Radiant

CHAPTER 14

Maitri [Sanskrit]: Loving kindness for all living creatures.

Outside the building we stopped so Festina could speak with Pistachio. She summarized what we’d learned, then asked Captain Cohen to do some eye-in-the-sky scouting for us. He soon reported a Fuentes building beside a dam thirty kilometers to the south. The dam had become a waterfall — silt must have closed the sluices, leaving the river with nowhere to go but over the top. Years of rushing water had mildly eroded the dam’s upper ramparts, but there’d been no major collapse; the dam still held back a reservoir of cold autumnal water. The accompanying building lay on the east bank of the reservoir… which told us which side of the Grindstone we should be on for the trek downstream.

Pistachio’s cameras didn’t have enough resolution to see much detail — not from such high orbit. However, Captain Cohen had begun to build new reconnaissance probes as soon as we’d left the ship, and there’d be one ready within five hours: just enough time, he said, to gather advance data, since we’d need six hours to walk to the dam. (When Cohen said that, I thought, Six hours? We’d take six hours to walk thirty kilometers on clear flat roads. Traveling through brush, up hills and down ravines, following the shore of a meandering river and perhaps dodging the occasional Rexy, we’d take much longer… and that was ignoring nightfall, now only three hours off, plus the storm we’d seen heading our way. When Festina asked Cohen how the storm looked, he admitted, "Oy, it’s a doozy.")

I wondered if Festina would decide it was safer to spend the night in the city, where we had shelter from lightning and pseudosuchians. There was also the question of Li and Ubatu; we hadn’t seen any sign of the shuttle, but odds were they’d tried to land in the city, where straight, paved streets would make good emergency airstrips. I found it difficult to believe Li was such an expert pilot that he’d managed a dead-stick landing without smashing to smithereens… but if the diplomats hadn’t died in a pancake collision, they might be lying injured, in need of medical help. With the three hours of daylight we had left, decency demanded we search for our fallen "comrades" in case we could save their annoying lives.

Then again, searching Drill-Press on foot would take considerably longer than three hours. We’d save time if we could get to one of the tallest skyscraper roofs for an aerial view of the streets. However, it seemed unlikely that elevators would still work after sixty-five centuries, and I didn’t want to climb eighty stories only to find the doors to the roof locked or rusted shut. Perhaps Pistachio’s cameras could pick out the crash site, especially if the shuttle had blasted a significant crater in the heart of the city… but there might be an easier way to search: with a bit of higher help.

I settled against the side of the bridge, my elbows propped on the rail, my eyes gazing out over the river as if scanning for trouble. I paid no attention to what was actually before me; instead, I withdrew into my mind and murmured, Balrog… I admit it, I can’t stand being blind. How far do your senses go?

As usual, the answer didn’t come in words. A point of perception opened within me: a single point, not in my brain, but in my abdomen, my dantien, my womb. Though I sensed that point by means of the Balrog, this tiny part of my body seemed free of alien presence; it felt like an untainted refuge, a virgin core the spores had chivalrously refrained from violating. Knee-jerk cynicism said I shouldn’t be so gullible — why should I believe anything the Balrog showed me, let alone a comforting fiction that some crucial portion of my being remained unraped? — but it felt so real, I had trouble doubting it. The point I sensed was me: me here and now, at this moment, complete… no more permanent than a sigh, no more real than any other temporary assemblage of atoms en route to elsewhere, but still, in that instant, me.

Then the point began to expand.

Expanding beyond tissues infested with spores, glowing red in the dark of my belly…

Beyond the boundaries of my skin, sweeping over the bridge’s pavement where EMP clouds lurked in the cracks…

Up to Tut and Festina, their auras tainted with Stage One microbes…

Moving farther out, reaching down to the river beneath the bridge, where primitive fish darted after food or drifted with minds empty, occasionally flicking their tails to change course when the current took them near small obstructions…

Still growing outward, exceeding the former limits of my perception, edging up to and into skyscrapers abandoned for millennia, room after fetid room where furniture decayed under beds of mold, where strains of bacteria had evolved to thrive on Fuentes upholstery, where lice had colonized carpets and mites crawled busily through fungus-covered electronics…

Farther and farther, past blooms of vegetation where the city’s artificial herbicides had been leached away by time, and multicolored ferns from the countryside had seeded themselves, creating little Edens for insects, maybe even for a small protolizard or toad, in areas as small as my cabin on Pistachio…

Continuing beyond, as my brain became dizzy, unable to handle so much detail — not like an aerial photograph that loses resolution as the scale increases, but retaining everything, perceiving multiple city blocks, the towers, the air, the soil, all down to a microscopic level filled with life, lifeforms, life forces, quadrillions of data elements flooding my mind, and still the view expanded, more buildings, more biosphere, every millimeter unique, all of it blazing/roaring/shuddering with energy, and somewhere in the middle, a woman whose brain couldn’t take the barrage beginning to go into seizure as sensations sparked through her neurons. Too much input, too much knowledge, electrical impulses ramming down wearied axons to release volleys of chemical transmitters, her skull full of lightning and bioconductors, overload, grand mal, electroshock, white light breakdown, brain cells rupturing by the thousand in fierce flares of overexertion… and all observed from that point in my abdomen, like an impartial witness at my own beheading.

I can’t say how long the blitzkrieg lasted — it was one of those imminent-disaster experiences that take place in slow motion, simultaneously drawn-out and fleeting — but before I could react, a dismaying percentage of my brain had been damaged irreparably. Neurons collapsed from the strain. Long-established pathways of thought got chopped into disjoint pieces. Where once my consciousness had lived, there was only a soup of demolished gray matter.

Yet I still could think. I still had the sense I was me. My heart still beat, and my lungs still breathed, because wherever my neurons burst under the rush of sensation, the Balrog instantly filled in the gaps. I could see spores annexing my brain like an invader’s army: all the key connection hubs under the Balrog’s control, and millions of other spores scattered like garrison soldiers at strategically located stations.

Before, I’d simply been conquered; now I was thoroughly digested. The very thoughts I was thinking had to pass through Balrog spores: like a computer network where every transmission was compelled to run along channels controlled by the enemy. I didn’t truly believe my "self" was that point in my abdomen — whatever significance that point might hold, my intestines/uterus didn’t have the capacity for thought. Thoughts could only be supported by the brain… and my brain was utterly compromised. Not just the higher centers, but the more ancient sections that controlled essential processes. My heartbeat. My breathing. My digestion. I could see spores completely integrated into my brain stem, and my own cells destroyed by the overload. Quietly, the spores lapped up the proteins and sugars released when my brain cells cracked open. Soon the Balrog would use my own biochemicals to build new spores.

I was irredeemably lost… and the Balrog had let me see it happen: to know I was watching my demise.

All this time, some part of me had nursed a delusion that the Balrog would let me go. Once I’d served my purpose (whatever that purpose was), how could I remain of interest to a higher lifeform? I was nobody special: just an ugly screaming stink-girl. I had nothing the Balrog could find desirable in the long term. Couldn’t I eventually go free?

But now there was no going back. When the Balrog consumed my foot, I could have limped away, crippled yet alive. Now I couldn’t survive without the spores. Vital brain cells were gone, destroyed. If the Balrog withdrew, my remaining gray matter couldn’t sustain life. I was now more than a slave — I was dependent.

Why? Because again, I’d asked the Balrog for a favor. I’d wanted the moss to grant me a gift, and it honored my request in abundance. The flood of sensation must have been deliberately intended to cause mental overload, delivered in a way that didn’t just target my perceptions but other parts of my mind as well. Why should a gush of awareness kill cells in my brain stem? But it had done so, because I’d foolishly given the Balrog carte blanche.

Stupid. Very stupid. And now my human life was over.

Unable to do anything else, I found myself laughing.

"What is it?" Festina asked, looking around as if my laughter heralded some threat.

She looked so humanly naive.

"It’s nothing," I said. "Just some nonsense that got into my head." I laughed again. "By the way… I know where Li and Ubatu are."

Of course I knew where the diplomats were. The mind-crushing overload was past, but in its wake my awareness extended much farther than before. I didn’t attempt to test the sixth sense’s range — that might cause more meltdown — but what I wanted to see, I saw. As simple as that. With a brain that was now half-Balrog, my mental processes (perception, filtering, interpretation) took place on a higher level. If I chose to examine the bacteria in an aphid’s gut two kilometers away, the data was instantly there: not just peeking into a place where normal sight couldn’t operate, but hearing the impossibly faint sounds of microbes splashing through stomach fluids, feeling the brush of their cilia rowing them forward, tasting the tang of the chemicals they absorbed. All was within my grasp, just for the asking… so of course I knew where our missing diplomats were. The answer came as soon as I asked the question.

They’d landed east of the city, on a highway that continued several kilometers into the countryside. (The road led to a limestone quarry that must have supplied raw materials for the city’s skyscrapers.) The highway made a good airstrip: it was one of the few paved roads that wasn’t lined by tall buildings, so there was little danger of the shuttle hitting anything on its way in. Crash-landing had rendered the shuttle unrecognizable as an aircraft… but that just meant the craft’s crumple zones had done their job, absorbing the crash’s impact to protect the cockpit and passenger cabin. Other safety features had done their job too, including automatic airbags and flame-retardant materials that prevented fires after the crash — all measures that worked despite the electrical systems being EMP’d out of commission. Therefore, Li and Ubatu had come through unscathed, give or take a few bruises. Enough pain to prove they’d faced danger, but without causing real inconvenience. The sort of injuries they’d talk about endlessly at cocktail parties.

Getting out of the ruined shuttle was more of a challenge. Since all exterior hatches were part of crumple zones, the usual exit doors had been crushed. That wouldn’t have mattered if the crash took place in a populated area, where rescue crews could rush to the scene and extricate survivors with laser cutters. The shuttle’s designers, however, had allowed for crashes on planets where no outside help would appear. A number of hand tools were cached in the passenger cabin: drills and saws and long-handled metal snips that could (with diligence and strength) be used to mangle one’s way to freedom. Neither diplomat had much knack for manual labor, but Commander Ubatu was an uberchild with bioengineered muscles, dexterity, and stamina; she’d found the tools and begun cutting. Whenever she started to slow — and as a pampered daughter of the Diplomatic Corps, she had little experience with physical exertion that lasted longer than an aerobics class — Ambassador Li made snide remarks till Ubatu got back to work. Escape was therefore a team effort: brawn and bad temper. By the time we reached the crash site, they were minutes away from success.

It hadn’t been hard to persuade Tut and Festina to follow me to the site. I’d told a version of the truth — that the Balrog had given me a "vision" of where the diplomats were. Festina grumbled about "the damned moss telling us where to go" but didn’t otherwise question my story. She fully expected the Balrog to force images into my mind if it wanted to compel us down a particular path; that was just the sort of high-handed manipulation one received from alien parasites. It didn’t hurt that Pistachio’s cameras could get blurry photos of the shuttle exactly where I said it was. Festina still suspected the Balrog of playing games, but since the "vision" had saved us time searching, she let me lead the way.

As we walked, she continued her report to Captain Cohen. Tut spent his time watching for Rexies, though my sixth sense reported none in the vicinity. I divided my attention between spying longdistance on Li and Ubatu and eyeing Stage One EMP clouds hiding all around us.

The clouds lay invisible to normal vision, spread microscopically thin along the pavement or compressed into cracks in mosaic murals. The cloud particles blazed with impatience: a hunger to see us removed. We were constant reminders of what they had once been. We had intelligence and physicality; we could affect the world directly with our hands. Threads of malice in the clouds’ auras hinted that the pretas wanted to see us brought low like them — disintegrated into nearly impotent Stage One smoke.

But with my expanded perception, I saw that blazing anger was only part of the pretas’ story. Beneath the fury, subtler feelings quivered: grief, regret, yearning, bewilderment. The clouds, after all, had been everyday people — not abnormally evil, even if they were now subject to extremes of emotion. Their desire to see us vaporized was more pique than true malevolence.

Mostly, the clouds just wanted us gone. The sight of us made them think and remember. Once we were removed, the pretas could go back to a neutral existence: drifting, purposeless, hopeless, hollow, neither asleep nor awake, letting the centuries plod numbly past but at least not tormented by reminders of what they had lost.

Seeing us caused them sharp regrets. They preferred the long, dull ache.

None of this was an individual decision — the clouds were a hive of hives. Each cloud was a composite being made of individual particles, but the clouds as a whole formed a loose gestalt: a collective emotional consciousness. They couldn’t combine their brainpower, but they helplessly shared each other’s feelings. Their auras showed that a tiny change in the mood of one cloud spread almost instantly to every other within range of my perceptions… even to clouds kilometers away. Conceivably, a single pang of torment might spread to pretas all around the planet.

So our presence caused global pain. The ghosts couldn’t escape suffering just by keeping their distance from us. As long as we were on Muta, they’d feel us and burn.

Was it any wonder that the clouds wanted us gone, even if that meant sending Rexies to kill us?

One other thing I sensed from the smoke: the pretas didn’t know about the Balrog. The moss had stayed concealed inside me; the one time it acted overtly was transferring spores to Ohpa, and that was done quickly in a room the clouds avoided because Ohpa caused them discomfort. Tut, Festina, and I had mentioned the Balrog in conversation, but Fuentes clouds wouldn’t understand English, and the pretas of Team Esteem probably couldn’t either — the Unity disdained all languages but their own. Only official Unity translators ever learned other tongues.

So the clouds didn’t know what we were saying… and they didn’t know the Balrog had hitched a ride in my body. A good thing they couldn’t read auras — I could see the Balrog bright within me, shining like a forest fire. Ohpa, with his limited wisdom, had also seen the glow immediately; but the clouds were blind to the Balrog’s brilliance.

If the pretas had known, perhaps a whole stampede of Rexies would be heading our way.

As we approached the shuttle, we could hear loud noises inside: not just the clatter of cutting tools, but Ubatu shouting and Li yelling back. Ubatu had reverted to some unfamiliar language, but I didn’t need a translation — curses sound the same in any tongue. Li, on the other hand, opted for intelligibility in his outbursts. He spoke full English sentences devoid of actual profanity but loaded with the sort of insinuations that cause duels, bar brawls, and major diplomatic incidents. I could hear him accusing Ubatu of incompetence on the job, ignorance of every worthwhile achievement of human culture, and such a shameful degree of cowardice that Ubatu probably demanded general anesthetic when she got her scalp tattooed.

Listening to this, Festina rolled her eyes. "If we walk away now, will they end up killing each other or sleeping together?"

"Why not both?" Tut replied.

Festina sighed. "At least they’re alive. And they sound healthy. Or rather, uninjured. So there’s no need for us to stick around. We’ll just leave some supplies and head for the Stage Two station."

"You think that’s a good idea?" Tut asked.

"It’ll be all right," Festina answered. "They’re smart enough to wait someplace safe till we come back…" Her voice faltered. "They’ll get into trouble, won’t they?"

"Eaten by Rexies for sure," Tut said.

"Yeah." Festina sighed again. "We’ll have to set them up somewhere warm and secure. But they’re not coming south with us; they’d get in the way and slow us down. So neither of you say a word about where we’re going. We’ll put them in a Fuentes building, high enough up to be out of harm’s way. We’ll give them food and water, then get out fast before they can follow. Pretend we’re going back to Camp Esteem for more supplies. With luck they’ll stay put a few hours… by which time the storm will arrive and discourage them from going anywhere."

"You want to travel through the storm?" I asked.

"Yes," Festina said, "we can’t waste time. The Stage One microbes are working on us. Who knows how long before they pull us to pieces? And who knows how long we’ll need to start the Stage Two process?"

"How do you know we can start it?"

"I’m crossing my fingers the Balrog wouldn’t be here unless there was a way to set things right. That seems to mean activating Stage Two. Maybe the Balrog will help us… though it’s been remarkably useless so far."

I made a noncommittal shrug. The Balrog had actually helped us reach Var-Lann (by augmenting my kick on the storehouse door), talk to Ohpa (by passing on the ability to speak English), and find our missing diplomats (by locating the shuttle via sixth sense). The important question wasn’t if the Balrog would start helping us, but if it would stop.

"Not to be a pessimist," Tut told Festina, "but you realize the Balrog doesn’t need us? ‘Us’ meaning you and me, Auntie. Mom’s got spores in her pores, and the Bumbler says she’s immune to Stage One. So whatever needs to be done on Muta, maybe the Balrog doesn’t care if you and I turn misty — Mom will survive to save the day."

"Then you should be happy, Tut," Festina said. "If you turn to smoke and Youn Suu activates Stage Two, you’ll become a demigod. Wasn’t that what you wanted?"

"If I become a cool demigod. Like a ninja Hercules, or a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Godzilla." He looked at Festina. "What about that, Auntie? Wouldn’t you want to become hemi-demi-semi-divine if you could be, like, a combination of Kali, Helen of Troy, and Picasso?"

"No," Festina answered.

"Cleopatra, Peter Pan, and a monkey?"

"I already said no, Tut. I respect humans more than gods or superheroes. Besides, surpassing mere humanity always has a price. Doesn’t it, Youn Suu?"

"Yes. You pay and pay and pay." I tried to keep bitterness out of my voice.

"See, Tut?" Festina said. "Better to stick with humanity. It’s what I’m good at. Being human."

"What if you don’t have a choice?" Tut asked. "What if your only options are godhood or a billion years as a cloud?"

Festina didn’t answer. None of us spoke.

We listened to Li and Ubatu snap at each other till they’d cut through the shuttle’s hull.

As soon as the diplomats had a modest-sized hole in the fuselage, they pushed out the cutting tools and demanded we finish freeing them. I doubt I was the only one who considered throwing the tools in the river and leaving the stowaways in the shuttle — they’d be safe inside, since the hole was too small for a Rexy — but the opening they’d already made was big enough for the diplomats to squeeze out if they really pushed, and even if it wasn’t, Ubatu’s bioengineered muscles could widen the hole eventually. Then the two would head into Drill-Press, both too disgruntled for cautious behavior and guaranteed to get into trouble.

Grudgingly, we began hacking at the hull. For once, Festina didn’t shoulder the hardest work; instead she sat sentry, watching for Rexies while Tut and I handled the manual labor. (I could have told her there were no Rexies within three kilometers… but then she’d ask questions about my newfound gift of perception. I preferred to avoid that subject, at least till I dreamed up an excuse why I hadn’t mentioned the sixth sense earlier.)

Using the big metal cutters, I took a "slow and steady" approach to the job. Tut, however, threw himself into the work with vigor. He picked up a crowbar and used it to pry/smash/hammer the ship’s battered hull. Soon, I heard him muttering. "The shuttle will buckle, grr-arrh. And then I will chuckle, grr-arrh. I’ll rip up the tin, then the fun will begin. We’ll shuck and we’ll suck and we’ll fuckle, grr-arrh."

"Tut," I said. "Stop that."

He didn’t seem to hear. "We’ll all soon be smoky, grr-arrh. But that’s okey-dokey, grr-arrh. In the meantime we’ll dance, and we’ll rip off our pants, we’ll pump and we’ll prod and we’ll poke-y, grr-arrh."

"That’s enough, Tut," I said. But even his aura showed no response. It had taken a flat, damped-down appearance, like a gas fire on its lowest setting… and it had gone that way so quickly I’d been slow to notice.

"There’s company coming, grr-arrh. They’ll have us all humming, grr-arrh. We’ll all become gods, and we’ll all shoot our wads…"

"Enough!" I dropped my metal cutters and grabbed him by the shoulders. The instant I touched him, his aura flared with anger… and the same anger burst in every direction, echoed by hundreds of hidden EMP clouds watching from cover. For a moment, I thought I was seeing something new: pretas reflecting a human’s emotions. They’d never before been affected by what we were feeling — for example, when Li and Ubatu were getting on each other’s nerves inside the shuttle, the pretas hadn’t reacted. But the second Tut got angry, the clouds responded as if he was one of their own…

Then the truth struck me. Tut’s own aura was still flat and withdrawn; the anger that poured off him didn’t belong to Tut himself but to EMP particles inside his body. I hadn’t noticed them till they flared with emotion… and now that they were blazing, I could barely detect Tut’s dull life force amidst their fierce glow.

An army of pretas had invaded Tut. Trying to possess him… just like they’d possessed the Rexy who attacked us. Maybe Tut’s insanity made him vulnerable — his inability to resist any impulse that crossed his mind — or maybe the clouds simply targeted him at random. One way or another, they’d entered him so smoothly my sixth sense hadn’t noticed.

Tut wasn’t entirely under preta control — not yet. Otherwise, he’d be doing something far more drastic than chanting doggerel. But if I couldn’t help him fight the clouds’ mental influence, how long before he succumbed completely?

"Tut!" I said, shaking him. "Snap out of it!"

"What’s wrong?" Li called from inside the ship. He and Ubatu had been watching our progress through the small opening in the hull.

"Tut!" I slapped his face, denting the thin gold surface with my blow.

"Youn Suu! Leave him alone." That was Festina, somewhere behind me. I ignored her and hit Tut again, denting his mask some more.

"Stop, Youn Suu, or I’ll shoot." Festina had drawn her pistol. If she fired, I wondered if it would have much effect. When Tut shot me on Cashleen, I’d only gone down for a few minutes… and that was when the Balrog was new to my body. Now that I’d been more thoroughly assimilated, I suspected the stunner would barely slow me down.

"Wake up, Tut!" I yelled. One more slap to his face. Festina began to pull the trigger… but in that instant, Tut’s aura flicked back to life. Immediately, clouds streamed out of him: erupting from his mouth, his nose, his ears, pouring like steam off his skin, surrounding both of us with fury-filled fog before it gusted away beyond normal sight. My sixth sense followed it a few seconds longer; then I turned my attention back to closer surroundings.

Festina still had the gun pointing at me, but her aura showed no intention to shoot. In the shock of seeing clouds gush from Tut, she’d simply forgotten to holster her weapon. Li and Ubatu hadn’t had a clear view through the hole in the fuselage, and they knew nothing about pretas, so they were babbling questions that I didn’t bother answering.

Tut himself was dazed, either as an aftereffect of being occupied by aliens or because I’d hit him hard several times. I eased him down to the ground. As I did, I couldn’t help notice what I’d done to his gold-plated face: three strong slaps with my right hand had caved in his golden left cheek, opening a rip halfway between nose and ear. Blood trickled out of the jagged slit; when the metal buckled under my blows, a sharp edge must have gashed the flesh beneath.

Hey, Tut, I thought, I’ve given you an oozing left cheek. It seemed so ridiculous, I didn’t know why I started to cry.