Ascending

25: WHEREIN I FACE THE FOE

Tahpo

The two were no taller than Uclod. One’s fur was brown and the other’s was black; apart from that, they appeared exactly identical. Same height, same width, same pose.

Despite their fur, they seemed more like insects than mammals — each had two faceted eyes as big as my fist, and four mandible attachments arranged in a diamond shape around their mouths. The mandibles were constantly in motion: first, the two side ones would rub together furiously, the way a fly rubs its forelegs before eating; then those side parts would spread wide, giving room for the top and bottom attachments to sweep lightly across the lips, as if wiping off whatever dust might have landed in the past few seconds. After that the cycle repeated, with the same fierce rubbing once more.

As for the rest of their bodies, each alien had two short but muscular arms ending in small hands with three clawed fingers and a thumb. At first glance, the creatures appeared to stand on three legs; but when I looked more closely, I saw that only two of the lower limbs were legs (hinged like a rabbit’s haunches). The third limb was a thick tail that ended in a chitinous scoop; the edges of the scoop looked sharp and sturdy, while the tail appeared muscular enough to move the scoop with great force. One supposed having a shovel on one’s tail would be useful for creatures who burrowed underground… but it would also be a powerful weapon in a fight, especially if someone attacked from behind. Indeed, with shovel-tails at the rear, and claws and mandibles at the front, these creatures would be formidable opponents if encountered in a narrow tunnel.

The instant the beetle-things appeared, Festina dived to one side, rolling across the dirt and vaulting to her feet again with her pistol trained on the newcomers. She stood that way for several seconds, no doubt noticing that the aliens carried no obvious weapons and showed no sign of combative behavior. Without lowering her gun, Festina said, "Greetings. We are sentient citizens of the League of Peoples. We beg your Hospitality."

The two furry beetles turned in her direction. This required a sort of hopping move on their back legs; but despite the awkwardness of the maneuver, they remained pressed against each other, keeping in physical contact at all times. After they faced her, they said nothing for several seconds long enough that I wondered if they had understood what she said. Perhaps they only spoke their own language… in which case, it was fortunate I could serve as interpreter. I was preparing to translate what Festina said when the black-furred beetle opened its mouth and a glowing gold ball emerged from its throat.

I had never seen a creature vomit a ball of glowing gold. The ball was not solid, but a tight clot of mist about the size of my head. Its consistency was highly reminiscent of Nimbus (who of course was a product of Shaddill engineering). The mist floated upward to hover above the black beetle’s head… whereupon a voice sounded clearly from the gleaming fog.

"Greetings yourself," the voice said in English. The sound was identical to Festina’s own voice; and it is most disconcerting to hear what seems like your Faithful Sidekick speaking from a ball of fog perched atop an alien bug. Clearly, the voice had to be a simulation… and when I thought about it, if I were creating a golden mist-ball to communicate with others, I might construct the ball to imitate the other person’s voice as closely as possible. This would not only ensure the mist-ball’s speech was pitched at a frequency the other person could hear, but it would also make one’s words sound agreeably dulcet to the listener. If I were designing a speaking mist, I might also make it float above my head, so people would hear the mist’s voice coming from my direction… but the whole idea was still most icky, and if I were an alien, I would not employ fog as an intermediary for communication. Especially not fog that resided in my stomach when it was not needed.

"I am Immu," the black beetle’s fog-voice said. "This is my mate, Esticus."

The brown beetle (Esticus) clacked all four mandible attachments twice. This was probably a gesture of polite acknowledgment, though to my eyes it looked most fearsome. "So you are spouses?" I asked.

"Yes," said Immu.[14]

[l4] — Of course, it was Immu’s fog-ball speaking, but I assumed the beetle was transmitting its thoughts to the mist in some way, whereupon the mist provided an appropriate English translation.

"Are you the husband or the wife?"

Immu did not answer; the two beetles just stared with their goggly eyes. Perhaps they were offended by my inability to recognize which was male and which female. Since neither of the creatures possessed obvious gender characteristics, I decided to regard Immu as the wife: she was the one who took a leadership role, and besides, she sounded like Festina.

"Are you Shaddill," I asked, "or Fuentes?"

"We’ve been called both names," Immu answered, "but it’s not how we speak of ourselves."

The other one, Esticus, sighed. It was a soft sigh that breathed out another glowing ball of mist. Even before the mist could drift into position above Esticus’s head, the fog murmured, "We are not Shaddill or Fuentes. We are Tahpo." I blinked in surprise, and for two reasons. First, the voice that emanated from Esticus’s fog-ball sounded suspiciously familiar: it was my own! It did not sound exactly like the tones I customarily hear in my head, but I have been told one’s voice never sounds the same in one’s own ears as it does to other persons. Furthermore, it made sense that if Immu imitated Festina, Esticus would mimic me. Even so, I did not like the idea of an alien who spoke with my voice; it was most sinisterly creepy, like the first step in acquiring an evil twin.

The other reason I reacted in surprise was because in my language (and therefore in Shaddill-speak too), Tahpo means "the last"… or perhaps a better translation would be "the dregs." Whatever Esticus meant by the word, Immu disapproved — she nudged him warningly with her hip. Perhaps she did not intend for us to see her action, but she hit Esticus hard enough to make him flinch.

If Festina noticed, she did not comment. Instead, she told the aliens, "We’re honored to make your acquaintance, but the circumstances are unfortunate. Why did you capture our ship? What do you want from us? If we’ve inadvertently offended you in some way…" She glanced in my direction, as if I might have been the one who provoked the Shaddill into reprehensible deeds… which was most unfair, because the Shaddill had started misbehaving first. "If there’s any kind of problem," Festina said, "let’s discuss it and resolve things amicably."

Immu made a raspy sound in her throat. I did not know if this was a growl of anger, the Shaddill form of laughter, or simply a clearing of phlegm. "Admiral Ramos," Immu’s fogball said, "we know your reputation — our substitutes for Admirals Rhee and Macleod kept us apprised of all activities in the Outward Fleet. We know you are an intelligent creature; you must realize you have seen too much for us to consider releasing you. This room, for instance."

She gestured toward the fountain, pointing a claw toward the mini-chili. The small yellow fruit had completely disappeared; now, there was only a mush of jelly. "We don’t know how you found your way here so unerringly," Immu said, "but it’s a pity we didn’t notice until you had already reached the fountain. Quite possibly, you’ve seen additional secrets on our ship: secrets we can’t let you share with the outside world."

"Then keep us here, but let everyone else go — everyone in the crusade and Royal Hemlock. They haven’t seen any of this."

"They still know too much," Immu replied. "For example, they know FTL fields can be hyper-charged by entering a star." The mist above her head reshaped itself slightly — a tiny bit of fog broke off from the main gold ball and circled for a bit before plunging back inside. I realized this was intended to suggest Starbiter looping about the sun before she finally entered the fire… and I was most envious the Shaddill mist-clouds could not only perform English translations but provide delightful visual effects.

Even as the fog was pretending to be Starbiter and the sun, its voice continued to speak. "This information is something we sought to keep secret. We replaced high officials in every culture we uplifted — like your Admirals Rhee and Macleod — and had them pass laws to prevent disclosure. For example, all starship computers in the Technocracy must be programmed to stay well clear of suns… supposedly as a safety precaution."

"So," said Festina, "if someone ever wanted to get near a star, the ship’s computer just wouldn’t let it happen. Simple, but elegant."

"And yet," I said, "Starbiter flew into the sun. She was reluctant to do so, but she obeyed me." The fog above Immu’s head flared brightly and made a harsh fizzing sound. I do not think the noise was intended to be speech — it sounded as if Immu was transmitting such angry thoughts to the cloud, the translation nanites had caught fire. In a moment, however, the fizzing spittered into silence and the cloud muttered, "We never should have given the Divians living starships."

"It was part of their culture," Esticus said softly. "It was what they were used to. They would have been most suspicious of ships made from inorganic parts."

"I know," Immu snapped, her cloud threatening to fizz again. "We still shouldn’t have taken the risk." She turned back to Festina and me. "The moment we gave the first Zaretts to the Divians, we surrendered control. You don’t build Zaretts, you breed them; and in the breeding process, random factors inevitably creep in. The first Zaretts we made would never go close to a sun; we designed them to have an absolute phobia against it. But in every subsequent generation, a few individuals weren’t quite as afraid as their parents. Inhibitions just don’t breed true, especially when they’re groundless. By now, half the Zaretts alive can be bullied into entering a star if you scream at them loud enough. Fortunately for us, no one ever tried it persistently."

"Until I came along," I said proudly.

Immu did not answer… but her translation mist gave another angry fizz.

"Why did you do it?" Festina asked the Shaddill. "Why create this elaborate lie about the limitations of FTL fields?"

"To slow you down," Esticus said. "To disrupt your species’ development. And to make sure our own vessel was always much faster than the craft of lesser races."

"Surely you’ve realized by now," Immu said, "everything we do is aimed at weakening you. We approach cultures as they start into space; we offer them technology and flawed but plausible scientific models that completely bypass certain discoveries those races would otherwise make on their own." The cloud above Immu’s head split into two hemispheres with a slight gap between left and right. "We create a discontinuity in a species’ scientific progress," she said. "We give them devices they don’t understand and won’t understand, because they’ve been deflected from developing the necessary scientific background."

"And of course," Festina said, "you place robot agents in positions of authority to make sure the background science is never filled in."

"Exactly," Immu agreed, her cloud fusing together again. "Our robot replacements control the purse-strings for almost all research in your sector. If someone begins to investigate topics we dislike, that person is diverted to a different project." A part of her cloud spun off on its own. "When that doesn’t work — and scientists often prove difficult to sidetrack — we take steps to remove the irritant." A strand of fog lashed out from the main ball of mist, struck the little separate piece, and pulled it back into the whole again… like a frog swallowing a fly. "The annoyingly keen scientist simply disappears, and ends up in a comfortable holding facility on this very ship: a facility you’ll soon see for yourself."

Festina lifted the muzzle of her stun-pistol. "Think again."

Immu made the raspy throat-noise. This time it definitely sounded like laughter. "You obtained that gun from our robots. Do you believe we would arm them with weapons that would affect us?" "You might," Festina replied. "For all your fancy technology, you don’t seem very smart."

"We aren’t," Esticus whispered. Immu gave him another hip-bump, this time making no effort to conceal it. She also made a hissing sound and clacked her mandibles in a gesture that was clearly a Shaddill shorthand for, "Shut up, you fool!"

"Here’s what I think," Festina said. "I think five thousand years ago, your people were science whizzes who built this ship and a lot of other fancy stuff. Somewhere along the line, you developed a way to evolve to a higher state of being — to make yourselves smart as all hell, even if you ended up looking like blobs of purple jelly." She glanced at the liquid spurting out of the fountain. "What’s this stuff called?"

There was a pause. The clouds over both Shaddill heads dimmed, as if they were trying to deal with some difficult concept and had to use all their power for the translation process. Finally, the mist above Esticus spoke softly: "Blood Honey," it said.

Immediately, both speaker clouds brightened to their usual golden luster… or perhaps a bit shinier than before, greatly pleased with themselves for devising an elegant translation of the actual Shaddill name.

"Blood Honey," Festina repeated. "Cute. Anyway, your people built Blood Honey fountains so you could all advance together. You carefully cleaned up the worlds where you lived, then you prepared to jelly out. The only problem was, some of you didn’t like the idea of turning into purple goop. I think it scared you shitless. So when everybody else went to bathe in the fountains, a bunch of you just turned tail. You buggered off on this ship, and you’ve been running ever since."

"You mean," I said, "these Shaddill ones are cowards? All others of their kind pursued Celestial Transcendence, while these turned away in fear?" I glared at the two furry beetles with contempt. Suddenly, I understood why Esticus had called himself Tahpo: the dregs.

"So how many of you are left?" Festina asked the beetles. "Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Or could it be you two are the only ones who didn’t have the guts to change?"

Immu didn’t answer — just turned her head away and lowered her gaze to the floor. Her mandibles fell still, as if she were paralyzed with shame. Finally, it was Esticus who spoke, his fog-cloud dim and drooping.

"There were others once," he said. "Many others. It isn’t an easy thing to contemplate changing to the Soft Form even when you’ve been assured it will… expand your horizons."

He closed his eyes: great brown eyelids rolled down from his forehead. "Once upon a time, this vessel was full of Tahpo. We spoke as if we were on a grand adventure — the last of our race, a single brave ship against a hostile galaxy. A grand, most noble adventure… and we formed a plan we all agreed was necessary for our survival. We would undermine lesser races before they could become our equals. There weren’t enough of us to compete any other way; our only defense was sabotage. So we all agreed. We all…"

Esticus’s mandibles suddenly clenched tight against each other. They squeezed for a long shuddering moment; then they fell limp and motionless. "We all agreed. But over the years — the long, long years — the others left, one by one. They found the courage to change… or perhaps it wasn’t courage but despair. Despair at what our lives had become."

Esticus sighed. "In a way, we’d become as lifeless and tired as the alien species we subverted. We all knew it. As the centuries passed, our comrades listened to the voices of… of those who had changed in the fountains." He paused. "The Soft Ones speak to us now and then. Or at least they used to. I haven’t heard them in years; perhaps they’ve given up on Immu and me. But when there were more of us, the Soft Ones whispered how profound their lives had become since the transformation… and slowly the other Tahpo surrendered. We’d discover that one of our number had vanished; we’d come to this room, and the fountain would be bubbling smugly."

He opened his eyes and looked over at his mate. "Immu always turned off the Blood Honey and let the fountain drain… but eventually, the basin would be full again and another of us would be gone. Until…"

Esticus’s voice trailed off.

"You are the only two left," Festina said. "Aren’t you?"

"Yes," Esticus whispered. "We are the greatest cowards of our race."

He closed his eyes again. The two Shaddill stood there, huddled against each other in silence.

The Effects Of Blood Honey

They did not hold the pose long. Immu suddenly lifted her head and glared at us, her mandibles once more working furiously. "So!" she said. "Now you know how pathetic my mate and I are. No doubt you’ll have a good laugh about it… once you’re locked in our jail."

"I would not enjoy imprisonment," I told her. "That would be unfair treatment… and I am fed up with cruelty at your hands. You gave me a Tired Brain! You made all my people that way! And since you first appeared above Melaquin, you have hounded me unmercifully for no good reason."

"There was a reason," Esticus said. "I don’t know whether you’d consider it good…"

He turned toward Immu with what I suspect was a pleading expression. Immu made an unpleasant grunting noise, as if she really did not wish to explain; but gazing on Esticus’s face, she relented. "When we picked up the Rhee and Macleod robots from New Earth," Immu said, "they told us a woman had died on Melaquin four years ago." The fog cloud above Immu’s head reshaped into an arrow pointing in my direction. "Few among your people ever die… and we thought we could use your corpse."

"What for?" I demanded.

"For an experiment. To see…" Immu glanced at the fountain, its basin now nearly full. "It’s been centuries since that was last turned on. Not since our final companion changed to the Soft Form. We don’t know if the Blood Honey is still potent."

"Of course it is potent," I chided. "You could discover that with a simple test." I waved toward the basin. "I placed a mini-chili in the bowl… and behold, it has turned to jelly."

"Jelly is only the first part of the transformation," Immu replied. "The easy part — breaking down a cell’s exterior to expose the DNA inside. After that, there’s a second process to convert the DNA into… something else. Something that can hold a vastly expanded consciousness."

"The process is complicated," Esticus put in. "It has to maintain existing neural connections in the brain to preserve the original psyche, while adjusting selected portions of the genome in a particular sequence…" His voice cloud began to reshape itself into some sort of twisty ladder, then collapsed back into a ball. Esticus must have decided this particular visual effect was too much bother. He said with weak sheepishness, "It’s very complex."

"How does Oar fit into this?" Festina asked.

"We wanted to put her body into the fountain," Immu answered. "Using a living person would be too much of a risk; it’s been so long since the Blood Honey was tested, the League of Peoples might condemn us for endangering another sentient being. But there’d be no problem with a corpse. We’d put Oar in the fountain, then examine her afterward to see if her cells had undergone the desired transformation." The alien glanced toward her husband. "Merely out of curiosity," she said. "To see if the Blood Honey still worked."

"Yes, just to see," Esticus agreed, gazing back at her. "A way to pass the time."

"But what good would Oar be?" Festina asked. "It sounds like the transformation is specific to your species. Any other species will just get broken down into purple goo, without being put back together the right way."

"Of course," Immu said, as if that should be obvious to anyone. "But Oar is our species. Haven’t you figured that out by now?"

The Stupidest Creatures In The Universe

"I am not a villainous Shaddill!" I replied hotly. "Not even a little bit."

"You are," Esticus said, his voice cloud sliding a short distance toward me. "Your genome is 99.999 percent the same as ours."

"The differences between you and us," Immu said, "are no greater than the differences between your Freep and Tye-Tye companions out in the corridor. Or between female Zaretts, who are large and spherical, versus males, who are small and cloudy. External looks are insignificant compared to what’s in your chromosomes and cytoplasm. We made your race to be just like us."

"But I am beautiful glass! Not fur at all. And I have five fingers, without claws… and no tail or mouth attachments…"

"All trivialities," Immu said. Her translation mist shaped itself briefly into an approximation of me, pleasantly tall and humanoid — then the image shifted into something more squat and beetle-ish. "Inside," she said, "you have the same organs that let you go without food for long periods of time, the same cellular structures that prevent you from aging, the same defensive systems that make you practically impossible to kill. We’ve lived more than five thousand of your years. Your people have the potential to live that long too."

"But it is five thousand years with Tired Brains!" I snapped. "That is another difference between you and me."

"It was necessary," Esticus said. "To make sure you didn’t get too…" His golden cloud broke into a large number of thready wisps surrounding two little lumps — perhaps suggesting a horde of my people vastly outnumbering the two Shaddill.

"We wanted children," Esticus continued, "but the Soft Ones changed us somehow so we couldn’t… it didn’t happen naturally. They wanted to be sure we were Tahpo: the last of our kind. Lucky for us, this was originally a colony-building ship; it still had full terraforming capabilities and a supply of frozen fertilized ova. We altered the DNA in the ova just a bit to create a human-shaped race and… well. You really are like us, Oar, even if there isn’t much external resemblance."

I still did not think it could possibly be true; but Festina was nodding to herself. In a quiet voice, she said, "If we get out of this, Oar, I’ll show you pictures of a Chihuahua and an Irish Wolfhound — unquestionably the same species, but different as night and day. External appearance just isn’t a reliable guide to cellular composition." She turned back to the Shaddill. "So you wanted Oar’s corpse to test the Blood Honey. Just out of curiosity. You had absolutely no thought you might take the big step."

Esticus turned his eyes toward Immu; she looked back at him. For a moment, they did not speak… and although they were horrid fur-beetles, the image arose in my mind of lovers from some tale of romantic misapprehension: the kind of lovers who fervently want the same thing but believe the other does not want such a thing, so they say, "No, no, I do not want that either."

Fools! I thought. They both wish to transform, but they fear to admit it. I could see it in their eyes — as if some deep-down Shaddillish part of me knew instinctively how to read such googly insect expressions. Perhaps Immu and Esticus had once feared the honey fountain, but now they longed for it. Even if it meant death, they wanted release… but each was holding back for the sake of the other.

"You are both quite absurd," I told them. "Are you not secretly eager to jellify yourselves? I believe you have been so for years. Yet you each think the other person is afraid, so you say nothing — never mentioning what you feel, for fear of upsetting your mate. Is that not the case? You have been shielding one another needlessly for five thousand years, because you are the stupidest creatures in the universe." I pointed to the Blood Honey filling the fountain. "Please jump in now, and get out of our lives."

The Tahpo/Shaddill/Fuentes stared at me pop-eyed for a good five seconds; then they looked back toward each other, their mandibles moving with great slowness. Esticus whispered something — a real whisper coming out of his mouth, not the cloud above his head. Immu whispered back. In a moment, they were nose to nose, whispering, whispering… and holding each other’s hands as their great shovel-tails slid forward to entwine.

Festina leaned toward me. "If they’ve just been holding off for the sake of each other… that’s so fucking soppy, I may puke."

"It is not soppy, it is merely ridiculous," I told her. "Many creatures in the universe are ridiculous. Besides," I continued, "these two claim to be the same species as I… and I am such a one as may soon succumb to a Tired Brain. Perhaps Shaddill brains get Tired as well, especially after five thousand years. The Shaddill may not fall dormant, but perhaps there comes a point when they do very little actual thinking."

"Perhaps," Festina agreed, watching Immu and Esticus whisper. "I’ll be ecstatic if they decide to go for a Blood Honey skinny-dip. Once they’re in ‘Soft Form,’ I don’t think they’ll see us as threats — the jelly-guys aren’t afraid of humans or any other species at our development level. With a bit of luck, we’ll be free to go; for that matter, they might give us this ship. Once they jelly out, they won’t need it anymore."

"You mean they will say, ‘Now we see the light,’ and all will be well? We will not get to punch anyone!"

Festina tapped my jacket with one finger. "You’re an Explorer now, Oar. The ideal outcome of any Explorer mission is to walk away safely — not to kick butt, not to make your opponents cry uncle. I don’t know if there’s ever been a mission where Explorers faced alien enemies and the enemies said, ‘So sorry, we won’t bother you anymore… and by the way, take the keys to our spaceship.’ But by God, every Explorer prays for something that works out so tamely. Tameness is good. Tameness means you live another day."

"But they are horrendous villains!" I whispered. "They may seem like foolish beetles, but they and their kind have wreaked havoc throughout the galaxy. On my people. On your people. On the Divians and the Cashlings and all those other species the Shaddill uplifted. Long ago, Cashlings were a sensible species, but now they are vain and obnoxious: is that not a result of the Shaddill’s deeds? And Immu said they did it deliberately! They intended to make the entire Cashling race silly and ineffectual; in a spirit of utter selfishness, these harmless-looking beetles have degraded billions of creatures into jokes."

"You think I don’t know that?" Festina replied. "You think I don’t know how humans and everybody else have been screwed around? Hell, Oar, Homo sapiens is a travesty of what it once was; the whole damned Technocracy is lazy, stupid, and corrupt, all thanks to a bunch of fur-balls who didn’t give a fuck how much trouble they caused, so long as it let them avoid a scary decision. That infuriates me, Oar the whole damned thing makes me livid. I want to snap the mandibles off these shitheads and stuff ’em down their rotten little throats. But I’m not in the business of vengeance; as always, I’m just trying to make the best of a crappy situation. So we grit our teeth, forget that the Tahpo have fucked over more sentient creatures than anyone else in history, and just cross our fingers the last two will remove themselves from the playing field. Once they’re gone, once everybody on our side is safe, then we’ll see if we can fix the damage these bastards have caused."

This plan did not please me at all: letting the villains quietly achieve transcendence after all the disruption they had wrought. But I did not have time to devise an alternate strategy because Immu and Esticus were turning our direction. Their faces looked just as ugly as ever… but their mandibles moved less frantically, as if some inner tormenting tension had eased away.

"You were correct," Immu said. "We had both… we had both been foolish on each other’s behalf. All this time…" She made a rasping noise in her throat. "We intend to transform as soon as possible."

"I’m fucking thrilled for you," Festina replied. "Now before you go all jiggly, please release our ships… or even better, tell your computers to obey our instructions and let us take care of—"

"Before any of that," Immu interrupted, "we have to make sure the Blood Honey is effective. It’s been centuries since anyone used it, and some of the ship’s systems are failing from sheer old age. Therefore, we must still try our experiment."

She turned to stare directly at me.

"Uh-oh," Festina said. She turned toward me too. "What?" I asked. "What experiment?"

Then I remembered. "Oh."

The Nature Of Cowardice

"The fountain shouldn’t hurt you," Esticus said, his shovel-tail twitching nervously. "We’ve analyzed the Blood Honey as well as we can. We think it’s still all right; we just aren’t sure."

"But it will turn me into jelly! Purple jelly!"

"If it works," said Immu, "you’ll be a million times more than you are now. Transcendent. With power and intelligence far beyond your wildest dreams."

"But I will be purple jelly! I do not wish to be jelly, regardless of the quality of its dreams."

Immu stepped toward me. It was the first time she had ventured out of direct contact with Esticus. "Weren’t you the one who called us cowards for refusing to change?"

"You were cowards!" I cried. "And you still are — if you cannot muster the courage to act unless I do it first."

"All right," Immu said, taking another step toward me. "So we’re cowards. We’ve thought of ourselves that way for thousands of years — the most cowardly dregs of a race noted for how much it loved to hide. We’re willing to do one last cowardly thing."

She took another step toward me. Festina moved in between us. "You don’t want to do this," she told Immu, ignoring the mandibles that twitched right in front of her face. "If you dump Oar into the fountain and it kills her, the League of Peoples will consider you murderers. You yourself said it was too risky to try with a living person."

"At this point," Immu answered, "I’m willing to take the gamble."

"And it isn’t really a gamble," Esticus said, scurrying up beside his wife. "We’ve done everything possible to check that the honey’s okay. So long as we make our best efforts to ensure Oar’s safety, we won’t be held responsible if something goes wrong." He reached out tentatively to touch my arm. "It’ll transform you into something amazing. Really."

I pulled sharply away from him. "I do not find jelly amazing. I should very much hate turning soft."

"But," said Immu, "it will cure your Tired Brain."

Suddenly, I felt as if everything in the world had gone silent. The fountain continued to burble, the Shaddill swished their mandibles together, Festina breathed softly… yet those sounds all seemed very distant. Very quietly I said, "It will cure my brain?"

"Yes," Immu replied, her translation cloud sliding closer to me. "The honey adjusts cellular activity and

DNA… especially anything related to mental capacity. It vastly expands your intellectual power; and in the process, it will correct the genetic blockages that make your brain Tired."

"That’s right," Esticus put in most eagerly. "We’ve, uhh… you’re not the first of your people who’s gone through this test. Back at the very beginning, when we were certain the Blood Honey was still good, we… we captured one of your men and we… he thanked us afterward, he really did. Before he left to join the Soft Collective. He thanked us, then teleported away by sheer force of will. So there’s nothing to be afraid of, and everything to be gained."

I turned to look at the fountain, still gushing with thick-flowing honey. Out near the edge of the basin, the surface of the pool was calm — like a mirror of clear crimson, barely rippled by the splashing in the middle.

It did not surprise me to see two fiery red eyes glimmering up from the liquid’s glossy surface.

The Pollisand had led me to this room. He had promised to cure me, and guided me straight to the remedy I needed. He had simply neglected to mention the medicine would turn me into purple gloop.

One should never trust alien promises. I ought to have known that by now.

"Perhaps someday," I said, "it will become necessary for me to take this step." I turned to Festina. "If I become such a one as does nothing for weeks on end and refuses to answer no matter how nicely you speak, you have my permission to take drastic action rendering me into a jellylike state. But not yet!" I glared at the two Shaddill. "Do you hear me? I do not wish to bathe in Blood Honey at this time."

"Perhaps not," Immu answered, "but you’re going to anyway."

Her great shovel-tail swept up from the floor. She intended to smack me into the fountain; but Festina was ready for such a tactic. My friend shot her hands forward, striking nasty little Immu hard in the chest with the heels of both palms. Immu staggered back, her aim spoiled; instead of striking me, the tail’s chitin edge swept harmlessly past, barely grazing my jacket sleeve.

Even that tiny graze was enough to slice a gash in the jacket fabric. The tail was strong and fast and sharp… and it was still whipping wildly through the air as Immu tried to regain her balance. Esticus squealed and ducked as the shovel-scoop slashed past him; I tried to catch the tail, but it plunged away from me, spearing into the soil beside my feet. In a split-second, the shovel was snapping up again, jerking clots of dirt loose as it freed itself from the hard-packed earth. I stomped down hard, hoping I could pin the tail under my heel… but it moved too fast, swishing out of range before my foot touched the floor.

For all their foolish appearance, the Shaddill were fast and elusive. Then again, what does one expect from cowards?

Immu may have evaded me, but she was not so lucky with my Faithful Sidekick. Festina stepped right onto the alien’s rabbit-like foot and slammed another double palm-heel into Immu’s chest. With her one foot trapped, Immu could not backpedal to keep her balance; she toppled back heavily, twisting at the last moment so she hit the floor with her shoulder rather than flat on her spine. Festina tried to press her advantage, jumping forward with the obvious intention of delivering a punch or kick… but Immu still had the use of her tail. It swept up fast and hard, not well-aimed but as dangerous as a swinging ax. Festina was forced to dodge out of the sharp shovel’s reach.

"Stop!" Esticus cried. "Stop, stop, stop!"

He was still crouched down, exactly where he had landed after ducking Immu’s tail. His own tail was tucked tight beneath him; he showed no sign of joining the fight. And yet… he had spoken in Shaddill-ese, not English. That was because his translation cloud was gone — it had vanished in the past few seconds, while I was concentrating elsewhere. Had the cloud’s component bits been scattered by Immu’s tail as it swept through the air? Or had the cringing Esticus sent his cloud on some terrible mission?

A look of horror passed over Festina’s face. Suddenly, she began to choke.