Mike Resnick - I, Alien

“That would be all right by me,” one of them said.

I stood and watched them all.

That was the day I was bonded to my aerokrat. The cycle of learning new things continued.

Huddled under the root of the tree in the steady rain by myself, I sorted through long buried, and a few recent, happy memories. They comforted me.

More of my fur had grown in by morning. I took a few moments to carefully groom myself with twigs, trying to comb over the few bare patches still left in my fur.

It was the fourth time I’d lost and regrown my fur. I was proud of the memories I imparted to each of my children with every new generation I sired.

The mud hadn’t dried, but it was walkable. Outside the treeline, bare ground stretched for miles and miles. Big yellow machines roved over the roads, driven by aerokratois inside.

The yellow machines shoveled and ate dirt. They burrowed into the ground sniffing for Metal. Then the Metal got taken back to the Hopper, which digested Metal in huge, fiery belches, and created Spare Parts for the Great Repair.

The bare ground of the aerokratois had spread outward quickly. When the first of us were taken over the ocean to work here, there were only trees and the Hopper.

Whiffets clung to the backs of the yellow machines, waiting for their orders. Others walked along the roadsides with picks, keeping the roads in good order.

More worked deep in the earth, their fur thick with dirt, pulling Metal from the ground.

I knew every inch of the land. From generations back, the memories swirled inside me. Sometimes I remembered the land across the sea my kind came from. It was very similar, but without wild animals, aerokratois, or big yellow machines.

Time to walk the many miles of road back toward my aerokrat’s home.

My aerokrat looked down at me. I stood on the steps to his small hut. His eyes looked puffy, and the fur on top of his head was unkept.

I extended my forearm to show him the numbers on it. NN-721. The fur didn’t grow around those markings.

Bob flinched. He recognized me now.

“Oh, god,” he said. “I helped you run away. I freed you. What are you doing here?” His voice sounded like an angry hiss. I flinched. “No, no,” Bob stepped back. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I am back.” I was happy to be back, and in the presence of aerokratois again.

“But why?” Bob shook his head. “Do you know what it took for me to get you out there?”

I give him the aerokratois gesture of understanding: I nodded.

“You,” and I recalled it exactly, “faked a pass to use a flier to drop me off far, so I could get far away from this hellhole of bondage.”

It had been an exciting adventure.

And now I was back.

Bob leaned toward the side of the doorway and repeatedly hit his head against it. I watched, trying to understand his actions.

I walked over next to him and did the same.

Some ritual of returning?

Bob stopped and looked around.

“Get inside,” he ordered.

He closed the door behind me quickly.

“Didn’t I drop you far enough away, so you could get away from all this?” Bob moved to the back of his hut and mixed different colored liquids together from elaborate jars into a glass. His face twisted when he lifted the glass and swallowed.

The liquids must not have tasted very good.

Bob drank things that didn’t taste very good often.

“Yes, you did drop me far enough away,” I said.

“Then why have you come back?”

“How can I leave my master? You guide me, teach me, and command me.” I would learn more new things, things not in my memory. The moment I came out of the egg I had become bound to him. This was our way.

Bob drank more liquids.

“We are missing each other, I think,” he said. “We don’t understand each other.”

I was excited.

“Yes, we must understand.”

He grabbed my hand.

“Come on, we’re going out.”

Bob took me to the graves. Tiny white crosses spilled out over the hill like strange saplings.

“In just two years since we first came to this planet, look at all the whiffets worked to death.” He swept his arm at them.

I looked at the hill, thinking of all the foreparents there. Many of their memories swirled through me like a storm. They were not lost, their memories were all over the place, in other whiffets working for the aerokratios.

“They are remembered.” I looked up at Bob. “What is your complaint?”

“You are being exploited.” Bob walked around in circles. “It is bad.”

“Why?” I sat on the bare ground. “What else would you have us do now that we are here, an ocean away from our homeland?”

Bob’s lips moved, but nothing came out for several seconds.

“It’s not just you,” Bob said. “That is bad enough. But we are also destroying ourselves.” Bob crouched next to me and put his head in his hands. “Losing our self-sufficiency and innovation. You know, the other day one of the trucks broke, and instead of fixing it they chose to build a wagon pulled by whiffets… it’s easier and quicker than spending time trying to figure out how to fix the truck.” Bob looked at me. “It’ll keep going like that. First we used you to serve tired workers drinks and get into small areas we can’t. They said it was better to relocate the robots into dangerous areas, we needed more help than just the people we’d unfrozen. But soon they will use your labor to replace other things. We’ll be taking away the greenhouses and using whiffets out in the fields to grow crops. And then, when the robots break down, you’ll be doing that work, too.”

A thrill shot up my back. All these new things we would be doing!

“This is wonderful.” I stood up. “You came from the sky and blessed us with all these new things. And now you tell me you will give us more.”

Bob pushed his fingers through his hair.

“You make things worse thinking like that.” He pointed down at the direction of the Hopper. The great legs poked out. Smoke rose from its pipes. The maw gleamed with fire. “We were just passing by this system when our ship’s shield failed. We were moving so fast the interstellar dust just ripped through the hull. Half of the passengers died, and hardly anything of use survived. This was the best place they could find on short notice. The engineers dropped down plan-etside near the best resource-rich area they could find. They think the hopper can manufacture enough of the parts they need.” He pointed up at the sky where aerokratois came from. “They say we can, but I don’t think they’re going to be able to fix the damage. It’s been two years and we’re hardly any closer, and the hopper is beginning to show signs of failure.” Bob poked at the dirt. “They’re many more passengers in storage up there that they’re going to have bring down before more life support systems fail on the ship. That’s why they’re making the roads and buildings: temporary housing.”

More? More aerokratois?

I jumped up.

“This is marvelous!” I wanted to share this new information, to ask if I could leave again, but Bob heard sounds from the tiny machine on his hand and sighed.

“Time to work.”

Bob directed teams of whiffets. We built huts for the aerokratois. It was long, hard work. Others around me, their fur thick, clumping, and ready for anakoinosis, talked with me as we sawed wood and hammered the buildings into shape.

Even though I could talk to other whiffets while I worked, we all knew this did not bring true understanding. For us speech was just a shadow of the truth. Only through constant anakoinosis could we truly be a community, and know what lay in each others’ hearts through the shared memories of our foreparents.