The Apex Book of World SF 2 (27 page)

Reaction in our
street to the news that an alien family would soon move into number 56 was
therefore mixed. Number 56 was the proverbial worst house on the best street,
and any family who could improve it—regardless of skin colour or number of
limbs—was welcome, in my view. My wife, Alison, said she'd wait and see. Josh
wondered if they had any kids his age.

Others near to the
action, and particularly the Murrays at number 54 and the Zhangs at number 58,
were less sanguine. "But it's not as if they need a resource consent," said my
wife to Jessica Zhang, and she was right. Having bought the house at a
legitimate auction through a telephone bidder, and paid the deposit, the alien
family were well within their rights to settle in our street, and the rest of
us would simply have to make the best of it.

To the unpractised
eye, Saturday the 12th of March would have seemed little different from any
other Saturday in Utley Terrace. 8am was the usual bleary-eyed rush-hour of
parents taking their children to cricket. By 11.30, when Josh and I returned to
our place at number 55, there was a little more activity: a lawn being mowed, a
car being washed, the postie delivering bills and special offers. All the same,
a certain twitching of curtains spoke of suppressed excitement.

Hoping for a flying
saucer, we were disappointed when a perfectly ordinary moving van appeared
outside number 56 shortly after noon, and perfectly ordinary movers began
carrying an assemblage of furniture—not well colour co-ordinated, but not
notably alien—into the house. Half an hour later, a white Toyota Corolla pulled
up outside, and our new neighbours, who went by the name of Thompson, got out.
We stood at our lounge-room window, staring.

They looked
completely human: Mum, Dad and the three kids. One appeared to be a teenager, I
was perturbed to note—did aliens play Marilyn Manson loud at 3am? Dressed in
good, practical moving-day clothes, they looked right at home as they took
vacant possession of their new domain.

"That's pretty
boring," said Josh. "They look just like us."

"There's a reason
for that," said Alison. "They're shape-shifters."

"Cool!" said Josh. "How
many different shapes do you reckon they can turn into?"

"As many as they
like, but they can't change their mass," Alison told him. She had this on good
authority from her friend Cecile in Wellington. Cecile, said Alison, had
contacts.

We didn't usually do
anything special to welcome new people to the street, but in this case we
thought we should make an exception. Neither the Murrays nor the Zhangs could
be expected to take the lead. The Murrays, acting on the adage that good fences
make good neighbours, had already added a metre to the height of theirs. Alison
and I decided it was up to us. We rang round, got a dozen or so pledges of
support, and then went over the road to knock on the new neighbours' door.

It was opened by the
teenager, who looked us up and down, called over her shoulder something that
must have meant "Mum!" and disappeared back inside without another word. So
far, so human.

Mum came to the
door. There was something unusual about her face. I do not mean that she had
three eyes, or purple skin, or a ring of small feeding tentacles where her
mouth should have been. Her features were quite regular and normal, but they
lacked any distinguishing quirks. Her nose, her eyes, her ears, her mouth, all
were in proportion, and her skin was flawless, without a beauty spot or wrinkle
to break the monotony. She looked like everyone and no-one.

"Good evening. How
may I help you?" she said.

"We were—some of
your neighbours were …" I stumbled to an embarrassed silence, and Alison took
over.

"Your new neighbours
would like to meet you and your family," said Alison, "and we thought, perhaps,
we could host a little celebration to welcome you to our street. We thought we'd
pop over first, say hello, and ask when might be a good time."

"Excuse me, please,"
said the woman, and returned inside.

We waited on the
doorstep, straining our ears for noises within. Something that might have been
music drifted from the back of the house.

"I bet they're
consulting with their superiors," said Josh. "I bet they have an antenna in the
backyard."

There were three
Super 14 games on tonight, and I had twenty bucks on the Blues by twelve or
under. My feet were making small movements back from the doorstep when the
woman reappeared.

"Now is a good time,"
she said. "And we will host the occasion."

"Now?"

"We possess and have
studied a barbecue."

It was short notice,
and there was some grumbling amongst the invited guests at this breach of
protocol, but curiosity won out and we soon had a pretty good crowd gathered in
their backyard. Even Jessica Zhang popped over for five minutes before excusing
herself. While I helped George to fire up the barbie, Alison inducted Myrtle
into the mysteries of impromptu salads, and once a few of the lads turned up
with some Speights, the party was humming.

"Do you, er, do
you—make sure you keep turning them, they burn easy—do you eat our sort of
food, then?"

"When we look as you
do, we eat as you do," George said.

"It's true, then,
you can change your shape?"

"We change to suit
our environment."

I took another swig
of Speights. "What do you really look like?"

For a moment,
something green and as broad as it was tall stood before me, balanced on an
indeterminate number of legs. Bony plates clashed in its jaw.

"Watch out, mate," I
said as he returned to human form, "you've dropped the tongs."

Later that night, when George and Myrtle had put Lucy and Peter to bed and shouted goodnight to
the teenaged Susan through her locked door, I sat in a deck-chair in number 56's
back yard, with Josh sprawled asleep on my lap. George sat beside me. The girls
were inside somewhere, looking at paint samples.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"In your terms, it's
Carina—59°23'," said George. He pointed, and I looked. Nothing but a faint wisp
of stars.

"Must be a long way," I said.

"It is."

"No popping back
home for a holiday, then."

"Not in a hurry, no."

"So why'd you come
here, George?"

"To build a better
future for our children," said George.

You couldn't argue
with that.

So Rosemont Primary
strove for excellence in all things. That caused problems when it came to
school sports day. Josh was bursting to tell me about it when I picked him up
from after-school care.

"Lucy from over the
road won the 100 metres, and Karen Pihama got mad at her and said she cheated
and grew some extra legs in the middle of the race, and Karen said aliens ought
to go back where they came from, and Mrs Grenville told her off, and then Lucy
said she did grow some extra legs, but she didn't know she wasn't supposed to.
And Lucy made the team for the Northern Zone finals and Karen didn't. And Karen
says her mummy will sue the school."

In the end, the
school sent both of them to the finals, and made Lucy promise to stick to a
human body shape. Legal action was averted, but it was a straw in the wind. Off
work one day with a cold, I went to pick up Josh at 3pm. There was a tight knot
of mothers standing to one side of the netball goal, and Myrtle Thompson
standing on the other side by herself.

I sidled close to
the mothers.

"—disgusting, they
have every advantage, and the school doesn't—"

"—won't put up with—"

"—start a petition?"

I left the mothers
to their anger, and went over to Myrtle. Perhaps she was adapting to our world:
faint lines of worry had appeared around her eyes.

"Tough day?"

She ghosted a smile.
"Lucy came first in another test. The other children say it isn't fair, and now
their mothers are getting upset. I tell her not to stand out so much, to come
second sometimes, but it's not in her nature."

"How about Peter?"

"He's turning into a
real Kiwi boy. Ignores his schoolwork, spends all his time on his PlayStation
or kicking a rugby ball around. He's fitting in fine."

Then the bell rang,
and Josh—not quite old enough yet to be embarrassed by his father—came bounding
out of the classroom to bury me beneath a blizzard of school notices.

The Concerned
Parents' meeting was supposed to be by invitation only, and as known allies of
the aliens, we weren't in the loop. But nothing stays secret for long in Utley
Terrace, and the Thompsons found out even before we did. We made some calls,
and got together with the Thompsons for a strategy session.

"But what can the
Concerned Parents actually do?" I asked.

"Their first step is
to get our children suspended, or preferably expelled, from school. If they can
do that, they deduce that we'll move away. From what I've heard, Karen Pihama's
mother will move to challenge our immigration status if that doesn't work out."

"I told Lucy she
should have chosen someone other than a lawyer's daughter to beat in that race,"
George added unhelpfully.

"What are they going
to get your children suspended for? Both of them are good kids and a credit to
the school. And you've paid your fees."

"Some of the other
kids are starting to gang up on them, on Lucy especially. They're trying to
provoke a reaction. Lucy's doing her best, but it's hard for her. Perhaps we
should do what they want?"

"It's the problem
with being pioneers," said George. "Wherever we go, we will face these
attitudes. I think we should stay here and face these critics down. I think we
should attend the meeting of the Concerned Parents' Group."

Meeting Room 4 at
the Rosemont Community Centre, 7.22pm. The Concerned Parent at the door looked
up in alarm as George, Myrtle, and Susan arrived, flanked by their supporters.

"You can't come in
here," hissed the Concerned Parent, who happened to be Leonie Murray from
number 54.

"Why not?"

"This is a private
meeting."

"No it's not," I
said. "It's a public meeting, because you're meeting in a community centre paid
for by everyone's rates. We have just as much right to be here as you have." We
swept past her into the room.

Much consternation,
much gathering and whispering amongst the organisers. Eventually, Leonie Murray
walked up to the lectern with a smile pasted to her face.

"Good evening,
everyone.
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa
." I saw Huhana
Pihama wince at the multiple mispronunciations. "We all know why we're here,"
Leonie said, and glared at us, the tight knot of Thompsons and supporters in
the third and fourth rows back. "We've built up a cohesive little community
here in Utley Terrace, a community that shares certain values, and now that
community is threatened. The Government won't do anything, and the Council won't
do anything, and the school says it can't do anything, so it's time we did
something ourselves. It seems that news of this meeting spread a bit wider than
we planned, so we're going to adjourn the meeting here and reconvene at 54
Utley Terrace, where only those who've got a genuine commitment to this
community are invited to attend."

Myrtle Thompson rose
to her feet. "Before you go off to your little meeting, I want to say
something," she said, to cries of "Sit down!" and "Go back where you came from!"
She did not sit down. One or two of the staunchest Concerned Parents walked
from the room, but the rest of the audience stayed, waiting for something to
happen.

It did. Myrtle
changed shape, and once again, but for longer this time, I saw one of our new
neighbours in its true form. There was nothing too threatening there: no claws,
no tentacles, no teeth to speak of. A multi-limbed green blob, with a mouth
pleading for air: Myrtle was breathing heavily by the time she changed back to human
form. Three more people had scrambled out of their seats and left in a hurry,
but Myrtle had the rest of the audience hooked.

"This is who I am,"
she said when she got her breath back. "I am not the same as you, but I do not
threaten you. For millennia, we of Th'katath have spread throughout the galaxy,
seeking only to live peaceably with our neighbours, to trade with them, to
invest in their worlds.

"You are a nation of
traders. You send your sheep, your beef, your wool, your fruit across to the
other side of your planet. But do you not realise what riches are on offer to
those who trade amongst the stars? Look!"

Without any visible
means of projection, she made glowing images appear on the off-white wall of
Meeting Room 4, and she began her pitch. She told us that we in New Zealand,
little old New Zealand, had what the galaxy was craving: fresh air, solitude,
and the leanest lamb in the galaxy. Tourists, she promised, would flock to see
us; carbon-based life forms everywhere, those of a carnivorous persuasion,
wouldn't be able to get enough of our two-tooth and hogget.

"Why don't you tell
the Government?" asked Larry Purvis from the quantity surveyors'.

"We have. But we
will not trade with those who hate us, and so we came to live amongst you, to
see whether we would be welcomed or shunned. Perhaps we should have known that
we would find a little of each reaction. Now is your time to decide. Will you
have us, and the riches we bring?"

High property values
are the hallmark of a civilised society. Meeting Room 4 said yes.
Overwhelmingly, they said yes. They came up and apologised; they offered
handshakes and hugs; they asked whether the inhabitants of the galaxy might
find a use for batik, or management consulting, or quantity surveyors. They
left happier than they'd arrived, and even those who were parents were, for the
most part, concerned no longer.