A Paradigm of Earth by Candas Jane Dorsey Page A

don’t want legal problems, no harassment. Leave us alone.”
    “You don’t ask much.”
    “I’ll ask for far more before I’m done. Advice, support—but only when Blue asks for it. Blue’s a person, not a thing to be passed from agency to agency, not a thing to be studied. I take no responsibility, except to teach what I can. Just as I have done when I worked in the Atrium.”
    The reason for keeping the policeman away from the kitchen was the alien standing behind the door. Now Blue came out. The spear-carriers stirred, blue suit took a breath, grey suit sat looking.
    “I think you see us as adversaries,” grey suit said. “I am not your adversary.”
    Interesting pronoun choice , Morgan thought as he carried on, “We are doing our best. We are all new at this. It seems to me that if I had a guest in my house from an unknown country, and the guest were as appealing and as helpless, I would fly as quickly to the defense. But I want to try very hard to show you that we have common concerns. We want this person, Blue, to stay alive. That’s my job. You know that. I’ve kept popes and politicians alive and frankly, this is a damn sight harder and more important than any of that. We want this person to know about us. That’s not so easy either. You”—he looked directly at the blue one—“seemed at first to know nothing. We tried to teach you, and we have. Now you’ve taken off like my teenage kid, as soon as you knew how to dress yourself. Do you”—back to Morgan—“see the problem?”
    “Yes,” said Morgan, feeling a little ashamed of herself, though that was probably just what he wanted. Even worse, he reminded her suddenly of her father—the sweetness of “the sweet guy”—despite being so much younger and smaller. Could she afford to ever think he was a “sweet guy”? She kept her face stolid as she listened.
    “Okay now, we don’t know what Blue wants here. We don’t know what the aliens want to say to Earth. We don’t know what they want to learn. Blue spends a lot of time watching, just like now. Can it find what it needs here, what we were trying to give at the Atrium? The Great Literature, Great Music, Great Art?”
    The blue one moved restlessly to stand behind Morgan.
    “We can do better,” Morgan said with bravado. “We can offer real life.”
    “My daughter is a video artist,” said grey suit unexpectedly, “and for all I know she’s a homosexual too. And a socialist, and a civil servant, even. This is her world too. So don’t think you know everything.”
    “It isn’t everything,” Morgan burst out. “It isn’t anything. Just Blue in distress at the door, falling down into my arms just about, for goodness’ sakes. You think I’m gonna leave that for the officials to take care of, no matter how good the hearts? I’ve been teaching this child, this empty filling life, for a long time now.”
    “Not that long,” said the man in the blue suit.
    “It seems like a long time.” Morgan glared at him. “Do you think I would walk away? That I could?”
    “No,” the grey man interceded. “I know that about you. Why do you think I kept you there when you pissed everybody off?”
    Morgan looked back at him. He was not exactly smiling, but he wasn’t glowering as he so often was in the meetings: progress? The man in the blue suit was glowering, but Mr. Grey spoke quietly. “It’s been happening in science fiction for years, the alien meets the ordinary people. You get to be the ordinary people.”
    Morgan snorted. “Ordinary? Sure, we’re the ones nobody else will have in their clubs.”
    “But what else is new about the world? There’s always somebody that doesn’t get chosen for the team.” Was he talking her into this?
    “Listen,” said Morgan, “I worked my heart out for those kids at the hospital for years teaching them to take their first steps all over again, teaching them to get used to their faces, their newly limited minds, their new limbs, all