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Authors: James Alan Gardner

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BOOK: Ascending
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Yet it was still very hard to leave my home…and to leave my ax as well. It was only an object, but it was
mine
: my sole possession, the thing I had held in my hands through many solitary nights of chopping trees, hoping someone would notice how I cleared land in the manner of civilized persons.

Now the test of civilization was not
using
my ax but
abandoning
it. This sounded very much like what humans call “irony”…and I do not like irony
at all.

With great reluctance, I removed my ax from Starbiter’s mouth and laid it on the pavement. A snowflake fell on the blade. I did not brush it off.

“There,” I said…speaking loudly and firmly, so no one could claim my voice trembled. “I am going now; and I shall willingly leave behind my ax, though it is my sole belonging—because I am a person of peace and never kill others unless they really truly deserve it.”

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, staring 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.

“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 headfirst: 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 seesawing 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?”

How I Was Doing

“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 the same buttercup-yellow as the room we were in.

“If you can have light down here,” I said, “why not in the throat too?”

“That’d be nice,” Uclod admitted, “but it’s not practical. The light here comes from a phosphorescent fungus growing on the alveolar membrane—a symbiote that absorbs nutrients from Starbiter’s bloodstream. You can’t get the fungus to root in the throat: the saliva tends to dissolve…umm…well, saliva is like water, right, and fungus won’t grow under water.”

He could not fool me—he had intended to say the saliva would dissolve items passing into the digestive system. And here I was, still damp with spittle, and beginning to get unpleasant runnel trails where the liquid was drying.

Fortunately, my Explorer jacket had washed down the same route as Uclod and me. It was soaking wet too, but I picked it up and began to mop myself as I followed the little man forward.

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’ clichés.

4
WHEREIN I TERRIFY A GIANT

The Soul Of Timidity

The corridor was long and round like the inside of a worm. The ceiling hung just low enough that I had to duck, which meant I trudged along with my head bent over. In that position I could only see the floor, which was most unattractive—the floor’s surface was corduroyed with riblike ridges spaced a fingerwidth apart, and in the gaps you could see icky bluish-white skin with snaky purple veins. One walked up on the ridges, with one’s feet never touching the skin beneath…but I could tell the skin would feel soft and weak and distressingly
pulpy
. It reminded me of dead birds and animals I had sometimes found while cutting wood: half-eaten, bloody, wet with dew, withered in some parts and bloated in others.

Ugly, ugly death.

But the skin below my feet was not dead, though it looked most revoltingly corpselike. I tried to ignore it and continued to walk, head down, Uclod’s feet padding in front of me, until we passed through another sphincter and entered a second yellow-lit room.

Two more orange feet stepped in beside Uclod’s. I lifted my head and saw a creature much like the little man but with important differences. First, this was obviously a female; she wore short gray pants and a white shirt of the same style as Uclod’s, but under the woman’s shirt lurked a sizable pair of wallabies. Also lurking under her clothes were massive muscles packed exorbitantly onto every bone in her body: huge arms, huger legs, and such an ostentatious set of shoulders they made one furious just to look at them. She was not much taller than I—well, perhaps she was two hands taller, but I do not call that a lot—yet compared to Uclod, she was an absolute giant. At the same time, she shared enough physical attributes with the little man to show she was definitely the same species: spherical globes atop her head, a similar facial structure, and the same scaly orange skin.

The woman said nothing for several seconds—she simply gazed at me with wide-open eyes. Her body pressed tight against Uclod’s back, as if she were trying to hide behind him…which was like a full-sized bear taking cover behind a woodchuck. She placed her hands on Uclod’s shoulders and gripped him tensely, balling up the cloth of his shirt in her fingers.

Still she did not speak. Uclod reached up, placing his hands gently over hers. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Everything’s fine. This is a friend.”

The woman did not move. She kept staring at me with her mouth shut, her eyes unblinking. At last, I lowered my voice and asked Uclod, “What is
wrong
with her? Is she simply crazed, or is there something chemically wrong with her brain?”

“There’s nothing wrong at all,” the little man said. He moved to one side so he could put his arm around the woman’s back and propel her a shuffle-step forward. “Honey?” he addressed her in a soft low voice. “Honey, this is Oar.”

“Oar?” the giant woman whispered. “Oar?”

“Yes,” I told her. “An oar is an implement used to propel boats.”

“But…” She closed her mouth so quickly, it made a clopping sound.

“I know,” Uclod said, “we were told Oar had died. The reports must have been wrong.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “I have never truly been dead. Not even once. You should not fear I am a moldering corpse, risen from the grave to ravage mortal souls.”

My words of reassurance showed no sign of comforting her. Uclod had to nudge her forward another step and ask, “Are you going to say hello to Oar, honey?”

“Hello, Oar,” the woman said softly. There was something odd about her voice—as if it was actually quite low but she was forcing it higher, like a male pretending to be female. I wondered if this person might truly
be
a man, despite the wallabies looming under her shirt; perhaps some types of alien men had prominent wallabies. Then again, perhaps some types of alien women had low voices they forced higher for foolish alien reasons…and it was all very boring to think about, so I stopped immediately.

I am excellent at putting a stop to moments of introspection.

“Well done,” Uclod told the woman beside him, apparently believing that saying hello took great courage. “Oar, this is my wife, U. C. Lajoolie.”

The woman half-whispered, “A lajoolie is a small glass bottle used for holding
paprikaab.

Uclod gave her a smiling squeeze. “Isn’t that nice, Oar? Lajoolie told you what her name means.”

I said, “I do not know what
paprikaab
is.”

When Lajoolie did not answer, Uclod leaned his head toward me. “Damned if I know either. The little woman comes from a different planet than me—she’s a Tye-Tye, I’m a Freep. We’re newlyweds, and still kind of sketchy about each other’s cultures.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I stared straight into the woman’s eyes and spoke with the clear enunciation one uses to address the mentally unfit. “I am most glad a lajoolie is a
glass
bottle. I am sure it is very pretty.”

The big woman stared at me in silence for a moment. Then she touched my arm and gave a timid smile.

Scanning Starbiter’s Bridge

“Okay, great!” Uclod said in the over-hearty way of males who wish to pretend all problems have been solved forever. “Enough blathering—it’s time for work. Sooner or later, the navy will show up…and by then, we want to be gone.”

He moved a tiny distance away from Lajoolie, who still had an arm wrapped tightly around him. This led to a dainty tug-of-war between the two…not that the woman was truly trying to keep hold of the little man, but even her unthinking strength was enough that Uclod could not break her grip. He had to pull away slightly, wait for her arm to ease, then detach himself a bit more. I could not understand why he did not say, “Release me!” or why she made him wriggle free in such a manner rather than just letting go; but there is no comprehending aliens unless you try, and it is seldom worth the effort. Instead, I averted my gaze from their antics and took my first good look at my surroundings.

The previous chamber had been completely empty except for glowing wall-fungus. This new room, however, had Mysterious Protrusions jutting from the floor, the ceiling, and the single round wall that encircled the place. The floor protrusions were obviously chairs…provided one did not mind sitting on great ugly lumps that appeared to be bone and cartilage upholstered with half-dried jellyfish. Normally, I would not be distressed by such jellyfish—at least they were transparent, which is why I could see the chair’s bony frame underneath—but their shriveled outer surfaces were starting to flake off, while the inner parts retained enough of their juices to wobble with shivery abandon. When you sat on them, I suspected they might
squirm
like things alive.

As for other protrusions in the room, I had no idea what they were. For example, above each chair hung long cords dangling from the roof: cords that resembled the intestines of a groundhog after it has been partly consumed by a coyote. This is not the sort of thing I would suspend from
my
ceiling, especially not above where people might sit; the intestines would sweep back and forth across a person’s hair with agitating gooeyness. If this is what amused Uclod and Lajoolie, I would not enjoy their company…but then, I would not enjoy remaining on Melaquin either—especially if navy humans arrived with the intention of eradicating evidence of Explorer habitation.

After all,
I
was such evidence myself: a firsthand witness to everything that happened. Wicked navy persons could not murder me on sight or the League of Peoples would never let them leave Melaquin. However, there was no League law against abducting me to parts unknown: to
isolated
parts unknown, where one would be devoid of sufficient stimulation to keep one’s brain from becoming Tired.

I turned sharply back to Uclod and Lajoolie. “Hurry now. Let us leave before malicious Earthlings arrive.”

Appropriate Restraints

“Right you are, missy.” Uclod finished detaching himself from his wife (or rather she let him go when she saw I was ready to pry him loose myself). “Find yourself a chair,” he said, moving to a seat of his own. He chose a place in front of the largest collection of bulges swelling from Starbiter’s wall. Lajoolie fairly ran to the position on his left…and since the chairs were arranged like a circle of toadstools all facing the wall, I took the seat on Uclod’s right.

No sooner had I settled down than a number of leathery tendrils sprouted from the chair and wrapped about my person. Some sprang from the seat and belted across my thighs, while others snaked from the chair-back to tie down my arms and torso. It happened so quickly, I did not have time to fight…and one good heave of my muscles proved the straps too sturdy to break.

Instead, I turned toward Uclod, intending to demand he release me; but he too was tethered to his seat with bindings like mine, as was his wife. Somehow they had contrived to keep their arms free, but that was all: they were well and truly webbed in.

Neither of them looked concerned at such confinement, not even the fainthearted Lajoolie. Therefore this must be standard operating procedure for spaceships—nothing at all to fret over.

When I recovered from my initial surprise, I remembered flying with Festina in an aeroplane. Aeroplanes also have straps, used as safety devices to prevent Calamitous Injuries during flight. That made me feel better about the tendrils clutched around my body. After a moment, I decided it would not be so bad if the restraints were even tighter in certain locations; but I could not see how to cinch them up myself, and Uclod was busy rubbing his hands against the bulges on the wall in front of him. I resolved to ask about adjusting the straps later…but that thought immediately vanished when something swallowed my head.

Intestines With Mouths

I had forgotten about the intestines dangling from the ceiling. When I first got seated, I had ducked low enough to keep the things clear of my head. Now, however, they descended to grab me, first making slimy contact with my scalp, then creeping quickly downward. I had not noticed the intestines possessed mouths, but obviously they did—mouths that could open as wide as a snake’s, stretching without difficulty to envelop my hair, brow, and eyes. Writhing could not shake the mouth off me…and my arms were locked under the straps that held me to the chair. At most, I might have screamed; but I refused to do that, for fear Uclod and Lajoolie would think I was a coward.

After all, this might be another procedure of alien Science: if I howled and moaned, Uclod might dismiss me as an ignorant savage who did not understand the requisites of space travel. Perhaps the intestine was actually an Important Safety Mask designed to keep one alive in the depths of The Void. It might provide air that was necessary for survival, and only a Childish Numskull would fuss over a simple life support system.

That is the nature of Science—it is often confusing and terrible, but you must pretend you are not troubled or else Science People will call you names.

So I sat there trembling as the intestines swallowed my face. Just before they covered my mouth, I took a deep breath; then I attempted to inhale more air through my nose, which was already sealed over. If I had not been able to breathe, I would have tried to break the seat-straps, no matter how strong they were…but I could inhale without effort despite the guts closed over my nostrils.

It was all very strange indeed—I could feel the stretchy intestines pressed tight against my face, yet when I breathed, there was not the least hindrance to normal air flow. I stuck out my tongue to touch the membrane; it felt solid and rubbery, as though it should be impermeable…yet when I blew out hard, I could not feel the tiniest backwash against my face.

In one way, the membrane
was
impermeable: I could not see. My eyes were open, but all was in blackness. All was silent too—the intestines had plastered themselves tight enough over my ears to muffle outward sound. Gradually, though, I became aware of a vague hum and a small patch of light, only visible with my left eye…a swath of colors like a rainbow. The colors slowly became brighter, but still only in my left eye; and it did not seem to matter whether my eye was open or closed, because I continued to perceive the rainbow even when I shut my eyes tight.

Then my left ear came awake, hearing a pure musical note that began as a whisper and gradually increased to moderate volume. Its tone did not quaver, not even a little bit. The sound continued for ten seconds…then it suddenly split in two, one half rising quickly in pitch while the other half plunged, high up and low down until both notes disappeared.

The rainbow in my left eye vanished almost as soon as the sounds stopped. A moment later, it reappeared in my right eye, brightening quickly this time and soon accompanied by a musical note in my right ear. The sound split to extremes again, the rainbow blinked out…

…and suddenly I could see perfectly, except that I was not inside the Zarett but out on the city street.

Seeing Through New Eyes

Snow still fell through the hole in the roof, accompanied by a distant roar of wind scouring through the mountains overhead. When I turned my neck, I could see in any direction, even far back to the central square—much farther than I had actually been able to see when I was outside the Zarett. My viewpoint was centered at a level considerably higher than the ground; so I peeked down and saw not my own body but Starbiter’s.

This was very odd indeed. I appeared to have become a Zarett. It was most unpleasant to see myself all stringy and awful, but if I was now a spaceship, perhaps there would be entertaining compensations. In a spirit of experiment, I willed myself to roll forward along the street; and I managed to move a quarter rotation before Uclod’s voice cried, “Whoa!”

“Do not address me as if I were a horse,” I told him. “I am now a Zarett.”

“Wrong,” the little man said. His voice came out of nowhere, all around me at once. “Sorry to disappoint you, toots, but you’re not Starbiter—you’re just linked to her nervous system. You can see what she sees, hear what she hears, feel what she feels…”

BOOK: Ascending
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