The Apex Book of World SF 2

The New Neighbours ^{Tim Jones}

High property values are the hallmark of a civilised society. Though our generation may never build cathedrals nor find a cure for cancer, may never save the whales nor end world hunger, we can die with smiles on our faces if we have left our house a better place than we found it, if we have added a deck, remodelled the kitchen and created indoor-outdoor flow.

Reaction in our street to the news that an alien family would soon move into number 56 was therefore mixed. Number 56 was the proverbial worst house on the best street, and any family who could improve it—regardless of skin colour or number of limbs—was welcome, in my view. My wife, Alison, said she’d wait and see. Josh wondered if they had any kids his age.

Others near to the action, and particularly the Murrays at number 54 and the Zhangs at number 58, were less sanguine. “But it’s not as if they need a resource consent,” said my wife to Jessica Zhang, and she was right. Having bought the house at a legitimate auction through a telephone bidder, and paid the deposit, the alien family were well within their rights to settle in our street, and the rest of us would simply have to make the best of it.

To the unpractised eye, Saturday the 12th of March would have seemed little different from any other Saturday in Utley Terrace. 8am was the usual bleary-eyed rush-hour of parents taking their children to cricket. By 11.30, when Josh and I returned to our place at number 55, there was a little more activity: a lawn being mowed, a car being washed, the postie delivering bills and special offers. All the same, a certain twitching of curtains spoke of suppressed excitement.

Hoping for a flying saucer, we were disappointed when a perfectly ordinary moving van appeared outside number 56 shortly after noon, and perfectly ordinary movers began carrying an assemblage of furniture—not well colour co-ordinated, but not notably alien—into the house. Half an hour later, a white Toyota Corolla pulled up outside, and our new neighbours, who went by the name of Thompson, got out. We stood at our lounge-room window, staring.

They looked completely human: Mum, Dad and the three kids. One appeared to be a teenager, I was perturbed to note—did aliens play Marilyn Manson loud at 3am? Dressed in good, practical moving-day clothes, they looked right at home as they took vacant possession of their new domain.

“That’s pretty boring,” said Josh. “They look just like us.”

“There’s a reason for that,” said Alison. “They’re shape-shifters.”

“Cool!” said Josh. “How many different shapes do you reckon they can turn into?”

“As many as they like, but they can’t change their mass,” Alison told him. She had this on good authority from her friend Cecile in Wellington. Cecile, said Alison, had contacts.

We didn’t usually do anything special to welcome new people to the street, but in this case we thought we should make an exception. Neither the Murrays nor the Zhangs could be expected to take the lead. The Murrays, acting on the adage that good fences make good neighbours, had already added a metre to the height of theirs. Alison and I decided it was up to us. We rang round, got a dozen or so pledges of support, and then went over the road to knock on the new neighbours’ door.

It was opened by the teenager, who looked us up and down, called over her shoulder something that must have meant “Mum!” and disappeared back inside without another word. So far, so human.

Mum came to the door. There was something unusual about her face. I do not mean that she had three eyes, or purple skin, or a ring of small feeding tentacles where her mouth should have been. Her features were quite regular and normal, but they lacked any distinguishing quirks. Her nose, her eyes, her ears, her mouth, all were in proportion, and her skin was flawless, without a beauty spot or wrinkle to break the monotony. She looked like everyone and no-one.

“Good evening. How may I help you?” she said.

“We were—some of your neighbours were …” I stumbled to an embarrassed silence, and Alison took over.

“Your new neighbours would like to meet you and your family,” said Alison, “and we thought, perhaps, we could host a little celebration to welcome you to our street. We thought we’d pop over first, say hello, and ask when might be a good time.”

“Excuse me, please,” said the woman, and returned inside.

We waited on the doorstep, straining our ears for noises within. Something that might have been music drifted from the back of the house.

“I bet they’re consulting with their superiors,” said Josh. “I bet they have an antenna in the backyard.”

There were three Super 14 games on tonight, and I had twenty bucks on the Blues by twelve or under. My feet were making small movements back from the doorstep when the woman reappeared.

“Now is a good time,” she said. “And we will host the occasion.”

“Now?”

“We possess and have studied a barbecue.”

It was short notice, and there was some grumbling amongst the invited guests at this breach of protocol, but curiosity won out and we soon had a pretty good crowd gathered in their backyard. Even Jessica Zhang popped over for five minutes before excusing herself. While I helped George to fire up the barbie, Alison inducted Myrtle into the mysteries of impromptu salads, and once a few of the lads turned up with some Speights, the party was humming.

“Do you, er, do you—make sure you keep turning them, they burn easy—do you eat our sort of food, then?”

“When we look as you do, we eat as you do,” George said.

“It’s true, then, you can change your shape?”

“We change to suit our environment.”

I took another swig of Speights. “What do you really look like?”

For a moment, something green and as broad as it was tall stood before me, balanced on an indeterminate number of legs. Bony plates clashed in its jaw.

“Watch out, mate,” I said as he returned to human form, “you’ve dropped the tongs.”

Later that night, when George and Myrtle had put Lucy and Peter to bed and shouted goodnight to the teenaged Susan through her locked door, I sat in a deck-chair in number 56’s back yard, with Josh sprawled asleep on my lap. George sat beside me. The girls were inside somewhere, looking at paint samples.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“In your terms, it’s Carina—59°23’,” said George. He pointed, and I looked. Nothing but a faint wisp of stars.

“Must be a long way,” I said.

“It is.”

“No popping back home for a holiday, then.”

“Not in a hurry, no.”

“So why’d you come here, George?”

“To build a better future for our children,” said George.

You couldn’t argue with that.

The trouble started at school. We were proud of Rosemont Primary’s Decile 10 rating, and guarded it jealously. There may have been more Government money to be had by dropping down a decile or two, but the effect on morale would have been disastrous.

So Rosemont Primary strove for excellence in all things. That caused problems when it came to school sports day. Josh was bursting to tell me about it when I picked him up from after-school care.

“Lucy from over the road won the 100 metres, and Karen Pihama got mad at her and said she cheated and grew some extra legs in the middle of the race, and Karen said aliens ought to go back where they came from, and Mrs Grenville told her off, and then Lucy said she did grow some extra legs, but she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to. And Lucy made the team for the Northern Zone finals and Karen didn’t. And Karen says her mummy will sue the school.”

In the end, the school sent both of them to the finals, and made Lucy promise to stick to a human body shape. Legal action was averted, but it was a straw in the wind. Off work one day with a cold, I went to pick up Josh at 3pm. There was a tight knot of mothers standing to one side of the netball goal, and Myrtle Thompson standing on the other side by herself.

I sidled close to the mothers.

“—disgusting, they have every advantage, and the school doesn’t—”

“—won’t put up with—”

“—start a petition?”

I left the mothers to their anger, and went over to Myrtle. Perhaps she was adapting to our world: faint lines of worry had appeared around her eyes.

“Tough day?”

She ghosted a smile. “Lucy came first in another test. The other children say it isn’t fair, and now their mothers are getting upset. I tell her not to stand out so much, to come second sometimes, but it’s not in her nature.”

“How about Peter?”

“He’s turning into a real Kiwi boy. Ignores his schoolwork, spends all his time on his PlayStation or kicking a rugby ball around. He’s fitting in fine.”

Then the bell rang, and Josh—not quite old enough yet to be embarrassed by his father—came bounding out of the classroom to bury me beneath a blizzard of school notices.

The Concerned Parents’ meeting was supposed to be by invitation only, and as known allies of the aliens, we weren’t in the loop. But nothing stays secret for long in Utley Terrace, and the Thompsons found out even before we did. We made some calls, and got together with the Thompsons for a strategy session.

“But what can the Concerned Parents actually do?” I asked.

“Their first step is to get our children suspended, or preferably expelled, from school. If they can do that, they deduce that we’ll move away. From what I’ve heard, Karen Pihama’s mother will move to challenge our immigration status if that doesn’t work out.”

“I told Lucy she should have chosen someone other than a lawyer’s daughter to beat in that race,” George added unhelpfully.

“What are they going to get your children suspended for? Both of them are good kids and a credit to the school. And you’ve paid your fees.”

“Some of the other kids are starting to gang up on them, on Lucy especially. They’re trying to provoke a reaction. Lucy’s doing her best, but it’s hard for her. Perhaps we should do what they want?”

“It’s the problem with being pioneers,” said George. “Wherever we go, we will face these attitudes. I think we should stay here and face these critics down. I think we should attend the meeting of the Concerned Parents’ Group.”

Meeting Room 4 at the Rosemont Community Centre, 7.22pm. The Concerned Parent at the door looked up in alarm as George, Myrtle, and Susan arrived, flanked by their supporters.

“You can’t come in here,” hissed the Concerned Parent, who happened to be Leonie Murray from number 54.

“Why not?”

“This is a private meeting.”

“No it’s not,” I said. “It’s a public meeting, because you’re meeting in a community centre paid for by everyone’s rates. We have just as much right to be here as you have.” We swept past her into the room.

Much consternation, much gathering and whispering amongst the organisers. Eventually, Leonie Murray walked up to the lectern with a smile pasted to her face.

“Good evening, everyone. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.” I saw Huhana Pihama wince at the multiple mispronunciations. “We all know why we’re here,” Leonie said, and glared at us, the tight knot of Thompsons and supporters in the third and fourth rows back. “We’ve built up a cohesive little community here in Utley Terrace, a community that shares certain values, and now that community is threatened. The Government won’t do anything, and the Council won’t do anything, and the school says it can’t do anything, so it’s time we did something ourselves. It seems that news of this meeting spread a bit wider than we planned, so we’re going to adjourn the meeting here and reconvene at 54 Utley Terrace, where only those who’ve got a genuine commitment to this community are invited to attend.”

Myrtle Thompson rose to her feet. “Before you go off to your little meeting, I want to say something,” she said, to cries of “Sit down!” and “Go back where you came from!” She did not sit down. One or two of the staunchest Concerned Parents walked from the room, but the rest of the audience stayed, waiting for something to happen.

It did. Myrtle changed shape, and once again, but for longer this time, I saw one of our new neighbours in its true form. There was nothing too threatening there: no claws, no tentacles, no teeth to speak of. A multi-limbed green blob, with a mouth pleading for air: Myrtle was breathing heavily by the time she changed back to human form. Three more people had scrambled out of their seats and left in a hurry, but Myrtle had the rest of the audience hooked.

“This is who I am,” she said when she got her breath back. “I am not the same as you, but I do not threaten you. For millennia, we of Th’katath have spread throughout the galaxy, seeking only to live peaceably with our neighbours, to trade with them, to invest in their worlds.

“You are a nation of traders. You send your sheep, your beef, your wool, your fruit across to the other side of your planet. But do you not realise what riches are on offer to those who trade amongst the stars? Look!”

Without any visible means of projection, she made glowing images appear on the off-white wall of Meeting Room 4, and she began her pitch. She told us that we in New Zealand, little old New Zealand, had what the galaxy was craving: fresh air, solitude, and the leanest lamb in the galaxy. Tourists, she promised, would flock to see us; carbon-based life forms everywhere, those of a carnivorous persuasion, wouldn’t be able to get enough of our two-tooth and hogget.

“Why don’t you tell the Government?” asked Larry Purvis from the quantity surveyors’.

“We have. But we will not trade with those who hate us, and so we came to live amongst you, to see whether we would be welcomed or shunned. Perhaps we should have known that we would find a little of each reaction. Now is your time to decide. Will you have us, and the riches we bring?”

High property values are the hallmark of a civilised society. Meeting Room 4 said yes. Overwhelmingly, they said yes. They came up and apologised; they offered handshakes and hugs; they asked whether the inhabitants of the galaxy might find a use for batik, or management consulting, or quantity surveyors. They left happier than they’d arrived, and even those who were parents were, for the most part, concerned no longer.

Of course, not everyone was happy. Lucy and Peter still had to put up with the odd comment in the playground, and there were still some who edged away whenever one of the Thompsons came into a room. Number 54 Utley Terrace squatted behind its high fence and its locked gate and would have no part of the bright future on offer. But now the mood was all for change.

And change duly came. Myrtle and George don’t live at number 56 any more—they’ve gone back to the home world. Lucy and Peter went with them, but Susan stayed on in the house. She met a nice human boy from Palmerston North, and they’ve got a family of their own now, two girls and a boy on the way. The children look human enough, and beyond that, I’m too much the gentleman to ask.

Myrtle wasn’t lying about the rest of the galaxy. Energy is as cheap as dust up there, and galactics—those who can breathe our air—come in such numbers the Government’s had to put restrictions on the back country. Lots of Chinese and Indian restaurants are closing down and being replaced by New Zealand ones, and you can walk past any bistro and see aliens of all shapes and sizes dining out on puha, kumara and lamb.

There’s just Alison and me now. Josh studied engineering in Christchurch, then, a couple of years ago, he left on a longer journey. We drove him up to Shannon, then stood watching from behind the safety of 80 centimetres of reinforced glass as the spear of light rose straight up into the night sky. Neither of us had much to say on the drive home.

Tonight we’re out on the deck, using the telescope that Myrtle and George gave us as a parting gift. Golden lights move serenely through the field of view, far above Earth’s atmosphere. We swing our telescope towards the patch of sky, dark and almost empty, where we know our son now lives, studying, learning. Sometimes we get a message, Josh smiling and telling us he’s fine against a background of lights, or bodies with too many legs, or places we cannot recognise or even comprehend.

I’m retired, and Alison’s not far off. One day soon, we’ll sell our house—the worst house on the best street—and after a few weeks of touring round and saying goodbye to friends, we’ll take that road to Shannon. Before they left, George and Myrtle said to look them up one day. I think we will.