Rick Wilber is a novelist and short story writer whose work often focuses on the impact on cultures overwhelmed by colonizing aliens of one sort or another. His long-running S’hudonni Mercantile Empire series of stories began with the arrival and departure of the Pashi aliens in “War Bride,” and continues through a number of other short stories in
JAMES PACKS HIS BAG.
Ahab, Huck, Yossarian, Nick Adams, even Hornblower goes in, along with six toothbrushes, a handful of postcards with various sunsets and palm trees and bathing-suited blondes, and four like-new baseballs. He would like to pack his basketball, but it just won’t fit.
He needs them—the books, the cards, the baseballs. He won’t be coming back, and he’s picked the things that will last the longest and serve him the best.
But no clothes. Whistle made that perfectly clear. No clothes. The Pashi can’t stand those Earthie clothes, and James won’t need them where he’s going. Whistle will take care of James’s attire, as she takes care of most everything else.
He does pack his prosthetic lengthener. Whistle has promised him an operation once they reach the home world, and then he won’t need the lengthener anymore. But the trip will take weeks, James has been told, so the lengthener comes along.
James stands, his head nearly touching the light fixture in the apartment’s living area. James is very tall, nearly seven-foot-three. The Pashi are even taller, and thin, but James is about as big as Earthies get, and Whistle has developed a real fondness for him. That’s why Whistle has decided to bring him along, now that the Pashi are leaving.
James looks out the sliding glass doors toward the Gulf of Mexico. The Pashi landing rigs and comm relays are just visible on the horizon line. That’s why Whistle bought James this apartment on the seventh floor, Gulf Boulevard, St. Petersburg Beach; so they could see the rigs and towers against the setting sun when Whistle came to play with her American pet.
Whistle is beautiful, in her own damp Pashi way. James knows he is lucky to have been chosen by her, lucky to be able to pack his one small bag with anything he can think of that will last forever on another world. Lucky guy, he tells himself forcefully, trying to make the sentiment stick. Lucky guy.
James has not always felt so lucky, so wanted. For most of his life, James has felt alone. He thinks about his loneliness as he looks out the sliding glass doors. All the years of it. Too tall, too many books or too much basketball, too many stares and too many expectations. Only Tom has found the way through all the incongruities, all the implausibilities to be his friend. In all those twenty-eight years, only Tom has been willing to think of James as a friend instead of a marketable product with a few esoteric quirks.
James tries to staunch his thoughts of Tom. Tom, his good and only friend Tom, will die tomorrow with the rest of them, with everyone, when the Pashi leave.
Whistle has explained it to him. The rest of his race, all the Earthies here who don’t have Pashi lovers ready to whisk them away, are going to die tomorrow.
It will be about lunchtime in St. Petersburg, and Tom will be having a grouper sandwich and order of fries about then if he can afford it. James tries not to think about that.
Tonight the Pashi leave. The great benevolent Pashi who brought so much to the world, who opened wide the doors to all those cosmic possibilities and the promise of trade with a hundred Pashi worlds strung like pearls through the whole spiral arm of the galaxy.
Of course it couldn’t all happen too quickly, the Pashi explained. The Earthies would have to be patient as the details were worked out. And there were certain adjustments that would have to be made to accommodate the Pashi presence on Earth. Economic adjustments. Military adjustments.
