by Jeff Stanley
The stranger knelt beside him, wincing. He shook his head, and the eyeball on its twitching strings swung back and forth like a pendulum. Frowning, the stranger reached up and took the eyeball. With his other hand he forced open the oozing socket and shoved his eyeball back into place. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
Rian watched in fascination as the cuts and lacerations on the stranger’s face knitted seamlessly, leaving only drying tracks of blood. A moment later the stranger opened his eyes. The mangled orb gleamed wetly in the fitful moonlight, cocked slightly to one side. The stranger tapped at the outer orbit, positioning the eyeball so that it stared down at Rian.
“Ease up a bit more. He’s going to lose consciousness.”
In response, the arm at his throat slackened, allowing him to draw hoarse, gasping breaths into his tortured lungs. A soft spray of tangled red hair fell across Rian’s face. He jerked his head from side to side and blew at the offending strands.
“What do you want?”
The stranger smiled. “You, Rian. You.”
Rian shook his head. “Why?”
The stranger’s smile broadened. “God calls you. You will answer his summons.”
“Kill him,” the woman said. She released Rian’s throat, leaving him in the embrace of the landskin, and circled him. She lay her hand on the stranger’s shoulder, kneading the taut muscles beneath his skin. “God can retrieve the information from his corpse as easily as from a live thing.”
The stranger shook his head. “I don’t think so. Can’t you feel it? Even through the touch of the landskin I can learn nothing of him. And the landskin is loath to embrace him. Something is wrong. Something has changed.”
“It doesn’t matter. Their existence is numbered in days, if not hours.”
“What are you talking about?” Rian demanded.
In response the stranger lifted his arm, pointing toward the sky, where Rian could see dozens of ool floating across the valley. Their bulks cast distorted shadows on the landskin. The sound of the ools’ passage had faded as they moved farther along the valley floor, heading for the ravine wall and the fens beyond. Now Rian could clearly hear the raucous, buzzing hum of swarms of boreworms, could see against the luminous tapestry of the night the creeping clouds of worms swollen with buoyant gases.
“Your precious Enclave will fall, Rian. We have awakened, and we will take back what was ours. We will cure this world of your parasitic infestation.”
“What are you?” He stared at the two of them, so alike, so utterly alien. The clean lines of their limbs, the very symmetry of their smooth bodies, rendered them monstrous. But the alien gleam in their eyes struck him to his core. He shivered. The landskin, reacting, squeezed tighter.
The stranger raised his arm, extending it for Rian to see. “Once, you were like this, Rian. Close, at least. A faint shadow of what I am. Your kind. Your species. Before you came here, when you remained where you belonged. Out there. Beyond the skies, traveling in your metal ships between the stars. Bringing your pestilence to a thousand worlds.
“You do not know your own history, Rian. You’ve forgotten it all. For so long have you breathed beneath our sun, for so long have you eaten of our flesh and drunk of our lifesblood, that you have lost all memory of your origins. Pitiful. A species with such poor cognitive abilities should never have gained the power you’ve accumulated.
“But we owe you a great debt, too, Rian. It was your individuality, your illogical adherence to hierarchy and struggle, that awakened us. You’ve partaken of us, Rian. But no more than we’ve partaken of you. Before you came this was a paradise, in the vernacular of your ancestors, an Eden. Look what you’ve made it. Look what you’ve made of yourselves in your vanity and your belligerence, your self-righteous superiority. You thought to change this world as you’ve changed countless others. You thought to remake it in the image of the thousand others upon which your vile, parasitic species crawls, sucking the life from them.
“But not this one, Rian. Never this one.”
Rian struggled against the landskin, trying vainly to move his arms and legs. He could not. It clung too tight, flowing against his skin like abrasive stone.
The stranger leaned closer, his breath hissing in Rian’s face. “We are the future, Rian. She and I. We are the future of this world. And, in time, we will be the future of others. All of them. Until, at last, the stars will cry out in unison, communion, one vast, all-encompassing species, at peace.”
He leaned closer still, until his blood-flecked lips touched the lobe of Rian’s left ear. “You are obsolete. An abomination even in the eyes of your ancestors.”
Rian snarled and spit at the stranger. The reaction surprised him with its violence.
The stranger screamed, his hands clawing at the droplets of spittle on his face, tearing great gashes in his skin. Between his clawed fingers Rian could see the stranger’s face bubbling, hissing, smoke rising from it in noxious pink streamers. The stranger reeled, falling to his back and writhing in obvious pain. His legs kicked out, slamming into the landskin, which bucked in sympathy. The woman rushed to the stranger, letting out a high-pitched wail. She seized him, clutched him like a newborn to her mother’s breast, while he thrashed wildly on the ground.
Still the landskin clung to Rian. He could not move.
When the stranger rose, half of his face had sloughed away, a dripping, ruined mass of pustule-ridden tissue. His lips were gone, revealing white teeth stained with blood thrusting up from oozing gums. His voice, when he spoke, slurred from his mouth. “That hurtsss. That hurtsss a great deal.”
He approached, staying out of range of Rian’s spittle. In his hand he carried the broken shard of the spear, twisting the short rod through his long, tapered fingers. “Ssso will thiss!” he cried. He reversed the spear shaft and slammed it down through the landskin and into Rian’s belly.
Chapter 33
“God?” The unfamiliar word felt strange in Dersi’s mouth. She shook her head, not understanding its meaning, and saw Erekel shrug.
The right side of God’s face twitched, his lips curving upward in a grotesque approximation of a smile. Cilia wriggled from between his tight lips, questing across his cheek, sliding into his dark nostril. “A concept all but abandoned in the universe of my birth. Simply put, God is the creator, the progenitor, the catalyst behind all that is nature. The supreme being. Me.”
Dersi stared at the foul creature, unable to decipher his claim. “Like a Veil Lord?”
God laughed, a harsh sound, like the scraping of raw stones in the ool’s gullet. Dersi shivered and drew back from him. “The Veil Lords are but pale imitations of me, Dersi. My creations, as are you all. They are failures, one and all. My first attempt at bonding humanity to the perfection that is the world-mind. Imperfect creations of a perfect, supreme being.”
God gestured with his metallic arm, motioning them toward the far end of the oblong chamber. There, in the deep shadows of clamorous machines and throbbing ool organs, a sphincter twisted open, revealing a long, torturous hallway beyond. Deep recesses lined the resin-encrusted walls, lit from behind by glowing light-tumors of a soft greenish hue. Vague shapes reared up within those recesses, cast in masking shadows.
He led them into the hallway. His trailing umbilicals moved through the flesh of the ceiling, merging with the tissue and following inside an undulating wave. Dersi trembled and pulled back against Erekel’s guidance.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t want to go in there, Erekel. This is . . . this is wrong. Something’s not right.”
He snorted. “Do you see an alternative? I’ve no doubt that if we refuse to go with him, God will bring the women back. I’m not anxious to tangle with them again. Are you?”
She shook her head, still hesitant. But Erekel tugged on her arm, just a few steps behind the grotesque figure, forcing her to stumble forward. Ooze dripped from the opened sphincter onto her shoulders and trickled down between her breasts.
She shivered and bit her lip.
“This way. There is a more comfortable room down here. You’re both hungry, thirsty. I’ll have refreshments constituted.” God kept his back to them, moving down the corridor in a miasma of sound. In his wake the scent of pungent spices, rich and sharp, washed over Dersi. She gagged.
Erekel pointed into one of the niches, nudging Dersi’s attention that way. Within the recess a creature which at one time might have been human sat in a resin-encrusted chair of worked metal. Rods and wires sank into the man’s distorted, enlarged head. His mouth was open, held so by little clawed arms that emerged from the walls of his recess. A bundle of dripping tubes clogged the orifice. Other wires, other tubes, wound around his head, masking his eyes and ears. His entire body glistened with hardened, wavery resin, forever sealing him to the thronelike chair. Behind him, on the back wall of the recess, a bank of blinking lights flickered on and off with no discernable pattern.
Dersi drew back, looking into another of the recesses. Each bore its own perpetual captive, silent forever.
“What are these . . . things?” Dersi whispered softly, for Erekel’s ears.
“I don’t—”
“Other failures, other attempts at union which went awry. My crewmen and compatriots, consumed by the same dream which drove me. Their bodies, their minds, their wills—they were not strong enough. Now they are storehouses of knowledge, of genetics, traits ripe for the harvesting.” God’s mechanical eye rose and turned back toward them, though his face remained fixed toward the front. “That one is Ensign Lisa Douglas, from Xenogenetics. Useful, but flawed. As were they all.”
“Are . . . Are they dead?” Dersi managed to ask. She stayed in the center of the corridor, keeping as much space as possible between her and the recessed creatures.
“They can never die. Like me, they are immortal. But they are unaware. At this point they are simply . . . farms, if you will. Cultures for the harvesting of genetic material.” He paused, mechanical finger to his cilia-dripping lips, and frowned. “Come, it’s only a little farther, and you can both rest.”
Dersi shrank into Erekel as they passed a woman forever posed with her arms stretched above her head, her fingers drawn like claws, as if to fight, to scratch and tear, at some horrifying menace. Translucent tubes capped her full breasts, extracting white fluid, milk or collostrum, with a wet slurp. Between legs held permanently open by digging clamps, other tubes pierced the woman’s vagina, organic tubes that moved lazily, undulating.
A sphincter at the end of the hallway twisted open, and God led them into an oval room with metal walls. Crystalline screens covered the far wall from floor to ceiling, coruscating with a kaleidoscope of colors. Before the wall of twisting designs rose a mammoth throne of gleaming metal. Directly above the throne a sphere covered with transparent tubes and claw-mouthed hoses dropped from the ceiling. God strode to the chair and seated himself. Needles emerged from the right arm of the chair and pierced his flesh, while from the other arm hissing clamps latched onto his metal appendage. The sphere of jutting crystal rods lowered, twin bars descending and sliding into the base of his skull. He sighed in seeming pleasure, his mouth gaping open and the cilia within it disgorging.
“Sit,” God said, raising the fingers of his right hand. Dersi started as machinery grated in the wall. A portion of the wall slid into the ceiling, and a low chair emerged from the darkness, clicking into place behind her. An identical chair slid into place beside Erekel. “Sit. Refreshments are on their way.”
“God,” Dersi said, licking her lips. She paused and glanced at Erekel. “God, what is this . . . this place? It . . . it’s so alien.”
He laughed. “You unwittingly mimic the very words of your ancestors, Dersi. They, too, once looked upon a new and fascinating world, wondering at their place in it, wondering at its reality, its immutable laws and the consequences of breaking those laws.”
“I don’t understand,” Dersi said.
“Neither do I,” Erekel echoed.
“Will you sit? It is not often that my children find me. I rather welcome the novelty. The simulacrums have become such tedious companions, and my other children have not yet emerged from the womb.” He gestured, and the chairs slid closer to Dersi and Erekel. Dersi, with a wary glance at her companion, lowered herself cautiously to the edge of the chair. Expecting the chill touch of metal, the rising warmth surprised her. She kept her hands in her lap, away from the chair’s armrests. Erekel likewise sat perched on the edge of his seat, looking as if at any moment he might bolt from it.
At that moment the sphincter through which they had entered spun open, and a pair of the nude, identical women stepped into the room. They carried trays burdened with clear flasks containing a white liquid, as well as platters piled with squares of some brownish material. An unusual scent rose from the trays, like nothing Dersi had encountered before.
God gestured with his fingers once more, and a low, broad table emerged from the floor in front of Dersi and Erekel. “Marissa, put down the trays and leave us.”
“Yes, Alberto,” the two said with one voice. Dersi eyed the squares as the women set down their burdens, turned, and departed the way they had come.
“It is quite beneficial, catered to the needs of your physiology.”
“What is it?” Erekel asked, touching one of the squares with a fingertip.
“Nutrient cake. Proteins, carbohydrates, a blend of vitamins and minerals in a fiber base. It’s soft enough for you to chew, though you should be careful, given your dental deterioration. An unexpected side effect of total dependence on the ool for sustenance, I’m afraid. It’s not filet mignon, but it’s palatable, nutritious.”
Erekel picked up one of the squares and sniffed it, while Dersi watched him. He licked his lips, then glanced at God. Finally, he took a tentative nibble at one corner of the cake. His face slid through several emotions: anxiety, revulsion, curiosity, and, finally, pleasant surprise. He swallowed, took another bite.
“A vast improvement over ool plasma, I take it?” God smiled his eerie smile.
“It’s good. Unusual,” Erekel told Dersi. He nodded toward the platter, then frowned, turning his head and sticking his finger into his mouth to scrape something from his teeth. “It sticks.”
“Try it, Dersi,” God said with a sickening smile.
Hesitant, Dersi forced herself to take one of the brown cakes. She stared at it, noted its tackiness on her fingertips and its subtle aroma, like strange spices. Wincing, Dersi took a tiny bite, finding the cake spongy, like lung tissue, and with a taste that defied description. Unusual, peculiar. Not unpleasant, however.
“What is this place, God?” Erekel asked. He gestured at the room around them, but clearly meant the entirety of the complex nestled within the ool, hidden.
“And what do you want with us?” Dersi said.
God laughed. “Very direct, Dersi. You remind me of Santiago.” He smacked his half-lips, the cilia spilling out like fat worms. “Hmmm. Yes. There is a certain similarity in the matrices. I thought I’d culled him entirely from my genepool, but it would appear not. That might work in my favor.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“It’s unimportant,” God said, raising his mechanical arm in a vague gesture. He sighed, an almost human affectation. “You asked about this place. A logical question. The answer, I’m afraid, is not quite so succinct and logical. Originally, this was to be our interface, our communications node with the ool, with the landskin, with the planet itself.”
“Our?” Dersi leaned forward in her chair.
“We. Us. Humans. We’re aliens, Dersi, foreign to this planet. Invaders from another, lost, world.”
Dersi burst out in laughter.
“Your disbelief is understandable. I’ve taken great pains to ensure it, in fact.”
“We’re from another world?” Dersi said, snickering. The horrendous caricature of a man across from her took on a comedic cast, its hor
ror fading in the light of revealed madness. “And just how did we accomplish that?” She raised her arms and flapped them at her sides. “Did we used to have wings, then? What happened to them?”
“Of a sort, yes,” God said. “Though not in a manner you could understand. Look around you, Dersi. See the things in just this room alone. The screen behind me, the communications equipment overhead, the computer terminals jutting from the walls. The walls themselves, in fact. Where have you seen such artifacts before?
“I’ll answer for you: nowhere. Oh, there are similarities between this technology and those perversions of the Gagash. Similar, but not identical. This is not a technology I’ve allowed to proliferate. It’s unnecessary to my children, a burden carted across the stars in an effort to transform, to terraform, an unwilling host planet in the image of our abandoned homeworld. It’s a crutch humanity leaned on for far too long, instruments of environmental rather than personal change, a means to refocus the world to meet our limited view of what it is, what it should be, rather than awakening to the realization that it is humanity that should change, humanity that must change. Or be changed.”
Dersi edged back in her seat. She glanced at Erekel to see if he was as astonished by God’s insanity as she. Shock rippled through her; Erekel slumped over in his chair, his eyes closed, his mouth gaping, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Tiny creatures crawled across his skin, multilegged and illuminated from within, spinning filaments as delicate as threads over his flesh.
“Erekel!” Dersi cried. She tried to rise and go to him, only to discover that she could not. The metal of the chair liquefied, drinking her in. Oozing tendrils spewed from the wall behind her, seizing her arms. One wrapped around her throat, another her forehead, and dragged her back against the chill metal of her chair.
“There is no cause for alarm,” God told her. “Erekel is unharmed, just asleep, while I harvest what sequences from him I can use. I promise you, he’s feeling no pain. In fact, I’ll send him pleasant dreams.”