Tainted Garden Page 10

  The duty chime floated out of the speakers set in the walls. Blaen, as was his wont, grumbled, but sprang out of bed, landing heavily on the floor. He stretched his arms over his head, his bones popping, and released gas. He scratched his scaled belly and looked down at Rian. A smile curled his lips.

  “Comfortable, Rian?” His laugh emerged as a rattling hiss. “None of my business, of course, but I’ve heard that beds were made for just that sort of thing. You should try it some time.”

  “Funny.” Rian climbed to his feet. “Thought I heard something down there. Vermin.”

  “Don’t tell the galleycrew.” Blaen laughed again. He moved to the bureau and threw on his duty togs, buckling a wide, black leather belt around his waist. Sitting on Rian’s bunk, he pulled on his boots and laced them up, grinning. “What’re you waiting for? Don’t you have administrative punishment today?”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Rian realized he was wearing his uniform tunic.

  “You sleep in that? And your boots, too? You’re a glutton for punishment, Rian.” Blaen stood and headed for the door. “Don’t be late.”

  Late. Come to me . . . Rian frowned. “What did you say?”

  Come to me . . .

  Blaen looked at him queerly. “Late. Don’t be. The duty officers hate it. Things’ll go worse for you if you’re late.”

  With that Blaen ducked through the door and was gone, leaving Rian staring after him. The hissing of the air ventilators sent a shiver down his spine.

  The summons came in the middle of his administrative punishment, while he was busy scrubbing the expansive floors of the muster square, hating each black and white checked panel. His fingers ached from grasping the course-bristled brush, and his eyes burned from the caustic vapors that rose from the wash bucket. He was happy to put aside brush and bucket and follow the aide from the muster square. The duty officer’s eyes bored holes in his back as he left, and Rian suppressed a smile at his good fortune.

  Good fortune? A summons from the Elders was seldom that. Particularly not under these circumstances.

  He followed the aide through the twisting corridors of the Enclave, ignoring the looks of the other Gagash they passed. His hands smoothed the wrinkles in his uniform.

  The aide led Rian toward the workroom where he had left the stranger the day before, then past it, farther down the steam-choked hallway. Rian frowned, wondering at the change. Every time he had interviewed with the Elders it had been in that workroom. He had never seen them anywhere else. Something important was up.

  Chapter 14

  Planetfall

  Santiago watched the display as the SeedShip descended through the outer atmosphere toward the planet’s surface below. Vast and primal, the world that stretched out beneath could not have been less Earth-like if it had been specifically engineered to be so. From horizon to horizon it was desolate, raw. Rivers laced through the rugged terrain, and mountains rubbed low and smooth by high winds marched in ragtag fashion across the broadest of the planet’s continents.

  Landskin. Santiago queued magnification, filtering out the interference of the landing engines so that he could focus on the ubiquitous mat that covered most of the surface area of the planet. Landskin—the sci-types down in BS called it. Its properties still had not been thoroughly investigated, despite the months spent collating and analyzing the data relayed up from the advance team on-surface. A simple cell structure, Rodriguez claimed, but displaying properties that argued for a systemic interaction on a much broader scale.

  Santiago did not pretend to understand what it all meant. He had interviewed Rodriguez extensively before giving his approval to final approach and planetfall. Now he played back the conversation in his mind, looking for holes that would explain the uneasy feeling twisting in his gut as he stared at the convoluted surface of the planet.

  “Landskin,” he muttered, and scowled. He had gone down to BS, of course, at the insistence of Rodriguez. The chief of BS had been quite excited about his discoveries and had all but begged Santiago to come and observe the peculiar biomass.

  Disgusting, Santiago had thought as he stared at the twitching, palm-sized bit of tissue. It did, indeed, somewhat resemble skin. Grayish, with a pink interior broken up into smaller chambers, the thing seemed almost to breathe within its plastic dish.

  “The planet’s ecosystem is incredible, Captain. Simple, yet complex. It—”

  “I don’t care about that, Rodriguez. Tell me, does it pose a threat to mission integrity? This . . . stuff, this landskin—is it dangerous? Poisonous? That’s all I care about.”

  Rodriguez stopped, his mouth hanging open, and stared at Santiago as if utterly astounded that he did not share the burning scientific curiosity running rampant through Biological Sciences. He blinked. “Well, no. No, sir. Not that we have been able to ascertain.”

  “But you’re not certain.”

  Rodriguez smiled. “We’ve run every test we can think of, Captain, and have seen no adverse side effects from proximity to the landskin. But there are few absolutes in science.”

  Santiago snorted. Few absolutes? Perhaps that was the principal failing of science, then. His own world dealt with little other than absolutes. Efficient or not. Within the threat threshold, or not. Dead, or not. You could not half-kill someone. Either your enemy died, or he remained a viable threat. End of story.

  “Give me the straight and narrow, then, Rodriguez. What is the recommendation of Biological Sciences? Is planetfall a viable option at this point?”

  Rodriguez frowned. “Well, of course. Yes, Captain. I see no reason we shouldn’t proceed immediately. I’m most anxious, in fact, to get planetside, myself. This presents a marvelous opportunity for the advancement of xenobiological study. It—”

  Santiago stopped him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “No need to go into particulars. Log your recommendation into ShipsNet. I’ll have Nav compute final approach and decide on the appropriate timing for planetfall. I’ll keep BS posted on progress.”

  He had turned away from Rodriguez then, returning to the endless parade of statistics and parameters that scrolled across his display. Dismissed, Rodriguez saluted and left, the door hissing shut behind him.

  Now, with planetfall in full progress and the bulging arc of this strange world growing closer and closer, Santiago wondered at the wisdom of this course of action. The sheer distance of this remote world from the core worlds of the Terran Hegemony made communication with his superiors a haphazard, sporadic affair. Even leap-frogging through the relay-pods Ship had deployed on its outward trajectory messages could take months to travel from point to point, making conversation impossible and all but the most general of instructions from home meaningless.

  Still, decisiveness was a virtue the Hegemony drilled into Service officers with a totalitarian approach. Indecisive leaders seldom passed muster. And only through sheer luck or the machinations of the body politic did a poor commander receive a commission. Santiago had few political connections. He stood on the merits of his Service record alone.

  In the month since his interview with Rodriguez, while Nav chose a landing site for the SeedShip, Santiago had ordered his own brand of tests run on the landskin. He found that the stuff burned readily enough, though it emitted a noxious odor when exposed to the wash of a flamer. Once burned away, it attempted to re-advance, to re-cover the barren, rocky soil beneath. Simple barriers of plastic or plasteel did little to halt its advance. The landskin moved around such obstructions, beneath them, over them, or, in some cases, through them, building pressure at the weakest point and wiggling through like a snake through mud. Even plasteel could not endure the inexorable pressures exerted by the landskin for long.

  The biomass resisted the veritable cornucopia of fungicides, pesticides, herbicides and other poisons borne as cargo aboard Ship. None seemed to have any effect. A few ingenious marines had tried mixing up bastardizations of the chemicals. There were few promising results and more than a few injuries to ma
rines as a result.

  Santiago moved to his grav-chair and queued communications. A burst of static arose, then faded. Sergeant MacCullum’s face, shadowed by the helmet of his power armor, winked onto the display.

  “Captain, sir?”

  “Status, Sergeant?” Santiago focused on the swath of the planet’s surface he could see to the side of Mac’s face. Curls of smoke rose from the ground, where shriveled piles of ash lay scattered amid clusters of boulders.

  Mac smiled. “Decon of the landing site’s almost completed, sir.”

  “And the barriers?”

  Mac shifted his position, and Santiago could tell he moved toward the perimeter of the burned area. “The current seems to be doing the trick, sir. The shit—pardon the expression, sir—doesn’t seem to like it. It’s not approaching, though it is building up a . . . a wall, or something, just outside the perimeter. Quivering, like it wants to come in, but can’t.”

  “Queue your outside read so I can see,” Santiago said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  A moment later Mac’s face disappeared. Static flooded across the display, then was quickly replaced by a wider, panoramic view of the proposed landing site. A circular area two kilometers in diameter had been burned free of the ubiquitous landskin, which now lay in smoking heaps, awaiting removal by one of the tractored rovers that had been carted planetside. At the circle’s perimeter Mac and his crew had erected a low wire fence. Hooked up to the power reservoirs of the XV, the fence ran with a steady, mild electrical current. Crude, but apparently effective. The landskin massed outside the fence, but seemed reluctant to approach it.

  “Very good, Sergeant.” Santiago glanced down at his display, watching Mac’s bio-stats scroll across the bottom of the screen. Nothing unusual. Mac seemed in perfect health. “And you and your men haven’t experienced any adverse effects? No sickness? Nothing?”

  “Zero, sir. Everything seems fine here planetside. This stuff’s disgusting, but it seems to be harmless. And if we can keep it outside a perimeter, I don’t think it’ll give the colonists any problem.”

  Santiago nodded, saluted, and ended the communication. They would have to devise a more permanent and efficient system once Ship went planetside, of course, but the electric current seemed to be adequate for their short-term needs.

  ShipsNet chimed. Santiago toggled comm. “Yes?”

  “Captain, we’ve entered final approach.”

  “Very good, Ensign. Carry on.”

  Santiago sank back in his grav-chair. Closing his eyes, he could feel the living pulse of the SeedShip beneath him, a massive, throbbing entity, the culmination of mankind’s evolutionary achievements. Two thousand crew, scientists, engineers, techs and soldiers. A million as-yet-unrealized colonists, frozen in their banks and banks of zygotes, awaiting quick growth and downloading.

  He felt the joggling hitch as Ship pierced the final veil of the planet’s atmosphere and descended toward the surface of the alien world.

  Chapter 15

  “What are you talking about, Erekel?” He had taken Dersi’s arm in one of his hands when they entered the meeting place, and now she jerked herself away and scowled at him.

  “Dersi, give me a moment and I’ll explain.”

  “Explain? What’s there to explain? You’re insane.”

  He shook his head. “It’s true, Dersi. You are not a Lady.”

  “What is she, then?” Baedere demanded.

  “Yes. What am I then?” She crossed her arms and stepped away from him. She could feel the others’ eyes on her, sense their anxiety. She did not care. She glared at Erekel, daring him to keep silent. “Well?”

  Erekel paused. His rheumy eyes focused on Dersi. “An enigma.”

  “An enigma.”

  He nodded. “Yes. An enigma.”

  Dersi threw up her hands. “Oh. Well. That explains everything, of course. Thank you for that intricate explanation, Erekel. All of my fears and doubts have been allayed. Very poignant. Very succinct.”

  “Now you’re being difficult.”

  “Difficult? I’m being difficult?”

  “Hysterical.”

  She clenched her teeth, balled her hands into fists. Her breath hissed between her tight lips. “Master Erekel, you’ve told me nothing. Nothing. If I’m being difficult, you’ll excuse me. During the last day I’ve found out I was to be married to a man I loathe, forced into bondage with the ool, and turned into a massive, immobile womb for the purpose of procreating a new generation. I’ve fled from my would-be husband and become trapped in a capillary while the ool’s resins made a damned good attempt at ingesting me.

  “No!” she snapped, holding up her hand. “I’m not through, and you will stand there and listen to everything I’ve got to say, Erekel, or I swear to you I’ll claw your eyes out myself.”

  Erekel’s mouth snapped closed and he stepped back from her rage. She pressed on.

  “Then along you come, pulling me out of the capillary, and I thank you for that. I’m grateful, incredibly grateful.” Dersi paused, closing her eyes for a moment. She sighed. “You drag me through the depths of the ool to some forgotten cavity where I’m confronted not only by outright hostility from your compatriots”—and she paused to spear individual men with her gaze, men who turned away from her fire—“but by your assertion that I’m not a Lady. That I’m an . . . enigma.”

  “That’s true,” he said.

  Dersi choked down her rage, breathing deep. “What, Master Erekel, does that mean? And if you give me some pat, evasive, dissembling answer . . . I meant my earlier promise. I will pluck out your eyes, or at least give it a damned good try. Don’t play games with me.”

  The gathered Bhajong kept silent. They stared at Erekel, awaiting his response. Baedere shuffled his feet and shifted slightly toward Dersi. Dersi folded her arms and shut her mouth, willing Erekel to answer.

  “I . . . uh . . . well.” Erekel swallowed. He refused to meet Dersi’s gaze, instead looking from face to face of the men seated at the tables.

  “Out with it, man,” snapped Baedere.

  Dersi glanced at Baedere, frowning. “Yes. Speak out, Erekel.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, and licked his lips. “Perhaps enigma was a poor choice of words.”

  “Oh? Then by all means, Master Erekel, find the right words.” Dersi did not take her gaze from his lined face.

  He licked his lips again. “You aren’t Veil Lord Huldru’s daughter, Dersi.”

  “What? Of course I am. He’s my father, the father of all my siblings.”

  “Yes. He’s the father of your siblings, of course. At least I assume so—I can’t speak for that. But he’s not your father, Dersi.”

  “How can you say that? I think I know my own father.”

  He smiled. “Actually, you’re right. You do know your own father. But not in the manner you think.”

  “You’re babbling. Get to the point and stop wasting my time.”

  He shook his head. “Huldru isn’t your father, Dersi.” He raised his face and locked his gaze to hers. “I am.”

  “Find her!” Lord Meloni lashed out, cracking the back of his hand across Captain Lhedri’s face. The man staggered and put his hand to his lips. Blood trickled from the corners of Lhedri’s mouth.

  “Yes, Lord Meloni,” Lhedri said, nodding. “We’re trying. Someone must have helped her. She couldn’t have gotten out of the capillary on her own. We found hardened casings molded to the shape of her body in the vessel. The shell bore the marks of sharp edges.”

  Meloni spun on his heel and stalked across Veil Lord Huldru’s chamber. The Veil Lord lay dormant, tentacles dangling, listless, barely twitching. Only the steady thump of blood pumping through the veins in the walls and floor indicated that Huldru still lived. And each of the other Veil Lords had gone equally silent. Meloni walked over to Huldru’s glistening trunk, reached out, and touched the sticky ooze that dripped down from its apex.

  “Find them as well, Lhedri. Find them a
ll, and bring them to me. Dead or alive, I don’t care.” He turned and faced the guard, his pinched features twisted in rage. “But if Lady Dersi has so much as a scratch from the efforts of your guards, you’ll answer to me, personally. Do I make myself clear, Lhedri?”

  Lhedri nodded. “Of course, Lord Meloni. No harm will come to her at our hands.”

  “Leave me now. Report back to me before morning with your progress. It would be well for you if you bring Lady Dersi to me at that time.”

  “I will, Lord Meloni.” Lhedri saluted, kneeling.

  Meloni turned away again, staring up at Veil Lord Huldru’s dormant trunk. He did not hear Lhedri leave. In the wake of Huldru’s unresponsive state, the sphincter that opened into his chamber lay in ruins, hacked open for better access.

  His stomach growled, demanding attention. But with the Veil Lords comatose the feeding tubes had retracted into the walls of the ool. Sleep, too, had become impossible, plagued by wild, dissonate dreams. Without the dream-cilia to induce pleasant slumber, hungry, angry, restless Bhajong crowded the main arteries. Tempers flared. Fights broke out. A few men even died.

  Meloni, acting on his own initiative and so far unchallenged by the other Lords, had stepped in to quell the disturbances and establish order. Offenders were taken for rendering, which alleviated a portion of the chaos, but not all. Meloni had stationed guards bearing acidrods at key intersections. All throats had been sealed off to traffic, restricting movement between levels.

  He shook his head, attempting to dispel the spiraling thoughts of doom, and drank in the sight of the Veil Lord.

  Such beauty. Such power. He ran his hands along Huldru’s trunk, marveling at the sheer perfection of the form, a form Meloni had longed to assume for as long as he could remember. And now this. On the eve of his veiling his betrothed vanished, the Veil Lords had gone dormant, and the ool moved of its own volition.