BLENDING IN

by Lew Stowe

Mary Smith was killed on a bright September afternoon.

Although a stunning blow for her parents, the young woman's death also hit them with an extraordinary dilemma. Still strangers in a strange land and world, they now found themselves forced into a cruel choice between their old traditions and those of their adopted planet. When they finally settled on what seemed the best solution, they surely

knew it was a compromise. But they also knew that life was full of compromises, some

better than others.

* * *

When the first aliens began migrating to earth in the late twenty-first century, the Smith family was among them. Of course, Smith wasn't their real name. The real name was unpronounceable in any known earth language, so they quickly changed it. From a small, crowded planet named Laebda in an obscure corner of the galaxy, blending in was easier than for many other aliens, because they looked much like ordinary humans. There was George Smith, a wiry man of average height, his wife, Nora, small and slim, and their teenaged daughter, Mary, who had an energetic glow that everyone found attractive.

All three were intelligent and sensitive, quick learners, with a finely-tuned attention to detail. George and Nora found good jobs, he as a software engineer, she as a linguist. They soon bought a nice house in a small suburban town. Mary enrolled in the local high school, where she did well and acquired lots of friends.

Naturally, they had to make adjustments. One of the hardest involved food. George tried to lead the way.

"These are vegetables," he said at the dinner table. "I have analyzed them thoroughly, and the nutritional content is compatible with our metabolisms. They are good for us. We must eat them."

"Disgusting!" Mary said. "They taste like shit! Triggers my rejection reflex. Do you like this stuff, Mom?"

She had never called her mother "Mom" back on Laebda, but was making a conscious effort to imitate her new friends. Her friends also used words like "shit," so she did, too.

Nora shook her head. "No, but that's irrelevant. It is healthy and we have to eat it. We must adjust. And where have you found excrement to taste? At school?"

Mary seized the opportunity to put on a fine exhibition of eye-rolling. "Just an expression, Mom."

There was certainly no excrement to be had at home, because the Smiths' bodies didn't produce any. All food was processed so efficiently it was normally burned up completely as fuel. Occasionally a few wisps of odorless fiber might require disposal, but these could be tossed in the nearest wastebasket.

"We have a choice: vegetables or the flesh of dead animals," George said.

"Yecch!" Mary said, testing yet another newly-learned response.

"So eat!" commanded her father, and everyone dug in with determination, if not enthusiasm.

* * *

That was the Smith family as I knew them. Call me Harry. My job then was to serve as liaison for migrating aliens, to make their assimilation into society as painless as possible. The Smiths were one of my easiest clients. They were such a nice family, pleasant, friendly and hard-working and ever eager to please. Better humans than the humans they interacted with every day.

After two years, they were so solidly immersed in community activities that anyone recalling the Smiths were aliens from another planet must have doubted his own memory.

I visited them once a month, but they never needed anything. Life was good. George and Nora were proud of Mary, ready to enter her senior year in high school.

Then it all shattered. Mary was crossing a busy street when two vehicles collided. Another swerved to avoid the accident and ran her down.

* * *

It's probably hindsight, but I know I thought there was something odd about George and Nora's grief. They were distraught, but it didn't seem to be about Mary specifically. More like something momentous was looming over them that they had a lot of trouble dealing with.

George kept saying "I don't know what to do!" and looking at his wife, who also seemed to be drowning in indecision.

I thought he meant the funeral arrangements, so I suggested I could handle those for him.

"No, no," George said. "That's all taken care of. The funeral is tomorrow. Everything is all set."

"All set," Nora echoed, looking at George.

"What about cremation?"

"No cremation," George said. "Mary will have a full-coffin burial in the mausoleum." He shook his head. "No cremation," he repeated.

Well. He certainly wasn't so indecisive that he hadn't been able to obtain the special permit for a full-coffin burial. The world was running out of space for cemeteries, so almost everyone got cremated, and you had to deal with the right people to avoid it. George apparently had known, or found out, how to navigate those tricky waters.

The funeral was a nostalgic piece of Americana that nowadays can be experienced only in small towns like this one. At the end, a large crowd stood with bowed heads, and George and Nora, in dark clothes, looked properly heartbroken. The twenty-third psalm

was read from the Bible, following which Mary Smith was laid to rest as her grayish-blue coffin was eased into its slot in the outdoor mausoleum at the Eternal Harmony cemetery.

The cover plate was screwed on, and it was all over.

I took the Smiths home and sat around for a while, but there wasn't much to say. George and Nora seemed to be pondering the imponderable and weren't interested in talking. For the hundredth time I expressed my condolences and left.

* * *

I didn't see them again for a couple of months. When I did, they appeared more reconciled to Mary's absence. Whatever had been bothering them was now in the past.

My main recollection of that visit was something Nora said.

"Mary is not dead to us," Nora said. "We will have her back completely in time. There is no question about it."

Lots of people say things like that. Depends on your religious beliefs, the depth of your grief, and the culture you were raised in. Everybody wants their loved ones back. So I just nodded.

But George frowned at her, and Nora immediately changed her tone.

"I am only a sentimental mother," she stammered, with a weak smile. "I don't know what I'm talking about. When I think about Mary, I get a little . . . goofy."

"Goofy," George said with a laugh. "Me, too. Mary's death made us that way. We are improving, though."

* * *

The next few months, I was busy and relied on telephone calls to the Smiths rather than visits. Nothing seemed amiss. Then I got really busy. By the time I actually made it back to their house, over a year had elapsed since Mary's death.

The Smiths weren't there.

Someone else was living in the house. The Smiths were gone and nobody knew where they were. That seemed to have been by design, because they didn't leave a forwarding address, either at the real estate firm that sold the house or the postal service.

I knew where George had worked, but they weren't of any help. Neither was Nora's old employer.

Someone I talked to thought George or Nora had mentioned a new job somewhere in the northwest, maybe Seattle. But they weren't sure.

All very strange. Why had the Smiths left? And why so secretively? They were now in their late forties, had put down extensive roots in this town--where their daughter was buried. They had always seemed happy here. Most humans would have a sort of sentimental attachment to their daughter's grave. Not, apparently, the Smiths. But the Smiths were humanoid, not human. Easy to forget that.

I knew I could find them if I wanted to. But for what purpose? There was no law against their moving whenever it suited them. What I needed was to try and understand if there was some underlying difficulty I should address. After all, that was my job.

So I conferred with Corbin Matrin, our resident specialist on Laebdans.

He listened carefully to the story of the Smiths, but didn't do much more than twist his mouth thoughtfully.

"The daughter," he said finally. "Mary? I wonder if she was a regenerant."

"Huh?"

He repeated himself: "Regenerant. Some Laebdans can regenerate following physical death. The body is restored back to the state it was in prior to whatever caused the death."

"They're immortal? "

"No, nothing like that. The ability fades with age and usually disappears after the age of fifty. And for regen to happen, the body has to be pretty much intact. Maybe thirty, forty percent needs to be present. If less, you get only normal decay."

"What . . . if the body were cremated?"

"Then regen couldn't work. It's a normal, natural process that requires a basic amount of intact body tissue for completion."

We looked at each other.

"How long does it take?" I asked. "For complete regeneration?"

"I understand eight months to a year. The body is in a mild type of coma, so has to be awakened when it's over. It must all be timed fairly closely, because when regen finishes, the need for sustenance is critical. Without food, the body declines into permanent death."

We looked at each other some more.

"I don't know what this has to do with the disappearance of the Smiths," Corbin said. "Probably nothing. Just thought I'd mention it."

I thanked him and went away shaking my head. My mind was churning.

* * *

The first thing I did was locate a forensic object imager and take it out to the Eternal Harmony mausoleum. The device can see through almost anything. You place the sensors on the object you want to scan, then punch in the area coordinates. What

comes back on the screen is a three-dimensional image showing the contents of the scanned area.

I scanned a lot of coffins, including Mary's.

All, except one, contained remains of bodies.

Mary's coffin was empty.

* * *

There isn't much more to tell.

I think the Smiths, once they decided there was no way they could leave Mary in that coffin, very meticulously planned their getaway. It must have been emotionally excruciating for them. But, because of Mary, necessary. Cemeteries tend not to have

much security, so it would have been relatively easy for them to stop on the way out of town--probably late at night--remove the cover plate on the tomb, pull the coffin out, awaken and remove their fully regenerated daughter, replace everything, and move on to

a new life elsewhere.

But why did they feel they had to leave?

My guess is that they had become too human. Maybe they even thought of themselves as human. Except humans don't regenerate. When humans die, it's forever. A daughter who won't die would have been an anomaly too startling for the Smiths to overcome. With Mary a walking advertisement for Laebdan differences, all efforts at blending in would have been in vain.

So they got out, taking Mary with them.

Yet . . . we humans have accepted so many other changes. Our lives are nothing if not roaring waterfalls of change. Aliens live among us now who are radically different from anything we've ever imagined. Still, we adjust. I'm not sure a regenerative daughter was that huge a deal. But the Smiths must have thought it was.

I located but never contacted them. The Smiths now reside near a large mid-western city, all three of them, George and Nora and their daughter, Nancy. The report indicates they are doing well. I hope they're happy. On this, their second try, they should be blending in as well as they ever did. Maybe better.