Think Like A Dinosaur
by James Patrick Kelly
Kamala Shastri came back to this world as she had left it -- naked. She
tottered out of the assembler, trying to balance in Tuulen Station's
delicate gravity. I caught her and bundled her into a robe with one
motion, then eased her onto the float. Three years on another planet had
transformed Kamala. She was leaner, more muscular. Her fingernails were
now a couple of centimeters long and there were four parallel scars incised
on her left cheek, perhaps some Gendian's idea of beautification. But
what struck me most was the darting strangeness in her eyes. This place,
so familiar to me, seemed almost to shock her. It was as if she doubted
the walls and was skeptical of air. She had learned to think like an
alien.
"Welcome back." The float's whisper rose to a whoosh as I walked it down
the hallway.
She swallowed hard and I thought she might cry. Three years ago, she
would have. Lots of migrators are devastated when they come out of the
assembler; it's because there is no transition. A few seconds ago Kamala
was on Gend, fourth planet of the star we call epsilon Leo, and now she was
here in lunar orbit. She was almost home; her life's great adventure was
over.
"Matthew?" she said.
"Michael." I couldn't help but be pleased that that she remembered me.
After all, she had changed my life.
#
I've guided maybe three hundred migrations -- comings and goings -- since
I first came to Tuulen to study the dinos. Kamala Shastri's is the only
quantum scan I've ever pirated. I doubt that the dinos care; I suspect
this is a trespass they occasionally allow themselves. I know more about
her -- at least, as she was three years ago -- than I know about myself.
When the dinos sent her to Gend, she massed 50,391.72 grams and her red
cell count was 4.81 million per mm3. She could play the nagasvaram, a kind
of bamboo flute. Her father came from Thana, near Bombay, and her favorite
flavor of chewyfrute was watermelon and she'd had five lovers and when she
was eleven she had wanted to be a gymnast but instead she had become a
biomaterials engineer who at age twenty-nine had volunteered to go to the
stars to learn how to grow artificial eyes. It took her two years to go
through migrator training; she knew could have backed out at any time,
right up until the moment Silloin translated her into a superluminal
signal. It was explained to her many times what it meant to balance the
equation.
I first met her on June 22, 2069. She shuttled over from Lunex's L1 port
and came through our airlock at promptly 10:15, a small, roundish woman
with black hair parted in the middle and drawn tight against her skull.
They had darkened her skin against epsilon Leo's UV; it was the deep
blue-black of twilight. She was wearing a striped clingy and velcro
slippers to help her get around for the short time she'd be navigating our
.2 micrograv.
"Welcome to Tuulen Station." I smiled and offered my hand. "My name is
