by Alex Lang
Bill panted. “We need to get on the ship. It’s not safe out here.”
“Yeah, I know all about the electromagnetism. Captain ordered us all on board. Like I give a crap what a Captain has to say.”
The sky was a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors that seemed to push the extremes of the spectrum. Ocean blue. Sapphire. Blood red. “I don’t have time for this.” Bill tried to step around
Skaggs.
The Galactic stooge stepped in front of him. “I’m been looking at your report.”
A flash of indigo lightning pierced the jungle. “Give me back my laptop,” Bill demanded.
Skaggs taunted him by holding it over his head. “Can’t say I like what you wrote about
me.”
The sky was a montage of dancing colors. Trees as tall as skyscrapers swayed. “I don’t care what you think,” Bill yelled over the roar of the wind.
“You ain’t gonna ruin my rep, pal.” Skaggs heaved the computer against some rocks. The device cracked. Skaggs grabbed it before Bill could get to it. He smashed it several times.
Bill knew the machine was useless. Without his notes, he couldn’t get student loan forgiveness. “Bastard!”
Skaggs smirked. “Guess you’ll be going to jail, pal.”
Bill wanted to hit Skaggs. Before he could do anything he heard a loud crack of thunder. The sky filled with a blinding tangerine light. Then he was overcome with nausea. He blacked out.
He woke up and saw himself. He must be dead. But he felt queasy and his head ached worse than a hangover after a college drinking binge. Dead people couldn’t feel pain, could they? God, he hoped not.
He stood up on wobbly legs.
He saw his body move.
Looking down, Bill realized the storm had affected him. He was in Skaggs’s body. Which could only mean Skaggs was in his. “Skaggs, you okay?” Bill called out.
Bill’s old body groaned.
***
Bill leaned back in the leather chair in Skaggs’s quarters and played “The Ballad of Jed Clampett.” His fingers still hurt. It would take him a few weeks to build up the calluses that experienced banjo players needed. It would take many months to work off Skaggs’ sizable gut.
The airlock hissed. Beth entered.
“I didn’t know you played the banjo.”
Bill grinned in his new body.
“I’m pickin’ it up.”
“Isn’t that Bill’s banjo?’
Bill put the instrument down. “I bought it from him.” When he realized he and Skaggs might never switch back he had arranged for Galactic to give his old body a share of the bonus.
Then he had paid off all his student loans with Skaggs’ money.
Beth sighed. “I guess he doesn’t want it anymore. The professor still says he’s you. That you stole his body.”
Bill felt sorry for Skaggs. He didn’t ask to switch bodies, but there was no reasoning with him. Skaggs just threatened Bill every time they spoke. “It’s really sad.”
“I’m recommending that we quarantine this planet,” Beth said. “We just don’t know enough about that electromagnetism. Look how it affected Bill.”
“My report says the same thing,” Bill said. He hoped that would keep Galactic away. He wished he could see Earl again. Maybe in a hundred years the whole planet would be playing bluegrass if Earl kept switching bodies.
“We put Bill back under sedation. He’s dangerous. You know, he told me this crazy story that we were all in danger of switching bodies.”
Bill tightened a string. “Crazy.”
“He was a nice guy.”
“What’s going to happen to him?” Bill asked.
“I don’t know. Psychologists on Earth will check him out.”
“You know, Beth, I’m thinking of retiring. I’m going to go to school. Maybe I’ll get a graduate degree.”
Beth cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t know that interested you.”
Bill picked up the banjo and plucked a few chords.
“What is that song?” Beth asked. “It sounds familiar.”
“The Ballad of Jed Clampett. It’s about a poor old country boy who becomes rich beyond his dreams after he finds oil on his land.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale,” Beth said.
Bill laughed. “Yep.” He adjusted another string and started back up.
Whisper
YELLOW-SPOT-ON-CEPHALOTHORAX TOUCHED her Queen’s antennae with her own, and felt the surge of { } coursing through and down her body. The two parted and stood still for long moments, enjoying the bond they’d just shared.
The Queen’s upper hands palsied about and Yellow-Spot couldn’t understand what the Queen was trying to say. She looked at one of the Nurses caring for the Queen, who said, “I think the Queen means to ask you how your stay with the gods was.”
Yellow-Spot’s heart ached, seeing her Queen in decline. When the gods had taken
Yellow-Spot those many moons ago, the Queen had looked so young and vibrant. Further sorrow filled Yellow-Spot because of what she was about to do. She lied, “It was wonderful.” It was horrible, witnessing the hateful machinations of these gods. “I learned to understand their strange god-speak.” That much was true.
“Gods! They aren’t gods,” said the demon voice in Yellow-Spot’s mind.
“Be quiet,” she replied back in her mind. Her hands faltered, trying to find her train of thought again. “They told me I was divinely chosen to understand them …”
“Why would the gods choose not to be easily understood?”
“… and I feel honored and humbled that I can tell everyone finally what they are saying.”
“It’s all lies! They’re not gods at all. Why don’t they look like us? Where’s their Queen? Why do they kill each other? How do they { }? They eat so funny.”
Yellow-Spot smoothed her left antenna to distract from any yellow or green her color-face might be showing, betraying her smell of agitation. What she wouldn’t give to stop this demon in her mind.
“Wonderful,” the Queen said. “They will be at the New Queen choosing ceremony. Correct?”
“Correct, my Queen.” Yellow-Spot could barely speak, the sense of betrayal so palpable.
“Why don’t the gods give the Queen everlasting life?”
Yellow-Spot ignored the voice, took a deep breath. “My Queen, the gods request a Drone.” Her legs almost gave out. The betrayal, even though she wasn’t sure what she was betraying. “Why am I taking a Drone?” she thought-asked the demon.
As response, { } surged through her. Though the monster in her mind had no physical existence, it somehow was able to give her { }. “Do as I say and all will be answered, and you shall feel the everlasting { } of a Queen.”
“Curious,” the Queen said. “The gods are mysterious. I will receive your Taste and give it to one of the Drone Nurses. When you require it, your Drone will be waiting.”
The Queen’s Nurse gave Yellow-Spot a Paste-berry. Yellow-Spot bit into the fuzzy skin, cringing a little at the bitterness. She hated eating this kind of Paste-berry, but it was necessary, as this variety added more of her Taste into the Paste.
A few moments later Yellow-Spot regurgitated the berry into Paste. The Nurse collected it for safekeeping.
The Queen said, “I grow tired. My days are numbered and I shall soon go to The Heavenly Colony. Is there anything else to discuss before I retire?”
“Yes, there is.” Yellow-Spot stared at her hands, surprised she’d said anything.
“Do it!” the demon commanded. “Tell her the truth!”
The words came to her fingers as if unbidden. “The gods aren’t true gods.”
The Queen’s color-face was the green of confusion, but she didn’t say anything.
“I mean … maybe they aren’t gods. Forgive me. I have misspoken.”
The Queen moved forward till their antenna almost touched. Her palsied hands said,
“How do you mean?”
“Do i
t!” the demon goaded.
Yellow-Spot loosened her fingers to speak. Perhaps she could feign blacking out. But no; the Queen might simply request the information after she pretended to wake. She said, “Perhaps they’re not gods at all. They look nothing like us. Didn’t the gods make us in their own image?
They’re missing two arms, for one thing. And their skin is soft and squishy like a Drone or newly hatched larval person, or an animal like a razor-run. They have only two eyes. Their ears are on top, not on the abdomen the way proper ears are. They have no antennae. Their eyes and ears and mouth are on a bulb supported by a thin stalk atop their body. And their size … gods are supposed to be larger than us. These gods are the same size, if not smaller. And most of their body is furless, and not in the vibrancy of our golds, and blues, and reds, and greens, and-”
“Interesting idea,” the Queen interrupted her. “But wholly incorrect. Come, let’s { }.” Their antennae touched and Yellow-Spot felt the { } course through her. The air filled with the smell of the Queen’s love. The Queen fed Yellow-Spot Paste, and Yellow-Spot Tasted the blissed music of the entire colony in the { }. She wanted it to last forever. Yellow-Spot slumped and collapsed to the floor, drunk with { }.
Yellow-Spot woke with the sun glaring in her eyes. She sat up and nearly bumped the top of the cell she lay in. She scooted out and looked around. Drones. Larvae. Cocoons. The nursery.
She must’ve been carried from the Queen’s dome.
“It’s about time you woke,” one of Yellow-Spot’s eyes caught a Nurse saying.
Yellow-Spot turned toward the Nurse, feeling guilty at the things she said to her Queen, questioning the gods’ validity, no less. “I’m sorry-”
“You shouldn’t be,” the demon said.
“You’re lucky you don’t get exiled.”
Exiled. Yellow-Spot imagined being pushed out of the colony, forced to wander the forest alone, cut off from her Queen and sisters. The horror almost caused her to pass out. “Yes, well, the Queen’s very forgiving.”
The Nurse made a dismissive gesture, and Yellow-Spot couldn’t make out if it was an actual word.
Yellow-Spot moved toward the dome’s entrance. “I’ll be leaving you, then.” She waited for a response, but the Nurse just stared at her, and the other Nurses were busy feeding larvae and attending to other duties. She was glad to leave.
Outside the nursery, she took a deep breath, feeling her abdomen expand and contract, smelling the Paste being cultivated from the nearby berry field. Gods yelled at the Farmers. To most people, any sound a god made was divine. But Yellow-Spot had lived with them; she could detect anger in their strange noise-speech. She thought about going over to the field and telling the Farmers what the gods were really saying. But her words would fall upon blind eyes.
“We need to leave tonight,” the demon said in her mind.
“I don’t want to.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“I do!” Yellow-Spot looked around, hoping no one saw her speak. She began walking toward her clutch’s dome, with the sun to her back now. Both moons were out, both nearly full.
“Why am I doing any of this?” she asked the voice.
“Everything will become clear,” the demon assured her.
Yellow-Spot thought about defying the demon, but she feared the demon would then withhold the { } that they could share.
The whine of one of the gods’ flying machines brought Yellow-Spot back to the present. Several people stopped what they were doing to prostrate themselves in prayer. Yellow-Spot continued walking, feeling only slightly guilty at the sacrilege she was committing. Perhaps the demon’s crazy thoughts were getting to her. She recalled the demon’s first appearance in her mind.
Yellow-Spot had been with the gods only a few days, feeling like a Queen, of sorts, as she’d been chosen to learn the god’s speech. That day she witnessed two gods standing, facing each other and making loud noises. One god pointed a grey stick at the other. The second god began to run away. The stick thundered, with smoke coming from it, then the second god fell. The fallen god made softer noises, like some wounded animals make, and leaked red fluid. After a short time she stopped moving.
“How could one god kill another of her own colony?” Yellow-Spot had asked herself. “Only animals do that!”
A new voice replied, “They are not gods.”
Yellow-Spot could deny the voice at first. It began as vague arms, indistinct, yet able to form words. Much as Yellow-Spot’s own thoughts. But it grew stronger the longer she’d spent with the gods, took more shape until it was not just arms but a body as well. She often wondered where the demon had come from. Perhaps it was some trick the gods had cursed her with. But that didn’t make sense; if anything, the demon acted against the gods. But then where’d the demon come from?
Both moons waxed and waned several times and Yellow-Spot witnessed further ungodly acts. She began agreeing with the demon, started accepting that these might not be gods. A whole cycle of seasons passed. By the time she had left, she’d been glad to go.
Presently the gods’ flying machine rumbled. Yellow-Spot stopped to watch it, truly mesmerized. How easy life would be to fly! The machine’s spinning wings took it south. An unpleasant sharp smell tickled her nostril; she knew it came from the flying machine. Everything about the gods was so alien.
Yellow-Spot was losing interest when she saw a stick rise up on a pillar of fire to connect with the flying machine. Several people marveled at the giant fireball that erupted.
“You stupid people,” the demon said, “they’re fighting.” In her mind’s eye the demon currently appeared as an indistinct person.
After Yellow-Spot had learned the rudiments of the gods’ language, she’d learned that there were two factions of them, each at an uneasy peace, much like her colony was with the other surrounding colonies. With the fireball lighting the sky, it looked like that peace had ended.
Yellow-Spot approached her clutch’s dome, the white of Paste-wax gleaming in the sunlight. She avoided people lest they ask her what had happened. Fortunately most seemed content to accept it as divine wonder.
“Sister!” exclaimed Taste-of-Sweet-Berries, running up to her. The two touched antennae and felt { }. It wasn’t as strong as with the Queen, but Sweet-Berries was her closest sister; their connection was rather strong.
The clutch was currently Pasting up the holes to their dome the hail storm had made a few nights ago. When Yellow-Spot came in, several people stopped what they doing to { } with her. Yellow-Spot loved the community of her clutchsisters and for a time the demon receded just a little.
After several greetings, Yellow-Spot motioned for Sweet-Berries to follow her back outside. “Are you ready for your assignment from the gods?” “from the cursed demon,” she thought-spoke.
“Yes,” Sweet-Berries said.
“And you’re sure you can make Royal Paste?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m a Nurse.”
“And Electric-Touch-On-Red-Fur? You’ve talked to her?” When Yellow-Spot had walked in a moment earlier, Electric-Touch was atop a people ladder Pasting the highest spots on the dome.
“Yes. Yes. Why all the secrecy? Wouldn’t the Queen at least give us her blessings?”