Standing stock-still, Torg, Alrine, and Laorcq waited for Mallory’s verdict, their helplessness making their tension palpable. Even the section chief seemed concerned. Interesting, she noted. His force field must not be strong enough to resist the soldier’s weapons. In that case, he’s got good reason to worry. As far as she knew, any one of his compatriots could be infected by a Saharj parasite and could suddenly decide to eliminate him.
She detected nothing from the second one and continued to the next. Faster! I’m much too slow at this game. One of the soldiers addressed Flesil, almost breaking her concentration.
“Your orders?” he asked, visibly surprised that the manager hadn’t given any.
“Keep our guests in your sights. Reinforcements are on the way,” the alien lied.
This lie calmed them and gave Mallory the time to finish her mental exploration. Finally, she gave a sigh of relief and, realizing her eyes were closed, opened them.
“It’s okay,” she said. “They’re all fine.”
Reassured, Flesil deactivated his protective field and took charge of the situation and the squad. They participated obediently in what would turn out to be many long hours of work for Mallory. Each time someone arrived at the top of the spiral escalator, she examined their mind, seeking the double thoughts that would betray the presence of a parasite. In the end, seven of the section chief’s team and two of his superiors became prisoners in pouches identical to the one that had swallowed the apprentice. In the meantime, a small crowd had formed in the room. The chief reconfigured it to make it larger.
Not everyone in the group was a Gibral, but there wasn’t a single Xilf among them.
After a period of astonishment, followed by agitation, they reached a consensus: measures would have to be taken to isolate the parasites, most importantly among the leaders. The highest-ranking Gibral agreed to speak with the Vohrn in exchange for their assistance.
Exhausted, Mallory went to sit with her back to a wall. On her forearms, the sensitive tattoos formed spiny stems and barely open rosebuds. Torg came to kneel in front of her and began to massage her shoulders. With his claws retracted, his thick fingers did a great job.
“Rest,” he ordered gently. “The hardest part’s over. Our mission here will soon be completed.”
Just as he finished his sentence, the twenty or so aliens near them reacted suddenly, as if to contradict him.
Just before joining the pilot and the cybrid, Laorcq changed direction. Followed by Alrine, he slipped between two Gibral mothers, each with a baby whose long necks protruded from their pouches. In a few steps, he approached the section chief. The latter had gotten up from his seat. Barraged by questions from every direction, he was evidently in the grip of what Laorcq interpreted as deep concern: his head never stopped bobbing up, down, left, and right, and his large eye blinked rapidly. Finally, he got sufficient control of himself to declare:
“A curfew is now in effect on the entire planet and the ring-station!”
Noticing the two humans standing nearby, he spoke specifically to them.
“Our precautions were all for naught. Tens of thousands of people have gone insane, across all of Solicor! They’re massacring everyone who crosses their path.”
In the middle of the room, a large screen displayed the carnage in the streets. A panicking crowd fled, pursued by a handful of individuals in the grip of homicidal insanity. The scene changed regularly but showed the same situation in sector after sector.
The veteran evaluated their options. The situation was extremely bad, but at least one problem had been resolved: although most of those affected by the parasites were cyclops, there were also members of other species among the Saharjs’ victims.
This proved to the Xilfs that what was happening was not a Gibral plot to get rid of them.
Without a second to lose, he contacted Frrrj.
“At least your actions served to precipitate events,” the Xilf said critically.
Laorcq didn’t disagree. He had to admit they hadn’t handled things well.
“My people will participate in the fight against the parasites,” Frrrj added before disconnecting.
The scarred man remembered that the Xilfs had a biological communication network. They could easily coordinate to assist Solicor’s police and military.
Around them, the Gibrals were growing more and more agitated. Taking Alrine by the arm, he dragged her aside, toward Mallory and Torg.
“What’s going on?” the pilot asked.
Laorcq didn’t beat around the bush. “The Saharj have turned those carrying parasites into homicidal maniacs. Tens of thousands of them.”
Hearing these words, the pilot immediately forgot her fatigue. She rose and said, “We have to warn Hanosk! The Urkein’Naak should destroy the Saharj vessels in orbit around Volda. If they don’t receive further orders, maybe the parasites will lose control of their hosts.”
Laorcq pointed out a problem with this seemingly excellent idea. “There’s little chance he’s just patiently waiting for us. They’re definitely in the system but finding them will take too long.”
Alrine spoke up in turn. “All of these telepathic conversations… Is there really no way to cut the connection between the Saharj and the implanted embryos?”
Mallory, who was obviously the group’s expert in this particular domain, thought for a moment.
During her few attempts at this form of communication, her external circumstances had had no effect on the “reception” quality. She suspected that traditional jamming methods would have no effect. On the other hand, if she could infiltrate the Saharjs’ telepathic network… Yes! Maybe we could use one of those mollusks we found in the cargo ship?
Another even better idea quickly replaced this one: she remembered the strange black substance she had seen in Jarvik’s “office.” What had Hanosk said about it? ‘An interface for communicating with a race of bio-engineered soldiers.’ So, a direct line. Exactly what we need!
Catching everyone by surprise, she declared, “We need to get to the embassy.”
They took their leave of Flesil, his colleagues, and the polymorphing room and set off at a run. The pilot explained her theory on the way.
The scarred man asked, “I’m missing something. If they’re telepathic, why do they need an extra device?”
Mallory’s forehead wrinkled as she slalomed through the crowd panicked by the state of emergency. She didn’t see the problem, she decided.
“You’re overthinking it. I think Jarvik was just too much for the parasite to handle, and he prevented it from communicating with the Saharj. Remember, on Reival: he managed to regain control of himself in the middle of combat.”
When they arrived at the Vohrn enclave, Mallory and Laorcq found the remains of their battle with the robot guard. Hoping there weren’t any more inside, she approached the door and stood in front of the four blue circles on its surface. The biometric lock identified her, and the two door panels slid apart. There were no nasty surprises. The pilot’s relief was palpable: the situation was bad enough, and she had no desire to fight another combat machine.
She crossed the hall and went to the place where she had discovered Jarvik about to be engulfed by a blackish magma dripping from the ceiling.
The dark mass was still there. Cautiously, Mallory entered the small room. Around her arm, the jufinol tightened his grip and transmitted a feeling of unease.
“I know,” she told him. “My plan doesn’t seem so good all of a sudden, but it’s all we’ve got…”
Alrine and Laorcq remained on the threshold, with Torg’s tall shape hovering behind them.
Laorcq tried to reason with her again. “What if that thing fries your brain instead? We should at least find a way to test it. I don’t like the idea of you taking such a risk. It seems to me that you’re just charging forward like a bull in a china shop, as usual.”
“We don’t have time for tests!” Mallory said sharply.
With the
se words, she stretched her hand toward the substance on the ceiling. Reacting to her proximity, it stirred, and a thick, viscous thread emerged and touched the human. The substances, shaped like an oil-colored boa constrictor, slowly engulfed her arm.
The pilot prepared for the transition to a different level of consciousness, or even a wave of pain. Reaching out, she drew strength from Squish, whose thoughts formed a warm and reassuring halo around her.
About thirty seconds later, she had to admit defeat: it wasn’t working.
“Shit!” she swore, disappointed. “We must be missing something,”
The tar-like substance retracted toward the ceiling, resuming its uniform appearance.
Mallory stared at her companions one by one in despair. It had to work: people were being massacred all over the planet!
As she watched, she saw Alrine’s blue eyes widen slightly. The tall blonde had just had an idea.
“What are you thinking, Alrine?” Mallory asked.
The policewoman hesitated, then finally said, “Maybe you have to have a parasite to establish the link?”
The truth hit Mallory. Why only try one thing? It was better to combine them. “Good eye! Take Laorcq and Torg with you and go get one of the prisoners from Flesil. I’ll stay here.”
While they returned to the liquid building, she went to look for something with a sharp edge. She wanted to be ready to fight back against the dark material if the situation took a turn for the worse. She moved from one room to another, finding only a few tools with unknown uses. She had to make do with a sort of awl, something between a screwdriver and a dagger. Dropping the thin blade into a pocket of her burgundy leather jacket, she returned to the room with the dark fluid.
It seemed like an eternity before her team returned with a Gibral. She recognized the section chief’s young assistant. Still partly groggy and submissive under the cybrid’s steel fist, she was perfect for what the human had in mind.
Following her instructions, Torg guided the cyclops to the middle of the room and held her there.
Mallory extended the arm around which the jufinol was curled and put her hand on the blue alien’s neck. She touched smooth, barely warm skin.
With Squish’s help, she sent her mind toward the Gibral. She quickly found the thought pattern of the Saharj embryo embedded in the extraterrestrial’s body.
The parasite defended itself, but this time the pilot was ready for it. Through force of will, she managed to hold it in place while remaining in contact.
She was ready.
Under Laorcq and Alrine’s worried gaze, she reached her other arm toward the ceiling. The black, liquid serpent immediately rushed out to meet her, engulfing her arm up to the elbow.
A burst of purple light surrounded her and she fell into another universe. She was assailed by a monstrous cacophony. Every nerve in her body fired at once. She was receiving a deformed echo of the sensations felt by thousands of parasites throughout the Aldebaran system.
Mallory realized she had been wrong about the dark material’s purpose. It didn’t compensate for the Vohrns’ resistance to the Saharj embryo. It was an amplifier.
A few sectors away, Vassili walked through the city-planet’s streets, observing the rare spectacle of uncontrolled violence. For some unknown reason, part of Solicor’s population had gone crazy and was savagely attacking anyone they could get their hands on. While most were Gibrals, there were other species among the murderers as well.
Vassili suspected this was related somehow to the Vohrn agents. It occurred to him that he should find a way to see the young pilot again and to try to get some information about it out of her.
A small smile appeared on his lips. Maybe he’d better not, after all. If she ever realized what he had done during their lovemaking, she would probably order her cybrid to grind him to bits.
He swept his gaze from right to left across a wide avenue. The population had been ordered to remain indoors. The tentacular city now seemed like a ghost town. Confident in his new abilities, Vassili wandered, unconcerned by the prospect of coming face to face with a madman. In fact, he was hoping for it…
As he walked, he discovered an alien cadaver. It was lying on the sidewalk in a pool of orange blood. A long trail of the same color indicated that it had been dragged for several yards before being abandoned. As far as Vassili could tell, the body was as wide as it was tall, almost five feet, and had two pairs of fins. It must move like a seal. It was hard to tell anything about its face: the part that should correspond to its head had been reduced to a trickling pulp. In several places, deep wounds indicated the use of a bladed weapon. The fatal blow had been truly savage.
Vassili’s augmented senses allowed him to pick up the murderer’s trail. He followed it to a store window. A violent blow had shattered the large glass pane, splitting its holographic messages in two. The items on display were not designed for humans. The shelves were lined with cylinders that looked like cement logs. Some were as thin as a human finger, but the largest were as wide as tree trunks.
A movement drew Vassili’s eye. At the back of the store, behind a pile of these concrete rods, something was moving fitfully. Vassili maneuvered around the obstacles and found a Gibral on his knees strangling a small alien, a sort of koala with green fur and three eyes. The victim’s desperate whines were growing weaker.
The man observed the scene coldly. His extrasensory perception told him that the Gibral was not behaving normally. An unusual film of sweat covered his skin, and his cardiac rhythm was irregular.
Intrigued, Vassili focused on the alien’s pulse. His face showed his surprise. Two hearts. He heard two heartbeats. One was very faint, but there was no mistake.
He decided to investigate further. In one stride, he approached the Gibral and smashed his fist brutally down on the cyclops’ head. Given his strength, which the ktol’s effects had multiplied, the blow broke the creature’s skull like a walnut under a hammer. The alien’s large eye squirted out of its socket and rolled on the ground with a wet sound. Mechanically, Vassili shook his hand to remove the coating of bluish hemoglobin.
Saved from death at the last second, the extraterrestrial koala fled without further ado, punctuating its flight with a last whine.
Vassili now only heard one heartbeat—the weaker one. He leaned over the dead Gibral and found the source at the base of its long neck. From his pocket, he took out an object the size of a pen, which turned out to be a surgeon’s laser. He sliced open the flesh with a low sizzle, blowing occasionally on it to disperse the smoke given off by the burned skin.
He worked for a moment until he extracted a small red creature from the body. It was dying like a fish out of water. Surprising himself, Vassili brought it to his mouth and swallowed it in one bite. He understood that he had been unconsciously guided by his new physiognomy.
Rifling through his clothes, he found the ktol at the bottom of a pocket. The artifact’s points dug into his fingers. The object reacted immediately to the presence of the creature in Vassili’s stomach. He felt his abdomen alter to examine the creature. Threads emerged from his stomach walls and insinuated themselves into the foreign body. Through the ktol, the man easily deciphered snippets of the parasite’s thoughts. He saw images of very tall humanoids whose thick brown skin stretched over a skeleton that protected its vital organs.
The Saharj embryo died suddenly. Vassili groaned in frustration: he had perceived a powerful desire in the back of the parasite’s fragile mind and wanted to know more.
He saw an opening between two buildings that led to a maintenance alley. He followed the narrow passage until he arrived at a heavy door panel. With a sharp yank on the door handle, he forced open the metal panel blocking his path and entered. After a few hundred yards walking down the damp, poorly lit corridor, he tucked himself into a dark corner and took hold of the ktol.
His mind abruptly found itself on the Primordials’ world.
The alien with the hideous face appeared,
looming over him with his colossal stature.
“Did you follow my orders?” he asked.
Vassili remembered that he had been told to collect information by seducing the pilot. “I got close to the human who’s working for the Vohrn, yes.” He continued immediately. “I’ve discovered something new.”
He described what he had found in the Gibral’s body and the images he had been able to extract from it.
“Saharj embryos,” Axaqateq confirmed. “They have finally decided to come out of hiding.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Since the Vorhns are interfering with the game, you are to leave Solicor and to go offer our aid to their adversaries.”
XIV
DECISION
MALLORY was drowning in an ocean of pain. Without the jufinol’s presence to sustain her, her consciousness would have been obliterated the second she made contact with the Saharj. The pilot felt as if she had been sliced in two, her mind torn between the pressure of the ephemeral environment and the perception of her body, one hand on the parasitized Gibral and the other plunged into the black substance stretching toward her.
Slowly, she overcame her suffering and began to figure out the structure of the space around her. The din ebbed, allowing her to order her thoughts. White, almost crystalline lines were superimposed over the dark red light that bathed the framework of the Saharj consciousness. When they intersected, they formed masses of pulsing radiance, then broke apart.
The pilot tried to send a thought towards one of these luminous balls, which she took to be manifestations of other creatures. In response, the thin, sparkling network seemed to flare suddenly. Surprised, she shielded her mind. The web of light returned to its original state.
Her first impression was confirmed: the strange black substance was a telepathic amplifier and, most importantly, it was bidirectional.
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