by Chris Turner
“I spare you this painful indignity,” he went on, “because you delivered me my amalgamator.” He reached over, gave Vanxus’s tank a loving caress, then flashed its victim an affectionate leer. “The Mentera used these tanks to siphon out the life energy of their victims. They had some fancy apparatus for it, hoses and pipes and circuitry and other gadgets beyond our current science. I haven’t figured them out yet, but I hope to soon, and use it to augment my own, above-normal strength.”
I stared at Mong as if he were an instrument of lunacy. “What sick fuck would even think of doing that?”
“You judge me, Rusco,” said Mong. “Remember, judgment is a dangerous thing.”
“Where’s Blest?” I growled at him. “You plug him in one of these tanks?”
“Blest is currently occupied, redeeming his sins. He raised firepower against me. For that he must suffer.”
I winced at the implications. So, Mong’s hints suggested that Blest was beyond saving.
“Move out,” he commanded.
Hadruk and two others motioned me away from the altar and we trudged down a windowless corridor located behind the altar. Guards prodded me from behind. The light dimmed. I could feel Hadruk’s rank breath on my neck.
I heard then a woman’s scream. A man’s hearty laugh followed and a heavy slap. I turned to see a flash of reddish-gold hair, a figure like Lady Volia’s suddenly pushed through a half-opened, double-door in carved teak.
Mong grinned. “Perhaps if you are well-behaved, Rusco, you may experience some of my Orpheum’s pleasures one day. ’Tis a novelty.”
Almost at the same time I saw a figure who looked like Blest hauled into another room. I could only guess that each victim would be taken to task in the most practical way. The Temple of Light… What a fucking joke! Temple of Pain. Fane of the Loony Tune.
“Perhaps you’ll want to rename your hallowed shrine to ‘Temple of the Deranged’,” I said.
“Deranged. Very good, Jet Rusco, perhaps that is one way of seeing it, but I hope you will be convinced otherwise.” He brandished a fist. “Come! The hour is late.” He beckoned with a sweep of arm, his voice resuming that cordial earnest mockery that I’d come to detest about Mong.
He drew me aside, his jaw working as if dissatisfied with my attitude toward one so great.
“You have potential, Rusco, but your sly sneaking and vindictive brooding erodes your sense of reality. You are like an old woman trying to get one up on everyone she thinks has slighted her. It’s unhealthy. It has made you gaunt and unlikeable, like an old crow cawing for the cheese it cannot have. Withdraw from the past and embrace the future.” He raised his hand in a righteous flourish. “’Tis a healthy, healing attitude. My program can help you on the path of your journey toward enlightenment.”
“Gee, Mong, would you do that for me? And I only wanted a nice ride away from a nuthouse, on a starship, at first available convenience.”
He tsked, shook his head with a screwball gleam in his eye. “Impossible, dear Rusco, I’m afraid you’re quite disillusioned into hoping for such a fantasy. Once a guest’s landed at Othwan, there is no going back.”
I swallowed, the thought chilling me, even more than a prolonged death at the hands of this psycho, a lunatic of lunatics.
“Let us test out the amalgamator. I’m sure it will be of interest to you.”
Chapter 17
Mong’s men transported the amalgo to the farthest room at the end of the hall and set it in a prominent position against the back wall. It looked like a new-fangled electric radiator. Didn’t seem to require any mechanical tweaking either; the flat facing plates continued to radiate their infernal green glow. The plates were wide enough to fit three men striding abreast, no more. None of the others spoke as Mong remained deathly silent for a time. He stared off into space like a Sphinx. “Ever am I searching for their lost worlds,” he intoned. “I can use this device to find them. Maybe acquire more samples and apparatuses that will help me resurrect their hallowed race.”
A sick feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. For what purpose and at what cost?
Mong nodded to Hadruk who withdrew a light oxygen mask from his side pack. Then he tossed it to me. “Put it on.”
Mong inclined his head to Hadruk. “Give me gauze.”
Hadruk handed him a roll. Friend Mong tore off a strip, spat on it and tossed it at me. “Look after that hand, Rusco.”
Grumbling foul words, I wrapped the stuff around my left claw. Hadruk accelerated the process by forcing the mask’s straps around the back of my head with no gentle hands.
“Hey, watch it,” I warned.
“Shut up,” he grunted.
“As for what lies on the other end of this warphole—” Mong shrugged, held up a palm. “It is a gift, I give you, Jet Rusco, to be first to venture to an unknown realm. The first to explore a new world, a place of vast potential, or perhaps terror and eerie surprise. A crap shoot. Perfect for a hustler like yourself.”
I gave a mocking salute while managing a sick grin. “I know, Mongo, why risk your own balls when some expendable stooge can risk theirs?”
“On the contrary, Mr. Rusco, Balt will accompany you on this important mission.”
“Good ole Balt? Really? Is he up to it?”
Balt stammered, licked his lips. “Sir, I’m hardly the best choice for the mission. Hadruk is much more qualified—”
“No arguments, Balt. I have thought the matter through. Are you ready?”
“I must prepare my war gear, lord—”
I put on a sour face and pushed forth. “I must freshen up and take a few things with me, like some Black Dog ale and a pint of regen—”
Mong shoved me through with a vicious snarl. I staggered between the space enclosed by the parallel plates and was gone in a second.
Harsh, strident sounds buzzed in my ears as if bees swarmed me from all directions. The eerie plates lit in full amber and an electrical surge passed through my body, hitting me square in the temple. I gave a soundless cry. A white light practically blinded me as I was sucked across gulfs, whole universes, unfathomable distances, through black holes and out the other ends.
I fell an incalculable distance then landed with a thud on a hard surface. I felt disassociated from my body as if I had been atomized. But somehow I was whole and very bewildered, staring out from googly eyes, not knowing where I was. Everything was dark here, with only the sound of the raspy air whistling through my mask. The air felt warmer than before, though edged with an acrid, dry tinge of decay. The mask only assimilated the alien air, processing the surrounding atmosphere as best as it could. My lungs pumped air, but my brain struggled to catch up with the impossible reality.
A tickle of electrical energy played at my back. Balt materialized behind me, like some amber ghost. His electrical signature jolted me forward, spiking me with a stronger current. I lurched to the laws of physics, sprawling on my hands and knees on some type of concrete floor. Balt’s form shimmered back to visibility, his atoms reassembled, and I saw that he wore a mask like mine. He kicked me aside, his weapon raised, trained to kill.
We crouched there like white-eyed zombies, breathing in the sepulchral darkness, waiting for some horror to come out at us. But it did not.
We’d left Mong’s temple far behind. We were in some new dimension. Behind us, the sister amalgo, companion to the one on Othwan, buzzed with a bee’s hum and shone a grim amber. We were in some medium-sized room with a low ceiling, carved out of pure rock—no, it was metal of some sort. I reached out to touch it and it gave back a hollow, tinny, reverberating sound when I knocked. Only the ethereal glow of parallel plates of the transporter gave us any illumination.
We edged our way to the room’s end, which was empty save for the amalgamator, perhaps fifty feet away. We passed through some U-shaped doorway with no visible door. I sensed we had moved into a vast space, like a cavern of giants, or some immeasurably large hangar. I looked down upon a frightening scene:
A vast pantheon of rectangular tanks standing upright, like old telephone booths out of Old Earth all assembled in a V-shape, or some deformed star shape. How many? The numbers were uncountable. Hundreds. Thousands? Some tanks were larger than others, and sported a dim green glow, perhaps large enough to hold some large lion or elephant or alien creature.
Balt prodded me along down the walkway that spanned the rim of the depot or hangar, whatever it was in the gloom. I discerned several aphid-shaped ships scattered amongst the masses of those tanks, much different from the Skug vessels, larger, bulkier, like praying mantises, with cruel prows and grotesque, chitinous flukes in their sides.
Christ, what was this place? Another Cyber Corp, some enormous crypt of the past?
Balt nudged me on. We wandered down a low ramp that gave access to the hangar below. I use that word loosely, for I approached the first row of tanks as a man would shamble in a sleepwalk. Ages of dust and grime coated the panes of thick glass. I wiped off a section and peered within. I saw only death. A human skeleton, stoppered, entombed, honeycombed like some primordial honeybee. The saliva in my mouth suddenly tasted dry and sour. Another victim was in no better state. A grinning skull, slumped at the bottom of a glass cage, some relic caught in time. The glass had cracked in several places, as with all of them, as if a foul liquid had drained from the glass sarcophagi ages ago.
A glow of green water radiated up ahead. Balt pushed me along with surly impatience, a hoarse rasp deep in his throat. Two neck-high tanks, stood side by side. Intact. We wiped the glass. I sprang back in horror, recoiling with a snarl on my lips. That tank contained the most repulsive creature I’d ever seen. Some jet black insect, as high as my shoulder, floating on its hind legs, suspended in some god-awful brine, light green like that back at Mong’s temple. The red eyes blinked back at me with feral intensity and a claw pincer lifted to touch the glass a few inches from where I stood. As in a trance, I raised a hand and my right finger mechanically touched the same spot that the insect had touched, suspended in that horrible brine beyond the glass. The insect’s lips parted and a bubble rose, as if to say something. Peekaboo. I see you.
No, this couldn’t be happening. Like some lunatic on a funny farm, I laughed at the mad absurdity of it. Balt licked his lips. “Pipe down. So, they do exist. They didn’t all die out.”
“Does what exist? What didn’t all die out? What the fuck are you talking about? What are these things?”
“They are the Mentera. The mutant locusts. Overlords of the galaxy.”
I stared again. The hint of wings, the faintest silver on the chitinous back, glinted back at me, as if long ago over the course of its evolution those dwarfed appendages had dwindled to stubs, depriving the thing of its power of flight. “Doesn’t look like that to me.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Rusco. Mong can tell you all about it.”
“Fuck Mong,” I sneered. “I’m sick of that crazy bastard and his airy hints. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Shut up.”
“We’ve done his scouting, god damn it. Dead humans, a bunch of tanks, and a couple of weird bugs—”
“I said, shut the fuck up!” He gripped his R6 with a white-clenched fist. I could see the sweat dripping down his bull neck. He was spooked too.
That dome far overhead, it allowed those mantis ships access to the universe. Sealed now. Perhaps that power grid, or control board, whatever the fuck controlled it at one time. I glanced at it again, to the side, with all its knobs and dials. Could it still work? If I could make a break for it, steal a ship—
Balt prodded me with his R6.
This was a graveyard, a mausoleum of death.
This depot once, was a vast factory of something, some repository of human specimens. I knew it, from what Mong had maundered on earlier about. But where in the hell was it? With no windows or portal to something for reference, it was impossible to gauge where in the cosmos we were. We could as easily be inside a small moon as on a space station, or in some madman’s dream. The green glow of the weird water of the few intact tanks was the only source of light.
I noticed a cable dangling from the stopper at the top of the insect’s tank. It hung to the floor, as if hinting of some feeding apparatus that Mong had described. To feed what—the Mentera? Or the trapped insect to feed something else? Why was one of their own kind imprisoned in the tank?
It was enough to make me retch.
I turned to back away and kept backing up, my entire being sickened by it all. I kept backpedaling, only to smell a more pungent odor of decay. I lifted a hand to shield my nose, nearly stumbled over a body, caught myself at the last instant.
I balked, did a double take, for in that withered face of the human figure, I thought to recognize a person of the past. I gasped. “That’s Mitch! I knew him. From way back on Brisis 9 when Marty and I had heisted the amalgo. Poor fuck must have starved here.”
“Yeah? Well, he’s maggot food now,” muttered Balt.
There, at his side, lay the crumpled black and white cap Mitch’d last worn. I remembered how he’d gripped one of those phasos and then poof, was gone, blasted into some forsaken dimension with no way to get back. The phaso ride he had taken back in Baer’s warehouse must have plopped him into this complex. Never occurred to him he could get back via the amalgamator in the other room. Then again, how could anyone have known that, or even how to use it?
This amalgo was tuned to the same destination as the phaso that Mitch’d touched. However long he’d clawed his fingers bloody trying to escape this place of lunacy, only the goblins of the past knew. Mitch had no inkling the magic U-shaped amalgamator in the other room could have transported him back.
I scanned the ships that lurked in the dim peripheries among the hundreds of tanks and skeletons. Mantis-like prows with big smooth, curving hulls like monsters of the deeps waiting to pounce. Perhaps one might offer a chance of escape? Yet the beetle-like turrets with their bug eyes sent shivers down my spine.
The place was dead. Not a flutter of movement. It had lain dormant for centuries. A part of me swayed, as if suddenly ready to fall head first from a high mountain. I bolted, trying to chase that image from my brain. Tanks swept by me like phantoms.
Balt gave a sharp yelp and caught up to me and ground me to a halt, pushing the R6 in my ribs. He prodded me back toward the two intact tanks. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going? Dimwit. Playing hide and seek on me in the dark? Another stupid move like that and I’ll plug you full of shells. Mong will be interested in these tanks.”
“He’ll likely want to play grabass with old Grover back there.”
“Shut up and move. Don’t waste my time. Mong should’ve blasted you from the start. Help me haul these two tanks back over to the transporter.”
I blinked as if he were speaking another language. “Your crazy master already has a couple of these.”
“So? Not with bugs in them. Move!” He struck my shoulder with his rifle, causing me to wince and gasp.
He kneed me toward the nearest tank, forcing me to start pushing it from behind. I leaned my shoulder into it, groaning in agony as the glass brushed against my mangled hand. The water inside the tank sloshed. I could hear the thud of hard chitin of the insect’s shell knocking against the side. It creeped the hell out of me. “Pure insanity what we’re doing here.”
“Quit your bellyaching.” Balt snapped me again with the end of his gun. “You’re such a baby. Mong can be a real hardass. Be thankful you have me. He had me lifting concrete blocks with a broken ulna.”
“Bully for you. Maybe you two can suck each other’s dicks as return favors.”
He sprang at me with a snarl of rage, pinning my arms down on the floor with his knees, shoving the barrel of the gun in my mouthpiece. “Only reason I don’t blow your fucking head off, Rusco, is Mong’d have my balls for breakfast. Consider this: ‘So, Balt, why’d you waste, Rusco?’
‘Because he was a dumb fuck.’
‘Well, I wanted him kept alive.’
‘Yeah, easier said than done—’
Bang—”
“So, consider yourself lucky. Now help me move this piece of shit out, and keep your mouth shut!”
He took an end and wiping my stretched lips, I helped him lug the bulky tank back the way we came.
We got it up the ramp and I pleaded for rest, hissing breath through my teeth through my awkward mask. I shook the pain out of my hand. Balt ignored me. We pulled it the rest of the way to the transporter room. I stepped back. I could see the trapped insect’s gimlet red eyes following us in something of rabid interest, as if after so many centuries it had something finally to entertain it. The thing was definitely alive. I could feel the vibrant force of its alien existence pulsing through the glass. Whether it breathed or shat like humans I could barely guess.
Balt prodded me back to fetch the other tank. Hard work. We crouched before the amalgo, gazing at our cargoes, Balt with satisfaction, me sweating and grunting with agony. We pushed the first of those eerie tanks between the parallel plates. The thing fit between the plates with only inches to spare. A flash of light almost blinded me, a sizzle, a flare, then the tank and alien vanished. The plates resumed their familiar dull, greenish glow.
Balt grunted and jostled my shoulder, a signal to help ease the other tank through. We did. It vanished with equal alacrity. Gone. Obviously such cargoes were meant to travel through these transporter highways. Balt pushed me through next. Vertigo hit me like a hurricane. Again that tickling sensation clutched my nerve ends and the dizzying freefall marked a dark journey through some wormhole. Not a bon voyage.
I came too, blinking in exhaustion back in the room on Othwan. Balt shoved me aside as before. It was as if I’d been gone only a second. Balt, the glib fuck, appeared to suffer no side effects. A half dozen eyes raked over us as if we were lab specimens. Hands snatched at the tanks, sliding them to the safety of the nearby wall. Mong, muttering in boyish excitement, gave a sharp exclamation. He pushed by me and embraced Balt in a bear hug. “You’re a hero! You’ll be awarded medals for this historic salvage, Balt. Those are live specimens—real Mentera!”
