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(c) 2007 Trismegistus Shandy

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. I.e., feel free to repost or mirror it unmodified on any noncommercial website or mailing list.

This story was first posted to the tg_fiction mailing list in mid-2007, then to Shifti.org.  It's the first of at least five stories about Nat Holcomb; I'm serializing the fourth on the tg_fiction list at the moment, the first draft of the fifth is finished and awaiting revision, and I have some ideas about a sixth story I haven't really started yet.

---

Next day, soon after her third lap around the nurses' station, the doctor writes Nat a discharge order. She calls Zach's home phone and doesn't get him, then a work number he gave her. She asks his supervisor if Zach is on duty (yes), can she talk to him (just a minute...). Zach says he'll be there in a few minutes, and is she alone in the hospital room? Yes. A very few minutes later Zach steps out of her bathroom, a towel around his waist. "Stand up, hold my hand, let's go," he says.

"Where?" she asks.

"The space station, if you're about ready to jump to the mother ship and change some of them again. Or our base in Toccoa, if you need more rest."

Nat sighs. "I could probably use a week of rest, to be honest. But I think I'm strong enough to change a few aliens. As long as I've got you with me to jump me back to the emergency room if I start passing out, I don't think it will kill me."

"No more likely than that the aliens will." He takes her hand. "OK, let's —"

"—go," he finishes as gravity disappears and they float nude in a small chamber with handholds all along the walls. Fixed somehow against one wall, there's a big sack. Zach turns, reaches for a handhold, and pulls himself closer to the sack, then rips open the velcro fasteners and pulls out two jumpsuits. Without a word they get dressed, bumping into each other a few times in the small space. Nat really wants to change back into a guy, she doesn't like this situation, but she knows she needs to save her energy for later.

"Ready?" Zach asks as soon as he's dressed, and without waiting for an answer pulls himself toward the small doorway, then floats through it and grabs another handhold in the corridor outside to brake himself. Nat follows clumsily, missing the first handhold and bouncing gently off the opposite wall of the corridor before catching another one. "This way," says Zach, and, pushing himself off from the first handhold, drifts down the corridor toward another narrow door. As he drifts down the corridor, he pulls himself along further whenever he gets close enough to a wall handhold. Nat follows more cautiously, always keeping at least one hand on a handhold.

They emerge into a much larger room, with a dozen or so people in it — astronauts, cosmonauts, xenobiologists, and superheroes. Nat recognizes two of the heroes, high-profile members of the World Guardians: Roland and Oliver. A large part of one wall is a window, the aliens' mother ship just barely showing a visible disc several hundred kilometers away.

"We're about ready when y'all are," Zach says without introduction, then: "Oh, this is Nat. I told you about her. — Can I take another look at the telescope monitor?"

"Right here," says an astronaut strapped in to a chair fixed in front of a large-screened computer monitor. She loosens the velcro straps, and, standing, expertly pushes off to drift to a place on the opposite wall where nobody is sitting, grabs a handhold, then a couple of velcro tethers to keep her in place. Meanwhile Zach is drifting slowly toward the chair; he looks like he's going to miss it, but reaches out to catch it, flips and sits down. Nat wonders if she should head that way too, but doesn't trust herself to jump accurately across that distance; she stays by the doorway, looks around and finds some velcro tethers like the one the astronauts are using.

Zach studies the real-time image on the screen, a close-up view of the mother ship from the space station's telescope. In the lower half of the screen, various numbers indicate the current distance, direction, and speed of the alien ship relative to the space station. Zach has been learning to read these figures over the last three days while Nat has been in Grady. After a couple of minutes, he nods, unstraps himself, and jumps across the room to grab a handhold next to Nat.

"I think we're ready," he says. "Roland, you got any new information that might help us?"

"None," he says. "We've been trying to make contact, telling them in several Earth and local spiral arm languages that if they surrender and prepare to withdraw, we'll change them back, but otherwise they can expect to keep getting changed. But they haven't said anything."

"I don't think I should try to change dozens of them at once again," Nat says. "This time I'll change them one at a time, as fast as I can, until I start getting tired; then I'll ask you to get us out."

"OK. Listen: just in case we miss the ship and land in vacuum, we need to be ready. Take a deep breath, hold it for a moment, and then start exhaling with your mouth open when I squeeze your hand. That way the air will rush out of your lungs freely and not cause damage. Ready?"

Nat nods, takes Zach's hand, and inhales. Then the squeeze; she opens her mouth, and —

— Darkness, tingling all over; a rush of air, the fastest she's ever exhaled; her ears popping; Zach's hand squeezing hers tighter than ever. The mother ship is only a few hundred meters away; huge, it fills half her field of vision.

Then: Bright light and warm air again. A welcome rush of breath into the lungs. They fall lightly to a floor, landing on their sides. Blinded at first, they stand up carefully, Zach still holding Nat's hand tight.

No sudden touch of tentacles this time. As their eyes adjust to the brightness, as they hadn't had time for on their two previous incursions, they realize they're alone in a long corridor that gently curves upward in both directions. They feel very light; the ship is rotating slowly, providing some low pseudo-gravity on this level of the ship.

"Any preference about which direction?" Zach asks, trying to keep his eyes fixed on Nat's face and off the rest of her.

"It doesn't matter. That way, I guess."

As they start walking, they feel slightly heaver. "We're heading against the direction the ship is spinning," Nat remarks.

There are doors on either side of the corridor every ten to twenty meters. To the left of each is a small metallic plate; to the right, a mechanical handle behind a transparent screen. At the first door, Zach fiddles with the handle, managing to slide back the screen, but then unable to budge the handle.

"I bet the plate is the normal way to open it," Nat suggests. "It probably reads a tentacle-print to see who wants to come in. But if the ship loses power, the handle will work — there's probably an electromagnet keeping it fixed in place now."

"That makes sense," says Zach. "But maybe it just needs a touch to open it with the plate; it might not look for a particular print."

"Better not touch it, just in case. If it is looking for a signature of some kind, it's sure to give an alarm."

"We've probably already been spotted by cameras by now anyway."

"Maybe, but let's keep going and hope we can take some of them by surprise."

This they do, before long. As they continue down the corridor, they suddenly hear a noise behind them, and spin around. One of the doors they've passed has opened, and two aliens emerge. For a long moment the four of them pause, staring at each other. Then the aliens rush toward Nat and Zach.

One of them becomes shorter and thicker, developing bright patterns on its front and presumably its rear as well. It stumbles, coming to a stop. The other rushes past its companion for a few meters; then it, too, changes and halts, just three meters short of where Nat and Zach stand, holding hands again just in case they might need to jump.

That's not necessary. After a few moments, the aliens turn and scurry away in the opposite direction.

"Let's check out that room," Zach whispers. They creep up to it slowly, then Nat peeks around the corner into it, still holding Zach's hand.

She doesn't see any aliens. The room is small enough for her to see all of it from here. There are two hammocks strung up, and two acceleration couches vertically fixed to the back wall; apparently that would be the floor when the ship is under acceleration. Then she notices two more acceleration couches against the outer wall between the bedroom and the corridor. A few spigots with handles flush to the wall, against either wall perpendicular to the couch walls, are the only other amenities she can see, though she guesses there are probably some drawers or cabinets not obvious to her.

"Nobody here," she reports. "Let's keep going, and fast; those guys, or girls, or whatever, have probably sounded the alarm by now." After Zach has a chance to glance around the room, they go on.

They've hardly gone another hundred steps when a loud, shrill whistling starts up, then a quieter, modulated series of whistles. Maybe it's the aliens' language, or maybe just a musical code like a bugle call. A few seconds later, all the doors in sight ahead of Nat and Zach open up, and aliens come out of them, mostly in pairs. They approach cautiously. Nat changes them, one by one; this time those changed pause, and fall back behind their comrades, but they don't run off.

Nat has changed almost all of those approaching them from ahead when Zach calls out "Behind us!" Nat turns around; there's just as many more aliens coming from the other direction, and they're nearly upon them. Nat changes the foremost, one two three four, and has to pause for breath. The changed aliens allow those behind them to pass, and then those come on at a run.

"Get us out of here!" Nat cries, "I can't change another just yet..."

Suddenly they're in the empty cabin they looked into earlier. "Let's sit flush against this wall, so they won't see us as they pass," Zach whispers.

"I'll need to rest a few minutes before I change any more of them," Nat whispers back. "Wouldn't it be safer for us to rest over in the space station?"

"Yeah, maybe so... but I need to conserve my energy, too. Keep a hold of my hand; if any of them stick their heads in, we're out of here."

So they sit there a while; Zach keeping his eyes off Nat by keeping them fixed on the doorway to their left, and Nat keeping her eyes off Zach; they're sitting as far apart as they can and still keep in contact.

In spite of the uncomfortably hard floor, Nat falls asleep. Zach notices when her grip on his hand relaxes. He wonders if he should jump them out now. But he's more than a little tired himself; that long jump up from Earth, the jump into vacuum and then into this ship... He should rest a while, too...

---

Nat is puzzled. These guys look familiar; one of them is the guy she first used her power on, back in high school, and the others are annoying bullies she remembers from elementary school and middle school. But when she uses her power on them they don't turn into girls, they change into little bright-colored hexapods, like nothing on Earth... What's going on?

She wakes up, lying in a low hammock in a small room — not the one she was in before. Zach is nowhere about, and there are no obvious doors, but she's pretty sure this mirror wall is one-way. The only features are a couple of small sinks with spigots in the wall, one below a human's waist height, the other very near the floor — perhaps a toilet, structured to fit the excretory organs of these aliens?

She's already pretty thirsty, but she doesn't want to try whatever comes out of the spigots until she's a lot thirstier.

After a while — she has no way of being sure how long — the mirror becomes a window into another, larger room; apparently the light has just been turned on in there.

In there she can see three of the aliens; these are about the same size and shape as the blue-black ones with red spots, but dark grey all over. A couple of them are working on a machine of some kind, sitting in the middle of the floor. The room has its own two sinks, several instrumentation panels on the far wall, and at least two doors she can see from here.

Nat thinks about exerting her power on the aliens from here — she's pretty sure she could do it through the glass; she's done that to humans before. But she saves her energy for later, and sits on the hammock, leaning her back against the wall opposite the window, and watches the aliens for a while.

After a while she hears a high-pitched noise; after a few seconds she realizes it sounds like human speech, probably speeded up a bit and noisy, like a fifth-generation analog copy — she can't recognize what it's saying, though, or even whether it's English.

The aliens are looking up from their machine, at her. After a moment she says, slowly and loudly, "I can't understand."

The aliens go back to work a moment later. Later: the same kind of thing again, slower and clearer, but still not quite understandable. After a few cycles of this she realizes that the voice is probably patched together from words and phrases copied from various recordings of human speech — radio and television broadcasts, she guesses.

"Can you understand us now?" it asks jerkily. "Why have you changed our warriors into drones?"

"Is that it?" Nat asks. "I wasn't sure how my power works on you, actually. If you let me go and leave our planet alone, I will change your drones back into warriors."

"This is not possible," the voice says a moment later, after the alien who seems to be in charge fiddles with the machine some more. "Our queen must take your planet. But we only need part of it. Not all humans will be killed. If you help us we will leave your family alone."

"If I change your drones back into warriors and you keep fighting, it will just take a little longer for our heroes and armies to fight you off. You still can't win. I won't help you unless you promise to leave, — and put me in contact with some of the Earth authorities so I can verify you're keeping your promise."

"If you — promise — to change those drones back into warriors, we will give you Earth food. Until then you will get only water. If you wait until the drones have all expired, you will no longer get water."

Nat, furious, reaches out and changes the alien who seems to be busiest with the machine: it turns blue-black with red spots. It pauses only briefly before tapping out another message:

"Thank you. Changing workers into warriors is also acceptable."

Nat turns her back on the window and keeps quiet. The voice speaks once more a minute later: "If you change your mind, speak."

Nat says nothing, thinking hard. She's made a mistake; apparently these aliens have more than two sexes. Her power changes warriors into drones and workers into warriors: could she, in fact change drones into warriors if she wanted to? Probably by trial and error, anyway; but she suspects they might go through one or two more sexes before they get there. Probably the "queen" they referred to is of a fourth sex, and if they have four sexes, why not five or more? Or maybe she could learn to exert more conscious control of her power, and change workers into drones as well. It might be worth trying. She turns around again, but the wall is a mirror; if there's anybody in the other room they're keeping the lights down.

After a while her thirst gets the best of her. She goes over to the sinks, cups one hand under the spigot of the upper sink, presses it to get a handful of what looks and feels like water, and drinks it: tastes like water, too. After waiting some time with no obvious ill effects, she repeats the procedure until she's no longer thirsty, then lies down again.

Where is Zach? He must have gotten captured at the same time as her. She should have asked about him when the aliens were talking. But he probably teleported back to the space station as soon as he woke up and realized they'd been separated. Probably he would be coming back and searching this ship for her — assuming she was still on the same ship.

After a little while she needs to pee. She walks over to the sinks again and looks at the lower one. It looks way too narrow to use without making a mess. She changes back into a guy; more convenient this way. The lower spigot turns on automatically for a few moments. After he's done he lies down again, even more tired than before, and soon falls asleep.

---

Nat wakes and sleeps, drinks and pees several times. He doesn't think he's sleeping a full eight hours or staying awake a full sixteen at any time, but it's impossible to be sure. He spends most of his time lying in the hammock, conserving his little remaining energy; sometimes when he gets up to pee he does a little light stretching exercise, but nothing strenuous. After a couple of wake cycles thinking about the aliens and how the war against them might be going, he turns to memory instead, remembering how the prisoner in _The Stranger_ tried to remember every detail of his everyday life before prison. He recreates his apartment in memory, every piece of furniture, painting, movie poster, all the books on each shelf in their logical order (no arbitrary Dewey Decimal silliness for him, no). Then more details: each bit of dirty clothing where it was left hanging on a door or chair or lying on the floor when he last left. He deduces how the bathrobe Zach was wearing and the clothes he was wearing must have fallen on the floor when they left. Zach... He places each dirty dish in the sink, each clean one in the drain...

The patched-together voice speaks again: "Two of those you changed into drones have died. The others will die soon unless you change them back."

Being obsessed with remembering the layout of his kitchen, it takes Nat a moment to process what the voice has just said. Finally it sinks in. "Sic pereant omnes inimici tui", he says, but not loudly.

"We do not understand. Please speak more clearly."

"I wasn't talking to you," Nat replies, not much louder than before; he has no energy to speak any louder. He probably wouldn't be able to change any more of the aliens anyway until they feed him first. Assuming they can keep their promise and give him "Earth food".

Then an idea occurs to him. "All right, I give in," he says. "Give me some human food, give me some time to digest it and get my strength back, and then I'll change your drones."

Almost before he has the last words out, there is a quiet click and a small door opens in the wall opposite the window, just within reach from the hammock where Nat is lying. There's a large platter or tray of some kind in it. Nat reaches into it and pulls out a loaf of sliced wheat bread, still in its plastic package; an apple; a red bell pepper; a clove of garlic; a stick of butter (already gone fairly soft); and a package of Cheetos, presumably all looted from a grocery store by one of their rover craft.

"Eclectic," he comments, "but this will do for now." He spreads out the bell pepper and garlic in little bites along with larger bites of apple and bread and butter, getting melting butter all over his hands and face and chest in the process. After eating most of the apple and several slices of bread, he throws up.

"Be patient," he says weakly, "I'll get more of it down next time."

Eventually, after several small meals and another couple of naps, he answers the importunate voice, saying yes, he's ready.

A moment later the light comes on in the other room, four dark grey aliens — workers — with one blue-black warrior come in, and the window-wall slides aside. Nat gets up from the hammock.

The warrior — perhaps the same worker he changed earlier — is carrying a machine of some kind on its back; its two middle appendages are manipulating controls on the machine while it walks with the front and rear legs. The same kind of patchy voice sounds, this time from the machine.

"Don't change any of us, or we will kill you," it says. "Come with us to where the drones are, change them back, and you will be given more food."

"All right, lead the way." Nat hopes his guess is right; if it isn't, he will have some extra work to do, and almost certainly get killed. He'll probably get killed anyway.

Two of the workers walk before Nat, the warrior with the speech synthesizer and the other two workers behind him. They go down a curving corridor a few dozen paces, then one of the workers in front presses one of its middle appendages to a door plate; it slides open, revealing a shaft with closely spaced ladder rungs.

"Are you strong enough to climb here, or must we carry you?"

"I can climb. Up or down?"

"Outward — down."

The two workers in front climb in, one above and one below; Nat climbs in, the one below him climbs further down, and Nat follows. The other aliens enter the shaft behind him. He estimates they descend four or five times his own height before exiting at another such door and walking along another, less tightly curving corridor to another room.

It's a small room, just big enough for one of the workers and Nat. "What's going on?" he asks.

The warrior fiddles with his synthesizer and makes it say, "We must be cleaned before going in to where the drones are." Then the door closes behind Nat and the worker who entered before him, and a shower sprays down. A few moments later it stops and air even warmer than usual blows through the room, drying them. Another door opens in the wall before them, revealing a much larger room beyond; the worker silently exits into it, and Nat follows. The door closes behind them, presumably another pair of aliens coming in to be cleaned.

There are more than a dozen hammocks slung in small alcoves here, most of them occupied by the shorter aliens with the bright striped patterns — drones. Their six legs dangle lethargically over the sides of their hammocks. Several gray workers are moving about the room, carrying trays of water and probably food or perhaps medicine. One of them whistles something, and the worker who entered with Nat whistles something back.

"I'll wait until your translator comes in before I start, if that's OK," Nat says. He wants to make sure he understands what's happening when he uses his power on the drones, and his best chance of that is with the translator present.

The worker stays close to Nat while it continues its whistled conversation with the nurse-worker. A few moments later the door behind them opens and the translator comes in.

"We had to clean off the queen-scent," it explains. "It is everywhere in the rest of the ship. It makes them frantic, and hastens their deterioriation. Quickly, change them back now."

"I'll do one at a time," Nat says. He walks over to the nearest occupied hammock, the translator-warrior and the worker who came in with him following close. Nat makes no special attempt to think of a warrior, but just exercises his power on the drone in the same way as usual.

He's expecting and hoping for something different, but the bright purple skin, the green and sky-blue stripes covering not just the ends, but the whole body, and the vestigial wings above the middle pair of appendages are a welcome surprise nonetheless. Hoping this is a queen, Nat turns, as the translator and the workers start up a frantic whistling, and exercises his power on this whole row of drones, then on those on the opposite side of the room. Fourteen queens in one hive, thirteen of them in one room — this will make life interesting, however many seconds of it are left.

The translator is rapidly tapping the buttons on his speech synthesizer. Fragmentary phrases sound from it: "Change them back! No—" A long pause, more tapping, while the queen in this nearest hammock whistles something, most of the workers fall quiet, and several of the other queens start whistling.

"Change the others back — leave this one alone," the synthesizer says after a few seconds of this.

"I'll need to rest a while first, after changing so many of them," Nat says. He's not sure if this is a lie or not; he does feel pretty weak. "Did I do something wrong?"

"You changed them all into queens!"

"Sorry about that," Nat says insincerely.

The queens are all whistling now, louder, perhaps trying to shout each other down, and the workers, both the nurses and those who escorted Nat down here, seem to be frantically looking around at each of the queens.

Now this nearest queen is climbing down from her hammock; the translator's synthesizer says "Come with us, quickly." Nat follows the translator, the queen and one of the workers into the small shower room — it's a tight squeeze. The warrior does something to some controls on the wall; the cleaning shower stops almost as soon as it's started, and the outer door opens.

The queen whistles uninterrupted for a minute or two as they disentangle themselves and exit the shower room. The worker stands in the outer doorway after the translator, the queen and Nat have entered the corridor; Nat guesses this prevents the outer door from closing and the inner one from opening.

When the queen stops talking, the translator taps out another message: "Come with us. Stay close by the queen. Don't change anyone unless I tell you to."

"All right."

The translator and the worker whistle at each other softly for a few moments, then the worker taps out a long series of codes on the keypad by the door. Then the whole group moves out along the corridor, leaving the outer door ajar. Nat stays next to the queen, as instructed, in the middle; the translator-warrior goes in front and the worker in the rear.

A minute or two later they meet a couple of workers, who whistle furiously for a moment, being answered briefly by the translator-warrior and at greater length by the queen. The workers join the group, one in front and one in the rear. They go on down the corridor, down a shaft, and up another corridor, being joined by several more workers and one more warrior in the same way. Then they reach a storage room. The queen whistles instructions, and all the workers and both warriors start opening cabinets and collecting things — weapons, mostly: long knives, cords, and little gun-like things Nat thinks might be tasers. The translator hasn't said anything to Nat since they left the drones' hospital, but now he taps at his device again and says, "We are going to the old queen's chamber. When we arrive, I want you to change the queen, and nobody else. If things go badly, I will say 'Warriors' and you are to change all the old queen's warriors into drones. Do you understand?"

"Yes. But if there's a lot of fighting going on I might not be able to tell the old queen's warriors from the new queen's. And if I try to change many beings at once, I can't easily target a specifc set — I'll have to change them one by one, or else change every creature within range."

"That is acceptable. We accept the risk."

So they move out. One the way to the old queen's chamber, they meet workers by ones and twos, who join them immediately, being given extra weapons. Later on they start meeting groups of warriors; most of them get off one or two taser shots, or thrown knives, before apparently being overcome by the new queen's pheremones and changing sides. Nat is still next to the queen, near the rear of the column, with one warrior and two workers behind them as a rear guard; a few of the workers near the front of the column are injured, but none apparently killed.

This is repeated several times, and they're moving more slowly. Nat has no idea how long they've been moving — he's starting to get hungry and tired again, and is glad the column is slowing down, or he might not be able to keep up.

Then he hears a human shout behind him, and turns. Zach, standing way back down the corridor behind them! A moment later Zach is standing beside Nat, then his hand is on his shoulder, then they are back on the space station, in a small room with a couple of sleeping bags attached to opposite walls.

"We have to go back," Nat says.

"No way," Zach rejoins. "I'm about worn out from doing so much jumping around looking for you, and you look pretty frazzled too."

Nat relents. "Yeah, we need to rest a little. But not too long." He explains rapidly the highlights of what's happened to him since they were captured.

"So why do you want to go back?"

"There are twelve queens left locked in that little room, or there were. I wouldn't be surprised if only one is left alive now. But if we go back to that room you can teleport the queens out, however many there are, and make the chaos on the mother ship even worse. Or maybe I can just change several random workers and warriors as many times as necessary until they become queens. That would be easier."

"Good plan. But you need to rest first, and so do I. I reckon you need to eat, too, right?"

Meanwhile Zach has been getting dressed in one of the jumpsuits. Seeing that they're not going to teleport again soon, Nat gets dressed too. Zach rummages through a sack attached to one of the walls, and takes a couple of squeeze-tubes of something nutritious but unappetizing from it, and a couple of larger bulbs of water.

"If we're going to eat and rest awhile, why not go back down to my apartment or yours to eat something better?"

"Too tired to jump that far," Zach says curtly. "Been jumping short distances on the mother ship every two seconds for hours, taking a few minutes' break over here every hour or so. I'll tell them we're back." He punches some buttons on a panel in one wall — an intercom. While Zach explains their situation to the person on the other end, Nat starts squeezing some food-like substance into his mouth, and swallows a few mouthfuls, even while he climbs into one of the sleeping bags. A couple of minutes later Zach signs off, and gets into the other sleeping bag, continuing to nibble on the food-paste from one of the tubes. Nat dozes and wakes a couple of times; waking again he realizes that Zach has fallen asleep and his squeeze-tube is drifting in the air currents, toward the door to the shaft... Nat climbs partly out of his sleeping bag and grabs for it, misses; tries again, and gets it this time, but loses hold of the sleeping bag. But the room is small enough he is in reach of a wall everywhere; he pushes back to the sleeping bag, climbs in, and is soon sound asleep.