Schmidt grinned and left.

Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today

Hafte Sorvalh, alien, walked the Mall in Washington, D.C. toward Antonio Morales, proprietor of Tony’s Churros, a small stand parked not too far from the Lincoln Monument. She had completed her morning meetings, had a couple of hours before her afternoon engagements, and had a craving, as she usually did when she was in D.C. for hot Mexican pastries.

Tony had her standard order of a half dozen cinnamon churros ready by the time she approached the stand. He handed them to her in a bag, smiling. “You knew I was coming,” Sorvalh said to Tony, as she took the bag.

“You are ten feet tall, Señora,” Tony said, using the Spanish honorific because he knew it charmed Sorvalh when he did; Morales had lived in the D.C. area his entire life and struggled through Spanish in high school. “It’s hard not to know you are coming.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Sorvalh said, paying for her pastries. “And how are you, Tony?”

“Business is good,” Tony said. “But then business is always good. People like churros. Are you happy? Have a churro. Depressed? Have a churro. About to go to prison for embezzlement? Have a churro before you go. Just got out of prison? Churro time.”

“Truly, the miracle food,” Sorvalh said.

“You come to get them every time you’re in town,” Tony said. “Tell me that I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong,” Sorvalh said. “Although a sentient being cannot live on churros alone.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Tony said. “In Uruguay, they make churros filled with cheese. That’s lunch right there. I may experiment with that. You can be my test subject the next time you come round.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Sorvalh said. “I like what I like. I am a creature of habit.”

“Your loss,” Tony said. “And how have you been, Señora? How is the diplomatic whirl?”

Sorvalh did her version of a grimace at this. Things had not been going well at all; since the destruction of Earth Station, things had been a real mess. Although the Conclave, which she represented, had nothing to do with its destruction, the loss of the station had put the entire planet into paranoid, angry mode at anyone who was not in fact a human from Earth. Consequently, her meetings with human diplomats and officials in Beijing, Moscow, Paris and the Hague were less like discussions and more like therapy sessions, in which her human counterparts vented as she sat there, cramped in their tiny offices (when one is nearly ten feet tall, all human offices are tiny), practicing what she hoped the humans involved would interpret as a sympathetic expression.

“It could be better,” Sorvalh admitted.

“That bad,” Tony said. He was getting used to reading Sorvalh’s physiology, and correctly guessed that there were many things Sorvalh was choosing not to say at the moment.

“It’s a complicated world we live in, Tony,” Sorvalh said.

“It’s a complicated world youlive in,” Tony said. “I make churros.”

“And that’s not complicated?” Sorvalh asked. “In its own way?”

Tony shrugged. “You know, this is actually my second job,” he said. “I went to school in business, got an MBA and spent ten years being one of those finance pricks who make everyone else miserable. I had a lot of fun at first and then near the end there I felt every day like I either needed to get drunk or start a fight with someone. So I uncomplicated my life. And here I am, with a churro stand. And now I’m happy most of the time. Because no one’s unhappy to see the churro man.”

“You’ll never get rich being the churro man,” Sorvalh said.

Tony smiled and opened his arms wide. “I was a finance prick! I’m already rich! And anyway, as I said, business is good. In fact, here come some new customers.” Tony pointed down the Mall, where a gaggle of eight-year-olds, herded by a pair of harried-looking adults, were heading chaotically churro-ward.

Sorvalh followed Tony’s pointed finger to look at the children. “Hopefully not all theirs,” she said.

“I would guess not,” Tony said. “More like a school outing to see the monuments.”

“Should I step back?” Sorvalh asked. Not every human was comfortable around ten-foot aliens. She didn’t want to get in the way of Tony’s business.

“You might,” Tony said. “If they were all adults I’d tell them to get a grip, but these are kids and you never know how they’re going to react.”

Sorvalh nodded and walked a bit away, toward a bench near the stand. Her body shape and height wouldn’t have made it comfortable for her to sit on, but for some reason it was less awkward for her to unfold and sit on the ground near a bench—a designated sitting area—than it was anywhere else. Sorvalh was sure if she thought about it enough, she could figure out where she had picked up this particular quirk of hers, but the fact of the matter was she was much less interested in that than she was in her now-cooling churros. She started applying herself to them while Tony’s stand was overrun with screaming, tiny humans, excited to cram fried dough into their gullets. She looked the other direction for most of that.

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation of her churros, Sorvalh turned to see one of the human children not too far from her, staring up at her solemnly. Sorvalh stopped chewing her churro, swallowed, and addressed the child directly. “Hello,” she said.

The child looked behind her, as if expecting that Sorvalh was speaking to someone else, then turned back to her when it was clear she wasn’t. “Hello,” the girl said.

“Enjoying your churro?” Sorvalh asked, pointing to the churro in the girl’s hand. The girl nodded, silently. “Good,” Sorvalh said, and moved to go back to her own.

“Are you a monster?” the little girl asked, suddenly.

Sorvalh cocked her head and considered the question. “I don’t think I am,” Sorvalh said. “But maybe that depends on what you think a monster is.”

“A monster fights and wrecks things,” the little girl said.

“Well, I try to avoid doing that,” Sorvalh said. “So maybe I’m not a monster after all.”

“But you looklike a monster,” the girl said.

“On Earth I might look like a monster,” Sorvalh said. “Back home on my planet I look quite normal, I promise you. Maybe a little taller than most, but otherwise just like anyone else. On my planet, you would be the one who looks strange. What do you think about that?”

“What’s a planet?” the girl asked.

“Oh, dear,” Sorvalh said. “What are they teaching you in your school?”

“Today we learned about Abraham Lincoln,” the girl said. “He was tall, too.”

“Yes he was,” Sorvalh said. “Do you know what the Earth is?”

The girl nodded. “It’s where we are.”

“Right,” Sorvalh said. “It’s a planet. A big round place where your people live. My people have a place like it, too. But instead of calling it Earth, we call it Lalah.”

“Hannah!” One of the adult humans had figured out that the girl had wandered away from her group and was talking to the big, scary-looking alien sitting by the bench. The human adult—a woman—came running up to retrieve her charge. “I’m sorry,” the woman said to Sorvalh. “We don’t mean to bother you.”

“She’s not bothering me at all,” Sorvalh said, pleasantly. “In fact, we were reviewing basic astronomy facts, like how the Earth is a planet.”

“Hannah, you should have known that,” the woman said. “We learned that earlier in the year.” Hannah shrugged. The woman looked over at Sorvalh. “We really did cover the solar system earlier this year. It’s in the curriculum.”

“I believe you,” Sorvalh said.

“It says it’s from a planet called LAH LAH,” Hannah said, overenunciating the name, and looking up at her teacher. “It’s in the solar system, too.”

“Well, it’s in asolar system,” Sorvalh said. “And I’m a woman, just like you are.”