The Host (The Host #1)(72)

“Will you tell me what it was like?” he asked, cocking his head to one side the way he used to when he was really interested in one of Melanie’s bedtime stories.

So I told him.

I told him all about the See Weeds’ waterlogged planet. I told him about the two suns, the elliptical orbit, the gray waters, the unmoving permanence of roots, the stunning vistas of a thousand eyes, the endless conversations of a million soundless voices that all could hear.

He listened with wide eyes and a fascinated smile.

“Is that the only other place?” he asked when I fell silent, trying to think of anything I’d missed. “Are the See Weeds”—he laughed once at the pun—“the only other aliens?”

I laughed, too. “Hardly. No more than I’m the only alien on this world.”

“Tell me.”

So I told him about the Bats on the Singing World—how it was to live in musical blindness, how it was to fly. I told him about the Mists Planet—how it felt to have thick white fur and four hearts to keep warm, how to give claw beasts a wide berth.

I started to tell him about the Planet of the Flowers, about the color and the light, but he interrupted me with a new question.

“What about the little green guys with the triangle heads and the big black eyes? The ones who crashed in Roswell and all that. Was that you guys?”

“Nope, not us.”

“Was it all fake?”

“I don’t know—maybe, maybe not. It’s a big universe, and there’s a lot of company out there.”

“How did you come here, then—if you weren’t the little green guys, who were you? You had to have bodies to move and stuff, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, surprised at his grasp of the facts at hand. I shouldn’t have been surprised—I knew how bright he was, his mind like a thirsty sponge. “We used our Spider selves in the very beginning, to get things started.”

“Spiders?”

I told him about the Spiders—a fascinating species. Brilliant, the most incredible minds we’d ever come across, and each Spider had three of them. Three brains, one in each section of their segmented bodies. We’d yet to find a problem they couldn’t solve for us. And yet they were so coldly analytical that they rarely came up with a problem they were curious enough to solve for themselves. Of all our hosts, the Spiders welcomed our occupation the most. They barely noticed the difference, and when they did, they seemed to appreciate the direction we provided. The few souls who had walked on the surface of the Spiders’ planet before implantation told us that it was cold and gray—no wonder the Spiders only saw in black and white and had a limited sense of temperature. The Spiders lived short lives, but the young were born knowing everything their parent had, so no knowledge was lost.

I’d lived out one of the short life terms of the species and then left with no desire to return. The amazing clarity of my thoughts, the easy answers that came to any question almost without effort, the march and dance of numbers were no substitute for emotion and color, which I could only vaguely understand when inside that body. I wondered how any soul could be content there, but the planet had been self-sufficient for thousands of Earth years. It was still open for settling only because the Spiders reproduced so quickly—great sacs of eggs.

I started to tell Jamie how the offensive had been launched here. The Spiders were our best engineers—the ships they made for us danced nimbly and undetectably through the stars. The Spiders’ bodies were almost as useful as their minds: four long legs to each segment—from which they’d earned their nickname on this planet—and twelve-fingered hands on each leg. These six-jointed fingers were as slender and strong as steel threads, capable of the most delicate procedures. About the mass of a cow, but short and lean, the Spiders had no trouble with the first insertions. They were stronger than humans, smarter than humans, and prepared, which the humans were not.…

I stopped short, midsentence, when I saw the crystalline sparkle on Jamie’s cheek.

He was staring straight ahead at nothing, his lips pressed in a tight line. A large drop of salt water rolled slowly down the cheek closest to me.

Idiot, Melanie chastised me. Didn’t you think what your story would mean to him?

Didn’t you think of warning me sooner?

She didn’t answer. No doubt she’d been as caught up in the storytelling as I was.

“Jamie,” I murmured. My voice was thick. The sight of his tear had done strange things to my throat. “Jamie, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Jamie shook his head. “’S okay. I asked. I wanted to know how it happened.” His voice was gruff, trying to hide the pain.

It was instinctive, the desire to lean forward and wipe that tear away. I tried at first to ignore it; I was not Melanie. But the tear hung there, motionless, as if it would never fall. Jamie’s eyes stayed fixed on the blank wall, and his lips trembled.

He wasn’t far from me. I stretched my arm out to brush my fingers against his cheek; the tear spread thin across his skin and disappeared. Acting on instinct again, I left my hand against his warm cheek, cradling his face.

For a short second, he pretended to ignore me.

Then he rolled toward me, his eyes closed, his hands reaching. He curled into my side, his cheek against the hollow of my shoulder, where it had once fit better, and sobbed.