2
Klesha [Sanskrit]: Poison. Used to describe any mental attitude that leads to disruptive fixations.
I GRADUATED from the Explorer Academy four days after I turned nineteen. A week later, I was assigned to the frigate Pistachio. The name made me laugh when I heard it; but tradition dictated that all vessels in the Outward Fleet be named after Old Earth trees, and only big ships got majestic titles like Ironwood or Sequoia. Little ships like ours (a crew of thirty-five plus a handful of cadets-in-training) had to settle for names of less grandeur…and just be thankful we weren’t Sassafras, Kumquat, or Gum.
For two months after my arrival, I did nothing except “button-polishing”—the mundane chores required to keep my equipment in top condition. Pistachio didn’t have anything else for me to do. Explorers on a starship filled the same niche as marines on old seagoing boats: while the regular crew ran the ship, we did whatever else was necessary. Landing on hostile planets. Boarding civilian craft suspected of breaking safety regulations. Helping to evacuate vessels in distress.
But Pistachio never had any such missions. We were just a utility ship, running straightforward errands in the tamest regions of space—mostly transporting personnel and materials. Pistachio’s uninspiring work never demanded an Explorer’s specialized skills. Therefore, I idled away my days like a firefighter in monsoon season, filling the time with preventive maintenance: inspecting the tightsuits we’d use for landings, calibrating my Bumbler (an all-purpose scanning/analysis device), checking the charge in my stun-pistol, and generally inventing work to keep myself from self-destructive boredom.
Despite years of rejection and being an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl, I was still “unskillful” at finding things to do on my own. In the Academy, I’d had classwork every waking moment. I’d also had fellow students who knew how it felt to watch pleasure-palace people reel away from you in disgust. On Pistachio, however, I’d entered a social vacuum with no friends and no pressing duties. No mother to fight with. No coping skills.
I thought I would die from loneliness—not the sharp, aching kind but the dull, ongoing blur. It can feel like fatigue that never goes away; it can feel like dissatisfaction with everything around you; it can even feel like lust, as you lie alone in the dark and pretend someone else is there.
But it’s loneliness. Deep, helpless, hopeless.
I tried to clear my head with meditation, but never managed more than half an hour at a sitting. Not nearly enough to ease my restlessness. If I’d been back home, I’d have asked a spiritual master what I was doing wrong…but no one on Pistachio could help me, and I certainly couldn’t help myself.
I found myself prowling the ship corridors at night, hoping something would happen. The engines exploding. Falling in love. Having a mystic vision. Getting a nice piece of mail.
Now and then, I contemplated becoming a drunk or nymphomaniac. Wasn’t it traditional for bored, lonely people to plunge into petty vice? But that was more Western than Eastern; when Bamars went stir-crazy, they usually shaved their heads, stopped bathing, and starved themselves into oblivion. Which I might have done, except that head-shaving, etc. were favorite tricks of my mother when she wasn’t getting enough attention. I swore I wouldn’t go that route.
For a while, I tried to exhaust myself dancing: in my cabin, in the Explorer equipment rooms, in the corridors when I was alone. But every place on Pistachio felt cramped, except a few big areas like the transport bay, which always had people around. I couldn’t bring myself to dance with regular crew members watching. Anyway, I hadn’t danced much since I’d entered the Explorer Academy. My ballet was rusty, my flamenco lacked rhythm, my yein pwe had no grace, my derv just made me dizzy, and my freestyle…every time I started something loose and sinewy I ended up as tight as wire—stamping my feet and shedding hot tears, though I couldn’t say what I was crying about.
Maybe I cried because I’d lost the flow. Once upon a time, I’d had the potential to be a dancer. Now I’d never be anything but an Explorer.
So in the end, like most Explorers, I took up a hobby. My choice was sculpture. Making figurines out of clay, wire, copper leaf, and the small industrial-grade gems that Pistachio’s synthesizer system could produce. I found myself constructing male and female “Gotamas”: princes and princesses trapped in ornate palaces that resembled Faberge eggs. I molded expressions of horror on my Gotamas’ faces as they looked through windows in their eggs and caught their first glimpses of the world outside.
After a while, I found myself spending so much time on art that I skimped on bathing and eating. I didn’t shave my hair off, though—just cut it short to keep it out of my eyes.
I said I had no friends. That was true. I did, however, have a partner: a fellow Explorer. Unfortunately, he was insane.
He was a lanky loose-limbed twenty-four-year-old beanpole who called himself Tut: short for King Tutankhamen, whom Tut resembled. More specifically, he resembled Tutankhamen’s funerary mask. Tut had somehow got his face permanently plated with a flexible gold alloy at the age of sixteen.
Before being metallized, he’d lived with a facial disfigurement as severe as my own. He wouldn’t describe the exact nature of his problem, but once he told me, “Hey, Mom”—he always called me “Mom” because I’d introduced myself as Ma Youn Suu and “Ma” was the only syllable that stuck in Tut’s brain—”Hey, Mom, I decided I’d rather soak my face in molten metal than stay the way I was. Paint your own picture.”
I doubted that Tut had truly immersed his face in liquid gold (melting point 1063°C), but I couldn’t rule it out. He was one of those rare individuals—always perfectly lucid, yet thoroughly out of his mind. If Tut had found himself in the same room as a vat of molten gold, he might well take one look at the bubbling metal, and think, “I could stick my face in that.” Two seconds later, he’d be ears deep in yellow magma.
That was the way Tut’s brain worked. Odd notions struck him several times a minute, and he couldn’t judge whether those notions were merely unusual or utterly deranged. For example, he was obsessed with keeping the gold on his face “shiny-finey clean,” so he constantly experimented with different kinds of polish—not just the usual oils and waxes, but also materials like ketchup, the ooze from my cheek, pureed mushrooms in hot chocolate, and his own semen. Once while we were talking in my cabin, he began going through my things, trying every garment I owned to see how well it buffed up his complexion…all while we were discussing a complicated technical bulletin on new procedures for taking alien soil samples. Every now and then, after he’d finished rubbing his metal forehead with my panties or the toe of my ballet shoe, he’d turn from the mirror and ask, “What do you think? Shiny-finey?” I’d say I couldn’t see any difference, he’d nod, and we’d go back to debating the niceties of separating extraterrestrial worms from extraterrestrial loam.
In Tut’s defense I’ll admit he was a skilled Explorer. He’d graduated from the Academy five years before I had, and his grades had been excellent. He’d even won an award in microbiology, his field of specialization. (My specialization was biochem…a natural choice after all the hours I’d spent analyzing the fluid from my cheek.)
Tut was the sort to throw himself unreservedly into whatever he chose to do. He was a quick learner and possessed a high degree of patience—an obsessive degree of patience. I never had cause to criticize his handling of equipment or his knowledge of operating procedures.
But Tut was as mad as a mongoose. Not violently so—since he was still alive after five years in space, the League of Peoples obviously didn’t consider him a threat to others. I often enjoyed his company, and found him helpful as a mentor: he’d had five years’ on-the-job experience, and he taught me many things my academic training hadn’t covered.
But none of that mattered. How could I trust a lunatic in life-or-death situations? Why was Tut on active duty when anyone could see he was non compos mentis?
I asked him that once. Tut just laughed. “They don’t need us sane, Mom. They just need us ready to bleed.” He chucked his finger under my chin like a fond uncle amused by his young niece. “If they rejected head cases, Mom, you wouldn’t be here either.”
I was so affronted by his insinuation I stormed out of the room, stomped back to my cabin, and made thirteen statues of little gold-faced men being disemboweled by tiger-headed demons. When I showed Tut the results, he said, “Shiny-finey! Could I eat one?” I told him no, but later I noticed my favorite demon was missing.
Two months and fifty-four statuettes later, we finally received a distress call.
At the time, Pistachio was transporting twelve dignitaries to the planet Gashleen: six officers from the navy’s Diplomatic Corps and six civilian envoys from the Technocracy’s Bureau of Foreign Affairs. Since Tut and I had no immediate duties, we always got assigned to play host for any honored guests who came aboard…but this particular group of VIPs took one look at my face and instantly became self-sufficient. My cheek had the wondrous power to make the mighty say, “No, no, I can do my own laundry.”
So I’d had little contact with the diplomats on that flight. I didn’t even know what their mission was. However, Cashleen was the homeworld of the Cashling race—longtime allies of the Technocracy—so I assumed this was just the routine diplomacy that goes on between friendly powers.
The team of envoys certainly didn’t behave as if their trip was important. Instead of preparing for the work ahead, they spent most the voyage getting drunk and trying to seduce the better-looking members of Pistachio’s crew. For the entire week of the flight, Tut never went to bed alone. He told me, “Hey, Mom, everyone loves to lick gold. Did you think it was just on my face?” I consoled myself with the observation that people might be eager to sleep with him once, but nobody did it a second time.
I’d never slept with Tut myself. I’d never slept with anyone. An honest-to-goodness virgin. Not literally, of course—I’d manually ruptured my maidenhead within twenty-four hours of learning what it was…mostly to spite my mother, who’d given me an infuriating lecture on remaining intact. Only afterward did I stop to think: Yes, I’ve done it, but how will my mother know? Any “discovery scenario” I could imagine made me nauseated. Later on, I found that the thought of sex made me nauseated too. How could anyone want to do that with somebody who looked like me? Pity? Depravity? A lust so intense it didn’t give a damn what it fucked? I couldn’t conceive of a single acceptable reason why someone would sleep with me, so I fled every situation where the possibility might arise.
I was in my cabin, gouging a little hole in a Princess Gotama’s cheek so I could plant a pearl there, when the message buzzer sounded from my desk. Most likely, I thought, the diplomats wanted me to fetch another case of Divian champagne. They never wanted to see me in person, but they were quick to ask for booze to be left outside their doors. Without looking up, I said, “What is it now?”
The ship-soul’s metallic voice spoke from the ceiling. “Explorer Youn Suu. Captain Cohen requests your presence on the bridge. Immediately.”
I nearly threw my figurine across the room. “Is there a response code?” I asked as I rushed to the door.
“No.” Which meant the captain hadn’t yet decided how to resolve the impending crisis. I had no doubt there was a crisis—not just because I’d been called to the bridge “immediately” but because the call came straight from the captain to me.
I was a wet-behind-the-ears Explorer Third Class. Tut was not only more experienced than I, but he outranked me: as an Explorer Second Class, he was my superior officer. Protocol demanded that the captain address all Explorer matters to Tut, who would then bring me in if he chose. Going over Tut’s head to call me directly meant the captain thought the situation was so serious it couldn’t be left to a madman.
(Cohen knew Tut was crazy. Everybody knew. They just pretended otherwise until their backs were to the wall.)
Pistachio’s bridge was small, made smaller by two diplomats who filled the space with bustling self-importance.
One was a woman no older than I. Black skin, no hair, scalp bleached paper white and covered with complex abstract tattoos in royal purple. With flawless skin and bone structure, she was almost certainly a test-tube baby like me…but from the boutique end of the black market. Tall. Strong. Amazonian. Beautifully proportioned, but with muscles like a giant panther. She wore the gold uniform of a commander in the navy’s Diplomatic Corps, plus three nonregulation diamond-stud pierce-bars mounting the bridge of her nose—a perfect example of the privileged thoroughbreds who pranced their way through the Outward Fleet’s DipCor. For centuries, our military diplomats had made themselves rich through bribe-taking, blackmail, and investments based on confidential information. Then they’d established diplomatic dynasties, bringing their offspring into the corps and speedily promoting them to lucrative posts. (Nobody my age could have earned the rank of commander.) Over the years, DipCor had become a family-run business, full of intermarried bluebloods with inflated egos and bank accounts: the last people you’d trust to work out vital treaties. These hereditary princes and princesses didn’t just live in the pleasure palace—they owned it. The woman in front of me turned in my direction, then quickly looked away…unaccustomed to sullying her eyes with beautyless things.
The other diplomat was a fortyish man, a civilian well tailored and well fed. He smelled of alcohol and his eyes were bloodshot. When he opened his mouth to yawn, his tongue was practically white, coated with the telltale signs of hangover. Or perhaps with gold dust from Tut. Unlike the female diplomat, this man didn’t avert his eyes when he saw me. He glared with utter disgust, not only despising my blemished cheek but my face as a whole, the cells in my body, and everything down to the subatomic level. In his mind, I was obviously made from the wrong kind of quarks.
“You took long enough!” he growled. His voice suggested he was the sort of diplomat who eagerly volunteered for missions where he got to make threats.
“Youn Suu took a mere forty-three seconds from the time I first called her to the moment she appeared on the bridge.” Those words came from the one person I knew in the room, Captain Abraham Cohen. In a low voice, he added, “Thought I should get the exact time…in case one of these schmuck diplomats decided to kvetch.”
Captain Cohen’s eyes twinkled at me. He was a delicate wispy-haired man who loved to play the fond Jewish grandpa. Often he could be charming, but sometimes I wanted to shout in his face, I’ve already got a grandfather! My occasional annoyance at Cohen, however, was nothing compared to Tut’s. Tut was utterly obsessed with our captain—particularly the possibility that Cohen might be a fraud. One night, Tut had walked into my cabin at three in the morning, sat on the edge of my bed, and whispered without preamble, “Nobody’s really called Abraham Cohen. It’s too much, Mom. Abraham Cohen. Abe Cohen. The name has to be fake. I’ll bet he’s never even met a real Jew. He steals all that Yiddish from bad movies. You want to help me pull down his pants and see if he’s circumcised?”
I’d declined. Tut left and disappeared for three days, during which time his only communication was a text message from the brig listing all the cultures besides Judaism that practiced circumcision.
There was more than one reason why Cohen would rather talk to me than to Tut.
“Youn Suu,” the captain said, swiveling in his command chair to face the diplomats, “this is Commander Miriam Ubatu and Ambassador Li Chin Ho. Commander, Ambassador, this is Explorer Youn Suu. First in her class at the Academy.” (Cohen always introduced me that way. I’d actually been second in my class, but every time I tried to correct the captain’s claim, he chose not to hear.) “Youn Suu will know what’s going on, you watch.” He swiveled back to me. “Five minutes ago, we received a distress call from our embassy on Cashleen. There’s been trouble.”
“At the embassy?”
“No. In a Cashling city named Zoonau. The embassy sent us footage.”
Cohen turned a dial on the arm of his chair. The bridge’s main vidscreen changed from an unremarkable starscape to a picture of what must be Zoonau. It looked like a typical Cashling city—enclosed in a giant glass dome and devoted to one of the five “Worthy Themes” that fascinated the ancient city-builders: water, mirrors, shadow, illusion, and knots.
Zoonau was dedicated to knots. The buildings were made of dull gray concrete, bland and unpainted, which might have produced a drab panorama; but every skyscraper body turned in twists and bends, even full loops and elaborate braids, made possible by carefully placed antigrav fields, which prevented unbalanced weight distributions from causing structural collapse. No street ran straight—they all intertwined, circling, crossing, passing over or under each other. It was a profusely contorted labyrinth: like living in a mandala.
Fortunately, Cashling cities had computerized voice-guides built into every streetlamp, able to direct passersby toward any desired destination. And if you didn’t like the roundabout nature of the streets, you could always get above the problem. Every twenty paces, knotted ropes rose from the ground, strung all the way to the dome. Cross-cords connected from rope to rope, along with the occasional solid rope bridge and macramé walkways that offered far more direct routes than the streets below. At one time, Cashlings must have been as nimble and strong as orangutans if they found such traversers practical.
But no longer. Even if Cashlings were physically able to clamber through rope jungles, they couldn’t be bothered. In the footage of Zoonau displayed on the vidscreen, every single Cashling was down on the ground…and not doing much of anything.
Cashlings were roughly humanoid, with two legs, two arms, and one head; but they had almost no torso, so their gawky legs reached nearly to their armpits. Though none in the vidscreen picture wore clothes, they showed all the colors of the rainbow, plus quite a few shades no self-respecting rainbow would tolerate. Cashling skins were naturally adorned with vivid swirls, stripes, and spottles. Each individual had unique coloration, and most augmented their birth appearance by adding tattoos, slathering themselves with cosmetics, and randomly juggling their pigmentation genes.
But making themselves more eye-catching was the Cashlings’ only field of expertise. Otherwise, they were laughing-stocks: a race of lazy fools, practically incapable of taking care of themselves. Their species would have died out from sheer incompetence, except that less decadent ancestors had created cities like Zoonau: fully automated self-repairing havens that satisfied all the residents’ needs. Cashling cities served as nannies to creatures who remained pompously infantile their whole lives.
As I watched, flecks of red began drifting from the top of Zoonau’s dome. The flecks looked like blood-colored snow. Soft. Slightly fuzzy. Floating gently. Not real snow—more like airborne seeds. I’d seen pictures of Earth thistle fields lost in blizzards of their own thistledown…and numerous nonterrestrial plants also emitted clouds of offspring, sometimes so profusely they could smother unwary Explorers. I wasn’t aware of such plants on Cashleen, but I’d never studied Cashling botany. Explorers cared more about the vegetation on uncharted planets than on worlds that were safely developed.
The red seed-fall started to settle: a dusting of crimson on the streets, soon thickening into solid mossy beds. The Cashlings themselves seemed untouched—not the tiniest speck on their colored hides. A few tried to catch seeds drifting past, but when they opened their hands, their palms were empty. The vidscreen showed one Cashling man bending to pick up a handful of the stuff…maybe thinking he could make a snowball. But as he reached down, the red particles fled: slipping just out of reach. When he withdrew his hand, the red seed-things flowed like water, back to where they’d been.
“So, Youn Suu,” Cohen said. “Do you know what the red stuff is?”
I hesitated. Crimson particles. Able to move so they couldn’t be grabbed. Forming into thick patches. Like moss…
The streets were now coated except for tiny clear patches around each Cashling’s feet; and the blizzard was still falling. Getting thicker. The camera barely penetrated the cloud of red, but I could make out the wall of a building…and moss climbing that wall as fast as a human could walk…climbing the ropes too, spreading across the whole knotted network until every rope looked like cord covered with plush crimson velvet…
Red moss. That could move. That could see the Cashlings and get out of their way.
A chill went through me. I said, “It’s the Balrog.”
“Balrog?” echoed Ambassador Li. “What’s a Balrog?”
“A highly advanced creature,” I said. “Much more intelligent than humans.”
I looked at the picture again. The moss had begun to glow: shining dimly as the city grew darker. Mats of fuzzy red clotted on Zoonau’s glass dome, cutting off sunlight from outside. Streetlamps flickered to life, but their bulbs were already covered with crimson fuzz. “The moss goes by many names,” I continued, trying to keep my voice even, “but when interacting with Homo sapiens, it calls itself the Balrog. The name refers to a fictional monster from Earth folklore, originally appearing in J. R. R. Tolkien’s—”
Li made a strangled sound and kneaded his temples as if I’d aggravated his hangover headache. Neither he nor Ubatu was seated—Pistachio’s small bridge had no guest chairs, and safety regulations forbade visitors from sitting at an active control station unless they were qualified to operate the station’s equipment—so Li just tottered shakily from one foot to the other until he overcame whatever spasm had gripped him. “Explorer” he said in a forced voice, “we don’t want your thoughts on literature. Stick to what’s relevant.”
“This is relevant,” I replied. “When an intelligent alien adopts a name from human mythology, it’s making a statement. If you met an extraterrestrial that introduced itself as Count Dracula, would you let it near your throat?”
“He would if it offered him trade concessions,” Ubatu said.
“Now, now,” murmured Captain Cohen, “no garbage talk on my bridge.” He turned back to me. “Go on, Youn Suu. Tell us about Balrogs.”
“It’s not Balrogs plural.” I gestured toward the screen as Zoonau continued to disappear under a blanket of red. “That’s all one creature: the Balrog. It’s a single consciousness, distributed over quadrillions of component units usually called spores. And the spores have been found on hundreds of worlds throughout the galaxy.”
“So it’s a hive mind?” Li muttered. “I hate those things.”
“Yes, Ambassador,” I said, “it’s a hive mind. The spores stay in constant telepathic contact with each other, regardless of how far apart they are. Instantaneous contact, even when separated by thousands of light-years. The Balrog is like a single brain with lobes in different star systems, but still intellectually integrated. Some experts believe hive minds are the next evolutionary step above individual creatures like ourselves. We’ve certainly encountered lots of hive minds in our galaxy: not just die Balrog, but the Lucifer, the Myshilandra, possibly Las Fuentes—”
“Hold it,” Li interrupted. He was massaging his temples again. “Let’s get something clear. How smart is this Balrog?”
“Smarter than Homo sapiens and our usual alien trading partners,” I said. “How much smarter, nobody knows. The Balrog is so far beyond humans, when we try to measure its intelligence, we’re like two-year-olds trying to rank the IQs of Newton and Einstein.”
Li curled his lip in disgust. “How typical. Explorers love saying that humans are idiots. You enjoy thinking you’re at the bottom of the heap. That’s where you’re comfortable.”
“Now, now “ Captain Cohen murmured.
“No, really,” Li said. “What makes her think this Balrog is smart? Better technology?” The ambassador waved his hand dismissively. “Better technology isn’t a matter of intelligence; it’s just how long you’ve been in the game. We have better machines today than the ancient Chou Dynasty, but we’re not a milligram smarter.”
“Oh God,” Ubatu groaned. “He’s going to quote Confucius again.”
“Ambassador Li,” I said (all the while watching the city of Zoonau being buried alive), “you don’t grasp the nature of superior intelligence. Suppose you create a brand-new intelligence test. Give it to average humans, and they’d finish in, say, an hour, probably with a number of mistakes. Give it to the most intelligent people in the Technocracy, and they might finish in half the time, with almost no mistakes. But if you approach the Balrog with your test in hand, it’ll say, ‘What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you to show up since last Saturday. I got so bored, I’ve already finished.’ Then it will hand you a mistake-free copy of the test you just invented. The Balrog can foresee, hours or days or months in advance, exactly what questions a person like you would invent. It doesn’t read your mind, it knows your mind. That’s superior intelligence.”
Li snorted in disbelief. I wondered why. Because he couldn’t imagine a universe where he wasn’t on the top rung? “Look,” I said, “when we classify the Balrog as ‘beyond human intelligence,’ we don’t mean it’s faster or more accurate in mundane mental tasks. We mean it can do things humans can’t. In particular, the Balrog displays an uncanny ability to intuit Homo sapiens thoughts and actions. Not just vague predictions but precise details of what we’re going to do far into the future.”
Li looked like he was going to interrupt. I went on before he could. “You may be thinking of quantum uncertainty and chaos theory: principles of human science that imply the future is inherently unpredictable. You’re right, that’s what human science says—which only proves the point. Humans are so stupid and self-centered, we think everything else in the universe has to be as limited as we are. But we’re wrong. The Balrog has demonstrated repeatedly it can predict the actions of lesser creatures like us. If you don’t believe that’s possible…then you’re a typical human, regarding yourself as the standard by which everything else should be measured.”
“And what about you?” Li sneered. “Aren’t you also hampered by human limitations? I suppose the less human you look—”
“Now, now,” Cohen interrupted, waggling a scrawny finger at the ambassador. “Now, now.”
“Explorers are just as limited as other humans,” I said. “The difference is we recognize our limitations. Otherwise…” I took a breath to catch my temper. “Do you know how we first learned about the Balrog? I’ll tell you. An Explorer took a single wrong step.”
Ubatu looked up. “That sounds interesting. I don’t know this part.” As if she already possessed extensive familiarity with superior alien intelligence, so hadn’t bothered to listen. Now, however, her nostrils flared as if she’d caught the smell of blood. I wondered if, like many of the most privileged in the pleasure palace, Ubatu had a ghoulish streak. Fascinated by tales of other people’s suffering. She said, “I assume you have an amusing story to tell?”
“Not amusing but important,” I said. “If you’re ready to listen.”
Li had gone back to rubbing his temples. He didn’t speak—didn’t even glance in my direction. I decided this was as attentive as he’d allow himself to be…so I began to tell the tale.
You can see what the Balrog looks like.” I nodded toward the vidscreen. The streets and buildings of Zoonau were completely lost under crimson fuzz. Cashlings, still untouched, either stood afraid to move or wandered in a daze. The Balrog slipped silently out from under the feet of the wanderers, then slid back after they’d passed, obliterating their footprints with spores of glowing red. The glow was brighter now, like the embers of a fire just before it’s fanned into a blaze.
“When the Balrog isn’t glowing or overwhelming a city,” I said, “it looks like nothing special. A patch of colored moss. Most humans would pass it without thinking…which is what a woman named Kaisho Namida did. Thirty years ago, she was an Explorer on a survey of some unnamed planet, and she stepped on a bit of nondescript red moss. No human had ever encountered the Balrog before, so Kaisho didn’t know what it was. She found out soon enough. The instant her foot came down, the Balrog ripped through Kaisho’s boot like paper and injected spores into her flesh.”
Cohen, Li, and Ubatu looked toward the vidscreen. In Zoonau, moss was still dodging out of the Cashlings’ way. “As you can see,” I said, “the Balrog is mobile. Very mobile. We think it can teleport across the galaxy in seconds. If it didn’t want to be stepped on, it could easily have got out of Kaisho’s way. But it didn’t. It waited for her to step down, then it took her like lightning—sending spores through her bloodstream, her nervous system, every tissue in her body.”
Ubatu’s face was keen. “You say it took her. Like a parasitic infestation?”
“Yes. The spores invaded all her major organs.”
“Did she die?”
“No. She felt almost nothing—just a pain in her foot where the spores had entered. Her partner rushed her to medical treatment, and that’s when the doctors found bits of Balrog throughout her body. They considered chemotherapy to see if they could kill the spores without killing Kaisho…but before they could start treatment, the Balrog took possession of Kaisho’s mouth and said the magic words.”
“What magic words?” Li asked.
“Greetings,” I recited, “I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality.”
Cohen gave a little chuckle. “This parasite waltzed into a woman’s body like cancer, then asked to be treated nicely? That’s chutzpah.”
“True,” I said. “But the Balrog had done nothing to violate League of Peoples’ law. It hadn’t killed anyone. Kaisho was still in excellent health. On the other hand, if the doctors tried to kill the spores inside her body, maybe the doctors would be guilty of killing sentient creatures.”
“Why?” Li asked. “Killing a few spores in a hive mind doesn’t hurt the organism as a whole. Last night I served champagne for dinner—killed a few cells in people’s brains and livers—but the League didn’t come after me for murder.”
“The League cares a lot about motive,” I said. “Presumably, you served that champagne to be hospitable—not to commit deliberate homicide on cells you thought were sentient beings. But if the doctors had injected Kaisho with chemicals intentionally designed to kill spores they knew to be sentient…” I shrugged. “You can never tell with the League. Common sense may say one thing, but you can’t help wondering if the League thinks the opposite. And where will they draw the line? If a doctor is declared nonsentient for killing Balrog spores, will the League blame the hospital for not preventing the crime? Will they blame the navy for improper supervision of the hospital? Will they blame the entire Technocracy?”
“Oy,” said Cohen. “These things always make my head hurt.”
Li growled and continued to massage his temples.
“In the end,” I said, “no one was willing to risk removing the Balrog—especially since Kaisho seemed unharmed. They sent her to a navy rehab center to monitor her condition, and nobody ever again suggested killing the spores.”
“So that’s it?” Ubatu asked. “Nothing happened?” She didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.
Without answering, I walked to a tiny control console stuffed into the bridge’s back corner. The console saw little use on Pistachio—it was the station from which we Explorers would operate reconnaissance probes if we ever got a planet-down mission. Once a week in the middle of the night, Tut and I used the station to run drills and diagnostics; otherwise, the equipment gathered dust.
I sat down to search through some files. When I found the photograph I wanted, I displayed it on the vidscreen, replacing the footage from Zoonau. “This,” I said, “is Kaisho Namida today.”
The picture showed a woman in a wheelchair. Her face was hidden behind long salt-and-pepper strands of hair; these days, she combed her hair forward to conceal her features. But I doubted if many people ever lifted their gaze as high as her head. They’d be too busy staring at the continuous bed of glowing red moss that reached from her toes, up her legs to her pelvis, and on as high as her navel.
Though it couldn’t be seen in the photo, I knew the moss wasn’t just an outer coating. Her legs had no flesh left, no blood, no bone—they were solid moss through and through, still shaped like the limbs they’d once been, but entirely nonhuman.
No one knew what remained of Kaisho’s lower abdomen. Three years after her “accident,” she’d checked out of rehab, got discharged from the navy, and refused further medical exams. Now, with the moss grown above her waist, did she still have intestines and reproductive organs somewhere beneath? Or was there just moss, a thick undifferentiated wad of it from belly to spine?
Ubatu and Li leaned forward. I’d finally caught their full attention.
“Is it eating her?” Li asked.
“Not precisely,” I said. “The spores get most of their energy from photosynthesis, so they aren’t consuming her for simple sustenance. They are breaking down her tissues and using the component chemicals to build new spores.”
Li was now holding his stomach instead of his head. “Why the hell doesn’t the League do something? This Balrog is devouring a sentient woman.”
“But it’s not killing her. Kaisho is still very much alive. And given the speed at which she’s being consumed, she’ll live a full human life span before the moss finishes her off. Possibly longer. The Balrog isn’t just absorbing her, it’s changing her. The spores keep her arteries free of plaque; and her heart is as strong as a teenager’s, even though she’s now…” I looked at a data display on my console. “She’s now one hundred and sixteen years old.”
“Oy.” Captain Cohen was also leaning forward in his chair, staring at the moss-laden woman. “So what does poor Kaisho think about this? Me, I’d cut off my legs as soon as I saw moss growing.”
“That wouldn’t have helped,” I said. “The moss had permeated her internal organs long before it showed outside. Amputate the visible spores, and there’d still be plenty in her heart, her lungs, her bloodstream—everywhere. As for Kaisho’s opinion of what’s happening to her…” I tried to speak without inflection. “She’s thrilled to have been chosen as the Balrog’s host. It’s transforming her into something glorious. She admits that her primitive brain sometimes panics at the thought of being cannibalized, but her higher mental functions soon reassert themselves, and she recognizes the privilege she’s been given. Kaisho is deeply, joyously, in awe of the Balrog and loves it without reserve.”
“In other words,” said Li, “she’s been brainwashed.”
“The spores,” I said, “have suffused every part of Kaisho’s nervous system, including the brain. When she speaks, we have to assume it’s the Balrog talking, not whatever remains of the original woman.”
“You think there’s some Kaisho left?” Cohen asked.
“The Balrog can’t entirely obliterate her human personality; that would upset the League. The spores must have preserved enough of Kaisho’s psyche that she’s still technically alive.”
“Oh good,” said Li. “So she’s conscious enough to know she’s being eaten, enslaved, and brainwashed.”
Ubatu flinched. She mumbled something under her breath, then turned her back on both Li and the vidscreen.
“Forgive an old man his senility,” Captain Cohen said, “but what is the Balrog’s point? If it’s so inhumanly smart, why’s it doing this? Kaisho…Zoonau…what does it want?”
“I can’t answer about Zoonau,” I told him. “As for Kaisho, there are plenty of theories why the Balrog took her, but they’re all just speculation. The only thing we can say for sure is that the Balrog’s action was premeditated—it can predict human actions with a high degree of accuracy, so it must have known when and where Kaisho would be. It waited for her at the perfect spot for an ambush. Then it took her the moment she came within reach.”
“Did it want this Kaisho in particular,” Li asked, “or was she chosen at random?”
“Only the Balrog knows.”
“Damn.” The ambassador paced a few steps, then turned back to me. “Has it ever taken anyone else?”
I checked. “There’s nothing in navy records.”
“Has it ever done anything like it’s doing to Zoonau?”
This time I knew the answer without doing a data search. “A few years ago, the Balrog attacked an orbital habitat belonging to the Fasskisters. It overgrew the entire place—coated every square millimeter.”
“Ah!” Li said, rubbing his hands together. “Now we’re getting a pattern. Did it leave the Fasskisters themselves untouched the way it’s leaving the Cashlings?”
I shook my head. “You know that Fasskisters are puny little aliens who encase themselves in robot armor? Big powered suits that compensate for the Fasskisters’ physical weakness? Well, the Balrog covered each Fasskister suit with a thick mass of spores that disrupted the mechanical control systems. The Fasskisters ended up imprisoned like knights in suits of rusted metal. Kaisho, speaking for the Balrog, said the Fasskisters would be kept immobilized for twenty years. Their life-support systems would stay operative, and they’d be supplied with whatever they needed to survive, but they wouldn’t be allowed to move till the Balrog let them go.”
“Did she say why the Balrog did it?” Cohen asked.
“As punishment. Apparently the Fasskisters had captured a few Balrog spores and locked them in containment bottles. Then they used the spores’ long-range telepathy as a private communication system. The Balrog was furious at having bits of itself kidnapped to serve as someone else’s intercom. It imprisoned the Fasskisters as vengeance.”
“Vengeance.” Li echoed the word as if he liked the sound. “Do you think that’s the reason for Zoonau?”
I shrugged. “Cashlings aren’t noted for prudence. They might have done something to make the Balrog angry.”
Li nodded. “They annoy the crap out of me every time I meet them. And they’re greedy too. I could easily picture them trying to exploit the Balrog and getting the damned moss mad.”
“Do you think that’s it?” Cohen asked me. “You know this Balrog better than we do.”
I didn’t answer—I just turned a dial on my console. The picture of Kaisho disappeared, and the screen returned to Zoonau. No significant change in the picture. A few Cashlings were talking into comm implants now, holding animated discussions. Knowing Cashlings, they probably weren’t calling home to check on loved ones; they’d be contacting local news services, trying to sell their stories. TRAPPED BY A MOSS MONSTROSITY: MY TERRIFYING ORDEAL! Others were no doubt calling politicians, bureaucrats, anyone who’d answer. The people of Zoonau would howl to government officials, and those officials (eager to pass the buck) would call our Technocracy consulate for help…wailing, “Please, we can’t handle this on our own.”
Although our consuls were probably sick of Cashlings whining, this particular crisis would elicit a quick response…because people at our consulate knew that sooner or later, some Cashling in Zoonau would fight back.
Cashlings seldom turned nasty. They were usually too lazy, vain, and petulant to take forceful action against obstacles they met. When something went wrong, they’d complain, complain, complain to other species till somebody bailed them out.
But even a race of useless idlers had some few individuals with sparks of spirit. In Zoonau, some Cashling would eventually be pushed beyond its limits, becoming so angry or upset it would stir into action.
Like trying to set Balrog spores on fire.
Or dousing them with dangerous chemicals.
Or simply smashing them with a rock, over and over and over.
Which would be understandable…but we couldn’t let it happen.
Not that I feared for the Balrog’s health. If it didn’t want to get burned, doused, or smashed, its spores would just avoid the attack. This was a creature that could teleport…and could foresee the actions of lesser beings far in advance. The Balrog wouldn’t let itself get hit unless it wanted to.
But the Cashlings of Zoonau didn’t know that. Cashlings were bottomless pits of ignorance when it came to most other species. And if some Cashling tried to pummel a clump of moss, the League would regard that action as attempted homicide: deliberately intending to kill sentient Balrog spores. The Cashling responsible would be considered a dangerous nonsentient. Furthermore, the Cashling government might be in trouble for not doing its utmost to avoid such violence; the Technocracy could be accused of negligence for not helping the Cashlings; and I myself might be considered callously indifferent if I saw this mess coming and did nothing to stop it.
“How old is this footage?” I asked. “When did the Balrog attack?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Do we have anything more recent?”
Cohen shook his head. “The city’s internal cameras aren’t broadcasting anymore.”
“Probably mossed over,” said Li, stating the obvious.
So the Cashlings had been trapped for an hour. And the readouts on the console in front of me said it would take another hour for Pistachio to reach Cashleen. By which time, the people of Zoonau would be getting antsy.
“We have to go in as soon as we achieve orbit,” I said. “Before one of those Cashlings does something we’ll regret.”
“Looks like it,” the captain agreed. “We’re the only non-Cashling ship in the star system.”
“But suppose the Balrog is punishing the Cashlings,” Ubatu said. She’d finally turned back to join our conversation. “Suppose the Balrog is punishing Zoonau like it punished those Fasskisters. If the Cashlings have done something to anger the Balrog, we have to think twice about coming in on the wrong side.”
Li nodded. “We don’t want to get caught in the middle. Otherwise, we might find our own cities covered in moss. This is just the sort of incident that could escalate—”
“Haven’t you been listening?” I shouted. “Don’t you understand?”
The bridge went silent. I could almost hear the echoes of my own voice ringing from the metal walls. Li looked shocked, like a man who’d never been yelled at before. Ubatu too—as if nineteen-year-olds in her world never felt the urge to scream. Cohen lifted his hand, about to pat my arm…which would only have made me more furious. But he must have realized this was not the time to play patronizing grandfather. He let his hand fall and said, “What?”
I took a shuddering breath. “Captain Cohen. Sir. The Balrog isn’t going to misunderstand our presence. The Balrog timed its arrival exactly to catch Pistachio and reel us in. You yourself said we’re the only non-Cashling ship in the star system.”
I looked around. Nothing but blank faces. “The Balrog wants us to come,” I said. “It’s teen waiting precisely for this moment. It could have hit Zoonau anytime, but it held off until we were near…because it knew the Cashlings would demand help, and we’d have no choice but to get involved.”
“It wants us?” Ubatu whispered. “Why?”
“We’ll have to go down and ask.”
“What if it’s…hungry?”
I looked her in tile eye. “Just hope you’re not the one it wants to eat.”