for a moment, it seemed to Ramon as if the markings on its flesh were moving, writhing and changing like living things. He stumbled, and instinctively clutched the alien's arm to keep from falling. Its skin was warm and dry, like snakeskin. In the enclosed space of the tunnel, he could smell the alien; it had a heavy, musky odor, like olive oil, like cloves, strange rather than unpleasant. It neither looked behind nor paused nor made a sound. The three aliens continued to walk on imperturbably, at the same steady pace, and Ramon had no choice but to follow after them or be left alone in the chilly darkness of this black alien maze.
At last, they came to a stop in another garishly lit chamber, Ramon almost walking into the wide back of the alien in front of him. To the human eye, there was something subtly wrong about the proportions and dimensions of the chamber: it was more a rhombus than a rectangle, the floor was slightly tilted, the ceiling tilted at another angle and not of uniform height, everything subliminally disorienting, everything off, making Ramon feel sick and dizzy. The light was too bright and too blue, and the chamber was filled with a whispering susurrus that hovered right at the threshold of hearing.
This place had not been made by human beings, nor was it meant for them. As he entered the chamber, he saw that the walls streamed with tiny crawling pictures, as though a film of oil was continuously flowing from ceiling to floor and carrying with it a thin scum of ever-changing images: swirls of vivid color, geometric shapes, mazy impressionistic designs, vast surrealistic landscapes. Occasionally, something recognizable would stream by: representations of trees, mountains, stars, tiny alien faces that would seem to stare malignly at Ramon out of the feverdream chaos as they poured down to be swallowed by the floor.
The alien who'd escorted him gestured him forward. Gingerly, Ramon crossed the chamber, feeling uneasy and disconcerted, unconsciously leaning to one side to correct the tilt of the floor and putting his feet down cautiously, as though he expected the chamber to pitch or yaw.
In the center of the chamber was a deep, circular pit, lined by metal, and at the bottom of the pit was another alien.
It was even taller than Ramon's guides, and much fatter, the lower part of its body bloated to four or five times the circumference of the other aliens, and its crest and quills were much longer. Its skin was maggot-white, and completely free of markings. White with age? Dyed white as an indication of rank? Or was it of a different race? Impossible to say, but as the alien's eyes turned upward, toward Ramon, he was seized and shaken by the force behind its gaze, by the harsh authority it exuded. He noticed, with another little shock, that the creature was physically connected to the pit - things that might have been wires or rods or cables emerged from its body and disappeared into the smooth metal walls, forming an intricate cat's cradle around it. Some of the cables were black and dull, some were luminescent, and some, glossy red and gray and brown, pulsed slowly and rhythmically, as if with an obscene life of their own.
The hot orange eyes considered him. Ramon felt his nakedness acutely, but refused to bend to this alien's will even to cover himself. The great pale head shifted.
"Noun," the alien said. "Verb form. Identifier. Semantic placeholder. Sense of identity."
Ramon stared at the alien, fighting to keep surprise from his face. It had spoken in Spanish (Ramon also spoke some English and Portuguese and French, as well as, of course, Portuglish, the bastard lingua franca of the colony), and quite clearly, though its voice was disturbingly rusty and metallic, as though it was a machine. How in hell had it learned a human language? "What the fuck are you saying?" Ramon said. "By Holy Jesus, what do you want?"
"Idiomatic vulgarity. Religious fear," the alien said, and then, with something that sounded like disappointment, "Unflowing." The great beast shifted in its web of wires and cables, its swollen abdomen rippling as if with a life of its own.
Ramon felt his gorge rise. "What do you want from me?" "You are man," the beast intoned.
"Yes, I'm a fucking man. What did you think I was?" "You lack tatecreude. You are a flawed thing. Your nature is dangerous and tends to aubre ."
Ramon spat