Interstellar Pig (12 page)

I’d sso been looking forward to thiss intime little tete-a-tete with you, Barney. But now it appears we are not alone, after all," said Moyna, in a mocking, sibilant whisper. "There sseemss to be a very talkative third party, quite closse by."

She had been hiding, listening. She had heard me exclaiming aloud about the silent thoughts from The Piggy, meant only for me. The secret thoughts that were one of my few advantages. How much had Moyna discovered from what I had given away? I grabbed the whip and the flashlight.

'"Sso you are The Piggy, and you are on my sside,'" Moyna mimicked me, lisping. "But not on your sside for very long, I'm afraid, Barney dear." She emphasized each word with a puff of her fetid, gaseous breath.

I made the mistake of switching on the flashlight. She floated a yard from my face Zulma I had perceived only in darkness. Jrlb had looked like a fish, and how ugly can a fish be? But Moyna was another story. Manny's card hadn't done her justice. Her huge soft head was slimy with mucouslike membrane. Thick veins branched across it. She spasmed and pulsed like an exposed internal organ.

The long threads that undulated around her tentacles made me think of earthworms. The tentacles themselves were pliant but muscular, their undersides stippled with suction cups secreting a yellow gluey substance. The eyes above the tentacles bulged out and then retracted, and bulged again. "How about a little kiss, Barney?" she said, through the trembling, protruding mouth that made me think of a rubber balloon nozzle. And then the mouth puckered and she laughed, and the bulbous eyes swiveled alarmingly in their sockets.

But I was quick enough to see a tentacle move. I lifted the whip. Moyna sailed out of reach.

"A pretty toy, but I have my toyss too," Moyna informed me, wrapping a tentacle around a large empty cola bottle beside the sink. "And I need not hessitate in the sslightesst to make full usse of them. I do not have to be careful of you, like the otherss did. You have become disspenssable now."

"You'll never find The Piggy if you kill me," I said, hoping I was right.

"The truth-telling Piggy, you mean," Moyna said, with a gleeful burst of expelling gas. "The factual Piggy. Sso terribly honesst. Issn't that right, Barney, my friend? Cute, sstupid little Barney." With vicious strength she smashed the end of the bottle and brandished it like a club.

The gesture reminded me of the way Manny had brandished the rubber spatula, way back in their kitchen. But this Moyna bore no mental relationship to Manny at all. There had been a streak of kindness in Manny, a naivete that had put him always on the verge of giving things away. This creature was even nastier, if possible, than the other two. And did she really know as much as she seemed?

"You're just putting on an act. You're not really like this," I said, trying to distract her. "You were Manny, and Manny was the nice one. Manny liked me. He wasn't like the other two. He didn't want to hurt me."

"Manny wass a better actor than the other two, that'ss all," Moyna said, taking aim with the jagged bottle. I ducked out of the way as it whizzed past my head. The force of the throw was so great that the bottle smashed against the wall behind me.

"And ssmarter, too, desspite what they may have thought," Moyna continued. The throw had flattened her somewhat against the window behind her, but now she floated forward again. "Ssmart enough to keep a transslator." (That explained why I could understand her.) "Clever enough to bide her time, to wait, to lissten, to learn."

"There's nothing to learn," I insisted, hoping my voice was steady. "You're bluffing."

"I ssusspect that The Piggy will tell the truth, to the one who possessess it.

You ssaid ass much. When you die, I will possess it. Then it will tell me anything I want to know. Ssuch ass where you hid it. Ass I ssaid before, Barney, you are disspenssable now."

"No, it's not like that," I insisted. But it was too late. I had divulged enough of what The Piggy was like to give Moyna a picture of its personality. She really believed that with me out of the way, it would tell her where I had hidden it.

Moyna was still moving toward me. I lifted the whip, sending her back across the room, toward the stove. Just in time I dodged a cast iron frying pan that she had pulled from one of the burners.

My only hope was to stay alive long enough to get more information out of The Piggy—information about what really happened at the end of the game, and how much time was left, and what The Piggy really was. Knowledge like that might save me, if I could get it.

A bread knife hummed past my ear, and stuck, quivering, in the wall.

The problem was, The Piggy wasn't especially terse. It didn't answer things directly. And I was not in the best situation for contemplating choice of words, or brilliant repartee.

"Thiss iss getting too tiressome for wordss!" Moyna shrilled. A tentacle reached up behind her to pull something—a weapon?—from the breathing bag fastened to her head.

I stumbled from the kitchen, my hands outstretched and groping. There was a faint rhythmic flickering on my wrist. The disguise selector! I had forgotten it.

I had only a couple of seconds before Moyna would find me and zap me. I crouched down beside the fireplace. The lichen on the hearth still hadn't learned enough to get away from me. Listening for Moyna, I pressed the SELECT button. Species flowed across the screen. Where was the one I wanted?

Moyna swept into the room, fizzling furiously. I didn't have time to see what her gun looked like. The species I wanted appeared on the screen. I lifted my finger and pressed ACTIVATE.

The bolt from her weapon zipped past the space where my head had been, continuing on to melt one of the andirons in the fireplace. I had found my disguise just in time. Moyna squealed her frustration like a demented steam calliope. But for the moment I was safe from her. I had become a lichen.

Being a lichen didn't feel at all as I would have imagined it—though, admittedly, I had never spent much time contemplating the idea.

Because it was a disguise, I did retain some of my human senses. Part of me could "see" the room, and Moyna, and the disguise selector on my wrist, and even my disguised self, like a pink soggy cornflake on the floor.

But another part of me was experiencing what it felt like to be a lichen. Not an Earth lichen, which might have been dull: a sapient, carnivorous lichen.

And a special one at that, a member of an adventurous colony that was risking its life on a strange planet.

What I felt first of all was hunger. No wonder the little things were so greedy! This was like no hunger I had ever known. It was as wrenchingly persistent as the impulse to take one's next breath.

It was fortunate for Mom and Dad that the living room rug was an imitation Oriental of virgin acrylic. A real wool one wouldn't have lasted five minutes.

It was also a good thing that the lichen were indifferent to linoleum, which prevented us from devouring the floors themselves.

Still, those of us in the living room weren't starving. The discomforting claim made by biologists that people live among dense swarms of invisible microorganisms—no matter how "hygienic" people imagine themselves to be— turned out to be true. There were tasty bugs everywhere, small, but in such vast numbers that we could stay alive. It was like subsisting on endless trays of hors d'oeuvres.

We lusted after the large, slimy and succulent Moyna, out of our reach for the time being. But not permanently out of reach. Only something tenuous and artificial kept her aloft. Under natural conditions she would be down here with us. And nature could often be relied upon. The main course might be coming yet.

We had followed Moyna and Zulma and Jrlb to this planet, and to this house. We wanted The Piggy too. And we had been able to recognize the creature who lived here, and who therefore must have The Piggy, by its similarity to the local organisms. We knew that eating little bits of it would quickly persuade it to give The Piggy to us— though it wouldn't have saved the creature from being rapidly devoured once we had the prize.

But now the unexpected disappointment was reaching those of us by the hearth.

The creature that possessed The Piggy was poisonous. The companions who had made the first attempts at persuasion had died—as had many others upon whom the creature had inflicted itself, before the news of its nature had become widely known.

Since the individual lichen cells did not have a lot in the way of personality, losing a few dozen cells did not have the tragic impact it would have in a human population. We were not sentimental creatures; whatever "emotions" we had were limited to food. Still, companions dying was a negative experience, because it weakened us,

And now the ripples of frustration and indecision increased. The creature with The Piggy had vanished. Furthermore, we were trapped in this dwelling, by the poison it had left at the exits. There wasn't much we could do, except continue to eat. Those units directly underneath Moyna began to speculate on how it might be possible to bring her down. More sustenance would give us strength.

The Barney part of me, meanwhile, was thinking hard. I wondered at first why my touch did not wither the lichen immediately adjacent to me. It must be that, being a lichen, I could not be poisonous to myself, or to the others, while in disguise. That was fortunate, because it kept me an invisible member of the multitude. A single isolated lichen, with a wide swath around it, would have been an easy target for Moyna.

Continuing to eat and passing on little snippets of information were automatic functions. I seemed to be able to carry them on, while at the same time keeping my real thoughts—as Barney—to myself. The time had come for my dialogue with The Piggy. And even in disguise, I didn't have a lot of time. At any moment Moyna might get smart—or bored and impatient—and begin burning up random patches of lichen with her gun.

Piggy.' I thought. Can you hear me?

Describe physiological—There was an abrupt pause. Then The Piggy whirred, Something has aJ-tered. Describe physiological alteration.

I'm a lichen, hiding from Moyna. But I don't have much time. The truth, Piggy.' What really happens at the—

You're a lichen? That's marvelous! The Piggy's voice rose slightly in pitch, like a record played just a bit too fast. A lichen? Oh, I envy you, enjoying such a fantastic experience. What is it like? Describe it in all possible detail.'

It's not enviable at all, I explained, trying to keep my patience. All they care about is eating and killing. Please, there isn't much time. What are you? What happens at the end of the game?

But I have never known the lichen experience. It is a mystery to me. Describe, describe, The Piggy begged me. Describe each sensation of it in precise physiological detail!

Moyna screeched again. There was a flash, and the other andiron melted. The lichen would go next.

All right, all right, I'll describe it! I frantically promised. But first, you tell me what you are, and what happens at the end of the game!

There was another brief pause. Can you communicate with the lichen? The Piggy asked me, in its original, not speeded up, voice.

Yes, yes, I'll tell you all about it. Just tell me what you are, and why all the creatures want you. Hurry!

But it is I... I who want them.

What?

Yes. It is I who want them. That is the function of what you call the game. Without it, I might be relegated for aeons to the depths of the interstellar void. The idea seemed to terrify it.

So the game is to make creatures want you. . . . The revelation that the game was deceptive was not a complete surprise. I had already noticed a flaw in the board game when it was translated into reality: If all the losers were destroyed, the game would end after one round. But why is the game necessary in order to make creatures want you? I asked. What's so bad about you, that they would throw you away in outer space?

I have the hiccups.

For that, I was not prepared. But I don't get it. So what if you have the hiccups? They're harmless.

Harmless indeed, to myself, The Piggy mechanically uttered. An involuntary spasm, over which I have no control. Unfortunately, its effect in this universe is equivalent to a 100 megaton nuclear explosion.

It was a good thing lichen weren't emotional. I was able to remain somewhat rational as this piece of information sank in. But the shock of it forced me to break my electrical contact with the adjacent lichen. It took all my concentration to absorb it fully, to take the statement to its logical conclusion.

That means . . . the game is backwards? I asked, after a pause. Everybody thinks The Piggy means safety, but what really happens is, the player who has The Piggy is destroyed at the end? Not the others?

An unfortunate deception. But circumstances gave me no other choice. Who would want me if they knew?

The adjacent lichen were beginning to notice something was wrong, bombarding me with impulses that were increasingly difficult to ignore. There was also Moyna, who would soon be taking aim at the hearth. Only my phlegmatic lichen personality kept me cool enough to inquire, And when is your next hiccup going to happen?

By my standards, instantly. By yours . . . approximately thirty-three minutes.