by Hugh Howey
“The big black one asked me if I was Catholic, too, and I said, ‘Oh, hell, yeah. As Catholic as the Pope,’ even though I was raised slapdash Buddhist. They all buzzed back and forth again. I think they looked it up while they tried to figure out what to do with us. I’d gotten my app working by that time, even though—wouldn’t you know it—our phone systems aren’t compatible with theirs so I couldn’t call the cops, but I could listen to them.
“Another big black ladybug said, ‘We can’t kill them if don’t have religious rites. It is wrong thing.’
“And an orange one said, ‘We can’t shove them back up hole. Whole bug-a-bug national army come down on us.’
“That’s when Ellis and I figured out they were rebels, and he was all like, ‘Whoa, dudes. We’re wasted as Macbeth on a pub crawl though Inverness. We don’t even know where we are, and we won’t tell anybody we saw you.’
“And the orange one turned his whole head at us, all those hundreds of black eyes glittering in the sparking light of the flare, and said”—Blake’s voice dropped to the most menacing rasp yet—“‘So, Soft-Shells, no one knows where you are.’
“I was all, ‘Um, we’re cool, ya know? We’re on your side. Screw the government.’
“The orange Chitterer was smarter than the other ones. He just stared at us with those multi-faceted eyes like brilliant-cut black diamonds. They don’t blink, ever. He just watched us, like he was looking for a mark on us or something.
“I said, ‘We’re just college students, on a bender during a vacation.’
“‘You Soft-Shells go to government university?’ Orange Bug asked.
“‘No, heck no!’ Ellis said, even though his face was mashed and his eyes were turning purple and swelling shut. ‘Private college. No, we don’t have any truck with the government. We hate those guys.’
“Orange Bug shined a flashlight beam at the hole we had fallen through. ‘What up there?’
“‘Sleds,’ I said. ‘Food. Water. Libations.’
“Orange Bug stared at the ceiling, thinking, then he pointed his big, long, pointy stick that was obviously a gun at us.
“‘Whoa! Dude! Sir! You don’t have to shoot us!’ I said.” Blake raised her hands to mime warding off the guns, all vulnerable palms and pale fingers. “‘We’re on your side.’
“‘Move,’ Orange Bug said.” Blake mimicked his terrible hacking voice again. “‘Over there.’
“Ellis cradled his broken arm, and we scooted like drunk crabs over to some rocks about fifty meters away.
“Orange Bug pointed his gun at the hole we fell through. A bayonet shot out of the end, but there was no bang or whiff of gunpowder. They don’t use anything that’s hot or on fire, you know, because of the hydrogen and oxygen mix of their air. Remember first-year chemistry? Oxygen supports combustion, but hydrogen is combustible. If you add fire, poot! It explodes.
“That bayonet, I don’t know what it was made of, but it dipped through the rock and scooped out a chunk like the ceiling was soup.
“And then our sleds fell through the bigger hole. WHOMP!”
At the party, telling the story, Blake slammed her palm flat on the table beside her. Four drinks on it jumped. One tipped and was going over toward her, but I grabbed it.
“Thanks,” she said to me. “Quick hands, there.”
“Yeah,” I said, wanting to fade back into the crowd, away from her luminescent gaze.
Blake turned away from me and continued, “And the fall popped all our liquor pouches like water balloons. The booze spilled all over the floor. Black Bug yelled, ‘It’s flammable!’ and they all skittered back.
“We were like, ‘Dudes, or Bugs, or whatever, that hooch was supposed to last for two months.’
“They all looked at us. If bugs had eyebrows, they would have been all frowny and pointy.” Blake pantomimed angry eyebrows on her pale forehead. “And then Big Black Bug loped over to us and stuck a scoopy gun right in my face. I thought he was going to cut my head off right there, and I was all, ‘It’s fine. It’s okay. Rots your liver anyway. I’ve been meaning to cut down.’
“Big Black Bug was all, ‘Why you bring bombs into our camp?’
“And I was all, ‘Peace, friend. That’s not bombs. That’s beverage.’
“Behind Big Black Bug, some of the other Chitterers moved in and started to clean it up. That’s when we figured out that the ethanol would volatilize in their lower air pressure and become a flammable vapor in their air that already has some hydrogen in it. Like a fricking fuel-air bomb. Okay, so we knew not to take anything into the caves that had to be smoked because of the hydrogen, but I suppose we should have just taken LSD with us instead of ethanol.
“Then Big Black Bug says, ‘Why you dig that tunnel? How long you spy?’”
I clutched my glass of Victoria’s poisonous red punch and held my chest, my lungs hurting. My face burned with horror at Big Black Bug’s accusation.
Blake said to the party, crowded around her and silent, “No kidding, they thought we were spies. Can you imagine, me and Ellis, both of us as wasted as pigs, spies? We would have been, like, the worst spies ever. So I was all, ‘No way, kemosabe. We not spies. Just drunk college students. Not spies.’
I held on to my drink and the drink that I’d rescued from the table. My knuckles hurt from clenching both of them so hard, like I was hanging on a rock wall. Damn bugs.
“‘Who you work for?’ Big Black Bug yelled. ‘Bug-a-Bug Army? Soft-Shells?’
“‘No one. Just exploring some caves for fun.’
“Black Bug reared up and shook his first set of arms and shouted at us, ‘You think I stupid? Soft-Shells never go in caves! You get lost in tunnels! Can’t even bore through rock without explosives!’”
Shouting?
Chitterers’ speech—and we’ve all heard it on the media whenever they give a statement about something else stupid that we humans are doing—is an inflectionless string of, well, chittering. It sounds like walking and dragging a stick across corrugated steel. Their volume and cadence never vary.
My tongue was a useless hank of dry insulation, filling my mouth and muffling sound. I slammed a drink into my mouth, burning my raw throat. I was already feeling the effects of just a few drinks. My legs were rubbery. I was such a lightweight. My liver was crap. I asked her, “How did you know he was shouting?”
Blake cocked her head to the right. “His third and fifth legs made an imperative sign. Black Bug signaled ‘Anger,’ or Ellis would say that he performed The Grand Jeté of Scorn. The Chitterers are pretty interesting, once you get to know them. Their sign language is really evocative. Since I’ve been back, it seems like we Soft-Shells sing when we talk, but Chitterers dance.”
“So the app translates the dance language, too,” Chess Jock said.
“No, none of the apps do. I haven’t found any publications on it since I’ve been back. I’m going to write my thesis on it.” Blake shrugged. “It took us a while to figure it out, maybe six months or so. Later, I figured out that those Chitterers at the consulate, the ones who told us that it was ‘okay’ to go into the caves, were doing The Bee-Bopping Finger Puppets of Equivocation and The Irish Step Dance in the Presence of Insanity. I just thought they had to pee.”
“No one else has lived with the Chitterers for any length of time,” I said. “The official delegations don’t allow prolonged interaction, and the rebel groups either ransom and release people within a few days or else kill them.”
Precious nodded and said, “And the CLF is the worst.”
I remembered about her cousin and felt like crap.
Blake turned her palms up and shrugged good-naturedly. “I don’t know why they didn’t shoot us with the scoopy gun or boot us out the airlock right away, especially since they thought we were spies, other than a bizarre inclination to make sure we got Last Rites. And I don’t know why they didn’t get tired of us a few weeks later and just shoot us then. Ellis and I hung out with them for months be
fore they finally let us leave.”
Over a year.
“So, anyway, Big Black Bug reared up and did the Port de Bras in Third Position of Fear and Loathing. ‘You are spies!’ he yelled. ‘How you contact your masters? Who are they?’
“‘No, sir, Big Black Bug,’ I said to him. ‘We not spies. We just exploring caves.’ I flipped over my phone and swiped open pictures of us outside on Earth’s moon, rappelling through Venus’s cities, and riding an interplanetary freighter bareback. ‘Soft-Shells do all kinds of stupid things.’
“He seemed to consider that. It’s kind of insulting that the ‘As a species, we’re too stupid to be spies’ argument was the one he listened to.
“Pretty Blue Bug, who was a great guy when we got to know him later, scuttled up to Big Black Bug and said, ‘If they spies, we should them kill. Dump bodies in the no-air. Soft-Shells not ask questions about CLF killing two Soft-Shells.’
“Orange Bug came up to us with the other Chitterers. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If they are spies, and we kill them, Soft-Shells’ government may side more fully with Chitterer government.’
“And that’s how we became guests of the Chitterer Liberation Force,” Blake said.
Precious and Chess Jock sat at Blake’s feet. I stood behind them. Even though I knew that this story must end well—for Blake was here at the party, drinking cheap college hooch with us in Victoria’s apartment floating high above Jupiter’s rioting orange clouds—she had been missing for a year: a year of mistreatment and living with only Ellis and insectoid aliens.
Blake talked about it like it was a pub-crawling adventure.
I knew that we weren’t hearing the whole story, that she and Ellis had been terrified and bored, and that the Chitterers had nearly killed them several times. I must have seen a report on the news somewhere.
I leaned in closer, examining Blake’s slim body and face, trying to remember the show I’d seen. It was more than just that sociology class, I knew. I’d heard her talk about her imprisonment before, in these same mocking, cheery tones. Maybe more than once.
Damn it, my memory was crap these days.
Blake said, “Some of them went up and plastered over the hole we fell through, because their warm air was leaking out. Then they tied us to rocks.”
Chess Jock’s horrified eyes widened. Precious fanned herself, sweating.
My hands shook. I had heard this somewhere before. I knew it. News broadcast? Another party, when I was halfway to blackout drunk? Wouldn’t be the first time.
Blake said, “When the Chitterers scoop out their rooms, they leave support columns so that, you know, their roofs won’t cave in.” She laughed. They laughed with her because they were afraid to break her breezy recitation. “They wrapped a cable around my waist and tied me so that I was sitting up, with my back to the pillar.
“Ellis had tried to grab one of their scoopy guns when we made a run for it when we first fell through, so they tied him to the column like he was hugging it. There were hundreds of those columns. It was like being in a petrified forest, where the branches interlocked and calcified into a stone canopy, shutting out the sun.”
Blake didn’t mention at the party that she had spent three months chained to that rock. That’s why I’m telling the story, too: to fill in the terrible parts that sunny, jokey Blake won’t.
“So Orange Bug saved you,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. We were lucky there!” Blake laughed.
Her pale skin whitened a shade. I even heard her stomach growl.
When adrenaline kicks in and your body goes into fight-or-flight mode, blood flows inward, even speeds up digestion. Blake was in the middle of a full-bore panic attack and was laughing it off.
I hated those insurrectionist bugs that would tie such a gentle soul as Blake to a stone pillar with a steel cord; I hated that they would threaten this effervescent life. I was falling in love with her, in a Desdemona-crying-over-Othello’s-war-wounds kind of way.
“And then what?” Chess Jock asked.
Blake said, “We sat there, waiting for them to figure out what they were going to do with us. Eventually, after a couple days of freaking out, we got bored.
“So we started telling each other the plots of books and movies. Ellis, he’s an Earth Lit major, so he recited the titles and plots to all forty-two of De Vere-slash-Shakespeare’s plays, plus his eight poems and a hundred fifty-four sonnets, in first-published order. I did films, lots of films. It was so dark most of the time. The Chitterers had lights, so we could see beams of light scuttling around the darkness, but we couldn’t see each other or ourselves. So a while later…”
Three months later.
“… Some Head Honcho Chitterer comes crawling into camp, and all those bugs jumped straight up!” Blake leapt out of her chair, lanky arms and legs spread-eagle. “They lit about a thousand of those cold flares, and the whole cavern was squinty-bright. The Chitterers were all doing The Arabesque in the Presence of Authority. By this time, some of the Chitterers were hanging out with us at our rocks. Pretty Blue Bug sat with us a lot. We weren’t just a chore by then. We were more like pets. Luckily, I’m cute.”
Blake sat back down in her chair, carefully, like her hips hurt. “So Head Honcho Bug strolls in and the Chitterers all jump, and we sat there because we were tied to those clammy, hot rocks.
“The dark had seemed to stretch on forever, but with the lights, the cavern looked small, like a couple of regular rooms stacked together, and it was round like a big hole in the ground, and the columns stood sentry around us.
“Head Honcho Bug, Orange Bug, and Big Black Bug sat around a table and conferred. Pretty Blue Bug said to us, ‘Hey, Soft-Shells, turn off your translators,’ so we pretended to, but I kept mine on text mode. They were talking Chitterer politics. Like Soft-Shell politics, it’s interesting at first, and then it devolves into nitpicking and a pissing contest.
“So I was barely watching the screen when the translator read, ‘What are those two Soft-Shells doing over there?’
“I slugged Ellis and pointed at my phone.
“Orange Bug said, ‘They found us. We don’t know if they’re spies or idiots.’
“Ellis whispered to me, ‘Are those our only two choices?’
“Head Honcho Bug asked, ‘Why they tied to rocks?’
“Orange Bug answered, ‘They might escape.’
“‘Have they tried?’
“‘Not since the first day.’
“‘Nearest Soft-Shells are hundreds of klicks away.’ Head Honcho Bug looked over at us. ‘Hey Soft-Shells!’
“We looked oblivious,” Blake did her best impression of good-natured oblivion, the Head Bobble of Minding One’s Own Business, “because, you know, our translators were supposed to be off.
“Pretty Blue Bug kicked me and performed The Swan Dive of Indication at my phone.
“So, after I pretended to turn my translator app on, Head Honcho said, “Hey, Soft-Shells! You not try to escape, right?’
“And we were all, ‘No, sir, Mr. Bug, sir. We not escape. Why would we try to escape?’
“Head Honcho swiveled back to Big Black Bug and Orange Bug and said, ‘Untie them.’
“So the Chitterers untied us, and that’s how we got to walk around the camp.
“So that was exciting for exactly five minutes, which was how long it took to walk the whole way around the camp, because we’d pretty much seen everything from the middle that there was to see. We were still reciting books and movies to each other, just to have something to talk about. At least they gave us some glowsticks, so we could see each other. It was always like midnight around a campfire, though.
“So we started helping out in the kitchen. Our food from the sleds had run out a while before that. They steal most of their food on raids, but it still has to be prepared, even though they don’t cook because they can’t light a fire or else: poot! So they grind and dry grains to make kind-of-like tortillas, or they soak and sprout some, and they
grind some other stuff to make pudding.
“Lowest bugs on the flystrip cooked, and Ellis and I were surely the lowest forms of life in that camp.
“We were still suffering from ennui, though, so we liberated a few big cans from the kitchen and washed them out. I commandeered some wire and made a kind of steel guitar. Ellis made bongos.
“Evidently, both Ellis and I have tin ears, because we thought we sounded pretty good.
“But the Chitterers hated our instruments. Every day, after lunch, when we pulled them out for band practice, the Chitterers would all do The Grand Jeté of Scorn or The Port de Bras in First Position of Wanting to Run Away.
“Finally, after about a month, Orange Bug came to us, bowing in the Namaste of Ulterior Motive, and said, ‘Look, we will give better sleeping accommodations if you let us destroy infernal noisemakers.’
“So the Soft-Shell Band broke up and went the way of all supergroups, due to artistic differences.
“They really destroyed our instruments, too. They had some sort of a gambling thing, like a lottery. Brown June Bug won, or we assume so because he performed The Autistic Hand-Flapping of Joy. Then he took a scoopy gun and carved our guitar and bongos into a thousand tiny pieces. They all stood around in The King Tut Posture of Rapt Attention, punctuated by more Autistic Hand-Flapping of Joy. It was funny as all hell to watch. Pooooooooose, flap-flap-flap! Pooooooooose, flap-flap-flap!
“We thought we were bored, but destroying our instruments was the most fun those Chitterers had the whole time we were there, except for raids.
“So that’s how we got our sleeping bags, and then we slept a lot better, considering that those caves are made of tons of high-pressure gas ices under a thin shell of sprayed-on plasticky stuff, even though the air was sultry and hot like a dry lightning storm in August.”
The party was at a standstill, listening. The music was off. No one even refreshed drinks. Thirty people huddled close, like around a campfire in the cold. Precious’s fingers were clamped on my skinny arm, bruising, and she finally noticed. “Sorry, Wellington.”
