Interstellar Pig

by William Sleator

  When they marched through the front door seconds later, I was standing with my arms flung across the mantel, like someone in an old-fashioned play, pretending to look at a book.

  "Barney! What are you doing here?"

  What I was doing was blushing furiously. I couldn't tell whether they were angry or merely surprised. "Well, uh, you asked me to come over, but nobody was here, so I thought . . . you wouldn't mind if I just read this book for a minute."

  They looked at one another slowly; then Zena was giggling. She had a rapid, high-pitched, silly giggle, like a teenager's, that bore no relation to her husky speaking voice. "And just what is it that you found to read, Barney, hmmmmm?" she asked teasingly, moving toward me and lifting her eyebrows.

  She didn't seem to be angry, but I wondered how she would feel if she knew what I really had been reading. I looked at the book in my hand for the first time. "When the aversive stimulus is the withdrawal of positive reinforcement," said the paragraph at the top of the page, "the resulting non-reinforcement of enough items ..."

  "I see, A Psychological Approach to Abnormal Behavior," Zena said, reading the title on the jacket. "A little weighty for a Sunday afternoon, but certainly a step up from science fiction. So you're an abnormal psychology enthusiast, is that it?"

  "I ... well I just ... it seemed . . ."

  "Well who isn't interested in abnormal psychology?" Manny demanded, hurrying over to the fireplace to defend me. "I love looking in volumes like that and discovering how abnormal I am."

  "You have to look in a book?" Zena asked him.

  "Everybody's abnormal, when you come to the bottom of it," said Joe, glancing at his watch. "Who's coming with me—to pick up the windsurfers?"

  "I'll go," Manny said.

  "I think I'll stay here and entertain Barney," Zena said. "Also, I need to do some work on my tan."

  "Hey, that's not fair," Manny whined, quickly holding his arm up to hers and comparing them with a critical eye.

  "Relax, Manny, well take the top down," Joe said. "Everybody knows you tan better in a moving vehicle than when you're just lying still."

  "Is that really true?"

  "Well I never heard of it before," Zena said.

  "It's because of relativity and time dilation," Joe explained with a straight face. "The greater your velocity, the slower time moves for you, so you have more time in the sun. Also, you age slower, so you stay younger looking."

  "No, but wait a moment," Manny said, sounding really concerned. "If time slows down for you, then it actually signifies you have Jess time in the sun than—"

  "If you don't get going now, it'll be too late to get any sun, even if you travel at the speed of light," Zena said impatiently.

  "Come on, Manny."

  And then, in that strange sudden way, the two men were gone. "Well, perhaps now we can get to discover each other, Barney," Zena said, her smile widening. "Perhaps we could even play the game."

  6

  She made a pitcher of lemonade and cajoled me relentlessly to sit with her out on the patio in the sun, insisting that it was too late in the day to get a bad burn, and offering me a tube of protective cream. I continued to balk. Finally she said, "Do you want a private lesson in Interstellar Pig or not?"

  "Sure I do!" I was flattered, and hoped I'd be a worthy opponent.

  "All right, I'll teach you a lesson, but I refuse to stay inside. We do it outside or not at all."

  "But . . ."

  "This is your final chance, Barney. And if you don't take it, I warn you, the others won't want to play with you."

  "Oh, all right."

  She handed me the lemonade pitcher and two glasses, and draped towels over my arm. "Take this outside, and take your shirt off and slather that cream all over you. I'll get the board."

  She didn't want me to know where they kept the board, it seemed. What if it was in the drawer where the document had been, and she noticed it was missing? I felt a sudden burst of panic. But the board hadn't been in that drawer, I assured myself, spreading out the towels—if it had been, I would have seen it.

  "Obey me, Barney, off with the shirt and on with the cream," she said, coming out with the board. She had changed into her bikini.

  Obediently, I took off my shirt and applied the cream. My body was so white, compared to hers, that we could have been members of different species.

  She set down the board and then sank to her knees on the towel and tossed back her hair. Muscles rippled on her abdomen. She opened the board between the two towels.

  I shaded my eyes with my hands and peered down at it. The background was black, sprinkled with stars. The stars seemed to be tiny reflectors, for they glowed—unblinking—as they would in space. They also varied in intensity, from big bright ones to pale clusters, distant nebulae so vague they were difficult to see in the bright sunlight, in shapes of spirals and crabs and amorphous clouds.

  The effect was so realistic that it could have been a vast photograph of the cosmos, taken by an outer space probe—if it hadn't been for the planets. They were strewn across the void, appearing to float above the board in startling three-dimensional relief. There was a fat bulbous one aswirl in luminous gasses. Several sported dazzling complex colored rings that made Saturn's look as dull ll. as Hula Hoops. There were planets of deserts and | terrifying jagged mountains; lonely barren 4" pockmarked planets as dead as the moon.

  "Comprehend?" Zend was saying. "The objective is to have The Piggy in your hand when the alarm goes off at the end. You will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. Otherwise, when the alarm goes, you and your home planet will be destroyed. Grasp it? Now, there are lots of manners of getting hold of The Piggy and preserving it from the other players. For instance, you can . .

  I wasn't really listening, hypnotized by the board. The larger stars seemed to be arranged in a kind of pattern—like the warped reflection of a chessboard grid in a distorting mirror—that undulated across the entire board. As if the stars could be used as a kind of path of stepping stones. And there were also several absolutely empty spots, small starless areas carefully contoured to give the impression that they were funnels, leading down into nothingness. Black holes?

  "... so that if you happen to be a water-breathing gill man from Thrilb, you can't set foot on Vavoosh without special breathing equipment, or you'll drown in boiling ammonia—not a pretty way to go. Or let's suggest you're an arachnoid nymph from Vavoosh, and you somehow end up on Mbridlengile, God forbid. The carnivorous lichen on Mbridlengile"—she pronounced it with a soft g—"aren't terribly sapient, but they're thorough. It would take them quite a time to digest you, and you'd be conscious for most of it—they go for the brain last." She nodded eagerly at me. "Okay, Barney? Prepared to play?"

  I had barely been listening to her and had no idea what she was talking about.

  It seemed complicated and grisly. "It's kind of hard to take it all in so fast," I said. "Could you just go over it once more?"

  She rolled her eyes. "You're going to have to be a little quicker on the uptake, Barney. This game goes vite. Maybe I miscalculated your abilities."

  "I'm a whiz at games," I insisted. "I just got distracted by the board. You have to admit it's pretty spectacular. Please, this time I'll pay attention."

  She sighed. "Well see that you do. Now. There are three kinds of cards: character cards, attribute cards, and instruction cards," she said, expertly shuffling one of the packs. "First you deal the character cards." She began laying cards out, upside down, on the cement beside the board. They were black on the back.

  "Those are the character cards?" I asked her.

  "Uh-huh," she said, her tongue between her teeth.

  "But we don't get to see them? We don't get to choose which character we want to be?"

  "Decidedly not. It's random, like life. Whatever creature you turn out to be determines what kind of atmosphere and temperature you need to stay alive—your strengths and weaknesses."

  "But where do y
ou get that information?"

  "From the rule book." She patted a fat volume on the towel beside her. "Go ahead, Barney. Pick."

  I hesitated. It seemed that a lot depended on the character you turned out to be. It was an unusual experience for me to be sitting out on the hilltop in the warm sun above the brightly crinkling, endless bay. But I wasn't noticing any of it.

  "You go first," I said.

  "The dealer doesn't pick first. Come, Barney. Take one," she urged me.

  I picked the card that would be my character x(;and held it up to my eyes, carefully shielding it ilttrom Zena. Drawn in lifelike detail on the card was a bubbling, gluey mass, a thick puddle of pink slime. Underneath it, enclosed in a circle, was a drawing of what seemed to be a single cell—apparently one of the individual units that made up the mass. The cell looked like a squashed wad of bubble gum, with faintly bluish nerves branching through it.

  "Ugh!" I couldn't help saying, as I pressed the card against my chest. This was the character I was supposed to be?

  Zena was studying her card with a little smile. She glanced.at me and giggled.

  "No necessity to secrete it, Barney. We all have to know what characters the other players are." She flipped her card over, displaying a fat, spiderlike creature with eight jointed legs. Its face might have resembled a human female's, except that the top half of the head was immensely swollen, to make room for huge faceted eyes. "I'm Zulma, an arachnoid nymph from Vavoosh," she introduced herself. "I'm not terribly agile in all environments, but I am quite brilliant, and marvelously sneaky. Who are you?"

  "This yucky thing," I said, showing her. "Couldn't I pick another one?"

  "The carnivorous lichen from Mbridlengile!" she cried. "They're fabulous!"

  I studied the card again, doubtfully. "I can't exactly see myself identifying with it. Couldn't I pick another?"

  "Against the rules," she said flatly. "You're going to have to stop being so prejudiced and provincial. How do you think you look to them? You don't appreciate how fortunate you are. Didn't you hear what I said about the lichen previously, Barney? They can eat anything—no creatures safe from them. And they're incredibly tough. They can survive at any temperature and in any atmosphere without cumbersome equipment like breathing gear—remember that, Barney—as long as there is something for them to dine upon. To the lichen, to eat is to breathe. Of course, they are rather less sapient than most other gaming species—my character, Zulma, the arachnoid nymph, is about one hundred times as intelligent as they are—but they do make up for it to some amount by-"

  "But how do you know all that?" I said.

  "I told you. It's in the rule book." She handed me the volume.

  I looked up my character. For a moment—possibly because of the glare of the sun—the lines of print shimmered illegibly. But quickly my eyes adjusted.

  Kingdom: Fungi

  Phylum: Mollusca

  Order: Holotricha

  Genus fr Species: Lichenes thalJophytis

  Common Name: Lichen

  Personal Name; Not applicable

  Sex: Not applicable

  Intelligence: IRSC 150

  Habitat: Surface of the planet Mbridlengile

  Diet: The lichen can obtain adequate sustenance from all known plants and animals. The lichen do, however, seem to exhibit a preference for the neural tissue of more intelligent animal species, taking especial relish in devouring living, conscious, functioning brain matter.

  General Remarks: Like certain primitive marine invertebrates, the lichen bridge the narrow gap between plant and animal. They live in colonies of hundreds or thousands of individual cells. Though the cells themselves do not possess senses as they are known to higher animal species, each cell is capable of absorbing chemical data from its immediate surface and transmitting it to the rest of the colony. In this way, the colony as a whole can be said to "see" its environment, even in the absence of light. The individual cells are incapable of passing on false information; they cannot "lie" to one another—such behavior would have no survival value for the colony. The colonies are ambulatory, and though their pace is necessarily slower than that of most animals, they are capable of eating through almost any obstacle to their progress.

  "You don't have to memorize it, Barney. You can check the details whenever you want."

  I looked up. Sunlight hammered onto the cement patio, which sent up sheets of heat that caused Zena's hands, shuffling another pile of cards, to waver before my eyes. Sweat trickled down my ribs, washing away the cream, but I hardly felt it. There is no heat in interstellar space.

  "Your deal," she said, handing me the cards.

  "Which cards are these?"

  "Attribute cards—things like special powers and equipment—and one of them is The Piggy. Obviously, most characters need equipment that allows them to breathe in other atmospheres, so they can get to other planets.

  Even the lichen sometimes need weapons, and vehicles, and protection."

  "That makes it complicated” I said.

  "Challenging is the word, Barney. You'll get the droop of it. Now are you going to deal or not? And these cards are kept secret, by the way."

  I began to deal them slowly, upside down. "Why is the important card called The Piggy?"

  "I don't know. That's just what they've always called it."

  "What does The Piggy do?"

  "Nothing. It exhibits no power at all, during the course of the game. But it is the single most vital card. If you don't have The Piggy when the alarm goes off, you and your home planet are destroyed. The only survivor is the one who holds The Piggy at the end of the game. Okay?"

  "I guess so," I said, although destroying all the players but one—not to mention their planets— .seemed a little extreme.

  I finished dealing. Zena gathered up her cards and studied them, chewing on her lip. "Oh, yes, you can only hold six cards in your hand at one time," she told me. "The rest of them have to be secreted away, on various planets.

  There's an envelope for each planet on the board. It's a wise advantage to stash your cards on planets that are less poisonous to you. Or if you have certain special equipment, you may want to secrete it on a planet where the equipment will be of use."

  "But—"

  "I'm almost concluded. You'll snatch on when we start to play. The most important thing is to ; find a good hiding place for The Piggy. You want it to be impossible for the others to find, but easy for you to travel to by the end of the game."

  "But why not just keep it in your hand all the time, so that you'll be sure to have it at the end?"

  "It's not secure enough in your hand. You may be in direct combat with someone and have to sacrifice a card. The optimum place for The Piggy is on some planet that's lethal to everyone else, but comfortable for you. And it's also a wise idea to surround it with various traps, or powerful guardians, so even if an opponent discovers it, he'll die before he can get it."

  The attribute cards included many types of breathing apparatus. There were also ray guns and bombs and missiles. There were even primitive things like ropes and flashlights and dehydrated food. And there were some things I didn't understand, like Portable Instant Impermeable Time-Released Cryogenic Vault, or Portable Access to the Fifth-Dimensional Matrix. No card in my hand said anything about a Piggy. Since there were only two of us, that meant Zena had it. So I had to get it away from her.

  I decided not to be intimidated. The game was so complicated, and involved so much information, that there was no hope of my planning an intelligent strategy this time. The only way to learn was to plunge in and play by pure instinct, not worrying about winning or losing. She had said this was a lesson, not a real game anyway.

  She laid out the planetary envelopes in two neat lines. Each was printed with a duplicate of one of the planets from the board and its name. We rolled dice to determine who picked first. I chose my planets without thinking too much about it, and distributed my cards among them. When we had both finished, Zena pu
t all the filled envelopes into a black bag, reminding me that no envelopes could be opened until one's character had landed on the corresponding planet on the board. She placed a little black figure representing Zulnia on Vavoosh, her home planet. She placed a pink one, representing the lichen, on Mbridlengile. Then she placed a small white disk, about an inch in diameter and half an inch thick, beside the bag of envelopes. "This is the timer," she said, one finger poised above a button on its edge.

  She stared at me. "Ready to go?" "Wait," I said. "How long do we have before it goes off?"

  "You'll be able to see. Now can we please play?" "Go head."

  She pressed the button. Zena won the first roil and moved first. "One two three four five six," she counted, moving her piece along the curving pathway of stars.

  I rolled a 9, and moved nine stars in the direction of the planet Flaeioub. It was the planet Zena had picked first, and so I figured it was important to her, and that maybe she had hidden The Piggy there. But as I set the lichen down on the ninth star, the star began blinking on and off. "What does that mean?" I said, startled.

  "You have to pull an instruction card. It's right there."

  The edge of a white card was poking out of a slot in the middle of the board. "Is it random, or what?" I asked.

  "Yes, Barney, it's random. It can happen on any star," Zena said, her voice sounding a little strained, "And will you speed up? Observe how much time is elapsed already!"

  I glanced over at the timer. A small curved area of black had appeared at the right-hand edge of the disk.

  "Oh, I get it," I said brightly. "The time's up when the whole thing goes black."