Interstellar Pig

by William Sleator

  What I felt first of all was hunger. No wonder the little things were so greedy! This was like no hunger I had ever known. It was as wrenchingly persistent as the impulse to take one's next breath.

  It was fortunate for Mom and Dad that the living room rug was an imitation Oriental of virgin acrylic. A real wool one wouldn't have lasted five minutes.

  It was also a good thing that the lichen were indifferent to linoleum, which prevented us from devouring the floors themselves.

  Still, those of us in the living room weren't starving. The discomforting claim made by biologists that people live among dense swarms of invisible microorganisms—no matter how "hygienic" people imagine themselves to be— turned out to be true. There were tasty bugs everywhere, small, but in such vast numbers that we could stay alive. It was like subsisting on endless trays of hors d'oeuvres.

  We lusted after the large, slimy and succulent Moyna, out of our reach for the time being. But not permanently out of reach. Only something tenuous and artificial kept her aloft. Under natural conditions she would be down here with us. And nature could often be relied upon. The main course might be coming yet.

  We had followed Moyna and Zulma and Jrlb to this planet, and to this house. We wanted The Piggy too. And we had been able to recognize the creature who lived here, and who therefore must have The Piggy, by its similarity to the local organisms. We knew that eating little bits of it would quickly persuade it to give The Piggy to us— though it wouldn't have saved the creature from being rapidly devoured once we had the prize.

  But now the unexpected disappointment was reaching those of us by the hearth.

  The creature that possessed The Piggy was poisonous. The companions who had made the first attempts at persuasion had died—as had many others upon whom the creature had inflicted itself, before the news of its nature had become widely known.

  Since the individual lichen cells did not have a lot in the way of personality, losing a few dozen cells did not have the tragic impact it would have in a human population. We were not sentimental creatures; whatever "emotions" we had were limited to food. Still, companions dying was a negative experience, because it weakened us,

  And now the ripples of frustration and indecision increased. The creature with The Piggy had vanished. Furthermore, we were trapped in this dwelling, by the poison it had left at the exits. There wasn't much we could do, except continue to eat. Those units directly underneath Moyna began to speculate on how it might be possible to bring her down. More sustenance would give us strength.

  The Barney part of me, meanwhile, was thinking hard. I wondered at first why my touch did not wither the lichen immediately adjacent to me. It must be that, being a lichen, I could not be poisonous to myself, or to the others, while in disguise. That was fortunate, because it kept me an invisible member of the multitude. A single isolated lichen, with a wide swath around it, would have been an easy target for Moyna.

  Continuing to eat and passing on little snippets of information were automatic functions. I seemed to be able to carry them on, while at the same time keeping my real thoughts—as Barney—to myself. The time had come for my dialogue with The Piggy. And even in disguise, I didn't have a lot of time. At any moment Moyna might get smart—or bored and impatient—and begin burning up random patches of lichen with her gun.

  Piggy.' I thought. Can you hear me?

  Describe physiological—There was an abrupt pause. Then The Piggy whirred, Something has aJ-tered. Describe physiological alteration.

  I'm a lichen, hiding from Moyna. But I don't have much time. The truth, Piggy.' What really happens at the—

  You're a lichen? That's marvelous! The Piggy's voice rose slightly in pitch, like a record played just a bit too fast. A lichen? Oh, I envy you, enjoying such a fantastic experience. What is it like? Describe it in all possible detail.'

  It's not enviable at all, I explained, trying to keep my patience. All they care about is eating and killing. Please, there isn't much time. What are you? What happens at the end of the game?

  But I have never known the lichen experience. It is a mystery to me. Describe, describe, The Piggy begged me. Describe each sensation of it in precise physiological detail!

  Moyna screeched again. There was a flash, and the other andiron melted. The lichen would go next.

  All right, all right, I'll describe it! I frantically promised. But first, you tell me what you are, and what happens at the end of the game!

  There was another brief pause. Can you communicate with the lichen? The Piggy asked me, in its original, not speeded up, voice.

  Yes, yes, I'll tell you all about it. Just tell me what you are, and why all the creatures want you. Hurry!

  But it is I... I who want them.

  What?

  Yes. It is I who want them. That is the function of what you call the game. Without it, I might be relegated for aeons to the depths of the interstellar void. The idea seemed to terrify it.

  So the game is to make creatures want you. . . . The revelation that the game was deceptive was not a complete surprise. I had already noticed a flaw in the board game when it was translated into reality: If all the losers were destroyed, the game would end after one round. But why is the game necessary in order to make creatures want you? I asked. What's so bad about you, that they would throw you away in outer space?

  I have the hiccups.

  For that, I was not prepared. But I don't get it. So what if you have the hiccups? They're harmless.

  Harmless indeed, to myself, The Piggy mechanically uttered. An involuntary spasm, over which I have no control. Unfortunately, its effect in this universe is equivalent to a 100 megaton nuclear explosion.

  It was a good thing lichen weren't emotional. I was able to remain somewhat rational as this piece of information sank in. But the shock of it forced me to break my electrical contact with the adjacent lichen. It took all my concentration to absorb it fully, to take the statement to its logical conclusion.

  That means . . . the game is backwards? I asked, after a pause. Everybody thinks The Piggy means safety, but what really happens is, the player who has The Piggy is destroyed at the end? Not the others?

  An unfortunate deception. But circumstances gave me no other choice. Who would want me if they knew?

  The adjacent lichen were beginning to notice something was wrong, bombarding me with impulses that were increasingly difficult to ignore. There was also Moyna, who would soon be taking aim at the hearth. Only my phlegmatic lichen personality kept me cool enough to inquire, And when is your next hiccup going to happen?

  By my standards, instantly. By yours . . . approximately thirty-three minutes.

  19

  The observer part of me glanced at the luminous dial of my wristwatch. It was 1:27.

  Doing my lichen's best to remain imperturbable, I considered my options.

  My first impulse was to throw off my disguise and hand The Piggy over to Moyna, who would then depart with it from the earth as quickly as her ship would take her.

  But I stopped myself in time. She would shoot me as soon as I resumed my human form. And if she didn't she would be immediately suspicious. How could I explain giving up The Piggy, without giving away its secret? The only way to get rid of it was to be as indirect, and deceptive, as the game itself.

  It occurred to me briefly to be noble, to sacrifice my life to save the earth by allowing Moyna to kill me and find The Piggy herself. But I quickly assured myself that without my help she wouldn't have time to find The Piggy before it went off.

  I also wondered, for a moment, what would happen if Mom and Dad showed up now. I could hardly picture the scene. It was too terrible to contemplate.

  The lichen around me were getting extremely suspicious. In a moment they would see through my disguise. I opened myself up to them. Lots of information poured in. A large arm of us, it seemed, was silently climbing the wall behind Moyna, planning to drop down upon her from the ceiling, eat through her gas bag and send her t
o the floor—if she didn't notice and kill us first.

  But I didn't want Moyna to die. I wanted her to find The Piggy. And the knowledge that the lichen were capable of scaling vertical heights gave me an idea. Perhaps they could lead her to it.

  As quickly as I could I began broadcasting The Piggy's location. The ones next to me didn't seem to understand at first. I continued sending out the information that the prize was nearby, in the bookcase directly above us.

  Finally my neighbors caught on. Growing as agitated as lichen can be, they began transferring the information.

  It did not occur to me, at that moment, to wonder how much I could really trust The Piggy.

  I sensed ripples of excitement flowing across the living room and into the kitchen. The arm reaching up behind Moyna paused. I began suggesting that we should form an arm to scale the bookcase and get the prize. Such mass movement couldn't be organized by one cell, of course. It would have to be by common consensus, which took a little while. I urged them to hurry. We had thirty minutes left.

  It was out of my control now. I had given the lichen the information; they had accepted it. I could only wait, and broadcast urgency, and hope it all went fast enough to get The Piggy out in space before it hiccuped.

  Waiting around wasn't good for my state of mind. That was when I saw that there was a flaw in The Piggy's version of the game, too—a big fat one. As soon as it hiccuped, destroying the unfortunate winner of the game, and whatever planet he or she was on, The Piggy's secret would be out. The surviving players would realize at once that The Piggy was a liability, not the asset it was in the board game. No one would want it then. They would shun it. It would be relegated to an eternity in the void—which was exactly what it didn't want.

  Had The Piggy lied to me?

  The lichen had made a decision. I began moving along with the flow, across the hearth, toward the bookcase. Ahead of me, lichen were oozing up onto the first shelf.

  But the arm on the wall behind Moyna was moving too. It had reached the ceiling and was inching along toward her head. And Moyna hadn't noticed. She was watching those of us climbing the bookcase. We were a diversion, attracting her attention and keeping her in one place until the others could reach her and fall upon her.

  I was still debating with myself about The Piggy, trying to decide between the conflicting versions of the game. Which one made more sense?

  Are you really telling me the truth, Piggy? I demanded. A lot of lives depend on it.

  I'm not as stupid as they think. They'll never find me here, The Piggy blandly recited.

  Forget Luap and listen to me.' I ordered it. Your version of the game doesn't work either. Help me, please! What do you really do?

  It is not only fate, my dear Ethan, but how a man responds to the blows dealt him by fate, that determines his true destiny, droned The Piggy. Stop quoting that dumb old captain.' I screamed silently, so beside myself that the lichen around me were a little startled. But I was beyond logic. Just tell me what you really are, and what's really going to happen in twenty-seven minutes. Please, what is the truth?

  Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty—That Is All Ye Know on Earth and All Ye Need To Know, it said mildly. Future Teachers of America, 2, 3, President 4; Pep Club,

  I, 2; Prom Queen Attendant, 4.

  Had the thing gone mad? Piggy, please don't desert me now.'

  A Man of Honesty He Is, and Trust. Varsity Wrestling, 3, 4; Intramural Football, 3, 4; Stamp Club, 1.

  But it had deserted me. It was quoting from the yearbook. True or false, it seemed to have said all it was going to say on the subject. I was on my own now.

  But not really. I was still a part of the lichen colony, in the vanguard, in fact, of the arm climbing toward The Piggy. We were at the level of the mantel now, mounting steadily over the tattered bindings. The observing part of me could see that the other arm had just about reached the spot on the ceiling directly over Moyna's soft throbbing inflated head. Several inches of lichen seemed to be loosening, preparing to attack.

  Then, unaware of her own danger, Moyna wafted toward the bookcase, fascinated by our arm. Behind her, a dozen or so lichen tumbled silently to the floor, just missing her. The arm on the ceiling began crawling forward again.

  I was locked into the chain of events I had begun when I had wanted to get rid of The Piggy. I could do little to change anything now—which was just as well, because I was a confused wreck. I didn't know what to believe.

  In only a few minutes, the lichen would reach The Piggy. And then, if Moyna was still alive, the battle for it would begin. When that happened, I would have to take specific action. And that action would depend on the answer to one simple question.

  Did I want The Piggy or not?

  20

  I appealed to The Piggy again as we inched toward the ceiling, sustaining ourselves on bookworms and silverfish and mildew. The Piggy responded with more inanities from the yearbook, in its mechanical voice.

  Moyna was so close to us now that her fetid succulence was intoxicating, almost overwhelming. If she had been a couple of inches nearer, we might have lost control and hurled ourselves upon her from the bookcase. But Moyna, who seemed to be familiar with the lichen, kept just out of our jumping range in this planet's gravity. We gritted our figurative communal teeth and moved up to the top shelf.

  The Piggy, inside the yearbook, was quoting from the yearbook now. Before, it had quoted Luap, and Ethan, and the captain.

  We were moving horizontally across the shelf toward the yearbook. I had managed to work my way into the front line. I tried to move as slowly as possible, to give myself more time to think. "Slowly, slowly, wait, she'll take it from us if she sees," I told the others, hoping to get them to stop.

  It seemed to work. As the message passed to those behind us, the arm slowed. We came to a standstill several volumes away from the yearbook. The Piggy was still quoting from it.

  I had thought, at first, that The Piggy told the truth. But I had been wrong.

  What it actually did, most of the time, was listen and quote. It didn't really communicate; it requested information and it repeated. It repeated things it read; it repeated what people said. It heard and then played back. That made me think of something—something familiar. And I was suddenly so excited that it was almost more than my lichen membranes could take.

  What The Piggy reminded me of was a tape recorder. An intelligent tape recorder, that was always prompting me to describe my sensations to it.

  I struggled to keep my agitation in check. But maybe I did have the answer. It was a kind of sentient recording device, programmed to learn— about many different species.

  The Piggy certainly sounded like a machine. I tried to remember everything it had said. The only time it hadn't quoted, or prompted, was when it gushed rapidly about wanting to be a lichen. And right after that it told me that it was going to blow up. And I had immediately told the lichen where I had hidden it. Perhaps that's what The Piggy had wanted me to do—so that it could move on to a new species.

  I felt myself being pushed forward from behind. "The other arm is above her now. They are about to drop. Move for The Piggy. She will be eaten before she can take it from us. Move on, move on, move on."

  It was like being dragged down by an undertow, or caught in a mob. The force was irresistible. We crawled along the shelf. We reached the yearbook.

  Moyna's shriek was so piercing and high-pitched, it might have broken my eardrums, if I'd had eardrums. As lichen, we couldn't exactly hear, but we were keenly aware of Moyna's situation. The attack had begun.

  The platoon had landed on Moyna's portable breathing bag, not her actual flesh. Though the bag was inedible, the lichen were able to puncture it instantly, rendering it useless.

  With a lash of a tentacle Moyna flung the bag away from her. It careened madly around the room, spitting hydrogen, until it finally drifted to the floor, with its clinging passengers. If only one of them had achieved a landing on Moyna's act
ual flesh, it could have eaten through her natural gas bag, mortally wounding her and sending her down to be agonizingly dined upon.

  But Moyna had moved too quickly. Not a single lichen had touched her. There was still a cubic foot of hydrogen in her head, diminishing with every breath, but still enough to keep her aloft for a short time. And that might be all she needed.

  We had eaten through the yearbook cover by now, doing our best not to taste the disgusting material, ingesting and excreting it as rapidly as possible. It would be clear to Moyna that The Piggy was within the volume. But she couldn't take it from us. We swarmed all over it; one touch of her talon, and we'd be swarming all over her. All she could do was watch and wait, tensed to pounce for The Piggy if the opportunity presented itself. But she was losing hydrogen, sinking millimeter by in evitable millimeter toward the floor, wkere our companions were hungrily waiting.

  I ingested and regurgitated on the front line, wanting to reach The Piggy before any of the others. But I was still thinking faster than ever.

  The idea that The Piggy was a recording device made more sense than anything I had come up with yet. It needed the game because its function was to learn about the players. And to record what it learned.

  I ate through the last sheet of paper, and there was The Piggy, startling me again with its primitive vapid ugliness. But I knew that it was not primitive at all. I wrapped my lichen body around it, being sure to stifle all digestive functions so that it would not be harmed.

  The Piggy was programmed to learn. To do so, it had to provide some reason for the subjects of its study to want it around. Otherwise, it would be neglected, empty, learning nothing. And what better reason for wanting it was there than fear—fear of being destroyed, and the resulting need for safety, for protection?

  The game threatened to destroy the creatures, and The Piggy promised safety. And that was why all the creatures wanted it, and fought over it, and gave it the exciting contact with them that it craved.

  But did the danger even have to be real? I wondered. Did species really have to be wiped out? Or could it be a false threat, to make the creatures compete for the protection offered by The Piggy? After all, it was what the creatures believed about The Piggy that would make them do what it wanted, whether it was true or not. The board game, and the awesome powers provided by the real equipment, seemed to do a good job of convincing them.