|
A Hissing Sound
by Neil James Hudson
|
|||||
|
The following is an excerpt from A Hissing Sound. I threw the pencil point-first at the poster. “Yes!” I shouted, and punched the air. I’d got him in the left eye. B’keg eventually made his way in. I could convince myself that he was human underneath his protection suit. Not that I was a supremacist in any way, but I just found that communication flowed a little more smoothly if I couldn’t see all the hair. “B’keg, while you’re here you might like to take these weather reports,” I said, and handed him the papers. Really it was my job to hand them out, but it was such a hassle putting the suit on. B’keg inspected the papers. “I don’t undertand why you pell our namet like that,” he said. It would have been perfect English if he’d managed the “s”. “You’re aliens,” I told him. “Aliens have apostrophes in their names. Everyone knows that.” “I don’t undertand your apotrophet,” he said. “Neither does anyone on Earth,” I said. “Now listen, B’keg. You’re talking to Earth people. They ring up from their comfortable homes in the suburbs of England and North America. They want to think they’re talking to someone in the same place.” “Of court,” said B’keg. “We memorite the weather, the port, the newt, everything they might ark about.” “Ask,” I said. “You need to make a hissing sound. Sssss.” “A hitting tound,” he repeated. “Come on, B’keg. We’ve got our differences, but they’re not inside our mouths. We’ve got the same jaw structure, the same tongue, and similar teeth. You could say it if you want to.” “I am torry, Mitt Daviton,” said B’keg. I sighed. “At least stick to words that don’t have an “s” in them,” I said. “We drew up a list. “Handing”, not “passing”, was one of them. Okay?” “Torry,” repeated B’keg, and I admitted I was wasting my time and let him go. But then I’d known I was wasting my time all along, because I’d been doing so ever since I’d first taken up this job. I was a supervisor, and there was little to supervise. If the M’arenzi ever learnt to pronounce the letter “s”, I’d be finished here. But no matter how they tried, they would answer the phone with a happy “good morning, tir,” and give the game away. Once people realized they were talking to someone on another planet, they just wanted trouble. Another voice cut in on my earphones. Someone who would have been quite happy if an Earth voice had answered the phone. “Good afternoon, sir, how may I help?” I asked. “Ah, Miss Davison,” said a voice. “I rather think it’s me that can help you.” “How do you know my name?” I said suspiciously and unprofessionally. “I know everything about you,” said the voice. “You’re all alone up there, aren’t you? It would be a shame if anything were to happen to you.” I hung up. Excerpt from A Hissing Sound © Copyright 2009, Neil James Hudson
|
|||||
|
© Copyright 2010, Zefram Media LLC |
|||||
