In Space No One Can Hear You Scream by Hank Davis Read Free Book Online

tight as little nuts, like pecans or those hard, dark brown ones you could barely break with the nutcracker. I never knew what those kinds of nuts were called, and now I didn’t have anyone to ask.
    Aleria had said this would happen, that all my lymph nodes would swell up more and more. That would mean my body’s defenses were getting taken over, and would start to tag the biological elements she implanted in me as “friend” instead of “enemy.” That was what was happening, I supposed.
    While I was drying off and feeling my nodes and all that, Aleria was babbling away, the way she often did after a replenishing. Talk, talk, talk. Snot flying everywhere. She got nostalgic, too—you know, talking about the old days and all that. She talked a lot about the Meeb home system. The Meebs didn’t live on planet surfaces, but in a bunch of big space stations spread around their star’s biological sweet spot. That’s where we were headed at the moment, to one of those habitats, even though the trip was going to take another Earth year. We were one year into it. Which was another reason I figured I was eleven.
    I could tell that Aleria was particularly relaxed today. She had fed well. And I guess she could feel that my resistance was really starting to break down.
    “The clan will be so happy to meet you, my darling daughter,” Aleria said. She was glowing white in the tank now, about to ooze her way out and back to her usual spot near the main ship interaction console. “And I think they’ll be very pleased with the bounty I bring them from this journey. Also for the information. We’ll get a fine reward.”
    Here was something I hadn’t heard from her before.
    “The information?” I asked. “I don’t understand, Mother. What do you mean?”
    “The knowledge of where the system is, of course, and what to expect when they get there.”
    “Get where?”
    “The systems where the new children are to be found, dear,” she replied. The wall speakers made it sound like she was sleepy, dreamy, the way I felt when I was drifting off to sleep all safe and sound and tucked in. It had been a long way since I felt that way.
    “Why would the clan want to go there?”
    “Why, to protect your kind, dear,” she said. “To absorb and protect. That’s what parents are for .”
    “They’ll take children?”
    “It’s better that way,” she said. “Believe me, I’ve had to absorb a full grown adult before, and it was an unpleasant process for both of us. Integrating those kinds of ingrained memories is difficult. So much resentment and anger to deal with in adults of a species.”
    “I guess so,” I said.
    “Children are so much easier to handle,” she continued. “But not all species have children, you know. Juvenile and nymph forms, I mean. Only special ones. Like yours, my darling.”
    And then it hit me. What she was. Her job. She’d told me over and over, but I hadn’t been listening, or it hadn’t, you know, registered.
    She was a scout.
    “Now darling, I need to get dried off and ready for my rest period,” Aleria said. “Come and wipe me down, there’s a dear.”
    My jaw hurt. I had been grinding my teeth again.
    “Yes, Mother dear,” I replied.
    So I guess I was thinking about Dustin when I did it. I was thinking about the way she would send back more Meebs. I knew how many existed in the space stations of Aleria’s home system. I’d watched the videos. My troubles in third grade were behind me. I was a good student now. Anyway, it didn’t take a genius to do the math.
    There were enough Meebs for every child on Earth, and then some.
    Aleria was a scout. Scouts find the way. Then they go back and lead others on the same path. To the same destination.
    A year to go, and then two years for a return trip. Those habitats were capable of faster than light travel. Imagine that: a whole city of a billion Meebs headed for Earth.
    Dustin would be eleven when they arrived.
    This would happen to him.
    I