Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  “Fascinating, is it not?” Singh said as he approached.

  Mac jerked, his hands dropping, one palm coming to rest by instinct on the cold butt of his holstered weapon. He seemed to relax as Singh touched one well-groomed hand to the glass.

  “What?”

  “Fascinating. I must admit the hard science is beyond me. Genetics was never my strong suit, though I did delve into the subject during my residency. But I felt a different calling.” He smiled. “A higher calling, I have always believed.”

  Mac grunted, noncommittal. Singh turned back, watching the technicians—Hatchlings, themselves—depositing another zygote into the vats. Another technician, using forceps with edges of sterile monofilaments, slid the download chip into the recessed tray at the base of the vat.

  “Another breeder?” Singh carefully kept the emotion from his voice. Certainly not even pride, pride at having suggested the course they had followed for years now. It would not be appropriate.

  But he had had no choice. Had he? Always honest with himself, Singh could not help but admit that the program had been a grave error. A calculated risk, he had called it. But, in reality, it had been one man’s vanity, playing at being a god. His vanity. His sin.

  Mac nodded. “The others have begun showing signs of the contagion. Two had to be put down yesterday.”

  “Two more. A pity. I had hoped we would enjoy a bit longer period of viability from them.”

  “They’d both borne a kid or two. They’d served their purpose. Their personas can be recycled, and the techs tell me they can throw their codes into a soup and come up with something entirely new. No big loss.”

  “Such a disregard for life.” Singh kept his eyes glued to the scene beyond the glass, refusing to look at Mac, though he studied the master sergeant surreptitiously.

  Mac bristled. His hand squeezed the butt of his pistol.

  “It’s all in how you look at it, Singh. You call the breeders alive? They don’t have the intellect of my bootstraps. They react on a purely instinctive level—hell, half of them can’t even speak. They serve a purpose. Life? That’s not what I’d call it. No more than I’d call my gun alive. It’s a tool. They’re tools. It’s as simple as that.”

  Singh shook his head, expelled breath in a hiss between his teeth. “I regret this course of action. I regret this grand scheme. What has it brought us? Has it brought us any closer to securing ourselves on this world?”

  Mac dropped his eyes, not responding.

  No. It had not. There were more of them now, of course. More workers, more laborers, more technicians. More soldiers. But . . . something was wrong. Something was decidedly wrong. Within weeks of being fast-grown, Hatchlings exposed to the atmosphere of this alien planet began . . . changing. They became warped, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Less than human. Nothing had served to forestall the changes, not even the most powerful of stabilizing drugs. Only closeting the breeders within the sterile environment of the skeletal remains of Ship kept them viable long enough to give birth.

  Singh continued. “How many originals remain, Master Sergeant? A hundred? Eighty?”

  “You should know. You’ve got files on all of us, don’t you?”

  “Of course. But, to be honest with you, I have stopped following the numbers. The story they tell has become too tragic, too dire. I do know that more than two-thirds of our population came from the Hatchery. And all of these seem much more susceptible to the contagion. Natural births have fallen dramatically—what were there? Three last year? It will be only a matter of time before we die out, leaving only these Hatchlings in our wake. These Hatchlings, which do not share our immunity to whatever plague this planet has inflicted upon us. What will become of us then, Master Sergeant?”

  Mac clenched his jaw, said nothing. He spun on his heel and stalked from the Hatchery, heading, no doubt, for the armory. Singh was familiar with the master sergeant’s moods. He needed to kill something, anything. Singh made a mental note, promising himself to enter the thoughts into MacCallum’s file, then turned back to watch the technicians at work.

  Chapter 29

  This is not right.

  Rian stared around him, taking in the pristine, white walls, the bright cases rising from the shining, polished floor. A tube hung from the ceiling, all of glass like those in the Elder’s laboratory, but without the greenish fluid. Instead, crystalline liquid held a figure suspended, streamers of bubbles gushing up from a ring around the base of the tube. The figure was motionless, its eyes closed. It seemed somehow . . . unfinished, as if its growth had been arrested.

  He moved closer, reaching out a hand to touch the glass.

  And stopped, staring at his hand. Thick, pliant material covered his hand to the wrist, swallowed by the tight-fitting cuff of a white sleeve. He looked down, staring at the coat that swathed his perfect, symmetrical body.

  Symmetrical.

  He touched the center of his chest through the tough material, feeling for the arm that should have been there, but was not. No nub, no scar tissue. Nothing.

  There was something covering his face, distorting his vision. He moved his hands over a transparent shield, a peculiar headgear that surrounded his head like a bubble.

  “Doctor?”

  Rian spun. The voice came from behind him. Another white-smocked figure stood there, a tray in its hands. On the tray was a shallow dish containing a black and white strip no longer than Rian’s finger.

  “Doctor, is something wrong?” Through the clear barrier of the face shield Rian could see concern in the clear, pale eyes of the man who addressed him. Clean skin, unblemished.

  “Wrong?”

  The figure nodded. “Yes. Is something wrong? Is the specimen not acceptable?”

  Rian backed away from the man and his tray, filled with a sense of dread, a sense of rising danger. His back touched the smooth glass of the hanging tube.

  “Doctor Singh?” The man pivoted his upper body and placed the tray on a nearby table. “Should I call someone? Are you ill?”

  “Ill?”

  “Leave us, technician.” The new voice came, cold and alien, from the white walls all around. Rian spun in place, eyes darting toward the shadowed niches near the ceiling, seeking the speaker.

  The man nodded. “Yes, Father.” Without another word, the man stepped toward a glass panel in one wall. The panel slid aside with a hiss and closed again after the man had left the room.

  “Is there a problem, Singh?”

  “Singh? Who are you? Where are you? Show yourself!”

  “Your behavior is decidedly odd, Singh. Has the therapy at last begun to fail?”

  “Therapy? No! Where are you!” Rian reached out and picked up the tray, slinging the shallow dish to the floor, where it shattered. The black and white strip slid across the smooth tiles. Rian held the tray up like a shield, a weapon. He backed toward the wall, pressing against it, facing out into the room.

  “That was foolish, Singh. The sample will have been contaminated. It will be unusable. We shall have to begin again.”

  “What are you talking about? Show yourself!”

  No. This is too soon. Awaken, Rian. Awaken. All in its proper time. The voice echoed out of darkness, swam up from Rian’s subconscious. Authoritative. Foreign. Undeniable.

  Rian woke on cool stone, in darkness washed by a sprinkling of stars and the quarter-moon perched on the western horizon. He blinked, unsure for a moment of his whereabouts, before the memories came tumbling back like a landslide. Shivering, he drew his naked legs up to his chest and stared out into the night, listening to the hissing sounds of the landskin breathing. Beyond his sight, a drake barked, its deep, sonorous voice echoed moments later by an answering cry.

  He sat on pebbled stone, a barren stretch of naked bedrock unblemished by the landskin. Behind him rose a low ridge, its rough surface abrasive against his back. Knots and bruises covered his body where he had crashed into the short wall when the landskin had so forcibly ejected
him. He rubbed his forehead, felt a tender spot the size of his thumb.

  Flickers of a dream came to him: white walls, a glass case, an eerie, cold voice. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the unwanted images. His pulse raced, his breathing came in quick, shallow gasps.

  Be patient. Be calm. All is proceeding according to plan.

  The voice spoke softly into his mind, overriding his fears, stilling him. Some small part of him rebelled. A soothing crept outward from his center, choking the rebellion, quaffing it.

  The rasping hiss of the landskin’s slow, steady encroachment warned him of its nearness; it could be beaten, pressed back, but without constant vigilance it would return, always return. Only the high places, the vertical cliff faces and precarious plateaus, unreachable by the drakes, remained unskinned for long.

  The drakes barked again, closer. Summoned by the landskin, called by its reluctance to approach Rian, the drakes lumbered through the night. He could hear their crashing progress through the trees beyond this bowl-shaped valley.

  Boulders loomed up around him like long, jagged teeth. None was high enough to keep him away from even the smallest of drakes. He needed to find higher ground, a place the drakes could not reach.

  He rose and felt around on the ground, coming up with a smooth, flat stone about the size of his hand. Crossing to a flat-topped boulder, he set down his stone and took up another, rounder one. A few sharp blows created a rough edge on the flat stone. Its edge drew blood when he ran his fingertip across the jagged serration.

  Armed with this makeshift axe blade, Rian paused to listen for the drakes. There. Closer. Trees cracked beneath their gargantuan weight, snapped off midtrunk, falling with the rattling hiss of crashing leaves. The drakes lowed, warbling voices rising as they approached. Need bled through those voices, yearning toward expansion.

  He climbed over the low wall and set out across a narrow gap in the landskin. At his approach the landskin seemed to shrink in on itself, retracting, baring stone in its determination to avoid his touch. The terrain sloped upward, climbing toward a high hillock whose upper third lay barren. Naked, jutting rocks and tumbled boulders formed a natural stairway to the hillock’s top. Though each step brought fresh pain in every muscle in his body, Rian hastened toward the jagged rocks.

  Taking the crude axe in his middle hand, Rian scaled the hillock. Sharp stones cut his feet and scored his hands. He left blood in his wake, painted on the rocks in a rich slather. The sparse landskin disappeared altogether as he climbed higher. When he reached the top he found a space no bigger than his own body, a rough spur of exposed rock upon which he balanced. Forty feet above the valley floor, he watched and listened, awaiting the coming of the drakes.

  As if driven by intellect, they came, one from the north, the other from the east. They broke through a ring of razor-leafed trees lining a ridge that encircled the valley. Huge old trunks came crashing down beneath the ponderous weight of the creatures, clattering on the landskin like loose skeletons.

  Rian watched them, saw them pause and raise ridged heads on long, serpentine necks. They lifted their snouts into the air, scenting. By the huffing sounds they emitted from the countless openings in their veiny skins, he knew they sensed his presence. They hesitated and became agitated, stomping on the landskin with their forelimbs of hardened resin. Their massive, flat tails slammed into the ground, a vast drumlike sound echoing in the night. The one that paused on the eastern verge rose on its hind legs, exposing a pale-white belly crawling with cilia. Its triangular head split, disgorging a mass of crimson sensory tentacles that looked like tongues of flame. Rian knew that the touch of those organs released a burning, consuming corrosive capable of stripping a man to his bones in seconds.

  He drew his legs up and squatted on his spur of stone, settling in for a long night.

  Trumpeting, the drakes approached one another, their ponderous movements shaking the ground. Pebbles rained down from Rian’s perch, pattering across the raw stone below. They met in the center of the valley, a mere hundred yards from Rian, and their long necks twined. Wads of sensory tentacles emerged from their mouths, tangling. Then, almost regretfully, they parted, and the smaller of the two lumbered closer to Rian’s roost. Its mouth gaped open, tentacles tasting the air in Rian’s direction.

  The drake tromped closer, raising itself on its hind legs. Ungainly in this posture, it teetered forward, its forelegs smashing down against the stone outcropping. Rian clutched the crumbling edges of his perch, maintaining his balance against the violent tremors that shook the stone. Though even fully extended the drake could not hope to reach him, Rian drew back from the edge. Scarlet sensory tentacles tickled the rock wall some ten feet below his position.

  The other drake withdrew, its footsteps reverberating through the valley, shaking Rian’s perch.

  Rian stared down into the hundreds of eyes scattered across the flesh of the closest drake. Pallid orbs, the eyes caught the thin moonlight, reflecting it back as eerie gleams in the darkness. He could smell the pungent odor of its body, the rank stench of its corrosive, dripping saliva.

  Gathering a handful of loose pebbles, Rian began tossing them at the drake below. Stones bounced harmlessly from its tough hide, causing its eyes to blink closed, then reopen. Tentacles snatched at the stones, drawing them into the creature’s maw.

  “Go away,” Rian said, raining pebbles down on the drake.

  As if understanding him, or realizing it had no chance of reaching him, the drake slid down the pillar of stone and turned with lumbering strides. It trudged across the barren stone to a point near the edge of the landskin and sank to its belly. Grumbling, it lowered its long neck to the cool stone, rested its head on the jagged upthrust of a boulder.

  Rian leaned on one elbow, watching the drake’s metamorphosis. Its legs splayed out at its sides and flattened, collapsing even as its massive trunk seemed to implode. Loose flesh flowed outward, spurting across the barren stone like miniature rivers of landskin. Its head and neck melted, dripping over the boulder and leaving it covered with landskin that pulsed and throbbed. In a few short minutes the drake disappeared, returned to that which had birthed it, expanding the reach of the landskin. A few residual blisters burst, spraying spores that landed deep into the region of stone and grew, becoming hard clusters of new growth, seeds for the next offensive.

  After waiting an hour or more for the encroachment to consolidate its hold on the land, Rian rose and searched the dark horizon for signs of other drakes. Another bellowed in the distance, but it was too far away to pose much of a threat. Rian climbed down the stone pillar, scraping his knees and elbows on the sharp rocks. Landskin now crouched in mottled rills around the base of his hillock, spongy beneath his feet as he reached ground level. It trembled as his flesh touched it, flowing, abrasive on his skin.

  While atop the hillock he had spotted the dim glow of the Enclave beacon in the distance, and he made for this now, climbing landskin hills crested with thick stands of trees. Here he used his crude axe blade to hack a sturdy limb from one of the trees. Quick, certain strokes of the flat of the blade shaved the bark from the limb, and he whittled a long, tapered point at one end.

  Equipped with his new spear Rian descended the line of hills into a crescent-shaped valley choked with a rich, dark canopy of trees. Flyers flitted among the moonglare-silvered leaves, blazing with scintillating colors ignited by the moonlight. A cascade tumbled from a rift in the canyon wall a hundred yards to the north. It crashed into a wide pool on the valley floor and sent a plume of mist high into the sky. Through the interlocking branches, Rian caught an occasional glance of the silvery river that wound through the ravine and disappeared around a curvature in the vaulted walls. A riotous miasma of scents rose from the valley, the perfume of a thousand flowers, and beneath it all the pungent aroma of the landskin.

  Rian recognized the valley. Following the river would take him into the boreworm fens surrounding the Enclave, a journey that would carry him on
into the morning. There he could . . .

  Could what?

  He paused beneath the razor-leafed trees, listening to their susurrus in a cool wind tasting of water. Events had unfolded so rapidly, one atop another, that he had had no opportunity to consider his next move. Return to the Enclave? But what would happen there? Though they had expressed regret at their actions, the Elders of the Enclave had imprisoned him, experimented on him.

  He ran hands across his naked flesh. The lumps beneath his arms remained tender to the touch, certain signs of the Elders’ violations. And though his throat no longer throbbed in pain, he could still taste the vile tube that had penetrated him. He spat on the landskin. It sizzled, rippling away from his spittle.

  He remembered the needles, the forceps. The penetrating, sawing blades, stealing gobbets of his flesh. He shivered.

  Would his reception on returning to the Enclave be any different? He shook his head, answering himself. When the Elders learned of his return—and certainly such knowledge would be conveyed immediately—they would react no differently. He would again be kept, held. Experimented upon. Sacrificed for the greater good of the Gagash, for the dream of returning to their origins, their humanity.

  But . . .

  Rian moved over to a rounded boulder and sat down, leaning his makeshift spear against the oozing bole of a tree. He watched a flyer buzz past, darting from flower to flower in an intricate dance, and saw much of himself in the creature. It never stayed for long on the delicate petals of the blooms, wary of the nectar oozing from the stamen that sought to trap it.

  At his feet the landskin retreated.

  He brought up his middle hand and stared at it in the filtered moonlight. A part of him since birth, he found it impossible to imagine life without the appendage. He had seen pictures of their ancestors, the people they had been in the long, long distant past. How would it feel to have only two arms, two hands, ten fingers? Hair rather than the rigid spines that covered the dome of his head? Symmetry itself seemed an alien concept. Rian could not imagine being so symmetrical, was not even certain if he desired such a profound change.