Page 4 of Sky Song
As he led Cricket across the hospital, he instructed her to act natural and stay away from controversial topics.
They reached a large atrium that ended in an impressive set of double doors. Dr. Ragberg pushed the heavy doors open, and Cricket walked into a cavernous conference room.
The alien delegation was seated around a U-shaped mahogany table that reflected the light of crystal chandeliers hanging above it, their glow turned to the max. The table was the width of a race track, befitting the room, and the aliens were widely spaced apart.
A low hum of conversation flowed around the room, assisted by a wizened old man with hair in a long scraggly braid and a deferential stoop.
Dr. Deja Nura who worked closely with Dr. Ragberg smiled at Cricket encouragingly. “They all speak Universal, and an interpreter is here to assist. Here you go.” She pulled up a chair for Cricket, positioning it at the heel end of the mahogany horseshoe of the table.
“Thank you.” Automatically, Cricket sat down.
The conversations quieted down as the aliens regarded her openly.
A Perali was drilling her with his animalistic beady eyes - a familiar experience. A big-boned Tana-Tana was checking her out with bored curiosity. A Tarai female with large furry ears and coarse facial features was looking at her like Cricket was a peculiar circus animal. Fair enough.
There were also a Xosa, a Sakka, a fish-looking Gaorz with blue lips, a red-skinned Levisur whose flattened bald head sat on the body without a neck, the Rix she’d seen on arrival, a Brata with four jointed tentacles for hands, one bird-looking citizen of the planet Romtu, a gentleman with seven eyes scattered randomly on his concave face whose nation Cricket struggled to remember, and three representatives from the Kessa planet cluster that belonged to the subgroups of the same race. The intergalactic consortium was represented in full.
“Is this the Earth-born human?” someone asked in a barely-understandable Universal.
“Yes. She is here for you,” the interpreter answered in an equally atrocious accent. Then he shuffled over to her chair and bent down, his stringy braid grazing her knees. “Do you have a greeting in mind or are we going to do a traditional one?”
Cricket blinked and focused on his face. What she saw there was pity. Here she was, a thin young woman with mousy hair and a plain face, dressed in an unremarkable beige sweater and worn-out sneakers. She was sitting in that chair, a lone figure dwarfed by this huge room with soaring ceilings and enormous chandeliers, lost in the echoing space barely broken by the shiny expanse of the table, a poor nervous nobody in front of exotic guests that were looking at her like she was part of their refreshments course. That was what the interpreter saw. That was what they all saw.
“I’ve got it,” she said, causing the interpreter’s eyebrows to jump to his vaguely defined hairline.
Cricket slowly rose to her feet, all five feet ten inches of her with a long neck and perfectly straight posture. Pressing her palms together in a cross pattern at the chest level, the gesture as familiar as it was global, she gave the room another sweeping glance.
“What you ask, may you receive. What you seek, may you find,” she said in Universal, modulating her voice so it reached the guests at the far back, including the Rix alien. She then lowered her hands down without unclasping them, performing the expected ritual. “Here, the light shines upon you, and peace awaits you.” She spread her hands apart, palms out, and gave a small bow. “We’re with you, by your side, always.”
The traditional part over with, Cricket dropped her hands at her sides and smiled. “I’m happy to take your questions, honored guests.”
The silence in the room was so complete it rang.
And in this sudden, permeating stillness, Cricket’s eyes collided with the Rix’s. He was looking at her from his seat at the very back of the table, and even across this vast distance she could clearly see his large eyes. He was male, Cricket suddenly decided, despite the delicate oval of that face and feminine hair. His warrior eyes gave it away. One second they appeared deep and bedewed, shining with a glistening sheen, then he blinked and they changed, became black amber, hard and dry and flat. Snake’s eyes, even though there was nothing reptilian in his appearance.
“Emma! You speak Universal?”
“Yes, I do.” Cricket turned to Dr. Nura who was looking at her in astonishment. Dr. Ragberg mirrored his colleague’s surprise. The interpreter appeared completely floored.
“I had no idea. How fascinating!” Dr. Nura’s surprise seemed genuine, and Cricket smiled in response.
“What are the humans saying?” The Gaorz asked in her broken-up Universal.
The interpreter remembered he had a job to do and translated their exchange.
“Good point.” The Gaorz pursed her deeply toned blue lips. “Howdidyou learn to speak Universal?”
“They teach Universal at schools on Earth,” Cricket explained. “And I have held a lot of different jobs since I started working at fourteen. I had to talk to all kinds of people over the years.”
“What people?” the Gaorz pressed on, clearly the most outgoing of the group despite her poor command of the artificial language adopted by the consortium nations for intergalactic communications that came to be known as Universal.
“Different nations have settled on Earth.” There was unrest and conflicts because of that, but Cricket wasn’t going into it. “Perali and Tana-Tana live there now. Sakka have a large community. Xosa travel in and out, and many others.” Except for Rix. Rix never came except for that one time when Simon’s ship crash-landed near the City where Cricket grew up. That hadn’t worked out all that great for Simon, so she couldn’t say she blamed his people for not wanting to socialize.
“You worked? What did you do?”
Cricket briefly described the menial jobs she had taken over the years only to lose them when her afflicted lungs kept her bedridden for days on end. She omitted the lungs part, of course.
“Do you have a family?” asked the Tarai lady.
