Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology

by J. E. Feldman

  “Let’s get dinner tonight,” I said. “Something healthy. No booze, no loud music, no casual hook-ups. Just good conversation.”

  She ran a hand down her cheek, as if expecting to feel beard stubble. Her eyes developed a hunted look. But then some sane remnant in the mental hell-storm appeared to assert itself. She stood more erect. “You’re right, Rae. I’ve barely been eating. A nice meal might make me feel human again.”

  We agreed to meet at the stairs at six o’clock. While I was putting on some make-up, I wondered if she would renege. My trust in her had faltered, as though she were a junkie. As it turned out, she was waiting for me at the stairs. Tidy hair and some make-up of her own concealed the worst of her deterioration, but couldn’t altogether hide the unnerving demon energy within.

  I doubted Cynthia would care for the confines of a shuttle, so we left the university grounds and strolled the wide pathway to a nearby restaurant that served Dimanthian cuisine. I didn’t care for it – too many things still resembled the things they had been before they were food – but it was Cynthia’s favorite and I thought a Dimanthian mottled stew might take her mind off her libido and cheer her up. We showed ourselves to a booth by the window and admired the horizon’s emerald shimmer as the red dwarf settled in for the night.

  The place was almost ours alone. A waiter poured us some water and told us about the anatomically intact specials. The way Cynthia clutched her menu, I feared it might tear down the spine at any moment. She had put on a good front for my sake, but the strain was showing. We would have got up and left a few minutes later, probably, had a team of Skuldugg men not strutted into the restaurant.

  The Skuldugg were the underclass on Dimanthia, the nearest habitable planet to our small green rock. Not long after Earth representatives made first contact with Dimanthia’s cold-intellect ruling class, the Skuldugg had begun to claim unofficial asylum. No uprising, no protests, no treaties; they just joined Earth ships in whatever capacity they could and began a trickle emigration. Now two generations free from their oppressors, they moved around the galaxy in nomadic tribes. They were known as hard workers, packhorses of the stars, but they were also big, brash, and confronting. Most averaged seven feet in height and had robust, almost stone-like features. Earth’s mythical ogre was probably the closest analogue. They had a soft spot for humans, whom they saw as accidental emancipators. Most Skuldugg men believed productivity, in all its forms, to be sacred and they liked to symbolize it in any way possible. One particular tradition affected the evening’s outcome.

  The five Skuldugg men jeered one another in their guttural dialect and addressed the owner with what I assume was some sort of Dimanthian epithet. His face curled up in distaste, but amid the subsequent laughter, he reformed it into a smile and showed them to a table.

  I turned to Cynthia to whisper a remark across the table and saw her eyes, hard as diamond drills, staring across the top of her menu. That scattered, sketchy, vibrating quality had left her. Now she had become as still as a cat preparing to pounce on a sparrow. As the Skuldugg men walked by, her eyes darted left and right. I glanced back across my shoulder to see what was so fascinating…and a second later, I twigged.

  I almost said something, but Cynthia and I didn’t get all up in one another’s business. That wasn’t our thing. Besides, I had never heard of a Skuldugg taking an interest in a human woman. So, I pretended not to notice and asked her what she thought she would order.

  “Not sure yet,” she said absently.

  The first Skuldugg male looked across at her, as if sensing her gaze. When the two locked eyes, I could swear the air between them crackled. He hesitated a moment, perhaps questioning his own sanity. Then he said something to his nearest table-mate, stood up, and began to walk toward us. His appendage, a dirty khaki color and as knobby and outsized as the rest of him, swayed as he walked. When he stopped beside our booth, the great ugly sausage kept moving for a while, like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.

  Cynthia’s eyes were two brown craters in the moon of her face and her tongue emerged, swiping her upper lip. The Skuldugg male appeared to appreciate this brazen interest, for the object of Cynthia’s desire began to quiver and lift upwards.

  “I think your friend likes what she sees,” he said. When a Skuldugg spoke, it was like listening to a cement mixer full of rocks.

  “She’s not feeling herself at the moment,” I replied. “We’re just here to have some dinner, so I’d appreciate it if you’d go—”

  “No,” Cynthia said.

  I gawped at her. “You’re not serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  The Skuldugg’s organ continued to grow. It was now as long as my forearm and much greater in circumference. In my peripheral vision, I noticed another two Skuldugg men taking an interest. I wanted to believe it was curious observation, waiting to see what their friend would do, but their prurient eyes said otherwise.

  “Really, Cyn?” I said. “Inter-species?”

  “It’s been done before,” she said vacantly. Her gaze never left the Skuldugg’s penis. It had now swollen to its full height and developed a dull sheen.

  “Not between human and Skuldugg. And you’ve seen the warnings. The inter-species relations experts recommend—”

  “Enough!” rumbled the Skuldugg man. No doubt he had spied his friends’ arousal, too, and wanted to close the deal before he had to fight for it. “She will come with me.”

  “Like hell she will,” I said, getting to my feet. I was hopelessly outmatched for size and strength, but I thought if I grabbed his silly alien dick and twisted it hard enough, it might buy us time to flee for the safety of our dorm.

  But then Cynthia stood up too and said, “It’s okay, Rae. I want this. I need this.”

  Skuldugg expressions did not always correlate to human expressions, but no language barrier could withstand such high-molar smugness. My eyes flicked to the other Skuldugg men, most of whom now stared in our direction. They reminded me of hyenas waiting to see if a lame zebra would collapse. Our quiet dinner had turned into a free-fall situation. With no other parachute available, the three of us left to a gravelly chorus of Skuldugg taunts and insults.

  Dusk consumed the remaining daylight as we made our way back towards the university. Cynthia and the Skuldugg walked side-by-side with me a couple of paces behind. He towered over her, yet a weird catalytic energy seemed to pass between them, as though they shared a physiology.

  My first thought was to contact campus security – non-students were not permitted in the dorm, so the Skuldugg would be escorted from the grounds two minutes after I made the call – but I knew Cynthia would never forgive me. So instead, I played along, pretended the Skuldugg was just another student with every right to be there. Then, at the landing near my room, I said to her, “I hope you know what you’re doing Cyn.” I went inside and closed the door, but only for half a minute. I came back out onto the landing and cocked my ear towards level four, finger poised to send an emergency signal to campus security.

  A short while later, I heard two screams.

  The campus security guard waved his master key past the sensor and Cynthia’s door opened obediently. The blood and gore spilled across the bed were a shock, but not a surprise. Less expected was the broken bedside table and the Skuldugg lying face-down next to it. But the most unexpected sight was what appeared to be a gigantic hairy caterpillar with blue, yellow, and pink banding along its body. It made a muffled churring sound and then began to creep forward in a pulsing movement, nudging some of the gore which fell to the carpet with an audible plop.

  The security guard, a plump man an inch shorter than I, clapped a hand to his mouth, glanced at me with disbelieving eyes, and said, “I’m going to get some backup,” before scooting away and vanishing down the stairs.

  The brightly colored caterpillar-thing cascaded off the edge of Cynthia’s bed. I glanced around for a makeshift weapon, but the only thing in reach was a pointy-toed shoe. I was set to cl
ose the door and flee when the blood-drenched creature made another soft-throated churr. This time it seemed to have structure, a familiar cadence. I paused.

  It made the noise again. This time, I had no doubt. Four distinct syllables.

  Au-rea-li-a.

  I inched forward. The caterpillar rose to its full height, sitting back on its tail the way a kangaroo does when preparing to fight. On the tip of its head were two yellow spheres the size of squash balls. These waved back and forth independently, like the eyes of a chameleon. Unlike a caterpillar, it did not appear to have feet on its underside, but rather thousands of anemone-like tentacles.

  Had an alien creature slaughtered Cynthia and her bedmate and somehow gleaned my name from her memory? I kept one knee cocked so I could spring away if it came at me.

  “Cynthia?” I said. “Is that you?”

  The rainbow caterpillar chuffed something indistinct, rolled its eyes around like old satellite dishes, then tried again to speak.

  Yes. Help me.

  “I will. Just answer a question, so I know it’s you. How did we first meet?”

  Late. For xen-bio.

  Unless the rainbow caterpillar was telepathic and had downloaded Cynthia’s every insignificant memory into its own brain – and no species I knew about could do that – it had to be her. The door swished shut behind me.

  “What happened, Cyn? Did the Skuldugg do this?”

  She waved her caterpillar head back and forth in a ponderous facsimile of human negation. Please. Help me.

  “I will,” I said again, although I had no idea how. The campus security guard would be contacting emergency services, but I couldn’t imagine a paramedic or even a hospital doctor doing much for Cynthia. What would be the treatment for turning into a hairy rainbow caterpillar?

  Then, like the blaze of a magnesium flare, came inspiration.

  “Cyn, can you walk…or…whatever it is you do now?”

  She nodded. The muscles along her body began to flex in peristaltic fashion.

  “Okay, come with me.”

  She followed me out to the landing and down the stairs. I moved slowly at first, unsure if she could keep up, but her soft body glided down in gentle waves. Night had fallen and the campus was deserted, so we moved along the lighted walkways unobserved. The doors to the science building opened as we approached, even though inside only safety lighting remained aglow. Nearly all the faculty would have retired for the evening and gone home, save those professors who needed to catch up on their own research, or those who were diligent to the point of obsession.

  Such as Professor Alden Jones, noted xeno-biologist, for example.

  His office door appeared to be closed, but as we got nearer, I could see it was a fraction ajar, applying a pinstripe of light across the hallway. Cynthia’s hairy, legless body made no sound on the carpet and I turned to ensure she was still behind me before I rapped my knuckles on the door jamb.

  “Professor Jones?” I said.

  “I am here, but I am not,” he said brusquely. “If this is a student matter, I am afraid it will have to wait until the morning.”

  “Well, it’s a student matter in a manner of speaking, but nothing to do with lectures or grades. My friend has turned into a giant caterpillar.”

  “Unlikely,” said Professor Jones.

  “Unlikely, but true,” I said.

  He looked up from his work. “I do hope this is not an attempt at humor, my dear Aurealia. Practical jokes are an almost uniquely human amusement.”

  “No joke, professor. Show him, Cyn.”

  I stepped aside and she shuffled forward, rising up to fill the doorway.

  “Well, well,” said Professor Jones. “This is an interesting development. Please do avail me of the exact circumstances that led to this transformation.”

  I shot Cynthia an awkward glance, but it was impossible to know what she was thinking with those twirling yellow eyes. She could still read my expressions, however, because she said, It’s okay. Tell him.

  I stood in his office and gave him a censored a version of the past few weeks without redacting crucial details. Cyn filled in the blanks. He listened in silence, winding two tentacles into a braid and unwinding them again.

  “Indeed,” he said, when I brought the story to its conclusion. “Most curious.”

  “Can you do anything for her?”

  “A moot question, my dear,” he said as he returned to his desk and began searching a database.

  “Moot?” I said. “What do you mean moot? She’s a giant fucking caterpillar!”

  “Profanity is the language of the ignorant,” he said. “Please refrain from its use while in my office. Now, as I started to explain, the question is moot is because Cynthia has nothing wrong with her. She is exactly as she should be at this stage of her life-cycle.”

  He brought up a holographic image and spun it around. It depicted a creature which, save for some unique banding, could have been Cynthia in her new form.

  “Few cuculidae xenomorphus have been documented and only one zoological study was ever undertaken on the species. What you are looking at – and what you are, my dear Cynthia – is the adult form of the cuckoo grub. Juveniles are shapeshifters. It is believed to be a self-preservation instinct. On their home planet, cuckoo grubs were once subject to severe predation and so evolved highly-sophisticated physical mimicry. If they are separated from their parents or find themselves in a perilous situation, they are able to detect a nearby lifeform’s DNA sequences and transmogrify to resemble it. Only it is more than a resemblance – the cuckoo grub’s DNA re-sequences such that, for all intents and purposes, it is that creature, and lives as one. Latent cuckoo grub DNA remains, but it is dormant and compartmentalized, like data behind a firewall.”

  I stared at nothing as mental puzzle pieces dropped into place. Professor Jones must have mistaken my expression for stupefaction, because he extended a tentacle to Cynthia and me and said, “No doubt this comes as quite a shock.”

  “It makes sense, in retrospect,” I said. “Cynthia was an orphan. Humans were probably the first species she made contact with after she lost her parents and she was around them all her life.”

  I had no idea, Cynthia said. It was like listening to someone speak through a shag-pile rug. How could I have no idea I was a cuckoo grub?

  “That I can’t say for certain,” explained Professor Jones. “Research is scant at best and your circumstances may have been singular. But if I were to guess, I would suggest it is part of the camouflage. If the cuckoo grub thinks it is the creature it mimics, it cannot accidentally reveal itself.”

  “Only she did, didn’t she?” I said. “What the hell was that about?”

  “A natural part of the cuckoo grub life-cycle,” the professor said. “Once a female reaches sexual maturity, she copulates, which triggers the metamorphosis. Not so different to the Earth butterfly, except that rather than spin a cocoon, the cuckoo grub essentially changes inside its skin and then sheds it. I would hypothesize your body was impelling you to find a mate with a phallus similar in size and shape to that of a male cuckoo grub.”

  Cynthia squirmed around uncomfortably. So, does that mean I am…pregnant?

  I empathized with her anxiety. She probably had visions of a half-Skuldugg growing inside her. But the professor just laughed. “Don’t worry, it is not true copulation. A female cuckoo grub cannot procreate until she has undergone the metamorphosis. And the probability of inter-species fertilization is essentially zero without medical intervention.”

  Being a human is all I know. Now I’m stuck like this.

  “Not at all,” said Professor Jones. “Adult cuckoo grubs retain an ability to shapeshift, although it is not at the genetic level as it is with juveniles. You may revert to human form whenever you like. Or any other form, for that matter.”

  I don’t know how.

  “Of course you do. It is innate. Stop thinking as a human with human limitations and will the change to happen.�
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  Her yellow eyes grew still and her whole body became rigid. Constipated was the word that ran through my head. Then all at once, her caterpillar body lost its composition and collapsed to the floor, a living soufflé gone wrong. As you’ve probably gathered from the foregoing tale, I’m not a girl who screams often, but I screamed then and stumbled back against the wall. Adrenaline sizzled through my blood as the colorless glob on the floor began to reform, starting as a shapeless finger that rose up and turned pink. The bottom of the finger split to form legs and feet; arms protruded in a blunt cruciform. Curly black hair spiraled out of an oval that pinched itself into a nose and chin. Within about half a minute, the rainbow caterpillar had become Cynthia again, right down to the thick eyelashes, which fluttered after the transformation was complete.

  She looked at the professor, then at me. “That was certainly an experience. And I’ve had quite a few experiences lately.”

  “See?” said Professor Jones. “Back to your old self.”

  “But I’m not really, am I? It’s a veneer; a trick, like a frog changing color to match a leaf. I’m even less human than I was before the metamorphosis.”

  “Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as a chance to explore a second life. You can live as a human or as a cuckoo grub. Few beings in the galaxy will ever be so fortunate.”

  She looked at me – with eyes that now resembled human eyes, but which still showed her the world in kaleidoscopic prisms – and I saw an expression so cynical, it broke my heart.

  “Easy for you to say, professor. You’ve always been what you were supposed to be.”

  “Being what you are supposed to be is not necessarily easy, my dear, especially when xenophobia is as ancient and immortal as the universe itself.”

  “Save the lectures for class,” Cynthia said. She left the professor’s office and disappeared down the shadowed hallway.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled on her behalf.

  “She will come around,” Professor Jones said. “It takes time to accept change.”

  I thanked him and set off after her. I caught up as she exited the science building and put my hand on her back.