The Alien and the Jeweler

15 minutes

Illana Greystoke was the name the twenty-nine-year-old behind the counter had given herself. The name on her birth certificate was less grand, but, like everything in Greystoke Originals, this name was shiny, hand-made, and a matter of her customers’ perception.

“That is the price,” she said.

The man on the other side of the glass countertop frowned. He was in his late fifties, stocky, with slicked-back thinning hair, almost unnaturally black but for the give-away gray at its roots. A recently retired stockbroker, she guessed, but not the fantastically successful kind. Illana could read his story in all the things he tried not to show. He’d been here earlier haggling over the same piece. He’d taken the wife on a nice trip upstate to Hudson. They’d gone shopping, like always. She’d taken a liking to one of the most expensive pieces in Illana’s shop. He was supposed to be treating her to a fine getaway, but she didn’t yet understand that their income level was now fixed. He needed to get her this keepsake just to keep up appearances. That was Illana’s read, anyway.

“I saw earrings just like this,” he paused as one of Illana’s cats leaped onto the counter and tiptoed between them like a referee, “online, at a fraction of the cost.”

Illana smiled patiently, gathering her response while she stroked the Russian Blue’s head. “Not just like this,” she finally said. “Because this set is handmade.”

The broker bit his lip in consternation. “I don’t think that’s particularly relevant. You see, in business, if a machine can do the same job at a lower price, then the machine wins. You’re going to have to adapt to the market.”

He offered a fatherly look to go with this free counsel and reached for the earrings. She pulled them back, slightly.

“These are handmade,” she explained, in the same patient voice.

He shrugged. “You know, machines are hand-made too. I met a real machinist, once. Talk about a truly indispensable job! Those guys are the real craftsmen of our age if you want my opinion.”

Illana didn’t. But she did want his money, and he must have known it. Illana’s time in sales had taught her that if the customer found the product desirable, and had the necessary funds, he’d usually buy. It was just a question of time and creating the right context. She was pretty sure he had the money, in a technical sense. The haggling wasn’t about affording this piece, it was about all the other expensive things that Mrs. Retired Stockbroker would be wanting in the years to come. And maybe it was about proving to himself that he still had it; not money, but it. But she couldn’t back down on price.

The elements were all in place for a sale. Illana knew the man’s wife really wanted these blue-stone fringes that had taken her the better part of fifteen hours to fashion. He didn’t know—and Illana couldn’t let him suspect—that she’d need to sell all three remaining sets, or the equivalent in scores of smaller pieces, by the end of the week, if she were to make the mortgage payment on the picturesque little house-shop on Warren Street. Otherwise, Illana would have to take another bite out of her savings. And how much longer could she sustain that kind of thing?

“As you said,” tried Illana, “we live in an age of machines. That’s why this piece has the value that it does. When people see these fringes dangling from your wife’s ears, catching and scattering the light, they’ll ask her where they can get the same earrings. And that’s when your wife gets to say, ‘These? Oh, thank you, but, you know, they’re hand made. They’re the only pair like them in the whole world. My husband bought them for me on our little trip upstate.’ That’s what you’re paying for, sir.”

It was her best argument, and she tried to deliver it with the serene confidence of some Couture luminary, and not like someone who had to dig into savings every month to keep her dream afloat. He smiled. But it was a triumphant smile, as if he knew everything going on inside her head. The man looked around the store slowly, emphasizing its emptiness.

“I’ll give you fifteen hundred cash,” he said, almost casually. “Final offer. Looks like you need it.”

She almost wavered. If he’d guessed she needed the money, then she was already defeated. But if she took his money and let him burst the bubble of perception that separated a high-price luxury item from almost the same thing made in a factory, then she really was defeated. It would be the first in a long series of small compromises whose end was mediocrity, the loss of the veil of veneration whose invisible presence made one material thing priceless, and another, plain.

“Twenty-three fifty is the price,” she repeated.

He shrugged. “Not worth that.”

“It’s actually quite competitive,” she tried again, “given the sort of piece it is. Elsa Peretti—”

“Yeah? But you’re not her.”

He turned to go. It took everything in her not to call out after him. The door chimed as he closed it behind him, none too gently.

Though it was fifteen minutes before closing time, Illana found herself locking the door, and turning the sign around. In a kind of daze, she floated toward the back room. Three long, collapsible tables covered in white tablecloth took up half of the re-purposed living room that was her workshop. Beads, gold and silver beadlets, and tiny colored gemstones formed a functional mosaic that would be chaos to anyone else but her. Three kinds of pliers lay where she’d left them. Illana sat down, intending to finish the piece she’d started that morning, then pushed it all aside and put her head on the table.

Outside, the day was failing. She knew she must put in two more hours before bed, or else get up at four and finish the same piece before opening. She scraped herself off the table, and stared, bleary eyed, at the complicated, many-colored device, trying to remember where she’d left off. Frustration welled upside in her, moving about her insides slowly, like the browned leaves of late November that turned and fell, churned and disappeared, into the Hudson River. Disappeared. They died there; though, like her dreams, they’d so recently been striking and vibrant. She gritted her teeth. Two hours now, and rise a little later, or sleep now, and face this complicated thing with half a brain. Every day, the same. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

She forced her fingers to move, and kept at it until a third and unconsidered option imposed itself at 10:36 p.m. That was when Illana fell asleep at her workbench. She would have lain like that until the cats’ scratching woke her, except that something else jolted her awake.

She’d been dreaming about being sentenced to a debtors’ prison from the old days, and, in the retroactive logic of dreams, her mind had interpreted the loud bang in her back lot as a heavy iron cell door being slammed shut by a stocky guard with black, slicked-back hair, frosty at the roots. The cats’ frantic whining proved the sound real, and she was suddenly afraid. Illana stood cautiously, brushing away the golden beadlets that had lodged themselves into her forearms and chin. When she slipped on her coat and opened the door to the hallway that stretched darkly toward her back door, the four cats she’d barricaded there shot past her, ignoring the coveted and forbidden workshop, and making directly for the stairs.

Illana had no weapons in the quaint little house-shop; a fact that hadn’t, until now, struck her as inconvenient. Red, smoky light glared through the back window, and by it she saw that she’d fallen asleep without threading the door chain. Even the deadbolt was open. Crouching, she moved toward the door, staying below the plane of its window, and turned the bolt. Quickly and without looking through the glass, she threaded the door chain. Back on her haunches, she stared up at the smoky red light floating in above her through the absurdly large and insecure portal that, it now occurred to her, anybody could simply break. She was all alone and should have been afraid. But she was also curious.

Illana rose to her knees and peeked through the window. Her back lot was a narrow rectangle, fenced-in, and sparsely covered by dormant November grass. In its center was a smaller rectangle, the now-abandoned herb garden she’d attempted last spring. In the middle of that, like a bullseye, a smoking red crater marked the end of her modest agricultural dreams.

She should have been upset but felt only relief. After all, a smoldering fireball in her backyard was significantly better than a bearded man with a knife or a demon from hell. At least she wouldn’t have to bother with that garden anymore.

“Well, what do you think?” she said, by instinct consulting the ever-lurking cats.

But her six little companions were nowhere to be found. Four had run away, she now remembered. The others were busy sleeping or pissing on her furniture. Useless. Maybe it was time for a dog. Illana took a deep breath and stood. She slowly undid the bolt and the sliding chain and opened the door. Wondering if she had a secret death-wish—if she were dead, there’d be no mortgage payment—she crept toward the red crater.

Bits of what seemed to be hot scrap metal lay scattered around the indentation. In its center sat a cracked, lozenge-shaped cylinder no larger than a cinder block. The lozenge wobbled.

Illana shrieked, but she had the presence of mind to run to the outdoor shed and grab her metal rake. It was the kind with heavy iron teeth that made it almost useless for leaf-removal because the leaves got caught in the tines. She raised it above her head, fueled by adrenaline, and prepared to bring all its force to bear on whatever wobbled inside the metal lozenge.

The lozenge cracked apart. Inside, its small mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, lay a little man. Well, not a man. He had large red eyes, a tiny, helpless mouth, and skin the color of dead leaves.

***

After Illana had recovered her wits enough to scramble back inside, she got to thinking about the tiny man. He was frightening, certainly. But he was small, apparently alone, and it was cold outside. If she looked past the large fire engine-red eyes, their image still imprinted in her brain, and the tiny claws on his tiny hands and feet, what remained was almost cute. A lonely little monster. A spaceman, though he was more brown than green.

“Why am I calling it ‘he’?” she said to Chekov, the AWOL Russian Blue.

Because it had eyes. Because those eyes had seen her, and seen into her, showing awareness. That made him more than a thing. And she’d left him there, naked, in the cold dark.

Illana took a deep breath, then darted upstairs. From a chest in her room, she retrieved a fuzzy blanket. A relic of her childhood, it was too small now to be used on her bed, and too special to risk some accident with the cats. Just right for him, though. She walked down the stairs with it. Five of her cats were still in hiding, but Chekov followed her down, purring in what seemed a threatening way; warning her, as if he knew only too well what his mistress was thinking.

Illana ignored him and marched toward the back door. Chekov scratched desperately at her ankle.

“Stop it,” she said, kicking him back inside as she opened the door.

The red smoke from before had dissipated. Now there was a black space in the center of the garden, illuminated only by stars, since the porch light, like the light for the basement stairs, and the one in her guest room, was out. Illana cursed her own negligence.

The moon had not yet risen. Everything was coated in a soft blue. For a moment she feared that the tiny man had run away, but a brief exploration found him huddling against the fence, balled up for warmth.

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Illana.

She crouched and spread the blanket. The creature flinched, then fixed her with a hard stare. Once more, reason told her to be wary, but her heart said otherwise.

“It’s not a net or anything,” she said, fluffing the blanket with her hand. “You must be so cold.”

The creature stood on shaky legs. It took two steps toward her, then tentatively extended a tiny, clawed hand. It touched the blanket, recoiled, then touched it again. One of its claws seemed to grow longer, and, with a sudden swiping motion, it sliced through the material. Then, with what Illana could have sworn was a nod, it walked its little body into the warm blanket, and looked up at her.

“My goodness,” she said. “Look at your eyes!”

The eyes grew narrower, as if the little man were warning her not to try any funny business. She giggled, wrapped him slowly in the blanket, and lifted him into her arms like a baby.

“Let’s get you inside,” she said.

A minute later, they were upstairs. The creature allowed itself to be cradled, and she felt it pulling the blanket more closely around its chilled limbs. Everything was going well, until she got to the bedroom. All six of her cats sat rigid on her bed, their back hair straight. Chekov was at the front, like a town magistrate. Though the little man couldn’t see them from inside the blanket, he stiffened, and she felt his tiny claws pop through the material.

“It’s alright, it’s alright!” she said. Then, to the cats, “Get out of here. Sleep somewhere else tonight.”

She shooed them out with her feet, ignoring their protests, then shut the door behind her. The creature in her arms instantly relaxed.

“There, now,” she said. “They’re all gone. Now, hold on just a second.”

Illana placed the bundle on her bed and opened the closet door. She had the old plastic carrying case she used to bring her cats to the vet. She’d need to reassemble it. She separated the pieces, took the small bolts from the sandwich bag taped against the bottom, and quickly rebuilt the carrier. When she looked up, the creature was standing on her bed, its fingers splayed out. Extended, its claws were as long as its fingers.

“Um…” she began, “I’ll … I’ll leave the door off, okay? I just thought, maybe, you’d want a little space of your own.”

She took it apart again and removed the door, which she waved at him before tossing it into the closet.

“See,” she said, indicating the open portal. “In and out whenever you want.”

The creature seemed to relax again, its claws visibly retracting. Outside in the hall, the cats whined loudly.

“Jealous little stinkers,” she said, glaring at the bedroom door.

When she looked back, the tiny man was facing away from her, staring at the opposite wall. There she had a poster of Brandon Lee. The image, found at an Oakland thrift store on a college road trip long ago, was a still shot from The Crow. Beneath it sat a small end table bearing several scented candles. Brandon lounged in an ancient chair, elbows propped up on the chair’s Gothic arms, wearing an expression that promised death to men and seduction to women. The candles under the image gave that corner of the room the appearance of a shrine. Silly, perhaps, but it was her own damn room after all, and she could hang anything she wanted.

“That’s … impossible to explain,” she laughed. “Don’t worry, though. It’s just a picture.”

The tiny man turned back to her, and now its expression was almost thoughtful. She set the pet carrier on the floor, not far from the heater, and placed the blanket inside, neatly folded. Outside, the cats whined more insistently. Illana thought she recognized and could pick out Chekov’s particular note. She sighed.

“Well,” she said. “Those are cats. I can’t promise they’ll ever love you. Hell, I’m not sure they really love me. But I feed them, so … wait a second. What on earth do you eat?”

Then she laughed at the irony of the expression and laughed again when she saw the little man’s confusion at her laughter.

“They don’t laugh on Mars … or … whatever?” she asked.

The tiny man cocked his head.

“Well, I have lunch meat and lettuce in the fridge. Maybe some crackers, too. Eat whatever you can, I guess. I’ll bring it up in a second. I … uh … I don’t know what to do for you in terms of a bathroom. Guess we’ll play that one by ear.”

The creature startled her by dropping into a lotus position. She couldn’t tell whether it was resting, meditating, or seething with anger.

“Man, what are you?” said Illana.

She wasn’t really expecting any reply.

“Do you have a name?”

No answer, only a narrowing of the eyes. She wondered if it—he—could even hear her. Did he have ears? Well, he’d sensed the cats. Yes, and he’d reacted to her laughter.

“I’m going to give you a name. Let’s call you Victor. Don’t ask me why. It just fits.”

Victor seemed to shrug, and that made her giggle all over again.

***

[Translated from Xtolchetznhautlz]

Ship’s Log, LD 5,736

We have been taken captive. The quantum storm that disrupted riftspace and laid waste one third of our comrades in the Forty-Second Wave did not destroy our own pod, only pulled it into lower space. The coincidence is so great, we’d be inclined to suspect it was intentional, were it not for the primitive technological level of this planet. We should have died honorably, either with our comrades in the rift calamity, or with those who passed through to wreak havoc on the Phlegmatarian cowards. We have been most unfortunate.

Yet all is not lost. Our mental link to the pod is still intact, obviously, for we sense the imprinting of this record as we make it. The ship’s core is still alive, and through it we also sense that the field configurer has survived impact. It lies somewhere in the surrounding countryside. Still, we were wise to eject, as the hull was breached, and the sub-light engines smashed to powder. Our plan must therefore be to recover the configurer and reassemble the ship’s components bit-by-bit, however long this may take. This done, we shall attempt to find a rift pore in local space, and, at some distant moment, claw our way back to Phlegmatar. We burn with envy, for many of our comrades must already have died gloriously, slaying the putrescent, cowardly Phlegmatarians without us.

There is, apparently, no danger of the local apex species finding and making use of the configurer, though even their simple defense array must have detected the pod ship’s entry. We must soon recover the config unit, lest it be spirited away to become an item of local worship. Speaking of this, our captor is a female of the brontian type, varieties of which have long been cataloged in the Index. She maintains a large icon of one of the local deities, has pierced her body through with many small bits of shaped metal, and lines her limbs and digits with still more pieces of metal and stone, and with various tribal etchings. She employs half a dozen warcats as guards, but evidently has little control over them. We shall have to make an example of the lead guard, and, in any event, will soon require sustenance if we are to convert to a more practical form.

Regarding the latter, we have so far detected no conversion capacity among the local faunae. Our captor’s living quarters, the implements she makes use of, or which decorate her limbs, even the dead matter which she both consumes and offers us for sustenance, imply a static morphology, one which cannot dynamically re-purpose living matter. If this is so, then we have a great advantage, for she cannot suspect what she cannot conceive.

On the other hand, our captor is far from harmless. Thrice we have fixed her in the death stare, and thrice she has broken free of its grip with hardly an effort. When locked in the stare, her upper body and mouth begin convulsing—an adaptation that greatly resembles the hoovering of burbleslurbs—and the stare is broken. If this adaptation were, as it initially seemed to us, a well-developed defense mechanism against mental attack, we’d be forced to infer a long co-evolutionary arms race. Yet she shows no other signs of mental agility. Our captor relies on her limbs and digits for virtually all manipulation, even when directing her warcats. From this we must draw one of two conclusions: either she is a top level mentaxic, choosing to conceal the full breadth of her acumen except when breaking the stare, or—and this seems more likely—her species lacks sufficient mental acuity even to feel the impact of a mental touch. In short, they are too stupid to be manipulated.

We must wait and gather evidence before making a direct move against our captor. We do not fear her. All that we fear is a meaningless death among primitives. Our heart burns to return to battle, to hear the warscream as it radiates through the infinite darkness of the Core Mind, to feel, to see, and to taste the hopeless suffering of the cursed Phlegmatarians, our slavers of old, as they burn in our fires and die in our jaws, their pups crying out helplessly as their sires are consumed by fang or by fire. O, Death! O Glorious Vengeance! How we long for thy sweet kiss!

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from “Hearts Uncanny: Tales of the Unquiet Spirit”. Click here to purchase the book, and finish the story!