Chapter Eight

There is a strangeness to the human work ethos, on the left hand of the scale they can be so lazy that it’s a wonder they don’t grow moss. Multiple vacations, creature comforts… far be it for me to complain about these since I would have to ruin my academic integrity by pretending I didn’t very much enjoy them.

But on the right hand of the scale, they are capable of tremendous energy and ambition, a desire to leave their mark on the world, and achieve something they deem worthy of themselves.

Even for so nonhomogenous a species, these extremes in them were jarring. I adapted better, I think, than most of my fellow students in part because dlamisans have at least some of these traits encouraged by our culture.

Strangely enough, with humans at least, it is the lazy that make the largest difference. This may shock some of the more industrious races who read what I am about to write, but I will explain. Picture an industrious idiot tasked to bring one hundred clay vases across a very wide room. Because he is industrious, he is willing to work hard, but because he is an idiot, his solution is to carry a great many of them, and as a result, he drops them and they shatter.

Now picture an intelligent and industrious person, they work out what they can carry, and tirelessly make many trips ensuring each one in safety, breaking very few and he finishes after a very long time.

Now picture a lazy idiot, he does nothing.

And lastly, a clever but lazy one, this one makes a cart with wheels and takes them all across with minimal effort. All of human civilization has advanced because somebody set out to make things easier to do. Whether inventing irrigation because buckets took too long or pulleys because heavy things are troublesome, humans are the only species I have ever encountered that can turn laziness into a superpower.

Which is why I was thinking hard about my next job while I got up and went to the shower downstairs that I would use to clean myself off. Humans, even more than dlamisa, love their water. Perhaps because so much of the planet is covered with it, they think it normal. My homeworld has substantially less, but it is because of that that we’re drawn to it. Unlike Earth, my home is a megacontinent, our own ‘Pangea’, the first of our kind to travel around it did so on foot.

But the human divisions brought about by having not one or two, but seven continents, made exploration far more dangerous, and their superabundance of water gave them far more options than they had any business having. With the abundance of massive seas providing nearly unlimited food for generations, their civilizations were able to grow up independently of one another…

…But I digress… I find myself doing that more lately, the longer I am here. My shower, yes, as I said, I had my own which provided ample hot water, though I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I, as Fauve put it, “...smell like wet dog.”

Rebecca helped to compensate for this by setting up three standing fans connected to a single power strip, along with a few extra towels so that when I left the shower I could simply turn on the fans while trying to dry myself. It took some time, and I had to go from standing to kneeling to turning around for several minutes at a time.

But it is a bad guest who stinks up the home of his host.

I am reticent to add this part before detailing the events of dinner, however after the publication of the 2nd edition of this volume, certain homophobic species let their fear of Homo sapiens get the better of them, and it was whispered that I was ‘forced’ by the Walker family into an elaborate cleaning ritual as a way of humiliating me or because they considered aliens to be ‘filthy’.

Therefore I add into this edition my refutation of that claim. Dlamisan fur may range from thick to short, but ‘mine’ was on the thicker side and relatively long, as such when taking showers, I would get thoroughly drenched and drip water for hours if not properly dried. Aside from puddles around the house that could be slipped on, I admit the odor was not the best.

Therefore I was more than happy to meet them halfway, and if it took a little longer to start my day, what of it? Unlike humans, I didn’t have to engage in the same daily cleansing ritual, only weekly, more if I dirtied myself at the park.

So with that interval accounted for and that rumor refuted in my own hand, I return to the narrative. After throwing on a pair of shorts and a loose t-shirt I headed for the stairs. Before I got there I could already hear two familiar voices, one, my avian comrade, Ka’wik. He was an odd one as I recall. Not many Kitzians became linguists, and he was another of the few predatory races to evolve, making him a double oddity.

He was living with Virginia Walker and her son Samuel, who were paired with him because of all the Walker clan, they were the most mobile, and Kitzians do not idle well in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. Their world is unique in that their civilization did not begin on land, but in the sky. Their ancestors settled on large floating fungi that drifted over their world. From what I know, they went down to land to create short term harvesting sites, and began rotational work that let their people make more discoveries and… so it went. Despite being settled and civilized, they are still known as wanderers. Ka’wik was very much one of his people, with a sharp hooked beak and a somewhat bulging red feathered throat, he had no claws on his hands, but rather nine webbed digits with small spines that would punch through whatever he grabbed.

Stolen novel; please report.

His more predatory ancestors slew their prey by grabbing it out of the air, then crushing it by slamming it into the ground below. As predatory species went, they were the dlamisa of the air.

The other voice I heard was that of Professor Sxlith, I stopped, resting my hand on the rail and remaining out of view on the stairs. “My student seems to have embroiled you in a thorough mess, and I would like to apologize for any fault of his.”

I should add that Tlaxishi do not really have a concept of ‘apology’ in their culture. Among their people, anyone who does something offensive, removes themselves immediately for a period of thirty days, time enough for aggression hormones to dissipate. Much of their Communication Age came about expressly because they needed to do more work at a distance and couldn’t afford to not communicate for an Earth month or nothing would ever get done.

Since his sojourn to Earth, the concept of an expression of verbal regret has entered their lexicon, and between that and some medicinal hormone blockers that make them less defensive, they are a more peaceful species than before. There is a reason Sxlith became famous in academic circles for his work with humans. But at the same time, it seems he was not immune from being impacted by his own studies, his apology flowed so naturally from him that had I not known his voice, and heard the faint flick of his tongue darting up to his eyeball, I might have thought it was a human speaking.

“Come now, professor, you know how these things go. At least it certainly does with Virginia and her mate…” I could practically see Ka’wik’s feathers puff out. I knew little about his time with Virginia, but what little I knew was that she and her mate were prone to various hijinks and exotic travel, throwing themselves headlong into every new experience. It wasn’t hard to conclude that he’d come to think of humans as headstrong and relentlessly adventurous… not to mention prone to getting into trouble.

“Think nothing of it, maybe there was a better way, but you don’t always have time for the better option, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t fitting. Besides, grandfather told me you learned that we do just fine with disruption.” William’s laugh after the last word was as thick and rich as syrup on pancakes, and it was at that moment that I realized that while I’d come to learn a fair bit about his immediate household, I didn’t know a lot about his family history. ‘I should have read the unabridged version, not Professor Sxlith’s purely academic work…’

That, if the reader is interested, is when I decided to release my volumes of thesis work as a journal instead of a traditional observatory report, breaking with centuries of tradition and presenting a narrative instead. The academic tome contained premises, conclusions, and evidentiary observations abound, but the meat or the humanity of the work was absent. It presented an incomplete picture that left me less prepared than I might have otherwise been for my time on Earth.

As I reached the main floor I saw an unexpected sight. Blorip, my semipermeable colleague, who I recalled moved like an oversized slug and was at least once or twice turned into a puddle from alcohol, had taken a human shape. It wasn’t quite perfect, but he had clearly learned to morph his body into something two legged, though the proportions were a little off.

But it was good enough that he wore a ‘kind’ of clothing. More specifically, he was wearing galoshes and a bright yellow raincoat that had been clearly cut and resewn into shorts and a button down shirt… or something like it.

“You never know what to expect, so you can’t plan for everything.” He said, and to me, that was a shock. Blorip came from a very conservative race called Baxili. Baxilians are even longer lived than dlamisa, reproduce asexually, and their offspring retain a large percentage of their ‘parental’ memories. While they are a predatory race, they are also capable of living off of almost anything, even more than humans, as they can survive off of a diet of raw minerals. That is to say… They can eat rocks.

I would have been less surprised to hear William offer rocks for dinner than I was to hear a Baxili say that you can’t plan for everything. Of course with humans, that was simply the truth.

“Professor, Blorip, Ka’wik, good to see you.” I extended my hand in a human greeting, and my professor’s lips twitched a little when I made the very human gesture and it was met by my classmates. We shook hands one by one, Ka’wik being careful not to do any accidental stabbings.

I kept a brave face on it, but I knew what it had to be about. “Come, sit.” Rebecca said and went to the coffee maker. As Michael wasn’t in his chair, I had to assume he was down for a nap, but though she put a brave face on it, I noticed the way her hands trembled a little and how she focused more intently on the task of coffee making than she usually did.

Any doubts I had about the subject were erased.

William emphasized his wife’s words and gestured toward several chairs, his hand falling to the wooden back of one of them when his eyes met mine.

I went for it while the others went for empty chairs of their own.

Professor Sxlith waited until the steam was rising from each of our cups and the cream was flowing out of its container, we all took one long, deep breath, inhaling the fragrant aroma of the rich liquid that so shaped much of human culture. Only then, when each of us had a hand on our cups and Rebecca claimed a seat of her own, did my professor speak.

“We need to talk about Bailey’s stay, and how much longer it will be. Or rather, not be.”