3 x T

The whole room grew quiet when the three of them walked in. They were dark blue and on the shaggy side. The door was more than two meters high, but they had to stoop to get under the lintel. The door was more than a meter wide, but they had to turn sideways to go through it. Their faces had short muzzles and impressive teeth.

"What species are they?" a student in the front row asked the fellow next to her. He shrugged and shook his head. Likely neither of them had ever been off Saugus before, Je

She knew the aliens' race. Of all the places she would never have expected to meet Foitani, though, a Middle English class on a human-settled planet of no particular importance to anyone ten light-years away came close to topping the list. Maybe, she thought, they were looking for the engineering department instead. She called, "How may I help you, Foitani?"

The three big blue creatures cocked their heads to one side, listening to the translators each wore. One of them answered, speaking softly in his own rumbling language. His translator turned the words to Spanglish. "Apologies for tardiness, honored instructor. We concede the fault is ours; we will yield any forfeit your customs require."

"We will," the other two echoed.

"No?forfeits?are necessary," Je

The Foitan who had spoken first bared his teeth?or possibly hers; the differences between Foitani sexes did not show on the outside. Je

"You're enrolled in my class?" Je

"So we ought to be," the Foitan answered, his own translator sounding grave as usual. "Our funds were accepted, our names inscribed in your computer banks. I am Thegun Thegun Nug; here beside me stand Aissur Aissur Rus and Dargnil Dargnil Lin."

Je

The Foitani sat. They weren't so much bigger than the average human as to make human furniture impossible for them?just enough bigger to be intimidating, Je

She knew that was true. "Very well," she said again, and began talking about the books she would be assigning. Never had she had such perfect attention from students on the first day of class. After the ostentatious if somber politeness of the Foitani, it was as if all her human students feared they would be torn limb from limb if they got out of line.

Because she didn't have to pause even once, she got through all the material she'd pla

Je

After lunch, she taught one course in modern Spanglish literature and another in composition, neither of which excited her very much but both of which helped pay her half of the rent for the apartment she shared with Ali Bakhtiar. She told herself she would have gone through them without much thought no matter what; with three Foitani in her morning class to think about, she knew she wasn't giving the afternoon sessions her full attention.

When she got back to the apartment, Bakhtiar was already there. His last class?he taught imaging, both tape and film?got out half an hour before hers. All she wanted to do was exclaim about the Foitani. He listened, bemused, for several minutes; she was not usually the sort to gush. At last, he held up a hand. "Wait one second, please. Why are you so excited about having these three aliens in your class?"

"That's what I was telling you," Je

"So I'd gathered," he answered with a wry quirk of that eyebrow. Sometimes she thought he practiced in a mirror, but she'd never caught him at it. "But who are the Foitani?"

She stared at him. "You really don't know?"

"Why should I?" he asked reasonably. "How many species of aliens do we know? Several hundred without hyperdrive, several dozen with it. That's on top of Allah only knows how many human-settled worlds. So why should I remember anything in particular about this one bunch?"

Je

He saw something was wrong; after all, he had lived with her for a year. Spreading his hands to placate her, he said, "Tell me about them, then, if they're that important."

"Well, for one thing, we've only known they aren't extinct for about the past fifty years," Je

"Wait a minute." A light came on in Bakhtiar's eyes. "Didn't they run a holovid special on that three or four years ago? Secret of the lost race, or something like that? I remember watching it, but I'd forgotten the name of the race."

"I suppose they may have," Je

"Why have they enrolled in your Middle English class? What do they think they're going to get out of it?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Je

Several years of trading missions among the stars had let her forget the time-serving students, the ones who took a course because they needed to fill a breadth requirement or because it happened to fit their schedules. The ones she'd remembered were the ones like herself, who enrolled in classes to learn something and worked hard at everything, for pride's sake if for no other reason. Saugus Central University had plenty of those. Unfortunately, it had plenty of the other sort, too, as she'd found to her dismay.