by Audrey Faye
“We just don’t feel comfortable staying here,” Mom said.
Hsissh felt a warm glow in the pit of his stomach and put a proud paw through his whiskers. He couldn’t speak into Mom’s and Dad’s minds, but he’d discovered he could tug at the waves in a way that sparked emotional reactions. Whenever a news report came on the hologlobe about The Three Book’s growing influence in civic affairs, or a riot against new settlers occurred in the city of Prime, he’d pulled hard on the waves and made their natural unease greater. When Dad had gotten a job offer on Earth, Hsissh had augmented his elation. When Mom contemplated moving her own consulting business, Hsissh had increased her optimism.
“We’ll all be off world …” said Noa.
Hsissh kneaded his claws. He’d nudged Masako to go there to further her studies—and she’d stayed! John had always wanted to leave; his parents had died in the Third Plague before Mom and Dad had immigrated to the planet. John himself had augmented kidneys because the Third Plague had destroyed his; Dad had taken him to Earth for several operations as he aged so that his “plastic kidney beans” could be replaced with larger ones for his growing body. John blamed the “Luddeccean crazy-late acceptance of nano cures” for his parents’ deaths and the augments that had cost him painful operations. Hsissh had only needed to strengthen John’s resolve to leave the planet.
Mom sighed. “Kenji is very upset about us selling the house.”
Hsissh’s ears twitched. Kenji had been the only member of the family he hadn’t been able to influence. Whenever Hsissh pulled on the waves coursing through his mind, Kenji had heard voices … much as the humans The One had tried to inhabit had. Perhaps it was because Kenji’s mind had special nano augments to make up for a congenital syndrome he had? Hsissh wasn’t sure, but the “voices” had worried Mom and Dad tremendously. Hsissh had to give up his attempts to guide Kenji, but in the end, the boy had left on his own, drawn by the promise of a better education on Earth.
“What will happen to Fluffy?” Noa said, and Hsissh’s body grew rigid.
“Sarah Benjamin has offered to take him in,” said Mom.
“She and Sergei know having an old werfle sleeping in the house is better than no werfle,” Dad said. “Rats hate them.”
“I wish we could take him aboard the fighter carrier,” Tim said. “We have a rat problem.”
Noa said what Hsissh was thinking. “He’d never survive the Fleet quarantine, even if he were younger.”
Mom sighed. “Sergei and Sarah, they’re kind people … they’ll treat the old man right.”
Hsissh’s whiskers twitched. They wouldn’t treat Hsissh at all. He’d be leaving this old body soon. In the kitchen, he heard Noa and Tim discuss their ship’s upcoming voyage. Mom and Dad discussed their upcoming move off-world.
Hsissh blinked. The sunlight felt especially warm, and made bits of dust sparkle in its beam like distant stars and brilliant expectations … He’d done it, he’d seen that his humans would leave this world and make it to safety. It didn’t feel a little like seeing hatchlings leave the nest; it felt exactly like that.
Carl Sagan Discovers Intelligent Life
Hsissh was in the body of a male werfle in his prime. He was watching as his latest hatchlings, now grown adults, set off through the undergrowth. Beside him the second in his parental triad squeaked. She wasn’t inhabited by The One and was simple, but Dich, the “other female” in the group, and the third in this triad was. It had made Hsissh’s time as First more interesting. Dich touched her nose to Second fondly, and Hsissh did the same. Second wiggled, sniffed the air, and set off on her own through the undergrowth.
“Well, that was well done,” Dich said into the wave. “We made great parents.”
Hsissh agreed and felt the warmth of satisfaction in his chest.
“I’m going to curl up and join The Gathering,” Dich said. “Will you be coming?”
Hsissh’s tail flicked, a dark mood settling upon him. He didn’t relish going over plans for the Fourth Plague.
“Suit yourself,” said Dich, and she hopped over to the tree log they used as a den.
Lifting his nose to the breeze, Hsissh detected the scent of a rat. He licked his lips. He could eat all of his kill for the first time in cycles! He slunk off, and an hour later he was rolling over on his back in a bright patch of sunlight, a rat carcass partially consumed beside him. He was utterly content. And then a wave-dream apparition appeared beside him. Hsissh blinked. The apparition was in the form of a cat. Before Hsissh could ask, the cat flattened its ears. “It’s me, Shissh!”
Hsissh blinked. “You’re a cat now?”
“I wanted to hitch a ride on one of the humans’ space ships,” Shissh said.
“How interesting,” said Hsissh, not particularly interested in anything but enjoying his current sunbeam and full belly.
“It’s Noa’s space ship,” Shissh said.
Hsissh sat up with a start. “Really, how is she?”
Shissh swished her tail. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t—”
“Pay attention,” hissed Shissh. “It may be the maternal hormones from the litter of kittens I just bore, but I’ve become fond of your human. She saved me from being thrown out of an airlock.”
Hsissh put a claw to his chest that was swelling with pride. “Well, of course she—”
Shissh hissed again. “She went to visit her brother on Luddeccea.”
“Kenji is here?”
“He’s been back for years. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Years?” said Hsissh.
“Listen,” Shissh growled. “Luddeccea’s time gate has gone offline and Noa is on the planet. If you want her to get off that self-righteous fundamentalist rock—”
Hsissh blinked.
Shissh licked a paw. “The attitude toward Luddeccea around here is influencing me.” She swished her tail. “You’ve got to find her and get her off the planet.”
“Is she alone—or is Tim with her?” Hsissh asked, rising to his hind legs.
For a moment, Shissh said nothing. She just sat, swishing her tail and glaring at him. And then she snarled, “Tim has been dead for several Earth years now.”
Hsissh sank to all ten paws. “What?” He’d been distracted by hatchlings and kits for a long time … he hadn’t realized how long. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to follow Noa too closely, afraid to know what he wouldn’t be able to influence.
“None of that matters,” Shissh said. “Find Noa!”
Hsissh launched himself into the waves, spreading himself as thin as he could… and encountered Ish’s consciousness in Prime. Ish was in werfle form, dancing in a home that had a ceiling that was a hundred werfle lengths high. “Isn’t it wonderful, Hsissh! The time gate is closed. No more ships from Earth, the humans here will be able to focus on enlightenment; they’ll evolve!”
Hsissh thought frantically, “Have you seen Noa?”
Ish put a paw through a whisker, and Hsissh felt his disapproval. “Your human is somewhere in the capital … she is wanted by the Central Authority. She is involved in some horrible new ‘technological experiment.’ But never fear, we’ll catch—”
Hsissh cut away from the conversation, feeling a bubbling wrath in his stomach—the same he’d felt when a rat had tried to attack one of his hatchlings. He tore himself completely away from his body, leaving behind just a werfle bewildered at finding itself stuffed with a delicious rat in a field. Letting his pattern flow through the waves, Hsissh found a werfle host not inhabited by a member of The One in Prime and slipped in.
Blinking his new eyes, he was assailed by the overwhelming smell of human. Instead of sod, underneath his feet was pavement.
He’d never been to Prime, but this werfle host had lived here all its life and Hsissh had all its memories. He wore a collar—once this werfle had lived with humans. He recognized the “alley” he stood in. It was behind a tall, slender “town home” where he’d resided with two ad
ults and a little boy. But recently, the “boy” was only a technological imitation of the man and woman’s child who’d died of a lung infection. Outwardly it was almost perfect, but it smelled wrong. And when the adults were not in the room, it became nothing but a piece of furniture, its mind simple and unchanging. It never cried, and it never yelled at the parents. The real boy had chased the werfle with such enthusiasm that they sometimes knocked over furniture and he’d screamed when the werfle had been separated from him. The machine boy never played chase. The memory of the strangeness of the artificial boy sent a cocktail of depressive hormones to Hsissh’s mind, and he cried into the waves at the lie that was the machine. Shissh must have been paying attention, because she heard. Hsissh felt Shissh reply, “Ah, yes, Noa’s spoken of those … Some humans use robots to replace their dead—but they don’t have the computing power to be like real humans. Something about Moore’s Law banging into Moore’s Wall … Human innovation has been stalled for the past few hundred years. To have a robot as smart as a human, you’d need a machine with the brain the size of a small moon and a nuclear plant to power it.”
Shaking his head to clear it of Shissh’s gibberish, Hsissh stood up on his hind limbs and looked to the home. He knew without going in that it was empty. He was assailed by a painful memory of Luddeccean Guards coming into the house, dismembering the machine boy, and taking the parents away. This werfle—not intelligent like the one inhabited by The One—had attacked one of the Guards and had been kicked across the room. Hsissh took a deep breath. His “new” ribs still hurt from the experience. He patted his body. It was amazing he hadn’t been killed … that had been months ago. This body hadn’t eaten well since then, even though he had fresh venom on his tongue.
Hsissh pivoted on his back hind legs and caught a glimpse of blue sky between the tall town homes on either side of him. He paused, struck by another memory. That ribbon of blue should have been filled with space ships traveling up to the time gate, but it was empty of everything but clouds. He craned his neck to see the time gate. A bright spark flashed beside the gate’s ring and then streaked toward the planet like a falling star. A meteor? He searched his mind, and the mind of The One … and all the thoughts of all The One on Luddeccea collided with his. He knew what the explosion was; it was a space ship. Worse, he knew where the two parents of the machine boy had been taken. He saw it through the eyes of another werfle somewhere so far north the snow had already fallen: a huge camp where humans were dying like they’d been afflicted by another plague. He felt in the collective consciousness of The One that these humans were “augmented” or had been owners of imitation robots. They had been rounded up and made to work until they dropped because of it. It wasn’t plague, but hunger that made them slump into the snow … Humans were starving their own kind to death.
His claws fell to his sides and he had an uncomfortable feeling in his gut. Perhaps The One need not exterminate the humans on this planet … they were doing the job themselves. Hsissh dropped down to all ten paws.
The sound of two human children behind him made him turn. They were thin, and he noticed with a start that they didn’t have the usual metal circle in the sides of their heads.
“Is that a rat?” one of the children said, raising a slingshot, a projectile device Noa had used on occasion as a child. Hsissh’s body reacted on its own. He dashed into a hole at the side of the “street” before he’d even thought about it. A moment later, he was in the darkness of the “sewer.” The hunger this body carried made the short dash exhausting. He curled into a ball and tried to seek out Noa’s consciousness. He searched until the light coming through the sewer “grate” had dimmed. But there were literally millions of humans in Prime and he had to gently probe each one at a time. After a while, his exhaustion broke down his concentration and carried his body into fitful sleep.
Shissh’s feline apparition found his dreams. “Have you found Noa? The Captain’s talking of having me spayed!”
“What is that?” Hsissh asked.
Swishing her tail, Shissh said, “Never mind! Where is Noa?”
“Ish told me she’s here in Prime,” Hsissh replied. “She’s being hunted by the Luddeccean Guard for her part in some sort of undesirable technological innovation.”
Sitting down, Shissh’s ears perked. “That’s odd, I know nothing of that.”
Hsissh wiped a nervous paw through his whiskers. “There are so many humans here, Shissh. Trying to find her is like—”
“Finding a needle in a haystack,” Shissh said. “That means—”
“I know what it means!” said Hsissh. “Do you have any ideas?”
Shissh’s tail swished. “Doesn’t she have an aunt in Prime? Aunt Eliza?”
Hsissh sat up, or his dream self did. “Yes … do you think Noa would go there?”
Shissh nervously licked her paw. “I don’t know …”
Hsissh thought of a tiny Noa barreling toward his tormentors so long ago. “I have to try and find her … I remember a map to the aunt’s home. I will go.”
Shissh’s cat ears perked again. “You’re going to do it …” And Hsissh felt her wonder. His whiskers twitched at the insult. She purred and kneaded her paws. “You’ve never been a werfle of action … it looks good on you. That means—”
“I have to go now,” he said. He tore himself from the dream, forced his body up from the ground, and began the journey through the sewers to Eliza’s house. The map in his memory was of streets above ground, but he knew his relative location from this body’s memories, and his body was sensitive to the magnetic pull of the planet’s pole. He would make it even in the dark, if the tunnels were clear, if he didn’t encounter any human “maintenance” workers, or children with slingshots.
He didn’t account for his body’s state of near starvation. After half a day cycle he collapsed.
He dreamed of Noa. She was arguing about stealing a space ship with … was that a member of The One in human form?
“Noa,” the maybe-member of The One said. “I need to know what your plan is. If I don’t know what the plan is, I can’t calculate the odds of its success.”
“Calculate the odds of success?” Noa said. “Some things are worth more than any odds.”
They continued to argue, and then Noa shouted, “If that’s what you believe, then go!” And then a real shout made Hsissh awaken. “Go!”
Blinking his eyes in the dim light of the sewer, Hsissh saw two humans not sixty hops away. One looked like Noa.
Hope giving him strength, he skittered to his feet and hopped as fast as he could toward the pair. A blast of air sent the slighter human’s scent toward him … and it was Noa! His exhausting trek toward Aunt Eliza’s domicile had paid off! His sense of victory was dampened by the smell of disease and hunger about her. A worried cheeping came from his chest. Noa turned, and he stood up on his hind-most legs, just as he’d done that first time he’d come back to her. His hearts slid toward the ground … She’d become so thin …
Taking off her outer upper garment, Noa sat down on her heels and held it out like a hammock. Hsissh approached cautiously, remembering her trepidation the first time he’d come back.
“They’re venomous!” the other human said.
Hsissh felt the waves … not a member of The One. But not quite right either.
Noa snorted. “Did you notice he’s wearing a collar? His venom has already been milked.” Not that Hsissh suspected she’d care … she’d managed to keep him from being milked when he was in his second body so he could “have some protection from the Jacobs of the world.” He slid into her garment and rolled onto his back.
“Someone’s pet,” Noa murmured, looking down at him. “But he’s in bad shape.”
Hsissh gave a cry of confirmation.
“I know you’re hungry, little one.” She sighed. “You lost your family, didn’t you? And there aren’t any more rats in the sewers.” She wrapped him in the fabric so only his head was exposed, and ran a fi
nger down his chin.
Another soft cry escaped Hsissh against his volition. The other human hesitatingly proffered a “soybean.” Hsissh was too hungry to reject the offering. His nose twitched as he ate. The other human smelled like steel and synthetics. His host’s memories shot through him. The man smelled a lot like the imitation boy! His nose twitched again … but no, that wasn’t quite right; the other human also smelled like a human male, and blood. Also, he was much too disagreeable to be an “imitation.” He’d argued with Noa quite infuriatingly. So much plastic, metal, and steel though … a human who had been excessively augmented? Hadn’t the werfles near the snow camps said that the humans trapped there were augmented?
“What are you still doing here?” Noa said. For a moment Hsissh thought she was talking to him, but then she resumed the argument she’d been having with the man. After a few minutes Noa said, “Fine, let’s go,” and started walking in the direction of the aunt’s house.
In her arms, Hsissh trembled. Could he really help Noa? He had poison fangs and a worn out body. She was sick. The other human was prone to arguing. Hsissh blinked at the other human; his slightly mollified hunger had cleared his eyes a bit. The other human looked a lot like Tim, taller though, more muscular, but did not radiate happiness in Noa’s presence. He did have a neural interface for the ethernet, unlike the two boys in the alley. Hsissh sniffed the air. The other human didn’t smell like Tim … he smelled, oddly, opposite of Noa. Hsissh couldn’t quite explain it, but as the two of them continued to converse, the fur on his back rose.
Perhaps sensing his tension, Noa ran a finger over Hsissh’s belly. Despite his hunger, and all his apprehensions, he purred.
“I think I’ll name him Fluffy,” Noa said, and Hsissh whispered into her mind, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”