Human Sister by Jim Bainbridge Page A

wrapped around my scalp, and thinking something to the effect that perhaps a little girl who could find phantom flowers with steamy stems wavering in the kitchen air held for him some of the interest of water swirling in a toilet bowl or of milk dispersing into tea. And then he smiled—not a broad happy smile, but a thin smile expressing interest, his eyes darting about like dragonflies over my face—and I felt for the first time that he was my brother.
    I smiled back, and saying, “I’m glad you’re my brother,” I put my hand on his hand, which still felt strangely cool and smooth. His smile evaporated, and his gaze turned back toward the curlicues of steam rising over the cup of tea.
    Grandpa then asked me to read aloud my list of new words for the week and the story I’d composed about Lily getting one of her paws stuck in chicken wire that Grandma had put up in the garden. I wasn’t excited about doing this, considering how bored with my new words First Brother had earlier appeared, but I did as Grandpa requested.
    Sure enough, all the while I read my list and my story, First Brother’s attention appeared to be directed toward something else—the purring of the biorecycler as near as I could tell—and my patience began to fray.
    “Brother, what were my new words for the week?” I asked, imitating the kind of question Grandpa would ask and the stern tone he would use whenever he sensed my attention waning.
    I was surprised when First Brother listed all twenty words without hesitation. And then I was struck with a realization: “You can think about more than one thing at a time, can’t you?”
    “I think about many things at once,” he replied, still staring at the recycler.
    “What else were you thinking about when I read you my new words?”
    He glanced at Mom, then looked back at the recycler. “Such things are not to be discussed with my sister.”
    When they left that day, I hugged and kissed Mom and Dad. First Brother extended his hand—to shake good-bye, I suppose—but I asked him to pick me up. He did, and I put my arms around his neck and hugged him and kissed his cool cheek.
    He became rigid, as if suddenly transformed to a statue.
    “I’ll think up a new game for the next time you come,” I whispered into his ear.
    He said nothing and, after a few inert seconds, set me down, leaving me, as he so often would in years to follow, with an empty, wanting feeling.

First Brother
     
     
    T hrough the eyes of the pigeonoid, I see a submersible break through the surface of the ocean. Six seconds later its top hatch opens and a flotation device is ejected—at 784 meters west, 139 meters north of the center of the mouth of the Russian River on the northern California coast.
    The flotation device bobs for 18 seconds, then distends and flattens out to an elongated raft, in the middle of which Sara sits cross-legged. She wears soft-soled, blue-and-white striped cloth shoes; white socks; faded blue jeans; an item of clothing (highest correlation: sweater) gray in color, wrapped and tied around her waist; and a long-sleeved white shirt, on which each button, including the top, is buttoned. Goggles with lenses tinted dark gray cover her eyes. On her hands are white gloves. A white hat with neck drapes shelters her head. A white pack is attached to her back with straps that come over her shoulders and wrap under her arms. The wide brim of the hat casts a shadow down her face and ventral trunk. A cloth band tied under her chin secures the hat on her head.
    She is not decorated with any of the jewelry or skin enhancements of contemporary teenage female humans.
    It is midday minus 26 minutes, 11 seconds on 20 June.

Sara
     
     
    “A ir France-KLM flight number 1147 departing for Amsterdam is ready for boarding at gate number E73.” The announcement was made in a pleasant-sounding, probably artificial, woman’s voice, perfect in its soothing mellowness.
    It was the middle of June, and for my sixth