The Metal Maiden Collection

by Piers Anthony

  “That is the object,” Adela agreed, stepping out of her clothing to stand with nymph-like sex appeal. As an Aware she was quite ready for this.

  Elasa realized that the Awares had played for this too, by giving him a taste of the pleasure they could offer him when they chose: not merely Kop’s nullification as an agent, but his enthusiastic cooperation. That would immeasurably enhance their chances of success.

  There followed another sandwich with the man in the middle. As Elasa knew, men put inordinate store in sex, and would often put their entire careers in jeopardy for its transient pleasures. Men could be utter fools. But Kop had little to lose long term, and much immediate pleasure to gain by helping them. Both Elasa and the Awares had freely played on that to convert him to their side, and he knew it. Now they freely delivered.

  Then they got to work on the mission. There were a number of important government figures to be nullified, but to do it they had to get Venus Flytrap close to them. They had been primed during Elasa’s prior tour, so that the Plant, guided by the Lamb, guided in turn by the Aware, could readily locate the spot and fudge the settings. It was painless, actually imperceptible to the men, until they tried to communicate with the alien home base. Then they were on their own. They could join the Earth defense effort if they chose, as Kop had, or remain aloof; in either event they would remain cut off from the Maggots.

  Kop turned the body over to Pauling, who promptly organized a spur of the moment duplicate tour to update the prior one. No one questioned him; Pauling remained a top official, and Kop remained, as far as the other Maggot agents knew, a top enemy agent. Elasa accompanied him as his personal secretary, as before, and Adela and Bunky came along too, unlisted. Plus one decorative plant, Venus. During the long flights they had frequent sex interspersed by discussion, while Bunky communed companionably with Venus. As a wether, a neutered sheep, Bunky had no interest in sex, which also protected him from Venus.

  “Now you know the Maggots are not going to accept this without objection,” Kop said. “When a number of agents fail to report, they will try to send clarifying directives, and when those fail, they will realize that something is wrong. There are two ways they may proceed: if they conclude that the human form is fundamentally unstable, so that transfer agents are subject to random elimination, they may conclude that this world is too awkward to process conveniently, and will bypass it and move on. In that event Earth will be spared, for now. But more likely they will be suspicious, and will send a Maggot to investigate physically. That would be mischief.”

  “I presume we can’t simply lay an ambush and assassinate the Maggot when it arrives,” Elasa said. “How would they react to the death of a Maggot? Would they blow up the whole planet?”

  “And waste all that good meat?” Adela asked.

  “Wasting good meat is anathema,” Kop said. “They will either harvest Earth, or bypass it, because there is also the potential for a future harvest. But because a bypass represents a certain loss of productive energy and postponement of gratification, they are likely to investigate first. The Maggot’s report will govern: proceed with the harvest, or bypass this world. But yes, you can’t simply lay an ambush. The Maggot will have more mental power than a thousand local inhabitants, and all of them will be immediately under its sway. All of them will defend the Maggot to the death. In fact several will give up their lives, screaming, as it feeds on them. No living thing will get close without being taken over and serving the Maggot’s purpose. It will soon know the situation, and make the decision.”

  “So if a Maggot lands, Earth is lost?” Elasa asked. “Since human hosts aren’t unstable, and we would not be able to nullify any that the Maggot is directly controlling, if they have not been zeroed in.”

  “Correct. If a Maggot lands, Earth is surely lost. And I judge that to be the likely choice.” He lifted an eyebrow in tacit query. “Unless your Lamb or Plant have some other ploy available.”

  “We have Elasa,” Adela said.

  “Whose mind can’t be read or taken over,” Kop agreed. “She could at least make an effort to take out the Maggot. But when it discovered that it could not control her, it would orient the living captives on her, and they would attack in a coordinated mass, heedless of losses. She would have to mow them down with a machine-gun, and probably would run out of bullets before they stopped coming. They would converge and tear her apart, literally.”

  “If I had a machine-gun,” Elasa said, “I would use it to mow the Maggot down.”

  “Good thought,” Kop agreed. “But meanwhile the captive folk would be throwing themselves between you and it, to take the bullets, and a number would be firing at you, aiming at eyes and legs so as to disable you. Even well armed, your chances of killing a Maggot are remote. It is not a situation you should seek.”

  “Are you saying we can’t stop the Maggot if it comes here?” Elasa asked.

  “I’m saying that killing it would be no easy task. It might be better to do what I attempted to do: nuke it. A missile fired from a safe distance might do it.”

  “But the other casualties!” Elasa protested.

  “This ain’t beanbag,” Kop reminded her. “Anyway, chances are that the key personnel required to make a nuclear strike would be under Maggot control, so that wouldn’t work either.”

  “So our best course is to persuade the Maggots that Earth is not suitable for harvesting at the moment,” Elasa said. “Is that possible?”

  “It is unlikely, because Earth is eminently suitable for harvesting. Only if there were some suggestion that it would cost more to reduce than it would be worth, would they decide to bypass it. The mysterious disappearance of their agents, suggesting that Earth has ways to spot and eliminate them, might do it. But I suspect they will send the Maggot.”

  “Which will likely doom us,” Elasa concluded.

  “Exactly. You have a nice touch here, cutting off their agents, but it’s not enough in itself. You need something more.”

  “We’ll work on it,” Elasa said.

  They met with the first foreign official, and sure enough, he had been possessed by a minion of the Maggots. He was telepathic and precognitive, but not using either talent at the moment, for reasons Kop had clarified before: short-range precog was too changeable, and other minds were messy. “What’s this about, Kop?” he demanded. “We’re busy here, about to go into harvest mode.” He eyed Elasa, surely aware from his host of her prior visit. “Not that a brief pause would be unwelcome.”

  “There is a complication,” Kop said. “We’re not going into harvest mode.”

  “Surely you jest.”

  “I have something to show you,” Elasa said, carrying the Plant toward him.

  But now the agent’s Awareness registered. “That thing is dangerous!”

  Elasa stood and opened her shirt to display her breasts. The man looked, momentarily distracted. In that moment, Adela and Venus struck.

  The man froze. “You cut me off,” he said, surprised.

  “Your best bet is to put your host’s mind back in charge, so he can start reversing the preparations for the harvest,” Kop said. “You have plenty to do, just not what it was.”

  “Yes, of course,” the man agreed, looking somewhat dizzy. His Awareness was stabilizing him, showing him the best course through this new reality.

  They moved out, heading for the next meeting. Elasa knew they had to keep moving, because once the Maggots caught on that they were losing their agents, they would immediately act to safeguard the remaining ones.

  “Can we get them all in time?” she asked.

  Adela put her hand on Bunky’s back. “We think so. But we can’t be sure of the ones not on our immediate circuit. Other Awares traveled with Bunky to set them up, but there is no clear indication of complete success.”

  “And Bunky is with us now,” Elasa said. “And Venus. They can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “Yes. Anticipating this problem, we primed the others slightly d
ifferently.”

  “Differently?”

  “It’s a cruder setting. When they try to contact the Maggots, their memories will short circuit, throwing them into convulsions. Some may die.”

  “Won’t that attract attention?”

  “Yes. That’s why it’s not the preferred mode. But we could not allow them to continue to function as Maggot minions.”

  “I suppose not,” Elasa agreed. She didn’t like it, but as Kop had said, this wasn’t beanbag. Beanbag was a cloth bag filled with dried beans, used in children’s games. They were playing for much higher stakes. At least the ones they nullified personally would be able to retire peacefully, making no waves, and their hosts would emerge in due course, perhaps not badly scathed.

  In the course of the excursion, Elasa got to see the formidable processing stations being set up. The local one was a slaughterhouse, but that was only one element of a multi-pronged program. Walking meat could be marched into the station and fed into the grinders, but what of sea, insect, and plant life? They visited a huge underwater center designed to generate a major ocean current that would sweep in all swimming things and chop them up and can them with the flow of water almost unimpeded. Another station was designed to set up a flow of air with tornado force that would draw in all flying things from birds to insects, filtering out the dust and rocks and compacting the flesh. Another was mobile, a giant mower type apparatus that would crunch overland and sweep in and grind up all plant life. If houses and buildings got in the way, well, the wood in them was organic and the metals, plastics and stone could be recycled into the manufacture of more harvest machines. Of course this would not be good for the health of the planet, but that was a non-issue: there would be no survivors anyway.

  “You mentioned poop,” Elasa said, morbidly fascinated. “If everything gets canned and shipped out, where does the poop come from?”

  “Poop gets shipped in,” Kop explained. “It can get messy leaving it in space, so it is loaded into the cargo ships and brought to Earth in an almost continuous conveyor line. Then the ships are reloaded with canned meat and head back out to the fleet within hours. It’s very efficient.”

  “But what happens to it on Earth? Is it just one monstrous pile burying the city?”

  “No, that would interfere with the food processing. Instead it is vaporized and blown high into the atmosphere, where in time—days, weeks, months—it will settle out like volcanic ash and form a growing layer across the globe. There the feces processors—mostly natural bacteria—will feast on it.”

  “But all that—that shit in the air will make it unbreathable,” Elasa protested.

  He glanced at her. “What part of ‘no survivors’ did you not understand?”

  The tour continued, and all of their contacts were quietly nullified. So far there was no commotion, and no evidence of mischief from the Maggots.

  Then as they returned there came news of a mysterious wave of incidents around the world, wherein important people had acted in crazy ways. One encouraging thing was that the news was not suppressed. That suggested that the Maggot censorship had been abated. There were no reported incidents among the people Elasa’s party had visited, indicating that the controls remained, but that the harvesting was not starting.

  As Elasa and her companions returned home, the corner seemed to have been turned. But was it enough? The final decision remained in the deadly hands of the Maggots.

  “It does not look good,” Adela murmured. “Bunky can’t see a clear outcome. The decision remains obscure.”

  So it still could go either way. Elasa hated that.

  Chapter 9:

  Maggot

  It did not take long to clarify. “They are sending a Maggot,” Adela reported after communing with Bunky. “It will arrive in two days.”

  “And I’m the only one whose mind it can’t take over,” Elasa said grimly.

  “You and Venus. Maggots are not adept at handling plant minds.”

  “Because they don’t have minds, strictly speaking. But if you’re with Venus, it could get at her through your mind.”

  “Yes. So you must be with Venus.”

  “I must be with Venus,” Elasa agreed. “She was always my plant. At least we can travel incognito. Where are we going?”

  “The Maggot will go to the slaughterhouse to stage its investigation. They like to feed while they think.”

  “But it has been established that I can’t kill it, alone.”

  “You will have help.”

  That was much of what she needed to know. “I think I’ll need it.”

  “One other thing,” Adela said. “The Maggot is already broadcasting to the remaining minions on Earth. A warrant for your arrest has just been issued. The police will be here in nine minutes.”

  Of course the Maggot knew about her; she’d been having the affair with Kop. Now she realized that cutting his line did not end his connection to the Maggots; it merely interrupted it. The Maggot might already be reconnecting, and was naturally suspicious of Elasa, for excellent reason.

  Elasa explained things briefly to Banner, put Venus in her car and headed for the slaughterhouse as she heard the police siren approaching. Banner would handle it, saying she had just left, but he expected her back soon. That might turn out to be a long wait.

  Unfortunately the police were not completely fooled. There was a backup car that evidently had the description of her car; it made a U-turn when she passed, and took off after her. They did not know where she was going.

  What she would do when she got there she didn’t know, but at least she would be on the scene. But first she had to shake the pursuit. Because it was evident that the Maggot did not want to meet her on her terms; it wanted her nullified. Not all the Maggot’s agents had been nulled, or else new ones had been made, including the local police chief. She would not survive arrest.

  Damn! She wished she had Bunky along, to precog the dangers and steer her correctly. But he had to be with the Awares now, because they could understand him more directly.

  She looked ahead. Another police car was coming through an intersection, toward her, siren going. They had her boxed in. In thirty seconds she would be sandwiched between them.

  “Venus, I need help,” she said. “You’re telepathic; I’m not. You may be in touch with Bunky and the Awares. Your stem is prehensile, and you can hear. If I were a living person you could talk directly to me, but maybe indirect will do. Touch the right side of the dashboard before you for YES, the left side for NO. Do you understand me?”

  The curled leaf touched the right side. Voila! That was YES.

  “Point the way I must go to escape capture.”

  The stem pointed to the right.

  Elasa slewed the car into a sharp right turn and cruised into a narrow alley. Behind her the two police cars almost collided; she had barely escaped that vice. But she knew their confusion would not last long. Already she could hear the siren of a cruiser circling to intercept her at the far end of the alley.

  “Where now?”

  The stem pointed toward the back of the car.

  Elasa didn’t argue. She braked and turned, finding a widening in the alley, and spun the car around to face back the way it had come. She gunned it forward, noting that the stem now pointed forward. She shot across the road, right between the two stopped police cars, and entered the alley on the other side.

  The stem pointed left. Elasa slewed left, into another alley, then right, then left again, following Venus’s signals. She knew Bunky was the one guiding her, and she trusted him.

  She wasn’t sure exactly how she did it, but somehow she slipped through the police net and found herself on a highway leading the way she needed to go: toward the slaughterhouse. “I get it!” she exclaimed. “They assume I’m fleeing the Maggot. They’re not looking for me this way.” Still, she did not take a straightforward route, but turned frequently, sometimes backtracking slightly, so that her destination was not evident. Venus warned h
er of mischief several times, and she detoured to avoid it.

  But, inevitably, the avenues of avoidance were shut off, and the sirens converged again just as she reached the slaughter complex. They were probably tracking her car directly now, having oriented on its locator. She slewed to a stop before the structure, put the car on auto-pilot, heaved up the pot, leaped out as the car resumed motion and ran under cover of trees toward the dread building. With luck the moving vehicle would lure the police after it, giving her sightly more leeway.

  The slaughterhouse was not yet in operation, and there were no personnel. It was simply there, a giant blank-walled edifice with four broad avenues leading to it. A single vehicle was there, a van; that must have brought the Maggot.

  Elasa stayed in the shadow of the wall and slunk around to the main entrance, carrying the heavy pot. The door was open. She entered. The halls and chambers were empty. Where was the Maggot?

  Then people appeared: men, women, children. They all oriented on Elasa simultaneously. They advanced on her, like zombies. Which surely what they were, really, being under the mind control of the alien visitor. She had walked into an ambush.

  Why hadn’t Venus warned her? Bunky and the Awares had to have foreseen this trap. They would not let her be torn apart by possessed people.

  Then the people scrambled back, looking horrified. “Dinosaur!” one cried.

  Oho! Venus was projecting a phantasm, maybe Tyrannosaurus Rex, that frightened them. They might be under the control of the Maggot, but evidently Venus could still govern what they saw. Why charge toward that monster?

  The Plant’s stem pointed to the side. There was a narrow stairway, evidently for private use. Elasa ran to it. This could be defended, because her attackers could mount the steps only one at a time. But what was the point? It was the Maggot she needed to get at, not its captives.

  The zombies came to the foot of the stairway, but none tried to mount it. Did no one want to be the first to get knocked back down? That shouldn’t matter to possessed people; the Maggot hardly cared about their welfare, and would probably eat them when this was done.