The skewer was no more than ten meters away, its smell like vinegar. Heavy on the air.
Talina, her body held parallel to the ground, eased up behind the girl. She was small, not much larger than Talina. Her body had a slight glow, warmer than the surrounding air. But then, it was morning, the heat still several hours away.
Talina edged closer, froze as the girl turned her attention from the invertebrates to the fluttering of a scarlet flier. The avian had been drawn by the distinctive breeding chime, expecting to find an easy meal. Instead it stopped short, fluttering in the air, the colors of panic running across its hide as it tried to determine the little girl’s nature.
As it did, the little girl took another step closer to the camouflaged skewer.
In that moment, Talina dropped camouflage, stepped around the little girl and placed herself between the girl and the predator.
The girl froze, terrified. Mouth gaping.
Turning, Talina lowered her head, hissing at the skewer. The predator immediately dropped its camouflage, extended the grasping pads, and flourished its thorn-like spear as it backed slowly away.
Talina glanced at the little girl, flipped her tail playfully, and uttered the closest sound she could to laughter.
“You saved me!” the little girl cried. “But you’re a quetzal!”
Talina lowered her head, her three eyes fixed on the girl’s awed expression. Again she made the chittering sound. Then she leaned up against the girl, bumping her gently with a shoulder.
“You’re a kid. Just like me.” She laughed, reached out, patting Talina’s shoulder. As she did waves of white, pink, and orange rolled across Talina’s hide and her collar membrane flared out.
“My name’s Kylee. What’s yours?”
Talina tightened her throat, wondering how the humans could make such sounds. Her utterance came out as a roar as she vented air to the rear.
“You’re like a rocket! You take in air and shoot it out the back with a roar! I’m going to call you Rocket!”
Talina glanced back into the darkness under the trees. Her vision, so much better than the little girl’s, easily picked out the two adult quetzals that blended with the shadows.
Yes. The first stage had been—
“Hey, Talina! Wake up.”
Tal blinked, visions of forest, blond hair, and sky-blue eyes fracturing like a dropped ceramic pot.
Shards, like dancing sprites, clattered across a Saltillo-tile floor. One triangular fragment, dominated by a Way glyph, seemed to catch her eye. Way, pronounced w-eye, the Maya glyph for the spirit possessed. For the Dreamer.
“What the . . . ?” She glanced around the familiar hospital room. Piss in a bucket if she hadn’t spent enough time in this room to know it inside out.
“What happened this time? How’d I get here? Am I shot, stabbed, or wrecked?”
Raya Turnienko was staring down at her. “Another one of the hallucinations. What was it this time?”
“The day Rocket met Kylee in the forest outside of Mundo Base.” Talina tried to reach up and rub her forehead, but her arm was immobilized. Looking down, she found straps holding her securely in the bed. “What the hell?”
“You remember putting a bullet through Sian Hmong? Turns out it was just a shipping crate. Not that that was particularly reassuring for Sian and her family.”
“That’s nuts!”
“Yeah, well the story’s all over.” Raya leaned down to emphasize her words. “Tal, most of the town thinks you’ve lost it. That you can’t control yourself. The decision’s pretty much unanimous. They want you restrained.”
“How long’s it been?”
“Couple of days. Dya and I have kept you sedated. Mark just got back from Corporate Mine, so Dya took the day off to spend with him, Su, and the babies.”
Talina took a deep breath. Images kept playing in her memory. In them, she kept seeing Kylee through Rocket’s eyes.
“So, everyone thinks I’m a quetzal, huh?”
“Not exactly a quetzal. Just infected with one.”
“What do you think?”
Raya gave one of those unconvincing shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t have a clue as to what’s going on in your head, Tal. I’m a physician, Dya’s an agricultural microbiologist with a minor in psychology, and Cheng’s an industrial chemist. We’ve barely figured out the chemistry of how the TriNA interacts with your cells. We haven’t a clue what it means, or what the molecules want. Hell, for all we know, each molecule wants something different from its counterparts.”
“Raya, that really sucks.”
A faint smile rearranged her flat face.
“When can I get out of here?”
“Don’t know, Tal. That depends on if and when you can control the quetzal thoughts. The fact that you thought you were shooting Sian? That you pulled your pistol and discharged a round? Does that sound like the old Talina Perez we’ve all known and respected?”
Talina squeezed her eyes shut. Yeah, she remembered. Just like the day she confronted Deb Spiro in the street in front of The Jewel. It wasn’t her. Just the action. Beyond her control.
“Maybe you’re right, Doc. I mean, I never liked Sian. She’s not exactly my kind of person, if you know what I mean. We might not have seen eye-to-eye over Rocket. But I’d never, ever shoot her dead. Not if I was in my right mind.”
“Good. Since you’re sane for the time being, how about a little supper? Millie brought over a plate of crest and beans. I had her throw in some extra chili for you. If I unstrap you, you promise to give me warning if your vision starts to change?”
“Yeah, sure, Doc.” The images of Kylee were still floating in the back of her mind. “What time is it?”
“About nine. You were the last patient on my list. So, eat. I’ll give you a sedative and get you buckled in for the night. We’ll tackle this whole quetzal thing again in the morning.”
Raya’s quick fingers began unbuckling the straps.
15
The question of the ship perplexed Tamarland. He sat in the Vixen’s observation bubble and stared out at the unfamiliar stars. Everything about his presence on the survey ship was at once unsettling and at the same time advantageous.
The universe bless Shayne, she’d removed him from the clutches of Radcek’s terrible retribution, and dropped him smack into a situation for which he had no previous experience.
A month ago, his current circumstance would have been unthinkable. Now, as if he’d been batted out of reality, he was thirty light-years from Solar System, a hunted man in charge of a Corporate expedition into the unknown. All of it seemed preposterous. Especially the mystery ship.
His sense of self-preservation, however, had triggered that deep-seated wariness that had kept him alive over the years. His strength was in planning and implementation. Whatever was awaiting him out there, politics were at the bottom of it, and Artollia’s scorpion was nothing if not adept at political gamesmanship. All of which had prompted him to order Torgussen to adopt a stealthy approach to Cap III and the mystery ship.
Additionally, he’d caught the captain on the sly, ordering him: “Any additional intelligence that comes in on that ship or planet, you and your officers consider it privileged information. My eyes only, understand?”
Torgussen had studied him for a moment, lips pursed. Tam suspected that the captain was considering the strange set of circumstances that had landed Tamarland Benteen on this mission in the first place. Was no doubt drawing false conclusions and misinterpreting Tam’s presence on Vixen. Which was fine. Let the man think he was The Corporation’s special agent. Let him think anything he wanted, so long as it added to Tam’s authority and power.
“It’s your call,” Torgussen had told him, saluted, and strode off down the corridor.
Saluted, no less. The action of an inferior to his superior.
<
br /> Tam chuckled dryly at the irony.
He was staring out at this new and fantastically thick band of the Milky Way, blotched as it was with black smudges of dark matter. It was beautiful, brighter than that seen from Solar System, and a patch of orange that was shaped like a lizard glowed against a star-smeared background. Old nebula?
A hesitant voice said, “Advisor?”
Tam turned to see Lea Shimodi at the hatch. The geologist’s face seemed even thinner given her chin-down posture. She had her hands clasped before her, uncertainty in her light brown eyes.
“What can I do for you, Dr. Shimodi?”
“I thought we might talk. I could come back later if this isn’t—”
“No, that’s fine. Come in. Have a seat.”
He’d already noticed that she carried herself well. Appeared to be in her late twenties, her spare body just enough out of proportion from the current fashion to indicate that she’d never bothered to undergo the makeover procedure. If anything, the slightly too wide hips, overly waspish waist, and un-augmented breasts imparted a sense of authenticity.
“What’s on your mind?”
“You’re going to have trouble with Dortmund.”
Of course he was. The man was a snobby, egotistical prig carried away by his sense of importance. “What’s your take on the guy?”
“I don’t dispute that he’s the master of his discipline. Perhaps the foremost planetologist in the last fifty years. The man has a truly formidable intellect with a string of publications that stretch back forty years. He has practically reinvented the discipline with his theory of management ecology. Time and time again he has crushed the evolutionists and saved conservation biology from being dismantled. His students worship him, and he has his political following as well.”
“A particular Boardmember?” Here, at last, was a battleground he was familiar with.
She seemed to hesitate. “Boardmember Shayne, I think. And particularly with the conservation ecologists. Have you spent any time on Earth lately? Been out to the re-wilded areas?”
“No. Wait.” He thought back. “They’re trying to rebuild wilderness areas, right? Reconstituting extinct species through recovered ancient DNA. Lot of argument about adding genes to species that couldn’t survive in the new re-wilded areas.”
“Dr. Weisbacher won that round. His argument was that re-wilded areas could slowly be managed back to their natural state, that it was transitional to use lab-modified animals to establish the initial ecosystem, then slowly replace them with what he considered genetically pure organisms until the original gene pools were once again fit for those environments.”
She raised her hands. “The point of all this is that Dortmund is a true believer. A sort of messiah. Willing to appear compromising on the front end, he’s going to keep whittling away at the edges until it’s his way or nothing.”
“No humans have screwed with Capella III.” He gestured at the transparency. “Unless that single ship’s been able to decimate the planet in the last ten years.”
“Capella III is Dortmund’s holy grail. He sees it as pure, uncontaminated by humanity. That’s why he’s so dogmatic about hazard protocols. Sure, to a point, I agree with him. On the other hand, I’m not living in a fricking safe suit for the next six months every time I’m down planet. I’ll take reasonable precautions against infection and contamination, but if I want to breathe the air, I’m breathing it.”
“You’re technically independent. Running your own show. So, why bring this to me?”
“If Capella III is as rich as we think, it’s going to be developed. In writing his management plan, Dortmund and his team will throw every obstacle in the way that he can think of. He’s not just committed to keeping Capella III as his own shrine, it’s a holy crusade. To the point that if he has to burn and raze Jerusalem and become a martyr to save it, he will.”
“He thinks his study is going to rewrite biology. I had to look up the HMS Beagle. Even I’ve heard of Darwin. You heard Dortmund that day.”
Shimodi nodded. “Great. Let him be the new Darwin. I just need to know which side you’re on. Keep Capella III as a laboratory of alien biology, or exploit its resources? I mean that’s why you were substituted at the last minute, right? Because the Board has a specific agenda?”
Tam laughed. “Nope. I’m neutral.”
Again her gaze narrowed. “Then it’s that ship out there. I was watching. When it comes to that ship, you’ve never so much as blinked an eye. It’s like you knew it was going to be there.”
“Nope.” He lifted his hands innocently. “Like I said, I’m just here to oversee the expedition. You do your job, Weisbacher can do his. If he starts to get insane, I’ll step in.”
She seemed unconvinced. “What if that ship out there is really illegal?”
“You don’t buy that it’s an alien?”
“Nope. It’ll be human. But did you see that crazed look Dortmund got trying to sell the alien idea, and then his outrage that someone could be screwing with his sacred little world?”
“I did.”
Her smile was anything but humorous. “I tell you, Advisor, you’ve got a mad messiah on your hands. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
16
There were advantages to being a psychopath. Especially the cold, antisocial kind like Dan Wirth. The guy just didn’t feel guilt. As far as Talina was concerned, that wasn’t such a bad thing. She’d been drowning in guilt for years. Guilt over the acts she’d committed under Clemenceau’s orders. Guilt over shooting Pak and Paulo down in the street that day. Guilt over the times she’d gone to the rescue of someone out in the bush—and got there too late. Guilt over Cap’s murder and the fact that she’d never found his killer. Guilt over Rocket’s death that day at Mundo and what it had done to Kylee. Guilt over the fact that Felicity had been blown up in Talina’s place.
“Yeah, a whole universe of guilt. I should have been born Catholic and Jewish.”
But she’d been born Maya. Her mother might have had a Catholic overlay, but at heart she still believed in the Lords of Xibalba, in the Hero Twins, and Wakah Chan, the great Tree of Life. In that Spirit World, pain, death, and blood were balanced with beauty, life, and joy. That was the cosmic balance that Talina had sucked in with her mother’s milk.
Why, then, the guilt?
As she sped south in the dying night she looked off to the east, searching for some sign of morning’s first light. Her aircar was down to a thirty-six percent charge. Her compass reading was on the money. With her augmented vision she could see the trees passing below—a vast expanse of deep forest, the roof of it mounded by the interlocking tops of mighty trees.
To the east, finally, the first faint graying of dawn was touching the horizon far out over the Gulf.
And, of course, now there was guilt over what she had done to Raya. While she hadn’t physically hurt her old friend, strapping her down on the bed and leaving her in Talina’s place was in many ways a worse betrayal.
But, damn it, she’d had to do something, and Talina Perez wasn’t the kind of woman who’d let herself be immobilized with restraints, drugged, and locked away in the hospital to helplessly await someone else’s discovery of a cure.
If she’d turned into a mad-dog danger to the community, she’d damned well remove herself. Run for the bush, and either figure her way out of the mess, or die trying.
Fortunately, she knew the only place on Donovan where that understanding might be found.
As rays of Capella’s first light poked above the horizon, Talina caught sight of her destination. A darker rectangle hacked out of the endless trees, the ruins of Mundo Base couldn’t be mistaken.
She corrected her course, circled the compound, and studied what lay below. In phallic defiance, the great tower thrust up where it had punched through the middle of Mundo Base’s circular dome l
ike a lingam and yoni. Most of the surrounding buildings remained intact. The band of terrestrial trees—though dwarfed by the high canopy of chabacho, stone wood, mundo, and southern aquajade—made a stark boundary for the agricultural fields they surrounded.
Talina made her descent, touching down in the weed-filled yard before the old storage shed. Only a twenty-eight percent charge remained in the power pack. Not even enough to get her to Corporate Mine if she had to make a run for it.
Mundo Base had always been a place of refuge for people fleeing Port Authority. She’d just never figured it would be hers, fleeing from her own people.
“Yes.”
“Oh, shut up,” she told the demon quetzal in her gut. “You and your kind, it’s your damn fault in the first place. Piece of shit.”
She felt rather than heard the now-familiar quetzal laughter.
It’s screwing with my mind. Triggering thoughts. Making me see what it wants me to see.
Or they were. She had molecules from at least five different quetzals inside her. Two of the quetzals wanted her dead. No telling what the Briggs’ quetzal wanted. Rocket was bonded with Kylee, and Talina thought of him as a friend. And Whitey? What the hell did he want? Seemed to her, she had had everything under control until good old Whitey spit in her mouth.
That had to be the catalyst for her descent into madness. Or possession. Or whatever the hell this was.
She pushed her aircar under the shed’s cover and used one of the old solar panels left behind after Mundo’s abandonment to hook up the trickle charger. As old as the panel was, it would take days to top up the power pack. Not that Talina had anywhere to go for the time being.
She shrugged into her pack as morning’s first light caressed the rows of corn, beans, squash, cucumbers, garlic, broccoli, and other terrestrial delicacies.
Mundo had been established to be an experimental agricultural station. It had been a breadbasket until Deb Spiro shot Rocket and pissed off the quetzals. That, coupled with the lack of repair, had led to the base’s desertion.
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