Unreconciled

by W. Michael Gear

  Have I ever been this exhausted?

  And it seemed like there was no end to it. Endless forest. Endless toil. Danger on all sides.

  You can do this. Gut it out.

  He focused his entire universe down on the bobbing flashlight beam, its wavering shadows as they leaped and jerked on either side. His Holland & Holland might have been an ungainly bar of lead. The weight of the sling felt like it was sawing its way through his shoulder.

  And he’d only what? Crossed a couple of kilometers of forest?

  Panting, he kept forcing one foot ahead of the other, jaws clenched with determination. It was just walking, following in Talina’s footsteps. Didn’t matter that they were starting up, that the way was turning rocky.

  “Watch out for the chokeya vine,” Kylee called back. “I severed it just above the roots. It won’t latch onto you now, but you really don’t want to touch it or get any of the fluids on you.”

  Dek blinked, looked up into the flashlight glare to see Talina Perez, rifle extended to hold the deadly plant out of the way as it flipped and twisted in death.

  Climb. One foot, then the other. And for God’s sake, don’t stumble when you’re passing that damn stem.

  “How you doing, Dek?” Talina asked as he staggered his way up the trail.

  “Praying we have supper reservations at Three Spires,” he murmured on the way past.

  “What’s Three Spires?” Talina asked.

  Behind him he heard Aguila’s musical laughter.

  “It’s a plush and tony restaurant on Transluna,” Aguila explained to Perez as she ducked beneath the dying vine. “Not the kind of place anyone but a Taglioni would know.”

  Dek managed to gin up a bit of rage at the tone in her voice. Used it to power his flagging muscles. And, miracle of miracles, it got him to the top of the steep climb. Then, reaching the flat, he stepped to the side, bent double, and propped his hands on his knees as he sucked air into his hot and starved lungs.

  “How you doing?” To Dek’s surprise, the voice belonged to Aguila.

  “I’m thinking that being dead takes a whole lot less effort than this does.”

  Kalico dropped down to a crouch beside him, calling, “We need to take a break, people. On the basalt like this, we’re finally off the worst of the roots.”

  Dek gasped, lowered himself to the bare rock. Every muscle in his body was on fire. His joints screaming and gone to rubber.

  Talina’s voiced carried from where she had stopped in conversation with Kylee and Muldare. “We’re calling it, people. This is about as safe as we can get. Bedrock, sparse canopy. Kylee, Flute, and I will keep watch. Dek? You, Muldare, and Kalico get some sleep if you can. I know it’s rock, but it beats the living shit out of roots.”

  “And they know we’re both about to fold,” Kalico muttered. “God, I’m fucking exhausted.”

  “Me, too. Amazing what ten years in a starship will take out of you.”

  “Everything but the memory of Three Spires, I guess.”

  Between panting breaths, he told her, “It just came back to me. I remember now. That’s the first place I ever met you. You were there, on Miko’s arm. My God, dressed in that radiant blue gown. Same color as your eyes. You could have stepped straight from the spotlight at the Paris fashion show. This absolutely gorgeous woman, and so much more than Miko ever . . . Well, it doesn’t matter.”

  Beside him, Aguila shifted. “Surprised you remember anything from that night. Let alone what I was wearing. That was what, ten years ago? Eleven?”

  He tilted his head back as he gasped for air. Could see the stars between gaps in the trees. Felt so much freer to be out of the deep forest. A weight lifted off his chest.

  “More like thirteen. I remember. Right down to the words I said.” He made a tsking sound. “If I could go back, I’d punch that toilet-sucking silly little shit that I used to be clear into next week. Beat him to within a millimeter of his over-righteous life.”

  He glanced at her, saw her eyes like pits in the darkness. “I am so sorry for what I said to you.” He chuckled dryly. “Sorry for so many things I did back then.”

  Aguila reached out. Clapped a hand on his shoulder. “If we live through this, maybe we can talk.” A pause. “Assuming this humility jag isn’t just a passing phase. That or some twisted strategy affected to gain you some advantage.”

  “Is it that difficult to trust someone?”

  “Nope.” She stood. “I trust a lot of people. Many of them with my life. Just not a Taglioni.”

  And then she rose, staggered wearily over to where Talina Perez and Kylee were talking. The big quetzal behind them was barely visible in the faint light of the hand torch. Amazing how the thing could blend into any environment.

  She really was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

  Closing his eyes, he could remember every detail.

  Right down to the loathing she’d tried so hard to hide when he opened his clap-trapping mouth and . . .

  “Hell, Dek,” he told himself. “If I were her, I wouldn’t forgive you either.”

  63

  When Dan Wirth had been a kid, his snot-sucking excuse of a father had periodically locked Dan in closets—and once in a storage box where he’d had to lay for three days, hungry, thirsty, and wallowing in his own urine.

  This was worse.

  Dan huddled in a corner of the plastic shipping box, shivering and looking up at the distant stars. To his right, the stack of shipping containers rose like an impossible wall. Through the side of the toppled box, he could see across the ferngrass to the bush. The moon was waxing gibbous and hung low in the west. The night chime was different than the day’s and fit to drive him half mad.

  And there, not more than a meter from the box, he could see Windman’s head. The gruesome thing lay on its side facing Dan. As pale as Windman had been in life, his head was beginning to darken, the eyes having sunk dully into the skull. The worst part was the gaping mouth. Invertebrates had been crawling into it, apparently eating the tongue because they now crawled out through the severed neck as well.

  Not that Dan had ever suffered a pang of guilt, but he wished he could kick the loathsome thing out of sight. Just get it the hell away.

  The miracle was that he was still alive. Trapped inside a clear plastic box, in Capella’s direct light throughout the long day, without water. The suffering had been encompassing. Enough to make death seem a blessing. The entire time, he’d been terrified. Nothing, absolutely nothing he had ever seen compared with watching the empty ground rise, turn itself into a quetzal, and devour copilot Windman.

  Not even Dan’s nightmares—and he had plenty—could compare. The abuse he’d had to endure at his father’s hands? The degradation and shame of sucking his dad’s prick? Hearing the man groan in delight? The mental and physical abuse? All the shit he’d had to take? Didn’t hold so much as a feeble flicker of the horror of watching a man eaten alive.

  He could still hear Windman’s bones breaking as Whitey crushed him.

  What the fuck was that? To feel one’s bones snapping and splintering? It wasn’t just the pain, but the unbridled horror of being eaten alive.

  I hate this fucking planet.

  Worse, he couldn’t leave. The fart-sucking quetzals had him neatly trapped, and the shit-sucking bastards were keeping watch.

  So far, he thought he’d counted three. They’d been coming and going. Whitey was easy given his wounds. The second had been smaller, had scratched gouges in the plastic trying to get to Dan. How fucking bone-rattling was that? Hearing the grating of claws in plastic, feeling it through the box? The worst part was watching, seeing the teeth, the claws, knowing that if the plastic failed, that color-flashing horror was going to tear you out of your hiding place and rip you into pieces while it ate you.

  The third beast was bigger. Not
Whitey’s size, but close. It had tried for an hour or so to wiggle its claws into the crack of the door and spring it open. Then it had tried the air holes at the top. Actually managed to elongate a couple, but the thick plastic had held.

  Off and on through the long afternoon, one or another of the quetzals had appeared, checked his box, and gone back to whatever they’d been about since the siren had gone off.

  That had been no longer than fifteen minutes after Windman was eaten—just about the time Dan was realizing how much sweat a human body could make.

  He had been waiting. Longing. But no all clear had sounded.

  Port Authority was still on lockdown.

  Until the quetzal problem was solved, no one was coming to find him.

  I’m the richest and most powerful man on the planet.

  What kind of fucking solace was that? Unless something changed, he was going to die of thirst or hyperthermia in a plastic box.

  Or he could simply throw the door open and be eaten alive.

  He was considering that very thought.

  Wondered if the quetzals were even around, when movement caught his eye. Slinking low, one of the beasts appeared at the corner of the shipping containers, seemed to flow across the ground. Its hide, in a remarkable feat, mimicked the colors of the ground it crossed.

  The thing jammed its nose against the now-scarred plexiglass.

  Dan thought he knew this one. Didn’t have to see the mangled left front leg.

  Whitey.

  “I really hate this planet,” Dan rasped through his dry throat.

  As if it understood, Whitey chittered before turning. With a kick, the big quetzal knocked Dan’s box hard enough to launch it nearly a meter.

  Slammed around the inside, Dan groaned, took a breath.

  When he opened his eyes, the door had held. He was still safe. But, through the plastic, Windman’s decomposing head was now mere inches from Dan’s face.

  64

  Vartan blinked. His lids grated across his eyes, feeling like he had sand in them. He was laid out on his bunk in the dormitory. A fan was blowing cool air from the ceiling vent. Light reflected from the hallway. He was naked, a blanket covering his body.

  Clap-trapping hell, but he was thirsty.

  He smacked his lips. Pulled the blanket back and sat up.

  His head hurt, and he had to pee.

  As he staggered to his feet, every muscle in his body screamed. His joints might have been soldered, or at least rusted, given the way they bent when he moved.

  At the sink, he drank and drank. Hobbled to the lavatory and sighed with relief as he drained his water.

  Back at his bunk, he found his wrap, tied it around his waist.

  “You all right?” Marta asked as he walked wearily into the small lobby out front.

  She was seated by the door, staring out through one of the windows at the yard beyond. The soft glow of overhead lights illuminated the stark ground, reflected off old pieces of machinery, and finally surrendered to the night.

  “What the hell happened to me?”

  “You came stumbling in a little after noon. Saw Svetlana’s body and collapsed. Fodor, Ctein, and I carried you here. Sent word to the Messiah that you were wounded.”

  He remembered Svetlana’s broken body. Had hoped it had been a bad dream.

  Marta glanced at him, her hazel eyes lackluster. “What happened out there? Where’s the rest of your team?”

  He sank into one of the chairs, rubbed his eyes. “Dead. Eaten. Buried in roots. Mars and Hap? They just vanished.” A beat. “What about Petre and Tikal’s teams?”

  Her stare fixed on some infinity out in the darkness beyond. “They haven’t come back. Haven’t radioed.”

  “Nothing?”

  “There’s been gunfire off to the west. Then the airtruck reappeared. No telling if it was Shyanne coming back or someone else. It went down in the trees. Heard some more gunfire just before dark. Got to be the Supervisor’s party.”

  “The children?”

  She inclined her head toward the rear. “Got them all asleep in the back. I’m ‘on guard,’ whatever that means.”

  “I’ve got to get something to eat. See the Messiah.” He struggled to his feet, wondering when he’d ever felt this weak, this defeated.

  “Vart?” Marta looked up, an anxious glitter behind her eyes. “It’s all coming apart. Everything. The universe? Being chosen? The Prophets? It was all a lie. We’re dying. And we’re not coming back.”

  She ran the tips of her fingers along the spiral of scar tissue on her breast, following it to her nipple. “Nothing there, Vart. No soul to be suckled into a reborn life. Just . . . nothing.” She raised her eyes. “And do you know what that makes us?”

  “Maybe the Prophets will—”

  “Irdan’s dead. Callista might be, too. Couldn’t tell last time I was in there.”

  He nodded, asked, “What did you do with the rifle?”

  “Left it at the admin dome.”

  Vartan stepped to the door, looked back. Marta’s gaze was once again fixed on some infinity that lay beyond the window.

  He walked out into the night, aware of the perfumed air, of the feel of the night breeze. Donovan’s moon was hanging over the distant western horizon; its weak light illuminated humped treetops, cast shadows as the forest stretched into the distance.

  The growling hunger that chafed his belly, the pain in his abused muscles, the desolation in Marta’s eyes, it all left him empty. A sucked-out husk.

  To his absolute disgust, Svetlana’s broken body still lay off to the side of the admin dome door. For a moment, in the muted glow of the yard lights, he thought she moved. Looked closer, and realized her body was swarming with invertebrates.

  “For the love of God!” He bent down, got one of her wrists, and with his last reserves, started dragging her off to the . . .

  He hardly had an instant to react to the tickle of little feet as several of the creatures skittered up his fingers. Like fire, they began taking bites out of his skin.

  With a howl, he let go of Svetlana, manically flinging his hand back and forth to sling the little beasts off.

  Damn, but that hurt!

  Backing away, he stared impotently at Svetlana’s crumpled corpse. The yawning hollow opened wider inside him. Seemed to swallow his heart.

  Flashbacks of her laughter, that dancing joy in her eyes. He’d reveled in her clever wit, in the times they’d laid in bed, holding each other, talking about the dreams they’d shared. Svetlana had been a true believer. Really thought she was the mother of the future, that she was the vessel of eternal life. That through her, the dead were reborn.

  Sucking at the bites on his hand, Vartan peered at Svetlana’s shadowed corpse, watched the invertebrates as they scampered into holes chewed in her flesh.

  So much for the repository of the dead, for being the living grave. The dead were now being consumed by alien bugs. To be purified into insect shit.

  Did I ever really believe?

  Or did I just sign on to the lie to justify staying alive?

  Shyanne had never believed. She’d played the game and done it well enough to survive. He’d always known her participation—good enough to fool the rest of the Will, and the Messiah, too—was a sham.

  Was the fact that he’d never turned her in due to his own apostasy? Or because of what he owed her for having once been his wife? They’d loved each other back then, before the Harrowing and Cleansing. Before participating in abomination had broken that beautiful relationship.

  He turned his eyes to the heavens, star-matted and stunning as it was: a wealth of Milky Way glowing in patterns of light. Shyanne had been smart enough to get out.

  Or had she? Marta said the airtruck had come back to get the Supervisor.

  But it hadn’t left
.

  “Deal with it later.”

  He gave Svetlana’s remains a final, grieving, glance and opened the door to the admin dome.

  The lights hurt his eyes.

  Plodding wearily down to the cafeteria, he entered. Saw Batuhan sitting in the throne, eyes on Guan Shi’s emaciated body where it lay on the rear table.

  The Messiah didn’t look up as Vartan crossed the room, entered the kitchen to see Irdan’s body laid out on one of the stainless-steel counters. The Prophet’s left arm and leg had been stripped down to the bones. Not that much meat had been on them in the first place. Callista, also dead, rested just beyond, still untouched.

  Additionally, in the rear corner, the completely processed skeletons of three individuals were piled atop each other, the blood-smeared bones intertwined. Someone had seen to the First Chosen killed by the Supervisor.

  As if anything made sense in this madness.

  It’s a prion. A misshapen protein that causes dementia. Not divine revelation.

  He might have had all the sensitivity of wood as he picked up Petre’s old cleaver. Used it to chop through the top of Irdan’s skull. Heedless of the bone chips, he grabbed the man’s hair. The sound of the keen edge biting into bone sent shivers through him.

  But in the end, he yanked the skullcap loose. It parted from the brain with a sucking sound. Vartan considered the Prophet’s brain. Used the cleaver edge to slice it open.

  What should have been pale gray and white wasn’t right. Looked . . . what? Spotted? Stippled? Bits of off-colored . . . Didn’t matter. Fact was, he seen healthy brain often enough to know this was wrong.

  It’s a disease. Not the universe.

  “What do I believe?”

  Vartan grunted at the irony. Walked to the rear and used a skewer to fish boiled cabbage from one of the big pots. Back in Solar System he had never been a fan of cabbage. Cold and soggy as this was, he considered it some of the finest eating he’d ever enjoyed.

  Hunger—and ten years of ration along with the occasional stewed human—could do that to a person.