Tim Curran - Dead Sea

George watched it, noticing now that it was making a sort of shallow, gasping sound and as it did so, those tubes on its underside inflated, then deflated. Sure, it was breathing. That’s what those things were. Aspirators of some type. Probably not anything like human lungs at all, but more like the book lungs of a spider or maybe the gills of a fish. Organs of respiration that separated breathable gases from the toxic ones. And in this place, George knew, that could have been oxygen… but with all the rotting weed out there, it could have been methane, too. Maybe a little of both with some nitrogen mixed in.

Nobody had made any threatening moves on it yet and it had not done a thing to provoke any. But it was coming. If not from the thing itself, then from the people gathered there. You could almost smell it in the air: a hot, seething intolerance for this creature. And you could see it on the faces of those gathered there: an atavistic, marrow-deep race hatred that was involuntary and automatic. This thing did not belong. It was spidery and evil and obscene. It was offensive to the human condition. You wanted to crush it. To kick it. To stomp it. It was an abomination that disgusted you in ways you could not comprehend… so it had to die. It had to be purged. It was simply too different to be allowed to live.

No, none of them were truly aware at a conscious level of what they were truly feeling, but it was there. A race memory, an inherited predisposition that was acid in their bellies and electricity in their veins. That communal need to destroy, to kill, to rend for the good of the tribe. Slay the beast, kill the monster, protect the hive…

And everyone was suddenly very aware of the weapons in their white-knuckled fists, how their muscles bunched and their nerve endings jangled. Those weapons needed to be put to use.

“Let’s kill it,” Saks said and you had to expect it to come from him first. “Ugly cock-sucker, let’s put it down.”

And everyone there seemed more than willing to let that happen. They were like the same animal with the same bones and claws and teeth. The same wide, predatory eyes.

But Cushing said, “Now take it easy. Just take it easy. It… it must be intelligent. To build something like that.”

Menhaus felt his mouth begin to speak: “You… you know what it is, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Saks said, his voice hollow-sounding.

“That flying saucer… that ship in the weeds… that’s where it came from.”

Cushing didn’t even bother inquiring about that one, he just said, “It’s smarter than we are… it might be able to help us, to get us out of here…”

George just stood there, feeling numb and stupid. His body was thick and ungainly like he was stuffed with wet rags or had been shot up with Thorazine. If the thing had moved suddenly, he knew, it would have had him. There was just no way he could have hoped to evade it. Maybe this was from fear and maybe it was the result of that thing looking at him and into him. And he wondered if that wasn’t it… because with those alien eyes burning into his head like arc lights, he had a mad desire to draw a razor over his wrists.

Those eyes were bad.

Nothing on earth had eyes like that.

Glaring and hateful and insectile. And this was only accentuated by its mouth which was little more than an oval, puckered hole set off to the side… like the mouth of an old man without his teeth in. The total effect was that of a wicked, evil alien face.

It stood there, watching them, not directly threatening, but infinitely repulsive. Maybe it was intelligent, but it had no right to be so. Not in the thinking of anyone looking at it. The idea of this slinking nightmare being intelligent was like the idea of an intellectual spider or centipede… appalling.

Fabrini took a step towards that weird machine and the thing tensed. Those tubes running down its belly shuddered. Something like black saliva ran from them and when it struck the deck plating, it sizzled like butter on a hot griddle.

“I don’t recommend pissing it off,” Cushing said.

George had to stay his hand now from bringing up that. 45 and putting a few rounds into it. Maybe more than a few.

Yes, he was thinking, it is intelligent. You can see that. But it’s the wrong kind of intelligence. It’s not our kind, but a profane, blasphemous sort of intelligence. Cold and cruel and arrogant. Looking at it, he was struck by its unflinching superiority, its… arrogance. Because, yes, it was arrogant. You could see that. It hated them. It hated them with the warped, inborn bigotry and aversion that its entire race felt for lower orders of life.

“We should try communicating with it,” Cushing said. “So it can understand we mean it no harm.”

And George almost burst out in hysterical laughter. Cushing suddenly reminded him of that dumb scientist in The Thing from Another World, the old 1950s sci-fi/horror flick. The one that tries to reason with the hulking, blood-sucking vegetable man from Mars and gets swatted aside by the bastard for his trouble. This scenario was too much like that. Mean it no harm? That was a good one, because George did want to harm it and he knew that, if there weren’t so many of his kind around, that hideous Martian or whatever in the fuck it was, would have killed him without a second thought.

Because George was getting a strong vibe from this thing.

Looking at that pissed-off face and those glaring, hating eyes, he was understanding this creature. Yes, it was intelligent and methodical… but so was a cruel little boy who pulled the wings off of flies and lit the tails of cats on fire. The intelligence of this thing was like that – tyrannical, sadistic, and maybe more than a little fanatical. That’s why it had started when Fabrini took a step too close to its machine. Because it had built it and inferior things like men had no right to touch it. Men were nothing but mice to it, shit-eating apes that belonged in cages with dirty straw. Something to be gawked at or laughed over, but certainly not equals. So don’t be touching my machine, you stupid rutting ape.

“So, go ahead, Cushing,” Saks said, badly wanting to hack the thing to bits, “try talking to that fucking puke. Go ahead. Take us to your leader, you ugly shit.”

Cushing opened his mouth, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

It always looked real easy in those old movies, but the reality of such a situation was a little different. This thing was such an angry, grotesque creature that talking to it, trying to reason with it would have been like trying to reason with a spider when you were caught in its web. Don’t sink your fangs in me, okay? Don’t suck my blood out and cocoon me up… can we agree on that?

Yeah, it was ridiculous, George knew.

Maybe this thing had harnessed the power of the stars and the secrets of life and death, but there was no hope of communicating with it. Yes, its intellect was vastly superior, but cold and unreasoning. It had a mindless, stupid hatred for any but its own kind. You couldn’t barter with such a creature. It got its hands… or tentacles… on you, most you could hope for was to be dropped into a jar of preservative and labeled or maybe dissected alive. And if it was in a particularly dark mood – it was – then maybe it would yank out your nerve ganglia and prod it with a knife, study your agony with an icy, alien detachment.

Fabrini said, “Fuck this. Let’s get out of here. I can’t handle that prick looking at me like that… looks like it wants to suck my eyeballs out of my head.”

And George was thinking, why don’t we just get it over with? We’re going to kill it and we know it, so let’s just do it already.

“Let’s just go,” Elizabeth said, the last sane voice to be heard.