Keep running, even though your chest feels like it’s going to explode and your heart burst through it. Keep running, against all the very sound advice your body is imparting to you. Don’t dare stop, don’t rest, don’t slow down and whatever you do, don’t look back.

But this last piece of advice he couldn’t ignore, and even though he knew it was the wrong thing to do, like Orpheus climbing slowly up from Hades and worried that Eurydice might not be after all following him, that the Lord of the Underworld had cheated him, he had to turn and look. Was Grant behind him? To his immense relief he saw that yes, he was, but then in almost the selfsame moment that relief turned to horror as a huge shape arose behind and above the other man, skimming low over the trees and coming in on an attack vector. A white line of fire spat from the thing, striking Grant in the back and pitching him to the ground, a thin scream issuing from him as he collapsed, face down, into the grey, stunted grass.

Imitating his friend, and hating himself for it, Tennyson dropped to the ground, flattening his body against the sharp needles of the carpet of grey which, though they cut into his skin and made him grit his teeth in pain, hid him from his pursuers, being fully six feet taller than he. Hard to run through, yes, but ideal to hide in. From his vantage point he watched the craft, low and flat and shaped something like his great-great-great grandfather(could be a few more greats added on there, he wasn’t sure of anything at the moment, least of all his heritage or parentage) had once shown him a picture of in a book, and which was called, he believed, a surfboard. Apparently, men used to use these devices to ride along the seas, long long and long ago. He couldn’t imagine such a thing? Seas? They said that once, long before even his great-great-great-whatever-grandfather had been born, there had been seas. There weren’t, of course, any more.

He tried to imagine the great, majestic, rolling blue oceans painted by his imagination and the stories he had heard, or even the quiet, tranquil smaller seas they called rivers, streams. He failed. He couldn’t even imagine water now. Once, it used to be the substance that kept humanity alive, one of their most precious resources. But he had never known water, would not recognise it were he to see it. These days, everything was synthesised, and handed out and controlled by -

His ruminations were interrupted by the sight of the craft - which looked, and was, much bigger now that it was on the ground and in almost the forefront of his sight - landing noiselessly beside the stricken Grant, who moaned and turned, obviously in great pain. Tennyson wished he could rush forward and help him, but he knew this would only result in his own death. So he watched, helplessly, feeling like a coward (but a live one) as a cloud of hissing steam issued from the craft and it disgorged its passengers.

He knew them, of course, who did not? They called them roaches, due to the slight similarity to the insects his people had so often crushed underfoot. Now it was they who were being crushed. The roaches were tall - huge, even - standing at least twelve feet tall and unlike their earthbound distant relatives (if they were indeed any relative at all) walked upright. They had the hard carapace of the insect, the hairy thin arms tipped with feelers, but there the comparison kind of ended. The thick, armoured shoulders ended in fat, slick, bulbous heads with wide mandibles filled with razor sharp teeth. Large, oval compound eyes surveyed the ground as the creatures approached Grant, and Tennyson tried to flatten himself even closer to the ground.

A thin clicking sound seemed to be the roaches’ primary manner of communicating, and they certainly were intelligent, working together, one much larger specimen seeming to be the leader, or certainly directing operations. He counted four of them, and assuming one was piloting the craft, that made five. Even if he did break cover and try to attack them (or even run) there were more than enough of them to take him down. They were huge, and so their strides were longer than his, not to mention that they were armed and really wouldn’t need to even break a sweat (if those damned things even sweated, he didn’t know) to put an end to him. He had no choice. He had to stay where he was.

A part of him, a detached, cold, logical part of him against which the rest of his mind rebelled and recoiled, had to admit that the roaches were efficient. Whatever they were saying to each other in those clicking voices that set his teeth on edge till he thought he must after all jump up and make a run for it, they all knew exactly what to do. He watched in fascinated horror as they used their awful weapons to literally strip the skin from Grant, one of them hoisting it over its thick shoulder while another hunkered down, its back to Tennyson. When it straightened, he saw what he knew he would - it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned about this before: Grant’s corpse was now missing its head, and the insect held it in one of its thick furred claws.

A trophy.

Damn them. Damn them all to hell. Didn’t they have any regard for a man’s dignity?

Of course, he knew the answer to that, too, and watched in horror as the four of them set to ripping the muscles, the organs from what had once been a human being, cramming them into their wide, fanged mouths with the same relish as diners at an exclusive party consuming the finest caviar. He turned his head away, his stomach rebelling, but found his eyes drawn back to the scene in fascinated revulsion as the roaches proceeded, their clicking of a higher and faster pitch, which he took to be laughter, to kick the skeleton of what had been his best friend into its separate bones, then trampled further on those bones, grinding them to dust so completely that for a moment even Tennyson questioned whether there had ever been a man in that spot.

Suddenly, the twitching of an insectoid head in his direction froze the very blood in his veins. Not even daring to breathe, he lay as still as he could, willing the ground to swallow him and hide him from the roaches, but he already knew it was too late. Pointing in his direction and gesticulating excitedly, the one who had looked over at him began to move towards him, followed by two of its comrades, their weapons hefted in big thick furry claw-like hands. He could not run; they would shoot him down before he got six paces. He could not fight them; he was unarmed, and much smaller and weaker than they. And he could not reason with them, if only due to the fact that they did not speak the same language. And yet, sometimes you can tell a lot about someone by their actions, and the actions of these roaches (well, all roaches if he was honest) spoke of arrogance, cruelty, savagery and a wild kind of exultant bravado. Even if they understood each other, he knew they were not in a mood to talk.

So this was it. At the tender age of seventeen, Robinson Tennyson was going to die. He couldn’t really blame anyone but himself. They had warned him, they had told him, they had pleaded with him to stay inside the stockade, but no: he had to be the big man. Suzy would think differently of him, he had thought, love-crazed, stupid teenager that he was, when he returned having successfully made it out beyond the compound, came back with tales of adventure, daring and bravery.

Well, he wouldn’t be returning, he told himself savagely, and neither would Grant, his rival for the girl’s affections. Best friends they may have been, but a woman can come between the closest of buddies, and the one snag in their long relationship had been Suzy. A horrible, hissing voice whispered in his ear, reminding him that Grant was dead now, and that if he, Tennyson, were to somehow manage to get back, she would be his. There was no rival any more, and he would be seen as a hero. How could she resist him?

He almost smiled.

Just one problem with that plan, of course: Suzy would have to find someone else to moon over her long chestnut hair and clear green eyes (to say nothing of her other attributes), because he wasn’t coming back either. The slow but purposeful and inexorable tread of the roach coming closer told him that: there was no stopping the insects, there was no escape. He was destined to end up as Grant had done. He wondered if it would hurt? The roaches weren’t renowned for their humane treatment of their captives, and he fully expected they might skin him without bothering to kill him first. Of course, he wouldn’t last long, but he was sure it would seem an eternity.

Like every man and woman in the last extremity of fear, as they face certain - and in this case, very unpleasant death, he suddenly realised that maybe believing in a god might not be the stupid idea he had always said it was, and found that he knew how to pray. Not that it would help him, but desperate times and all that. Besides, he was rather surprised to find, it gave him an odd sense of comfort and calm.

He was surprised at that, but not as much as he was surprised by what happened next. A white beam lanced through the air, and as he braced for the impact, silently thankful that the roaches had decided after all to kill him before depriving him of his skin, his amazed eyes showed him one of the huge insects falling to the ground, a smoking hole in its carapace.

Confusion broke out as another fell, and a third, and then the one nearest him, realising perhaps that something was wrong, began to retrace its steps towards the craft which had carried it and its compatriots here, but it was already rising. Whether these monsters could feel emotions or not was something Tennyson did not know, but if they could, he thought he detected frustration and rage in the set of the remaining roach’s shoulders.

A moment later the craft exploded into blue and white flame as the source of the destruction of the other three insects came into view, a larger, better armed ship, sleek and black, and blasted it out of the sky. Bits of metal, superheated fuel and what looked like fragments of the roach which had been piloting the thing spread out over a wide area and with a loud bang the wreckage fell to the ground, sending fresh clouds of smoke and flame up into the sullen, dark red sky, the shockwave from its destruction rolling over the remaining roach and pulverising him to dust.

The explosion and the whirling debris drove Tennyson from his hiding spot, and of course once he stood up he knew he had been seen. There was nothing he could do but wait, frozen, unable to move as the much bigger craft slid to the ground near him, its seamless hatch opening and disgorging one roach. This one was not armed, and it approached him slowly. Knowing he was caught, Tennyson waited, hoping it would be quick and relatively painless.
The roach towered over him, reached one horrible hairy claw down towards him. Tennyson tried not to recoil from the touch, closed his eyes and waited for the blow that would end his life.

When that blow did not fall, he risked opening his eyes. The roach was back at its craft and seemed to be watching him with an expression on its nightmarish face that somehow communicated to him a sense of frustration, but not anger. Lifting one huge arm, the thing seemed to point, back in the direction from which Tennyson had originally come. Turning in that direction, then taking a tentative step, he saw that the roach made no attempt to pursue or stop him, and walking faster, with furtive glances behind him, he made it into the high grass. As he loped away, amazed to be alive, he heard the soft hiss of the craft as it lifted into the air, and for a moment he thought they were going to shoot at him, but then the craft rose higher, banked to the north and sped away. He was left alone, facing a long walk back to the camp, but at least he was alive.

As he walked, he tried to divine some sense in what had just happened. He thought of Suzy, and the warm comfort he would find - hero that he was - between her legs, but something else bothered him. It was the way the roach had touched him just before letting him go. It reminded him of something he had heard once that people did with - what did they call them? Dags? Degs? Dogs? Yes, that was it: dogs. Ancient companions of humans, domesticated animals that they used to call … pets?

Yes.

What the roach had exhibited towards him was uncannily like what humans used to do to dogs.

It was as if it had petted him…

Tennyson turned, his face a mass of conflicting emotions, and stopped. He remained that way, suspended in time, escape only a few steps away, but he was caught, frozen, never to move again. A voice spoke, but not to Tennyson. In fact, it’s doubtful he even heard it.

“Pause playback, please. Thank you. Now,” said the voice, as Tennyson continued to stare, caught like a fly in amber, with a confused expression on his face, “Who can tell me what lesson should be learned from having watched this?”

A small voice spoke up; Trangor was one of the older pupils, twelve hatchings gone, but had yet to develop the use of a voice that would one day be powerful and booming. He was one of Professor Jinanga’s best students, and the teacher always encouraged bright podlings.

“It knew to hide, Professor,” said the child. “It showed intelligence.”

“Oh, Trangor.” The look on Professor Jinanga’s thick, grizzled face showed disapproval, disappointment. “You know better than that. Don’t assume,” he warned the child, “that just because today is your Spawning Day that you can get away with sloppy conclusions. Animals operate on instinct,” he went on, addressing the whole class now, “and nothing more. To say such as this possesses intelligence - beyond, of course, the basic need to survive - is ridiculous, romantic nonsense, and there is no room for such as that in my class, Master Trangor!” His compound eyes flicked back to the young podling, a warning in them, but a somewhat merry twinkle there belay his intended harsh tone.

Another young cramaxian put up its feeler. “But - but my father says they have been shown to possess skills which other animals do not, Professor, which shows they may indeed be intelligent beyond what we believe.”

This challenge to his authority - whether it had been intended as such or not - earned the podling a sharp look from his teacher, but a look too that spoke of innocence and forbearance. “Then your father is a foo- your father is ... mistaken, young Triplion!” he exclaimed, unwilling to embarrass either his young student or indeed his surely well-meaning but easily-swayed father. To ameliorate his reply, his body shook slightly as the insectoid people did when they expressed mirth or humour. He again addressed the class as a whole.

“Put that thought right out of your heads immediately. Humans are nothing like us. They have intelligence, true, but it is rudimentary at best. The one you saw on the screen simply employed the limited powers of reasoning it had to construct a primitive survival strategy. No doubt it felt nothing for the other of its kind the hunters killed, and as soon as it got back to the compound would have been interested in nothing more than mating, something that seems to occupy these creatures’ every waking moment, according to our observations of them over the years.”

Jinanga noted one of the other podlings had turned a pale green, and he tsked. “A little squeamish, are we, Serintus?”

Anxious not to be seen as a weakling in front of his peers, the child rallied. His Spawning Day was not yet due for some time. “I just wondered why they - why the hunters - what the point …” He trailed away, the greenish cast coming back to his carapace. Jinanga smiled kindly; once, a very long time ago now, he had been young too. This was the first time the children had seen a hunt, and it was bound to affect some of them, which was not a bad thing. Once one becomes desensitised to violence and horror, he knew, it can be a slippery slope.

“Why do they skin the humans?” he finished for the boy. “Well, you see, human skins are highly prized. Collectors will pay vast sums for them. And the muscle and organs are - well. Let’s just say they have a distinctive flavour. Of course,” he was quick to point out, “all of this is highly illegal. The hunting of humans, the sale of their pelts, even the consuming of their organs, all against the law.”

“Why?” This was another pupil, whose father was known to be a rich and powerful diplomat, and as a result was both popular and reviled, but it wasn’t the professor who answered this time, but the student who had responded to the question first. Obviously anxious to redeem himself in the eyes of his professor, and with it being, after all, his Spawning Day, a day on which he should certainly not be acting like a child, he retorted, hoping Professor Jinanga would not take it ill that he respond in his place. He also wished to, as all cramaxian young did on their Spawning Day, assert his dominance. Ubemesk may have a powerful father, but he wasn’t going to allow that to cow him.

“Because they’re an endangered species, stupid.”

The professor frowned at Trangor. “Quite correct,” he admitted, adding “though reaching one’s Spawning Day is not an excuse to insult other students, Trangor. ” The slight admonishment stung Trangor, but he contrived to look sheepish, though it was clear he was far from repentant. “You see, Ubemesk,” Jinanga spoke to the student who had asked the question, but addressed the entire class, “when we first came to this planet, many hundreds of years ago, we found humans to be the dominant species. They had built cities, communities, transport networks, even a rudimentary defence system, which we were of course able easily to disarm. We tried to communicate with them, to explain that we came in peace and wished to co-exist with them, but they are a brutal, savage race and either could not or would not understand us. They attacked us. You surely all know the story of the Morning Herald, the first of our ships to make contact with the humans.”

“They destroyed it!” piped up another, unnamed cramaxian indignantly, his righteous anger shared by all the class, even the professor himself.

“They did,” he sighed, as if remembering, though even he was too young to have lived through those days, and knew of them only through the history books he taught from, and the many other books which had been written on the subject, each with varying degrees of accuracy. “They took the Herald by surprise. The captain was not expecting such a response. It was a scout ship, after all, and not very well armed. They didn’t stand a chance.”

A moment of silence, respect for the long-dead crew of the Morning Herald, descended upon the class. Jinanga broke it by speaking again.

“From then on, the die was cast,” he told them. “Pushed, we pushed back. Attacked, we responded in like kind. But the outcome was never in doubt. Within a few short weeks their proudest cities were razed to the ground, millions, perhaps billions of humans killed. Death, disease and starvation was their lot, until finally in desperation they unleashed what they believed to be their most potent weapon upon us.”

He sighed. “The poor fools. It seems they knew they were doomed, but in typical human fashion, wished to take us down with them. They thought nuclear weapons would hurt us. We, whose ancestors bathed in the radioactive glow of our home planet for millennia, to whom the choking nuclear winter is like their brightest summer, who luxuriate in what they call acid rain, who revel in darkness and aridity.”

Jinanga paused, shaking his head, recognising the fundamental miscalculation the humans had made, and how it had proven to be their undoing. He went on. “They knew nothing of our repulse shields, which surrounded each of our capital ships, and which, when their missiles struck them, merely caused them to bounce off and return to their point of origin. In the end,” he remarked heavily, and not without appreciating the irony, “they were the architects of their own destruction. We could now live on their planet, they could not. We conquered them easily, rounded up what few survivors there were, and chose a part of the world least affected by their own last fatal blow against their homeworld, there to house them. And there they remain, even to this day.”

It was Ubemesk again, his claw in the air. “Why didn’t we just exter - extrem - extim -,” his face knotted up in consternation and frustration and he settled for “wipe them out, Professor? We didn’t need them, and they had tried to kill us. Why let them live?”

The Professor’s reply was simple. He smiled kindly and said, “Because, podling, we are not humans.”



Seated in the back seat of the aircar, Trangor looked up from his plasma and said “Did you know, father, that there’s evidence that humans can write? Or, at least, that they could, once?”

His father, without turning (he was piloting the vehicle after all, and needed to keep his eyes on the road ahead) somehow contrived to convey a sense of disapproval. “Trangor, I’ve told you not to be looking at those conspiracy websites,” he told his son reprovingly. The boy sniffed.

“Oh, I don’t scan those anymore,” he said, with the air of someone who has given up playing with stuffed animals, and is aghast at the idea anyone should think he still engaged in such behaviour. “No, this is a proper government site, and they have pictures and everything. Look!”

But his father, of course, did not: even with the sharp compound eyes his people were blessed with, one needs to keep one’s attention on their driving. How many other careless users of the magna-road had perished, or caused accidents by having their attention even momentarily diverted? Yet he did wonder.

“A government site? Who told you about those?”

Trangor thought about this for a moment. Professor Jinanga had made it quite clear that, though he taught the curriculum that he was supposed to, there were views he held that the faculty would frown upon, and that, were they to become common knowledge, might spell trouble for the old man. He remembered how the professor had asked him to remain behind after class, and Trangor, with a mixture of trepidation that he had done something wrong and impatience to be out of the class, especially on this, his Spawning Day, had acquiesced with something of bad grace.

But it had been worth it. Jinanga had shown him things he had never dreamed were possible, even thought of, and yet, as he read the pages, he realised he had had these ideas himself. He knew how dangerous it was, though, to espouse such beliefs, and he decided that, while he had been always taught that it was preferable to be honest, perhaps this was one of the few times when it was best not to tell the truth.

“One of the guys in class,” he lied, paging through what had turned out to be a fascinating read. He had decided to be as vague as possible; he didn’t particularly want to get anyone into trouble in place of the professor, even that shishbinat Ubemesk, and if he didn’t name names then nobody could be blamed. His father let out a bubbling snort of disapproval. He must remember to talk to Professor Jinanga tomorrow; he didn’t want anyone filling his son’s head with that human rights nonsense.

“Father?” the voice came from the backseat.

“Yes, Trangor, what is it?”

“What does -” the boy paused, obviously reading off the screen a large word - cons-tee-chew-shun mean?”

“I have no idea,” his father shrugged. “Why?”

“It’s here on the site,” the boy told him. “One of the few remaining examples of human literature (he was obviously reading out again) confirmed by DNA analysis as being almost certainly of human origin. It reads: Con-stee-chew-shun of the Yoo-Nye-ted Staytes of …” He stopped. Intrigued, despite himself, Trangor’s father almost - almost - turned around.

“Of what?” he asked. He knew enough about writing to know that a sentence usually didn’t end in a preposition, and though these sites had obviously been translated into their own language from what was believed to be the human tongue (the very idea! Humans talking! Whatever next?) the same basic rules should apply. Though he couldn’t see him, he felt Trangor shrug.

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s all there is. Looks like,” he added thoughtfully, “it got torn at the end. It’s just a raggedy scrap of - what I think they call - paper?”

There was silence for a few moments, and Trangor’s father tensed, knowing that the usual debate was about to kick off. “Father? Have you thought any more about getting me what I asked for for my Spawning Day? A human of my own? I’d look after it real well, take it for walks and everything. You wouldn’t have to do anything, I promise.”

His father sighed. “Son, you know that’s not allowed,” he explained. It was not the first time he had had this conversation with Trangor, and it would not be the last. Kids… “Humans are a protected species now. There are only - I don’t know how many …” But his son was already consulting his plasma, and had the answer for him.

“One point seven million, at last count.”

“Yes. One point seven million,” echoed the father. “They’re dangerous, son. They’re not to be trusted. They’re wild, and savage, and they’d kill you as soon as look at you. They don’t make good pets.” He frowned to himself. A human in his house! The very idea made him shudder. “Before we arrived there were over three hundred billion on this planet. Most were wiped out by their own nuclear weapons and many more died in the long aftermath of that strike. They are not suited for this environment, and every year more die, and fewer are born. It’s only in specially-created habitats like the compounds that they can survive at all.”

“In class today,” interrupted the boy, “we saw a holo of one - well, two - who escaped from the compound.”

“That was very reckless and stupid of them,” remarked his father. “But it just proves how low their intelligence is. They’re just animals.”

Trangor did not dispute this. “One got killed and ate by hunters,” he told his father, “but the other was clever and hid till the rangers came and blew the hunters to bits, letting it escape.”

Trangor’s father shook his head. Traffic was very heavy today. He had the hatch open, and the acid rain felt cool on his scales, but this journey was taking longer every day. He found himself wondering if the school allowed such graphic material to be shown to its students, whether he should consider moving his son to another one. It worried him: who knew what ideas got formed watching such things? “Well I guess it was lucky then that the rangers were able to save it,” he said somewhat distractedly. "They do a very important job, protecting the last indigenous wildlife on this planet."

“But don’t you think,” insisted the boy, “that the very fact that it hid proves the human had more than animal intelligence?”

“Trangor! I’m trying to concentrate on the road!” snapped his father, and immediately regretted his outburst when the boy fell silent. Placatingly, he answered the question as best he could. He didn’t know much about humans. He didn’t really care about them, though his son was certainly showing a marked interest in them. Perhaps he might one day want to be a ranger. And if so, then really, he as his father should encourage that ambition all he could.
But no point lying to the boy.

“It’s a simple survival instinct,” he told Trangor, as another driver tried to cut across him. He resisted the urge to curse: he had his boy in the vehicle, but inwardly he wished the carapace would melt off that lane jumper. “Nothing more. All animals have them.” Again, he resisted the urge to turn around and talk to his son face to face, feeling the wave of disappointment emanating from the boy’s antennae. “Look at it this way,” he said as kindly as he could. “Humans used to eat meat. Think about that for a moment. They actually killed other species and consumed them. It’s enough to make you ill, isn’t it?”

For a race who ingested all their nutrients directly from specially-prepared chemical compounds, the idea was as anathema as slaying one of their own kind, another thing humans excelled at, and a practice the cramaxians abhorred. Pressing his perceived advantage, he went on.