Molt

Yogi’s first molting season was upon him, and he didn’t know how it would go. His superiors had assured him that the Earth’s temperature range, length of day, and amount of daily sunlight variations were close to those on his home planet. He would do fine. And he had, so far. But he couldn’t be sure those factors would be enough for what was about to begin.

The outer layer that wrapped his body was a close analog to microscopic bird feathers. The feathers were so tiny they were indistinguishable from human skin cells, and they were somewhere between dark brown and pinkish. There was skin underneath, but it was gray and wrinkled.

He had deep-set lavender eyes, deep enough so that his lack of eyelashes wouldn’t be noticed. And he could fake eyebrows with a little makeup.

All in all, Yogi had been pleased that his overall body shape and face had turned out to look so human. That probably had some straightforward explanation: his five-foot-nine stature, two-legged upright body, front-mounted eyes, side-placed ears, and so on were likely functions of having evolved on a planet with a certain gravity, climate, humidity, diurnal cycle, need for depth perception, and so on.

His nose and ears, almost tiny, were out of proportion for a normal human face, but not so it would scream alien. The outer layer of his head was the same composition as the rest of his feathery outer layer: he could use a wig or just be bald. Only the composition of the outermost layer seemed to be an adaptation to something different.

This first year had been very difficult—landing in a remote area, finding his way to the nearest big city, absorbing the language (thank heavens for the language implant!), finding a job, getting an apartment, getting documented. And thank heavens, too, for the computer and the device that researched and then forged his driver’s license, Social Security card, college transcript, birth certificate, and a couple of credit cards. His bosses didn’t know what sort of society he would encounter, so he had to program the machinery, which was twice as big as it probably needed to be. It had made his backpack very heavy. At least he hadn’t had to find a power source: the machine had a forever battery.

He settled in to his tiny apartment and subsistence wages. The job wasn’t hard: a security guard for a strip mall. That was fine; the job didn’t require Yogi to know or learn a lot about human culture beyond the briefest outline he’d gotten from the machine. His job was one into which one could become practically anonymous.

The mall didn’t really need protecting, but its owner’s insurance company had insisted on it. Yogi could lounge in his booth and emerge a few times to make his rounds. He had almost no interaction with the shoppers or even the guard on the other shift, a taciturn, shy woman who said little more than hello and good-bye when she reported for work.

The most challenging adjustment had been the food and water. Nothing tasted right, and his two stomachs were upset for weeks after he landed. Any beverage he drank turned his urine a strange shade of bluish red so bright it almost glowed.

More of his kind would arrive in the coming years; Yogi, as the vanguard of the invasion-by-infiltration force, was lonely for more of his kind. But he was a kind of proof-of-concept. He had to get through the first year and report back.

And that first year involved an annual molt, almost at the end of his assignment.

During molting season, the feathers had to shed and be replaced. It certainly wouldn’t do to have the top layer of feather-skin slough off for all to see. Even at home, folks were usually unable go out until the new keratinous layers had grown back. The wrinkly, slightly scaly, gray tissue underneath was far from attractive. And the feathers grew back in spiky patches.

Yogi quit his job, assuming it would be easy to find another one. He braced himself for the coming ordeal.

The molting process was complicated. For the first week Yogi had to stay in the dimmest light possible, give himself daily overall body rubs to loosen the outer layer of feathers, clean up the considerable matter that fell off, and eat lots of protein. And he itched like crazy. Once the new outer layer started to grow back, he would slowly become nearly comatose; both the shedding and the growing took a lot out of him. Eventually the patches of feathers would coalesce, lie down, and smooth out. He would look okay but would need another week or so to regain his strength.

Three weeks later, Yogi drowsed into consciousness. After a week of itchy molting, he had been lying nearly immobile for two weeks (he had thought it would take only one) as the new microfeather cells sucked excess protein from his body and populated his skin.

Yogi groaned and rolled to the edge of the mattress. He swung his feet over the edge, fell back, and tried again. Not working. He turned over and slid off the mattress backward. His feet got to the floor, and he stood for a while, waiting for his legs to stop shaking. Then he took a few tentative steps, waited for the shaking to subside, and took a few more. He could barely walk; in fact, he was near death from starvation and dehydration. This was normal, however, so he just inched along, feeling his way in the dark toward the bathroom to see the results in the mirror. He took shaky step after shaky step. He knew his strength would return, but he hadn’t expected this molt to be so hard.

He flicked on the light.

Swearing in Yogi’s native tongue was eloquent, literate, multisyllabic, and extremely loud. It went on for some fifteen minutes, rearranging and elaborating on the curses, his voice rising and falling. Fortunately, in his urban apartment, his neighbors chose to ignore his unintelligible screaming.

Yogi looked again and again in the mirror, hoping he was mistaken. He was not. The swearing gave way to sobs.

Yogi was, from top to toe, a bright, iridescent purple.