That scale didn’t come from a crocodile or lizard. It came from that bat. I saw it fall to the ground when I hit the bat with my shovel. And sure, bats are mammals and have fur instead of scales, but this bat had scales on its wings.
The bats also seemed to work together when they freed the trapped bats. I’ve seen bats swarm before, and there is a randomness to it. But this time, two bats came straight for me, and two attacked Jack at almost the same time. It was as if the bats could coordinate.
I’ve been camping in the bayou my entire life, and I’ve never seen anything like this. I’d love to take a closer look at these bats. I suggested to Jack that we try to trap another one, but he just looked at me as if I were crazy. I sort of think bats give him the willies.
The moon rose over Thebayou, and N’ctath allowed her eyes to adjust to the illumination. She listened carefully and sniffed every few moments until she eventually caught Khakreet’s aroma. She kept still, hanging upside down from the cypress tree, waiting for him to pass, and then launched herself into the air behind him.
One of the best aspects of Earth was that with the denser atmosphere, it made flying and gliding easier. While normally a Tseekahn would be able to fly the distance from Thebayou to Cashone in two nights, on Earth it could be done without any heavy effort, and, in fact, Khakreet and N’ctath could take the time to rest and hunt while flying. While Khakreet hunted mosquitoes, N’ctath searched for sweet, edible fruits. Berries were plentiful, and all offered themselves up, without N’ctath wondering if the berries were filled with blood or were just the empty calories of an unsated mosquito.
In two nights of travel, they arrived at the conclave in Cashone, Khakreet still unaware of his shadow. The conclave itself was not what N’ctath expected. The idea of all the colonial governors meeting had a certain amount of ceremony associated with it. In fact, the gathering looked little different from H’ckess’s funeral, although N’ctath knew fewer of the participants. A few she recognized. Khakreet, of course, but also Harleth, Dhaafren, and Sharsheth, the supreme commander of the Tseekahn Invasionary Force.
N’ctath listened as the talk revolved around the incursions the humans seemed to be making into Tseekahn-held territory. Most of the governors were of the opinion that if the humans were left alone, they would leave Tseekahn territory, but a few very vocal governors, including, N’ctath was reasonably pleased to hear, Khakreet, argued for more direct action.
“We came to Earth to fight a war,” he said, “That we haven’t is entirely due to sheer chance. We cannot let ourselves become complacent. This is the humans’ home planet. Just as we spread across the face of Tseekah before venturing into space, so, too, will they fill their world if allowed. We have but two choices. We can fight the humans as we came here to do, or we can flee back to Tseekah, our wings clipped and unworthy of the name Tseekahn.”
A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed nearby, their bloated bodies saturating the air with the scent of blood. N’cath realized that she didn’t crave them. Whether that was because she had gone for two days and broken an addiction or because they weren’t actually addictive, she didn’t know. And then she did.
The governors were ignoring the mosquitoes, continuing to wrangle among themselves. A few agreed with Khakreet, but most didn’t. Hardly any supported the idea of going back to Tseekah, and only slightly more wanted to get involved in a battle against the humans.
Harleth pointed out, “When we came here five years ago, we had only a limited understanding of what the humans were and their capabilities. Even with our technology, technology that many of us have turned our backs on since landing here, we would have been hard pressed to hold our own in a frontal assault. The humans really do have all the advantages here.”
N’ctath had seen some of the governors hunting mosquitoes and assumed they were as addicted as anyone else. Now she saw that they didn’t have to hunt the creatures, didn’t even notice them if they were working on something important. Between her own actions and those of the governors, N’ctath was convinced that mosquitoes were harmless delicacies as quickly as she had been concerned that they were addictive. Her own fault, she realized, for basing her conclusion on H’ckess’s idiocies.
“Who’s there!”
It wasn’t a question, but rather an order, and N’ctath hopped along the branch on which she was perched until she was visible to the governors.
“N’ctath, is that you?” Khakreet asked.
She waved her wings in acknowledgement and tried to think of something to say. Her concern over mosquitoes was no longer something she felt the need to discuss with the governors, and even when she thought it was important, she realized now that it paled in comparison to the conversation they were having.
“Khakreet is wrong,” she blurted out. The governors, and especially Khakreet, stared in her direction.
“How am I wrong?” he asked.
“There are more than just two options, flee or fight. There is the option of coexistence.” N’ctath was trying to figure out what she was going to say next when one of the governors she didn’t know spoke up.
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? Living beside the humans?”
“No. We’ve been hiding from the humans.” As she said this, she realized it was true. The plan for invasion that seemed so clever five years earlier was nothing more than hiding in secluded areas. Had bats not existed on Earth, so similar and familiar in appearance to Tseekahn, they would never have even attempted to live in the swamps apart from the humans.
“If we talk to the humans, let them know we are here, perhaps we can come to an arrangement.”
Jack and I were packing up the tent when the weirdest thing happened. We hadn’t seen any more bats since the attack had happened. And we didn’t see any bats then, either. Instead we heard a voice. A very odd voice, sort of like what I imagine a pixie would sounds like, except, of course, pixies don’t exist.
“Us would . . . I would talk with you to.” the squeaky voice said from somewhere in the cypresses that surrounded our campsite.
“Okay, come on out,” I called, waiting for a kid to come out. Instead I was surprised to see a bat fly, slowly, into the clearing. I was even more surprised to see a small chain around its neck from which hung some sort of pendant.
“My name is N’ctath. I am a Tseekahn,” the bat said.
Jack’s mouth was hanging open like he was trying to catch flies. I can’t say as I blamed him. Bats aren’t supposed to talk. Or wear jewelry.
“Let me guess,” I said, “You’re from Mars and I should take you to my leader, only I’m not exactly on a talking basis with the President.”
“I’m not from Mars,” the bat said. “We’ve been living here for five years and thought it was time to talk to you. You’ve proven yourselves less primitive than we expected, and we would like to open trade negotiations with you.”
“Trade negotiations?” Jack had recovered his voice. “I’m not sure . . .”
I cut him off before he could say something stupid. Here we were, dealing with an alien space bat, and he was going to blow the entire deal simply because we knew that we were only second-shift laborers and the alien space bat thought we had something we could negotiate with.
“We can offer you some of our technology,” the bat said, “Starting with these translators.” The bat dipped its wing to indicate the charm around its neck. As it did, I noticed that each time it spoke, a ring on the pendant spun around. I’d need at least two of them, one to take apart and one to keep in working condition..
“And what do you want in return?” I asked, knowing I could promise anything but probably not deliver on it.
“We’ve colonized some of the areas of this world that aren’t being used by you humans. We’d like humans to avoid them.”
Our talks went on, a study in absurdism. I was talking to a bat, promising it things I’d never be able to give. More importantly, I was talking to a bat.
After the bat left, Jack co
mmented, “We’re going to be famous! We’re going to be rich! We’ll be on the cover of every newspaper!”
“Every newspaper you can buy in better supermarket checkout lines.” I said, looking into the trees to see if the bat, or any other bats, had stuck around.
“We can sell our story. The newspapers’ll pay us, and we can quit working in the factory! We’ll be rich!”
“No, we won’t. Nobody is going to believe us. They’ll lock us up,” I said. “And if someone does believe us, they’ll take anything we get from the bats and turn the devices over to the government.”
Jack shrugged into his backpack and began to walk to the edge of the clearing. I hoisted my backpack. Jack paused, and I picked up my rifle. We left the clearing to head back to civilization. I knew I’d have to convince him that keeping quiet would serve us best in the long run, and I knew that there was no way that two people could keep a secret, especially not when one of them was Jack.
N’ctath returned to where Khakreet was waiting near the humans’ camp. Her negotiations had gone much more smoothly than she anticipated. In addition to getting promises that the colonies would be left alone and that trade deputations between the humans and the Tseekahn would be established, she also got a concession of her own, at least from the humans. Now she would have to convince Khakreet and the governors to support her.
N’ctath, however, was sure they would agree and award her a monopoly on the Earth mosquito-export business. She could already picture finer restaurants throughout the civilized universe battling to include N’ctath’s Earth Mosquitoes on their menus.
TWILIGHT ANIMALS
By Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Over the past twenty-some years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold novels, juvenile and media tie-in books, short story collections, and more than two hundred fifty short stories. Her works have been finalists for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won a Stoker Award. Nina has also recently published a young adult novel, Spirits That Walk in Shadow, and a short science fiction novel, Catalyst. Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy Science Fiction and teaches short story writing through her local community college. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with several cats, a mannequin, and many strange toys.
Milo had the run of his yuppie older brother Tad’s house for the month Tad and his wife and three kids were traveling in Europe. Tad needed someone to take care of his big, dumb, goofy dog, Paladin, and water the garden. Having the house occupied also meant it was less likely to be robbed, Tad said. Milo was doing him a favor by staying there, Tad said.
Tad was good at looking at the bright side. His wife, Sherry, was more realistic. “Yeah, freeloader, get it while the getting’s good,” Sherry muttered to Milo as he carried her suitcases out to the car the day Tad’s family was leaving. “I’m going to hold you accountable for every missing or broken thing in the house when we get back. Don’t think I won’t. I took a video of everything and stashed it in the safety deposit box. Don’t even think about throwing a party and inviting your college-age drug-addict buddies over here. I don’t want to find their stink on my upholstery. I know you’re a worthless bum, but I’ll find a way to take it out of your hide if you break anything.”
“Thanks, sis,” Milo said. “I love you, too.” So that canceled a few of his plans, because he knew Sherry well enough to know she would sell his organs if she couldn’t get money out of him any other way. Not that his buddies were actually addicts, but they were relaxed about things in a way Sherry wasn’t.
Milo sat in the back of the van as they drove to the airport, with his two nephews beside him and his niece behind him. Sherry glared at him from the front seat the whole trip, even though he carried her suitcases over to the skycap for check-in before driving the van home. It just didn’t pay to be nice to some people.
Anyway, her threats didn’t matter. His biggest plan was still greenlit. He was going to get away from dorm life and study a suburban community. Collect data. Write a paper that would make his sociology professor proud. “Daytime Ghost Town, Nighttime Party Town” was his thesis. Or maybe he would call it “A Slice of Summer Suburb Life.”
After three days of sleeping really late and watching tons of satellite TV, he went out to test his theory.
He made his first foray around two in the afternoon. He’d read enough detective novels to know a person needed an apparent reason for wandering a neighborhood if he didn’t want to get arrested, so Milo carried a clipboard and wore a brown uniform that looked vaguely UPS.
As he walked, he drew a plan of the three blocks nearest his brother’s, sketching in six houses on the long sides and three houses on the short sides of Blocks One and Two. Block Three had a different layout, bigger houses, larger lots. Milo noted addresses and names, if he could discover them from mailboxes. He cataloged the types of fences everyone had or marked “nix” where there were no fences and noted whether there were bikes or trikes abandoned in the driveway, barking dogs in back yards, lawn gnomes out front.
As he had suspected, there was not a lot of daytime activity in the neighborhood. Mostly sprinklers. Automated. Some kids were around—he heard shouts from backyards—but hardly any grownups. He observed three young women pushing babies in strollers or leading toddlers to the park on Block Four, beyond the range of his area of study. He wasn’t sure if the women were mothers or nannies.
He made his second round at dusk. This time he wore a more relaxed outfit, jeans and a university T-shirt, but he still carried the clipboard. Again confirming his suspicions, life had entered the houses. In the twilight summer heat, many people had their doors propped open, their curtains wide. Some shared their musical preferences with passersby and their neighbors. Milo heard the edges of conversations, saw phantom people on large-screen TVs through living room windows, smelled meat grilling. Other people strolled the street, some of them being dragged along by dogs. There were many cats out in the evening, perching on fences and watching him, darting across the street, rolling in the grass.
And there were possums.
Where he had grown up, out in the country, possums were night visitors, not active when the sky was still half full of light, and you never saw more than one at a time unless it was a mother carrying babies on her back.
When he saw the first possum crossing the street, he almost mistook it for a cat, but it carried its ratlike tail low to the ground, and with its short legs, its movement was more a trundle than a stroll or a lope. Once he recognized the first animal, he started noticing them everywhere.
Almost every house in Block Two and most of the houses on Block Three had a possum lurking near it. Some of the possums snuck up and ate from pet food dishes on people’s porches. Others crouched in shadowed parts of the yards, almost catlike in their silhouettes, but not quite.
“What is with this plethora of possums?” Milo muttered. He had photocopied his first map earlier in the afternoon so he’d have a copy for each round he made and could note populations on it, people and things and animals. He used M for man, W for woman, C for child, D for dog, and K for cat (since C was already taken). There were little red Ps for possum all over.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” said someone beside him.
He jumped so hard his teeth knocked when he landed. “What—who are you?” he asked.
“Bethany,” said the girl. She wore a pale sundress that showed her nice breasts and good legs. Her black hair was bunched into a curly ponytail. Her skin was tan or naturally dark; she looked like caramel given a sultry shape. She had dark eyes that looked wise beyond her years, whatever they were—he wasn’t sure if she was a teenager or a grownup. “I’ve been following you for two blocks.”
“What?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t your mother tell you not to talk to strangers?”
“You’re not a stranger. Aren
’t you staying in Tad and Sherry’s house? You’re Milo, right?”
Milo’s shoulders sagged. His clipboard hand lowered to his side. “How’d you know?”
“Sherry, she’s not the type to trust people, you know?”
“I know.”
“Well, she asked everybody to keep an eye on you and make sure you didn’t do anything subversive, like, say, have fun while you’re here. I live next door, and I’ve been watching you. Not that I’d rat on you to Sherry. I’m not a squealer. I’m just bored.”
Milo looked at his clipboard, with its neat stack of maps, three for each day of the rest of his stay. He had planned to do one round in the morning (provided he woke up on time), one in the afternoon, one at twilight. He had even thought that he’d go up and knock on doors midway through the process, maybe pretend he was conducting a survey or something, and ask what people did with their days, how many of them were home and why. He wasn’t sure anybody would talk to him, but he thought it was worth a try.
Not if everybody knew who he was. That would contaminate his data. He sighed a sigh that started in his toes and worked its way up.
Maybe he could start over, pick some blocks farther from Tad and Sherry’s. He was getting into this data collection thing.
“So what are you doing?” Bethany asked.
Milo started walking again, and she walked beside him. “Just watching stuff,” he said, lifting his clipboard to mark two children playing basketball on a concrete driveway.
“Sounds lonely,” said Bethany. “Want some company?”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Sixteen.”
“Somebody’s going to accuse me of a crime if I hang out with you.”
“Oh? So how old are you? Eighteen?”
“Twenty,” said Milo.
“We’re just walking where anybody can see us. I can tell everybody I’m making sure you don’t have any fun.”
Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Page 23
