?If this was an ordinary worker it would have come out by now, emerging through the sternum region. Also, it’s gestating in the uterine cavity instead of the chest. Since a queen is a much more complex organism it apparently requires both more space and time to mature. Otherwise I’d be dead by now.

?I’ve seen how they work. It’s not very pretty. When full grown this thing is enormous, much bigger than the one we’ve been fighting here. It’s definitely going to be a queen, an egg layer. Millions of eggs. It’s not going to be anything like the one that’s out there running around loose.?Her voice fell. ?Like I said, nobody’s had any experience with a larval queen. I don’t know how long a gestation 192

Alan Dean Foster

period it requires, except that it’s self-evidently a lot longer than an ordinary worker.?

He gazed down at her. ?Still sounds like bullshit to me. If you got this thing inside you, how’d it get there??

She was staring down at her hands. ?While I was in deep sleep. I guess the horrible dream I had wasn’t exactly a dream. I got raped, though I don’t know that that’s a wholly accurate term. Rape is an act of premeditated violence. This was an act of procreation, even if my participation wasn’t voluntary. We would call it rape, but I doubt that the creature would. It would probably find the concept… well, alien.?She looked thoughtful, thinking back.

?The one that got loose on my first ship, the Nostromo, was making preparations to reproduce itself, but it wasn’t a queen either. At least some of them must be hermaphroditic. Self-fertilizing, so that even one isolated individual can perpetuate the species. A warrior-worker is capable of producing eggs, but only slowly, one at a time, until it can develop a queen to take over the job. That’s how this one was able to start a queen inside me. At least, that’s the best scenario I can come up with. I’m no xenologist.?

She hesitated. ?Great, huh? I get to be the mother of the mother of the apocalypse. I can’t do what I should. So you’ve got to help. You’ve got to kill me.?

He took a step backward. ?What the fuck you talkin’ about??

?You don’t get it, do you? I’m finished. I’m dead the minute it’s born because I’ll no longer be necessary to its continued survival. I’ve seen it happen. That I can live with, if it’s not too strict a contradiction in terms. I’ve been ready to die ever since I encountered the first one of these things. But I will be damned if I’m going to let those idiots from WeylandYutani take it back to Earth. They just might

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