***
“Who is it I’m protecting you from, Karik?” she asked him when her next twelve-hour shift came around. She was edgy and ill-rested. Though she had no memory of the bad dreams she had experienced in 406, she still felt beaten up by whatever they had been.
“First, you must protect me from yourself,” Karik told her.
“How’s that?”
“I am certain you were instructed not to question any of us about what our function here is.”
Her gaze grew hot, her jaw shifting. “Kind of hard to do my job when I don’t really know what that job entails. Who the enemy is. Isn’t that the most basic information a soldier needs?”
“You would do better to address that question to your superiors than to me. But if they have been vague with you about the form of the potential threat, it is because we have been vague with them about the form of the potential threat. And that is because we ourselves do not know exactly how, if it comes, that threat might take form. That is all I can tell you.”
“That doesn’t tell me a goddamned thing.”
“I am sincerely sorry.”
“Whatever you say.” Sulkily she went to the VT and activated it, plopped down in the chair she favored and zipped through channels. She came to a porn channel, and stopped there to watch. Appearing three-dimensional in the vidtank, a Tikkihotto male—human in appearance except for the clear ocular tendrils that swarmed from his eye sockets—was thrusting into an Asian mutant with an additional pair of arms and legs, all eight of her limbs wrapped spider-like around him. The Tikkihotto’s eye tendrils crept into the woman’s mouth, nostrils, and ears in fervent exploration.
“This filth offends me!” Karik blurted, whipping away. “As you knew it would. Why are you being childish, corporal?”
Sia shut the VT off, jumped to her feet, took Karik’s arm and forced him to face her. When he turned, he saw her removing her chest armor.
“What are you doing?”
Next she unfastened the top of her fatigues, and tossed that to the floor beside the armor. Beneath that she wore a black sleeveless undershirt. “I told you my name is Sia. Are you afraid to call a woman by her first name? A little too intimate for you Kalian guys?”
“You do not understand me. I do not see women as inferior, as many of my brothers do. But I have a devotion … I am a priest, of sorts.”
“I thought you told me my skin is beautiful, Karik.”
“It is,” he said, looking down at her body as if he couldn’t resist the struggle to do otherwise.
She peeled the undershirt up over her head, and now from the belt up wore only a sports bra. “Then why don’t you touch my skin?”
“I cannot,” the Kalian murmured.
“I’m telling you, you can.” She reached out and took hold of his hand. “I want you to,” she said huskily. And she pressed his palm to her bared midriff, just above the five-pointed star outlining her navel. He could have pulled his hand away, but he didn’t.
They drew closer, and now both his hands were on her … sliding, roaming, around to her back, meeting and diverging in different directions again.
She kissed his neck, and drew in a deep inhalation of his gray skin, which smelled warmly of the spices he ate. She unfastened the high collar of his tunic, and peeled it apart.
“Please,” he said, but she didn’t know if that meant please stop, or please do this. And he whispered, “Sia,” sounding just like the ghostly voice that had traveled around the rotunda in her dream of him.
She saw that his chest was densely tattooed with rows of black characters, just like his arms. She bent to his breastbone and kissed these lines of ink. Her lips trailing across his quivering skin, she took a black nipple into her mouth while he in turn slipped his hands up under her bra to cup her breasts.
Sia pulled back from him a little to remove his tunic completely, and help him step out of his trousers. She found that his entire body from the neck down was covered with alien words. As if in resignation, he spread his arms outward like those of a human star.
“You must not tell anyone about this,” he said. “Not your people … not mine. No one was to have seen these lines. No one was to touch them. To risk compromising their power, I must be mad. I am too weak.…”
“I don’t understand a thing you’re saying,” Sia said, unbuckling her belt. “Just shut up and get in the bed.”
***
She awoke before him, and glanced nervously at the time, afraid that Private Birkett would come to relieve her while she still lay in bed with the Kalian. She saw that she still had a couple of hours before Birkett came. She slid out from under Karik’s tattooed arm as lightly as she could. He moaned, but didn’t awaken. She got back into her uniform and armor.
She put on the VT again, but with the volume muted. Instead of a porn channel, she opted for a Punktown news station.
What she found being broadcast there was all the more disturbing for having no audio to give it context.
It was apparently a live feed, the camerawork jerky, though whether it was being supplied by a news crew or just some eyewitness on the street, Sia didn’t know. And she didn’t know what she was seeing.
It was some kind of structure, looming taller than the other buildings in its immediate vicinity. In fact, it was literally surrounded by a ring of identical apartment towers, and Sia realized she recognized them—though Punktown was an immense city and she had never seen all it had to offer, despite having dwelt there all her life. This apartment complex was called the Octoplex. Several times she had even visited a friend in one of its eight apartment blocks, some years ago. Back then, there had been no central structure like the one she was seeing now.
It was entirely black, and it conveyed the impression of being a baroque and complex cathedral. But a cathedral that moved … that throbbed, and undulated, like something organic and rubbery.
She sat forward in her chair, and gawked in disbelief as a part of the black cathedral like a slender tower or minaret, with an entwined design, unbraided itself and revealed itself to be a nest of wildly whipping black tentacles.
The cathedral seemed to edge forward a bit, toward the camera, and Sia noticed then that the whole soaring form appeared to be supported on a base of thick, root-like growths. Did it crawl on those? As the black cathedral shifted, its bulk pressed against one of the towers of the Octoplex. The building toppled into the street, where it seemed to explode into a billowing cloud, which rose up as if to veil the monstrosity from Sia’s eyes before it could stain her sanity.
“Turn it off,” a voice commanded behind her.
Sia jolted, startled, and twisted around in her chair to see Karik sitting up in bed, the VT glow reflected in his black eyes.
“Turn it off!” he repeated. “Before it sees us watching it.”
“Sees us?” Sia didn’t understand, but she touched the VT’s remote and shut it off as he had demanded. She had never heard the soft-spoken Karik speak with such force and intensity.
“It has begun,” he muttered, looking away. “As we feared. I had hoped it might only be cultists hunting for us, seeking to eliminate us as a threat. This is so much worse.” He swung his legs out from under the blanket and stood.
Sia was shaking all over now. “I’ve been inside that thing … in a dream. You were in it, too. You know what I’m talking about. So what the dung is it?”
Slowly, Karik faced her again. After a moment of hesitation, he said, “It is one incarnation of the Kalian deity, Ugghiutu. God and demon. Creator and destroyer. In the holy text the Fizala, Ugghiutu appears to humans as a temple erected to his own worship … into which they are enticed as sacrifices, willing or unwilling.”
“That … that’s your god? Here in Punktown? And my government knew this could possibly happen?”
“The governing body of Paxton was notified by Kalian opponents of the fundamentalist Cult of Ugghiutu that efforts were underway to attempt a summoning, somewhere in this colony. T
o conjure Ugghiutu here to do what he does: consume … destroy. Then give forth new life. But new life that would only bring about yet more destruction, in a never-ending cycle.”
“And you … the Nine … you’re the opponents.”
“We are an instrument of those who oppose the summoning of Ugghiutu onto our plane. We have devoted our lives to keeping Ugghiutu from infiltrating the Prime Dimension.”
“So, are you Nine going to be able to stop that thing?”
Karik was getting back into his clothing as he spoke. “If it is possible. If it is not already too late.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Spells from the Fizala are what brought him here. There is another book that we hope will send him back, and seal the breach between planes.” Karik groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. The bullet-like headache again.
“How much of a threat is that thing?”
“More than you can imagine, Sia. Soon Punktown might consist wholly of this manifestation of Ugghiutu. But for now, we ourselves are safer in here, in Die Glocke, than anywhere out there in the city.”
“Why is that?”
“The rounded shape of this building. Ugghiutu and his brethren Outsiders move best through angles, not curves. It will be harder to perceive us in here. Harder for them to reach through, and try to stop us before we can act. And the building being suspended in the air, buffered with water … these factors too may help keep us shielded from their awareness, until we can strike. But you must not view this entity on the vidtank … or any other entities that might manifest themselves. It opens a means of them viewing us, in turn.”
“How could that be?”
“Just believe me. We should have thought to advise your people on such a possibility earlier.”
The door to room 404 buzzed, and a voice came over the speaker. “Karik.”
“Enter,” he said.
The door slid back to reveal a group crowding the hallway beyond. They were a mix of Colonial Forcers carrying their Sturms, and Kalians in metallic gold garments like Karik’s. The foremost of the latter was a middle-aged woman with her black hair hanging free, threaded with silver. “It is time to read the book,” she announced.
“I have seen,” Karik replied.
A burst of sound behind Sia caused her to spin around, reaching for her sidearm. The VT had come on by itself, the vidtank filled with static, the volume full blast with hissing/crackling. Were those vague dark figures moving behind the veil of snow?
Furthermore, the various vidscreen panels along the walls had awakened like windows that had been abruptly flung open by unseen hands. At first Sia thought it must be night outside, but then she remembered it was still day outside. It was the bubble of water around Die Glocke: it had gone completely black, as if it had changed to ink. Luminous red shapes floated here and there through the ink, and those that drew near to the vidscreens revealed themselves to be creatures like fleas the size of a dog, glowing crimson, their many legs paddling in a blur.
“Ugghiutu knows we are here,” the gray-skinned woman who had addressed Karik stated. “He has already seen us, through his familiars. We must move quickly.”
***
The topmost floor of Die Glocke hotel contained an indoor pool, which could be closed to create more floor space for functions such as conventions. Such was the case now. The ceiling above them was a high dome; the interior of the brassy orb’s upper curve. Sia was, of course, reminded of that other dome from her dream.
All six business-suited government agents were in attendance, and ten Colonial Forcers held a perimeter around the sizable room. The other ten guarded the rest of the hotel. Sia was one of those providing security for whatever ritual was about to take place. She found it hard to fathom that her own people, let alone the Kalians, believed magic was the answer to the threat that had torn its way into the Prime Dimension. She herself was not religious, not even spiritual, had faith only in the solid killing machine she held ready in her fists.
Eight of the Kalians had disrobed and formed a circle, facing inward, none of them exhibiting any self-consciousness now. Young men, older men, young women, one very elderly woman, and even a male child of perhaps twelve. What they all shared in common was that their bodies were covered in a black mesh of Kalian calligraphy. Only one of the Nine did not undress, and stood at the center of the circle in his gold-colored outfit. Sia overheard others refer to this man as the Reader.
As one, the eight Kalians arranged around the Reader spread their arms wide. They were ready. All the observers held their tongues. Held their breath. They saw the Reader open his mouth to speak.
A massive thump caused the room to tremble, and ring deeply like the inside of a great bell. The military team forming a second circle around the Nine looked about sharply, fingers poised on triggers. Somewhere, there was a long, creaking squeal of stressed metal.
But the Reader straightened up taller with resolve, and began reading. That was when Sia realized what she was seeing. What Karik and the other eight in the circle were.
They were a book.
The Reader was facing the twelve-year-old, reciting in a resounding voice full of authority and strength. Yet Sia understood he wasn’t reciting from memory, but reading words inscribed across the boy’s bony chest. He had apparently only read a single short line, however, when he shuffled a few steps as if rotating on a fixed axis, to face the elderly woman standing to the right of the boy. Even as the Reader stopped pivoting and faced her, the old woman had turned away from him, so that the next lines he read were tattooed across her back.
He continued shuffling around, revolving to the right and further to the right and then to the left, clockwise and clockwise then counterclockwise … then clockwise again, and so on, like the combination of a safe being dialed. Sia was amazed that he could remember all these movements. More amazing was that each of the eight nude figures encircling him had all learned their own precise movements, also revolving this way and that, so that the Reader could follow a line of text from this person’s arm to that person’s hip, from this person’s thigh to that person’s buttocks … maybe only getting several words from a young woman’s narrow leg, but a long line from a beefy man’s chest. All of the Nine moving constantly, turning like intricately meshed gears in one beautifully articulated machine.
Sia stood behind Karik, and whenever he rotated to face in her direction she searched his face, but if his obsidian eyes registered her she couldn’t tell. He seemed either fully entranced, or simply so intent on the memorized movements of the strange dance that his focus precluded all else.
The Reader’s chanting voice seemed to grow even louder, stronger, and more rapid, the alien words reverberating off the concave ceiling. Meanwhile, Sia could now hear the sirens of police vehicles beyond the thick metal wall … and deep, dull thuds like distant explosions.
The Reader was almost feverish now, his black eyeballs wide and wild, spittle flying from his lips. He turned faster, faster, and so did all the others gears in the organic machine. They were working toward a crescendo. The whole display was making Sia dizzy, almost nauseous, and her own headache was returning. She realized that she was shivering. No … vibrating. The air was vibrating.
The room rumbled, shuddered violently. Another screech of tormented metal.
Beyond that, and beyond the chanting, Sia also detected a kind of scratching or skittering sound against the outside of the dome. Like the Reader’s voice, it too intensified by the moment. Then, with a flicker, a single huge vidscreen that encircled the entire room in a band came on. What it showed was that same inky blackness, populated by so many of those monstrous fleas—thousands—that their combined red glow shone on the glossy floor. The creatures were massed thickly against the dome, staring inside, clawing at the exterior of the brass orb with their blurring legs.
The room—the entire hotel—lurched. The floor was left tilted at a slight angle.
Through the chanting,
the scratching, the quaking, Sia heard the soldier on her left cry out, “The supports!”
The Reader shouted the last word he read from the living book; shouted it at the top of his lungs. Amplified by the rotunda, it sounded like a detonation. And when he went silent, the echo of the final word still ringing in the air metallically, the eight Kalians surrounding him were all facing outward, whereas at the start they had been facing in.
This left Karik facing Sia directly, and at last his eyes met hers with recognition, as if he had just woken from a dream. He smiled at her. It was a very subtle smile, with his full lips pressed together, but a smile nevertheless.
The vidscreen, with its view of the contaminated aquarium bubble, went dead, cutting off the blood-red bioluminescence. And then from somewhere outside Die Glocke, somewhere in the city of Punktown, there was a tremendous howl … or wail … or roar … though there really was no word to describe it in terms of sounds known to the human ear.
“Oh my God,” Sia said, in awe of the cry … in awe of the fury and agony it seemed to convey. Her gaze still locked with Karik’s, though neither of them now was smiling, she let her Sturm hang by its strap to clamp both hands over her ears.
As the monstrous cry finally tapered away and faded, with wavering reverberations as if the sound were falling away down a bottomless pit, there followed a great crack like a cannon blast—much closer at hand.
Die Glocke, sheared away from the two connecting passageways that had upheld it, plummeted like a cannonball itself toward the pavement so many floors below.
***
Sia regained consciousness as if jarred from a nightmare, gasping as she emerged from vague visions of a city that was composed entirely of one enormous ebony building. A building writhing and alive … sentient. A crawling city that meant to grow and spread across the whole of the globe.
She was greeted by a cacophony of agonized screams, approaching sirens, and the chatter of automatic gunfire. Lifting her head, she saw that Die Glocke Hotel lay on its side, the floor slanting up beside her like a wall. The closed swimming pool had split open; she lay in its shallow water, cupped in the rotunda’s curved wall. A whole section of the actual wall of the hotel’s top level had broken away, like the shell of a giant brass egg. She could see the city out there, and several of the other members of Operation Wunderwaffe who had survived the fall.
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