If you have become famous on more than a couple of planets in the Milky Way recently, then chances are you have appeared on its most popular transmission and been interviewed by its most illustrious host: the incomparable Oyanna.
Oyanna is a Dalingi. Oyanna belongs to a species so adorable that Earth puppies are mere garden slugs in comparison. Yet even among the Dalingi, Oyanna stands out. Spherical and huge-eyed, draped in lustrous locks from pole to pole, she could hardly be more attractive, and is so filled with buoyant gases she weighs nothing at all.
Looks, however, explain only part of her prominence. A much larger part comes from her ability to shower her guests with such attention, such admiration, such fellow feeling, that they can think only of their need to tell her everything they can about anything she wants to know.
Then, after being showered, these guests are often skewered with questions and allegations they cannot hope to dodge in their Oyanna-fied state of mind.
Though that is a technique reserved for certain invitees only: corrupt politicians, for example, or quacks touting cures for the Great Tedium. No one expects to see it used on, say, artists. And certainly no one anticipated even a hint of it during Oyanna’s most talked-about episode of recent times.
For the guest on this occasion was known to be so earnest, so open, so idealistic, it was impossible to imagine him involved in a corrupt activity. And besides, even if he'd wanted to be, he wouldn’t have known how.
But had he revealed his most private opinions, his most guarded memories? No one had, until they met Oyanna. Which was why, as the time of this episode approached, billions of life forms were activating their receiving devices, while thousands more were filling the palatial auditorium where she reigned.
And then . . . the time had arrived, and there she was, gliding towards them across her light-soaked stage, while music swelled and an army of tiny cubes flew about, capturing expressions, gestures, poignant thoughts, which were either displayed in the enormous light frames that kept flashing into existence above everyone’s heads, or were transmitted directly into the brains of the many telepaths tuning in.
The crowd erupted.
“Oyannaaaaaaaaaaa!” it cried.
“My friends!” she answered. “My unsurpassable friends!”
And the way she said it: Oh, it made everyone believe she was speaking to them personally, although doubtless she was also addressing her coterie: a group of six smaller and only slightly less cute Dalingi who accompanied her everywhere, heartily approving of everything she said and did.
“Has even a single one of you not heard of our guest tonight?” she asked. “Could there be an individual so uninformed?”
In case, however, such a being existed, she quickly recapped the guest’s recent achievements, the light frames serving as visual aids.
She reviewed his famous battle, now widely regarded as history’s oddest, followed by its equally improbable aftermath. She showed him racing about the Galaxy, thrusting himself before politicians, other interviewers, anyone who would listen, until the Zetans, submerged in scrutiny, had no choice but to honor their agreement and discontinue their activities on his world.
Then he was still racing about, still arguing, pleading and campaigning, only now on behalf of other worlds—all the ones similar to his own.
He was before the Galactic Council.
It was voting.
“Which brings us to this very week,” said Oyanna, “when a measure long considered a fantasy of animal rights activists actually became law.”
And as she said this, the light frames glowed with broadcasts that had leaked into space from 277 pre-starfaring civilizations.
In most, teams of creatures were propelling small spheres before crowds of spectators.
Though in one, a pair of helmeted avians were pecking each other featherless.
While in another, an octopus-like being had attracted its choice of mates by donning an exquisite set of cuffs.
“No longer may we interfere with any of these entities,” said Oyanna, “whether by abducting them or probing their rectums or disturbing so much as a leaf where they live.
“Although one of them, you must agree, has disturbed a few leaves of ours.”
She paused for a dramatic moment. Then . . .
“Beings of my homeworld, my constellation and my galaxy, I beg you: Through your thoughts and through your voices, through your air and through your oceans, please, wherever you are, convey our most liver-felt of welcomes to . . .”
And then once more she paused, as the lights dimmed, everything went quiet, and, in silhouette, a small biped began a trek from the rear of the stage.
“To . . .”
But in an instant the lighting was back on, the music soaring, the audience in a frenzy and Oyanna crying out.
“The Mushkiss!!!”
And there he was, before them on the stage and above them in the light frames, looking exactly as they expected him to and exactly as he always did. There was the halo of oddly colored hair, and there the turquoise jewel about his neck, and there the belt engraved with the primitive space vehicle that displayed simultaneously his lowly origins and uprushing sense of adventure. The footwear? Well, there was his footwear—it was, for some reason, what he liked—but all in all, the being whose image now flashed across ten million star systems awoke in those who saw him the warmest feelings of admiration, affection and, in not a few instances, maternal love.
He walked up to Oyanna. Then right by Oyanna and into the cheering crowd.
It was a move that had drawn raves from the hosts and producers of the many other programs he had appeared on, due to the excitement it generated. But Marshall didn't do it for that. He did it because he loved to. Emanating ecstasy, he launched himself into the throng—grabbing hands, tentacles, claws, newborns. He threw his arms around beings whose whose ancestors had mastered mortality and hyperspace, yet who eagerly embraced him back, thrilled at the honor bestowed on them by his attention. And with members of familiar species, he exhibited a knowledge of greetings that could only impress: butting shoulders with the Tradaxans, oscillating lips with the Blurggit, lifting his face with the Arrondinians in communal howls.
After a few minutes, however, he noticed that a strange silence had descended on the auditorium. The music had stopped. The spotlights no longer targeted him. Glancing back, he found Oyanna lined up with her coterie, blinking slowly, while off to their left a rather nervous being he recognized as the program’s senior producer seemed to be performing a kind of limb-flinging dance.
Could it be the producer wanted him back on the stage? On the chance this was so, he earnestly begged forgiveness from audience members he had almost, but not quite, reached (thus demonstrating his knowledge of apologies as well as greetings), and reversed direction. Again the music swelled. Again the spotlights converged. But this time he attended to the producer, who gestured him into a plump chair, then went into his dance again as Marshall rested his feet on the accompanying footstool.
What was wrong this time? The answer arrived in the form of three sub-producers who dashed ducking onto the proscenium like attacking infantry and bore off the stool like a fallen comrade. “It was hers!” one of them hissed as they retreated. But that made no sense. There were two seats on the stage—two elegant armchairs such as heads of state on Earth occupied during international conferences. So one had to be for him and the other for her, right? Well, apparently not. Because in short order a new stool had been delivered, and Oyanna was atop it, flanked by her six companions at its base.
This allowed him to observe that the Dalingis never actually touched the surfaces on which they seemed to rest. Only their perfect hair did. The rest of them hovered slightly above, and he suspected that expulsions of gas through some concealed orifice propelled them where they needed to go.
They were, in short, irresistible blimps.
And now they bathed him in admiration with their crystalline, slow-blinking eyes.
“Mushkiss,” cooed their leader in a melodic and deeply gentle voice, “it would appear that your fame has exceeded even my own.”
“Oh, but that’s not possible, Oyanna,” said Marshall.
“Oh, but I am certain it is,” she said, extending a delicate arm to the crowd. “Do you see how an entire galaxy has grown to love you? And so quickly, too. How long has it been since your battle, Mushkiss? No more than a year, surely. And yet, since then you have been like one of those strange particles the scientists are always discovering, everywhere at once in space and time.”
“Well, not quite everywhere,” he said blushingly but smilingly.
“Well, almost everywhere,” she said. “Is my research incorrect? Have you not been to one hundred and twenty-seven advanced worlds?”
He shrugged. “Well, I suppose. Something like that.”
“And yet, still found time to ascend the Spires of Domos?”
“Now that was fantastic. If you would like, I could tell your audience—”
“Ion surfed in the thirteenth dimension?”
“I could tell them about that, too.”
“Traversed the Hourglass Nebula not once but twice?”
“Yes, but you see, the first time I was in such a terrible mood that I didn’t really notice—”
“The reason I recount all this, Mushkiss,” she flowed on, “is to set before everyone how much of our galaxy you have seen—”
“I have truly been fortunate,” said Marshall.
“—and therefore how puzzled I have been by some of your other interviews. For have you not declared that you detect no difference between your world and the ones upon which we all live?”
“But how could I have?” he said. “The differences are obvious. Faster-than-light travel, immortality, telepotties . . .”
He had not completed this rundown of alien attainments, however, when a light frame snapped into being above his head, showing him on another program and prompting several billion intellects to wonder if he really was as forthright as they had supposed him to be.
Yet the Mushkiss seemed unperturbed.
“Oh that,” he said. “You must understand I was making only a limited comparison.”
“Well then speak to us of this comparison.”
“All right,” he said carefully. “Put it this way. Suppose that you lived on my planet and looked up into space using the rudimentary tools we have for such efforts. What would you find?”
“I don’t know,” said Oyanna. “What would I find?”
“Well, you’d find . . . oxygen, for instance. And water. And metals. In sum, whatever was around you and beneath you, you would also detect above you. And that principle, I have noticed, extends beyond material things to stuff I'd never have imagined running into, except on my world.”
“Stuff? What stuff?”
“Well, stuff.”
“Forgive me, Mushkiss,” she said, “but perhaps the translator—”
“I mean,” he continued, albeit reluctantly, “stuff like greed, prejudice, swearing, street crime and war.”
“Just one moment!”
And as she spoke, her eyes, so recently admiring, narrowed, while her lips retracted to expose small but exceedingly pointed teeth.
The coterie didn’t look too pleased, either.
“Are you telling us,” she said, “that after all this galaxy has done for you, that is what you notice?”
He rushed to correct the impression. “Oh no, Oyanna, you misunderstand. I was focusing on the negative, which is but part of the story. Empathy, altruism and idealism also figure prominently in the life of the cosmos, just as they do on Earth.”
“So as I observed,” she insisted, “you think everyone everywhere is the same.”
“You know what I think?” he said, leaning forward, “I think the bad stuff exists for a reason. To push us. To make us more than we start out as. Because we don’t start out as much, do we? And we’d stay that way forever if we could. Only the bad stuff won’t let us. Mortality and pain won’t let us. The tribe over the next hill won’t let us. So that before long we have spears and language. And then machine guns and vaccines. And then, maybe, starships. And then, who knows what? Though nothing's guaranteed, unfortunately, and sometimes the bad stuff wins. Sometimes it overpowers an individual, a society or even an entire world, and then that individual, that society, that world is gone. So no, Oyanna, I do not believe we’re all the same, since as anyone can see, some of us are coping a whole lot better than others with the bad stuff.”
“And your planet?” said Oyanna. “How is it coping?”
“Well, we have lots of good people. And accomplishments to be proud of. So if the Zetans aren’t interfering anymore, I have no doubt that in a few years—”
“Oh, is that what you think?” she interrupted, while exchanging knowing expressions with her companions. “Well, I must say, I am relieved.”
Marshall was confused. “Relieved?” he said. “You’re relieved my species might have a future?”
“I mean, dear Mushkiss, that I am relieved you think so highly of them, given the effect the new law is to have on you.”
Now he was really confused. And a bit uncomfortable. “On me? Personally you mean? But how—”
“Mushkiss, you have read it, haven’t you? The new law? The one named for you? The Mushkiss Measure?”
“Well of course,” he said. “The introduction, definitely. But you know, with all this traveling—”
“Oh, my homeworld,” she said, shaking her head solemnly at her companions, who shook their heads solemnly back. “As I confided to the six of you at the very moment the Galactic Council reached its decision, I was afraid of this. Which is why”—she turned now to the audience—“I insisted on inviting our next guest. Friends, would you extend a most liver-felt welcome to Nrnckl, research professor in semi-sentient zoology at the Zeta Reticuli Institute of—”
“Zeta Reticuli!” cried Marshall, leaping to his feet. Yet try as he might, he couldn’t escape, and looking down discovered why. It was the coterie. They’d grabbed his pants and were jetting him back into his chair.
“Let go!” he demanded.
But they didn’t. And meanwhile the Zetan, who had appeared upstage, approached ever closer, while Oyanna reached out, with her arms and with her words. “Mushkiss, please, ask yourself: who would harm you before billions of your loving admirers? Exercise your faculty of reason, however limited it might be.”
Marshall exercised it, and would undoubtedly have felt reassured, had no one been holding him captive. With a violent lurch, he made a final attempt at flight, but succeeded only in losing his balance, so that he was soon looking up, from his knees, into a pair of teaspoon eyes.
Whereupon his fear was joined by curiosity and even astonishment, because the Zetan had begun to speak, in a voice unlike any he had heard from a Zetan before. A voice so drenched in sorrow and remorse that its sentences weren’t made entirely of words but were sprinkled with little noises—brief falsetto whimpers that swooped from loud to soft, high to low.
“NNNnnnn, NNNnnnn,” this Zetan said, for example. “NNNnnnn, NNNnnnn, how I grieve, Mushkiss. That you would behave in such a manner, as if we were all responsible for the actions of NNNnnnn a few.
And Oyanna spoke as well. “Mushkiss, please, rise up. There now. Good. Now try to understand: they all appear the same because they all must wear protective garments in our atmosphere. But that does not mean they are the same. Professor Nrnckl, for instance, could not be more unlike those you met previously.”
Marshall grabbed hold of himself, realizing the illogic and even blameworthiness of his initial reaction. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no business making generalizations about an entire species.” He addressed the professor. “I understand now that you had no responsibility for what happened and beg you to forgive me.”
Then he held out a hand, which Nrnckl clasped in both her own.
“NNNnnnn thank you NNNnnnn Mushkiss, you are so pure. Though I must say, Oyanna, I do feel responsible. That I and my fellows in the anti-colonization movement could not stop the things that were being perpetrated, NNNnnnn NNNnnnn, it was a great failing on our part, I think. Though NNNnnnn we tried. I am sure you know we tried.”
“I do know,” said Oyanna. “And this must therefore be a time of celebration for you, all the more because you now have the honor of explaining the Mushkiss Measure to the Mushkiss himself. Concentrating on its fifty-seventh addendum, of course.”
“Of course,” said Nrnckl. “But please, with your permission, Oyanna, may I address the audience first?”
“Certainly, professor. Go ahead.”
Nrnckl approached the audience. And when next she spoke, her tone had changed. Gone were the whimpers. Gone too was the remorse, even a trace of it. In its place was confidence. Confidence in herself combined with perhaps slightly less confidence in the mental and moral faculties of her hearers.
“Beings and entities,” she said to them. “I hope you will not object too strenuously if I interrupt the spectacle you are so enjoying. But as a lifelong student of semi-sentient life, I would ask that you attempt to view the organism upon this stage as he is and not as you would prefer him to be.
“Can you even begin to do it?” she continued. “Can you imagine being ripped from your planet, your clan and your familiar social hierarchy, only to be thrown into a universe whose complexity terrifies and overwhelms you?”
“But it doesn’t,” said Marshall, rushing forward. “I’m very happy here. I wouldn't want to be anywhere—”
“Oh, Mushkiss, little Mushkiss,” she cried, reverting to her former self while seizing him and holding him to her. “I know how you long for the massed bodies of your extended family, taking comfort of an evening from their exhalations and secretions.”
“What?”
“Do you not see the masquerade he performs for us?” she called out. “A never-ending act so we do not change our minds and condemn his species once more to destruction. Is this acceptable to you? Would you have him go on like this until he literally dies from the strain?”
“But I never had an extended family,” he protested, wrenching himself from her while addressing the audience wildly and incomprehensibly. “I had a basement . . . and a TV.”
She did not pursue or even look at him, which might have communicated a challenge. Rather, lowering her head, she focused on a section of floor beside him, while holding out her hands: a gesture of appeasement.
“You can stop pretending now,” she said in a slow, calm and non-threatening manner. “No one is going to harm you or your planet because of it. On the contrary, you are to receive a tremendous reward.”
“Reward? What kind of—Oyanna, do you understand any of this?” he sputtered, suddenly remembering that he was a guest on an interview show and therefore had a host.
Oyanna, who had also moved to the front of the stage, rephrased the question. "Professor, have you any interest in explaining the fifty-seventh addendum to the Mushkiss Measure? The sole reason, incidentally, for your presence on this program.”
“Certainly, Oyanna,” said Nrnckl. “You need only ask. Although, to be frank, there is not much to explain. The addendum merely states that every abducted semi-sentient must be restored to precisely the place and the condition in which that organism was found at the time of its abduction, insofar as this is possible.”
“And in the case of our beloved Mushkiss,” said Oyanna, “what is possible?”
“Well . . . ,” came the reply. “Not everything, regrettably. Others, who have been away from their homeworlds for only a short period, have had their memories of the trauma erased. But the Mushkiss, I’m afraid, has been with us too long for that. On the other hand, he has endured every sort of violation of his anatomy—alterations to his mass, his eyesight, his lifespan—and these, I promise you, will be rectified prior to his return.”
“So he is to be returned. Even if he does not wish to go,” said Oyanna.
Nrnckl straightened. “As an expert in my field, Oyanna, I assure you, he does wish to go. And there are to be no exceptions, precisely so that certain parties among us do not keep specimens around for their . . . amusement.” She turned to Marshall. “Do you hear that, precious one? No exceptions. You too are going home. To rejoin your fellows. To NNNnnnn chant once again your ceremonial ballads around the communal hearth fire.”
Earlier in the program, its senior producer had been provoked into a frenzy. But now Marshall entered a state beyond that. Utterly immobile with upset, he felt his eyes overflowing with tears, blinding him, while his throat clenched, rendering him mute. But what did it matter? What would he say, even if he could? The whole galaxy was listening, yet what could he tell it?
That he loved it—its planets and homeworlds, its stars and starships, even its spike gangs and antimatter torpedoes?
It was true, but who would believe him?
And now, as he listened to Nrnckl, listened to her lecture and hector, on and on, and on and on and on and on, he was filled with an abhorrence, a hatred, a loathing unlike anything he had ever felt for a Zetan before, or a colleague, or a prescreener, or even Larry Smolsky himself.
“You!” he managed to croak out finally, while extending a quivering finger.
“You!” he repeated, but more words wouldn’t come.
“You!” he blared. And now the words were coming.
He hurled them at her.
“You pile-of-eggs thoughtful!!!”