Analog SFF, September 2010 (11 page)

The last item on the spool indicated that Xinecotic was nearly ready to transmit her notes to the Grand Nest. Takacha must have discovered this, somehow, and killed her to prevent it.

I sat there with my parent's last written words between my fingers, already hungry again, with my bones aching and my skin feeling ready to split. Under normal circumstances I would be curling up in my little nest already and preparing to pupate.

These were not normal circumstances. If I pupated now I would die, and my siblings with me. My parent's death would go unreported and unpunished. Worse, a whole planet of innocent aliens would be swindled and cut off from civilization forever, and the crime might never even be discovered.

I hated to think of that happening to the juvenile alien who had been so helpful to me. And I was the only one who even knew about it.

But what could I do to prevent it? I was only one juvenile, small and weak and powerless. I had no relatives to protect me, no adult would listen to me, and I couldn't even work my parent's communication device.

Then, as I sat lamenting my fate, I remembered what the alien had made me say: I am significant.

I
am
significant, I told myself.

I didn't really believe it. Deep down, I knew that no matter how close to pupation I was, I was still only a juvenile. But acting as though I believed it was the only way I had any chance to stop all those awful things from happening.

"I must go out again,” I said to Seko-cho, tucking the notespool and communication device into my panniers. A strong flavor of confusion came from her, and I realized it was because I was speaking as an adult. But, just as though I really were an adult, she said nothing and waited attentively for further instructions. I decided to continue using “I"—it would help to keep Seko-cho and the others from panicking. “You must seal the door behind me, as before. I will return with more food as soon as I can."

"When will that be?” Seko-cho asked, not unreasonably.

I thought for a long time before answering. “I do not know. I may not return at all. If I do not, you must take care of your siblings and yourself as long as you can. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Xinecotic,” Seko-cho responded, unthinkingly calling me by our parent's name.

I left as quickly as I could, so that my own flavor of grief and self-doubt would not infect my siblings.

Outside the weather door, considering my options, I realized that my best hope was to return to the alien planet and try to find the juvenile that had helped me before. Its parent was a leader of its people; if nothing else, the information might prevent the aliens from being swindled. And I might be able to return with one more load of food before I had to pupate.

But as I moved across the encampment toward the portal, I realized that pupation had advanced much farther than I'd thought while I'd been reading Xinecotic's notes. My limbs were swollen and stiff, my vision was beginning to cloud, and the pain along my spine had turned into an itching line of fire that felt ready to tear open at any moment. And the faster I tried to go, the worse the pain got.

I am significant, I told myself. I matter. I can make a difference. But only if I keep going.

I dragged my swollen body across the stony ground toward the portal. As I passed through the ring of soldiers guarding it against alien invasion, one of them eyed me warily and said to her neighbor “That juvenile looks sick."

"Maybe we should put an end to its suffering,” the other soldier replied.

As the soldier raised her weapon, I froze in fear. I had not considered my appearance, or what any considerate adult would be expected to do upon seeing a juvenile in pain.

"No!” I managed to cry, despite my paralysis. A whiff of surprise leaked from the soldier's armor—no juvenile, especially a sick one, would ever say such a thing to an adult—but she hesitated. “I—Ksho is delivering an important package to her parent on the alien planet.” I gestured to my pannier. “Ksho must do this before pupating."

I waited, trembling. The soldier seemed uncertain what to do.

After an eternity, the other soldier spoke. “Oh, let her go,” she said. “If she dies over there, no one will ever know."

Somehow I managed to will myself into motion. The soldier's weapon continued to follow me, and I expected a gout of acid to strike me at any moment, but finally I found myself on the other side of the portal.

I never expected to feel relief at the cold, the strange flavors, the leaden weight of the other planet's gravity.

That relief was short-lived. Now I had to find the alien juvenile.

The path to the huge stone structure seemed infinite as I hauled myself along it. The aliens who passed did not react any differently than they had before—they probably did not know the difference between a healthy and a sick juvenile—and I was glad there were no Shacuthi present. At one point I felt a tearing pain in my side, followed by a slow trickle of fluid down my flank, but I pressed on, not wanting to know what it looked like.

At last I came to the structure's massive door, which stood firmly closed. There was nothing like a scratching-board . . . I had no idea how to signal for entrance.

Then a form loomed up behind the door's transparent panels. For a moment I felt hope, but then I realized it was just an alien adult, one I'd never seen before. It did not appear to have a translation device on its limb.

I needed the alien to bring me to the juvenile. But how?

And then I remembered the very first thing the juvenile had said to me: “Speaker equivalence (assertion) Ah-lec-sa (proper name).” It had made no sense to me at the time, but I realized now what it had meant:
I am Ah-lec-sa
.

"Ah-lec-sa,” I said to the alien at the door.

I repeated it as the alien opened the door.

I continued to repeat it until the alien departed, then returned with another that had a translation device. “I must speak to Ah-lec-sa,” I said. “It is vitally important."

I sat on the cold stone outside the structure's weather door for a long time, unmoving from pain and fatigue more than from fear. Something tore open on my other flank.

I waited.

And then a whole crowd of aliens appeared: the juvenile Ah-lec-sa, followed by several others with dark skin like hers, and several more.

I dug in my pannier and brought out the notespool, and I explained as best I could what my parent had learned. Another alien brought a larger, more complex version of the translation device, and that made the conversation a little easier. Many other aliens came. When I brought out Xinecotic's communication device, two of the larger aliens immediately moved in and took it away from me. I was too tired to argue.

After a long while they brought it back, saying they had examined it and determined it was safe. I explained how to open it, and one of the aliens who had taken it away tried, but in the end it turned out that only Ah-lec-sa had fingers small and strong enough to work the catch. I showed Ah-lec-sa how to feed the notespool into the device's reader and how to initiate transmission.

"You must take the device through the portal,” I said, “and transmit from there.” After so much talking, my voice was hoarse and whispery.

The aliens argued a long time among themselves. I didn't follow the argument very well—I was drifting in and out of consciousness—but I gathered that Ah-lec-sa was the only one who could manipulate the device, and the other aliens didn't want it to go. Eventually, though, Ah-lec-sa bent down to where I could see. My vision had nearly failed. “Speaker travel (future) and return (future),” it said to me. “Listener wait (imperative) at this location."

"I will wait,” I said. I didn't really have much alternative.

Ah-lec-sa left, accompanied by four of the largest aliens. I slumped where I sat. Some of the other aliens asked me questions, but I was barely able to respond.

I realized I had done all I could.

I crawled into a corner and began to wrap myself, beginning with my tail and working up. I had waited almost too long; my skin had stiffened to the point that I could barely reach my tail with my mandibles. I did the best I could, but it took much longer than it was supposed to. I hoped my adult form would not suffer because of the delay.

While I worked, many other aliens came, pointing devices at me that flashed and beeped. I ignored them.

I was nearly finished, just my head and one limb unwrapped, when Ah-lec-sa and the others returned. My vision had failed nearly completely by now, but Ah-lec-sa's flavor, different from the other aliens’ though equally strange, had become familiar to me.

"Transmission completion achieve (past, assertion),” Ah-lec-sa said. “Grand Nest acknowledge (past) transmission. Grand Nest send (assertion) soldiers, apprehend (future) criminals."

"Thank you, Ah-lec-sa,” I sighed.

"Listener status (query),” Ah-lec-sa asked.

"I am pupating now,” I whispered. “You must watch over the pupa for three months. Do not let predators eat it, or let it get too warm or too cold. The soldiers from the Grand Nest will tell you what to do, and will care for my sisters."

"Speaker talk (future, assertion) with listener in three months."

I paused in wrapping the one remaining exposed limb. “No, Ah-lec-sa. The adult that emerges from the pupa will not be me. She will know the things I have done and learned, but I am told it is like reading a spool about the ancestors, not like a memory. She will be a different person. You will need to introduce yourself to her."

Ah-lec-sa and the other aliens discussed this for a long time, while I continued wrapping myself. Covering my own head was the most difficult part, but I relaxed and let my instincts guide me.

"Speaker equivalence (assertion) great sadness,” Ah-lec-sa said.

"Do not be sad, Ah-lec-sa. The new adult will be glad to meet you. She will enjoy hearing from you what we have done together."

"Adult feel (future, assertion) pride about listener. Listener equivalence (assertion) significant-person."

"I would never have been significant,” I said, “if you had not taught me to be."

I tucked my mandibles against my neck, feeling the wrappings begin to harden, and let myself relax into the long sleep.

Copyright © 2010 David D. Levine

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First contact is likely to require special skills—and not necessarily the ones you might think!

Billy Whilmer wasn't sure when he realized there really were thoughts better left unthunk. Not that he believed in thought police waiting to get him. There were just some ideas that, once planted, rattled around your head until your only option was to test them. Either that, or go mad, wondering. Which, he supposed, is why there really would be thought police if anyone ever came up with a way to do it.

Not that Billy was all that philosophical. He just liked to play with ideas.

Whenever his epiphany came, it was after the gelatin incident. He'd been noodling around, doing nothing in particular, when the idea was handed to him in a news story. Some girl had sneaked in at night and dumped a gazillion pounds of gelatin into a high school swimming pool. The next day, she'd gotten to the locker room early so she could be there when the first victim ran out, jumped in . . . and emitted a yell, accompanied by a sucking, slurping noise the commentator rendered as “spludge."

Billy didn't hear the rest of the story. Some ideas, once planted, really can't be unplanted. “Spludge” was the seed. He wanted to hear it for himself.

It took months. First he had to locate massive quantities of gelatin at an affordable price. Nor could it be colored, lest a lemon or cherry tint give the whole thing away. A pale, swimming-pool blue, that's what he needed, whipped up with clear gelatin and a few bottles of food coloring.

Then, after he finally found a restaurant-supply business that didn't balk when he placed the order on his father's credit card, he had to gain the janitor's trust so he could get into the building late at night. He also had to learn how the pool's water pumps worked. Ruining expensive equipment wasn't his goal.

Practical jokes aren't for the lazy. Billy had to join the swim team and do enough six a.m. laps that by the time he was ready to lug gelatin bags around, he was already developing a physique. Billy-the-jock . . . not something he'd ever envisioned.

He only forgot one thing: The boys and girls teams shared workout time. Technically speaking, he didn't forget. He just didn't think it relevant. Unfortunately, the first (and only) one into the pool that morning was a girl. And, while the gelatin made a most satisfying sound as she hit it in a shallow racing dive, she was wearing a two-piece suit . . . part of which kind of got left behind.

Billy was charged with sexual harassment. The school principal wanted it upped to assault, but Billy's attorney convinced him that since she'd hit the, er—even the attorney had trouble coming up with a word, but eventually settled on “surface"—under her own power, Billy hadn't quite assaulted her.