A Silent Scream

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. And, of course, “they” refers to my parents as they cautioned me against straying too far from the hive. The vacuum of space is an ever-looming threat on a planet where wormholes spawn randomly, drawing everything below into the inky nothingness of the galaxy or unleashing torrents of debris on unsuspecting victims of fate. And scream isn't really the right word. 

I'm an auqred, which means I don't have vocal cords. We have a spoken language, but it would sound more like the hissing of a cockroach to human ears, or so I've read. This is because our voices, produced by special rattles in our throats, can't create inflection or change volume. Instead, we have a series of glands that secrete chemicals into the rattles when we feel strong emotions, so those chemicals disperse as the sound travels. So a "scream" is just a word flavored with panic bile.

From what I have read, humans can have voices that sound the same. We do not. Auqred voices are unique harmonies created by a set of rattles that produce different frequencies; no two are exactly alike, even among millions of beings. I think it would be similar to how human voices work, but I'm not sure. We know a bit about your anatomy from studying the travelers brought here by the portals, but I've never spoken to a human before. None of you ever survive the trip. Except her.

The girl in the wasteland.

I've dreamt about her every night for as long as I can remember. But, no, night isn't the right word. Night implies that the darkness is followed by light; here, in the far outskirts of the solar system, there is no day. There is nothing but dim twilight punctuated by dimmer moonlight, and neither penetrates the burrows of the hive.

You might think that a planet caught between two suns would be brighter than average, but perpetually thick cloud cover stops most of that light from reaching the surface, and three moons block more of it from even reaching the clouds. Only one occasion brings heat and light to our home: when a portal opens.

The everlasting darkness makes it hard to keep track of time, so our hive announces the rise and fall of the moons via sentries posted at the entrances. They call out the time into a channel that runs along every burrow and tunnel of the hive, with the sound escaping through evenly spaced holes that breach the tunnel walls.

Even so, I prefer to mark its passage with my dreams. It is always the same dream and the only dream. There is a certain comfort in the consistency, even if the dream is more like a nightmare. The details are so embossed upon my memory that I can conjure her at will.

It's bright. So bright I can feel my eyes burning, demanding to be closed against the light. I refuse, fascinated by the foreign but familiar sensation.

At first, there is only light and pain. But soon, a dark, shapeless smudge forms in the center of my vision. As I focus on the beacon of shadow, the spot widens, lengthens, and begins to take a definitive form. The figure approaches, becoming clearer and more distinct as it closes the distance between us.

A face appears ahead of a body in what was once a white dress, all dirty and red. She sees me, and fear floods her eyes as she skids to an unsteady stop on the slick ice.

I cannot move. I cannot speak. I cannot see anything but the girl, the light bouncing off the frozen ground and washing everything in its white heat. The fear softens into curiosity as she examines my face, so different from her own.

Her eyes drift above me, and the fear returns. I try to follow her gaze, but the strange paralysis continues. I cannot look away as she loses her footing, scrambling for purchase in a frenzied attempt at a retreat. She looks at me, then back to whatever terror lurks above, and back again. There is something new in her eyes.

Pity.

She points, yelling in her hypnotizing and melodic voice for me to move, to get away, to take shelter, to take flight. Hide, she pleads. Run.

But I cannot move. The light has rooted me to the ground as it thins and warms the air around me. She spares one more glance before turning to run, too late. The ice erupts beneath us.

She screams.

I wake up. I hear nothing, sense nothing. Panic rises until the tips of my claws sense the warm, moist, and familiar wall of my sleep chamber. I have not been swallowed by the sky. No shards of ice are threatening to impale me. There is no light searing my eyes into blindness. There is no girl.

There could never be a girl.

My parents' words linger in my mind as they always do when I wake. When I was young, my dreams of the girl in the wasteland scared me so much that I woke our entire quadrant with the chemical equivalent of a blood-curdling scream. It happened so often that everyone began to ignore panic bile if they could hear my harmony. Every time, they reinforced that I was home and safe, that what I had seen so vividly was nothing more than a child's fantasy. There was no portal, no light, no ice, and, above all, no girl.

Eventually, I stopped screaming when I woke by touching the walls of my sleep chamber to reassure myself that I was alive and safe at home. That didn't stop the quadrant from ignoring me, but it did keep the sour taste of panic from staining my tongue for the rest of the day. When my parents' scavenging party was taken by a portal last year, I learned that sorrow tastes sweet. Not pleasantly sweet, but the sweet of something just on the rotten side of ripe.

Each auqred bloodline has a role to play in the survival of the hive, and ours is scavenging resources from the mounds of debris deposited by the portals. My parents, their parents, their parents' parents, and so forth have all scoured the surface for the most precious and vital resource deposits of all: cellulose from wood and paper.

Plants cannot survive the freezing temperatures of our planet. Even in the burrows warmed by the core, there isn't enough light to cultivate plant life. There have been dozens of attempts to create a sustained light source and seed plants inside the hive, but none have been successful.

However, the portals deposit mountains of debris every time either sun experiences a flare. Most of the debris is fairly useless, taken from dead planets in the sun's system. It amounts to raw elements, metals, ice, and other inorganic materials.

But, in each system, there is one other planet that hosts life. Debris arriving from these planets means plant matter: wood and paper. And wood and paper mean life continues for the auqred. Our hive is built with cellulose. The fungi that we eat to survive grow on cellulose. Even our clothes are woven from cellulose.

Today, I taste the tangy bite of excitement as I move from my sleep chamber into the empty common chamber of my family burrow. It tastes like fear but less potent and with a hint of happiness. I'm eager to start my work as a scavenger, and my work detail begins today. Scavenging is a dangerous role, but it is the role my family plays. Plus, it has its perks.

Surface access has always been strictly limited to scavengers, burrowers, and sentries. When I was young, I came across a book in my mother's pack as she sorted the items in the common chamber before taking them down to the collectors in the heart of the hive. I stole it, curious about what this strange contraption of flesh and paper could be. I could feel that there were iron markings on top of the cellulose, arranged in a pattern, and I wanted a closer look.

I hid the book in my sleep chamber, then waited for my parents to fall asleep at white moon rise. The white moon is the brightest of all, reflecting more light onto the cloud cover and through to the ice than the blue and red moons combined. I slipped silently out of my sleep chamber, through the common chamber, and into the tunnels with the book tucked under my tunic.

Our quadrant of the hive was near the surface and our chambers closer still, just under the skyward portal threshold–the depth at which chambers could be built without the risk of the top and everything inside being dragged off into space. The labyrinth of passages, curved and wound tightly together near the heart, were straighter and sparser this close to the surface.

Even still, there were a dozen paths to choose from, and only three led to the surface. I knew from my mother that sentries guarded them at all times but only at the threshold. The path to the surface from the threshold was vertical, and the sentries announced the rise whenever the moon passed over the opening.

I remembered that my father once complained to one of their party members that the sentry for the tunnel nearest our chamber, where my parents and their party exited the hive, always left his post during the white moon because the light hurt his eyes. He was often late when returning to announce blue moon rise. This made my parents late to work detail, so they were always at the back of the line.

They were among the last ones out, which meant they were among the last to return. Therefore, they always missed the fresh fungus and got the slimy remainders, and it was all the sentry's fault. The party member agreed; in fact, she suggested they do something about it. Perhaps they should report the sentry to the enforcers and have him exiled. Since parties had to have every member present before exiting, my parents' tardiness meant she also never got to eat any fresh fungus. They grumbled and returned to their slimy fungus rations, never to do anything stronger than complaining over bowls of goop and spongy bits.

I made my way to the nearest surface tunnel and crept toward the threshold to find my father had been right all along. The sentry was nowhere to be found, and a feeble beam of diffused moonlight shone through the opening above. I stepped into the beam, my eyes stinging as I retrieved the book from my tunic. I opened it to see the markings I had sensed earlier, arranged in blocks.

Those mysterious symbols were the most beautiful, magical thing I had ever seen. I knew I had to uncover their meaning, and I later would. I collected dozens of books over the years, taking one at a time from my parents and hiding them in a special compartment I constructed in my sleep chamber. Some had pictures on them; others had only words. Some had elaborate bindings while others had only more paper.

Every night I would take one to the threshold and puzzle over its secrets. Eventually, I could understand what the words meant and how they were arranged in sentences, paragraphs, and different languages. I put the pieces together and connected words with their pictures, then to the debris that fell through from the planets called Earth and Noyath by the humans who lived there.

For years, I read as my parents slept and hid nearly a hundred books in my chamber. Until my parents were taken skyward. The sentry struggled with guilt for making them late, as their party was the only one on the surface when the portal opened. After that, he started staying throughout his shift. When I made the trek on the next white moon, I startled him as much as his unexpected presence startled me.

He thought I was there to grieve, and he tried to comfort me. Reassuring me that I would only have the best and freshest fungus from now on, he walked me back to the tunnel entrance and told me to come back any time I needed to. I did grieve when I returned to my stale, silent home chamber, both for my parents and for the loss of my only source of solace. There would be no chance to read again until I began working as a scavenger myself.

I reflect on my excitement as I leave my home chamber just before red moon rise. I want to work the red moon shift so that I can return to the surface after work to read my treasures in the best light. I have already slept during the blue moon shift after so many years of reading through the white moon that it seems only natural to keep to my routine.

I make my way toward the collectors to receive my first quota, the volume of cellulose I need to deliver to earn a fungus voucher. Wait, not a voucher–it's more like a stamp that acts as a voucher. It's a chemical marker the collectors apply to the center of scavengers’ foreheads, right under the tendrils that mark our age. The dispersers read it and hand out the appropriate portion of fungus based on the danger and difficulty of the work detail.

Scavenging was the most lucrative of all the manual work details, with each scavenger auqred receiving extra fungus. More importantly, it granted permission to come and go at all hours and keep a small stipend of cellulose for home chamber expansion or repairs. Scavengers could also keep any debris deemed unusable by the collectors as long as they make their quota. Preoccupied with the prospect of expanding my collection, I spend longer than intended navigating the maze of tunnels and bodies until I reach the entrance to the massive chamber just outside the heart of the hive.