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  “Commander!” She came forward, reaching out. Then, with a slight smile of rue, she withdrew her hand. Rodriguez felt its absence like a wound. “We don’t have much time. Their relays will trigger the alarm in moments.”

  Rodriguez glanced down at the pair of dead soldiers. Both had fist-sized holes in their chests, where thin curls of smoke carried the stink of charred flesh. He felt no bitterness toward them, only regret. They were lost to the cause, the beautiful cause. The cause hatched over the past days, while Rodriguez languished, alone, in his prison.

  Be always mindful of the sin of pride, my son. The voice sounded curiously pleased now, and Rodriguez felt a sense of gratification. The specter of his father had been mollified, placated by the grand plan that would see the works of the Lord glorified.

  The soldier gestured down the hallway, and Rodriguez and Marissa set off. Their compromised guardian tagged along behind them, watchful at the intersections, his gun held ready. Rodriguez felt comforted by his presence. The first of my seraphim. The first of many.

  “The XV?” Rodriguez asked as they moved through the spiraling corridors of Ship.

  Marissa nodded. “The others are waiting for us in the hangar. The other shuttles have been disabled. When we launch, they won’t be able to pursue us.”

  “The guns?”

  She smiled. “Our XV’s launch is keyed to a dormant program in the primary computer interface. As we clear the hangar doors, the program will initiate, locking down their systems. Simultaneously, a second program will crash the coolant subroutine, effectively disabling the core. They won’t be pursuing, and they won’t be able to fire on us.”

  And with the core disabled, Ship could not hope to leave the planet’s atmosphere. Captain Santiago and his lackeys would be stranded on this beautiful, alien world, forced to accommodate to its demands. Or die. Rodriguez smiled. Everything was working out perfectly.

  “The cargo?” he asked.

  Marissa drew up short at an intersection, and the klaxons sounded. The loud warbling galvanized the soldiers milling about the halls. They seized their weapons and moved to duty stations, barking out queries over their in-Ship comm units. Their guardian soldier pulled them back behind a bulkhead. They pressed against the cool ceramic wall, holding their breaths as soldiers pounded past them.

  When the last of the soldiers had passed, Rodriguez grasped Marissa’s shoulder. “The cargo!” he demanded.

  She winced and pulled free. “Aboard. Most of it.”

  “Most?”

  Marissa ignored him, moving into the hall and heading down a slope toward the hangar deck. Her fingers caressed the barrel of her plasma rifle. Rodriguez shuddered.

  “Most. It couldn’t be helped. Eight thousand zygotes and a like number of download-packs. To move more would have brought too much suspicion. It should be enough.”

  She was right, of course. Eight thousand. More than enough for his purposes, when combined with the breeding stock Santiago and his crew represented. With Santiago’s faction and a gene pool of zygotes eight thousand strong, chosen on Terra for their perfection, Genesis could begin anew. The download-packs, of course, would be discarded. Carrying the composite personalities, intellects, and skillsets deemed most likely to thrive in a hostile alien environment, they would have no place in the new garden.

  The new Eden.

  Chapter 20

  In the transparent tube, He floated. A thousand delicate landskin tendrils caressed him. Renewed, revitalized by the influx of nutrients fed to him through the landskin, He flexed the muscles of his arms and legs, reveling in the fresh power flowing through his body. Gone were the toxins of the man-things. Gone were the hundreds of small wounds, the anxieties, the fears. The metal instruments, the clamps and bonds, had cracked beneath the constant, worming pressure of landskin tendrils. When the time was right, they would burst.

  He had watched as the men took Rian and deposited him in another tube nearby. Rian hung limp in the empty tube as the others attached metal clamps to his arms and legs. The men seized the landskin in their cruel hands, stretched it taut, creating tentacles, which they attached to Rian’s skin. The landskin recoiled, loathe to touch Rian. He could feel its revulsion through the surface communion. But the men persisted and succeeded at last in attaching the tentacles.

  Other men had come in, then, and used coiled hoses to pour the green fluid into Rian’s tube. It rose to his ankles, his thighs, his waist, and still the man did not move. It covered his torso as other men climbed around the rim of the tube, inserting a sharp-ended tube of shiny black stuff between Rian’s lips, down his throat. A hinged arm tipped with round cups descended from the ceiling. The man-thing called Pallas attached this to Rian’s eyes. The fluid rose, covering Rian’s chest, touching his chin. And then it swallowed him, and the men retreated, back to their tables and instruments, with obvious excitement.

  Now He stared through the green bath in his own tube at Rian. The man called Pallas spoke to Rian, but He could not hear his words. Rian twitched, struggled. Anger and panic rode him like a heavy yoke.

  He closed his eyes and opened himself to communion, remembering, learning. Communion broached hidden reservoirs of memory and dreams. Memories that stretched far back, before awareness, before sentience. Before the coming of Man. Memories of oneness, of completion and perfection. Memories that did not include Man, neither Gagash nor Bhajong, as they termed themselves.

  Memories pushed forward, demanding recognition. He sensed with a hundred million organs the bright flare, the trailing arc, as the twinkling star descended. He tasted with a billion tongues the poisonous taint of noxious smoke and burning landskin as the star, surrounded by a coruscating, shimmering veil, settled slowly into a deep-rivered valley. He heard a roar greater than the heaving bellows of the ool with countless aural receptors. And he felt the tread of alien life on his skin.

  Later, much later, he sensed their destruction of his perfection. The bipeds emerged from the belly of the fallen star to crawl about on the landskin, pierced living flesh with implements of metal and other foreign materials, dug deep into the solid bedrock and tapped the molten core of the world. Pillars of smoke climbed into the pristine cerulean skies, vast smudges that seemed to be tears in the fabric of the world. Artificial structures sprang up, erected in a blink, forever altering landscapes that had stood inviolate since the Beginning.

  The memories included overwhelming patience, a learning of these invaders from the great Beyond. Attempts at communion failed. Those bipeds touched by the landskin became diseased, unclean. Memories of fire, consuming, pushing back his skin, away from their shining spheres and angular structures. Constant fires against the needful, constant encroachment of the landskin, the undeniable influx of life to cover barren lifelessness prevented, denied. Pain. Pain beyond bearing.

  And still patience. A new thing, learning. Growth in a different manner, an expansion of consciousness, a disease brought by those from the Beyond. Recognition. Cognition. Awareness. Facility.

  Still, the memories insisted, communion had been sought. And still it was denied. Revoked.

  Ool came, trailing communion tentacles from feeding tubes, seeking by this last, greatest effort to establish contact. Fires, spit from coiled cylinders into the blue skies, enveloped ool, burned them, rendered them lifeless ash. A diminishing. A loss. Loss of communion, of completion, of perfection. Pain.

  One came, different than the other bipeds, desiring contact, communication. He was welcomed. He came, seeking, and the world cried out with joy, believing this to be but the first tentative reach. This one experienced, communed, and was changed, altered. The others, those brought with him, refused to change, could not, and communion failed.

  And still others sat in their shining spheres and structures, refusing, destroying.

  He shook, trembling. He forced the memories away, away. Away.

  But another door opened, reawakened during communion. The other side. The other perspective. Human. In
a flash of insight, He realized that he possessed their memories as well, the pooled memories of these invaders from the stars.

  Not Gagash. Not Bhajong. Not different. The same.

  Those memories tore at him, and he could not face them. He shuttered them away and locked the recesses of his mind against the sudden influx.

  Time—another gift of the Humans—passed, though He remained consciously oblivious of its passage. He opened his eyes and stared at Rian, the avatar of all that was hated, the focus of his rage. The other humans stood around He’s prison, pouring over their notes, prodding at bits of his stolen tissue, manipulating the landskin in a hundred different, obscene ways. He could hear their voices. He watched them manipulate their machines, machines that poked him with needles and saws, stealing his tissue bit by bit for their tests.

  The man called Pallas approached Rian, holding up a vial filled with pink, frothing liquid. Rian jerked, turning his body away. While He communed, the men had removed the cups from Rian’s eyes.

  “This is incredible, Rian. Incredible. The . . . anomaly you brought with you. It’s fascinating.”

  Rian kept himself turned away. The other humans poked at He. He ignored them, watching Rian, fearing Rian.

  He shifted. The clamps holding his legs cracked, bits breaking off to float down through the jelly. Soon. Soon.

  “If I have the tube removed from your throat will you speak with me?” Pallas asked Rian.

  Rian turned slowly in the clutching jelly. Pallas stepped back.

  He moved his hands, touching the fine strands of landskin that filled his prison. He stroked them with his fingertips, caressed them, commanded them. They throbbed, answering his call.

  “But you must, Rian,” Pallas said. “We must know more of it. You must have left something out. Something that might not have seemed important, but is. Something seemingly trivial? This . . . enigma, this anomaly . . . it seems so close to human, close enough to have all the genetic markers common to our species. And yet more, so much more. There are tags I’ve seen only in the landskin, and others unique to the ool. Other markers suggest kinship with the drakes. The entity seems an amalgam of them all. Incredible.”

  Rian kept silent.

  Pallas sighed. “You don’t understand.”

  More. He commanded, demanded. The landskin shoved its way into the tube, expanding, straining against the tight confines. It flooded upward, enveloping He in a loose cocoon. Fine strands shot out from the walls of the cocoon, seizing the remains of the clamps on He’s wrists and ankles. The tendrils squeezed, heaved, and tore loose the bonds. Pressure built, though He remained insulated within the cocoon.

  Through the landskin sheath He heard the shattering of his prison. The mass of landskin crashed to the floor, carrying He along with it. It flowed away from him like water. He stood, free within a ring of men.

  Rian’s eyes snapped open as something crashed nearby. He heaved himself back against the far wall of his prison as the stranger’s tube exploded, flooding the room with writhing, convulsing landskin. A central globe of landskin bubbled and frothed on the floor, pulsing like some great bellows.

  Elders scrambled away from the globe, knocking over chairs in their haste. A spill of instruments danced across the hard metal floor. Glass shattered.

  “What the . . .” Pallas turned his back on Rian, staring across the laboratory.

  The bulge throbbed, cracks lacing, widening across its surface. Elders cried out as the landskin burst like a gigantic blister, spewing ichor and slime in a wide arc. Something rose from the ragged wound. A pale figure, dripping with ooze.

  Rian jerked in his restraints, recognizing the stranger. His bonds held him fast.

  The stranger surveyed the room in an instant, his gaze roving across the Elders pushing away from him, before traveling onward. Rian saw recognition and something else—fear?—in the stranger’s eyes when that gaze fell on him.

  The stranger leaped forward. Pallas scrambled out of the way, screaming. A braver Elder tried to interpose himself. Without pause the stranger seized the man’s throat and jerked downward. He tossed the corpse aside. It crumpled to the floor, its head dangling at a bizarre angle.

  The other Elders scattered. They bolted for the iris. One of the Elders paused long enough to slam his fist down on a switch. Klaxons rang out, and bright red warning lights flared into brilliance.

  Rian struggled against his bonds, throwing his weight from side to side. He strained his arms, kicked out with his legs. He chewed on the tube in his mouth, gagging.

  The stranger reached Rian’s tube and raised his fists over his head. His eyes blazed with a strange light, and his mouth was drawn up into a fierce snarl. He slammed his doubled fists into the wall of Rian’s prison, the impact rattling the tube on its base. Cracks shot through the glass, and fluid spewed out. Again the stranger pounded on the glass. And again. Chunks of glass broke away, falling to the floor.

  The stranger reached into the shattered tube, his hands burrowing through the draining jelly to seize the tight knot of tentacles that bound Rian to the top of the tube. He grit his teeth and heaved. His banded muscles bulged. With the sound of tearing flesh, the tentacles ripped free. A flood of hot liquids washed out, bathing the stranger.

  Rian fell to the floor. The stranger jerked on the tethers, heaving Rian through the ragged hole in the glass. Jags like daggers tore through Rian’s skin, drawing blood. Rian squirmed, kicked out at the stranger’s reaching hands. His bare foot smashed into outstretched fingers, snapping bones. The stranger took no notice. He tightened his grip on the mass of intertwined tentacles and jerked Rian toward one of the landskin pools.

  Rian struggled, but the bonds held him tight. He coughed on the throat tube, frantically trying to force it from his mouth. He felt a rising surge from his stomach.

  Guards poured into the room, armed with sporelances. The stranger ran toward the landskin pool, dragging Rian across the glass-littered floor, as the guards leveled their weapons. The stranger ignored them, leaping down into the central pit.

  Rian’s eyes widened as he saw a tremendous swelling rise from the pit, a great bulb of landskin that pitched and heaved and swayed. A hole opened in the bulb, and the stranger sank into it. Flowing like water, the landskin enveloped the stranger, swallowing him.

  Sporelances barked, spewing wads of poisonous spores into the landskin. It shivered, but wrapped its folds tighter about the stranger. With a tremendous, heaving jolt, the landskin bulge sank into the pit, bearing the stranger down. Rian, caught by the attached tentacles, felt himself drawn into the pit, crashing into the landskin. It shot out hundreds of tendrils, wrapping around him in a bubble.

  “No!” he heard someone scream as the landskin began to close. He saw a guard throw down his sporelance and leap. The guard’s hands clasped around Rian’s ankle. He hung on, and more guardsmen joined him, hands clawing at Rian’s flesh.

  “No! Don’t let it take him!” Pallas screamed.

  More guards poured into the room. Their lances riddled the landskin with poisonous spores. Gaping, dripping wounds appeared in the snaking landskin tentacles. Flesh sizzled and popped, bubbling with virulent toxins. Other guards grabbed at Rian, pulling him upward, back into the chamber of horrors.

  Crackling, wounded shreds of landskin shot up from the pit, coiling into blunt knobs. The knobbed tentacles lashed out, smashing in skulls, breaking ribs, crushing limbs. Guards fell away, only to be replaced by others who pawed at Rian as he was drawn inexorably down into the pit.

  With a final, sharp jerk, Rian sank into the hole, and the landskin swallowed him.

  Chapter 21

  “You’ve led us to a dead end!”

  Erekel spared her a withering glance. “I know. I can see that.”

  Acidslugs burst on the walls to either side of them, punctuating his words. Dersi ducked, avoiding the small, spreading clouds of corrosive gas. Erekel gasped and jerked his hand away from the wall as metal bubbled, liquefied.r />
  “Hold your fire!” a figure at the far end of the hallway demanded. “Hold your damned fire!”

  “What’ll we do?” Dersi asked.

  “I don’t know. I must’ve taken a wrong turn somehow.”

  “I thought you knew this place.”

  “I told you, this place is vast. No one knows all of it.”

  A figure detached itself from the group at the end of the corridor and strode toward them. His shoulders squared, the man carried an acidrod, which he leveled at Erekel and Dersi. As he came closer and the lights triggered on the walls, Dersi recognized him.

  “Lhedri! What are you doing here?” She felt confused. “Why are you doing this, Lhedri?”

  “Lady Dersi, Lord Meloni sent me to safeguard your return. I trust you’re well. These malcontents haven’t harmed you?” He came forward, eyeing Erekel warily. He trained his acidrod on the center of Erekel’s chest.

  “Malcontents?”

  Lhedri shrugged. “Rebels. Rabble. Call them what you will. Have they harmed you?”

  “Stay back, Lhedri,” Dersi said. She raised her hand, palm outward, commanding.

  Lhedri smiled. “Lady Dersi, I can see that you’re confused. It must be all the stress. You’re safe now, I assure you. Come away from this man. Lord Meloni awaits you.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You heard her,” Erekel said, puffing out his chest.

  “You would be wise to keep silent, traitor,” Lhedri said. “If you’ve harmed the Lady Dersi it will go worse for you. The rendering vats will seem like paradise.”

  “Stay away from me, Lhedri. I’m asking you, as a friend. Or, if that was false, I command you, as my father’s daughter.” She pushed aside the nagging memory of Erekel’s assertion. Claiming him as father would certainly weaken her position.