Ascending

The little man shrugged. 'I’m thrilled for you, toots, I really am; but I gotta say, you were worth more to me as dead meat. A good-lookin’ gal, all battered and broken — that would have played big-time with the viewing public. But if you’re still alive and kicking, what can I sell to the network news?' He kicked at the rusty hunk of debris lying in the street. 'You think they want pictures of this boring old junk? They’ll flash it on the screen for five seconds, tops; then they’ll move on to some interesting story, like a dachshund who juggles goldfish.'

'But it is better me being alive,' I said. 'I will play with the viewing public very big-time indeed, for I shall describe all the awful things that were done to me. I am excellent at Sensationalized Descriptions Of Emotional Trauma.'

'Uh huh.' He looked me over from head to toe. 'I have to admit, toots, you’d wow ’em on the news. And the nets will be much happier putting your face in the headlines than Festina Ramos.'

I nodded sympathetically. Festina is a very nice person, but she does not have a Dazzling Regal Beauty.

'The more I think about it,' Uclod said, still gazing at me, 'this could work. It really could. I’ve got the footage I need from this world — pictures of the city, the Explorer equipment, the missile crater in the roof. That’ll be fine for the courts. But for the media, you’d add that extra level of authenticity to make this story zing.'

'I am most zingfully authentic,' I assured him. 'I am an extremely credible witness.'

'Yeah, I can imagine Mr. and Mrs. Slack-jawed Viewer saying, Look at the credibility on that babe!'

He paused and his face grew more somber. 'Now, toots, I gotta warn you: this could get pretty ugly. Those buggers on the High Council are vicious bags of shit — that’s damned obvious from reading York’s files — and if they decide murdering you will solve more problems than it creates, they’ll hire some dirt-wad to shatter your glass caboose.'

'Hah! I am not the type of glass that shatters into cabooses. If any dirt-wads try, I shall make them very sorry.'

Uclod scowled. 'You gotta take this serious, missy. Bad people will want you dead. And no matter how unbreakable you think you are, those navy shits can dream up something to put you in a coffin. Blow you up, crush you under a dozen steam-hammers, then dump whatever’s left in an acid bath. If you treat this like a game, you’ll die… and maybe take other folks with you. Me and my family, for instance.' Hepeered sharply into my eyes. 'If I let you come to New Earth, are you going to be smart? Because if you aren’t, to hell with you. I’m taking enough risks already, and I don’t need someone who’s just a liability. For all I care, you can go straight back to that tower and let your brain rot to tapioca.'

I attempted to return his gaze with righteous indignation — I truly did my best. But I will tell you a thing: there are times I am not so strong as I want to be. When humans or other aliens tell me, 'Oar, you must behave the way we say' I am not always wholly defiant. I am, after all, perfectly able to conform with Conventional Rules Of Propriety; under the tutelage of human Explorers, I learned Earthling modes of conduct as quickly as I learned the Earthling language.

But I am not an Earthling. I do not wish to be one. I do not wish to be mistaken for one. As the last of my kind, I refuse to betray my species by submitting to alien dictates. When I am strong, I therefore comport myself in a defiant fashion of my own choosing.

At that moment, however, I was not strong. If Uclod went away, perhaps no one would ever come to my planet again except navy persons endeavoring to eradicate evidence of humans on my world, and I knew better than to approach them. I would end up forever alone… and in time, I might go back to the Tower of Ancestors, and I might lie down, and I might not get up.

'I know this is not a game,' I mumbled to the little man. 'I know there is much at stake. Much. I will not act crazed and irresponsible.'

Uclod stared into my eyes a moment longer, then nodded. 'This way,' he said, 'The spaceship is down here.'

The Jacket

He started along one of the streets leading off the square. I threw away the Explorer jacket I had been holding and followed him a few steps… then went back and picked up the jacket again. It was damp and smelly and pierced with insect nibbles; but I knew certain people in the Technocracy thought you were stupid and disgusting if you Walked Around All Day With Your Bare Ass Hanging Out.

I am not such a one as cares about surly people’s opinions; but as I have said, at that particular moment I was not possessed with great strength of spirit. And perhaps, I thought, there were important Science reasons why one had to wear clothes on other planets. Perhaps there were dangerous cosmic rays or poisonous atmospheric substances, so one had to don jackets to protect oneself from peril.

Wearing clothes might not be a cowardly concession to the small-minded prejudice of hateful persons. It might be a sensible precaution.

Yes.

Clutching the jacket, I took a deep breath. Then I hurried along behind Uclod, following his tracks through the light sheen of melting snow.

3: WHEREIN I AM SWALLOWED BY A LARGE CREATURE

The Diversity Of Spaceships

The spaceship was three blocks away, still well within the snow zone. Uclod had set it down in a wide intersection where two streets met; there was not so much landing room as if he had chosen the central square, but I suppose he had not wished to disturb the Explorer evidence back there.

Uclod’s vessel was nothing like the spaceship the Explorers had been working on when I arrived in the city. The Explorers’ ship had been shaped like a large glass fish… except Festina told me it was not a fish at all but a mammal called an orca, or killer whale. The whale shape was not the Explorers’ choice — many of them thought it barbaric for a starship to look like an animal instead of an abstract geometric object — but the Explorers were using the hull of an old space vessel built by ancient inhabitants of Oarville, and beggars cannot be choosers.

As for me, I thought a fish was an excellent form for a spaceship; one could picture it diving into the great blackness and plunging past whirlpool galaxies. Also it would be very good at orbiting, for fish are constantly swimming in mindless circles. Uclod’s ship, on the other hand, was not so easy to imagine speeding through The Void — it was nothing more than a huge gray ball, five stories high and powdered with snow. One could picture such a thing avalanching down a mountain, but it certainly did not fit the image of a Graceful Nomad Of The Space Lanes.

'Isn’t she a beauty?' Uclod said as we walked toward the ship. 'Isn’t she the loveliest little girl you’ve ever seen?'

'It is quite spherical,' I answered with tact. 'You do not think the snow on top will cause problems, do you? Sometimes when machines get damp, the electric bits go fizz.'

'Lucky for us,' Uclod said, 'she doesn’t have electric bits. Bioneural all the way.'

I had not made the acquaintance of the word 'bioneural,' but I assumed it was a boring Science concept that would only vex me if Uclod tried to explain. Besides, I had greater concerns on my mind. The closer we got to the ship, the more I saw it was not just a plain gray sphere; it was, in fact, a whitish sphere, covered with snarled-up threads of gray string. As for the white undersurface, it looked all wet and gooey, glistening as damply as the snow falling around it. To get the exact picture, imagine the egg of some slimy creature that breeds in stagnant water, then wrap gray spiderwebs all over the egg’s jelly so the strands sink into the goo.

In short, the ship was very most icky… so when I got close enough, I touched it to see if it felt icky too. It felt quite appalling indeed — like bird poop just after it falls from the sky.

'What are you doing?' Uclod asked.

'I wished to see if your craft feels as vile as it looks. Which it does.'

'Hey!' he said sharply, 'don’t insult Starbiter!'

'If you have named your ship Starbiter,' I said, 'there is little more I can do in the way of insults.' The Nature Of A Creature Which Bites At Stars

I began to circle the ship’s exterior, wondering why alien races always make their machinery unattractive. Surely the universe does not require space vehicles to be large gooey balls wrapped in string; a sensible universe would not even approve of such a design. If you constructed your starship out of nice sleek glass, I believe the universe would let you fly much faster, just because you had made an effort to look presentable. But one cannot suggest such things to Science people — they will laugh at you in a very mean fashion, and make you feel foolish even when you know you have an Astute Perspective On Life.

'Why is it like this?' I asked Uclod, who was following at my heels, 'Why is it all stringy and damp? The spaceships of the human navy are not so awful — I have heard they are big long batons, covered with pleasantly dry ceramics. They are also white… which is not as good as being clear, but much better than a sodden gray.'

'Well, missy,' he said, 'when humans joined the League if Peoples, they were given a different FTL technology than my ancestors. Humans got baton-ships; we Divians got Zaretts.'

'This is a Zarett?'

'It is indeed.' He reached up to pat the ball’s gluppy exterior, 'A sweet little filly, only thirty years old… but smart as a whip and twice as frisky.'

I stepped back a pace. 'It is alive?'

'Absolutely. The daughter of Precious Solar Wind and Whispering Nebula III… which would impress the nads off you if you knew anything about thoroughbred Zaretts. This baby is worth more than a minor star system; I’d be the squealing envy of rich men and gorgeous women, if only I could tell the world what I’ve got. Which I can’t: Starbiter wasn’t exactly born with the blessing of the Bloodline Registry Office. A slight irregularity in the breeding procedure.'

'In other words, you did something criminal to procure her.'

'Not me personally,' he replied. 'Someone else pulled the actual heist: a load of fertilized ova went missing under unconventional circumstances. My family simply acted as go-betweens, finding buyers who’d provide good homes for the misplaced little tykes… and we took several ova off the top as our consulting fee.' He patted the ship again. 'You can’t imagine how long I had to suck up to Grandma Yulai before she let me have this one.'

I continued to stare at the Starbiter creature. Uclod called it smart and frisky, but I could see neither quality in evidence. It did not frisk at all; and one does not display much intelligence by sitting in the middle of an intersection. 'If this is an animal,' I said, 'what does it eat?'