Being Alien Read Online Free Page A

full of traffic gas. I was in the Bay Area near a freeway. One Barcon said, “We’d better fix his fingerprints now.”
    The other Barcon, wider at the hips, probably the female, said, “Be sure to tell him how to get his papers replaced if he gets mugged."
    “We inserted the right data into the computer," the Ahram, Alex, said, “so you’re street legal."
    “After we change your fingerprints. Temporary, so don’t abrade them. We’ll redo the tips in a month. Lucky your law doesn’t take retina prints."
    “What about my skull computer?” I’d just left Karst fifteen minutes earlier. Being here so suddenly was weird, not that I hadn’t traveled as fast before to really alien planets.
    “If they find that,” the male Barcon said, “you’d be made as experimental KGB, and we haven’t given you an address."
    “Alex? Can I get in touch with you?”
    “We’ll be in touch with you,” Alex said.
    I didn’t like that; it reminded me of major drug investors who sent out thugs in untraceable junker cars with muddy plates, the guys who forced my brother Warren to make drugs for them, back in Virginia before Karst rescued me from that life. “I’m loyal to Karst,” I said.
    Alex said, gesturing at one of the Barcons, “Jack here was mugged.”
    I got embarrassed for humans all over again. Of course, they couldn’t trust me— I was from a long line of xenophobic/philic flip-flops who believed aliens would eat them or save them.
    The Barcons wiggled their noses. Amused, the bastards. Alex said, “Tom, sit down. I’ll try to get you oriented while the guys work on your fingers.”
    I sat on a metal stool while the Barcon sprayed both my hands with nerve deadener spray from a bogus Windex can. Alex sat cross-legged on the cement floor near my feet. “We’ll put you on the San Pablo bus when we finish.”
    The only human city I’d ever been much in was Roanoke. “I could get lost.”
    Alex unfolded a map while the Barcons peeled off my finger skin. “Here. The main bus connections are at Shattuck and University. We’ve rented a place for you just off Shattuck on Milvia, so you can walk to the university and the co-ops. Black Amber rented an apartment in the same building.”
    “Near people she wants me to meet?”
    The male Barcon grumbled Barcon language about Gwy-on-ngs and Black-re-Amber.
    “And you’re going to leave me by myself, so I’ll get lonely enough to call on them.” Black Amber gave me the woman’s address just before I left Karst.
    “Tom, you’re acting suspicious, just like a human.”
    “Alex, he is right, though,” the female Barcon said.
    “We will leave him alone to make contact.”
    I half wanted to spit in their eyes and go back to Karst.  “So I have an apartment already. Do I have a bank account?”
    “You’ve got to set one up. You’ve been in Asia, remember. You know Yangchenla’s language."
    “Shit, if anyone knows real modern Tibetan…”
    “You learned an obscure dialect. Asia’s very fragmented, even for a human territory."
    I studied the map, found the university sprawled over a huge chunk of it. “I’ve got to do research on Japan while I’m here.”
    “You’ll get a library card for about twenty dollars as a Berkeley resident,” Alex said. “The library’s okay, but you’ll still have to carry out bound books, though—no terminal texts for non-students."
    “Oh.” I was so used to accessing texts through the computer that I'd forgotten about checking books out.
    “Setup an account with the Bank of America near the Co-op. Electric money is waiting for you.”
    “Fake credit?” They’d make me an outlaw again, data junking the Bank of America.
    Alex said, “Don’t be so touchy."
    “It’s his planet,” the female Barcon said, bent over my right thumb, carefully rolling down the fake skin.
    “I’m nervous; I broke parole when I left Virginia.”
    Alex looked at me as if he’d just realized I was not simply another rude human. “Okay,