“SO, SPEAKER,” CAT says without looking up from her tablet. “Just out of curiosity, what did you wind up doing with the people you took from us two years ago?”
Speaker’s head lifts enough for him to turn half-around toward the back of the compartment.
“I have already discussed this with Mickey and the Nasha,” he says. “I would rather not do so again.”
Berto grins. “Mickey and the Nasha? Are you two starting a band?”
Cat shoots Berto a sour look before turning back to Speaker. “Is that so? One of the people you grabbed during the winter was my bunkmate and another was my friend, and I’d really like to know what happened to them. So, I would rather you did do so again.”
“They killed them,” Nasha says. “Not much more to say, is there?”
“This is true,” Speaker says, “but to be clear, it was not our intent. We meant only to exchange ancillaries.”
Cat’s face twists into a scowl. “Exchange ancillaries? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a whole thing,” Nasha says. “They don’t have much of a concept of individual life.”
“Untrue,” Speaker says. “This was a misconception. We understand our mistake now.”
“It was understandable,” I say. “The creepers are a hive mind.”
Speaker rounds on me. “Also untrue.”
“It is, as we understand it. Your ancillaries are not individually intelligent.”
Speaker’s mandibles clatter together. “Untrue. Untrue. Am I not intelligent?”
“Sure, I guess so—but you’re not an ancillary.”
A ripple runs the length of his body. “I am. This should be obvious. Do you imagine we would trust you to carry away our Prime?”
“So the smaller ones,” I say, “the ones that we destroyed … they’re intelligent?”
“No,” Speaker says. “Obviously not.”
“You’re avoiding,” Cat says. “What did you do with my friends?”
“I am not avoiding,” Speaker says. “I am clarifying.”
Nasha nudges him with her boot. “Answer the question.”
Speaker twists toward her, waves one foreleg in an opaque gesture, then turns back to Cat. “We disassembled them,” he says. “We hoped to find more useful innovations to assimilate, as we did when we disassembled the first of the Mickeys that we captured, but unfortunately they were all quite badly damaged during retrieval. We were able to learn some things regarding your biology, however. It was particularly useful to see examples of both of your basic forms. We have no such differences in body function, so this was an interesting discovery.” After a few seconds of silence, he goes on. “Understand—for us, these are ordinary interactions between two unfamiliar Primes. Exchange of ancillaries is mutual and voluntary if the meeting is friendly, forced and sometimes one-sided if not, but it always occurs.”
“Huh,” Nasha says. “Always?”
“Yes,” Speaker says. “More or less.”
She leans forward with her elbows on her knees. “Your friends to the south—they feel the same way?”
Again, a ripple runs the length of Speaker’s body. “Of course. Is this not why we have brought so many of you?”
We ride in silence for a long while after that.
“I’M BORED,” LUCAS says.
Cat shakes her head without looking up. “Of course you are. Why didn’t you bring a tablet?”
“I thought this would be exciting. Didn’t realize it was actually going to be sitting on a bench and staring at the wall for the rest of my life.” He shifts in his seat uncomfortably, then leans his head back and sighs again. “Who wants to tell me a story?”
“A story?” Nasha says. “What are you, four?”
“I can tell you a story,” Speaker says.
Lucas barks out a short, sharp laugh. “Wasn’t really talking to you, Wormy.”
“My name is not Wormy,” Speaker says. “Please call me Speaker.”
“Whatever,” Lucas says. “Point is, I don’t want to hear a story from you.”
Nasha breaks into a grin. “I don’t know, Lucas. I’m kind of interested.”
“As you should be,” Speaker says. “I am an excellent storyteller.”
Lucas looks back and forth between them, then closes his eyes and slumps a little deeper on the bench. “Fine. Make it a good one.”
“Very well,” Speaker says. “This story begins one hundred and seventy days ago. The sun was hot in a clear sky after two days of rain. A soft breeze moved through the fern fields, which were a- swarm with a million tiny hunters. Just past midday, Berto opened a dialogue with Mickey, initially related to whether Mickey would like to join him for lunch. However, the topic very quickly turned to Mickey’s relationship with the Nasha. It seems that there had been an issue with their sexual—”
“Hey!” Nasha says, as I drop my head into my hands and the rest of the cabin bursts out laughing.
“I am sorry,” Speaker says. “Have I misspoken?”
“No,” Cat says around a giggle. “Not at all. I, for one, would very much like to hear the rest of that story—but I think everyone else was kind of hoping you might have a story about you.”
“Oh,” Speaker says. “Why? My life has been both brief and dull. I was sure you would find the intimate relations of Mickey and the Nasha much more interesting.”
“Well—” Cat begins, before Nasha cuts her off.
“No,” she says. “Nobody wants to hear that.” She shoots me a look that tells me very clearly how much I’m going to regret having that chat with Berto, then turns back to Speaker. “Chen is right. We want to hear something about you. Not you in particular, maybe, but your people. You got a creation myth or something? Gods and spirits and all that mess? Those are always fun.”
“Creation myth?” Speaker says. “I do not believe I understand.”
“You know,” Cat says. “Like, where did you come from?”
Speaker twists around to face her. “Oh. I thought this was clear. We come from here. We have never been elsewhere. Your people are the ones who have come here from somewhere else. In truth, it would probably be more useful if you told me where you come from. This has been a point of some speculation for us.”
“That’s an interesting question,” Nasha says. “What have you speculated?”
Speaker hesitates. “I would rather not say.”
“Wormy doesn’t want to give away information,” Lucas says without opening his eyes. “He’s trying to learn as much as he possibly can about us while giving us the least possible information about him. It’s exactly what I’d do in his situation, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.”
“Again,” Speaker says, “my name is not Wormy.”
“It’s a nickname,” Lucas says. “A sign of affection.”
“How about we trade?” Nasha says. “A story for a story?”
“Yes,” Speaker says. “This seems fair. Will you begin?”
Nasha turns to me, one eyebrow raised.
“Nope,” I say. “This was your idea.”
She sighs. “Fine. Here’s a story for you. These people? They’re all from a place called Midgard. I am too, I guess, but my parents came from another place. They called it New Hope. Sounds nice, right? Very hopeful. It wasn’t, though. I never saw New Hope, but my parents told me stories. It wasn’t as god-awful as this place—no offense—but it was close. They needed CO2 filters to breathe, it rained pretty much every minute of every day, and there were things there—not as spooky as you, maybe, but bad enough.
“Anyway, once they’d made planetfall, they made it work, because just like us, they didn’t have any other choice. They planted crops, built out the colony, started raising babies. Things were going okay until some of the younger ones—the bottle babies, like my parents—figured out that one of the local species was maybe probably intelligent. Problem was, that species was one of the only things native to New Hope that humans could actually eat, and the colony had been capturing them for slaughter almost since the day they made planetfall.