Strange Tails

Squirrel peered out the window from his top bunk, much like he’d done at the Silence, hungry and thirsty, wondering if he’d ever get a hotel with room service.

He admired the aggressive bulk of the spaceship hovering outside, just a few yards from his window and a few feet from the ground. It was even more like a shark than a shark, like millions of years of killer fish evolution had produced too many unmenacing bits, and nature could take a pointer from this baby. The business end faced towards him in an exciting and alarming way, and he imagined it racing towards him at the speed of light. Could it travel at light speed? And was that better than heavy speed? He’d have to ask about that.

Despite the aerodynamic shape of the front end of the craft the rest of it bristled with carbuncled knobs and thrusting antennae, leaving so many shadowy alcoves and recessed doors that he wondered what the point of the front-end pointiness could actually be. Shouldn’t it be smooth all over, to reduce drag? And if that didn’t matter, because it was designed for space and as far as he could tell air didn’t like going into space very much, why make it any shape at all? Especially a shape that’s so hard to put furniture against. Wouldn’t a cube be better? Although, he thought, a cube might lead to some very big dust bunnies in some very big corners.

Potbelly snored. She, like Squirrel, had sort of fallen asleep in Snodberry’s arms as he carried them from the ship, and then very much fell asleep when he’d laid them out on the soft fluffiness of their new bunk. Squirrel woke first, not being much of a sleeper, despite a lifetime of practice. He’d rested enough to be alert; besides, Potbelly snored like a tuba in a wind tunnel.

He continued his watch. Creatures came and went through a portal door revealing a secret dimness lurking within. Others, too, crawled, hopped, and paced over the outer shell, pulling, poking, and generally so-what’s-this-then-ing over just about anything they could point at or touch. He couldn’t remember from where Snodberry had originally emerged, or how they’d figured out how to undoor the doorway, but it seemed like this place had a pretty smart idea of what it was doing. Someone had even fixed the hole they’d blasted in the nose cone.

This place, he thought. It was hot. An air conditioner rattled in the corner as if mumbling to itself about the bother of humidity. It couldn’t disguise what lay beyond though, a thickness to the semi-invisible air leaving it tangible, tasteable. Wafts of shimmering heat rippled from the craft’s shell like a Scooby Doo flashback. That made him think of Michel and his video collection. Did they make it out of the Silence in one piece? Be a shame to lose that video collection.

Potbelly snuffled herself awake. She slapped a tongue around a dusty mouth and creaked the bed springs into a reluctant shape.

“Squirrel?” she mumbled.

“Yep?”

“Why are we both on the top bunk?”

“It’s probably an April Fool’s joke. Do you need me to help you out?”

“Sure.”

“Which way did you come in?”

“Very good. Now find out how to get me down.”

“There’s a ladder,” he said, nodding to one resting against the bunk. Potbelly looked at the large gap between each rung.

“We really need to have a word about accessibility. So are we in Africa?”

He nodded to the window. “If not, global warming has definitely become an issue in Ohio.”

“Oh God, I feel so lost.”

“You’re not lost, old girl. You’re just not somewhere where you know where you are.”

“You do know what lost means, right?”

“Everything’s fixable. Wasn’t so long ago you were shrink wrapped in an alien spaceship and shot at with lasers. Lost in the jungle is progress.”

“Excellent. Maybe I can work my way up to being fired out of a cannon. Really make today a win.”

A small voice wafted in from the doorway. “Nah, you’d be too fat to fit in the barrel,” it said.

They turned to see the unmistakable girth of Snodberry’s upper body, and just as unmistakably, the girth of Siobhan’s toothy grin.

“Siobhan! You survived!” yelled Squirrel, leaping from the top bunk. Potbelly tried to follow him by ladder, waving a hind paw down to the first rung.

“It’s a miracle!” said Squirrel. “We thought you were dead!”

“I think she is,” said Siobhan.

“What?”

“It’s me, Stinkeye.”

“Wait, didn’t you used to be a moth?”

“I still am.”

“So … you live in Siobhan now?”

“No, genius, I’m up here.”

Squirrel looked up farther, and then up some more, until the ascent took him to the very peak of Snodberry’s fur-capped dome. A small pair of wings beat to attract his attention. Snodberry stepped into the room.

“Oh,” said Squirrel. “I thought you sounded different.”

“Stinkeye!” joined in Potbelly, having flopped back onto the mattress, defeated. “Judging by your offensive opening statement I see you’ve already spent far too much time around Squirrel.”

“Sorry, I thought that was how you guys rolled.”

“It needs some work.”

“My young Padawan’s learning the force,” beamed Squirrel, nonetheless.

“Again, sorry Potbelly. Sometimes the one brain says do nothing and then the other brain says ooh look, pretty lights.”

“You have two brains?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not that I’m aware of. You sure it’s not just two different voices in your head?”

“You hear them too? Sheesh, that’s a relief. I was dialing it down with the two brains. Didn’t wanna seem weird.”

A pause seemed the best answer. Potbelly brightened. “So, we all made it out. That’s fantastic news.”

“Actually, no,” said Stinkeye. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. Siobhan is actually dead.”

“But she’s right there, look. Snodberry’s holding her.”

“He doesn’t seem to want to let her go. Rigamortis set in but he doesn’t seem concerned. A lion in the medical center tried to take her away from him. They say it’ll be walking again in a few days.”

Potbelly peered at Siobhan’s matted corpse. “That’s kinda gross,” she said.

“Love is,” observed Stinkeye.

They all pondered that for a moment.

“At least it’s cured my hankering for some gummy bears,” said Squirrel, never one for an over-pondering.

Stinkeye sighed. “Snodberry’s noble devotion reminds me so much of my own Vanessaconshaltamaressasitiamamorena. Oh how—“

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve done that already.” Squirrel patted around the bedsheets for any stray confectionery.

“Squirrel, don’t be so rude. And will someone help me down from this bloody biped climbing frame?”

Snodberry craned up his free arm to oblige. An interesting whiff seemed to emanate from Siobhan as he did so, but then again, it may just have been that armpit.

“So you’ve looked around this place?” Potbelly asked of Stinkeye, once she was down on the floor.

“Not much, just caught a ride from Snodberry. He seems to feel at home here. Must be a species thing. We’re in Madagascar, apparently. Somewhere in the middle, near Antsirabe.”

The others nodded in ignorance.

“Is that anywhere near Ohio?” asked Potbelly, with little hope.

“Compared to the moon, it’s practically around the corner. Can’t say I know too much other than what I said. We probably need the audio guide. Shall we wander? Maybe you can follow your nose, what with me not having one.”

A large black bird suddenly appeared in the doorway, peering around Snodberry and holding out one wing. “May I be of service?” it asked.

“Well, that depends,” replied Potbelly. “Are you in any way serviceable?”

“I’m looking for Cyril and Probably.”

“Squirrel and Potbelly?”

“Close enough. I presume the gorilla in the room here is Snodberry. I’m Zoltan the Majestic.”

“Of course you are,” replied Potbelly. “And on top here is Stinkeye the … wait, y’know, Stinkeye, we never did find out your real name.”

“Stick with Stinkeye. My given name is not as easily pronounceable as Vanessaconshaltamaressasitiamamorena.”

“Got it. And next to Stinkeye is Siobhan. Siobhan the Stiff, I suppose.”

“Nice to meet you. Please follow me.”

Follow him Potbelly did, out into the brightly-lit and gaily-adorned corridor from where Snodberry had carried her, no doubt, back from the spaceship, but of which she now had no memory, save for the bruising that still nagged at her rear end. Seeing no reason to not follow, the others joined in too.

“So you flew in this thing?” asked Zoltan, after he strutted, bobbed, and lead them in his avian way along each corridor and out onto a shaded verandah. Potbelly wondered why the final doorway was bulldozed into a gaping hole, but lost that thought under a deluge of wow, yes, we really did fly in that thing. The silent, menacing spaceship hovered before them and Potbelly felt the twinge return to her leg as they studied it some more. Finally, she verbalized an affirmative, causing her to spontaneously pant. The shade of the verandah had little effect on the thick, oily humidity of the jungle air.

“Quite the adventure, eh?”

“If by adventure you mean a tortuous ordeal of abject misery, then yes.”

“So what are you going to do with it?” asked Squirrel. “Tourist attraction? Burger bar?”

“Not my area, I’m afraid. The Inner Circle has me detailed to Nevermore’s medical side. I’m here to check on you, so I’m told. Which suits me, I’m more interested in how we work rather than how this silly spaceship works. I guess they’ll have it figured out soon.”

“Figured out?”

“The secret to getting off the planet. The secret to going straight to the horse’s mouth, as it were. Or squid. Or whatever it is they have up there.”

“You’re off to meet the aliens?” wheezed Potbelly, still struggling with her breathing in the soupy humidity. Squirrel shook his head. He had no trouble breathing, realizing one does it the same way wherever one happens to find oneself. “Oh dear, here we go again,” he said.

“To the Inner Circle, it seems the logical thing to do.”

“You mean, the kind of logic that has you following the other lemmings, because, hey, what could possibly go wrong, right? It’s probably just a shortcut to the beach.”

“Quite—but maybe, in the end, we cannot avoid a confrontation.”

“Potbelly and I did a pretty good job.”

“Is that why you’re standing here?”

“Things sort of changed.”

“They have a tendency to, don’t they?”

Zoltan continued his bobbing around the periphery of the extensive verandah, paying little attention to the possible discomfort of his following and somewhat wheezing entourage.

“We rescued one human,” continued Squirrel. “One’s enough, right? What’s the number before you get excused heroism duties?”

“Last we saw it, though,” said Potbelly, finally catching her breath, “it was playing dodge the ground, much like Squirrel’s lemmings. My money was on the ground. Did it end up playing splat instead?”

“It? Oh you mean the human female. She survived. The hamster’s parachute caught on the upper tree branches. A broken foot, but we took care of her.”

“See, Squirrel, I told you it was a her.” She turned proudly to Zoltan. “Rose tattoo. Only a girl would do that.”

“Where is it?” asked Stinkeye.

“The tattoo?”

“No, the human. Sorry, where is she? I never actually met a talking one.”

“She’s convalescing by the baobab.” Zoltan nodded to a nearby stand. They all looked over. “Fascinating specimen, isn’t she. All that amazing medical information just locked up in that one big—ah.” The rest of the group had made an unspoken decision to wander in the direction of the star turn. Zoltan bobbed after them.

The gangly biped was, indeed, quite the draw. Creatures that were supposed to be on spaceship duty would wander close by and sniff, stare, listen attentively, or do whatever it was their species did when figuring out what a thing was. The human smiled and waved in return. Clearly she was more at home in Africa than in the Silence. Again, must be a species thing.

“Oh, look at the cute little baby!” she cried, pointing at Siobhan. Snodberry, ever the quickest to get anywhere, despite seeming to roll in every direction but forward, arrived at the human being with his deceased love cradled in one arm.

“She’s so cute! May I stroke her?”

Snodberry shrugged, and Siobhan, as he did so, nodded her consent. The human leant in and cooed, withdrawing with a patch of dead skin and hair. The human wrinkled her nose. Snodberry gestured for the swatch to be returned.

“So you don’t want to kill us anymore?” asked Squirrel. He’d taken to riding atop Potbelly again, with Stinkeye fluttering erratically behind.

“Why would I want to kill anyone as lovely as you, Widdle-Puffs? Come give me a big old hugsy.” She stretched out both arms and arrowed in on his small furry frame, long pink fingers wiggling like octopus tentacles.

“Gerroff!” he cried, jumping from Potbelly to Snodberry, his little claws scrabbling for purchase, recalling immediately her previous attack when ensconced in the coffin. He finished with an expletive and a “Just get lost, pinky.”

The human seemed to think about this instruction. “Sure thing fella,” she replied. “Where would you like me to get lost? Hey, this thicket looks a good place to start. No one would ever find me in that. Well, been nice meeting y’all!”

The human rose and limped off to a rather thick and impenetrable looking cluster of grasses. They were a cluster of grasses in the same way downtown Tokyo was a cluster of dwellings.

“No peeking else you’ll find me!” She began hacking with bare hands through the initial shoreline section of the jungle. Soon a large black bird swooped onto her shoulder and whispered into her right ear. Together they ambled back to the group. By now blood had begun seeping into the bandage around her ankle.

“New plans!” she said, plonking herself back in the deckchair and promptly falling asleep.

“Is she on drugs?” asked Squirrel.

“Very much so,” said Zoltan, hopping off her shoulder. “Though how we control them, that I cannot say.”

“Like to keep secrets, huh?”

“No, I am unable to define how the cryotubes actually work. The humans knew, of course, but it’s all locked up in their skulls.”

“The cryotubes? Yes …” Potbelly’s voice trailed off. “Say, if I was to pretend, just for argument’s sake, that I don’t know what you’re talking about, could we play a game of you explaining it to me?”

“May I play too?” asked Stinkeye.

“The Silence did not teach you these things?”

“Teach is not a word I’d associate with the Silence,” explained Stinkeye. “Which is why my dear, sweet, but sadly now departed Vanessaconshaltamar—“

“It taught us,” interrupted Squirrel, “that annihilation awaits if your pantry contain-eth not a single Twinkie.”

Zoltan cast an eye over the throng of his busy colleagues, a look that suggested either he or they took entirely the wrong science major. He gestured to his entourage before leading them back into the facility known as Nevermore.

They were struck by how different it felt from the Silence. Each well-lit corridor sung with a vibrant color scheme that drew abstract joyful shapes onto every wall. In the rooms between they saw signs of a home, and a comfortable one too. All the rooms lacked were occupants, distracted as they were by examining their conquest outside. Again, the only thing conspicuously broken was each doorway, being smashed through at the center, as if the stone ball from Raiders of the Lost Ark was a frequent visitor.

The wandering group, variously fluttering, trotting, and galumphing their way along, finally came across a laboratory. It was reminiscent of the Silence, with its array of monitors, its plastic jungles of wires and cables, and its cold, oddly alluring steel surfaces, but unlike the Silence this laboratory hummed with the sound of noble scientific pursuit.

Machines blinked and dinged. Occasionally something would spool out of something else, as if ready to abseil to the floor. Most striking of all, though, and again by comparison to the octagon at the Silence, they saw a multitude of colorful posters adorning the walls: Apocalypse Now, which Potbelly knew was a movie, hung just inside the doorway; several floral CND signs were tacked up just beyond; and by the door a full length Barbarella leaned over the new arrivals, poised as if ready to demand their entrance fee. Other posters were homemade and bore simple typographic messages: So Much for Coming in Peace, said one; Make Doves Not War, said another.

Zoltan hopped to a long Perspex tube beneath a banner simply stating: I Wanted To Believe. The translucent container wore the general appearance of the one they had seen at the Silence, the one that contained their human, but this one, in stark contrast, was smooth and sleek in its beautifully made-ness; the lines were crafted, not cobbled together.

“This is a cryotube,” announced Zoltan.

Squirrel stared at the bullet-shaped container. “I assume they didn’t use it for tobogganing,” he replied.

Zoltan exhaled patiently. “It’s designed to induce sleep, much like the sleep you experienced in the pods, but for a longer space journey.” He ran the feathered tip of one wing along its side. “And like the pod, it induces some sort of mind control.”

“Where’d it come from?” asked Stinkeye.

“It was built here, but it’s based on alien technology. About fourteen months ago the human military forces, or rather their pitiful remains, captured an alien ship. One imagines the aliens had gotten cocky and let their guard down. The military captured it in Canada, near your Ohio. It’s why the Silence is located on the Great Lakes. But, then, you know this.”

The group nodded sagely, or at least with some sort of herbal flavoring. It was all news to them.

“The human cargo burned to a crisp. The military, though, put together enough information to understand the human race was not being slaughtered, but harvested. The ship’s cargo was being transported.”

“To the alien planet?” asked Squirrel.

“I’d say not to Florida for Spring Break.”

Squirrel sniffed. “I think you’ll find I do the sarcasm around here.”

“He does, you know,” remarked Potbelly. “In fact, it’s pretty much all he does. Sorry, Zoltan, continue.”

Zoltan shrugged both wings, as if to say he didn’t have much else to offer, at least nothing they shouldn’t know already, but he’d offer it anyway.

“Bringing down that spaceship proved a seminal moment, of course. The squid thing, they found that too, though not alive as we have now. Nevertheless their existing work in bio-engineering came on leaps and bounds. That’s despite there being very few humans remaining at that point, you understand.”

Zoltan’s audience continued to nod quietly. Unsure what that meant, he finally concluded it meant carry on.

“There were very few humans, as I say, but, of course, there were trillions of us. As you know, animals had been employed by the human military for centuries, but what they had in mind now was different. We were a vast natural resource ready to be exploited, militarily. Their New Model Army, as it were.”

“Army?” queried Stinkeye. “Snodberry I could understand, but what was I supposed to do? Loop around the lampshade until the aliens got dizzy?”

“Good question. The humans did not articulate battle orders to us here at Nevermore, and, based on our conversation so far, I assume not to you either. My assumption is we wouldn’t have been fighting the aliens directly—with all the goings on, one would be hard pressed to see the logic in engineering, at least for warfare, a sarcastic squirrel.“

“Whereas a pompous feather duster was mission critical, I suppose?”

“I’d say our intelligence was the key,” continued Zoltan, paying Squirrel no mind. “And if we were not meant to be deployed here on Earth, then that only leaves the alien home world.”

“How do you know all this if the humans didn’t actually tell you?”

“They didn’t tell us nothing, they just didn’t tell much of it to me. The Inner Circle, well, that’s another matter. I’m sharing what I can deduce from what I’ve found here in the laboratories. Notice how you survived the pods and didn’t turn into the happiest zombie like your human outside. Despite the same sleep induction, our brains emerge cognizant and logical. We were engineered to survive the journey.”

A general good point was murmured amongst the group, save for Squirrel, who was beginning to murmur something else about Zoltan.

“So, what happened to all your humans?” asked Potbelly. “Granted this place is prettier than the Silence, but it does lack a certain vibrant Homo sapiens scene.”

“They left in rather a hurry. I don’t know why, no one tells me anything. It’s a crow thing. Blatant species-ism.”

Squirrel shifted awkwardly, guiltily remembering his attitude towards the crow at the Silence. “Well … maybe that’s because your lot were picking us-bits off the freeway like five minutes ago.”

Potbelly tsked at Squirrel, and again she beckoned to Zoltan to continue. The crow seemed to mentally check his watch, but then relented. He hopped over to a wardrobe-sized freezer, tapped a code into a box with his beak, and then hopped back in retreat. A large, full-width door whooshed open. The rest gathered around, shivering, and not just from the cold.

Inside stood a frozen something. Child-sized and hominid it had an oddly contoured outline, like it had recently run into a Snodberry but had not yet shaken off the impact. Like Snodberry, the thing wore a variety of metal appendages that resembled inputs one might attach to a computer. The frozen creature’s face was the color of an ice storm, utterly lifeless, a fact which upset no one—except Snodberry, who reached out to touch one of the appendages, as if in recognition.

“A human clone,” said Zoltan. “Or at least, an attempt at one. I’ve scanned the files and there’s no record of a survival rate.” He tapped at the box again. The door closed before too much cold could escape, and, to the relief of his audience, anything else too.

“Presumably this was their best shot. They made machines, fighting machines, but nothing made a dent in the alien force. Intelligent animals was their next big thing, apparently. Until getting wiped out was their next big thing, of course.”

“Hear that, Potbelly?” announced Squirrel. “You were their last great hope. They were royally screwed, weren’t they?”

“At least I possess more than four teeth, gummy-boy.”

“All this bio-engineering stuff does explain one thing, though,” said Stinkeye. “My species, Atlas moth, not really known for its longevity, but based on what you’re saying we all just appeared in, what, the last year or so?”

“Something like that,” agreed Zoltan. “I think in part the engineering extends your lifespan, but yes, you are correct—if I were you, I wouldn’t bother opening a retirement account.”

“So our purpose is to embark on some mission? To free the humans on the alien planet?”

“Seems like a reasonable guess, doesn’t it? I assume they knew little about that alien planet, if anything at all, but presumably it contains organic life, and presumably an atmosphere that supports Earth life else why transport the humans? Maybe they thought we’d blend in—go unnoticed.”

Zoltan opened his tar-black wings and flew to a stainless steel tabletop. He looked down at Squirrel, who clamped both paws to his stomach to confirm his entrails weren’t showing.

“And the spaceship?” continued Stinkeye. “I felt like I knew how to communicate with it. Like I knew which software to run and how to release the hairy brigade here from their sleepy-by sandwich bags. How did I do that?”

Zoltan blinked at him curiously, as if he’d asked why water was runny. “Well, as you should know, you have inside your brain a small, but very powerful computer. Just like the one on the spaceship. Which is, coincidentally, and actually this is the more interesting part, also how we talk to each other. We think we’re listening to each other’s chatter but we’re not, we’re experiencing each other’s thoughts. You, Stinkeye, are the latest hardware version I’d wager. As a non-yakker able to access the smallest locations, you’d make perfect sense.”

“Can’t be,” replied Squirrel. “I hear Potbelly bark, growl, and whine. Especially the whine part. In fact, mostly the whine part. Whether I like it or not, she’s clearly talking.”

“Vocal creatures need to vocalize. We are the yakkers. It’s in our biological wiring. It helps us to deal, psychologically-speaking, with our unexpected ability to talk. As you know, the telepath-only communication of non-yakkers is rather unsettling. We hear the echo in our heads.”

“This must be how the humans understand us,” guessed Stinkeye, now more keenly aware of his effect on the others. “And this computer, I suppose, just translates their language in return?”

“You are correct.” Zoltan appeared to warm a little to Stinkeye’s scientific curiosity, either that, or when he spoke himself, the unsettling voice of Stinkeye did not. “Right now, neurograins are recording signals from tens of million neurons in your brain. A cortical intranet across your cerebral cortex feeds data to and from your embedded biocomputer. It’s deciphering the neural code needed to understand spoken language. Quite a feat of engineering, given the number of nested circuits pinging out their little signals.”

Zoltan, now atop the table, bobbed purposefully to one end. His self-conscious movement reminded Squirrel of another talking bird from the Silence.

“The biocomputer is really a mashup between a cerebral organoid and a more traditional biocomputer, something the humans had already developed. A brain within a brain, so to speak, working as a neural interface. The leap in wetware technology was dramatic. The humans from your Silence learned this from the captured ship and shared it with Nevermore.”

“Wow,” intoned Stinkeye, a hush to his voice. “A computer … inside me … and just like the one in the spaceship?” They gazed astounded at Zoltan’s knowledge, their rapt vacant faces telling him they understood barely a word of it. Squirrel simply focused on how to make a joke out of wetware.

“So, again, we speak … how exactly?” prompted Stinkeye, hoping his natural expression was less ridiculous than Potbelly’s slackened jaw.

“Transmission, that is, our form of speech, works in reverse. We orchestrate electrochemical signaling in the brains of recipients. The brain-to-brain interface works flawlessly across distance for enhanced animals like us, but you need to be in reasonable proximity for a human brain. The squid in the spaceship, an enhanced being far away, was a case in point. Not a difficult target to hit. Nevermore transmitted at a high baud around earth’s curvature—fortunately possible given the two comm satellites the propellerheads here managed to keep operational.”

Zoltan nodded to Stinkeye. “That said, all they achieved yesterday was to work through the squid, as we might call it, to get to the guidance system. Even their non-yakkers lacked your ability, Stinkeye, to completely wrest control of the craft. Kudos, my friend.” He then nodded in the general direction of the window. “I believe their aim is to use the squid as an API for running the entire ship.”

Potbelly whistled, or as she now understood it, or didn’t, she still wasn’t sure, growled and gave everyone the impression she whistled. “That’s a whole lot of bio-engineering just so we end up with a fat rodent bitching about candy supplies,” she concluded.

“Aha!“ declared Squirrel, triumphant. “Not now I have my wetware, Potbelly! Now I’ll just sea candy and dive right in!”

Everyone, except Squirrel, who beamed, sighed.

“Communication is the key to any successful military campaign,” concluded Zoltan, avoiding the prow of Squirrel’s sinking ebullience. “There’s more to it than that, of course: species recognition, orthologs of the FOXP2 gene, and so on. We still have much to learn, if we ever hope to reproduce our own kind.”

A crash from next door interrupted Zoltan. “But then I’m boring you,” he added. “Would you like to go back outside into the lovely sunshine?”

“What was that sound?” asked Potbelly, trying to peer past Zoltan.

“Just an experiment. I will attend to it soon. Anyway, enough of this Brainiac talk. I’m keeping you. I believe we’ve learned from each other all that we’re likely to learn.”

“I was quite getting into it,” protested Stinkeye. “Don’t mind the occasional documentary. What was it about species recognition?”

“Really, nothing.”

“Oh, go on.”

“Just … recognition distracts from the disembodiment of projected speech. Some of us use our eyes, some of us our ears, some of us our nose.“

“Aha, are you saying we smell?” asked Squirrel, his eyes widening.

“It’s how we detect a scent from the speaker, yes.”

“But what if Potbelly, say, didn’t have any olfactory function?”

Zoltan stared at him, confused.

“Ignore him,” sighed Potbelly. “He’s just trying to do his my dog has no nose joke again. So what about the aliens? Are they actually squids? Is their world made of water?”

“It’s not clear, but it’s possible. Then again, maybe not, maybe they just make their ship controllers that shape.”

“Because why? Squids are prettier than kittens?”

“As I say, it’s not clear. No one tells the crow.”

“At least this explains why the four-legged flea bus here makes no sense,” Squirrel continued, undeterred, and nodding at Potbelly. “I thought she was barking mad—turns out, without her brain computer running, she was just barking. And up the wrong tree, usually.”

“It explains, my stumpy-armed friend, how Tina could bring down a spaceship. Just like Stinkeye did. Also explains why I feel hard-wired to help those damn humans. I am literally hard-wired to help those damn humans. Something must be amiss with your wiring, Squirrel, but then we’ve known that for a long time.”

“Can you help Snodberry to speak?” asked Stinkeye.

During their conversation Snodberry had leaned in to take a long sniff at each speaker, testing to see if aroma recognition made any difference. It didn’t. Though an earthiness confirmed to Potbelly Siobhan was decomposing apace.

“Surgery is beyond me,” sighed Zoltan, flapping his wings. “One does wish the humans had considered these things. The more digitally advantaged of us are all employed in other, apparently more important analysis. They have their precious spaceship. Whereas I have the human to—“

Another crash from next door. All except Zoltan craned a neck to see.

“—work with,” he finished.

“Spaceships are no big deal,” replied Squirrel, bored with the limited gag material. “We had one at the Silence. Wasn’t particularly interesting.”

“You had … sorry, what was at the Silence?”

“A spaceship.”

“You had a spaceship at the Silence?”

“Does your brain computer need an upgrade? Yes, spaceship. Big thing. Lasers. Best avoided.”

“The spaceship outside is the one you had at the Silence?”

“No, that’s a different one,” replied Potbelly. “Actually, the other one wasn’t strictly speaking at the Silence, but it was in a field not far away. In Ohio. You want it for spares? One careless owner. Some bits exploded but the radio still works.”

“She didn’t tell me this.”

“She?”

Zoltan coughed, shiftily. “The human, I mean.” He paused a moment before adding, “You creatures are absolutely incredible.”

“Why thank you sir!” beamed Potbelly.

“No, you had the Silence’s laboratory, all that data, and you even had a spaceship. But you don’t know anything about what I’ve just told you? Are you all damaged?”

“Keep that up and the only thing damaged around here will be you, sunshine,” snorted Squirrel, holding up two tiny fists.

“It was Coralane,” said Stinkeye. “We didn’t lose our humans, she overthrew them. Her and her cronies. The humans destroyed their laboratory, and all their data. Coralane wasn’t interested in them anyway, only in what they could tell her about popping out new generations of smart animals. Smart birds in particular. She’d have loved you. You’d have been a rock star in that place.”

Another crash echoed into the room.

“Birds excel in these environments,” said Zoltan, hopping in the direction of the corridor.

“Don’t get any ideas,” said Squirrel. “She was a nasty piece of work. She’d have killed us if it wasn’t for Snodberry here.”

Zoltan stood in the doorway. “The silent ape rescued you?”

“No, now I think about it, he just sort of forgot to kill us. Probably shouldn’t have brought it up.” Squirrel patted a hairy Snodberry leg, the thickness and hue of a telephone pole. A small part of Siobhan drifted down to the floor.

“Am I correct in thinking you do not know where this Coralane is located?” asked Zoltan.

“Snodberry might, but I warn you, he doesn’t fold under questioning. She’s still in Ohio possibly. Or maybe on the spaceship.”

“On the spaceship?”

“Big thing. Lasers. Do keep up.”

“Actually,” said Potbelly, “amongst all these goings on, we have rather forgotten about Coralane. If she’s on the ship then it could be a problem for whatever this lot are up to.”

“Leave them,” said Squirrel with a dismissive wave. “They’ll be crispy fried duck soon. Or aardvark, or whatever it is they are.”

“But we are guests here, we should—“

“—Your rodent is correct, no need to worry about such things,” interrupted Zoltan. “Allow me to return you to your room.”

Potbelly eyed him narrowly. “But I think it makes sense,” she said. “And this Inner Circle—it sounds like they have more information about the humans.”

“Good point. I agree with Potbelly,” said Stinkeye.

“Why do people keep doing that?” implored Squirrel.

“Your room, please, let me—“

“Take us,” insisted Potbelly. “I want to yank the chain of command and see what flushes.”

“My only task was to show you around and assess your usefulness to the mission. I believe we have that measure now. There are things to do.”

“What do you think, Snodberry?”

Snodberry leaned over to sniff Zoltan once more, this time bearing a wide set of teeth. He took in a very long, slow drag. Siobhan smiled at him, evilly.

“Oh, very well.”