She just needed Sasquatch to leave Steve alone.
Unfortunately, the alien did not take kindly to being manhandled. Those fine little arms possessed major tensile strength. Even as she attempted to keep her hold on the side quills, Sasquatch ripped her away, tossing her aside like a pest. But she was not deterred. As soon as they turned their back, she tried again, reaching out.
Justice grunted under her breath, struggling to keep hold. The hairs were smooth, and her gloves wanted to slide away.
Sasquatch’s faceplate snapped in its companion’s direction. It paused, and the two seemed to be conversing.
Justice held on, hoping—
Whump.
Not again. Son of a bitch, can’t they see—
Whump. Whump. Whump.
This time, the bass felt like rough kisses over a bruise. They stung, gave her insides an aching throb. She wasn’t sure how many times her organs could tolerate the abuse before bursting.
Once more, she lost consciousness.
When she woke again, she tried not to scream. She tried not to breathe, tried to keep every soft orifice closed.
She was back on the platform, supine as before, laid out like sardines next to her away team.
But this time, she had no helmet. She had no pressure suit. There was nothing between her and the alien air except her thin temperature-regulating unitard.
Clamping her eyes closed, throwing a hand over her nose and mouth, she held irrationally still, willing her systems to slow, to dwindle. It was no use, of course—even if she had such control over her respiratory and nervous systems, she’d already been exposed. As she’d slept, she’d sucked it in. Right now, it was being circulated through her body, pumped into every nook and cranny by her ignorant heart.
Damn them, she thought, tears prickling in the corners of her eyes—brought on both by her ridiculous insistence she hold her breath, and by the extreme sense of violation.
Eventually she had to gasp. There was nothing for it. One did not prevent death-by-microbe via suffocation.
When she did, she sobbed. She couldn’t help it. She took in another shuddering breath and felt her lips pull wide and taut over her teeth while she moaned in distress. Her interlaced fingers moved from her lips and nose to her eyes. She had to hide from this, somehow. She no longer had the protection of her pressure suit, so her own bare hands would have to do.
As she shifted, she felt a deep-muscle pain in her left forearm. It felt like an old impact wound—like someone had punched her hard. Between quivering breaths, she glanced at it, to see if she could identify the injury.
A soft tangerine light blinked back at her from beneath her skin.
Her first instinct was to claw it out, not to question what it was. She took her right thumb to it, trying to force it out through the small pinprick that must have been its entry point—like she was trying to push out a sliver. But the light wouldn’t budge. Her skin crawled with a rhythmic, get it out, get it out, get it out. It was like noticing a worm—something foreign and wriggling and dirty.
On the next inhale, her memory provided her with a helpful frame of reference. She thought of Stone’s family farm, of the plastic tags stuck through cow ears like jewelry.
We’ve been tagged. They tagged us. Like . . . like animals.
We’ve been approaching this all wrong. They don’t want to learn from us. They don’t want to communicate with us. We’re not just some hillbillies from the universe’s back end to them.
No, we’re freaking animals.
No one fought as the aliens cleaned them up. It wasn’t a bath like Justice ever would have thought of a bath, but obviously it was meant to make the unhygienic little apes more pleasing to their not a loose follicle to be found hosts.
Cinderella, who’d put on some sort of shift for the event, much to Justice’s chagrin (she’d wanted to see their insides, to put on her scientific cap—it kept her grounded), lifted Justice’s arm by the wrist and ran a device that emitted an electric blue light over her armpit.
God, are they going to put us in a zoo? Keep us in a lab?
Dr. Ratha had been crying uncontrollably for the past fifteen minutes, and both Sasquatch and Cinderella had taken a stab at stopping the tears. They’d even gone so far as to pull up ASL gifs on their screens of [why?] and [wrong?], and Carmen had very forcibly explained exactly what was wrong with the medic. She’d probably gotten a tad too complicated with her signs, but her ferocity had bolstered Justice.
We’ll get through this. Captain Tan will figure out how to get us out.
For now, Carmen had ordered them all not to fight—an argument she’d had to make to Mac and Steve more than once before it sank in. As long as they didn’t try to do anything else invasive, the aliens were allowed to touch.
Justice suspected this was a tactic to keep the team calm more than anything. If everyone felt like they’d made a decision, like all of this probing was their choice, than maybe it wouldn’t seem so awful.
When Sasquatch and Cinderella approached them all with strange, jelly-like orbs attached to long tubing, while the nameless ASL woman signed [face,] Justice asked, [does this count as invasive?]
Carmen looked uncertain. The aliens held them out, several of the jiggling, toilet-bowl-cleaner-blue spheres balanced in the spread of their palms while the gif signed [face] over and over.
So far they weren’t trying to force these objects onto the humans, so that was a sign of some sort. Wasn’t it? She tried not to think about the thing in her arm.
[Do it,] Carmen instructed with a heavy sigh.
They each held out their hands, and the aliens distributed the globes. Justice cringed as she brought it up to her nose. This is a bad idea. Holding her breath and screwing her eyes shut, she pushed it onto her face like she was pieing herself. It even felt a little like smashing into the filling of a banana cream.
She knew something awful was coming. When she felt the tubes probe at her mouth, nose, and eyes, she yelped involuntarily. That was enough to give the plumbing access. They shot into every orifice—pried her eyelids open and snaked around her cheekbones and into her ears. She screamed into the jelly and saw the others squirming out of her peripheral vision, but couldn’t hear them.
Thick goo filled her nostrils and esophagus—oozed in her ears and coated her eyes. She fought her gag reflex, tried not to breathe, but took a gulp into her lungs nevertheless.
Tearing at the globe did nothing—chunks of it fell away in her grasp, squishing between her fingers, exuding through them like warm butter, but the overall invasiveness remained intact . . .
Until the tubes retreated suddenly, and a large hand slid under her chin, holding it steady though she tried to struggle. A rough cloth swept over her cheeks and nose and lips, wiping away the excess blue goo.
“You stupid sons of—” she started to shout at them, but tripped over herself when her voice didn’t sound like her voice. It was muffled, as though through water.
And she could still breathe, still see, still hear. But her sight was clouded blue, like she’d been given cobalt glasses.
She felt sick, disoriented. The sly masochists hadn’t tried to force those things on them because they didn’t want to start a panic. They knew if they tried to perform whatever the hell that procedure was one at a time, they’d have to use their knockout whumps again.
Maybe I should find it comforting that they’re allowing us to be awake for all this. They could perform whatever tests they wanted if we were out.
Yeah, maybe I should, but I don’t.
Cinderella came back with a second set of blue globes. [End,] their screens signed.
[No,] Ratha signed and said. [I will not. No. No. No.]
“Okay, surely this counts as invasive, right?” Mac shouted, his voice three octaves higher than it had been a half hour ago, even with the blue-goo interference.
[No,] Carmen signed to the aliens.
[Clean before visit,] Sasquatch explained with th
eir screen. [No end, no visit.]
Justice had earlier guessed that this was all one long decontamination session, and this seemed like confirmation of her theory, but it was still not a process performed among equals. The aliens hadn’t bothered to explain before they put hands on the humans. They hadn’t bothered to ask for permission in most tasks. Hell, Cinderella hadn’t even trusted Justice to lift her own arms so that she could be cleaned with the blue light.
They were treating them like infants at best, mindless animals at worst.
[No clean, stay. Clean, visit.]
Carmen turned to her team, mouth pursed, brow heavy. [You can each choose,] she signed. [No one has to do this. But if they’re going to take us into the rest of the ship, I’m not turning that down. If you choose not to, we’ll get separated.] She turned to the aliens. [If some of us refuse, what happens?]
[No clean, stay,] Sasquatch’s screen signed again.
Hopefully that meant they’d remain in this room until the others returned.
[Yes, for me,] Carmen said.
[No,] Ratha signed immediately.
They went down the line. Only Justice and Mac also agreed to the second spheres.
She gave Mac a smirk when he agreed. “What?” he asked. “It’s my job to protect you. I’m not going to send you out there without security.”
Like it makes a difference, said Justice’s dark inner voice.
Reaching into the platform—pulling up part of the cushiony substance like it was clay—Cinderella built low, temporary walls around each of them.
They have a concept of privacy, Justice noted. Funny how I couldn’t tell before, she thought bitterly.
Once the three of them finally had all of their holes plugged—God, who knew inter-intelligence relations could be so humiliating?—the walls weren’t pushed back into the whole of the platform like she expected, oh, no.
Instead, Cinderella drew them up higher and folded them over the humans.
Justice was a shouter, she’d come to accept that about herself. Whenever she was startled or mad, she yelped. Now was no frigging exception. Cinderella folded her into the platform like a filling in a human pie, and then shoved down—pushing her in, in, down, into the foam. It wasn’t sticky, but she moved through it like it was honey or marshmallow cream.
Here, there was no air. She couldn’t breathe. The spongy material enveloped her face, contouring to its shapes and protuberances. She opened her mouth and it tried to fill the space.
Her heart jumped into her throat, her lungs burned as she tried to gasp.
They’re not going to kill you. They’ve gone through too much trouble to kill you.
Maybe they don’t know this will kill us, she snapped at herself. People kill animals by accident all the time.
So she kicked and reached, trying to swim, to move the material past her. There had to be an out, this had to lead somewhere. But the material wouldn’t shift for her. Her momentum sprang solely from Cinderella pushing on her spine.
But then her hand burst free. She could feel it—open air. She stretched for it, trying to hold on to the thin atmosphere like the lifeline it was. If only she could pull herself to safety this way, if only—if only—
She sprang from the foam and flopped on the other side, like a beached fish. She couldn’t have been in the platform—the wall, whatever—for more than thirty seconds, but her anxiety had made it feel like a lifetime. She wanted to hit things, to cry, to tear all of Sasquatch’s spines out one by one.
What gave them the right to treat them this way? Why wouldn’t they explain things first? Why did they have to push them around? Why couldn’t—
She looked up as a mechanical thing stopped before her. It had eight legs and three claws, and out of the top—spinning around like a light in a lighthouse—was a head. A head without a helmet. No faceplate, no mask. Just a head, organic and terrifying.
It was engulfed almost entirely by two silvery compound eyes, set opposite from each other, one in the back and one in the front. At least, she thought the side with the wide, thin mouth beneath the bulbous eye was probably the front. But was it a mouth? When it opened, it made no sound and had no teeth.
It peered at her curiously, the whirling of its neck halting for half a moment to give one eye a constant view. It bent its mechanical knees, coming closer to her level. The various bits of its suit made sounds—like metal hinges, and there was a gurgle of liquid—but the creature itself stayed silent.
What did it look like on the inside? Did it have that many limbs, or was it also four-legged?
She had to turn away from its face, unable to hold its surreal gaze.
It jumped back when Carmen and Mac pushed through the floor beside her. Cinderella and Sasquatch weren’t far behind.
She was surprised to see both of them. They trusted the other humans alone in the deCON room?
Then again, perhaps a “babysitter” was on their way for Dr. Ratha and the rest.
Other Lùhng began to gather around. Justice realized they were in a hallway—a tube that went on and on in a straight line for as far as she could see. As with the bubble room, all surfaces were “down.”
Carmen huddled close to Justice, and she threw an arm around her. A quick glance to her right saw Mac quivering in his proverbial boots, so—with an internal shrug—Justice roped him in as well. Without the rest of his security team, all his pretenses seemed to fall away. Whatever performative hypermasculinity he’d been clinging to was suddenly replaced with a heady dose of real-world vulnerability. He clung to her shoulder, happy to share in the solidarity.
Cinderella indicated that the humans should get to their feet. As though they were a mirror of the six-legged monstrosity before them, they wobbled upright, never losing contact with one another.
Sasquatch waved their colleagues—crewmates, shipmates, Justice wasn’t sure what to call them—away from the visitors. The mechanical crab appeared to take issue, gesturing at the humans emphatically, its clawed arms and head all whirling around and around. Sasquatch maneuvered itself in front of Justice in a manner that could only be read as protective.
How were the two aliens communicating? Not with their mouths, or with any other sounds as far as she could tell. No one else wore screens, so that wasn’t a standard method, either. The hall was eerily quiet. Not a single creature apart from Mac—who was whimpering, seemingly unconsciously—made a purposeful noise. No clicks, no thumps, no wild gurgling calls or whistles. There was only the gentle swish of fabric from those dressed, the soft rattling of quills, and the scuffling of feet. The mechanical suits whirred, and there was the occasional grind of metal, but nothing like the beeps or sirens of Justice’s own pressure suit. Beneath it all was a faraway thrum, most likely the sound of the spaceship’s bowels going about their business. But that was all.
The silence made Justice want to fill it. It felt suffocating, oppressive—like the foam doorway. She wanted to punch through it, tear a hole in the atmosphere with a deliberate sound wave of some kind. But she suppressed the impulse, knowing she was already so deep that to disrupt whatever was going on here could be counterproductive. Instead, she tried to focus her thoughts on questions and potential answers rather than simply reacting.
Which brought her back to how these beings were talking with each other. If not sound, then perhaps they communicated visually? But there had been no formal gestures exchanged between Cinderella and Sasquatch, and none exchanged now. Nothing akin to ASL, or any other movement-related language. There was no color shifting, as with some nautili. She observed no bioluminescence or artificial light exchange.
Could they rely on chemical communication? Smell?
She breathed deeply, trying to gauge the air for herself, but to no avail. The blue jelly compound blocked out everything and had no noticeable scent itself. Clearly the stuff was meant to keep foreign chemicals and microbes out, just as it was meant to keep theirs in. Maybe it only let necessities, like oxygen, through.
Cinderella started to herd the humans away as Sasquatch continued to run interference, but another alien stopped them, embroiling Cinderella in what looked like an entirely new argument. Others stopped to watch the humans pass, leaning into one another, but seemingly saying nothing. One’s clothing caught Justice by surprise, in that it resembled a burqa. She could see nothing but the creature’s two eyes. And though the body beneath was bulky and monster-like, the eyes were soulful.
She shivered.
When Cinderella stooped abruptly to pick Carmen up by the waist, Justice and Mac both shouted.
[Put her down!] Justice demanded, but Cinderella completely ignored her. Instead, Carmen was thrust bodily back through the wall they’d just exited, and was covered over by the foam in half a blink.
Justice backed away from Cinderella, dragging Mac with her. “No!” she shouted, entirely unsure if Cinderella even had ears to hear her.
The denial was important. She knew saying no would, in practical terms, get her nothing. But it was essential for her own sense of personhood, of agency. She refused to go along with whatever their captors (for they were captors) wanted simply because it was going to happen either way. Her wants and choices would not be erased.
“No!” she spat again, in unison with Mac.
They backed away quickly, but as soon as she felt a sharp pricking along her spine, she froze.
Noumenon Infinity Page 35
