Song of Scarabaeus

by Sara Creasy

  Kristos was already following him.

  “Wait!”

  Edie reacted instinctively to Finn’s shout, dropping to her knees and grabbing for Kristos’s jacket as he went over the edge, but she missed. She peered over the boulder. Kristos had landed in the spongy patch of dark undergrowth. It was littered with what looked like crushed and broken exoskeletons.

  “My boots are stuck!” he called out.

  “Grab my hand.” She reached down as far as she could. Preoccupied with pulling his feet out of the sticky bed, Kristos didn’t look up.

  The ground shifted again, forcing Finn to back up against the ferny vegetation of the jungle. Kristos lost his balance and landed on his backside.

  A long thick pad snapped across Kristos’s body, then two more. They curled in on him like fingers closing into a fist. Edie realized they had unfurled from the edges of the marshy area where Kristos was stuck. The fingers twisted from the base like a corkscrew, tightening into a massive, fleshy tuber that swallowed up Kristos’s body with more speed than any plant should have been capable of.

  Finn reacted instantly. Leaping forward, he grabbed the edge of one pad and pulled until it separated from the adjacent one, and plunged his arm inside.

  “Stay there,” he yelled at Edie as she moved to climb down.

  As Finn grappled with the tuber that enclosed Kristos, she noticed a row of pale markings along the edges of the fingers. Photosensitive pits. The tuber, despite looking more plant than animal, had eyespots similar to those of primitive invertebrates. From their crude structure she guessed they could differentiate light from dark and probably even the direction of light rays.

  Finn grabbed his shiv with his free hand, but it had little effect on the fibrous plant. A strangled cry came from within the tuber as the fingers tightened further, and the entire structure slowly twisted and tightened.

  Edie couldn’t just sit there and watch. She slid down the side of the boulder, keeping clear of the corkscrew fist, and joined Finn around the other side. She helped him pull on the fleshy pad to widen the gap he’d made. Finn braced himself against the ground to avoid being pulled inside as the plant inexorably drilled itself into the earth.

  “Got him.” Finn’s jaw clenched with the effort.

  He had a good grip on Kristos’s arm, and yanked hard. Edie caught a handful of Kristos’s collar and did the same. The edges of the tuber’s fingers peeled back to reveal a layer of inward-directed spines on the inside that worked against them, holding Kristos firm, although his shield protected him from being impaled. It sizzled against the spines as it resisted them.

  The tuber had wound itself halfway into the ground, forcing Finn and Edie to their knees as they pulled without making much progress. There was a terrible crunch as bones broke.

  “Kristos! Turn up your shield.”

  His head bobbed against his chest. Edie thought he’d passed out, but then he raised his chin, eyes wide with terror. She yelled at him again, urging him into action. One hand came up and gripped the edge of the tuber, as if he might try to pull himself out, but his weak effort made no difference. His other arm was still trapped.

  Edie reached down the side of Kristos’s hip, now below ground level, and searched blindly for the shield generator on his belt, feeling the tug of the tuber as it sucked at her arm.

  “Stay clear,” Finn shouted, doing his best to keep a hold on Kristos’s arm.

  “We need to crank up his shield.”

  Another crunch as Kristos’s lower body was crushed. He was no longer moving at all.

  “Get back!”

  She ignored Finn, frantically grabbing at Kristos’s belt, her arm sinking up to the elbow. The force of the twisting motion was incredible, and she wasn’t sure her shield could protect her bones for very long. A sudden jerk pitched her forward and her arm slipped deep inside the tuber. She struggled to keep her head free. Pain shot through her arm as it was slowly forced to bend the wrong way at the elbow joint. She could barely gasp a moan of agony.

  Finn released Kristos, who disappeared into the clutches of the tuber. His strong hands closed around her shoulder and he tried to lever her arm free.

  “You have to grab Kristos,” she gasped. “It’s crushing him. Grab him!”

  As Finn pulled hard on her arm, Edie cried out—in frustration more than anything. She should have known Finn wouldn’t waste time with someone else when she was in danger. His priority was her life, because her life was his life.

  And her life was in danger now. The tuber was not giving her up. She didn’t know how deep it would drill into the ground, but if it didn’t let go she’d be buried alive.

  The strength of Finn’s body pulling against the plant suddenly deserted her. He stepped back and hauled his rifle into position.

  “Don’t move.”

  He fired twice into what remained of the tuber above ground, angling his aim to avoid hitting Edie.

  The rounds exploded with waterlogged pops, and sap spurted from the tuber. Edie felt an immediate relaxing on the twist of the fingers, and her arm came free. Before Finn had time to object, she plunged both arms back inside, desperate to take advantage of the damage that had been done to the corkscrew. It must rely on water pressure to maintain turgidity, because as the sap leaked out its grip grew weaker and weaker.

  She felt Kristos’s limp body and grabbed handfuls of his clothing. The lack of resistance as she touched him told her his shield had burned out under the pressure. The tuber fingers wilted and she was able to pull him halfway out.

  “Finn, help me.”

  Finn stared into the jungle, his rifle slung, and Edie followed his gaze. There was a ripple within the ferns. The tangled mass of vegetation coiled itself up, as though waiting to strike.

  Then it pounced. Not an animal, surely, though it moved like one. The tip leapt out like a whiptail, striking a blow to Finn’s shoulder, hard enough to make him stagger. His shield sizzled and absorbed most of the impact, but the reedy stalk, as thick as his arm, held fast around his neck. Its inertia dragged him to his knees. The shield kept the pressure off his windpipe, and he was able to twist and fire into the thing with his spur.

  Edie fired into the undergrowth an instant later. The whiptail retracted quickly, thumping along the ground like a wounded snake.

  A squeal came from the undergrowth. All around them the jungle rustled. Edie cranked up her shield a notch, seeing Finn do the same. He made a quick turn, full-circle, warily taking in their surrounds. They were cocooned on all sides, and above, by the close jungle, with no room to run and nowhere to hide.

  The tuber that imprisoned Kristos sank to the ground like a deflated balloon.

  “We have to get him out,” she said.

  Finn nodded and took a step toward her.

  Something hit the side of Edie’s head and she yelped. The sensation was muted by the shield, but it still felt like she’d been punched. More whiptail attacks on Finn came in quick succession, from all directions, leaving him whirling in confusion. They bounced off his shield and he held his fire. Edie leapt to help, pulling up when one more fell short, the tip landing a meter from her boots. It writhed on the ground, possibly injured by Finn’s first shot.

  “Stay close,” Finn said as she went to his side. “Stay low. And stay calm.”

  She nodded, crouched, spur at the ready, peering into the living jungle. For a tense minute, nothing happened.

  “What the hell is this stuff?” Finn said.

  “I don’t know.” She just wanted to get to back to Kristos.

  “Come on, you must’ve seen a lot of weird shit in your time.”

  “Not like this.”

  She’d never seen anything like it. A half-meter-wide flattened reed anchored the creature or plant, or whatever it was, within the vegetation mass. At the other end its tapered tip folded and twisted in on itself like origami. More than anything the tip resembled a locust, as long as Edie’s leg. She caught glimpses of moist, speckled pink
flesh within the squirming folds.

  Her heart pounded, and that wasn’t good for Finn. She took deep breaths and concentrated on looking out for the next attack. Were these things harmless or not? They couldn’t penetrate the shields, but prolonged physical battering would drain the batteries as the shields wasted energy dispersing the impact. With shields down, they’d be exposed to the cyphviruses that permeated the planet.

  Which was already Kristos’s fate, if he was still alive.

  Behind her, Finn continued turning a slow circle. What terrified Edie more than the whiptails was the way the jungle moved around them, shifting and heaving like a leviathan waking from slumber. To get out of this place they were going to have to go through that.

  Two more whiptails lashed out, one catching Finn’s leg and almost tripping him up. He fired in the general direction of its anchor, but the vegetation was too thick and tangled to accurately judge where they were coming from.

  Edie grabbed a stick and prodded the half-dead fleshy thing near her feet. It reacted instantly, coiling around the stick, holding it fast. Then it let go. It had either died or decided the piece of debris wasn’t worth its time.

  And then the jungle seemed to inhale, and she held her breath with it. She heard only silence, but felt the pulse of the jungle beating. Faster.

  Finn sensed it, too. He shifted uneasily. “What the hell…?”

  A quick, violent quake shuddered across the landscape. It wasn’t the ground that moved but the things around them, vibrating as one beast. Again the whiptails shot out, but this time a dozen or more at once, in a coordinated circle from every direction. Finn pushed Edie to the ground and covered her with his body as the heavy tips battered him. One caught his wrist and he snaked it free. She felt him fumble for his rifle, and as soon as the whiptails withdrew he rolled onto his back and opened fire in a wide arc into the undergrowth.

  The foliage exploded, disintegrating amid hissing steam. Edie covered her head as fronds and branches tumbled to the ground. Higher up, the vines scrabbled for a hold, thrashing about as their scaffolding was cut out from beneath them. Those that broke and fell landed on Finn and Edie, bouncing off their shields in a patter of sizzles and pops.

  The air smoldered. Unseen creatures shrieked and scurried.

  Finn shouldered the rifle and surveyed his handiwork.

  Edie gasped in the scorched air, cranking up the filters on her shield. “Must’ve been the flash bomb. We were fine until that went off. Some sort of defensive mechanism kicked in.”

  Thick vines squirmed around them, unraveling, creeping in from every direction, reaching with seeking, trembling tendrils. The area was fast becoming a choking, tangled web and soon it would be impossible to move through it at all.

  An alarm sounded on Finn’s shield. He checked the monitor on his belt and threw Edie a worried look.

  “Must’ve been damaged. Thirty minutes left. How much on those battery packs you salvaged?”

  “A few hours, all up, but its leaking just like you said. Mine too—it’s reading five hours left.” They weren’t going to make it. “We have to get back to the clearing. To the BRAT. Maybe I can recharge our shields from its power source.”

  Finn slapped a fresh clip into the rifle and nodded curtly. “This way.”

  He grasped her hand and pulled her along at a half-crouch, back toward the boulder, ducking a new wave of whiptails that flayed their shields. They approached the collapsed tuber that encased Kristos. Cocooned in a tight mass of vines, all that remained was a desiccated husk, its surface gray and cracked.

  “I need to check…”

  He was dead, she already knew it, but she needed confirmation. Something stuck out between the twisted fingers of the tuber: Kristos’s hand, clutching at nothing. If he’d kept his shield higher, if the jungle hadn’t attacked them, if they’d managed to pull him out…But he was dead, and if she and Finn didn’t get to safety before the jungle overwhelmed them or their shields ran out of power, they’d end up the same way.

  They climbed up the sheer face of the boulder, easier now than it would have been ten minutes ago because the jungle had descended and there were low-hanging branches to haul themselves up with. On the other side, confronted by shifting tentacles of foliage that latched onto their limbs and whipped across their faces, they made a dash for the clearing, retracing their steps even as the path was obliterated. It was only fifty meters or so, but they fought the jungle every step of the way.

  When they finally broke free of the dense vegetation and emerged into the swamp clearing, things weren’t much better. Shadows shifted and wavered in the half-light and the same whiptail reeds snapped and withdrew, over and again, wherever they moved. Above them, the tunnel they’d made through the canopy had closed over as though it had never been there, and the jungle pressed down. The living cave was collapsing.

  They fired when they had to, when the whiptails grabbed them or blocked their path, but it seemed that each shot only amped up the jungle’s violent reaction. As the writhing vegetation edged closer, they were forced toward the center of the clearing, into the shallow swamp. Every nerve-racking step through the mud could lead them into another trap like the predatory tuber that had taken Kristos, or some other unknown danger.

  “Need a damn flamethrower,” Finn muttered, checking his ammo. “Can you get us inside that thing?”

  The BRAT lay ominously silent a few meters away.

  CHAPTER 26

  There’s always a way in.

  Bethany’s presence flooded the datastream that flowed through Edie’s mind. So many years since she’d jacked into Bethany’s coding. The familiar sonnets brought a wave of pleasure. The way Bethany riveted her tiers together with glyphs, using the actual glyph as a bridging subroutine instead of a simple marker. The way she wedged extra commands into empty layers to create a more compact and efficient program—more efficient for the biocyph, a nightmare for the cypherteck trying to tease the strands apart, but Edie was used to it. Edie had adapted the technique, improved it, used it herself for years.

  Bethany’s frank, confident, innovative personality was written into the code.

  Finn stood guard beside Edie, gritting his teeth, wary of every movement of the jungle around them. From the way he rubbed the back of his neck, he was equally aware of her heightened mental state that messed with his head. They had made it across the swamp to the BRAT, dodging flailing whiptails and vines, so she could jack in. They’d emptied their spurs in the process and discarded them.

  Behind them lay Zeke. Edie avoided looking at him.

  The first priority was to get inside the BRAT casing, which would provide physical protection against the attacks. Then they could figure out how to recharge the shields and brace themselves for the long trek out of the megabiosis.

  To get in, Edie needed to convince the BRAT to open up. She’d used the Crib’s emergency codes to get past its security barricade, leaving it open to surface-level reprogramming. Now she had to decide the best way to proceed without annoying it to the point that it threw her out of the link.

  She’d drained half of her remaining shield power into Finn’s damaged shield, but his was draining fast as he kept the jungle at bay with the occasional rifle blast. He asked after her progress only once, and she answered him with a scowl. He kept quiet after that.

  Crouched low, Edie leaned against the BRAT, fingers pressed into its single dataport.

  Bethany’s coding had never been the harmonies that Edie could create. No one else could do that. Bethany’s sonnets were fragments of music, without melody but always melodious, like sultry wind chimes dangling in a light breeze. Endless variations on a theme. Edie could lose herself in there, in the familiar cadences, in the memories. She filed through the datastream looking for the layers she needed to work with.

  The softlink physically connected her to the biocyph within the BRAT, but it was a tenuous link. It relied on the BRAT giving up its data to her, usually something it was m
ore than willing to do—biocyph relied on external stimuli to function, and was primed to respond to cyphertecks. But this biocyph didn’t want to let her in. It had built security blockades throughout the tiers, making them difficult to de-merge, as though seven years of playing the same tune had imprinted an irreversible habit upon it.

  But it wasn’t the same tune, Edie saw that now. A BRAT seed’s instructions were to transform an alien ecology into a Terran-like environment. To use the genomes available within the existing web of life, to make simultaneous changes from the microbe level up, in every metabolic pathway in every living thing through every level of the food chain, to create ocean, soil, atmosphere, and biosphere where humans could thrive. But after a year of dormancy brought on by Edie’s kill-code that had spread from another BRAT on a faraway island, from the moment the BRATs on Scarabaeus had managed to reactivate, their instructions had changed.