Chapter 22: The Selok
The Bolon body sent quivers of excitement through the web that linked the selves. Annoyed, the Selok sent thoughts of calm, of quiet, to the far off host. But the Bolon body had been damaged during the nearly disastrous attempt to add an adult human to its meld. It should have listened to the tales of the elders. Infants were fine, embryos were prefect; but by adulthood, all potential host bodies merged with a species consciousness, one most weren’t even aware of possessing.
That consciousness had almost destroyed it. But it had been desperate for another host. It had taken so much time to establish itself among the rulers of Shadriss, to become close to the enhancer that the locals called the God Core. By then, it had possessed a mere three bodies, and one of those was less than halfway grown. Adding another adult, especially an adult with the skills of a pilot, had been too much temptation to resist.
Now, the damaged Bolon body had developed a personality of its own, a stunted, child-like personality that insisted on indulging all its emotions to the full. Today, it bathed in a mixture of hatred and sadistic satisfaction that interfered with the concentration the Selok needed at this crucial time. Irritated, it withdrew a portion of its attention from guiding the Prime body through the preliminary ceremony and looked out through the Bolon body’s eyes.
It was looking at a human child. A small, dirty, child dressed in rags, and speaking with a stammering haste that made it difficult to pick any meaning from the flow of words. When it was in control, these creatures would no longer need such clumsy means of communication. But whatever the boy was saying, it set flames of want and rage through the Bolon body’s mind.
". . . on a barge," the boy said. "Ugly Jak, the pretty woman, and the Terran with our Alpha."
"Not my Alpha," a second child said. This one might be female. "Big One now."
"He is not!"
It failed to see why the Bolon body should find this information so exciting. Unless . . . . The adult human that it had tried to assimilate called himself Jak now. Which meant the ‘pretty woman’ was the Hired Companion. But the Terran? The Selok knew of only one Terran who’d come to Shadriss in recent memory, and she was dead. Or so n’Tau had told the Bolon body. Had the Gambler lied? If so, this was indeed a situation worthy of its full attention, although not for the emotional reasons that ruled the blossoming personality in the Bolon body. Family Mobutu had been tracking its kind for generations, since the first of their trading ships had landed on one of the home worlds. It would be wise to do something with this information before the Terran became a problem.
Omniphage Invasion Page 22
