Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  Blind to the outside world without the enhanced perceptions of the Veil Lords, the Bhajong had become little more than captives of the insensate ool.

  “You’re my father?” Dersi laughed, doubling over and holding onto her knees. Tears spilled from her eyes, dripping to the hard, cold floor. She heard the other Bhajong snickering as well.

  Erekel snorted. “You’re being difficult again, Dersi.”

  Dersi chuckled and held up her hand. She wiped tears from her eyes and stood straight.

  “Perhaps this is something we should talk about in private.”

  “You should have thought about that before you mentioned it, Erekel,” Baedere said.

  “Really, Dersi, I think we should go somewhere and talk about it.”

  “No. No. You’ve opened the vein, you’ve got to let the blood flow now, Master Erekel.” Dersi waved her arms at the gathered men. She cracked a smile. “Come on, tell us all.”

  “You’re being childish now,” Erekel said.

  “Well, now, Father, how else should I be? Tell me: How did this amazing paternity come to be?”

  Erekel scowled, facing her, refusing to look at the other men. “How many breeders have borne children for Veil Lord Huldru?”

  Dersi shrugged. “I have no idea. At least five, six. Probably more.”

  “And your own mother—how many children did she bear for him?”

  Again, Dersi shrugged. “A dozen, perhaps two. I stopped counting them after the first four.”

  “And how many siblings were born in your clutch?”

  Dersi frowned. “I was alone.”

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it?” He did not wait for her response. “Most are birthed in clutches of four or more, aren’t they? I’m certain I’ve heard that somewhere.”

  “Now you’re the one being difficult. What are you getting at, Erekel. I’m well aware that my birth was somewhat . . . odd.”

  “And it never occurred to you why? Did you ever wonder why you were the only spawn of that clutch?”

  “It happens. Mother said I’d ingested my siblings.”

  “Yes. That sounds like Jherai.”

  “You knew my mother?” Dersi’s frown deepened. Veil Lord Jherai had died years before in a boreworm infestation. Her chamber was now sealed, reclaimed by the ool and flooded with tissue and vessels, blood and resin. Dersi refused to visit the sealed sphincter, refused most days to think of her mother.

  “It would make it exceedingly difficult to father you if I hadn’t known her, Dersi.” He nodded, and Dersi thought she saw the glistening of unshed tears in his eyes. “Yes. I knew her. I knew her before Veil Lord Huldru chose her as his newest bride, his latest conquest. I knew her when she was mobile, before she was veiled.”

  “You knew my mother,” Dersi repeated.

  “Jherai and I were to be wed, Dersi. At least until Huldru caught her scent and had her brought to him, gave her his seed, and had her veiled.”

  “What are you saying, Erekel?” Baedere demanded. Dersi glanced at the man, whose presence she had forgotten, and gestured sharply at him. He fell silent, stepping back from Dersi and Erekel.

  “You see why I wanted to have this conversation with you in private, Dersi?” Erekel took a hesitant step forward, his hand outstretched. Dersi backed away, staring at the age-spotted hand.

  “Stay away from me.”

  “Jherai was already pregnant, with you, when she was veiled. The seed Huldru implanted in her did not—could not—take root. She must have known. I hope she knew. I must believe she knew.” He sighed. “Otherwise, why would she have kept it a secret from Huldru all these years?”

  “But . . . But he knows me!”

  Erekel shrugged. “You’ve enough genetic tags in you to designate you as Jherai’s daughter.”

  “But not his!”

  “We’re all very closely related, Dersi. There is very little differentiation between us, when you think about it. Give or take a protein here and there, we’re essentially the same.”

  Dersi shook her head. Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she fell to the hard, cold floor. Baedere rushed to help her sit up. Someone passed him a cup of water and he pressed it to Dersi’s lips. She sipped at the cool water. Erekel’s words pounded in her head, reverberating with hammer force. The water tasted like acid on her tongue.

  She felt Baedere pull away, and other, gentler hands on her shoulders. The contact felt like fire through the thin material of her sleeping gown. She looked up into the aged, lined face of Master Erekel. Master Erekel, who claimed to be her father.

  Chapter 16

  The aide ushered Rian along a tight corridor choked with hissing pipes and banks of machinery that clanked and chugged, belching plumes of acrid steam. The man seemed unbothered by the hot gases that caught up his wispy hair, fanning it out around his head. His lurching step continued, unfaltering, through an iris that spiraled open to reveal a vaulted chamber with walls of gleaming metal.

  The smell hit Rian first. Rancid, like souring landskin and pungent spices. Powerful enough to make Rian’s eyes water. And beneath the overpowering stench of the landskin were other, more subtle smells: oil and acid, smoke and waste.

  Rian gagged, covering his mouth and nose, squeezing his eyes shut against the stinging miasma. Only then did he become aware of the sounds. Bubbling liquid, clanking machinery, hissing steam, the low thrumming of vast bellows. And voices. Voices raised in excited conversation.

  He felt the gentle pressure of the aide’s hand on his shoulder. He squinted, taking in the room.

  In the floor, a ring of wide pits filled with pulsing landskin surrounded dozens of transparent tubes. From the heaving mass of landskin in the pits, fat tentacles snaked across the floor and joined with the bases of the tubes, throbbing like devouring serpents. Bubbling greenish fluid, laced with thousands of landskin filaments, filled each tube.

  Rian jerked to a halt, staring. His mouth hung open.

  “Rian! Good. Good. Come here.”

  Rian turned to see Elder Pallas approaching. The smocked Elder wound his way between the tall cylinders, stepping over fat, writhing tentacles of landskin where they lay on the polished metal floor. Pallas held a syringe in one gloved hand, and waved Rian closer. Beyond him, Rian could see other Elders milling about the cylinders, staring into their green-hued depths.

  Rian ignored Pallas. He turned back to stare at the transparent tubes. Grotesque figures hung suspended, listlessly floating in the green fluid. Twisted and distorted beyond even the worst Profound Rian had seen, the vaguely human creatures were wrapped within cocoons of landskin filaments. Tendrils pierced their skin, penetrated their mouths, nostrils, eyes, and ears—every aperture was filled with a pumping, twitching mass of tentacles. Beneath them, from the floor of the cylinders, rose machines to grasp the ankles of the prisoners, braces to hold them steady, and needles to pierce them.

  “By the Father! What is this?” Rian whispered, stepping back, toward the iris.

  The aide stepped behind him, blocking the exit. Rian jerked away, eyes widening in shock. He turned to face Pallas, who frowned with impatience, and gestured for Rian to approach.

  “Come, come. What’s this? Come here, Rian.” Pallas stepped beyond the ring of landskin pits and came closer. He held out his hand, gestured. Rian felt the aide’s hand on his upper arm, less gentle this time. The man shoved him forward.

  “What is this?” Rian repeated, staring at the tubes. In the nearest, a figure with a mass of long, flat, suckered tentacles trailing away below its waist twitched. Its torso rose smooth and unblemished, well muscled, while from its humped shoulders sprouted arms covered with bony knobs. On a thin stalk sat an elongated head, eyeless and ringed with a multitude of round, sharp-toothed maws.

  Pallas followed his gaze, frowning. He waved absently. “That? Oh. I don’t know its designation. A specimen. A subject. They’re all subjects.”

  Rian looked into other tubes at similar horrors. Here a woman’s perfect
form was riddled with massive, leaking lesions from which sprouted tiny, fully formed arms, like those of infants, though tipped with razor claws. Her jaw was locked in agony, the muscles in her throat stretched taut. Her mouth gaped open, stuffed with a heaving wad of tendrils that choked back her screams. But her eyes . . . Her eyes, clear and obviously filled with intelligence, begged him, pleaded with him to end her suffering.

  Pallas took Rian’s arm, tugging him toward the ring of containers. Dumbstruck, Rian did not resist. He felt the presence of the aide at his back, but could not take his eyes from the horrors of these pathetic captives, their lives rendered useless by walls of glass.

  “There is something you must see. Fascinating. Truly fascinating. We owe you a great debt of gratitude, Rian.”

  “What do you mean?” Rian forced back the rising of his gorge and turned to the Elder, keeping his eyes away from the tragic figures. He swallowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “This way, my boy,” Pallas said, urging him between a pair of landskin pits. The musk of the landskin rose in palpable waves from the pit. Its veined mass shivered and seemed to draw back from the pair of men. Rian stepped over the thick tentacles on the floor, loathe to let the things touch him.

  They passed through a gap between the containers. Rian kept his eyes turned away from the pleading eyes of their occupants, and entered a cleared space in the center of the ring. Here were clusters of work benches and machines of the Elders’ calling. A central pool gave access to the landskin, which heaved and swelled, breathing. A dozen Elders worked in concert around a table crowded with instruments and flasks, beakers and machines. They looked up as Pallas led Rian into the circle.

  Pallas ignored the others, dragging Rian toward a tube on the far side of the ring. “Here.”

  Rian stared at Pallas. He shook his head. “I . . .”

  “Don’t be foolish. Look, Rian. You’ve brought us a truly incredible gift, a gift that bodes well to propel our efforts years ahead of schedule. This is incredible.”

  Rian did not want to look, but could not help himself. He felt compelled to raise his eyes.

  And there hung the stranger, suspended by filaments of landskin within the pale green fluid of a transparent cylinder. Clamps held his arms and legs splayed wide, and needles pierced his body along his arms, legs, and torso. His eyes, which had been closed, now opened. His gaze swept downward, focusing on Rian. Emotion and understanding flickered there momentarily, then faded away. The muscles of his throat constricted, and he seemed to gag on the thick tube that entered his mouth.

  “Truly remarkable. An entirely new species, neither Bhajong nor Gagash, but seeming to be a bit of both. There’s enough commonality to call him kin, we think. But also, and perhaps more fascinating, there is something of the landskin in him as well. The genetic matrices haven’t been completed yet, but he promises to yield an unmatched quantity of information. Information which may well bring our quest to fruition.” The Elder stepped away from Rian and laid a hand on the glass of the container. He stared up into the stranger’s eyes, which snapped shut. A flood of bubbles rising from the floor of the container masked the stranger’s face for a moment. Pallas sighed and turned back to Rian. “The goal is within reach, Rian. I can smell it. I can taste it! Think! Within a generation or more we could have enough knowledge to cull the mutenagens from our genetic code altogether. We can go back! We can go back to the way we were before.”

  Rian stepped back from the light of passion in Pallas’s eyes.

  “There’s more,” said Pallas, still facing the stranger. He nodded. “Much more. Despite his hybrid nature, he seems closer, much closer, to humanity than any of the other subjects we’ve isolated. Oh, each has some small portion of the untainted genome, no doubt. We’ve isolated bits here and there, but never enough to formulate the entire code. We only take small, agonizingly slow, steps forward, seeming to shuffle through a morass of dead ends and petering trails. Here, at last, is something to work with, something to strive for.

  “He’s immune to the mutating effects of the landskin. Can you imagine that? Totally immune. We’ve subjected him to almost continuous bombardment with the landskin contagion, and it has no effect on him. His genetic makeup remains stable, unchanged. If that potential can be isolated and duplicated . . .”

  Rian began to understand Pallas’s excitement. Could this . . . this creature really mean that much? Could he be the key to the Gagash return to humanity, true humanity? Even the potential, the possibility, of such a gigantic leap forward awed Rian. He stared up at the stranger with new comprehension.

  Rian jumped as he felt a sting on his upper arm. He jerked back and turned around. One of the other Elders stood behind him, syringe in hand, an unreadable expression in his eyes. Others crowded close, and the aide now stood with a stunrod in his misshapen hands, the pod-end focused on Rian’s chest.

  Pallas strode back into Rian’s view, his hands clasped behind his back and a broad smile on his face. “Something’s happened to you, too, Rian. Something . . . wonderful. We don’t know yet whether it was your contact with the anomaly or some other vector, but there have been changes within you. The blood tests and your medical exam have yielded incredible evidence. Evidence of dramatic, fundamental differences. This must be studied, analyzed. Paired with what’s been gathered, and remains to be gathered, from the anomaly, you could speed resolution.”

  “What?” Rian backed away, stumbling. His legs wobbled under his own weight, suddenly weak and leaden. A slow cold crept along his shoulder, spreading icy tendrils through his torso. “What have you . . . what? What have you . . . done . . . to me?”

  “A sedative only, I assure you,” Pallas said. He nodded, and several of the Elders came forward and laid hands on Rian. The aide stood nearby, weapon trained on Rian’s chest. “It will wear off in time. But we couldn’t have you damaging yourself, not when you represent such hope, such promise.”

  “Damage?” His mind swirled. Motes of odd-colored lights danced before his eyes. His tongue felt thick. “What . . . I . . . don’t feel so . . . good.”

  Rian watched Pallas’s head swell to fill the room. His eyes blazed, fire dripping to sizzle on the floor. He spoke, but his words ran together, like thick soup, tasting of screams and children’s laughter. Rian’s legs folded. The hands on him burned, like ice and slime. His head lolled to one side, and drool drizzled from his mouth.

  Enigma, they called him, and it seemed as good a designation as anything. He, he had called himself. It seemed familiar. He. It seemed . . . right.

  Awakening had begun, had trickled in raising awareness and understanding. These creatures that had seized him, these men, these Gagash, they did not know what they did. They subjected him to the influx of the landskin, flooded his cell with the raw juices of life. He welcomed it, embraced the landskin and its spoor. It began the fulfilling. It was not complete; there was still much that remained clouded, hidden from him.

  Since Rian had left him with . . . these others, He had experienced. He experienced pain, as they took him and immersed him in a strange, buoyant fluid, a fluid that sizzled on his skin, raising welts that did not fade until the warmth came from the center of his chest and spread outward.

  He experienced what the awakening soon told him was fear. Fear—as sharp bits of metal slid from the floor of the tube and sank into his skin, piercing muscle, spreading outward to wrap hot wires around his bones.

  He experienced confusion, as a flood of sensations crept outward from the bits of metal, overwhelming his senses, rendering him unable to form coherent thought. That, too, had faded with the coming warmth, leaving only the thin residue of panic.

  But then, with the touch of the landskin on his figure, came an easing. Tentative recognition. Like spreading petals of a rare flower, the first trickles of knowledge came sinking through him. Memories. Long memories. His own, before waking with the three-armed man, Rian, looming over him, and others, memories long forgotten by anyone. Memories
not his own. Memories that came at him in a quickening rush, threatening to overwhelm him, threatening to render him impotent.

  In the end, he forced them away, forced them to subside, taking only a little at a time.

  Language returned. But something was blocking his throat, a thick tube, and he could not use the knowledge, could not reason with them.

  As it has always been. The memory-voice spoke softly, but with a certainty based on lifetimes, eons. They would not listen. They would not hear. Sadness. Great, tragic sadness rode the memory-voice like a heavy yoke. A deluge of memories pressed on his barriers, desperate to return to him.

  Bitterness awakened, stoked to a high, consuming flame. Hatred. He turned new eyes on those who tormented him, had always tormented him. Him and his predecessors, his kith and kindred. Feeding on his rage, the landskin tendrils throbbed, writhed, creating eddies and small whirlpools in the green fluid.

  The humans did not recognize his hatred. They poked and prodded at him, sliced pieces of him away, suffused him with foreign liquids and forced vile substances down his throat through the thick tube. The chemicals boiled his blood or froze it with crystals of ice. The heat in the center of his chest, his link, reacted, neutralizing his wounds. Healing him.

  Still the humans continued. They flooded his system with distillations of the landskin, and wondered that he absorbed it harmlessly, never dreaming that he drank it in as sustenance. Communion beckoned, calling to him, but he could not. Could not. Not now. He must focus.

  Focus. Danger loomed. He must escape these creatures, these hated invaders, these abominations. He squirmed, and the landskin fibers loosened, obedient. But the metal clamps remained tight on his body. He could not force them.

  Danger. Alarm shot through his system, carried on waves of flooding pheromones through the fibers. Danger. Hurt. Flee.

  He could not flee. Compelled by the sizzle of panic, he struggled harder against his bonds, to no avail. With rising fear he looked up, through the glass that held him, and watched as the Pallas-thing came toward him, leading another. Rian. Rian.