“No!” I managed to cry, despite my paralysis. A whiff of surprise leaked from the soldier’s armor—no juvenile, especially a sick one, would ever say such a thing to an adult—but she hesitated. “I—Ksho is delivering an important package to her parent on the alien planet.” I gestured to my pannier. “Ksho must do this before pupating.”
I waited, trembling. The soldier seemed uncertain what to do.
After an eternity, the other soldier spoke. “Oh, let her go,” she said. “If she dies over there, no one will ever know.”
Somehow I managed to will myself into motion. The soldier’s weapon continued to follow me, and I expected a gout of acid to strike me at any moment, but finally I found myself on the other side of the portal.
I never expected to feel relief at the cold, the strange flavors, the leaden weight of the other planet’s gravity.
That relief was short-lived. Now I had to find the alien juvenile.
The path to the huge stone structure seemed infinite as I hauled myself along it. The aliens who passed did not react any differently than they had before—they probably did not know the difference between a healthy and a sick juvenile—and I was glad there were no Shacuthi present. At one point I felt a tearing pain in my side, followed by a slow trickle of fluid down my flank, but I pressed on, not wanting to know what it looked like.
At last I came to the structure’s massive door, which stood firmly closed. There was nothing like a scratching-board… I had no idea how to signal for entrance.
Then a form loomed up behind the door’s transparent panels. For a moment I felt hope, but then I realized it was just an alien adult, one I’d never seen before. It did not appear to have a translation device on its limb.
I needed the alien to bring me to the juvenile. But how?
And then I remembered the very first thing the juvenile had said to me: “Speaker equivalence (assertion) Ah-lec-sa (proper name).” It had made no sense to me at the time, but I realized now what it had meant: I am Ah-lec-sa.
“Ah-lec-sa,” I said to the alien at the door.
I repeated it as the alien opened the door.
I continued to repeat it until the alien departed, then returned with another that had a translation device. “I must speak to Ah-lec-sa,” I said. “It is vitally important.”
I sat on the cold stone outside the structure’s weather door for a long time, unmoving from pain and fatigue more than from fear. Something tore open on my other flank.
I waited.
And then a whole crowd of aliens appeared: the juvenile Ah-lec-sa, followed by several others with dark skin like hers, and several more.
I dug in my pannier and brought out the notespool, and I explained as best I could what my parent had learned. Another alien brought a larger, more complex version of the translation device, and that made the conversation a little easier. Many other aliens came. When I brought out Xinecotic’s communication device, two of the larger aliens immediately moved in and took it away from me. I was too tired to argue.
After a long while they brought it back, saying they had examined it and determined it was safe. I explained how to open it, and one of the aliens who had taken it away tried, but in the end it turned out that only Ah-lec-sa had fingers small and strong enough to work the catch. I showed Ah-lec-sa how to feed the notespool into the device’s reader and how to initiate transmission.
“You must take the device through the portal,” I said, “and transmit from there.” After so much talking, my voice was hoarse and whispery.
The aliens argued a long time among themselves. I didn’t follow the argument very well—I was drifting in and out of consciousness—but I gathered that Ah-lec-sa was the only one who could manipulate the device, and the other aliens didn’t want it to go. Eventually, though, Ah-lec-sa bent down to where I could see. My vision had nearly failed. “Speaker travel (future) and return (future),” it said to me. “Listener wait (imperative) at this location.”
“I will wait,” I said. I didn’t really have much alternative.
Ah-lec-sa left, accompanied by four of the largest aliens. I slumped where I sat. Some of the other aliens asked me questions, but I was barely able to respond.
I realized I had done all I could.
I crawled into a corner and began to wrap myself, beginning with my tail and working up. I had waited almost too long; my skin had stiffened to the point that I could barely reach my tail with my mandibles. I did the best I could, but it took much longer than it was supposed to. I hoped my adult form would not suffer because of the delay.
While I worked, many other aliens came, pointing devices at me that flashed and beeped. I ignored them.
I was nearly finished, just my head and one limb unwrapped, when Ah-lec-sa and the others returned. My vision had failed nearly completely by now, but Ah-lec-sa’s flavor, different from the other aliens’ though equally strange, had become familiar to me.
“Transmission completion achieve (past, assertion),” Ah-lec-sa said. “Grand Nest acknowledge (past) transmission. Grand Nest send (assertion) soldiers, apprehend (future) criminals.”
“Thank you, Ah-lec-sa,” I sighed.
“Listener status (query),” Ah-lec-sa asked.
“I am pupating now,” I whispered. “You must watch over the pupa for three months. Do not let predators eat it, or let it get too warm or too cold. The soldiers from the Grand Nest will tell you what to do, and will care for my sisters.”
“Speaker talk (future, assertion) with listener in three months.”
I paused in wrapping the one remaining exposed limb. “No, Ah-lec-sa. The adult that emerges from the pupa will not be me. She will know the things I have done and learned, but I am told it is like reading a spool about the ancestors, not like a memory. She will be a different person. You will need to introduce yourself to her.”
Ah-lec-sa and the other aliens discussed this for a long time, while I continued wrapping myself. Covering my own head was the most difficult part, but I relaxed and let my instincts guide me.
“Speaker equivalence (assertion) great sadness,” Ah-lec-sa said.
“Do not be sad, Ah-lec-sa. The new adult will be glad to meet you. She will enjoy hearing from you what we have done together.”
“Adult feel (future, assertion) pride about listener. Listener equivalence (assertion) significant-person.”
“I would never have been significant,” I said, “if you had not taught me to be.”
I tucked my mandibles against my neck, feeling the wrappings begin to harden, and let myself relax into the long sleep.