The Only Thing to Fear

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Others, including Evan, Paul, and Rudy, jumped from the stage to the patio below, turning to see for themselves.

  How could you not?

  With deceptive slowness, the Crougk—whom the Urgians later claimed to be a performance artist sponsored by the city of Kateen itself—began to charge. Each foot cracked the stage where it struck. The massive jaw gaped wide in a silent roar. Faster and faster—a mighty thrust upward at precisely the right moment—broad front feet striking the Actor in precisely the right spot—

  To redirect the falling mechanical into the trees, benches, and drizzle shower, the Urgians having fled to a better vantage point. The resulting tremendous CRASH could be heard, it was later discovered, all the way to the shipcity, where it was dismissed as mere Day One antics by those who’d bought tickets only for the finale.

  In a second, more powerful leap, taking three arms with it, the rest hitting the stage in a tangle of metal, glitter, and steam, the Crougk sprang to the top of the high stone wall put up by the Sacrissee Embassy to avoid seeing Humans on a daily basis—

  And was gone.

  The abrupt silence rang in Evan’s ears. “What—?”

  “Oh, that was brilliant,” Rudy said, laughing so hard he gasped the words. “Brilliant! Not that I approve,” this to Paul, who’d frowned. “But you have to admit it worked.”

  “I’ll find Bess.”

  “Bess?!” Evan realized he hadn’t seen her. There’d been so much confusion—“Why? Isn’t she with you?” Though he shouldn’t be surprised. She was the most independent— “I’ll help you look—”

  “You’re needed there, Evan.” Paul pointed to the end of the stage now covered in the Actor’s severed arms. Staff were trying to pull the mess apart.

  Oh, no. Prela and Feen. “But Bess—”

  He was alone.

  There was a cry for help. Another for heavy equipment. It wasn’t a choice at all, Evan knew, and began to run with the rest.

  * * *

  I cycled midleap, shedding mass as rain, the remnants of my Crougkself blending with the spray from broken plumbing as I landed in the shrubbery. Ersh herself couldn’t have done better.

  She wouldn’t have tried. That being one of those unhelpful “Esen-alit-quar, what have you done now” thoughts, I focused on my next step. Beings having left their belongings as they fled in terror, as they should, I’d no trouble finding discarded clothing.

  I selected a—I decided to call it a jacket, there being sleeves, and used those to tie it around me. Paul would have a change of clothes for “Bess” in his pack.

  It was only then I realized what I had done.

  The Actor’s arms, so amusing during a performance, draped a third of the stage in twisted metal. It didn’t matter that I’d directed the rest of the mechanical away. This—this was disaster. Embassy staff were running. I heard them cry for help, the slap of their shoes—

  Nothing from the tangle, other than a warning creak as the debris continued to settle under its own weight.

  I had to know.

  Throwing off the jacket, I climbed inside, this form’s size letting me go where others could not, pulling myself up and over, mostly crawling beneath what could, I knew, crush me.

  Oh, I’d survive. It wasn’t a comfort.

  I found them in the middle of it all and their positions told the story. Feen must have thrown herself over Prela. A strip of raincoat showed beneath her bent body, its pink stained with red. More red spread out in a growing puddle, obscenely bordered in glitter.

  They hadn’t been crushed by an arm. I glanced overhead and qualified that. Yet. One hung overhead, ready to fall.

  “Is . . . who’s . . . there?”

  Feen? Alive! I went to her at once, kneeling in still-warm blood. “It’s Bess. Don’t try to move. Help’s coming.”

  I could hear them trying, anyway, but the arms were a jumble. It’d be like picking apart a knotted mass. Pull the wrong piece, the rest would collapse on itself.

  And us.

  New plan. “Can you move?”

  The fingers of her outstretched hand twitched once. “No. Push me off Prela.” Feen’s voice was little more than a faint wheeze, but I knew an order when I heard it.

  I knew a bad idea, too. All I could see of her injuries was that ominous puddle of blood, and the Popeakan could be dead—

  “Do . . . it.”

  I tried. Feen was too heavy and limp for this me to roll over. All I succeeded in doing was making her hiss with pain.

  Another creak from overhead.

  I needed another form. Or another approach. In my birth-form, the canid Lanivarian, I’d engage Paul in play whenever the chance arose. I’d jump on him, he’d pretend to fall, then we’d roll around like puppies—me using every trick I knew to win, which in Lanivarian terms meant flipping him on his back and sitting on top. He’d cheat and tickle—

  Refusing to doubt my Humanself, I slipped my arm under Feen’s from the back, used my knee to keep her from sliding, and flipped her over as quickly as I could.

  She screamed.

  * * *

  “I’ve life signs.” The security chief put down the scanner. Everyone around gave a sigh of relief and exchanged glad looks. “It’s not good,” she warned. “This mess could come down on them at any moment.”

  “But we’ll get them out,” someone said.

  They were doing their best, Evan thought. At any other time, he’d have been moved by the level of interspecies’ cooperation underway. Urgians summoned experts, with equipment to grab and lift the arms, and were working with embassy staff to determine where it was safest to start. Ganthor kept watch on the Hurns not being seen by med-techs. A cluster of Rands had shown up, offering to help tidy the patio, but Terry caught them making off with beer and sent them away. Of more use were the Odarians, who’d offered their embassy as a shelter, but no one left.

  Everyone waited.

  “How many life signs?” It was Paul and when Evan saw his face, he felt the blood drain from his own. He spotted Rudy, pale and grim.

  Where was Bess?

  “Two. One more—comes and goes. I can’t be sure. Damn cheap thing,” The chief shook the scanner. “We use it for finding pests in the basement.”

  Where was Bess?!

  * * *

  Senior Political Officer Simone Argyle Feen lay on her back. That she was still breathing was, in any sense, improbable, given the gaping wound along her side. The culprit, as if it mattered, was a length of black metal I hadn’t noticed until now, some device or attachment from the Actor sent whipping through the air like a saw.

  Through that opening gleamed bone and the slick of organs, and she should be dead.

  She would be shortly, a knowledge I saw in her eyes. “Pre . . . la.”

  Because there were two here, the other a still-motionless lump under a raincoat. Hardly daring to hope, I lifted one end.

  A golden eye looked up. “Is it gone? !#~!!~”

  “Yes,” I told ril, not bothering to puzzle out which fear of so many. Working gently, and so I didn’t dose ril with Feen’s blood, I removed the raincoat. One eye was closed tight, another limb bent, but the Popeakan looked whole.

  For how long? Ril’s body had shrunk into itself by half, the gold fading.

  “Take . . . to Wimmerly . . .”

  The Human knew.

  Before I could pick ril up, Prela rose on toetips to lean over Feen. “You! You kept me safe from!#~!!~. You.”

  Blood bubbled at the corner of Feen’s lips. Her eyes found me. Hurry, that was. I tried to grab Prela.

  “Stay back!” A limb slashed at my hands, just missing. “You,” Prela said again, touching Feen tenderly, then reached for the bag around ril’s neck with a spate of Popeakan too quick and complicated for my present ears.

  I knew pro
found emotion when I heard it. More importantly, I grasped what was happening—what Prela felt. “Feen. Say you accept. Hurry!”

  “No . . . Wimm—” bubbles of red consumed the word.

  Ersh, save me from the stubborn. Dropping to my knees by her head, I said with deliberate cruelty, “It’s too late for that. Accept, or the Popeakans die. Now!” It was Feen’s only hope, too, not that I’d time to explain.

  Her eyes defied me, but her mouth formed the words, barely audible. “I . . . accept.”

  Another spate of Popeakan, this joyful, and I, Bess who was Esen, was witness to the attachment.

  Later, Paul would ask me to describe what happened, and I did so, ensuring he hadn’t eaten recently. Suffice to say what required a true emotional attachment to inspire took a significant amount of messy biology to complete. Often the way.

  First from ril’s bag came what I recognized as a Human-made dispenser, already loaded. Prela applied it to Feen’s neck with practiced dexterity, leading me to conclude the decision to “go Human” had been made much earlier than I’d thought.

  Feen’s eyes closed, and I gasped.

  “She feels no pain, Bess,” Prela explained. Second from the bag was another similar device, this with a sharp needle ril drove into the base of ril’s neck before I could blink. “Now, we can—at—tach.” More Popeakan, this labored, as if something inside were damaged after all.

  No, as if ril’s body were hard at work.

  Then ril vigorously squirmed into Feen’s wound.

  A detail Ersh had definitely left out.

  * * *

  Paul leaned against the embassy wall, away from the rest, eyes shadowed. Evan kept glancing his way. Perhaps it was because the other remained still, among so many in motion—

  “Bess gets herself into things,” Rudy said. He’d stayed with Evan, the pair close enough to watch the rescue work without interfering with those who knew their jobs and the urgency. Most of the staff lingered in the undamaged portion of the patio, small somber groups on benches, or pacing. A few had brought chairs into the lobby to keep vigil with the ambassador, the doors left open. “She gets out again. It’s not her.”

  The word had spread in hushed whispers. The last scan found only two life signs. They’d names now: the child, missing and unaccounted for, along with Polit Feen and Pre-!~!-la Acci-!~!-ari.

  “It was probably Prela,” Evan admitted sadly. They’d dispatched a messenger to the Popeakan Embassy. He supposed if no one answered the door, they’d know for sure, not that anyone had explained how—

  A hand on his shoulder. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, my friend, it’s not to mourn until you’ve seen a body—and even then I’d wait for a med-tech.”

  Numb, Evan nodded as if he understood. “We’ll know soon. Looks like they’re ready.”

  The Urgians had three immense cranes. With a warning klaxon, the cables attached to parts of various arms began to spool to their sources, snapping taut in unison as they took weight and pulled.

  The black arms rose in the air. For a dreadful moment, Evan found himself staring at a SPIDER worse than any nightmare, half the height of the embassy, JOINTED LEGS waving over them all.

  And didn’t care. He turned his attention, like everyone else, to the now-exposed stage.

  Paul Ragem was already there.

  * * *

  The arms shifted and for a dreadful moment I was certain they were about to collapse and ruin a perfectly good ending.

  Then they lifted up and away, letting in light and—someone grabbed me.

  “Wasn’t my—” fault I tried to say, but Paul hugged me too tightly for this form to breathe, which I didn’t mind, then shoved something over my head, which I did, until I realized it was my spare tunic and cooperated by pushing my arms through the holes. Clothes were an excellent idea, with the lights and all the others running toward us. I hoped no one noticed “Bess” had found time to change, but if anyone asked, I’d go with being part of the performance.

  Paul, meanwhile, went to the other of us, glancing back to me in astonishment. “Did you know?”

  “Had an inkling,” I admitted, then grinned.

  A smiling, bright-eyed Feen lay in the puddle of her own blood and glitter. Pre-!~!-la Acci-!~!-ari was, well, the soft part of ril’s body was inside the Human’s, the two held in place—sealing Feen’s wound—by the tight grip of the Popeakan’s five intact walking limbs.

  Prela waved a jaunty handling limb, two eyes gleaming with pride. “The Offer has been accepted. Begin the celebrations!”

  “Thank you,” Feen said to me, though doubtless she seethed with questions starting with who are you really, Bess, or is it what are you, and others that would not go well.

  “Here’s help,” Paul announced, equally aware. As the horde of med-techs and other concerned beings arrived, he took my hand in his and we edged back and out of their way, down the collapsed back of the stage, through the shrubbery—

  —to the patio, where Paul smiled at me, then shouted loudly, “I’ve found her!”

  And that, was that.

  * * *

  The Urgians recorded in the annals of the 300th Festival of Funchess that, while Pursuit did take place, to the joy of all who showed their face, it was the spontaneous chaotic collision between the Funchess Actor sponsored by Keep It Hot Plumbing and the Human Embassy that, wouldn’t you know?

  Just stole the show.

  * * *

  An art, the walk of Evan Gooseberry, Midlevel Political Assistant, composed of precise and thoughtful steps.

  With the occasional hop over something left behind from the festival, the Urgians not yet ready to unleash a cleansing deluge.

  He was on official business. The satchel at his hip contained an invitation to the newly appointed Popeakan Ambassador, C’Ril Pre-!~!-la Acci-!~!-ari Feen, to attend at their convenience the retirement party for Ambassador Wimmerly. Wimmerly had, to the Urgians’ delight, agreed to be an occasional speaker and reader of Human poetry at the Kateen Institute of Alien Affairs.

  Terry had offered to take the envelope for him, Evan still breaking out in a cold sweat when surrounded by Popeakans, but no, this was his task. They could have used the coms, newly restored—the techs having received mysterious instructions on where and how the system had been breached—but Ambassador Wimmerly confessed to a fondness for the old ways and why wouldn’t they indulge his final request?

  Ambassador Prela Feen, as the Attached preferred to be called, would attend without question. While some had a difficult time seeing a Human with what appeared a spider growing from her side, the link was, they were told, temporary. Once sufficient Popeakan tissue had taken hold to guarantee that others of their kind would continue to accept Feen as their own, the pair would detach. That the growth of this tissue also healed the wound Feen had sustained saving Prela, thus saving Feen? A natural consequence of such perfect Attachment.

  Evan shook his head in wonder every time he thought about it. Bess had known. She’d been involved, he’d bet on it, but no one, least of all Feen, said a word, and after celebrating—the lost found, the villains caught, and everyone happy—Paul, Rudy, and Bess had slipped away.

  But weren’t gone. Evan smiled to himself. He’d called Great Gran on his new holocube to tell her of his promotion and no, he couldn’t make the wedding. But he’d made new friends. She’d liked that.

  The Largas Pride would be back in a week. Rudy’d invited him to pay for supper and beers.

  Best of all, Evan had a pamphlet of his own, with a written invitation to the All Species’ Library of Linguistics and Culture any time he needed help, or just to visit.

  He hoped it’d be soon.

  * * *

  I stepped back from the recycler, my secrets, our secrets safe. Others I’d kept from Skalet, my sharing kinder than usual.

  I�
�d left out the Popeakan sharing of flesh, it being disturbingly like our own. No wonder Ersh hadn’t told me. This wasn’t a species we could risk becoming, not when capable of leaving bits in others. Bits that somehow changed the other—

  “Changed your mind, Old Blob?”

  Being Lanivarian, I could wrinkle my snout at my first and oldest friend. “You were right. Evan isn’t ready. Not for this—” I gestured at myself.

  “Well, then, are you? Ready?”

  Oh, and didn’t Paul have that look I’d learned to like, very much, the one where he seemed about to explode—if not like web-kin, then in his own way which was, admittedly, easier on furniture—meaning he had a surprise to share.

  Knowing full well what it was, I leaned forward and licked the tip of his nose, tasting salt. “After you.”

  “Together,” he said, suddenly serious as Humans were wont to be. “Always.”

  “Agreed.”

  But, because this wasn’t a day to be serious, I squeezed through the door with him, making us both laugh, then insisted we run side-by-side—restraining the instinct to drop to all fours and race—only to stop, breathless with laughter, when we reached the grand entrance to the All Species’ Library of Linguistics and Culture.

  Breathless with something else entirely, for this was our new beginning, Paul and I opened the doors, together.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Julie E. Czerneda is the author of the Species Imperative trilogy, the Web Shifters series, and the Clan Chronicles novels. She is a multiple Aurora Award winner, and a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award.

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