Tainted Garden

by Jeff Stanley

  They came together in a rush, and Rian died, his head bashed in by a knobbed club.

  Flicker

  Rian’s hands trailed through the cold, wet clay. His feet pumped, up and down, on the pedals of the potter’s wheel. A long, fluted neck emerged beneath his skilled fingers; the funerary urn for the chieftain’s ashes took shape. Long used to such efforts—for had he not provided the burial urn for the chieftain’s father and three brothers, slain in the Hittite raids of two summers past?—he let his hands work of their own accord. His mind focused on the glaze he would choose for the urn. Blue, to placate the spirits and draw them near as escorts to the Otherworld. The appropriate pictographs to delineate the chieftain’s meager achievements gave him further pause. What achievements could a fuzz-cheeked boy have after only fifteen years of drawing breath and a mere month of leadership?

  Flicker

  Rian danced, her breasts heaving beneath the thin gauze, her hips swaying to the increasing tempo of the music. Frantic, impassioned, she raised long, thin arms over black-as-night tresses, the cymbals on her fingertips clashing together, beating counterpoint.

  The Emir regarded her through smoky, long-lashed eyes. She found herself surreptitiously regarding the breadth of his shoulders and the hard angularity of his face. Not handsome, but powerful. At his word he could raise two thousand swords and half as many horses, a mighty warband, indeed. And if what she had heard was correct, his favorite wife had yet to give him an heir. Rian suppressed a smile, allowing her gaze to linger on the Emir’s. There were potions that could ensure the favored wife would never conceive.

  She danced, seducing the Emir. She would bear him many strong sons!

  Flickerflickerflicker

  Images piled one atop another, a flood of lives lived, experiences gained. He was a poet, a sailor, a thief, and a baron. A knight, sworn to William, called the Conqueror, executed for betraying his liege to the Saxon lords. A bishop, grown fat on the toil of others, his rectory in all respects a palace, all gilt and marble. A duchess, a scullery maid, a serving wench, a goodwife. A cobbler and a cooper, a writer of odes, an actor, and a barrister. Each acquisition of knowledge, each slightest step of human evolution, technology alien to his Gagash heritage, he experienced. He made discoveries, stole them, exploited them. He fought wars against evil, was evil, a victim and a victimizer. He feasted and starved; died old and abed, consumed by wasting diseases, and young and alone, pierced by swords, punctured by bullets, boiled in suits of steel by heated oil dumped through murderholes of castles he had been ordered to take.

  Flicker

  He leaped from a boxy, gleaming craft onto an alien, dusty landscape, and looked back upon Earth, small, blue-green, and glowing in the light of a newly risen sun. His boots sank into the thick dust of the moon, immortalizing the first tentative step of mankind into the vast beyond.

  Flickerflickerflicker

  He piloted shuttles and needlecraft, landers and freighters, spanning first the homesystem, Sol, then taking larger leaps outward. Cruisers exploded under his command, vaporizing crews of thousands. He pressed buttons that released planet-killer bombs, consuming the atmospheres of splinter worlds unwilling to swear fealty to the Hegemony, and he laughed.

  Flicker

  He awakened to the whole of human existence, his memories exploding with . . . with everything.

  This new awareness dwarfed his own existence, made him smaller than a mote of dust. Racial memory, an expansion of consciousness that was the offering of this alien world, its attempt at communication, at union. The world, the landskin, the drakes, the ool—all part of a symbiosis that transcended consciousness. Through some power or ability, that symbiosis encompassed the whole of human history, the memories, dreams, and aspirations of the entire race. And this gift, this knowledge, was offered as surety. But to accept such a gift? The consequences, the utter and complete loss of humanity. . . . The price was too high.

  He understood, finally, that the Bhajong and the Gagash were one people, one alien, ruthless, conquering people, born on another world and launched into the universe, their hierarchical and competitive natures creating a vast, parasitic, breathing organism that was the Hegemony. An empire spanning thousands of worlds, bleeding them dry, sucking the life from them as it sucked the life from all its citizens.

  And this world was to have been the next conquest. Here his newfound knowledge failed. For in all the convoluted, bloodthirsty history of the Hegemony, it had never failed to ultimately devour what worlds it set its eyes upon. One ship should have been followed by another, and another, until a flotilla, an armada, of warships came. If the world had proven intractable, it should have been reduced to a smoking ember, floating barren and lifeless about its star.

  But it had not happened. There was only the one Ship, peopled by more than a thousand citizens of the Hegemony and bearing in stasis the cellular potential of a million more, with composite personality downloads stored in vast computers. Terran fauna and flora had been carted across the vast void of space, to recreate Terra anew, as had been done so many times before.

  Failure. The schism that had developed among the Ship’s crew had torn them apart, broken them into rival factions, had set them against one another in a desperate bid for dominance planetside. Alberto Rodriguez, Biological Sciences officer, had led the Exodus, bent on establishing communication and interaction with the primitive, all-encompassing entity that was the landskin, that was the ool, that was the drakes—all of them. They had become the Bhajong, parasites within the great ool, manipulated in every manner by the despot, Alberto.

  Santiago’s faction sought dominance still and became the Gagash, warped by a forced dependence upon the landskin for nourishment, their gene pool hopelessly clouded by mutations as the world-mind sought to adjust them to its own ends.

  Flicker

  And understanding blossomed.

  He experienced them all, all their lives. He was there when humankind first stepped foot on this alien world. And he was there when the traitor, Alberto Rodriguez, led his band of malcontents in their exodus, sabotaging Ship’s systems in the process, marooning them all here, forever.

  Outside of himself, he gasped, for all of human history here on this world unfolded to him, came to him in a rush, inspiring panic and awe, revulsion and disgust. Hatred.

  Father. Santiago.

  The Elders, serving no end but their own, harvesting attributes and abilities from the Gagash in order to recreate them within their own, insular people. A separate race entirely, in every sense that mattered, bred among themselves, kept pure, apart. The Gagash were their chattel, their livestock, bred not for food, but for genetic material to further the grand scheme that had driven them since the Founding.

  They had no hope of recreating the lost humanity in the bulk of Gagash society. That had never been their aim. Instead, they worked beneath a cloak of secrecy, building themselves farther and farther apart from the rest of the Enclave, building themselves into superior beings capable of taking their insane war to the planet, itself. Building themselves with material, tissues and traits, stolen from those unfortunate enough to have attracted their attention. All in the deceitful name of reclaiming something long, long lost.

  Santiago. Father. The voice in his head.

  It is necessary, Rian. Necessary. You cannot know the sacrifices I have made, all of us have made. You cannot realize what has been lost on this foul world. The voice spoke with a keen urgency, a zealot’s fervor.

  No! I will not be used like this!

  A vast, foreign sigh echoed through his mind. You have no choice.

  The final, sealed door in his memory opened, revealing to Rian the invasion of his own body, his own mind. Since the night he had awakened, lured by the childlike figure that continually dashed away before he could reach it, he had carried this thing, this presence. Santiago. An alien infiltrator, growing increasingly dominant within Rian’s mind.

  Things had been done to him. Alterations.
Augmentations. He was a carrier. A carrier of disease, of infection. A carrier of Santiago’s hope.

  For generations the Gagash had believed the Elders strove to return them to their lost humanity, impelled beyond reason to maintain a tenuous grip on a history they could not remember.

  But it was all a lie. A hateful, horrible lie.

  And now . . .

  And now.

  Awaken. We have work to do.

  Rian’s middle arm lay bent beneath his body. He rolled over, groaning, and his senses throbbed into wakefulness. Sounds crashed in on him: screaming and the roar of fire, crashing machinery and a deep, throbbing pulse from the ool-flesh surrounding him. Hands touched him, hesitant. Heat and moisture blanketed him. Blood filled his mouth and he spat on the sweat-stained metal floor. The rough skin of his face stung where someone had slapped him repeatedly.

  “Can you get up?” The voice came from close to his ear. Rian turned and looked into the gray, watery eyes of a white-haired old man, his face wrinkled and pale. Bhajong.

  Rian’s middle hand snaked up, seizing the old man around the throat. “Get away. Get away from me!”

  The elder choked, his eyes round and wide. His tongue lolled from his mouth. His feeble hands clawed at Rian’s grip.

  Rian slid to his feet, taking in his surroundings with a glance. A woman lay, unmoving, at his feet, blood drenching her face, staining her hair. Bits of crusted resin splotched her skin. The elder he held struggled, but could not hope to loosen Rian’s hold.

  Beyond them, through a crack in one of the living doors of this nightmarish place, came a clamor, and smoke roiled into the tight corridor in which he found himself. Movement beyond the crack was diluted, hazy with smoke and masked in the stench of burning flesh and smoldering machinery. Something moved there, but he could not say what.

  The old man’s face was turning a nice shade of pale blue. Rian relaxed his grip and shoved the man against the wall. Tentacles hanging against the wall slithered.

  “What’s going on here? Who are you?”

  “P-please . . . Choking . . .”

  Rian released him. The man crumpled to the floor and lay there, groaning, his hands at his throat. “Must . . . must get out . . . of here. God . . .”

  “God.” Rian jerked his gaze back to the crack in the portal.

  Rodriguez. The enemy. Rian was unsure if the inner voice was his own . . . or someone else. Father. Santiago.

  Something approached from the other side, something huge. A terrible voice screamed rage, and the walls of the corridor shook.

  “God,” Rian repeated.

  “Help us,” the old man managed to choke out. “Lady Dersi . . .”

  “She looks dead. Sorry, old man. You’re on your own.” He turned from them, staring down the corridor toward a branching of ways in the distance.

  Our fight has just begun, Rian. The plan unfolds, but you have much, much more to do. Though you have delivered Rodriguez’s demise to him, he remains capable of thwarting me. Santiago’s voice, this time. Smug. Self-assured, thinking himself undeniable.

  “Please.” The old man climbed to his knees.

  Rian hesitated, and the portal exploded outward, flinging shards of hard resin like daggers. One splinter scraped along Rian’s cheek, slicing it to the bone. He hunched over, avoiding the hail of blades, and felt the impact as something landed heavily at his feet. The steaming remains bore little resemblance to anything human, neither Bhajong nor Gagash.

  “Lhedri,” the old man said, his voice a whisper.

  Smoke billowed into the corridor, and a dark figure moved through it, bellowing.

  Rian hissed, then reached down and hauled the limp form of the woman to his chest. He held her there with his middle arm and dragged the old man to his feet. “Come on.”

  “What? What happened?”

  “I remembered God,” Rian said. Dragging the old man behind him, Rian pounded down the corridor, while at his back the massive form of God screamed in rage. And, inside of him, Santiago cried out for vengeance.

  Chapter 43

  Erekel felt a shock travel along his arm as the three-armed man grabbed him and pulled him along. His arm went numb to the shoulder. Then spreading warmth flowed outward from the Gagash’s grip, a burning sensation that seemed to travel through Erekel’s bloodstream. He gasped, but plodded along behind him.

  “Who . . . who are you?” Erekel asked between gasps for breath.

  “Rian. You?” The Gagash did not even seem winded, despite the abuse he had obviously suffered. Erekel wiped a hand across his forehead, slinging sweat and droplets of blood—his or another’s, he could not say—to the floor.

  “Erekel.” Behind them, no more than twenty yards back, God surged into the corridor. The walls rippled toward them, a wave of flesh thrashing with tentacles. Metal buckled, screeching, warping beneath a crushing weight of living muscle. “Let go of me. I can manage on my own.”

  Rian released him and pounded down the corridor. At the intersection he did not hesitate, but turned to his right.

  “Where are you going?” A quick glance back showed God gaining on them, his massive form pushing at the tight confines of the hall.

  “I don’t know,” Rian said. “Anywhere but here.”

  The burning sensation continued despite Rian releasing his arm. It swept through Erekel’s chest, sinking into his legs, tingling his toes.

  Then it faded, leaving renewal, refreshment. Weariness vanished from Erekel’s limbs, and he followed Rian with a new lightness in his step.

  God’s voice boomed through the corridor. He laughed, a hollow, mirthless sound. “Where will you go, my little lambs? You are in my domain. Cease this flight. Come back and prostrate yourselves before me, and I will welcome you into my flock. I will shower blessings and gifts upon you, and exalt you.”

  Ahead of Rian the ceiling ripped, and a bulge of ool-flesh surged into the corridor. The mottled flesh throbbed, and running sores spat cilia that reached for the Gagash. He lowered his head, tucked Lady Dersi closer to his chest, and slammed into the narrow gap near the floor of the hallway. Cilia snapped at him, twining around his arms and throat, then jerked away as if pained. The mound of flesh heaved like some great slug and retreated. Erekel ran in Rian’s wake. His skin crawled as his shoulders brushed at the writhing cilia.

  God screamed behind them. His massive fists slammed into the walls, which shuddered at the impact. Joints groaned and beams twisted. “No! You will spread your contagion no further, Santiago-spawn!”

  Rian ran on, and Erekel followed. They passed through an arch ringed with pustules and entered a broad hallway broken by niches along each wall. Within each niche sat shadowed figures, hundreds of tentacles attached to their bodies. Thick resin coated them, sealing their faces forever in expressions of horror and alarm.

  God entered behind them, closer. Erekel risked a glance back and saw the creature stagger forward. He seemed to have grown, his head now brushing the ceiling ten feet overhead. His shoulders scraped the sides of the corridor, metal screeching along metal, ool-flesh merging and separating from the organic portions of the walls. He gestured with his organic arm, and a ripple traveled through the flesh-lined corridor.

  “Rian, look out!”

  Spines shot from the walls at their left, thick, sharp barbs dripping with acid. Rian and Erekel ducked, and the spines slammed into the opposite wall, plunging into flesh and metal alike. Erekel fell to his knees. Tentacles spurted from the floor, cracking through metal like fragile tissue and latching onto his legs with clinging suckers. They drew back, smoking, and whipped away from him.

  What? What was happening?

  “Come on!” Rian said. He jerked the Bhajong to his feet.

  God roared, slamming his fists into the floor. The corridor shook. “Come, my little lambs! I grow tired of this sport. Humble yourselves before me, and I will yet honor you.”

  Erekel stumbled forward, watching in horror as waves of flesh pinched shut a
head. A rolling bulge of muscle came toward them, while from behind God pressed forward. A mere ten yards separated them. “Rian?”

  The Gagash ignored him, moving toward the approaching pinch of flesh, his hands outstretched at his sides. His body glistened with sweat; the spines on the back of his head stood on end. He shoved forward. His hands clenched in the ool-flesh. The walls trembled, shook, and drew back from him. Flesh smoked, oozing with unhealthy-looking fluid. As if splashed with powerful acid, the organic walls continued to decay, bubbling and hissing, melting into runnels that pooled on the floor.

  “What are you?” Erekel whispered.

  Rian did not answer. The pinched flesh snapped away from him, rolling back as surely as it had rolled forward, and Rian pressed onward.

  Erekel chanced a glance over his shoulder again. God closed on them. Erekel could almost feel the monster’s hot, fetid breath on the back of his neck.

  “Erekel, my child. Erekel, why do you forsake me?” God’s voice dropped, becoming low, insinuating. “Erekel, don’t turn your back on your God. Come and kneel at my feet, that I might give you my blessings.”

  Erekel felt a stirring in his body, a yearning to obey, to turn around and submit to the will of God. His steps faltered. He slowed. His feet became leaden, drawing sluggishly up from the floor. Dull pressure pulled at his eyelids, forcing them closed. Lassitude crept over him, stealing his will.

  Rian seized his hand and jerked him forward. A hot surge gushed through his body, and the compulsion to obey vanished in a wave of disgust. The horror of the creature that pursued them came crashing down on him, and he quickened his pace.

  God screamed, pounding at the walls of the corridor. Something snapped, a vast tearing sound. Erekel stumbled. He stared in horror as God jerked one of the still figures from its niche. Veins and tentacles popped, fountaining rancid liquid. He raised the petrified figure over his head and flung it toward them. Erekel struggled to his feet and hurried after Rian. The petrified corpse crashed into the wall and bounced away, clattering, chunks of flesh and solid resin breaking free like shattered glass.