Babysitting (Short Story)
Babysitting
by
Christine W. Murphy
John crouched next to his charges and pulled one back from the edge. The clay embankment didn’t look sturdy enough to bear the weight of a full-grown avral.
“This will have to be our last visit. The rain’s supposed to start soon.” With his arms stretched to encompass them, John drew his brood back a few steps.
Damn little buggers. Toss the lot over the edge and watch them learn they can’t fly.
The next hill over looked exactly like this one—a mound of clay covered with apartment-sized blisters, but hollowed out and filled with swirling dust. He pointed over the orange clay landscape to a spot several hundred meters down the slope from where they stood.
“That’s where your mother and I will meet you after the rain stops. You won’t be avrals any more.”
What they would become was lost in the uncertainty that defined John’s translator. Not that he knew what an avral was either, not exactly.
“And it won’t hurt?” one of John’s sons said.
“How will you recognize us?” asked the other.
“According to your mother, no, it won’t hurt, and mothers always recognize their children, even after they’ve grown wings. She knows about these things.”
All five of John’s charges nodded in unison. That’s one thing they all agreed on. Mother was the smarter of their parents. And why wouldn’t she be? She was a native on this ball of mud, he was just a visitor.
Stupid females, anyway.
“How will we get there?” The littlest was always a worrier. John’s wife said it was genetic. Eons ago, the runt was often starved out by ravenous sibs, sometimes eaten. It paid to remind your parents where you were. John’s sons were always sniffing around him, looking for attention.
A sarcastic remark danced on John’s lips before it slid down his throat, unspoken.
“We’ll have our wings to use, silly.” The answer came from one of the girls. Three boys, three girls. That’s how it had started out.
Remembered anger set John’s right arm twitching. How he’d wanted to send that little bugger down the mountain on his ass. Always pestering, always whining. I want my food now, Daddy. I want a drink of nectar. When will it be my turn?
The only surprise for John came when the smallest of his sons died in an accident. John hadn’t even been in charge. His wife had taken the children on one of her sporadic outings. An aging breeder had nabbed the tyke. Always a risk, she said with a shrug when she’d returned home one short. They usually went for the smallest male, so no real harm was done.
John had felt grateful he couldn’t be blamed. He’d heard stories about fathers punished for inattentive childcare. No telling what they would do to an alien serving his time.
“At least some of us will have wings.” The girl aimed her sneer at her brothers, who stood several centimeters shorter than their female sibs.
The girls were the most trouble, they knew too much. Their mother told them things. John had tried to protest, tried to tell her it wasn’t fair. Why should she keep the boys in the dark? Men needed to know how the world worked so they could keep things on the right track. John remembered the incident quite clearly. His jaw had locked and his face flushed hot when he tried to contradict his wife.
A tug on John’s pant leg reminded him of his duties. He caught the arm of one boy and slung the other over his shoulder as he herded the girls inside. They could spend the afternoon playing monchon. The sound was excruciating, but it would keep them out of trouble until bedtime. If he lost one of the little monsters, he’d never hear the end of it, despite his wife’s cavalier attitude. Of course if they lived closer to ground level, he wouldn’t have to keep such a sharp eye. An entire planet of females in need of feeders, and he got stuck with a low-status globe.
“Hey, Man.”
John ignored the whispered call of his next-door neighbor until he’d shut the door on the little ones. Squeals sounded as they jockeyed to claim the best instruments. Why did his wife do that? She never bought enough so they could each have one. Next time he’d insist on it. He would not stand there like an idiot, nodding agreement to every word she said.
“Well, come on in.” John invited three more fellow feeders, who poked their heads out from adobe doorways. “The wife won’t be home ‘til supper. Plenty of time to get ready for her.”
John cupped his privates and winked as his fellow househusbands slunk into his den. His wife said that every man needed a place in which to prepare himself. John didn’t know about that, damned translator was awful mushy about certain things, but he did need a place to stash what passed for hooch in this place. Fermented nectar packed a punch if you distilled it just right, boiled it down to ten percent and mixed it with slag. An acquired taste, but John was used to making do. After all, look at what he was sleeping with instead of a real woman.
The male who lived in the next apartment spoke first. He always did. Probably something to do with protocol. John wasn’t certain. Didn’t want to know too much about this place. Just do his time and get back to the real world, to real people.
“I finished all my chores, and the little ones are sleeping.” Cringy, as John called him, cocked his antennae toward the sound of John’s raucous children. “Don’t yours need a nap before the big change?”
Cringy was one whipped aphid, but he had a buddy four levels down who let them hang out, which came in handy on hot days. The air got better the farther you went down the slope.
“The way I figure things, if they need a little nap when this change thing gets started, it’ll mean that much less work for me.”
Cringy pulled his head close to his shoulders, which made him look more like a bug than usual. Harvey, so named by John because his antennae were a few millimeters too long, held out his cup in wordless appeal. The antennae reminded John of a rabbit–of course, they all did, not just Harvey’s–but after telling his fellow feeders the story about the man who saw an enormous rabbit with oversized ears named Harvey, calling Harvey, well, Harvey, annoyed the bug no end.
The entire crew now held out their mugs, which they kept in tiny silk sacks attached to their belts. John filled each with precisely one shot of hooch, as measured by the eye. A person didn’t want a drunk bug in the house, not with children around, or the wife due home soon. John took a slug from his beaker.
“Next year, I’m going to be my wife’s breeder,” Harvey said.
Cringer snickered; the others ducked their heads. Harvey was a feeder by virtue of his oversized ears, and no amount of pandering and scrubbing floors could change him from a feeder into a breeder.
For John it was strictly a matter of biology. No matter how many times he sent it home to the little woman, she couldn’t get preggers by him. A big, beefy fellow of her own species with bloodlines proven to produce strong females and cooperative males did that job a few days before John’s transport had signed him over.
John could simulate the act, of course, and he did quite regularly, but it didn’t do much for him. Although she claimed otherwise, his wife seemed to like it. Her antennae twitched rhythmically, especially the one on the right, which Harvey claimed had too much ruff. When what passed for Friday night came, John closed his eyes and thought of baseball while he recreated the little woman. It made for a more peaceful week.
“This is my last time as a feeder,” Chester said. John had named him that just because he reminded John of a Chester he’d known once. Ass of a guy.
The others nodded in sympathy as Chester rubbed his leg. “My mate and I have been doing this for too many years. It’s best to end it now.”
Chester’s brood of wiggles had gone through the change a week early, which resulted in some sort of mishap. John hadn’t asked for details. Seemed kind of rude. No one had mentioned what happened to the kids. Would be a shame if being off by only a week meant the little critters hadn’t made it to their next stage. They’d always been a quiet, obedient little troop when John was around.
All four held out their glasses for a refill. John obliged. He might not see the fellows again. The change would come to all their charges soon, and John would be on a shuttle headed for home the minute the rains let up.
He’d been sentenced to one cycle. The judge had made that clear. Serve as a feeder for their new alien friends through one entire cycle. Hell, what was one cycle? All that crap about interspecies relations, the future of mankind. John was playing Daddy to save his neck.
“Have you done your chores?” The obvious question came from Twister, whose head topper twirled in an almost symmetrical pattern. His near perfection had earned him and his misses a spot halfway down the mountain. No slumming it with the rest of them for Twister. But on occasion he visited Chester, a fellow littermate from what John gathered of the discussion, up here in the slums.
“I’ve got time for chores,” John said.
“You don’t want to get caught in the rain.” Cringer licked the inside of his cup. Handy tongues these fellows had. Would drive the women back home crazy.
John used to drive women crazy. Carla on Mondays when her old man pulled a double. That bit of ass that worked for the guy John sold hot parts to. And his wife, of course, who knew better than to act standoffish.
“Well, humans don’t melt, not like some species. And we don’t jump when our wives say boo.” The whole planet seemed to be water-soluble. Damned depressing place in the rainy season if he could believe the briefing he’d received during transport. Those less fortunate than John worked in knee-deep muck under a marine-green sky to extract whatever the hell the government was so crazy about getting out of this place.
Yes, despite not being here of his own volition, John was living the life. Babysitting and humping a bug. What was that compared to farming alien algae?
Twister’s mouth pursed like he was going to defend himself, but thought better of it. Four empty glasses appeared under John’s nose again. This would have to be the last round. He knew first hand what this lot was like when under the influence.
“Is your wife in need of a breeder for next season?” Harvey asked.
Funny place where a man could ask if his wife planned to get knocked up by another fella and not get a fist to the nose. John had been forced to put his fist upside his human wife’s head more than once to remind her not to go sniffing around the guys she worked with.
John emptied the beaker, pausing while the burn made its way down his throat.
“Nah, she’s had enough. I mean, how’s she going to go back to you lot after she’s had a taste of a man.”
The four freeloaders exchanged looks again. Creepy little guys.
Twister poked Chester in the ribs for no reason that John could discern.
“Well,” Chester said, as he wiped the last of his drink from his chin cilia, “I think it’s very unselfish of you to give your wife this chance to experience quiocerno.”
The translator failed on the key word, which seemed to happen a lot. From what John could gather, when a couple had their last batch of kids, they retired to some nice place to escape the constant chatter of tiny mandibles.
“Yes,” Harvey added, “she never would have had this chance without you.”
Four sets of atrophied private parts swelled ineffectually and swayed as if blown by a breeze. Feeders didn’t need a functioning prick, although Harvey swore that would change if a female chose him for a breeder.
John eyed their semi-limp peckers as clandestinely as he could manage with this much hooch under his belt. The sight made him uneasy, as if he’d stumbled upon an all-male daisy-chain party before the hookups had been made.
“Mine must have been good enough to do the job.” Four hairless eyebrows rose a centimeter to let John know they doubted that very much.
“She saw the breeder only once and then it was back to mine.” John patted the zipper on his last pair of denims to make certain they caught his meaning.
Four pairs of eyestalks swiveled to focus on the rip in his pants that cut uncomfortably close to his crotch. If the rain didn’t come soon, John would have to go native. He kept his uniform coveralls hidden away for the day they came for him.
Cringer crouched down. He didn’t have to go far to come nose-to-nose with John’s business end.
Well, John wasn’t about to show them. That would be too twisted, and would give the little guys a permanent inferiority complex, not that their present circumstances didn’t do a fair job of that already. He’d kill himself if he had to do this forever–babysitting someone else’s batch of prepubescent offspring while the wife went to work. They didn’t need to know that a real man had a tool longer and thicker than their forearm.
John jiggled the empty beaker and cleared his throat to bring their attention back to where it was supposed to be, on him and his story. He’d gotten it down pretty well after months of telling.
“How was it that you met, again?” Twister hid his leer behind twitching facial bristles.
“It was just starting to clear up after the big rains. My kind usually leaves around then, when the clay dries and hardens. All that dust mucks up the gears of our powerful machines.” And made it hard for humans to breathe, but John wasn’t about to mention that. Best to emphasize the powerful machines. That’s all these runts could understand.
“So I settled myself down in the local bar on a comfortable stool and had myself a cold one.”
Four pairs of eyestalks turned in mournful unison to stare at his empty beaker.
“Not sure how many I had, couldn’t have been more than seven or eight pints…”
Harvey choked. One drink that size would pickle him.
“Then she walked in. Almost looked human, she did. Well, you’ve seen her. You know. Had my thing in her before I even found out her name. Didn’t have a translator installed then. Love at first sight, I suppose. She couldn’t help herself.”
John’s Greek chorus nodded their heads. Something resembling sadness clouded their eyes.
“Well, one thing led to another. She proposed and after one trip to the breeder, we settled up here with you nice folks.”
Eight antennae twitched with disappointment and alien peckers deflated the rest of the way. He must have left out the sexy part. Damned hard to remember what exactly that was.
“Didn’t even know her name.” Had he told them that before?
“That’s why you’re on the top,” Twister said.
Before John could make a rude comment, Twister pointed upward. A single layer of clay plastered over a stick frame was all that separated them from the weather.
“The women are home.”
Cringer ducked his head and ran. The others made slightly more dignified exits.
***
John tried to stop fidgeting. Something was vaguely familiar about the scene, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. His brain hadn’t connected with his body quite right since the sentencing. Maybe something they’d given him to survive the trip.
“I took the kids on a nice, long walk today. They had a good time. Was just getting ready to put them down for their nap.” John kept his eyes focused on the floor to save the strain on his neck. Besides, he didn’t like the way his wife’s eyes looked when she towered over him.
Damn freak would be playing basketball back on Earth.
“Glad to know someone enjoyed himself today. Wish I could spend it playing.”
John’s wife sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. The bitch could smell out hooch in a rainstorm. Well, she had no right complain. He was the one stuck at home with screaming avrals while she got to go out. Air conditioning. Adult conversation.
“Did you have a good day at the office, dear? Would you like a nectar before supper?” Or a kick in the rear. Or, hey, why don’t you tuck your own little worms into bed for a change and stay the fuck out of mine.
His wife sniffed the air again, her multi-facetted eyes blinking rapidly. Always a bad sign.
“You didn’t get the meat. I told you, I reminded you. And you still didn’t get it.”
Anger made John’s left arm twitch. Right in her bugger face. That’s all he wanted, to reach up and put his fist right between her buggy eyes.
“I didn’t have time today, dear. Remember? You asked me specifically to take the children to see their landing spot so they’d know where to go. Before that we had lessons, and they made a terrible mess at lunch. It took me almost an hour to–”
“Oh, shut up. I don’t want to hear your excuses. I’ll just change all of my plans and go do the shopping instead of–”
“Now, you don’t have to do that, dear. I can do it tomorrow. You don’t have anything planned for me then. Plenty of time to lay in stores before the rain starts.”
“It would serve you right if I did. Just left you at home without enough food. You are the feeder in this family you know, not me. I have to work for a living.”
My fist between your eyes. John’s hand shook again, but instead of showing her who the man was, he busied himself with straightening the children’s jackets.
“I know how hard you work, hon. Say, how about we pretend this is Friday. The kids are busy with their game. We have time before supper. I’ve got a dish in the freezer that I can thaw while we– ”
That sniff again, this time directed at him. No telling what she smelled. When she picked him out of the line up, she’d said she found his aroma exotic, alluring. But maybe that’s what she told all her feeders. Cringy said John was her fifth. Something about a short temper and a willingness to tolerate aliens.
“Don’t bother yourself. I’ve got better things to do than participate in alien perversions on the eve of our children’s morphing.”
Fear made John’s voice tremble. “Where are you going?”
What if she didn’t sign off on his service? What if he didn’t get credit for the cycle? He’d end up in the lineup again, poked and prodded by another loser who couldn’t attract one of her own kind to care for her brood. For a frightening instant, John contemplated a life of servitude.
She threw off her work coat and plucked the green silk from the peg by the door. The fabric slicked her folded wings against her back and made her look almost human. She was going to that bar again. The new transports would be arriving from Earth, the ones filled with workers who had nothing to do but drink until the rains came and turned the dust to mud.
“You’re going to find another one, aren’t you?”
Her mandibles snapped open and shut a half dozen times before she spoke. “Off to see the girls. Not the right time of year to pick a breeder, human, or a new feeder.”
She said human as if it were some insult, as if her entire economy wasn’t tied to the one he’d left behind on Earth.
Somehow, John managed to cross the room and take her arm before she could leave. Had he felt any regret when he’d walked out on his human wife? He’d left right after he punched her in the face, right between the eyes. He’d punched her right after he’d…right after he’d….
“I’ll go shopping tomorrow,” he heard himself say. When hell freezes over, you selfish bitch. “You’ll see. Everything will be just fine.”
John’s alien wife glanced at the door that muffled the sounds of her children playing. Then she looked him up and down as if he were a slab of meat instead of man, and shrugged. “The girls should make it, at least.”
With that enigmatic statement, she left. John spent the rest of the evening taking care of the children and wondering if his translator worked.
***
The next day rain fell in sheets. John couldn’t see anything through the windows. No sign of the little woman, although John found a fresh supply of meat in the cooler when he woke. His hooch buddies were also absent. Unusual for them. They seldom went more than a day without coming over with cup in hand. But they didn’t show up the next day, or the day after that. Neither did John’s wife.
By the third day, John had had enough of the kids’ squabbling and locked himself in his den with the last of human food. No way he could go out in this weather anyways. Somehow, hiding in the windowless room made him feel less claustrophobic.
Damned little buggers expect me to spend my days doing nothing but cook their meals and clean their noses. Well, they can just starve for all I care.
That night, the first drop landed on his cheek. John rolled out of his chair, disoriented and stiff from sleeping upright. Once his head cleared, he stood on his makeshift bed to reach the ceiling. It felt slick and it smoothed out when he run his thumb over the gouge his initial exploring had made. A hand against the wall revealed the same condition. His palm came away covered with damp, adobe-like clay. He’d assumed the walls were painted metal.
By morning on the fifth day, the rain was over. No windows in the den to confirm, but the pounding on the roof had stopped. No wonder no one wanted to live on the top level of this place. Too damned noisy and the roof melted. By noon, the ceiling was hard again. John stood on his chair and banged on it with both fists. Solid as granite. Time to make his escape.
He eased his door open and tiptoed through the quiet house intent on reaching the front door before any of the kids woke. Then, he heard sounds in the kitchen, behind him.
The little buggers must have finally figured out how to fix their own breakfast. Should give me time to run down to the bar and insist that lazy bitch sign my freedom papers.
The door handle crumbled in John’s hand, which came away covered with a fine, red-brown dust.
The seam between the door and the jam was gone; now all smooth and run together with the adjacent wall. He didn’t have to check but the one window. It told the story. The entire mountain and all the apartments carved into its side were sealed under a mass of adobe pottery that now baked in the hot sun.
How long had his wife said the change would last? When were they supposed to meet the children at the bottom of the hill? But the mountain would be impassable now, the footpaths erased by the recent rain and baked hard and smooth. The distance to safety was a backbreaking fall.
And how would they get out? Would someone scale the mountain to break the walls, or was he supposed to chop his way through the clay like some sort of human egg tooth on a baby chick? He slammed his fist against the stone-like window.
John stumbled over his smallest son as he backed toward the den. He tried to kick it to clear his path, but his feet refused to do anything more than shuffle and nudge body parts aside.
Damn that woman. I’m going to kill her when she gets home. Doesn’t she know taking care of the brats is her job?
He recognized the three girls right away, despite the blanket of gauze that wound about their bodies. They were taller than the boys. One of them still moved, twisting and turning in her cocoon.
His girls had run that day, had run screaming, blood dripping from where he’d managed to catch two of them with his knife.
Well, they couldn’t run now, but strangely, neither could John. His feet refuse to move toward their helpless forms. When he decided on another destination, his knees flexed and he started toward the den again.
Then, the solution came to him. Dust. Everything eventually turned to dust. All he had to do was wait and the walls that locked him in would blow away without him doing a thing. The kids didn’t need him to survive. Damn, why hadn’t the little woman taken him with her?
“I need you. Feed me.” The rasping demand came from John’s remaining son.
Was his translator working properly? John tapped the plate behind his ear. The boy walked toward him, apparently oblivious to his male littermate’s antennae crunching beneath his feet.
Hot, blinding anger burned through John. The damned little bastard had sided with her. How dare he? His son was a man, or he would have been in another ten years. How dare he stand between his mother and her just reward? How dare he beg him not to hit her again?
Finally, something broke free inside. John heard it just as clearly as if he’d stepped on a dried branch. Something inside him snapped and he raised his hand over his head. He felt the knife butt in his fist, smelled the blood and the urine, heard his wife whimpering at his feet.
A sharp sting on his left thigh and a stream of warm pee running down John’s leg returned him to the moment and to the avral who stood beside him. His antennae beat an undeterminable message on John’s deteriorated jeans.
John’s knees gave out next. He fell into the kitchen and onto the sticky floor. He smelled avral meat. No telling what the damned stuff was. Translator never did work right.
After that the floor sort of melted, like the walls had, and John floated eyelevel with the crumbs he’d failed to clean from beneath the cupboards the week before. Nothing he could do about that now.
This time it won’t be just the girls who survived. This time his son would live, too. John hadn’t wanted to kill his human son, he hadn’t meant to. His fist had risen of its own accord and then dropped again and again until he was nothing but a bloody mess.
John tried to raise his hand now. His right arm lay dead at his side, unable to respond to the frantic messages John’s newly released brain sent. His left was firmly grasped by his son, who was calmly munching himself into adulthood. He would never be a breeder, too short.
The End
“Babysitting” is Christine W. Murphy’s second short story with Apex Digest, appearing in the fourth issue. “Allergies” appeared in the premier issue of Apex Digest (now Apex Magazine). An ex-Navy officer and survivor of the Cold War, Christine now writes submarine manuals by day and fiction by night.
Christine has published six novels with Hard Shell Word Factory (www.hardshell.com). Her books include science fiction, fantasy, mystery and romance, sometimes in combination. Christine’s SF romance novel Cast in Steel, Carved in Stone won the 2003 Dream Realm award in the Speculative Fiction – Romance category.