Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Not that I was ever allowed to go.

  Ersh had dictated I was to stay on Picco’s Moon until I was ready. Ready? I understood waiting until my body grew into its full web-size. After all, mass had to be considered when cycling into another form. It was wasteful, if entertaining, to gorge myself simply to cycle into something larger, then have to shed the excess as water anyway upon returning to web-form. Then there was the issue of learning to hold another form. The others presumed my staying Lanivarian from birth till impact meant I’d be able to distort my web-mass into any other I’d assimilated. They were wrong. While I could immediately return to my birth-form for a moment or two, after all this time, I still couldn’t hold other forms for any duration. I might have done so faster, had Ersh chosen to teach me what I needed to know—and had the others refrained from terrifying hints I might explode if I wasn’t careful—but Ersh had definite ideas of what and how I was to learn.

  Which was the real reason I still wasn’t “ready” after two hundred years. Ersh had insisted I be taught—by the others, as well as herself. Since this teaching could not be done by assimilation alone, and she found fault with almost everything I did learn—not surprising, considering I had four teachers who’d never taught before—“ready” seemed unlikely to occur within even a web-being’s almost endless life span. I was stuck on Ersh’s rock, safe and utterly bored.

  It would have been nice if it had stayed that way.

  “Esen!!!!!!”

  My present ears were tall enough to extend past the top of the friendly boulder sheltering the rest of me. I swiveled them slightly to capture more nuance from the echoes ricocheting after that latest bellow from the window. It was important to gauge when Ersh was about to pass exasperation and head for all-out fury, if I wanted to avoid something thoroughly unpleasant in the way of consequences. The Eldest did occasionally give up before losing her temper. Twice, maybe.

  “Are you going to answer, ’tween, or should I?” a velvet-coated voice from behind inquired, driving my ears flat against my skull.

  Skalet? I didn’t bother twisting my snout around to glare at her, too busy quelling this body’s instinct to run from threat. I wasn’t in any danger, except from heart palpitations at Skalet’s bizarre sense of humor. She’d approached from downwind, naturally, having firsthand knowledge of my current form’s sense of smell. Providing such unpleasant surprises was simply this web-kin’s favorite game at my expense and quite the feat this time, considering she was supposed to be half the quadrant away.

  However, Skalet was probably preparing to expose my hiding place to Ersh—her other favorite pastime. “I was just getting up,” I told her, attempting to make this more casual than sullen. Skalet had no patience for what she called my “ephemeral moods.”

  When I finally looked at her, it was to affirm the voice matched the form I’d expected. I may have been the only “born” web-being, but that didn’t mean the others were identical. Far from it. Even in web-form, they were distinct individuals, sending tastes as unique as themselves into the air, though this was usually only when they were sharing memories with one another. Revealing web-form to aliens was strictly forbidden, precaution as well as protection.

  So normally, they chose another form, picked, my Elders informed me, for its appropriateness as camouflage and its convenience when using non-Web technology. I was reasonably sure their choices had more to do with personal preference, since if it was convenience alone, they’d all be Dokecian and have arms to spare—with a brain able to control all of them at once. Not that I’d been Dokeci any longer than it took to realize successful coordination required a certain level of maturity as well as a room without fragile objects.

  Skalet managed to cause me enough grief with her present brain. She stood too close for comfort, straight and tall on two legs, dressed in a chrome-on-black uniform she likely considered subtle but which reflected glints of Picco’s orange-stained light with each disapproving breath. Kraal. I replayed a portion of memory. Human subspecies. Not biologically distinct, though heading in that direction. Culturally so, definitely, with a closed society built around an elaborate internal hierarchy of family, clan, and tribe allegiance. New from her last trip was a tattoo from throat to behind her left ear marking a particular affiliation; she’d made sure to braid her thick hair to expose every line. I didn’t bother reading it.

  My obedient rise to my hind legs produced the expected ominous silence from the window and lit a triumphant gleam in Skalet’s Human eyes. “What did you do this time, Youngest?” she asked as we walked together up the slope to Ersh’s cliffside home. As we did, I could see Skalet’s personal shuttle sitting on the landing pad. Shuttles to and from the shipcity on the other side of Picco’s Moon were the only rapid means of travel across the tortured landscape. The native intelligent species, Tumblers, preferred to migrate slowly along the jagged valley floors, stopping for conversations that could last months. They had a time sense on a par with Ersh’s, which I’d long ago decided was why she was usually a Tumbler herself. Another difference between us.

  “Nothing,” I said, quite truthfully. I was supposed to have finished repotting the duras seedlings in Ersh’s greenhouse this morning, making that “nothing” undoubtedly the cause of the bellowing. I hated plants. They stank when healthy and reeked when ill. And dirt. I hated dirt, too. Dry sand I quite liked. But no, plants insisted on wet dirt that stuck to my paws and got in my sensitive nose. It hadn’t taken more than the thought of coming outside to catch the monthly Eclipse, an event I always missed because of some task or other Ersh invented, to make me abandon the trays.

  “Ah,” Skalet replied, as if my answer was more than sufficient. “Neither did I,” she said more quietly, her steps slowing as if in thought. “Are the others here yet?”

  “What others?” I asked. “I didn’t know you were coming until now. Are the rest on the way?” My tail gave a treacherous sideways drift before I could stop it, tail-wagging being among those childish things I was supposed to be long past. Lesy tended to bring presents. To be honest, any of the web-kin did, in the form of knowledge to be shared—even Skalet, though hers often tasted more of conflict and politics than wonder. Ersh sorted it all for me first, of course, as Senior Assimilator, but I could always tell the source.

  “That’s for Ersh to tell us,” Skalet said brusquely, our steps having reached the point of our approach everyone knew marked where Ersh’s sensitive Tumbler hearing must be taken into account.

  Ersh had told us, all right. I gingerly pushed the seedling into the revoltingly damp dirt with one extended toe. My Lanivarian hands were adept at such fine maneuvers, if a misery to clean afterward. My ears were cocked back, toward the kitchen, straining to catch the mutterings of an argument which had lasted longer than I’d thought possible.

  No one countered Ersh’s wishes. Except me. But that was something my web-kin had come to expect. They all knew I’d give in, come home, do the job, and grovel appropriately. It was unthinkable to imagine otherwise, even for me at my most rebellious. Ersh was the center of our Web. Her word was Law.

  Until today, when she’d stated her latest wish and Skalet had tried to refuse.

  Another seedling went in, stubbornly crooked until I pressed the dirt to one side firmly with my thumb; I couldn’t help humming happily to myself. Although it delayed supper and spoke volumes about my immaturity, the novelty of someone else taking the brunt of Ersh’s ire was extraordinarily pleasant—not to mention I was on Skalet’s side.

  I most definitely didn’t want her staying with me while Ersh left home for the first time in my memory.

  That this arrangement was designed to punish both of us with Ersh’s famed economy of effort was not lost on me, but what Skalet could have done to deserve it I didn’t know. Nor wanted to.

  Ersh should have told me.

  “I’ve had enough of you.”

  My stylo halted its dive at the star chart and I peered up hopefully. “We’re done for
the day?” I asked.

  A violent wave and: “Ssssh.”

  Skalet was using the com system. Again. As she had most of the morning since Ersh departed—in Skalet’s own shuttle, something she’d known better than to protest.

  I sighed and reapplied myself to the present lesson. Another three-dimensional strategy calculation, probably containing some unlikely ambush. Ersh must have removed more than usual from Skalet’s latest memories of the Kraal before sharing them with me, for this made less sense to me than the last lesson.

  Regardless, it would be my fault. I sighed once more, but to myself. Skalet was brilliant and, as a Kraal, had earned considerable acclaim within her chosen species as a strategist. Not an accomplishment she flaunted, given Ersh’s obsession with keeping our natures and activities hidden, but there were no secrets in the Web. Well, technically there were any number of secrets held within Ersh’s teardrop blue web-mass—most being kept from me—but none of us had that ability. And, when it suited her, or more truthfully, when Ersh was within earshot, Skalet could be a patient and interesting teacher. Otherwise, as now, she was maddeningly obscure yet somehow convinced I deliberately avoided what she saw as the clear, simple path to the right answer in order to waste her time.

  Hardly. I was every bit as anxious to have this lesson done and be outside where I could observe the Eclipse. I wrinkled my snout at the problem before me, wondering if accidentally drooling on the plas sheet might somehow ruin it.

  Skalet continued talking urgently into the com. “Listen, Uriel. Just bring it down here instead of where we arranged. That’s the only change.”

  Maybe it was the lesson, with its layers of move and countermove, but I grew suddenly curious about Skalet’s conversation with this mysterious “Uriel.”

  Of course, it’s hard to be subtle with ears like mine. “Esen,” Skalet said sharply, “if you can’t concentrate on your work, go outside for a while.”

  Perversely, now that she told me to do what I’d wanted to do, I no longer wanted to do it. I glumly suspected this irrational reversal was another of those indications I wasn’t ready to assume an adult’s role within the Web. I opened my mouth to protest—and then closed it. Skalet had leaned back against the com unit, watching me with the obvious intention of not saying another word in my presence.

  So I left.

  Picco was a gas giant, her immense curve dominating a quarter of the horizon, reflecting, during her day, a vile combination of orange and purple over the landscape of her hapless Moon. During her night, Picco’s silhouette occluded a chunk of the starry sky—the so-called Void. Early Tumbler civilizations had populated the Void with invisible demons. The belief continued to influence their behavior, so that modern Tumblers had a hearty dislike of moving about in the dark. As Ersh pointed out, this was a survival characteristic, given the fragile nature of an adult Tumbler’s crystalline structure and the difficulty in finding any level ground on their home sphere. Beliefs have value, I could hear her repeating endlessly, if not always that assumed by the believer.

  Picco’s Moon did spin, luckily for those of us interested in a broader array of color, but with aggravating slowness. Once a moon week, Ersh’s mountain faced away from Picco to bathe in the light of the system’s star. This arrangement was called the Eclipse, Tumbler science persistent in its belief that Picco orbited her Moon and thus the shadow cast on the giant planet’s surface mattered more than the arrival of true daylight. Legend said this was the time when the Void tried to drill a hole through Picco herself, only to be foiled by the magical strength of Picco’s surface. Festivals and other entertainments were typically timed to climax at the end of the Eclipse as seen from the Picco-facing side of the Moon.

  Other things were timed for sunlight. The sort of things I might accuse Ersh of deliberately keeping from me, except that I was afraid she’d chime agreement.

  Sex wasn’t the mystery. Ersh might presort the others’ memories before sharing them with me, but biology didn’t seem to be one of the taboos she enforced. On the contrary, we had many discussions, ranging from gruesome to merely nauseating, about the lengths to which species went in order to mix their genes. Oh, I knew all about Tumbler sex. Those individuals interested in procreation wandered about gleaning material from others of presumably attractive growth, incorporating each shard as it was received into their body matrix until they felt sufficiently endowed. There followed a rather orgasmic interlude of fragmentation, resulting in a smaller, presumably satiated adult, and a litter—literally—of tiny pre-Tumbler crystals dropped wherever that Tumbler had been roaming at the time. Somehow, during Eclipse on the sunside of Picco’s Moon, those crystals were recovered by their proud parent and given the opportunity to grow.

  Somehow. This was where Ersh grew annoyingly vague and, when pressed for details, had begun inconveniently timing my indoor tasks during the sunny side of Eclipse.

  Skalet, however, didn’t care what I learned, as long as she didn’t have to teach me.

  I bounded up the last, worn stone step to the top of Ersh’s mountain and paused to pant a moment. Usually I avoided the place, unless it was one of those times Ersh insisted the sharing of the Web be done here, but there really was no better view. Just in time. The orange rim of Picco was disappearing behind the horizon, cut into a fanged grin by the distant range of mountains. Sunlight—real, full spectrum, right from the source light—poured over the surface, losing the struggle where Picco’s reflection still ruled, but elsewhere striking the crystalline facets etched on every slope and valley in a display that explained quite clearly why this was a gem dealer’s notion of paradise.

  Gem dealers. I grinned, walking to the cliff’s edge, stopping a comforting number of body lengths short. While Ersh disapproved of irony on general principle, given how often it involved disaster for the species involved in mutual misconception, I couldn’t help but take special pleasure in this particular case. The most prized gems from Picco’s Moon? Tumbler excretions. Those legitimate dealers—hired by the Tumblers for waste removal and treatment around their shipcity, the only densely populated area—did their utmost to regulate off-Moon availability and so keep up the price of the beautiful stones, but there was, naturally, a thriving black market fed by those fools willing to try landing where level merely implied nonperpendicular.

  To their credit, the Tumblers were dismayed by this risky traffic in defecation and regularly tried to explain, but something kept being lost in the translation of their polite phrase: “ritual leavings.”

  I sat on my haunches, feeling the warmth of the Sun’s rays on my back, and looked for Tumblers engaged in Eclipse activities, feeling deliciously naughty—especially with Skalet to take the blame when, not if, Ersh found out.

  But what I saw was a midsized cargo shuttle with no markings, banking low in front of Ersh’s mountain, heading to our landing pad.

  If this wasn’t Ersh returning too soon from her mysterious trip, or web-kin with a particularly large present, Skalet was going to be in more trouble than I’d hoped.

  The advantage of a shared secret was a mutual desire to keep it. I had no doubt Skalet knew I was nearby, but also knew this time she wouldn’t reveal my hiding place. Not to her guest.

  A non-Web guest. Hair persisted in rising along my spine. Alien. Human.

  And, most intriguing of all, male.

  I held the genetic instructions for Human within my web-mass, along with all other species the Web had assimilated, but were I or any of my web-kin to take that form, we would be female. Cycling didn’t change who we were—simply what we were. As a result, I’d never been this close to a male Human before.

  Shared memory wasn’t everything, I realized, aware this was something Ersh had despaired, loudly, I’d ever learn to appreciate.

  He was as tall as Skalet, not as whipcord thin, but gracefully built. The wind picked up curly locks of black hair and tossed them in his face—surely distracting, but he didn’t appear to notice. No tattoos. Perhaps
not Kraal.

  Or not wanting to appear Kraal, I thought abruptly, enjoying this live game of strategy far more than any of Skalet’s simulations. Kraal didn’t mix with other types of Humans, unless in formal groupings such as war or diplomacy. He could be—a spy!

  Against us? My lips rolled back from my fangs despite common sense. With the exception of Ersh, none of us approached Skalet’s paranoia about protecting our true nature. So, this Human wasn’t a threat to Ersh or our home. Then what was he? I tilted my ears forward as the male began to speak.

  “—nice spot, S’kal-ru. We should have used this from the first—”

  His voice might have been pleasant, but Skalet’s smooth alto made it sound like something from a machine. “This is not a secure location, Uriel. We have an access window sufficient to make the exchange, no more. You brought the grav-sled?” At his nod and gesture to the shuttle’s sideport, she snapped: “Good. Then load it up. I’ll bring the plants.”

  My plants?

  This time when my lips curled back in threat, I left them there. What was Skalet planning? She had to mean the duras seedlings and the adult versions in Ersh’s greenhouse—these were the only plants on Picco’s Moon. While a constant source of drudgery for me, they were also the only source of living mass other than the local wildlife—and Tumblers—available to us.

  That source of living mass was crucial. We could fuel and maintain our bodies by eating and metabolizing in another form. But it took a sacrifice of web-mass to energy to distort our molecular structure, to cycle and hold another form. To become anything larger meant assimilating living mass into more web-mass. To replace lost web-mass? The same. It was the fundamental hunger, the appetite we couldn’t escape.

  Skalet was robbing Ersh’s supply? She must have her own source, not to mention plant life was hardly a rare commodity—anywhere but on this world. It didn’t make sense.