Being Alien Read Online Free Page B

we’re nervous too. You’re the first human refugee ever to get a home pass.”
    “I’m nervous about other humans here.”
    “You’ve got to learn how to deal with major humans,” Alex said. “First contact’s due in about ten years. Much better if you can help us deal with them.”
    “Are we really that awful?”
    “No, no, not that awful.” Alex smiled at me. “We in stay in touch, I promise.” He tapped my temple over the skull computer so I’d realize how.
    They’ve set it up so I’ll have to meet people. My face went hot. I didn’t say anything more while the Barcons stripped the rest of my fingers and rolled cultured fake print skin down the tips They glued down the grafts with glop that was also anesthetic.
    “Don’t grip anything too hard today,” the male Barcon said. I picked up my bag strap with the palm of my hand—a big duffel bag full of clothes that some alien, maybe Alex, had bought me in Berkeley. Alex opened the garage door and we went to the street.
    My brain made Berkeley look like Roanoke around the railroad yard—good old brain using its familiar templates. We waited at the bus stop with weird half-breed sorts, Mexicans, Asians. One black guy stared at the Barcons, at Alex, and then at me, shrugged as if bewildered. Yeah, they don’t look real Negro, noses too thin, too many angles in the jaws.
    What I’d thought was a railroad line was the BART, Bay Area Rapid Transport, which zipped by overhead. I hadn’t noticed that the rails were elevated. It was like a commuter tube train on Karst, but without the magnetic levitation. The foggy air was too chilly for June. Was it really June?
    The San Pablo bus, wires sparking overhead, pulled up. Alex said as I got on, “Get a transfer for the Shattuck Avenue bus.” If I’d dealt with really hostile aliens on Yauntra, I told myself, I should be able to solo under cover on my own planet.
    Just before the doors closed, Alex got on the bus, too. He sat down beside me and patted my leg. “Since you’re new to Berkeley,” he said, “I should show you around a bit.”
    I sighed, too hugely relieved. This trip was regressing me back to my wimpy adolescent years. Alex said, “We’ll get you settled in and then hitch up to see the sunset from Lawrence Laboratory.”
    What we passed continued to look like a flattened Roanoke. Denial is soothing, as I’d been told when I first came to Karst. But why shouldn’t Berkeley remind me of Roanoke? Both of them are human cities.
    “You’re originally from the East,” Alex said. “I heard acid rain killed off the Frazier firs there.”
    “Not where I was.”
    “We’ll change soon for a Shattuck Avenue bus.”
    When the bus stopped at a light, I saw a bizarre dingus whip around the corner—a ten foot long fiberglass bullet with bike wheels embedded in it, flying a flag on a pole like a fishing rod. The hull looked almost like a Yauntry snow coach.
    “What?” My muscles tingled as though I was ready to jump or had started and didn’t notice.
    “Vector—you see more of them since the Oil Wars.”
    “Alex, what in the hell is a Vector?”
    “Faired bicycle, recumbent. They made a few of them in the seventies, but they’ve only become popular on the street in the last seven years.”
    “I’ve only been out of the country five years.” I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. The bus rumbled on for a bit, then stopped. Alex pulled me to my feet and said, “Transfer.”
    We got out. Some of the people waiting for the buses wore clothes I was used to, jeans and sweatshirts, but others dressed oddly—black shiny pants that looked like exotic long underwear, men’s jackets with asymmetrical openings like a woman’d have on a dress. Berkeley humans would give any alien an odd impression of my species.
    The Shattuck Avenue bus pulled up and we hopped on board. A woman and man were arguing fiercely in a foreign language. Everyone on the bus slanted their eyeballs half at them,