Eating Memories by Patricia Anthony

a pan of sand and water.
    “You haven’t asked who I am,” George said.
    Besseh stuck out its bottom lip, a Karee shrug. “You is yuma. More doesn’t matter. All yuma is alike.”
    “All humans aren’t alike, Besseh.”
    “All yuma is alike, it said, twisting its face in George’s direction and tilting its head back so that it could see. “We got power of the mind; you got power over the body.”
    George’s eyes were drawn to the hunched back, the twisted limbs, the deformed eye sockets of the creature. The magician, he imagined, had an intimate relationship with pain. For the first time since he had come he felt more pity than discomfort.
    “You take the body from here to there, yuma. You come from your planet to this. But the body is stupid.”
    “Stupid. Is that what you think of us?”
    Behind the twin slits on its face George thought he could see Besseh’s eyes glitter, black diamonds in a cave. “Stupid,” it said.
    George got up from his stool and walked to the pail of sand and water. Besseh, with an odd gentleness, took the bowl from his hands.
    “You ain’t eat much,” it said critically as it washed the bowl.
    “Will you do the magic for me?”
    “Sure.”
    “When do we start?”
    George was unprepared for the splash. Grit and stale dishwater exploded against his eyes. He raised up a protective arm, but it was too late.
    “Now,” Besseh said with a laugh.
    George felt himself falling. He twisted his body to the side, trying to catch himself.
    Across the thick mauve carpet in the lobby a woman stood with Sanderson, the chandelier above her casting bright lights in her hair. As he approached into the subtle gravity of her slim body, the tug of her perfume, Sanderson asked in a strangely far away voice how he’d liked the Beethoven. Then he turned to the woman at his side. George’ s eyes had never left her face.
    “George Hatterly,” Sanderson said, “Lauren McKnight.”
    * * *
    “Yuma!”
    George thrashed.
    Lauren was arguing politics with him over the breakfast table. He won a point more by sheer force of the argument than facts. Smiling, she lifted the pitcher of orange juice, flourished it and poured it into his coffee. The cup overflowed onto the counter.
    “Yuma!”
    George was a pragmatic man with a limited sense of the absurd, so irritation hit him first. Then, because Lauren had been a good teacher, the humor finally kicked in. He glanced up, fighting a smile. She was laughing.
    “Goddamn! Yuma!”
    Lauren’s perfect face burst like a warm bubble.
    “Yuma! You got visitors!”
    George took in a deep breath that tasted of damp and old food. He opened his eyes to see Besseh standing over him in the semi-dark. The Karee looked scared.
    “You get up,” Besseh said as he pulled on George’s arm. “They think you dead. You get up and talk.”
    George’s mouth felt funny. He swiveled his legs from the cot, but his knees wouldn’t hold him.
    “Ambassador Hatterly?” a resonant voice asked.
    Blinking, George looked up. His aide and the Chief of Intelligence stood just in the curtain staring at him.
    George lifted a slow hand and ran it over his face. There was stubble on his cheeks. “How long?” His lips didn’t work right.
    “Sir?”
    “How long have I been here?”
    “Presumably eighteen hours, sir,” the intelligence officer said. “That’s how long you’ve been missing.” The officer had flat, suspicious eyes and he kept his hand near the weapon at his belt.
    “George. We’ve been looking all over hell and gone for you,” his aide told him. “Jesus Christ. We nearly started an interplanetary incident.”
    The ambassador coughed. He licked his lips. They felt glued. With practical, professional solicitude, Besseh brought him a drink. George had raised it to his mouth when the intelligence chief stepped forward. “Don’t!” he snapped.
    “You don’t know where that cup’s been,” his aide sighed, “or even what’s in it. You know the hygiene around