Uncle’s here, and he’s telling me I’m too big to cry. That I shouldn’t cry any more. I tell him I want mama.
Uncle makes a nasty-mouth, and I cry louder.
Hush, he tells me. Quiet, Matt. There, there, Matt boy.
He straightens my blankets, but I scrunch my legs up under me and mess them up again because I know it’ll annoy him. I like to annoy him because he isn’t mama or daddy. But this time he doesn’t seem to get annoyed. He just tidies them up again, and he pats my forehead. There’s sweat on his hands, and he gets it on me.
I want mama, I tell him.
He looks down at me for a long time. Then he tells me, mama’s not coming back.
Not ever, I ask?
No, he says. Not ever.
I don’t believe him, but I don’t start crying, because I don’t want him to know he can scare me. How about daddy, I say. Get him for me.
Daddy’s not going to come back either, he tells me.
I don’t believe you, I say. I don’t like you, uncle. I hate you.
He shakes his head and coughs. You’d better learn to like me, he says. You don’t have anybody else any more.
I don’t understand him, but I don’t like what he’s saying. I kick the blankets off the bed, and he picks them up. I kick them off again, and he hits me.
Then he bends over quick and kisses me, but he doesn’t smell right and I start to cry. Rain comes. I want mama, I yell, but mama never comes. Never at all.
(Falk fell silent for a moment and closed his eyes. “Was she dead?” Cullinan prodded.)
(“She was dead,” Falk said. “She and dad were killed in a fluke jetliner accident, coming back from a holiday in Bangkok. I was four, then. My uncle raised me. We didn’t get along, much, and when I was fourteen he put me in the Academy. I stayed there four years, took two years of graduate technique, then joined Terran Imports. Two-year hitch on Denufar, then transferred to Commander Warshow’s ship Magyar where—where—”)
(He stopped abruptly. Cullinan glanced at Warshow and said, “He’s warmed up now, and we’re ready to strike paydirt, to mangle a metaphor.” To Falk, he said, “Tell us how you met Thetona.”)
I’m alone in Kollidor and wandering around alone. It’s a big sprawling place with funny-looking conical houses and crazy streets, but deep down underneath I can see it’s just like Earth. The people are people. They’re pretty bizarre, but they’ve got one head and two arms and two legs, which makes them more like people than some of the aliens I’ve seen.
Warshow gave us an afternoon’s liberty. I don’t know why I’ve left the ship, but I’m here in the city alone. Alone. Dammit, alone!
The streets are paved, but the sidewalks aren’t. Suddenly I’m very tired and I feel dizzy. I sit down at the edge of the sidewalk and put my head in my hands. The aliens just walk around me, like people in any big city would.
Mama, I think.
Then I think, Where did that come from?
And suddenly a great empty loneliness comes welling up from inside of me and spills out all over me, and I start to cry. I haven’t cried—since—not in a long time. But now I cry, hoarse ratchety gasps and tears rolling down my face and dribbling into the corners of my mouth. Tears taste salty, I think. A little like raindrops.
My side starts to hurt where I had the accident aboard ship. It begins up near my ear and races like a blue flame down my body to my thigh, and it hurts like a devil. The doctors told me I wouldn’t hurt any more. They lied.
I feel my aloneness like a sealed spacesuit around me, cutting me off from everyone. Mama, I think again. Part of me is saying, act like a grownup, but that part of me is getting quieter and quieter. I keep crying, and I want desperately to have my mother again. I realize now I never knew my mother at all, except for a few years long ago.
Then there’s a musky, slightly sickening smell, and I know one of the aliens is near me. They’re going to grab me by the scruff and haul me away like any weepy-eyed drunk in the public streets. Warshow will give me hell.
You’re crying, Earthman, a warm voice says.
The Kollidorian language is kind of warm and liquid and easy to learn, but this sounds especially warm. I turn around, and there’s this big native dame.
Yeah, I’m crying, I say, and look away. Her big hands clamp down on me and hang on, and I shiver a little. It feels funny to be handled by an alien woman.
She sits down next to me. You look very sad, she says.
I am, I tell her.
Why are you sad?
You’d never understand, I say. I turn my head away and feel tears start creeping out of my eyes, and she grabs me impulsively. I nearly retch from the smell of her, but in a minute or two I see it’s sort of sweet and nice in a strange way.
She’s wearing an outfit like a potato sack, and it smells pretty high. But she pulls my head against her big warm breasts and leaves it there.
What’s your name, unhappy Earthman?
Falk, I say. Matthew Falk.
I’m Thetona, she says. I live alone. Are you lonely?
I don’t know, I say. I really don’t know.
But how can you not know if you’re lonely? she asks.
She pulls my head up out of her bosom and our eyes come together. Real romantic. She’s got eyes like tarnished half dollars. We look at each other, and she reaches out and pushes the tears out of my eyes.
She smiles. I think it’s a smile. She has about thirty notches arranged in a circle under her nose, and that’s a mouth. All the notches pucker. Behind them I see bright needly teeth.
I look up from her mouth to her eyes again, and this time they don’t look tarnished so much. They’re bright like the teeth, and deep and warm.
Warm. Her odor is warm. Everything about her is warm.
I start to cry again—compulsively, without knowing why, without knowing what the hell is happening to me. She seems to flicker, and I think I see a Terran woman sitting there cradling me. I blink. Nothing there but an ugly alien.
Only she’s not ugly any more. She’s warm and lovely, in a strange sort of way, and the part of me that disagrees is very tiny and tinny-sounding. I hear it yelling, No, and then it stops and winks out.
Something strange is exploding inside me. I let it explode. It bursts like a flower—a rose, or a violet, and that’s what I smell instead of her.
I put my arms around her.
Do you want to come to my house, she asks.
Yes, yes, I say. Yes!
Abruptly, Falk stopped on the ringing affirmative, and his glazed eyes closed. Cullinan fired the stunner once, and the boy’s taut body slumped.
“Well?” Warshow asked. His voice was dry and harsh. “I feel unclean after hearing that.”
“You should,” the psychman said. “It’s one of the slimiest things I’ve uncovered yet. And you don’t understand it, do you?”
The commander shook his head slowly. “No. Why’d he do it? He’s in love with her—but why?”
Cullinan chuckled. “You’ll see. But I want a couple of other people here when I yank it out. I want the girl, first of all—and I want Sigstrom.”
“The doctor? What the hell for?”
“Because—if I’m right—he’ll be very interested in hearing what comes out.” Cullinan grinned enigmatically. “Let’s give Falk a rest, eh? After all that talking, he needs it.”
“So do I,” Warshow said.
(Four people watched silently as Falk slipped into the drug-induced trance a second time. Warshow studied the face of the alien girl Thetona for some sign of the warmth Falk had spoken of. And yes, Warshow saw—it was there. Behind her sat Sigstrom, the Magyar’s head medic. To his right, Cullinan. And lying on the cot in the far corner of the cabin, eyes open but unseeing, was Matt Falk.)