Scifi Motherlode

by Robert Jeschonek

  He parked his hoversled in front of the lab shed and switched off the motor. Then, he sat for long moments in the cockpit, knuckles white as he clutched the wheel. Sweat ran down his back and sides as he dug deep for courage.

  He found it in his flask of bourbon. Two long pulls calmed his shaking. One more, the longest yet, and he popped the cockpit canopy and stepped out of the hoversled. Stood for a moment in the pool of brightness cast by the lone floodlight atop the lab shed.

  Then, heart slamming like a fighter's fist against his rib cage, he walked toward the open door of the shed.

  *****

  As soon as Father Obregón stepped through the door, they moved toward him. Patchwork assemblages of mismatched human body parts, held together with clots of black foam. All the eyes wide open, all the faces slack and dead.

  They looked far more horrifying in person than they had through Naima's eyes--heads lolling, bones protruding, organs dangling. Black foam oozing between joints and out of every orifice. A grinding, sloshing sound as they hobbled and shuffled toward him. A stench of excrement and rot so overwhelming, it made him gag.

  And there were so many of them. Dozens. No wonder Naima had lost count.

  He forced himself to stand with shoulders squared as they surrounded him. As they pressed closer and closer on all sides.

  Peering between them, he glimpsed Naima in the sealed lab, gazing out through the reinforced glass door. He heard her in his mind--no words, just breathing. A nervous quaver in each exhalation.

  And then something else was in his mind, too.

  The familiar presence of the black foam welled up within him, pulsing and pressing against his awareness. Hyperfast gibberish babbled in his head, and images rushed past his mind's eye: black foam falling from drifting cloud sheep to blanket the fungiscape; Father Obregón giving communion to Piotr Punzak and a stream of others, dozens of humans all over the world...all of them dead now.

  Suddenly, the creatures grabbed hold of him, snapping his focus back out of his mind. With clumsy power, they wrenched his arms wide and held him spread-eagled. One of them clamped his head between bloody, mismatched hands.

  This is it. Eyes wide, heart jackhammering, Father Obregón felt more of the creatures grab hold of him, wrapping him in a solid clinch of rancid flesh and black muck.

  "Stop!" Naima's voice sounded far away as she screamed in the lab, more distant than when they'd been hundreds of miles apart. "Please no!"

  The creatures ignored her cries. One of the patchworks wobbled in front of Father Obregón, its head that of a young man with sandy brown hair. Its torso, strung with shreds of green cloth, belonged to a woman; one arm was short and pale, the other long with coal-black skin.

  When the dark arm swung up and the tiny pink hand on the end reached for his face, Father Obregón tried to flinch, but the other hands gripping his head wouldn't let him. He cried out, struggling, but the hand moved toward him inexorably.

  He shut his eyes and grimaced when the stubby little fingers made contact with his forehead. A fresh wave of gibberish surged through his mind, swirling like a cyclone. More images of communion, more images of black foam showering down.

  And then, a new cycle of images coursed through him. Settlers tasting the black foam, putting curds of it in their mouths. Each one dying horribly afterward, convulsing on the ground, then literally falling apart...limbs and heads slumping away from torsos, organs sluicing in the dirt in a flow of black sludge.

  Pulled together by tendrils of foam, the body parts became shambling patchworks. The patchworks went after other settlers, feeding them more of the foam, and the cycle repeated.

  Through it all, Father Obregón felt the same words rise up in his mind again and again. The same words as before, imparted nonverbally to his fevered mind:

  EAT GOD.

  His head was spinning as he tried to make sense of what he'd seen. One thing was clear: he knew how the nightmare had started. Settlers had eaten the foam of their own accord...but why? He still didn't understand.

  The infant hand on the dark-skinned arm withdrew, then dug its stubby fingers into a bubbling clot between the patchwork's head and torso. The fingers came away smeared with black foam.

  Then, they moved toward Father Obregón's mouth.

  EAT GOD. Again with the same message. EAT GOD.

  As the foam-covered fingers slid closer to his mouth, Father Obregón realized how wrong he'd been. The patchworks hadn't been trying to attain divinity by consuming the flesh of humans who'd eaten God in communion. They'd never wanted to reach the God of humans at all.

  They'd been trying to do the opposite. Trying to get humans to eat their god.

  But humans couldn't survive it. The black foam sacrament had killed them all. And Father Obregón was next in line.

  "Please, no!" Father Obregón fought harder, but he couldn't break the combined grip of the ghoulish patchworks.

  "Stop it, you monsters!" It was Naima. Father Obregón heard the door to the lab crash open and her footsteps charge into the patchwork mob. "Leave him alone!"

  But nothing would change the course of events. The tiny fingers jabbed forward, and the black foam touched Father Obregón's lips. He felt it fizzing like a carbonated drink on his lips and then the tip of his tongue.

  EAT GOD.

  There was a moment as the substance soaked into his bloodstream, a moment of stillness. The patchworks let go of him, and his arms fell at his sides. Naima pushed through the crowd and stopped in front of him; she looked crushed when she saw the black foam on his lips.

  Tears ran down her cheeks. "Don't go. Oh please, don't leave me alone here."

  Father Obregón smiled. Just as he was about to say something, the moment of stillness

  ended

  and everything made sense.

  *****

  Father Obregón's mind felt as if it had burst. Light poured in from every direction, swirling with color and sweet fragrance. Geometric patterns appeared and shifted before his mind's eye, dancing like the patterns in a kaleidoscope.

  Or the patterns on the yeast lakes of Benares.

  He felt his mind changing shape, flowing between forms in a dizzying rush of transformations. He melted from a spinning disk to a rippling lavender veil, from a pink beachball to an upside-down pyramid of violet neon light.

  Every shape just like the lifeforms he'd seen on Benares.

  Waves of textures washed over him, clinging and combining in electric layers of high relief. There was roughness, grittiness, laciness, puffiness, fluffiness, spikiness, foaminess. One after another, from firm smoothness to crystalline latticework.

  Just like the multitude of fungal flora thriving on Benares.

  All these sensations blossomed and swirled together in his mind, crackling with invisible fire that he felt and saw and swallowed. Structures and instincts from the largest to the most extreme subatomic pulsed and sang within and without him.

  And all the while, even as his mind opened and transformed and filled to overflowing, he felt lighter than air. He felt better than he ever had, completely new from tip to toe, from gut to soul.

  For an instant, he thought he had died, but then the thoughts of the patchworks, which once had seemed like gibberish, suddenly came into focus. Conveying the truth in a wordless intention, a heartfelt expression.

  He has eaten and survived.

  He had tasted their god, the collective essence of their world, and not died in doing so. Chalk it up to the splicer physiology of the genetically-enhanced super-chaplain.

  The black foam had tuned him in to the psychedelic glory of the life force of Benares. It had expanded his consciousness to encompass the total majesty of the world that had always fascinated him.

  And it had done one more thing to him, too.

  *****

  Father Obregón pulled his hoversled into a misty cove in the heart of a jungle of enokitake. The slender stems of the tall white mushrooms flickered in the breeze, spherical ca
ps bobbing in the morning light from the sun-blooms.

  A week had passed since he'd first eaten the black foam, and he was back on the road again. He was making his rounds again, traversing the wilderness, ministering to believers around the world.

  The congregation was different, but the work was the same in the end.

  As he popped the cockpit canopy, a call buzzed for attention in his head. He picked it up with a smile. "Good morning, Naima."

  "Good morning." Naima, as usual these days, didn't sound happy. She was back at the lab, where she'd been working since the patchworks had evacuated. They'd left her alive and intact at Father Obregón's request after he'd eaten their black foam sacrament. "Where are you this time?"

  "Prayer meeting up north." Father Obregón stepped out of the hoversled, his feet sinking in a soft carpet of dewy gray-green mildew. "It's good to hear your voice, Naima."

  Naima sent him a thought that was the mental equivalent of clearing her throat. She didn't approve of the new direction his work had taken. She didn't approve of his new calling. "You need to come home, Gavín."

  "Not yet, Naima." Father Obregón padded through the mildew carpet toward a cluster of buried lumps in the middle of the cove. "I've got work to do."

  "It's not safe, Gavín," said Naima.

  Father Obregón chuckled. "God's work is never safe."

  Naima sighed. "What if the foam kills you? It's fatal to non-splicers. What if you're only temporarily immune?"

  Father Obregón knelt among the buried lumps and began brushing away layers of mildew and soil from one of the biggest, the size of a basketball. "Naima, please..."

  Naima's voice rose in anger and desperation. "You're under the influence of a highly concentrated mind-altering drug controlled by a malignant sentient fungus that has killed everyone else who tried it! How the hell can you be out there working for it?"

  "It didn't intend to kill them, Naima," said Father Obregón. "It wanted the same thing they did. To give the settlers the ultimate mind-expanding experience. To help them get closer to God."

  "The god of fungus," snapped Naima. "The god of monsters."

  Father Obregón felt sorry for her. He loved her as he loved all his flock, but he knew she would never understand. One taste of the black foam was all he'd needed to connect with his new worldwide congregation. One taste, and he'd been able to move on to important new work after the human settlers had died out.

  "Can I talk to you later?" Father Obregón finished clearing the largest lump--a giant truffle, the hub of a complex underground network of them. "I'm a little busy just now."

  "You've got to listen to me, Imam!" Naima's thoughts burned with wild urgency. "I think I can reverse the effects of the compound! I'm working on a seratonin inhibitor right now..."

  Just then, something buzzed in Father Obregón's head, and he smiled. "Naima? I don't have time to talk about this now." Softly, he ran his fingers over the rough scalp of the giant truffle, which was the source of the new buzzing in his mind.

  The truffle was signaling for his attention, reaching out to link him with its network. Dozens of other signals were racked up in the queue behind it, clamoring for attention. There were always umpteen signals in the queue these days, ever since the black foam, signals from fungal lifeforms all over Benares. Signals from buried truffles and towering toadstools alike, from giant portabellas to microscopic penicillium, from spinning pizza shell flyers to hulking eight-legged shaggy behemoths the size of elephants.

  The switchboard in his head was back in business. Father Obregón would never be lonely again. His second chance with Naima might never come to fruition, but his love for his new congregation had to take first place in his heart. Naima might need him, but they needed him more. She might love him, but they loved him more.

  His beloved flock.

  "I have another call coming in, Naima," he said. "I'll have to put you on hold."

  "Father, wait!" she said, just before he hung up on her.

  Then, smiling, he lifted the hem of his black shirt, peeled back a flap of skin just below his bottom right rib, and drew out the fresh-baked communion host from the cavity there, still warm from his flesh.

  And he spread that host, the precious black foam, on the tongue of the giant truffle. "The soul of Benares, given up for you," he said. "Amen."

  Beware the Black Battlenaut

  "Looky there," said Swindle, the leperchaun on Grist Halcyon's shoulder. He pointed with a crumbling green finger at one of the Battlenaut's cockpit video screens, and Grist looked in that direction.

  On the screen, Grist saw the barren, storm-swept surface of the rebel-held moon, Sangre. The latest flare of lightning revealed a towering black figure on the crest of the hill. At that instant, the very first instant he glimpsed it, Grist knew in his heart what it was even as he knew in his head it just wasn't possible.

  The flare of light faded, and the black figure faded with it back into the night. When the next lightning struck a moment later, the hilltop was deserted.

  "Begorra." One rotting nostril fell away from Swindle's leprous face. "It's him, ain't it, boyo?"

  Grist blinked hard and shook his head. "Can't say." Just then, his arm burned as the automated hypodermic cuff strapped to his bicep shot a fresh jolt of go-juice into his system. A ring of lights around the forward viewport flashed in a pattern designed to reset his body's circadian rhythms.

  Must've been about to nod off. Can't have that, can we? As the go-juice pumped through his arteries, Grist felt himself return to full alertness. The Battlenaut's sensors and computers had done their job again, intervening at just the right moment with just the right dose of meds to keep Grist awake and alert for yet another hour.

  Grist licked his dry lips and checked the video monitor again. Lightning spiked nearby, revealing six soldiers in Battlenaut armor facing off on a rocky battlefield...but no sign of the dark figure from the hilltop.

  Grist stabbed the comm button and spoke into his mic. "Hey, Freak. Ever hear of the Black Battlenaut?"

  When he didn't get a reply, Grist looked at the button he'd just hit and realized it wasn't the comm at all. He was just about to punch the real comm button when the cockpit rocked from a powerful impact. It was enough to crack his helmeted skull against the headrest and snap him back to the reality from which he'd taken a brief vacation.

  Fight. That's right. His hands flew back to the steering and weapons controls. I'm in a firefight.

  I'm fighting a war here.

  *****

  Sharon "Freak" Freemare laughed like a maniac as she cut loose her Battlenaut's main guns against the oncoming enemy. One slug hit home in a big way, punching through the enemy's armor and leaving a jagged, smoking hole at the top of one leg.

  Still shrieking with laughter, Freak swung a laser around and opened up on the damage. Metal and plastic melted before the onslaught, and the enemy Battlenaut's leg gave way within seconds.

  The damaged Battlenaut went down hard, flat on its face. The enemy soldier in its cockpit tried in vain to force the smashed war machine to get up and fight, but it was still lying in the mud when Freak marched her own Battlenaut over to meet it.

  "Hey, traitor!" shouted Freak, though she knew the downed pilot couldn't hear her. "Special delivery from the Redeyes for ya!"

  Freak used her lasers to disable the enemy Battlenaut's weapons systems. The whole time, the smell of baking bread was so strong in the cockpit that it made her stomach growl.

  Why she smelled baking bread in the cockpit instead of the usual sweat and stink, she had no idea, but she didn't let it trouble her. Better just to soak it in like the smell of roses that had rushed over her moments earlier, or the incredible smooth feeling of silk that had rippled over her skin moments before that.

  Better just to enjoy the ride.

  Eyeballing the display on her visor, she located the other members of her squad. Lieutenants Grist and Pellucid formed two points of a triangle enclosing the battlefield,
with Freak as the third point. Four enemy Battlenauts were trapped inside the triangle, three still standing plus the one she'd just brought down.

  Freak cackled as she swung her Battlenaut toward a fresh target. These bums are no match for the Redeyes.

  That was what Freak's squad called themselves: Redeyes, because they fought without rest. Computers monitored the alertness of this experimental squad and administered countermeasures, chemical and otherwise, to keep them awake and fighting. Such sleep deprivation techniques promised to limit downtime for deployed Commonwealth troops, giving them an edge in the ongoing civil war against the Rightfuls.

  From Freak's point of view, the experiment was the biggest success of all time. She and the others had been awake for days on end, so long she'd lost count, and still they suffered no ill effects.

  If anything, Freak felt better than ever. She'd never fought more fiercely or thought more clearly in her life.

  Who knew insomnia could be so much fun?

  *****

  Lieutenant Robert "Raw" Pellucid was convinced that the chronometer in the cockpit of his Battlenaut was broken, but he didn't have time to try to fix it.

  Even as Raw pounded two enemy Battlenauts with laser fire, he stole another look at the chronometer's readout. He growled like a dog and grimaced at the blinking red numbers.

  1805. 1805. 1805.

  Seems like it was just 1805 fifteen minutes ago.

  Unless the extreme sleep deprivation was affecting his time perception, the chronometer was running ten times slower than reality. What that meant was, the chronometer was definitely running slow, because Raw was running fine, sleep dep and all. He'd been awake for what felt like forever and hadn't needed even a single shot of wake-up juice.

  His fellow Redeyes might be running on fumes, but Raw was burning rich. He was just that kind of guy. Even before the program, he'd always kept a lid on, no matter how high the heat.