Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  Curled up within the landskin bubble, He drank in the communion, learning, consciousness expanding as wave after wave of memory, dream, pounded into him, flooding him. He fought against the deluge, but could not contain it.

  Know this, son. The voice echoed through the landskin, coming from all around him, powerful, undeniable. A voice he should know, a power he should recognize. He almost touched it, almost grasped it. But the knowledge slid away, just beyond his reach. Know this.

  He shrank in upon himself, arms wrapped around his head, tears leaking from his eyes as the memories came, the hateful memories.

  The memories of the others, the outsiders, the humans. All of their memories, their thoughts, their dreams. They came to him in a flood, the blessed, cursed release of knowledge that flowed to him through the landskin. And He knew. He knew. Those hateful, infesting aliens, who had come down from the stars to pervert the perfection of the Family—He knew the minds of all of them who had died and been absorbed upon this, his world.

  He twitched in the throes of dream/memory, fighting to emerge. The flood of images continued, unabated. Thousands of individuals, separated by hundreds of years, all distinct, all unique, diverse. All of their memories were his. All, for this was the beauty of the Family, that knowledge, memory, thought—these things were not lost from generation to generation, but continued, carried over, protected.

  He drowned in the racial memories of the humans, awash in their pains and progresses, their failures and achievements. From the dimmest ancestral visions: swinging through trees on prehensile tails, gathering insects from overturned logs; developing the first of the crude tools—sticks thrust into gigantic conical termite mounds—that would gain their species ascendance and dominance on their homeworld; creating fire; roaming great plains; settling, building structures that would expand into mammoth cities, crawling with their kind. Later: the first tentative steps spaceward, pitiful launches of little more than habitable bombs. Failures, successes. The first footfall on a surface other than their own overdeveloped world. Thousands of developments, thousands of breakthroughs, each hurtling them farther and farther from their point of origin. The founding of their Hegemony, and its expansion.

  He fought to awaken, terrified by the flickering images that he could recall as vividly as his own first waking, crude thoughts. He was them. All of them. He lived their lives, experienced their triumphs and failures, their loves and hatreds, their cruelties and their grandiose, prophetic dreams. So many, separate, driven. A horde of disconnected, yet unified memories.

  The nightmares plagued him, the loneliness these creatures felt. Apart from the Family, kept apart by their own selfishness and greed. Oh, communion with the Family had been offered them. Communion. But they had refused, all but the least part of them. More, they opposed the Family, sought to thwart it, to destroy its perfection and beauty. Ill content to join in the blessed communion, these hateful creatures from another world had refused the generous, awesome gift of communion, and refused it still.

  They were imperfect. Alien. Hostile. Enemies.

  This creature, this Rian . . . He felt hot hatred boiling in his gut, an inferno of rage.

  Rian must die! He must kill Rian!

  A voice thundered through the landskin, rattling it. A Voice. He jerked awake, shaking, cowering. The voice. The undeniable, unyielding voice. No! Bring him. Bring him to me.

  And the final barrier to He’s memories shattered, splintered into a million bits. Knowledge flooded in, knowledge of his origins. Knowledge of his God. His master.

  I come, the God said. I come to bring you back into the embrace of the Family. This Rian. You will bring him to me. For I have determined that Rian is a weapon of my enemy, a weapon I must understand. Bring him to me.

  Your will be done, my God, He communed through the landskin. Your will be done.

  He felt the sudden slack in the tethers by which he held Rian. The cilia lining his sphere hissed. He reached out, accepting the penetration of the needle-headed strands, opening himself to communion. Awareness flooded him, a vast flood of perception. He felt the surging approach of dozens of ool, the peculiar lassitude of countless drakes drawn into quiescence by the approaching dawn, the endless caress of the wind across his limitless skin. Below, in the bunkers of the Gagash, the parasites poked and prodded at the landskin, introducing poisonous cells, cousins of the abomination. And—

  She.

  He jerked away from the cilia, twitching. The muscles throughout his body spasmed, responding to impossible, illogical stimuli. Stimuli that he recognized, on a primitive level, had been there all along, submerged, battered into a corner of his mind by the deluge of awakening memories. Now . . . Now he could no longer block away the urgent need.

  She.

  Every nerve in his body screamed fire, twisting tendrils that climbed from his genitalia, irrepressible demands on his being, his body, his mind. Heart pounding, blood streaming, pounding in his ears, his limbs rigid, unresponsive to his mental commands. His breath came hot and heaving, ragged gasps that he felt in his toes.

  She.

  No. I come, and I will succor both of you. Do this. Bring me the creature, Rian. Bring him to me. The God’s voice reverberated through the landskin, powerful, insistent.

  But He, gripped by primal urges, could not hear the voice of his God.

  He seized a fold of the landskin with both hands. Screaming, he ripped it apart. With a ragged sound of tortured flesh the landskin parted. Plasma gushed out over him, a wash of hot, slick liquid. The cilia went wild, lashing at him, thrashing, whipping at his naked skin. He felt nothing. He reached into the raw, open wound in the landskin and seized chunks of flesh, ripping them away and tossing them behind him into the sphere. He burrowed through the landskin, ignoring the cries, the entreaties, the ravaged pain that shot through communion.

  Reacting, agonized, the landskin retreated. A tunnel opened up before him, climbing upward. Tentacles shot from the walls, seizing him, wrapping around arms, legs, torso. They shoved him upward, carrying him aloft as if through some gigantic throat. Frenzied, prey to primordial instincts, he fought against the restraints. He was powerless against the landskin, held immobile as it surged up through the cracks in the land.

  Mate.

  The landskin attempted communion, but He could not. It begged, cajoled, strove to awaken his kinship. But He felt only the undeniable surge of procreative energy rising from deep within, flooding through his bloodstream, awakening nerves long dormant, causing his skin to tingle, his muscles to throb. Against such primal instincts, cognition could not prevail.

  He rose through the landskin. Ahead, the landskin parted, allowing a glimpse of blue skies.

  He could sense her.

  Female. She.

  Chapter 23

  Lhedri cursed as Dersi flung herself in front of the rebel, Erekel. He heard her scream. The gap between the ceiling and the rising wall shrank. Erekel screamed Dersi’s name in panic, his voice raw, ragged, as the door closed with a resounding crash.

  Panic seized Lhedri. Had the slug hit Lady Dersi?

  He rushed down the incline to the blank wall at its end. With the butt of his acidrod he beat on the metal. But the wall resisted his efforts without a scratch. Breathing heavily, Lhedri brought his acidrod to his shoulder, stepped back, and sent slug after slug into the wall. Acidslugs ruptured, spilling hissing, sizzling wads of corrosives across the metal face. Acid devoured the metal, eating deep, sending runnels of bubbling fluid dripping to the floor.

  At last his acidrod was depleted, and still the door stood, partially melted but strong. He threw the acidrod down in disgust.

  “Dersi! Lady Dersi!” he called. His voice echoed through the corridor.

  Behind him footsteps betrayed the approach of Lhedri’s guards.

  “Captain Lhedri!” One of the guards, a man with a bulbous nose and thick eyebrows above deep-set, pale eyes, stepped forward and saluted with precision. His acidrod still smoked, a del
icate plume of greenish smoke rising from its nozzle.

  “Report, Cadrin!” Lhedri snapped.

  “We’ve routed them, sir. A few escaped, but not many.”

  “How many?”

  Cadrin shrugged. “No more than a handful, at most. I’ve detached parties to hunt them down. We’ll get them all.”

  Lhedri nodded and turned away, staring at the acid-scarred wall. “Lady Dersi and Master Erekel disappeared behind this wall. We’ve got to get through it.”

  “Your acidrod doesn’t seem to have had much effect,” Cadrin said.

  “No. It didn’t. Still, there must be a way through. Fan out and search this area. Look for a trigger or a latch.” Lhedri took an acidrod from one of the other men and checked its load. Six acidslugs remained.

  If Lady Dersi were hurt . . .

  Lhedri cursed. How could he have known she would react with such . . . stupidity? There really was no other term for her actions. What hold could Erekel have on Dersi, that she would so selflessly throw herself into the path of certain death to save him?

  He shook his head. That argument would win him no mercy from Lord Meloni. If the wall came down and Lhedri faced the gruesome scene of Lady Dersi’s acid-ravaged body, how could he return to Lord Meloni? More, how could he live with himself? His heart caught in his throat at the mere thought of such a thing. Dersi was . . . He pushed the unwanted thought away. Whatever else she might be, Dersi was a Lordling, daughter of the Veil Lord Huldru. While he . . . he was a mere soldier, a servant.

  “Captain Lhedri! I think I’ve found it,” one of the guards called from near the back wall face.

  Lhedri hurried over and stared at the shallow depression inset at shoulder height in the wall. Glaringly obvious compared to the plainness of the rest of the corridor, the depression seemed sized to fit a hand. Thinking back, Lhedri recalled he had seen other, similar depressions in the walls of this alien installation, marking hundreds of places other rebels could still be hiding.

  What was this place?

  He pushed aside the young guard who had found the depression and, facing the acid-scarred wall, slowly pushed his hand into the niche. An almost imperceptible tingling rose beneath his palm. He jerked back his hand.

  He heard a muted rumbling coming from walls, ceiling, and floor.

  “I want Lady Dersi alive. Unharmed.” If she was not already dead. But Lhedri turned from that very real possibility, refusing even to consider it.

  She could not be dead. Could not!

  “Dersi, no!” Erekel ignored the boiling pain of his arm and threw himself at Dersi’s hurtling form. His shoulder crashed into the small of her back, sending her spinning into the rising wall. He heard the crack of her impact and her cry. His arm flaring in agony, Erekel crumpled to the floor as the acidslug whizzed scant inches overhead and slammed into the far wall. It burst in a shower of rancid green, consuming smoke.

  “Dersi!” Lhedri’s voice eked through the narrow gap as the wall rose. Erekel flinched as acidslugs slammed again and again into the other side of the blank metal.

  The wall met the ceiling with a dull click.

  Erekel crawled over to Dersi, who lay motionless on the cold floor. He reached out, biting back a cry of pain as his bubbling skin stretched taut, cracking open, leaking blood. He cradled the limb awkwardly, afraid to touch it. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and a low whine escaped his lips.

  The small room lurched. Erekel braced himself against the sensation of rapid downward movement. A low hum leeched through the walls. The floor vibrated.

  Dersi groaned and rolled over on her side. Her hand rose and touched her jaw. “What did you do to me?”

  Erekel managed to grin through the pain. He nodded toward the far wall, where dripping acid ate ravenously through the blank metal. “Saved . . . your life. That was meant for . . . me. Not . . . not you, Dersi.”

  “I couldn’t . . . couldn’t let you die for me,” she whispered. She drew her knees up and leaned against the wall, brushing a strand of her pale hair from her face.

  “Very noble. Not terribly smart. But thanks,” Erekel said. He hissed as a fresh wave of pain picked at the edges of his consciousness. His stomach roiled.

  “You’re hurt.” Dersi crawled over to Erekel and reached out for his arm. He held it out for her, almost afraid to look at it, knowing what he would find. The skin had peeled back, eaten away by the corrosive juices, exposing banded muscle. Blood and pus oozed from the hand-sized wound, dripping onto the floor. “That looks . . .”

  “Hurts. But I think . . . the acid’s lost . . . its potency.” The flesh and blood no longer boiled, and now fresh, untainted blood welled up from deep within the wound.

  Dersi took the hem of her sleeping gown and tore away a long strip of soft cloth. She wrapped the strip loosely around the raw wound. “It should be washed, but this will have to do for now.”

  “Tha—” Pain and exhaustion caught up with Erekel, and he slumped over, unconscious.

  Dersi caught Erekel as he fell. His body was slight, almost weightless. She lay him down, positioning him so that his wounded arm lay across his chest. Then she extricated herself from him, rose, and glanced around the small room. Other than the slight depression in one wall and the scars in the walls from the acidslugs, the room was featureless, a plain metal box.

  It moved, she was certain of it. Slight tremors rose up from the floor through the soles of her feet. The walls, too, vibrated. What was this place? She touched the wall that had slid up from the floor and felt a dull thump from its other side. A few moments later another thump traveled through her fingertips.

  She could not stay in here forever. Erekel, for one thing, needed attention. The acid wound would require much more than just loose bandages. At the very least it needed to be washed free of the residual toxins. And neither of them carried water or food. If this were an ool tunnel sustenance would be no problem. She could stroke a feeding tube from any wall. But here, in this place . . .

  Dersi rubbed her jaw, wincing at the tender spot where she had crashed into the rising wall. She stared down at Erekel. Even in his sleep the wound troubled him. He clenched his jaw whenever the slightest movement jostled his arm. A slight groan escaped his thin lips.

  Without pause, she stepped over Erekel and slid her hand into the depression in the wall, feeling a subtle shifting. The vibrations throbbing through the room slowed, then stopped.

  Hidden machinery clanked and rumbled as the door slid down into the floor. The revealed corridor stretched straight ahead, disappearing into darkness. Lights blinked, flickered, and slowly settled into a harsh white glare along the ceiling. In the glow she could see the corridor ended in another blank wall no more than a hundred paces distant.

  Careful not to touch his wounded arm, Dersi dragged Erekel into the corridor, afraid that if she left him alone the room would seal him away again. He groaned as she lay him down against one wall. The heat rising from his forehead indicated an encroaching fever.

  “Hold on, Erekel,” Dersi whispered. She rose and walked down the corridor, her footsteps echoing in the tight confines. Behind the walls she could hear a dull whirring buzz, another alien sound among so many she had experienced in the last few hours. She shivered and tugged the remains of her gown tighter about her shoulders.

  As expected, there was a slight depression on the right-hand wall at the end of the corridor. Taking a deep breath, she slid her hand into it, then stepped back, crouching, ready for whatever might be beyond.

  The door slid down into the floor, and Dersi gasped in wonder.

  Lord Meloni paced Veil Lord Huldru’s chamber, his hands laced behind his back, his gaze trailing across the dormant sensory tentacles and organs. Lhedri was past his deadline. Well past. Meloni refused to think what that could mean, allowing the slow, burning anger to build into a pyre.

  At the sound of hesitant footsteps on the resinous floor, Meloni turned toward the shattered doorway. A guard saluted, kneelin
g, and Meloni felt a thrill of pleasure at the unfamiliar gesture of subservience. When he veiled, such abject humility would be commonplace. But now it made him smile.

  The idea that smiling would be beyond him when he veiled flitted through his mind, but he ruthlessly crushed the rebellious impulse. A small price to pay, regardless. Trivial, even.

  “Yes? What is it?” Meloni demanded, coming back to himself.

  “Lord Meloni, the throats . . .”

  “Yes? The throats, what?”

  “They . . . they’re not working.”

  “Which ones? Send a carver team to see to it.”

  “It . . . It’s all of them, Lord Meloni. All the throats. None of them work.”

  “None of them?”

  The guard nodded. Meloni, frowning, noticed for the first time that the man’s eyes were wide, his mouth a tight line.

  “That’s impossible,” Meloni said.

  The guard opened his mouth to reply but snapped it shut as a tremendous shudder swept through the Veil Lord’s chamber. Meloni staggered to his knees as the floor heaved beneath his feet. The dangling tentacles shivered with the motion. The ool itself seemed to shake, to tremble. The guard fell back, crashing into a wall.

  “What’s happening!” Meloni was wide-eyed with fear as he climbed to his feet. A ripple surged up through the floor, shattering resin into tiny, piercing shards. Like a wave of flesh, the ripple traveled across the chamber. Veil Lord Huldru’s base cracked, partially torn from its moorings. Purplish black fluids spurted from writhing roots. Chunks of Huldru’s hardened body broke free, tumbling into the widening chasm at his base.

  Meloni, borne on the wave of rolling flesh, grabbed at cracks in the floor, at dangling tentacles, at hissing, pumping organs. Nothing could stop the surge as it heaved him into the air. He crashed down, instinctively rolling, and smashed into the wall.