Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm

the tables lower, the chairs more spindly than any John had ever seen. All the furniture and screens were of woven tika vine, hardened with tika syrup into a glossy finish. He’d never seen it used for chairs and tables before, and wondered if it would take his weight. He felt disoriented, like the time he had wandered into an older part of Evangeline’s gondola and encountered the formidable couches and work surfaces his ancestors had used. Only this was like being invited into a creche’s playroom. Eyes turned to him as he passed. He hadn’t felt stared at in the corridors, but here the attention was impossible to ignore. His close-cropped hair and traditional orange flight suit were enough to mark him as a Mariner; his hulking size advertised his great age as well. He wasn’t sure which trait was drawing all the attention.
    The host was very smooth about bringing a larger chair for John, but couldn’t do much about how low the table was. John waved off his apologies and accepted a small menu. He was studying its ornate print when he realized Deckenson was looking at him. John met his gaze.
    “Feels odd, doesn’t it? To be so big in a world of tiny people. Like you’re an outmoded piece of equipment. Obsolete. Archaic.”
    “So?” John asked coolly.
    “So I brought you here on purpose. To emphasize it. To get you thinking. What will you find next time you come back from space, John? People that look even more like children? Will you be able to walk among us, to sit in our chairs, to drink from our tiny cups? Look at me, John, and see what we’re doing to ourselves.” Deckenson held out his hands, spread-fingered, as if to emphasize the slenderness of his fingers, the delicacy of his pink nails, the fragility of his white wrist with the pale blue vein pulsing in it.
    John shrugged. “I’m a Mariner, Deckenson. It was my first option, and I’ve been with it for twenty-three years, my wake time. Yeah, every time I come back, things have changed more. But I’m adaptable to it. That’s why Mariner came out number one on my options.”
    “There are also the factors that you don’t form bonds easily, and don’t seem to regret not having any close personal relationships. Are not those also prime personality traits for a Mariner?”
    John took a sip of water from a narrow glass. “Of course. You say it like I should apologize for it.”
    “No. I merely think it odd, in a man whose second option was Poet. One would think a man with a predilection for poetry would be closely enmeshed with humanity. I always thought of Poets as speakers for their species.”
    It irritated John that they had somehow dug out this odd bit about him. Rubbed him worse that Deckenson placed importance on it. He wondered what else they knew about him. How intrusive were these people? His irritation came through in his reply. “Skill with words isn’t chained to love of one’s fellow man.”
    “Poetry is more than skill with words. The option tests for Poet are quite exhausting mentally, and very demanding emotionally. I ought to know. It’s my first option.”
    John should have known. “Really? Well, perhaps times have changed in that, also. When I took the tests, I came away feeling I had been the victim of a scam. All the questions seemed to ask one sort of thing while digging information of a very different sort out of you.”
    “Exactly.” Deckenson took a quick breath as if he were about to go on, then paused abruptly. He let the breath out slowly, then breathed in twice, slower still, through his nostrils. John recognized the calming exercise. Deckenson looked up at him across the table and smiled suddenly, disarmingly. “Look, John. This isn’t going at all the way I’d planned, and I’m not going to let myself get sidetracked. Poet might be my first option, but Executive was my next, and that’s what I have to be right now. For the sake of poetrylater. I have so much to convey to you, and such a limited time. And I