Trixie & Me

by Peter Cawdron

“Warm,” she replied, finding it easy to mimic his sounds, vaguely remembering these concepts. She knew the words, she'd heard them spoken so often before, but it seemed only now that they had any meaning. Now, they were anchored in her mind to tangible, real concepts.

  “Yes, warm. Do you feel warm or cold?” Berry asked, rubbing her arms. He picked up his jacket and helped her put it on. It felt cold, but she smiled, appreciating his interest and kindness.

  “I feel cold,” she said, intuitively realizing cold was the opposite of warm. It was a sentence. She was learning.

  “We've got to get out of here, Trix.”

  Berry turned and started walking toward the back of the cavern.

  Trixie stood there paralyzed in fear. She couldn't move, her legs wouldn't let her. This was all she knew, she couldn't leave. The thought of what else might be out there in the darkness terrified her. In here, there were bugs, branches, gnarled roots, soft tufts of moss, pretty insects that glowed like stars, images made from light, these were all things she knew, the only things she knew. Out there could be anything. Monsters waited in the shadows.

  Berry turned back to her. He reached out, resting his hands on either side of her neck, gently caressing her shoulders before running his fingers up over her cheeks as he reached in and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Oh, what have they done to you, my darling? I am so sorry. I know this must be hard for you, but you're doing great. Just stay with me, okay? Everything's going to be all right.”

  Trixie nodded. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  Berry held her hand, pulling her along with him as they weaved between the other vivisection platforms scattered throughout the dark cavern.

  A large hole in the floor loomed at the back of the cave, marking the corridor running through this section of the alien ship.

  The black abyss frightened Trixie. She remembered it. She remembered being caged. She remembered being dragged from corridor to corridor before being brought into this cavern. And she remembered the strange feeling in her stomach as gravity realigned within the tunnels winding through the alien ship.

  Shafts of differing sizes branched through the interior of the craft like veins, following paths of organic purpose rather than straight lines. Her memories were like a dream, a haze in the back of her mind, but she knew what to expect as they approached the broad hole in the ground. Thick roots lined the floor, like cables snaking into a shaft, tripping her on the odd occasion. At one point, Berry slipped on the damp roots, falling slowly to the ground.

  “Like falling in a swimming pool, ain't it?” he said as he caught himself with his outstretched hands. “Not that you'd know too much about getting wet.”

  “Water?” she said, making a connection deep in the recesses of her mind.

  “Yeah,” Berry replied. “That's right. Swimming pools are full of water. And here, on this craft, gravity is weak. It's hard for us, it's like fighting to move through syrup. You can't move as fast as you want to. It feels like you're being held back, but that's because our bodies evolved to move against the pull of one gravity, allowing us to rebound in a natural rhythm, but here, it feels like there's a lag, as though there's some kind of delay.”

  “Syrup?” Trixie asked, struggling to piece together the rest of his sentences.

  “Oh, you'll love syrup, Trix. It's sweet. Syrup goes well with pancakes.”

  “Pancakes?”

  “Yeah,” Berry replied, taking her hand again. “There's a lot you're going to have to learn about, Babe, but you'll like them, syrup and pancakes. Just keep talking, Honey. Try not to think about where you are. Try not to think about what's happening. Just keep thinking about syrup and pancakes.”

  Although she knew what was coming, it was still a surprise to Trixie when down became forward and she realized Berry had walked her into the hole. Down had shifted. Down had changed, just as it had when she'd jumped up into the vines and branches on the wall.

  With her fingers, Trixie pointed, trying to comprehend what had happened. The bell around her wrist rang softly. Down had been a concept she thought she understood. Her old down now lay in front of her, and yet down was still below her. Her mind struggled to grasp that she would no longer fall toward her old down as she had just seconds before. Berry could see the confusion in her face.

  “Kind of trippy, huh,” he said. “Don't know that we'd ever get used to this, but it means our concept of upright has multiple meanings in just one room. Must be quite something, though, as it increases their usable space by a factor of six. These corridors are the worst, they're winding cylinders, like artery walls, so there is no right way up, all ways are right and all ways are up, all pointing in toward the middle. How the hell they do that without spinning the craft, I don't know. The techs on the Rift Valley would be impressed with this stuff, though.”

  He let go of her hand, giving her some freedom.

  The roots were larger in the spiraling corridor, reaching up to waist height and, in some places, forming knots slightly over her head. Trixie touched one, feeling it pulsate. Berry seemed to know where he was going, so she pressed on behind him. Her bell rang as her arms swung beside her.

  “We're going to have to lose that bell, Trix.”

  Trixie shook her head. A look of horror crossed her face at the thought of losing her bracelet, but she wasn’t sure why. With her other hand, she silenced the bell.

  “You can't do that forever, Trix. We've got to be quiet. We can't do anything that would give us away to these buggers. You're going to have to take that off and leave it here.”

  “No,” she replied, fiddling with the silver tag and the bell. If she slipped the woven bracelet down her wrist, she could rest the metallic tag and the bell in the palm of her hand and hold them silent with her fingers.

  “I know it means a lot to you, but I can get you another one.”

  “No,” she repeated, defiant. It felt good to be assertive, to be herself, to express her needs in unambiguous terms. No was such a powerful word. It carried so much depth behind it, far more than warm or cold, pancakes or syrup. Trixie decided she liked no.

  “OK, but you keep that thing quiet,” Berry said, his voice barely audible.

  “OK,” she replied in a whisper. In the midst of the darkness, in the cold and danger, words became her refuge. Trixie struggled to comprehend everything Berry said, but that he would say something was a relief, a distraction.

  Critters scurried past her in the dark, clinging to the tangled roots, scrambling along beside her. Centipedes and spiders, at least, that's what they looked like to her. They spooked her. She flinched, trying not to scream as one of them ran over her hand, its claws clinging briefly to her skin. As in the chamber, whenever she put her hand out to steady herself, it seemed one of these creatures would scurry across her soft skin.

  “It's OK, Babe. They're workers, not thinkers. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Afraid,” she said, linking another concept in her mind.

  “Nothing to be afraid of,” Berry repeated, edging forward cautiously within the tunnel. He kept low. “They're cleaners, repairmen, mechanics, plumbers. They won't hurt you.”

  “Won't hurt you.”

  “That's right. They won't hurt you. They won't hurt me,” he said, pointing at her and then at himself.

  “Won't hurt you,” she repeated, touching him in the center of his chest, before pointing at herself and adding, “Won't hurt me.”

  “There. See. You're a fast learner. You and me.”

  “You and me,” she replied smiling.

  Berry smiled back.

  Trixie liked it when Berry smiled.

  Berry turned and pushed on, following the contour of a large root with thick vines wrapping around it. The vines appeared to be suffocating the winding trunk. He whispered under his breath, laughing to himself as he said, “Here I am, stuck in a goddamn alien war craft, giving English lessons to a newborn. We're screwed. We are so totally screwed.”

  �
�Screwed?” Trixie asked, whispering as well, mimicking Berry in as many respects as she could.

  “I'll explain that one to you later. We've got to get the hell out of Dodge before they realize we're on the run and turn us into a pile of prokaryotes. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life as a mushroom.”

  Trixie stole a look behind them as Berry paused at the intersection of six corridors in the heart of the craft, trying to get his bearings. As she looked back, she could see the point where they had entered the hole. Was it above them or below them, or just behind them? The notion of anchored spatial directions was meaningless within the alien spaceship. When they entered the corridor, up had been sideways. Down, it seemed, was always down wherever they happened to be as they curved around the inside of the vast tube, which was disorienting.

  Trixie could see the central root they'd followed through the darkened corridor. It had twisted through three hundred and sixty degrees as it wound along the tunnel. They had gone upside down without realizing it, but then, there was no upside down here on the alien ship.

  The curved veins running along the side of the massive root were teaming with workers streaming back and forth, their phosphorescent bodies glowing with an oily iridescence, providing what little light there was in the cold darkness.

  Trixie reached out, running her fingers over the rough surface of the root beside her. The bark, if it could be called that, was different from the smooth textures in the vivisection chamber. The seemingly wooden surface felt stippled, raised up in hundreds of tiny lumps like the surface of a basketball. She could feel the root throb, pulsing beneath her fingertips with a slight rhythm. There was a harmony to it, a sense of purpose which she found perplexing.

  The organic nature of the alien spacecraft was a stark contrast to the sterile, lifeless structure of the Swift . Trixie’s memory was fragmented, with fleeting glimpses of the white, clean surfaces, the right-angle corners, the hatchways and corridors within their scout craft. These were a huge contrast to the earthy tones and soft curves around her now. She remembered the metallic smell of ozone from the CO2 scrubbers on the Swift , like the smell that hung in the air after a thunderstorm. Here, though, the musty smell of decay lingered around her, repelling her.

  When Trixie turned back, Berry was gone.

  Panic swept over her.

  Trixie started to call out his name, but thought better of it, not wanting to attract the wrong attention. She clambered forward over a large root, slipping and falling gently onto her back in a wedge between two of the main arteries.

  What seemed like thousands of beetles, centipedes, spiders and cockroaches scurried over her, filling her with dread. Their spindly legs clawed at her arms, catching in her hair and clinging to her hands.

  Trixie scrambled to her feet, shaking her arms and flicking the creatures from her body. Although she knew they were nothing like terrestrial insects, the feeling of dirt and decay overwhelmed her, filling her with revulsion. She was manic, grabbing at the creatures and tossing them to the ground. There had only been a handful of them clinging to her, but she continued pulling at her hair, convinced she could feel more of these alien insects crawling over her skin, hiding beneath her dark locks. Try as she may, there was nothing she could do to rid herself of the apparitions in her mind. Even after they were gone, she felt as though they were still scurrying over her, climbing up her arms and along her shoulders. As she watched the creatures scamper away, she knew they were just as startled as she was and just as glad to be rid of her, and yet she felt violated, defiled.

  Trixie pushed on blindly, not sure where she was going, just wanting to get away from that junction, to be free from the terror of the moment.

  A dim light glowed from an open chamber at the end of a narrow, slowly curving corridor. Thick vines entwined themselves around the artery-like tube. Trixie crept forward, her eyes scanning the darkness.

  “Berry?” she whispered, more to set her nerves at ease from hearing a human voice than to actually find her lost partner.

  Every couple of feet, she paused, running her hands through her hair to reassure herself there was nothing there.

  Trixie felt dirty, soiled. Her long hair drifted around her, floating in front of her whenever she paused. The side tunnel was no more than fifteen feet in diameter, making it the smallest artery she had seen. When she stood, her head was within a couple of feet of the gravitationally neutral center of the tunnel, which put unusual stresses on her body. Her feet felt anchored, pulled outward by gravity, but her stomach seemed to float slightly in her chest, while her arms and hair were buoyant, seemingly weightless.

  Trixie felt a little giddy with blood pooling in her extremities, so she crouched down as she moved toward the dim glow in the distance. She was trying to minimize the weightless effect. She hoped she'd would find Berry in the chamber beyond. As near as she could remember, he’d been heading in this direction.

  A vast spherical cavern opened up ahead of her, stretching out over several hundred yards. At its heart, suspended in mid-air, lay a seething ball of golden dust, swirling like a sandstorm. A dim yellow light shone from the heart of the compressed sphere. It was diffuse, there was no clear boundary marking its outline, just the misty haze of dust fines growing ever denser toward the glowing center.

  Trixie watched as the creatures, or workers as Berry had called them, formed a living chain, reaching up from the surrounding vines and branches into the swirling storm. She coughed. The powdery dust coated everything, getting in her hair, her eyes, her nose, on her lips and in her mouth, leaving a sharp, sour taste.

  Trixie pulled her singlet up over her nose and mouth, using it as a filter to breathe through as she watched with fascination. Several strands of living bridges stretched out into the glowing mist from equidistant points around the chamber. These tiny creatures were harvesting the fine dust, carrying it away for use elsewhere.

  Trixie was curious, although if asked, she couldn't have explained why she was curious, just that she was. The view startled her. It was the inconsistency of the topsy-turvy alien world that got her attention. Some kind of localized gravity caused the creatures swarming around her to stick to the walls of the vast chamber, but the center of the chamber with its bulbous dust cloud didn't seem to be subject to the craft's gravity, it seemed to have its own pull independent of the alien vessel, and that intrigued her. Trixie had expected this sphere to be similar to the shaft, weightless in the center, but it seemed everything in this vast chamber revolved around the dense, glowing dust cloud.

  Trixie reached down and picked one of the smaller workers off a root, holding him by his shell as his feet splayed helplessly through the air. She tossed him at an angle, sending the creature across the chamber and not directly at the eddies swirling within the dust ball. The cockroach-like animal curved in an arc away from the chamber wall and down into the dust storm, disappearing from sight without having struck any visible surface.

  “Having fun?” came a quiet voice from behind her.

  Trixie almost screamed.

  Berry placed his hand over her mouth, pulling her down into a gap between the roots. Trixie flinched, her heart leaping in her throat before the realization struck that Berry had found her.

  “Don't wander off like that,” he whispered in her ear as he let go.

  Trixie started to protest, wanting to point out that he had left her back at the intersection, when Berry whispered again in her ear, pointing off to one side.

  “Thinkers.”

  There, on the roof of the circular chamber, was a black shape, much larger than several men huddled together. In the grainy half-light, Trixie couldn't make out much detail, but, like the bugs around her, there was a faint glow of phosphorescence emanating from around the edge of what appeared to be an outer shell.

  Trixie felt her heart racing. Her mouth went dry. She wanted to run. It was as though she could somehow escape from the alien craft if only she could run fast enough and far enough. Her muscl
es tensed. Berry must have realized what she was thinking as she poised, ready to spring at the slightest sign of danger. He whispered softly in her ear, saying, “Easy, girl. Don't panic. Keep it together.”

  Trixie found herself breathing heavily, hyperventilating. It was irrational. Somehow, deep down, she knew that size was meaningless. Just because the creatures crawling past her were small didn't mean they weren't dangerous, it had worked out that way because of their function, not their size, and yet the imposing bulk of a thinker intimidated her. It seemed there was strength hidden there, coiled up in that dark body, with its crab-like feet poking out from beneath its shell.

  “Come on,” Berry said, watching the thinker overseeing the extraction of the fine powder. “We've got to get back to the Swift . We need to see if we can get her started and get back home.”

  “Home?” Trixie asked, the sound of loss in her voice.

  “Yes. Home. Back on the Rift Valley .”

  Berry inched backwards down the shaft, keeping a wary eye on the thinker moving around the chamber. Staying in the shadows, the two of them moved back to the junction.

  Trixie grabbed at Berry's shoulder and upper arm, not wanting him to creep too far ahead of her. It wasn't the thinkers themselves that terrified her, it was the idea of being caught, the uncertainty about what would happen next. She had an irrational fear of being brutally slaughtered by some dark inhuman monster.

  The bell on her bracelet rang softly in the dark. Although the sound was soothing to her, Berry whipped around, holding his finger to his mouth, signaling for her to be quiet. Her lips turned down, her head bowed, and she gripped the small bell in the palm of her hand again, feeling scolded.

  After reaching the convoluted intersection, Berry picked his way slowly across the network of tunnels. The two of them defied gravity as they twisted around and over the ceiling into another major artery.

  Berry signaled for Trixie to pause. Without turning back toward her, he reached behind, grabbing her shoulder and pushing her down as he crouched low. His eyes were focused on something in the darkness.