by Darrell Bain
The spider mechs made no bones where they wanted the people to go. Big oval-shaped conveyances as white as hen's eggs and capable of holding dozens of people appeared at intersections and in the Central Square. Lyda got her arms into the straps of her pack, dropping the towel she had intended to dry off with in the process. She scanned the whole area while avoiding a mech and saw no way to escape. Resignedly, she headed toward the open maw of one of the alien vehicles. An unseen force shoved her inside along with others, crowding them together like sardines and just as tightly packed.
Lyda was one of the last to be taken by that particular craft. As she saw the entrance begin to close, her last thought was that despite searching vast areas of the city, no young children had ever been found. They had disappeared as completely as the fairy tale children of Hamelin, following the piper into oblivion. And she never again saw any of the ones who opted to experience the full intensity of the pleasure rooms on a regular basis.
* * * *
There was no red, consciousness-sapping light this time. Neither was there room to sit and brace against the frequent changes in gravity and momentum. There wasn't even a way to tell whether it was a spacecraft or a local conveyance. Lyda thought the alien technology was so advanced that the sense of change in location could have been just as easily cancelled out had the aliens desired. Perhaps they wanted their captives to know they were being moved, but there was no way to find out. She and the others had to stand and suffer through the jostling and pressure of bodies being thrown this way and that.
Lyda was fortunate she was among the strongest of the tightly packed captives and was able to resist changes in momentum without great effort. Her main concern was to keep from injuring those near her while trying to keep her own balance.
Time passed, but she couldn't tell how much. Eventually, the smell of human waste pervaded the air as bladders overflowed and bowels could no longer hold their contents. Again, Lyda felt the degradation was deliberate. Whatever the aliens did to humans always turned into a trial. Some environments were worse physically than others, but conversely, the city of plenty had seen the most loss of stable minds once able to function. They had lost the young children there, too, which Lyda thought contributed to the general sense of malaise after they had been there for a time.
The air was beginning to get really foul when the craft lurched to a stop. It opened at both ends and again, an unseen force pushed them, this time out instead of in.
Lyda stumbled along, unable to see much of what was happening, but keeping a tight grip on the clothes in her hand; she was determined not to lose them. No sooner had she had gone a few steps beyond the vehicle, than the floor opened under her and she fell into a lightless void. There was no sense of others around her, nor any sensation of movement, just an endless time of almost total sensory deprivation.
A sudden flare of light preceded her exit into a new world. She landed on hands and knees, but not heavily. She scrambled to her feet and looked around, squinting at the sudden bright light while trying to gauge the dangers she would encounter this time. Her clothing and jacket dangled from one hand. She had kept a fierce grip on them throughout the ordeal.
* * * *
Lyda didn't have long to wait, nor get much of a chance to see what her surroundings were like; all her attention was suddenly focused on the monstrosity in front of her. If the most evil looking rat on earth could grow fangs coated with a green slime and expand in size to shoulder height, then become able to rise up and walk on hind legs almost as large as those of a kangaroo, while holding a tool of some kind in one of its front paws, which included flexible digits and an opposable thumb, then it might have approached the appearance of the creature in front of her. Small red eyes blinked intelligently and stared at her with a gaze that would have done credit to a weasel in the midst of feeding on live prey.
Lyda shrank back, pawing for her pistol, and felt only skin. She was still clad only in the bathing suit. She almost tried to retrieve the gun from her jacket with her other hand before she observed the big ratty animal was wearing a harness of some kind, like a draft animal—or an intelligent species of unknown origin. It was no illusion; she was certain of that, but she had no idea of its status or standing in the new scheme of things the aliens were subjecting them to. There were screams and sounds of scuffling in the background but she couldn't take her eyes off the nasty looking beast in front of her. It took a step forward on one of its big rear appendages.
Lyda started to retreat, then held her ground. Was this one of the aliens, so long concealed while their dirty work was done by the mechs and other unseen servants? There was no way of telling but she decided to stand fast, even though one of the abiding fears of her early childhood had been rats, accidentally seen one time in a movie her parents were watching while unaware of her presence. She gritted her teeth and repressed a shudder of revulsion as it opened its mouth. A drop of green slime dripped from one of its top fangs onto its thin bottom lip. A narrow, three pronged tongue shot out and licked the drop of goo back into its mouth. The lips curled back in a rictus that might have been a snarl or a grimace of disgust at her appearance. The scrap of bathing suit she still wore exposed most of her skin, in contrast to the rat creature. It was covered with thick, wiry gray fur, startlingly similar to an earthly rat.
Lyda made a supreme effort and gave the creature a tiny smile, displaying a minimum amount of teeth, just enough so that if it were intelligent, it might notice that her dental equipment wasn't designed for ripping or tearing. It worked well enough so the rat thing settled back on its big hams and waited, eyeing her carefully.
Very slowly, keeping a wary eye on the thing and never letting go of her backpack, Lyda peeled off the suit and got into her spare set of clothes. She slipped her arms into her jacket and began adjusting her backpack. The rat animal sat patiently, but its eyes darted here and there, moving independently of each other. Noises and yells of rage and fear were still audible somewhere behind her. She thought it might be observing whatever was taking place but she didn't dare look herself.
When her backpack was secure and she felt confident enough to take her gaze off the creature for a moment, she looked around. A giant cockroach, or its equivalent, was chasing a screaming woman. It was bigger than she was. The woman found herself trapped in an alcove along the wall. She beat at the insect with a quarterstaff she must have brought aboard the transport craft. A brown ichor dripped from one of the big insect thing's antennas that had been broken off near its base. Both antagonists disappeared into the depths of the recess. A moment later, the screaming stopped.
The big rat creature paid no mind. It went back to watching Lyda. While they were engaged in the staring contest, Lyda moved her gaze every thirty seconds or so, trying to get an idea of her surroundings. She was in a large space bounded on one side by an irregular wall that curved up at an almost indiscernible angle, indicating she was inside a room that must be very large. She took a chance and turned around in a circle. There was an endless expanse of the surface she was standing on in one direction, broken only by odd projections and extrusions here and there. In the opposite direction, she could see a maze of halls, entrances and high walls. That was where she thought most of the screaming and yelling had come from. It was fading now and could hardly be heard. Directly behind her was a long stretch of what looked like shrubs and giant mushrooms growing from the floor. The whole place was brightly lit.
Which area would be safest? She certainly didn't want to tangle with that cockroach thing. She couldn't see very far into the halls and open entrances. That left the scrubby looking mushroom and shrub area. It offered a blend of a reasonable view into the distance and obstacles to hide behind if danger threatened.
The rat was still staring as if it were prepared to do so all day, but so far, had made no threatening move. Lyda wondered if she could make friends with the thing and suddenly thought of Gavin. He would probably already be petting it and scratching behind its ea
rs, except for the fact that it didn't have ears she could see.
Lyda decided to make the first move. She took a careful step forward, then another. She stopped. The rat took a step toward her with its big hind legs. Lyda came closer. She raised her hand and very slowly stretched it out toward the creature, even while thinking how horrible it looked. It touched her hand with one of its skinny clawed digits, but Lyda sighed as she saw that the sharp claw retracted before it made contact with her. A sign of friendship? She gave it the benefit of doubt when it unfolded the other four digits, claws also retracted, and rubbed the tips of them across her open palm. Friendly? Yes, but was it intelligent? The tool it was holding in its other hand resembled nothing she had ever seen before. It was no help and might not even be a tool. She wondered if it could speak and decided to find out.
“Hello. My name is Lyda Brightner."
The thing made some unintelligible noises that might have been language, or might have been the rumblings of its last meal being digested.
She pointed to her chest. “Lyda."
It raised its hand to its head. “Sgghghhhgff,” it said, then it turned one of its eyes down to gaze at the metallic looking object in its other hand. It made another noise as it held the object upright. A slender knife blade extended and retracted back into the tool, then the creature attached it to the harness it was wearing.
Lyda supposed he had told her the name of the knife tool it had been holding but she couldn't even come close to pronouncing the noise it had made. She could see that language was going to be a problem, but that could be worried about later. Right now, she wanted to get away from this area before another of those giant cockroach things came along. She pointed toward the mushroom and shrub plain.
“Go,” she said.
“Bggghehhff,” it answered, but came with her, walking upright with a peculiar side to side wobble like a woman with extremely wide hips.
Lyda tried to sense its thoughts like she could now do with humans, but if it had a mind, it was in park. She gave up the attempt and concentrated on where they were going.
The mushroom looking growths had smaller clusters budding off at their bases, like piles of marbles arranged around a baseball. As she and Shaguff, as she began calling her companion, penetrated deeper into the plain, the growths became larger. Lyda could see to where they turned into an irregular brown and red forest in the distance.
Lyda remained very alert, not wanting to be taken by surprise, but she was anyway. As they neared a mushroom twice her height, it split open like an overripe melon and disgorged a cluster of knee high organisms that looked like caterpillars and moved like inchworms. In perfect unison like a platoon of soldiers at drill, they humped their way forward, coming directly toward them.
Lyda froze, not wanting to make any mistakes. Shaguff raised its tool as if brandishing a weapon. Lyda frantically waved her hand, then pointed to the ground. It wavered, then lowered its arm. The inchworm creatures stopped two feet from them, their movements still perfectly unified. All at the same time, they reared up, raising half their length. Lyda shivered when she noticed the first third of their undercarriage consisted of hundreds of tiny teeth, similar to the rasping maw of a sucker eel. When she and Shaguff made no hostile moves, they all swiveled together and moved off at a right angle. She watched as they headed directly toward another giant mushroom and burrowed inside it from the base. The worms were feeding on them.
Lyda felt a touch on her shoulder. She started and twisted her neck. Shaguff was touching her in a gesture she didn't understand. Respect? Friendship? Disgust for not killing and eating the inchworms? There was no way to tell for sure, but she thought it was trying to indicate to her that she had done the right thing. She hoped so.
A terrified human scream came from somewhere ahead of them, sounding as if the person was about to be torn to bits—which might very well be the case here, Lyda thought. She broke into a run toward the source of the sound, not waiting to see if Shaguff was coming with her.
Lyda came to an abrupt halt before a big grove of shrubs, all head high or above. A woman was darting here and there among the trunks, trying to escape the clutches of what Lyda first took to be a spider mech. Then she could make out that it was organic, a caricature of the earthly brown spider grown to monstrous size.
The woman's screams never stopped, even as she ran. She made a turn at the edge of the grove, intending to dart back into it for cover, when she saw Lyda. She changed her mind and ran toward her like a soldier under an artillery barrage searching for a foxhole. Then she saw Shaguff and halted. The screaming stopped but her eyes were crazed with fear. She looked over her shoulder and shrieked when she saw how close the spider thing was. She looked back at Shaguff, then like a prisoner forced to choose between death by hanging or a firing squad, decided that Shaguff was the lesser of two evils. She came on.
“Stop!” Lyda called to her. “Don't run, it might be friendly!"
The woman paid not the slightest heed. She galloped past them as if escaping from the Devil himself.
Lyda stood still as the spider approached. Once the woman was past them, it seemed to lose interest in her, but now they were the focus of its attention. Lyda saw that it really didn't resemble a spider that much, nor one of the alien spider mechs either. It had only four legs, with two other shorter appendages which writhed like captured snakes but ended in a cluster of tiny tentacles she was sure could function as efficiently as hands. It had no discernable head, but there was a maw in front guarded by mandibles that moved in all directions. It must be able to see, Lyda thought, even though it had nothing resembling eyes. The important thing was that it wasn't attacking.
Humans have an almost instinctive fear of spiders, a loathing for rats and disdain for crawling insects. Lyda could already see the pattern: the aliens were subjecting their human captives to the most terrifying and disgusting animals of earth in the guise of intelligent avatars. She had no doubt the thing in front of her was intelligent. It had a rope of woven matter coiled in loops and hanging from a handy backward facing hook above one of its mandibles, and odd bits of cloth were attached to various parts of its body. But the most telling feature was when she showed no fear (though she was quaking inside), and it didn't come toward her in a blind attack.
Shaguff backed up. Lyda motioned him (her? it? Call it him, she decided) forward, hoping he would understand the gesture, then waited. Pattern or no pattern, there was no way of telling whether or not the aliens had mixed potentially friendly or truly inimical creatures into the habitat together. This place will be like a continuous game of Russian Roulette, she thought. The spider—may as well call it that, she told herself—touched her outstretched hand with the cluster of little tentacles at the end of its front appendage. They writhed like worms in her hand. She had to consciously restrain herself from trying to shake them off, just as she would have if someone really had given her a handful of worms.
“Hello, I'm Lyda Brightner,” she said, doubting the being could speak. She didn't even know whether it could hear her or not. There was no answer to her greeting, but apparently, it was satisfied. It left her and approached Shaguff. He shrank back, raising his gadget again. Lyda waved for him to stop. He did, immediately.
That was all it took, but surprisingly, the spider decided there was something about them it liked and wanted to come with them. Lyda looked for the woman it had been chasing. She was a long way off, but had halted and was watching them, resembling a reluctant gladiator who had no intention of going back into the arena with the lions again. When Lyda started walking toward her, she broke into a run and was soon out of sight.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The new environment proved to be the toughest nut Lyda had yet tried to crack. She found few other individuals with strong enough minds to overcome their instinctive fears and dread of the creatures in this habitat. It was hard to even approach other humans with Shaguff and the spider, whom she immediately named Spi
dey, in tow. She began referring to the spider as her, assigning to it the opposite gender than Shaguff, just for amusement. She actually had no idea of what sex either of them were, or whether they had genders at all. Even with them along, she gradually accumulated some companions and began learning about their new home.
One of her new friends was Soo Long, a Korean who had grown up under a dictatorship so severe, even the worst of the environments he had been subjected to were an improvement over his previous life. He reacted to the different shaped occupants as if they were more of a nuisance than a threat. He was also absolutely fearless, causing Lyda to wonder how he had lasted so long.
“You're going to get yourself killed taking chances like that,” Lyda said, soon after they had met. Soo had just faced down something that resembled a cross between a praying mantis and a grizzly bear. He put his hands on it. It huffed and walked back toward the mushroom where they had encountered it on its peculiarly jointed legs. It walked like a crippled horse.
“I've thought I was dead so many times that it doesn't matter anymore,” Soo told her, watching the creature amble away. “Besides, you can only die once."
That was true, Lyda thought, but she wanted to live. One day, she hoped to see the end of these trials and find out what they were all about. She told Soo the same thing, hoping to change his attitude. She could read his surface thoughts easily, as she found she could with most people now. She was careful with the ability, using it only to judge people, not invade their privacy. Soo told her he had lost his only son to the security police of his homeland, then escaped across the border to China with his wife, only to see her killed by a spider mech when he was captured during the invasion.
“I'm not ready to die yet,” she emphasized.
Soo only shrugged. “Yes, you obviously have a love for life. And I would like to be around for the end of our strange adventures, but I've become a fatalist, I suppose. Nevertheless, I can be of help here. Only you and a few others are willing to brave the strange and different, but I sense you have become very important in the scheme of things. Better for me to die and you be spared if a confrontation turns lethal."
