by Jeff Stanley
The passage narrowed before Dersi emerged onto a landing protruding out into a wide, vertical shaft that stretched away into darkness. Warm air rose from the depths, smelling of acid and digestion. Down there were the areas of the ool where no Bhajong trespassed, the working flesh of the ool, a mystery. Cilia sprouted from the shaftwalls, flowing with the air currents like a purplish-red carpet of surface grass. A metal stake driven into the tissue of the shaft indicated the throat designation and the landing number.
Dersi ran her hand across the cilia, depressing the tickling fibers. A rumbling sound issued from below her, a bubbling hiss. The walls of the shaft below her landing twisted closed as muscles contracted. She stepped out onto the newly formed mound of flesh and stretched out her arms, trailing her fingers through the cilia.
The gag reflex of the ool throat contracted the musculature surrounding the shaft in an ascending wave that carried Dersi aloft. She kept her hands out at her sides, brushing across the cilia, as she counted the landings she passed, noting the markings on metal poles driven into the tissue. As her landing approached, she withdrew her hands, allowing the cilia to sink into quiescence. The contractions ceased, and Dersi stepped out onto shaped flesh, finding herself in a broad, well-lit tunnel.
A pair of guardsmen armed with acidrods—the products of polyps such as she had been harvesting only a short time ago, Dersi thought with momentary pride—stood at attention on the landing. They saluted her formally, kneeling, as she stepped from the gorgemound. She bid them rise.
“Must you do that every time I pass, Captain Lhedri? Aterin?” She smiled as she rebuked them.
“Protocol, Lady Dersi,” Lhedri replied. He winked at her. “Most Lords stand firm by it.”
“I’m not most Lords, Captain,” she said. “And I’m not overly fond of ceremony.”
“Wish all the Lords thought that way,” Aterin said.
She sighed, wanting to spend a few minutes talking with them, anything to delay her conversation with her father. But duty and obligation called. She promised to send a servant with refreshments and took her leave of the guardsmen.
She continued deeper into the intricate passages. Here there were few pedestrians, mostly servants who bowed or knelt as she passed. She spoke to each, knowing their faces, if not their names.
“Lady Dersi!” came a strong, masculine voice from a side capillary.
Dersi turned to see Lord Meloni approaching and suppressed a scowl. He wore a shallow grin on his pinched face. His thin lips curled up in a leering smile, and his eyes roamed the landscape of her body. She felt a shiver of revulsion as his gaze lingered on her breasts. Only through an effort of will could she stop herself from crossing her arms over her chest.
“Slumming with the commoners again, Lady Dersi?” Meloni asked. His strong fingers pinched a fold of her jumpsuit. He wiped his hand on his own ornate robes. “Really, I don’t know why Lord Huldru allows it.”
Dersi kept a pleasant smile pasted on her face. “I believe my father sees the wisdom in my understanding the routine maintenance of the ool, Lord Meloni.”
His smile faltered, and he bowed at the waist. Even bent over, his gaze climbed from her calves, along her thighs, and onward to her bust. “Of course. The Veil Lord Huldru’s wisdom is without equal.”
“If you’ll excuse me, Lord Meloni. My father has called for me.”
He straightened and his smile broadened. His flat, depthless eyes locked on hers. “Of course, my lady. I await your favorable response.”
Dersi frowned, wondering at his meaning, and watched as he walked away along the corridor. He seemed . . . smug. Self-satisfied. It sent another shiver up her spine.
Dersi pushed the unpleasant thoughts of Meloni away and continued on her way, passing another set of acidrod-armed guardsmen and exchanging pleasantries. She entered the section of the habitable mass of the ool that had been set aside for the Veil Lords. Here more guardsmen clogged the passages and chambers. In a vast hollow space with walls riddled by fat, pulsing veins and arteries, Dersi knelt before a resinous column that rose from the floor and stretched toward the ceiling far above. Thousands of thin tentacles writhed about the column. Fat globules of milky fluid dripped down from gaping orifices that ringed its apex, coating its surface, keeping it moist.
Eyes winked open in the column, and a slit of a mouth parted, spurting discolored fluids that dripped down to the floor.
“Daughter.” The voice echoed, filling the chamber, reverberating. The fat veins and arteries pulsed quicker, in cadence. The massive chamber that was Veil Lord Huldru’s body shivered in recognition of her. Fine, dripping laceries emerged from the ceiling and caressed her face. “Dersi.”
“Father, you summoned me?” Dersi asked, her head bowed.
Chapter 3
“Careful here,” Rian said, taking the stranger’s arm and guiding him around the seething pool of liquid. In the yellowish light of the glow-rod the liquid appeared sickly, unhealthy. The light also drew the boreworms to the surface. Their knobby heads emerged from the water, twisting around, seeking sustenance. “If you fall in there, that’s it. There won’t be enough left of you to put in a sack.”
Despite Rian’s urging, the stranger stopped and squatted beside the pool, staring at the writhing worms. He stretched out a hand over the water. The worms stretched toward the human flesh. Rian thought he saw the stranger smile.
“Don’t do that. You’ll just agitate them, maybe make them swarm. You wouldn’t want that,” said Rian. He tapped the stranger’s shoulder with his sporelance.
Without a word the stranger arose and fell in line, following Rian as he wove a meandering path through pools and trenches filled with boreworms. The drake barked again, closer, and the stranger jerked, glancing behind.
“Don’t worry about that. The drake won’t come in here, and we’re almost there, anyway.” He paused, staring at the man, and tapped his lower lip. He fished into his beltpouch, pulling out a long, thick strand of leather. “Come here. Close your eyes and turn around. I should have done this sooner.”
The man did as Rian bade him, seeming unconcerned. Rian wrapped the leather strip around the man’s head, blocking his vision. “Now, I’m going to walk alongside you, steering you. You’ve got to follow my every step without hesitation. It’s dangerous here, treacherous. The path’s uncertain, and sometimes the pools and trenches expand or contract, changing the path entirely. I’ve got to concentrate on the way, so I can’t spare much attention to you.
“I’d like to get you to the Enclave, but you’re not worth my life. If you put me in any jeopardy, I’ll throw you into the boreworm pools myself. Understood?” He did not wait for a reply, assuming none would be forthcoming.
Midway through the boreworm pools he heard it again: the unmistakable sound of an approaching ool. A shudder ran through him, but he did not hurry. Hurrying here would spell disaster. Besides, the boreworm pools would keep the ool at bay. They were the Enclave’s first line of defense against the Bhajong.
By the time he reached the interior margin of the pools, he could hear the ool’s approach clearly. The normal forest sounds utterly ceased. Even the drake’s barking call stilled. Looking back, Rian could see the pools seething, the worms beginning to swarm. He jerked the blindfold from the stranger’s eyes. Rian hesitated, then sliced the cord binding the stranger’s hands. The creature would be less trouble that way.
“Now, we’d better hurry. I’m as eager to be caught in a boreworm swarm as I am to be sucked up by an ool.” He sheathed his dagger and held the glow-rod in his middle arm, grabbing hold of the stranger’s hand with his left. He pulled him along, breaking into a ragged trot.
They moved through dense forest, the moon and stars blocked by the thick canopy overhead. The hissing buzz of swarming boreworms masked the sounds of their progress, rising to a distracting level that hurt Rian’s ears. Ahead, he could see the obelisk of metal that thrust up from the landskin like an immense thorn. The marker and do
orway to the Enclave.
He swatted at an airborne worm, smashing it to the landskin. It writhed there, seeking his flesh. He stepped on it with his heavy-soled boots. Guts squished out with a noxious stench. More worms buzzed around, borne aloft by the frenzied chemical reaction in their pale bodies, fattened with expanding gases.
Swarm!
He dropped his sporelance, ignored the stranger, and ran his two free hands over the surface of the obelisk, searching for the trigger. Boreworms landed on his shoulder, digging with razored teeth through the thick leather of his harness, seeking flesh. Others alighted in his spiny hair, along his bare arms, and began chewing their way into him. He grit his teeth, ignoring the pain, and continued his search.
By the Father’s Voice! Where was it? Panic robbed him of his memory. He had entered and exited this obelisk his entire life, knew it as he knew the dimensions and décor of his own quarters. But now, in this moment of tension, he could not find the key. He pounded his fist against the smooth metal.
He heard a thin, mewling sound from behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Boreworms covered the stranger. Covered! What skin he could see through the squirming mass of mottled, pale worm-flesh was streaked with bright red blood.
“Open, damn you!” he shouted, beating on the obelisk. “Open!”
And suddenly he beat on thin air, as the doorway opened, and he tumbled inside. Bathed in artificial light, he stared at the twisting fat worms that sprouted from his arms like massive hairs. He flung himself toward the near wall, seizing a long cylinder and directing the spray nozzle on his flesh. Oily foam washed out, bathing him, blanketing the worms. Killing them.
He dashed out into the night, finding the stranger prone, motionless, buried under the boreworms. He doused him with anellidicidal foam, dropped the canister, and seized the stranger beneath his arms. The swarm slammed into him as he dragged the man into the obelisk. He hit the button on the wall that sealed the pillar. The door slammed shut, crushing scores of worms. A hundred others in the tiny room bit into him, chewing.
Rian stumbled toward the other canister in a rack on the wall. He screamed as he felt worms burrowing through leather, skin, crunching bone, slurping blood, devouring organs. He collapsed into the rack, tore a canister free and sprawled out on the metal floor. He pressed the trigger, and suffocating, saving foam washed out, expanding. Keeping the trigger depressed, the foam buried them both, Rian and the stranger.
And then the stranger screamed, once, and grasping black tentacles seized him, pulling him down, down . . .
Memories flooded through him. Memories of warmth. Fluid motion. Tickling caresses.
Currents washed over him, and he swam lazily through them. He touched borders, boundaries, pliant, elastic membranes.
He wiggled digits on the end of longer stalks that grew out from his central trunk. Fingers. Arms. Yes. Fingers, on hands, attached to arms. And arms linked to shoulders, torso, legs, feet, toes. Head, on top. And loins. Oh, yes, loins. Penis, scrotum, testes. Maleness.
He.
Yes, he.
His fingers quested over his body, touching his face. There were features there, sensory organs, he knew, which, in other environments, would serve to feed him input, input for processing and interpreting that environment. Eyes, for vision. Ears for hearing, nose for smelling, tongue for tasting, and skin for touching.
Below, from chest and stomach, knotted cords stretched away from his body. He followed the cords, finding that they disappeared into the membrane overhead. Experimenting, he pinched one of the cords and immediately felt a peculiar sensation in his body. An unpleasant sensation. He released the cord, and the discomfort faded away.
Something emerged from the membrane wall and touched him with countless tiny pressures. Like fingers, only smaller. And moving all across his skin, his flesh, from toes to fingertips. The pressures vanished.
He felt cold seeping into him through the cords. Unpleasant. He tried to move away, but the cords followed him, the cold deepened. He squirmed, hugging his legs to his chest.
Other memories, then. Vague. There and gone before he could grasp them, hold them. He felt a painful absence, as if a part of him, a vital part, had been severed. But he could not remember what, or how. Only . . . He was incomplete.
He floated.
And awakened.
He rose to his bare feet and looked around the cold room. Its surfaces were covered with thick, white, airy stuff. The three-armed thing lay limp on the floor. Red fluid leaked from the breaks in its outer covering.
Skin. Wounds. Blood.
Blood leaked from the wounds in its skin.
He raised his fore appendages—arms—and stared at them. Holes, wounds, spotted his skin. Forty-two wounds, all small, circular, deep. And his . . . skin was covered with the red fluid, blood.
Unpleasant sensations localized in his head and ears, occupying his attention for a moment. He staggered, his legs wobbling. That was not a pleasant sensation. He felt more comfortable when he sank to his knees, into the fluffy stuff. He moved over to the three-armed thing on the floor.
Still, rubbery things on the floor caught his gaze. He picked one up. It flopped across his skin.
Dead.
Dead. It was dead. Ceased. Life functions arrested.
His legs wobbled again. He fell to the cold floor, which was much more comfortable.
Dying.
He frowned. No. That was not acceptable. He looked at the dead thing in his hand. If this was dead, he could not be dead. Dead was unacceptable.
He felt a sudden heat in the center of his chest, radiating outward. It sank into his arms, fingers, legs, toes. The heat rose and washed over his face, covered his chest. And then it receded.
When he looked at his arms the wounds had vanished. Only the . . . blood remained. It flaked off when he touched it with a . . . fingernail, falling into the white fluff.
The three-armed thing was dying, too. That was unacceptable. The three-armed thing had brought him here, had brought him into this cold place, away from the rubbery things that lay dead all around them. Dead was not a good thing for the three-armed thing.
“Hurts,” he said, remembering. “Hurts.” He touched the three-armed thing, and the heat surged, leaped from his body to that of the three-armed thing. He watched as circular wounds sphinctered shut, the skin rebuilt. He spent a moment scraping blood from the three-armed thing with his fingernail, waiting for it to begin life functions again.
Chapter 4
“Dersi.” The voice boomed from the wet slit in the column, echoing throughout the chamber. “Where have you been? I called for you hours ago. And why are you wearing those disgusting workclothes?”
“I’m sorry, Father,” Dersi said. She raised her eyes and shuddered at the sight of him. His Bhajong body was long gone—replaced only by this sickening pillar of oozing ool-flesh. His mouth was split open, a slit in the base of the column, and dripped fluid in a pool at his base. Cilia, sensory organs, squirmed along his entire length, tasting the air, breathing intangible scents, extracting perception from the environment in manners Dersi could not hope to match. Where was her father? Where was Lord Huldru? Gone. Replaced by this . . . thing. This horrible, abominable thing.
Still, she forced a smile. “Father, it was wonderful! I went down into the core with Master Erekel. He showed me—”
“Silence!” boomed her father’s voice.
Dersi shrank back, put her palms to her ears. The ringing pain of his voice sent rippling waves through her body. Her muscles ached, her bones throbbed. She stared at her father, watching as his mouth worked, yawning open and snapping shut, dripping globules of mucus that plopped to the floor. Orifices sphinctered open, sucking down the fluid.
“You’ve soiled your hands with the work of common laborers? You’ve stained your mind with their impure thoughts?” Thousands of tentacles draping from the ceiling shook with a wet, slithery sound.
“I . . . I thought . . . I wanted to se
e what they do,” Dersi said, stumbling on her words.
Her father’s ring of eyes bulged from their wet sockets. Dripping vertical slits opened, sucking in air with a vibratory hiss. “They consume. They propagate. They proliferate. They suck from the bounty of the ool like parasites, giving nothing in return.”
“But I thought . . . The polyps. The boreworms.”
“Enough! I didn’t call you here to discuss such things. You will not sully yourself again. You have duties, responsibilities.”
She felt the heat of anger climb her face. “Then why have you called me here, Father?”
“Lord Meloni has sought my approval for your union. I’ve given it.”
“What? Father! I despise the man! How could you?” She rose and stamped her foot on the floor of polished resin. Cracks snaked out from the impact of her foot. “I won’t do it!”
“You’ll do as you’re told, Dersi!” her father roared, his voice shaking the chamber. The fat veins and arteries shuddered, gorged. Tiny fissures ripped through the cavern wall, spewing hot fluids. “Meloni is of superb genetic stock. Your children will be strong, hastening the day of our ascendance.”
“Children? No,” she said softly. She glared at the ring of eyes on the column. His eyes stared back, oozing, swimming with all the power of a Veil Lord. Beneath that gaze she withered, her knees shaking, her flesh quivering. She fell to her knees on the hard, warm floor. She hung her head, pressed her skin to the slick, smooth surface of polished resin. “Father, please?”
“You are too young to know what is best for you, or for our people. When you have veiled, perhaps you will inherit a measure of wisdom to temper your fire.”
Lady Dersi shuddered. Being veiled marked the achievement of a Bhajong’s highest ambition. But the thought of it sat like a festering, seething cancer in Dersi’s stomach. A lifetime of immobility, rendered nothing more than a massive, immobile expanse of flesh, a pulsating womb filled with churning life, growing new generations . . . It was more than Dersi could take.