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He cried because….[]
Blue Grey Tentacles crouched on the hard stone floor of a prison cell sobbing. He didn’t shed tears from his eyes as a human would. None the less anyone who understood Centaurian feelings would know that the young alien was utterly and abjectly miserable. Everyone, even his family on prison visits said it was good his tentacles no longer flashed scarlet. Little Blue Grey Tentacles felt he’d lost part of himself with that and with the name change.
He cried because prison psychologists, a Terran innovation, had explained to him how badly he’d behaved and he couldn’t stop feeling ashamed. The Terrans had done him no harm, he simply shouldn't have frightened Terrans and told them so many bad things. He knew he’d let down his family and abused all those powerful computers his wealthy family could afford. He'd let down all his friends as well and he was sure all his friends hated him and no one would ever like him now. He cried because he was sure no decent Centaurian would ever find him sexually attractive again and he certainly wouldn’t want the type who would go with a former prisoner. He cried because they said he didn't deserve the one nice prison psychologist and all the others kept telling him he was bad. He cried because petty thieves and criminals shook their tentacles at him and jostled him and told him they were better than he was. Those thieves and petty criminals had never upset a whole planet. He felt so awful about himself and he was sure all those criminals really were better than he was. Blue Grey Tentacles was very young and badly needed the one nice prison psychologist to show him how far he’d got things out of proportion.
The prisoner hated being with other prisoners and he hated being alone. And little Blue Grey Tentacles cried and cried and cried for a mudbath.
There was a short, two (Terran) day winter when Porrila was furthest away from Proxima Centauri in its orbit, then the little alien was cold in his prison cell. There was a slightly shorter summer when the planet Porrila was closest to its sun and then the cell was uncomfortably hot. There was not even the cycle of day and night as on Earth because Porrila kept always the same face to its sun as our moon does to the Earth. Proxima Centauri always stood in almost the same position in the sky. It wobbled just slightly because Porrila moved faster during summer than during winter. That hardly made a difference. The blood red sunlight shining through the one prison window always hit the cell floor at roughly the same spot, the stones were slightly faded there. Then something broke the prison monotony, sunlight was increasing, the sun was brighter and more yellow, like our sun. For the first time the prison cell was well-lit.
Flare[]
Blue Grey Tentacles shuddered and couldn’t enjoy the light as the alien knew from his earliest childhood what it meant. Proxima Centauri was flaring. There was a small cubbyhole he could go to during flares otherwise the radiation would kill him. His soft, boneless octopus-like body squeezed into it though no human could have got in. The alcove wasn’t comfortable but it kept him safe, he could even move about a bit in there as the cubbyhole was designed for adults larger than Blue Grey Tentacles. The alien wriggled about till he could see into the sunlit cell.
“Even the sun hates me.” he thought.
Blue Grey Tentacles knew Proxima Centauri’s flares affected the whole daylight side of the planet but still he felt the flare was punishing him personally.
“Please don’t hurt me, Great Lord Sun” he shouted aloud.
He felt that the shafts of radiation from the sun were trying to strike him like the spray of cold, clean water when they forced him to take a prison bath. And that hurt, it hurt a lot. [1]
External links (Background to the alien evolution)[]
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Footnotes[]
- ↑ I've recently read that Proxima Centauri flares much more often than I suggest here, writing Hard science fiction without even small inaccuracies is very difficult as I am an amateur astronomer and can't always easily chase up facts that professionals have at their fingertips.