Mike Resnick - I, Alien

You are strong, my child, the aware one said. You thrive while others fail. What is the explanation?

I sent back my information, the flavor of the moisture on the night wind, the riches that came into the forest when the wind blew from the direction in which the aware one had not yet gone.

The wind that travels over us is dry, the aware one said. You must go out and seek this moisture. Separate, my child, and when you have found the answer, send back to me so that we may live.

Separate? But I wasn’t ready to fruit yet. If I separated now, would I ever get to fruit, would I become just one of the forgotten processes, and only share in the awareness as an afterthought—

Separate, my child, the aware one said. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready. But the aware one said that it was more than just my siblings on the fore-line of our growth who were at stake; it was more than just my need for moisture that impelled the aware one. If I could never fruit, if I had to sacrifice my place in the history of the aware one, if I was going to be a sterile scout—well. I am of the aware one; I am the aware one, if only a very small part.

And past the grief and the anxiety I felt in separating, in the loss of my identity as a fruiting body, I felt some interest and anticipation. Go out, the aware one said. Find out where the wind that bears the moisture is coming from. Bring back the news to us, so that we may live.

It took me several dayblinks to collect sufficient moisture; it was the warm part of the year still, but the wind was very rich at that time, and I fattened on the treasure that it brought, spreading myself as thinly as I dared over the blanket of debris on the tree-floor to absorb as much as possible.

On one night I fattened and grew full, and knew that the time had come. I called my substance back into myself, I made myself solid with my flesh and the water that sustained it, I rose up out of my bed in a form that I had borrowed from a small eater of vegetation, and I walked forward into the woods—past the boundary of my life, past the far edge of what was familiar to me, into the woods in the direction from which the treasure-wind came.

It was frightening and exciting at once in a sense I’d never experienced but one time before—when a small animal had died and been buried in my leaf-mold by the insects for processing. The richness of the feast had sustained me in fullness for almost an entire warmcold. That had been in the warmcold of my coming to awareness; I could still remember it, but the husk of the memory was fragile.

There was so much new to eat here, so much untouched food to process and to harvest. There were others here, too, others like me, in their unconsolidated state; but when I touched them, I could sense nothing that was aware, and wondered. They were not like me, then. They seemed to be the same, they seemed to do the same work, but they were not aware.

When the bright came on, I sank deeply into the embrace of a bed I prepared in the tree-floor and rested myself, taking nourishment from the substance that was like me and yet not aware. Perhaps the aware one had been here before, and just forgotten, and left this food for me. I was very tired after traveling on footlike-things above the ground, carrying my substance with me; I shuttered up my sense-of-light and rested for some time.

But I had a purpose, and could not rest for long. When the next bright dimmed, I spread myself out along this new piece of the tree-floor, to absorb the moisture in the wind; there was more of it, here, but as I was about to collect myself to rise again something new and unique came through the forest, treading upon the tree-floor, breaking through my substance with its weight.

They were creatures such as I had never seen before, with two footlike things to travel on, and the only animals that I had ever known with only two footlike things were feathered. These animals were not feathered in the same way, though perhaps they were feathered, because they seemed to be wearing dead leaves of some sort upon their flesh. There were some of them, I couldn’t tell, more than two, then another two, but it was difficult for me to sort them out.

They stopped in the middle of the blanket I had spread of myself to catch the moisture and made sounds to one another. One reached down into the tree-floor and lifted in its branch or paw or claw a piece of me—they had four footlike things, then, even if they only used two of them to travel—and, in contact with warm flesh uncovered by the dead leaves or the tangled hairs the nesters use or whatever it was that they were covered with, I tasted moisture.

It was moisture with mineral salts, and I was greedy for it, and sucked it all up as quickly as I could. It wasn’t all there was. There was more moisture. There was so much moisture, juicy, warm, bursting with nutrients, and I couldn’t get to it through the rind of the creature; what was I going to do?

The one who had lifted the portion of me dropped me from the height to the tree-floor once more, but another came down to the tree-floor as the first one dropped me, putting its other footlike things into the tree-floor where I could harvest the moisture and the minerals on its skin. I wanted through its rind. I was near frantic with desire, so much moisture there, the aware one would feed from this for an entire warm-cold as I had with the smaller beast. What could I do?

I fruited. It was my only chance to get closer, to get in. I could smell the moisture when they made their noises to each other, and they had breathing-places that were similar to the other warm animals I knew. If I could only reach… I fruited, then and there, in front of the creature, and thrust my spoor as hard as I could up toward its body, aiming for its mouth and nostrils. It wasn’t a full fruiting, no, of course, only a small process, I hadn’t had the time to do a better job of it; the creature fell into the tree-floor heavily, making sharp movements with its body, but I was in.

Oh, it was heaven. Moisture, minerals, salts, nourishment—preprocessed nourishment, the rarest of treats, flesh bursting with the moisture that the aware one needed for survival—but it had been only a small fruiting, simple, and when the creature expelled me from its body too little of me remained behind to make an effective use of the resources.

The creatures withdrew across the tree-floor in the direction from which they had come, but now I knew that some of the wonderful juiciness in the wind came from the creatures. And I knew what to do next. For several dayblinks I traveled after the creatures, resting during the brights, feeding in the darks, sure of my purpose.

In the dark of the fourth dayblink since I had seen the creatures for the first time they came back. I smelled them coming in the wind; I sank into the tree-floor where I stood and spread myself, carefully, seeing myself shining in the night with the blue-white glow of the aware one, and concentrated my energies to fruit. There was only one creature who came, though. That was a disappointment; I wanted at least two, one to have and one to send ahead, but I could make use of this one, I could experiment.

Hesitantly, the creature came, pausing at the edge of my glow-field. I increased my bioluminescence in the place where I was nearest to being ready to extrude a fruiting body; it came closer, it put itself down into the tree-floor, its mouth and nose and eyes were so near that I could have reached out and had them then and there but I wanted in through the rind. Carefully, I formed a fruiting body, a much bigger fruiting body this time, and made it like something that a warm-blooded chewing animal likes to hunt and hide and eat, so that it might look familiar and appetizing.