were returning to Earth, why contact her? She hated aliens. They'd killed her father after they used him, luring him with their hi-tech and materials.
A scientist engineer, he’d carved this home from connecting caves in this beloved Arizona mountain, supplying it for bad times ahead. Karen switched on one of his inventions, a tubelight, grabbed the stun gun, and shot at the deceitful face till it broke up and dissipated in the light beam.
“Don’t come back.” If they did, she’d find the ship, blow it up.
Cursing sleeplessness, she tromped downstairs, hit a lever, and rattled down on a squeaky, jerky platform, and stepped onto a ledge a meter above the cavern floor. In the humidity, bat dung odor lingered in the chimney’s cracked, broken opening. There, till her neck ached and aliens were forgotten, she chiseled out rock to widen it for conduits to connect to her small energy station—a construction she’d finished during a fit of rage over ETs.
* * *
Zerera, Zer for short, who'd never thought of herself as an alien, was flying on a starship to the Milky Way. The vision of a cave woman delighted her. It dispelled misgivings about meeting barbaric Earthlings. This one welcomed her with water, the artful splash rousing Zer’s curiosity about the custom. She wanted to meet this woman. A tree biolinguist, Zer anticipated great rapport with an Earthling who lived underground with hairy spiders and plants—who would doubtless love her gift.
Suddenly, the woman levitated and smacked into a rock wall. At the same moment, the starship abruptly slowed and jerked Zer from vision. She memorized the woman’s face and ignored the levitation; the starship was crossing the outer edge of Andromeda, heading to the Milky Way; everyone knew galactic edges distorted perception.
It was mathematical. The weight of a materialized starship, plus an edge zone and velocity change added up to a dent in space fabric, plus a warped view of reality.
“Do many Earthlings live in caves?” Zer swiveled her chair toward Vatta who'd traveled a lot and visited Earth. They sat at paired consoles in the circular work hall’s south quadrant.
Vatta turned her big, bald head and smiled, the peach and blue flecks in her opalescent eyes sparkling. “Not usually. The breach will clarify it.”
“What?”
“Your vision.”
“Thanks.” Sometimes nothing beat an intuitive friend, Zer thought. She settled back in the chair, waiting for her first breach experience. Zer lived among Zenobians who revered the dark stretch between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies. They said the breach between the Ways promoted lucid thinking.
Zer thought it a shame, considering the underground woman and her dying plant, that Earth was the last stop on the journey. The woman needed plants now, and Zer had just the gift to establish a perfect relationship: three bags of seed. Not just any seed. Exotica trees cleaned air and clarified minds and refreshed people’s spirits. Thank the stars she’d tripled her allotment for gift giving. She’d locked the two extra bags in a biolab drawer, so the pilot wouldn’t throw them out. How could he after she told him the vision? The seed promised fertile relations with aliens.
“Don’t count on it,” Vatta said, forgetting her mind-reading manners.
“What better way to prep for bi-galactic adventure?” Zer shrugged at her friend’s amused look. Vatta believed in the ancient prophecy of cultural sharing or even co-evolving with Milky Wayans, which Zer’s age group called a myth.
“What if space data prove otherwise? Will you stay?” Vatta asked, “help prepare more than a few willing Earthlings for the future?”
Zer looked out the viewscreen at darkness. She heeded the danger part of the myth. She just resisted a galactic dream kindled and tumbled down for ages after an ancient visit to Earth; Earthlings weren’t ready then to welcome Zenobians because most couldn’t imagine changing dimensions or turning invisible at whim. Those who could were outcast, burned at stakes, or hid the knowledge. Some went insane.
Still insane or barbaric. Earth was a far-flung outpost of wild people. There nineteen Earth years ago, her parents died—for sharing unknown bioconcepts.
Zer was an infant at the time, so in lieu of parents she’d never known, Exotica trees nurtured her. By five, she was changing dimensions habitually. She had to mentally detach from emotion and bodily sensations so that her body could dematerialize, changing frequencies and molecular bonds. As an invisible vibration, she’d vapor-travel and slip under a tree’s green skin. The symbiosis had brought her back to her senses more than once. “They offer sanity.”
“Please. They’re taboo. Earth people aren’t like us,” Vatta said.
“They think, don’t they? Exotica reflect people’s thoughts. What’s so terrible?”
“Those trees stir up some people’s darkest hidden thoughts. They’ll cause hallucinations,” Vatta said.
“The way we look won’t?” Zer gazed at her friend’s long, pearly fingers. When on Earth, Andromedans mostly contained their life force in third- or fourth-dimension bodies. In third-di bodies, they resembled Earthlings, except they were less muscular and short haired or hairless with slightly bigger heads and large, expressive luminous eyes. Mixed bloods often had multicolored eyes, though Zer’s were white, flecked with white.
“They’ll think you’re blind. Have you talked to your brother?”
“He’s too busy navigating.” Thankfully, Zer thought, because her foster brother mind read even better than Vatta. A pilot, he worked at the hub of their pyrid craft, one of three hundred currently interlocked with the mothership; Zer worked on the pyrid’s outer ring with the C-ring section between them, though with his gift, it didn't matter. Leon surely knew about the extra seed. So the elders had obviously lifted any taboo on establishing Exotica on Earth.
“Those trees will cause trouble. They're a threat to Earthling sensibilities,” Vatta said. Zer didn’t believe it. In the last nine years, Zer had trained some hundred saplings and never saw anyone hallucinate in their presence.
The tricky juvie stage annoyed Zenobians like Leon. A pureblood, her foster brother preferred calm and detachment, so he could study arcane cosmology. He called her a wild cultivar. Exotica trees half raised her. She came from Lilio, the island continent, whose people had bred and exported Exotica to neighboring continents for millennia. Lilios were a merry people.
Zer missed her kind. She was ten when the Lilio volcano exploded. Leon rescued her from the island and took her to his mother in Zenobia. Later, he brought her saplings to train and breed though he didn’t love and understand them as she did. For many Zenobians, the trees mainly cleansed and stabilized high radiation environments; since abundant stock and trees existed on Zenobia, few people experienced a sense of loss. With Lilios, Exotica shared humor, insight, and adventure. They did not harm others.
Vatta broke into her thoughts. “How do you expect Earthlings to cope with sentient, walking trees?”
“They don’t walk or talk. They glide, gracefully.”
“They make their thoughts known,” Vatta said.
“Happily, and clarify their companions’ thoughts.” A lunar-bright smile lit Zer’s face. The cave woman. That's why her foster brother had wanted her to come on this journey—special agent to properly introduce
