Unidentified Funny Objects 3

by Alex Shvartsman (Ed. )

  The Ugglezian was already halfway up the side of its own lander and heading for the hatch.

  Number Twenty-Nine watched, mesmerized, as the dark shape undulated toward him. It seemed to have no feet, no head, and it radiated a soothing, benign aura.

  From what seemed like very far away, he heard the Ugglezian shout something. It sounded like: “Flee, Yagwar! The Rogbat’s hibernation was disturbed by our weapons’ energy discharge.”

  Number Twenty-Nine didn’t see why that should concern him.

  The Rogbat came closer.

  “It’s omnivorous! Run!”

  Now that the Ugglezian mentioned it, Number Twenty-Nine could sort of make out a mouth-like aperture in the center of the Rogbat’s mass. But he couldn’t really be concerned about it because he felt so sleepy right now. He could barely hold up his rills. A nap would be perfect, just the thing. He hunkered down on the purple sand and shut his eyes.

  ###

  He opened his eyes in the dark. “Blik,” Number Twenty-Nine said. “It smells like spoiled nuglak in here.

  Luckily, his infrared senses had already matured. He activated them and looked around. He seemed to be in a smooth cave of some sort whose walls and floor were slick with moisture. Scattered about the cave were strange objects.

  It looked like a lot of murph. In fact, it reminded Number Twenty-Nine of his grandmother’s recycling yard. Blik all over the place. Just to the side was what looked like an old orbital mine buoy from the outer rings of Goloppa II. And over there, wasn’t that part of an Orten transport?

  And over against the curving wall was at least half of a Cantilian zek, squashed and mangled, but still recognizable.

  A wave of noise crashed over him as the cave floor shook. Number Twenty-Nine fell over on his back and—just in time—rolled out of the way as the mine buoy toppled with a crash. He lay still until he was sure that all movement and noise had stopped. Then he sat up.

  Number Twenty-Nine couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to him as though the cave had just belched.

  “It is a puzzlement,” said a thin and tinny voice.

  Number Twenty-Nine spun around as fast as his pads would allow, but the source of the voice eluded him. He was alone, he thought, having hallucinations, in a cave prone to earthquake. Blik.

  “Why would a Rogbat swallow organic matter when it cannot digest it?”

  The words were in Nargexian. The voice seemed to be coming from a small round metallic object.

  Number Twenty-Nine took a step closer.

  The round object had two red spots on it with white circular centers, and a slash below them. It looked remarkably like a miniature version of a Nargex head.

  The red spots fixed on him. The slash below moved and said: “What manner of being are you?”

  “I’m a Yagwar male drone,” Number Twenty-Nine replied.

  “A male? I’ve never encountered one of you alone before. Rather small, aren’t you? Why weren’t your large aggressive females protecting you?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We have a great deal of time here.”

  “We do?”

  “Well, I do. And you, well, you’ll probably die of hunger, eventually. And then be expelled. The Rogbat can’t digest you.”

  “So we’re inside the Rogbat?” Number Twenty-Nine had difficulty believing the truth of this. Yet what other explanation was there? He settled down on his rear pads. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable in here, but he was beginning to wish that his grandmother had found him before the Rogbat had. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said. “But what exactly are you?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “You appear to be a small Nargex head.”

  “Ah, the Yagwar drone is more intelligent than originally noted.”

  “Where’s your body?”

  “Now that’s a long story.”

  ###

  As the mech explained, it wasn’t really a full Nargex head but, rather, a miniature used to run Nargex orbital miners. The mech had never really had a body. When the orbiter to which it was attached suffered a fuel cell malfunction and made an emergency landing on Eridnae 7, it was immediately swallowed by the Rogbat. The vessel’s superstructure had already been digested. Only the head remained, a snack for later.

  “One must be careful with these energy signatures,” said the head. “You never know what will summon a Rogbat. And there’s no reasoning with them.”

  “Yes, I see.” Number Twenty-Nine was beginning to wonder how long it would take him to die of hunger here in the Rogbat’s stomach. He already felt an unwelcome pang in his thorax. To distract himself he pawed a twisted piece of metal out of the way. “What is all this junk?”

  “Bits and pieces of machinery that the Rogbat hasn’t had time to finish digesting. It will get around to them eventually,” the head said. “And, eventually it will get around to me.”

  “I wonder what this thing is.” Number Twenty-Nine prodded a strange flat metal container. It had obviously suffered some sort of heat damage and was charred black around its edges. The remains of what could have been wings or solar panels jutted out of the top and gave it a distressed, melancholy appearance.

  “I have no visual referents for it,” the head said.

  Again, Number Twenty-Nine poked at the thing. Bits of metal char flaked away at his touch. Just a big piece of murph, he thought. He batted at one of the winglike vanes.

  “Bzzzt! Yarfagloo!”

  He jumped backward and landed in a heap.

  “Gloofanzzt!”

  “Look out,” the Nargex-like head said. “It’s alive!”

  “Yarfagloofanzzt!”

  “Careful now,” the head said. “Take precautions, Yagwar.”

  But Number Twenty-Nine didn’t want to stand back. The gibberish he was hearing was remarkably similar to the gibberish that he’d first heard on his rujex seven cycles ago.

  —We come in peace…—

  Was it possible that these noises he now heard were the same? Did this strange box with its blackened arms belong to the Remarkable Strangers? Were they looking for it, right this very moment?

  They might be nearby! What if the Rogbat ate them as well?

  The thought horrified him. The Remarkable Strangers, swallowed alive? Before he had had a chance to establish contracts with them? No! They must be saved.

  In his agitation he tripped over the Nargex-like head.

  “Young Yagwar, be careful!”

  Falling, Number Twenty-Nine grasped at the alien machine but overshot and came to rest on his back on the slimy pink floor with the alien device on his thorax.

  Bzzzt!!

  With a strange quiver and whirr, the Remarkable Strangers’ box came fully to life, glowing with strange fires. It leapt out of his paws, loudly broadcasting its strange gibberish, and bounced off the ceiling.

  The floor began to rumble.

  The alien device caromed off the wall and back into the ceiling.

  The floor lurched.

  “Be warned,” said the Nargex-like head. “Its movements may have agitated the Rogbat’s digestive system!”

  The floor was heaving and shaking now. Number Twenty-Nine was caught up in a cascade of objects, carried helplessly on the wave of metal, moving faster and faster. It didn’t smell very good but at least it seemed to be getting lighter up ahead. He didn’t need his infrared any longer.

  Number Twenty-Nine tumbled toward the light as all around him roared and spasmed. When the tumult stopped he found himself lying on his back in the open air, rills flapping.

  The Nargex-like head rolled up against his pouch and came to rest upside down. “Complete regurgitation,” it said. “Well done, young Yagwar. Triggering that device has saved us.”

  Number Twenty-Nine raised his head. He saw nothing nearby but the head and other mechanical debris from the Rogbat’s stomach. “Where’s the Rogbat?”

  “Gone. Most likely scanning energy signatures looking for a replac
ement meal.”

  Number Twenty-Nine took in the orange landscape, rugged mountains, and deep valleys. Overhead burned a large golden sun. “I don’t think we’re on Eridnae 7 any more.”

  “Possibly the Rogbat teleported as he regurgitated,” said the head. “That’s a nuisance. Of course, we’re lucky not to have been ejected in mid-teleport. I was made to handle unpressurized vacuum environments but I doubt you would survive them.”

  Number Twenty-Nine glared at the device. “Where in the galaxy are we?”

  “Why do you assume that we are in our own galaxy? Rogbats can travel through space, dimensions, and, perhaps, time.”

  “Time?!”

  “Don’t squeal, Yagwar. I doubt that we’ve actually moved in time, although it is theoretically possible.”

  Number Twenty-Nine was not in the mood to discuss temporal theory with a mech head. His own thorax was steadily rumbling with hunger. He padded across the cinder-flecked ground and began to examine the various pieces of machinery that had so recently resided in the Rogbat’s stomach.

  What a shame that only part of the Orten scout ship had survived, he thought. The pilot’s area had a nasty crack running through it. Number Twenty-Nine didn’t want to think about what had happened to the previous occupant. The damage was centered directly where the pilot would have been sitting, in front of the semicircular thruster control.

  Despite the damage, the controls looked fairly intact. There was more here than he had thought at first glance. He might have a viable spacecraft. If only he could find something to seal that nasty crack, and form a vacuum barrier.

  He prodded a Goloppan mine buoy lying on its side, and thought: That should contain foam baffle. He cracked it open and probed the insulation. It was still pliable and he could pull it free in long strips. Yes, yes, that would do nicely.

  Number Twenty-Nine laid the insulation into the cracks and crevasses of the wounded ship, folding slices of the buoy’s shell in-between the sticky stuff to act as baffles. Next, another layer of insulation to finish the job. There. The thing was sealed.

  Now all he needed was a power source. Well, the Cephallonian satellite over there, although crushed, retained a fusion pod that he could probably use.

  A deep grumbling roar made him pause to look up. Had the Rogbat returned? “What’s that?” he asked the head.

  “A volcano about to erupt.”

  Number Twenty-Nine felt his rills lay flat against his thorax with fear. “A volcano? Near here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How near?”

  “That depends upon how you measure distance.”

  “Can the lava reach us?”

  “Yes.”

  Number Twenty-Nine began to work faster, pads dancing over the alien machinery, marrying the mine buoy’s rudimentary pilot control to the Orten craft’s main panel, and attaching the fusion drive of the Cephallonian satellite. The thing could manage perhaps three gees. That would at least get them off the surface.

  Number Twenty-Nine clambered into the pilot chamber, then remembered the mech head, and got out to grab it.

  It was snug inside the vehicle. Number Twenty-Nine thought it was just as well that the mech head didn’t have a body.

  With a huge clap of thunder, the sky lit up.

  “The volcano has erupted,” the head announced. “Undoubtedly there will be lava. Yes, there it is. It should reach us in twelve, no, make that nine seconds.”

  Number Twenty-Nine looked up. A flowing river of molten orange rock was heading right for them. He hit the ignition.

  The thrusters hiccupped, cut out, cut back in, and yanked them hard, straight up. Number Twenty-Nine was plastered to his seat by the increasing gees as the thrusters roared. He fought to reach the control panel.

  They bucked through the upper atmosphere, broke free of the planet’s gravitational grip and skittered out into the darkness beyond.

  “A close call,” said the head.

  Something flapped noisily in the air filter but Number Twenty-Nine didn’t have time to worry about that now. They had made it. They were spaceborne. Just one problem: he had no idea where in the galaxy they were.

  “How did do you plan to find our way back?” the head asked.

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Well, you could try plugging me into the directional system. I might be able to guide it.”

  “No offense, but I don’t see any place on you where I could…”

  “Oh. Sorry.” A hexagonal opening appeared under the mouth. “Try that.”

  Number Twenty-Nine found a corresponding nub and attached the head to the control panel.

  The head made a gargling sound. “You’ve got me on the recycling program.”

  Number Twenty-Nine moved it to the next nub. “How’s that?”

  “Ahh. Guidance. Good. Now allow me some silence and let me work.”

  ###

  The head convinced the piloting system to function as a homing device. Of course, since it had belonged to a Goloppan buoy, it insisted on triangulating on the Goloppa system despite the head’s best efforts. So they aimed for that. If the fusion pod held out they would leapfrog to Eridnae 7 in two cycles.

  Soon Eridnae’s four-sun system loomed in the main viewer.

  The ship moved smoothly into orbit and made planetfall with only a few bounces.

  Number Twenty-Nine opened the hatch and crawled out onto the purple pebbles of the planetoid.

  He noted that there was a ship on the ground, waiting. It looked familiar. Beside it stood several tall figures. He recognized them, and his empty aching thorax hurt even more. “My elder sisters.”

  The head made a sound. “Those are your females? Impressive. They’re even larger than I expected.”

  “You should see my grandmother.”

  “Number Twenty-Nine!”

  He recognized the deep bray of his eldest sister and took the ritual submissive position—on his back, paws spread, throat bared—to indicate that he was prepared for all deserved bites and pinches.

  “Number Twenty-Nine, we thought that you’d gotten away for good.”

  He shut his eyes and prepared himself for the usual pain and humiliation.

  Nothing happened. He opened one eye.

  His sisters weren’t even looking at him. They were swarming around the spacecraft, examining it and the Nargex-like head.

  “Where did you get this?” Eldest Sister demanded.

  “It’s a long story,” Number Twenty-Nine replied.

  “Never mind,” said Second-Eldest Sister. As she eyed the head her rills fluoresced. “Do you know how much mech heads are worth these days?”

  “No.”

  The sisters exchanged amused glances. “No,” said Eldest Sister. “Of course you don’t. But we do. Grandmother will be pleased. Very pleased.”

  Number Twenty-Nine could scarcely believe what he’d heard. “She will? You mean, I can keep my nunc?”

  “Not only that, she might even give you your own name.”

  “She will?”

  “Psst!” the Nargex-like head said. “What’s going on?”

  “Shhh,” Number Twenty-Nine said.

  His sisters were still occupied by his remarkable find. Before the head could say more, Eldest Sister disengaged its energy source. Its eyes faded from red to grey to black. It fell silent.

  Number Twenty-Nine began to hope for better things.

  More than one meal a day.

  A larger nunc.

  A name instead of a number!

  Did he even dare to dream of what more might come? Perhaps his own scavenging runs! Oh that would be glorious. He might even encounter the Remarkable Strangers in his travels and they would bring him back with them to their home world and its treasure trove of valuable junk to scavenge.

  Eldest Sister leaned down and sniffed him. Number Twenty-Nine preened, awaiting her praise and perhaps even a congratulatory nose rub.

  She leaned in
closer. Sniffed again.

  Her pad caught him across the top of the head and she cuffed him, twice.

  “Ugh,” said Eldest Sister. “Infant! You smell like spoiled nuglak.”

  ###

  The fourth sun had set on Eridnae 7 and purple twilight ruled the barren landscape. With a shimmer and a hiss, a strange ship appeared in the sky.

  Once the ship had landed, strangers emerged from its portal.

  Number Twenty-Nine would have found them quite remarkable. The language they spoke would have sounded strangely familiar, akin to what he had heard on his rujex while toying with the ruined probe in Grandmother’s yard.

  But the planetoid was empty of life, save for the visiting strangers. No one was there awaiting them, despite all of their signals and announcements. No one was there at all.

  Sadly the strangers transmitted the information to their mothership that there were no signs of intelligent life in this quadrant, either.

  “We’re at the limit on fuel expenditure,” came the crisp reply. “Abandon further exploration efforts.”

  The strangers returned to their ship and departed the quadrant, leaving behind nothing at all on the barren surface of Eridnae 7 but purple pebbles and the faint whisper of the wind.

  ***

  Karen Haber is the author of nine novels, including Star Trek Voyager: Bless the Beasts, and co-author of Science of the X-Men. She is a Hugo Award nominee, nominated for Meditations on Middle Earth, an essay collection celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien. Her newest book, The Sweet Taste of Regret, a collection of short fiction, was just published by ReAnimus Press.

  Her recent publications include The Mutant Season series (PhoenixPick/Arc Manor), the Woman Without A Shadow series (ReAnimus), and Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art, (Rockport).

  Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many anthologies. She reviews art books for Locus magazine and lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, Robert Silverberg and three cats.