Read A Paradigm of Earth for Free Online Page B

can’t stand the noise when my head aches.”
    “The alien, the spaceman who’s come to see us! We really are not alone!”
    She shouldered him aside, tangentially remembering her dream as she did so, and ran for the discarded newspaper, and sure enough, front page and whole first section said it:

    We Are Not Alone!
Man From Outer Space Lands in Zurich!
Alien Makes Visit to Peace Talks!
     

    The blurry photo could as easily have been anyone, though the color balance was all wrong for human skin. The blue aliens in her dream had had her parents’ faces: that was obvious symbolism; this was just coincidence. She was too ill to read the small print. She went back to bed.

    Someone left the newspaper open to the help wanted ads, and Morgan saw there—she thought Russ must have marked it for her—a child care job. Teaching certificate required. Working with disadvantaged adult clients. A child care job with adults? Must be low-IQ, thought Morgan, as she printed out a resume and sent it off.
    Getting an interview was unexpected. Her application had been so perfunctory that it was almost worse than no effort at all; clearly, her subconscious had hoped to sabotage the process. But now there she was, walking through the door of an unlabeled government building. There were decontam procedures at the entry, strong security. She thought the interviews must be far from the job site: who would keep kids in a place like this? But inside, the building opened out into a giant atrium, with huge trees and running water in a courtyard big enough to hold—holding, in fact—a couple of smaller buildings.
    She was placed in a waiting area with benches, under one of the clusters of trees. Small birds flitted through the branches. Morgan felt itchy, watched. She looked up, around, irritated at herself for the cliché: if she was thinking about surveillance, why not use her mind, rather than the hair on the back of her neck? But there were no cameras. She turned impatiently, and under the thick branches of the tropical mini-forest there was someone crouching, watching.
    Adult body, to be sure, but certainly childlike pose and gaze. She had just met one of the “clients”, she thought, unsurprised. In the green shadows under the boughs, the pale skin looked blue.
    “Hello, person,” said the being, sounding like a recording. Autism sometimes presents this way, Morgan thought, and waited for more evidence.
    “Hello, person to you too,” said Morgan.
    “‘You too you too you too.’ ‘That’s okay, just stay right there while I look at you.’” The second imitated voice was deeper and differently accented: Mennonite Manitoban? Morgan thought. There were many causes of this kind of imitativeness.
    “I’m not going anywhere,” Morgan said. “Are you going to come out and let me look at you ?”
    The being sighed exaggeratedly, another imitation, and crawled out from the jungle.
    The skin was blue.
    Morgan was looking at one of the aliens.
    “Blue,” she said, involuntarily.
    “Blue,” it said. “Blue blue blue blue?” The face was blue, but blue in a thick undertone to ivory, an undertone that took no life away from the rich texture of the skin. The eyes were dark. The hair was long, and knotted behind the head, carelessly through itself. Strands were loose. They were a dark blue, close to black, the way dark brown is close to black. Gleaming dark strands. Morgan’s own long hair was tied in a knot; she wondered who had taught the visitor that trick, not foolish enough to believe that such details are universal.
    “That about covers it. What’s your name?”
    “Blue.”
    “My name is Morgan. What is your name?”
    “Blue. Blue. My name is—Blue.” In Morgan’s voice.
    This was very silly. Not at all like in all those SF books. Exactly like. What was she doing here? This was stupid.
    Another voice, from another being this time: “You’re hired.”
    “Say what?”
    “You’re hired.” A grey man—no, thought