They never meant to come to Earth. They were never allowed to leave…

Welcome to Cottonwood.

Excerpt:

“You should have heard it, Kate. It was subtle, but it wasn’t my imagination. The guy spent five hours essentially telling us that the aliens are retarded.”

“Oh come on.”

“Not in so many words, but—hang on.” Sarah moved the paz to her other hand so that she could lay her right arm over Fagin’s back, since he was being insistent about it. “But he just really drilled it in,” she continued, resigned. “Over and over, really soft and gentle. ‘They’re not smart, they don’t take care of themselves, they need to be controlled.’”

Kate’s tiny image on the screen flickered as she shifted her own paz and had trouble restabilizing. The two weren’t exactly compatible anymore. She really needed to get a new one. “So? Maybe they do.”

“And maybe they don’t. Kate!” she said, trying to laugh through her frustration. “These people came to us in a spaceship! A planet full of stupid layabouts does not master intergalactic space travel!”

Kate’s image flickered again and snapped to black. She didn’t need it. She could hear the distraction in Kate’s voice, and the tight I’m-pretending-I’m-not-angry tone that had been her default setting pretty much since Sarah told her she was really moving to Cottonwood. “Okay, so the guy who’s been studying them for twenty years is wrong and Sarah Fowler, who hasn’t even met one yet, is right. Congratulations. You’re that good.”

Sarah felt herself blush. “It didn’t sound right, that’s all I’m saying. Some of the little things he said just…just really got to me.”

“Like what?” Kate asked, sounding concerned now and not big-sister patronizing.

“Like…Like he said that if their claspers came off, they’d die.”

A short pause. “What are claspers?”

“Oh, that’s not the point, they’re like tiny little extra arms that smell things. The point is, how many aliens had to lose their claspers and die without having any other…What’s the word I want? Variables?”

Kate was quiet for a while. The picture tried to come back a few times, showing Sarah glimpses of her sister through a haze of multi-colored distortion. “These guys are professionals, Sarah. It’s their job to make connections that people like us miss.”

“Yeah, but how did so many aliens lose their claspers in the first place, that’s what I really want to—”

“Did your house come with a phone?”

“Huh? Um, yeah.” She twisted to look up at it, clinging to the wall like a shiny, black beetle. “But it’s patched into the IBI switchboard. I can’t figure out how to get a line outside the village. I could look it up in the manual, but—” She laughed. “—I’m kind of manualed-out. I had to set everything, you have no idea. All the faucets are TruTouch. Who the heck even knows off-hand how many degrees they like their shower? Or their drinking water? Plus, I got my Fahrenheit and my Celsius screwed up and practically steamed-cooked my face off the first time I…Why?” She checked the paz’s signal, but it looked good. “Can’t you hear me okay?”

“I hear you. I was just curious. So this is your own paz?”

“Yeah,” said Sarah, still trying to see where this was going. “But they scanned it in through the company server when I got here. You know. So I can’t take pictures or blog about company policy or stuff. They said it wouldn’t affect my performance. I mean, I can barely see you, but—”

“That’s normal for the fossil you’re using,” Kate agreed. In a new, hearty voice, she added, “TruTouch faucets, those are awesome!”