across the top of the board, she wrote "MOON CROSS" in square letters, and underlined it with a quick swipe of her chalk. She turned again.

"Some of you may have heard of Moon Cross already. It's a lunar event of great importance in the G889 year. I've picked that date for a few reasons. One, it's in the equivalent of an Earth month--thirty days from tonight." She wrote the number 30 next to the words and outlined it with a box. "That gives you plenty of time to think. Second, it's one of the times in the year that the Terrians are the most powerful, and therefore able to heal a great number of children at once. Third and finally, it's the beginning of winter, when the Terrians hibernate. Moon Cross is your child's last chance at a Terrian healing for three months. Some of your children may not have three months."

Like most everyone else, Alonzo looked at Brenda and Ryan McNab. Everyone knew that Lynnie was hanging on by a fingernail, that even thirty days might be optimistic. The boy curled his lip at them all. Brenda looked steadily at nothing.

Devon continued, "Now, I'm not going to force anyone into this choice. That's the last thing I want to do. The Terrians have told us repeatedly that they will not take a child without the permission of his or her parents. You need to make the decision yourself. Talk to me, talk to Julia, talk to Alonzo, talk to Uly. We have the most knowledge, in different ways, of this change and what it will mean. Beyond that, talk to the advance crew, who have all learned to live with the Terrians as neighbors. If you make the decision to allow the Terrians to heal your child--to restore them to the full health that you see in Uly right now, today--I want to write your child's name on this board so everyone can see." She held up the chunk of chalk, then dropped it back into the box and brushed the dust from her fingers. "We'll answer any questions you have now."

The questions didn't so much start as explode, and none of them sounded encouraging. Alonzo answered questions about dreaming--"Do you mean they can make you dream what they want?"--and what had happened the time Terrians had hurt humans. A quick glance from Devon told him to tone it down, and he tried to make it sound like an accident, emphasizing the way that the Terrians who’d killed Mary’s parents had been cast out from the tribe. As it was, even the toned-down version caused murmurs and angry head-shakes.

It went on so long that the questioners all started to run into each other like melting wax. Or maybe it was just that all the questions had started to repeat themselves. Cameron brought them cups of the kinda-coffee Bess had figured out how to make out of seeds. It tasted like boiled goat turds, but it sure as hell packed in the caffeine. Alonzo dribbled honey into his until it was drinkable. Devon knocked it back straight and kept going.

Alonzo looked down in the middle of his fifth explanation of Terrian dream communication and saw Danz making wind-it-up gestures at him. He frowned very slightly, and his friend pointed off to the right. Alonzo glanced over and realized that Devon, while she looked all relaxed and casual with one hand on the back of a chair, was holding on just a little too tight. "--and I think that's it for tonight," he finished up.

"One more question," Devon said, her voice so firm and clear it practically fooled Alonzo. "Yes, Trent."

"How do we know the Terrians won't just snatch our children? They say they won't, but--"

"They don't lie," Alonzo almost snarled. He’d had it way up to here with these xenophobes. "That's a human thing. I'm not just talking to them in those dreams, I'm thinking with them. I'd know if they were planning that. Which they won’t," he added.

Devon cut in, "Alonzo and Uly will maintain contact with them, and pass on any information they think we should know."

Alonzo kept his face blank to cover up the sudden sinking of his heart at her words. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to take on that burden. It wasn’t like he’d been doing anything different for the past two years. He’d love to maintain contact with the Terrians.

Trouble was, he hadn't had a Terrian dream in three weeks.

It's a lull, he told himself. You've had lulls before. The tribe’s not feeling too talkative right now, is all.

The meeting broke up reluctantly. Danz pretended that he’d called a halt because Uly and True were both half-asleep, and Devon pretended to believe him, and they understood each other perfectly.

Alonzo found Julia. "I’m about ready to pass out. Care to join me?"

Julia looked as if she might pass out, with or without him, right there on the floor. But she tucked her hair behind her ears and said, "I’ve got to get back to the hospital."

"What? You were there all day."

"I was there all morning," Julia corrected him. "I have a split shift today."

"Until when?"

"Midnight. I have to, Alonzo, I’m the doctor on duty. I’m already late."

"At least kiss me goodnight. Just once?" He puckered up and made smoochy noises.

It got her to laugh, finally, and she kissed him. "I’ll try not to wake you up when I come in."

He held on for a moment. "You can always wake me up, you know that."

She smiled at him, then pulled away and started working her way through the crowd. He watched her go, wishing he’d pulled her pins out while she was kissing him. He really hated it when she had her hair up like that. She disappeared out the door, and he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, wondering if he would make it to his bed. He stretched, then joined the crowd jostling their way out.

He was so loopy that he stepped on several feet. Mumbling "Sorry, sorry," he finally managed to get out the door, where he promptly ran smack into someone, almost knocking them over. "Whoa! Sorry."

"I’m fine," the woman said.

He stared down at her. "You," he said. "I’ve been looking for you."

Rita Vasquez looked back up at him. "You’ve found me," she said. "Did you need to talk to me about something?"

"You know damn well I do," he said, and added deliberately, "señora."

"Well, then," she said. She started off on the path that led out of the square and behind the hospital.

Alonzo started after her. Suddenly, he felt wide awake.

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