Cold-Blooded

TO MY SISTERS, the Iridescent Ones, the Egg-Bearers, the Many-Faceted, greetings from the Planet of Moths.

At last we have succeeded in establishing contact with the creatures here who, in their ability to communicate, to live in colonies and to construct technologies, most resemble us, although in these particulars they have not advanced above a rudimentary level.

During our first observation of these “blood-creatures,” as we have termed them – after the colourful red liquid which is to be found inside their bodies, and which appears to be of great significance to them in their poems, wars and religious rituals – we supposed them incapable of speech, as those specimens we were able to examine entirely lacked the organs for it. They had no wing-casings with which to stridulate – indeed they had no wings; they had no mandibles to click; and the chemical method was unknown to them, since they were devoid of antennae. “Smell,” for them, is a perfunctory affair, confined to a flattened and numbed appendage on the front of the head. But after a time, we discovered that the incoherent squeakings and gruntings that emerged from them, especially when pinched, were in fact a form of language, and after that we made rapid progress.

We soon ascertained that their planet, named by us the Planet of Moths after its most prolific and noteworthy genus, is called by these creatures Earth. They have some notion that their ancestors were created from this substance; or so it is claimed in many of their charming but irrational folk-tales.

In an attempt to establish common ground, we asked them at what season they mated with and then devoured their males. Imagine our embarrassment when we discovered that those individuals with whom we were conversing were males! (It is very hard to tell the difference, as their males are not diminutive, as ours are, but if anything bigger. Also, lacking natural beauty – brilliantly patterned carapaces, diaphanous wings, luminescent eyes, and the like – they attempt to imitate our kind by placing upon their bodies various multicoloured draperies, which conceal their generative parts.)

We apologized for our faux pas, and enquired as to their own sexual practices. Picture our nausea and disgust when we discovered that it is the male, not the egg-bearer, which is the most prized among them! Abnormal as this will seem to you, my sisters, their leaders are for the most part male; which may account for their state of relative barbarism. Another peculiarity which must be noted is that, although they frequently kill them in many other ways, they rarely devour their females after procreation. This is a waste of protein; but then, they are a wasteful people.

We hastily abandoned this painful subject.

Next we asked them when they pupated. Here again, as in the case of “clothing” – the draperies we have mentioned – we uncovered a fumbling attempt at imitation of our kind. At some indeterminate point in their life cycles, they cause themselves to be placed in artificial stone or wooden cocoons, or chrysalises. They have an idea that they will someday emerge from these in an altered state, which they symbolize with carvings of themselves with wings. However, we did not observe that any had actually done so.

It is as well to mention at this juncture that, in addition to the many species of moths for which it is justly famous among us, the Planet of Moths abounds in thousands of varieties of creatures which resemble our own distant ancestors. It seems that one of our previous attempts at colonization – an attempt so distant that our record of it is lost – must have borne fruit. However, these beings, although numerous and ingenious, are small in size and primitive in their social organization, and attempts to communicate with them were not – or have not been, so far – very successful. The blood-creatures are hostile towards them, and employ against them many poisonous sprays, traps and so forth, in addition to a sinister manual device termed a “fly swatter.” It is agonizing indeed to watch one of these instruments of torture and death being wielded by the large and frenzied against the small and helpless; but the rules of diplomacy forbid our intervention. (Luckily the blood-creatures cannot understand what we say to one another about them in our own language.)

But despite all the machinery of destruction which is aimed at them, our distant relatives are more than holding their own. They feed on the crops and herd-animals and even on the flesh of the blood-creatures; they live in their homes, devour their clothes, hide and flourish in the very cracks of their floors. When the blood-creatures have succeeded at last in overbreeding themselves, as it seems their intention to do, or in exterminating one another, rest assured that our kind, already superior in both numbers and adaptability, will be poised to achieve the ascendancy which is ours by natural right.

This will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen. As you know, my sisters, we have long been a patient race.