The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction

by Ashley, Mike;

  Somewhere, hidden, the Lords of Propriety – umbilicus-joined with delight shocks spurting softly pink along the flesh-linkage joining them – began their renewed gluttonous feeding.

  4

  Bailey was whirled out of the Montagasque subaltern’s body. His soul went shooting away on an asymptotic curve, back along the feeder-lines, to the soul files of the Succubus.

  5

  This is what it was like to be in the soul station. Round. Weighted with the scent of grass. Perilous in that the music was dynamically contracting: souls had occasionally become too enriched and had gone flat and flaccid.

  There was a great deal of white space.

  Nothing was ranked, therefore nothing could be found in the same place twice; yet it didn’t matter, for the Succubus had only to focus his lens and the item trembled into a special awareness.

  Bailey spent perhaps twelve minutes reliving himself as a collapsing star then revolved his interfaces and masturbated as Anne Boleyn.

  He savored mint where it smells most poignant, from deep in the shallow earth through the roots of the plant, then extended himself, extruded himself through an ice crystal and lit the far massif of the highest mountain on an onyx asteroid – recreating The Last Supper in chiaroscuro.

  He burned for seventeen hundred years as the illuminated letter “B” on the first stanza of a forbidden enchantment in a papyrus volume used to summon up the imp James Fenimore Cooper then stood outside himself and considered his eyes and their hundred thousand bee-facets.

  He allowed himself to be born from the womb of a tree sloth and flickered into rain that deluged a planet of coal for ten thousand years. And he beamed. And he sorrowed.

  Bailey, all Bailey, soul once more, free as all the universes, threw himself toward the furthermost edge of the slightly flattened parabola that soared free as infinite, limitless dark.

  He filled the dark with deeper darkness and bathed in fountains of brown wildflowers. Circles of coruscating violet streamed from his fingertips, from the tip of his nose, from his genitals, from the tiniest fibrilating fibers of hair that coated him. He shed water and hummed.

  Then the Succubus drew him beneath the lens.

  And Bailey was sent out once more.

  Waste not, want not.

  6

  He was just under a foot tall. He was covered with blue fur. He had a ring of eyes that circled his head. He had eight legs. He smelled of fish. He was low to the ground and he moved very fast.

  He was a stalker-cat, and he was first off the survey ship on Belial. The others followed, but not too soon. They always waited for the cat to do its work. It was safer that way. The Filonii had found that out in ten thousand years of exploring their universe. The cats did the first work, then the Filonii did theirs. It was the best way to rule a universe.

  Belial was a forest world. Covered in long continents that ran from pole-to-pole with feathertop trees, it was ripe for discovery.

  Bailey looked out of his thirty eyes, seeing around himself in a full 360° spectrum. Seeing all the way up into the ultraviolet, seeing all the way down into the infra-red. The forest was silent. Absolutely no sound. Bailey, the cat, would have heard a sound, had there been a sound. But there was no sound.

  No birds, no insects, no animals, not even the whispering of the feathertop trees as they struggled toward the bright hot-white sun. It was incredibly silent.

  Bailey said so.

  The Filonii went to a condition red.

  No world is silent. And a forest world is always noisy. But this one was silent.

  They were out there, waiting. Watching the great ship and the small stalker-cat that had emerged from it.

  Who they were, the cat and the Filonii did not know. But they were there, and they were waiting for the invaders to make the first move. The stalker-cat glided forward.

  Bailey felt presences. Deep in the forest, deeper than he knew he could prowl with impunity. They were in there, watching him as he moved forward. But he was a cat, and if he was to get his fish, he would work. The Filonii were watching. Them, in there, back in the trees, they were watching. It’s a bad life, he thought. The life of a cat is a nasty, dirty, bad one.

  Bailey was not the first cat ever to have thought that thought. It was the litany of the stalker-cats. They knew their place, had always known it, but that was the way it was; it was the way it had always been. The Filonii ruled, and the cats worked. And the universe became theirs.

  Yet it wasn’t shared. It was the Filonii universe, and the stalker-cats were hired help.

  The fine mesh cap that covered the top and back of the cat’s head glowed with a faint but discernible halo. The sunbeams through which he passed caught at the gold filaments of the cap and sent sparkling radiations back toward the ship. The ship stood in the center of the blasted area it had cleared for its prime base.

  Inside the ship, the team of Filonii ecologists sat in front of the many process screens and saw through the eyes of the stalker-cat. They murmured to one another as first one, then another, then another saw something of interest. “Cat, lad,” one of them said softly, “still no sound?”

  “Nothing yet, Brewer. But I can feel them watching.”

  One of the other ecologists leaned forward. The entire wall behind the hundred screens was a pulsing membrane. Speak into it at any point and the cat’s helmet picked up the voice, carried it to the stalker. “Tell me, lad, what does it feel like?”

  “I’m not quite sure, Kicker. I’m getting it mixed. It feels like the eyes staring . . . and wood . . . and sap . . . and yet there’s mobility. It can’t be the trees.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “As best I can tell right now, Kicker. I’m going to go into the forest and see.”

  “Good luck, lad.”

  “Thank you, Driver. How is your goiter?”

  “I’m fine, lad. Take care.”

  The stalker-cat padded carefully to the edge of the forest. Sunlight slanted through the feathertops into the gloom. It was cool and dim inside there.

  Now, all eyes were upon him.

  The first paw in met springy, faintly moist and cool earth. The fallen feathers had turned to mulch. It smelled like cinnamon. Not overpoweringly so, just pleasantly so. He went in . . . all the way. The last the Filonii saw on their perimeter screens – twenty of the hundred – were his tails switching back and forth. Then the tails were gone and the seventy screens showed them dim, strangely-shadowed pathways between the giant conifers.

  “Cat, lad, can you draw any conclusions from those trails?”

  The stalker padded forward, paused. “Yes. I can draw the conclusion they aren’t trails. They go fairly straight for a while, then come to dead ends at the bases of the trees. I’d say they were drag trails, if anything.”

  “What was dragged? Can you tell?”

  “No, not really, Homer. Whatever was dragged, it was thick and fairly smooth. But that’s all I can tell.” He prodded the drag trail with his secondary leg on the left side. In the pad of the paw were tactile sensors.

  The cat proceeded down the drag trail toward the base of the great tree where the trail unaccountably ended. All around him the great conifers rose six hundred feet into the warm, moist air.

  Sipper, in the ship, saw through the cat’s eyes and pointed out things to his fellows. “Some of the qualities of Pseudotsuga Taxifolia, but definitely a conifer. Notice the bark on that one. Typically Eucalyptus Regnans . . . yet notice the soft red spores covering the bark. I’ve never encountered that particular sort of thing before. They seem to be melting down the trees. In fact . . .”

  He was about to say the trees were all covered with the red spores, when the red spores attacked the cat.

  They flowed down the trees, covering the lower bark, each one the size of the cat’s head, and when they touched, they ran together like jelly. When the red jelly from one tree reached the base of the trunk, it fused with the red jelly from the other trees.

 
; “Lad . . .”

  “It’s all right, Kicker. I see them.”

  The cat began to pad backward: slowly, carefully. He could easily outrun the fusing crimson jelly. He moved back toward the verge of the clearing. Charred, empty of life, blasted by the Filonii hackshafts, not even a stump of the great trees above ground, the great circles where the trees had stood now merely reflective surfaces set flush in the ground. Back.

  Backing out of life . . . backing into death.

  The cat paused. What had caused that thought?

  “Cat! Those spores . . . whatever they are . . . they’re forming into a solid . . .”

  Backing out of life . . . backing into death

  my name is

  bailey and i’m in

  here, inside you.

  i was stolen from

  my

  called

  is

  wants

  body

  the

  some

  somewhere, he –

  by

  succubus.

  kind

  there in the stars

  a

  he,

  of

  recruiter from out

  creature

  it

  puppeteer,

  a sort of

  The blood-red spore thing stood fifteen feet high, formless, shapeless, changing, malleable, coming for the cat. The stalker did not move: within him, a battle raged.

  “Cat, lad! Return! Get back!”

  Though the universe belonged to the Filonii, it was only at moments when the loss of a portion of that universe seemed imminent that they realized how important their tools of ownership had become.

  Bailey fought for control of the cat’s mind.

  Centuries of conditioning fought back.

  The spore thing reached the cat and dripped around him. The screens of the Filonii went blood-red, then went blank.

  The shriek of something alive that should not be . . . broken glass, perhaps. The thing that had come from the trees oozed back into the forest, shivered for a moment, vanished, taking the cat with it.

  The cat focused an eye. Then another. In sequence he opened and focused each of his thirty eyes. The place where he lay came into full luster. He was underground. The shapeless walls of the place dripped with sap and several colors of viscous fluid. The fluid dripped down over bark that seemed to have been formed as stalactites, the grain running long and glistening till it tapered into needle tips. The surface on which the cat lay was planed wood, the grain exquisitely formed, running outward from a coral-colored pith in concentric circles of hues that went from coral to dark teak at the outer perimeter.

  The spores had fissioned, were heaped in an alcove. Tunnels ran off in all directions. Huge tunnels twenty feet across.

  The mesh cap was gone.

  The cat got to his feet. Bailey was there, inside, fully awake, conversing with the cat.

  “Am I cut off from the Filonii?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid you are.”

  “Under the trees.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What is that spore thing?”

  “I know, but I’m not sure you’d understand.”

  “I’m a stalker; I’ve spent my life analyzing alien life-forms and alien ecology. I’ll understand.”

  “They’re mobile symbiotes, conjoined with the bark of these trees. Singly, they resemble most closely anemonic anaerobic bacteria, susceptible to dichotomisation; they’re anacusic, anabiotic, anamnestic, and feed almost exclusively on ancyclostomiasis.”

  “Hookworms?”

  “Big hookworms. Very big hookworms.”

  “The drag trails?”

  “That’s what they drag.”

  “But none of that makes any sense. It’s impossible.”

  “So is reincarnation among the Yerbans, but it occurs.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I told you you wouldn’t.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Thank you. There’s more about the spores and the trees, by the way. Perhaps the most important part.”

  “Which is?”

  “Fused, they become a quasi-sentient gestalt. They can communicate, borrowing power from the treehosts.”

  “That’s even more implausible!”

  “Don’t argue with me, argue with the Creator.”

  “First Cause.”

  “Have it your way.”

  “What are you doing in my head?”

  “Trying very hard to get out.”

  “And how would you do that?”

  “Foul up your mission so the Filonii would demand the Succubus replace me. I gather you’re pretty important to them. Rather chickenshit, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t recognize the term.”

  “I’ll put it in sense form.”

  “Oh. You mean • • –.”

  “Yeah. Chickenshit.”

  “Well, that’s the way it’s always been between the Filonii and the stalkers.”

  “You like it that way.”

  “I like my fish.”

  “Your Filonii like to play God, don’t they? Changing this world and that world to suit themselves. Reminds me of a couple of other guys. Lords of Propriety they were called. And the Succubus. Did you ever stop to think how many individuals and races like to play God?”

  “Right now I’d like to get out of here.”

  “Easy enough.”

  “How?”

  “Make friends with the Tszechmae.”

  “The trees or the spores?”

  “Both.”

  “One name for the symbiotic relationship?”

  “They live in harmony.”

  “Except for the hookworms.”

  “No society is perfect. Rule 19.”

  The cat sat back on his haunches, and talked to himself.

  “Make friends with them you say.”

  “Seems like a good idea, doesn’t it?”

  “How would you suggest I do that?”

  “Offer to perform a service for them. Something they can’t do for themselves.”

  “Such as?”

  “How about you’ll get rid of the Filonii for them. Right now that’s the thing most oppressing them.”

  “Get rid of the Filonii.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m harboring a lunatic in my head.”

  “Well, if you’re going to quit before you start . . .”

  “Precisely how – uh, do you have a name?”

  “I told you. Bailey.”

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry. Well, Bailey, precisely how do I rid this planet of a star-spanning vessel weighing somewhere just over thirteen thousand tons, not to mention a full complement of officers and ecologists who have been in the overlord position with my race for more centuries than I can name? I’m conditioned to respect them.”

  “You sure don’t sound as if you respect them.”

  The cat paused. That was true. He felt quite different. He disliked the Filonii intensely. Hated them, in fact; as his kind had hated them for more centuries than he could name.

  “That is peculiar. Do you have any explanation for it?”

  “Well,” said Bailey, humbly, “there is my presence. It may well have broken through all your hereditary conditioning.”

  “You wear smugness badly.”

  “Sorry.”

  The cat continued to think on the possibilities.

  “I wouldn’t take too much longer, if I were you,” Bailey urged him. Then, reconsidering, he added, “As a matter of fact, I am you.”

  “You’re trying to tell me something.”

  “I’m trying to tell you that the gestalt spore grabbed you, to get a line on what was happening with the invaders, but you’ve been sitting here for some time, musing to yourself – which, being instantaneously communicative throughout the many parts of t
he whole, is a concept they can’t grasp – and so it’s getting ready to digest you.”

  The stalker blinked his thirty eyes very rapidly. “The spore thing?”

  “Uh-uh. All the spores eat are the hookworms. The bark’s starting to look at you with considerable interest.”

  “Who do I talk to? Quick!”

  “You’ve decided you don’t respect the Filonii so much, huh?”

  “I thought you said I should hurry!”

  “Just curious.”

  “Who do I talk to!?!”

  “The floor.”

  So the stalker-cat talked to the floor, and they struck a bargain. Rather a lopsided bargain, true; but a bargain nonetheless.

  7

  The hookworm was coming through the tunnel much more rapidly than the cat would have expected. It seemed to be sliding, but even as he watched, it bunched – inchworm-like – and propelled itself forward, following the movement with another slide. The wooden tunnel walls oozed with a noxious smelling moistness as the worm passed. It was moving itself on a slime track of its own secretions.

  It was eight feet across, segmented, a filthy gray in color, and what passed for a face was merely a slash-mouth dripping yellowish mucus, several hundred cilia-like feelers surrounding the slit, and four glaze-covered protuberances in an uneven row above the slit perhaps serving in some inadequate way as “eyes.”

  Like a strange Hansel dropping bread crumbs to mark a trail, the spore things clinging to the cat’s back began to ooze off. First one, then another. The cat backed down the tunnel. The hookworm came on. It dropped its fleshy penis-like head and snuffled at the spore lying in its path. Then the cilia feelers attached themselves and the spore thing was slipped easily into the slash mouth. There was a disgusting wet sound, and the hookworm moved forward again. The same procedure was repeated at the next spore. And the next, and the next. The hookworm followed the stalker through the tunnels.

  Some miles away, the Filonii stared into their screen as a strange procession of red spores formed in the shape of a long thick hawser-like chain emerged from the forest and began to encircle the ship.