The creatures withdrew across the tree-floor in the direction from which they had come, but now I knew that some of the wonderful juiciness in the wind came from the creatures. And I knew what to do next. For several dayblinks I traveled after the creatures, resting during the brights, feeding in the darks, sure of my purpose.
In the dark of the fourth dayblink since I had seen the creatures for the first time they came back. I smelled them coming in the wind; I sank into the tree-floor where I stood and spread myself, carefully, seeing myself shining in the night with the blue-white glow of the aware one, and concentrated my energies to fruit. There was only one creature who came, though. That was a disappointment; I wanted at least two, one to have and one to send ahead, but I could make use of this one, I could experiment.
Hesitantly, the creature came, pausing at the edge of my glow-field. I increased my bioluminescence in the place where I was nearest to being ready to extrude a fruiting body; it came closer, it put itself down into the tree-floor, its mouth and nose and eyes were so near that I could have reached out and had them then and there but I wanted in through the rind. Carefully, I formed a fruiting body, a much bigger fruiting body this time, and made it like something that a warm-blooded chewing animal likes to hunt and hide and eat, so that it might look familiar and appetizing.
The creature reached out for the fruiting body, plucked it from my substance, put it in its mouth where it dissolved into the pith and filament I needed to propagate my substance throughout its body. I waited. There was nothing. The fruit failed. The moisture in the creature’s mouth, was it too unfriendly to my fruit?
The creature lay down in the tree-floor, then, and was quiet.
I scouted it carefully, wondering what was going on, trying to understand what was happening. The creature had not stopped breathing; I made a net over its face to capture its moisture, so that it would not go to waste. I tried to comprehend the dead leaf covering, the hair covering, sending my processes into every aperture I could find; just as I was about to give up hope ... I found it.
The creature’s rind was broken in several places, not large places, and most of the breaks had a shield over them so that I could sense the aperture but not get to it; but some of them were still building their shields, new breaks perhaps, and I could get in.
Oh. I cannot describe the wonder of the experience. I had only been inside a dead thing ever before; this one was still alive. Its body did things when it recognized that I was other than itself, so I took its chemistry, I borrowed its moisture, I adjusted my processes until its body could no longer tell that I was not the same as it was; and then I learned and fed and fed and learned, and when the dayblink came I covered it up with leaf-Utter and mold and continued to learn and feed as it lay on the tree-floor. It breathed quietly and slowly for the entire bright before it died.
It would have been too much for me to process, but with the strength I gained from the nourishment and moisture it provided I sent substance back across the tree-floor floor where I had walked and traveled; that absorbed substantial excess nourishment, and when I touched the skirts of the aware one in the place of my origin—the aware one fed through me with the hunger of the almost desiccated.
I hadn’t understood how close the aware one had been to discontinuity. It troubled me; but I was more pleased than troubled, because I was there, I was entirely the consumer of this wonderfully succulent creature, and I was the one who had saved the aware one from discontinuity. I was the one. I am of the aware one, but there were parts of the aware one that were not me, and I hadn’t truly understood that before then.
The aware one wanted more. Needed more. From the first taste of the moisture I sent back I knew the thirst of my siblings, the seeking along my path. When the bright dimmed, I could feel the drawing from me quicken; I was first, but many were coming. It was frightening, because I wasn’t ready to fruit and didn’t want to be absorbed in the aware one. This was my accomplishment, the acquisition of nourishment; I didn’t want to stop there and be content, because this one had come from the direction of the wet wind, and there had been more of them.
I gathered up the leaves that the animal had used to cover itself. I gathered up the nourishment that I had not fully absorbed, I arranged it in its original pattern, I stood up in the manner of the creature and walked into the wet wind. There was something so rich and promising in that breeze that I could hardly grasp it, more nourishment than seemed to be possible.
When the bright came, I sank back into the tree-floor to rest and feed. Creatures came through the forest, many twos and twos and twos of them, but I kept quiet and fed from the hard long and bony parts of the one I already had. I made an error in judgment; I used too much, drunk with moisture and replete with food. The hard bony parts would no longer support the weight of the water in my substance when I stood up to walk, but crumbled.
I needed another. I knew how to get one. I left the pieces of the animal where one of my siblings could find it in a dayblink or two, and went on. When I felt some of the creatures coming in the dark, I spread myself, as I had done before, and set my lures glowing in the dim light.
These were new creatures, it seemed, because they seemed wary or unsure, and kept to the outside of the field that I made for them. I waited. One came, finally, to take up the fruit I offered; this time I tasted the air all around it, quickly, and found where its rind was recently broken, and went there.
The creature didn’t try to eat the fruit I made for it, but it didn’t matter. I was there. I was in. I sealed the place where the rind was broken and went out into the creature’s body, remembering what I had learned from the last one about hiding from its internal defenses, reveling in nourishment.
I didn’t want to make the same mistake that I had made before. I didn’t harvest the creature; I merely fed, quietly, and only enough to keep my awareness. For my reward the creature stooped down and picked up the fruit I had made for it, and took it in a container of clear leaves; turned around and signaled to the other—and started walking back.
Terror paralyzed me as the creature stepped past the field that I had made, and carried me past the forward edge of my knowing. The aware one had never been here. There was no connection anymore between me and the aware one; and yet I was still aware. What was going to happen to me? Had I become lost? Could I ever get back?
I was alone. There was no aware one. There was only me, and the creature, and the creature’s companion. It walked vigorously with confidence, it moved so much more efficiently than I had moved the remnants of the last one, and with every step it took we traveled farther into the wet wind.
Through the forest. Out onto a hard place in the forest, something wide and stony with very strong substances in its composition, chemistries I had never sensed before; there was no way for me to send back the news to the aware one, we were severed from each other, so I didn’t know if the aware one had ever encountered anything like this in our life.
The creature had a fir-cone on the hard place, something that was in a way similar to a fir-cone, something that would carry its weight and could be moved over the surface; a very large fir-cone, and with little that was forestlike in it, but much more of the very strong chemistries all around. It sat in the fir-cone, its companion sat inside the fir-cone with it, and the fir-cone started to travel very quickly across the hard place, still into the wet wind.
I couldn’t tell where we were going. It was going too fast, and the messages in the wind were gone before I had a chance to truly taste them. I recovered from the paralysis of fear; I had to know, and my desire was stronger than my fear, but I didn’t know how I could slow the progress of the fir-cone.
The creature’s body protected one part of it more than any other; that is where I went. I didn’t care any longer about concealing my presence from its body. I went into the protected place; it was where all of the sharp brightness of warm life was concentrated, all of the quickness of the creature. I had to stop the fircone. I
exerted myself, I infiltrated its brightpaths, I slowed the quick bright sharpness of its messages.
The creature fell forward in the fir-cone, and its companion became agitated, but the fir-cone stopped. It stopped very suddenly. The creatures were both damaged, but I was not damaged within the creature. It was a shame that the creatures had been damaged. They were interesting creatures. Was there something I could do to restore them? I had caused the damage, after all, in some sense.
I went carefully across the surface of the strong and very bitter chemistries to the other creature and crept in, since there was no lack of places where the rind had been broken. This creature had not been as badly damaged as the one I occupied. I used the nourishment of the one to try to repair the other, encouraging its body, transferring fuel; after a while the other moved its body, shifted itself out of the fir-cone, and stepped onto the hard surface.
I let it carry me. It walked back in the direction from which the fir-cone had come, but not very far. The wind was still blowing in the same direction, but the wet was different. I harvested some nourishment from the creature to strengthen me and went out of its body to go look. There was a steep bank there, with a smell of sharpness as though the steepness had been made not very many warmcolds ago. The hard surface bridged the gap between one steep bank and another, and beneath—in the low place—there was wet. So much wet. Unimaginable wet.
As though the rain that falls in the forest, all of the rain that had ever fallen in the forest, had collected in one place, so much rain that it did not soak into the tree-floor, so much rain that it stayed whole and wet even though it lay upon the ground. That was where the wind picked up the water, blowing over this huge wet; and behind the wind, instead of a forest, there was a flat land with soil that was so fat with nourishment that the taste of it was dizzying.
There were things growing in the flat land, things in regular array, juicy things with fruit in them ripening in the warm. I left the creature; I needed all of my substance with me to explore, and lay the creature down softly on the hard surface before I fled into the flat land.
The bright came. But I was safe below the surface of the flat land, feeding from the juicy things with a hunger I had never known before. There was so much. It was so good. The juicy things grew sere and withered as I fed, but I didn’t care, there were so many of them—nothing that I could sense as far away as I could sense but food.
I could no longer sense the aware one. I was in a new place, on my own. I no longer even thought of the aware one. I knew my purpose. I fruited and fed, and fed and fruited, and when the creatures brought poison into the flat land I crept into one of them and traveled to more food. There was no end to it. There were fewer and fewer creatures, and poison in the flat lands behind me; but they could not keep me from the food.
Now the warm is over and the cold is coming, but I will not sleep. I have found a place in a nest of the creatures, full of moisture, full of food, and I will keep myself aware there for the cold. When the warm comes again, I will try to get back across the hard stony thing to the place where I was born to find the other, to share the nourishment I’ve found.
I am of the aware one; I am the aware one. There was only one: now there are two, and with the nourishment I have found we will feed and multiply, and be the caretakers of this wonderful new world—and all the creatures in it.
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FIRST CONTRACT by Linda J. Dunn
M
Y NAME IS TWEEN dy Kula Niiam and I can justify my existence. I am a Tween. I facilitate communication. I have years of experience and adapt quickly to new situations.
I repeat these words every morning while facing the judgment wall and wait to learn if I continue my duties or expire. I stand still and calm, keeping my skin color a reverent shade of pale blue, and oozing the sweet scent of dedication. When the wall flashes life colors, I bow three times and back out of the room.
I have performed this sacred ritual every morning of my life. The difference now is that I know I will not die as long as I am assigned to the negotiating team on Earth. Our work is important. We cannot pause to wait for our home world to send a replacement.
Once the contract is signed, a new team will arrive to oversee the construction of the three factories and sublight delivery systems. They will hire humans at a fraction of what we pay our lowest caste laborers on any of our colony worlds.
Then I shall return home and once again face the possibility that the judgment wall will find me no longer useful.
This will not happen, though. Not to me. I am efficient, meticulous, and highly useful. I shall merit at least one life extension for my work on Earth, and I would not be surprised to be granted immortality. Such a reward is rare, but I have done very well.
I was thinking about this when the shuttle arrived to take us to our meeting with the humans. I sat down in the first seat behind our human escorts and turned a happy shade of blue. Vaaishya dy Muwa Feerow sat down beside me and emitted the pleasant odor of success.
“Today, we will sign the contracts and our work here will be done.” He punctuated his statement with the rich aroma of satisfaction.
“I pity the vaaishya who must stay behind to assist the new team overseeing construction and management.” I turned a sickly shade of yellow to convey my thoughts about that particular task.
“Pray it will not fall upon my shoulders.” Feerow turned a matching shade of yellow and the richness faded into the tangy scent of concern.
“They are all idiot savants,” Feerow added, “except for those who are not. Some are merely idiots.”
We flashed laughing shades of purple and filled the shuttle with the thick aroma of humor. Our Earth escorts at the front and back of the shuttle stood watching, deaf to most of our conversation.
Poor idiots. They lacked two of the basic components of language. Their bodies could turn only one color and that was a reddish tone that indicated embarrassment. As for scents, they could only emit one and that was a most unpleasant odor that none of us wished to encounter again.
How tragic that the first oxygen-breathing, intelligent life-form we encountered was two-thirds mute!
The first Tween to encounter humans was terminated by the judgment wall. So were the next three Tween representatives to Earth. I was warned that all had gone mad from their efforts to learn so many different languages, each of which were splintered into numerous dialects.
I am the fourth Tween, but I do not fear insanity. After the deaths of the other Tweens, the Earth representatives selected their best communicators. They speak one common language clearly, consistently, and without any of the neurological problems that afflicted the first group of human negotiators.
Those humans, according to the notes left behind by my predecessors, were subject to fits that caused their faces to twist in odds ways and their limbs to flail about while they were speaking.
Feerow must have been thinking along the same lines. He said, “Have you ever paused to think about the problems our brethren will face after we sign this contract? The humans have so many strange customs and they only expect to work five days out of every seven. I cannot comprehend a species that can set aside their work like it is something other than part of themselves.”
He turned yellow-almost-green and added, “I would rather expire than live among these people. I pray I will not be selected.”
“Blessed is our judgment wall,” I said, “and perfect in its choices.”
Feerow turned blue again and emitted the scent of contentness. “Yes. Thank you for reassuring me. Perfect is our system, unlike the chaos of Earth.”
I nodded and then the impossible happened. I heard the screeching of the shuttlels brakes, the crunch of metal hitting metal, and a loud whooshing sound that I could not identify. Airbags exploded and we struggled to free ourselves and see what had happened.
I smelled smoke. When I escaped the airbag and stood up, I saw fire at the front of the bus. Our human escorts rus
hed forward into the flames and I, being wiser than they, ran toward the emergency exit at the back of the shuttle.
My fellow team members all did the same and I feared I would be the last to escape, if I escaped at all.
“The window!” Feerow shouted. I was closer to the window than he was and thus I stood on the seat and pushed my body through the shattered window while he faced the approaching flames.
I fell and hit my head. I could hear people screaming, and over all the noise someone shouted, “Get them away from here!”
Rough, human hands grabbed me and I saw blurry images that I knew were not our guards. They dragged me toward soft grass. A moment later, I saw someone carrying Feerow and, as they reached the grass, the shuttle exploded.
People screamed and I heard a man’s voice clearly, “A bomb! Get the hell out of here. There may be another one.”
Hands touched me again and I was too groggy and confused to respond.
“I don’t think we should—” Whatever the woman was going to say was interrupted by a different man’s voice.
“It’s a gift. Fate. We’ve got to take them.”
“We’ll never get away with this,” a woman said. “The police will think we did it.”
“Shut up, Amy, and follow me,” the first one said.
They pulled me upright and I heard someone ask, “Where are you taking them?”
“To a hospital,” the man said. “She’s a nurse. Clear a path for us, please.”
So I was safe. I thought I would wake up in a hospital and all would be well.
Except they didn’t take us to a hospital. I barely remembered the jostling ride down unfamiliar streets into a part of the city that must have been undergoing major construction. I could think of no other reason why the building’s doors and windows would be covered with wood.
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