Analog SFF, September 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Oh, you will check in tomorrow, at twelve past the hour of waking, just as you have been doing every sixthday.” Xinecotic's eyes twitched at the statement, and the flavor of anxiety that pervaded the room intensified. “Yes, we've been monitoring your communications. And we're able to reproduce them as well. You won't be missed until after our job here is done."

  Xinecotic bristled. “A bad clutch of eggs always hatches a bad swarm. One of your compatriots will betray you to the Grand Nest in exchange for leniency."

  All during this conversation Ksho's mind raced—there must be something she could do to help her parent. But her soft little voice would never be heard more than a few rooms away, and even if she ran for help, no adult would listen to a juvenile. Even the structural failure alarms were deliberately out of reach of her stubby little limbs; everyone knew that juveniles, with their undeveloped brains, could not be trusted with such a responsibility.

  But Ksho was almost an adult. Anyone could see how close she was to pupation. Surely she could use that fact to convince someone to come and help.

  Just as she was about to slip her eye out of the door and ease it closed, Takacha buzzed “None of my compatriots would ever betray me! This nest is as one."

  This nest is as one. Takacha was saying that every single adult on the expedition was part of . . . whatever it was that Ksho's parent was trying to stop. Something illegal. That meant that even if Ksho managed to get one of the adults here to believe her . . . it wouldn't save Xinecotic.

  Ksho trembled, immobilized by fear, her eye still peeping into the room.

  "The Grand Nest is mired in tradition,” Takacha continued, the weapon still pointed at Xinecotic. “We are the future. What we are doing here may be prohibited today, but the children who hatch from eggs not yet even laid will hail us as the saviors of our species."

  And then, to Ksho's horror, Takacha squeezed the weapon's actuator. A sharp, acrid flavor filled the room as the weapon discharged its load onto Xinecotic, the powerful acid eating through chitin and muscle and revealing the bone beneath. Xinecotic hissed in pain and lunged toward Takacha, but she fired again, the acid spewing right into Ksho's parent's face. With a horrid gasping hiss she collapsed, eyes and antennae dissolving into a smoking ruin at Takacha's feet.

  Four of Ksho's siblings had also been caught by the acid and writhed hissing on the floor. The rest stood stock-still, ancient instincts holding them rooted even as their parent, the only adult in hundreds of leagues who would care for them, lay dying within easy reach.

  Ksho's own body froze, trembling in terror. Takacha was already slipping the weapon into one of the folds of her garment and striding toward the door where Ksho stood. Ksho barely managed to pull her eye from the door and move out of the way before Takacha reached it. She brushed past Ksho, taking no notice whatsoever of the trembling juvenile. A moment later Ksho heard the nest's weather door scrape open, then shut, leaving her alone with her dead parent and dying siblings.

  The hideous flavors of acid and spilled bodily fluids suffused the air.

  Ksho, too, was doomed, as were her sisters, even those who hadn't been struck by the acid. The offspring of a deceased adult of eggbearing age were usually adopted by close relatives, but Xinecotic had no relatives at all in this tiny, isolated encampment. Ksho realized now why this was so—she had been one of the Grand Nest's “wasps,” an undercover agent hidden in a nest of criminals. None of them would adopt even the smallest, most innocent grub of Xinecotic's. Left alone, the younger ones would starve within days. Ksho, nearly an adult, was capable of feeding herself, but without a parent to watch over her during the long months of pupation she would surely be eaten by predators or succumb to parasites.

  It would be so easy to die. To sit here, petrified with fear, until thirst or starvation or predators took her. Every instinct told her to hold still until the danger had passed.

  But Ksho knew the danger would not pass. Not by itself.

  Something would have to be done.

  And there was no one but Ksho to do it.

  It took her many long, panting breaths to convince her body to move. To edge one limb forward was an effort; to haul her ungainly, gravid body across the floor was an agony. And hunger, always present, clawed at her stomachs like a predator.

  She must be her own adult, and her sisters’ adult as well. She pulled in her eyes for a moment, comforting herself with the darkness, before resuming her painful movement. The sharp flavor of her own fear soured her stomachs, but she persisted, returning to the door through which she'd seen her parent's death.

  Nothing in the room moved. Ksho's sisters sat as motionless as Xinecotic's acid-mangled body. Even those that had writhed in pain now lay still.

  Bitter grief lay strong on Ksho's fingers.

  "Ksho will find help,” she told her unmoving sisters, though she didn't know how she would manage it. Even the shape of the number Ksho in her mandibles reminded her that, no matter how close she was to pupation, she was still only a juvenile—unfit to bear a personal name or to use the pronoun I. “Seko-cho,” she said, addressing the eldest of her younger siblings, “after Ksho leaves Xinecotic's nest you must seal the doors behind her, and do not let anyone else in until she returns. Can you do this?"

  "Seko-cho does not know. . . .” she responded, her voice very small, only her mandibles moving. The flavor of fear seeped from her. She was only a little more than two-thirds Ksho's age.

  "You must.” Ksho hauled herself to Seko-cho's side and stroked her trembling skin. “You must."

  "Seko-cho will try."

  Ksho stayed beside Seko-cho for a moment longer, taking comfort from the touch herself as well as giving it, before dragging her heavy body to the nest's weather door. She closed the door behind herself, satisfied to hear Seko-cho's mandibles working at the edge of the door to seal it. The seal would not withstand a concerted effort, but would hold off anyone who tried to enter out of idle curiosity, at least for a day or so.

  She turned away from the door and took in a great breath, letting it out with a shuddering hiss through the spiracles on her sides.

  The expedition had set up on the side of a rocky, inhospitable mountain far from the nearest outpost of the Grand Nest. The individual nests of the expedition members—all criminals, Ksho realized now, except her own dead parent—lay scattered across the gravel-strewn slope wherever their occupants had thought best to build them. A cold wind blew down from the top of the mountain, making Ksho shiver.

  What should she do now? What could she do?

  No one here would help her voluntarily. There was nothing to eat here outside of the central refectory, and only an adult could requisition food from there. Stowing away on the lone air transport that connected this site with civilization would be impossible—Ksho had often overheard the pilot complain about how every minim of weight was accounted for and double-checked. She could, she supposed, slip a written note onto an outbound transport, but to whom, and who would believe a note written in a juvenile's scrawl?

  But there was one other way out of the encampment.

  Ksho considered her options. A long moment's thought convinced her that the few alternatives were no better.

  Tasting determination as well as fear, she shambled toward the center of the encampment.

  The portal was a ring of pale glowing metal standing upright, twice the height of an adult. Its bottom edge hung a span above the ground, apparently unsupported. Anyone or anything that passed through the ring went . . . elsewhere. Some people and things came back. Armed soldiers surrounded the ring, ready to defend the encampment and the planet against any attack from the other side at a moment's notice.

  They paid no attention to Ksho, though, as she waddled across the stony ground toward the ring. Juveniles were often seen running errands and carrying messages to and from their parents on the other side. Ksho herself had done so several times a day since the portal had been opened a month and a half ago, and all juveniles looked a
like to adults other than their own parents.

  She remembered how pleased everyone had been when, after months of fruitless searching, the portal had finally connected to a world with breathable air and people worth trading with. A very strange people, but people nonetheless. Ksho hoped they would be willing and able to help an orphan.

  Using all four hands of her first two pair of limbs, she boosted her swollen body over the ring's lower edge.

  Immediately the suffering of her overgrown body seemed to double as she fell into the other world's gravity field. The gravity here was actually only a little higher than what she was used to, but its leaden pressure seemed to emphasize the grief that weighed her down. The air, too, seemed heavy—chill and dense with unaccustomed metallic and astringent flavors.

  And then there was the weight of the hunger in her stomach, which dragged her down and sapped her energy. She realized she should have eaten something before she left her deceased parent's home. How many other mistakes had she made? Would the armed soldiers shortly come charging through the portal, with orders from Takacha to detain and dispose of her?

  Ksho straightened herself and moved away from the portal as quickly as her stumpy limbs could carry her in this strange environment. The ground here had been covered with a prickly bed of tiny plant stalks when they'd arrived, but after the first half month many paths had been trampled into bare dirt. Eventually the dirt had been replaced by a dark and gritty surface that tasted like a cross between fuel and broken stone.

  This side of the portal had its own defenses: towering two-legged aliens clad in their own version of body armor, huge hulking vehicles flavoring the air with iron and solvents, towering walls of rough artificial stone topped with coils of jagged metal. But the alien defenders, too, were so used to juveniles appearing from the ring that they paid her little heed. As always, she was required to pass through a portal that hummed and tickled her insides, but otherwise her progress was unimpeded.

  Beyond the defensive walls stood an even larger structure: smooth sheer cliffs of gleaming white stone pierced at regular intervals with hard-edged, angular openings. This structure, which the aliens called the White Nest, was the center of the aliens’ government and was the reason the portal had been shifted to this location from the point of initial contact. The structure was entirely flat planes, straight edges, and square corners except for an imposing forest of cylindrical columns that stood in a semicircle before the structure's weather door. This enormous pile of stone was the dwelling of just one alien, one who held more power than any on this world. Or else it was the workplace of hundreds of aliens and home of none of them. It wasn't clear. Perhaps there were translation difficulties.

  There were always translation difficulties.

  Ksho was seized again by a spasm of pain, her body stretched nearly to its limits and her aching bones squeezed by the higher gravity of this place. Her stomachs, too, throbbed with renewed hunger, and whether the White Nest was dwelling or workplace, it seemed the most likely place for her to find something to eat. She moved toward it as rapidly as she could manage.

  As she hauled herself along the path, she passed several of the towering aliens, all of which stared at her with predatory intensity. Their disturbing eyes, dark circles within light circles, each looked like the opening of a weapon pointed directly at her; their movement, accomplished by a shift of weight from one of their two lower limbs to the other, emphasized their intimidating height and made them seem even more huge and ponderous than they were.

  After a long time she passed through the half-ring of imposing columns and approached the giant structure's weather door, not a proper door at all but a pair of huge, flat, angular plates that hinged open at one side. She had passed through this door many times before, but every other time she had been expected and one of the aliens had been here to open it for her. Now the door stood closed, silent and untended.

  Ksho realized she had been a fool. She'd stepped through the portal to an unknown world, throwing her own fate and that of her siblings into the strange hands of alien beings with unknown motivations. They might be just as likely to eat her as to feed her.

  Suddenly an alien appeared on the other side of the door, peering at her through one of the transparent plates in the door's substance. Ksho froze in terror.

  This alien was different from any of the others Ksho had met. It was no bigger than Ksho herself, both shorter and smaller around than any other alien she'd seen. It was dark like a Shacuthi, instead of pale like most of its kind, which made it seem a little more familiar but also made its disturbing eyes even more prominent and strange. And the tendrils on its rounded head, which curled in tiny dark ringlets, were gathered into tufts on either side. Each tuft was bound at the base by a few turns of some soft, sparkly material. Was this unusual tufting some indication of caste or status?

  The alien and Ksho stared at each other for a time. And then the alien leaned forward and pushed the door open a couple of spans. Moving the huge door was clearly an effort for the small alien, which made Ksho feel a little sorry for it—it seemed nearly as unsuited to this enormous, heavy world as Ksho herself.

  And then the alien spoke. Its voice burbled and lapped like a stream flowing over pebbles, an almost pleasant sound, higher and softer than others Ksho had heard. A moment later a device strapped to one of the alien's limbs spoke in an approximation of Ksho's language: “Speaker equivalence (assertion) Ah-lec-sa (proper name). Identity listener (possessive) existence (query)."

  The second translated phrase was one Ksho had heard before; it meant what is your name? Still petrified with fear, she struggled to reply. “Xinecotic-ki Ksho,” she managed to stammer.

  The alien's head drew back and its eyes narrowed a bit. Ksho had no idea what that might mean. “Zi-neh-ko-tick (proper name, possessive) three (ordinal) existence (denial) name.” It took Ksho a moment to recognize her own dead parent's name, as rendered by the alien's mandibles and then the translation device, and another moment to puzzle out the sense behind the translation: "Xinecotic's Third” is not really a name.

  And, indeed, ksho was not a proper name, an adult name, at all. It was just the number three, indicating that Ksho was the third of Xinecotic's offspring: The first had failed in the egg and the second had died as a grub. Then there had been three more deaths before Seko-cho, number seven; Xinecotic's luck with offspring had not been good. And now there would be no more siblings at all.

  Ksho tasted grief but could not give in to the emotion. How to explain all of this to an alien?

  "Ksho is not a name, but is Ksho's designation,” she said. “Ksho is a juvenile and does not have a name like an adult's."

  After Ksho finished speaking, the alien held its upper limb close to one side of its head—those curved protuberances had to be its ears—while the device burbled softly in the alien's language. It seemed to consider for a moment what it had heard, then replied. “Listener existence (assertion) merely juvenile,” came the translation. “Speaker equivalence (assertion) listener."

  You're just a juvenile, the alien meant. I am the same.

  That explained why this alien was smaller than the others, and why it was willing to speak with Ksho. Ksho relaxed a bit, allowing herself to breathe but still not moving from the spot. Perhaps the young alien would also be willing to help one like itself. “Ksho is hungry,” she said. “Ksho needs food for herself and her siblings."

  After hearing the translation, the alien suddenly bared its teeth—a vicious surprise of white against the dark skin that made Ksho freeze again. The alien's flavor, salt and iron and flowers, told Ksho nothing about its emotions. Then it spoke: “Speaker bring (conditional) listener building within.” Ksho didn't know why the verb was flagged as conditional, but the statement was accompanied by an unmistakable gesture: The alien pushed the door open wider and stood to one side, leaving enough space for Ksho to enter.

  Ksho hesitated, trembling, for a long time before convincing her limbs to mov
e her forward. Everything in this place was so strange and frightening. But the alien, despite its inexplicable habits and the language barrier, waited patiently until Ksho could coax herself into entering the structure.

  As the door closed behind her with an ominous clack, Ksho immediately regretted her decision. The air inside was even colder than outside, and the light here was unnatural and flickery and made everything look strange. “Speaker bring (future) listener toward food-preparation-place,” the alien said, and moved off toward the interior of the structure. Ksho envied its gait, which was more of a leaping bound than the larger aliens’ ponderous motion, as she dragged herself through the heavy gravity. But the promise of a “food-preparation-place” drew her forward. She'd eaten the aliens’ food before, at ceremonial negotiations, and knew that it was not harmful and could even be nutritious and delicious.

  They came to a place of hard surfaces and bright lights, all ceramic and metal. Many large aliens were here, all working diligently at incomprehensible tasks, and the air tasted of a hundred different things, some delicious and some disgusting. As soon as the small alien entered, one of the larger ones stopped whatever it was it was doing and bent down to the small one's level. They warbled at each other for a while, both of them aiming their strange eyes at Ksho between glances at each other.

  Ksho fought to relax. Nothing good would come from freezing in fear; she was deep inside the aliens’ nest and if they meant her harm it was already too late to escape. But she didn't think the small alien intended any harm, and some of the flavors in the air here made her stomachs clench with renewed hunger. She had no idea how long it had been since she'd eaten.

  The larger alien went away, then returned with a large, flat, angular metal plate upon which were arranged small dabs of many different substances. Ksho tasted each dab with a finger, saying “Ksho likes this one” or “This one tastes awful” for each. The large alien didn't have a translation device on its limb, but the small alien interpreted for Ksho, and a short while later the large alien brought out bowls with larger quantities of some of the foods that Ksho had liked best. She had no idea what any of them were, but some were absolutely delicious and she had soon eaten her fill.