Authors: William Sleator
The observer part of me glanced at the luminous dial of my wristwatch. It was 1:27.
Doing my lichen's best to remain imperturbable, I considered my options.
My first impulse was to throw off my disguise and hand The Piggy over to Moyna, who would then depart with it from the earth as quickly as her ship would take her.
But I stopped myself in time. She would shoot me as soon as I resumed my human form. And if she didn't she would be immediately suspicious. How could I explain giving up The Piggy, without giving away its secret? The only way to get rid of it was to be as indirect, and deceptive, as the game itself.
It occurred to me briefly to be noble, to sacrifice my life to save the earth by allowing Moyna to kill me and find The Piggy herself. But I quickly assured myself that without my help she wouldn't have time to find The Piggy before it went off.
I also wondered, for a moment, what would happen if Mom and Dad showed up now. I could hardly picture the scene. It was too terrible to contemplate.
The lichen around me were getting extremely suspicious. In a moment they would see through my disguise. I opened myself up to them. Lots of information poured in. A large arm of us, it seemed, was silently climbing the wall behind Moyna, planning to drop down upon her from the ceiling, eat through her gas bag and send her to the floor—if she didn't notice and kill us first.
But I didn't want Moyna to die. I wanted her to find The Piggy. And the knowledge that the lichen were capable of scaling vertical heights gave me an idea. Perhaps they could lead her to it.
As quickly as I could I began broadcasting The Piggy's location. The ones next to me didn't seem to understand at first. I continued sending out the information that the prize was nearby, in the bookcase directly above us.
Finally my neighbors caught on. Growing as agitated as lichen can be, they began transferring the information.
It did not occur to me, at that moment, to wonder how much I could really trust The Piggy.
I sensed ripples of excitement flowing across the living room and into the kitchen. The arm reaching up behind Moyna paused. I began suggesting that we should form an arm to scale the bookcase and get the prize. Such mass movement couldn't be organized by one cell, of course. It would have to be by common consensus, which took a little while. I urged them to hurry. We had thirty minutes left.
It was out of my control now. I had given the lichen the information; they had accepted it. I could only wait, and broadcast urgency, and hope it all went fast enough to get The Piggy out in space before it hiccuped.
Waiting around wasn't good for my state of mind. That was when I saw that there was a flaw in The Piggy's version of the game, too—a big fat one. As soon as it hiccuped, destroying the unfortunate winner of the game, and whatever planet he or she was on, The Piggy's secret would be out. The surviving players would realize at once that The Piggy was a liability, not the asset it was in the board game. No one would want it then. They would shun it. It would be relegated to an eternity in the void—which was exactly what it didn't want.
Had The Piggy lied to me?
The lichen had made a decision. I began moving along with the flow, across the hearth, toward the bookcase. Ahead of me, lichen were oozing up onto the first shelf.
But the arm on the wall behind Moyna was moving too. It had reached the ceiling and was inching along toward her head. And Moyna hadn't noticed. She was watching those of us climbing the bookcase. We were a diversion, attracting her attention and keeping her in one place until the others could reach her and fall upon her.
I was still debating with myself about The Piggy, trying to decide between the conflicting versions of the game. Which one made more sense?
Are you really telling me the truth, Piggy? I demanded. A lot of lives depend on it.
I'm not as stupid as they think. They'll never find me here, The Piggy blandly recited.
Forget Luap and listen to me.' I ordered it. Your version of the game doesn't work either. Help me, please! What do you really do?
It is not only fate, my dear Ethan, but how a man responds to the blows dealt him by fate, that determines his true destiny, droned The Piggy. Stop quoting that dumb old captain.' I screamed silently, so beside myself that the lichen around me were a little startled. But I was beyond logic. Just tell me what you really are, and what's really going to happen in twenty-seven minutes. Please, what is the truth?
Beauty Is Truth, Truth Beauty—That Is All Ye Know on Earth and All Ye Need To Know, it said mildly. Future Teachers of America, 2, 3, President 4; Pep Club,
I, 2; Prom Queen Attendant, 4.
Had the thing gone mad? Piggy, please don't desert me now.'
A Man of Honesty He Is, and Trust. Varsity Wrestling, 3, 4; Intramural Football, 3, 4; Stamp Club, 1.
But it had deserted me. It was quoting from the yearbook. True or false, it seemed to have said all it was going to say on the subject. I was on my own now.
But not really. I was still a part of the lichen colony, in the vanguard, in fact, of the arm climbing toward The Piggy. We were at the level of the mantel now, mounting steadily over the tattered bindings. The observing part of me could see that the other arm had just about reached the spot on the ceiling directly over Moyna's soft throbbing inflated head. Several inches of lichen seemed to be loosening, preparing to attack.
Then, unaware of her own danger, Moyna wafted toward the bookcase, fascinated by our arm. Behind her, a dozen or so lichen tumbled silently to the floor, just missing her. The arm on the ceiling began crawling forward again.
I was locked into the chain of events I had begun when I had wanted to get rid of The Piggy. I could do little to change anything now—which was just as well, because I was a confused wreck. I didn't know what to believe.
In only a few minutes, the lichen would reach The Piggy. And then, if Moyna was still alive, the battle for it would begin. When that happened, I would have to take specific action. And that action would depend on the answer to one simple question.
Did I want The Piggy or not?
I appealed to The Piggy again as we inched toward the ceiling, sustaining ourselves on bookworms and silverfish and mildew. The Piggy responded with more inanities from the yearbook, in its mechanical voice.
Moyna was so close to us now that her fetid succulence was intoxicating, almost overwhelming. If she had been a couple of inches nearer, we might have lost control and hurled ourselves upon her from the bookcase. But Moyna, who seemed to be familiar with the lichen, kept just out of our jumping range in this planet's gravity. We gritted our figurative communal teeth and moved up to the top shelf.
The Piggy, inside the yearbook, was quoting from the yearbook now. Before, it had quoted Luap, and Ethan, and the captain.
We were moving horizontally across the shelf toward the yearbook. I had managed to work my way into the front line. I tried to move as slowly as possible, to give myself more time to think. "Slowly, slowly, wait, she'll take it from us if she sees," I told the others, hoping to get them to stop.
It seemed to work. As the message passed to those behind us, the arm slowed. We came to a standstill several volumes away from the yearbook. The Piggy was still quoting from it.
I had thought, at first, that The Piggy told the truth. But I had been wrong.
What it actually did, most of the time, was listen and quote. It didn't really communicate; it requested information and it repeated. It repeated things it read; it repeated what people said. It heard and then played back. That made me think of something—something familiar. And I was suddenly so excited that it was almost more than my lichen membranes could take.
What The Piggy reminded me of was a tape recorder. An intelligent tape recorder, that was always prompting me to describe my sensations to it.
I struggled to keep my agitation in check. But maybe I did have the answer. It was a kind of sentient recording device, programmed to learn— about many different species.
The Piggy certainly sounded like a machine. I tried to remember everything it had said. The only time it hadn't quoted, or prompted, was when it gushed rapidly about wanting to be a lichen. And right after that it told me that it was going to blow up. And I had immediately told the lichen where I had hidden it. Perhaps that's what The Piggy had wanted me to do—so that it could move on to a new species.
I felt myself being pushed forward from behind. "The other arm is above her now. They are about to drop. Move for The Piggy. She will be eaten before she can take it from us. Move on, move on, move on."
It was like being dragged down by an undertow, or caught in a mob. The force was irresistible. We crawled along the shelf. We reached the yearbook.
Moyna's shriek was so piercing and high-pitched, it might have broken my eardrums, if I'd had eardrums. As lichen, we couldn't exactly hear, but we were keenly aware of Moyna's situation. The attack had begun.
The platoon had landed on Moyna's portable breathing bag, not her actual flesh. Though the bag was inedible, the lichen were able to puncture it instantly, rendering it useless.
With a lash of a tentacle Moyna flung the bag away from her. It careened madly around the room, spitting hydrogen, until it finally drifted to the floor, with its clinging passengers. If only one of them had achieved a landing on Moyna's actual flesh, it could have eaten through her natural gas bag, mortally wounding her and sending her down to be agonizingly dined upon.
But Moyna had moved too quickly. Not a single lichen had touched her. There was still a cubic foot of hydrogen in her head, diminishing with every breath, but still enough to keep her aloft for a short time. And that might be all she needed.
We had eaten through the yearbook cover by now, doing our best not to taste the disgusting material, ingesting and excreting it as rapidly as possible. It would be clear to Moyna that The Piggy was within the volume. But she couldn't take it from us. We swarmed all over it; one touch of her talon, and we'd be swarming all over her. All she could do was watch and wait, tensed to pounce for The Piggy if the opportunity presented itself. But she was losing hydrogen, sinking millimeter by in evitable millimeter toward the floor, wkere our companions were hungrily waiting.
I ingested and regurgitated on the front line, wanting to reach The Piggy before any of the others. But I was still thinking faster than ever.
The idea that The Piggy was a recording device made more sense than anything I had come up with yet. It needed the game because its function was to learn about the players. And to record what it learned.
I ate through the last sheet of paper, and there was The Piggy, startling me again with its primitive vapid ugliness. But I knew that it was not primitive at all. I wrapped my lichen body around it, being sure to stifle all digestive functions so that it would not be harmed.
The Piggy was programmed to learn. To do so, it had to provide some reason for the subjects of its study to want it around. Otherwise, it would be neglected, empty, learning nothing. And what better reason for wanting it was there than fear—fear of being destroyed, and the resulting need for safety, for protection?
The game threatened to destroy the creatures, and The Piggy promised safety. And that was why all the creatures wanted it, and fought over it, and gave it the exciting contact with them that it craved.
But did the danger even have to be real? I wondered. Did species really have to be wiped out? Or could it be a false threat, to make the creatures compete for the protection offered by The Piggy? After all, it was what the creatures believed about The Piggy that would make them do what it wanted, whether it was true or not. The board game, and the awesome powers provided by the real equipment, seemed to do a good job of convincing them.
Would it be necessary for planets to be destroyed? Maybe an occasional example would be enough. Maybe just one at the beginning.
Or maybe none at all.
I had believed. Jrlb and Zulma and Moyna had believed—and none of us had known the real game to come to any conclusion at all.
But I still needed one more piece of evidence.
I was squished in the middle of a three-inch ball of lichen that had formed around The Piggy I was also aware that Moyna had sunk several feet. Her talon, according to those waiting impatiently beneath it, was now only .734 meters from the floor.
"Hey, could I ask you a question?" I said to the lichen cell beside me. "Something I don't understand. I'm kind of new and young."
"You don't look it," my companion said.
I remembered that lichen couldn't lie to each other. "I know this Piggy thing is the prize in the game we're playing. But why do we want it, exactly? What does it do?"
"What does it do?" The lichen seemed to find the question meaningless. "It is the prize. Without it, we will lose."
"But what happens if we lose?"
"How did you get into this colony anyway?" the lichen asked me suspiciously. "Why are you asking these stupid questions? You seem peculiar, different. I'm not sure I like being next to you."
"Just answer me or I'll eat this thing!" I threatened it—I was right on top of The Piggy. "What happens if we lose?"
Now the lichen seemed frightened of me. It knew I couldn't lie, so it believed my threat. "If we lose, we will be destroyed when the game ends. Everyone knows that. And don't you dare eat it! We've never been this close to winning before. You'll ruin everything!"
"But what happened at the end of the last game?" I demanded. "Who was playing? Who was destroyed?"
"The last game? But this is still our first game," the lichen said. "Excuse me." It jostled the cell on the other side of it. "Could you just trade places with me? I need a change of position. I'm a little cramped over here."
I had offended it. It would probably start telling the others there was something wrong with me, and blow my disguise. But for the moment, I had learned enough from it. It had told me the same thing the other players had.
It didn't know what happened at the end of the last game. Because this was its first game.
The other players could have been lying, but not the lichen. Lichen couldn't lie. None of them had actually known The Piggy to destroy a species, or a planet, or anything at all.
Was it really possible that The Piggy never destroyed anything? That the game was a hoax, devised to keep The Piggy in the center of the action, recording away?
It seemed too good to be true. Yet it was far easier to believe than either flawed version of the game. And if it was true, all I had to do was let the creatures take The Piggy. And I'd be safe from them, and from their brutal game.
But did I dare to believe it?
The ball of lichen around The Piggy, now six inches thick, rolled off the shelf. We squelched softly down upon a cushion of our companions on the floor. We began rippling quickly toward the front door, ignoring even Moyna, who was crumpling down beside the fireplace.
I opened myself up to the latest news. Lichen had been testing the poison at the exits. It had lost its effect. The door was locked, but busy cells had already eaten a large enough hole in the wood to get The Piggy out. And then we could be beamed with it, back to our ship.
My blood was no longer poisonous. That must mean that I, in my natural form, was no longer immune—the pill had worn off. But I was in the very center of the colony now, still beside The Piggy. If I wanted to become Barney, before getting beamed up to their ship, I'd have to work my way back to the edge, quickly.
But I had one more question for The Piggy. Piggy, what you said about the hiccup in fifteen minutes. Why did you tell me that? Because you'd been on the earth long enough, and wanted me to let you go? Or was it true?
There was no response.
The lichen had The Piggy now, not Barney. I was out of communication with it. It was tired of human beings, and wanted to stay with the lichen—it had told me it had never experienced them before.
And then it had told me about its hiccup. That information made me give it to the lichen. That was probably exactly why it had told me it was going to hiccup. And it had worked.
I had made my decision. I was moving away from The Piggy. Soon I reached a position where the mass was only one lichen thick. Then things became very difficult. The mass was moving with all its combined force toward the door.
But I wanted to stay inside, to escape out of the mass. I was trying to move against the surging mob now, and it was nearly impossible. The best I could do was try to stay in one place, and not get pulled out the door with all the rest.
It would have been easy if I were still immune. But apparently I wasn't. I couldn't risk becoming Barney until I had worked my way clear of them. I did the lichen equivalent of elbowing and kicking as they swarmed past me, cursing me, furious and uncomprehending.
The decision was now irrevocable. I had sacrificed The Piggy to the lichen. If the board game was right, Moyna, Zulma, Jrlb, and Barney—as well as our planets and species—would be obliterated in thirteen and a half minutes. Only the lichen would survive.
If The Piggy was right, then the lichen ship would be inflicted with a 100 megaton nuclear explosion in thirteen and a half minutes. Who else would feel the blast would depend on how close they were to the ship, and how fast it could move. There was a good chance it would be far enough away from the earth not to do much damage.
And if I was right, no one would be destroyed in thirteen and a half minutes.
I hoped I was right.