“But Celestro’s not dead yet! That god-man said it would take six months.”
“My former owner is legally dead,” the artilect explained. “Once the Eternalists registered his initiation into the borxha cleansing, he was deemed officially expired by the Quinary.”
“Ship,” asked Johrun, “what does Taryn inherit beside yourself?”
“All other appurtenances, chattels, funds, and tangible properties belonging to Celestro.”
“And what is the monetary figure in Celestro’s personal accounts?”
“Ten million, thirty-three thousand, and sixty-five chains.”
Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, Taryn could find no words. Johrun could not resist teasing her.
“Captain Endelwode, I believe that thirty thousand of those chains is the amount Lutramella and I paid for the use of this ship. Seeing as how we received prejudicial treatment that endangered our wellbeing, I would like to ask the new owner for a refund.”
Taryn burst into tears that soon segued to wild laughter. She jumped up, threw her arms about Johrun, and waltzed him crazily around the cabin. Then they were kissing. Then they were tumbled into bed.
With a serious look, Johrun paused in disrobing himself and the woman. “I would not want you to think I was utterly mercenary in my ardor.”
“Oh, you damn fool! The money came from Drowne’s capture. It’s as much yours as mine!”
“Not so. I—”
Taryn stopped his silly prattle with more kisses.
Lutramella, released, returned to the ship unannounced on the evening of the third day, before they could even go to meet her. The fur on her regrown leg showed a juvenile texture and color. But other than that, she manifested no repercussions, no limp or obvious fragility.
Johrun squeezed the lean-bodied chimera so tight she had to finally wriggle out his embrace. Then Taryn followed suit. When she had squirmed free again, Lutramella said, “What fine friends, to let me walk back nearly half a kilometer!”
“We wanted you to get into shape for some serious swimming.”
“What do you mean?”
Johrun explained the sudden turn in Taryn’s fortune—”Our fortune,” she insisted—and their immediate plans.
“We have in mind to use some of the money to restore her village of Vevaliah and its sister communities that were decimated by the palm tree plague. We’ve already contacted the Pollys, and they have a line of fast-growth, disease-resistant trees for sale that will be just perfect. The toddy-tapper economy will be up and running again. And we have the Brickers ready to rebuild decayed housing stock and new units too. But we’ll have to stay on Anilda for a time to supervise everything.”
Lutramella said, “This is all more wonderful than a fairy tale. I’m so happy. But Joh, I must ask one thing. Have you given up your hopes of regaining Verano?”
Johrun paused before answering, making an internal survey of his deepest feelings. “Yes—yes, I think I have. Once Drowne died, our last avenue to reestablish our rights to the planet reached a dead end. I think about our old home often, but more with melancholy pleasure than real sorrow. After all, without my family and the Soldeveres alive to share Verano, what does the world hold for me?”
“And what of Minka?”
Taryn averted her gaze, as if not to influence Johrun’s response.
Hearing the name of his former beloved did not fire quite as sharp a flaming arrow into his guts as he had anticipated. “I could try to win her back, I suppose. Even without the planet as my bridal price. But why? She expressed no interest in sharing my life of trials. Has she sought to contact me in all these months? The Indranet works in both directions, you know. No, I can’t pretend my feelings for her are gone. But neither are they so intense as they were. It’s probably better for both of us not to meet again.”
Taryn looked up at Johrun, reached out, and squeezed his hand.
Johrun found he had something to ask Lutramella.
“Tell me, Lu, why did you choose to hasten the end of Drowne’s life as you did?”
“I felt it was a more merciful fate than what the Church intended. He ended up here only due to our intervention. And he was doomed from the instant we landed here. There was no way, once the Eternalists got their hands on him, that we could bring his testimony to Bodenshire. So I removed him from the game board. And I knew that by doing so, I would free us from Celestro’s grip.”
“How so?”
“While you were maundering on and on with Beadle Egmont’s whiney advice, I was studying the laws of borxha as promulgated by the Church. So I knew that once Drowne died, Celestro would inherit his sins, and be removed from interfering with us. But I had no idea that all his money would go to Taryn. If I had, I would have secured a finder’s fee!”
Taryn hugged the splice again and said, “A third of it is yours, Lu.”
“Ridiculous! Who ever heard of a rich splice? Although I might borrow a little for some rejuve treatments. I can’t go through life with one limb young and the rest of me old!”
The authorities on Anilda in the town of Remy’s Post were thrilled when they learned of the private rebuilding initiative that Taryn intended to launch, especially since it meant that the makeshift and overburdened camps full of seaside refugees could soon be dispersed. And within half a year the camps were emptied, with the returned villagers living easily on Taryn’s dole until the rapidly growing trees and the restocked fisheries reached maturity.
Johrun took a long hearty slug from his Citrine Drizzle. He saw Lutramella playing on the beach with the gaggle of children that always surrounded her. He heard Taryn singing in the house as she prepared their noonday meal. Life was good.
Johrun stepped off the veranda to stretch his legs before eating. Motion in the sky snagged his vision.
A one-man braneship was settling down on the verdant open lawn. Johrun strode over with idle curiosity. He pinged the craft with his vambrace.
It was The Wine of Astonishment.
The ramp extruded. Down it boldly tromped Quinary Invigilator Oz Queloz, dead man come alive once again.
“Vir Corvivios, all your attention, please! The matter of Verano’s disputed ownership is newly to hand!”
In the parlor of their Anilidan house, Johrun watched for the third time the shaped-light recording which Queloz displayed from his vambrace. And at last the accompanying speech from the Invigilator began to penetrate Johrun’s shock and make some sense. The comforting presence of Taryn and Lutramella by his side aided his gradual acceptance of the unsettling information.
“Is the universe not full of impossible wonders?” Queloz said. “To think of a species able to reconfigure common memory crystals in realtime on a quantum level, and all while embodied in a human host. It gives one pause. Already the boffins among the Smalls are rethinking entire categories of knowledge. I do blame the Quinary’s laissez-faire policies for allowing such dangerous ignorance to persist as long as it did, however. No one save the sartors of the inquestorial meshes really understood the powers of these creatures. If we were a more proactive polity, anything like a real old-fashioned government, we would establish galaxy-wide researches into all the odd corners of every planet. But as things stand, we are content merely to hawk our wares, soothe the marketplace, and tally our profits, until a crisis strikes.”
Queloz’s words were perhaps meant to provide some emotional distance from the scene that Johrun was watching. The video had been recorded with orbital cameras that could not be spoofed like the ground-level ones had been. Consequently, the angle of viewing was aslant. But the extreme high-resolution still allowed for positive identification of everyone involved.
“So here we are on Irion,” continued Queloz, “at the famous Glass Grotto, which the Blue Doyens had wisely placed off-limits due to the phagoplasm plague. Now here come your irreverent bride and her friends.”
Johrun watched as the daytrippers Minka, Anders Braulio, Trina Mirid, Viana Salp, Braheem Porter, and Ox Nixon
traipsed capriciously from stone to stone above the pellucid waters. Suddenly, whiplike tendrils shot out of the Grotto and snared the foolish students. The unbreakable attachment of the tendrils allowed each amorphous phagoplasm creature to haul up its bulk and infiltrate the orifices of the victims. Like inhaled strings the parasites vanished up the noses, down the gullets and into the ears.
Johrun was reminded of his own experience under the inquestorial meshes.
The subjugated humans flopped down, half on stones, half in the water. They were quiescent for a time, then arose, brushed themselves off, and departed as if nothing had happened.
“The phagoplasm does not eradicate the consciousness or the personality of the victim. We are unsure if the host even knows he or she is possessed. Rather, the internal rider disinhibits the host, and counsels madcap adventures and irresponsible actions, all in the pursuit of an experiential richness which, being essentially a kind of sapient nudibranch or medusozoa, the phagoplasms cannot themselves otherwise obtain. And the urges from the riders grow more explicit and perverse over time. Experts are uncertain whether a host can be made to perform acts contrary to their innate ethos or not, but recorded incidents of such possessions often involve affronts ranging from misdemeanors to the highest crimes. And this case, I am sorry to say, involves the latter.”
The next recording from an orbital camera showed a very familiar scene: the landing field at Danger Acres, the ship Against the Whelm, and the secret visit in the night by strangelet expert Anders Braulio to sabotage the ship’s engines.
Queloz ceased the show. “The cameras onboard your parents’ doomed ship showed nothing amiss, as we know. But only because of the quantum tampering.”
Johrun felt his eyes begin to flood, and his breath to catch at the back of his throat. “Then their deaths are to be laid at Minka’s feet.”
“Not so, Vir Corvivios! Established legal precedents absolve the victims of phagoplasm infection of all crimes committed while being ridden. It is the same as invoking mental illness as a defense. Minka Soldevere and her friends were not compos mentis in the eyes of the law. However, they can and will be prosecuted for trespassing at the Glass Grotto and opening themselves up to infection. I believe the sentence for that is ten years of virtual incarceration.”
“The horror of this is beyond belief. And yet you tell me there’s more . . .”
“I fear so. You see, Minka and her associates are also the Redhook Combine. There are no other claimants to your planet. That was a deliberate mirage. We were able to obtain an injunction to get past the lawsuit’s privacy strictures, once we knew of her contamination. Her claim to the planet would take hold only when she emerged as the last family member alive. And after killing all the rest of your clan, she needed only proof of your death. Those assaults against you on Verano—her doing. And then she had great hopes for you never returning from confronting Honko Drowne, your obvious recourse once you failed on Bodenshire.”
“But why did she want to steal Verano? She would inherit it anyway!”
“She—or the phagoplasms—wanted to turn your summer world into a kind of refuge for their species, where they could conduct any and all outrageous behaviors. A wild frontier world of licentiousness and hedonism, beyond even such regulated places of carnal indulgence as New Thelema. She knew neither you nor your elders would ever consent to such a development. So she had to rid herself of you all.”
Johrun heaved a mighty sigh that seemed to emerge from a vast hollow where all his organs had been, as if he too had been cored of meaning. “Where are Minka and her crew now?”
“Back on Verano, just awaiting their victory. They know nothing of your survival and current estate. You made no great show of your good fortune, and have sequestered yourselves on this backwater world. Please excuse my candor regarding your charming but trivial planet, Mir Endelwode! The infected sextet have established themselves at your family ranch, where Steward of the Magenta Distinction Fang-Blenny never ventures. He relies on Indranet reports, which have all been spoofed. He shall certainly receive an upbraiding for this, have no fear, perhaps being downgraded to Puce Distinction! Having discovered all this, I am tasked with nullifying the ridden vandals and bringing them to court. We have an effective technic for dispossessing the phagoplasms by injection of an antagonistic agent. I thought perhaps that you might derive some satisfaction and closure by assisting me.”
Johrun stood up as if laboring under the gravity of a much larger planet. “Taryn, Lu—I have to go. You understand, don’t you?”
“I’ll be here when you return, Joh,” said Taryn.
“And I as well,” said Lu.
The one-man death-and-revival ship of Oz Queloz was left behind on Anilda as unsuitable, and they used the Mummer’s Grin. Queloz maintained an elated air during the short hop from Anilda to Verano. “So, this is what normal space travel feels like! Luxurious and almost sybaritic! I might have to resign my post after this, and take up gallivanting for sheer pleasure.”
Johrun knew that the man was merely trying to distract him from the grim revelations the Invigilator had delivered, and from the task ahead. He was grateful for the courtesy, though he could not fully participate in the sham.
This latest attempted theft of Verano, involving the death of his and Minka’s families— Was it really all down to an irresponsible foray into readily avoidable danger by his flibbertigibbet bride? How could he live with this callous irony, this waste, this anger, this grief? How could Minka?
When their ship entered Verano’s atmosphere, Johrun imagined he could feel any residual Veranonal nanomites, the ones not overlain by Cupuni’s contributions, stirring to life within him, eager to be home. The ultra-familiar landscape displayed as the ship descended seemed like imagery out of some intimate dream. The world he had yearned to return to, the world he had yearned to replace in his back pocket, seemed now like a realm out of some old legend encountered as a child.
Queloz came in low, from over the horizon, and put the ship down behind a butte, out of sight of the ranch. Johrun and the Invigilator trekked by foot for an hour. The unique smells and violet radiance of Verano infused Johrun with hard-edged nostalgia.
At the perimeter of the household, Queloz whispered, “We will track them down one by one by vambrace. I have the ability to ping covertly without alerting them. Then we must function as a team. You distract, and I pounce and deliver the antidote. You understand?”
Johrun nodded. “Let’s go.”
Luckily the six perpetrators were not in each other’s company. Perhaps each phagoplasm rider preferred to derive its fun jealously by itself.
Braheem Porter was found in a herple nursery, crushing spratlings with a hammer. Johrun snuck up behind the preoccupied fellow and tapped him on the shoulder. As soon as the man twirled around, Queloz was on him with the injectable.
Porter collapsed, unconscious, and slimy foulness poured from his orifices, leaving the temporarily insensate victim on the road to recovery. Queloz deliquesced the parasite instantly.
Trina and Viana were found in separate rooms of the splice quarters, having their erotic way with the subservient workers. They too quickly disgorged their riders, and were left where they lay, insensible for a while.
Ox Nixon occupied the kitchen. He had gorged himself with at least ten kilos of herple meat and could barely rise up from the table. In an instant he too was saved from his internal guest.
Anders Braulio saw Johrun approaching when he looked up from pulling the entrails from a dead splice splayed out on the lawn. Johrun recognized the faithful Arbona, one of the boss chimerae left in charge of the ranch on the eve of the wedding. A red rage filled Johrun’s mind and he charged at Braulio, who smiled and stepped forward.
They grappled furiously, battering at each other. Braulio’s greater strength, weight, and reach were rendered less effective by a kind of awkward sluggishness, as if the man had surrendered too much control to the less-than-capable phagoplasm inside hi
m. Still, the battle was hard fought. The larger man seemed on the verge of gaining dominance, and Johrun redoubled his assault. Finally, on the edge of surrender himself, trying for one last decisive punch, Johrun laid Braulio flat with an uppercut to what must have been a glass jaw of which the phagoplasm was unaware. With heaving breath and with sweat and blood pouring into his eyes, Johrun saw Queloz standing idly by and watching with a grin.
“I fancied this was a task you might wish to accomplish on your own,” said Queloz. “Although I did have your back.”
“Yes, yes . . . I thank you.”
Queloz made Braulio safe from his parasite, and then they headed for the last of the invaders.
Minka had taken up residence in Johrun’s own bedroom, which was a shambles. Empty liquor bottles of every variety carpeted the floor. His childhood lover moaned and writhed on the bed in some kind of delirium tremens. She stank of booze and sweat. Her loveliness was fled.
There was no need for distraction with such an opponent, and so Queloz simply administered the antagonist dosage, and Minka was freed of her alien alter ego.
“I go now to collect the others and confine them onboard the ship. You may stay here a while if you wish. Do not let her beguile you if she awakens.”
Johrun nodded. “Resistance will be easy.”
He sat by Minka for some time, until she came half alert.
“Oh, Joh, is that you? How—? I mean, where—? I feel—I feel as if some long nightmare is just ending.”
Johrun stroked her greasy hair and contemplated all the childhood detritus of his past life. “For me, yes, it’s finally over. But for you, dear Minka, I am not sure it will ever end.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Di Filippo sold his first story at the tender age of twenty-three. Since then, he’s sold over 200 more, afterwards collected, along with his many novels, into nearly fifty books. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, in the shadow of H. P. Lovecraft, with his partner, Deborah Newton, and a cocker spaniel named Moxie. He hopes to explore the worlds of the Quinary in more detail in future novels.
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