Awares

by Piers Anthony

  “You are not my enemy, Elasa. You are the enemy of the Maggots. So am I.”

  “But you are doing their business.”

  “Because if I do not, they will feed me immediately into the grinder, literally, and substitute a better performer. I survive only because I am a capable administrator. When this task is complete, I will be ground up regardless. They don't keep workers beyond one planet. So I perform, for the sake of less than a year of extended life.”

  She considered that. “So you really do want my favor. To make your last months happier than otherwise.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if I tell our government, we can organize resistance.”

  “Your congress? Lot's of luck. We have our agents there too, though we hardly need them. They will not believe you, and if they did, they would still accomplish nothing. All you would achieve would be mass panic, if the corrupt media even ran the news.”

  He had a pretty good grasp of local politics, surely gleaned from his host. Elasa was coming to appreciate why the Awares were operating secretly. There was nothing to be gained by publicity. So she shut up and organized the papers. It seemed that Kop would be making presentations in the name of Pauling to promote a secret military building project that no one would dare veto. Military projects were sacred, regardless of their cost or irrelevance. Congress would probably not even inquire into the nature of these huge buildings. There was, after all, a lot of money to be made from construction contracts.

  Adela returned with Bunky. The Lamb sniffed the man and backed off, recognizing the alien quality.

  “Telepathy!” Kop exclaimed. “And precognition! Maybe there is yet hope.”

  “Hope for what?” Elasa asked.

  “Hope for your salvation. Food-species legend has it that three things are required to balk the Maggots even temporarily: telepathy, precognition, and power. My folk had the first two but not the third; our space fleet was only a fraction of the Maggot swarm. So we were doomed.”

  “Power is not necessarily military,” Elasa said.

  “Indeed. But what else is there, in the face of an armada? Imagination?”

  “So it seems that we also are doomed,” Elasa said.

  “You're lying. You believe you have something.”

  “I did not promise you complete candor,” she reminded him.

  “Which gives me faint hope. My world is gone. I would help save yours if I could. Meanwhile I will build the slaughterhouses.”

  Elasa put her arm around Bunky. “Is he serious?”

  “Yes,” Bunky bleated. Then he and Adela departed.

  “Remarkable,” Kop said. “The creature is not close to human intelligence, yet his telepathy enables him to understand and respond. But I fear that such mental qualities limited to an animal mind will not suffice to accomplish much.”

  “Nevertheless, the Lamb endorses your sincerity,” Elasa said. “Then I will be your lover, while you tell me all about the Maggots.”

  “Gladly.”

  “Starting with the best way you think Earth might save itself despite your construction program.” She started removing her clothing.

  “You can't balk them militarily,” he said as he undressed. “The only way you can possibly save your planet is to persuade them that Earth is more trouble than it is worth. Since it is worth half a year's food for them, that's a lot. But if you should succeed, they will bypass you and move on to the next edible world.” He advanced on her, human penis erect. Obviously he was more than ready to make sex the native way.

  “We will ponder it,” Elasa said as she opened her arms to him. Kop had already given them much to ponder, and the Lamb and Awares would be working on it. Kop might not think the Maggots could be stopped, but she believed they would find a way.

  “Now tell me the rest,” Elasa said as she took him into her. She knew she could keep his sexual interest indefinitely, and he would have her interest as long as his information held out. “I want your personal story, too. From the beginning of your contact with the Maggots.”

  “You shall have it,” he gasped as he ejaculated into her.

  Chapter 6:

  Invasion

  I was making love to my sibling Qqess when the call came. “Inferno!” I swore. “There's an emergency at the observation station. I must leave you, Kess.”

  She was used to emergencies, for my profession was to handle them. “I will be here when you return, beloved, with my cloaca hot.”

  I bit her ear affectionately as I disengaged. “I love you, sister.” Then I departed.

  Space Command had detected a blip, and the power precognitor reported it was dangerous. All of us have precognition, of course, but the vicissitudes of changeability make it virtually worthless for routine things. What point to precog the next day's highlights, when one's very awareness of them changes them? The routine is similar regardless whether one takes one route or another. So we normally survey our near future routinely each day to be sure there is no significant mischief, such as a blip in the motor causing the flyer to crash, then proceed satisfyingly null. Similar with telepathy; the Qqq mind is one of the most complicated objects extant, and reading other minds soon makes a person queasy; they are filled with disorderly thoughts and impressions that one would never tolerate in one's own mind. I have thoughts of my own to organize without having to struggle with the messiness, desires, and guilts of others. It is better to stick to verbal and visual communication, allowing each other comfortable privacy while sparing ourselves avoidable disgust. Professional precogs, however, have far greater powers, not wasted on personal interactions, and can spot future events that need to be expeditiously handled.

  Such as that blip. It was at the extreme range, and ill defined, but already carried the aura of menace. It might be a false reading; at the fringe reliability suffered. But it was not worth the risk of ignoring. Not until we were sure. I am also an Aware, which is another reason for my position, and I knew this situation was wrong. There was genuine mischief here.

  I gave commands. It was my profession to assess borderline risks and categorize them, relaying them to the appropriate authorities for resolution. First I had the visual and auditory scopes orient on the blip, to get a literal picture of it. It fit the profile of a space ship. None of ours were that far out. That was in the direction of the Oumic realm, a pseudo-civilized species with which we had very limited contact. We probably would have been at war with each other, were the costs of interstellar combat not so wastefully extreme. Had they now embarked on the foolishness of a physical invasion of our sphere? That did not seem to make sense. They were reprehensible but not crazy.

  Yet as the analysis was tallied, it turned out to be true: it was an Oumic ship. Worse, it was definitely foreboding. Menace was migrating to doom. If we let that craft into our region of space, we would pay a hideous price. The precogs were certain.

  But I was not. I did not want to make a planetary case of a potential misunderstanding. So I alerted our military arm to organize, then messaged the alien contact crew. “Beam them a warner,” I said. “To justify their approach, retreat, or be demolished.” Beam communication is of course the fastest, and protocols were in place; the Oumic would receive it. They would respond, or else. They knew that, just as we would if we foolishly invaded their space.

  They did not respond. They kept on coming, and the aura of menace intensified. “Do not let them get within mental range,” the head procog warned me.

  But protocols are tedious, and by the time we had to act, the ship was in range. The precogs went wild. “Get rid of it!”

  This seemed apt. I turned it over to the military, which had been eagerly waiting permission to blast.

  And nothing happened.

  I rechecked. “Why aren't you blasting?” I demanded.

  “The order was mislaid,” the general responded, evidently out of sorts.

  “Well, recover it,” I snapped. “The precogs are losing their minds.”

 
; Yet somehow nothing was done. The alien continued on course, its menace growing. It was not blasted.

  I was furious, but also perplexed. Such mismanagement was not typical of our personnel. Always alert for the unexpected, I checked with a private telepath, the kind who could survey a distant mind and identify a deviance from the normal pattern. “What's going on?” I asked him. “Why aren't the blasting orders being executed?”

  He checked, and expelled a whistling breath through three vents. “There's an interference in their minds. They are unable to execute the order.”

  Aha! “What is the source of interference?”

  “It is masked, but seems to originate in the alien ship.”

  “So it is a mind attack preceding a physical attack?”

  “This may be the case,” he agreed uncertainly. “The masking is subtle.”

  I messaged our Supreme Coordinator. He responded immediately, knowing that I took such a step only from urgent need. “I fear we are under attack by the Oumics,” I reported. “They have nullified our triggermen so that their ship is not being blasted. That means they are in our minds.”

  “I am aware of the situation,” he said. “Abate your concern.”

  I chilled. My Awareness does not function long-distance, but I knew that this was not right. In fact I feared that the enemy had already reached and corrupted a key mind: that of the Coordinator himself.

  “Thank you for your reassurance,” I said politely. “My concern is abated.”

  We were definitely under attack. But what could we do, with our top official already corrupted?

  I did what I could. I prepared an all-points bulletin. WARNING! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY AN ALIEN FORCE. THE MINDS OF TOP OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN CORRUPTED. DEAL ONLY WITH THOSE YOU TRUST. That at least would get the word out and give us a better chance.

  And my bulletin did not go out. Key minds in that chain too had been corrupted. Then I knew it was bad.

  I went home and communed with Kess. She agreed that any further effort on my part would only attract attention to me and get me killed by one of the corrupted personnel. We made desperate love, and her cloaca was indeed hot, but much of the joy in it was gone.

  We watched as the alien ship arrived at a planetary port unscathed. There was no commotion; it never made the planetary news. That was more evidence that there was suppression, as an alien landing should have been phenomenal news. Instead the normal planetary routine continued.

  Months passed, and things happened. Huge new buildings were constructed near the largest municipalities, their presence also unremarked. Special highways were cut through neighborhoods to terminate at those buildings. Traffic formed, a seemingly endless line of transport trucks, driving into one side of the local building and out the other side, lighter. Still no news. A rail track was laid down, extending form the building to the hugely expanded spaceport, and a continuous line of boxcars rolled along it, unloading something that the giant alien spaceships carried away.

  But some citizens were curious, and managed to peek into the building without being seen. Thus I received word: it was a slaughterhouse. For animals and people.

  Our world was being rendered into meat to feed the aliens. And it seemed that there was nothing we could do about it.

  “We can't trust anyone else,” I told Kess. “I have to do it myself.”

  “Do what, my love?”

  “Disrupt the process. I will bomb the slaughterhouse. That will at least slow them down.”

  “Not for long,” she said. “A bomb will demolish only a small portion of it, which they will soon rebuild.”

  “I have access to a small nuclear bomb.” One of the prerogatives of my position was knowledge where such things were stored, and I had the access codes to reach it and transport it. It was almost as if our forerunners had known there would come a time when such access was needed.

  “Oh! But that will take you out too, beloved.”

  “Yes. It will be a suicide mission. But maybe it will show our world that resistance is possible, and there will be a spontaneous general uprising that will extirpate the alien menace.”

  “It will kill a great number of our neighbors.”

  “I know it, and it pains me. But if I do not act, they will soon die anyway, being canned for alien food. This seems less unkind.”

  “I will help you.”

  “No, Kess! I want you to survive and find happiness elsewhere. You must flee far from here.”

  “I will have no happiness without you, Kop. Besides, it requires two to transport the bomb.”

  She was correct. Reluctantly I allowed her to assist me in our suicide mission. We fetched the bomb and wheeled it by night to the outer wall of the building. The stench surrounding the edifice was terrible. I went about arming it. There would be no delay once I completed the process and depressed the DETONATE button. It would blow, and this entire section of the planet would be vaporized.

  It was ready. My digit hovered over the button. “I love you, Kess,” I said sincerely.

  “I love you, Kop.”

  “You can still escape,” I said. “I can wait a time period, long enough for you to get clear.”

  She licked my hide. “I can imagine no greater honor than dying with you, for the greater welfare of our planet.”

  I was gratified. If I had to die, dying with her was my preference. I went for the button.

  But my digit did not descend. It remained hovering.

  “Do it, beloved,” Kess said urgently.

  “I can not,” I said.

  “Then I will do it.” She reached for the button.

  And paused. “Neither can I,” she said, appalled.

  Then I understood. “We have been taken over by alien minds.”

  “Duh!” a voice in my head said. “Did you think we would allow you to destroy our handiwork?”

  “Who are you?” I asked aloud, for the moment unable to think of a better reaction.

  “I am your alien master from Oumic. I have been with you all along, observing. But now it was necessary to take over.”

  “How did Oumic achieve the means to defeat us like this?”

  There was a hollow laugh. “We didn't. We were taken over by the Maggots. Our planet is now a mass of fecal matter, the remnant of the meat that once governed it. The Maggots are moving on to the next food planet, this one. I have been spared temporarily to do their bidding, which is to govern you. Too bad; I admit I had hoped that you would successfully oppose them. But now I know they can not be stopped by species as stupid as ours or yours. Only one that can make the reduction of their planet more costly than it is worth can balk them even temporarily.”

  “You can balk them!” I cried. “Set off the bomb!”

  “This?” The Oumic laughed hideously. “Like this?” Kop's digit descended and punched the button.

  Kop flinched, but nothing happened for a moment. Then a panel on the surface lighted with the word DUD.

  “Did you think the Maggots would leave dangerous weapons adrift for any fool to use?” the Oumic asked rhetorically. “You never had a chance.”

  “But I'm Aware,” Kop protested. “I know that bomb was live.”

  “You knew only what I allowed you to know. The bomb was illusion.”

  So it seemed. They had, as the alien said, never had a chance. Kop's Awareness had been functioning as usual in other respects, enabling him to bring the bomb here unobserved. It had never occurred to him that an alien mind had joined his own, blocking off both his Awareness of its presence and the trap set for him. It had not occurred to him because the alien blocked him.

  “Now you are catching on. We have dawdled long enough,” the Oumic said. “The master is hungry.”

  Then the two of us marched on into the building. I was not conscious of being directed; it seemed that the imperative was my own, though I now knew it was not. Here the odor was a magnitude greater. I was surprised that the people of the neighborhood had not remarked on it.

>   “What people?” the Oumic asked. “They have all been reduced. You are the last; we saved the two of you for two purposes.”

  Was there any point in asking what those purposes were? We would surely learn it all too soon.

  We came to a kind of office. There was a person sized grub, with several little forefeet, a slimy snout, several body segments, and a tail that oozed excrement. It smelled even worse than the building. But its mind was quite another matter. Telepathic awareness fairly radiated from it, overwhelmingly powerful.

  This, I realized, was a Maggot.

  Kess walked forward, seized by the rapacious mind of the Maggot. I tried to call out to her, warning her to stay away from it, but its mind had control of mine too. All I could do was stand there, mute.

  “Canned meat is fine,” the Oumic said in my mind. “But Maggots prefer live meat when it is available.”

  Kess rapidly stripped away her apparel and threw it aside. Then she went right up to the awful thing, reaching her forelimbs out toward it as if seeking to embrace its gross torso. But it was neither love nor sex it sought. Its snout oriented, and squirted translucent juice that soaked her skin. She screamed in utter agony as that strong digestive acid melted her flesh and continued penetrating to the bone, but she did not flee.

  Beloved! I cried internally, still unmoving.

  “The Maggot appreciates your pain also,” the Oumic said with my mouth. “That is one reason you are witnessing this.”

  The Maggot applied its gross snout to that dissolving flesh and slurped it in with gusto. Kess continued to scream. She could not move or defend herself, only shriek as the pain of dissolution continued. Just as I could not move or defend her, only watch in horror.

  When her forelimbs were gone, Kess bent forward as if to kiss the monster. It squirted more liquid on her head. She screamed anew as her fur, skin, and face dissolved, then the bone of her skull. When the pulsing matter of her brain was exposed, the Maggot put its snout to it and sucked it in, slowly hollowing out her head.

  Before long Kess stopped screaming. Her vocal apparatus had dissolved. But she was still hurting; I could tell by the helpless quivering of her body. Not until most of the brain was gone did I know that she had found the relief of death. Beloved!! I repeated, stunned by grief and desolation.