James Patrick Kelly - Think Like a Dinosaur

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Think Like A Dinosaur

by James Patrick Kelly

Kamala Shastri came back to this world as she had left it -- naked.

She

tottered out of the assembler, trying to balance in Tuulen Station's

delicate gravity. I caught her and bundled her into a robe with one

motion, then eased her onto the float. Three years on another planet had

transformed Kamala. She was leaner, more muscular. Her fingernails were

now a couple of centimeters long and there were four parallel scars incised

on her left cheek, perhaps some Gendian's idea of beautification. But

what struck me most was the darting strangeness in her eyes. This place,

so familiar to me, seemed almost to shock her. It was as if she doubted

the walls and was skeptical of air. She had learned to think like an

alien.

"Welcome back." The float's whisper rose to a whoosh as I walked it

down

the hallway.

She swallowed hard and I thought she might cry. Three years ago, she

would have. Lots of migrators are devastated when they come out of the

assembler; it's because there is no transition. A few seconds ago Kamala

was on Gend, fourth planet of the star we call epsilon Leo, and now she was

here in lunar orbit. She was almost home; her life's great adventure was

over.

"Matthew?" she said.

"Michael." I couldn't help but be pleased that that she remembered me.

After all, she had changed my life.

#I've guided maybe three hundred migrations -- comings and goings --

since

I first came to Tuulen to study the dinos. Kamala Shastri's is the only

quantum scan I've ever pirated. I doubt that the dinos care; I suspect

this is a trespass they occasionally allow themselves. I know more about

her -- at least, as she was three years ago -- than I know about myself.

When the dinos sent her to Gend, she massed 50,391.72 grams and her red

cell count was 4.81 million per mm3. She could play the nagasvaram, a kind

of bamboo flute. Her father came from Thana, near Bombay, and her favorite

flavor of chewyfrute was watermelon and she'd had five lovers and when she

was eleven she had wanted to be a gymnast but instead she had become a

biomaterials engineer who at age twenty-nine had volunteered to go to the

stars to learn how to grow artificial eyes. It took her two years to go

through migrator training; she knew could have backed out at any time,

right up until the moment Silloin translated her into a superluminal

signal. It was explained to her many times what it meant to balance the

equation.

I first met her on June 22, 2069. She shuttled over from Lunex's L1

port

and came through our airlock at promptly 10:15, a small, roundish woman

with black hair parted in the middle and drawn tight against her skull.

They had darkened her skin against epsilon Leo's UV; it was the deep

blue-black of twilight. She was wearing a striped clingy and velcro

slippers to help her get around for the short time she'd be navigating our

.2 micrograv.

"Welcome to Tuulen Station." I smiled and offered my hand. "My name is

Michael." We shook. "I'm supposed to be a sapientologist but I also

moonlight as the local guide."

"Guide?" She nodded distractedly. "Okay." She peered past me, as if

expecting someone else.

"Oh, don't worry," I said, "the dinos are in their cages."

Her eyes got wide as she let her hand slip from mine. "You call the

Hanen

dinos?"

"Why not?" I laughed. "They call us babies. The weeps, among other

things."

She shook her head in amazement. People who've never met a dino tended

to romanticize them: the wise and noble reptiles who had mastered

superluminal physics and introduced Earth to the wonders of galactic

civilization. I doubt Kamala had ever seen a dino play poker or gobble

down a screaming rabbit. And she had never argued with Linna, who still

wasn't convinced that humans were psychologically ready to go to the stars.

"Have you eaten?" I gestured down the corridor toward the reception

rooms.

"Yes ... I mean, no." She didn't move. "I am not hungry."

"Let me guess. You're too nervous to eat. You're too nervous to talk,

even. You wish I'd just shut up, pop you into the marble, and beam you

out. Let's just get this part the hell over with, eh?"

"I don't mind the conversation, actually."

"There you go. Well, Kamala, it is my solemn duty to advise you that

there are no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Gend. And no chicken

vindaloo. What's my name again?"

"Michael?"

"See, you're not that nervous. Not one taco, or a single slice of

eggplant pizza. This is your last chance to eat like a human."

"Okay." She did not actually smile -- she was too busy being brave --

but a corner of her mouth twitched. "Actually, I would not mind a cup of

tea." "Now, tea they've got." She let me guide her toward reception room D;

her slippers snicked at the velcro carpet. "Of course, they brew it from

lawn clippings."

"The Gendians don't keep lawns. They live underground."

"Refresh my memory." I kept my hand on her shoulder; beneath the

clingy,

her muscles were rigid. "Are they the ferrets or the things with the

orange bumps?"

"They look nothing like ferrets."

We popped through the door bubble into reception D, a compact

rectangular

space with a scatter of low, unthreatening furniture. There was a kitchen

station at one end, a closet with a vacuum toilet at the other. The

ceiling was blue sky; the long wall showed a live view of the Charles River

and the Boston skyline, baking in the late June sun. Kamala had just

finished her doctorate at MIT.

I opaqued the door. She perched on the edge of a couch like a wren,

ready

to flit away.

While I was making her tea, my fingernail screen flashed. I answered

and a tiny Silloin came up in discreet mode. She didn't look at me; she

was too busy watching arrays in the control room. =A problem,= her voice

buzzed in my earstone, =most negligible, really. But we will have to void

the last two from today's schedule. Save them at Lunex until first shift

tomorrow. Can this one be kept for an hour?=

"Sure," I said. "Kamala, would you like to meet a Hanen?" I

transferred

Silloin to a dino-sized window on the wall. "Silloin, this is Kamala

Shastri. Silloin is the one who actually runs things. I'm just the

doorman."

Silloin looked through the window with her near eye, then swung around

and

peered at Kamala with her other. She was short for a dino, just over a

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James Patrick Kelly - Think Like a Dinosaur

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