Interstellar Pig (14 page)

The lichen were moving very quickly, desperate to get the entire colony out under the sky where they could be beamed with The Piggy to their ship. Despite my furious efforts at resistance, I was being dragged toward the door. If I ended up on their ship, I'd never be able to take off the disguise, or they'd eat me. I would have to remain a lichen forever.

That thought helped me to sustain my efforts. But by the time I had reached the back edge of the lichen mass, we were almost at the doorstep. And there was a wall at the back edge of the mass, a membranous skin that, as a lichen,

I could not penetrate.

All around me lichen were sliding under the crack below the door. I resisted, feeling the membrane stretch like elastic. But it wasn't going to break. In another instant I would be pulled through.

Even losing a foot would be preferable to being trapped on their ship. As the observing part of me touched DEACTIVATE, the lichen part made one last push away from the door.

And then I was Barney, toppling into the living room, my bare feet on the raised threshold of the front door. I bellowed. The parting gesture of my former companions was to eat through both my big toenails. But they had no time to finish the meal, and oozed off into the night.

The pain, and the sudden disorienting change, left me stunned. I remained sprawled on the floor by the still locked front door, not thinking, feeling relief at having escaped the lichen so easily.

Then I saw Moyna—or rather her four muscular tentacles. She had dropped the gun and was dragging her deflated head toward me, pulling herself along by digging her talons into the floor.

I yelped and jumped to my feet, limping out of the way. But it wasn't me she was after now. Sure, if she'd been able to use the gun she probably would have killed me, just for the heck of it. But she was obviously too weak from lack of hydrogen to wield the gun, or do anything but drag herself painfully toward the door. All she wanted now was to get outside. Apparently, like the lichen, she needed to be in the open air in order to beam herself back to her ship.

If she didn't die first. Her veiny, wrinkled head was as flat as a cartoon character run over by a steamroller, a two-dimensional pancake. She seemed to have barely a cubic centimeter of hydrogen left. If she died, I'd have her corpse on my hands.

Quickly I unlocked the door, flung it open, and peered outside. There was no sign of the lichen. They had departed quickly with their prize. "Come on,

Moyna, out you go," I urged her. "Atta girl, you can do it, I know you can."

But she still had several feet to cover, and she could barely move at all now. Swallowing my disgust, I reached under her slippery head and draped it over my arms. It was like picking up entrails. Carefully, carefully, I carried her outside and deposited her gently on the ground at the bottom of the porch steps. She had enough energy to carve a wicked gash in my arm with a talon before vanishing.

"Gee, thanks a lot!" I shouted at the empty space where she had been. "After I help you and—"

Then I remembered the others. Jrlb, who must have been observing from some safe vantage point, would probably have reached his ship already. But Zulma would be on her way out of the house any second now. And she wouldn't be weak and harmless like Moyna. She'd want to get in her parting shot. I ran from the steps and crouched down behind a pillar of the porch.

With a throaty hiss and a brittle clatter, Zulma scurried from the house. She paused at the bottom of the porch steps. The weather had cleared. In the moonlight I saw her hideousness—the powerful jointed legs, the swollen belly, the huge insect eyes. Her bristly head swiveled like an owl's. She screeched, displaying her curving fangs.

I had been watching from almost the same hiding place when she had made her original appearance. How compelling and attractive she had been, tossing back her luxuriant hair, greeting Ted so demurely. She had drawn and fascinated me from that first moment.

Now she made one last disappointed vengeful shriek and vanished as Moyna had. She would have enjoyed killing me, but she didn't have time for that luxury.

She was behind the others now.

I still seemed to be wearing my old wristwatch. It was three minutes to two.

If the earth did continue to exist, I would have a long night ahead of me. The house was a mess: furniture overturned, light fixtures broken, kitchen equipment sticking into walls. And there were dead lichen everywhere, which would have to be gathered up, somehow, in the dark, and dispensed with. They would probably make excellent compost.

Now that the rain had stopped, Mom and Dad would probably be home soon—it must have been the rain that fortunately had prevented them from coming home any earlier It would be nice to get the mess cleaned up before they arrived, to avoid trying to explain it to them.

But I didn't have to start just yet—there was no point in cleaning up if the world was going to be destroyed in two minutes. I stood up and walked to the middle of the front yard and looked up at the night sky. It was familiar, and,

I suppose, beautiful. I had been in the dark for so long that the stars shone forth with unusual clarity.

They were dim and dull compared to the stars on the board. And there were no colorful, detailed planets. I had halfway expected some shooting stars, but there weren't any.

I stood and watched as the numbers on my digital watch blinked toward two o'clock.

The moment came and passed. The earth remained. There was no bright flash of a hiccuping Piggy. I waited another minute, two more minutes, just in case my watch was slow. By ten after two, still nothing had happened.

I turned back to the house.

It was going to take me a little while to adjust to the fact that it was all over now, that things would go back to normal. There was a lot I wasn't sure about, including my own interpretation of The Piggy-

But it had happened all right—the onerous cleanup that now confronted me was testimony to that. The reality of the job almost made me wish the whole thing had been a dream—almost, but not quite.

One thing I was very sure of was that I was glad it was over. The others were so vicious that they made even the human race look good. But I almost felt sorry for them now, trapped in their frantic perilous game. Maybe they enjoyed it, but they were still the dupes of The Piggy, they were still its slaves.

Only I had managed to escape.

It made me wonder about their interpretation of the IRSC. Maybe they had it backward, and the higher numbers were better after all.

It was a satisfying thought. Broom in hand, I began to whistle. There was a lot of sand mixed in with the dead lichen. It was always that way at the beach—no way to keep the sand out.