I, Alien

AQUARIUS by Susan R. Matthews

I BECAME AWARE in the warm part of the year, resting and growing in the litter of the leaves, drinking the cool dew from the night breezes, growing and gaining in understanding of the world that was around me. I had siblings; all of the aware one was my mother, and there were others destined, like me, to be fruiting bodies—children of the aware one, and part of the aware one.

I lay in the warm moist comfort of the tree-floor as I formed, as I grew stronger and throve in the nourishing forest. I had nothing to do but to eat and drink and listen to the voice of the aware one, the thousands of voices of the aware one, speaking quietly in the night of the moment of Creation and the nature of the world. We are old, very old, millions of dayblinks, thousands of warmcolds, but until only one hundred and thirty warmcolds ago we were not aware.

How did it happen? Just as it happened with me, I supposed. In the natural progression as the caretaker of the tree-floor we grew in size, we grew in complexity, and in the course of time we became aware—not only aware, but able to communicate with the rest of our being, and know that we were with the aware one. I am of the aware one. I am the aware one.

And at the same time I was only one of a generation of fruiting bodies, and there was something wrong, something that puzzled the aware one, something that had not happened in our memory which reaches back to long before the time at which we became aware. Something was happening.

In my infancy I cultivated the tree-floor where I lay for nourishment, breaking down the litter and the debris, taking the material the insects made for me and processing it further for the smallest of insects to complete the cycle and free the food that the deadfall contained for the use of the trees and the insects and the aware one, and me. The aware one was hungry, I was hungry, I was not growing as quickly and as well as I could have; I felt it as something that was wrong, and wondered if I was working hard enough.

The moisture was not there. The moisture was needed for the insects, but the moisture was even more important to me for my use. I could not make use of the nourishment without moisture. I cultivated my area, I sought out the moisture in every warm breathing spot where it could yet be found, and there was not enough.

Without adequate moisture I would die. I would not be able to complete my development, I would never fruit, I would wither into the tree-floor to nourish the fruiting body that would come next; I would fail.

I sought the warmcolds-old wisdom of the aware one for assistance, and there was no comfort in the answer. There is no moisture, the aware one said. Not throughout the forest as we travel in your direction. The others are being called back to the Body. Find moisture, or surrender your substance back to the aware one.

During the brights I could do nothing but hide in the moistest places to be found, stretched thin, almost out of touch with myself from place to place. During the darks I could sometimes find enough moisture in the cool air to seek out my siblings to one side and the other side of me and ask for their report. No moisture, they said, something has robbed the forest of its water here, and dryness increases. We must return to the Body, or be lost.

But when the wind blew through the forest from the one direction, the one that was in front of me, it was fat and rich and pregnant with moisture, delicious moisture full of nourishment. I rose up to the surface to capture the treasure in the wind, spreading myself as thinly as I could to drink the most deeply, watching always for the bright to come—knowing I had to protect my moisture from the bright—but filled with so much joy and delight in the dark, when the wind blew toward me, that it was as though something was different in my awareness, something very light and filled with happiness. I had no word then for intoxication, but I learned to be drunk on the night breeze’s moisture, and grew strong on its treasure while my siblings faded back to either side of me.

Thus I grew and prospered, thinking only of myself, because that was my purpose at that time—the aware one had made me to be a fruiting body, it was my function to gain and grow fat, but before I could achieve my mission in life, the aware one took thought for the treasure I had found and changed my instructions.

You are strong, my child, the aware one said. You thrive while others fail. What is the explanation?

I sent back my information, the flavor of the moisture on the night wind, the riches that came into the forest when the wind blew from the direction in which the aware one had not yet gone.

The wind that travels over us is dry, the aware one said. You must go out and seek this moisture. Separate, my child, and when you have found the answer, send back to me so that we may live.

Separate? But I wasn’t ready to fruit yet. If I separated now, would I ever get to fruit, would I become just one of the forgotten processes, and only share in the awareness as an afterthought—

Separate, my child, the aware one said. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready. But the aware one said that it was more than just my siblings on the fore-line of our growth who were at stake; it was more than just my need for moisture that impelled the aware one. If I could never fruit, if I had to sacrifice my place in the history of the aware one, if I was going to be a sterile scout—well. I am of the aware one; I am the aware one, if only a very small part.

And past the grief and the anxiety I felt in separating, in the loss of my identity as a fruiting body, I felt some interest and anticipation. Go out, the aware one said. Find out where the wind that bears the moisture is coming from. Bring back the news to us, so that we may live.

It took me several dayblinks to collect sufficient moisture; it was the warm part of the year still, but the wind was very rich at that time, and I fattened on the treasure that it brought, spreading myself as thinly as I dared over the blanket of debris on the tree-floor to absorb as much as possible.

On one night I fattened and grew full, and knew that the time had come. I called my substance back into myself, I made myself solid with my flesh and the water that sustained it, I rose up out of my bed in a form that I had borrowed from a small eater of vegetation, and I walked forward into the woods—past the boundary of my life, past the far edge of what was familiar to me, into the woods in the direction from which the treasure-wind came.

It was frightening and exciting at once in a sense I’d never experienced but one time before—when a small animal had died and been buried in my leaf-mold by the insects for processing. The richness of the feast had sustained me in fullness for almost an entire warmcold. That had been in the warmcold of my coming to awareness; I could still remember it, but the husk of the memory was fragile.

There was so much new to eat here, so much untouched food to process and to harvest. There were others here, too, others like me, in their unconsolidated state; but when I touched them, I could sense nothing that was aware, and wondered. They were not like me, then. They seemed to be the same, they seemed to do the same work, but they were not aware.

When the bright came on, I sank deeply into the embrace of a bed I prepared in the tree-floor and rested myself, taking nourishment from the substance that was like me and yet not aware. Perhaps the aware one had been here before, and just forgotten, and left this food for me. I was very tired after traveling on footlike-things above the ground, carrying my substance with me; I shuttered up my sense-of-light and rested for some time.

But I had a purpose, and could not rest for long. When the next bright dimmed, I spread myself out along this new piece of the tree-floor, to absorb the moisture in the wind; there was more of it, here, but as I was about to collect myself to rise again something new and unique came through the forest, treading upon the tree-floor, breaking through my substance with its weight.

They were creatures such as I had never seen before, with two footlike things to travel on, and the only animals that I had ever known with only two footlike things were feathered. These animals were not feathered in the same way, though perhaps they were feathered, because they seemed to be wearing dead leaves of some sort upon their flesh. There were some of them, I couldn’t tell, more than two, then another two, but it was difficult for me to sort them out.

They stopped in the middle of the blanket I had spread of myself to catch the moisture and made sounds to one another. One reached down into the tree-floor and lifted in its branch or paw or claw a piece of me—they had four footlike things, then, even if they only used two of them to travel—and, in contact with warm flesh uncovered by the dead leaves or the tangled hairs the nesters use or whatever it was that they were covered with, I tasted moisture.

It was moisture with mineral salts, and I was greedy for it, and sucked it all up as quickly as I could. It wasn’t all there was. There was more moisture. There was so much moisture, juicy, warm, bursting with nutrients, and I couldn’t get to it through the rind of the creature; what was I going to do?

The one who had lifted the portion of me dropped me from the height to the tree-floor once more, but another came down to the tree-floor as the first one dropped me, putting its other footlike things into the tree-floor where I could harvest the moisture and the minerals on its skin. I wanted through its rind. I was near frantic with desire, so much moisture there, the aware one would feed from this for an entire warm-cold as I had with the smaller beast. What could I do?

I fruited. It was my only chance to get closer, to get in. I could smell the moisture when they made their noises to each other, and they had breathing-places that were similar to the other warm animals I knew. If I could only reach… I fruited, then and there, in front of the creature, and thrust my spoor as hard as I could up toward its body, aiming for its mouth and nostrils. It wasn’t a full fruiting, no, of course, only a small process, I hadn’t had the time to do a better job of it; the creature fell into the tree-floor heavily, making sharp movements with its body, but I was in.

Oh, it was heaven. Moisture, minerals, salts, nourishment—preprocessed nourishment, the rarest of treats, flesh bursting with the moisture that the aware one needed for survival—but it had been only a small fruiting, simple, and when the creature expelled me from its body too little of me remained behind to make an effective use of the resources.

The creatures withdrew across the tree-floor in the direction from which they had come, but now I knew that some of the wonderful juiciness in the wind came from the creatures. And I knew what to do next. For several dayblinks I traveled after the creatures, resting during the brights, feeding in the darks, sure of my purpose.

In the dark of the fourth dayblink since I had seen the creatures for the first time they came back. I smelled them coming in the wind; I sank into the tree-floor where I stood and spread myself, carefully, seeing myself shining in the night with the blue-white glow of the aware one, and concentrated my energies to fruit. There was only one creature who came, though. That was a disappointment; I wanted at least two, one to have and one to send ahead, but I could make use of this one, I could experiment.

Hesitantly, the creature came, pausing at the edge of my glow-field. I increased my bioluminescence in the place where I was nearest to being ready to extrude a fruiting body; it came closer, it put itself down into the tree-floor, its mouth and nose and eyes were so near that I could have reached out and had them then and there but I wanted in through the rind. Carefully, I formed a fruiting body, a much bigger fruiting body this time, and made it like something that a warm-blooded chewing animal likes to hunt and hide and eat, so that it might look familiar and appetizing.

The creature reached out for the fruiting body, plucked it from my substance, put it in its mouth where it dissolved into the pith and filament I needed to propagate my substance throughout its body. I waited. There was nothing. The fruit failed. The moisture in the creature’s mouth, was it too unfriendly to my fruit?

The creature lay down in the tree-floor, then, and was quiet.

I scouted it carefully, wondering what was going on, trying to understand what was happening. The creature had not stopped breathing; I made a net over its face to capture its moisture, so that it would not go to waste. I tried to comprehend the dead leaf covering, the hair covering, sending my processes into every aperture I could find; just as I was about to give up hope… I found it.

The creature’s rind was broken in several places, not large places, and most of the breaks had a shield over them so that I could sense the aperture but not get to it; but some of them were still building their shields, new breaks perhaps, and I could get in.

Oh. I cannot describe the wonder of the experience. I had only been inside a dead thing ever before; this one was still alive. Its body did things when it recognized that I was other than itself, so I took its chemistry, I borrowed its moisture, I adjusted my processes until its body could no longer tell that I was not the same as it was; and then I learned and fed and fed and learned, and when the dayblink came I covered it up with leaf-Utter and mold and continued to learn and feed as it lay on the tree-floor. It breathed quietly and slowly for the entire bright before it died.

It would have been too much for me to process, but with the strength I gained from the nourishment and moisture it provided I sent substance back across the tree-floor floor where I had walked and traveled; that absorbed substantial excess nourishment, and when I touched the skirts of the aware one in the place of my origin—the aware one fed through me with the hunger of the almost desiccated.

I hadn’t understood how close the aware one had been to discontinuity. It troubled me; but I was more pleased than troubled, because I was there, I was entirely the consumer of this wonderfully succulent creature, and I was the one who had saved the aware one from discontinuity. I was the one. I am of the aware one, but there were parts of the aware one that were not me, and I hadn’t truly understood that before then.

The aware one wanted more. Needed more. From the first taste of the moisture I sent back I knew the thirst of my siblings, the seeking along my path. When the bright dimmed, I could feel the drawing from me quicken; I was first, but many were coming. It was frightening, because I wasn’t ready to fruit and didn’t want to be absorbed in the aware one. This was my accomplishment, the acquisition of nourishment; I didn’t want to stop there and be content, because this one had come from the direction of the wet wind, and there had been more of them.

I gathered up the leaves that the animal had used to cover itself. I gathered up the nourishment that I had not fully absorbed, I arranged it in its original pattern, I stood up in the manner of the creature and walked into the wet wind. There was something so rich and promising in that breeze that I could hardly grasp it, more nourishment than seemed to be possible.

When the bright came, I sank back into the tree-floor to rest and feed. Creatures came through the forest, many twos and twos and twos of them, but I kept quiet and fed from the hard long and bony parts of the one I already had. I made an error in judgment; I used too much, drunk with moisture and replete with food. The hard bony parts would no longer support the weight of the water in my substance when I stood up to walk, but crumbled.

I needed another. I knew how to get one. I left the pieces of the animal where one of my siblings could find it in a dayblink or two, and went on. When I felt some of the creatures coming in the dark, I spread myself, as I had done before, and set my lures glowing in the dim light.

These were new creatures, it seemed, because they seemed wary or unsure, and kept to the outside of the field that I made for them. I waited. One came, finally, to take up the fruit I offered; this time I tasted the air all around it, quickly, and found where its rind was recently broken, and went there.

The creature didn’t try to eat the fruit I made for it, but it didn’t matter. I was there. I was in. I sealed the place where the rind was broken and went out into the creature’s body, remembering what I had learned from the last one about hiding from its internal defenses, reveling in nourishment.

I didn’t want to make the same mistake that I had made before. I didn’t harvest the creature; I merely fed, quietly, and only enough to keep my awareness. For my reward the creature stooped down and picked up the fruit I had made for it, and took it in a container of clear leaves; turned around and signaled to the other—and started walking back.

Terror paralyzed me as the creature stepped past the field that I had made, and carried me past the forward edge of my knowing. The aware one had never been here. There was no connection anymore between me and the aware one; and yet I was still aware. What was going to happen to me? Had I become lost? Could I ever get back?

I was alone. There was no aware one. There was only me, and the creature, and the creature’s companion. It walked vigorously with confidence, it moved so much more efficiently than I had moved the remnants of the last one, and with every step it took we traveled farther into the wet wind.

Through the forest. Out onto a hard place in the forest, something wide and stony with very strong substances in its composition, chemistries I had never sensed before; there was no way for me to send back the news to the aware one, we were severed from each other, so I didn’t know if the aware one had ever encountered anything like this in our life.

The creature had a fir-cone on the hard place, something that was in a way similar to a fir-cone, something that would carry its weight and could be moved over the surface; a very large fir-cone, and with little that was forestlike in it, but much more of the very strong chemistries all around. It sat in the fir-cone, its companion sat inside the fir-cone with it, and the fir-cone started to travel very quickly across the hard place, still into the wet wind.

I couldn’t tell where we were going. It was going too fast, and the messages in the wind were gone before I had a chance to truly taste them. I recovered from the paralysis of fear; I had to know, and my desire was stronger than my fear, but I didn’t know how I could slow the progress of the fir-cone.

The creature’s body protected one part of it more than any other; that is where I went. I didn’t care any longer about concealing my presence from its body. I went into the protected place; it was where all of the sharp brightness of warm life was concentrated, all of the quickness of the creature. I had to stop the fircone. I exerted myself, I infiltrated its brightpaths, I slowed the quick bright sharpness of its messages.

The creature fell forward in the fir-cone, and its companion became agitated, but the fir-cone stopped. It stopped very suddenly. The creatures were both damaged, but I was not damaged within the creature. It was a shame that the creatures had been damaged. They were interesting creatures. Was there something I could do to restore them? I had caused the damage, after all, in some sense.

I went carefully across the surface of the strong and very bitter chemistries to the other creature and crept in, since there was no lack of places where the rind had been broken. This creature had not been as badly damaged as the one I occupied. I used the nourishment of the one to try to repair the other, encouraging its body, transferring fuel; after a while the other moved its body, shifted itself out of the fir-cone, and stepped onto the hard surface.

I let it carry me. It walked back in the direction from which the fir-cone had come, but not very far. The wind was still blowing in the same direction, but the wet was different. I harvested some nourishment from the creature to strengthen me and went out of its body to go look. There was a steep bank there, with a smell of sharpness as though the steepness had been made not very many warmcolds ago. The hard surface bridged the gap between one steep bank and another, and beneath—in the low place—there was wet. So much wet. Unimaginable wet.

As though the rain that falls in the forest, all of the rain that had ever fallen in the forest, had collected in one place, so much rain that it did not soak into the tree-floor, so much rain that it stayed whole and wet even though it lay upon the ground. That was where the wind picked up the water, blowing over this huge wet; and behind the wind, instead of a forest, there was a flat land with soil that was so fat with nourishment that the taste of it was dizzying.

There were things growing in the flat land, things in regular array, juicy things with fruit in them ripening in the warm. I left the creature; I needed all of my substance with me to explore, and lay the creature down softly on the hard surface before I fled into the flat land.

The bright came. But I was safe below the surface of the flat land, feeding from the juicy things with a hunger I had never known before. There was so much. It was so good. The juicy things grew sere and withered as I fed, but I didn’t care, there were so many of them—nothing that I could sense as far away as I could sense but food.

I could no longer sense the aware one. I was in a new place, on my own. I no longer even thought of the aware one. I knew my purpose. I fruited and fed, and fed and fruited, and when the creatures brought poison into the flat land I crept into one of them and traveled to more food. There was no end to it. There were fewer and fewer creatures, and poison in the flat lands behind me; but they could not keep me from the food.

Now the warm is over and the cold is coming, but I will not sleep. I have found a place in a nest of the creatures, full of moisture, full of food, and I will keep myself aware there for the cold. When the warm comes again, I will try to get back across the hard stony thing to the place where I was born to find the other, to share the nourishment I’ve found.

I am of the aware one; I am the aware one. There was only one: now there are two, and with the nourishment I have found we will feed and multiply, and be the caretakers of this wonderful new world—and all the creatures in it.