Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #214

by TTA Press Authors

  He exhaled the sweet, calming fragrance of cactus-blossom seedlings in springtime: Yes, yes, of course. Scent-of-Moss, like most wives, tended to look for answers strictly in the material world. Ember-Musk believed it was his duty as a husband and supernaturalist to remind her that life was more complex than that. After all, the true mysteries of existence—their Life Purpose, the love between a husband and wife, those ineffable qualities that brought them joy—could never be solved by analyzing a genetic strand or by studying the chemical composition of an aroma. Yet Scent-of-Moss, Ember-Musk realized, had continued to immerse herself more deeply in naturalism over the past year, to the exclusion of all else.

  You've smelled the rumors that have been wafting around? Scent-of-Moss sprayed.

  Ah, this explained her ill humor, he thought. He had whiffed traces of those rumors and knew that they would only exacerbate Scent-of-Moss's own worries, so he sprayed an even sweeter mist, and decided to downplay them: Scent-of-Moss! Since when does a naturalist pay attention to gossip?

  She turned around and embraced him in her fore-arms.

  You're right, husband. It's nonsense. If it were truly a scout ship presaging some ... invasion, it would have taken action a long time ago. Invaders wouldn't just stay in orbit so long, transmitting that same baffling signal toward us. No, it's clearly here to communicate something to us.

  Is the Council still transmitting responsive sweet-scents?

  Every day. But the ship doesn't acknowledge them. Either the aliens don't understand, or they're choosing to ignore us.

  Could the ship be automated? Ember-Musk scented.

  Its vast size makes me think otherwise. But I suppose it's possible that the aliens aboard didn't survive the interstellar voyage. If only we had the technology to fly up to it, to study the craft up close...

  I've prepared a meal. Come, let's eat. He pulled Scent-of-Moss's rear-arms.

  She emitted a frustrated puff.

  Not everything can be explained by naturalism, wife, he gently reminded her. Sometimes the peace of mind that prayer brings us provides its own answers. Ember-Musk emanated the numinous scent of a summer sea breeze at sunrise.

  He realized this was an argument that husbands and wives had had since the dawn of time, and one they were unlikely to settle tonight.

  I know, I know, Scent-of-Moss misted. But let's go back to one of the first messages. One final time.

  Scent-of-Moss turned the dial on the signal-projector and the alien's holoimage appeared in midair.

  Each time Ember-Musk viewed it, it seemed less horrific. It didn't seem so farfetched that the Gods might conceive of such strange, delicate creatures as their heralds.

  The alien clasped its two hands behind its back and paced back and forth. How it managed to maintain its balance on only two legs, Ember-Musk couldn't understand.

  What are those symbols scrawled above the image? he sprayed. I believe they may be some form of marker or identifier in the alien's written language, Scent-of-Moss answered. They're the same type of symbols the aliens used in the primary transmission.

  —holo-seg 2 of 15 [] shiptime 9:03:22 [] 11/10/2251—

  How do I even begin? How do I tell you—whoever you are—about our final days on Earth? How do I put into words the chaos ... the madness ... everything that's been lost?

  I've heard so many stories of how the invasion began that I'm no longer sure which ones are true. But this much I know for certain: the Apocalypse began in the Middle East, in Old Jerusalem. Some blamed it on an arms race run amok, a new weapon that ripped open the fabric of realspace and created the Fissure, a three-dimensional rectangle of light. There are those who described the Fissure as beautiful, a shimmering, golden doorway—but I can't allow myself to believe that.

  Nothing that let them in could be beautiful.

  For weeks the Fissure hung there harmlessly while puzzled scientists ran their tests. Then someone—no one knows who or why—spoke the dark prayer, a whispered invitation, and the hellgates burst open.

  Given the infinite number of universes, I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised that somewhere there might exist beings that would jump at this invitation. But who would have guessed that the creatures that answered the call would resemble the grotesqueries of our fevered imaginations, our worst nightmares? Something about them triggered a visceral revulsion in humans, a gag reflex. Was it their angular cheekbones and pus-yellow pallor? Their naked, sexless forms? Their perpetual, emotionless smiles? Their strange, featherlight footsteps, that made it seem as if they were adjusting to a new, weaker gravity? It was almost as if we knew on a molecular level that they were malevolent, that they didn't belong here. No, they were unmistakably inhuman. Unmistakably evil.

  The Reviled flooded into our reality and launched a silent blitzkrieg, striking with their hollow, pointed tongues like slick cobras, piercing warm arteries and vacuuming the blood of helpless thousands in just the first night. And though their initial actions seemed haphazard, the Reviled proved far more intelligent than anyone had at first suspected, for they specifically targeted the scientists who might have had some idea of how to seal the Fissure.

  The survivors of that first assault reported hearing the sound of victims retching followed by their high-pitched wails, but the Reviled, as always, maintained their eerie silence. We could see them, we could feel them, but somehow they remained cloaked from our senses of hearing and smell.

  God help us, death had stepped through that doorway. The death of my world.

  And we had invited it in.

  * * * *

  Do you notice that the large cavity beneath its snout repeatedly flutters open? Scent-of-Moss sprayed. In one of the previous messages it ingested what appeared to be some form of sustenance through this opening.

  Really? Ember-Musk tried to visualize it, but had trouble doing so. It seemed so inefficient. He pointed to the alien's skull with his fore-hands. And what of those two orifices on the sides of its head, wife? The ones flagged by that protruding, rounded flesh?

  I think they may be large pores, she misted. But the scanners still don't detect anything on the scent-track of the message stream, not even an iota of aroma.

  The tiny proboscis seems somewhat primitive, don't you think? Ember-Musk scented. Not what one would expect from a sentient species, let alone a space-faring one.

  Scent-of-Moss inhaled deeply and seemed to consider his observations. Although she was the one who excelled in the natural arts, Ember-Musk, like any good husband, often tossed out ideas, theories that might inspire her. He emitted the balmy scent of a freshly dug, equatorial burrow: Do you remember those animals in the Red Desert, the Barzelian crawlers, the ones that changed the position of their limbs to signal to others of its kind?

  Scent-of-Moss turned around and faced him. Of course! The way the alien moves its two arms, the way it tilts its head. It may be some sophisticated form of motion-communication!

  Play the next holo-segment, wife, he misted.

  * * * *

  —holo-seg 8 of 15 [] shiptime 11:11:45 [] 11/17/2251—

  My wife Carla and I—along with hundreds of other engineers—toiled around the clock on the construction of The Deliverance in New Houston. Work on the ship, work that had stalled for years, gained a new urgency as world events spun out of control.

  Within a year after the Fissure burst open, the Middle East and Europe fell. But by then the rest of the world had marshaled its forces. The American Axis and the Sino-European Alliance called a truce and worked together to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.

  You see, we actually thought we stood a chance.

  [ ... ]

  After the first mushroom cloud dissipated, it looked like we had won. The Reviled had been vaporized. But then we realized that the nuclear firestorm had done nothing to seal the Fissure. Every day at sunset hordes of them poured through, seemingly unaffected by the radiation, drawn to our world by what we could only assume to be some mad, insatiable hunger. On
e night—inevitably, I suppose—a series of nukes failed to detonate, and the Reviled breached the perimeters. It's rumored that military personnel saw them through infrared goggles shifting shape into an ethereal mist that dispersed across the night sky. But more likely they'd activated some highly advanced cloak, we assumed, or perhaps they had a natural camouflaging ability. In any event, within a matter of weeks the Reviled had scattered across the globe and infiltrated every city on every continent. Once they'd penetrated the general populace, the nuclear option was eliminated.

  The Final War had begun.

  * * * *

  At greydawn, Ember-Musk undertook the Holy Ascent to the top of Mount Shanriola, not far from the Grand Glacial Cavern, with forty-eight members of their clan. The eruption of a small volcano a hundred kilovertecs to the west had occluded much of the sky and a steady flow of ash softly drizzled down on them. Not only decipherers, but farmers, rock-sculptors, Council members and healers, naturalists and supernaturalists, walked the well-trod dirt path that snaked up the mountainside. As they climbed the pathway, Ember-Musk looked down into the valley that he and Scent-of-Moss called home. Water-filled craters and patches of berry-blossoming red cacti pockmarked the landscape. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the beauty that surrounded him. Would Scent-of-Moss be able to experience this same wonder in her current state of mind, he thought to himself, the sense of the sacred inspired by these amazing vistas? Or would she only see meteorite impact craters and a valley shaped by millennia of erosion and magma-flow?

  He had pleaded with her to forget about the holoimage, just for a single day, to participate in the Holy Ascent, but she had refused. I don't have time for rituals at this critical juncture in my work, she had scented, especially with the new season fast approaching. Scent-of-Moss feared that with the expected influx of desert travelers and with a large segment of the current population expected to leave on the Desert Walk, a new Council might interfere with her work—or even replace them with different decipherers from among the travelers. He had tried to reassure her of their highly regarded status—they had discovered the encrypted holoimage, after all—but she insisted that they couldn't rest on past laurels.

  Ember-Musk had painted his exoskeleton a deep black to shield himself against the sharp drop in temperature on the snowy mountain peak. The air frosted white from his snout, and he hugged himself tight with his four arms. He tried his best not to exude any acrid fumes of discontent—there was no need to make others aware of the private matters between him and his beloved—but he had to admit that he was becoming impatient with her. Scent-of-Moss had disregarded their prayer sessions and now the Holy Ascent too.

  The female naturalists led their coterie, scoping out the path ahead of them for rockslides, while the men followed close behind, scenting a group prayer for the desert travelers, asking the Gods to deliver them and their bounty safely. Ember-Musk also prayed quietly for both the patience and divine inspiration that might help him assist Scent-of-Moss—indeed, all of his people—with the important work deciphering the aliens’ messages.

  By midday, they reached the summit of Shanriola. As they stood at the edge of an overlook, the ground's steady rumble suddenly grew in intensity. They stepped backward and rooted their center legs. The minor temblor caused rocks to crumble down the side of the cliff, but fortunately the ledge upon which they stood was, like their caverns, made of flexible softstone, which held firm. From here, Ember-Musk stared out at the other side of the mountain. Endless deep-red sand dunes stretched into the far horizon. In the remote distance, he could barely make out other mountains, not unlike Shanriola, that harbored similar oases and verdant valleys populated by other clans. Thousands of vertecs below their position, he spotted an encampment demarcated by brilliant red poles buried in the sand, a caravan of approximately two dozen travelers. The wanderers waited there, immobile, their snouts up in the air. The full moons had shone brightly last night, so the travelers knew that the ritual would take place today at midday. From this distance, Ember-Musk thought, the strangers seemed healthy and—from the opalescent sky-blue they had painted themselves—proud and respectful.

  As we have all sought food and shelter and succor in the kindness of our neighbors, the lead supernaturalist recited, so too shall we provide the same. And may the Gods, in turn, bless us all with such kindnesses. With those words, Ember-Musk lined up side by side with all forty-eight of his clan mates, rear-arms locked together and carapaces puffed. Together, they released the thick, redolent sweet-scent vapors.

  Within a matter of minutes, the travelers began to dismantle their encampment in preparation for joining their new community, an indication that they had picked up the fragrance.

  As always, Ember-Musk found himself deeply moved by the ceremony. It's life-affirming, isn't it? he scented to the adolescent naturalist standing to his left. Producing the sweet-scents is even more gratifying than receiving them after the long Desert Walk.

  They come from the south so I expect they'll carry exotic foods, new paints, interesting new technologies with them, she responded. But more importantly, they'll bring healthy young travelers with them. Hopefully, I'll find a mate.

  The young girl's exoskeleton was barely hardened, but she spoke with the pragmatism of an adult naturalist. She had totally missed the spiritual beauty of the ritual, Ember-Musk thought. If they're from the south, I have some experience translating their regional scents, he sprayed. And I can work with their decipherers to teach them our language.

  Scenting with this girl reminded Ember-Musk that he and Scent-of-Moss would likely have become parents in the past year, but for the priority they had given to their work over their personal lives. He tried his best to resign himself to this fact. After all, the life-plans of all decipherers had been put on hold by the alien transmissions. And his every instinct told him that the Gods had a greater purpose in mind for them, that these transmissions had some connection to the Prophecies. Once they had children, he and Scent-of-Moss would join a convoy and start the Desert Walk, until they found food and shelter in a hospitable new community, just like these travelers, he thought. Settlement, procreation, and relocation. This had always been the way of their people.

  Even from this distance, Ember-Musk breathed in the gratitude of the blue-painted travelers.

  Scent-of-Moss, he scented, we will have our answers. I just know it.

  * * * *

  When Ember-Musk returned late in the evening to their cavern it appeared that Scent-of-Moss hadn't shifted position from when he'd last seen her at dawn. She seemed to barely pay attention when he scented a detailed account of the Holy Ascent and the blue-painted travelers who had arrived from the south.

  The alien also looked unchanged, he thought, pacing left and right, holding its two spindly arms behind its bent back.

  * * * *

  —holo-seg 9 of 15 [] shiptime 11:11:45 [] 11/18/2251—

  Just when we were about to lose all hope we discovered the Achilles’ heel of the Reviled—the same vulnerabilities, strangely enough, presaged by legend: sunlight, fire, sharp wooden weapons. This gave rise to both hope and hysteria, for most people viewed this as conclusive proof that we were dealing with supernatural forces. Myself, I stayed firmly in the camp of reason. Everything about the Reviled, their origins, their abilities, their weaknesses, had to have a rational explanation. That we didn't understand them yet didn't mean they were somehow exempt from the laws of physics. Plenty of theories certainly abounded. Their vulnerability to sunlight, some hypothesized, meant that their world orbited a star much different from our own, perhaps a neutron star or a brown dwarf. Others theorized that a genetic defect in the Reviled from inbreeding caused them an allergic reaction to the daylight. And most people—among rational thinkers, I mean—believed that a protective energy field of some sort surrounded their supposedly ‘invulnerable’ skin. The fact that sharp wood could penetrate this field while bullets, knives and other objects failed to do so, suggested that trees were
alien to their universe. Of course, we had no evidence yet to support any of these theories, but the alternative ... No, I couldn't accept the alternative.

  Many people tried using crucifixes and other religious artifacts ranging from Stars of David to Buddha statues as weapons and shields, to no avail. In hindsight, it seems ridiculous, pathetic. But I can't blame them. You have to understand, we were beyond desperate.

  Eventually, the military deployed the warbots—equine-shaped, low-level AI devices fitted with an assortment of weapons: napalm flamethrowers, sunlight-simulating highbeams, wooden scythes capable of slicing off heads like tree branches. A protective warbot monitored every city block at all times.

  But we were no longer safe in open-aired metropolises where the Reviled could materialize at any moment during the night. We constructed domes over small communities, then eventually over entire cities and, once enclosed, found that the Reviled were powerless to enter without an explicit invitation. Massive sun simulators kept the cities lit at all times. And dedicated truckers and traders traveled during daylight hours between the domed cities—at least those in close enough proximity to reach before nightfall—transporting and exchanging goods. In this way, secured in our vaulted metropolises, we reached a stalemate of sorts; we held the Reviled at bay for years.

  But stragglers and nomadic tribes and others who had refused the sanctuary of the domed cities—or who had simply been unable to reach them in time—slowly fell prey to the Reviled.

  And all the while, the hordes continued to pour through the Fissure.

  * * * *

  Scent-of-Moss carried Ember-Musk in her fore-arms as she waded into the volcanically heated spring baths. From here, deep in the valley, they could see the row of orange-shaded moons begin their slow ascent through the clouds and over the snow-covered peaks of Shanriola. Several other couples downstream from them also luxuriated in the baths. Their children—still smooth-skinned and translucent and lacking fully formed exoskeletons—scampered in the sand, digging burrows with their rear-arms.