“No!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
The objections cascaded one atop the other, underscored by an orgy of tlict writhing and stomping. As the long silver translator rolled free of the bundle, its metallic voice squealed, “No! Not-tlict merchandise. Not-follow. No. No! Gertrude worry. Not-tlict you. Answer. Worry. Not-tlict merchandise. No!”
“OK! OK!” She beat back an urge to retrieve the translator for them, unwillingly repulsed by the very alienness of their display. “I’ll leave the boy here. But you have to bring me back before too long. He can’t stay completely alone.”
“Yes. Yes. Not-tlict you. Follow.” One of the twitching green Larries plucked up the errant translator. It passed between all four of them on its way back to its original holder. “Answer. Worry. Answer. Strangeness. Yes. Yes. Gertrude breathes.”
“Let’s keep us both that way.” As they stepped into the airlock, Rahel wondered if a snooze pistol would even work on a tlict.
With luck, she wouldn’t have to find out.
Smells. Wet, frigid, alien smells. Smells that made her mouth taste like ginger, smells that clung like spider silk to her hair. Something hiding in the odors made her heart turn over with grief—but it wasn’t a smell Rahel could sense with her nose, just a feeling that swelled up inside her from nowhere as she followed the Larries through the unchanging corridor. In the cold, voiceless darkness of the tlict jumpship, she mistook the melancholy for reality. Then they passed out of whatever area produced the sad aroma, and she felt only confused and manipulated, and more than just a little afraid.
She should never have agreed to come here.
Frost flowers salted the walls where the corridor finally widened into a cathedral-sized chamber. A scaffolding of struts and steam smothered an unseen light source, throwing the cables and elaborate grillwork spanning the ceiling into a sparse, shadowed flatness that reminded Rahel more of wrought iron than jumpship design. She stopped when one of the Larries picked at her shoulder. A cloud of her own breath washed back in her face with clammy staleness, and she was startled by how different it smelled from the rest of the air.
“I hope you guys don’t expect me to go on without you.” The rush and roar of some gas pumping device deadened her voice even in her own ears. “I can’t see, and I don’t know where you want me.”
“Follow. No. Follow. Ending.” Words like whispered vapor drifted down from above, so soft as to be only in Rahel’s imagination. She craned her head upward in search of a speaker, but the Larry behind her pressed all four thorax arms against her back to keep her from moving away.
“Good breathing,” the fragile voice pronounced. A puff of curling steam blasted outward from either side of the room’s central strutting. “Wise air. Gertrude-this. Larries touching. Not-tlict you.” The grillwork high above tipped downward, and every cable and structure in the room rearranged itself as the massive creature shifted position. “Gertrude-this.”
Dizzy terror crammed a fist into Rahel’s chest. Gasping, she clapped both hands to her mouth and stumbled backward a step to keep from falling to her knees. All four Larries scampered forward to preen their mammoth consort. Rahel didn’t want to feel the prejudice—didn’t want to fear anybody just because they were huge, and hideous, and impossibly different. But her eyes kept flying between the multiple joints and grip-pers, the bony plates of ornamentation, the workings of the Larries’ mouths as they nursed at knobs along their Gertrude’s belly, and Rahel found hard to ignore the primal instinct that said she shouldn’t let this monstrosity exist in the same world with other people.
People in glass houses, her civilized brain reminded her sharply. After all, she was in the tlict jumpship—as the monster among them, she should probably exercise a little tolerance.
“Gertrude.” Rahel wasn’t sure if she’d actually found the breath to croak the single word, so cleared her throat and dropped her hands to call the greeting again. “Gertrude, my name is Rahel Tovin. I…” She tried to think how to best acknowledge her reason for being here, then decided that discussing anything beyond the perfectly obvious would just get garbled in translation anyway. “Larry said you wanted to talk to me.”
“Yes. Yes.” Gertrude scraped arms on head crest to produce a hollow humming. “Not-tlict merchandise. Larries breathing. Gertrude-this. Worry.”
“The merchandise.” Rahel slipped her hands into her pockets. For some reason, the warm outline of the snooze pistol didn’t feel as comforting as it once had. “The feral boy.”
“Yes. Yes.” The translator pressed to Gertrude’s thorax purred breathily. “Not-tlict merchandise. Not-tlict you. Same. Yes? Same. No!”
“Yes.” Rahel nodded. “The merchandise is human. He’s what my people call a feral child. Can you… taste what ‘feral’ means?” Gertrude prodded at her Larries, but none of them gave any sign of understanding. “He grew up without the help of other humans. Like an animal. He can’t function within human society, or even think like a human anymore.”
“Worry. Worry.” Gertrude’s armor clacked like rifle shots as she shivered. Two of the Larries disengaged from their nursing, clawing at their mouths as if to clear them of some vile flavor. “Wild-not-tlict-not-think-larva-thing-that. Not-tlict merchandise. Damaged. Yes? Animal. No.”
“No—not damaged.”
“Animal,” Gertrude persisted, shuddering her head crest. “Yes?”
Rahel sighed and scratched at her scalp. “No. I mean yes. I mean…” She groaned and knotted both hands in her hair. “The merchandise is human,” she finally said slowly, forcing herself to make eye contact with the gertrude. “The merchandise is also an animal. All humans are animals—”
“Not-tlict you. Tlict-think you. Yes? Yes?”
No. No. Big time no. “Humans are intelligent, yes. Very intelligent. But much of what we are is information that we learn—information that only happens if we keep in constant contact with other humans.” Rahel watched the Larries huddle back against the Gertrude’s legs to chew their pincers. “Except for that information and our ability to pass it on, we re just as much slaves to our instincts as the smallest paramecium.”
Gertrude tasted every surface on her translator, rubbed it between her armored plates, tasted it again. “Not-tlict you.” The translator buzzed. “Not-tlict you. Alone. Mature. Yes? Yes?”
Rahel tried to knit together the string of word concepts, but finally shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Larva-you. Adult-you. Not-alone. Change. Information. Change. Yes? Yes?” An expanse of bony arm stretched out above Rahel, then recoiled at the last moment as though unwilling to actually touch her. “Larva-you. Adult-you. Alone. Not-change. Not-information. Not-change.”
“Humans never…” Rahel spread her arms uncertainly. “We never change. We keep the same form all our lives.”
“No!” Front legs pumping, Gertrude’s barbed elbows scraped sparks against the metal walls. “Larva. Adult. Not-same. Can’t-same. Never-same.” Drops of light showered around her, singeing the Larries with a smell like burnt roses.
“There are differences as we become older,” Rahel admitted. Backing out through the open door was probably not a good idea, no matter how attractive it might seem. “The way humans think, the way we move. All of that is different by the time we’re finished growing. Brand new babies may share the same physical form as all other humans, but they aren’t as well-developed, and they aren’t nearly so large.”
The rust-and-cream Larry used its lower arms to wrench one primary limb up close to its mouth parts. Gertrude flicked the male away from her with a foot. “Not-tlict larva. Not-tlict grow.” Great crest tipped from side to side, testing the torpid air. “Big. Grow. Not-change.”