Mike Resnick - I, Alien

I dug the dust and earth away from my brood. Then-sacks throbbed and moved which is good because it means they are still alive. But not all the time. Sometimes a creature burrows into the sack and eats the babies and the creature wriggling around in the sack munching only looks like the babies are alive.

Munch munch.

But that is not the case here as I touched them all with my mind and they are happy.

It took me ten whole days for me to make my own sack. It is very horrible because it grows in my tummy and then when it is too big I sick it out and it hurts. But then I climbed inside and the wet edges joined together and Just Like That! I don’t have to move or feed from the air because my sack does it all.

I closed my eyes and my brood joined me and I started to work.

I wake up after many days. A hundred and a hundred and another hundred! My sack has split open and the wind rubs dust onto my skin which hurts a bit. But then I look and see that my brood has also wakened. They have all gone away except for one that I made stay because it is part of my plan. It is sitting in its sack looking at me and I laugh and clap my hands because balancing on the long neck is the face of Sara smiling at me. Her head is still too small and it wobbles a lot, which is funny, but I don’t think mummy and daddy will mind because they will have Sarah back and they will be happy.

I gather her up and run back along the dust because I want to give them their present as quick as I can run.

But I still wait. Because I want it to be a surprise. So I sneak in the house at night and take New Sarah to her bedroom. A Wonderful Surprise awaits me. Mummy and daddy have had another baby! Now we will be a big happy family. I put New Sarah into the bed with her sister and tiptoe back downstairs. (Although this is just a Figure Of Speech that means very quiet as I don’t have tiptoes.)

I wait in the garden and I shake because I am so happy. I put on my dress that I have kept clean all this time. I sit at the table where we will all have picnics and laugh and tell stories. When the sun starts to come up, I listen to the bugs, but they are keeping their secrets.

Then I hear a scream. It is mummy and she is screaming for daddy. It must be about something else though because it does not sound like a happy scream. Then daddy shouts and then mummy runs into the garden with her new baby. She sees me and starts screaming Samuel! Samuel! (For that is daddy’s real name.) I see daddy at the window then he goes away again and I get up and walk to mummy, but before I can get there, New Sarah vanishes from my head. It is hard to explain, but she is just not there anymore.

I wonder what is wrong because I feel all horrible and twisty and I want mummy to comfort me like she did Sarah when she was upset, but she is still screaming and so is the baby, and then daddy comes out and he has something against his shoulder. He screams for mummy to get out the way and she runs away and leaves me. I still feel horrible and I think New Sarah has gone. I wonder if the creatures that eat the sacks are in the house as well. I should tell mummy so nothing happens to the new baby.

Then there is a loud bang and I jump backward and sit on the wet grass although I didn’t even mean to! There is lots of smoke in the air and I try to catch it with my fingers, but it slips through them.

I think the run has left me tired because I can’t keep my eyes open. I decide I will sleep, and then when I wake up, maybe then we will all have lunch at the table.

Then we will all be happy.

I BECAME AWARE in the warm part of the year, resting and growing in the litter of the leaves, drinking the cool dew from the night breezes, growing and gaining in understanding of the world that was around me. I had siblings; all of the aware one was my mother, and there were others destined, like me, to be fruiting bodies—children of the aware one, and part of the aware one.

I lay in the warm moist comfort of the tree-floor as I formed, as I grew stronger and throve in the nourishing forest. I had nothing to do but to eat and drink and listen to the voice of the aware one, the thousands of voices of the aware one, speaking quietly in the night of the moment of Creation and the nature of the world. We are old, very old, millions of dayblinks, thousands of warmcolds, but until only one hundred and thirty warmcolds ago we were not aware.

How did it happen? Just as it happened with me, I supposed. In the natural progression as the caretaker of the tree-floor we grew in size, we grew in complexity, and in the course of time we became aware—not only aware, but able to communicate with the rest of our being, and know that we were with the aware one. I am of the aware one. I am the aware one.

And at the same time I was only one of a generation of fruiting bodies, and there was something wrong, something that puzzled the aware one, something that had not happened in our memory which reaches back to long before the time at which we became aware. Something was happening.

In my infancy I cultivated the tree-floor where I lay for nourishment, breaking down the litter and the debris, taking the material the insects made for me and processing it further for the smallest of insects to complete the cycle and free the food that the deadfall contained for the use of the trees and the insects and the aware one, and me. The aware one was hungry, I was hungry, I was not growing as quickly and as well as I could have; I felt it as something that was wrong, and wondered if I was working hard enough.

The moisture was not there. The moisture was needed for the insects, but the moisture was even more important to me for my use. I could not make use of the nourishment without moisture. I cultivated my area, I sought out the moisture in every warm breathing spot where it could yet be found, and there was not enough.

Without adequate moisture I would die. I would not be able to complete my development, I would never fruit, I would wither into the tree-floor to nourish the fruiting body that would come next; I would fail.

I sought the warmcolds-old wisdom of the aware one for assistance, and there was no comfort in the answer. There is no moisture, the aware one said. Not throughout the forest as we travel in your direction. The others are being called back to the Body. Find moisture, or surrender your substance back to the aware one.

During the brights I could do nothing but hide in the moistest places to be found, stretched thin, almost out of touch with myself from place to place. During the darks I could sometimes find enough moisture in the cool air to seek out my siblings to one side and the other side of me and ask for their report. No moisture, they said, something has robbed the forest of its water here, and dryness increases. We must return to the Body, or be lost.

But when the wind blew through the forest from the one direction, the one that was in front of me, it was fat and rich and pregnant with moisture, delicious moisture full of nourishment. I rose up to the surface to capture the treasure in the wind, spreading myself as thinly as I could to drink the most deeply, watching always for the bright to come—knowing I had to protect my moisture from the bright—but filled with so much joy and delight in the dark, when the wind blew toward me, that it was as though something was different in my awareness, something very light and filled with happiness. I had no word then for intoxication, but I learned to be drunk on the night breeze’s moisture, and grew strong on its treasure while my siblings faded back to either side of me.

Thus I grew and prospered, thinking only of myself, because that was my purpose at that time—the aware one had made me to be a fruiting body, it was my function to gain and grow fat, but before I could achieve my mission in life, the aware one took thought for the treasure I had found and changed my instructions.