Analog Science Fiction and Fact - July-Agust 2014

by Penny Publications

  How good that would be.

  But any problem you could name, the "how" seemed to derail the "what" every time.

  He turned and trudged uphill again, cold to his core. What if this business tonight was more to do with the aliens? Or their monstrous "pet"? And him without Sara, or a single thought in his head of what to say.

  Had to figure out some way to talk to them though, didn't he? Or someone had to. Just work things out like regular people. He knew that in his bones.

  Something else he knew: call in an official, or most anyone who'd never met the strangers, and you were asking for a bloodbath.

  Shep gave a yip and ran ahead again, not up the high path but along a lower one that skirted the mountain's flank. Jason breathed easier. He knew this path well, and the place it led to: more a depression in the rock cliff than a cave, but deep enough. He'd sheltered there in storms more than once, lungs filled with the rich smells of damp leaves and earth.

  This time something different was on the air.

  Near the back of the overhang, faint in the dim wash of moonlight on grayish stone, Shep stood guard by a mound of something on the ground. Something that gave off that smell, of fish too long in the sun.

  He fumbled for the flashlight, switched it on, and froze.

  The mound on the cave floor was an alien, one of the "soft" ones, as he'd begun to think of them. Without a shell. Tall. "Regal," Sara had said, in spite of the way they could bend where you'd least expect. Decent, though, strange as they were. He still thought that.

  Even so...

  But Shep was sure, and concerned for the creature on the ground. Just like that first meeting, when the dog had seemed so drawn to one of the aliens. The one that Sara had decided was female. They'd learned her name later. Vooo? Vera? Vooorh. That was it, with a little guttural to the "r."

  No matter. Whoever it was, it... she... needed help. She was pale. Her outer cloak was gone. The inner garment that had looked so moist, like an all-encompassing sweater damp from an easy rain, lay riddled with rips and snags, leaving patches of ochre skin uncovered and dry.

  Could he help her? She was a living creature, wasn't she? Like every other one he'd cared for; a few capable of thought, most not, on the farm or in the wild. But she was so very, very strange.

  He crouched beside her, eyes wide, every hair on end.

  She was about played out, no question. And bone dry.

  With a trembling hand, he reached. Just the lightest touch. The cold of her face was a shock even to his half-frozen fingers. But there was movement in the rags. Somehow she'd kept on breathing.

  He took his hand away, only half aware that he wiped it on his jeans, and looked closer. Thick eyelids like soft, fogged plastic were shut tight over wide-set oval eyes. Could she see through those? Maybe, but her eyes never moved.

  Her breathing tube, still plugged into the single nostril at the center of her face, trailed back to a thin, foot-square tank near her feet. She'd dropped it, most like, as she crawled in here.

  Something in his dazed brain took hold of that. What was she doing here? Hiding? Sure looked like it. But from what? What... or who... could have done such a thing?

  And where...?

  His shoulders hunched, aware before his brain of the darkness yawning at his back, beyond the cave.

  Where were they now?

  Heart racing, he scrambled to his feet, brushing the tube. It shifted, and her shallow breathing faltered. Had he done that? Or... was the tank empty? He glanced around. A second tank lay at the cave mouth a few feet away, much too far for her to reach. When he returned with it, her breathing had steadied.

  That was a relief, but... He lifted his head, listening. No sound from outside. And no alarm from Shep. Still, it was time he got her home.

  So. To lift her.

  Kneeling again, inching a hand beneath her narrow shoulder, he felt some kind of dried residue, stiffening the rags, rough against his skin. He slid his hand further, beneath her back. Her arms curled, rubber-like, and he jerked away. She drew breath with a hiss. From pain? Or was it his touch she didn't care for?

  No way to know.

  And no time to spare.

  When he reached again she made another sound, the gentle soughing of her native speech, or its shadow, barely inflected. Rasping and dry. The small pursed mouth he'd seen earlier now gaped, the thin lips dry, quivering with every breath.

  "Miss," he said, not quite touching her broad forehead, his hair still on end. "Miss... Vooorh... please. Tell me in English."

  Her eyelids fluttered at the sound of the name, but nothing more. Shep paced back and forth beside her, eyes riveted on her face, with a quiet, worried whine.

  No more time.

  Jason shrugged off his coat and saw to the breathing gear first, noting how the tube connected and switching to the second tank. He slung both tanks over his shoulders by their harness. Had they sloshed? He'd think on it later. He thrust the flashlight into his belt, pointed more or less forward, and lifted... the alien. So still, and lighter than he'd have thought. Even wrapped in his coat she made a cold, limp bundle as he carried her, half running, from the cave.

  Shep stayed close, trotting from side to side across the path, ears twitching toward the forest, herding them around hazards on their way down the mountain.

  At the barn, Jason finally gave out. He left her on fresh hay with Shep and her tanks at her side and hurried on to the house, then back, with blankets and a jug of water.

  It seemed useless. Her wide face was still as death, her mouth hanging limp on the rim of the glass he had brought. She choked on the little water he could pour into her, slack limbs jerking with every cough.

  As the coughing eased, her eyelids opened, revealing warm, amber eyes. But when her gaze came to rest on him, a subtle twitching in the flesh about those eyes tugged their oval shape into something more... oblong. She sighed, hissing faintly, that expression—if that's what it was—playing about her eyes. Then, in weary, rasping English, she spoke.

  "P... pourrh. So... drry."

  Of course. He poured water over her by the glassful. When a hint of the rich ochre glow returned, he covered her with blankets, slung on his coat and the tanks, and carried her into the house.

  Holding her against his shoulder like a child, he freed a hand to lock the door behind him, then nested towels on the bed in the spare room, settled her into them, and switched on the light for a better look. She was doing every bit as poorly as he'd thought, but her half-open eyes did seem more alert.

  "How can I help you?" he asked, as clearly as he could.

  The eyelids fluttered shut again and her head rolled to one side, her limbs eerily still. Then, with obvious effort, she turned her face to him and opened her eyes.

  "Your mate, she is not here?" she asked, her soft, windy voice unsteady.

  "Sara," he said. "Her name is Sara, and no. She's not here." No need to explain. Not till she was stronger.

  She regarded him for some time, as if from a distance. "How are you called?"

  "I am Jason."

  Another long moment. "You have a tub, for washing. Yes?"

  "Yes."

  She let out a long breath, as if resigned to some dreaded but needed thing.

  "Let me see."

  He lifted her, her damp garments cold against his skin, and carried her the few feet to the bathroom door. After a brief look she said, "Enough," and he returned her to the bed.

  She asked to see his hand, and he showed her, turning it one way and the other till her eyes slid shut.

  "Bring water," she said. "Hot, not too much. And salt, to fill your two hands." She rested for a few breaths, and went on. "Mix, in the tub, till the salt... melts. Then more water, cool now, and put me in."

  When it was ready he set her tank beside the tub and eased her into the water, resting her round, flattish head and thick neck against the smooth end opposite the faucet. Her arms and legs drifted loosely in the water.

  "No
w open the cloth," she said slowly, as if settling into sleep, "and let me... all in."

  Careful to avoid the breathing tube, he eased the fitted hood back from her face, revealing a soft, hairless dome. Next he opened the remains of her inner garment, scissoring with patient care through soft fibers and fine metallic threads, from neck to crotch and down each sleeve and pant leg to the soles of the roundish, attached boots. A choking wave of fish smell filled the room as he spread the split clothing to either side.

  But it was only when he freed her limp feet from the opened boots, and gathered up the rags of the garment, that he grasped her full inhuman shape.

  He stared openmouthed, struggling to keep the shock—or was it horror?—from his face.

  Her body was perfectly smooth, with no trace of mammalian features. Her limbs were firm, but freed from the garment they coiled in the water like thick snakes. Her rehydrating ochre skin shone almost golden in the light.

  Alien. The full impact of that word seeped into his mind at last. She was alien.

  But she was not horrible.

  He took a breath, looked again.

  The arms and legs were clearly tentacles, two to each side, tapering from torso to tip with no hint of underlying bone. The torso was short in relation to her limbs, oval in shape and rather flat, with the ends of the oval forming her neck and blank crotch. Thick fleshy webs, like the smaller one at the joint of his own thumb and forefinger, marked every joining of tentacle and torso.

  Four smaller tentacles, also two to a side, joined the torso about where a human's hips and lowest ribs would be. These did not coil in the water as the larger tentacles did, but drifted loose about her midsection.

  Octopus-like suckers lined the underside of each tentacle. Each arm and leg ended in a cluster of slim, nubby tentacles, surrounding an area that could flex into irregular flattened shapes—a hand, or a foot—each set with a single large sucker at its center and using those smaller tentacles as fingers or toes.

  The sole suggestion of an orifice other than her mouth and single nostril was a fleshy, horizontal flap, slack but closed, set about midway down her torso.

  One thing about her was horrible. The skin all over her body was marked with thin, shallow cuts, as if scored with knives.

  Finally looking away, Jason noticed the tank again, and moved it to a better position. It did slosh. He couldn't ignore that any longer.

  "You breathe water?"

  "Air," she said, fogged with sleep. "Like yours, but with more of one gas, and more... moisture." And she drifted back toward sleep.

  He sloshed the tank again. "Please, Vooorh, should I get you more water?"

  "The tank... takes it. From your air. All I need," she said. "And... the gas, for many days."

  When next she spoke he could barely hear her.

  "Now let me all in the water. In the morning... one thing more."

  Jason eased her head and torso further into the tub, leaving only her mouth and the breathing tube above the water.

  He stood, cleared and cleaned the bathroom, and opened the window for fresh cold air. Then he switched off the lights and stayed in the darkness, as he always did with the creatures he treated, to watch for a while as she slept. She seemed better. Maybe the salt water was doing some good.

  And he'd seen something else as he settled her into the tub: a look in those squared eyes that had nothing to do with injuries. Something powerful. Enough to keep her going in that cave.

  In spite of everything her enemies could do.

  He returned to the window, pulse racing, and stared out into the night.

  Next morning, before his early chores, Jason found her stronger of color and voice, her tone more like the airy, soughing sound he remembered. The cuts were covered with a substance like clear, flexible scab, already healing. And she smelled less of fish. But her arms and legs still curled in the water around her, more like an octopus than the erect, bipedal form he'd known.

  "You are still weak," he said.

  "That is the next thing." The squarish eyes flicked shut, opened, fixed on him. "Touch just below my head, at the back."

  He knelt and slid his hand into the water, touching her cold, rubbery flesh just below her neck, and almost cried out. Her flesh felt slippery now, with a thin surface layer of something slick and wet. And she was not just cold, but as cold as the water. Exactly as cold.

  "You are cold-blooded," he said, more shocked by that than the suckered tentacles. Or the fish-wet skin.

  "Yes. We warm ourselves from the world around us and from our garments. Now please, move your hand toward my arm. Feel what is under my skin."

  Shaken, he felt along her cold, slick back toward the joining with her left arm, and found the curved line of a recent cut. Beneath that was a hard shape, flat, its curved edge identical to the curve of the cut, like a thin disk some two or three inches across. He jerked his hand away.

  "What is that thing?"

  "That is poison," she said. "There are four, one near each of the nerve centers that control my limbs. My kind have no stiff parts like your bones. Only muscles and cartilage make my limbs strong. The poison steals the muscles' strength."

  "My God..."

  "These things are not deep." Her still face turned toward his. "They only need... a little knife."

  Jason stared.

  "You mean, you want me to cut those things out of you?"

  She looked at him a moment longer. Looked away.

  "There is no one else."

  But... how could he? He'd performed surgeries on creatures of many kinds, but those creatures shared his planet. Their bodies had similarities to his own. And few spoke to him or watched his every move with knowing eyes.

  But she was right. There was no one else.

  He drew a steadying breath. "Where should I move you, to do this?"

  "Here is best," she said, "with fresh water and salt."

  Taking her to the bed, he drained the tub and cleaned it, drew and salted fresh hot water, but paused before diluting it. "Would you like it warmer? Or is room temperature enough?"

  "Warmer, to help the healing. But still cool to your hand."

  He ran the water and returned her to the tub with her tank nearby. Then, frowning, he studied her face.

  "Is there anything I can give you, for the pain?"

  "Not here," she said.

  All he could do was nod.

  In the kitchen he drenched a small, sharp boning knife in alcohol, along with small tongs, and dropped both into boiling water just to be sure. With a clean fork he fished out the tongs, used those to lift out the knife, and laid both on a dinner plate he'd scrubbed with alcohol. He set the plate on a stand beside the tub, tested and warmed the water, and focused a bright floor lamp on Vooorh.

  "I must move you," he said, and slipped his hand beneath her back to ease her upper body forward, settling her wide head and breathing tube onto a pair of pillows that he'd piled over her lower tentacles.

  Washing his hands, he reviewed his tools and arrangements with slow deliberation. Finally stretching on a pair of surgical gloves, he knelt and laid his left hand on her upper back, thumb and forefinger holding her slick skin taut over the nearer disk.

  "Vooorh?"

  "Yesss?"

  "Are you ready for this?

  "Please... the knife is sharp?"

  "Yes."

  "I am ready."

  She only hissed a little as the knife went in. A slight ooze of bluish fluid stained the skin as he sliced delicately along the disk's upper curve and eased the tongs into the wound, grasping the edge of the thin, grayish metal. He gave a tug, expecting it to slide out freely. Instead he felt resistance, then a sudden give. A tearing inside the wound.

  Vooorh made a high, keening sound, her skin stiffening beneath Jason's hand. Thin spines lanced through his glove.

  With a soft groan he replaced the tongs on the plate.

  "I am so sorry, Vooorh. I don't know what happened. But your skin! What in
the world?"

  "It is reaction to attack. I... you hurt me, as if you meant me harm. Why? Why would you do that?"

  "I don't know. It's rooted somehow. Give me a minute and I'll take a look." He climbed to his feet, stripping off the glove to rinse his stinging palm in the sink.

  "But we use disks like these for the animals. They come out with not much pain."

  Jason spun toward her, his hand dripping water on the floor. "You use things like this, Vooorh? On animals? Why?"

  "Not now," she said, her voice low. "Please, just do this."

  He dried his hands, watching her. Her eyes, fixed on his, now perfect squares, and... desperate? In an Earthly creature that's what he would call it.

  "Tell me one thing, Vooorh, and I'll do it. Why do you use these things on animals?"

  "It is to heal them. When our pet... the creature with claws... when she gets free and injures them." She paused, looking away. "You have seen such injuries." Her gaze swung back to him. "The shell people use the disks for... other things."

  "And they did this to you?"

  "Yes."

  Nodding, deep in thought, Jason pulled on fresh gloves and knelt. He examined the incision, holding it open with the tongs, and slid the knife along the surface of the disk, feeling for sticking points. There were many: small, crudely shaped metal loops or eyelets. Her muscle and connective tissue had already begun to grow around and through them, binding the disk into her body.

  "This is going to be harder than we thought, Vooorh," he told her quietly. "You're attached to the damned thing. I am going to have to cut some more."

  "There should not be much pain," she said, her voice now high pitched, wavering.

  "These are different." He said it through gritted teeth, the sting in his hand now a steady ache. "I will show you when I'm done. Right now I just want to get them out of you. I'll be as gentle as I can."

  Lifting the loosened flesh from the disk as far as it would go, he widened the incision, slicing through whatever flesh attached to metal. The low hiss went on as he made his careful cuts. This time her skin did not bristle as he worked. It went rigid, rough as sandpaper.

  When he'd freed her from the outer surface of the metal, he grasped the disk again, using the tongs to lift it away from the flesh that overlay the tendon beneath, and cut the connecting tissue free on the inner side as well. When he lifted it out at last and laid it in the sink, he could see flaps and tags of flesh littering the inner surfaces of the wound.