Secret Weapons

The image of Wavedriver Hanupt shifted into focus abruptly as I lowered myself into the tub. His command center, steeped in the natural brine of Homeworld, sent a pang through my surrogate body, despite my dampness.

I inclined the surrogate’s head in a crude approximation of Hanupt’s graceful mantle bow.

“My waters and yours {honor, happiness}, Wavedriver,” I sent. Thankfully, I did not have to attempt actual speech with the crude bony jaw of my surrogate. The transfluid was nearly clear, and my words and glyphs floated almost as if we shared a waterspace. I knew this meant the Clutch would soon be here.

“The Clutch {community, nest, young, elders} is pleased by your report on the indigenes of the third planet,” Hanupt sent to me. “It will arrive in wetspace, in the large water you have named {peaceful, gentle} Pacific.”

I again attempted a bow, and sent a simple pair of glyphs {satisifed, protective} in response.

“Have you tasks to perform before wetfall {invasion, cleansing}?” the Wavedriver inquired.

“My reports on the weapons possessed by the bonewalkers is complete. There is a cultural phenomenon I have been drawn to observe by this body’s {clutch, not-clutch}.”

“{amused} One final observation before they are consumed {hunger, sated, flourishing}?” Hanupt flushed in a rapid pattern that strangely mirrored the bonewalkers’ “chuckle” in both rhythm and meaning. “Soon the Clutch will know {possess, devour} all that they were.”

“This is a {small mystery} display few of the bonewalkers are able to make, Waverider,” I reasoned. “It may be a thing my senses {fluids} are more suited to convey to the clutch than simple consumption.”

---

The bonewalker Stacey and her singleton mate Chris conveyed me to the display in their poisonous metal machine. For perhaps the last time, I marveled at the resilience of these ascended mammals -- little more than large rats, really -- and their ability to absorb so many contaminants inimical to their own metabolism with relatively little harm.

“Chris has been a member at the Castle for years,” Stacey informed me, in the honking grunts of the bonewalkers.

“I’ve turned a few tricks,” Chris averred. Both of them laughed, and though my surrogate betrayed nothing, I writhed internally at the strange, grating noise that I was never entirely convinced conveyed pleasure.

“I bet you have,” I agreed. Predictably, the bonewalkers laughed again. For some reason, there are a few simple phrases that can quite reliably set bonewalkers at ease. I suspected that Stacey and Chris had both ingested alcohol (a poison specifically concocted and imbibed by bonewalkers to produce a euphoric state, though it often produces melancholy, aggression, and physical sickness as well) before arriving.

We turned in to a twisting path, and soon exited the machine. Stacey gave custody of the machine over to another bonewalker, in exchange for a slip of paper.

“We need to hurry,” Chris said, looking at his chronometer. “We won’t get seats unless we’re there before the doors close.”

We galumphed our way through the structure, after each of us showed our pieces of paper to the bonewalker at the door. When we arrived at the proper compartment of the structure, only a few resting areas remained, but there were three adjacent to one another, and Stacey guided us to them, and as we occupied them, the display began on a lit dais at the front of the downward-sloping room.

An electronically-amplified voice made an announcement.

“The Castillo Mágico is proud to present: The Astounding Alberto!”

A single, powerful light was trained upon the center of the platform, and the crowd became still for a few moments, but nothing happened.

Some of the bonewalkers, including both Stacey and Chris, chuckled, amused by the apparent delay. I was just about to ask them what they found humorous when a bonewalker materialized in the light, accompanied by a flash.

My coiled mass within the surrogate’s internal cavities gave a lurch of dismay.

This could not be.

The bonewalker, dressed in what I knew was some form of formal wear, waved at the smoke, and the others laughed at him. They laughed, though this one had just made -- I suppose you would call it “dryfall” as he did not appear in a cushioning fluid of any kind, and they *laughed*.

My mind was reeling. I had taken several surrogates, including one privy to the most guarded secrets of the bonewalker’s military arsenals, and seen no indication they had any mastery over Transit!

Staring, my surrogate’s oral cavity slightly open, I watched the smoke finally dissipate. The Astounding Alberto searched about his person, as though he had forgotten some item he needed to continue the demonstration. The bonewalkers seemed amused when he discovered the large hat on his head and attempted to remove it. In his struggles with the malfunctioning headwear, Alberto contrived to damage his cylindrical hat, crushing it into a nearly flat saucer.

Suddenly, he freed it from his head, and the hat returned to its original shape. But upon the bonewalker’s head was a live animal -- an animal that simply could not have been contained within the damaged headgear. It was a white lagomorph, or “rabbit,” of at least four kilograms.

The crowd seemed mildly amused by this, but I could feel my tentacles twitching involuntarily in my surrogate’s intestines.

How had I missed this?

And it went on and on.

Though Alberto seemed, in the judgment of the crowd, to be of middling or perhaps even poor skill, he nonetheless produced objects from the Transit without any visible apparatus. White birds, a bunch of cut plants, and perhaps most chillingly of all, a white liquid which he somehow was able to pour from one container into another without any visible change in the levels of either.

I was stirred from my baffled contemplation of these events by a prodding from Stacey.

“She’ll volunteer!”

“Volunteer?” I asked, uncertain.

“He needs somebody from the crowd,” she said, “for the mind reading.”

I froze, horrified.

I managed to address Stacey in a reasonable tone after a moment.

“I am very unwell,” I explained to her. “I must find a washroom immediately.”

Before she could reply, I had shoved and crowded my way to the aisle, and thence to the door, which was thankfully unguarded.

I raced along the corridor until I saw a compartment door with the symbol of a stick figure in a dress, and pushed my way into it. Dismayed, I surveyed the washroom and found it completely devoid of any type of tub save the small basins bonewalkers use to water their paws.

Desperate, I activated the faucets on three of these, using wadded drying papers to prevent the precious water from escaping too quickly. I would never be able to submerge the entire surrogate, but I could get the sensory organs and the sensitive paws reasonably wet. It would have to be enough.

I stuck the surrogate’s head in the center basin, and the hands into those that flanked it, and attempted to reach the Clutch.

It was a tenuous connection, dry almost to the point of desiccation, yet I was able to rouse Wavedriver Hanupt. Little beyond impression glyphs could traverse the weak link.

“{question, unscheduled}” he sent.

“{trap, hunters, not prey, not prey, emphatic}” I replied desperately.

“{weapons, query}”

I hesitated. How to describe what I had seen?

From the darkest depths, from which we rose and leviathan still sleeps, I dredged the glyph.

I finally sent it, again and again until I felt the Clutch shift in Transit and it was gone.

“{magic}”