by Neil Clarke
It wasn’t one of his freqs. Maybe interference from the station? No way to test that, but he didn’t believe it anyway. He’d been using his freq the whole time he’d been at Mug Ruith and he’d never heard—or felt—that before.
What he hadn’t ever done before was go out on the surface with his freq turned on. That’s where he’d felt it the first time. When he was out there with the Worm.
Earworm, his exhausted brain said, making him shudder.
He sat up. His stomach hurt. His inviz said it was almost time for his sleep shift and he couldn’t remember eating anything since he got up so maybe he was just hungry. Jens pulled himself to the galley and got a meal bar.
The Worm wanted the Eel. Why? Why else? It wanted to get out of here, too. Get away from Mug Ruith. From Silxen and stupid contracts and certain death. Another body that Silxen owned, like Jens’ and Elena’s.
He crawled into his bunk, chewing. Rolled on his back. Turned up his cochlear. Turned it up more. Then lay there with the meal bar forgotten in his hand, crying, listening to the Worm’s freq, letting it tell him you are wanted, you are valuable, you are not alone.
He woke up with a headache and a purpose. It felt good to work with intent; not a feeling he got often, just sometimes when he worked on music and it was going well. The world would still, settle around him for a while. But any time he got stuck writing songs the feeling would shoot away and he’d be alone again inside his skull, the flow of it gone, connection lost. Worse almost to have it and then watch it leave.
Jens ignored the messages from HR, from Any. Any Body, he said to himself. He kept his cochlear turned up as he hovered down the cold ladder into the Hellhole and through its black eye to the ocean floor.
It wasn’t hard, this time. With his tranquility freq on, and the Worm humming comfort to him beneath that, the darkness wasn’t so vast. He undocked the Eel, used the suit’s hoist to pull himself up to the charging dock and remove the little fusion battery from the station’s hull. He mounted it directly onto the Eel. Before he climbed back into the station he maglocked the Eel to one of the station struts.
Back in the station, the lights had dimmed. The charging dock battery provided power for the station’s ancillary systems so that the main battery wasn’t tied up, and with it gone some systems had auto-powered down. Nothing important, and Jens didn’t mind. It was restful in the half-light, calming. The makeshift curtain had slid off the porthole again, but instead of rich velvet black it reflected back warm light, an unreliable, dying sun.
What would it be like? He tried to imagine, but couldn’t.
He pulled up the Worm’s biocontrols. He stared at the inviz for minutes before he realized he was drifting, cocooned in his freq; he’d have to switch it off to focus. Better not mess this part up.
He wouldn’t have been able to do it without Any Body telling him about what was in storage LQ-306. He duplicated the program that LQ-306’s equipment needed, made the necessary changes to it and to the Eel. He triple-checked the program, ran the test twice. Nothing to do but hit go. He watched the Worm’s neural traffic chug along, then spike, twitch, struggle against the pull of the programming as its information—its brain—was dragged from the flabby pale body eating and shitting silica off Mug Ruith vent and instead into the cool cylinder of the Eel.
Jens wished he could have warned it beforehand. It must have been frightening.
The under-station camera feed was up in Jens’ inviz. He watched the Eel, stomach cold with fear and excitement, though nothing looked different. Then it came alive. Its motor woke. It rose from the ground, strained against its magnetic tether, paddling determinedly in a circle. Jens wondered how long it would take for the Worm to figure out how to release the maglock.
LQ-306 held a shallow plastic box with sharp metal spindles inside that looked truly horrific. Better not to think about their purposes.
The lab had a small multipurpose medical chair. Jens installed the contents of LQ-306 and examined the disquieting result while unscrewing the vial of sedatives. He put the vial to his mouth and swallowed them all, dry.
Any Body had insisted that it wouldn’t hurt, but then they wouldn’t be the anybody in the chair.
No reason to delay. Go. Just go.
Jens went.
The legs of the chair molded around his calves, and when he put his wrists against the arms they snaked up and held him in place. That shot him through with adrenaline, but he was woozy and finding it hard to stay upright and away from those scary fucking metal bits. Should he have his cochlear on or off? Would it matter?
The sedative was sucking him down and back—no, that was the medical chair. The thing had a mind of its own, like everything else down here. He fought, but he couldn’t fight it, and gray static was closing in at the edge of his vision. He slid back. Cold pressure against his neck, a spike of furious heat, and then.
Elena laughing, shaking her head. So long, farewell—
His inviz dimmed and faded, then flared up, different, taking up more space, all of his vision, not just his eyesight but all his available brain. He was staring at nothing. Blind? Except that wasn’t right, because he could see. He just didn’t know what he was seeing, or he wasn’t seeing with—
A creeping feeling and a jerk. The inviz faded and reappeared a few times, like he was half-closing his eyes against very bright light. Brain on overdrive, like he’d had too many stim tabs.
There was a deep thrumming, a buried feeling that segued into that ultimate embrace promised by the freq he’d heard. Oh, satisfying, yes, like hunger fulfilled. Black-and-white grew texture, shades, depths. He could see temperature, but it was a shade of black and the light was a searing nuisance. So much big darkness beyond.
That was all the first instant. And then something pressed up against his thoughts. Crowded against him. He had just enough time to wonder if he’d made a mistake, a skewer of panic, before the Worm crushed into the space where his singular mind was, filaments of its otherness shooting through and into his thoughts, colonizing them. The hum was there, the freq he’d heard, the feeling he’d come for; it was him and he was it, but it was changed now, colored with fear and confusion.
You’re free, this is what you want—I gave you what you want. It was hard for Jens to think anything straight, tendrils of that other mind—those other minds, thousands of them, more—breaking down his coherence, but there was still enough of him, enough to try. He shouted as best he could, hoping that, now that he and this other thing were the same kind of thing, the same type of creature, that his intent would come through the way the Worm’s intent had come through on his freq.
Somebody released the maglock tethering the Eel to the station, Jens or the Worm, it wasn’t clear.
I gave you what you want, Jens tried again, though it broke apart as he was trying, like a clump of sand disintegrating into particulate. It was replaced instead by a yearning, a hunger that he recognized now, not an empty-stomach feeling but a craving for diversity, for materials, for components of the thing that could build a self into another new self. He had enough of his own mind left to wonder if he had misunderstood the Worm, and then to realize, with distance, that of course he had misunderstood it. It didn’t even recognize him as another mind, another self.
The station lights went off overhead and the darkness was entire. It slid across them like the gentlest night. The thing inside the mind of the Eel couldn’t see, but sensed when it slid out from beneath the station, into the darkness. The boundless, silent darkness.
What was left of Jens recoiled, backpedaled, tried to reach for control of the Eel, but slipped beneath the weight of everything else in there with him. And the Worm, humming its song, slithered, hesitating, into the void, to see what they might find.
About the Author
Tegan Moore is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest who enjoys eating noodles, hiking in the rain, and reading scary stories. She has published short fiction in magazines including Beneath Ce
aseless Skies, Asimov’s, and Tor.com, and runs the Clarion West One-Day Workshops. You can read more of her work at www.alarmhat.com and follow her obscenely charismatic dogs @temerity.dogs on Instagram.
The Oddish Gesture of Humans
Gabriel Calácia
Karier-lah had been staring at the image for some time now. That was starting to bother Hiimar, who walked up and down, busy with spreadsheets, theoretical books, memos, and ideas weighing inside her head. And Karier did nothing but look at that damn image.
“Ier,” she called one more time, still being able to find patience somewhere. “You’ve been looking at that image all morning, please come help.”
“It was just nine hundred and sixty-seven kuynas,” Karier said, checking the watch in his ring.
“For the Stars’ sake, Karier! We retracted that probe so long ago and all you do is stare at that, that . . . photograph.” She pronounced the word in the human language, which felt weird to say. It was a sort of rolling language, sticking in the mouth, like melted koku sweet. “The linguists haven’t even finished deciphering and we already have a significant amount of data to review, analyze, and interpret. All you can do to help is obsess over this single image?”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.
“Why do they do this, Hiimar?” he asked. “What is it they’re doing?”
Karier turned to an open book on his desk. It was the volume twenty-seven of the Manual of Civilizations, but there was little help for him there.
“It’s a demonstration of love, Karier, you know it very well. The sociologists, the psychologists, all of them agreed already. What else could it be?”
“I know, I know, it’s a demonstration of love. But . . . it couldn’t be just that.” He turned and looked at Hiimar. “Could it?” His four eyes blinked, bright and anxious.
“Karier-lah, my little,” she said. “You don’t study civilizations, psychology, or species behavior. You’re an oceanographer. Now, would you please stop with these pointless questions and help me interpret these awful sounds? I can’t stand to hear them all over again, I’ve toggled my ears four times, they’re hurt. All these things do is scream uuuurrrrghhhh and throw water somewhere.”
“They’re sea creatures, Hiimar.” His gaze returned to the image. “Just sea creatures,” he said as he reluctantly turned off the display.
After eighty-four hundred painful kuynas, Hiimar was sitting down on her armchair at the end of the day. She loved things like the probe they had retracted earlier—it was great to have new info about a civilization of which almost nothing was known—but she had to admit that she hated them sometimes. The labor it took! It mobilized hundreds of professionals of every known area, all of them bursting with theories, digging into old books as if looking for precious stones.
Now, thanks to the Stars, she was sitting down, the hurtful muscles of her legs at last relaxed. She was all ready to enjoy a sleep that, although short, should be invigorating enough. Another full day of work awaited her tomorrow.
All ready. That is . . . until Karier-lah came back from the bath.
“I’ve been thinking . . . ”
Please, no, Hiimar thought, exhausted, her eyes closed.
“Do you think more people can do that?”
“I don’t see why they couldn’t. How many humans must be out there, billions? Those aren’t the only ones who can do that.”
“But do you think that more than two can do it at the same time?”
Hiimar had to open her eyes.
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
“No one wondered that.”
“Because it’s stupid,” Hiimar said. “Imagine how it would be. It doesn’t look very . . . doesn’t look very practical to me, Karier. Another person can’t fit there. Humans have small heads, but they are still pretty round. Imagine three kra-kri-kra balls together. If humans did it, they’d get their cheeks stuck to one another’s.” She made a pause. “And why am I talking about this?!”
“That’s my point!” Karier said. “I don’t doubt that it’s possible, after all they seem to have a very mushy, rubbery consistence. But surely it’s not practical. So, if only two people can do it at the same time . . . ”
He tapped his nails on his chest bone, producing loud snapping sounds.
“If only two people . . . ” Hiimar pushed. “Say it at once so I can go to sleep.”
“If only two people can do it . . . well . . . look! Just imagine it. I’m looking for a good example, Hiimar, but I can’t find it! What do we do with two people only?”
“Irritating someone,” she said. “Exactly what you’re doing right now.”
“Oh, please. This is interesting, I promise.”
“I don’t doubt that it is interesting, but this is not our area, there are people who . . . ”
“I know! The scientists of civilization, of mind, of this and that. But just because it’s not our field it doesn’t mean we should avoid thinking about it, don’t you agree?”
“I do, Ier . . . ” she said. “And don’t doubt me, don’t make that face. After all, you remember the day when we discovered that those sounds in the labevita’s recordings were words of a children-exclusive dialect, right? That didn’t have any connection to oceanography.”
“Yeah,” Karier smiled. “That was a very beautiful day.”
“It was,” she smiled too, and her eyes blinked bright. “But I’m really-really tired, my little. And we have much more work to do tomorrow.”
Karier-lah looked at her for an instant. He seemed to be still thinking about the day of that linguistic discovery. Two oceanographers, who could tell . . . the linguists were nuts.
“All right, Hiimar,” he said. “You’re right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?” she asked. “Are you not going to sleep?”
“I think I’ll take a walk. I’ll be back soon. But sleep, please.”
“Yes . . . ” she said, as Karier went out and the door came down again. She looked at the empty chair by her side. That was unusual.
She closed her eyes, foreseeing it would be hard to keep them like that for long.
Hiimar found Karier exactly where she expected him to be, some kuynas later, when she decided that she couldn’t sleep.
He had a quirk of sitting on the floor between two shelves in the library. Though the environment was acclimatized, the floor was still very cold, and at that time everything was dark in the library. Some of the books created a dusty atmosphere, and the smell bothered almost everybody, but it never bothered Ier.
“Ier . . . where are you?” she asked, in a hushed tone, knowing he would hear it.
“Hiimar?” he asked, and his long head creeped out from behind a shelf in the language section.
“Hi,” she said, approaching him.
“What are you doing? You can’t sleep?”
She didn’t answer before sitting by his side, looking at the books at the level of their eyes. Original and translated volumes, a few not fully deciphered. It was an area they were very interested in when younger.
“I’ve been thinking about many examples for your problem,” she said.
“What problem?”
“The photograph one, the one from the humans. You asked me what kinds of things we do with only two people.”
“Yes. And I can’t think of anything. All we do, whether work or fun, always takes a lot of people. That varrmoine psychologist said we are a race of needy people.”
“That is true, but not for us.”
“What do you mean?” Karier looked at her.
“Us, Ier. We always did things together. We played together, when we were kids . . . ”
“Yes, but only because the other kids didn’t want to play with me. Only you did.”
“Right. We studied together.”
“For the same reason. And, in college, the library was always full.”
“We work together.”
“We ar
e the only oceanographers!”
“We are talking together, Ier. Right now. What we’re doing right now takes two.”
“Yes, but . . . but it can be done with more people. Do you understand?”
“According to your theory, that thing in the picture can as well.”
“They can, but they don’t do it very often. It may be rare. Maybe the humans have something like the frikar herb, or the kutu juice. They’d only do it when numb. But, for most people, in most situations, I picture it as something only two people do.”
“And what’s the importance of that, my little?”
“I don’t know,” Karier said, and he seemed honestly frustrated. “Something in that gesture impresses me a lot. It’s not because it’s weird, and the Stars know it is. Don’t the humans know that their mouths must be as dirty as their feet? But because it’s . . . I can’t find the word. I don’t believe we have a word for it. It’s like something . . . inner, but not inner for one person. Inner of two people. Do you understand what I mean, Hiimar? Interior between two people?”
“I bet the humans have a word for that.”
Karier-lah looked at the books in the language section. The shelf was huge. There were books on the language of almost every known race and species in the Manual of Civilizations. Of almost all of them, but not the humans’. What they knew about humans could be summed up in a small chapter in volume twenty-seven, section four of the manual. With the probe they had collected this might change soon, but it still didn’t seem enough to him.
“I wish I could know more,” he said.
“Me too. You know what’s funny, Ier? For humans, that gesture that causes us so much doubt must be something so simple.”
“Do you think so?” Ier asked. “What if it’s socially complicated?”
“By the happy expressions on their faces, it doesn’t seem complicated at all. Did you see the female’s face? Her skin seems to glow. I mean, figuratively. They are all a little glowy, literally speaking.”