When his starliner's escape pod takes Bart to a planet inhabited by giant caterpillars, he must find a way home. He manages to do it by having fun, and just happens to save all of humanity while playing.
Chip Warner sat next to his downed escape pod and watched one of the planet’s many enormous, purple and yellow striped caterpillars devour the leaves of a large bush. Ten feet long and three feet high on the stubby appendages they used for legs, they were the only animals he had seen in the three days since he had landed, apparently the only survivor of the Starfreighter Argo, which had been destroyed in hyperspace by Wraith battlecruisers.
His parents had booked him passage on the Argo, bound for the planet Parstain 5, where this sector’s Starfaring Academy was located. As the only passenger, he had been ordered into an escape pod at the first sign of attack. Then a massive shock had run through the ship, the pod’s hatch automatically sealed and he blasted away from the Argo, scared and alone. The pod, programmed to head for the nearest charted planet with a breathable atmosphere, dropped into normal space and landed here a couple of lonely weeks later.
Bored, Chip walked over to the huge caterpillar. He had been afraid of them, at first, but they had turned out to be slow and non-threatening. This one had the front of its body up off the ground as it chewed leaves, which was all they did except when they trundled to a new bush on their ten leg-stubs. Its eyes were black dots, so Chip couldn’t tell if it was even looking at him.
He had tried to keep track of time and figured today was his twelfth birthday. He had hoped to be at the academy by now; he was eager to complete his years of training and take part in the decades-long battle against the Wraiths. By then he would no longer be a skinny, freckle-faced kid and he’d be able to hold his own against the enemy, who were the greatest mystery humankind had ever encountered. No Wraith had ever been seen. Even on the rare occasions when Earth Federation forces defeated an enemy ship, the Wraith vessel would disintegrate leaving no sign of the crew.
Chip saw that green drool was running from the caterpillar’s mouth.
“You could at least sing Happy Birthday to me,” he said just to hear his own voice.
The over-sized worm continued chewing.
So here I am on my birthday, Chip thought, scared and stuck in a jungle with only survival rations to eat and not knowing if Spacefleet will be able to rescue me. Afraid I’ll never see my parents again.
Irritated, he lashed out at the innocent caterpillar. “You sure are stupid looking,” he said.
Suddenly there was a thought in Chip’s mind. “Who are you calling stupid looking?”
But Chip hadn’t thought it!
Uh-oh, I’m going crazy, he thought. Too many days alone.
“You’re the stupid looking one, if you ask us,” came another unexpected thought.
“Is that you in my mind?” Chip said, puzzled and feeling silly to be talking to a giant caterpillar. “You can talk?”
“Of course we can’t talk. But we can. . .” and there was a sound in Chip’s mind that sounded like someone choking on their food.
“What was that noise?” He asked aloud.
“It was a word you don’t have in your language. It means ‘share thoughts with all others.’”
Chip decided to try an experiment. Instead of talking out loud, he thought, “Can you read my mind?”
“Sort of. We can’t pick up your normal thoughts. But if you direct a thought straight at us, we can receive it.”
“Can all of you caterpillars think to each other?” Chip said aloud, not used to directing thoughts.
“Of course. We’ve been thinking about you since you arrived. We wondered why you never communicated to us.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘we’? There’s only one of you here.”
The caterpillar’s next thought seemed puzzled. “But we are millions and millions, even though some parts of us are sometimes physically separated from the rest.”
“Huh? But how do you tell each other apart?”
“You still don’t understand,” the caterpillar sent to his mind. “We are all one individual.”
“That’s crazy. What do you call each other? Don’t you have names?”
“We have one name. It is. . .” and Chip “heard” another strange noise in his mind. It sounded like someone gargling while trying to sing an opera.
“I can’t say that word,” Chip said. “I’ll just call you ‘Bart.’” Bart was a fat kid who had lived in his pressure dome back on his home planet.
“As you will,” the worm answered.
“So, Bart, what do you do for fun around here?”
“That word does not translate in our mind,” Bart said.
“What word? Fun?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fun is something that makes you happy. You know, something that makes you smile or laugh.”
“We don’t have those thoughts, either.”
Chip thought to himself for a moment. “How about emotions? You know, love, hate, fear, stuff like that.”
“More meaningless thoughts.”
“Wow.” Chip was amazed. “Is there anything that makes you feel good?”
“Yes. Duty. Each part does its duty and we feel good. And being together as one, that is good also.”
“Oh, boy, was I ever right when I named you Bart,” Chip said, shaking his head. “All the real Bart ever did was homework and study.”
“Meaningless thoughts.”
“You’ve never laughed?”
“Meaningless thought.”
“Well, not anymore,” Bart said. “You can’t go through life without ever having fun. I don’t have anything better to do while I’m stuck here, so I’m going to make you enjoy yourself if it kills me.”
“You would cease existence for our benefit?” Bart asked.
“It’s just an expression,” Chip answered. “Now, have you heard the one about the chimpanzee who went to school with a banana in its ear?”
For the next several minutes he told Bart all the really funny jokes he knew, but the only result was Bart thinking “Meaningless thoughts,” as he munched on leaves. So then Chip tried making faces, but Bart didn’t find that amusing either. Chip tried standing on his head, dancing like a fool, making silly noises. Nothing worked.
“I’ve got an idea,” he finally said. “Are you a grown-up? An adult?”
“Do you mean this part of us that is physically near you?”
“Yes, of course. You. The one I’m talking to.” Chip was becoming frustrated.
“No. This part has not yet become a fully mature part of us.”
“Okay, that makes you a kid. And kids like to play. Let’s see, what can we play? Ball? Nope, you don’t have hands. Hide and seek? Yeah, that’ll do it. But you’ll have to be ‘it’. You could never hide with those purple and yellow stripes.” Chip looked around. Lots of places to hide. “Okay,” he said, “Bart, you close your eyes, uh, well, look the other way since you don’t have eyelids and count to fifty. Then come looking for me.”
Chip couldn’t be sure if Bart was silently counting or just ignoring him. Nevertheless, he ran to a large tree on the other side of the open area.
“Fifty,” he suddenly heard Bart’s thought in his mind. “And now we are supposed to determine your location?”
“Right,” Chip thought back. “Now you’ve got the idea.”
“You are right here,” Bart’s thought came back, this time with a mental picture of Chip crouched behind the tree.
“Wow, I didn’t know you could send pictures,” Chip exclaimed, running back to Bart.
“So, was that fun or what?” Chip said when he arrived.
“Meaningless thought.”
“You are one big, fat party-pooper, Bart, you know that?”
“Meaningless thought. This part will now move to another bush for continued nourishment.” Bart lowered his fore-end to the ground and rumbled off, looking like an amusement park ride come to life. And that gave Chip an idea.
“Ride ‘em, cowboy!” he cried, running after Bart and jumping on his back.
“Meaningless thought,” came from Bart.
“Well, I’m having fun, at least,” Chip said. He felt childish, acting like a six-year old, but he was bored from being alone. Bart was a soft, comfortable ride, and the rippling of his body bounced his rider up and down like a small roller coaster.
“Yahoo,” Chip shouted, kicking his mount with his heels.
Suddenly his mind was full of laughter and he somehow shared the enjoyment of Bart. It confused him at first, but then he realized Bart was laughing mentally because of the physical sensation of being kicked.
“What is happening to us?” Bart managed to ask with a thought between bouts of mind-laughter.
“I’m tickling you!” Chip shouted. “You’re laughing!”
Chip was laughing like crazy, too, both in his mind and aloud. It was the most fun he had ever had. He didn’t stop tickling until they were both exhausted.
Bart sent him a thought-picture of millions of caterpillars bucking around as if they were ridden by tickling riders. “We enjoyed that.”
“You’re all right after all, Bart,” Chip said. “It’ll be great having a friend around while I’m waiting for rescue.”
“That thought is meaningful,” Bart thought.
“Which thought?” Chip asked, not really paying attention.
“Friendship. It is much like the bond we share between the parts of us. Being together as one.”
“Uh huh, that’s nice.” Chip was growing sleepy, lying facedown on Bart’s back.
“So, with your kind, the parts make decisions separately? They are not as one?”
“Nope. We’re all different.”
Bart paused for a few seconds, and then said, “In that case, we will no longer make war upon your species.”
“That’s nice. . . WHAT?”
“No more war.” Bart was sending Chip a mental picture. Chip saw planets full of purple and yellow striped caterpillars spinning cocoons and maturing into speedy, graceful, yet deadly insects. They resembled the praying mantis insect of Earth, but they were eight feet high and had a pair of something like hands beneath their slashing pincers. Next he mentally watched huge starships full of adult bugs coming down to the surface of these planets to take their new adults into space. And then he watched as these starships attacked human spaceships, swarming in for the kill. These were the Wraiths, Chip realized with horror! Bart would grow into a deadly enemy of mankind!
“Yes, we are the hive-mind humans know as ‘the Wraith,’” Bart said. “We left the hive of our home planet and have been in space for many thousands of generations,” Bart said. “Our young parts, the ones you think of as ‘caterpillars,’ need fresh, green food, so we leave them on planets until they are ready to join us physically.
“In the near past, when we returned to one of these planets to leave our eggs, your kind had come to it. We approached in peace, but hateful, threatening thoughts were flung at us by a human part. We killed them all, thinking they were like-thinking parts of a hive-mind like us.”
Wow, thought Chip, that must have been the Proctell Colony. None of them survived. History books said they were slaughtered by the Wraiths for no reason.
“But now we know your species can reason and we can make peace with at least one of you. We will stop killing until you can attempt to arrange peace between our species.”
“But. . . but why didn’t you kill me on sight?” Chip asked. “Every time humans came across you, you attacked immediately.
“We would have. The part you call Bart would have killed you, but our immature parts have no killing or handling limbs until they emerge from their cocoons.”
“Whew! Lucky for me.”
“Not just for you, for your entire species. We were about to attack your home planets with thousands of ships to exterminate humankind. As for you, we were waiting for a small ship of adults to return to this planet and kill you. But now they will put you and your escape pod in orbit around a human-controlled planet. We’ll send a part of us with you to talk of peace - Bart, if you wish. But now, while we wait for the ship, would you do something for us?”
“I’ll do anything!” Chip was relieved he would soon be back among his own kind. But, even more important, he had incredibly saved the entire human race.
“Tickle us again,” Bart said. “That was fun!”
End
First published in Beyond Centauri magazine, July 2004
#1 New Release on Amazon
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