She
started violently then curled up even more tightly, nose to tail like an
infant. The blackness behind her eyes
consumed everything and the only sound that she could hear was breathing.
Slowly,
though, she became aware of other noises.
Though they were muffled by her protective suit, she heard a voice
repeating her name. “Ahrottl? Ahrottl, can you hear me? Please tell me that you can hear me.”
Gerry, she thought. Images of a tall, angular alien creature with
a sickening lack of fur on its pallid skin and a huge mop of it on top of its
head, a study in color contrasts, dark and light. Thick, rubbery pinkish-red lips underneath a
bizarre triangular nose (they have hairs
inside their noses but almost no where on the outside) beneath a pair of
binocular eyes, the most familiar thing about this “face”.
The
images, by themselves, without emotional context, were disturbing. It felt like part of her, the part of her
that felt was cut off from the part that made images, and that in and of itself
was extremely unsettling.
Alone with aliens, nothing around, the Red
Key’s curse… her thoughts flowed in a circle, a wheel that she was unable
to stop, a cycle she was unable to interrupt.
The vast loneliness, the unimaginably huge distances between her and
another of her kind, and the mocking, gory image that she had been subjected to
all conspired to keep her Stilled, and not just as a deliberate sign of
displeasure, not consciously, but Stilled to the depths of her, moving in such
a quick, tight circle that she seemed not to be moving at all.
“Ahrottl! Ahrottl!
Wake up!”
She
grew aware of a sense of detachment. As
these thoughts cycled at a vicious pace, she could see them, separately. A part of her was watching the frantic pace
of madness overtaking her with a detached curiosity, and heard the voice
outside her suit with remarkable clarity.
“I
don’t know, she won’t move, she’s not responding! She’s breathing but she’s just curled up into
a ball! What do I do?” More muffled voices. The detached part of her guessed idly at the
tones without being certain which was which or what they were saying.
What will they do? Detached-Ahrottl
wondered. What will they do with me? Will
they just space me? I’m just using
resources, precious resources, the resources that Maria didn’t want me to use…
they’ll space me. I’m sure of it.
Panicked-Ahrottl
seemed to hear this and the visions of the empty, cold vastness drew even
further outwards. Her body tightened
even more; Detached-Ahrottl could feel control of bowels and other voluntary
functions beginning to slip.
“Ahrottl,
listen, it’s Gerry, Algernon, please listen to me. I’m here.
Maria is joining us. We’re going
to do this together. We should never
have sent you out alone. It was unfair
of us to expect that of you.”
See what you’re doing? His wife sent him out, and now she’s coming
herself. You forced her to risk her
mate, and now her own body, a mated female with status and a ship. It’s bad enough that she had to send her
husband after you, but now you’re putting a potential Mother at risk with your
selfishness. If they space you that’s
the least you deserve! Detached-Ahrottl reasoned. At least, it seemed very reasonable to
her. Images of Maria, another alien
shape flashed through her mind. Even
more hairless, but at least not as angular as her husband, and another female,
another potential Matriarch.
Don’t fool yourself, Ahrottl. You’re no potential Matriarch. You write novels and make a poor sum at that. Sure, you have fans. Sure, people enjoy your work, but what do you have to show for it? Plenty of males would love to play with you
for the novelty of it but none of them are going to want to stay and build a
family with an author of all things. No,
Ahrottl. Your job is an unstable one,
your lifestyle an unstable one, you have no den, you have no close family, you
have no way to feed your children, if
you even had any. Even if you weren’t
lost at the other end of reality from every Hrotata that ever lived, and about
to die there, it’s not like you have a legacy other than masturbatory pleasure
fantasies about people who never existed outside of your own mind.
After all, Detached-Ahrottl thought, why else would you be out on a mining
operation with humans? We both know why
– you do poorly enough with your own kind that you seek out aliens to fill your
need for companionship. You know that
your prospects of creating a den and a legacy are null, so you run off to have
adventures like an adolescent male! You
probably would have been happier as a male, able to go and fight and play and
seek and explore without any concern about serious matters like education,
finance, or the future of your species and the Great Family. The Mother-gifts are wasted on you, and your
organs will shrivel before you have a chance to use them for their true purpose
– that is, they would have, if you were even going to live that long.
Somehow
Panicked-Ahrottl spun even faster internally with each cold, detached insult. Detached-Ahrottl had ceased to pay attention
to the outside, crouched over the frightened animal spinning in circles inside
her own head, taunting. Detached-Ahrottl
ceased to feel so detached. A kind of
hateful satisfaction flooded her as she tortured herself, and Detached-Ahrottl
spread her shoulders and stretched and yawned, shedding her old coat for a
red-and-black one, becoming Tormenting-Ahrottl.
Yes, little creature, keep running. Keep in circles. That’s all you’ve ever known to do, isn’t
it? You don’t like something, so you run
from it like a male instead of facing it and defending your turf. You run, but then you run into something else
you don’t like and you run again. You
keep running, bouncing from place to place, and now you’re running out of
places to run and hide. There are no
good options now. There’s no place that
you can run to that is made for you, no comfy den and you don’t have the
strength or the ovaries to create your own.
That’s why you’re spinning like a moon; you don’t know how to sit down
and deal with discomfort.
Panicked-Ahrottl
began to mewl as she ran, letting out peals of agony. Tormenting-Ahrottl was vaguely aware of the
sound the human outside, saying something about her making noises. She refocused on her prey.
They won’t help you, they can’t help
you. Their Mother is as afraid as you
are, little one. There is no den, no
home, no warmth, no bonding. They
scratch your head and let you sit beside them and on them as they would a pet
or a favored animal, and you know that it’s only because you let them taste
your nectar. They think of you as a
useful tool, like their artificial intelligences. They think of you as an animal that they send
out to do their dirty work for them.
When you show that you’re useless – as you already have, by breaking
here – they’ll probably end your life in mercy, unless they keep you around to
eat after supplies run low. After all,
they are aliens, and not scavengers.
Humans like their meat fresh.
Tormentor-Ahrottl
cocked her head, listening, and smiled in satisfaction. They’re
talking about opening your helmet now.
No, it’s not out of concern, though it might be masked with that. They’re talking about opening your helmet
because you’re an expendable animal to them.
They want to see if the air will kill them, so they’re going to try it
on you first. Just like they did by
sending you in to the predator’s den first, to see if there were any scraps to
be had.
Just stop.
Just give up. Stop running,
creature, scared little male kit. The
only Mother than can help you now is Death, and she awaits you eagerly. If you want to be altruistic about it, you’re
helping those poor humans by giving up your pointless life.
Fool. She kicked herself.
Fake, pauper. She spat on herself.
Professional liar. She turned her back on herself.
Honorless homwrecker, trying to steal a good
woman’s mate.
Within
her she felt something welling up. The
spinning of Panicked-Ahrottl was reaching a fevered pitch. Like a wheel with a burr, she began to trip
up at one point, and the shaking began to rasp and get more and more violent.
Useless, shiftless, pointless, meat. Tormentor-Ahrottl dropped that one on
Panicked-Ahrottl, spitting it at her over her shoulder.
Panicked-Ahrottl
exploded with a shriek of confusion and rage.
The scream ripped through all of Ahrottl’s parts, beginning as high and
keening but continuing and growing low and ragged as it faded. No longer tense, her body fell limp and for a
moment there was blissful silence within and without.
Then
her head snapped back, and her eyes opened wide. She knew these things because she could feel,
but she could not see. All that was in
front of her was a field of white, endless white light. Her jaw began to work without her permission,
and words came out of it that did not originate in her at all.
“Leave
this place. It is diseased, not with a
disease of poison or parasite but with a malady of perception and
cognition. Cling to your ignorance and
stay and share our fate or leave and warn the others. If this spreads all Raleli are doomed. Quarantine and flee.”
Then
the pure white light faded again to quiet, comfortable darkness.
Awww, I was a little sad that all this internal distress was being externally provoked. I'm quite familiar with all those pieces, I've heard them bickering in my own head, and I consider myself sane enough. One of my cardinal joys in life is mocking the Tormentor with counter-evidence. I've gotten used to letting my Panicked self wear itself out. And the Detached self... well, he's the model for an entire book. Maybe I let him rule a little too often. It's probably fair to say that the whatever-it-is largely exploits and enlarges traits that are already present.
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