Loop by Brian Caswell Read Free Book Online Page B

planets that are supposed to be more advanced.
    Naturally, they couldn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. Most of the planets we study can’t. But I always go to school anyway. It’s a great place to observe the natives.
    Take the ritual of the alpha male, for example.
    I’d barely touched ground when this blond-headed Neanderthal tried to claim me – like a trophy or the choice portion of the kill.
    Rolf Aaronson. At first I couldn’t work out why everyone took a step backwards when he approached them. Then I watched him in action, and I thought of those fourteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one different words …
    I made a mental note to find a way to neutralise his aggressive tendencies, one which fell within the Grand Council guidelines, of course. But for the first couple of weeks I decided to just stand back and observe. I was new. I didn’t want to take the chance of making waves too quickly.
    It made it difficult to talk to Jamie, and that was a pity. After all, he lived in the same street, and for a member of a non-Federation proto-civilisation he really was quite cute.
    But back to the story.
    You’d think that being there with all those teachers and kids would be the time I’d be most likely to make a mistake and give myself away, but in the end it wasn’t.
    And when you think about it, I guess it isn’t all that surprising. The fact that it is dangerous puts you on your guard. You act more carefully; you watch what you say and do.
    It’s when you feel safe that you drop your guard. At least, that’s how it worked with me.
    Luckily, it was Jamie who caught me and not some suspicious adult.
    It wasn’t the kind of mistake an Observer Class One should make, but it’s hard to be at your best when you’ve caught a local virus that clogs your head up and makes you sneeze. On Earth they call it ‘the common cold’, but it’s not common anywhere except on Earth.
    What I did was … Well, I forgot to put my hair on.
    I was lying down feeling like my head was about to explode – which is an interesting, if painful, experience – when Jamie knocked on the door. Both my parents were out, so I opened the door. Minus my hair.
    I knew something was wrong when his mouth dropped open and he went white.
    â€˜Cassie?’ he said.
    â€˜Jamie,’ I replied.
    â€˜Your head,’ he said.
    â€˜Oops!’ I replied. And I immobilised him with a mind-lock.
    I got him inside and closed the door, but now I had a real problem.
    The rules say that if one of the natives blows our cover we have to leave immediately, report the incident and suffer the consequences. And the consequences are pretty serious.
    My parents had worked hard to get the Class One rating, and a mistake like this could bump us all back down to Class Four, which meant we’d only be able to observe on planets without any intelligent life-forms.
    Question: How do you tell your parents that you’ve just completely ruined their lives?
    Answer: You don’t.
    I decided to take a gamble and see what happened. After all, it couldn’t get much worse than it already was.
    Jamie’s story
    When Cassie un-immobilised me, she had her hair on. And I have to admit she looked much prettier that way. Her face was the same, of course; it’s just that Yyeddans don’t have hair. What they do have are these three small, bony ridges that run the full length of their head, which you can’t see if they wear a wig.
    The ridges – and their violet-coloured eyes – are the only things that give them away. In every other way they look human, which is why they get to observe on Earth and planets like Earth.
    I won’t lie. I was scared.
    I mean, I’ve seen loads of science-fiction films, so I know that not all ‘visitors’ are cute like E.T.
    I was definitely scared.
    But this was Cassie, and something told me she wasn’t