Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  But could he make that decision for all Gagash?

  He sighed, holding his head in his three hands.

  The bellowing of a drake from nearby and the crashing destruction of trees raised him to his feet. Still uncertain of his destination, but knowing he could not be caught here, defenseless against the encroachments of the drakes, Rian set off toward the rich silver ribbon of the river on the valley floor.

  He slaked his thirst at the river and paused to rest once more before pressing onward, following the winding course of the waterway. Here the trek was easier, for the landskin thinned as it approached the running water, and pebbles poked up through its sparse coverage. The cool water soothed his feet and calves. Moonlight bathed his shoulders, broken only by the occasional branch that thrust out across the water.

  He heard the ool before he saw it, the world-shaking thrumming of its dangling tentacles sending ripples through the bedrock, the landskin throbbing in time to the monstrous sound. Stopping in the shallows of the river, he stared behind him, watching as the gigantic, tumorous mass crested the canyon wall, eclipsing the moon and rolling its great shadow over the river. The massive feeder tentacle dragged along the top of the escarpment before falling over its edge to slam onto the valley floor. The riverbed shook, and Rian fell to his knees, thrusting his hands into the silt at the river bottom to keep from falling on his face. The crackling rip of trees torn up by the roots and sucked into the fleshy blot in the sky masked the sound of the river’s tumbling.

  Wasting no time, Rian gained his feet and sprinted along the riverbed. The ool devoured the moon, its vast bulk blotting out the stars as it swept toward the Enclave. Risking a glance over his shoulder, Rian saw another ool approaching, trailing the first. And another.

  He had to get out of the valley. He scrambled up the steep slope of the ravine, dodging slashing limbs and razor-edged leaves. Behind him the ground churned; the landskin rippled as it rushed ahead of the ool in a massive wave that toppled trees and spat plumes of river water high into the sky. Flyers darted past Rian toward the rim of the valley.

  The first ool crested the far rim of the ravine and sank toward the fens on the other side, its tremendous gas bladders deflating with a rush of hot, moist air that stank of putrescence as it washed over Rian. He clawed at the roots of trees in the face of the heaving wind, feeling his body lifted from the ground, rendered weightless. Leaves slashed at his face and arms, but Rian snapped his eyes shut and clung to the roots, ignoring the biting pain of a hundred cuts.

  The harsh, buzzing hum of a boreworm swarm rose from the fens, audible even over the destruction of the ool.

  The hot wind died, cut off by the interposing rim of the escarpment. Rian collapsed to the tangle of roots, banging his forehead on a hard knot. He dragged himself toward a hollow at the base of a giant tree. The tangled roots fought him. The landskin beneath him heaved.

  Two hundred yards away a feeder tentacle trailed through the river, ripping trees crouched at the banks of the waterway up by their roots and tossing them skyward. Rian looked directly overhead at the underside of the nearest ool. Thousands of twitching purple tentacles hugged close to the lumpy flesh, surrounding a gaping hole in the mottled flesh. From this hole lightning flickered, trickling down toward the earth like caustic tongues. The earth exploded at the touch of the bolts. Great clouds of dust and rock and shattered trees rose in twisting funnels that danced along beneath the ool.

  Rian crouched lower, attempting to dig deeper into the stinging, cutting ropes of the tree’s roots. He felt the tug of howling winds, the sizzling crackle of lightning, the pulsating thunder of the ool’s bellows, its destructive rampage. He wrapped the roots tighter about his body and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Hello, Rian.” A firm hand seized his left shoulder. He snapped his eyes open and gazed up into the face of the stranger.

  Chapter 30

  Prodded from behind, Dersi stumbled into the dimly lit corridor. She lost her balance and tripped over the throbbing tentacle, which jerked at the touch of her skin, slithering with a wet slurp across the ridged metal floor. Dersi scuttled back from the looping coils and pressed against the right-hand wall. Thick, clotting ooze bubbled from gaping orifices pocking the metal to coat her shoulders. The unmistakable, heady scent of a Veil Lord struck her, pungent and suffocating, powerful.

  Here?

  Dersi swallowed panic and turned to stare at the walls. From ceiling to floor the metal dripped with resin. Oblong boxes scattered with blinking, muted lights thrust out from between hard chitinous ribs in the walls. Hundreds of flailing tendrils flared from sphincters that opened and closed like mammoth nostrils. As Dersi rose to her knees a long, articulated metal rod dropped from the ceiling and oriented on her. With a wet hiss, the globed end of the rod parted, revealing a crimson orb. In the center of the orb a circular patch of darkness expanded with a whirring buzz.

  Like an eye.

  Dersi stared up at the hovering sphere, waiting for something to happen. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the naked woman standing, motionless, her gaze fixed on the crimson orb. The sound of the woman’s umbilicus as it slid across the floor sent shivers down Dersi’s spine.

  “Get up,” the woman said in her monotone voice.

  Dersi, staring at the crimson eye, ignored her.

  “Who is this?”

  Dersi jerked, looking around for the source of the new voice. It seemed to come from all around, leaking from the dripping walls themselves.

  “I do not know,” the woman answered.

  “Bring her to me.”

  “That was my intent.”

  “She intrigues me. I can taste her.”

  The woman nodded her head, once, and stepped toward Dersi as the articulated rod retreated. From the ceiling, a wave of dripping metal swelled into a pulsing mound and split open to swallow the red eye. Ripples passed through the ceiling as the slash sealed itself.

  The woman’s umbilicus heaved, a portion rising from the floor like some gargantuan worm, and flopped forward. It retreated ahead of them, sliding over the metal floor with a wet slurping sound, and disappeared around a corner choked with shivering tentacles.

  “Who are you?”

  Dersi winced as the woman seized her. Long fingernails dug into her shoulder. She tried in vain to pull away, but the woman’s grip was unbreakable.

  The woman said nothing for a moment. Dersi looked over her shoulder at her. For the first time an expression flickered on her face. She frowned, bit her lip. Her free hand rose to touch her auburn hair, pulling free a single curl and wrapping it around her finger. Then, as if noticing what she was doing, the woman jerked her hand away. The curl snapped back into place. “M . . . Marissa,” the woman said, a strange hitch in her voice.

  “Where is Erekel?”

  “Be silent. Proceed.” Marissa squeezed tighter, and Dersi gasped in pain, her knees buckling. She put out a hand to catch herself.

  “You’re hurting me!” Dersi jerked to her feet and twisted. Marissa’s fingers dug into Dersi’s shoulder, sending spasms of agony through her body. Ignoring the pain, Dersi balled up her fist and smashed Marissa in the face. The crunching impact rocked Marissa’s head back amid a fine spray of blood.

  Marissa stumbled, dragging Dersi with her.

  “Let go!”

  Marissa righted herself and shot out her other arm, clamping her hand around Dersi’s throat. Effortlessly, she raised her arm, heaving Dersi into the air. Gasping for air, Dersi kicked out, slamming her bare feet into Marissa’s thighs and torso. Marissa shook her, tightening her grip around Dersi’s throat.

  “That was foolish. Cease this. Your struggles are pitiful.”

  Dersi gagged, feeling faint. She clawed at the fingers around her throat.

  “You will come with me. As I understand your . . . physiology . . . maintaining this level of pressure against your airway will soon render you unconscious. It makes no difference, to him or to me, whether you come consc
ious or unconscious. The choice is yours. Cease this struggle and I will release your throat.”

  Eyes bulging, lungs burning as if filled with acid, Dersi forced herself to be still. She fought to draw breath and failed.

  “Very well.” Marissa lowered her to the floor. She released her grip, and Dersi collapsed in a heap. Precious air filled her lungs in a searing, gulping flood.

  “Where . . . Where are you . . . taking me?” Blinking away tears, Dersi looked up at Marissa.

  “He’s waiting for you,” Marissa answered, and she reached down and jerked Dersi to her feet. “Come.”

  Who? But the stony look on Marissa’s face promised she would answer no questions. Dersi moved ahead of the nude woman, flinching as Marissa’s hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. More gently this time, but still painful.

  As they traveled the narrow corridors, Dersi noted more and more of the strange, oblong boxes protruding from the walls, each covered with twinkling, multihued lights. Twice more the ceiling parted and the eyelike constructions dropped down, following their progress. Each time the bloodred orbs focused on her Dersi felt as if she had been stripped bare, her mind peeled away, layer by layer, exposed.

  The corridor debauched into an oblong room choked with writhing tentacles and strange machinery. Massive gears turned overhead, spinning interlocked wheels and driving metal rods into cylinders that wheezed and clanked, belching steam. Hundreds of articulated rods thrust from the ceiling, the floor, the walls, all orienting on Dersi, their bloodred orbs darkening, contracting, swelling with interior blackness. A huge vein transversed the chamber. It pulsed and leaked translucent ooze in long streamers. Dozens of smaller vessels fed into the larger, each swollen.

  Marissa’s umbilicus wound across the cracked and pitted floor, looping around the hard, planar surfaces of bizarre machinery. It rose to pierce the side of the vein.

  In the streaked shadows a dais rose from the floor, on it a construction of crystalline spheres and rods and black, coiled tubes. Darker shadows crouched at the foot of the machine, a black, distorted hump that expanded and contracted, as if breathing.

  “Alberto, I’ve brought her,” Marissa said, speaking into the clamor of the room.

  “Dersi!”

  Dersi darted her gaze to the familiar voice on her left. Erekel entered the chamber from the opposite side, escorted by a woman in all respects Marissa’s twin. He tried to move toward Dersi, but his escort jerked him back, driving him to his knees. He gasped, his fingers prying at the woman’s grip on the back of his neck.

  “Erekel!” Dersi strained against Marissa’s hold. The woman clamped down on Dersi’s shoulder, her grip unbreakable.

  “Release them.” The voice reverberated through the huge chamber, shaking the tentacles, rattling the churning machines. Instantly Marissa removed her hand and stepped back toward the wall. Simultaneously, the other woman released Erekel. Dozens of thin filaments spat from the walls and swarmed the women, wrapped around their bodies in tight cocoons. The chitin-covered metal walls rippled, opening gaps into which the cocoons retreated. Ooze flowed from pores high on the wall, dripping over the openings, sealing them, hardening.

  Erekel rushed up to Dersi and knelt at her side. He took her in his arms, holding her close. Dersi mewed weakly, gasped in pain. Erekel drew back, holding her at arm’s length. “Dersi?”

  She shook her head. “I’m alright. Just sore.”

  “What happened to you? After the lift . . .”

  “You were so hurt, Erekel. I . . . I had to look for something, anything, to help you.”

  He shook his head and raised his arm before her. She stared at the unblemished pink skin, reached out, and touched it with a fingertip. No wound, no scar. Nothing. “She did it. The woman. I awakened in a corridor with her staring down at me, her hands roaming over my body. I called out for you, but you didn’t answer. I resisted her, tried to, when she picked me up. I might as well have been fighting the whole ool.”

  “Me too.” Dersi stared over Erekel’s shoulder at the bizarre trappings in the room. “What is this place?”

  He shook his head, his gaze sweeping across the room. “I don’t know. It . . . it’s incredible. These machines . . .”

  “Welcome, my children!” The powerful voice shook the chamber. Erekel seized Dersi’s hand and drew her close. On the dais, the heaving black hump stirred, seeming to grow before their eyes.

  “Erekel?”

  “I don’t know, Dersi.”

  A figure rose and descended from the dais, cloaked by shadows. Long strands like puppet’s strings climbed from its form toward the ceiling, merging with the throbbing veins that crisscrossed the vault. As the figure approached them and Dersi and Erekel backed farther away, the machinery continued to pound, hiss, and clank. Lights of a thousand hues blinked on and off from a hundred surfaces. The red-orbed mechanical arms swiveled, training on the Bhajong.

  Coming toward them, the figure moved into a band of light, revealing itself. Erekel’s hand tightened on Dersi’s.

  Man-shaped, half of the creature’s body seemed composed of metal, metal that whined and screamed in protest as it approached. But metal and machinery merged flawlessly with oozing, leaking organic tissue. It left wells of slime in its footsteps. From every portion of its body rose tentacles and cords, organic and artificial, that disappeared into the tangle overhead. One of its eyes protruded on a gleaming metal stalk, whirring as it regarded them. The other eye leaked a pallid discharge that dripped down its brittle flesh. Its mouth crawled with writhing cilia.

  “Welcome, my children,” the creature repeated. Its voice fell from that horror of a mouth and, simultaneously, seemed to resonate from the walls all around them. “I’ve tasted you. You are my progeny, but I do not know you.”

  Nearly choking, Erekel stepped forward. “I’m a harvester . . . Erekel.”

  “Harvester.” The figure paused, staring off into space, before orienting on Dersi. “And you? Are you, too, a harvester?”

  Dersi opened her mouth to confirm the assertion, but her tongue refused to obey. Her jaw moved up and down, but she could not utter the lie. The wet slurping sound of the tentacles overhead, the ominous clangor of the machines, the hissing whir of the mechanical eyes . . .

  “No. No, you are not a harvester. You are a Lord. I can taste it. And yet . . . And yet you carry his blood within you, as well. Curious.”

  “Dersi,” she managed to say, a faint whisper.

  “Dersi. Your markers are familiar. Interesting matrices. Much potential. A throwback of some sort, I suppose. Should have thought of that myself.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dersi said. She moved closer to Erekel, drawing strength from his warmth.

  The figure raised one arm, the gesture accompanied by a bedlam of noise from the tentacles attached to it. “Come. We will speak.”

  “Who are you?” Erekel squeezed Dersi’s hand.

  “Biological Sciences Officer Alberto Rodriguez.” The way the creature spoke, it sounded almost like a question. “Yes. That’s correct. But I haven’t used that name in generations. You may call me God.”

  Chapter 31

  APF 0018

  “Come.” Captain Rafael Santiago set aside the cup of lukewarm water—wishing it were coffee, wishing that Ship’s stores still held the precious beans, or that the plants had demonstrated more tenacity in taking root in this foreign soil—and peaked his hands in front of his face. His chin rested on his outthrust thumbs, and he could feel the stubble there.

  The door to his office slid open and his aide stepped inside, executing an imperfect salute. Santiago watched the aide cross the polished ceramic tile floor, noting the hitch in the young man’s step. The contagion, it must be. Though the aide wore a crisp uniform that covered him from ankle to throat, Santiago could almost see the festering sores that must cover his flesh. Festering sores, or worse. Some of these newer Hatchlings had developed . . . abnormalities that made sores seem like a godsend.
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  Santiago repressed a shudder, remembering others he had seen, others with huge, tumorous growths sprouting from their limbs, bones twisted, sending out spurs barely wrapped in taut flesh. One woman, only recently put down, had hidden a complete, diminutive arm that had grown from her pelvis. Another man, one who had escaped through the porous perimeter and into the wildlands surrounding the Enclave, had developed a ring of blisters along the base of his neck. The blisters burst, revealing red-rimmed eyes that leaked a foul liquid.

  “Captain, the reports you requested.” The aide handed Santiago a datapad. Santiago felt a shiver crawl along his spine as his fingers brushed against the Hatchling’s. He knew it was not communicable, knew he could not catch the contagion. None of the Founders could, or their natural offspring. Only the Hatchlings, and their clones.

  Still. He surreptitiously wiped his fingers on his pants leg.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?” The aide shifted from one foot to another.

  Santiago looked at the man, so young, physiologically as well as chronologically. Yet so old, measured against the span he could be allowed to live. Most Hatchlings could expect five, perhaps six years of life after awakening. Before the contagion took hold, and spread, and . . . changed them.

  “How long have you been awake, Simon?”

  Simon refused to meet his eyes. He stared at the floor. “Four years, three months, two days, sir.”

  “Does it hurt?” He did not know why he asked. He never had before, of any of them. Not in the eighteen years they had been marooned on this disgusting planet. Perhaps it was nostalgia. Simon looked a bit like his namesake, the son Santiago had buried so very many years before, long before launching himself into space aboard Ship.