SLATE

“Computer?”

The word dies on my lips. I stop dead.

The wolf pauses, listening for a sound. Pawing the ground and sniffing.

I stop cold in the doorway. One hand on the seal keeps my tired legs from folding.

The skinsuit I wore has stood up.

It stands in the center of the cabin, where I left it, but it has taken shape and it moves.

My heart pounds — It comes to seeking its revenge.

No, this is not dead skin and neither is it the ape-man’s relatives but I am no less on edge, for it is no less startling than entering a room and finding an animal skin come to life.

My mind screams like a skiff in afterburn. Everything has changed in an instant and my fists clench. I hold onto the pain of cold-burned hands, contorted in vicelike readiness.

It is deep and hooded, covered in grey skin and fur. Not the matted skin I produced — Rather, the lush furs look like thy belong t a living creature, a possibility I cannot discount. The figure faces away from me, motionless.

It heard me alright. But it gives me its back — a staggeringly unwise choice. My weight is on the balls of my feet. Before me is an opponent with their back turned. Behind me is cover, and probably a weapon, if I can find it.

A sound struggles out from the creature like an animal has limped from its jaws.

It is slow and halting and full of cruel imitation. The sound curves like a vicious blade with hooks and barbs, and the sound drags across the folds of my brain matter, leaving their indelible mark.

It says, “Com-pu-ter.”

The word stops me, sakes me, almost brings me to my knees. Vocal mimicry is a common strategy in nature but seldom is it used as an attack.

But I should not be surprised. Words are weapons. Everything is a weapon to the one who knows how to use it.

It turns its cowled head, but not its body, which remains facing away. I can just make out a pale shape within. It drinks in my form with a lingering stare and I become conscious of my lack of bodily protection or even basic covering.

“Computer?” It repeats. The mimicry is better now, even the intonation. It sounds like me — not just the word, the intonations, the tone of voice. But the sound is tortured through inhuman apparatus. If a blender and a computer could have a conversation, this is how it would sound.

Something is off; at least, something else — mimics recreate sound. It bounces in my processing unit, before presenting itself. A small thing, that itches with implication — mimics do not sound words into syllables.

Breaking a word into syllables suggests an understanding of words and perhaps some language fluency, which is a marker for intelligent species.

The thought chills me. I feel the cold again. The cold that seeps into my core — burning cold, and numb pain.

Words are weapons and weapons can kill, even words, to the one who knows how to use them.

“Computer.” It says finally, the imitation is good enough now for the blind wolf.

“No.” I bark loud enough that the pup seizes mid-motion and rolls into the center of the room. It scrambles away from unseen danger in an unknown direction, and succeeds only in violent motion, without linear progress.

The figure turns its full body to me. It looks at the wolf sprawled on the ground and leans to peer at the wolf pup from within the deep hood.

The wolf squirms under the glare and scampers back. Yes, the blind wolf feels the invisible gaze. It senses the threat — and clambers to the threat that it is more familiar with.

It speaks slowly and deliberately. The alien mouth wraps unnaturally around the word. In the shadow, I perceive the hint or lateral movement, like a wave where a mouth should be.

It says “No.”

Everything has changed.

My word returns to me softer, but with the same clipped intonation as I gave it.

The Shadowed head — a working theory — climbs slowly from the wolf to my own.

“No.” It repeats, its whole body giving a quiver that charges my nerves, which I shake out, in readiness for violence. Perhaps we shall see whether the creature is as skilled at mimicking my fist.

I feel the shiver against my leg. The soft whine.

I resolve not to say another word for this thing to use against me. But my mouth doesn’t stay closed. It falls open in mute horror as the hood lowers.

I regain control with a cold of my own — a cold from within, that chills the air around me. I recite the mantra. Everything is a weapon. A word is a weapon and a face is a weapon, to the one who knows how to use it. And I know how I will use it. I will cut off its face off and wear it; take its weapon and use it.

Its skin is smooth and pale as new snow, yet is not a dead white, as you might expect, but a living one, accented be dead blues and pale pinks, and in its furs. I judge it is not pale from cold — this is its natural coloring, like a creature that has never seen the sun. It is not the absence of pigmentation, I decide, but the presence of it that gives the pale face its vital appearance.

My body wars against my mind and my defense must be corrected as it slips. A nervous heat spreads over me, my pulse quickens. I feel the veins in my throat and arms engorging with pulsing blood and cold I consoled myself with flees from me, replaced by warmth.

It is a human face.

No. It looks human, but it is not homo Solaris.

As sure I know myself, I know this thing does not share a common origin with my species, now or ever. It has two large eyes, pale blue ice, that drink in everything about me. I do not look directly at it. It has a nose, like mine. A mouth. Curved with soft lines that must have conformed to some pleasing mathematical ratio.

The degree of its facial symmetry is uncomfortable — solarin engineers know that imbalance is desirable in a face. The face had no ounce of fat, suggesting her body to be athletic and fit — a specimen to be wary of until her full capability is known.

But it is not human. Pseudohuman, I decide.

It shifts its head like a snake that has learned to stand but hasn’t got the hang of it yet, or still thinks standing to be an inferior posture. It is in the musculature, in the shifting under its skin. Even below layers of thick fur, there is something unnatural in its movements suggestive of extra joints and vertebrae.

The threat assessment is unable to compute her threat level — no baseline, not enough information. But I don’t need an algorithm to tell me: she is dangerous all over.

“No, computer, no.” It experiments with the words together, perhaps trying to initiate some response but only succeeds in reprimanding a computer, which is not in any position to feel chastised.

The female form is strategic. A male is less likely to attack a female of its species, and more vulnerable to manipulation by it, assuming that its gender works as it does in base animals.

But the strategy has changed. Whatever it is, it is not an animal. Beneath the heavy coat, it wears clothing that creeps over its form. The cloak has marks of simple manufacture, but it was not made by one person, it was made an economy, social complexity, and intelligence.

It likely has language also, given its ease of imitation. A bird learns imitation starting with bird sounds and slowly listens and conforms the sounds. It takes a fluent species to ape sounds easily, to break them up, and put them together.

It studies the changes in my body with cold interest, but without human expression or knowledge of human cultural norms.

This would tell me something about its anthropology being divergent from our own if I could think well enough to make deductions.

I find my hands again loose at my side. My body does not seem to accept that this is a dangerous alien enemy — so its mimicry is partly successful.

My body is in its adolescence and for some reason its biological imperatives are unchecked. My heart pumps like clean fuel in a brand new engine.

There is no procreation on a starship. We have enough adults in the prime of their physical and mental capabilities. Children are a drain on resources, with little return, and if a child were needed — an absurd thought — it would be hatched, as all civilized species do in the solar age.

Even so, its appearance on the ship has initiated a new set of protocols.

Social protocols. Diplomacy.

I cannot afford to anger a dominant race on a planet I intend to conquer.

This would be a good time to introduce myself, but one small problem — I don’t know my name, and it's probably better I don’t give that away.

“Human” I gesture to myself. “Wolf” I gesture to the wolf. I use the wolf as a third object, hoping it will be clearer when I gesture to it.

Diplomacy does not go as expected, however.

These types of situations are carefully gamed out.

We begin by establishing communication, learning simple words.

That doesn’t happen here.

It breaks the paradigm; strides across the room.

I am prepared to defend myself, but until I am attacked, I can take no action to provoke it.

It slips out of its heavy grey cloak in its stride. Exposing white expanses of skin where its garments do not reach. I seek out its vulnerabilities — the arteries and pressure points of its form. A human shape, but not human, I remind myself.

It breaks the center line and continues to close the distance.

My body is neutral posture but my mind is poised for sudden and extreme violence at the slightest hint of aggression.

I catalog every item in my radius, in the room ahead, in the store behind me.

Everything is a tool and everything is a weapon, to the one who knows how to use it.

It stands inches from me. She stretches her head up at me, exposing her delicate throat. All its pipes in one narrow package. I see its pulse — it has a pulse.

Its eyes are perhaps its most remarkable feature. I swallow. They are what I imagine lakes to be, translucent pools of cold blue. There are hundreds of solutions to the problem of visual stimuli — hundreds of eyes of various designs. Whatever these are, they are not human eyes. The deep pools stare back, assessing me with all the emotion of a lizard.

It waits, its body winding in liquid time.

Eyes dart over my form and its hands begin to travel glacially as it unties the clasps of its tunic. It takes the smooth plains of her upper chest for me to realize what is happening — Diplomacy.

“Yven.” She puts a hand on her bare chest.

It is not a sexual advance, but a meeting on equal terms, the adoption of a foreign custom — mine. I am partially naked, so she makes herself likewise. A meeting on equal terms and an introduction.

“Human, volf, Yven.” She gestures to each party to confirm her understanding.

This is within expected parameters for a first encounter. The mimicking of actions and customs is often a basic first step towards more advanced communication. And yet it somehow comes as a shock — I blame the unchecked drives of my body for mounting a response from several of my body's systems. If I were a ship, I would be swirling with flashing lights and alarms.

“Yven,” I repeat. The sound is foreign and comes out strangled.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. It gives up the defense of its clothing, exposes its body’s design, bearing its weaknesses and secrets.

Even I am surprised when my hand closes over hers before my brain can override the command.

“No,” I say.

I do not want to see its form.

“No.” She says.

Her voice does something to me from this distance, and I’m not sure whether it is how she says it or the fact that I feel her words on my skin. They down my back, and back along my spine.

Her hands draw apart her open tunic and a passage of skin opens.

I take her quickened pulse through her skin, noting every place a surface throbs.

There is something different to her skin — it has no pores, but there is a texture.

“No,” I confirm, drawing her hands back to her centerline.

If it is a sexual advance, I risk giving offense by rejecting it. I have no clue as to the sexual hangups of the species if it even has any — sex or hangups. Any strategic advantage gained by her nakedness is shortsighted. This is no longer a fight. The last thing I need is to set a precedent of meeting this race naked, or worse.

Her eyes roam over my face like I am confusing terrain that must be navigated. I have confused her somehow.

I read the increased attention as urgency. She needs something. She has an objective to achieve with this interaction. She sees her advance as a means to achieve it. Yet I have frustrated that advance and that objective.

Needs are weapons. Everything is a weapon. But only to the one who knows.

Her head drops stiffly, chin to chest. Shoulders rise, fall. I read the increased breathing and heart rate as signs of frustration.

Then her hands are on the move again, they travel with the same careful slowness. Slow as to be non-threatening.

They travel down, down, ignoring the shifting open garment.

My hands follow hers, like two dogfighters locked in combat, as she draws a hand upwards. My hands are defensive and warding. She is too close for comfort.

She pauses, observing me with vulnerable intensity. But she resumes her considered movements, even with my hands now making firm contact with hers. Some warmth seems to be generated from the limited contact and spreads through m body.

This is not the sort of fight I know. She will kill me ever so slowly, slipping a blade into my flesh, and I will still be waiting for the attack.

It is a weapon she draws. But then everything is a weapon and this weapon is a calendar of patterned and polished bone. It is well cared for, but with unmistakable antiquity and long use.

My open hands travel on hers, directing them away from my vital centers, as though we are in a slow dance of choreographed movements. The seconds feel like minutes. And for those crawling seconds, it would seem to the observer that our purposes are aligned. But we are opposite and opposing forces.

Despite the appearance of harmony, she maneuvers the bone between our throats, like it is a collar that will link us at the neck. This endgame somehow comes as a surprise to me. Like the slow dance and contact have put me in a trance.

I lock eyes in with it, totally vulnerable in front of her. If she releases her weapon, I am dead.

Cold steel slides from the cylinder and meets her exposed neck. And just as she maneuvers the blade without my knowing, I find my hands now directly on the cold bone, holding the knife to her throat. I am stunned — yes by the fact that she has skillfully manipulated my hands without my realizing it, but more by more by the fact that she leaves herself vulnerable to me.

Her life is in my hands.

Her eyes are rolling glaciers, crushing me. They are primal force, an ancestral voice. They are a time when men took what they willed, from whom they willed. They are wild dominance, cracking ram skulls, locking antlers, savage snarls.

They say. You are mine. I own you.

She gives up the advantage and somehow seems to say, that she still holds it.

But I am not cowed.

I hold the knife against her throat until I see the sharp line of steel twinned on her skin.

She could have killed me. That was the point. Now, she gives me power over her. But it is her power, her victory. Not mine, which kills any pleasure I would receive from opening up her throat, from turning her throat into a faucet.

She no longer crawls through time. Time stands still around her. Her eyes are now stuck, her chest holds her last breath.

I feel the wind at my back that carries the scent of the forest; the wind that picks me up and puts me down without breaking stride. But maybe it is because she has the scent of pines in her hair.

This is not a game of chivalry. We are not taking turns like children. It does not matter how the advantage is gained, only how I use it. If she gives me the knife at her throat, then she is an idiot, asking for death.

There is blood on her neck. A line of blood as thin as the blade’s sharp edge.

At the first released vessel, her hands seize over my own. As mad as it sounds — I think I feel a single blood vessel spill open followed by an avalanche of breaking vessels like heavy meteorites vapourising on a planet with no atmosphere.

She is far too strong for her size and build.

But I am in position for a fatal strike and not easily dissuaded by such a thing as pain.

Bloom wells under steel, a ripe rivulet bursts forth; a long line on her slender throat, a red blaze on pale skin. To me, a serving suggestion.

I do not know what she sees in my eyes, but there is terror in her's now.

“No.” One word and she knows how to use it correctly, to stop a wolf in mid-stride. But I am not a wolf pup. “No.”

My eyes pour into hers but I no longer see.

Liquid fire slashes my naked brain. Her blood is a river carved from the beating heart of worlds. It thrums with vital birth and brutal death and rutting sex. Veined wings, reaping claws, binding fire. It is the wind of the sun in the sail of life, strata of churned starlight.

Blood and jump fuel.

For all our diplomacy, it ended in a fight after all.

I hold a knife to her throat yet somehow I am under attack.

Yet out is not she who attacks. Everything is a weapon, even blood. To the one who does not know how to defend against it.

The fight is in my mind and though the fight is within me and against me, I know how to fight. Especially against a stronger opponent.

The seed is planted in my brain, the red weed in my mindscape. The spineless vine. Its tendrils thread through my thoughts, calling every neuron to the fight against me. It wants blood. No, it wants this blood. It is thirsty. It cries with the grating cry of a newborn whose indelible wails are etched into the human psyche.

I cannot win.

So I feed it slashing red rain.

A small thing — a matter of millimeters, a subtle push to release the sweet treasure.

I release the catch at the back end, the second blade sides into the meat of my trapezius. Primitive pain bypasses the red root. The pain floods my brain like the blast of a supernova, sweeping aside the root as though it were space dust.

It will have to be satisfied with my blood for now.

I will not be controlled — I will not be governed by a parasite. It thinks it sits in the control seat — it better buckle the frag up. I would rather die and frag the fragging mission. If it is a parasite in the true sense, then its host.

Every option is on the table, and every option is live.

Blood pours from my shoulder — the pain that overwhelms the root also feeds it. I stagger, a hand on the blue-eyed serpent’s shoulder.

I don’t think. I need to stand, it is there.

It gave me a blade to its throat, yes, all the while knowing it was double-edged — double-ended. It had but to shift the release mechanism that was under my hand.

I fall. It bears me up.

It was the wringing of her hands that gave it away — the undue force on my backhand.

With martial training and her strength, she could easily have disarmed me.

I lean against the wall. A hand is on my face.

If I can read alien expressions, it is deeply perplexed. It studies me more intently.

I would have thought — anger. But there is none of that on the alien’s face.

I shove it off, heading for the store. Yet somehow it is under my shoulder. As though I need its help.

Objective: diplomacy. Report.

Trust. That was the aim of the exercise.

Alcohol. Stitch gun. Bandages.

I use my remaining resources to sort through what happened.

It put itself at my mercy or, rather, intended to give that impression. It would not have been so bold, without a hidden blade. But if things had gone to plan — its plan — it would have proved trusting and I would have proven myself trustworthy. I would trust it because it had shown me ultimate trust. It would trust me because I had refused ultimate power. It was a bold plan, filled with risk, and cunning, and I can’t help but admire the audacity of it.

Things didn’t quite work out that way, however.

I wince under sloshed alcohol. She works to fasten her garment, then cleans her wound. It is a scratch, deserving little attention, yet she cleans it meticulously.

Blood. There is something about blood in this world and this is reflected in her ritual cleansing.

I don’t know when my mind shifts from it to her, but at some point, it becomes a conscious exertion of will to keep it up, and I have to force myself as a way to remember: it is alien and dangerous. It is inhuman, a shapeshifter assuming human form. It wears a skin that does not belong to it as I did. My respect for it — for her grows.

I cannot say it is truly a shapeshifter, or to what extent it can alter its form. It seems more likely that it can change its form than that it should have the same form. And didn’t I see it change in front of me, in its voice and appearance?

I grit my teeth with irritation and I allow it to use the gun for the exit wound where I cannot reach. It adapts quickly to a level of technology and manufacture it has probably never seen. And it does not flinch, so it has seen violence. No surprise in a world such as this. I make a note of its quickness — a stitch gun and a real gun are similar enough in concept and function.

Diplomacy. Allowing its participation is diplomacy. It is a psychological principle in social species. I allow her to some concrete means of helping me. She invests her attention and action in my well-being. I give her a part to play — an important part — that validates her.

And there is some reciprocal feeling of obligation that is unavoidable.

I grunt grudgingly at her work and do the bandaging myself.

She grunts in return. Her expression is misplaced and comical — it is my own.

I let slip a wry grin that seems to interest her. I upbraid myself mentally — without, I congratulate myself, teaching her any new expressions to mimic. I should be mimicking it, not the other way around. It should be feeding me information, instead, the information flows only one way. I must adapt to the habits and customs of this world — I must forget my own.

I must its weapons against it. Cut off its face and wear it. Just an expression — until my tanning skills improve.

I have a hard time suppressing my relief as I tug on a pair of underwear. The sense of relief is disproportionate to the negligible armor rating they provide.

Frag, but it feels good.

What were the technicians thinking? Genitals are inconvenient at the best of times — particularly the dangling male varsity — but running naked in the icy cold?

The ritual does not go unstudied. She is a is keen a study of behavior as she is of language. And she is ahead in information gathering. I will have to do something about that.

I sigh deeply and reach for more precious white fabric. White is an impractical color but I justify it because — snow.

Truce: that was the outcome of the exercise. Perhaps grudging respect and wariness, also, but not open hostility.

I pull on neutral camouflage pants, that will work in crater or forest, to balance out the impracticality of unbroken white.

It could have killed me if it had wanted, but it was not altogether honest either. I can respect its cynicism. I dearly wanted to kill her and resisted the action at a cost to myself. So I am both dangerous to it and not. So respect and wariness.

I did not resist out of a need to preserve its life, except perhaps for diplomacy — but it doesn’t need to know that.

Gods.

More relief washes over me as I pull on soft socks and sturdy boots. I catch her in a moment of contentment at my satisfaction.

Does it have to be an alien? An enemy?

Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

But acting like it is an alien will get me nowhere. Successful infiltrators do not act, they become.

A person cannot live a lie, but they can believe a lie.

I glance at her, she returns a nervous flash on blue ice.

The lie I must believe is that this is a person, a she. The lie is that I am not repulsed by her, that I would not kill her while she sleeps. Perhaps, this lie will even be that I care for it.

I must become the lie, until it is no more a lie but merely falsehood.

A bird uses bird sounds and slowly conforms them to human speech. I must use my resources, and slowly conform them to feeling normal human emotions towards that which is not human. Towards her, I force.

Disgust. Contempt. Universal emotions, that have universal expressions — in humans at last — even in isolated populations. I cannot allow these to give away my true feelings.

I will think of it as a fight. That will be easier. I know how to fight. My beliefs and attitudes are the enemies, and I must make allies of new emotions.

Not just her either. I must win over the people of this world. I must gain trust and acceptance. I must win their hearts and minds.

Frrag.

Deep breaths. I picture the tension leaving my body. the smile is more advanced than I am ready to attempt.

I look at her face and give a simple nod. It’s not much, but it's a start.