Strange Tails

“What’s going on?” demanded Potbelly.

“I don’t know,” replied Itchynuts.

“We’ve only been gone a few hours. I thought we were spending our whole miserable lives up here.”

“You’re disappointed?”

“It’s not what it said in the brochure. What do we do now?”

“Release the hounds,” suggested Squirrel, unsteadily.

“Of course, the cryotubes. Why aren’t you opening the cryotubes?”

“Other than because I’m distracted by a small fat dog?”

“Thanks! Just trying to help.”

“Well I wish you could. The cryotubes won’t open.”

“Won’t open?”

“Is repetition how you’re going to help?”

“Did you test this beforehand?”

“Of course. We were in and out like the hokey-cokey. But now, nothing.”

The ship jerked again, and the two smaller mammals slid into the squat gray pillars of Itchynuts’s rear legs.

“Stinkeye,” called out Potbelly. “Is the squid causing a problem?”

No reply.

“Hey, stupid fish,” echoed Squirrel, whose marbles finally dropped into position. “Where’s Stinkeye?”

“Oh, hey again small furry dude. You know that kind of language can be hurtful.”

“Be thankful it wasn’t a short order to have you deep fried with potatoes. Where’s Stinkeye?”

“The little fluttery dude?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not with you?”

“No, that’s why I’m asking.”

“Oh, OK.”

“And so?”

“And so … what ya need buddy?”

“We need to know if Stinkeye is conscious,” shouted Potbelly. “Can you use your special powers of telepathy?”

“Oh, sure thing. Hey, little fluttery dude,” called out the fish. “You still conscious?”

“Oh for Chrissakes.”

Itchynuts was losing patience. “Stinkeye stopped responding when we entered into the docking maneuvers.”

“Then why didn’t you just tell us that?”

Itchynuts growled to himself. “I cannot get anything to work!” he yelled, butting his huge head into the monitor. “The squid is piloting and everything is locked down.”

“So the squid is locking the cryotubes?”

“It must be. But I don’t understand. We disengaged its brain.”

“Potbelly did that years ago but she still functions.”

“Could you try manual release?”

“There’s no need for crudity.”

“Will you quit it Squirrel? This is serious.”

“Of course it’s serious. We’re all going to die. Making asinine comments is how I choose to go. Do you want to hear the one about the bishop and the sticky wicket?”

“Coralane!” cried Potbelly, exasperated. “She … she switched on some monitor to see what was going on outside. Can we do the same?”

“Coralane is here?”

“No time for details, just head-butt that monitor.”

Itchynuts activated something on the screen, working through its API, and in a few moments a monitor on the adjacent wall flickered into life.

They were closer now, close enough to see a portal on the brass-colored sphere slide slowly back to reveal a void beneath. Even Potbelly could see now that this was some kind of docking procedure. They were being pulled in by the receding handle, the belt from their ship still hooked to it, moving as they were a giant pair of pants about to be ripped on a bedroom door.

The void approached and they disappeared into blackness. They watched in silence, waiting, with only Squirrel piping up on occasions, trying to tempt Itchynuts into a shaggy dog story.

A new door opened, this time like a zipper, separating slowly from the top. The two sides formed an inverted triangle, through which they could see an almost welcoming light. It had the blue tinge of day but without the accompanying yellow. Beyond that they caught a glimpse of something large and bulbous, and then the monitor flicked off.

“There was something very troubling about that,” intoned Squirrel.

“What happened to the display?” asked Potbelly.

“Locked out,” replied Itchynuts. “Not responding.”

“Would anyone like a snack?” said the human, who appeared suddenly with a pop. She held a bowl of pretzels, and with timely sonic appropriateness, a glass of pop. Her soft drink may not have begun life resembling Cherryade but it did so increasingly as blood poured from her gaping wound.

“Your head!” declared Potbelly.

“You are in immediate need of medical attention!” declared Itchynuts.

“Are pretzels all you’ve brought?” complained Squirrel.

“It itches again,” said the human, motioning to the cleft in her cranium. “Feeling woozy.”

She placed her snacks on a nearby terminal and leaned against it, wiping excess blood from her forehead and examining the sticky fluid on her fingers. She looked up, looked down, and then adopted a new, inquisitive expression.

“What the hell have you done to me?” she demanded.

“You fell over when the ship lurched, and—“

“Don’t give me that crap! You attacked me!”

“No … we … wait, you’re talking to us like we’re assholes. Are you human again?”

“Again? What was I before, a soap dish? Where are we? We’re in a spaceship? We’re in space?”

“Yes, well, no,” said Itchynuts. “We were in space, but now we’ve arrived somewhere else. Possibly the alien planet. At least, that’s what I think, it kinda looks like a brass baseball. But then our monitor switched off.”

The human let out several expletives and pushed Itchynuts from his terminal, or at least shoved him until he got the message and he hrumphed sideways. Blood dripped onto the reflective screen as her fingers danced across it.

“You have sentients in cryo. It’s time to release them. Something’s terminating the command prematurely.”

“It’s the squid,” said Itchynuts.

“Nope, it’s offline. So is your telepath-only sentient, that can happen, reverse subconscious impulse. So that damn thing’s no use any more. What the hell is stopping the command executing?”

“Could it be Coralane?”

Human fingers stopped dancing.

“Oh the pretty bird!” she said, clapping her hands together. Blood squirted out from between them. “Thank you Lucy, now I remember. I wanted to stroke her but she said I wasn’t needed any more. Shame. I like the pretty birds. Pretty doggies too, of course.”

Squirrel turned to Potbelly. “And you want to save this lot?”

“She’s reverted. Maybe the collar’s affecting her. Or the bash on her head.”

“Do I have something on my head?” asked the human, peeling off a chunk of raw flesh from her wound and then examining it. “Looks like sushi. Do I have sushi on my head, Widdle-Puffs?”

“Taste it and see.”

“No!” cried Potbelly.

“I told you, if she keeps calling me Widdle-Puffs … ”

“Talk to me again and you’re dog food,” snarled the human. “Stop distracting me, I need to get these cryos open.”

Squirrel whistled. “And we thought the fish had memory issues.”

“Hey, how ya doing little furry guy,” piped up Cuthbert the Chronological. “Sounds to me like it’s time to get this part-ay start-ayed.”

“Not now crab cakes!”

“If we get the monitor back on,” suggested Itchynuts, nervously. “Maybe we can pilot the ship manually?”

“Good idea. At least someone’s thinking.”

Itchynuts beamed. “Yes, and then I thought—“

“Quit while you’re ahead.”

Blood oozed a slow ravine down the human’s nose, but despite the obvious discomfort she strummed percussively, swiping at the interface, occasionally adding a syncopated curse.

The monitor flickered back on and there it was again, the large and bulbous thing, but as soon as it appeared it disappeared. The monitor’s darkness preceded another human oath about which even Squirrel, for all his encyclopedic knowledge, stood quietly impressed.

Then the noise they had not quite heard, but must have been there all along, stopped. A balloon of silence grew. They looked at each other, including the human, who had ceased her bothering of the computer terminal.

For an instant it seemed to Potbelly that the monitor had flickered back on, but it hadn’t. What happened next was in three dimensions. It was like the immersive cinema, but more so; this, in fact, was reality. The wall adjacent to the group had evaporated entirely to be replaced by humans, a cohort of them, spread out nine or ten deep, smiling, waving, clapping, and cheering.

“Welcome! Welcome everyone!” cried the apex of the cohort. “Welcome to Ponyata, your new home!”

“What the hell?” It was the human who replied first.

“You are injured,” returned the cohort apex. “We must address your wound. Here, let me administer relief.” A small sharp tube was raised and stabbed in her neck.

“What the hell?” she repeated, her eyes flipping back to resemble poached eggs. She fell silently into her welcomer’s arms.

“Take this one to repair,” said the leader, passing her back to the cohort. They warbled their cheerful acknowledgement, lifting her overhead like a stage diver at a rock concert.

“And what dear little pets,” simpered the leader, patting Itchynuts unenthusiastically on the rump. “You’ll have to be put down, of course.”

Itchynuts mustered his grandiose powers into a single hydrogen burst of pomposity. “We are here to liberate humankind!” he declared.

The human’s smile did not budge. Its eyes blinked rapidly, trying to read back every frame of what just happened on the spool of time.

“You speak?” it said finally.

“I do,” replied Itchynuts.

“Why?”

“We were wondering the same thing,” said Squirrel.

The fixed smile of the leader tilted left and then down, its eyes steering the rest of its head to where it could gape at the wooly, rather shabby-looking creature on the floor.

“You all speak?”

“Yes,” said Potbelly. “You can’t see them, but the fish do too.”

“Hey humans!” echoed a voice through their collective craniums. “Totally looking forward to rescuing you guys. Sorry we’re a bit late. Hope you’re not all dead.”

“Where … where did that come from?” replied the human, top lip quivering from the stress of maintaining its radiant smile.

“From where we’d usually prefer it stayed. They have a habit of talking but not saying very much. We have a Stinkeye, too. Well, when he’s awake that is.“

“Wonderful news,” declared the leader, clapping its hands, and turning and waving a clipboard towards the others. “Time to report our findings!” As one agreeable hominid fleet they tacked about and sailed out of the room.

The dissipation of human legs revealed to Potbelly and Squirrel what lay beyond. Pretty much nothing. A corridor, quite a big one, maybe twenty feet deep, with all the makings of a bog standard, not much to write home about corridor. Pipes, conduits, some kind of outlet thing that had more holes than it probably needed, and a yellow sign full of words Squirrel couldn’t quite read from this distance. It looked, again, just like the Silence. Assuming the Silence contained a spider the size of a Buick.

Great torso-thick legs curved into the doorway, bristly and deep and brown, feeling their way into the room, soon covering the inner wall with aquiline barbs. A fat body appeared too, ovoid and succulent, with fangs like scimitars, and eyes like bushels of dark-green bottles. As the room filled with spider, the watchers filled with terror.

“How simply adorable,” said the spider, lisping as it spoke, pronouncing the words thimply adowable, and with a high, child-like voice that emanated from behind those scimitar fangs. They clacked to and fro, like the devil knitting socks.

“Ickle talking dollies,” it continued, still with that sibilant lisp. “We got a message about you. Now where did you all come from?” The spider turned its evil eyes towards Itchynuts. “Oh, look, a weally big one.”

Potbelly and Squirrel edged behind the plinth holding the control monitor, attempting to occupy a single and infinitesimally small space, preferably in another dimension. Unable to find even remotely plausible cover, Itchynuts decided on becoming evolution’s first perspiring rhinoceros.

“I was told that you could speak,” lisped the spider impatiently. “Well, speak.”

Itchynuts stared helplessly at his absent comrades, his corrugated brow and pleading eyes soliciting no response. He turned back to the spider.

“We come from planet Earth,” he said, beads of perspiration rolling down his wrinkled face like ball bearings in a bagatelle. “We come in peace,” he added, as if concerned his petrified demeanor conveyed some mote of harmful intent.

“I guess they didn’t specify interesting speech,” replied the spider, following it up with a condescending sniff. “Did you come all this way for a reason? Or just popping in for tea?”

Itchynuts wondered how long he could perspire before passing out from dehydration. “Rescue,” he managed, barely, still unable to pull his gaze from those clamping fangs.

“You want to be rescued? Or are you going to do the rescue? Which is it?”

“Do,” wheezed Itchynuts.

“And are you doing it right now?” The spider surveyed the rhino for signs of action.

“Yes,” he breathed.

“It’s happening remarkably slowly.”

“Deciding. Strategy.”

“Oh, I see, well don’t let silly old me stop you.” The spider’s accommodating tone encouraged Potbelly to edge out slightly to witness the conversation.

“Private,” replied Itchynuts.

“Oh that’s a shame,” said the spider, still not budging.

A few seconds passed and a few more drops plopped down from Itchynuts’s top lip. Finally the spider reached behind its head with one huge and horrifyingly adept forelimb, and then slung around a small bag it had hitherto kept hidden under deep barbs of black bristle. The spider pulled something sleek, shiny, and pointy from the bag, which itself glittered with iridescence, and waved the small pointy object in the direction of Itchynuts.

As this went on, Itchynuts found a square inch behind him that he had not yet occupied and squeezed back farther into it, somehow without gaining any distance from the spider at all. He eyed the small device with trepidation. The spider responded by removing another highly reflective item from its bag, and held this thing in front of its face. It looked as if it was taking aim.

Potbelly, still peering from behind the safety of the monitor plinth, recognized the second device immediately: it was a mirror. Peering into it, the spider used the first object, which Potbelly now recognized as a tube of lipstick, to draw a blood-red line around its jet black mouth, taking great care to avoid its protruding incisors.

Encouraged that maybe the time of their demise wasn’t quite this very moment, Potbelly emerged fully from behind the plinth. Squirrel, still trying to conceal himself at the subatomic level, tugged at her to return. She ignored him.

“Are we free to go?” asked Potbelly of the spider.

“Oh, look who’s back. Go where?”

“Into the corridor?”

“If you like, but there’s not much to see.” The spider smacked its lips together and admired its work in the mirror.

“I don’t mind,” said Potbelly, after a pause. “I quite like corridors.”

“But you haven’t told me your strategy.”

Potbelly glanced at Itchynuts. “I wouldn’t call it a strategy, as such,” she said.

“No?”

“More like a plan. Well, an intention, really. When I say intention, it’s more an idea. Let’s call it a suggestion.”

“A suggestion of what?”

“Of rescuing the humans?” she ventured. Potbelly was unsure at this juncture whether or not honesty was the best policy, but having examined said policy and found it containing only a blank sheet of paper, she figured cunning deception wasn’t available right now.

“Rescue the humans,” echoed the spider. “I guessed as much. And you will be rescuing them from whom?”

“Well, you I guess.”

“Me? But we’ve barely met.”

“True, and you seem nice, but we were lead to believe the humans were not keen on being here.”

“The ones you just met? Did they not seem keen on being here?”

“No, well … yes, they seemed content enough, I suppose, but … ”

“I’d call them downright happy.”

“But isn’t that because you made them that way?”

“What, happy?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a crime?”

“Not exactly, but making people happy when they don’t want to be happy, that might be.”

“And you happen to know that they don’t want to be happy?”

“There’s much evidence on Earth to suggest that, yes.”

“So we should make them unhappy instead?”

Potbelly shivered slightly at the mention of we. She was rather hoping this fearsome-looking creature was the only one on the planet.

“I think the preferred position is to let them decide for themselves.”

“But do you think that any sane creature would choose unhappiness over happiness?”

“I never said they were sane—“

“Surely, if one made such a choice, then one is no longer in a position to be trusted with the exercise of free will. What if one went on to decide that other creatures should be unhappy too? And how could that not happen, if one was already full of such communicable miserableness? Would that be fair on all concerned?”

“Well, no, I guess.”

“So we’re agreed then. They don’t need rescuing.”

“Erm … ”

“Good,” said the spider, shifting to one side, appearing to offer the open doorway.

“I can’t say I much wanted to rescue them anyway,” added Potbelly, brightening a little.

“Liar,” came a small, Squirrel-like voice from behind the plinth.

“I am unsure as to the validity of this logic,” said Itchynuts, his copious sudation subsiding, and finding that, as the dialogue between Potbelly and the spider calmed him, more than two syllables were now possible.

“Shh!” hissed Potbelly.

“No, please, go on,” said the spider.

“If the humans do not want to be rescued then why did they engineer us to do just that?”

“They engineered you? Oh how very clever of them.” The spider’s inflection seemed to contain genuine admiration. “I had no idea. Tell me, which humans were these exactly?”

“The ones on Earth,” said Itchynuts.

“So, not the ones up here then.”

“No, but pretty much the same ones, when you think about it.”

“But importantly, the ones that had not yet been made happy. By your own definition, the Earth-bound unhappy ones wanted you to rescue the happy ones, just to give them the opportunity to be unhappy again?”

“Yes.”

“Does that sound like valid logic now?”

“People have a right to free will,” declared Itchynuts, finally martialing his imperious tone, encoded as it had hitherto been at the DNA level.

“Who told you that?” asked the spider.

“It is self-evident.”

“So, you are backing up your claim that my position is illogical with just a bald, unsupportable assertion?”

“Yes.”

“I think I preferred you when you spoke less.”

Potbelly coughed one of those coughs that hoped a suggestion of laryngitis might afford some attention. “For those of us not especially involved in the rescue dialectic, may we go?” she asked.

“But how do I know you won’t now sneak off and try a spot of rescuing on the side?”

“You can trust us,” beamed Potbelly, or trying her best to beam.

“Unsubstantiated,” said the spider. “Do you have any proof you will not attempt some freelance emancipation on the side?”

“I am a small dog,” said the small dog. “And he’s a squirrel.” She gestured to the plinth.

“No I’m not,” said the plinth.

“Ignore him, he is. Would you say such lowly creatures could challenge someone as mighty as yourself, and rescue an entire species from an alien planet?”

“Fair point, even if technically you are the alien here. But how do I know you don’t have some kind of secret weapon? Some kind of slick, unstoppable strategy?”

“As someone once said, you’ve met us.”

“Yes, and curious you are too.”

“Not really. Spend some time with us and you’ll find our curiosity is only skin deep.”

“Sorry? You want me to spend some time with you?”

“Well—“

“Aww, you see, now that is adorable.” If Potbelly wasn’t very much mistaken, the hulking vibrissa-clad monster melted just a little. “I must admit, all this talk of rescue is quite romantic, but it can only lead to fisticuffs and I’d hate to see the place get untidy.”

“So you’ll let us go?”

“Of course not.”

“Eh?”

“Death it has to be, sorry. Just to, you know, be on the safe side. You understand, of course.”

“But we’ve done nothing wrong!” barked Potbelly, panic rising in her throaty voice. To her surprise, the spider backed away a little.

“No need to get persnickety,” it said. “Seems only fair to me.”

“Fair? Fair?” barked Potbelly. Again the spider retreated. Potbelly pattered forward until she stood directly under those two cleaving fangs. Its eyes hovered above, like a cluster of trapped bubbles. “Why … you! You! You don’t know the meaning of fair!”

“Actually I do, it means to be—“

“Try to kill me would you? You, you … Swiss Army bog brush! I’ll bite every one of yer legs off!”

“Guards! Guards!” squeaked the spider, lisping the final consonants and spraying Potbelly with something she’d definitely want to clean off later. The great hulking beast retreated fully out the door, in an exact reversal of its entrance, until the last fibrous leg slid out of view.

Potbelly watched, amazed. Squirrel popped out a head.

“Has it gone?” he asked.

“I think I scared it away,” she replied, proudly.

“There was mention of guards, as I recall,” said Itchynuts.

“If it’s more like that one,” announced Potbelly, “it’ll be Kentucky Fried Spider all ’round.”

“Plenty of legs,” noted Squirrel.

Two pops, followed by the whooshing of wings, came loudly from behind.

“Well done,” said Coralane, alighting on the checker-plate floor. “We’ve been watching on the CCTV. Please take care of the rest while we slip on through.”

Coralane’s scratchy, squawky voice brought back the ice to Potbelly’s spine, and the appearance of Zoltan did nothing to warm it.

“Coralane!” cried Itchynuts. “So it’s true, you are here! Thank heavens! I have done my best but we need your leadership. What should we do whilst the little dog holds off the guards?”

“Hey!” declared Potbelly. “You’re not going to help me?”

Squirrel edged back behind his plinth.

“We must release the army from the cryotubes,” continued Itchynuts.

“Seriously, everyone, no help?”

“I trust you to release the others,” replied Coralane. “Zoltan and I shall fly on to scout out the terrain.”

A tramp, tramp, tramp reverberated in the corridor outside. Potbelly hoped it came from an onomatopoeically-inclined tramp.

“How will we find you again?” asked Itchynuts.

“We will find you, have no fear.”

“Permission to have fear,” came a voice from behind the plinth.

“A perfectly reasonable request.”

Suddenly the doorway filled with humans. Each lacked the smile and the clipboard of the previous group, but did not lack an array of large, unholstered, and for some reason ornately decorated weaponry. Potbelly stared at the arsenal raised against her—the end was near, she thought, or to be precise, about three feet away.

Coralane and Zoltan launched themselves at the arriving heads, their wings beating furiously between helmets and ceiling, feathers molting, inducing sneezing, while in response the human guards swiped at the mess above them, finding their oversized weapons a hindrance against such an attack.

Yet it was no attack. Coralane and Zoltan swept over them, out the door, and into the corridor beyond, banking hard left and flapping out of sight.

Out of sight of Itchynuts, that is, and the phalanx of guards swatting feebly at the air, but not Potbelly and Squirrel, whose highly attuned cowardice had them on their toes and through a forest of human legs the very nanosecond an opportunity presented itself.

They emerged into the corridor, keeping tabs on the disappearing plumage of Coralane and Zoltan. From somewhere behind they heard Itchynuts pleading an apology.

Still their surroundings looked like the Silence, gray and functional and interminable, not in disrepair though, but decorated with pictures of beaming humans holding useful things, or pointing at fascinating items on a computer screen. They saw fire extinguishers, closed doors, warning signs in some or other language, and once a small box holding a button that Squirrel would love to have pushed if only he had time.

Then there was a door. Coming hard around a corner it brought Potbelly and Squirrel to a bump. Zoltan pecked furiously at a control pad.

“How do we get out of here?” breathed Squirrel, puffing from the exertion.

“We are improvising,” replied Coralane.

Hard behind them they could hear the tramp, tramp, tramp again.

“We’ll be incinerating if we don’t open this door.”

A blue-white flash shot above their heads. They ducked behind a pillar, conveniently placed for that very purpose it seemed.

“You two stand and fight,” shouted Coralane. “Zoltan and I will work on the door.”

“May we discuss delegation?” suggested Squirrel.

A human voice called out. “We just want to be your friends!” it yelled, followed by a laser fire that singed Potbelly’s exposed tail. She yelped. “We have treats!” yelled another, cocking a rifle and raising it helmet-wards. They were at the far end of a not nearly long enough corridor. The humans ducked behind pillars of their own, unaware the creatures they chased were unarmed.

“Also, tactics,” continued Squirrel. “How about we surrender and hope for the best?”

“It might involve fewer lasers,” agreed Potbelly, her tail smarting.

Then a miracle happened: the door behind them finally opened. Not an impressive miracle, granted, or at least Earth would have had rather more saints than it knew what to do with if such an action was considered divine intervention, but right now, and to Potbelly and Squirrel, it was up there with making the lame see and turning water into Twinkies.

A fat, yellow-spotted, but otherwise quite brown and most definitely hairy spider hooked its leg around the door. Then another, and another. At last the full spider emerged. On seeing a group of heavily armed humans ready to fire weapons, it promptly fainted.

“Cease fire!” cried a voice.

“We’ve killed a glorious one!” cried another, stepping out from behind a pillar.

Every breathing thing in the corridor peered over at what, to all the world, looked not so much like a glorious one but the galaxy’s least attractive doormat.

“You mean you did,” said a third, backing away slowly.

“You fired, I saw you!”

“I don’t even have a gun,” replied the first, dropping something on the floor and kicking it to one side.

“You must report this immediately,” said another.

“Why me?”

“You’re nearest.”

“But we all have communicators.”

“I don’t.” Something else hit the floor.

“Well I’m not even here.”

A thin voice piped up from the spider as it gingerly poked out a leg out, slurring its speech. “Wha’ppened?” it said.

“The glorious one’s alive!”

“Hooray!”

“I said … what happened?”

“We shot you!” cried a human.

“It was only a little bit!”

“I don’t even have a gun!”

“Let’s err on the safe side, shall we?” The spider reached one leg into the fibrous roots of another to make a few deft taps. A dozen human heads, from the neck up, exploded like bottle rockets on the Fourth of July. The same number of torsos tottered for a moment, and then skittled to the floor.

The spider shook its head, or rather, its whole body, which also contained its head.

“Look at the mess,” tutted the spider, followed it up by muttering something about ruining the carpet. The spider peered about the corridor to determine what could possibly have caused such a kerfuffle, but aside from human soup it could see nothing. It punched a couple more buttons on a keypad and the door behind it whooshed closed.