But he didn’t make consciousness easy for them.
Hickory accepted my hug and tentatively touched my head; it can be shy when I’m suddenly demonstrative. I took care not to lay it on too thick with the Obin. If I get too emotional it can mess up their consciousness. They’re sensitive to when I get overwrought. So I backed up and then looked toward my parents again with the binoculars. Now John was saying something, with one of his patented half-cocked smiles. His smile erased when our visitor started talking again.
“I wonder who he is,” I said.
“He is General Samuel Rybicki,” Hickory said.
This got another glance back from me. “How do you know that?” I said.
“It is our business to know about who visits you and your family,” Hickory said, and touched its collar again. “We queried him the moment he landed. Information about him is in our database. He is a liaison between your Civil Defense Forces and your Department of Colonization. He coordinates the protection of your new colonies.”
“Huckleberry isn’t a new colony,” I said. It wasn’t; it had been colonized for fifty or sixty years by the time we arrived. More than enough time to flatten out all the scary bumps new colonies face, and for the human population to become too big for invaders to scrape off the planet. Hopefully. “What do you think he wants from my parents?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Hickory said.
“He didn’t say anything to you while he was waiting for John and Jane to show up?” I said.
“No,” Hickory said. “He kept to himself.”
“Well, sure,” I said. “Probably because you scared the crap out of him.”
“He left no feces,” Hickory said.
I snorted. “I sometimes question your alleged lack of humor,” I said. “I meant he was too intimidated by you to say anything.”
“We assumed that was why you had us stay with him,” Hickory said.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “But if I knew he was a general, maybe I wouldn’t have given him such a hard time.” I pointed to my parents. “I don’t want them getting any grief because I thought it would be fun to mess with this guy’s head.”
“I think someone of his rank would not come all this way to be deterred by you,” Hickory said.
A list of snappy retorts popped in my head, begging to be used. I ignored them all. “You think he’s here on some serious mission?” I asked.
“He is a general,” Hickory said. “And he is here.”
I looked back through the binoculars again. General Rybicki—as I now knew him—had turned just a bit, and I could see his face a little more clearly. He was talking to Jane, but then turned a bit to say something to Dad. I lingered on Mom for a minute. Her face was locked up tight; whatever was going on, she wasn’t very happy about it.
Mom turned her head a bit and suddenly she was looking directly at me, like she knew I was watching her.
“How does she do that?” I said. When Jane was Special Forces, she had a body that was even more genetically modified than the ones regular soldiers got. But like Dad, when she left the service, she got put into a normal human body. She’s not superhuman anymore. She’s just scary observant. Which is close to the same thing. I didn’t get away with much of anything growing up.
Her attention turned back to General Rybicki, who was addressing her again. I looked up at Hickory. “What I want to know is why they’re talking in the sorghum field,” I said.
“General Rybicki asked your parents if there was someplace they could speak in private,” Hickory said. “He indicated in particular that he wanted to speak away from Dickory and me.”
“Were you recording when you were with him?” I asked. Hickory and Dickory had recording devices in their collars that recorded sounds, images and emotional data. Those recordings were sent back to other Obin, so they could experience what it’s like to have quality time with me. Odd? Yes. Intrusive? Sometimes, but not usually. Unless I start thinking about it, and then I focus on the fact that, why yes, an entire alien race got to experience my puberty through the eyes of Hickory and Dickory. There’s nothing like sharing menarche with a billion hermaphrodites. I think it was everyone’s first time.
“We were not recording with him,” Hickory said.
“Okay, good,” I said.
“I’m recording now,” Hickory said.
“Oh. Well, I’m not sure you should be,” I said, waving out toward my parents. “I don’t want them getting in trouble.”