Donovan’s immense and endless forest gave way to the escarpment upon which Tyson Station perched. The day had gone from uncomfortably warm to downright hot. Kalico shifted her quetzal-leather hat where it hung down her back, the strap tight at her throat. Anything to get a little air. She wished she’d worn something lighter.
She stood beside Mark Talbot as the ex-marine kept the airtruck skimming a good two hundred meters above the highest treetops. Thickly packed forest stretched off to the irregular horizons—a lumpy mass composed of aquajade, various species of chabacho, stonewood, broadvine, and the curiously turquoise trees she’d never heard a name for.
And then, here and there, they would overfly an open spot, something she’d never seen except around Tyson. Usually it was a round hole in the forest, maybe a couple hundred meters in diameter and surrounded by towering trees. In the center, all alone, stood a most unique tree. Another uncatalogued species. This one a bright lime green with branches that ended in oversized round-shaped flat spatulate structures—could you really call them leaves? They reminded her of supersized ping pong paddles on flexible stems. The tall tree occupied the exact center of the opening; apparently the rest of the forest wouldn’t dare to intrude. Given the way Donovanian forest jostled, shoved, fought and crowded, that made the plant, tree, or whatever it was, more than a little ominous.
Talbot pulled back on the wheel, and the airtruck climbed as it approached the dark basalt cliff upon which Tyson Station had been built. He crested the caprock and hovered while Kalico, Dya, and the two marines studied the research base. A couple of people were out, watching, hands to their brows to shade them as they squinted against Capella’s bright rays.
“Try them again,” Kalico said to Dya.
The woman lifted the mic, saying, “Tyson Base, this is the Supervisor. We’re inbound with a load of provisions. We have issues we need to discuss. Please respond.”
“We see you. You are free to park. Look forward to serving you.”
“Serving us? Hope that isn’t a cannibal joke.” Private Muldare observed where she stared thoughtfully out at the five domes. They looked out of place—white and round as they were against the green, blue, and gray background. The sheds, made of chabacho wood, had more or less faded into the scenery as they weathered.
“Park? What is it with these people?” Kalico muttered under her breath. “All right, set us down in the landing field, Mark. But be ready to fly if they make a run for the airtruck. Carson, Muldare, be ready. Weapons on safety, but chambered.”
She heard “yes ma’ams” all the way around.
Kalico braced a hand on the grabrail as Talbot swung the airtruck in a wide circle, settling onto the landing pad with the lightest of touches.
Kalico waited, counting the seconds. The people standing out before the domes just watched. A couple were talking back and forth, obviously about the airtruck’s arrival. Nothing, however, indicated the slightest apprehension, not the least bit of concern. People didn’t look off toward any of the sheds or other domes like they would if an armed party were hidden there and were expected to issue forth at any moment.
“Nothing,” Talbot said through an exhale. “That’s a relief.”
“Very well,” Kalico said. “Let’s get those crates of food offloaded. Carson, Muldare, you’re on guard so keep your eyes open.”
Talbot lowered the tailgate, jumped down, and started offloading the crates that Dya and Kalico handed him.
Can you believe this? Kalico asked herself as she manhandled another crate to the tailgate. I’m a pus-rotted Supervisor, working like a dockhand.
Kalico muscled another of the heavy crates around. Imagine what Miko Taglioni would have said. Perhaps something like: “My, how the mighty have fallen.”
It took them all of fifteen minutes to stack the crates off to one side. In that time, another three people appeared to watch the proceedings.
Finishing, Kalico wiped the sweat from her forehead and ordered, “Carson, you stay here. No one gets access to the airtruck.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Carson snapped a saluting hand to his brow.
“Why is my gut doing flip flops?” Dya asked as Kalico led the way toward the large dome that housed admin, the cafeteria, and the offices.
Kalico nodded to the watching people as she approached, asking, “Where’s Batuhan? Um . . . the first and last? Your leader.”
“In there,” one of the young men told her, averting his eyes in the process of pointing toward the admin dome. Then he scuttled away, as if afraid he’d be tainted just by her presence.
“Something’s happened,” Talbot half growled. “Last time, it was all a happy parade.”
“Wish we were in armor.” Muldare tightened her grip on her rifle.
“On your toes, people,” Kalico muttered, her hand on her pistol. She led the way, pushed open the double doors, and strode down the hallway. Glancing in doors as she passed, it was to see the rooms vacant. Arriving in the cafeteria, she recognized a couple of the throne-bearers huddled around a little boy who’d been laid on one of the tables in the rear.
One looked up and started before saying, “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here?”
“Don’t you listen to your radio? We’ve brought a load of groceries, things that don’t grow here. It’s all stacked out on the landing pad. Where’s your boss?”
“Our boss—as you say—is the universe.”
“Batuhan. Where is he? We need to talk.”
“Then, let us talk, Supervisor,” Batuhan announced, stepping out from one of the side doors. The big weird blue eye painted on his forehead and the amputated nose were always disconcerting. He carried his human-thigh-bone scepter in his right hand. The man was dressed in a breechcloth; his skin—apparently unwashed—still showed evidence of the white stuff he’d been plastered with aboard Ashanti. He walked over to the throne, seated himself, and crossed his legs as he studied first Kalico, and then Dya, before shifting his gaze to Briah Muldare, who stood at attention. Talbot, he ignored.
“Nice,” he murmured. “Three beautiful, strong, and healthy females of breeding age. Such a change. But then, as the fetus, upon exiting the womb, transitions from the umbilical to its first solid sustenance, so to do we metaphorically make the change during our own birth.”
“Right,” Kalico told him. “And you’d damn well better stick to your metaphors. We’re not your acolytes. But tell me. What’s with the scars? Why the mazes on your cheeks? What’s that all about?”
He raised a finger to the corner of his mouth, flat black gaze on hers. The blue eye on his forehead sent a quiver through her. Seemed to look right through her. She noticed that his fingernail was long, stained black with something that looked like dirty axle grease.
“I am the way,” he said. “The beginning and the end. Only through me will you find salvation. But the body and soul are different, a duality of existences. Upon a person’s death, through the sacrament of consumption, the body begins its transition to purification.”
“Yeah, I got that part,” Kalico told him.
Dya was looking at the guy like he was her worst nightmare. Talbot was fingering his pistol. Muldare’s expression hinted that Batuhan was the most disgusting human she’d ever seen.
Call it unanimous in Kalico’s eyes. “You left five butchered skeletons on Ashanti. They do something to piss you off, or just have an unlucky day?”
“At the last moment, their faith wavered. Salvation depends upon unity of spirit.”
“And they didn’t live up to your expectations, huh? So, what’s with the patterns of scars? How does cutting designs into living skin purify the soul?”
Batuhan adopted the same tone he would use when talking to a child. “When we consume the body, it follows the path past the lips, over the tongue, and down the throat. In the stomach it begins its assimilation, passing through the guts until finally only the profane—the summation of darkness, foul, and refused of salvation—is voided from the anus.”
“No need to elaborate on that,” Dya muttered.
Batuhan didn’t even bat an eye. “The rest of the body, the pure portion, has begun its journey toward salvation. It is assimilated into our living flesh, made part of the whole. In the receptacle of my body, it lives on.
“But not being physical the soul releases itself from the flesh. It enters here”—he tapped the side of his mouth at the opening to the maze—“separating from the body at the time of consumption. Keep in mind that the soul is light, airy. Adrift without the flesh that once anchored it. Seeking any path, it enters the maze. A receptacle. A place into which the soul must lose itself. It must try this direction and that, slowly working out its way. Learning. Experiencing the twists and turns, feeling out the dead ends.”
“Screw me in vacuum,” Talbot whispered just loud enough for Kalico to hear.
Batuhan closed his eyes, leaned his head back. The big blue eye in the middle of his forehead stared mockingly as he played his long black fingernail through the various paths in the maze scarring his right cheek. The expression on the man’s face was rapturous.
Dya looked sick. Muldare’s face had gone pale.
Through a long exhale, Batuhan said, “Only when the soul has matured in the maze and found its way does it locate the exit.” His black nail had wound through the twists and turns to the opening just in front of his ear. “From here it follows the path.”
Batuhan’s black nail traced the long line of scar tissue down the side of his neck, then forward to the suprasternal notch. From there the scar tissue split into three lines: the left into one pectoral spiral, the center ran straight down the man’s belly, and the right into the right pectoral spiral.
Batuhan tapped fingers against his chest, saying, “The paths, one on the right, one on the left, lead to the spirals.” The black fingernail traced the routes. “There, the souls that have not yet reached illumination are led in an ever-decreasing radius to the nipples. There they reside until a woman suckles them into her own body.”
“Excuse me?” Dya snapped. “Did you say suckles?”
Batuhan fixed on her with dark and intense eyes. “Of course. In the same way a woman provides an infant with milk, I provide a supplicant woman with one of the souls that has lodged in my right or left nipple. She produces physical sustenance when an infant sucks from her breast. I produce a spiritual essence when she sucks from mine.”
Kalico couldn’t stop the shiver from running down her spine.
Fixed on Dya, Batuhan smiled. “I have the feeling that you are empty, a void that longs to be filled. Would you like to partake?” He shifted and offered his right breast in Dya’s direction.
Kalico shot out a restraining hand as Talbot started forward.
“Not on your life,” Dya managed through gritted teeth.
“And the center line?” Kalico asked, desperate to get off the subject of Batuhan’s breasts.
“Ah, that is the route chosen by those souls that have achieved true purity.” Batuhan shifted his dark-eyed gaze to hers. The black fingernail traced down the line of scar tissue to the separation around his navel, and then down under his breechcloth.
Kalico remembered the scars ending at the root of his penis. “Where, along with your semen, they can be deposited into a fertile female,” she finished.
“Quite so.” Again he leaned his head back, eyes closed, and took a deep breath. “I am the beginning and the end. I am the purification of the body and the soul’s route to immortality.”
“Then,” Dya asked, “what’s with the eye cut into your forehead?”
“It was a gift from the Prophets, who know the universe’s will.”
Kalico ground her teeth, feeling ill. Pus and ions, but she wanted to be shut of this place. Maybe nuke it from space. “Yeah, about your Prophets. We’ve got some information about them. Have you ever heard of prions? Or something called kuru? Spongiform encephalitis?”
“No.”
“It’s a protein disease, one communicable to people with a homozygous recessive genetic predisposition. It’s called kuru, though it hasn’t been seen since the early twenty-first century. It comes from eating another human being’s brain, spinal fluid, or infected—”
“Stop it! Of course you’d manufacture such foolishness. Not only do we have no desire to hear, but we anticipated your heresy. The universe told us in no uncertain terms that you would do anything in your power—corrupt and tainted as you are—to mislead us.”
Dya said, “It’s not misleading, don’t you understand? Your prophets are going to die. Their brains are already riddled with lesions. And you have other people—”
“Enough!” he barked, straining upright. “You are the mouths of deceit. Lies incarnate sent to tempt the pure back into perdition. By your very declarations, you betray yourselves. And in the end, we will finally rid you of your pollution. You will come to understand.” He paused. Smiled to himself. “Soon.”
Yeah, right. But Kalico gestured for silence on Dya’s part as the woman drew breath to object. Saw the almost pleading look the woman gave her.
Batuhan studied his scepter as if something fascinating were to be found in the intricate carvings. “I need you to tell me what’s wrong with two children. And then I need you to leave. And when you do, I want you to never come back. Our people don’t need your kind of duplicity.”
Kalico fought to keep her expression under control.
“Is that one of the children?” Dya asked, indicating the boy on the back table.
“It is. The other is a little girl. We think something is inside her body, so we put her in a back room where, if the creatures get loose, we can contain them.”
“What’s with the boy?” Kalico asked, stepping close to the kid. She looked down to see a half-wasted little urchin, his skin puckered in patterns of scars. That they were already white indicated he couldn’t have been more than three or four when the boy had been scarified.
“Don’t know,” the first man said. “Found him like this at the edge of the cliff.”
Dya leaned over, squinted at the faint blue stain on his swollen lips. “He ate berries off one of the bluelinda vines. They’re pretty, almost a crystal blue, and deadly.” She sighed, stepped back. “If you could see inside his mouth, you’d discover it’s already blistered. Blood vessels are breaking in his tongue, the back of his throat, clear into his brain. The same in his stomach, and as soon as the enzymes eat through, his liver and kidneys will be riddled.”
“What’s bluelinda?” the third man asked. “How do we know which of the native plants to keep the children away from?”
“Keep them away from all of them!” Dya almost shrilled. “What part of ‘all the native plants are dangerous’ don’t you get?”
“Hey,” Kalico said, “easy. Now, what’s with this little girl?”
“She’s in the back,” the first man told her, his eyes a flat brown, as if no emotion remained there. “Something’s wiggling in her leg. Like a moving knot.”
“Want to bet it’s a slug?” Talbot managed to say through gritted teeth.
“Take us,” Dya snapped. “If it’s a slug maybe we can still save her.”
“Might cost her the leg,” Mark noted as they followed the man toward the door in the rear. “Was she barefoot?”
“To be barefoot is a sign of humility.” Their guide had a prim, superior tone in his voice.
Dya turned to where Batuhan still sat in his throne. She snapped out, “This is Donovan, do you get it? There is nothing, nothing on this planet that won’t kill you. Now, round your people up, get them dressed, and keep the kids out of trouble.”
Before following the man down the hall, Kalico turned one last time to Batuhan. “Did you hear what she said? Otherwise, you’re not going to have any children, let alone people.”
Dya was almost vibrating with rage as she stomped along behind their guide. “They just let children wander? Are they mad?”
“Just ignorant,” Talbot said in a calming voice.
Private Muldare had kept quiet, her hazel eyes shifting this way and that, clearly uncomfortable. Her hand remained on the action of her slung rifle as they followed a hallway to the rear.
“Why’d you put her clear back here?” Talbot asked, a wary tone in his voice.
“Thought that if something was alive in her, and it got loose, we could catch it here in the back room.” Their guide shot them a sidelong look. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” Kalico asked.
“These children really aren’t dying. The universe might be killing their bodies for the moment, but they’re going to be purified and reborn. There is no such thing as permanent death among the universe’s chosen.”
Kalico made a desist gesture in Dya’s direction to keep the woman from leaping for the guy’s throat.
They had laid the little girl on a table in one of the storage rooms at the back of the dome. She lay naked on the duraplast surface, and Kalico winced. She could see three lumps moving slowly under the little girl’s scarred skin. One on her upper thigh, two more slipping along under the delicate skin of her stomach.
“Shit!” Dya hissed, coming to a stop.
The little girl was writhing, her arms flexing, hands knotting, while whimpers broke from her throat. Behind the delicate lids, her eyeballs were flicking back and forth. The kid looked to be in agony as the slugs slithered through her guts.
“That’s two we can’t help,” Talbot said. “Not with the slugs in her belly already.”
“Supervisor!” came the cry in her earbud. “Carson here. They’re making a try for the airtruck. I’m . . .”
Kalico was turning for the door when the distant bang of a rifle sounded. The throne-bearer whirled, leaped from the room, and slammed the heavy door shut behind him.
“Carson! Carson! Stat report! Carson!”
Even before Talbot could get a hand on the knob, the sound of the lock clicking home could be heard.
“The only way Carson wouldn’t be responding is if he’s dead,” Talbot said laconically, a finger to his earbud as he glared at the locked door.
“Lot of good that’s going to do them,” Muldare noted dryly as she unslung her service rifle. “Mark, step back. I’ve got an explosive round chambered. I’ll blow the damned door straight off its hinges.”
As Talbot leaped back, Batuhan’s voice sounded through the room speaker overhead. “If you attempt to shoot your way out, we will detonate the magtex charge in the ceiling. Most likely, so my people tell me, it won’t kill you outright. They assure me, however, that you will be sufficiently stunned that we can disarm you and secure you without issue.”
Magtex? Where did they find the magtex?
But then, it was a mining colony. Could have been in any of the boxes out in the sheds.
“What about this little girl?” Kalico demanded, stepping forward. “You going to blow her up, too?”
“Fatima is already dying. Her body will become one with us, purified, and she shall be reborn into a better existence.”
“Sick son of a bitch,” Dya hissed, hands clenched.
“So?” Batuhan’s voice asked reasonably. “What will it be? Will you lay down your weapons? Or shall my people simply remove them from your stunned and disoriented bodies? For our purposes, it matters not if you are a little bruised and tenderized. Purification is a painful business either way.”
Talbot leaned close to whisper, “I don’t see a camera. He can’t see us, just hear us.”
“Got something in mind?” Kalico mouthed the words.
“Plan B.” And so saying, Talbot shoved a crate against the door knob to block it. Then he pulled his knife, stepped over to the BoPET polyethylene terephthalate wall, and with all his might, drove the blade into the plastic.