Ascending

'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 head-first: 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 see-sawing 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?'

'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 me 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.

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 finger-width 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 domes 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.'