*****
At school recess the next day somebody called out, "Ship!"
Everyone stopped and looked up.
Keelic scoffed. Pesfor 3’s skies were full of space stations and thousands of ships, but here one little ship was a big deal.
"Not a transport," said someone, and Keelic looked up in spite of himself.
Ermol Station hung in the sky like a bright moon, backlighting a sleek, dark ship snuggling up to it. Those lines could only be military, possibly a fast cruiser or even a far-space probe. He wished he had his far-viewer. Nothing else happened and everyone returned to their game, except Keelic, straining his eyes to see more detail. The end-class chime rang.
A military shuttle appeared overhead, banked, and settled down on the other side of the school. Keelic sprinted off the field. He flew through the halls, skidding to halt at the front doors as six tall men in crisp Alliance Defense League uniforms ushered a nonhumanoid into the school. Keelic stood against the wall as they passed, then followed them down the hall. The alien had an oval body shaped like a streamlined turtle with a raised portion identifiable as the head because of the two flexible eyestalks protruding from it. It moved with a bunch of flexible light-pink legs and looked like it would be more at home in trees. Pale-brown fur so fine that it waved and swirled with every air current covered it head to end.
Most of the children in the halls backed away, but Keelic followed closely. The men went into the Chief Instructor’s office. Keelic slipped into an empty classroom until the halls cleared. He crept to the Chief’s office and put his ear to the wall, careful to stay out of the door’s proximity field.
A strong man’s voice. "...know what it is, but it is not dangerous. We recovered it deep."
A far-space probe! Keelic pressed his ear to the wall hard to catch every word.
"It communicates telepathically with images and emotions, but only when it wants and with who it wants. We can’t deal with it now. The proper people will be out to retrieve it."
The Chief Instructor’s voice said, "Hold on here, Captain. We don’t have the facilities to deal with nonhumanoids. There is no way we can take it."
Captain’s voice. "You will. You have the only facilities within a month. This has set me back six already. It is highly intelligent, can memorize anything. My analyst thinks it’s young, so a school is the best environment for it. All you need to know has been downloaded to your school primary and cleared with your planetary steward."
Chief, ingratiating. "Captain..."
Captain, hard voiced. "League regs required me to save it, required me to bring it back, but I will not keep it. You will."
The door opened and Keelic stepped away from the wall as the captain strode out, right into Keelic. The captain stumbled with an epithet as Keelic spun from the impact to sprawl in the doorway. The captain strode brusquely away with his grinning men.
The Chief Instructor expanded, eyes blazing in preparation to blast Keelic, whose eyes were locked with the alien’s. Keelic smiled in awe.
The alien retracted its eyes and leapt away from the Chief Instructor, bounding to cling to the ceiling in the corner farthest from him.
Startled, the Chief stuttered at Keelic, "G-get out."
Keelic ran as three instructors walked past him into the office.
In the lunch hall, the alien was the talked-about subject. In line, Keelic had a large group listening to what he had heard. Even a cluster of popular boys and girls were listening.
"Form a single line!" shouted an instructor. Everyone started bustling for position, and an older boy cut in front of Keelic.
"Go to the end," Keelic told him.
The kid smirked. "You gonna make me?"
Keelic pushed him out of line, and he collided with a girl walking past with a tray of food. The two went down with a crash, getting covered with wet green, white, and orange. Every one near began laughing, except Keelic. The boy glowered at Keelic and began to rise with clenched fists, while the girl, red faced, tried not to cry. Ms. Onkalwitz came over and most of the laughing stopped. The boy stood slowly, glaring at Keelic. The girl on the floor stood up next to him and the instructor looked them up and down.
"Go get cleaned up," she said. Then to the line, "What happened?"
Keelic tried to look innocent. Thom, one of the most popular guys in the school, said, "Uban slipped, Ms. Onkalwitz."
Keelic stood rigid as Ms. Onkalwitz eyed him. After she left, everyone burst into laughter, and Keelic was invited to sit with Thom and his friends. Keelic was pleased. He got his food and followed Thom to the table where the tough boys sat. Keelic put his tray down. A firm hand was placed on his shoulder.
"That’s my chair," said Thom.
"What?"
"Sit here," Thom ordered, pointing to the next seat.
Keelic frowned.
"Sit," said Thom.
Keelic replied, "My tray is already here."
Thom handed his food to someone and puffed up his chest, pushing it against Keelic. Keelic knew he should back down, but the unfairness of a week of daily attacks burned. He flashed an angry look up at Thom’s freckled face, and tried to sit down. They pushed against each other, scooting the chair around until an instructor’s voice cut between them.
"What’s the problem here?" said Ms. Onkalwitz.
Before Keelic could answer, one of Thom’s friends said, "Keelic tried to take Thom’s seat and food."
Ms. Onkalwitz grabbed Keelic’s arm as he tried to deny the accusation, and ushered him to a table where no one was sitting.
"Sit here and don’t cause any more trouble, understand?"
"But I—"
"I don’t want to hear it. Do you want detention?"
Keelic turned away from her. He watched others eat for a while and looked for his tray, but it was gone. He got up to get in line for more, but Ms. Onkalwitz spied him, rushed over, and gripping his arm, lifting it up, sat him down again.
"Sit here or sit in the Chief Instructor’s office. You already have a day of detention. Do you want more?"
Keelic almost answered, but sat, feeling abused. When the end-lunch chime rang, he walked to his tablet locker, and found a message from Mr. Hallod canceling his class for the day. Keelic wilted, and went back to the lunchroom to wait for Astronomy class. He sat next to the window and gazed up at Ermol Station, but the ADL ship was already gone. With his tablet, he sent out a few queries about the vessel, but none returned.
Frustration roiled. He hated this place. This whole planet. What was wrong with him that everyone hated him so much? Sadness and rage were all mixed up. The unfairness of everything burned, and he nearly threw his tablet across the cafeteria with all his might. But it was a really good tablet. He slouched in the seat and called up a simulation.
In the halls at the next end-class, everyone was talking about the alien, but no one would talk to Keelic. For the rest of the day, no one talked to him at all. People whispered behind his back when he passed. When he turned to look at them, they stared at him like they knew something he didn’t. He chanced a smiled at Jasinal, but the boy ignored Keelic and seemed to enjoy doing it. Loneliness lodged in Keelic’s chest.
At the end of the day, Keelic hid in his last classroom to avoid Ms. Onkalwitz. After the halls were empty, he peeked out, then walked briskly to the bus field where the hover shuttles were preparing to take off. He expected at any moment to hear Ms. Onkalwitz screeching for his return and more detention.
Someone called his name. He turned reluctantly and saw Jasinal standing at the corner of the school smiling and waving for Keelic to come. The buses were about to leave, but he was glad someone, even Jasinal, had decided to be friendly, and ran over. Another boy stepped around the wall, grabbed him, and yanked him around the corner. Keelic stumbled to a stop, facing Thom and his friends. He turned to leave but boys blocked him.
Thom laughed. "What’s wrong? Scared?"
Turning to face Thom got Keelic a fist in the nose. The
world swerved and Keelic fell back onto the grass, pain pounding to the pulse of a warm flow down his face. Something slammed hard into his side, and cuffed his head. They were kicking him. Keelic cried out and rolled over, and tried to hide his head. The boys laughed and jeered.
"Whittle Annoboy! Does it heurt?"
They kicked him a few more times, then ran to catch their buses.
Keelic rolled onto his belly as great sobs of shame welled up. Pain surged in his face with each. He raised his head and watched horrified as blood poured out of his nose onto the grass.
Orange warmth and blue calm spread over his pain and fear, suffusing his mind with sympathy and something he had never felt before. His sobs died as the bleeding slowed. He saw a strangely structured and colored image of himself from above, lying on the ground. He stood and looked up at the school windows. Two black eyes on pink stalks looked back at him. Keelic smiled in wonder and was shocked when a feeling of friendliness bloomed in his mind.
He asked, "Did you do that?"
It stared at him quizzically.
Picking up his tablet, he heard school-bus lift fans.
"No!"
He ran around the corner. The landing area was deserted, the last bus soaring away into the sky. He slouched and his head dropped to his chest. He touched his nose as it began to throb again. A call home was now in order, and that entailed a trip to the Chief Instructor’s office, and probably more detention.
Walking slowly, Keelic approached the dreaded office door, passing the storage room where the alien was. He stopped.
Tentative, he asked, "You there?"
Test, purple green recognition swirl, warm orange.
Keelic was pleased that the alien recognized and liked him. Then a wave of dark-gray loneliness coursed through him, and he stumbled back with a gasp as it touched the wounded places inside where his own feelings of isolation bled. He found himself sitting on the floor, blinking at the storage room door. That hadn’t felt good. But he had certainly understood it. He stood, unsure what to do.
Yellow image of empty hall.
Was that a question? Keelic looked up and down the hall, and whispered, "Yes."
The door to the room slid into the ceiling. The alien put out one eye to look down the hall, then the other to look the other direction, and hopped out. It reached up and touched the door-close panel. Its skin flushed dark pink with pleasure that Keelic could feel. It reached out to him, and he let it touch his bloody face. The end of the alien’s arm was formed of thousands of filaments of different colors that spread to tickle Keelic’s face or grasp his hair gently. Pain faded, and he felt the alien’s orange warmth grow in him.
A door slid open down the hall, and the alien leapt straight up, flipped, and grasped the ceiling. Keelic turned toward the Chief Instructor’s office and walked to the door, head down. An instructor walked past, glancing at him as the Chief’s door opened.
The man raised his eyes to glower, then jerked his head up at the blood all over Keelic.
"What happened?"
Keelic explained, leaving out the alien. The Chief called the school medic, and sat drumming his fingers.
"Sit," he ordered.
The medic arrived and examined Keelic with much prodding and instrument reading, and pronounced him mostly undamaged.
The Chief Instructor dismissed the medic and tapped on his console.
Presently Keelic heard his mother’s voice. "Yes?"
"Mrs. Travers, I have your son in my office. He has been in a fight. He is not seriously hurt. My medic has examined him. Would you please come pick him up?"
"Yes, I will be there in ten minutes."
Keelic relaxed, knowing his mother was on the way.
More tapping by the Chief Instructor brought a nasal woman’s voice. "Oh, hi honey. What do you want?"
The Chief Instructor’s cheek twitched. "Don’t let Thom go anywhere when he gets home. I am going to have a talk with him."
Keelic felt sick. Thom was the Chief Instructor’s son!
The woman replied in a cool tone, "All right. Don’t be late tonight."
The Chief nodded curtly and cut off the screen.
The door opened. Keelic looked to see a black eye peering in from the top of the doorway. He snapped his head to look at the Chief, who was also looking at the eye.
"Damn," the Chief Instructor said, and stabbed a finger at his console. "Waters, that damn thing is out again. Get down here and bring the stunner."
Moments later the alien dropped into the doorway and hopped in as a red stun ring hissed past. There was a screech down the hall, and a thud as a body hit the floor. The alien hopped beside Keelic.
Waters stuck his pimpled, chagrined face into the room, along with the humming stunner.
The Chief Instructor exploded. "Imbecile! Don’t point that thing at me. Who did you hit? Did I tell you to shoot everything on the planet? Did I?"
Waters’s head lowered a couple of inches on his neck. He flipped off the stunner and moved into the room. The Chief, standing now, glowered at him. Waters glanced up, and the Chief raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Waters said, "Uh," and looked down the hall. "It’s Ms. Onkalwitz."
Keelic suppressed a giggle, and marveled at the alien as it leaned against his legs, watching Waters with one eye and the Chief Instructor with the other.
Cheek twitching, the Chief shook his head. "Now I’ll be hearing from the Teaching Unisociate. Don’t stand there, Waters. Help me get it back into the room. Travers, move away from the creature."
As the Chief Instructor spoke, Keelic got a red-edged yellow image of him and the alien making a dash through the open door. He replied to the alien, "No."
"What?" the Chief flared.
Keelic looked up.
"Move away from it. Now, Travers."
Keelic got up and walked across the room. The alien stuck close, touching.
The Chief screwed up his face and walked over to Waters, ripping the stunner out of his hand. The Chief waved a hand at the door. Waters touched the door panel, and it slid closed.
The Chief Instructor said, "Travers, when I say go, you run back across the room."
He turned on the stunner and pointed it at the alien and Keelic.
Crimson fear blazed. Ducking, Keelic and the alien scrambled behind the Chief Instructor’s desk. On fingers and toes, Keelic tensed, ready to dodge again. Nothing happened, so he peeked over the immaculate desktop.
The Chief appeared astonished that they had disobeyed him so completely. He was recovering from the shock, though, his cheek beginning to twitch with inarticulate rage.
Keelic ducked back under the desk. After a moment he could hear the man breathing slower, getting control of himself.
"You are going to regret this, boy, if you don’t move right now."
Keelic held absolutely still. When nothing happened he chanced another look. The two men stood on either side of the door, Waters sullen, the Chief steaming, but also not sure what to do next.
A hovercraft landed outside. Through the window, Keelic saw his mom striding toward the school. How fast had she flown to get here that quick? The Chief Instructor shoved the stunner at Waters, and intercepted her on the lawn.
She came in, looked Waters up and down, eyes lingering on the stunner, and said, "Keelic?"
He stood up, looked down at the alien crouched at his feet, and said, "That’s my mom, it’s okay."
A single eye raised enough to peek over. Looking at his mom, Keelic felt safe. The other eye looked up at Keelic, and he felt maroon safe, mother love. His mother’s face softened, and she walked without fear to the other side of the desk, though she paused when she saw the alien. She reached out to Keelic’s face, and the alien reached up to touch her hand.
"Let’s go, Keelic," she said, guiding him from behind the desk. The alien moved with them, touching their legs.
"He has to come with us! He’s afraid to stay here."
"No, dear. I’m s
orry, but it’s not ours, or our responsibility."
Keelic looked at the alien. "Tell her."
His mother’s eyes grew wide, then saddened, and her hand strayed to her chest.
The Chief Instructor grew alarmed and said, "That thing is my responsibility, given expressly to me by Captain—"
"Ilintire," she said, finishing his sentence, and faced him with her head high. "How could you lock it into a room with no one for company? Can’t you see it’s a sentient, and a social one? You threatened it and my son with a stunner. I am going to report this. This alien is an extraordinary being. You have mistreated it horribly."
She paused and looked at the alien snuggled between her and Keelic.
The Chief Inspector drew himself up to respond, but she cut him off. "My husband is an exobiologist. He will be able to take proper care of it. I take full responsibility. Excuse me." With Keelic and the alien in tow, she swept out of the office.
Walking out to the family hover shuttle, Keelic chanced a furtive look at the windows of the Chief Instructor’s office. He stood there, ominous, but impotent for the moment. Keelic kept his mom between him and the glaring Chief as they boarded the shuttle.
The alien watched with interest as Keelic’s mother tried to strap it into the seat. She gave up when Keelic told her the alien could climb on ceilings.
"That won’t help in a crash," she replied.
On the way home, Keelic told her everything at light speed. She had him repeat certain sections slower, then queried across the planet and in orbit. There was no information on the alien.
"Carl? I’m bringing an unknown life form home."
"Do you mean Keelic, or did something wander into the schoolyard?"
"No. This is from an ADL probe ship."
"Oh? Oh. What form? Have you checked the planetbase?"
"Yes. There’s nothing. I’ll explain everything when we get there."
Keelic’s father was waiting beside the hover pad with a big shoulder-slung scanner. Keelic and his mom watched as Father scanned the alien for five minutes. The alien looked out the shuttle windows, checked out the scanner, but did not try to exit the shuttle until Father moved out of the way.
"Come inside," he said.
The alien walked beside Keelic up the path. Keelic pointed out the seed-hoppers. They passed into the house, the alien’s eyes swaying about to look at everything.
"Anny!" said Keelic. "This is my new friend. He came from farspace. He’s telepathic, and can climb walls. He—"
His mother interrupted. "Why don’t you tell both Anny and your father in the gathering hall?"
Keelic’s father said, "I’d like a constant bioscan, Anny. Check for pathogens and toxins in any quantity. L5, please."
"My resolution is quite enhanced in this matrix. I can manage L7 throughout most of the house."
Father nodded to Anny’s statement. In the gathering hall, Keelic sat on his favorite giant cushion with the alien. Father knelt next to them, and carefully examined the small being. It examined him just as carefully, making Keelic laugh.
"I wonder if it has a gender," his father asked himself, studying anatomical scans on a mobile console floating next to him.
Keelic peered hard at the alien, and thought of a man, a woman, a boy, and a girl.
The eyestalks raised a little, and Keelic got a confused splatter of colors, mostly yellows.
"Wow," said Keelic blinking.
He scooted closer, thought the same images, but tried to make them yellow. The boy flashed orange in Keelic’s mind.
"He’s a boy," Keelic said triumphantly.
"Did you just ask it that?" asked his dad.
Keelic nodded.
"What’s it like, what type of communication is it?"
"Colors mostly."
"And imagery," said his mother.
"Yeah, some pictures, too."
"What did you see?"
"A picture of a boy all orange. But I think blue means yes."
"Hmm. Ask him if I can put him under the big scope. You know how it feels. Try to let him know what it will be like."
Keelic tried to imagine the alien walking into the examination chamber, the door shutting, lying down—no, the alien would just settle down, and the lights going out, feeling queasy, hot, cold prickles, and it going on for a long time. You were not supposed to move around.
Affirmative blue-purple image of the alien walking into the chamber.
"He understands," said Keelic, amazed.
After the alien sat in the scanning chamber for Father, they set out every piece of food in the house on the evening dining table. The alien manipulated each item with the filaments on the ends of his front two legs, indicating blue or orange affirmation to Keelic for the ones he wanted.
Mother said, "If he’s anything like Keelic, he’s picking his equivalent of cookies, candy, and milk."
"He has a robust metabolism," said Father. "None of this should harm him. I will know more about his nutritional needs after Anny and I go over the scans."
After the meal they studied the alien for hours in the main lab until Mother told them all it was time for bed. As Keelic and the alien headed off for his room, he overheard his father ask Mother something, and crept back to listen to her reply.
"Carl, I simply don’t know. Suddenly I knew that I had to take the little being away from there. It spoke to me. But it was so much more than colors and imagery. I can still feel the effects. The emotions were intense. Pure." She paused. "I’m not sure we should have Keelic attend that school."
Keelic’s father sighed in a way that told Keelic they had discussed this before, and said, "It’s the only school, Sarah."
"What about home schooling?" asked his mother, and Keelic felt a thrill.
His father sounded a bit defensive. "I don’t have time. IIAK is waiting for my prelim on these biocodes. They’ll send in someone else if I don’t get it done. Do you have the time? Are you ready to scale back on the Biospheric Society?"
"No," said his mother sadly. "You know I can’t. The Trade Guild wants to raze the entire Kalhorn Valley to grow Prince’s Gold, of all things. I’ve got the independent farm owners meeting to prepare for. And now we have this alien to look after..."
"Yes, the alien," said Father. "Alien is right. If someone had claimed to have seen what I recorded here tonight, I would have laughed at them. The electromagnetic field around that little being is so strong it interferes with some of my instrumentation. Some sort of photosynthesis is occurring in those fine filaments on his back that generates energy that is stored I don’t know where, and from the size and structure of his optic receptors, I’ll bet my Nobelin Prizes he can see way into the ultraviolet and infrared, maybe further. Look at this biocode. It’s the tightest I’ve ever seen, tighter even than the Ermol codes. Tell me that isn’t engineered."
Mother said, "I’ve been wondering all evening, why did the ADL leave it here? A discovery this significant—a first contact, for space sake!—wouldn’t that merit a return to base for an expedition?"
"Good point," Father said. "I read what the ADL gave to the school, but there isn’t much there, no location, no detail about the find, and certainly no reasons for their decision to leave the only member of a first-contact species in the care of an ill-equipped school on a frontier world."
They were both quiet for a while with their own thoughts. Keelic turned to leave, but his mother said, "For some reason I know it, but I still have to ask. Are you sure that Keelic is safe, or even us, around it?"
"I think so. His chemistry and makeup are some of the most unusual I’ve ever seen, but he doesn’t have any of the characteristic components for dangerous chemistry or behavior, nor does his field seem to interfere with our own biostratum-electrics, but I will look deeper." He yawned.
Keelic ran to his room. The alien examined everything top to bottom before snuggling up beside Keelic on the bed. He noticed that his new friend was quite warm to touch.
"Wh
at’s your name?" Keelic asked.
Yellow uncertainty.
"It’s okay if you can’t remember," said Keelic.