A man walks through the avenue dressed in a long white robe and wearing a white headscarf, barefoot, dark brown skin glistening in the sun, whether with sweat or anointing oil is anyone’s guess. He has a handbell that he rings just before he speaks of doom and destruction.
Koriko watches from the shade of an almond tree. If the prophet of doom sees her, he does not indicate, although he continues to list the sins of Rosewater without pausing for breath. His feet and the hem of his robe are both dirty, mud from the rain no doubt. He is unaware, but he is walking along the path that directly overlies one of Wormwood’s pseudopodia. Humans aggregate over the tendrils like iron filings on magnets, which makes Koriko wonder at their potential, their ability to subconsciously discern the alien’s presence.
They see you, she thinks to Wormwood.
There is no response. She sighs, because there has been no communication since the day she took over from Anthony, the previous avatar. Wormwood obeys her whims, does what she directs without hesitation. But they have no intercourse, no communion, no relationship other than master–slave, and Koriko does not know why. Is it mourning Anthony? It almost died during the insurrection. Could it be suffering some post-traumatic reaction?
The chemical explosion created many bodies, which took days to transport to the Honeycomb, and so she is tired, but more than that she is lonely. There is nobody like her and nobody she can talk to about anything. She starts to walk down the road, along the same pseudopodium, querying Wormwood as she goes. She eats the flesh of an almond fruit, discarding the nut. A small knot of humans follow her casually, some just to see if she will do something entertaining, like find a dead body, others with prayer cards and supplications, regardless of how often she sends them away.
She breaks off one of the stone organelles on her skin and drops it. A wall of dense woven vines grows between her and the people, blocking the road entirely. On a whim Koriko goes to the residence of Alyssa Sutcliffe.
It is both different and the same. The house has been remodelled and the grounds landscaped. Koriko wonders what the residents’ association feels about the palm trees in the yard. She makes herself invisible by removing awareness from the visual cortices of people nearby. They will edit her out of their own visual fields, although cameras and electronic devices will still pick her image up.
The family seem to have just received a grocery delivery. Pat, the child, grown taller now, stacks items into a pyramid. Mark, Alyssa’s husband, is loading the fridge with cellulose water bottles. Alyssa is putting other items away. Not Alyssa, but the being she constructed and imbued with Alyssa Sutcliffe’s memories. Alyssa is dead.
Koriko stands unseen, unheard, unperceived in their kitchen, feeling the unspoken bond between them, casting her own aloneness into relief. She lurks in their house all day, moving out of their way when they come close, shifting into different rooms with them, watching old movies, tasting their food, all the while ignoring indications of the dead from the rest of Rosewater. They will rise as reanimates and she will find them and bring them to the Honeycomb without fail.
She watches ersatz Alyssa make love to Mark in the dark, though she can see multiple wavelengths and darkness is a meaningless concept to her. Alyssa straddles Mark and rocks, still with her nightgown on, breathing heavily. Mark strokes her arms and cheeks. His eyes are open. The room itself is thick with sweat and passion. Koriko tries to leave. In a sudden, sharp motion the Alyssa construct stops moving and turns in Koriko’s direction, frowning, squinting, sensing something, but seeing nothing.
“What’s wrong?” asks Mark.
“Nothing, I… Nothing.”
Koriko makes her way to the garden and calls Wormwood. It responds, takes her into the soil and transports her to the toxic waste-contaminated zone. The buildings here are stripped of the vegetation that climbs over the rest of the city. When she emerges, a moray accosts her.
“This area is toxic. Leave,” it says.
Morays are serpentine robots used in disaster areas to hunt for life signs of survivors, or to root out pockets of hazards to warn rescue teams. They have a limited AI capability outside those functions.
“This area is toxic. Leave.” The moray will continue to repeat the injunction until it gets some kind of response.
“I acknowledge your message,” says Koriko. “Will you follow me around, little creature? Will you keep me company?”
“Do you need assistance?” asks the moray. “Are you in pain?”
“Yes.”
“How may I assist you?”
“Follow me around,” says Koriko.
The robot slithers alongside Koriko, and she in turn asks the kind of inane questions that it is capable of answering. At intervals it defaults back to asking about toxicity, but on the whole, she finds it a useful companion.
Some of the buildings have been reduced to rubble, but Koriko moves through them, the bitter residue of a chemical fire in her nose and the back of her mouth.
“How many people did you save this week?” she asks the moray.
“Sixty-eight. Twelve of those died in the hospital.”
Nothing grows here any more. The soil is poisoned, and it will take Wormwood some time to repair. Humans cannot live here. It reminds Koriko of where she was, back on Home, the last person to leave the planet, cataloguing, dilly-dallying because she did not wish to live in space.
The moray scrunches up, shortens itself to six inches, then springs up to bound across a gap between islands of dry surfaces. Some of the toxins are corrosive, and while the robots are resistant, this feature is not absolute. At times they meet other serpentines: eels, centipedes, boomslangs, worms; all synchronise data before moving on. The moray is one of the better designs, working with air cells as bellows, and able to pitch, yaw and roll smoothly.
As the hours pass, lights come on in the moray’s segments, and soon they run into a search party of sorts, humans in hazmat suits who stop when they see Koriko.
She tells them she wants the moray, and reverently they rush to accept. They make tweaks to the AI and leave.
They continue together, the moray and Koriko, it after the living, she after the dead.
At the Honeycomb, Koriko delivers the last of the day’s dead into the electrolyte baths. Organic neural computers grow on the walls looking like fungus, but made of the same durable material that constitutes the alien headquarters. This is secreted according to plans stored in the xenosphere, directed by Chief Scientist Lua.
The computers keep track of all the transfers and alert when anything goes wrong, which, according to Lua, it frequently does. One of the assistants asks Koriko to follow her; says the chief scientist would like a word.
The moray coils around her ankle, uncharacteristically silent. Koriko thinks it is recording where it is, because not many humans or human constructs are allowed into the Honeycomb.
Each chamber leads into another, which may be larger or smaller, on the same horizontal plane, lower or higher. Koriko slows when they pass the holding room for the passers, those Homians who either think they are human or pretend that they are. They lie in neat rows, their heads covered in mucoid sludge while they are being re-educated. The humans bring them in, usually protesting and under restraint, and Lua’s people smear them with neuro-active bio-material. Then they hope for the best. If it doesn’t work, they are held in the Honeycomb indefinitely.
Koriko meets Lua in a chamber of quiet music where a woman struggles against leather straps in a chair. There is no greeting exchanged–they do not have that kind of relationship–but there is the faintest impression of a nod.
“Is that… human technology wrapped around your ankle?” asks Lua.
“It’s my pet,” says Koriko.
“I… Never mind. This person is, used to be, Manpreet Kaur.”
Koriko notices the green sclera, and the fact that the moray does not react to her. “She’s not human.”
“No, she’s Homian. She’s a re-host.”
“I don’t know what that is. I thought if the transfer didn’t go well, we just sent them to the west wing?”
“The problem here isn’t the transfer. This person has already been hosted, but destroyed her body deliberately. The algorithm just queued her data back to the front and the process transferred into Manpreet.”
“Are you saying she committed suicide?” asks Koriko.
“No. Or maybe a suicidal act of terrorism. This is Laark. He created the toxic spill and died in the process.”
Koriko knows of Laark, knows him of old. Instead of the gentle takeover of indigenous populations, Laark advocated large-scale murder to hasten the coming world for Homians. He and his ilk were purveyors of a particular brand of eschatology that required Homian intervention, bloody intervention if necessary.
“The spill gave us a lot of hosts,” says Koriko.
“But the tactics—”
“I’m only doing what you want to do but can’t. Or won’t,” says Laark. “There are no laws against it.”
Lua raises her eyebrows. “Human laws—”
“I do not recognise human laws. You might as well say insect laws or bacteria laws. All are the same to me.”
Koriko turns to Lua. “Why are you showing me this person? What is my role here?”
“What shall I do with him?” asks Lua. “Previous synners only killed one or two, but this is systematised.”
“Set him loose,” says Koriko. “And the next time he dies, re-host him. This makes my work faster.”
Lua’s mouth drops open. “You mean…”
“Yes,” says Koriko. “And don’t bother me with this again.”
Laark nods, giggling, unable to contain his glee.
Koriko and the serpentine return to the edge of the toxic zone, and she waits while it explores. Before long, Laark drifts from her mind.