A Bug's Life (8 page)

As a shifter, the form was the thing. You
could do whatever your form could, and could not do whatever your
form couldn’t. But the stronger the shifter, the more options you
had in terms of just what your form was going to be.

The strongest beings in the galaxy were the
Troglodytes from Rockenroll, because they were literally beings
made out of stone. In Round Form a Pillar’s shell became like iron,
but only for as long as that form could hold out under the stress
of warp.

However, a cross between a Troglodyte and a
Pillar could, in theory, survive an extended warp. Only there was
no such cross, because those two races did not interbreed with each
other.

Until now.

The beauty of being a shape shifter of my
strength and skill was that I had the ability to become anything I
wanted. The danger was that what I wanted might not be something
that could, in actual fact, survive existence, even for a short
period of time.

I needed my outer shell to be made of
Troglodyte stone, the inner shell to be the iron hardness of the
Round Form, but the rest of my inside portion to be soft and filled
with the fifty little legs of a Pillar, so that I could hold the
Birthing Sac and keep it safe and steady. All of which needed to be
inside both the six Polliskins I had on and my spacesuit. And I
needed to be four times larger than the Pillar actually were and
two times larger than the biggest Troglodyte, in order to be large
enough to surround this Sac.

And I had no idea if this would work, or if I
and the Pillar young with us would die. I only knew that, when
faced with watching the last of their colony and, possibly, the
last Pillar in the galaxy die, I was willing to risk whatever I had
to in order to ensure that didn’t happen.

My willingness to risk wasn’t based on the
Pillar emotionally manipulating me, or on any kind of fatalism. Roy
had actually called it correctly when we were alone – I had no idea
if I would ever have a child of my own.

Normally, I never thought about this. We were
usually too busy trying to stay alive for me to ponder progeny or
my lack thereof. And I wouldn’t have called myself overly maternal
on a normal day.

But this wasn’t a normal day.

While I knew the Pillar had connected in some
way with everyone on the crew by now, I also knew that they’d
connected the most strongly with me. They could have connected to
Tresia or Ciarissa, but they’d chosen me, and I knew they
had.

Not just because I cared and had risked my
life to save them, but because I was the only one who could, at any
time I wanted or they needed, become a Pillar. Become their mother,
both figuratively and literally.

And I could also become something unheard of,
in the hopes of saving them.

The first portion of this experiment worked –
both the space suit and my Polliskin layers altered with me and
didn’t rip or explode off me. So I’d have the protection these
offered, and so would the Pillar.

True, I filled most of the hold, but I was
functioning. I’d never gone into Pillar form before; there had
never been a need. However, we’d visited Rockenroll enough, and
being heavy and strong had its advantages, so I’d assumed
Troglodyte form many times. Plus I had practice looking like one
kind of being on the outside and altering my insides into something
else.

I altered next into the Pillar portion of my
experimental form, while remaining a Troglodyte at the same
time.

Again, I had success. I hadn’t destroyed
myself or turned into something that couldn’t move, function, or
think. The Pillar shell was the hardest, but that was one of the
reasons I’d put on more than one Polliskin – the outermost
Polliskin layer I turned to the iron hardness of the Round Form. My
spacesuit altered to Troglodyte stone. If there were still
competitions for the most amazing shapes managed – as there had
been before the Purge – I’d have been guaranteed to win.

I pointedly didn’t pay attention to anyone’s
expressions, Roy’s in particular. There was no way this look was
going to fulfill anyone’s fantasies. However, I was able to move,
albeit slowly, and to curl around the Birthing Sac securely. The
Sac’s rough edges didn’t bother me – I could feel them, but they
weren’t causing discomfort because my many legs were able to
position the Birthing Sac perfectly to hold it steady and not hurt
myself at the same time. Plus the Polliskins were a great
buffer.

Ciarissa was in my mind – at my request and
Roy’s insistence. I wasn’t sure if I could communicate with anyone
properly in this form, and if things were going wrong, the Pillar
and I would have only seconds.

“I am here, DeeDee,”
she said soothingly.
“I
am connected to you and the children as well.”

“Are you too tired?”

“Not for this.”

I could feel straps being put on and around me
– to keep me stationary during flight and most importantly during
warp.

“It’s almost time,”
Ciarissa said.
“Do you
need one of us to stay in the hold with you?”

“Absolutely not. But please ask
Bullfrog to stay close.”
If I was in
danger, he’d get to me fastest and was the strongest and so the
most likely to be able to help open me up. So to speak.

“He is indeed staying near. But
all will be well, DeeDee. Fren is also monitoring and will use his
powers as necessary.”

The entire crew was going to be drained if
this succeeded. And if it did succeed, we’d need to hope we could
get to someplace calm where we could recuperate. But first we had
to make it.

I could tell when we made the jump
to warp because I could feel the extra pressure pushing against my
outer shells. But it didn’t bother me any more than warp normally
did. And, for once, I couldn’t really see the suffocating blackness
that accompanied warp, because in Round Form my face was tucked
down and inside the outer shell. As a matter of fact, my face was
resting against the Birthing Sac.

So when the children began to sing, I heard it
clearly.

Pillar music was their gift to the
galaxy, but this was different. It wasn’t just music or sound, it
was feeling and thoughts and history. All the history of the Pillar
race. All of their race, each and every one of them who had ever
existed since the first Pillar became sentient.

Everything every Pillar had ever seen or
experienced was in this song, and it was being passed to me.
Because the children knew the risk we were taking and, if they
died, they wanted someone to remember them and to sing their song.
Someone they loved.

As the song washed over me and burrowed into
my mind, I realized I could only hear it as I was in this form and
in this way. But all the Pillar’s music, every song any of us had
ever heard, was simply a section of this one song. The Song of
Life.

The Song was beautiful and, in some ways,
terrible, all-encompassing and overwhelming, and yet also sublime
and wonderful. The Pillar lived short individual lives, but the
lifespan of their race was long, and as long as the Song existed,
the Pillar existed as well. So long as the Song was sung, the
Pillar lived. When the Song stopped, so would their
race.

And now I knew the Song, and Ciarissa probably
did as well. Two of us out of the billions of beings in the galaxy.
But two was better than none. Two could share the Song with
others.

But I didn’t want us to be the last ones to
know the Song. I wanted the children who were singing the Song to
me to continue on. To have their own children who would learn the
Song and carry it on down throughout the generations. Because they
loved me and I now loved them – for trusting me, for sharing their
Song with me, for needing me in a way no one else ever had
before.

They knew this, and that was why they shared
the Song with me. Because I wanted for them what any mother would –
for them to live and prosper and go on forever.

The pressure on my outermost shell was more
intense for a moment, and then it stopped. I felt the straps being
loosened.

“We are in orbit around
Rockenroll, DeeDee,”
Ciarissa said in my
mind.
“Kyle’s idea worked. Bullfrog is
with you. Willy has friends on the planet who he thinks will be
able to effectively hide, protect, and raise the Pillar
children…and ensure their song continues.”

I moved slowly, to be certain that I didn’t
jostle the Birthing Sac. Once the Sac was safely away from me, I
shifted back to my regular form.

Bullfrog coughed. “Uh, DeeDee?”

“Yes?” My voice sounded funny. Higher pitched
and more musical.

“You’re, ah, not really back. To you, I
mean.”

I looked down. Among other things, I still had
fifty limbs. “Oh. Uh…whoops.”

“I could be wrong, but I don’t think this is
the look Roy’s hoping you use for every day.”

“You think not? Really?” As I shifted back to
me, to DeeDee Daniels from Seraphina, not from Pilla, I could hear
the children in my head. They were laughing and adding to the Song
– so that future generations would know that there were some beings
out there who would indeed love them, no matter what form they were
in.

The Song of Life bound me to them. I now knew
the Song, knew how to sing it. I would sing it, over and over
again, aloud and to myself. And I knew one other thing – the
Pillar’s telepathy wasn’t why the Diamante Families wanted them
destroyed.

What the Diamante Families feared was the
Song. Because somewhere in the Song was the key to defeating them.
And if I sang the Song long enough, I’d figure out what that
was.

About the Author

Gini Koch writes the fast, fresh and
funny Alien/Katherine "Kitty" Katt series for DAW Books, the
Necropolis Enforcement Files series, and the Martian Alliance
Chronicles series. Touched by an Alien, Book 1 in the Alien series,
was named by Booklist as one of the Top Ten Adult SF/F novels of
2010. Alien in the House, Book 7 in her long-running Alien series,
won the RT Book Reviews Reviewer's Choice Award as the Best
Futuristic Romance of 2013.

As G.J. Koch she writes the Alexander
Outland series and she's made the most of multiple personality
disorder by writing under a variety of other pen names as well,
including Anita Ensal, Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, and J.C.
Koch.

Gini also has stories featured in a
variety of anthologies, including the Unidentified Funny Objects 3,
Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens, Two Hundred and
Twenty-One Baker Streets, and The X-Files: Trust No One
anthologies; writing as Anita Ensal, in The Book of Exodi, Love and
Rockets, and Boondocks Fantasy anthologies; and, writing as J.C.
Koch, in Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, The Madness of Cthulhu,
Vol. 1, and A Darke Phantastique anthologies, and, coming in
2015/2016, The Mammoth Book of Kaiju and MECH: Age of Steel
anthologies. Gini will also be featured in the Temporally Out of
Order, Unidentified Funny Objects 4, Out of Tune 2, WERE-, and
Alien Artifacts anthologies, all coming in 2015/2016. She will also
have a novella, A Study in Starlets, the next adventure in her
Sherlock Holmes universe, coming in summer 2015.