Tendrils touched him, trying to bury inside him.
He panicked, kicked and spun hard. Then he pulled his body into the first disguise that occurred to him.
Electric voices jabbered.
A language was found, and what surrounded him said in the human tongue, “It is a Remora.”
“Down here?”
“Tastes wrong,” a third voice complained.
“Not hyperfiber, this shell isn’t,” said a fourth.
The voices never repeated. This oily body contained a multitude of independent, deeply communal entities.
“The face is,” said another.
“Look at the face.” Another.
“You hear us, Remora?”
“I do,” Alone allowed.
“Are you lost?”
He knew the word, but its precise meaning had always evaded him. So with as much authority as possible, he said, “I am not lost. No.”
In an alien language, the multitude debated what to do next.
Then a final voice announced, “Whatever you are, we will leave you now in a safe place. For this favor, you will pay us with your praise and thanks. Do this and win our respect. Otherwise, we will speak badly of you, today and for the eternity to come.”
He was spat into a new tunnel—a brief broad hole capped with a massive door and filled with magnetic filters, meshed filters, and a set of powerful grasping limbs. The limbs gathered him up. He immediately transformed his body, struggling to slide free. But his captors tied themselves into an enormous knot, their grip trying to crush him. Alone felt helpless. He panicked. Wild with terror, fresh talents were unleashed, and he discovered that when he did nothing except consciously gather up his energies, he could eventually let loose a burst of coherent light—an ultraviolet flash that jumped from his skin, scorching the smothering limbs—and he tumbled back onto the mesh floor.
A second set of limbs emerged, proving stronger, more careful.
Alone adapted his methods. A longer rest produced an invisible but intense magnetic pulse. The mechanical arms flinched and died, and then he changed his shape and flowed out from between them. The chamber walls and overhead door were high-grade hyperfiber. With brief bursts of light, he attacked the door’s narrow seams. He attacked the floor. Security AIs made no attempt to hide their presence, calmly studying the ongoing struggle. Then a pair of technicians stepped through an auxiliary door—humans wearing armored lifesuits, complete with helmets that offered some protection to their tough, fearful minds.
The man asked the woman, “What is that thing?”
“I don’t damn well know.”
“You think it’s the Remora’s ghost?”
“Who cares?” he decided. “Call the boss, let her decide.”
The humans retreated. Fresh arms were generated, slow and massive but designed just moments ago to capture this peculiar prize. Alone was herded into a corner and grabbed up, and an oxygen wind blew into the chamber, bringing a caustic mist of aerosols designed to weaken any normal machine. Through the dense air and across the radio spectrum, the humans spoke to him. “We don’t know if you can understand us,” they admitted. “But please, try to remain still. Pretend to be calm. We don’t want you hurt, we want you to feel safe, but if you insist on fighting, mistakes are going to be made.”
Alone struggled.
Then something was with him—a close, familiar presence—and the voice said, “The animals.”
Alone stopped fighting.
“They have us,” said the voice.
He listened to the air, to the empty static.
But whatever spoke to him was already gone, and that’s when a low whistling noise began to leak out of the prisoner—a steady sad moaning that stopped only when the ranking engineer arrived.
6
“I think you do understand me.” He stared at the woman. Except for a plain white garment, she wore nothing. No armor, no helmet.
“My name is Aasleen.”
Aasleen’s face and open hands were the color of starless space. She was speaking into the air and into an invisible microphone, her radio words finding him an instant before their mirroring sound.
The woman said, “Alone.”
He wasn’t struggling. Doing nothing, he felt his power growing quickly, and he wondered what he might accomplish if held this pose for a long time.
“That’s your name, isn’t it? Alone?”
He had never embraced any name and saw no reason to do so now.
With her nearly black eyes, Aasleen studied her prisoner. And as she stood before him, coded threads of EM noise pushed into her head. Buried in her organic flesh were tiny machines, each speaking with its own urgent, complex voice. She listened to those voices, and she watched him. Then she said one secret word, silencing the chatter, and that’s when she approached, walking forward slowly until he couldn’t endure her presence anymore.
He made himself invisible.
She stopped moving toward him, but she didn’t retreat either, speaking quietly to the smear of nothing defined by the giant clinging limbs.
“Twisting ambient light,” she said. “I know that trick. Metamaterials and a lot of energy. You do it quite well, but it’s nothing new.”
Alone remained transparent.
“And I understand how you can alter your shape and color so easily. You’re liquid, of course. You only pretend to be solid.” She paused for a moment, smiling. “I once had a pet octopus. He had an augmented brain. To make me laugh, he used to pull himself into the most amazing shapes.”
Alone let his body become visible again.
“Step away,” he pleaded.
Aasleen stared at him for another moment. Then she backed off slowly, saying nothing until she had doubled the distance between them.
“Do you know what puzzleboys are?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Puzzleboys build these wonderful, very beautiful machines—hard cores clothed with liquid exteriors. Their devices are durable and inventive. Their best machines are designed to survive for ages while crossing deep space.” Aasleen paused, perhaps hoping for a reaction. When she grew tired of the quiet, she explained, “Puzzleboys were like a lot of sentient species. They wanted the Great Ship for themselves. Thousands of worlds sent intergalactic missions, but my species won the race. I rode out here on one of the earliest starships. Among my happiest days is that morning when I first stood on the Ship’s battered hull, gazing down at the Milky Way.”
He said, “Yes.”
“You know the view?”
“Yes.”
She smiled, teeth showing. “A couple thousand years ago, as we were bringing the Great Ship into the galaxy, puzzleboys started singing their lies. They claimed they’d sent a quick stealthy mission up here. The laws of salvage are ancient—far older than my baby species. Machines can’t claim so much as a lump of ice for their builders. But the aliens claimed that they’d shoved one of their own citizen’s minds into a suitable probe. Like all good lies, their story has dates and convincing details. It’s easy to conclude that their one brave explorer might have actually reached the Great Ship first. If he had done that, then this prize would be theirs. At least according to these old laws. The only trouble with the story is that the mission never arrived. I know I never saw any sign of squatters. Which is why we’ve made a point of insulting that entire species, and that’s why the legal machinery of this cranky old galaxy has convincingly backed our claim of ownership.”