by C. Gockel
“He’s getting so skinny,” said Masako.
“He’s getting old,” said Noa, and Hsissh could hear the hitch in her voice. He couldn’t hang onto this body for much longer, which was one of the reasons why he was going to church today. He wasn’t sure how much time he had left, and he wanted to be with her as much as possible. This body had long ago decided that her family was his family, and he got the same rush of bonding hormones being with them that he did being with Shissh. When the time would come to change this body for another, those hormones would disappear. Intellectually, he knew it was for the best. Emotionally … he felt his hearts sink into a space near his gullet.
“Why do we have to go to church?” Noa said, her hand pausing its path. “You don’t believe in The Three Books!” She didn’t want to go. In her mind she was imagining zipping through the forest on her bicycle with Hsissh in a padded basket at the front, nose lifted to the wind.
“Because it’s our community,” Dad rumbled.
“It’s stupid,” Noa grumbled.
Hsissh wouldn’t call it stupid, he’d call it hopeless. Humans were doomed. He was glad Noa was leaving, joining the Galactic Fleet and leaving this planet behind.
“If God were really all-powerful and didn’t want us to eat the stupid apple, He wouldn’t have let the snake into the garden,” Noa muttered.
No one answered. Hsissh agreed that it was implausible; all the stories from the Three Books seemed so to him. It was odd that the implausible stories tied them, though ever so slightly, to the waves. Maybe it was because the waves were beyond what was plausible in observable Newtonian physics and the stories put believers in the correct mindset?
“And if He didn’t want me to be a pilot, why would He make me want it so much?” Noa whispered. Hsissh lifted his nose toward hers and wiggled his whiskers. Noa’s parents didn’t discourage her from leaving the planet, but among the people of The Three Books, she was considered odd at best, a “dangerous little girl” at worst.
Seeing his whiskers quirking, Noa smiled and Hsissh felt her mood lift.
“There is a crash,” said Kenji out of nowhere, in a toneless voice.
Dad slowed the vehicle, and Noa’s eyes went to the window. Hsissh struggled to lift his protesting muscles. Outside, he saw a peculiar car protruding from a ditch. It had no wheels and lay flat on the ground. A family was standing around it, fanning themselves with their Three Books.
Noa touched the neural port at the side of her head. It had been activated a cycle ago. For a moment, her eyes became glazed. “It’s a LX0001 hover craft,” Noa said, gleaning the information from the “ethernet.” “The new model’s antigrav was formulated to handle Luddeccea’s gravity.”
Luddeccea was the name the humans had given to this planet. Hsissh had heard of the antigrav vehicles. They were powered by the same technology that powered the time gates, albeit on a much smaller scale. They created a “bubble” in time that allowed the vehicles to counteract gravity and float over rocky terrain, and even above treetops. As Hsissh understood it, hovers were very common on Earth. However, the antigrav had to be calibrated for each planet. Local gravity, the relative position of the planet in its solar system, and the solar system’s position relative to the galactic core all had to be taken into account.
Dad sighed heavily and brought the car to a halt beside the immobile vehicle. “New tech … always buggy.”
“Kids, into the back; make room for the Benjamins!” Mom said, and Hsissh was hoisted by Noa as she scrambled over the seat. He knew she tried to make the move as comfortable as possible for him, but his joints hurt, and his body squeaked in protest. “Sorry, Fluffy,” Noa murmured, cradling him closer.
A few breaths later, the Benjamins were in the vehicle and Mom and Dad were occupied with making “small talk.” Hsissh settled onto Noa’s lap in the flat back portion of the vehicle. She was sitting cross-legged in her “Sunday finest.” Hsissh glanced up at her. Her eyes were on the Benjamin’s son, Sergei, sitting in the backseat. You didn’t have to use telepathy or even be human to know she was attracted to him, or that it was one-sided. The sight made the fur on the back of his neck prickle, and he couldn’t say why.
The sun was bright above the front lawn of the Church of Three Books. The adults were off talking in the shade of the steeple. Hsissh was draped over Noa’s neck. She was hanging around some boys, of whom Sergei was one.
“You only think you want to be a pilot,” Jacob, one of Hsissh’s former tormentors, was saying.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Noa demanded, hands going to her hips.
Jacob shrugged. “You’ll fall for some boy and you won’t want to be a pilot anymore. My dad says so.”
And suddenly Hsissh knew what was bothering him about Noa’s eyes on Sergei. She wouldn’t be the first member of any species to be distracted by thoughts of procreation—Hsissh had often been, in this form and others. But she couldn’t afford to be.
The church doors opened, and the congregation began moving into the building. Spinning on her heels, Noa muttered, “I will be a pilot.” Stroking Hsissh’s tail, she added, “Watch me.”
Hsissh forced a long purr out of his chest. Her eyes slid to him and she smiled. As they moved into the shady interior and Noa took a seat at the pew, Hsissh desperately hoped that he would be able to see her achieve her dream.
As soon as everyone was seated, the church leaders—all male, and one for each of the books—raised their arms. “We will open with a prayer.”
Noa bowed her head and silence swept through the church.
“Hsissh!”
The whisper on the waves made his ears perk—the source was very close—as was the smell of fresh rat blood. Peering down the aisle, Hsissh’s nose twitched. He saw an unfamiliar young werfle on its hind legs waving at him. “Isn’t it amazing!” the werfle whispered across the waves. Hsissh blinked and was able to identify the consciousness in the new body. It was Ish. What was he doing here, so far from the human “capital” of Prime?
Ish put his two middle pairs of paws behind his back, and gestured with the top pair for Hsissh to join him. Hsissh didn’t really want to get up … but some deep social instinct within compelled him, as did the smell of fresh rat blood. He stiffly slid down to Noa’s lap, and before she could react, skittered to the floor and down the aisle. “Fluffy!” she whispered.
“Shhhhh … ” said Mom. “He’ll be fine.”
One of the church leaders cleared his throat. Noa settled and bowed her head. There was no sound except for Hsissh’s and Ish’s claws on the wooden floor. Ish’s claws were much louder because his young body was hopping up and down.
“Do you feel it? Do you feel their consciousness rising?” Ish said, spinning in a circle. Ish was older, wiser, and more prone to reflection and study than Hsissh—who was mostly prone to eating and sleeping—but the body Ish inhabited was young and vigorous. It made Hsissh tired just watching his excitement.
Hsissh didn’t respond. The first few times Hsissh had come to church he’d been excited, too. He’d felt some of the congregation’s minds touch the wave and experienced the same elation he’d felt when his first blind hatchlings had cracked through their shells. But his hatchlings had soon opened their eyes; the humans never left their bodies.
“No, they’re not,” Hsissh said. “They’ve been doing this for all of their recorded history.” He’d learned that through Noa’s history lessons.
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Ish said. He delicately touched his nose to Hsissh’s, but his hind legs continued to hop. “We’re witnessing evolution!”
Hsissh didn’t agree. Noa had to become a pilot, so she could get off Hsissh’s world and live. He didn’t have Shissh’s worries about spreading black waters, or Ish’s scientific enthusiasm, Hsissh cared only about the human girl who had twice endangered her life trying to save him. He looked at her now, her eyes darting down the aisle to check on him as though he were the kit, not her, and he felt th
e same rush of feelings he’d felt for his blind hatchlings.
“Does it matter that they can’t touch the wave?” Hsissh said to Ish. “They are telepathic in their own way.”
Ish sniffed derisively. “If their satellites go down, or their time gates go offline, they are trapped in their own minds. Light beams, radio, and microwaves … they are as primitive as their speech. Their ethernet is a trap, distracting them from true oneness.”
Hsissh thought of the minds across the galaxy Noa spoke to. She’d joined a Reserve Fleet Training Corps. It was a group for adolescents who dreamed of joining the Fleet; through them she’d found support for her ambitions and discovered that although her dreams weren’t average for a young girl, they weren’t weird, and she wasn’t a deviant.
He bowed his head. She had confessed to her friends that the only thing she was worried about was leaving her “pet Fluffy.” His hearts beat painfully at the thought. “Does it matter though?” he whispered. “Maybe they aren’t wave aware, maybe they will never be … but they feel as much as we do.” Even though they’d evolved light years away from one another. Even though they weren’t wave-aware. Perhaps it was because they were creatures that had to raise helpless young communally, too?
Ish lowered his head and narrowed his eyes at Hsissh, his hindquarters’ furious hopping abruptly coming to a stop. “Are you crazy, Hsissh? Rats have feelings, too … even lizzar do!”
“But it’s not the same,” Hsissh said. “Rats don’t grieve their dead for decades.” Like I do, he almost said.
Ish raised his head and put a paw through his whiskers. “Rats don’t live long enough, Hsissh.”
Hsissh’s body hunched. “We could communicate with the humans if we wanted to, we could even discuss the wave with them; they see its existence—”
“Through the primitive mirror of their mathematics,” said Ish. “Until they feel it, they can’t know it.”
“They could still be useful!” Hsissh protested. “They have opposable thumbs and fighting machines!”
Ish’s whiskers twitched. “Are you worried about Shissh’s dark waters?” He poked Hsissh’s chest with a sharp claw. “I can feel you are not, Hsissh. You’ve become too close to your humans, or that old body of yours has. We cannot announce ourselves to the humans. Announce ourselves, and we would, at least temporarily, lose the upper hand. It would be very inconvenient if they tried to wipe out our host species.”
“We’re thinking of wiping them out,” Hsissh countered.
Ish got very still. “Only on this planet, Hsissh. They will still have their sanctuaries on other worlds.” Ish’s eyes bored into Hsissh’s, and then his consciousness did as well. Probing Hsissh’s memories, Ish found the ones where Hsissh tried to talk telepathically to Noa—and succeeded—and then failed due to her mind’s rationalizations.
“You’re lucky you didn’t succeed in that,” Ish said, the wave crackling with malevolence. “It would ruin my observations and their natural evolution—and you’d be ostracized, if not condemned to have your pattern dissolved.”
Hsissh swished his tail. “I never tried to tell her I was sentient … I just tried to let her feel that she doesn’t have to worry about me.”
Ish’s frame relaxed. “You’re young—well, not your body, you look terrible—and I see you didn’t successfully break any rules.” He put a claw through a whisker. “They’re your ‘pets,’” he said, using the human word. “And you’re worried. But don’t be. They’ll evolve; you’ll see.”
Hsissh knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Ish, and if he pressed too much, The One might separate him from Noa. He’d lose his chance to see her escape this world. He sniffed, and changed the subject. “I smell fresh rat blood.”
Ish’s hindquarters began hopping again. “This place is crawling with them! I killed three before the service—silly, really, I can only eat one at a time. Would you like to come finish off the rest with me?”
If he had any poison, it would have pooled on his tongue. “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Hsissh replied, using an expression Dad used from time to time.
“What?” said Ish, head drawing back.
“Never mind,” said Hsissh. “Lead me to those rats.”
“With pleasure,” said Ish. Pivoting on his forequarters, Ish darted for the back of the church. Hsissh followed, muscles and joints protesting all the way. He was vaguely aware of Jacob whispering as he slipped after Ish through a door just barely ajar.
Hsissh followed his fellow werfle up a stairwell, and then another to the attic of the church. There were two dead rats laid out in a sunbeam, like a scene from a dream.
An hour and a half later, after a delicious snack, the creaking of floorboards awoke Hsissh. Eyes blinking open to a blur, he heard Jacob say, “There you are, rat!”
For a moment, Hsissh was confused. The rats were long gone; he and Ish had gorged themselves quite completely. But then he was caught in a crushing grip, he felt his ribs fracture, and the world went dark. It took him a moment of frantic sniffing to realize he’d been dumped in a burlap sack. His hearts’ beating increased in speed exponentially. “Let’s see what happens to Noa when you don’t come back!”
Intellectually Hsissh knew he might be able to claw his way out, or gnaw a hole. But his werfle body couldn’t abide confinement and just … stopped. He didn’t have to concentrate to leave his shell; the patterns that made him himself scattered onto the waves almost too quickly. As he collected them, he felt Shissh’s consciousness. “It’s about time! Now you can leave that debilitating sentimentality behind.”
And he had already. The deep emotional pull he felt to Noa and her family was gone, as was all the pain of his previous body. He saw Ish cowering in a corner as the boy lugged the sack across the room. Ish called out through the waves, “I’m sorry, Hsissh. My body’s calling for revenge, but this is the most perfect research opportunity.”
“It’s fine,” Hsissh said, thought, and felt; they were all the same here.
He hovered a bit. He saw Noa racing up the stairs. “Hey, I’ve got your werfle,” Jacob taunted. “What are you going—”
Jacob was interrupted by a lightning fast kick to the stomach that sent him stumbling backward into the wall, dropping the sack in the process.
Noa bolted toward the sack Hsissh’s old body was in. Falling to her knees, she gently pulled out Hsissh’s body. “Fluffy?” she cried. And then she screamed, “Fluffy!” and fell to her knees, her entire body wracked with sobs.
“Ha, ha, made you cry!” Jacob said. “You’ll never be a pilot!”
And Hsissh had to leave. Not because he felt a pull to Noa, but because he didn’t.
5
LUMINOUS CREATURES
“It’s great to have you here.” Shissh opened and closed her pincers; they didn’t clack so much underwater. “You’ll get over Third in this form.”
Hsissh’s pincers drooped. No mention of needing to forget Noa or her family.
Waving her eye stalks, Shissh continued, “It’s too bad about the humans—I talked to Chisssh about tweaking their DNA to make them wave aware, but they reproduce too slowly … it would take ten hundred cycles at the least.” She pointed with a pincer down the reef. “The elders of these hosts meet every three cycles of the moon. I’ll see you then; we’ll ask them to tell us the stories of the dark waters. In the meantime—my side of the reef is over there.” She waved with her pincers and eye stalks. “Stay away.”
On that cheery note, she crawled away. Not that Hsissh minded. This particular species wasn’t sociable.
He skittered down his side of the reef, cracking open tiny mollusks and sucking them into his primary orifice. The waters weren’t dark, even though the sun was a distant dream, cut off from them by meters of ice. The seas of this moon were alive with bio-luminescent organisms that drew their life’s energy from the heat that poured through the vents to the moon’s raging magma core.
Food was plentiful. Shissh had alread
y taken care of all potential predators. Company was available if he wanted it. But he didn’t. It was the perfect place to explore, live, and not hurt.
He lasted only three rotations of the moon.
“You’re an idiot,” Shissh said.
Hsissh flexed the claws of the new werfle hatchling’s body he’d acquired. “Probably,” he agreed. Shissh’s consciousness floated away. He didn’t say goodbye. Blinking awake from his nap, he got up and resumed tunneling through the underbrush. He was barely weaned from this body’s third. None of this body’s three parents had been host to a member of The One. They were sweet, kind, and boring. Hsissh would miss them, the third especially; but he remembered Noa kicking Jacob across the room, and then sobbing for a creature that wasn’t her species. He missed Noa more—the tightening in his hearts was unmistakable. As he hopped toward the Sato family, he felt elation in his sorrow. It felt so good to feel again.
Hearts pumping, he increased his speed. Time on the crustacean moon had passed more slowly, due to a difference in gravity. Noa was several cycles older and would be taking exams soon. He had to reach her, and be there to sit on her shoulder and her lap while she studied to offer moral support. He had to snuggle with her at night so she wouldn’t be afraid of rats and could get enough sleep. He had to see her get off this planet before his kind unleashed the Fourth Plague—more and more humans were arriving every day, and many of The One were pushing to advance the date.
