We're Not from Here: Chapters 8–15

Like all of us, Dad had two sets of clothes. Unlike Ila and me, today he was wearing his more casual one—a faded blue T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts.

Two pods came at the same time, announcing their arrival with the usual thunderclap of the fence getting breached.

There were at least a hundred Zhuri, but they weren’t as riled up as the ones at the airport, because none of them hit the screen and got zapped as we stepped out of the pod and walked to the building.

He beckoned to me with his long, sticklike arm.

But the pod coming in for a landing was a whole other thing: gleaming silver chrome, dagger-shaped and sleek, with little winglike flourishes that reminded me of the tail fins on antique cars back on Earth.

I practically screamed as a sudden crackle of static burst through my earpiece.

Numbers and letters of human code cascaded down the display.

She’d barged into my house without asking and had practically robbed me.

“That was a lie I told the guards so they would not know I overrode the security features on the fence. But don’t worry—you are safe from the protestors. Only the Ororo are clever enough to override a fence, and none of them would bother to come here except me.”

Marf reluctantly set it back down.

Marf trundled over to the control panel and showed me how it worked.

Due to their low mental ability, the adult humans were assigned jobs in the waste-removal and mortuary sectors.

This afternoon, security forces were called to Waste Facility Seven Six Seven, where one of the humans attacked a Zhuri supervisor.

I’d been hoping to hitch a ride home in her fancy silver pod, but I wound up taking my usual generic one and sitting in silence with my armed guard as I tried to puzzle out just what the heck my teacher was asking me to do.

“Zhuri doctors are not competent to care for non-Zhuri species,” she said.

Mom paused at the threshold and peered inside.

And when the pod zoomed away, I would’ve expected us to be knocked backward like bowling pins against the rear wall. Instead, there wasn’t even a mild lurch.

“How is it,” Mom asked, “that this pod seems to defy physics?” “The technology is called ‘inertial buffering.’ It is difficult to explain in a way you would understand,” Marf told her.

“How is it,” Mom asked, “that this pod seems to defy physics?” “The technology is called ‘inertial buffering.’ It is difficult to explain in a way you would understand,” Marf told her.

We genetically manipulated our fat cells to render them poisonous to the Krik. Now, if a Krik eats any part of an Ororo, it will die instantly.

Hunf’s signature was an older man’s slow drawl.

In the space of ten minutes, Hunf scraped a DNA sample from Dad’s tongue, analyzed it, designed a medicinal cream that would counteract the venom without side effects, and manufactured eight ounces of it using some kind of biochemical kiln the size of a shoebox.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” he told Hunf. “It was trivial,” Hunf replied.

“But there is also an element of genuine concern for your own safety. The Zhuri are very fearful of causing another tragedy like the one that befell the Nug.”

When progress has the upper hand, there is growth and change. But when that change comes too quickly or causes problems, tradition takes over to act as a stabilizing force.

When the traditionalists are in control, as they are now, everyone claims to agree with them about everything...until the situation is reversed, the forces of progress take over, and suddenly everyone’s in full agreement with the exact opposite of what they agreed the week before.

“Don’t play it yet, my precious. I haven’t finished lecturing our guests like a pompous know-it-all.”

Twenty-odd years ago, the progressives had been in charge of Choom’s government for nearly a century. They received a distress call from the Nug, who were being driven from their home planet by an invader. The government offered them refuge here.

As a species, they’re quite dull. No music, dance, drama, architecture, painting, sculpture—they just plod through life and lay eggs, really.

But they’d begun to see this as a shortcoming in themselves. Partly, that’s because we Ororo had been living among them for a while, and they’d seen how much art and culture improved our own quality of life.

It turned out they had a real knack for mass dancing. For them, it was like their swarming behavior, only positive—joyful instead of violent.

The space between them was black, wet, and roiling. It looked like a stormy ocean of oil.

What I’d thought was a huge pool of black liquid turned out to be a writhing pile of giant, wormlike Nug.

“And the government wanted to stop swarms from ever forming again. But they somehow got it in their heads that the best way to do that would be to suppress all smells. They thought if they could just shut down their whole society’s emotional responses, the result would be peace and agreement forever.”

“But they’re conflicted,” Hunf added, “because the government did invite you here—and they can’t bear to think they might be responsible for the demise of a second species. So they’ve decided to play up your violence as a way of putting all the blame on you for things not working out.”