Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  “The new vessel is prepared,” Singh said. “The persona of the vessel has been subverted.”

  The Avatar started, her hands clenching on the bedsheet. She had forgotten.

  No. She had not forgotten. She had consciously repressed the knowledge, as it was too painful to acknowledge. Conscious awareness of Magda’s subsumed persona, buried deep within the recesses of this body’s brain, forced into a role of subservience to the needs of the Avatar, languishing for decades as a mental and emotional prepubescent, was too painful to give heed. She wondered if the other Avatars before her had thought the same.

  More, what would Magda experience in the too-brief period of time between the Avatar’s uploading into Father and her body’s death? How would a child of seven adapt to the sudden realization of her geriatric state? The idea of it—falling gently asleep as little more than a toddler, then awakening in a body grown old, wrinkled, aching—brought fresh tears to the Avatar’s stolen eyes. Mercifully, Magda’s flesh could not long sustain its life. The child-persona’s period of suffering would be brief.

  “Rest, Magda,” Santiago said. “Your body is very old, and frail. It would not do to have it die before the Avatar can be uploaded. Makes things messy.”

  Magda wept, but could not disobey. She climbed back up onto the bed, feeling every ache in her bones, each sharp pain in her joints. Her skin hurt. A dull cold twisted in her stomach, and she felt her heart lurching to keep up its tempo.

  Needles emerged from the cold surface of the bed and pierced the flesh of her neck. Warm fluid rushed through her bloodstream, carrying lassitude. Her eyes grew heavy. She could not keep them open. A tear dropped from the corner of her eye and trickled across her wrinkled cheek, falling onto the bedsheet.

  A low whine escaped her lips as memories began to slide from her mind. She grasped at them, frantic, but could not hold onto them. Mother, father—not hers, Magda’s—faded away, lost to the blackness. Her first kiss. The only child she carried to term. The feel of her husband’s weak grip on her hand as he died. Watching her grandson born. She swiped at the memories, desperate to hold onto them.

  They were hers. Hers! Experienced in a stolen body—Magda’s—but the memories were hers alone.

  In the one, intense moment before the last shred of her consciousness faded, she sensed another persona, a delicate, frightened persona, bubbling up from the depths of their shared mind. She reached for the other, wanting to comfort her, needing to hold her.

  She failed.

  Chapter 38

  God turned back to Dersi. “The situation seems well in hand.” He smiled, spilling squirming cilia from his mouth. Drool dangled in long, yellow streamers from his lips. At his gesture the floor near Dersi’s chair split open, and a hump of ool-flesh rose. It flattened, spreading, forming a plane with a shallow depression. God sat, his tethers hissing and clanking to accommodate the movement, and the hump of flesh molded itself to his form. He leaned forward, crossing his arms on his knees, and favored Dersi with a broader smile.

  “Let us continue our conversation, shall we? Now. Where were we? Ah, yes. Santiago.”

  “Why are you holding me? Let me go!”

  He shook his head. “Dersi, my child, my beloved child. Don’t you see? I cannot let you take this most profound of evolutionary steps on your own initiative. I’ve tried free will, and it doesn’t work! The Gagash were given free reign to seek me, to return to my embrace, and they chose to strive against me, against the ultimate fate I ordained. Your own Bhajong were given the greatest of gifts: the gift of communion with me, with the world-mind. Your leaders turned it into an elitist privilege, excluding those who are of my family. This cannot be allowed. The time for such freedoms is past, my child. For the Gagash. For the Bhajong. For you.”

  “No! Let me go!”

  “Don’t worry, my dear. It will only hurt for a brief—very brief—period, and then you will join me in such a wonderful communion. The communion of your Veil Lords pales in comparison, I assure you. You will be first, my primal angel. My messiah. I shall place you at my right hand, my dearest.”

  He raised his metal arm, and overhead machinery clanked and clamored. Deep amber lights flickered on in hidden recesses, illuminating a cylinder of gleaming metal trailing dozens of coiled black cords that slid along the ceiling on wheeled tracks. The construction came to a halt directly above Dersi, who stared up into its hollow center. Within, beams of light crisscrossed the cylinder, while slender needles circled its rim.

  “What is that!”

  “Don’t worry, Dersi,” God said. “I told you it will only hurt for a brief time. In the end, it will all be worth it.”

  Other equipment slid out of the ceiling, dropping down to bracket Dersi’s head. Clamps emerged to grasp her scalp. She screamed, trying to pull away, but tiny claws seized her, held her immobile. From the floor came oozing tentacles, wrapping around her throat, pulling her head back. Others looped over her chin; hard, needlelike tips wormed between her taut lips and clenched teeth, forcing her mouth open. The rancid taste of bile squirted into her mouth and she gagged.

  A thick, blunt-tipped tentacle slid out of the tangle of machinery overhead. Hanging just before her wide-open eyes, the blunt head split, disgorging a metal-sheathed rod that entered her mouth. Something cold and slimy, with the feel of a thousand crawling legs, crept down her throat.

  Dersi tried to scream, but gagged, her breath coming hot and uncontrolled. The metal cylinder overhead lowered, the ringing needles piercing Dersi’s forehead, scraping bone.

  “I apologize, but evolution does require wakefulness,” God said. He reached out his organic hand and touched her cheek. “I promise it will soon be over. In time the memory will fade altogether, and you will be unable to recall the pain, only the overwhelming joy of what’s to come.”

  Dersi struggled. But, held by the grasping chair, the tentacles, and the bizarre equipment, she could do nothing. The cylinder overhead began—slowly at first, then quickening—to rotate. The needles sliced cleanly through the skin of her forehead, scoring the bone beneath.

  Unable to scream, unable to move, Dersi sought the solace of retreating into her own mind.

  “I’m sorry, Dersi. But I can’t allow that,” God said. His metal fingers caressed her cheek. A thin tube dropped from above, a bead of liquid at its end. The drop fell into her eye, coating her lashes. A hot flush sizzled through her body, and her mind sharpened, her senses instantly focused on the pain.

  The cylinder rotated faster, faster. Thin curls of smoke rose from her forehead. Blood dripped into her eyes, down her cheeks, her throat. The stench of burning bone clogged her nostrils.

  Another arm descended from the mass of machinery. Clutched in fingerlike pinchers was a squirming, multilegged worm.

  “The vector,” God supplied, his voice soft, passionate. “Merged with the cerebral cortex, it opens . . . wonders, Dersi. Wonders beyond belief.”

  Dersi could only scream silently, watching as the vector neared her, hearing the terrible sound of the bonesaw, smelling the acrid stench of charred flesh and bone, feeling the indescribable agony of her tortured body.

  “What do we do, Captain?” Cadrin leaned close, whispering. He cast a significant look over his shoulder at the remaining four soldiers. Following his gaze, Lhedri watched as the men whispered among themselves, their hands white-knuckled on their acidrods. Their eyes were wide, wild, their lips pressed tight together.

  “Did you get a good look at that thing?”

  Cadrin shook his head. “It happened too fast. Something popped out of the ceiling, then Rhoud was down, dead. Then I grabbed you and jerked you out of there.”

  “I saw it. A long stalk with a box on its end and a red sphere. I think I can hit it.”

  “What?” Cadrin grabbed Lhedri’s arm and pulled him a little farther from the others. “Captain, your pardon. But that’s insane. You saw how quick it made rendering out of Rhoud. You’d be dead before you could squeeze off a s
lug. Then where would we be?”

  “You have a better suggestion? The mechanical throat isn’t working and we can’t stay here forever. Sooner or later more of those monster women will come, and we have only thirteen slugs left to us, Cadrin. What happens when those are exhausted? Swords? You saw what they did to the men in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “You think more will come?”

  “Something’s controlling them, Cadrin. You heard the voice in the air. Something directs them, knows we’re here, and doesn’t like it. It’s only a matter of time.” He shook off Cadrin’s hand and crept toward the curvature of the wall. Listening, he could hear the clinking whir of the mechanical arm in the hallway. He turned his gaze to Rhoud’s corpse, sprawled with arms and legs akimbo in the center of the corridor. A thin curl of smoke still rose from the hole in his forehead.

  Lhedri retreated and pulled Cadrin aside. “You’re a good shot, aren’t you, Cadrin?”

  Cadrin nodded, frowning. “I don’t think I’m going to like this.”

  Lhedri grinned. “Trust me, Cadrin. I think this will work.”

  Cadrin groaned, but followed Lhedri as his captain led the way back down the corridor toward the piles of the dead.

  A few minutes later, after much heated debate away from the ears of the other men, Cadrin and Lhedri returned to the waypoint, dragging the limp corpse of one of the women along with them. The trailing end of her severed umbilicus oozed, leaving a wide, slick path behind her. They grunted at the effort, for her slight size belied her considerable weight.

  “Captain?” The soldiers stood, leaning their acidrods against the wall, and stared at them.

  “You’re sure about this, Captain?” Cadrin asked as they dropped the corpse near the curve in the corridor. He swiped the back of his hand across his forehead and flung sweat to the floor.

  Lhedri smiled grimly. “No. But it stands to reason. From the looks of the thing, it’s been there all along. There being no other exits from this corridor besides the lift, the women had to have come from that direction. I think the arm-thing will recognize its mistress.”

  “Enough to stake your life on it?”

  “Enough to stake my life on your aim, Cadrin. Help me lift her up. I think once I get my arms beneath her shoulders I can keep her up.”

  The other soldiers crowded close as Cadrin helped Lhedri heft the corpse to its feet. The severed root of her umbilicus continued to ooze, a thick fluid heavy with gobbets of flesh. Lhedri slid his hands into her armpits, staggering beneath her weight and grunting. “Damn, she’s heavy!”

  “Can you move?” Cadrin asked.

  Experimentally, Lhedri shuffled forward, pushing the woman ahead of him, keeping his head low and centered between her shoulder blades. The ragged trunk of her tentacle leaked onto his tunic. His legs trembled with the effort of keeping his balance. His arms shook. “Get behind me!” he said, gasping.

  With Cadrin trailing close behind, Lhedri staggered along the hallway. Twice he slipped in Rhoud’s pooled blood, nearly losing his footing and crashing to the floor. But Cadrin stepped forward, supporting the dead woman’s weight while Lhedri regained his balance. Careful of his footsteps, Lhedri pushed forward. Cadrin came close on his heels, crouching, his acidrod held in white-knuckled hands.

  “Ready?”

  Cadrin swore under his breath. “No. But let’s get on with it.”

  As he pushed the dead woman out before him Lhedri heard the mechanical whir of the arm in the ceiling. He cringed, feeling his scalp prickle. He realized his eyes were squeezed tight and forced them open. The woman’s head flopped to one side, and a lock of her auburn hair fell across Lhedri’s face, tickling his nose. He resisted the impulse to sneeze.

  “Can you see it?” Lhedri said, between wheezing breaths.

  “No. But I can hear it. It’s tracking our movement. I can feel it watching us.”

  “It hasn’t done anything yet. Ease around to one side and see if you can get a look at it. I’ll distract it.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Lhedri did not answer, pushing forward. He could hear the thing’s movement, overhead and perhaps a dozen yards farther along the hallway. Pressing his forehead against the dead woman’s back, he could feel his warm sweat on her cold skin.

  “I see it. It’s pointed directly toward you, toward her. Wait. It’s . . . damn!” Lhedri heard quick movement behind him, and a brilliant red beam lanced down over the woman’s shoulder, narrowly missing Lhedri’s head. The crackling beam raised blisters on Lhedri’s forehead, and he bit down on his lip to keep from crying out.

  “Cadrin? Cadrin!”

  “I’m fine. It missed me, barely. I’m not certain this is going to work. The thing moves fast.”

  “It has to work. I don’t think I can back up now.”

  “Hold on, I have an idea.” Cadrin shouted back at the four soldiers behind them. A moment later one of the men answered.

  Lhedri ignored them, concentrating on his feet and on the ominous sound of the mechanical arm overhead. Sweat trickled down his face. His arms and legs screamed in protest, the deadweight of the woman dragging on him. He locked his knees.

  “Cadrin, if you’re going to do something, do it soon. I don’t know how much longer I can hold her.”

  “A moment,” Cadrin answered, and Lhedri could hear him shifting forward. “Be still.”

  It happened quickly. A sword, tossed by one of the soldiers, clattered in the hallway behind them. The mechanical arm screeched, whirring, and the brilliant crimson beam lanced out. Cadrin, in the moment it took for the guardian to reorient itself, stood, acidrod training on the arm. The weapon thumped. An acidslug struck the mechanical guardian. It shattered, bursting in a hissing spray of acid. Sparks laced the hallway, and an explosion slammed Lhedri backward through the air. He crashed to the metal floor, rolling as the smoking corpse of the woman crashed down beside him.

  Lhedri lay stunned for a moment, groaning.

  “Captain?”

  He focused on the voice, finding Cadrin kneeling at his side. His lieutenant’s strong hands gripped his shoulders, gently shaking. Blinking his eyes, Lhedri slid across the floor and leaned his back against the wall. He glanced around, noting the smoking, dripping arm hanging from the ceiling, sparks dancing from its ragged end. The woman’s corpse lay nearby, its abdomen torn asunder, entrails bubbling up from the jagged cavity, smoking. The flesh of her face had been stripped away, revealing a charred skull banded with gleaming metal strips.

  “Are you all right?” Cadrin asked.

  “Just give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”

  A scream ripped through the corridor, coming from beyond the mammoth metal doors at its end.

  Chapter 39

  Cadrin pulled Lhedri to his feet. The other men remaining in Lhedri’s command approached. One of them reached out a booted toe to shove at the limp body of the dead woman. Another man stepped up to the crackling arm hanging from the ceiling, careful to avoid the sparks that leaped from its end. Near his foot lay a tangle of wires and twisted metal, smoking and running with acidic residue.

  Lhedri pushed Cadrin away and surged toward the massive doors at the end of the corridor. “That scream! That’s Lady Dersi!”

  “Wait, Captain!” Cadrin ran after him, snatching up his acidrod from where he had dropped it. Another of the men carried Lhedri’s acidrod slung over his shoulder. They followed close behind Cadrin.

  Lhedri reached the doors and ran his hands over the smooth metal, trying to work his fingers between them. Cadrin seized his shoulder and turned him around.

  “Captain, we don’t know what’s in there!”

  “Lady Dersi’s in there, Cadrin. Let me go.”

  “At least let us get ready. Set the men into a containment ring, ready to lay down a covering fire. I’ll open the doors. You get behind the lines.”

  The doors slid open at their backs, and another of the monstrous women reached out, seizing Lhedri by the b
ack of his neck. He felt the power of her grip, the inexorable pressure on his spine as she tried to draw him close. Her mouth opened, revealing blunt teeth, a feral snarl on her lips. Only Cadrin’s grip on his shoulder gave her pause. Cadrin tugged on Lhedri’s arm even as the captain screamed in pain.

  Behind the woman came others of her kind, leaping into the ranks of Lhedri’s men. One man was dropped instantly, his face crushed by a pounding fist that drove his teeth through to the back of his skull. Another man fired his acidrod, destroying a woman’s midsection. She reeled back, consumed by acid that ate away at her insides. She slumped over, soundless.

  Lhedri twisted, ducking, using his weight to pull the woman’s hands downward. Cadrin stepped in, bringing up his acidrod and placing its fluted nozzle directly into the woman’s mouth. He fired, and her head evaporated. Droplets landed on Cadrin’s arms, sizzling. A gout of acid washed over a woman behind the first, dissolving her arm down to its metal-wrapped bone.

  Another Bhajong fell as a woman reached out and seized his arm. Her foot came up, placed on the small of his back. She wrenched backward with her hands and shoved downward with her foot. His arm tore free of his body and he screamed in agony before shock claimed him.

  Cadrin snatched up another acidrod and passed it to Lhedri. Too close to use it as other than a cudgel, Lhedri smashed its butt-end into a woman’s stomach. She did not flinch. Her hand lashed out, jerking the weapon from his fingers, and tossing it aside. Disarmed, Lhedri pushed back, his hand fumbling at his side for the hilt of his sword. The woman came on, hands outstretched to crush him.

  “Captain!” Lhedri heard Cadrin’s voice over the terrible chaos of the battle. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that only he and Cadrin survived. The others lay, broken and twisted, tangled with the bodies of four of the women. Three of the monsters remained alive. Cadrin was pressed by one of them who wielded a Bhajong arm as a club as she beat at Cadrin’s defense. He used his acidrod as a staff, fending off her blows, retreating down the hallway toward Lhedri.