'No species would do that!'
'Yes. Some have. And a few of those who have have taken whole ships of our people with them. We've learned. Mass suicide is one of the few things we usually let alone.'
'Do you understand now what happened to us?'
'I'm aware of what happened. It's... alien to me. Frighteningly alien.'
'Yes. I sort of feel that way myself, even though they're my people. It was. . . beyond insanity.'
'Some of the people we picked up had been hiding deep underground. They had created much of the destruction.'
'And they're still alive?'
'Some of them are.'
'And you plan to send them back to Earth?'
''No.'
'What?''
'The ones still alive are very old now. We've used them slowly, learned biology, language, culture from them. We Awakened them a few at a time and let them live their lives here in different parts of the ship while you slept.'
'Slept. . . Jdahya, how long have I slept?'
He walked across the room to the table platform, put one many-fingered hand on it, and boosted himself up. Legs drawn against his body, he walked easily on his hands to the center of the platform. The whole series of movements was so fluid and natural, yet so alien that it fascinated her.
Abruptly she realized he was several feet closer to her. She leaped away. Then, feeling utterly foolish, she tried to come back. He had folded himself compactly into an uncomfortable-looking seated position. He ignored her sudden move-except for his head tentacles which all swept toward her as though in a wind. He seemed to watch as she inched back to the bed. Could a being with sensory tentacles instead of eyes watch?
When she had come as close to him as she could, she stopped and sat on the floor. It was all she could do to stay where she was. She drew her knees up against her chest and bugged them to her tightly.
'I don't understand why I'm so. . . afraid of you,' she whispered. 'Of the way you look, I mean. You're not that different. There are-or were-life forms on Earth that looked a little like you.'
He said nothing.
She looked at him sharply, fearing he had fallen into one of his long silences. 'Is it something you're doing?' she demanded, 'something I don't know about?'
'I'm here to teach you to be comfortable with us,' be said. 'You're doing very well.'
She did not feel she was doing well at all. 'What have others done?'
'Several have tried to kill me.'
She swallowed. It amazed her that they had been able to bring themselves to touch him. 'What did you do to them?'
'For trying to kill me?'
'No, before-to incite them.'
'No more than I'm doing to you now.'
'I don't understand.' She made herself stare at him. 'Can you really see?'
'Very well.'
'Colors? Depth?'
'Yes.'
Yet it was true that he had no eyes. She could see now that there were only dark patches where tentacles grew thickly. The same with the sides of his head where ears should have been. And there were openings at his throat. And the tentacles around them didn't look as dark as the others. Murkily translucent, pale gray worms.
'In fact,' he said, 'you should be aware that I can see wherever I have tentacles-and I can see whether I seem to notice or not. I can't not see.'
That sounded like a horrible existence-not to be able to close one's eyes, sink into the private darkness behind one's own eyelids. 'Don't you sleep?'
'Yes. But not the way you do.'
She shifted suddenly from the subject of his sleeping to her own. 'You never told me how long you kept me asleep.'
'About. . . two hundred and fifty of your years.'
This was more than she could assimilate at once. She said nothing for so long that he broke the silence.
'Something went wrong when you were first Awakened. I heard about it from several people. Someone handled you badly-underestimated you. You are like us in some ways, but you were thought to be like your military people hidden underground. They refused to talk to us too. At first. You were left asleep for about fifty years after that first mistake.'
She crept to the bed, worms or no worms, and leaned against the end of it. 'I'd always thought my Awakenings might be years apart, but I didn't really believe it.'
