Mike Resnick - I, Alien

It did seem strange to me. But I’d been busy tracking down the Naag and hadn’t thought about it much.

“It was the Sublukhar’s idea. Her species, anyway. They paid a visit to this place a hundred thousand years ago, and saw that it was bad. Too cold. Too much ozone. Too little latent radioactivity. The oceans were too small, too salty, and didn’t have the right levels of PCBs or mercury. There were too many of the wrong kinds of plants and animals around. Too many mountains. Forests.”

I felt my heart leak out through the bottoms of my padded feet.

“So,” the Naag went on, “the Sublukhar said, hey! Why not tinker with the DNA of one of the existing species? Hardwire it to xenoform the planet? They did that thing, then told their creation: be fruitful. Multiply. Spread out and seek dominion over all the Earth. This was before the age of quick and easy xenoforming machinery, of course.”

I slumped back against the couch cushions. I’d been duped. Why hadn’t I seen this? The human race themselves, the perfect intra-biospheric xenoforming organism. No matter what they thought, no matter what they wanted to do or talked about doing, they’d been designed to do one thing: to turn their homeworld into a paradise which they could not inhabit.

“Simple. Elegant,” the Naag went on. “It takes a long time, I’ll admit, but the results speak for themselves. Another few hundred years and their work will be done. They’ll self-destruct in cataclysmic biological attacks, and the Sublukhar will have their paradise.” He chuckled. “Only one small problem. With all the scrutiny over xenoforming lately, the Sublukhar were worried someone would find them out and stop them. So they hired me to get the human race protected. Of course, it takes someone with pull inside the government to protect a species.” He did a little half-bow. “I thank you for your help.”

In that moment, centuries of guilt caught up with me. My own world, gone. My father, crushed (literally) by a roll of the dice. Hundreds of planets, xeno-formed right under my nose. And now I’d failed to save the Earth.

And in that moment, the Naag moved in.

“Hello, Xzchsthyl,” he said from inside my head. His Catholic slumped forward on the credenza. “You know, I’m sick of having you on my back all the time.

Sick of having to bribe judges because of you. Sick of you in general. I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to devour you, Xzchsthyl, and when I’m through, I’ll use your empty husk to get offworld.”

He walked around, using my body like a puppet made of bone and meat. I didn’t try to fight him. I deserved it, after all. That was clear enough. It was my fault that the Earth was going to be xenoformed, and there was nothing I could do about that now.

But there were other, future worlds the Naag would xenoform, and anyway he had really pissed me off. So, even though I’d earned my guilt, I knew I had to ditch it.

“You’re off the hook,” I told myself.

Now, I’m no Xalian monk, and my forgiveness wasn’t much. But it was just enough for me to take back a small amount of motor control.

“What are you doing?” said the Naag.

For an answer, I reached out and grabbed the psychological injector, and I aimed it at my head.

After he recovered, the Naag was brought up on charges under article five million three hundred thousand eight hundred and thirty-one: conspiracy to use an officer of the law as interstellar transportation. He bribed the judge, of course, but I had had about enough of him by then. In other words, I bribed the jury. It took my life savings, but it was worth it to see him brought to justice. He was incarcerated on Earth, in California, Pismo, in the mind of a marijuana-smoking, ex-competition surfer whose favorite phrase was “Hey, man, ain’t nothin’ but a thing.”

Remsee came out to supervise the procedure and, after he was told the surfer also ran a puppet show at county carnivals, they fell in love and Remsee left the force.

The Sublukhar, meanwhile, was badly injured when, pursued from Breakneck Mountain by a pack of enraged monkeys, she was struck by a public works truck hauling fifty tons of road salt.

As for the Earth, well, by their very nature, the human race will turn it into a paradise they can’t inhabit, but even if they hadn’t been protected, what was I supposed to do? Have them destroyed? It’s just one of those things. And anyway, there’s always hope. Not much, I admit, but it does exist. I visited the planet a few years later, and by that time, Remsee’s consumption of ambient intelligence had mellowed out the population as far away as Idaho, and the environmental movement in that area had subsequently grown by leaps and boimds. He’d taken a particular toll on the Naag, who had become so idiotic that the last time I saw him, he actually apologized to me for being such a jerk.

I felt just the tiniest bit guilty,

ODD CREATURES— (Sidebar: yes, even I admit it, honored colleagues [note the irony, won’t you?]; I’m not blind to reality) —but that doesn’t change anything. They’re fascinating all the same.

They come in a wide assortment of sizes, colors, scents, and textures, even though they all approximate the same basic shape. They’re a massive jumble of contradictory data. I mean, the vast majority of otherwise intelligent beings— (Sidebar: yes, I said “intelligent”; they found us didn’t they?) —waste huge chunks of time sleeping, grooming themselves, playing games, copulating, and eating.

Since my rep is that I love to conduct empirical studies on new spacefaring species rather than playing around with theories— (Sidebar: going native, my peerless colleagues — [yes you; you’re still reading this, aren’t you, with some kind of perverse fascination?] may call it) —it wasn’t too difficult to get myself assigned here to check out the latest arrivals into our part of space. So as usual I learned the language and the slang, reshaped my body, donned appropriate female guise and clothing— (Sidebar: the males are easier to manipulate; dare I say it’s the same with us?) — adopted incomprehensible habits, and headed out to experience reality such as they know it. (Sidebar: How else do you really learn a species without getting inside its mind? — and no, don’t tell me it’s easier to use the scanner. This species has no idea why they do what they do, they’re just a bundle of biological wiring. How could a scanner uncover anything of actual value? Besides, laboratory experiments are boring when compared to going into the field.)

So, here I am. In the field. On the inside. Learning by doing. I scouted ships, found a likely one bound for a rimworld called Paradise, bought myself a license, and set up an office.

Pheromones are pheromones, regardless of the species; and yes, even in this guise I receive as well as exude. So I confess— (Sidebar: and won’t that amuse all of you, now?) —to being a sucker for the studly young types who enter my place of business with a lazy grace and try to charm me. Some of them mean it. A few of them don’t.

I’ve gotten very good at sniffing out the skeptics, as they’re called. Some are innocent enough, trying to figure me out so they can say they have; others truly don’t believe a word I say.

And then there are the self-satisfied ones who find immense amusement in poking holes in my job, which also means in my cover. (Sidebar: and yes, they are intelligent enough to figure out I’m dissembling. They may think differently from us, but it doesn’t make them stupid.)

Anyway, it had been a slow day on the job—and in the study—until he sauntered in, all sleek and smug and elegant. Not a hair out of place, not a foot put wrong, with the faintly superior air of one among the blessed, sanctified by whatever power had endowed his kind with enough intelligence to find their way to deep space.