Interstellar Pig

by William Sleator

  Not much. My situation was really pretty desperate because I didn't have a thermal suit or even any breathing equipment. That limited me to planets which had low temperatures and atmospheres with lots of oxygen. Prxtln was cold enough, only I couldn't breathe there. On Mbridlengile, I would be not only too hot and unable to breathe, but also a victim of the carnivorous lichen.

  Was pitifully obvious Ja-Ja-Bee my only choice?

  It was, I decided. Then I lost the roll for planet envelopes, giving me last choice. Zena got to pick first. With a big grin in my direction, she drew Ja-Ja-Bee.

  I was baffled. Ja-Ja-Bee was useless to her—unless she knew I had The Piggy. But how could she know?

  I picked Prxtln, hopelessly, and then two other planets, without thinking much about it. One of them was all blazing desert, a furnace as far as Luap was concerned. The other was a yellowish planet named Teon with a nice oxygen atmosphere, but still far too warm. Where was I going to hide The Piggy?

  Now the others were busily stuffing their envelopes. The Piggy grinned vacantly at me from my hand, as simple and artless as a child's drawing. And it still gave me a jolt to look at it, the feeling of something jumping out at me in the dark.

  "We're waiting, Barney," Zena said.

  The others had finished with their envelopes and were complacently sipping wine. They were smiling at me, apparently friendly: Zena, Manny, and Joe, the glamorous people next door, who really did seem to like me after all, forgiving me for this afternoon, including me in their game.

  Only right now, they were a hairy spider-lady; a fishman with a long, razor-sharp horn growing out of his head; and a flying octopus with claws. And they would happily kill me to get the smiling pink tiling in my hand.

  I looked quickly away from the gruesome trio and back to my hand. And I noticed something I had missed before: Teon had two little ice caps on Its poles, like Earth. Glacial areas where I could breathe and also be comfortable. Suddenly I be-very busy with my cards.

  "Ready," I said. Joe pressed the timer, and the game was on.

  The game went fast with four players, especially since all the others seemed to have their strategies well planned, moving purposefully across the board.

  My only strategy was not to make it obvious that I had hidden anything important on Teon, which happened to be the closest planet to my starting point of Ja-Ja-Bee. I left home and moved as quickly as possible in the opposite direction of Teou, hoping to lead them off the track.

  Then Zulma landed on a blinking star, and took an instruction card which ordered her to land directly in the surface of Ja-Ja-Bee, where she was to spend her next three turns.

  "Poor fat Zulma," Moyna giggled. "Your bloated brain won't save you now."

  I understood Moyna's glee at getting the dangerous intelligent spider-lady so quickly out of the game. Would the atmosphere poison her before she had time to freeze to death? I was curious to see.

  But Zulma wasn't perturbed. She had brought portable breathing equipment with her. And, since Ja-Ja-Bee had been one of the planets she had chosen at the beginning, she had cache a powerful heat pump there, as well as a stash of freeze-dried mosquito larvae, her favorite food. She had a nice, cozy little sojourn, saving up fuel, biding her time—and she was now conveniently close to Teon, which made me uneasy.

  My uneasiness grew when I noticed that Moyna and Jrlb were both zeroing in on Teon as well. My long brooding over the cards, added to the fact that Teon was the only planet I had chosen on which I could survive, must have tipped all three of them off. They all knew The Piggy was on Teon—and meanwhile, I had stupidly put myself halfway across the universe from it.

  On my next turn I reversed direction and began heading back. It was sadly obvious, but what else could I do?

  When Zulma's waiting period was up, she rolled a 9, which brought her only three stars from Teon. In another move, she'd be there.

  Then Jrlb took his turn, and landed on the same star as Zulma. That meant direct combat in space.

  The game was so hypnotic that I could almost see Zulma strapping on her breathing gear and scrabbling out of the ammonia lock. In my imagination—aided by the rule book—her abdomen throbbed, spinnerets wriggled. Sticky threads emerged, attaching themselves to her ship's hull. Zulma launched herself into space, propelling herself by spewing out thread behind her, which had the strength of coaxial cable and kept her safely anchored to her ship.

  Water-breathing Jrlb also had portable breathing equipment. Even so, on the surface of most planets he would have been at a terrible disadvantage, since the water in his tanks weighed a ton per cubic meter on Earth. But he was in space now, so the tanks weighed nothing. He also had a mini-rocket strapped between his legs, which enabled him to propel himself in any direction. In combination with his sleek swimmer's body it made him spectacularly agile. He zoomed from his ship, his sword pointed directly at Zulma's soft underbelly.

  Zulma could move by spewing out thread, but she couldn't retract it. Smart as she was, in space she was infinitely slower and clumsier than Jrlb.

  Jrlb darted ahead of Zulma and sliced her cable in two with his sword. Zulma rolled and tumbled helplessly, tangled in cord, separated from her ship. Jrlb dived and then came up from below her, his sword slashing through the vacuum. A couple of strokes, and the cord wrapped around her would be in shreds, and after that, her abdomen.

  "Go get her, Jrlb! Slice her to ribbons!" urged the fragile, delicate Moyna in Manny's breathy squeal. I was actually beginning to feel sorry for Zulma, so awkward and helpless.

  But I had forgotten about her brain. Zulma wouldn't have left her ship without another card up her sleeve. It was a laser gun, clutched in her maw. As Jrlb came up from below for the kill, she let him have it.

  It was all over in a flash; he didn't even have a chance to utter his death bellow. Quietly his tanks dissolved; there would only be the hiss of water vaporizing. Nothing was left of him but the charred, twisted remains of his once mighty sword, spinning away, I imagined, to drift eternally in space.

  "Three-man game," Joe grunted, slamming down his hand.

  "Too bad, Joe," said Zena matter-of-factly, grabbing his cards without looking up. Zulma busily went through the attributes she had won from Jrlb, to see if there were any worth keeping.

  That reminded me that there were other attribute cards stashed away on various planets. I was quite close to Flaeioub, which, I remembered, was one of Moyna's envelopes. I could breathe on Flaeioub. I took the risk of darting down there on my next turn, instead of continuing to head back to Teon. And I was in luck. Moyna had left the Portable Access to Hyperspace card in her envelope. There was only one of them in the whole deck, and it functioned exactly like the black funnels on the board: It took you anywhere instantly.

  But why would Moyna leave such an important card at home? She wasn't stupid—her IRSC number was better than my character's. I hadn't read all of the rule book, but I had made a special point of looking up the IRSC. The higher—or worse—a character's number was, the fewer clever moves he was allowed to make, because he wouldn't be smart enough to think of them. The lower his number was, the more moves were available. And so I was a little shocked, as well as elated, that Moyna would leave the hyperspace card behind.

  In my excitement, it didn't occur to me that Moyna must have had a reason for doing it—such as wanting to keep an even more powerful card in her hand. . . .

  I took the hyperspace card, leaving one of my own in its place, as the rules stated. I entered hyperspace and was instantly on the northern ice cap of Teon, guarding The Piggy, ahead of the other two.

  Moyna moved six stars closer. Then Zulma hit another instruction card: You, and the closest player in transit, proceed to surface of nearest planet for mutually beneficial trade.

  Only, with me already there, it wouldn't be "mutually beneficial trade." It would be combat, two against one.

  It was late autumn on Teon, according to the timetable in the rule book, and the norther
n polar tip would be entering into its winter of perpetual night. I stood on an ice field. A shriveled corona of dusk lay weakly on the horizon. As I pictured the scene, vast onrushing shadows of distant cliffs, magnified out of all proportion by the departing sun, swept over and swallowed the last raised patches of dully glittering snow around me,

  Only two shapes were high enough still to be touched by a dying orange glow as they swooped toward me. I imagined Moyna's head billowing in the rush of her descent, her tentacles undulating behind her, each ending in a vulture's claw. Zulma would be a fat blemish on the sky, black as the speeding cliff shadows, except for the last of the sunlight that twinkled and flashed from her needlelike teeth and many faceted eyes.

  And they were chatting quite amiably, out of earshot, trading attributes, making deals—all aimed at getting rid of me.

  I began to panic. My lighting equipment would have been an advantage, only I had exchanged it for Moyna's hyperspace card. I had a disguise card, enabling me to resemble the inhabitants of the planet, but no locals lived up here—my pursuers would know it was me, no matter what I looked like. I had some kind of neural whip, but that wouldn't be much help against Zulma's laser gun—especially since she'd be able to see much better than me, with her enormous eyes. I had something called euphoric gas, but I hadn't had a chance to find out what that would do to them—or to me. I had plenty of food and water, and I had the built-in bodily advantage of being comfortable at this temperature. But with their lethal bodily advantages, they could dispense with me so fast they'd be out of here before they had time to feel the slightest chill—even without Zulma's heat pump.

  The last threadlike glow shrank beneath the horizon. My pursuers grew rapidly larger and less distinct in the enveloping dimness.

  But I had forgotten something: the slug that lived in my mouth. The slug was a brain without a body, who could not move or see or touch or smell on his own, but who could survive by absorbing the remnants of food left on my teeth. And who, when agreeably satiated, would repay me by improving my IRSC to an absolutely transcendent 3.9.

  "Are you ever going to wake up and eat something, you cretin?" he reminded me. I was so caught up in the game, I could almost hear his voice, a petulant sour twang. It was his hungry voice, and it wasn't pleasant. "Spider meat," he suggested. "I'm in the mood for some nice crunchy little spiders."

  Reptile though I was, spiders were my least favorite food—and hairy Zulma bearing down on me didn't make the thought any more appetizing. Still, I had a good supply of them. I shoved several handfuls into my mouth, frantically gobbling them down.

  "Hey, slow it down, you retard!" the slug peeped piercingly at me, curled up against my palate out of danger from my teeth. "I've told you over and over again! You must masticate your food properly. Otherwise it does me no good at all."

  Slowly, thoroughly, I chewed. In the imaginary gloom, Zulma seemed to have landed about a hundred yards away from me. Moyna was a pale shape beside her. The low hydrogen here had been the .cause of Moyna's rapid descent, and now she seemed to be able to hover only inches above the ice, moving slowly. As my slug grew full, my IRSC began moving toward 10, and I began speculating about Moyna's trump card—the card so powerful she had left her hyperspace card at home for me to take.

  There weren't many cards that powerful.

  "Ah, that's a little better now," chirped my slug, whose name was Zshoozsh, a little more amiably. "I feel just energetic enough to start tossing you some really scintillating hormones, pal." He went into meditation. My IRSC zoomed past 7, past 5, all the way to 3.9.

  Of course, Zshoozsh wasn't trying to save my hide purely out of the goodness of his nonexistent heart. He simply knew that if I went, he went too.

  If Luap's IRSC had been this low from the beginning, of course, he would have had more options. He would have taken The Piggy immediately from Teon and zipped home with the hyperspace card. Luap at IRSC 25, however, had not been allowed by the rules to make that move. He had stood and watched the eerie sunset and fretted. And now, since the others had landed, direct combat could not be avoided.

  But Luap at 3.9 might be brilliant enough to make up for his near fatal blunder. Moyna, sagging and limp as a deflated inner tube, was too sluggish and earthbound to be much of a threat. Zulma, with her heat pump and breathing gear, was the real danger. And she knew it too. I couldn't see much, but I was intelligent enough to interpret the most minimal signals. Zulma was taking aim with the laser gun.

  I lashed out with the neural whip, sending the laser gun spinning off into the distance and stunning Zulma briefly. But only briefly. In the next instant she was upon me, knocking me to the ice with her superior weight, slashing with her pincers. I couldn't slide out from under her. The bottom half of her face fell open. Paralyzing fangs lunged for my neck.

  I popped the capsule of euphoric gas. It was a risk, because I did not have the antidote. But it was my only chance. And perhaps my superior intellect would leave me less incapacitated than her.

  We rolled away from each other, giggling. Zulma lay helplessly on her back, flailing her legs and gasping out nasty spider limericks in her native tongue.

  I was smart enough to understand them. In any other condition they would have repelled me, but in my drunken state I thought they were hilarious. I lay there and laughed at her wit, and thought about how beautiful the black ice field looked against the almost as black sky.

  My super intelligence did tell me what card Moyna must have, as she dragged herself, her limbs nearly inflexible with cold, to The Piggy. But I didn't bother trying to stop her. "Oh, Zulma, I can't stand it!" I wailed in mirth.

  "The irony's too much. Poor dumb little Moyna, and all the time she had the Portable Access to the Fifth-Dimensional Matrix." I emitted another shriek.

  "And now she has the hyperspace card back too!"

  Then Moyna was gone. Zulma and I both felt it. Just as the hyperspace card took you out of normal space, so that you could go anywhere in an instant, the fifth-dimensional matrix card took you out of time. Moyna, with The Piggy in tow, could now go anywhen she would like. And naturally she took The Piggy to the end of the game, when the alarm went off.

  Luap and Zulma were still trapped in real time. And The Piggy was eternally out of reach to them.

  They could do nothing but wait until the end of the game, anticipating the loss of their lives and their planets.

  Fortunately, since there hadn't been much time left in the game anyway, their gassed euphoria persisted until it was over, preventing them from suffering as much as they might have.

  But as soon as the alarm went, the euphoria went too. The three losing planets blinked off the board.

  "What a loathsome sound that thing makes!" Zena said, quickly switching it off.

  "It sounds quite cheerful and mellifluous to me," Manny said, displaying the round smirking Piggy to all of us.

  "Watch it, Manny," Zena warned him. There was no humor in her voice; she was a poor loser. "Don't shove it. You cheated back there. You didn't inform me you had the fifth-dimensional matrix. Things might have been otherwise if you had."

  "You didn't ask me," Manny pointed out. "I didn't cheat at all. And anyway, you were planning to kill me down on that ice cap, as soon as you got rid of Lu—Barney, weren't you."

  "I don't want to talk about it!" She pushed her chair back and stood up from the table. She stared down at me. "I don't like it when people keep things hidden from me," she said, quite slowly. "It makes me very mean."

  She stared at me for so long it began to seem a little strange, "What are you looking at me for? I didn't hide anything from you," I said, quite truthfully—I was still too caught up in the game to remember what was going on outside the game. "We both lost. Fair and square."

  Now Joe was watching me too, chewing grimly at his lip, but I still couldn't figure out what might be the matter with them. The game had left me in a kind of stupefied daze. It was more intense than the way I felt after finishing an exci
ting book. It had been like actually being in the book. Was Joe angry because I had lasted longer than he had?

  "I think Barney played very decently for a beginner," Manny said, with a nervous little smile. Their unsportsmanlike behavior was taking away his pleasure in winning. "He'll be a real whiz after a few more games."

  "If we ever let him play again," Zena said. She had become another person, some kind of cold evil queen out of a fairy tale. "We don't like playing with liars and cheats."

  Then Joe's mood suddenly shifted. "Oh, relent, Zena. You know we must play with him again. It's the only . . . It's not right to get someone involved and then suddenly exclude them. And you have to confess, Barney has talent. He almost came close to winning, on his first four-man game—if Manny hadn't had the fifth-dimensional matrix. That card's hard to beat."

  "The fifth-dimensional matrix didn't help Luap very much," Manny said, with a surprisingly bitter laugh. "That's what got us into this whole mess. If it weren't for that we'd—"

  "For God's sake, Manny!" Zena cried, swiftly turning away from me, her voice shrill.

  Manny didn't know where to look, or what to say. He seemed terribly embarrassed. If he hadn't been so tanned, he might have been blushing.

  "Huh?" I said, confused. "But I ... Luap didn't have the fifth-dimensional matrix. You did, Moyna—I mean Manny. What are you all ... ?" I sank into my chair, shaking my head.

  "Manny was just referring to a game we played the other day," Joe explained. "Oh. I see," I said. But why should that account for Zena's horrified response and Manny's shamed reactions? They had been so friendly before the game; now that it was over, nothing they did was making any sense. I looked at my watch.

  It was a quarter to ten. Gratefully, I stood up.

  "I guess it's time for me to go now," I said. "Anyway, I don't want to intrude. Thanks for letting me play. It was wonderful. I really would like to play again." I was backing for the door.