by Jeff Stanley
Rian moved to the center of the room as the plumes of gas fell toward the floor. He caught a faint, sweet scent. “What? What do you want? Who are you?”
Laughter. “Who am I? Why, I’m Father, Rian. Now. Sleep. My need is great, and you can help me.”
Rian coughed. The gas expanded, covering the entire space. Rian rushed to the door and tried in vain to turn the wheel. It would not budge. He held his breath, but the gas, falling on his skin, tingled. His flesh went numb. His lungs burned, desperate for air.
“Why?” Rian whispered, his voice cracking as the fumes engulfed him.
“The vagaries of fate, it would seem, have conspired to make you unique, Rian. My old foe risks much in a desperate gambit, and I cannot allow him to succeed.”
“Fate?”
“It was you who found the stranger, Rian. You who touched him, and were touched in return. You carry his contagion, his pestilence. I would return the favor.”
“No. I don’t understand!”
“Sleep, Rian. When the time is right, you’ll know what to do.”
His eyes burned. He could not hold his breath any longer. Holding his sleeve to his nose and mouth, he expelled his breath and sucked air through the weave of his tunic. The gas, permeating everything, flooded his lungs. His vision tunneled.
He fell, his knees buckling. The metal floor felt cool and hard beneath his face.
“When the time is right . . .”
Chapter 12
“Roll her over.” The voice echoed, coming as if from a vast distance. Dersi felt herself turned onto her side. Something pulled at her lips, prying them back. Her jaw popped and groaned as her teeth were forced apart. Fingers, tasting of resin and chemicals, probed her mouth, forced back her tongue, tickled the back of her throat. She heaved. Vomit surged up from her stomach in a thick stream filled with chunks of congealed ool fluids. The fingers probed her mouth again, clearing away chunky slime.
“Ouch! Damn. She bit me,” the voice said.
She felt bone between her teeth.
“Dammit, Dersi, let go!”
Dersi could not open her eyes. But she did relax her jaw. The probing fingers slid free.
“Disgusting,” another voice muttered. “It’s on my shoes.”
“It’ll wash off,” the first voice said. Dersi thought she should know that voice. Its raspy grumbling seemed familiar. She could not place it. “Get her over to the bed and cover her up.”
She felt herself lifted, too weak to complain, her muscles limp and unresponsive. Strong hands lay her down on a smooth, hard surface.
“Help me clear this gunk from her face,” the familiar voice said. Recognition edged closer. Fingers gouged the hardening ooze covering her face. It cracked. Jagged, brittle chunks broke away. Cool air filtered across her sweat-bathed face. She tried to force open her eyes but could not. “Here. Let me scrape that away.”
Gentle fingertips swiped her eyes, wiping away sticky goo.
“Try to open them now,” the gentle voice said.
Her lids felt leaden, but she forced them open. Violent light blinded her. She snapped her lids shut again. A moment later she tried again, opening them just a crack. Backlit by the glow of light-tumors bulging from the walls, a hazy figure swam into view.
“Erekel?” A heaving cough shook her, and bits of ool tissue spewed from her mouth. She choked, gasped. Erekel knelt beside her, thumping her on the back. Fluid boiled up from her throat, sloshing out onto the hard metal surface on which she lay.
“It’s me, Dersi,” Erekel said. “Don’t worry, you’re safe.”
“Safe?” Her coughing fit subsided, and she looked into his rheumy eyes. He smiled at her.
“For now.” He glanced over his shoulder. Dersi’s gaze followed. A number of men hovered nearby, in the shadows cast by the light-tumors. Beyond them, an encrusted capillary yawned open, leading into darkness.
“Where am I? What happened? I remember . . .”
“Hush, now. You’re safe here.” He brought a flask of formed, hardened resin to her lips. She scented water and drank deep. Water drizzled from her lips and spilled down her chin.
She shook her head and sat up. Looking around, she noted that she sat on a surface of wooden planks built over a glazed hump of resin. The ceiling of the small chamber bore thick scars, poorly healed. Erekel, noting her gaze, nodded.
“Sensory tentacles for the Veil Lords. We’ve taken care of them. We’re alone. Unobserved.”
“How?”
“We kept watch on you, ever since I came to your room last night.”
She nodded, her suspicions about her mysterious visitor confirmed.
“When you left Veil Lord Merisi’s chamber we followed and saw Lord Meloni with your handmaiden. We also saw you run and knew you’d decided.”
She shook her head. “I had decided nothing. I was scared.”
“You had a right to be. Regardless, I tried to reach you before you dove into the capillary, but you moved too quickly. And then the guards followed you down. I worried that they would pull you out. We waited, watched. We were prepared to act. But then they both climbed out, obviously shaken, and took off down the artery in search of help.
“We know the back passages better than anyone, save perhaps the Veil Lords—and even from them we have our hiding places. We tunneled through the ool-flesh to retrieve you. It was almost too late. It had begun to ingest you.”
Dersi shuddered and clutched herself. “Why? Why did you come for me?”
“I told you we’d prevent your veiling if we could.”
“Yes. But why, Erekel?”
One of the other men came forward, leaned down, and whispered something in Erekel’s ear, something Dersi could not overhear. He nodded and waved the man off.
“I’m afraid that will have to wait, Dersi. There is much you need to know, but matters come to a boil now, and I don’t have the leisure to tell you. I will eventually. I promise. Trust me.”
She stared at him. Trust him? But what had he done to inspire such trust?
She knew the answer and felt a pang of shame for the asking. Without Erekel, she would have been absorbed into the ool by now. She owed him her trust. She nodded.
“Come. I know you’re weak, but this place isn’t safe any longer. Something strange is happening. The Veil Lords have gone dormant, and the ool moves on its own.”
Dersi frowned but accepted the hand he offered her. She arose on shaking legs. Only Erekel’s comforting solidity kept her from falling face down onto the hard, brittle floor. He rested her weight on his shoulder and gestured to the handful of guards. They fanned out and drew weapons: saws and probes and even an acidrod.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safer. There are deeper places, places even the Veil Lords have forgotten about.”
One of the guards motioned to them to wait. He switched his bonesaw to his left hand and drew out a short rod carved of bone. A thin needle sprang from the hollow end.
“What’s that?” Dersi asked.
Erekel grinned. “Something of my own design. It delivers concentrated boreworm toxin on impact. Very effective against the sensory tentacles.”
“Where did you get the boreworms?”
“The ool’s always flying over Gagash settlements, stirring a swarm. Some of the worms inevitably get through the ool’s outer husk, burrowing deep into flesh. I’ve harvested a few here and there.”
“But why?”
“That ties into some of the things we need to discuss later. Now, hush.”
Dersi stared at him. How dare he speak to a Lady so? But she wasn’t exactly a Lady any longer, was she? She had made a decision, conscious or unconscious. An irrevocable decision.
The guard armed with the poker crept into the capillary, disappearing into the darkness. Erekel cracked a desiccated light-tumor against the resin. It hissed, shedding a weak glow. After a few minutes, Erekel led Dersi forward. The other Bhajong followed with weapons drawn.
She heard the hissing before she saw its cause. Bubbling, churning, the sound reminded her of the acidic bite of breached polyps. They curved around a massive bone protuberance, and Dersi gasped as an eerie green glow washed out of the walls ahead of them.
He edged them toward the other side of the capillary. “Careful here.” They passed the green glow, and Dersi saw a seething wound in the vessel wall, the distended remains of sensory tentacles dangling toward the floor. Newborn polyps writhed at the edges of the wound, spurting acid on the ravaged flesh.
Erekel tugged her past the lesion. “That’s the effect of the boreworm toxin. Remember what I taught you. Don’t let the acid touch you.”
Dersi nodded, dumbstruck.
The capillary shrank, and Erekel led Dersi into an artery that sloped sharply downward. He sidestepped down the incline, planting his spike-soled shoes firmly into ool-flesh. Dersi followed, trying to emulate him. The hard resin was slick. Dersi slipped and fell. Erekel caught her by the back of her nightrobe and dragged her to her feet. Holding on to her, he led them down, down into the depths of the ool. The guards trailed them, silent.
“What is this place?” Dersi stared, slack-jawed, at the immense chamber. She stood on a narrow tongue of old ool-flesh, thick-glazed with resin. Beyond and below her the mammoth chamber stretched into darkness. Above, monstrous bones protruded from the ceiling, hung with tattered ribbons of decaying flesh. Like gargantuan ribs, metal beams rose from the floor on one side of the chamber, spanned the ceiling, and sank into the flesh on the other side. A pool of water sat, bubbling, in the center of the chamber. Spars of metal poked up through the liquid, covered with dozens of colored blinking lights.
Beside her, Erekel shrugged. “An old stomach, I think. I don’t know what it is now, really. It’s old. I think, perhaps, this is an ancient ool. Maybe the oldest. This place has been long forgotten.
“Below there are big machines that buzz and hum and spit out smoke and steam. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. But the Veil Lords have no eyes here, and the ool doesn’t seem to realize this area even exists anymore. It’s our haven.”
“Our?”
“Come on, I’ll take you down, and we can talk.”
The path downward consisted of a narrow, bisected artery carved with deep grooves—steps. Puzzled, Dersi studied the small details of the chamber as they descended. Everywhere the marks of Bhajong industry and alteration reared up within the ool-flesh. Landings on the stairway were too precise, too angular, too flat, unmarked with the characteristic bulge of sunken veins and hernias. Planar surfaces jutted out from the walls of the cavern as well, their functions indeterminate, but strange. Long strands stretched between the landings, strands she had assumed were nerve trunks or neural clusters. On closer study they had the look of artificiality. She reached up and touched one and found it hard, elastic.
“What are these?”
“I don’t know. They run between those little metal boxes inset in the ool-flesh. They’re all over this place, but they’re not part of the ool.”
“Artificial?”
“They would have to be. Like the machines down below.”
“Machines? Like the Gagash use?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’ve never been in a raiding party, so I’m not familiar with Gagash machinery. But this looks old. Very old. Strange.”
Dersi frowned and stared at the odd machines. She knew the Gagash utilized artificial machines, thwarting the natural laws. Their dependence on such perverse things made them weak, and would, in the end, lead to their downfall.
Erekel took her hand and led her onward. The stairway deposited them on a solid ring surrounding the central pool. From this vantage Dersi could see the mammoth pillars rising from the swirling waters. The lights dotting the structures blinked slowly in a distinct pattern, indicative of purpose. Soft whirring sounds came from the pillars.
Dersi studied the pillars as Erekel led her around the pool. She wondered what foul purpose they could serve, what perversion of the natural order they attempted to circumvent. Ahead, another structure protruded from the metal-ribbed walls of the cavity. A rectangular aperture pierced the vertical plane, opening into a room flooded with harsh, glaring light. Erekel steered Dersi through the gap, and she found herself in a cubic area bathed with light from a ring of luminous panels inset in the walls. Tables and benches sat offset to one side of the room.
Several dozen Bhajong perched on the benches. They rose at Erekel’s entrance and stared at Dersi.
“Erekel, what have you done? You’ve brought one of them here!” The speaker rose from the table and glared at Dersi. A thin, ropy man whose pale skin seemed stretched taut across his cheekbones, he held a bladed metal rod in one hand. He gestured with the weapon toward Dersi. “You’ve doomed us all.”
Erekel shook his head. “Sit down, Baedere. You’re acting like a fool. She’s one of us.”
Baedere glared. “She’s a Lady.” He frowned at Dersi, and she felt herself withering beneath his gaze. An uncomfortable feeling, one to which she was wholly unaccustomed. She shoved the feeling away and drew herself up, freezing her gaze.
Erekel shook his head. “No. She only thinks she’s a Lady.”
Dersi jerked her attention to Erekel. The harvester smiled thinly at her.
“Dersi is not a Lady at all.”
Chapter 13
“Mom? Mom? Mother!” Rian tugged on her arm. It would not move. The bone had swept up from her breast, flowing thick, encasing her shoulders, her throat, most of her face. Tiny spurs and knots erupted from the bone, still growing beneath his palm, but slower, sluggish. “Mother?”
With a massive effort she turned her gnarled, warped head. Bone cracked like breaking twigs, crumbled into a coarse powder that fell onto the worn fabric of her blanket. He knelt at her bedside, fighting back tears. One eye was covered with bone. The other cracked open with startling clarity. Her body failed her, but her mind remained sharp, reflected in the bright tears that spilled from the corner of her eye to drip down her hard cheek and onto her pillow. The tiny pinprick holes in the bone covering her nose wheezed as she struggled to draw breath. She could not talk. Her mouth had long since sealed. Only a thin straw of metal thrust between plates of bone allowed her to suck up the thin broth that kept her alive.
“The surgeon’s coming, Mom. He’s coming. He’ll cut it back again, just like last time. You’ll see.” A tear spilled from his eye and traced a thin track through the grime covering his face. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, forced a smile to his rebellious lips. “You’ll see.”
Her eye closed, squeezing out more tears. The hard plates that sheathed her fingers ground together as she forced her hand to clasp his. He felt powdered bone as it trickled between his fingers. Sticky blood followed, flowing into his palm.
He waited for the surgeon, waited. Always before they had come. As the instrument panel mounted above her bed slowed in its relentless pinging, quiet alarms sounded. Alarms that should summon the surgeons, with their saws and knives and medicines.
Her breath rattled through the straw, spittle dripping from its end to fall on the hospital sheet.
Flicker
Rian jerked, his gaze sweeping around, drinking in strange, unfamiliar surroundings. Man-shaped figures clothed from head to toe in white moved about the room, their faces concealed behind masks, eyes shielded by thick goggles. Their hands, tightly sheathed in gloves, moved with sluggish care across globes of glass from which wires and tubes spidered. One figure began walking toward Rian, forcing him to step back. The figure turned to look at him through bug-eyed goggles.
“Doctor, is something wrong?” The voice came across muffled, altered by the mask. Rian saw that the figure carried a shallow glass tray. In the precise center of the tray was a clear strip, grasped by metal clamps and marked with tiny black beads. Noting Rian’s gaze, the figure glanced down at the tray, then back up. “Isn’t this the download you
wanted?”
“What?” Rian touched his head and discovered he wore a light mesh mask over the lower half of his face. His fingers crawled upward, finding thick, transparent goggles. What was this? Where was he? Confusion flooded over him. He did not understand . . .
Or did he? Knowledge tickled at the edge of his consciousness. This was . . . This was . . .
“Doctor? Isn’t this the right coding?”
“I . . .”
This is too soon. Go now. Father’s voice echoed in Rian’s mind.
Flicker
Rian jerked awake. Sitting up, he cracked his head against the top bunk. Blaen stirred, grumbling in his sleep. The bunk creaked beneath his weight.
Only the tiny light mounted near the floor disturbed the darkness. Rian felt his pulse laboring; his breath came in gasping heaves. What was that? Where? He should remember. There was something decidedly familiar about the white room, about the white-garbed figures and their work. About the strip of black-dotted material in the tray. Doctor, he had been called, and it had not seemed utterly alien.
Haze crept in from the corners of his mind, thick and cloying. He battered at it, struggling for retention. He must remember! He must! But the haze wrapped around him, stuffing his head full of white fluff, and he could only grasp in futility at memories that churned away from him, away from the light of his consciousness. Mental fingers swiped at retreating knowledge, and fell short. Memories withered.
Rian shook his head, raising his middle hand to rub at his temples. Something . . . Something should have been there to prevent him from touching skin. Some obstruction. What? He could not recall.
Other memories flooded forward, pushing those he pursued aside like a raging wave of violence. The chamber, the drawers, the crystals! The eerie, mocking, nonsensical voice. The laughter. The gas! Choking, burning, numbing.
He climbed down from the bed and crouched near the light, staring at his skin. Unblemished. His exploring fingertips felt no residue of the gas, no greasiness, no thin film. Just night-sweat, from the dream. The dream. Was there something there?