"Ew, Erin."
"Well, they do. I guess they only like to eat. They"re just like you, Heather."
"Oh, Erin, you are so funny. All they do is eat and sleep. It"s boring. I want to go home."
"But we have to find our real mommies," said Tommy.
"But how?" asked Heather. "n.o.body wants to help us. We don"t know how to look for them.
We don"t know what they smell like, even."
"I guess," Tommy sat, ears drooping over his nose, making small snuffle noises.
Erin rumbled, low, in frustration. "How come they didn"t come for us?"
"Maybe they don"t know where we are," said Tommy.
"How come they sent us away in the first place?" Heather said.
"I want to go home," said Erin.
The humidity eased off; the air on Tommy"s back warmed. The strange Froggie creatures returned, one by one, to their round earth-holes. Hopping around to investigate, Tommy realized that each of the holes had trees deeply overhanging, providing protection from the sun all day long. Remembering the intense pain of his first sunburn, he approved their planning.
Erin came up behind him. "I wonder why they go in there, during the day."
"There"s nice trees overhead-I bet it"s cool and comfy."
"I"m going to find out." She hopped over to the rim. Uh-oh.
"Erin, I don"t think they like us." But she was already over the edge, snuggling down among the adults. "Do they mind?"
"Don"t think so. Hey, it"s really neat down here, all slippery-smooth, legs and tummies rubbing everywhere. Feels like . . . like something, I can"t remember. But it"s nice, come try."
Tommy poked a doubtful ear over the edge, considering. Wumpf! Something solid struck his back and he fell in, landing right on top of Erin.
"Hey, watch it!"
"It"s not my fault-somebody pushed me. I bet they"re coming down, better move over." They squeezed in among the others, twining tails and arms through the gaps, settling their backs against the smooth dirt floor. "Erin, feel, the ground is so nice and even."
"Yeah, it"s just right. But getting crowded, my feet are squashed. Scoot over."
A strange m.u.f.fled cry reached his ears. "What was that?"
"Sounded like Heather, I think."
"Heather! Heather, where are you?" No answer.
Tommy got worried. "I better go find out where she is." He tried to untangle himself, but couldn"t get free. Every time he almost got his arms out, a new adult would come in and snuggle up with him. So many of them, each pressing into him, not letting him loose. "Erin, help, I can"t get out."
Her voice was languid, " "S"okay, Tommy, just go to sleep." He struggled harder, but felt his limbs getting heavier. He couldn"t seem to get a full breath. The more he pulled upward, the more some other would push down on him. His thrashing slowed, stopped. He drifted into uneasy oblivion.
This time the dreams almost made sense.Patterns of swirling smells-sun on dirt, ripe peppers, wet leaves, ice melting in spring, burning lichen, fresh blood, rotten green-fruit-each came and went in almost repet.i.tious sequences. Sounds, really low, below what Mommy could hear, ran as a constant undercurrent. But not quite. Just when Tommy thought he had it figured out-the pollen smell always came after ice, and the sound shifted from an even thrum to a slightly higher pulse- the next time around it was different. They went on forever (small flier dung in snow, ripe ice-fruit, pollen, burning leaves) evoking days of playing in the snow with Mommy, of hunting for new fruits with Heather and Daddy, collecting flowers in spring, jumping in leaf piles with Erin in the fall.
Late-afternoon sun filtered through the overhanging leaves. The adults began crawling out of the nesting hole in a messy confusion of limbs. Flailing, he got his toe in someone"s ear, and received a swat on the leg. On the next try, he connected with dirt. Keeping all his hands and feet close together, he made his way up the wall without stepping on anybody else. Safely out, he scooted away toward Erin.
"Erin, hey, Erin, what did you dream about?"
"Sad smells, smells from Mommy and the aunties and Uncle Dave."
"But right before we went to sleep, I thought I heard Heather," said Tommy.
"Heather, Heather," they called.
From far away, near the lake, they heard intense scuffling. Tommy bounded toward the noise. "Heather, is that you? What happened?"
Heather was alone by the lake, cleaning her arms fastidiously. "At first they were just ignoring me, like they were all day. Then when it started getting hot they headed into their nest-holes. I couldn"t find you guys. One of them grabbed me and pushed me into a hole and I tried to get out, but more and more of them jumped in, they were all on top of each other and on top of me, and I couldn"t move, I could hardly breathe. Then they were sleeping, and I slept, too. When we all woke up it was hard getting out of that nasty hole."
"Oh, it wasn"t so bad," said Erin.
"I poked somebody in the ear," offered Tommy.
"But did you have the funny smell-dreams, Heather?"
"I guess, there were smells, yes, I remembered snow, and that time we found the dead hrroat. . ."
"Yeah, I got that one, the smell of blood." Erin hopped a bit with excitement. "Tommy, do you really think they talk in the dreams?"
"Maybe. Maybe they only talk in dreams. Maybe that"s why they ignore us when we"re all awake."
"Maybe it"s bad manners to talk when we"re awake."
"So if we wait until we sleep again-"
"We could try to talk, too," Erin said.
Heather snorted. "You guys want to go back into those holes, try to dream-talk to the weird Froggie people?"
Tommy rippled the skin along his spine, considering. "Maybe ... If we can get them to talk to us, they"ll help us find our real mommies."
"Yes!" said Erin. "I think we should stay more, find out what the dreams are all about."The communicator shrilled.
"Jo-ann!" Dave called. "It"s Amanda!"
Reluctant, she came into the kitchen, activated the monitor. "What? Of course. What else would they say." She threw down the control. "That"s it. They didn"t buy it. I"ve got to find Tommy, he"s the only way to make them see reason."
"Do you even know where to look?"
"I"m going to try the hills west of here. There was a group living up by that hidden lake six years ago."
He sighed. "Do you want company?"
"You mean it?" She looked at him, surprised. "No, I made this mess, I"ll clean it up."
"I"ll be here when you get back. Take the flare gun." He kissed her. For the first time in six years, Jo-ann left the compound. At the gate, she paused. Strange, the trees beyond looked just like the trees of her home, but they weren"t the familiar trees. Larger maybe, or perhaps the leaves were rougher. They looked subtly wrong. Funny how a person gets used to the everyday things, doesn"t like it when something new stares back. She shrugged the thought aside. In her pack she carried her old aerials, marked with the route to the lake. The stellar cartographer had made the aerials for her team back when they first arrived to investigate the Froggies.
Recollections of her first landing on Minerva came to her as she went in search of the children.
The shuttle rocked lightly as it settled onto the surface. The gate creaked as she pushed it open. She walked out into a field of tall cinnamon gra.s.s. Pushing through a cl.u.s.ter of dense p.r.i.c.kly bushes, she checked her map against the readings on her s.e.xtant. The sun glowed dim and lilac in the pale green sky. She squinted at the sun, wishing again that compa.s.ses worked on Minerva. The breeze, redolent of sweet marjoram and din, brushed against her face. She sniffed, searching for a trace of Froggie; she hoped the local group was still there. The blades of the gra.s.s made quiet shushing sounds as she walked. A noise on her left made her jump, but it was just a hrroat grazing, pulling leaves off the high branches with its tail. Hills rose on the horizon, draped in swaths of olive and pomegranate foliage. She skirted the herd, following the stream up through the hills. She reached the edge of the field; the smells of salt and ozone drifted up to her.
Climbing over the slippery shale rocks, she approached the ridgeline. At her feet a cliff dropped sheer into the cobalt sea, mauve and lavender shale glistening in the ocean spray.
She looked down into the valley: Froggies, at least thirty of them, gathered by the lake.
The group was still there.
Adrenaline rushed through her; her heart raced. She hadn"t visited any Froggies since Tommy.
She shielded her eyes against the late-afternoon sun. From this distance, she couldn"t tell if the children were down there. She climbed down the hill, breaking through the brush and sending up clouds of pollen. Once, she almost stumbled into an insect hive, only frantic windmilling saved her from collision. Just like bees on Earth, these bugs would sting if something disturbed their hive.
She hiked on.Tommy dreamed.
Low sounds, moving in even cadence up to a middle range, slowly back down to the initial note. Up and down, hypnotic. An even pace, as of walking. The pattern repeated, louder then softer.
Even after a few days, he was never sure when a dream was trying to tell him something and when it was just there for itself, just art. Erin thought some were math, formulas for things they hadn"t learned yet. Heather thought most of them were just pretty pictures. Tommy wanted to figure out who was sending each dream. If he only knew who was talking, he might be able to talk back. But so far, he could find nothing individual in the dreams. They all had the same direction-pressure, and none contained the distinctive smell of any of the Froggies he had encountered.
The music continued, a shuddering upwelling of individual notes. Pushing out of the void, they rushed past, stuttering one after the other; then meandered, slowed. Dripping, finally, one by one, into a pool of growing silence. Pause. A new sound began, higher, faster, unsteady, demanding. His heart raced, antic.i.p.ation.
By the time she reached the valley floor the sun hovered on the horizon and near-dark draped the valley in exaggerated shadows. Emptiness and holes littered the valley floor. A blue-green mist drifted over the waters of the lake. All was still, no creatures moving in the dusk.
Memory suddenly a.s.saulted her: The three of them timed the raid for dawn. It was Gillian"s suggestion, because they"d never seen a Froggie active during daylight hours. They had located a good prospect, a sleep-pit with three different litters. Amanda had argued for the importance of a genetically diverse sample. The sky hovered close above them, a soft, flat gray green, as they hiked down into the valley. The Froggies were wrapping up their nocturnal foraging, their target mothers herding their litters into the western pit by the lake. The three women crept forward and paused, but they saw no response to their presence. "Now, "Jo-ann hissed, and they darted forward into the crowd. With shaking hands Jo-ann reached past the slippery arms of the mother and grabbed a squirming bundle of baby Froggie. She turned, smothering a ery as she felt the mother"s arms wrapping around her shoulders, and bolted for the woods. She heard a human grunt behind her and glanced back to see Amanda recovering from a fall.
The other woman ran from a crouch, a small Froggie in her arms. Gillian raced up from the other side and the three scrambled into the woods. They ducked past low branches and around tangled bushes, running flat out until they reached the clearing where Dave held the idling helicar. "You get them? " he called, leaning out of the pilot"s seat. The women mumbled breathless a.s.sents as they jumped into the cargo hold.
"Go, go, go,"Jo-ann yelled, and Dave activated the throttle, lifting the helicar up and away.
In all that time, Jo-ann had never let herself wonder if the Froggie mother had missed her child.
"Tommy?" she called.
No answer. Could the local group have left the valley? Petrified, she realized that she had no idea where else to look for the children."Tommy, Tommy, are you there?" she called again, her voice thin and strained.
Still no answer. What if they were gone forever? Was Dave right, did they belong with their own kind? What about the ethics panel, would they understand why she had to take them? She hadn"t had any choice-she needed to find a way to save the Froggies, all of them. The panel would have to understand.
She managed a hoa.r.s.e shout. "Tommy!"
Nothing.
She walked into the valley, toward the lake. Halfway there, she came upon a pit, wide and deep, centered under a cl.u.s.ter of trees. Looking in, she saw a tumble of sleeping Froggies, piled one upon another. For a dreadful moment, she thought she was looking at a grave. But peering closer, she saw the gentle rise and fall of ribs. Asleep, under shade, as always during the heat of the day. She sighed with disappointment and started to move away.
She paused midstride, remembering the dreams. Tommy had described dreams with intent, dreams that had meaning, that spoke of her and of the devastation to their planet. Could they be talking to each other in their dreams? What if they were dreaming now, dreaming with each other, sharing their thoughts about the human presence on their planet? About her? Her mind boiled with wild thoughts. Could she join in their dreams, explain to them the threat posed by the Hugonauts? Maybe she could find the Froggie mother from so long ago. Maybe she could explain. Holding her breath with fear, she peered farther into the hole.
There, that corner, a bit of exposed floor, room for her to step in, if she was careful. She reached out a hand to grip the edge of the hole, noticing how it shook before she grabbed on to an exposed root. She swung her leg over, and dug the toe of her boot into the loamy wall-soil.
Hugging her body tight against the dirt wall to avoid stepping on exposed limbs and faces and stomachs, she slid down into the pit. The sensation of drowning swept over her, and she realized she had been holding her breath. She gasped, dragging the musky air of the sleeping creatures deep into her lungs. Panting, she looked around, noting the way the Froggies wrapped their limbs around each other, torsos touching, heads resting against neighbor backs. She hesitated, then lay the flare gun down, slowly leaned over and unsealed one boot, then the other.. ..
Naked, she curled up on the ground, aware of the touch of the skin of the Froggies on her legs, her back, her arms. Leaning back, she rested her head against the bristly spine of her neighbor and closed her eyes.
As often in the dreams, smells and touch began to mix in with the sounds. Poke, squirm, nestle down, deeper. Push aside slippery limbs, slide over brother-backs and sister-backs, around and through the tangle of skin and bristles. He breathes in gingery musk of contentment and peppery hunger, finally food-smell, he burrows inward to the source.
Gleaming warmth, it smells of wet and orange. He bites, sucks-But these images-he recognizes them-his own memories! They were dreaming his dream, the feeding-nest he remembered before any other. His dream, and, he realized, Erin"s, and Heather"s, from their earliest days. How could they share his memory? As he wondered, the link of images broke.
He felt physically jarred, shoved and pulled. An ugly smell oozed into his mind, cuc.u.mbers and tar, mixed in with smell of Jo-ann. Their anger toward her burned into him.
Dislocation. Terror. Isolation.Abruptly, he woke.
Years ago, Jo-ann had tried out the department"s sensory deprivation tank. Floating in viscous liquid, body temperature, suspended, no pull of gravity, she drifted. Eyes covered, ears plugged, a mask over her nose and mouth delivered tasteless, odorless air. At first her mind had raced, thoughts of her research, of Dave. Then it slowed, lingered on one image, a hand, for an endless time, then a color, yellow. Maybe a banana. She felt her thoughts congeal, she could watch them pa.s.s across her inner vision, one by one. The first time she took off her clothes for Dave. Delivering that paper on chimp language development at the Xenoan-thropology Conference. Her first alien sunrise. The hospital, the doctor"s head moving back and forth, so slow, while Dave"s fingerbones pressed against hers. Each thought arrived, first a pinp.r.i.c.k, then a small intrusion, growing larger and rounder and fuller, until she held the entirety of the memory for an unbearable moment, and then the process reversed, the thought shrank and collapsed smoothly upon itself, disappeared. Then the next arrived, just a hint, growing into her mind. These dreams were both like and unlike.
No visual component at all. Utter darkness. A suffocation of blackness, obliterating her sense of self. But the growing world of smell, sound, touch surrounded her, rebuilt her awareness one touch at a time. She could not interpret what she experienced, searched in vain for patterns. The images swirled around her floating weightless existence, pushed against her skin, tugging her this way and that. Sounds, not human, strange combinations.
Here and there, blank s.p.a.ces in the flow, perhaps when the sound traveled beyond human ears, and the dreaming of human ears. Smells of the planet, smells of memory, but not her memory, emotions she had never felt, never imagined. Sliding skin, silky like no human skin, smells that she might have found revolting, but here, these smells evoked hunger and delicious satiation. And there, that smell! she recognized the smell of Tommy, her Tommy.
Her baby was here! She cried her relief. And there, Erin, there Heather.
Abruptly, she woke, and quickly dressed as the nest came alive.
The Froggies were moving, writhing their plenitude of arms. They reeked, a new smell, cuc.u.mbers and tar. Their motions were smooth and graceful, but Jo-ann saw danger in them.
The two aliens nearest her stood to their full height, towering over her, pressing her up against the dirt wall. She struggled to breathe.
"Wait, wait! Tommy, where are you? Tommy, help me! You don"t understand. I need to talk to you. You have to listen, the Hugonauts are taking your planet! Tommy!"
They leaned in, one on each side, pushing against her shoulders, her rib cage. She squirmed, hunched her shoulders to protect her head, but they kept coming closer. She crouched defensively, but when the one on the right grabbed her arm with his midhand, she panicked. She twisted savagely, kicked its leg, dived past and scrambled for the surface. It tried to keep hold of her arm, but she bit the grasping midhand and the creature jerked back with a squawk. The other grabbed at her thigh, but she kicked out wildly and it could not find purchase on her leg.
She had just got her head over the edge of the hole, when the Froggie managed to pull her leg back, dragging her down again.
She screamed, drove her elbow into its ribs. When it bent forward, she punched it, right on the nose. The high-pitched keen hurt her ears, and guilt stabbed her, but she forced herselfback, up the wall. Her hand reached out, grabbing for roots, for leverage, and when she felt something hard under her palm, she latched on and pulled with terror. But it was no root, it came down so quickly that she fell.
She landed next to the flare gun, and looked at it in amazement. As she hesitated, the Froggies piled onto her, one, two, another. She couldn"t see. Sobbing, she curled in on herself, cradling the flare gun to her stomach.
Her hand found the switch, she rolled and released.
Chaos.
The screams of the aliens deafened her. She thrashed out, bucking and clawing, stepping on arms, walking up an exposed back, kicking the grasping hands. A tail reached for her waist-she slapped it with the flare gun. Tears poured down her cheeks, blinding her. She scrambled over the rim, ran a few feet, tripped and collapsed. The smell of burned flesh filled her nostrils, but it was not the smell of human flesh. She retched.
"Tommy?" she cried.
"Mommy, is that you?" A half-pint Froggie leapt awkwardly out of the pit. "Mommy, what was that?"