Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi (read me like a book .TXT) 📕

Miranda laughed a little, and then rested her head on my shoulder and cried just a little bit as well. Van Doren, who had been watching us, decided this was a good time to stare at a far wall. “Oh, Tom,” Miranda said, finally. “I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “You’ll be just fine. I’ll stay with you, if you want.”

“And have you see me with aliens digging into my skull?” Miranda smiled more widely and wiped her eyes, clearing away the film of tears. “I don’t think so, Tom. I don’t think we’re at that point in our relationship yet.”

“I guess that’s true,” I said. “Most couples would save the alien probe scene until at least the tenth anniversary. You know, to add some zip to a stale relationship. We’re just way ahead on that curve.”

Miranda placed her hand on my cheek. “Tom,” she said, not unkindly. “Right now, that’s nowhere as funny as you think it is.”

*****

Miranda, Michelle and Joshua wheeled away towards the Yherajk medical area, shapeless Yherjak pooling on the sides of the stretchers, pulling it along. Van Doren and I looked at each other. We had no idea what to do with ourselves now. Gwedif, who remained with us, offered a full tour. I accepted, and Van Doren tagged along, apparently excited at the idea of actually understanding what it was he was looking at this time.

The rest of the ship was as visually unappealing as what we had already seen: corridor and rooms carved out of the stone of the asteroid, smoothed over and filled with the Yherajks’ equipment. For all intents and purposes, we could have been at a science lab anywhere on the planet — everything functional, none of it esthetically pleasing.

Gwedif, who was trying to keep us distracted from our concern about Miranda and Michelle, acknowledged that for us the ship might not be tremendously exciting to look at. That’s the problem with our species having different primary sensory organs, he said. It’s really fascinating to smell, he assured us. Of course, most of the smells on the ship would make us pass out from their potency if we didn’t have noseplugs. Which Gwedif also admitted put a damper on the wonder of the ship.

The one area of the ship that I found the most interesting was what Gwedif labeled as the art gallery, with the tivis that Gwedif described to Carl. Like everything else on the ship, the tivis weren’t much to look at — they looked like shallow bowls left on the floor, with blackened crusts of something surrounded by wires. Gwedif steered us to one, suggested we sit down to get closer to the tivis, and then slid a tendril into a slot on the floor near the tivis.

The tivis immediately started to warm up; the wires were apparently heating elements. Through my noseplugs, I smelled something acrid, but I was also immediately overwhelmed by a sense of wistfulness, with overtones of happiness but the slightest bit of regret. It was the feeling you get when you see an old girlfriend, realize that she’s a wonderful person, and that you were kind of an idiot to let her go, even if you’re happily married now. I mentioned this (without the drama) to Gwedif.

“It worked, then,” Gwedif said. “Tivis work by stimulating certain emotions through smells. This one,” he pointed to the one we were at, “is actually fairly crude — it’s just one primary emotion with only a couple of emotional harmonics. Any of us could have made it, actually. It’s the tivis equivalent of a paint-by-numbers. Some of our tivis masters can create works of incredible emotional depth, layering emotion on emotion in unexpected combinations. You can get really worked up over a good tivis.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “These could go over real big on earth. You need to introduce me to some of the Yherajk who make these.”

“Looking for clients already?” Gwedif said.

“I’ve already got all of you as clients, Gwedif,” I said. “Now I just need to find out which ones of you need individual attention.”

We sampled a few more tivis before I got restless and wanted to return to the ambulance. If I was going to be worried, I wanted to be worried near something familiar. Van Doren came with me. We hung around the ambulance for an hour before Van Doren fished through the glove compartment and unearthed a pack of cards. We played gin. Van Doren kicked my ass; he apparently didn’t believe or understand the concept of a friendly game of cards. After I got sick of cards, I grabbed a blanket out of the ambulance, spread it out on the floor of the hangar and willed myself into another nap.

I awakened this time by someone sticking their toe in my side. I swatted at the leg. It jabbed, harder.

“Wake up,” Someone said. It was Michelle’s voice.

I spun up, whacking my head on the ambulance as I struggled to get up. Michelle stood before me, naked. There was a crooked and slightly sardonic grin on her face. Never in all the years that I knew her had she ever had an expression like that. Sardonicism would have been a little much to ask out of Michelle.

“Joshua?” I asked.

“You were expecting maybe Winston Churchill?” Joshua said. “By the way, I think you might as well start calling me Michelle. There are very few people who look like this,” she motioned to her body, “That would be called Joshua.”

“All right….Michelle,” I said.

Van Doren came over and frankly stared at Michelle’s naked form. “Wow,” he said. “I may have to revise that comment about taking you off my list of women to date.”

“Back off, jerky,” Michelle said.

“I just can’t win,” Van Doren complained.

“I guess we can say the transfer was a success,” I said.

“It was easier than I thought,” Michelle said. “It helped that Gwedif had rummaged around through a human brain before. When I first suggested the idea of going into Miranda’s brain, he shared his knowledge with me so I didn’t have to fly completely blind. And Miranda was very open as well. Between the two of them, we made some remarkable progress.”

“Where is Miranda?” I asked.

“She’s sleeping,” Michelle said. “The experience took a lot out of her.”

“Is she all right?” I said. “I mean, no damage to her?”

“Other than fatigue, no, none,” Michelle said. “Though you might give her a few days off when we get back. Let her rest up.”

“She can take the rest of the year off,” I said.

“Give her a raise, too,” Michelle said. “Hazard pay.”

“Pretty soon she’ll be making more than I do,” I said.

“And about time, don’t you think,” Michelle said.

“How much of you is you?” Van Doren asked Michelle.

“Which me are you talking about?” Michelle said. “Joshua, Michelle or Miranda?”

“Michelle, for starters.”

“There’s actually quite a bit of who Michelle was in here,” Michelle said. “Miranda’s insistence on that matter made me take a look at the whole picture again. It took more time to get it all in, but now I agree with Miranda. It was the right thing to do. Now, I did do some judicious editing. Miranda’s natively smarter and has more common sense than Michelle. In those matters, I had a tendency to model the template towards Miranda than Michelle. And at the end of it, everything that was Joshua is in here too, although a lot of it is being subsumed by the parts from Miranda and Michelle. I’m much more human than I was before. And yet I retain all my endearing qualities from before. Truly, a perfect being.”

“And modest, too,” Van Doren said.

“Feh on you,” Michelle said. “I’m going to remember that comment when the revolution comes.”

The door to the hangar opened and a stretcher wheeled out, pulled along by Yherajk. Miranda lay on it. She smiled and waved as her stretcher was pulled up to where we stood.

“You ought to be sleeping,” Michelle said, severely.

“You ought to be dressed,” Miranda said.

“That hospital gown was so not me,” Michelle said. “I’ve retained Michelle’s fashion sense.”

“I urged her to rest, but she insisted on coming back here,” Gwedif said. He was one of the Yherajk pulling the stretcher.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” Miranda insisted. “I feel like my sinuses were used as a bypass for the 405, but that’s over with. Now I want to go home. It’s been fun having an alien probe, really, but I have plants to water and a cat to feed. I’ve already missed two feedings. I miss one more, and I get classified as food myself.”

“Is she well enough to move?” I asked Michelle.

“She’s fine,” Michelle said. “But I still think she needs some more rest.”

“I can sleep on the way down,” Miranda said.

“Good luck with that,” Michelle said.

“Don’t make me get huffy,” Miranda threatened. “Besides, we have to go back. You need to be outfitted, Michelle.”

“That’s true,” Michelle admitted. “There is much shopping to be done. We should head back immediately. Stores are about to open.”

“Do we all have to go back?” Van Doren said. We all turned to him. He shifted, slightly uncomfortable. “If no one minds, I’d like to stay here for a while.”

“Why?” I asked.

“If my job is to be the storyteller for this little venture of ours, then it stands to reason that I should spend time getting to know the Yherajk,” Van Doren said. “I think Gwedif and I could stand to spend a little more time together. I want to get this story right, Tom. Besides, it’s not like I have anything going on back on earth. I don’t even have a cat. And this way you’re guaranteed that I’m out of your hair.”

“Gwedif?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t mind,” Gwedif said. “It could be valuable, in fact. It could be helpful in figuring out what we need to do to make the Ionar more friendly to humans.”

“Start with air freshener,” Van Doren suggested.

“Watch it,” Gwedif said.

We said our goodbyes to Van Doren and Gwedif. Miranda, still in her stretcher, lay in the back; Michelle, still naked, stayed in back with her. Two Yherajk pilots arrived and positioned themselves; in a moment a platform formed beneath them and a transport cube began taking shape. Behind the wheel, I waved again at Gwedif and Van Doren. Then the cube wall slid higher, obscuring the view.

Michelle poked her head up to the front. “Well, you did it,” she said. “You got me into this body. You’ve made me a human. What are we going to do now?”

“It depends,” I said. “How well do you think you can act?”

Michelle snorted. “Better than I could before, that’s for sure.”

“Well, then,” I said. “I have a plan.”