This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions #12
Prisoner \!X!/ wasn’t sure where he’d landed, but he knew anywhere was better than the transport ship. He flinched as his tentacles rolled him over a mass of pointed brown ovals—the trees here called themselves pines when he reached out his energy to theirs, but that didn’t tell him much. They weren’t as talkative as the trees on his home planet. All these did was whisper their names to themselves over and over again—pines pines pines—in a way that was rather annoying, like a breeze that whistled the same note through his mind, no matter how hard he tried to block them out. These trees didn’t respect mental boundaries the way his home ones did, either. He glared at them with his eye before turning his attention to the careful path between the terrible ovals that littered the forest floor.
He eased his way over the sharp things, wincing as the points bit into his soft underside in a way that he knew would leave little red dots of fluid later. If his sometimes-mate saw them, she’d turn him inside out just to watch him squirm to put his insides back in before they shriveled up. Normally the thought of her jealous overreactions made him angry, but now he just felt an ache in his mid-section, where his hearts were. If I ever even see her again.
But he couldn’t think about that, not while trying to figure out what planet he’d landed on. None of the terrain looked familiar, and he couldn’t remember learning about any pines trees in the 2,000 planets he’d learned as a wee blob.
He wondered how long till his captors noticed his escape. Doesn’t matter, he thought. Maybe it’ll give them enough time to figure out they’ve got the wrong silopodean. Not that they were probably even looking for any other. They already thought he was the one involved in the illegal crater operation uncovered on TX-12.
He snorted to himself. Not just involved, he reminded himself. The ring leader! The one manning a fifty-creature ring that spanned seven planets! As if I even saw fifty creatures regularly on my own planet.
The layer of pointy brown ovals, which he guessed came from the pines around him somehow, gave way to a soft bed of green needles. It felt much nicer on his underside and was thick enough to provide a considerable cushion on the tender flesh. He purred in satisfaction, allowing himself to stop thinking about the reason he’d been on that transport ship in the first place.
His eye gazed around him, taking in the trees covered with their slender, green needles, and the sameness of the forest around him. There didn’t seem to be any clear path through the trunks, so he sucked his eye into the center of himself, then popped it out the other side. The same scenery stretched out before him that way, too.
With a sigh, he returned his eye back to position.
He carefully picked his way forward, choosing random trees to move towards, then picking another random tree after he made it to his goal. After a while, the trek became tedious, so he made it into a game, first counting each tree using the Universal Alphabet, then with his home planet numbering system, and finally down to the basic, rudimentary counting system he’d learned when he was first hatched. On that system, he made it to iteration thirty-seven when the annoying, whispering pines pines pines ended. His eye widened as he took in the expanse of rolling pasture before him. It was so orderly, all the bright greenness stretching for at least 0.38 of a Quadrant! Even in the fading light, which he supposed indicated the approach of this planet’s sunless period, the color was shockingly bright.
He popped his eye back through to the other side, confirming that the whispering forest was behind him for good, then gave a disdainful squirt from his ink pouch. Let the pines pines pines take that for the message it was meant to be.
As his tentacles rolled over the plushness of the green covering, which responded in the same simplistic way the trees had when he touched its energy—thousands of small voices whispering timothy–, he purred. Whatever this planet was, it had some delightful areas for recreation. Though he knew he needed to find shelter quickly, he took a moment to let his tentacles spread out, like a pool of liquid, over the top of the greenery. As if he were melting, his bulk slowly lowered as the tentacles coagulated into the same translucent mass and oozed him lower to the ground. The individual blades of green were like a tickling caress that made him purr louder.
When he felt himself absorbing some of the ground’s energy, he reluctantly reformed himself. He sent an appropriately polite apology to the greenery, noting that he hadn’t eaten in weeks, and that he appreciated their hospitality. But they only responded with weaker, faded voices of timothy timothy, so he moved on.
Cresting the next hill, he was surprised to find life forces, ovular white creatures with spindly legs like sticks that appeared to be eating the massaging greenery. He stopped, ready to defend himself, but none of them moved toward him. They appeared to be too immersed in their meals.
A short distance away, one let out a bleat, which a few others returned, and then it was quiet again. What odd creatures, he wondered. When he tentatively reached his energy towards theirs, in greeting, he was surprised to find that their minds transmitted not words, but emotions. In a wave, their thoughts rolled over him, flooding him in sensation. Hunger, smells, the taste of dirt, the tickle of grass around their legs, hunger, curiosityfear.
He moved his eye to his right side to see one of the creatures staring at him, projecting the curiosityfear. It took two bites, then stopped and projected fear? at him. He blinked at it warily, unsure what its response might be if it decided the answer was yes. On a hunch, he responded with intensehunger and it blinked, then dropped its head to eat.
He blinked, pleased enough to send a light pink blush throughout his mass. A tingling began in his top section, where his stomach was, and he realized that the greenery he’d absorbed had awakened his own hunger.
With a brief flash of apology, his tentacle whipped through the air, wrapping around the midsection of the creature, and then jerking it into himself before it even had a chance to bleat. Encased in the gelatinous mass of him, the creature struggled and kicked for several minutes before his digesting acids broke it down, dissolving the bones, flesh, and organs into a delicious simple syrup. The animal’s casing was a different matter, however, and when it didn’t break down after several moments, he expelled it.
He left the mucous-covered mass of white fluff in a sodden heap on the ground, then moved down the hill. At the base of it, he encountered a fence with an oddly asymmetrical arrangement of posts and rails, but it was the large structure on the other side of the fence that he was interested in. It was nothing for him to unform enough to ooze through the slats to the other side and then reform.
There was no entrance point that he noticed, so he eased his way around the front. There he saw a break in the structure, a door-like area, cracked just enough for him to see a light source within. I’m just going to tell them the truth, he thought. Explain that the whole thing was a mistake. Hopefully they’re a well-meaning species that won’t take my intrusion into their territory as too invasive.
He eased his way between the doors, stretching out his energy to touch the building’s in greeting. But nothing answered him back. It was like the wood was dead, entirely non-sentient. A slight quiver eased its way along his tentacles. Nothing was right here.
His eye flicked nervously around the interior of the building. How odd to see a building with so many right angles. Beams of dead wood stretched from one end of the ceiling to the other. A row of four empty slots sat to his right, looking like half-formed boxes with a door hinged on the front of each. Overhead, a light source cast a half-hearted glow over the area, casting shadows that arced in harsh lines over the floor. The area had a musty smell to it that wasn’t quite unpleasant, but the metallic contraption in the corner reeked of oil and something else, something more acrid that burned the short sensory hairs along the outside of him.
A crunch outside caught his attention, followed by several more in a rhythmic pattern that told him something was moving his way. And quickly.
In a panic, his eye sprouted from one side of his body to the other in search of a place to hide, but the movement sounds were close enough that he knew he wouldn’t be able to get to any of the corners fast enough. His decision to explain his situation suddenly seemed absurd—how could he, a silopodean on the run, expect another entity to understand his innocence when he stood in the middle of their structure, having entered without permission?
But if he could give himself some time to observe them, perhaps? Surely then he might find the best way to approach them? The doors began to grind their way open with a squeal as an idea occurred to him.
#
It wasn’t fair. Of course, Dad didn’t understand how hard science was for him, not when his Dad had been the Almighty Winner of Everything Science Fair. Thomas had heard about it enough last year, when his Dad teased him about his simple tri-fold poster on the growth cycle of local poisonous plants.
“How well do you think a botanist’s going to fare on a sheep farm, son?” his Dad had asked. He’d done it with a smile on his face, but it was obvious from his tone that he wasn’t entirely joking. What his grandmother would call half-joking, all-serious.
But Thomas had expected something along those lines, so he knew that if he could bore his Dad with the details, his father would leave him alone long enough to return to the baseball game on TV.
“It’s important to know what plants we have around here that could kill the livestock, right Dad? Like the way the grove of acorn trees in South Pasture could be lethal if they got over that far. Or if one got out and ate Mom’s oleander?”
But his Dad just snorted and waved his questions away with one hand. “Sure maybe, but even sheep are smart enough not to eat things that are poisonous to ‘em. They know to avoid it instinctually.”
Thomas didn’t buy it, considering he heard his Dad complain on a near-daily basis that sheep were about as smart as shite. It was never shit, always shite, as if that made it any less of a bad word. Though he was only eight, he knew it was close enough to get soap squirted in his mouth if his Mom heard him say it–the liquid kind, too, so it wouldn’t matter if he clenched his jaw shut.
But he nodded and looked away like he agreed. He’d waited until the day before it was due on purpose, so his Dad couldn’t make him do it on something else. His Dad always suggested doing his Science Fair project on something like the reproductive cycle of sheep or on an analysis of the wool sheared, things his Dad had a deep knowledge of and could “help” with.
Thomas, however, didn’t care about the husbandry aspect of the sheep. Which was why this year he’d chosen botfly lifecycles, a bug that plagued the sheep and his Paint gelding every summer. But then his Dad found out a whole week before the Science Fair, by stumbling on the tri-fold poster in his closet, and had decided there was enough time for Thomas to do something different.
“Botflies are boring. Besides, wouldn’t you rather help me test the sperm count of the breeding rams on the farm?” Something his Dad had been meaning to do for a week. “Or maybe mapping the basic genetics to determine why some sheep have yellow eyes and some have darker ones?”
Then his Dad had launched into some excited chatter about homozygous and alleles, and Thomas had had enough. Without realizing how, he’d become furious. Not just angry, not “look away and wait until Dad loses steam” kind of frustrated, but so mad he wanted to scream.
So, he had. “Dad, nobody cares about sheep sperm! Why can’t you just leave me alone to do my project by myself?” He spit the words into his Dad’s face, meaning only to express exasperation, but realizing, from the look on his Dad’s face, that it had come out much angrier, much more hurtful. He watched the disbelief, then the hurt, and finally the sullen anger slide across his Dad’s face, and had known he’d be grounded. Amid all the yelling, the verdict had been hollered: two weeks. For being disrespectful.
He’d waited until his Dad left his room, then stared at the botfly poster until the circular lifecycle graph had begun to blur. Then he ran, not really knowing where he was headed, but knowing he didn’t want to see that stupid chart anymore, then one that got him grounded for two weeks and probably (eventually) forced to count sheep sperm or match genetic possibilities anyway.
His feet carried him to the barn, where he’d expected his gelding, Archer, to be waiting in one of the double stalls. But Archer didn’t whicker a greeting at him when he pulled the doors apart, so he guessed his Mom had turned him out instead. Once inside, he turned and raised his middle finger at the house, unused to the gesture, but trying it on for size. There was a savage thrill in it, in holding his hand high with the middle finger pointing straight to the sky like a skyscraper on a city’s horizon. But it also made him feel exposed, so he didn’t hold it for long.
He stood in the middle of the floor, not wanting to be in the empty barn as dusk faded into evening—he though the dust-covered light made creepy shadows along the barn walls—but not wanting to be in the house with his parents either. The thought of the lecture waiting for him from his Mom was enough to keep him in the barn a bit longer still, though the shadows seemed to stretch out like arms around each side of him.
A shuffling sound from one of the stalls made him cry out. He whirled toward the noise, feeling his stomach flop as adrenaline flooded his system. The sound had been too big for a mouse. But with the shadows, he couldn’t tell which one it had come from.
When the sound didn’t come again, he realized it was probably just one of the barn cats on the prowl. Still, he couldn’t make his legs relax from their tense, run-ready positions until he knew for sure.
“Moose?” he called in a voice barely louder than a whisper. Then, louder, “Moose kitty?” He tried to mimic the yodeling call his Mom perfected at the cats’ meal call. “Moose kitty kitty kitty?”
One of the stall doors, the middle one, eased gently open, and a sheep popped its head around the corner.
Thomas let a shaky laugh. A sheep. One of the sheep gets out, wanders into the barn for a late-night snack, and you almost pee yourself. He didn’t realize that the voice in his head sounded strangely like his Dad’s, but the sternness of it made his laughter fade.
“What’re you doing in here, buddy?” He moved slowly toward the sheep, speaking in the soft, slow voice they liked. To his surprise, it didn’t dart anxiously back into the stall, bleating its head off like they usually did. Instead, it watched him approach with bland yellow eyes.
When he got close enough to open the door, it didn’t move. Even as he cautiously stretched his hand out to caress the wiry texture of its wool, it stayed put, allowing his hand to slide over the back of the head and down one long ear.
“Wow, no fear, huh, my fine sheep friend?” he murmured. None of them had ever let him pet them, and there were so many sheep in his Dad’s flock that he’d long since given up on trying to tame one enough to be a pet. “Let’s get you back out with the rest of your buddies, how about?”
He leaned over and tapped the sheep’s rump, which was usually enough to make them bolt forward. His plan was to herd the sheep out of the barn and into the chute so he could let it back out in the pasture.
But when the sheep moved forward—calmly, as if it had all the time in the world but would move as a favor to Thomas because he asked it politely—Thomas saw it limping on its right fore. He moved to the sheep’s leg, so focused on checking it for injury that he didn’t register the way the sheep stopped to let him approach, without any of the usual fear or scared bleating sheep usually did.
But when he examined the leg and the hoof, Thomas couldn’t find anything wrong. “That’s weird,” he murmured. “What’s up with your foot, boy?”
He realized the sheep must’ve been left up because his Dad or one of the daytime hands had noticed something off with it. He also realized that if he let out a sheep Dad had kept penned for a reason, he’d earn more than a grounding for the effort Dad would have to take to get the creature back in.
Thomas darted to the doors, closed them, and then pushed the sheep away from the door. It moved clumsily, as if unsure what he wanted it to do, but Thomas finally got it moving back toward the stall.
“Wait a minute.” As the sheep ambled back into the stall, Thomas saw that the limp was different. “Weren’t you lame on your right fore, buddy?” It had been favoring one leg when he’d ushered it out of the stall, but now going back in, he saw the sheep favored the other.
He tried to think of any diseases that might make sheep have alternating lame legs, but couldn’t come up with any. Feeling a little discomforted, he closed the door, making sure to properly lock it this time, as the last person in apparently hadn’t done, and then moved towards the door.
“See ya tomorrow, buddy.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Probably with gloves on, if my Dad has his way about it.” Then he left. Better to find his Mom before she found him.
#
Prisoner \!X!/ stayed for a long time in the same spot the boy had left him in. He fought to quell the wave of panic that made every cell in his body quiver. A human! That was a human. And not just any human, but a child human! One of the old races, though, admittedly, the boy hadn’t looked very old. But this was bad. This was very, very bad. Of all the places he could have escaped his transport ship to, it had to be Earth. Though he was innocent of the crime he’d been convicted of, now he truly had committed a crime, just by being here.
His concentration shifted and he unformed, flowing into a puddle of goo like water poured from a bucket. Of all the places to land, I had to land on a protected intergalactic preserve. One of the twelve places in the entire federation of galactic systems not to go. Not to even get in the same solar system as. And I landed on one.
The penalty for illegal cratering was nothing compared to the penalty for breaking federated galactic law. Earth, the planet that housed the primitive species homo sapiens, had been sectioned off as a preserve to allow the endangered human population to flourish. It had been heca-years since the last contact with humans, and all space quadrants had agreed to let the planet be, to refrain from attempting to contact or engage the human species until they’d had a few hundred million Earth-years to evolve into something worth contacting.
And he’d just made first contact with the rarest of all the human kinds, a young boy.
If this didn’t get him exiled to the Beta Colony Kudriss, to fight for survival among the moon snakes and the xenucks, then the best he could hope for was death, once they found him.
Maybe it’ll take them a millennium or so to get the permissions needed to even come get me, he thought. If it was illegal for him to be here, it was illegal for them to be here, too. But he’d have to figure out how to go undiscovered that whole time.
What had the boy called him? Sheep. He’d been lucky to have grabbed one to snack on earlier, otherwise, he wouldn’t have known the energy trace to mimic in his transformed state. But, like all silopodeans, he was very good at transformation. Down to the last milkpod snagged in the wool, he knew he looked exactly like the other sheep creatures he’d met on the hill. Or, at least, the one he’d digested.
Besides, humans weren’t the brightest of species, as all the history books told. He was willing to bet they couldn’t tell all the sheep apart either. In fact, he was willing to risk his life on it.