Interstellar Pig by William Sleator Read Free Book Online

atmosphere and temperature you need to stay alive—your strengths and weaknesses."
    "But where do you get that information?"
    "From the rule book." She patted a fat volume on the towel beside her. "Go ahead, Barney. Pick."
    I hesitated. It seemed that a lot depended on the character you turned out to be. It was an unusual experience for me to be sitting out on the hilltop in the warm sun above the brightly crinkling, endless bay. But I wasn't noticing any of it.
    "You go first," I said.
    "The dealer doesn't pick first. Come, Barney. Take one," she urged me.
    I picked the card that would be my character x(;and held it up to my eyes, carefully shielding it ilttrom Zena. Drawn in lifelike detail on the card was a bubbling, gluey mass, a thick puddle of pink slime. Underneath it, enclosed in a circle, was a drawing of what seemed to be a single cell—apparently one of the individual units that made up the mass. The cell looked like a squashed wad of bubble gum, with faintly bluish nerves branching through it.
    "Ugh!" I couldn't help saying, as I pressed the card against my chest. This was the character I was supposed to be?
    Zena was studying her card with a little smile. She glanced.at me and giggled.
    "No necessity to secrete it, Barney. We all have to know what characters the other players are." She flipped her card over, displaying a fat, spiderlike creature with eight jointed legs. Its face might have resembled a human female's, except that the top half of the head was immensely swollen, to make room for huge faceted eyes. "I'm Zulma, an arachnoid nymph from Vavoosh," she introduced herself. "I'm not terribly agile in all environments, but I am quite brilliant, and marvelously sneaky. Who are you?"
    "This yucky thing," I said, showing her. "Couldn't I pick another one?"
    "The carnivorous lichen from Mbridlengile!" she cried. "They're fabulous!"
    I studied the card again, doubtfully. "I can't exactly see myself identifying with it. Couldn't I pick another?"
    "Against the rules," she said flatly. "You're going to have to stop being so prejudiced and provincial. How do you think you look to them? You don't appreciate how fortunate you are. Didn't you hear what I said about the lichen previously, Barney? They can eat anything—no creatures safe from them. And they're incredibly tough. They can survive at any temperature and in any atmosphere without cumbersome equipment like breathing gear—remember that, Barney—as long as there is something for them to dine upon. To the lichen, to eat is to breathe. Of course, they are rather less sapient than most other gaming species—my character, Zulma, the arachnoid nymph, is about one hundred times as intelligent as they are—but they do make up for it to some amount by-"
    "But how do you know all that?" I said.
    "I told you. It's in the rule book." She handed me the volume.
    I looked up my character. For a moment—possibly because of the glare of the sun—the lines of print shimmered illegibly. But quickly my eyes adjusted.
    Kingdom: Fungi
    Phylum: Mollusca
    Order: Holotricha
    Genus fr Species: Lichenes thalJophytis
    Common Name: Lichen
    Personal Name; Not applicable
    Sex: Not applicable
    Intelligence: IRSC 150
    Habitat: Surface of the planet Mbridlengile
    Diet: The lichen can obtain adequate sustenance from all known plants and animals. The lichen do, however, seem to exhibit a preference for the neural tissue of more intelligent animal species, taking especial relish in devouring living, conscious, functioning brain matter.
    General Remarks: Like certain primitive marine invertebrates, the lichen bridge the narrow gap between plant and animal. They live in colonies of hundreds or thousands of individual cells. Though the cells themselves do not possess senses as they are known to higher animal species, each cell is capable of absorbing chemical data from its immediate surface and transmitting it to the rest of the colony. In this way, the colony as a whole can be said to "see"