The Legend of Miaree

Chapter Seven

There was no sense of urgency. It was dreamlike, unreal; but no problem to Rei, for man conquers. Daily man vanquishes all the ills to which he is heir. He had that sort of confidence here. Where? Brown atmosphere. Sand. Water somewhere.

He was there and his friend was there. Who? There was a warm feeling of comradeship. They had to get the hell out of there, but they could do it.

There was a tunnel arrowing into blackness. It was lined with light. He went, confident, flying. The tunnel closed and filled. Huge forces shook him. His friend was gone, swallowed up by blackness. There was no face, only an awareness, a knowledge that his friend had surrendered.

Outside the tunnel the world was brown. There was water somewhere. The sky was there, but unseen.

He knew immediately that they were mother and daughter. The younger one was attractively slim with a multicolored soft fur for skin. The older one was woman with a trace of the hardness which sometimes comes with maturity, but still woman, convincing, alluring. They didn’t speak. It was a long time before he heard them, but they were telling him.

"Come, come."

He was not ready.

With no sense of urgency he was in a long room. Ahead of him stretched stainless steel cases, boxes, all on legs to raise them to face- and chest-level. He understood that he was to progress from station to station. He stood before the first case, the line of steel enclosures perspecting away to the far end of the room where a man in a white lab coat puttered, clipboard in hand.

An automated hypodermic needle swung out from the steel and jabbed at him. He sensed, feared evil. He pushed. There was no sound as the case fell. He pushed, pushed, fighting now, for he knew that it was urgent. He knew this place. Case after case fell with no sound, crashing noiselessly, surprisingly fragile, dominoing case after case until, near the end of the

long room, he stood in the shambles as the white-smocked man advanced, a long needle menacingly ready.

He ran. A door opened into a cul-de-sac, a molding, musty, cement-walled room of damp threat with corpses, and they were there, the two women, one young and full-lipped and beautiful, although strange, the other only slightly less beautiful but possessed of that warning hint of mastery.

They clung to him. He knew the woman-warmth was hypocrisy, far removed from reality, a force holding him through the engendered male response to femininity. The long, shining needle pierced his arm, going deep; no, his thigh. On each side. He was walking, one of them on either side, clinging, immobilizing his arms, leaving them to hang weakly as they moved timelessly across the brown with water somewhere and the sky not seen and they were thinking, feeling.

"Come, come."

There was the aura of cruelty about the mother, a beautiful and mature being. Her daughter, young, fresh, gave him something approaching empathy. She cared. She didn’t like what she was doing, but it was the nature of things. There was something between them, him and the daughter, something indefinable. Her grasp was less possessive, less limpet-like.

He had to get away.

He could fly. By pumping his legs he built something, compressions, something, underneath. He went up. Three trees stood apart from the forest. The younger one seized on. He tried to dislodge her before the cruel one came.

"Come. Come."

She was almost gentle, but there was the older one, clamping onto his bare thigh, making herself one huge mouth which sucked, buried itself leech-like in the thin pad of flesh over his hip joint. Pain. Not blood being sucked but something more vital. They were bearing him down, weighting him, ending the flying. Almost reluctantly the young one ceased being a woman and became that leech-mouth feeding on something vital, digging hurtingly into the flesh over the opposite hip joint, and he was going, hearing them more clearly, although there were no words.

"Come. Come."

Brownness. Brown sand and water somewhere, and they were sapping him, the sucking maws obscene, evil, limpets clinging as if to wet rock, impossible to displace although his fingers dug and dug into his own skin and got a nailhold under the soft one, the young one who exuded that feeling of near empathy.

He did not want to go. He had things to do. She, the younger one, was also reluctant, not liking what she was doing to him. She was the weaker of the two, weaker than the sucking, strong, cruel mother-thing which made the brown come near with her enervating bite. He screamed in pain. His fingers dug until, with a sucking sound, the younger one let go and was in his hand, a thing, unidentifiable but alive and sinister, pulsing, red maw underneath.

No. He would not go. Man conquers. Man, all men, materialized in him, reminding him of his mission. With a final, wrenching effort, he displaced the other thing which had existed, once, in the guise of woman. The two things in his hands fought. He knew his time was short, measured in seconds, although all was timeless as he forced the two sucking things maw to maw and felt them shudder as mutual force destroyed them. He had won.

He could fly again.

Lift under him, tired, not able to fly as he once could fly, he saw the water underneath. The things were melting, but still living. He could see their gory hearts hanging like melting ice. The water was the place for them, far out. But he could not make it. The calm water was close. The younger one was thinking, feeling. Her being alive terrified him.

"Come. Come."

He cast them, bound together by their own force, into the smooth water, and then he was sinking. He fell only feet from them. The shore was near. He swam. He could hear the younger one calling.

"Come. Come."

Mindless.

Ahead of him in the smooth, perfumed water, was the broad, flat back of a Bolun, familiar, ancient, kept alive, some eons past, by love and daily medication. Old, fine, loved pet. He put him to sleep, the finest Bolun in the system, and he cried. The Bolun knew what was happening. After dozens of trips to the veterinarian, the Bolun knew what was happening, for he’d never complained before, never wept that howling wail before. The Bolun had struggled against needles and rectum worm checks and parasite removal and all such indignities, but he knew that this was more than just one more needle. It wouldn’t hurt going into the tough, fight-scarred scruff of the neck, but the Bolun knew that this was the final needle, and the world’s finest Bolun howled because his friend didn’t have the guts to stay there and watch him die. Howl in his ears going out the door with tears forming in his eyes, and ahead of him in the perfumed water the broad, fat, black back, swimming. How could it be? And the young thing calling.

"Come. Come."

Far down the light-lined tunnel were the doors to the universe. He screamed and reached for them, his arm stretching, stretching, falling short. Inside those doors, warmth, love, safety.

"He got away."

"Who got away?"

"Him."

His hand went through the doors. All he ever wanted was inside, all of it there. Behind him the water. He turned his head and listened. A keening in his ears. Musical.

"Come. Come." The dark voice under the music.

He knew who he was not by name, not by identity, and there it all was behind him inside the doors, and he could open them, only his hand went through the doorknob, and out there were the things from which he’d escaped, and the water had not always been perfumed. The water was timeless until it began to boil and steam as a world died. The mad, grasping, deadly feel of it.

The brown coming back, misty, and he could no longer fly, and if the things were not to take him, then what? He had escaped to what?