I strode majestically toward the open door… but not before I caught a look passing between Festina and Uclod. One might think she would be reproving him for making me so furious; but in fact, her lips mouthed the words, "Thank you" — as if he had done something praiseworthy instead of driving me into a rage. And the little man actually winked back at her.
There is no understanding aliens at all.
Burrows
The door led into a corridor that was nothing like a proper ship corridor — just a dirt-lined tunnel, as must be dug by rabbits or gophers if the animals were almost the size of a real person. I say "almost the size" because the tunnel roof was not quite my height; I had to duck slightly, which did not improve my mood. Aarhus too was forced to stoop, and poor Lajoolie needed to bend most uncomfortably. I expected the short people to boast that they had no trouble at all… but Festina was too polite, and Uclod too busy fussing with his wife, trying to think of ways to make movement easier for the big woman. ("Would it help if… suppose I… maybe you could…" None of this improved things in the least, but perhaps Lajoolie found his efforts endearing.)
Nimbus, of course, floated down the middle without difficulty. As we started forward, the cloud man told Festina, "You realize this tunnel is just a mock-up? I sent a few of my cells to check the wall; it’s a type of artificial dirt sprayed over a base of solid steel-plast."
"Doesn’t surprise me," Festina replied. "It looks like the Shaddill evolved from burrowing creatures. All this soil must make them feel comfortable."
"Then they are giant space gophers?" I asked.
"Gophers aren’t the only animals who burrow," Festina said. "Rabbits… worms… beetles… snakes… and those are just terrestrial species. I could list thousands of even stranger burrowers from other planets."
"Do you know what Las Fuentes looked like?" Uclod asked. "Before they changed into purple blobs."
Festina shook her head. "They cleaned their worlds meticulously before they abandoned their settlements made a determined effort to eliminate any direct clues about themselves. Oh sure, they overlooked a few odds and ends: a small number of tools that were probably designed for four-fingered hands… broken furniture that suggests they always lay down rather than sitting, so they were probably jointed differently than we are. No bodies, though; not a single bone. Shows how advanced their technology was if they could make such a clean sweep. Also shows Las Fuentes didn’t want us to know what they looked like."
"Just what you’d expect of burrowing creatures," Aarhus said. "Obsessively secretive."
"It is not obsessive," I told him, "it is simply good sense. One must always take pains to go unnoticed, or one might be observed by persons of unknown provenance…"
I stopped. Festina was looking at me keenly. "Your race is secretive, isn’t it? And you all live in hidden enclaves like that underground city."
"Are you suggesting I am a Shaddill? That is very most rude of you, Festina. I may speak their language, but I am not such a creature as burrows… or has small four-fingered hands… and I bend in the middle with perfect ease, thereby allowing me to sit wherever I choose."
"I’m not saying you’re a Shaddill look-alike," Festina replied, "but your planet Melaquin was the earliest known settlement established by the Shaddill after Las Fuentes disappeared. The Shaddill may have created you as an artificial race who looked human enough to please people taken from Earth, but who had Shaddill-ish characteristics too. The secretiveness, the instinct to hide. They built you concealed towns and villages all over the planet; and they made you transparent, so you’d be damned hard to see, even when you ventured out into the open. If the Shaddill are, uhh, reclusive space gophers, they constructed you to follow in their footsteps."
"And they taught you their language," Aarhus put in. "They didn’t do that with any other race they uplifted."
"The other uplifted races were scientifically advanced," Festina said. "At least advanced enough to have launched a few rockets and satellites. But Oar’s people got picked up when they were still trying to get the hang of smelting bronze." She puckered her brow. "Makes you wonder why the difference. What did the Shaddill want with…"
"Children!" Lajoolie blurted out. "The Shaddill wanted children."
We all turned to look at her. I noticed Uclod turned faster than the rest of us — the little man’s head fairly snapped like a whip. Perhaps a man has especially rapid reflexes for responding when his wife broaches the subject of offspring.
Childlike, Most Childlike
"Uhh," said Lajoolie, wilting under our collective gaze. "It’s just… well… maybe the Shaddill wanted children. To watch growing up… and… playing… and… things. Because maybe they’d done something to change themselves from burrowing creatures into blobs of jelly, and maybe the blobs of jelly couldn’t have babies, or anyway not normal ones, so the Shaddill… Las Fuentes… were nostalgic for children. They created an artificial race that was sort of like what they used to be — secretive, you know, and hard to notice — but the kids would always be, uhh, childlike throughout their entire lives."
She looked at me with her big brown eyes. "Yes, childlike. And maybe the Shaddill couldn’t take care of the children one hundred percent of the time, so they brought in bronze-age humans to be, uhh, nannies. At least for the first generation. The Shaddill made the children look and act like humans, so the Earthlings would feel more comfortable tending them, but inside, the kids had attitudes that would make the Shaddill find them… lovable."
There was a silence; for some reason, everyone was now looking at me instead of Lajoolie. "But that is not how it was," I told them. "My people have stories and records. Flesh-and-blood Earthlings were brought to Melaquin, and the Shaddill asked, ‘Do you want your children to live forever?’ The Earthlings said yes, that is what they wanted… and the Shaddill changed the humans inside, so their offspring would be made of glass. My ancestors were not babysitters; they were loving parents who cared so much for their children, they desired us to be perfect."
Festina put her hand on my shoulder. "Oar — you shouldn’t put faith in your written records. The humans on Melaquin came from 2000 B.C. Almost no one on Earth could write back then… and if any of the settlers were literate, they’d write in their own language, not yours." She took a breath. "It must have been the Shaddill who wrote your history books."
I stared at her, feeling a tear trickle down my cheek.
"It might not have been a total lie," she said. "The Shaddill may have altered the humans physically to become… surrogates. The women could have served as hosts for implanted embryos: they’d be more likely to take care of you if they thought you were their own children."
"But if the Shaddill made us to be their children," I said, "why did they make our brains Tired?"
Silence. I was about to say, You see, I have defeated your arguments, when Nimbus spoke softly. "Perhaps they didn’t want you to grow up."
I whirled upon him. "What do you mean?"
"Perhaps," he said, still very quiet, "there comes a time — even for beings designed to remain childlike as long as possible — perhaps there comes a time when childhood has to end. When the brain reaches a point where it must either become adult… or become nothing. And the Shaddill preferred you to be nothing."