Copyright 2008 by S. Thomas Kaza

Jack leaned over the edge of the building over sixty stories up. The lights of the city flickered below. The wind gusted and blew into his face. He head began to spin. He tried to swallow. Instead, he gasped for air like a fish tossed up onto the bank of a river.

“Have you jumped before?” the Tarantellan attendant handing out chutes asked.

“Yes,” Jack said and turned away from the edge of the building. He snatched up the silk chute offered him and began to furiously tie off its lines to the rings on the body harness he wore. He wanted to show everyone he wasn’t just some bumpkin fresh off the tourist rocket. He knew what he was doing.

There were six lines in all and four different knots to use. A Tarantellan with nine eyes and eight appendages that served as both arms and legs could tie three different knots at one time. Jack struggled with the last knot while the others lined up to jump.

The attendant approached him. “Are you ready, sir?” he asked, “They want you to go first.”

Jack looked over at the others waiting in line. They were mostly young male Tarantellans, clerks and bean counters that worked in the offices downtown. One large bull, nearly twice the size of the others, was probably a construction worker. Jack noticed he shivered as he waited.

“Chee kra te koh,” Jack clicked, “the cold doesn’t bother me.” He pointed to the bull. “Let him go first,” he added.

Since the sun slipped below the horizon, the temperature had dropped ten degrees. While he taught his last English class of te day, it had dropped another ten degrees. It would drop another five degrees in the next hour. A visitor form Earth would say it was getting chilly. A cold-blood Tarentallen needed to head home or risk losing an appendage to frostbite.

By the time Jack finished tying his last knot, the attendant was starting to shiver. He quickly looked over Jack’s knots.

“Its not my best work,” Jack clicked.

“Good enough,” the attendant said, patting Jack on the back and gently pushing him to the edge of the building at the same time.

The well-lit boulevard he wanted to land on gleamed over on his right. Jack took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and threw himself off the tower.

“Ka kru kir tah!” the attendant shouted after him, “Don’t forget your mother-in-law!”

For a moment Jack felt as if he was not falling. Perhaps the winds whipping around the tower gave him the sensation of hanging in mid-air, somewhere between heavan and Tarentella. He opened his eyes and looked up at the night sky filled with thousands of stars. Somewhere out there was Earth, home sweet home. He pictured his mother and father sitting in their living room and staring at the glare of their television. He pictured his sister on the phone and his brother in the garage working on his car. His heart reached out.

“They’re only a rocket away,” he told himself, “only a rocket away.” But gazing up into the vast firmament that night, he felt the light years between them.

The sound of rushing air distracted him from his thoughts. Jack looked down and saw the lights of the street below flying up to meet him. Then he remembered he was falling.

“Good lord,” he thought, “I forgot to count!”

His hand reached up to pull the cord. A few seconds later he felt a tug on his harness as his chute burst open above him, its rippling silk material filling with air. Jack breathed a sigh of relief. His free fall slowed now, and he floated down. Shifting his weight, he banked away from the jump tower until his flight path lined up with a broad, lighted boulevard that ran north from the city center.

What had he been thinking? How could he let himself get so distracted? He shook his head.

In another hour, the boulevard and the main streets of the city would be deserted. But

at this hour, they were swarming with Tarantellans, each hurrying to get home before it got any colder. Jack smiled. The scene below reminded him of a mass of insects crawling over the ground back on Earth. Crowds on Tarantella did not flow the way a street crowded with two-legged humans did. Each eight-legged Tarantellan moved first in one direction, then in another, zigzagging their way through the masses.

But if you tried not to focus on one spot, if you took a broader view of the spectacle and let your eyes drift out as if you could see in two directions at once like a chameleon hunting for prey while at the same time trying to avoid becoming prey, then you would see it as a nine-eyed Tarantellan did. They called it “the living street”, a ribbon of colors stretching from one horizon to the next and crisscrossing at several places in the middle. Jack thought it looked more like a stretch of canvas that had come alive, with each individual drop of paint deciding to get up and run in different directions.

He found himself thinking of the attendant back up on the jump tower. The Nine-Eyes shouted something to him. What was it? Yes, he had told him to watch out for his mother-in-law. In the Tarantellan language among males the expression meant “be careful”. But it had other connotations as well. Historically, the first meeting with one’s mother-in-law caused great anxiety for a male Tarantellan. If a mother-in-law didn’t approve of her new son-in-law, she could kill him by decapitation. She administered the blow herself, since full-grown females tended to be several sizes larger than even bull males. But this normally happened only after the couple produced their first offspring.

For a moment Jack played with the idea that the attendant knew he was actually on his way to meet his mother-in-law for the first time. But how could he have known? Jack did not say anything about it to the attendant. He mentioned it in a letter to his family, but he didn’t mention any details. He told no one at the English school where he worked. Jack remembered reading that the fear of one’s mother-in-law was wired so deeply in a male Tarentellan’s DNA that they could smell if someone was going to meet their mother-in-law. Jack felt it was nothing but nonsense, another urban legend on Tarantella, but for a moment he considered it. Then he noticed that he was approaching the ground. He put the incident out of his mind by deciding it to be nothing more than a coincidence.

Several stories above the boulevard now, he could hear the sound of tapping, quiet at first, then growing louder and louder until it filled the air, like cicadas rising up in song on a warm, sticky August evening. As a Tarantellan walked, the hard tip of each of their feet struck the pavement one after the other. If you multiplied that times a thousand, the sound would be nearly deafening. Jack smiled. Forget about a tap dance. It was thousands upon thousands of tap dancers each tapping out their own rhythms.

Jack dropped out of the darkness and into the lights of the boulevard, a lone human floating down out of the night sky. Some Tarantellans caught sight of him and paused to watch. An open space began to clear on the side of the boulevard. Tarantellans had an amazing sense to know where falling or floating objects were going to land. Maybe it was their nine eyes. There was nothing more for Jack to do except let the wind and his chute carry him to the ground.

A few moments later, Jack landed lightly in the center of the space that cleared for him. He took three steps to catch his balance and grabbed the lines for his chute behind him. The open space immediately began to close in around him as curious Tarantellans pressed forward to have a look. He ignored them and busied himself with hauling in his chute, rolling it up, and stepping out of his body harness. Humans had been visiting Tarantella for over fifty years, but most Tarantellans had still never seen a two-legged humanoid up close and in person.

“Nice jump,” a young Tarantellan watching nearby said.

“Nice English,” Jack said to the young Tarantellan.

His flight from the jump tower put him within a kilometer of his destination. A little later in the evening the streets would be nearly empty. Then he could just walk to his mother-in-law’s house. But at this hour, it made little sense to try and negotiate the busy boulevard. A two-legged human would only end up being a nuisance.

“Where are you going?” the young Tarantellan asked in a tone that implied he could be of help.

“Kra kru tcha ghoi?” Jack clicked, “aren’t you a little too small?”

This brought a chorus of “oohs” and “awws” from those still standing around watching. It was unusual to see a humanoid on Tarantella. It was even more unusual to hear one that could speak Tarantellan.

“I didn’t mean me,” the young Tarantellan said, “I have a cousin.”

“Then I would like to meet your cousin,” Jack said as he finished wrapping up his chute and tucking it into his backpack.

The young Tarantellan lifted its head an emitted a gargling screech that came from the hollow of his throat and rose above the clamor of the street. In a few moments, the crowd parted, as a large male, a bull Tarantellan over seven feet tall walked up. His jet, black endoskeleton shined in the streetlights. Jack noticed clay stuck to the hairs near the bottom of his back legs. He figured the bull must have come right from work, probably a nearby construction site.

After haggling over a price with the smaller Tarantellan, the bull crouched down. Jack hauled himself up onto its back. He barely had time to hook his feet under the third set of legs and grab the lip of its endoskeleton at the neck, before the bull lurched forward. The crowd parted silently and watched as they left. The young Tarantellan followed along behind.

“Are you a student?” Jack asked back over his shoulder.

“Yes,” the young Tarantellan answered, “I want to be a diplomat, but recently all the good jobs seem to be taken.”

“So another year in school?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” the young Tarantellan said.

Jack nodded. Many young, male Tarantellans struggled under a system where all the best jobs went to females or those with connections.

“Are you a teacher?” the young Tarantellan asked.

“Yes,” Jack answered, “but I have been doing translation work on the side. My wife helps me.”

“She is Tarantellan?”

“Yes,” Jack said. He paused considering whether to say it or not. Why not? He decided to share his secret with this stranger. “In fact, I am on my way to my wife’s mother’s house right now. Tonight is my chr-kirtah, the first meeting with my mother-in-law.”

Jack did not see it, but the young Tarantellan following behind him shuddered. All of his eyes blinked at once. “You are not joking?” he asked, “I have spoken with humans before, and I found that they like to joke about serious matters.”

“No,” Jack said, “I am not joking.”

The young Tarantellan ran up alongside the bull and said something which Jack could not hear. Without warning the bull veered off to the side of the street and stopped.

“What’s wrong,” Jack asked, although he already guessed what it was.

“My cousin cannot speak English. He wants me to ask if you know what chr-kirtah means?”

“Of course I do,” Jack said, “It is my first meeting with my mother-in-law. She has the right to refuse my marriage to her daughter.”

The young Tarantellan translated what Jack said to the bull. The bull nodded and said something back.

“And if your mother-in-law refuses,” the young Tarantellan asked, “do you know what can happen?”

“It is very rare nowadays,” Jack said, “It happens only in the countryside, where tradition is slow to change.”

“Your mother-in-law can take your head,” the young Tarantellan said, “one bite, and it is over. It is her legal right.”

Jack smiled. He had heard the argument before.

“Ask your cousin if he knows what will happen if she accepts me.”

The young Tarantellan translated. The bull blinked and said something back.

“He says that if your mother-in-law accepts, then you will be treated as one of her own children.”

Jack nodded. He would not be the first human to be taken into a Tarantellan family. But his mother-in-law knew important people in top positions all over the city. Marriage into her family would open up opportunities for him. Instead of working at a language school, he might find a teaching assistant position at one of the local universities, or better yet a government post as a translator. Jack wondered if the young Tarantellan and his cousin considered these possibilities.

He looked at his watch. He was running late. “If we start moving again,” Jack said, “I will tell you a secret.”

The young Tarantellan said something to his cousin, and they started off down the boulevard. Jack waited until they had gone a little ways.

“My mother-in-law is very modern,” he said, “Her hobby is watching Earth movies.” He looked back over his shoulder at the young Tarantellan. “And my wife has a sister. Her husband has already had his chr-kirtah.”

“He is alive?” the young Tarantellan asked.

“He is working downtown as a manager at the First Bank,” Jack said.

The young Tarantellan ran up alongside the bull and excitedly translated what Jack had said. When he finished, the bull said something back. After that the younger Tarantellan quietly fell into step behind his cousin.

“Well?” Jack asked.

“My cousin said that he can take you halfway to the spaceport at no extra charge. In the morning you can catch a ride the rest of the way. Tomorrow is Thursday. There will be a rocket that leaves at noon.”

Jack shook his head and smiled. He patted the bull on the back and decided to say no more.

“Let them think what they will,” he thought.

They soon turned off the boulevard and headed down a side avenue, where a few stores with colorful lights, but mostly houses tightly packed together, lined the street. Jack’s eyes adjusted to the deeper shadows between the occasional streetlight here. The familiar smell of cooked lokibug hit him. Jack considered walking the rest of the way by himself, since the streets were much less crowded here. But he decided to let the Tarantellans guiding him find the address in the dark. It would save him some time.

A few more turns and they were on a much narrower side street. The houses here were larger, set further back from the street with yards in front. Here the noise of the boulevard faded into the background, and Jack could hear the sound of his Tarentallen guides tapping along the pavement. Finally, they came to a stop under a streetlight.

“It’s just over there,” the young Tarantellan said pointing.

Jack slid down off the back of the bull. He reached into his pocket for a tip, but the bull saw what he was doing and took a step back. Jack brought his hand out empty.

“Chk kru,” he clicked, “thank you.”

The bull closed all of his eyes at once as a sign of respect. Then he turned to his smaller cousin and said something. Here on the quieter side streets, away from the crowds, Jack could pick out some of the words the bull said… real stories, government, not true, experience. The younger Tarantellan waited for his cousin to finish, then he turned to Jack and translated in a hushed voice.

“My cousin wants to tell you that the stories are real, and what you might hear from government reports is not always true. He knows from personal experience. He also

wants me to tell you that there is no shame in turning away from your chr-kirtah.”

“Personal experience?” Jack asked, “Wouldn’t he be dead if he had a personal experience? What is he talking about?”

“He’s a….. “ the young Tarantellan paused for a moment trying to think of the word, “He’s a grave digger.”

Jack was at a loss for words. Everything he had read about it, everything he had discussed with his wife convinced him that the tradition of approval by one’s mother-in-law was fading into obscurity. It may have been common in the old days, but not here and now, not in one of Tarantella’s busiest cities. To keep galactic commerce flowing, there were conventions to be observed. Planetary governments were required to guarantee their citizens certain rights. It couldn’t be true. Jack looked at the dirt on the bull’s feet.

“Not a construction worker,” he thought.

He looked up at the bull’s face, hoping to find the truth there. Jack read an article recently that stated that one Tarantellan could read another’s face. He memorized all the signs to look for- the third eye twitching, a wandering seventh. He tried it several times with his wife, and he believed he could do it. His wife told him he could. But now he realized he couldn’t. He was not Tarantellan. He couldn’t see all nine eyes at once.

“Run,” the bull clicked, “and don’t look back.” He turned and started up the street. His cousin, the young Tarantellan followed behind. He paused to look over his shoulder once. Then they disappeared around the corner.

Jack felt alone, abandoned under a streetlight in a dark neighborhood on a strange planet hundreds of light years from home. His head began to spin. He tried to swallow.

“Jack!” He heard his name called.

Slowly he turned around. There in front of him he saw the house. It looked just like the pictures Helena showed him, round and squat like two great mud patties stacked one on top of the other, like most houses on Tarantella. The front door was set back in a wide, gaping alcove. To the left of the door two narrow windows ran up to the second floor. To the right of the door there were three narrow windows. His mother-in-law would be waiting behind those windows Helena told him that she spent most of her days there now that old age crippled her.

Jack felt someone’s eyes on him. He took a step forward, out of the glow of the streetlight, and looked around. He could see no one in the neighbourhood, but he noticed the pipes on each side of the house jutting out and down into the ground. They looked like the long, spindly legs of some giant beast. Jack froze. It was the house. The house was watching him. The narrow windows were its eyes. Jack swore he saw it blink. The door and alcove were its mouth. Jack held his breath and strained his ears to listen for its breathing as it waited crouching in the darkness for him to approach.

The front door opened. Light splashed out on the walkway. His new wife, Helena, the love of his life, stepped out into the alcove.

“Jack?” she said, “what are you doing?”

He heaved a sigh of relief and hurried up the walkway. He embraced her and gave her a kiss just below her fifth eye.

“I was just looking at….. at the neighborhood,” he said.

“There’s not much to see at night,” she said, “Come on inside. It’s cold out.”

Jack leaned closed to her. “How is everything?” he asked, lowering his voice to almost a whisper.

“Everything is just fine, Jack” Helena whispered back, “Now don’t get nervous and ruin everything. Mother is in a very good mood tonight. She is looking forward to meeting you. Come inside.”

Jack nodded and followed her through the door. “Sure,” he told himself, “it’s nothing. I’m just going to meet my mother-in-law. There’s no reason to be nervous.” He put the words and the warnings of the bull out of his mind.

Jack’s mother-in-law sat in a corner of the living room on a large cushion. She filled her side of the room, being nearly twice the size of Helena. Thick, black hairs covered her legs. Her endoskeleton, faded and blotched in places, showed her advanced age. One of her eyes seemed to be stuck shut. The other eight eyes followed him as he entered the room.

“Ke dthik, kir tah,” Jack clicked politely, “Good evening, Mother.”

Helena giggled behind him.

With what seemed like a great effort, Jack’s mother-in-law lifted one of her appendages and beckoned Jack to be seated. He pulled up a cushion and sat down. Helena took a place next to him.

“See, Mother. Jack is learning to speak Tarantallen,” Helena clicked to her mother, “and doesn’t he look just like the men in the movies I show you.”

“Pretty,” Helena’s mother managed to say in English.

Jack smiled and looked at Helena. “You never told me she spoke any English,” he said,

“I told you she likes Earth movies,” Helena said, “besides its just a few words.”

Jack nodded. Not sure what to do with his hands, he put them in his lap.

Helena’s mother clicked something that Jack did not understand.

“Yes, Mother,” Helena said, and she turned to Jack, “My mother is scolding me for the meal being late.” She pushed herself up on her eight legs. “I better go check the oven.”

Once Helena left, there was an awkward moment of silence broken only by the clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen. Jack felt something on his forehead. He reached up to brush it off and his hand came away wet with sweat.

“Kah kur kir kingk?” Jack clicked politely, “what was your mother’s name?” He read that this was a good question to ask at a first meeting with one’s mother-in-law.

“Pretty,” his mother-in-law said, and her ninth eye opened suddenly.

A few minutes later Helena returned with a tray loaded

with crisp, roasted lokibug on sticks, fresh petula salad, and a bottle of silkdew wine.
"Oh,Mother," she said when shesaw what had happened, "I really hoped Jack would be the one."
"I’m sorry, daughter," her mother clicked, "but the two-eyes was no good for you."
Helena sighed. For a moment it seemed like she might start cry.

“Keep your chin up,” her mother clicked, “there will be other flies in your web.”

Helena managed a smile. “I know you’re right, Mother,” she clicked.

“Besides,” her mother clicked, “that Two-Eyes looked too much like a lokibug. We can’t have lokibugs living in the house. What would the neighbors say?”

Helena giggled.

Helena’s mother moved and settled into a more comfortable position on her cushion. “Now let’s eat,” she clicked.

The older female picked up a stick with slices of roasted lokibug on it and started to eat. But before she could take a second bite, she shuddered. She could feel the cold night air on the hairs on her leg.

“I’m sorry, Helena dear,” she clicked, “Would you mind getting up and closing the front door? The Two-Eyes must have left it open on his way out.”