'Oh god,' she whispered. And the hair-the whatever-it-was---moved. Some of it seemed to blow toward her as though in a wind-though there was no stirring of air in the room.
She frowned, strained to see, to understand. Then, abruptly, she did understand. She backed away, scrambled around the bed and to the far wall. When she could go no farther, she stood against the wall, staring at him.
Medusa.
Some of the 'hair' writhed independently, a nest of snakes startled, driven in all directions.
Revolted, she turned her face to the wall.
'They're not separate animals,' he said. 'They're sensory organs. They're no more dangerous than your nose or eyes. It's natural for them to move in response to my wishes or emotions or to outside stimuli. We have them on our bodies as well. We need them in the same way you need your ears, nose, and eyes.'
'But. . .' She faced him again, disbelieving. Why should he need such things-tentacles--to supplement his senses?
'When you can,' he said, 'come closer and look at me. I've had humans believe they saw human sensory organs on my head-and then get angry with me when they realized they were wrong.'
'I can't,' she whispered, though now she wanted to. Could she have been so wrong, so deceived by her own eyes?
'You will,' he said. 'My sensory organs aren't dangerous to you. You'll have to get used to them.'
'No!'
The tentacles were elastic. At her shout, some of them lengthened, stretching toward her. She imagined big, slowly writhing, dying night crawlers stretched along the sidewalk after a rain. She imagined small, tentacled sea slugs- nudibranchs-grown impossibly to human size and shape, and, obscenely, sounding more like a human being than some humans. Yet she needed to hear him speak. Silent, he was utterly alien.
She swallowed. 'Listen, don't go quiet on me. Talk!'
'Yes?'
'Why do you speak English so well, anyway? You should at least have an unusual accent.'
'People like you taught me. I speak several human languages. I began learning very young.'
'How many other humans do you have here? And where's here?'
'This is my home. You would call it a ship-a vast one compared to the ones your people have built. What it truly is doesn't translate. You'll be understood if you call it a ship. It's in orbit around your Earth, somewhat beyond the orbit of Earth's moon. As for how many humans are here: all of you who survived your war. We collected as many as we could. The ones we didn't find in time died of injury, disease, hunger, radiation, cold. . . . We found them later.'
She believed him. Humanity in its attempt to destroy itself had made the world unlivable. She had been certain she would die even though she had survived the bombing without a scratch. She had considered her survival a misfortune-a promise of a more lingering death. And now...?
'Is there anything left on Earth?' she whispered. 'Anything alive, I mean.'
'Oh, yes. Time and our efforts have been restoring it.' That stopped her. She managed to look at him for a moment without being distracted by the slowly writhing tentacles. 'Restoring it? Why?'
'For use. You'll go back there eventually.'
'You'll send me back? And the other humans?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'That you will come to understand little by little.'
She frowned. 'All right, I'll start now. Tell me.'
His head tentacles wavered. Individually, they did look more like big worms than small snakes. Long and slender or short and thick as. . . . As what? As his mood changed? As his attention shifted? She looked away.
'No!' he said sharply. 'I'll only talk to you, Lilith, if you look at me.'
She made a fist of one hand and deliberately dug her nails into her palm until they all but broke the skin. With the pain of that to distract her, she faced him. 'What's your name?' she asked.
'Kaaltediinjdahya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso.'
She stared at him, then sighed, and shook her head.
'Jdahya,' he said. 'That part is me. The rest is my family and other things.'
She repeated the shorter name, trying to pronounce it exactly as he had, to get the unfamiliar ghost j sound just right. 'Jdahya,' she said, 'I want to know the price of your people's help. What do you want of us?'
'Not more than you can give-but more than you can understand here, now. More than words will be able to help you understand at first. There are things you must see and hear outside.'
'Tell me something now, whether I understand it or not.'
His tentacles rippled. 'I can only say that your people have something we value. You may begin to know how much we value it when I tell you that by your way of measuring time, it has been several million years since we dared to interfere in another people's act of self-destruction. Many of us disputed the wisdom of doing it this time. We thought.. . that there had been a consensus among you, that you had agreed to die.'
