Page 10 of Volunteer 4711

“How is my ….?” he asks.

“I do not understand.”

“How are my males?”

“I don’t know. I ask now,” I reply and turn to leave the room.

“Wait,” he says. “How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. It isn’t that I don’t know a vague time period, I just don’t know how to express it in their language. I hold up seven fingers and then point to the pink sky.

“Seven days?”

“No,” I recognize the words for days. I make a round motion with my hands as if to say, ‘more.’

He says something else, and I look at him blankly.

“I don’t know,” I repeat.

“You’re a Water woman, yes?”

“That’s what they call me.”

His sharp blue eyes size me up as if he is deciding something. I don’t know what to do, so I just stand still, waiting. Then he says, “Go see about my males.”

I leave the room in search of the other volunteers. I visually check each one of his males and try to get some idea of their injuries. I return to my room and close the door.

“Ten males. Most are okay. Some have bad broke hand and foots,” I say willing him to understand me. I don’t have this kind of vocabulary.

“Everyone healthy?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Bring me my clothing, Volunteer.”

I pick up his clean clothing from where I had folded it. He gets out of bed naked, and my eyes can’t help but inspect his penises again, innocently dangling between his thighs now. If he caught me looking, he doesn’t mention it. He instructs me to dress him, and I don’t hesitate. I have the feeling he’s leaving, and I’m already thinking about plain oatmeal.

Once dressed in shoes and all, he seems like a completely different person. “Volunteer, follow me.”

I follow him out of the farmhouse to where the transport crashed. All that’s left is black technology on charred grass. However, my patient gets to his knees and begins searching. He asks me something, but I don’t have a clue as to what he wants, but I want to look helpful, so I get on my hands and knees and start looking as if I know what I’m looking for.

“Found it!” my patient says, standing.

I stand too, looking pleased he found whatever it is in his hand, a tiny black device. He does something and then talks into it. I can only make out a few of his words and I realize that before, he was speaking slowly and clearly for me. I can make out that he’s calling a mother ship or something. When he finishes talking into the black device, he looks down at me and speaks slowly but sternly, “Go tell my males to prepare. We are leaving. Go quickly, volunteer.”

I turn and run back into the farmhouse. I don’t like the sharp voice my patient has just used with me, and I worry that all my struggles will be for nothing if he decides to execute me because I’ve annoyed him now at the very end. As I run, I reflect that I shouldn’t have looked at his penises like I did. No doubt, in this culture, it’s very rude. I berate myself that this would be a terrible way to die because I let my curiosity for an alien’s appendages get the better of me. I run faster, looking for the other volunteers and their ‘patients.’

I begin to call out to my fellow volunteers, “Hear me! My transport male wants everyone to go now.”

At the sound of my loud voice, everyone begins coming out of their rooms or from wherever they were, and the Silver farmworkers are coming in from outside to see what I’m yelling about.

“What’s going on, Volunteer 4711?” one of the male farmers asks me.

I point outside to where my patient is waiting. “He says he’s going to go and wants his males to come out.”

The male farmer starts telling everyone to hurry up. As a native speaker, he is much more articulate than I am, and no one hesitates when they hear him. Then he looks at me. “You can eat when they have taken off.”

I’m so hungry. I know it’s only been a day, and I’ve not done much work, but I feel light-headed. I assume it’s not only the hunger, but the stress of the crash, the alien patient of mine, and the treatment by the doctor.

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