“Uh,” said Green man. “Hi.”
“Great, everybody’s friends,” I said, and stepped off the porch. Babar left our green friend to follow me. “I’m off, then.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come along?” Green man said. “I don’t mind.”
“No, please,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to get up for anything.” My eyes sort of casually flicked over at Hickory and Dickory, as if to imply it would be a shame if they had to make steaks out of him.
“Great,” he said, and settled onto the swing. I think he got the hint. See, that’s how you do studied casual.
“Great,” I said. Babar and I headed off down the road to find my folks.
TWO
I climbed out onto the roof through my bedroom window and looked back at Hickory. “Hand me those binoculars,” I said. It did—
(Obin: “it,” not “he” or “she.” Because they’re hermaphrodites. That means male and female sex organs. Go ahead and have your giggle. I’ll wait. Okay, done? Good.)
—and then climbed out the window with me. Since you’ve probably never seen it I’ll have you know it’s a pretty impressive sight to watch an Obin unfold itself to get through a window. Very graceful, with no real analogue to any human movement you might want to describe. The universe, it has aliens in it. And they are.
Hickory was on the roof with me; Dickory was outside the house, more or less spotting me in case I should trip or feel suddenly despondent, and then fall or leap off the roof. This is their standard practice when I climb out my window: one with me, one on the ground. And they’re obvious about it; when I was a little kid Mom or Dad would see Dickory blow out the door and hang around just below the roof, and then yell up the stairs for me to get back into my room. Having paranoid alien pals has a downside.
For the record: I’ve never fallen off the roof.
Well, once. When I was ten. But there were extenuating circumstances. That doesn’t count.
Anyway, I didn’t have to worry about either John or Jane telling me to get back into the house this time. They stopped doing that when I became a teenager. Besides, they were the reason I was up on the roof in the first place.
“There they are,” I said, and pointed for Hickory’s benefit. Mom and Dad and my green friend were standing in the middle of our sorghum field, a few hundred meters out. I raised my binoculars and they went from being hash marks to being actual people. Green man had his back to me, but he was saying something, because both Jane and John were looking at him intently. There was a rustle at Jane’s feet, and then Babar popped up his head. Mom reached down to scratch him.
“I wonder what he’s talking to them about,” I said.
“They’re too far away,” Hickory said. I turned to it to make a comment along the lines of no kidding, genius. Then I saw the consciousness collar around its neck and was reminded that in addition to providing Hickory and Dickory with sentience—with their idea of who they were—their collars also gave them expanded senses, which were mostly devoted to keeping me out of trouble.
I was also reminded that their consciousness collars were why they were here in the first place. My father—my biological father—created them for the Obin. I was also reminded that they were why I was here, too. Still here, I mean. Alive.
But I didn’t go down that road of thought.
“I thought those things were useful,” I said, pointing to the collar.
Hickory lightly touched the collar. “The collars do many things,” it said. “Enabling us to hear a conversation hundreds of meters away, and in the middle of a grain field, is not one of them.”
“So you’re useless,” I said.
Hickory nodded its head. “As you say,” it said, in its noncommittal way.
“It’s no fun mocking you,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Hickory said.
And the thing of it was, Hickory really was sorry. It’s not easy being a funny, sarcastic thing when most of who you were depended on a machine you wore around your neck. Generating one’s own prosthetic identity takes more concentration than you might expect. Managing a well-balanced sense of sarcasm above and beyond that is a little much to ask for.
I reached over and gave Hickory a hug. It was a funny thing. Hickory and Dickory were here for me; to know me, to learn from me, to protect me, and if need be to die for me. And here I was, feeling protective of them, and feeling a little sad for them, too. My father—my biological father—gave them consciousness, something the Obin had lacked and had been searching for, for the entire history of their species.