Interstellar Pig

by William Sleator

  Would it be necessary for planets to be destroyed? Maybe an occasional example would be enough. Maybe just one at the beginning.

  Or maybe none at all.

  I had believed. Jrlb and Zulma and Moyna had believed—and none of us had known the real game to come to any conclusion at all.

  But I still needed one more piece of evidence.

  I was squished in the middle of a three-inch ball of lichen that had formed around The Piggy I was also aware that Moyna had sunk several feet. Her talon, according to those waiting impatiently beneath it, was now only .734 meters from the floor.

  "Hey, could I ask you a question?" I said to the lichen cell beside me. "Something I don't understand. I'm kind of new and young."

  "You don't look it," my companion said.

  I remembered that lichen couldn't lie to each other. "I know this Piggy thing is the prize in the game we're playing. But why do we want it, exactly? What does it do?"

  "What does it do?" The lichen seemed to find the question meaningless. "It is the prize. Without it, we will lose."

  "But what happens if we lose?"

  "How did you get into this colony anyway?" the lichen asked me suspiciously. "Why are you asking these stupid questions? You seem peculiar, different. I'm not sure I like being next to you."

  "Just answer me or I'll eat this thing!" I threatened it—I was right on top of The Piggy. "What happens if we lose?"

  Now the lichen seemed frightened of me. It knew I couldn't lie, so it believed my threat. "If we lose, we will be destroyed when the game ends. Everyone knows that. And don't you dare eat it! We've never been this close to winning before. You'll ruin everything!"

  "But what happened at the end of the last game?" I demanded. "Who was playing? Who was destroyed?"

  "The last game? But this is still our first game," the lichen said. "Excuse me." It jostled the cell on the other side of it. "Could you just trade places with me? I need a change of position. I'm a little cramped over here."

  I had offended it. It would probably start telling the others there was something wrong with me, and blow my disguise. But for the moment, I had learned enough from it. It had told me the same thing the other players had.

  It didn't know what happened at the end of the last game. Because this was its first game.

  The other players could have been lying, but not the lichen. Lichen couldn't lie. None of them had actually known The Piggy to destroy a species, or a planet, or anything at all.

  Was it really possible that The Piggy never destroyed anything? That the game was a hoax, devised to keep The Piggy in the center of the action, recording away?

  It seemed too good to be true. Yet it was far easier to believe than either flawed version of the game. And if it was true, all I had to do was let the creatures take The Piggy. And I'd be safe from them, and from their brutal game.

  But did I dare to believe it?

  The ball of lichen around The Piggy, now six inches thick, rolled off the shelf. We squelched softly down upon a cushion of our companions on the floor. We began rippling quickly toward the front door, ignoring even Moyna, who was crumpling down beside the fireplace.

  I opened myself up to the latest news. Lichen had been testing the poison at the exits. It had lost its effect. The door was locked, but busy cells had already eaten a large enough hole in the wood to get The Piggy out. And then we could be beamed with it, back to our ship.

  My blood was no longer poisonous. That must mean that I, in my natural form, was no longer immune—the pill had worn off. But I was in the very center of the colony now, still beside The Piggy. If I wanted to become Barney, before getting beamed up to their ship, I'd have to work my way back to the edge, quickly.

  But I had one more question for The Piggy. Piggy, what you said about the hiccup in fifteen minutes. Why did you tell me that? Because you'd been on the earth long enough, and wanted me to let you go? Or was it true?

  There was no response.

  The lichen had The Piggy now, not Barney. I was out of communication with it. It was tired of human beings, and wanted to stay with the lichen—it had told me it had never experienced them before.

  And then it had told me about its hiccup. That information made me give it to the lichen. That was probably exactly why it had told me it was going to hiccup. And it had worked.

  I had made my decision. I was moving away from The Piggy. Soon I reached a position where the mass was only one lichen thick. Then things became very difficult. The mass was moving with all its combined force toward the door.

  But I wanted to stay inside, to escape out of the mass. I was trying to move against the surging mob now, and it was nearly impossible. The best I could do was try to stay in one place, and not get pulled out the door with all the rest.

  It would have been easy if I were still immune. But apparently I wasn't. I couldn't risk becoming Barney until I had worked my way clear of them. I did the lichen equivalent of elbowing and kicking as they swarmed past me, cursing me, furious and uncomprehending.

  The decision was now irrevocable. I had sacrificed The Piggy to the lichen. If the board game was right, Moyna, Zulma, Jrlb, and Barney—as well as our planets and species—would be obliterated in thirteen and a half minutes. Only the lichen would survive.

  If The Piggy was right, then the lichen ship would be inflicted with a 100 megaton nuclear explosion in thirteen and a half minutes. Who else would feel the blast would depend on how close they were to the ship, and how fast it could move. There was a good chance it would be far enough away from the earth not to do much damage.

  And if I was right, no one would be destroyed in thirteen and a half minutes.

  I hoped I was right.

  21

  The lichen were moving very quickly, desperate to get the entire colony out under the sky where they could be beamed with The Piggy to their ship. Despite my furious efforts at resistance, I was being dragged toward the door. If I ended up on their ship, I'd never be able to take off the disguise, or they'd eat me. I would have to remain a lichen forever.

  That thought helped me to sustain my efforts. But by the time I had reached the back edge of the lichen mass, we were almost at the doorstep. And there was a wall at the back edge of the mass, a membranous skin that, as a lichen,

  I could not penetrate.

  All around me lichen were sliding under the crack below the door. I resisted, feeling the membrane stretch like elastic. But it wasn't going to break. In another instant I would be pulled through.

  Even losing a foot would be preferable to being trapped on their ship. As the observing part of me touched DEACTIVATE, the lichen part made one last push away from the door.

  And then I was Barney, toppling into the living room, my bare feet on the raised threshold of the front door. I bellowed. The parting gesture of my former companions was to eat through both my big toenails. But they had no time to finish the meal, and oozed off into the night.

  The pain, and the sudden disorienting change, left me stunned. I remained sprawled on the floor by the still locked front door, not thinking, feeling relief at having escaped the lichen so easily.

  Then I saw Moyna—or rather her four muscular tentacles. She had dropped the gun and was dragging her deflated head toward me, pulling herself along by digging her talons into the floor.

  I yelped and jumped to my feet, limping out of the way. But it wasn't me she was after now. Sure, if she'd been able to use the gun she probably would have killed me, just for the heck of it. But she was obviously too weak from lack of hydrogen to wield the gun, or do anything but drag herself painfully toward the door. All she wanted now was to get outside. Apparently, like the lichen, she needed to be in the open air in order to beam herself back to her ship.

  If she didn't die first. Her veiny, wrinkled head was as flat as a cartoon character run over by a steamroller, a two-dimensional pancake. She seemed to have barely a cubic centimeter of hydrogen left. If she died, I'd have her corpse on my hands
.

  Quickly I unlocked the door, flung it open, and peered outside. There was no sign of the lichen. They had departed quickly with their prize. "Come on,

  Moyna, out you go," I urged her. "Atta girl, you can do it, I know you can."

  But she still had several feet to cover, and she could barely move at all now. Swallowing my disgust, I reached under her slippery head and draped it over my arms. It was like picking up entrails. Carefully, carefully, I carried her outside and deposited her gently on the ground at the bottom of the porch steps. She had enough energy to carve a wicked gash in my arm with a talon before vanishing.

  "Gee, thanks a lot!" I shouted at the empty space where she had been. "After I help you and—"

  Then I remembered the others. Jrlb, who must have been observing from some safe vantage point, would probably have reached his ship already. But Zulma would be on her way out of the house any second now. And she wouldn't be weak and harmless like Moyna. She'd want to get in her parting shot. I ran from the steps and crouched down behind a pillar of the porch.

  With a throaty hiss and a brittle clatter, Zulma scurried from the house. She paused at the bottom of the porch steps. The weather had cleared. In the moonlight I saw her hideousness—the powerful jointed legs, the swollen belly, the huge insect eyes. Her bristly head swiveled like an owl's. She screeched, displaying her curving fangs.

  I had been watching from almost the same hiding place when she had made her original appearance. How compelling and attractive she had been, tossing back her luxuriant hair, greeting Ted so demurely. She had drawn and fascinated me from that first moment.

  Now she made one last disappointed vengeful shriek and vanished as Moyna had. She would have enjoyed killing me, but she didn't have time for that luxury.

  She was behind the others now.

  I still seemed to be wearing my old wristwatch. It was three minutes to two.

  If the earth did continue to exist, I would have a long night ahead of me. The house was a mess: furniture overturned, light fixtures broken, kitchen equipment sticking into walls. And there were dead lichen everywhere, which would have to be gathered up, somehow, in the dark, and dispensed with. They would probably make excellent compost.

  Now that the rain had stopped, Mom and Dad would probably be home soon—it must have been the rain that fortunately had prevented them from coming home any earlier It would be nice to get the mess cleaned up before they arrived, to avoid trying to explain it to them.

  But I didn't have to start just yet—there was no point in cleaning up if the world was going to be destroyed in two minutes. I stood up and walked to the middle of the front yard and looked up at the night sky. It was familiar, and,

  I suppose, beautiful. I had been in the dark for so long that the stars shone forth with unusual clarity.

  They were dim and dull compared to the stars on the board. And there were no colorful, detailed planets. I had halfway expected some shooting stars, but there weren't any.

  I stood and watched as the numbers on my digital watch blinked toward two o'clock.

  The moment came and passed. The earth remained. There was no bright flash of a hiccuping Piggy. I waited another minute, two more minutes, just in case my watch was slow. By ten after two, still nothing had happened.

  I turned back to the house.

  It was going to take me a little while to adjust to the fact that it was all over now, that things would go back to normal. There was a lot I wasn't sure about, including my own interpretation of The Piggy-

  But it had happened all right—the onerous cleanup that now confronted me was testimony to that. The reality of the job almost made me wish the whole thing had been a dream—almost, but not quite.

  One thing I was very sure of was that I was glad it was over. The others were so vicious that they made even the human race look good. But I almost felt sorry for them now, trapped in their frantic perilous game. Maybe they enjoyed it, but they were still the dupes of The Piggy, they were still its slaves.

  Only I had managed to escape.

  It made me wonder about their interpretation of the IRSC. Maybe they had it backward, and the higher numbers were better after all.

  It was a satisfying thought. Broom in hand, I began to whistle. There was a lot of sand mixed in with the dead lichen. It was always that way at the beach—no way to keep the sand out.

  EPILOGUE

  “That pathetic, vacuous little cretin!" Zulma shrieked, her legs whirling around her wildly as she punched control buttons. "Losing The Piggy to those accursed lichen!"

  "Vacuouss indeed," lisped Moyna from her own speeding ship—the three of them were communicating from their separate ships by radio. "Hiss brain musst be even more primitive than hiss IRSC ssuggesstss. He could eassily have killed me, but he wass too pitiably densse."

  "We're the ones who should be blaming him for that oversight, Moyna dear, not you," Jrlb pointed out. His ship was the closest to the lichen's. "If only he'd been a little smarter, he could have put you out of the game for good—and saved us the job."

  "It's just plain incomprehensible, baffling." Zulma had her ship on course now. She waddled from the controls and sank into her lounging net. She was not weightless; she was heavier than she was on most planets, in fact, because her ship was accelerating. "I will never understand it, never. Failing to exhibit the natural response to destroy an enemy. That species must be some kind of evolutionary blunder, a biological lapse. Unfit for the privilege of the game." She sank deeper, the net groaned under her weight as the ship's velocity increased.

  "Fortunately The Piggy iss now out of itss hand’s, and we will no longer have to ssuffer that sspeciess' detesstable pressence," said Moyna. She undulated comfortably in the vat of mucus that protected her fragile membranes from the rigors of high speed travel.

  "And we must make sure that some other second-rater like Luap does not drop it there again," Zulma insisted venomously. "I can only hope that the torment of his blood boiling was extreme. And to lose The Piggy in the past, on top of it all. Making it necessary for us to spend all that time in those odious disguises on that putrid planet, doing research on their rudimentary little culture in order to find it. Forcing us to work together!" The spinnerets on her abdomen shuddered at the very thought of that.

  "We sshould have killed him insstantly, and hiss parentss ass well, ass ssoon ass we learned he had The Piggy," Moyna whined, "Then the lichen wouldn't have it now." The lichen were going to be something of a problem.

  "To kill the whole family, and then be vulnerable to detection, without knowing where he had hidden The Piggy?" Jrlb paused to slurp down one of the eels that lived in his water tank. There weren't many adult eels left—he hoped the maturing eggs would hatch soon. "Even three little killings would have been noticed quickly—that species has a peculiarly hysterical attitude toward death. No, Moyna, the only way was to do as we did, and let him lead us to it."

  "But to let him forfeit it to the lichen!" Their contact with one another was growing fainter as they approached light speed, but the piercing frequency of Moyna's wail made it clearly audible to the others. They had passed the orbit of Pluto. The stars were beginning to blur. "Thosse abominable lichen. Who can't be approached. Who can hardly even think. Who can predict what they will do with it? How can it be wressted from them?"

  "Oh, so you don't have a strategy, Moyna dear?" Zulma's cackle was fading. "That is valuable information for me. I can make use of it in my own strategies." She paused, and her voice took on a mournful tone. "I only wish there had been time to rend the Barney creature slowly. The frustration of its leaves me empty and wanting."

  "Look on the bright side," Jrlb gurgled distantly. "His species was drawn into the game. The Piggy will destroy that species at the conclusion of the game.

  Let us all be thankful for that."

  The others agreed silently. Their ships, programmed to follow the lichen, achieved the wave frequency of light, cutting them off from one another.
>
  The lichen ship, meanwhile, was heading for home. Its controls were operated by the lichen's slaves, a simian species, docile and small-brained, who responded well to pain. The lichen were nestled together with The Piggy on their traveling bed of rich slime mold. The bed was constantly replenished by an automatic system connected to a vast store of freeze-dried mold spores, which took up much of the space of the ship. The lichen were free to occupy themselves as they wished. Like any species in possession of The Piggy, they were attempting to learn from it.

  They asked it many questions. "What can we do to keep you happy and satisfied?" "What type of organism do you take most pleasure in devouring?" "What is the secret of winning the game?"

  The Student Council this year has been extremely active in school affairs and in stimulating school spirit among the student body, The Piggy whirred blandly at them.

  WILLIAM SLEATOR graduated from Harvard with a degree in English and spent a year in England studying musical composition and working as a pianist. For nine years he was a rehearsal pianist for the Boston Ballet and composed three ballets for that company. He now lives in Boston and devotes himself to writing full-time. William Sleator's other popular novels include,

  Interstellar Pig, Singularity, The Boy Who Reversed Himself, and The Duplicate.