Creature

Creature




I am a creature. A hideous, ill-built thing that seems to be the only one of its kind in the universe. I don’t know where or when or, as I’ve recently been pondering, why I was born. I know only that I was born into this life as a laborer.
Most people are repelled by my very presence. My slimy, filmy skin, my immense watery eyes and a repulsive growth that seems to cover nearly all of my body mark me as an outcast. Most think that I’m of a species that evolved on a boggy, water-covered planet. The very air that I breathe requires such high concentrations of deadly chemicals that I must wear a breath mask at all times. No one else would survive in a room with the stuff that I breathe poisoning the air. I often wonder why my masters keep me alive. Surely the amount of money required just to keep me respirating is more than they can get from my work. But I think they have a certain reverence for me, as one of an extinct species. Of all my fellow laborers, I have but one friend. He doesn’t look like most people, either. He’s rather insect-like, in fact. His name is Xitell, and he claims to be of an ancient people called the Zhorl. He has seen many others of his race, and has learned a little about where he came from. He knows little else about history, though. I know nothing of myself. I have never seen or heard of any other member of my species.
“Keep it moving!” One of our overseers barks as I and my crew use subsonic drills to break apart rocks far beneath the surface of a world far from civilization. We search for fragments of some mineral or other that the masters find valuable. A chill wind whips down through the mining tunnel, blowing harsh, biting dust into our exposed forearms and faces. The darkness is kept at bay only by the electric lights held by our overseers. In their other hands are weapons. I have seen workers try to run and escape, and seen their bodies shimmer into steam when the terrible streams of white fire those weapons project strike them. I shudder against the wind and direct my drill downward again, noiselessly blasting away rocks into sand. I’ve become a good judge of equipment over the span of my life, and the equipment we use must be at least a good century out of date. That’s about the most recent any of the equipment we get ever is.
After another three hours of labor the overseers lead us back to a rusty old transport that shuttles us back to the great ship waiting overhead. It’s a heavy expeditionary ship, designed to run mining operations on distant worlds. It houses almost two thousand of us workers.
What I just described to you happened nearly every day for most of my able-bodied life. However, one day a change came, a great change. Our crew had just returned to the orbiting expeditionary ship, and we went to our quarters. We were allowed to sleep in one bunk each. The rectangular slab of bedding that we all had to sleep on was immensely uncomfortable, but I had grown used to it. The hardness that my comrades liked I found very unpleasant. I suspected this was another sign that I was meant to be a water-dwelling creature, though it was quite possible it was just another example of the softness of my flesh. Our workers’ barracks is a simple rectangle-shaped, tarnish-walled room in one of the deepest sublevels of the ship. Coolant fluids seep out of the walls and ceiling like sap out of a tree, and the temperature is kept just above water’s freezing point. We each have a hard slab, an infested blanket and a relatively clean sheet. Our bunks are stacked in fours, with old, creaking ladders running down the sides. The air is foul and stale, but our bosses at least try to keep anything that could kill us out of it. Of course, I don’t notice the air as much due to the tiny apparatus on my neck that directs a stream of the poisons I need to breathe toward my mouth.
I shifted in my bunk, turning myself toward Xitell’s bunk, the next over. “What word from the snatcher?” I asked, casually. Every troop of laborers had three essential contacts with the outside world: A snatcher, a grabber and a dealer. The snatcher’s job was to learn as much information pertaining to any interesting occurrences as possible, by whatever means available. The grabber was the acquisitionist. If you needed anything, you went to him. The dealer’s job was to keep the overseers content and to steer them away from any anger towards the laborers, through bribes, favors, or any other means.
“He said he was up on servant duty with the crew, and he heard that we’re being taken to a planet not far from here in a few days. Some sort of backwater mining colony world with several outposts on it. I think its atmosphere is some sort of toxic combination. We’ll need breathing gear.”
“Well, I’m sure used to that.” Xitell made a chittering sound that was a form of affirmative. He lifted his chitinous wrists and flexed powerful muscles. A slight popping sound resulted but nothing else, and he made his equivalent of a sigh. He told me long ago he’d once had great claws in those wrists, noble weapons that he could extract at will. When he was a young child they’d been lopped off by the masters. I shifted again, and asked the nightly question: “Why, Xitell?”
He responded with the traditional answer, despite knowing exactly what I was asking. “Why what?”
I continued our age-old routine. “Why do they use us to do their labor? It’s been millenia since they had the technology to have robots do all the work. Why bother spending money keeping biologicals alive?”
“Many snatchers have gotten pieces of their history. Apparently in their ancient times they had slavery on their planet. Like most species they stopped when they became advanced. Once they conquered the galaxy they rediscovered slavery and found its true use.”
“And what’s that?”
“To keep us in our place. To push us down onto the ground and grind us into dust with their heel. As long as we slave for them we can do nothing else.” His eyes had always been foreign to me, but I could detect the yearning in them, the distant dream that was fueled by the knowledge that he was of a great people. I had no such knowledge.
“I guess so.” I turned onto my back. I could tell my friend was about to start philosophizing, as he did frequently, so I closed my eyes and tried to find comfort in the chilly metal darkness that was my existence.
“Good night, my friend,” he said softly. He watched over me as I fell asleep. A more loyal companion I couldn’t have asked for. And if I had I wouldn’t have received one anyway.
When I woke up the next morning I felt like one end of a steel cable had been attached to my neck, the other to my hip, and then the whole thing tightened a few inches. I streched myself out, trying to unknot great muscles that I’d spent a lifetime building up. Most people felt physically superior to me, with my slimyness, but only I truly knew the power of the great masses that flowed under my skin with every movement. A tiny anount of luminescence from the dim lights that ringed the room bounced around the walls and into my aching eyes. Xitell stirred next to me, his exoskeleton clanking against the frame of his bed. The other laborers slowly woke up, too. None of us knew what relative time it was in whatever star system our ship was passing through. We woke up, therefore it was morning.
We wouldn’t be needed for any true labor until we made planetfall, so we were assigned to various tasks throughout the ship to keep our bodies busy and our minds locked in formation. I was led by a pair of armed men out of the barracks and down a transport tube into the depths of the rusty old ship. Even the newest technology on the ship could scarcely have been three centuries old. The empire spared no recent technology on its fringe workers. A door hissed open as if in contempt that a wretch like me should have to pass through its frame. I was hustled into a small room to attend to a pair of immense men who worked the controls to the ship’s generators. They each immediately asked for food, and I walked in solitude through a small corridor to the mess area that served the engineering section Either of them could quite easily have made the trip himself. I picked up two cubes of synth-food, managing to scrape a few shavings into my thin garment for use later, and walked back, handing one to each man. “Thanks, slimy,” was my reward for this thoroughly superfluous task.
Back in the barracks during my midday break. We had no mess hall; we ate where we slept. The one separate room we had with which to fulfill basic necessities was the lavatory, and probably only out of concern over disease-spreading. I ate a block of grey something, indestinguishable from the millions of blocks of grey something I’d eaten throughout my life. I flavored it with the shavings of green something I’d taken from the food squares I’d gotten for the engineers.
Later that day we could feel the ship slowing down, despite the mechanisms that kept the physical motions and stresses of the ship from affecting those inside. I turned to Xitell. “What’s going on?”
“I heard the snatcher say we’re getting a new shipment of workers before we reach that planet I told you about,” he said, his own curiosity aroused. “Perhaps this is it.” Then we felt the slight lurch that indicated another ship had docked with ours. A few minutes later the boss came down the corridor. He was grinning, with about the most sneering, life-threatening grin I’d ever seen. He clapped his great hand on my shoulder. “We found a pal for ya, slimy! ‘Tis an interesting day indeed! In fact, we got ‘im all ready for ya, as well!” He guffawed as he walked away down the corridor. I saw the new group of slaves file down the passage, and one drew my eyes like a lightning bolt in a starless sky. It was...Another me! It had the same slimy skin, the same immense, wet eyes, and the same strange bodily growth. It also wore breathing apparatus. It was much younger than I, I thought, although I wasn’t sure, as I had no objective references of my own species. I was fairly sure, through a hunch, that it was a male. Indeed, the boss had readied him up. He was bruised and bleeding the strange, dark blood that I had bled on many occasions. He walked slowly, hunched over from recent pain. Slowly he raised his head up, shaking it, probably to clear it up. When his eyes caught mine, the intangible lock of a common bond held them there. I felt him similarly examining me. He stumbled toward me as the rest of the prisoners filed into their own barracks. Then he spoke, sounding like a nervous little rodent. “You are...Are you...One of mine? My people?”
“I think so,” I replied. He blinked several times.
“Instinct tells me that you are a male, like I. Is this true?”
“Yeah, I’m fairly sure,” I replied, and a smile managed to crease his battered face.
“Then we probably are the same species, if we can determine aspects of each other by instinct.” He coughed and his knees threatened to pull out from under him. I swiftly caught him and carried him back into the barracks. He slept for a few hours, during which time I did my best to heal his wounds. When he awoke I did my best to teach him how to survive as one of our band. We shared very few more words about being members of the same species; since neither of us actually knew anything about our species we had little to say on the matter.
“Do you have a name?” He thought for a second.
“The closest thing to a name I was ever addressed by is ‘clown.’”
“You’re better off than I am. ‘Slimy’ is all the overseers’ve managed to think up.”
“Well, how about I just call you ‘friend,’ then? I don’t mind being called Clown, in fact it suits me rather well.”
“Okay, then. On to business. First and foremost, how much work have you done in your life?” I asked.
“I worked as jester to a planetary governor for several years-hence the name. When I ceased to amuse him he sent me down to the mines, where I spent a year and a half.”
“The life we live is along the same lines as the past year and a half of yours, but with a lot more and harder work.” He nodded grimly. “First rule: Always do whatever the boss says. If you have any complaints, he will give you an eloquent reply.”
“Oh? Has he a good command of language?”
“His command of language is like his command of men: If it doesn’t do exactly what he wants it to, he beats the stuffing out of it.” He snickered softly. “He’s got a much greater proficiency with his club than with his words, and he’ll probably use the former when he has the choice. He is, as far as we are concerned, a god, only without the aspect of respecting or liking us.” He nodded. “Also, never lie, cheat, steal, or beg. We have specific people who do that stuff.” He nodded again. “Next: As you’ve seen, the two of us’ll be given even less respect than most workers because we’re whatever the hell we are.”
“Have you ever seen another one of us?”
“No, never.” He nodded slightly in sad recognition. “Anyway, don’t make any trouble. If you do, you’ll most likely die.”
“Given how life is, it might be worth the risk.”
I leaned forward and whispered very softly, but very piercingly, “Don’t ever consider taking any more risk than you do just by living. Do you know how significant it is that we’ve found each other? Maybe the rest of our race is out there somewhere. I can’t afford to lose you.” He smiled nobly and clasped my hand.
“I’d never think of it, friend. Hell, there are at least two of us still left! Maybe someday we’ll even find a female, get a chance to elongate our race’s life.”
“It’s my greatest hope.” We grinned. I looked up at Xitell, who was standing nearby to keep the other workers from listening in. “He,” I said, pointing, “is someone you can trust with your life. He’s guarded my back for many long years, and he’s a noble and fully trusted ally. Clown, meet Xitell.”
“Pleased to the utmost,” said Clown, performing an elaborate bow. Xitell nodded.
“I am most happy to see you meeting another of your species, my comrade,” he said to me. He cocked his head slightly to look at Clown. “If ever you need anything, young one, feel free to come to me.” Clown nodded.

The ship chugged its merry way towards the unknown planet. The snatcher managed to grab a few more bits of information before we arrived. Apparently there were several large permanent mining bases scattered around several continents, mostly mining for salt and copper. What the masters wanted with those archaic substances I had no idea, but then I didn’t usually.
We arrived at the edge of the star system about a week after Clown and party arrived. There were no windows that the workers had access to, so I had no idea what our destination looked like. Still, I had a vague feeling stirring somewhere within the depths of my subconcious. If I hadn’t become so proficient at just sitting and thinking due to the skull-grinding boredom that we lived in whenever not working, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. The navigators set the ship into geosynchronous orbit over a large continent, and a large work detail was selected by the boss to go down to the planet surface. Breathing gear was distributed to everyone except for Clown and me, already possessing our own. We were marched into a small shuttlecraft and strapped in. The compartment had a few tiny windows, so a few seconds after the lurch of launch I could see the streaming, speckled blackness of space outside. The planet came into view after a few seconds. There were great plateaus and immense basins, at the bottom of which were small, dark oceans. Most of the surface looked semi-arid or just blasted desert, with a few spots of green here and there. On the whole far more hospitable looking than most worlds I’d worked on.
The transport landed with a clump, and the slaves were thrown around some in our seats. Then the long rear door of the transport unfolded into a ramp, allowing the whitish yellow sunlight to flow into our compartment. The sun felt good on my face, after having been living in a compartment with low-intensity artificial lighting for several months. The guards came back, unstrapped us, and shackled our legs. They didn’t worry about our arms; they all had powerful hand-weapons and rather enjoyed the sport of dealing with a troublesome slave. We were lead down the ramp onto the planet’s surface.
When my feet touched the ground I felt a strange sensation. My body felt more potent and more energized than ever before. I looked around and the other workers seemed to be having a tough time with the gravity, which was slightly greater than that of the ship. All except Clown. The other slaves, again, aside from Clown, also wrinkled their noses at the foul scent they detected in the air, a small amount of which could seep into even the best breathing gear. And we had been given far from the best. As we walked out one man’s breathing mask’s seal failed, and his body convulsed and he tore at his throat as acrid air swept down into his lungs and seared his insides. He died within seconds. The guards vaporized his body on the spot, then turned to move on. The area we had landed in was a mild desert, with plenty of dry-terrain flaura and the occasional small animal. I had never been versed in any sort of science so I had no idea what the things were, only that they seemed appropriate for their surroundings based on my experiences working on arid planets. My gaze fell on the mining station, a few hundred feet ahead. It was an ugly, cancerous blemish corrupting the surface of an otherwise fine-looking planet. Great black towers and equipment servicing stations stabbed the sky, and the whole complex was surrounded by a ten foot black wall, guards posted every few yards. Mining vehicles passed in and out, rumbling along with their cargoes. The main gate swept open and the hideous complex devoured us.
Once inside we were assigned a small barracks near the east wall of the complex. The slaves already working there seemed in better general health than we, but as usual there were no other slimies. Just Clown and me. Every shift a batch of slaves would go out on a transport with a few guards, work at an existing mine or dig a new one. A simple enough life on what was growing to be a truly beautiful world.
Clown and I were usually put on the same shift. The easier for the overseers to mock us both, I guess. The other slaves didn’t mind our being what we were, but they plainly weren’t terribly thrilled with it, either.
Two mornings later Clown and I were working the early shift. We were loaded like cattle onto an old, overworked, and extremely obsolete truck(The thing had wheels, for pity’s sake!) and driven out to the site of a planned new mine. I thanked the great multitude of gods I didn’t believe in that I could work on the surface for a few days. I had really come to like the sun.
Clown and I were by ourselves, about two hundred feet away from the nearest guard, who was closely overseeing another slave’s assembly of a digging tool behind a nearby dune. We were scouting out the terrain to find weak points in the rock where digging would be easiest. The handheld sensors we’d been equipped with belonged in an archaeological dig, but they worked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Clown looking intently at me, as if to see if I were looking at him. Then, in a swift motion, before I could leap over and stop him, he yanked his breathing gear off of his face. I was about to scream profanely and curse him, myself, this awful life, and the universe in general, but before I could he took a deep breath, and smiled. No convulsions. No illness. If anything he looked better. His eyes blazed and his muscles seemed to relax as he took more breaths. “Try it, friend! The air’s wonderful!” There was really nothing to say. I removed my mask for the first time in memory. The feeling of the mask’s being removed from my face was unprintable relief in itself, but the next part was undescribable as I inhaled deeply. The crisp, delicious air rushed down my throat, and I took great gulps of it. My body felt reforged, energized.
“That is...”I had no adjective. Fortunately he knew exactly what I meant. As I searched for more things to say about our amazing discovery my eye caught slight motion a few dozen yards away. I thought the top of a dune moved. I looked more closely and saw a figure in near-perfect camoulflage crouching on a dune. Suddenly the wind picked up and it whisked itself away off into the sands. I lost sight of it. Clown asked me what I had seen and I told him.
“Funny. Maybe it was - the guard’s coming back!”
“Quick, put your gear back on. We can’t let them know we can breathe here.” He swiftly complied and I fastened on my own breathing device. We continued our work, hearts aflutter over our amazing discovery. Over the next few days we went to the same spot, and each time I saw the strange figure observing us.
On the fifth day Xitell joined our group and went along with us to the spot where we were constructing the new mine. As the guards hustled us out of the truck and across the ground, I heard a bird calling. Another bird replied. Strangely, I saw no birds anywhere. The guards were also confused. When a third bird call sounded the sand around us erupted into life. Figures clad in the same color as the spy I had seen, with full robes, hoods and face shrouds, leapt from beneath the sands wielding strange black weapons. The weapons barked loudly and tiny bursts of flame came out of their tips. Invisible projectiles burrowed into four guards, who fell to the sands bleeding. The other two dropped back and returned fire, but the strange warriors evaded their weapons and killed them with two more shots. All the slaves but Clown, Xitell and me jumped onto the transport truck, and they drove it in the direction of the far scrubland.
Our mysterious rescuers said nothing, they only threw more desert-colored robes over us and led us swiftly away from the digging site and to what at first appeared to be a patch of empty ground. One of them raised something to its lips and produced another bird-call sound, and a great mouth opened in the ground. On closer inspection it was a large trap-door that led to a tunnel. We were forced, in the most polite sense of the word, down into the tunnel, and the door sprang shut. The little passage smelled of damp stone and a slight chill hung in the air. At last one of the raiders walked in front of us and removed its hood and mask. Clown duplicated my gasp of amazement. Another one of us. Slimy skin, huge eyes, growth, the works. And yet despite all the slanders my physical appearance had recieved, based on those traits, I found her to be quite beautiful. She looked battle-hardened and well experienced, which her previous actions had been evidence enough of. The other raiders removed their masks and they, too, were all ‘slimies.’ She put her hand on my arm, and smiled warmly, which was about the last expression I’d figured her capable of. “Come with me, all of you, and your questions will be answered.”
We were led into a large chamber of rock lit by warm lights made to mimick sunlight. A great gathering of my race was there, including some children! The room also contained several of what appeared to be equipment repair stations. Most looked like they were stolen from the mining bases. Racks of similar guns to those our rescuers had used lined the walls. The leader sat down on a stone bench against one wall, and invited us to sit across from her. “Welcome to our home. Whatever small hospitalities can be given to you’ll be provided. It’s a rare occasion we can find and free two at once.”
“Two of us?” Said Clown. She nodded.
“It’s been almost a year since our last freeing. It’s extremely dangerous to mount rescue missions in any case. Now we’ll have to lay low for a while. But I’m sure you’re wondering about more profound things. Do either of you know anything about our species?”
“Up until recently, neither of us had ever seen another,” I said.
“What about you?” She asked, looking at Xitell.
“I know I am of the Zhorl, and I have been taught some of our folklore by others I’ve encountered.” She nodded.
“We have several Zhorl working here,” she said, “and I’m sure they’ll be overjoyed to see you and teach you all about your people.” Xitell’s small mouth twitched, an indication of excitement. She turned her eyes back to me. “We have a large staff whose mission is to piece together as much of our history as they can. I’ll give you a detailed series of history lessons later, but I’ll give you the basics now.” Clown and I both leaned forward in anticipation.
“We were once a great space-faring race with a proud warrior tradition,” she said solemnly. “We evolved on this planet.” Clown and I looked at each other and beamed. In a tiny space of time we’d found each other, these people, and our homeworld! “After millenia of infighting we united, then struck out across space. We colonized this whole system, then eventually sprang to the stars. We encountered a number of other powerful races, most friendly. The hostile ones were dealt with easily enough. We established a large interstellar empire and trade with other races boomed. Prosperity grew and grew.” She sighed softly, and her tone deepened. “Then they came. From who knows where, but they came. Most of our allies evacuated their space and sought shelter with an ancient, powerful race called the Nir, but we stood, proud and stubborn, refusing to abandon our homes. Within two years the invaders had smashed the main part of our fleet, within three they stood on this planet. And they ravaged it. They could have wiped us out as an example, but they wanted to humiliate us. For weeks their ships pounded the surface of this world with horrible weapons. But they didn’t exterminate us. Most of our people on other planets were left alive.” Her eyes darkened and her lips curled into a snarl. “That was a grave mistake. Our civilization smashed, we were enslaved and scattered across the immense empire that they control-almost two enitre galaxies. Only about fifteen thousand of us are currently free in this galaxy. We operate in cells like this one, striving to free more, to multiply. One day, with the help of our allies who were wise enough to retreat to fight another day, we will rise up and we’ll crush them.”
“Of that I have no doubt, after having viewed the spirit of your folk,” said Xitell.
“Now,” she said, “you should rest. Then you’ll be educated and trained. Our war goes on, and we gain a little ground every day. Your freedom is a large step forward.”
“One more thing!” I said. “I want to know us by a better name than ‘slimies,’ which is all that most people have ever called me.”
“It is one of our biggest secrets, but we do not keep secrets from fellow freedom fighters,” she said. “Our name was long lost, a whisper scattered to the far corners of the universe. But we found it again. In our great past, and continuing into the future, we are known as Humans.”