Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe

C. Gockel

Contents

Copyright

1.
What Little Werfles are Made of Little Werfles are Made of

2.
A Nice Nest

3.
The Gathering Place

4.
Take Me to Church

5.
Luminous Creatures

6.
Releasing Pets into the Wild

7.
Carl Sagan Discovers Intelligent Life

Contact Information

Also by C. Gockel

Copyright

Copyright © 2016 C. Gockel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, subject “Attention: Permissions,” at the email address below:

cgockel.publishing@gmail.com

1

What Little Werfles are Made of Little Werfles are Made of

“ … cells are made of proteins, proteins are made of molecules, molecules are made of atoms, atoms are made of particles … And do you remember what those are made of?”

“Waves, Third One!”

“Yes, you are waves manifest as matter. You can become waves again at any time.”

Sliding down the embankment, his ten legs not able to lift him, Hsissh reprimanded himself, Next body, no sleeping in a field frequented by lizzar. He knew better, but the rock had been sunny and wonderfully warm. And then one of the clumsy, wave-ignorant oafs had whacked him with its tail. Now this body was beyond reasonable repair and he had to move on. Finding a dry spot, he curled into a ball. Tucking his nose to his tail, he closed his eyes and … hesitated. He blinked. He didn’t want to let this form go … Shissh, his blood kin in her last life, had been urging him for years to give up this shell and the pain that was tied to it; to let his memories of their third parent become a dream.

“What’s that?”

His ears perked. It was the vocal utterance of a wave-ignorant Newcomer. Ish, one of the more scholarly members of Hsissh’s kind, had decoded most of the language and shared it in the waves. Hsissh hadn’t thought the Newcomers had spread this far north. He wondered what they’d found.

A sharp pain in his side made his body uncoil with a startled squeak.

“Is it some sort of albino-mutant-ten-legged weasel?” There was another sharp pain, and Hsissh was flipped over. Helpless in his weakened state, he lay sprawled on his back, all ten limbs and tail wriggling. Through blurry eyes, he saw three Newcomers standing over him. They smelled strange, like alien vegetables and meats partially digested and burned. Their naked bodies, where they showed at the edges of the faux furs on their heads and forelimbs, were disgusting. They looked smaller than he’d been informed; yet, even their shorter forelimbs were longer than his entire body. They could kill him by merely stepping on him.

“It’s a werfle,” said another Newcomer, using the enormous deformed paw on a hind limb to prod Hsissh’s limbs. “Their bites are poisonous. Don’t touch it.”

The poison oozing from Hsissh’s fangs could kill them with a single bite, but his body wasn’t responding to his mind’s order to roll over. And the pain was disorientating; he couldn’t focus enough to agitate the waves into starting a fire. A shadow moved. He felt a stinging in his chest and a soft squeal came from his lungs. His mind slowly processed that one of the Newcomers was jabbing him with a stick. Ish thought these beings were worthy of study … Obviously, Ish was an idiot. Hsissh felt rekindled determination to leave this body—when he was new and healthy again, he’d join the faction that was pushing to have the Newcomers wiped off The Planet.

“Huh, looks almost dead,” said the one with the stick. He poked Hsissh again, and pain shot from every root of fur on his body.

“My mom says they’re really soft and we should make them into coats,” said another, prodding Hsissh’s side so hard it sent him rolling. When Hsissh came to a stop, he tried to squirm, but pain shot from his tail as one of them stepped on it, and he clawed helplessly at the dirt.

“Too small to make a coat. Maybe a muffler?” said the one that had kicked him.

Hsissh closed all ten of his claws and reminded himself he was a wave. He just had to focus …

“Leave him alone!”

The pain in his tail vanished. He shot forward and was able to feel the waves that coursed through his body. Grabbing hold, he let them carry him up and out, changing the electrical impulses in his body and mind to a pattern of particles in the waves. Bit by bit, memories from every shell he’d ever worn and his current thoughts were encoded. He felt Shissh’s consciousness in the wave, and felt her speak. “Finally! You should have left that hide ages ago.”

Not wanting to encourage her nagging, Hsissh did not answer. As the pattern that was Hsissh expanded out and upward, he was able to feel the scene in every direction. Above him, the Newcomer’s time gate hung like a ring-shaped moon, visible even though it was nearly midday. He could just barely make out the ships that were slipping into the gate and then disappearing, primitively transported in their physical forms across the Milky Way to their home planet “Earth” and nearly a dozen other colony worlds. Below him, much closer to his rapidly dying body, a smaller Newcomer was standing at the top of the embankment, fists clasped at its sides. It looked different from the others. The fur on top of its head was nearly black and pulled back in a way that exposed a flat metal circle at the side of its skull. Its eyes were nearly as dark, and its skin was a deep brown. The others looked more like what he’d gleaned from the collective consciousness of his kind, The One. They had hazel-to-brown eyes, tan skin, and fur that flopped over the peculiar metal ornamentation Newcomers wore in the sides of their heads.

“Are you going to stop us, Noa?” one of Hsissh’s tormentors goaded.

Dipping its chin, the smaller one said, “Yeah!”

“Pfft! You’re a girl.”

One of the others whispered, “She wants to be a pilot … she doesn’t know the Luddeccean Guard doesn’t take girls!”

The one that must be Noa snarled, “I’m going to be in the Galactic Fleet. It’s better than the stupid Guard, and they take girls!”

One of Hsissh’s tormentors picked up a clump of dirt and tossed it at her. His other friends followed suit. Hsissh’s would-be protector sensibly retreated into the forest that surrounded the embankment.

“Ooooo! The brave pilot retreats!” one of the tormentors hooted before turning back to Hsissh. They huffed air out in staccato bursts of sound. “What are we going to do with the werfle?” one of them asked, swinging a stick.

Resuming his slow, steady slip into the wave, Hsissh had a moment between panic and curiosity. If he was hit hard enough in the head, and life seeped slowly from his body, would he become waveless, like his third parent? Energy could not be created or destroyed. Perhaps the waveless like Third went some place … else?

His rumination was interrupted by a frenzied vocalization he did not understand. “Arrrrrggghhhhhh!”

In his in-between state, Hsissh felt the girl swinging a branch thicker than his girth and longer than her body above her head. Her lips were curled, and her flat white teeth were bared.

The boy with the stick danced over Hsissh’s body and cried, “Are you crazy?” right before the branch connected with his jaw. In his bodyless state, Hsissh felt the Newcomer’s pain. The shock sent a ripple through the wave, Hsissh lost his concentration, and he found himself back in his body, staring up at the Newcomer known as Noa. She was panting, holding the branch in front of her chest with two hands. His body, perhaps trying to avoid its inevitable passing, slipped into unconsciousness.

2

A Nice Nest

Hsissh awoke next to a wall of immense, deadly, roaring flames. He might have immediately bolted, but he hurt too much; his body felt tight and alien. It was definitely time to leave.

Closing his eyes, Hsissh slipped from his body. Floating away, carried on the waves again, he saw that his shell had been wrapped up in some sort of plant fiber, and was cradled by a soft square of a similar fiber. He abruptly slipped back into his “werfle” form with a shocking realization. They’d made him a nest. He sniffed. More accurately, Noa had made him a nest. He smelled her all over it.

Ever so gently, he flexed his claws. It was a nice nest, he could tell that, despite his pain. It was almost as soft as the one made by Third of ptery scales and her belly fluff. The fire was a nice touch; bigger than he would ever light on a cold night, but he supposed that the nearly naked Newcomers might need more to ward off the chill. And now that he studied it, he realized it was well contained.

“He’s awake!”

He heard a rush of footsteps and looked up to see Noa, his rescuer, leaning over him, forelimb outstretched. He drew back and another Newcomer said, “Be careful, Noa.” This Newcomer was larger than Noa, and tan like most Newcomers, with black hair and golden eyes. By smell, Hsissh identified her as a female member of the dual-sexed species, probably Noa’s mother. In spite of himself, he felt sympathy for her. How difficult would it be to raise a litter with only two adults? How would Third ever have managed without First and Second to hunt and protect her, Hsissh, Shissh, and their brothers and sisters?

“But the veterinarian milked his venom, Mom.”

Whiskers trembling in alarm, Hsissh slipped his tongue beneath the sharp tips of his fangs and gently pressed. There was no swell of poison. He hunched into the nest, feeling violated.

“Yes, the veterinarian did,” said Mom, and Hsissh entertained visions of killing Veterinarian once his venom returned.

“... but the veterinarian also said that it would take a while for his ribs to heal. You have to be gentle, Noa.”

Heal ribs? Whatever for? It was easier to leave a shell and find the body of an unclaimed member of one of The One’s host species. He blinked. But of course, the Newcomers were wave-ignorant—like Third had been at the end. They couldn’t slip out of their shells and so had become resilient to injury and disease. They’d overcome the three plagues The One had let loose among them with “nanos” and “antibiotics.” And he’d heard that, even when they lost limbs or organs, they replaced them with mechanical parts. Those who had such parts were called “augments.”

Noa, who Hsissh was beginning to suspect was an adolescent among her kind, gently touched Hsissh’s head. He thought of delivering a non-venomous bite out of spite for letting Veterinarian milk his venom; but her touch wasn’t unpleasant, and he was too exhausted to bother. And then she scratched him behind his ears, and he couldn’t help purring.

“Can we keep him as a pet?” Noa asked.

Hsissh’s eyes snapped open at the unfamiliar word and the implications of “keep.” Something to be eaten later?

Another voice, deeper than even Mom’s, rumbled, “You know that we shouldn’t do that.” Hsissh’s nose twitched. A male of the species, also tan skin with dark brown hair, who smelled like Noa, but not like Mom. Perhaps the other parent?

“But why, Dad?” said Noa.

“Because he is a wild animal,” Mom said. The round metal plate in the side of her skull glinted dully in the light. At the center of it was an opening … and then darkness. Hsissh could smell no blood, bone, or other gore from the gaping hole. “And it wouldn’t be fair,” Mom continued. “You heard what the veterinarian said. These creatures die in cages; it would be wrong to keep him.”

Maybe he wouldn’t kill Veterinarian … but what was this “keeping” business? They didn’t seem to want to eat him.

Mom continued, “We don’t know why they die in captivity, but we do know they are intelligent, and social. They probably need to be with their own kind to remain healthy.”

Hsissh’s nose twitched. He’d become rather solitary since Third died the true death. He could go months without contact with his kind. Still, even a non-claimed member of The One’s favorite host species, the “werfles,” would leave its shell, too, if caught in a cage out of sheer humiliation. But it was a well-considered hypothesis.

“And they help us kill rats!” Noa interjected.

The deep-voiced one, Dad, muttered, “Damn rats, invading this pristine ecosystem.” Hsissh’s mind tripped over the word “damn,” but he had the impression that Dad was angry. Whatever for?

Noa stroked Hsissh’s head and the two adult Newcomers walked away. Another smaller, though still enormous, Newcomer came over and gazed down at Hsissh. He smelled like Noa, Mom, and Dad—a blood kin. His skin was tan, with dark brown fur on top of his head, like Mom and Dad, and his eyes were light in color.

“I wonder if he has a name, Kenji?” Noa whispered, scratching Hsissh behind the ears and under his chin, evoking a helpless purr.

“There are three sexes among werfles; I don’t think it is a ‘him,’” Kenji said. He idly played with the metal disk in the side of his head with the long, slender appendage of a paw.

Hsissh's whiskers twitched. In point of fact the werfles had males, females, and females that had matured to Thirds, nursing adults who passed on genetic information through their milk. “Him” and “her” worked well enough for members of the species not in a breeding triad.

“I’m not calling him an ‘it,’” Noa said, increasing the intensity of the ear scratching. The Newcomers had curiously ineffectual claws; they were short, stubby, and thin. However, Hsissh was discovering they were perfect for grooming without the worry of shedding blood.

“And he needs a name,” she continued, lowering her head so Hsissh was able to look into her dark eyes. Maybe he was becoming fond of this Newcomer because he didn’t find her general furlessness disturbing. Or maybe it was the color of her skin. It didn’t look as though her fur had sloughed off from illness. It was the same rich brown as the bark of a healthy red nut tree, and twice as smooth.

“A name,” Noa whispered. “He has to have one.”

And he did. It was against the rules of The One to communicate with the Newcomers, lest they know they were being scrutinized. Like sub-atomic particles whose behavior changed when observed, research subjects behaved differently when they knew they were being watched. But suddenly he wanted her to know. He concentrated and tugged at the waves that coursed between Noa, Kenji, and himself. “Hsissh,” he sent along the wave. “Hsissh, I am Hsissh.”

“Hsissccchhh!” said Kenji, the sound erupting not just from his mouth but also his nose.

Hsissh squeaked in joy and wonder. He’d been told that the Newcomers were incapable of wave riding, but Ish had hypothesized that they were on the verge of it—and Ish was right! The Newcomers were truly an intelligent species!

“God bless you,” Noa said, eyes set on Hsissh. She nodded. “Fluffy, I think I’ll name him Fluffy.”

Kenji wiped his nose with a forelimb and touched Hsissh’s fur gingerly with the other. “That is a good name; he’s very soft.”

Or maybe they weren’t quite so bright.

3

The Gathering Place

In the dark, cavernous space that was the human attic, Hsissh sighed with pleasure. His stomach was filled with fresh rat, and his mouth was still flavored with its blood. Exalting in the feeling of all being right with the world, he rolled onto his back … and all was not right anymore. The attic was made of wood slats that were hard and had splinters that poked through his fur. Rolling back over, he scanned the room. A “box” in the corner caught his eye. The box was filled with faux fur humans used for colder temperatures. Rats enjoyed nesting in it; perhaps he would, too?

Trundling over, he slid inside, kneaded the soft material with his claws, and curled into a ball. It was very comfortable and, as a plus, smelled like his favorite prey. He closed his eyes. Rain was pattering on the roof and the single attic window. Downstairs, he could hear the family eating, their “silverware” clinking on their “plates.” He still didn’t understand why they used “dinnerware,” but the clinks were pleasant. The sounds, his full belly, and the warmth of the “fur” lulled him into a doze almost immediately. As sometimes happened, his mind slipped slightly from his body and he felt the rain, the cold air outside, and the children and their parents in the dining room below.

A loud clacking almost woke him. And then he realized the clacking was coming from the wave. More specifically, from an aquatic organism not as tall as Hsissh’s shoulder, ovoid, with a brilliant green, luminescent exoskeleton to protect it from the pressure of the ice-crusted oceans of the moon it evolved on seventeen billion light years away. It was Shissh, snapping two pincers at the front of her carapace, sending her consciousness to interrupt his nap and heckle him for not slipping out of his body. He almost woke up just to spite her; but seeing her, even in this new form, caused his body to release a flood of bonding hormones. He purred with familial love. Did she still feel the bond in that hard, cold shell? Did she still think of Third—the only member of their three parents whose werfle body had been inhabited by The One?

Shissh spoke into his mind. “Are you coming to The Gathering … Fluffy?”

Betrayed by familial love. He never should have told her that name. “No, of course not. Go away and let me sleep.” He tried to burrow deeper into the furs.

Shissh clicked her pincers and waved her eye stalks. “If you want to keep your warm human nest, you’d better come now. Misch is pushing for a fourth plague and—”

A vision of Noa’s eyes dulled by death permeated Hsissh’s dream. Hsissh sent his thoughts into The Gathering before Shissh had finished.

Shissh’s crustacean dream-self emerged beside him, eye stalks pointed in his direction. “Mighty fast entrance, Hsissh.”

“I’ve got a good thing going,” Hsissh grumbled, looking out at The Gathering. It was held in a cavern with an opening directly above that let in the sparkle of the stars—but not the glow of the time gate or human satellites. The cavern had been destroyed thousands of cycles ago, and this was only the memory of a memory that The One all shared. It was crowded with dream versions of The One. Most were in the form of werfles, but there were exotic creatures from several dozen worlds scattered among them.

“I’ve been to Earth!” one of The One’s consciousnesses roared. It was Misch. He wore the form of a “cat,” one of the few species on the human home world that was a compatible host and could tolerate living in close quarters with humans. The One had tried to inhabit humans; it didn’t work. Human bodies rebelled and were inevitably drugged for “schizophrenia” and often “institutionalized.” But cats were easy enough to possess. Pacing on his four feet, Misch said, “The humans have no fur, no claws, no speed, and no natural armor. They can’t see in the dark, and they are more ignorant of the waves than a cat … and I can tell you, cats are short on brains.”

Hsissh’s whiskers twitched. His host species, the werfle, weren’t particularly “long on brains” either, but The One outsourced their big thinking to the collective consciousness of the waves.

Swishing his feline tail, Misch declared, “They have stripped and poisoned their home world of natural resources to make up for their inadequacies. Introduce the Fourth Plague before it happens here!”

Hsissh had seen the results of the Third Plague in holos with Noa. He had seen orphaned human children too weak to defend themselves from rats feasting on their flesh. Hsissh’s two hearts beat faster as he stretched his mind out to all who were in The Gathering. “But they are wave aware!”

He felt the focus of the room shift to him.

“Impossible!”

Misch sat down and swished his tail. “Hsissh, what are you doing here?”

Someone else said, “Shouldn’t you be napping?”

A member of The One, wearing the same species host as Hsissh, stood up on her hind legs. “We know the humans don’t use waves.”

Ish, wearing a werfle body, said, “They do.”

There were hisses and grumbles among The One.

Hopping up and down with the excitement of his own recent epiphany, Hsissh explained. “The circular metal devices affixed to the sides of their skulls enable humans to talk mind-to-mind. Every human with the metal implant has nanos—tiny machines—in their brains. They are awakened in later adolescence.” Noa was too young, but her “data port” and “neural interface” had been checked by a “physician” at her yearly “checkup.” She’d taken Hsissh to the visit as a “security blanket.” A bit of the memory of the enclosed doctor’s exam room slipped into the wave and some of the werfles hissed in fear. Hsissh rushed on. “The nanos turn their thoughts to waves, and allow them to interface mind-to-mind via light beams, radio, and microwaves—they call it ‘the ethernet.’”

Misch’s mind hissed, “Primitive and barbaric! Even a lizzar can hear and see, and a “nano interface” is not much better!”

Hsissh’s chest tightened, and he couldn’t help thinking of rats feasting on Noa’s flesh.

“But they are wave aware!” Ish said.

At Ish’s opening, Hsissh said, “Yes, yes! They know that all matter is made of waves.” Hsissh shared the memory of a lesson he’d studied with Noa, a history of physics from Isaac Newton to the current ethernet age. Humans were aware of the subatomic world, but they couldn’t feel it and barely used it; they hadn’t found a way to do so practically. “But they are on the verge!” Hsissh said, as his memory of the holo documentary ended. “Lizzars aren’t wave aware! Nor were the creatures we eradicated at the end of the last Epoch.”

Shissh clacked, “Interesting … ” very slowly, the way she did when Hsissh had said something stupid.

There was a collective silence from The One.

And then a thought, so soft he almost missed it, entered his consciousness. “Hsissh’s Third died the true death ten cycles ago, it’s left him addled.”

From the collective consciousness rose an unmistakable feeling of pity. In Noa’s attic, his physical body shivered … he’d failed.

Ish stood on his back four hind limbs and waved his paws. “The humans, as they call themselves, are wave aware—in the truest sense of the word!”

Thoughts rose in The Gathering like swirling mist.

Misch swished his tail. “I know nothing of this!”

“Because you haven’t been to their places of worship,” Ish said. “It is my understanding that on their home world the practice is all but forgotten; it was one of the reasons we have humans on our planet. The ones here were seeking enlightenment and to escape the material, non-wave focused cultures of Earth.”

“Worship?” the question rose from Hsissh and all in attendance.

Ish clasped his top two claw pairs behind his back and strode through the Gathering Place on his back four legs. His middle pair of paws waved. “They enter states of profound meditation in group settings.”

Misch hissed. “They don’t feel the waves!”

Ish bowed his head, and said, “They feel closer to ‘God’ in their meditative state, a being they believe is responsible for all creation and is all powerful. That is the waves from which all matter is derived, obviously.” Stopping his pacing, he raised his head and faced the crowd. “They have a concept of the oneness of everything.”

There were soft noises of awe from around the cavern.

“Humans brought the rats,” someone else thought. “They’re everywhere.”

Nearly everyone in attendance licked their lips; even Misch’s feline form did. “We should reward them for that,” said another werfle.

Clacking her pincers, Shissh drew the audience’s attention. “If they could join the waves, they could become useful allies.”

“Allies against whom?” Misch cried.

“You know it is only a matter of time!” Shissh snapped.

Misch’s cat form’s fur rose.

A member of The Gathering wearing a werfle host said, “In all probability, we will discover an enemy—or they will discover us. The universe is predator and prey.”

“And symbiosis!” Shissh declared.

“Humans—the Newcomers—believe in symbiosis,” Hsissh said, hopping up onto his back two pairs of paws. “They don’t eat all the species they meet or even the ones they keep!”

Misch’s cat-eyes narrowed to slits and he hissed. “But they do neuter them—”

Before Hsissh could inquire of the meaning of “neuter,” the crowd erupted, and for a moment his mind was a whirl with so many thoughts he could scarcely hear his own.

At last, the tide began to subside, and a chorus rose in the cavern. “We will give the Newcomers one hundred cycles to join The One in the waves.”

Hsissh felt his physical body relax and uncoil from the knot he’d tied himself in. The One were of one mind after the chorus … One hundred cycles around the sun … certainly in that time humans would evolve to feel waves, if they were already on the verge?

One by one, all the consciousnesses began slipping away into other dreams, and Hsissh found himself alone with Ish, Misch, and Shissh.

Licking a paw, Misch said, “They haven’t found a way to ride the waves in the last four million years. They won’t figure it out in a hundred years more.”

“What has you in a snit?” said Shissh.

“Hmpf,” said Ish, “You only say that because you’ve studied the ones on Earth. They are debauched and lazy.”

Flattening his ears and hissing, Misch faded from view. Ish turned to Hsissh. “Next time, let me do the talking,” the scholar said, and then he disappeared, too. Only Hsissh and his luminescent, crustacean once-kin were left. He felt a lump in his stomach; at the same time, he felt a warmth in his hearts. Shissh had chosen the crustacean form because it was not social, and did not mourn the departure of others of its kind. Still, because she had stayed, Hsissh felt that she must still care about him.

Combing his whiskers with his claws, Hsissh asked, “Do you really think we might become prey to something else?” It was difficult to imagine the “else.” The One could mutate the genomes of viruses, bacteria, and fungi by exciting the waves within them. Whenever they had a species that became too problematic, it was easy enough to cull or eradicate them with a specially mutated pathogen. They’d culled the humans—and debated whether or not to cull the rats—but their primary hosts preferred to keep the rats plentiful, fat, and delicious.

Shissh’s eye stalks swept toward him. “The species I inhabit now—they are like the cats of Earth—they can play host to wave riding beings, but they haven’t learned to leave their bodies … not yet.”

Hsissh smoothed his whiskers meditatively. Shissh had told him this much before.

Shissh continued, “There are rumors among this species ... stories of dark waters spreading on distant moons, wiping out all the creatures in the oceans and the land. Since the species I inhabit does not travel, I think there may have been other wave riding species that have brought their stories with them.”

Hsissh’s thoughts drifted to Noa. She dreamed aloud of traveling to distant moons when she snuggled with Hsissh at night … He looked through the opening in the ceiling. It was close to her bedtime now.

Shissh clicked softly, “I believe the humans might make a good ally, Hsissh … but I worry about you living among them. You should have left your body and its grief over Third’s death. Living with humans, you’re just setting yourself up for more pain.” Her pincers clicked so fast they became a song. “You’re much too sentimental to become attached to creatures that die.”

Hsissh felt his frame tighten. “I just stay with them for their beds,” he replied.

“Liar,” said Shissh.

Hsissh’s consciousness snapped back into his body. He found himself shivering despite the faux furs and bolted from the box. Shissh was right, he was too attached to Noa and her family. He had originally stayed for the rats in the attic, the beds, and out of curiosity; but he liked them, and they would die. His consciousness was over a thousand years old … Noa might live to be three hundred; but if a Fourth Plague came, even the humans’ nanos and antibiotics wouldn’t save them.

The sound of rain on the roof became louder, as though it were a command, “Run, Hsissh, run …” Hsissh obeyed. Instead of darting down the trapdoor that led to the hallway, he skittered over to the window. He wasn’t strong enough by the laws of Newtonian physics to move the latch, but he focused the waves inside his body to give his muscles more power. The latch gave, the window opened, and he slithered out into the rainy night. Sliding down the slope of the roof, he swung over the edge and jumped into the ivy that grew up the side of the house. He was halfway down when he heard a creak of a window opening. Noa’s voice rose above the raindrops. “Fluffy!”

Hsissh hesitated, but then, shaking himself, leaped down into the garden. He slunk into the low, alien vegetation around the home that was lit by electric spotlights. Noa’s voice rose in pitch. “Fluffy!”

He drew to a halt, his two hearts constricting, his claws sinking into the mud. He heard Mom say, “Noa, it’s time for bed,” and Noa respond, “But Mom—”

Mom said, “No buts!” and then Hsissh heard the window bang shut. Bowing his head, Hsissh wove through the plants toward the forest beyond. He’d gone only a few hundred body lengths when he heard the window creak and then bang closed. He increased his speed. He’d just traded the spotlights for the shade of the forest when he heard Noa’s voice again, this time as soft as her paws in his fur. “Fluffy?”

He stopped. The bipedal steps hesitated. “Fluffy, are you lost?” From the sound of her voice, he could tell she was not ten body lengths behind. He heard a sound like branches clacking and realized it was Noa’s teeth snapping together. The cold mud beneath him seemed to wrap around his claws and hold him immobilized. An enormous drop of frigid water fell from a tree and landed squarely on his nose. The rest of him was well protected, but Noa ...

“Fluffy?” Noa cried.

Hsissh turned around and slid through the underbrush. He found Noa at the trees’ edge in a pair of “slippers” and thin “pajamas.” Soaked and shivering, she was hugging her body. She should have gone home, but instead she was crying his name.

Noa was trying to save him—again. It was foolish. She could suffer hypothermia, or get lost and injured. Her parents might not even be aware she’d gone missing until dawn; then, it might be too late. He crawled out of the undergrowth. Noa’s eyes widened at the sight of him, and she smiled as he hopped forward. Scooping him up, she touched her nose to his. “Fluffy, I found you!” Clutching him to her chest, she dashed back toward the house. “I climbed out the window, but it’s too high to get back in,” she whispered. Instead, she went through the front door, into the foyer, and then into the front room where her parents were reading.

Dad’s voice boomed through the house with such force that the floorboards reverberated. “Noa Sato, were you outside?”

“What were you doing out there?” Mom exclaimed. “You’ll catch your death of cold!”

Hsissh stiffened in Noa’s arms, but she didn’t seem to notice. Holding him up for her parents’ inspection, she said, “I found Fluffy!”

“I’m getting a towel,” Mom said. A few moments later, she wrapped one around Noa’s shoulders, but Noa pulled it off and wrapped it around Hsissh instead.

“The towel was for you!” said Mom.

“He’s wet and cold,” said Noa, gently drying Hsissh’s fur with the warm, absorbent fabric.

“Do not do that again, Noa!” Dad roared.

But Noa didn’t seem to hear either of them. Teeth still clacking, she carried Hsissh back to her room and set him down on her bed. As she slipped into dry pajamas, Hsissh made a show of prowling under the covers for rats. His protector wasn’t afraid of foes who were bigger or outnumbered her, or catching her death of cold, but she was terrified of the tasty little rodents.

He stuck his nose out of the blankets and gave the ‘all clear’ squeak and Noa bounded under the covers with a laugh. Her body was still trembling, and she pulled him close. Hsissh curled himself into a ball. Noa’s fingers traced the line of his spine, and then scratched him behind his ears. Her touch was as gentle as Third’s had been when Hsissh was just a hatchling. Her body was around his, much like how Third had coiled around Hsissh and Shissh as hatchlings and then kits. The down cover and mattress were as soft and warm as Third’s fur. The way Noa’s night light shone through the covering made everything soft and gilt around the edges, like a memory.

“Don’t do that again, Fluffy,” Noa whispered. “Please.”

She drifted off to sleep. Hsissh heard Mom’s footsteps by her door, and then Mom’s voice. “Oh, child, don’t do that to me again.” He could hear the tears in her voice; they were, he had learned, a symptom of mourning.

There was something about Mom’s plea that touched him. Noa was prone to misadventures, and Hsissh could see that begging her to be safe was like screaming into the void. It made him think of being with Third after her mind had been stripped by the wasting disease. Hsissh had begged her to slip into the wave, to stay with him. He kept pleading even after all hope was lost. Afterward, he’d admonished himself. He should have checked on her more frequently, in the waves and in the flesh. In the end, he found himself wishing for just a few more breaths of time to be with her, even just to have her nuzzle him in her wave-ignorant, mind-degenerated state. The memories of his pain, of Noa calling him in the dark, and Mom’s plea to her headstrong daughter … Hsissh knew why he stayed with the humans. It was because he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

4

Take Me to Church

“What the hell!” Dad yelled, and lifted his feet out of Hsissh’s way. The “all-terrain vehicle” swerved and hit a bump. For a moment, they were airborne, and Hsissh braced his achy muscles for the inevitable reunion with the ground.

“George!” Mom exclaimed, using her own pet name for Dad.

“That damn werfle just crawled under my feet!” Dad roared, bringing the vehicle under control.

“Fluffy, come here!” said Noa, and Hsissh slunk past Mom and Dad to the back of the vehicle and the relative safety of Noa’s lap. She stroked his sore back with warm, gentle hands, and he gingerly curled into a ball. His old rib injury hurt, and this body was getting old, period.

Noa’s cousin John threw up his hands, as did her little sister Masako. “Fluffy is going to church with us again!” they cried in unison. It was Hsissh’s tenth such visit in the three cycles of the sun since he’d joined the family. “Yay!” shouted Noa, Masako, and John. Kenji was quiet, his eyes focused on the window.

“He stays in the car!” said Dad.

“It’s too hot in the car, George,” Mom said and Dad grumbled.

Noa drew her hand down Hsissh’s back. Ish had mapped human brain activity, what areas were energized by different patterns in speech, sight and hearing. Hsissh, if he concentrated, could use the waves to feel what areas were excited and read Noa’s thoughts. She was so quiet, he did so now. He saw his body through her eyes. His spine was visible through his thinning fur, as were the joints of his limbs. He felt her feelings, too. She was afraid of losing him. Death wasn’t eternal for him, like it would be for her. He could speak into her mind, and tell her so—and he had—but she discounted the voice in her head. It hadn't come from the active nanos that now let her talk to her grandparents, and new friends, solar systems away with only a thought. Her nanos told her it was “her imagination.”

“He’s getting so skinny,” said Masako.

“He’s getting old,” said Noa, and Hsissh could hear the hitch in her voice. He couldn’t hang onto this body for much longer, which was one of the reasons why he was going to church today. He wasn’t sure how much time he had left, and he wanted to be with her as much as possible. This body had long ago decided that her family was his family, and he got the same rush of bonding hormones being with them that he did being with Shissh. When the time would come to change this body for another, those hormones would disappear. Intellectually, he knew it was for the best. Emotionally … he felt his hearts sink into a space near his gullet.

“Why do we have to go to church?” Noa said, her hand pausing its path. “You don’t believe in The Three Books!” She didn’t want to go. In her mind she was imagining zipping through the forest on her bicycle with Hsissh in a padded basket at the front, nose lifted to the wind.

“Because it’s our community,” Dad rumbled.

“It’s stupid,” Noa grumbled.

Hsissh wouldn’t call it stupid, he’d call it hopeless. Humans were doomed. He was glad Noa was leaving, joining the Galactic Fleet and leaving this planet behind.

“If God were really all-powerful and didn’t want us to eat the stupid apple, He wouldn’t have let the snake into the garden,” Noa muttered.

No one answered. Hsissh agreed that it was implausible; all the stories from the Three Books seemed so to him. It was odd that the implausible stories tied them, though ever so slightly, to the waves. Maybe it was because the waves were beyond what was plausible in observable Newtonian physics and the stories put believers in the correct mindset?

“And if He didn’t want me to be a pilot, why would He make me want it so much?” Noa whispered. Hsissh lifted his nose toward hers and wiggled his whiskers. Noa’s parents didn’t discourage her from leaving the planet, but among the people of The Three Books, she was considered odd at best, a “dangerous little girl” at worst.

Seeing his whiskers quirking, Noa smiled and Hsissh felt her mood lift.

“There is a crash,” said Kenji out of nowhere, in a toneless voice.

Dad slowed the vehicle, and Noa’s eyes went to the window. Hsissh struggled to lift his protesting muscles. Outside, he saw a peculiar car protruding from a ditch. It had no wheels and lay flat on the ground. A family was standing around it, fanning themselves with their Three Books.

Noa touched the neural port at the side of her head. It had been activated a cycle ago. For a moment, her eyes became glazed. “It’s a LX0001 hover craft,” Noa said, gleaning the information from the “ethernet.” “The new model’s antigrav was formulated to handle Luddeccea’s gravity.”

Luddeccea was the name the humans had given to this planet. Hsissh had heard of the antigrav vehicles. They were powered by the same technology that powered the time gates, albeit on a much smaller scale. They created a “bubble” in time that allowed the vehicles to counteract gravity and float over rocky terrain, and even above treetops. As Hsissh understood it, hovers were very common on Earth. However, the antigrav had to be calibrated for each planet. Local gravity, the relative position of the planet in its solar system, and the solar system’s position relative to the galactic core all had to be taken into account.

Dad sighed heavily and brought the car to a halt beside the immobile vehicle. “New tech … always buggy.”

“Kids, into the back; make room for the Benjamins!” Mom said, and Hsissh was hoisted by Noa as she scrambled over the seat. He knew she tried to make the move as comfortable as possible for him, but his joints hurt, and his body squeaked in protest. “Sorry, Fluffy,” Noa murmured, cradling him closer.

A few breaths later, the Benjamins were in the vehicle and Mom and Dad were occupied with making “small talk.” Hsissh settled onto Noa’s lap in the flat back portion of the vehicle. She was sitting cross-legged in her “Sunday finest.” Hsissh glanced up at her. Her eyes were on the Benjamin’s son, Sergei, sitting in the backseat. You didn’t have to use telepathy or even be human to know she was attracted to him, or that it was one-sided. The sight made the fur on the back of his neck prickle, and he couldn’t say why.

* * *

The sun was bright above the front lawn of the Church of Three Books. The adults were off talking in the shade of the steeple. Hsissh was draped over Noa’s neck. She was hanging around some boys, of whom Sergei was one.

“You only think you want to be a pilot,” Jacob, one of Hsissh’s former tormentors, was saying.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Noa demanded, hands going to her hips.

Jacob shrugged. “You’ll fall for some boy and you won’t want to be a pilot anymore. My dad says so.”

And suddenly Hsissh knew what was bothering him about Noa’s eyes on Sergei. She wouldn’t be the first member of any species to be distracted by thoughts of procreation—Hsissh had often been, in this form and others. But she couldn’t afford to be.

The church doors opened, and the congregation began moving into the building. Spinning on her heels, Noa muttered, “I will be a pilot.” Stroking Hsissh’s tail, she added, “Watch me.”

Hsissh forced a long purr out of his chest. Her eyes slid to him and she smiled. As they moved into the shady interior and Noa took a seat at the pew, Hsissh desperately hoped that he would be able to see her achieve her dream.

As soon as everyone was seated, the church leaders—all male, and one for each of the books—raised their arms. “We will open with a prayer.”

Noa bowed her head and silence swept through the church.

“Hsissh!”

The whisper on the waves made his ears perk—the source was very close—as was the smell of fresh rat blood. Peering down the aisle, Hsissh’s nose twitched. He saw an unfamiliar young werfle on its hind legs waving at him. “Isn’t it amazing!” the werfle whispered across the waves. Hsissh blinked and was able to identify the consciousness in the new body. It was Ish. What was he doing here, so far from the human “capital” of Prime?

Ish put his two middle pairs of paws behind his back, and gestured with the top pair for Hsissh to join him. Hsissh didn’t really want to get up … but some deep social instinct within compelled him, as did the smell of fresh rat blood. He stiffly slid down to Noa’s lap, and before she could react, skittered to the floor and down the aisle. “Fluffy!” she whispered.

“Shhhhh … ” said Mom. “He’ll be fine.”

One of the church leaders cleared his throat. Noa settled and bowed her head. There was no sound except for Hsissh’s and Ish’s claws on the wooden floor. Ish’s claws were much louder because his young body was hopping up and down.

“Do you feel it? Do you feel their consciousness rising?” Ish said, spinning in a circle. Ish was older, wiser, and more prone to reflection and study than Hsissh—who was mostly prone to eating and sleeping—but the body Ish inhabited was young and vigorous. It made Hsissh tired just watching his excitement.

Hsissh didn’t respond. The first few times Hsissh had come to church he’d been excited, too. He’d felt some of the congregation’s minds touch the wave and experienced the same elation he’d felt when his first blind hatchlings had cracked through their shells. But his hatchlings had soon opened their eyes; the humans never left their bodies.

“No, they’re not,” Hsissh said. “They’ve been doing this for all of their recorded history.” He’d learned that through Noa’s history lessons.

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Ish said. He delicately touched his nose to Hsissh’s, but his hind legs continued to hop. “We’re witnessing evolution!”

Hsissh didn’t agree. Noa had to become a pilot, so she could get off Hsissh’s world and live. He didn’t have Shissh’s worries about spreading black waters, or Ish’s scientific enthusiasm, Hsissh cared only about the human girl who had twice endangered her life trying to save him. He looked at her now, her eyes darting down the aisle to check on him as though he were the kit, not her, and he felt the same rush of feelings he’d felt for his blind hatchlings.

“Does it matter that they can’t touch the wave?” Hsissh said to Ish. “They are telepathic in their own way.”

Ish sniffed derisively. “If their satellites go down, or their time gates go offline, they are trapped in their own minds. Light beams, radio, and microwaves … they are as primitive as their speech. Their ethernet is a trap, distracting them from true oneness.”

Hsissh thought of the minds across the galaxy Noa spoke to. She’d joined a Reserve Fleet Training Corps. It was a group for adolescents who dreamed of joining the Fleet; through them she’d found support for her ambitions and discovered that although her dreams weren’t average for a young girl, they weren’t weird, and she wasn’t a deviant.

He bowed his head. She had confessed to her friends that the only thing she was worried about was leaving her “pet Fluffy.” His hearts beat painfully at the thought. “Does it matter though?” he whispered. “Maybe they aren’t wave aware, maybe they will never be … but they feel as much as we do.” Even though they’d evolved light years away from one another. Even though they weren’t wave-aware. Perhaps it was because they were creatures that had to raise helpless young communally, too?

Ish lowered his head and narrowed his eyes at Hsissh, his hindquarters’ furious hopping abruptly coming to a stop. “Are you crazy, Hsissh? Rats have feelings, too … even lizzar do!”

“But it’s not the same,” Hsissh said. “Rats don’t grieve their dead for decades.” Like I do, he almost said.

Ish raised his head and put a paw through his whiskers. “Rats don’t live long enough, Hsissh.”

Hsissh’s body hunched. “We could communicate with the humans if we wanted to, we could even discuss the wave with them; they see its existence—”

“Through the primitive mirror of their mathematics,” said Ish. “Until they feel it, they can’t know it.”

“They could still be useful!” Hsissh protested. “They have opposable thumbs and fighting machines!”

Ish’s whiskers twitched. “Are you worried about Shissh’s dark waters?” He poked Hsissh’s chest with a sharp claw. “I can feel you are not, Hsissh. You’ve become too close to your humans, or that old body of yours has. We cannot announce ourselves to the humans. Announce ourselves, and we would, at least temporarily, lose the upper hand. It would be very inconvenient if they tried to wipe out our host species.”

“We’re thinking of wiping them out,” Hsissh countered.

Ish got very still. “Only on this planet, Hsissh. They will still have their sanctuaries on other worlds.” Ish’s eyes bored into Hsissh’s, and then his consciousness did as well. Probing Hsissh’s memories, Ish found the ones where Hsissh tried to talk telepathically to Noa—and succeeded—and then failed due to her mind’s rationalizations.

“You’re lucky you didn’t succeed in that,” Ish said, the wave crackling with malevolence. “It would ruin my observations and their natural evolution—and you’d be ostracized, if not condemned to have your pattern dissolved.”

Hsissh swished his tail. “I never tried to tell her I was sentient … I just tried to let her feel that she doesn’t have to worry about me.”

Ish’s frame relaxed. “You’re young—well, not your body, you look terrible—and I see you didn’t successfully break any rules.” He put a claw through a whisker. “They’re your ‘pets,’” he said, using the human word. “And you’re worried. But don’t be. They’ll evolve; you’ll see.”

Hsissh knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Ish, and if he pressed too much, The One might separate him from Noa. He’d lose his chance to see her escape this world. He sniffed, and changed the subject. “I smell fresh rat blood.”

Ish’s hindquarters began hopping again. “This place is crawling with them! I killed three before the service—silly, really, I can only eat one at a time. Would you like to come finish off the rest with me?”

If he had any poison, it would have pooled on his tongue. “Does a bear shit in the woods?” Hsissh replied, using an expression Dad used from time to time.

“What?” said Ish, head drawing back.

“Never mind,” said Hsissh. “Lead me to those rats.”

“With pleasure,” said Ish. Pivoting on his forequarters, Ish darted for the back of the church. Hsissh followed, muscles and joints protesting all the way. He was vaguely aware of Jacob whispering as he slipped after Ish through a door just barely ajar.

Hsissh followed his fellow werfle up a stairwell, and then another to the attic of the church. There were two dead rats laid out in a sunbeam, like a scene from a dream.

An hour and a half later, after a delicious snack, the creaking of floorboards awoke Hsissh. Eyes blinking open to a blur, he heard Jacob say, “There you are, rat!”

For a moment, Hsissh was confused. The rats were long gone; he and Ish had gorged themselves quite completely. But then he was caught in a crushing grip, he felt his ribs fracture, and the world went dark. It took him a moment of frantic sniffing to realize he’d been dumped in a burlap sack. His hearts’ beating increased in speed exponentially. “Let’s see what happens to Noa when you don’t come back!”

Intellectually Hsissh knew he might be able to claw his way out, or gnaw a hole. But his werfle body couldn’t abide confinement and just … stopped. He didn’t have to concentrate to leave his shell; the patterns that made him himself scattered onto the waves almost too quickly. As he collected them, he felt Shissh’s consciousness. “It’s about time! Now you can leave that debilitating sentimentality behind.”

And he had already. The deep emotional pull he felt to Noa and her family was gone, as was all the pain of his previous body. He saw Ish cowering in a corner as the boy lugged the sack across the room. Ish called out through the waves, “I’m sorry, Hsissh. My body’s calling for revenge, but this is the most perfect research opportunity.”

“It’s fine,” Hsissh said, thought, and felt; they were all the same here.

He hovered a bit. He saw Noa racing up the stairs. “Hey, I’ve got your werfle,” Jacob taunted. “What are you going—”

Jacob was interrupted by a lightning fast kick to the stomach that sent him stumbling backward into the wall, dropping the sack in the process.

Noa bolted toward the sack Hsissh’s old body was in. Falling to her knees, she gently pulled out Hsissh’s body. “Fluffy?” she cried. And then she screamed, “Fluffy!” and fell to her knees, her entire body wracked with sobs.

“Ha, ha, made you cry!” Jacob said. “You’ll never be a pilot!”

And Hsissh had to leave. Not because he felt a pull to Noa, but because he didn’t.

5

Luminous Creatures

“It’s great to have you here.” Shissh opened and closed her pincers; they didn’t clack so much underwater. “You’ll get over Third in this form.”

Hsissh’s pincers drooped. No mention of needing to forget Noa or her family.

Waving her eye stalks, Shissh continued, “It’s too bad about the humans—I talked to Chisssh about tweaking their DNA to make them wave aware, but they reproduce too slowly … it would take ten hundred cycles at the least.” She pointed with a pincer down the reef. “The elders of these hosts meet every three cycles of the moon. I’ll see you then; we’ll ask them to tell us the stories of the dark waters. In the meantime—my side of the reef is over there.” She waved with her pincers and eye stalks. “Stay away.”

On that cheery note, she crawled away. Not that Hsissh minded. This particular species wasn’t sociable.

He skittered down his side of the reef, cracking open tiny mollusks and sucking them into his primary orifice. The waters weren’t dark, even though the sun was a distant dream, cut off from them by meters of ice. The seas of this moon were alive with bio-luminescent organisms that drew their life’s energy from the heat that poured through the vents to the moon’s raging magma core.

Food was plentiful. Shissh had already taken care of all potential predators. Company was available if he wanted it. But he didn’t. It was the perfect place to explore, live, and not hurt.

He lasted only three rotations of the moon.

* * *

“You’re an idiot,” Shissh said.

Hsissh flexed the claws of the new werfle hatchling’s body he’d acquired. “Probably,” he agreed. Shissh’s consciousness floated away. He didn’t say goodbye. Blinking awake from his nap, he got up and resumed tunneling through the underbrush. He was barely weaned from this body’s third. None of this body’s three parents had been host to a member of The One. They were sweet, kind, and boring. Hsissh would miss them, the third especially; but he remembered Noa kicking Jacob across the room, and then sobbing for a creature that wasn’t her species. He missed Noa more—the tightening in his hearts was unmistakable. As he hopped toward the Sato family, he felt elation in his sorrow. It felt so good to feel again.

Hearts pumping, he increased his speed. Time on the crustacean moon had passed more slowly, due to a difference in gravity. Noa was several cycles older and would be taking exams soon. He had to reach her, and be there to sit on her shoulder and her lap while she studied to offer moral support. He had to snuggle with her at night so she wouldn’t be afraid of rats and could get enough sleep. He had to see her get off this planet before his kind unleashed the Fourth Plague—more and more humans were arriving every day, and many of The One were pushing to advance the date.

Hsissh had chosen his hatchling’s body for its proximity to the Sato’s homestead. He was at the edge of the trees, dirt stained and exhausted, just past sunset. He came to an abrupt halt before he entered the garden. There were boys outside of Noa’s window. He felt venom pool on his tongue. Were they there because of some human “elopement” ritual?

A voice rose among the boys—it sounded like Jacob’s, but deeper. “You’re not going to race your brother’s new antigrav bike?”

Noa was silhouetted by light and he couldn’t read her facial expressions. But through the wave he felt her fury. “I’ve already beaten your ass twice, Jacob. Now I’ve got to study.”

“Waste of time,” said Jacob.

“If you’re only interested in being in the Luddeccean Guard, sure,” Noa hissed.

“Nothing wrong with joining the Guard,” said another voice … again, familiar but deeper. Hsissh sniffed. It was Sergei! He’d grown since Hsissh had been gone. Noa’s silhouette turned to Sergei and Hsissh could feel the war within her. He rushed through the garden, all ten legs pumping.

“She’s lost her edge,” said Jacob. “Let’s go.”

The boys turned away.

“Wait!” said Noa, her eyes on Sergei.

Hsissh leaped into the ivy on the side of the house and began climbing the vines.

“Noa?” Sergei said.

“I heard something!” Noa said, and Hsissh could feel her concentration had left the boy.

“A wild werfle!” Jacob cried, “Kill it!”

Noa shouted, “Stay away from him or I’ll kill you!” Before Hsissh could blink or think, she was soaring through the window above his head and landing lightly on the ground.

“It’s your funeral if he bites!” Jacob said.

Dad’s voice roared through the night. “Who’s there!”

Hsissh took the opportunity to sneak in the window and leap onto Noa’s bed. He heard Sergei say, “It’s her dad, run!”

Inside the house, there was the sound of Mom’s footsteps running toward Noa’s room. Hsissh dived behind the pillows on Noa’s bed just before Mom burst in. Outside, he heard the boys’ retreating footsteps, Dad’s thunderous approach and booming voice. “Noa, what was going on?”

“They wanted to go racing,” she said. “And then Jacob tried to attack a wild werfle.” He could hear her rifling through the ivy.

Hsissh watched Mom go to the window, peer out, and then turn to shoo Masako and John from the room.

In the garden, Dad said, “Go back inside.”

“But the werfle …” Noa said.

“Will be fine,” said Dad. “You go inside …”

There was the sound of soft, quick steps and then a thump against the house. A moment later, Noa was climbing through the window, a few pieces of ivy clinging to her fingers.

“That wasn’t what I meant!” Dad shouted.

“I have to get back to studying!” Noa said, landing lightly on her feet and immediately going to her hologlobe. The device was larger than the one she used to have—this one was as large in diameter as two grown werfles. Hsissh felt her concentrate. The globe glowed and within it appeared a scene of Fleet ships below a time gate.

Noa’s paws balled at her side. “The Guard won’t take me …” she muttered. Shaking her head, she focused ... and then her mind was alight with the thoughts of members of the Reserve Fleet Training Corp.

“Hey, Noa, you’re back!” said a boy Hsissh didn’t recognize.

“You weren’t kidnapped by crazy fundies and forced into marriage with a man five times your age,” said a girl who looked to be about Noa’s age.

“Ha, ha, you’re hilarious,” Noa said aloud. The words were picked up by the nanos in her mind and sent across the galaxy to her friends. Noa punched the air. “Let’s get back to the Battle of Time Gate Five. What would we have done in Captain Malik’s position? I was thinking … ”

Hsissh dropped from her consciousness. He was warm between the pillows, but an uncomfortable feeling was coming over him. Noa didn’t really need his help. She was going to leave. She had to, not because of any plague, but because she didn’t belong here. Maybe he didn’t, either.

* * *

It wasn’t until she was putting on her pajamas that Hsissh slunk from his hiding place. Her back was to him, and he was pondering quietly leaving … but then she turned suddenly. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of him—and he reared on his hind legs at the sight of her. She’d grown in the time he was gone, and developed the secondary sexual characteristics of her kind, but she was still lean, her skin was still a beautiful rich brown, and her eyes that deep almost-black.

“Fluffy?” Noa said, reaching out hesitantly. In the waves he heard her thoughts. It’s not really Fluffy, but so much like him, he’d stand just like that …

With a strike of inspiration, Hsissh dived beneath the covers and did his circuit. Coming up for air, he gave the squeak of ‘all clear.’ He tugged at the waves, and tried to reassure her, I won’t bite.

Noa fell onto the bed and scooped him up into her arms. She scratched him behind the ears, the way he’d liked in his old body and still liked in this one. He purred unabashedly and she wept into his fur.

Later, with a belly full of leftovers Noa had sneaked from the kitchen, he curled up with her under the covers. Noa didn’t need him to escape Luddeccea … and he didn’t need to love her. But life without love was like a rat that had been dead for a few days. You could eat it, but it wasn’t as delicious.

6

Releasing Pets into the Wild

Hsissh’s body was old again. If he moved, his joints would ache, and his fur was thinning. But he wasn’t moving, the chair beneath him was soft and comfortable, and he was warmed by a sunbeam.

“Looks like you’ve stolen my seat, Sir,” said Tim. Hsissh blinked his eyes. Tim was Noa’s husband. His appearance was as striking as Noa’s. Instead of tan skin, his was as pale as a shaved werfle. His eyes were an eerie sky blue, and his hair was the color of dead grass.

Hsissh raised his head. “Oh, don’t get up on my account,” Tim said, scratching Hsissh gingerly behind the ears.

Not that Hsissh would dream of it, even though he liked Tim, despite his disturbing appearance. Tim was an engineer in the Fleet and served on the same “space ship” that Noa did. They were stationed light years from Luddeccea. Noa would be safe when the plague came; just as important …

Noa’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “You’re moving back to Earth?”

Dad answered, “Luddeccea is becoming too fundamentalist.”

The turn in conversation drew Tim to the kitchen. Hsissh watched him go. As far as he understood these things, Tim was a fine specimen of the masculine gender of Noa’s species. Broad-shouldered and tall. But more important, Noa and Tim were happy when they were together—the waves buzzed with their feelings. Hsissh was pleased. Humans, from the werfles’ observation, were mostly polygamous in their youth, but then settled into monogamous relationships as they aged. It seemed to correspond with stability and happiness.

“We just don’t feel comfortable staying here,” Mom said.

Hsissh felt a warm glow in the pit of his stomach and put a proud paw through his whiskers. He couldn’t speak into Mom’s and Dad’s minds, but he’d discovered he could tug at the waves in a way that sparked emotional reactions. Whenever a news report came on the hologlobe about The Three Book’s growing influence in civic affairs, or a riot against new settlers occurred in the city of Prime, he’d pulled hard on the waves and made their natural unease greater. When Dad had gotten a job offer on Earth, Hsissh had augmented his elation. When Mom contemplated moving her own consulting business, Hsissh had increased her optimism.

“We’ll all be off world …” said Noa.

Hsissh kneaded his claws. He’d nudged Masako to go there to further her studies—and she’d stayed! John had always wanted to leave; his parents had died in the Third Plague before Mom and Dad had immigrated to the planet. John himself had augmented kidneys because the Third Plague had destroyed his; Dad had taken him to Earth for several operations as he aged so that his “plastic kidney beans” could be replaced with larger ones for his growing body. John blamed the “Luddeccean crazy-late acceptance of nano cures” for his parents’ deaths and the augments that had cost him painful operations. Hsissh had only needed to strengthen John’s resolve to leave the planet.

Mom sighed. “Kenji is very upset about us selling the house.”

Hsissh’s ears twitched. Kenji had been the only member of the family he hadn’t been able to influence. Whenever Hsissh pulled on the waves coursing through his mind, Kenji had heard voices … much as the humans The One had tried to inhabit had. Perhaps it was because Kenji’s mind had special nano augments to make up for a congenital syndrome he had? Hsissh wasn’t sure, but the “voices” had worried Mom and Dad tremendously. Hsissh had to give up his attempts to guide Kenji, but in the end, the boy had left on his own, drawn by the promise of a better education on Earth.

“What will happen to Fluffy?” Noa said, and Hsissh’s body grew rigid.

“Sarah Benjamin has offered to take him in,” said Mom.

“She and Sergei know having an old werfle sleeping in the house is better than no werfle,” Dad said. “Rats hate them.”

“I wish we could take him aboard the fighter carrier,” Tim said. “We have a rat problem.”

Noa said what Hsissh was thinking. “He’d never survive the Fleet quarantine, even if he were younger.”

Mom sighed. “Sergei and Sarah, they’re kind people … they’ll treat the old man right.”

Hsissh’s whiskers twitched. They wouldn’t treat Hsissh at all. He’d be leaving this old body soon. In the kitchen, he heard Noa and Tim discuss their ship’s upcoming voyage. Mom and Dad discussed their upcoming move off-world.

Hsissh blinked. The sunlight felt especially warm, and made bits of dust sparkle in its beam like distant stars and brilliant expectations … He’d done it, he’d seen that his humans would leave this world and make it to safety. It didn’t feel a little like seeing hatchlings leave the nest; it felt exactly like that.

7

Carl Sagan Discovers Intelligent Life

Hsissh was in the body of a male werfle in his prime. He was watching as his latest hatchlings, now grown adults, set off through the undergrowth. Beside him the second in his parental triad squeaked. She wasn’t inhabited by The One and was simple, but Dich, the “other female” in the group, and the third in this triad was. It had made Hsissh’s time as First more interesting. Dich touched her nose to Second fondly, and Hsissh did the same. Second wiggled, sniffed the air, and set off on her own through the undergrowth.

“Well, that was well done,” Dich said into the wave. “We made great parents.”

Hsissh agreed and felt the warmth of satisfaction in his chest.

“I’m going to curl up and join The Gathering,” Dich said. “Will you be coming?”

Hsissh’s tail flicked, a dark mood settling upon him. He didn’t relish going over plans for the Fourth Plague.

“Suit yourself,” said Dich, and she hopped over to the tree log they used as a den.

Lifting his nose to the breeze, Hsissh detected the scent of a rat. He licked his lips. He could eat all of his kill for the first time in cycles! He slunk off, and an hour later he was rolling over on his back in a bright patch of sunlight, a rat carcass partially consumed beside him. He was utterly content. And then a wave-dream apparition appeared beside him. Hsissh blinked. The apparition was in the form of a cat. Before Hsissh could ask, the cat flattened its ears. “It’s me, Shissh!”

Hsissh blinked. “You’re a cat now?”

“I wanted to hitch a ride on one of the humans’ space ships,” Shissh said.

“How interesting,” said Hsissh, not particularly interested in anything but enjoying his current sunbeam and full belly.

“It’s Noa’s space ship,” Shissh said.

Hsissh sat up with a start. “Really, how is she?”

Shissh swished her tail. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t—”

“Pay attention,” hissed Shissh. “It may be the maternal hormones from the litter of kittens I just bore, but I’ve become fond of your human. She saved me from being thrown out of an airlock.”

Hsissh put a claw to his chest that was swelling with pride. “Well, of course she—”

Shissh hissed again. “She went to visit her brother on Luddeccea.”

“Kenji is here?”

“He’s been back for years. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Years?” said Hsissh.

“Listen,” Shissh growled. “Luddeccea’s time gate has gone offline and Noa is on the planet. If you want her to get off that self-righteous fundamentalist rock—”

Hsissh blinked.

Shissh licked a paw. “The attitude toward Luddeccea around here is influencing me.” She swished her tail. “You’ve got to find her and get her off the planet.”

“Is she alone—or is Tim with her?” Hsissh asked, rising to his hind legs.

For a moment, Shissh said nothing. She just sat, swishing her tail and glaring at him. And then she snarled, “Tim has been dead for several Earth years now.”

Hsissh sank to all ten paws. “What?” He’d been distracted by hatchlings and kits for a long time … he hadn’t realized how long. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to follow Noa too closely, afraid to know what he wouldn’t be able to influence.

“None of that matters,” Shissh said. “Find Noa!”

Hsissh launched himself into the waves, spreading himself as thin as he could… and encountered Ish’s consciousness in Prime. Ish was in werfle form, dancing in a home that had a ceiling that was a hundred werfle lengths high. “Isn’t it wonderful, Hsissh! The time gate is closed. No more ships from Earth, the humans here will be able to focus on enlightenment; they’ll evolve!”

Hsissh thought frantically, “Have you seen Noa?”

Ish put a paw through a whisker, and Hsissh felt his disapproval. “Your human is somewhere in the capital … she is wanted by the Central Authority. She is involved in some horrible new ‘technological experiment.’ But never fear, we’ll catch—”

Hsissh cut away from the conversation, feeling a bubbling wrath in his stomach—the same he’d felt when a rat had tried to attack one of his hatchlings. He tore himself completely away from his body, leaving behind just a werfle bewildered at finding itself stuffed with a delicious rat in a field. Letting his pattern flow through the waves, Hsissh found a werfle host not inhabited by a member of The One in Prime and slipped in.

Blinking his new eyes, he was assailed by the overwhelming smell of human. Instead of sod, underneath his feet was pavement.

He’d never been to Prime, but this werfle host had lived here all its life and Hsissh had all its memories. He wore a collar—once this werfle had lived with humans. He recognized the “alley” he stood in. It was behind a tall, slender “town home” where he’d resided with two adults and a little boy. But recently, the “boy” was only a technological imitation of the man and woman’s child who’d died of a lung infection. Outwardly it was almost perfect, but it smelled wrong. And when the adults were not in the room, it became nothing but a piece of furniture, its mind simple and unchanging. It never cried, and it never yelled at the parents. The real boy had chased the werfle with such enthusiasm that they sometimes knocked over furniture and he’d screamed when the werfle had been separated from him. The machine boy never played chase. The memory of the strangeness of the artificial boy sent a cocktail of depressive hormones to Hsissh’s mind, and he cried into the waves at the lie that was the machine. Shissh must have been paying attention, because she heard. Hsissh felt Shissh reply, “Ah, yes, Noa’s spoken of those … Some humans use robots to replace their dead—but they don’t have the computing power to be like real humans. Something about Moore’s Law banging into Moore’s Wall … Human innovation has been stalled for the past few hundred years. To have a robot as smart as a human, you’d need a machine with the brain the size of a small moon and a nuclear plant to power it.”

Shaking his head to clear it of Shissh’s gibberish, Hsissh stood up on his hind limbs and looked to the home. He knew without going in that it was empty. He was assailed by a painful memory of Luddeccean Guards coming into the house, dismembering the machine boy, and taking the parents away. This werfle—not intelligent like the one inhabited by The One—had attacked one of the Guards and had been kicked across the room. Hsissh took a deep breath. His “new” ribs still hurt from the experience. He patted his body. It was amazing he hadn’t been killed … that had been months ago. This body hadn’t eaten well since then, even though he had fresh venom on his tongue.

Hsissh pivoted on his back hind legs and caught a glimpse of blue sky between the tall town homes on either side of him. He paused, struck by another memory. That ribbon of blue should have been filled with space ships traveling up to the time gate, but it was empty of everything but clouds. He craned his neck to see the time gate. A bright spark flashed beside the gate’s ring and then streaked toward the planet like a falling star. A meteor? He searched his mind, and the mind of The One … and all the thoughts of all The One on Luddeccea collided with his. He knew what the explosion was; it was a space ship. Worse, he knew where the two parents of the machine boy had been taken. He saw it through the eyes of another werfle somewhere so far north the snow had already fallen: a huge camp where humans were dying like they’d been afflicted by another plague. He felt in the collective consciousness of The One that these humans were “augmented” or had been owners of imitation robots. They had been rounded up and made to work until they dropped because of it. It wasn’t plague, but hunger that made them slump into the snow … Humans were starving their own kind to death.

His claws fell to his sides and he had an uncomfortable feeling in his gut. Perhaps The One need not exterminate the humans on this planet … they were doing the job themselves. Hsissh dropped down to all ten paws.

The sound of two human children behind him made him turn. They were thin, and he noticed with a start that they didn’t have the usual metal circle in the sides of their heads.

“Is that a rat?” one of the children said, raising a slingshot, a projectile device Noa had used on occasion as a child. Hsissh’s body reacted on its own. He dashed into a hole at the side of the “street” before he’d even thought about it. A moment later, he was in the darkness of the “sewer.” The hunger this body carried made the short dash exhausting. He curled into a ball and tried to seek out Noa’s consciousness. He searched until the light coming through the sewer “grate” had dimmed. But there were literally millions of humans in Prime and he had to gently probe each one at a time. After a while, his exhaustion broke down his concentration and carried his body into fitful sleep.

Shissh’s feline apparition found his dreams. “Have you found Noa? The Captain’s talking of having me spayed!”

“What is that?” Hsissh asked.

Swishing her tail, Shissh said, “Never mind! Where is Noa?”

“Ish told me she’s here in Prime,” Hsissh replied. “She’s being hunted by the Luddeccean Guard for her part in some sort of undesirable technological innovation.”

Sitting down, Shissh’s ears perked. “That’s odd, I know nothing of that.”

Hsissh wiped a nervous paw through his whiskers. “There are so many humans here, Shissh. Trying to find her is like—”

“Finding a needle in a haystack,” Shissh said. “That means—”

“I know what it means!” said Hsissh. “Do you have any ideas?”

Shissh’s tail swished. “Doesn’t she have an aunt in Prime? Aunt Eliza?”

Hsissh sat up, or his dream self did. “Yes … do you think Noa would go there?”

Shissh nervously licked her paw. “I don’t know …”

Hsissh thought of a tiny Noa barreling toward his tormentors so long ago. “I have to try and find her … I remember a map to the aunt’s home. I will go.”

Shissh’s cat ears perked again. “You’re going to do it …” And Hsissh felt her wonder. His whiskers twitched at the insult. She purred and kneaded her paws. “You’ve never been a werfle of action … it looks good on you. That means—”

“I have to go now,” he said. He tore himself from the dream, forced his body up from the ground, and began the journey through the sewers to Eliza’s house. The map in his memory was of streets above ground, but he knew his relative location from this body’s memories, and his body was sensitive to the magnetic pull of the planet’s pole. He would make it even in the dark, if the tunnels were clear, if he didn’t encounter any human “maintenance” workers, or children with slingshots.

He didn’t account for his body’s state of near starvation. After half a day cycle he collapsed.

* * *

He dreamed of Noa. She was arguing about stealing a space ship with … was that a member of The One in human form?

“Noa,” the maybe-member of The One said. “I need to know what your plan is. If I don’t know what the plan is, I can’t calculate the odds of its success.”

“Calculate the odds of success?” Noa said. “Some things are worth more than any odds.”

They continued to argue, and then Noa shouted, “If that’s what you believe, then go!” And then a real shout made Hsissh awaken. “Go!”

Blinking his eyes in the dim light of the sewer, Hsissh saw two humans not sixty hops away. One looked like Noa.

Hope giving him strength, he skittered to his feet and hopped as fast as he could toward the pair. A blast of air sent the slighter human’s scent toward him … and it was Noa! His exhausting trek toward Aunt Eliza’s domicile had paid off! His sense of victory was dampened by the smell of disease and hunger about her. A worried cheeping came from his chest. Noa turned, and he stood up on his hind-most legs, just as he’d done that first time he’d come back to her. His hearts slid toward the ground … She’d become so thin …

Taking off her outer upper garment, Noa sat down on her heels and held it out like a hammock. Hsissh approached cautiously, remembering her trepidation the first time he’d come back.

“They’re venomous!” the other human said.

Hsissh felt the waves … not a member of The One. But not quite right either.

Noa snorted. “Did you notice he’s wearing a collar? His venom has already been milked.” Not that Hsissh suspected she’d care … she’d managed to keep him from being milked when he was in his second body so he could “have some protection from the Jacobs of the world.” He slid into her garment and rolled onto his back.

“Someone’s pet,” Noa murmured, looking down at him. “But he’s in bad shape.”

Hsissh gave a cry of confirmation.

“I know you’re hungry, little one.” She sighed. “You lost your family, didn’t you? And there aren’t any more rats in the sewers.” She wrapped him in the fabric so only his head was exposed, and ran a finger down his chin.

Another soft cry escaped Hsissh against his volition. The other human hesitatingly proffered a “soybean.” Hsissh was too hungry to reject the offering. His nose twitched as he ate. The other human smelled like steel and synthetics. His host’s memories shot through him. The man smelled a lot like the imitation boy! His nose twitched again … but no, that wasn’t quite right; the other human also smelled like a human male, and blood. Also, he was much too disagreeable to be an “imitation.” He’d argued with Noa quite infuriatingly. So much plastic, metal, and steel though … a human who had been excessively augmented? Hadn’t the werfles near the snow camps said that the humans trapped there were augmented?

“What are you still doing here?” Noa said. For a moment Hsissh thought she was talking to him, but then she resumed the argument she’d been having with the man. After a few minutes Noa said, “Fine, let’s go,” and started walking in the direction of the aunt’s house.

In her arms, Hsissh trembled. Could he really help Noa? He had poison fangs and a worn out body. She was sick. The other human was prone to arguing. Hsissh blinked at the other human; his slightly mollified hunger had cleared his eyes a bit. The other human looked a lot like Tim, taller though, more muscular, but did not radiate happiness in Noa’s presence. He did have a neural interface for the ethernet, unlike the two boys in the alley. Hsissh sniffed the air. The other human didn’t smell like Tim … he smelled, oddly, opposite of Noa. Hsissh couldn’t quite explain it, but as the two of them continued to converse, the fur on his back rose.

Perhaps sensing his tension, Noa ran a finger over Hsissh’s belly. Despite his hunger, and all his apprehensions, he purred.

“I think I’ll name him Fluffy,” Noa said, and Hsissh whispered into her mind, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“He isn’t fluffy, his fur is short. That name doesn’t even make sense,” the man said. Hsissh went stiff in Noa’s arms. He felt a trembling in the waves, as though someone were using it for communication.

“They are fluffy when they’re kits,” Noa said. “We named our werfles Fluffy back on our farm.”

“You named more than one werfle Fluffy? How is that even practical? They wouldn’t know which one you were calling,” the man said.

“Not at the same time!” Noa replied. “After the first died, we named the second werfle Fluffy. That way we didn’t slip up and call werfle number two Fluffy, when his name was actually Rex, or Spot or something. Calling him by a dead werfle’s name would have been rude and weird.” And in the wave Hsissh felt her think, And they were so similar … I felt like they were the same being.

“But technically, you were calling him by the dead werfle’s name,” the maybe-human protested. “Fluffy was the dead werfle’s name even if it was also werfle number two’s name.”

Noa huffed. “Fine, if you don’t like Fluffy, choose another name.”

The man looked down at Hsissh, and Hsissh felt it again, a tiny disruption in the waves that came with communication across time and space. “I wouldn’t even think you’d like werfles. They look like rats,” the man said.

Hsissh’s ears flattened like a cat’s. He tried to send disapproval into the man’s mind, but … the wave felt different in the other human.

Noa’s eyes went wide and she gasped. “They look nothing like rats. Their noses aren’t long and pointy, their eyes aren’t small and beady, they’re clean—well, when they have access to clean water, they’re clean. Their tails aren’t naked, and they don’t eat people.” She lifted Hsissh to her nose. “They eat rats. They’re cute, they’re friendly, and they’re intelligent—smartest creature on Luddeccea—at least as smart as ravens as far as anyone can tell.”

Hsissh could see the irritation flaring in the other human as Noa touched her nose to his. Hsissh purred with the new beginnings of familial love …

… but then a rush of alien waves sparked through his mind. “Fine, call it Carl Sagan if it’s so smart,” the man snapped.

Hsissh’s whiskers trembled, and it all came together. He understood. The other human was extremely augmented, not just in his body, but in his brain—like Kenji! Hsissh hadn’t been able to touch Kenji mentally either, not effectively anyway. The different “augmentation” in the man’s brain allowed him to use the waves. Humans had achieved wave manipulation through their technology! If he’d had more energy, he might have wiggled out of Noa’s grasp in excitement. Ish had been wrong thinking humans would achieve oneness through their prayers—maybe that had shown them the way—but they were inadequate creatures in fur, claw, and mind. Like every other inadequacy, they’d made up for their weakness with their machines. He took a deep breath … would the other werfles accept it? He exhaled. Not fast enough. They still had to leave before the next plague—but maybe someday …

“Carl Sagan?” said Noa.

“Twentieth-century scientist,” the man muttered, looking away from Hsissh. “He theorized that there was intelligent life in the universe, just that it hadn’t visited us.”

Hsissh purred. The One had neglected the quadrant of the galaxy that was home to humans—it had been a complete fluke that the humans had found The One’s home planet first and not the other way around. To think a human named Carl Sagan had theorized that was possible … His purr halted. The One thought that there was no other intelligence in the universe but their own, and so had humans, though they’d been under one another’s noses for a few centuries now. Their concepts of “intelligence” were just too different to allow them to see one another. A purr rose in his chest again. But their sense of love, it was the same. Hsissh tried to send a rush of admiration and validation to the other human. The man didn’t respond. Hsissh almost got mad, but then realized that maybe the human hadn’t felt it. What had Dad said? “New technology, always buggy”?

“Carl Sagan,” said Noa. “I like it.”

Hsissh purred. He liked it, too.

* * *

If you enjoyed this story and would enjoy reading another story in this universe, check out Archangel Down.

Or check out my urban fantasy / sci-fi series about Loki, the Norse God of Mischief, Chaos, and Lies. It's called I Bring the Fire, and the first book, Wolves, is free just about everywhere.

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