Питер Филлипс - In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

Finally, after what seemed like hours and hours, but I knew was maybe thirty minutes—two Sponge Bob episodes, Da used to say, when I asked how long that was—a deep sigh came from the wall speakers.

“Perfect. That will be all dear,” Aleria said.

I pulled out my arms. They came out coated in her milky interior fluid. I had towels, the ship made them for me, but I knew not to rub my arms off just yet. My skin was blistered, and the skin mechs needed time to fix what they could of the damage before I went to dry myself. The mechs never really did a great job. I thought that, like a lot of the stuff on Aleria’s ship, they were kind of stale or something like that. I knew my arms would be red and hurt for at least a light cycle.

When I first got on the ship, I used to call a light cycle a day, but pretty soon I figured out that they were exactly the same length every time. The light came from everywhere in the ship, and then didn’t. Nearly ten Earth hours on. A little over four off. I asked once, and Aleria explained this was the Meeb active-rest cycle. And when the lights went off, it became so pitch black I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face in the ship’s bridge or the recreation room or the waste room, which was where both Aleria and I went to the bathroom. It got sort of sucked dry and cleaned after we left. This was done with mech crawlies that looked like baby spiders, maybe. They clumped together while you were going, then swarmed the place after you left and carried off whatever.

Anyway, there was one place where the faintest of light remained during lights-out. This was in the supply room. There were observation portals there. Each one was about as big as the windows used to be in my bedroom, but they were roundish, kind of egg-shaped. They were shaped to fit a Meeb optical stalk. There were four windows around the supply room, and I could always see the stars through them. We were traveling faster than light, but it was still slow enough so the stars didn’t look like they were moving. I usually slept floating near one of those portals. I pretended that I knew the one that was facing Earth, and I would look out and pretend I could see the sun, even if it was only a pinprick in the dark. I knew this wasn’t true, that I didn’t know which one was the sun, but I could sort of fake my way to sleep that way.

So I let the mech work, and then I patted my arms and hands dry with an absorption towel, and was careful not to take off too much of my tenderized skin. Even though I was going easy with the towel, it still felt like I was rubbing sandpaper against myself. The towels were the same gray color as my pajamas, by the way, and not pretty the way Mom’s always were, with flowers on them and stuff. Everything in the ship was gray like that, and even I was now.

This time when I dried off the milk, something felt different. My skin wasn’t just blistered; it was changing shape, too. It was kind of crunchy-lumpy. And it looked thinner. In fact, I touched it with a finger and it popped like a pear skin. Something oozed out, but it wasn’t red like blood. It was white and looked like puss.

I felt the swollen nodes under my chin, the nodes in my neck. They were big and as tight as little nuts, like pecans or those hard, dark brown ones you could barely break with the nutcracker. I never knew what those kinds of nuts were called, and now I didn’t have anyone to ask.

Aleria had said this would happen, that all my lymph nodes would swell up more and more. That would mean my body’s defenses were getting taken over, and would start to tag the biological elements she implanted in me as “friend” instead of “enemy.” That was what was happening, I supposed.

While I was drying off and feeling my nodes and all that, Aleria was babbling away, the way she often did after a replenishing. Talk, talk, talk. Snot flying everywhere. She got nostalgic, too—you know, talking about the old days and all that. She talked a lot about the Meeb home system. The Meebs didn’t live on planet surfaces, but in a bunch of big space stations spread around their star’s biological sweet spot. That’s where we were headed at the moment, to one of those habitats, even though the trip was going to take another Earth year. We were one year into it. Which was another reason I figured I was eleven.

I could tell that Aleria was particularly relaxed today. She had fed well. And I guess she could feel that my resistance was really starting to break down.

“The clan will be so happy to meet you, my darling daughter,” Aleria said. She was glowing white in the tank now, about to ooze her way out and back to her usual spot near the main ship interaction console. “And I think they’ll be very pleased with the bounty I bring them from this journey. Also for the information. We’ll get a fine reward.”

Here was something I hadn’t heard from her before.

“The information?” I asked. “I don’t understand, Mother. What do you mean?”

“The knowledge of where the system is, of course, and what to expect when they get there.”

“Get where?”

“The systems where the new children are to be found, dear,” she replied. The wall speakers made it sound like she was sleepy, dreamy, the way I felt when I was drifting off to sleep all safe and sound and tucked in. It had been a long way since I felt that way.

“Why would the clan want to go there?”

“Why, to protect your kind, dear,” she said. “To absorb and protect. That’s what parents are for .”

“They’ll take children?”

“It’s better that way,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve had to absorb a full grown adult before, and it was an unpleasant process for both of us. Integrating those kinds of ingrained memories is difficult. So much resentment and anger to deal with in adults of a species.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Children are so much easier to handle,” she continued. “But not all species have children, you know. Juvenile and nymph forms, I mean. Only special ones. Like yours, my darling.”

And then it hit me. What she was. Her job. She’d told me over and over, but I hadn’t been listening, or it hadn’t, you know, registered.

She was a scout.

“Now darling, I need to get dried off and ready for my rest period,” Aleria said. “Come and wipe me down, there’s a dear.”

My jaw hurt. I had been grinding my teeth again.

“Yes, Mother dear,” I replied.

So I guess I was thinking about Dustin when I did it. I was thinking about the way she would send back more Meebs. I knew how many existed in the space stations of Aleria’s home system. I’d watched the videos. My troubles in third grade were behind me. I was a good student now. Anyway, it didn’t take a genius to do the math.

There were enough Meebs for every child on Earth, and then some.

Aleria was a scout. Scouts find the way. Then they go back and lead others on the same path. To the same destination.

A year to go, and then two years for a return trip. Those habitats were capable of faster than light travel. Imagine that: a whole city of a billion Meebs headed for Earth.

Dustin would be eleven when they arrived.

This would happen to him.

I floated over to the water maker-cone and planted my feet against the ship wall. I pulled on the end of the bump. The ship wall dimpled out at my touch. I pulled harder. The cone grew in length, became more a tube than a cone. It reeled out like a hose, flowing from the material of the wall itself. I needed it to be long enough to reach Aleria.

So I pulled it out farther and farther. I wrapped it around my elbow and a thumb, the way I’d seen Da roll up the extension cord for the leaf blower. The extension cord was orange. The hose was a light shade of gray. I missed colors.