Uclod rubbed his eyes as if they pained him. "You scare me, toots. You honestly do." Then he reached to help me into the ship.
Fondling The Inner Cheek
Since my skin was already damp with snow, I could not feel the wetness of the Zarett’s mouth. However, I could see it glistening moistly beneath my feet — and it looked very slippery indeed. I resolved to walk most carefully, for fear of sliding on a slick patch and Falling Precipitously. (The fall would not damage me, but it might make Uclod think I was clumsy. I did not want that, not even a little bit)
So I stood unmoving on the ribbed floor of Starbiter’s mouth, staling forward at the creature’s yawning throat.[2] Since we had entered the Zarett at ground level, the throat ran upward, further into the center of the ball. Proceeding forward would require a difficult ascent, all slippy and slidy like scrabbling up a muddy riverbank; but the throat was too dark to see how steep the slope might truly be.
[2] — I do not mean Starbiter was yawning as a bored person, does. She could not have been bored at all — it must be very interesting to have a beautiful glass woman enter your mouth. But it is a time-honored figure of English speech to say that darkened cavities "yawn"… and I am excellent at reproducing others’ cliches.
"What do we do now?" I asked Uclod.
I turned and saw the little man had gone to the side of Starbiter’s mouth, where he was rubbing a patch of the Zarett’s inner cheek. Most of the tissue around us was pale pink, but the patch he touched showed a redder tinge. I remembered the way he had massaged the creature to get it to open its lips; apparently, one communicated with Zaretts through fondling.
This struck me as most inefficient "When a machine has buttons," I told Uclod, "you press a button and something happens right away. That is how machines ought to work. I do not think much of a spaceship you must rub to get its attention."
"Not to get her attention," the little man replied. "Sweet baby girl is checking out my taste: making sure I’m her real daddy. Can’t be too careful with a Zarett this valuable. So the cells in this part of her mouth can do a complete DNA analysis on my hand, not to mention verifying my palmprint and fingerprints — all to make sure she doesn’t open up to strangers."
"That is foolish," I told him. "If criminals wished to impersonate you, they could simply cut off your hand. Then they could rub the detached member against the wall."
"Whoa!" Uclod interrupted. "Just whoa," He swallowed hard. "What is wrong with you, missy? How can such grisly ideas pop into such a pretty head?"
"I am simply practical," I said. "Unlike your Zarett’s security precautions, which seem to encourage villains to amputate—"
"Hush! Right now. Not a word."
I hushed. He was clearly a squeamish alien.
A moment later he muttered, "You left your ax behind, right?"
I did not dignify that with an answer.
Past The Teeth And Over The Gums
The little man stepped back from rubbing the Zarett’s mouth. "She’s recognized me," he said, quickly putting his hands behind his back. "We’re ready to go."
I looked at the shadowy throat slanting upward. "It appears to be a difficult climb."
"Climb?" he said. "We don’t have to climb."
"Then how—"
I did not finish my question, because two distractions occurred. First, Uclod dropped to his stomach, lying flat on Starbiter’s lower palate. Second, the Zarett’s lips clamped shut and sealed themselves, plunging us into blackness.
"Get down, toots," Uclod said.
I did not obey. "Why?"
Without the slightest warning, Starbiter lurched. I had time to think, Oh, it is a big ball and it is rolling along the street: then the floor beneath me tipped to the vertical and I fell down hard.
Down
The impact of my fall made a splash in the Zarett’s spittle. Though I could not see, I had the impression the creature’s mouth was flooding with saliva. I did not have long to think about that, because the rolling soon reached the point where the throat was no longer up but down. With nothing to hold on to, and nothing but slippery oral tissue under my body, I slid helplessly forward, tobogganing head-first: bouncing blindly off the walls of the mouth, until I was funneled into the throat and hurled downward.
Zoom.
Saliva whooshed me on my way, like a stream of mucousy water, very slick and oily. I could not slow myself at all; when I flailed my arms, I only managed to roll onto my side. Then onto my back. Then onto my side again. But of all the positions, it felt the most pleasing to whiz along on my front, so I worked over to that.
At one point, something brushed against my spine — a thinning in Starbiter’s throat, perhaps the epiglottis Uclod had mentioned. I did not have time to grab it; anyway, it felt as slippery as everything else around me, so I doubt that I could have managed to stop myself.
The ride continued, but not in a direct line down. Soon after the epiglottis, the path veered to the right, rolling me high up on the throat wall before the route straightened again. That sent me see-sawing back and forth, up the left wall, down to the bottom, up the right… which would have been most enjoyable, except that the slide leveled out quickly after that and my motion began to slow. Apparently, the Zarett had come to rest in a position that left this part of the throat horizontal. I saw light glimmering ahead; and with my last momentum, I slid into a small room whose walls shone as yellow as buttercups. Uclod was there, already on his feet. As I came to a stop, he bent over and asked, "How’re you doing, missy?"
"I am exceedingly vexed," I said, elbow-deep in spittle. Though the fluid was rapidly seeping away through the porous tissues around me, I was still soaking wet in every particular. That is not a nice feeling, especially when one does not know if Zarett saliva is the type of liquid that leaves stains or crusty patches when it dries. Therefore, when Uclod offered me his hand as an aid to standing up, I scowled and did not take it; I rose on my own (with magnificent grace) and told him, "It was very most rude not to warn me what would happen."
"You weren’t keen on being swallowed," he said. "I figured it would cause less fuss if I didn’t explain ahead of time."
"Because you thought I might flee? Or make trouble?" I glared at him. "From now on, you can best avoid trouble by keeping me well-informed. Do you understand?"
The only answer I received was a slight shudder under my feet. "Starbiter doesn’t like it," Uclod said, "when people threaten her dad. You might remember that, missy, if you want to avoid trouble."
"What will she do? Eat me? She has already succeeded in that."
"We didn’t get eaten," Uclod replied, "we got inhaled. Back where the throat curved, we got shunted away from the stomach and into the lungs… which are set up as living quarters. There’s eighteen rooms in here, bedrooms, bath, the works, all made from enlarged alveoli: cells for air storage. The old gal’s got real alveoli too, tiny little buggers like the ones in your own lungs, but these special eighteen cells were engineered big enough for people our size to live in."
"So we were not swallowed but instead Went Down The Wrong Way. When that happens to me, I cough."
"Starbiter’s not going to cough!" Uclod answered most snappishly. "Just…" He glared at me. "Just forget she’s alive, okay? Think of her as a normal spaceship, nothing fancy, nothing strange. Now come with me down this bronchial tube to the bridge."
He walked to the far end of the room and stomped his foot once on the floor. A section of the wall opened like a sphincter to reveal a passageway leading onward. The passage was lit with me same buttercup-yellow as the room we were in.