Inquiline
Sarah Connell
Even at first glance, Aranea knew this other had been born the same as she - red body too opaque, black eyes too small, mandibles overlarge. Workers in the tunnel ahead filed around the newcomer as if she were one of their own. But Aranea shuddered at the dissonance, wondering if perhaps this is how she looked - a tear in the ever-shifting fabric of her people.
The stranger sensed her and turned.
Aranea tried to duck back, to hide, but it was too late.
“Isn’t this place great?” the newcomer asked, coming closer. “I am Spinnekop. What are you called?”
“I am named Aranea.”
Spinnekop circled her in a quick dance. “You mimic these ones very well.”
“You should not have come here. This is my nest, my people.” Aranea lowered her forelegs, letting her fangs come out in full show.
Spinnekop stopped. “I am tired of being alone. Surely one such as you understands?” she wheedled.
Unease washed through Aranea, remembering the long-ago days spent moving from hole to hole, always quiet, always with none but herself. But more than anything had lingered the all-consuming wish to have been made differently, to be one of many.
Aranea raised her thin forelegs above her head again and skirted Spinnekop. “Just don’t get caught,” she said as she passed. “Or we’re both dead.”
Spinnekop followed her and burrowed into a half-collapsed chamber next to Aranea’s.
“Room for all,” the newcomer said, getting cozy.
Aranea did her best to ignore the friendly advances, but life was not the same. She saw more and more the disparities between herself and the workers while watching Spinnekop.
“Why be just a worker?” Spinnekop asked one day.
“Because that’s what we are.”
“No.” Spinnekop turned to her. “We are not them. And since we are not, why not choose to be another? A something bigger. A something with power.”
Aranea tapped her forelegs on Spinnekop’s head. “We cannot. We are merely workers. Ones of many.”
But Spinnekop could not suspend the knowledge of how they were both born so as to lose herself to the hoard and become one of the many.
The otherness between them grew and Aranea became manic, trying to evade Spinnekop’s attempts to change her stance and scent signature until she felt torpor coming on.
Spinnekop sensed it too, fangs descending as she showed her true face around the corner of the burrow. “I will watch for you,” she said to Aranea who could do nothing but fade.
Tucking her legs, she released her hold, the distant sounds of the workers humming through the nest like the patter of a hundred heartbeats
* * *
She surfaced under the eightfold stare of Spinnekop hovering nearby and felt something akin to comfort.
“Much has happened since you last stirred.”
And Aranea could hear it. Dissonance thrummed around them.
“One with wings has been born - the weakest are being sent out to make a new colony.”
The two ran out into the tunnels. Workers swarmed over and around them to form a ring in the central chamber.
Spinnekop broke through the circle of onlookers and came up against a soldier. She cowered, as a worker would, and then tensed before coming to her full height. An almost-perfect scent message rolled from her.
Chaos broke out in the chamber. The colony had taken notice.
“Stranger,” they chanted.
Caught up in the tide, Aranea added her voice to theirs.
“Other,” she crooned along with them.
“Alien,” the throng shouted.
At this last Spinnekop reared up, playing at worker again. “I am like you,” she said.
The soldier loomed over her, feeling along her body as she shivered with anticipation but Spinnekop did not run or fight or lower her forelegs that fretted as would nervous antennae. The soldier’s mandibles opened wider, her antennae quivering in contemplation at the unusual worker before her.
Aranea danced forward in the lull, legs stretching up. Aggression was the one thing her people recognized. And so, before Spinnekop could move, Aranea bit down hard. The others raced in, grabbing where they could until nothing of the imposter remained whole.
Three workers walked ahead, shifting the body between them over the rocks until they found a place in the high grass to ease their burden. Aranea followed the procession into the evening sun. She watched them as they gave the body one final patdown, antennae shifting and saying no words of farewell before heading back into the cool shadow of the tunnel mouth.
Alone, she started forward, made nimble by hunger and let caution fall away at last to stretch out to her full length. Her fangs tasted of the gore of Spinnekop, the tang unlike that of her people’s flesh.
She left the pretender’s corpse to rot in the sun.
Sarah Connell is the author of the cozy science fiction trilogy, Project Awakening, and her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the world. A collector of hobbies, her favorite things outside of books include quilting, hiking and growing obscure vegetables in her garden. She lives in the Carolinas with her husband and their cat, Lyra. You can see more about her stories at www.sarah-connell.com.
