COAL BLACK HAIR AND FIERCE RED EYES

It was a rough little after-work meeting place.  Rough in construction, I mean; the customers weren’t all that rough.  The building had been thrown up twenty-four hours or so after landing on this inhabited planet.  It was a combination mess hall, bar, supply post, and whatever else it was needed to be.  We’d been here for a month now and were continually amazed at how quickly the native human-like beings had been able to learn Earth-speak and also to pick up on things like humor, sarcasm, irony, and a host of other things that usually take a different culture years to assimilate.  Also odd was that unless they were hiding part of the population from us, every one of them appeared to be of equal intelligence and ability.  Maybe some sort of cloning.  Just within the last week some of the younger men and women had been stopping in an apparent attempt to polish their language and social skills.  When this used to happen on Earth, before Earth-speak was the official language, there were always the humorous anecdotes about misunderstandings the learners of the new culture had to endure.  That wasn’t happening here, though.  With the interaction with these people, at least I think they’re people, most of the embarrassment was on our end.

“No, you certainly won’t be having sex with me tonight,” said one of the females to me not unkindly.

“But, I didn’t …,” I started to say, but was immediately interrupted.

“You could see me naked, if you would like to, but it would be at a distance, down by the lagoon.  No touching.  And definitely none of that,” she said pointing at the bulge in my pants.

“Can you people …,”

“No, we don’t read minds,” she said answering my attempted question.  “We could read your minds.  We know what minds are.  We would not want to read your minds, though; too dangerous.  To us.  We read your eyes.  Your smell.  Your body language.  You people from Earth say a lot more than you know you’re saying.  But read your minds?  No, not that.”

She smiled and turned to talk with one of her women friends.  Probably about me.  Geesh!

“So, struck out, did you?’ asked Rosalita, my immediate supervisor.  “I haven’t had much luck with either the men or the women so far.  They seem interested in us and friendly enough, but I think the only thing they haven’t quite figured out about us is the complicated games surrounding sexuality.  One woman asked if we were all mildly mentally ill.  She thought we were very poor ambassadors from another planet.  When I finally figured out what she was referring to, I told her that almost everybody on Earth and the three planets we had colonized so far were like us.  She blushed a really bright blue and excused herself.  I haven’t seen her around since.  I hope I didn’t do any harm.”

“Ya mean the invaders causing a bunch of grief for the natives?” I snorted.  “Yeah, like that’s never happened before.”

THE END

© 2015 Roy Dorman

E-mail: Roy Dorman

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