Chapter 29: Jak
The slab had fallen away to reveal a triangular hole. It was almost impossible to see anything inside in the dim, gray light, but it smelled dry and disused. Jak stretched one arm inside, trying to see how big the space might be. He couldn’t touch the back, but on either side of the opening, he felt smooth stone. He didn’t think this was a natural cave. Kamura was going to be doing some serious Recording. Jak pulled out and turned around so he could slide his right leg into the opening. His foot hit the floor only a short way down. Before he could check any further, Toko slithered past him.
"There’s plenty of room," the boy said. "Everybody fits."
Well, that’s what he’d wanted to know. And since Toko wasn’t screaming in agony, Jak was probably correct in his belief that the space was empty. He turned to Tessa and Kamura.
"Come on up. We can spend the day in here."
Tessa came up first, and Jak helped her over the edge of the opening. Kamura moved a little more slowly, but she made it up and inside on her own. She moved to the rear of the space to sit next to Toko. Tessa sat next to Jak who’d positioned himself near the opening. Moki didn’t like to share their territory, so there probably wasn’t another one nearby, but other dangers lived in the desert, and someone had better keep an eye out for them.
The sun rose slowly, the pinkish morning light revealing the inside of the cave. Only it wasn’t exactly a cave.
"More artifacts!" Kamura exclaimed. The walls were shining black stuff, covered with the worms’ strange glyphs. Chunks of it had fallen from the ceiling onto the floor. She started to crawl further toward the back of the space. Jak couldn’t see a far wall.
"Stay here," he said. "You don’t know what’s back there."
"But these could be important. I have to Record them."
Toko wrapped an arm around the girl’s waist and pulled her down beside him. "Jak is right. Stay here. Could be dangers down there."
Although she peered into the interior of what had to be a ruined building, she didn’t try to move away. But Jak thought that might be more because she wanted contact with Toko than because she believed there was any danger. The sky continued to lighten with the rising of the sun. The air was already uncomfortably warm. It was a good thing they’d found shelter. Jak stuffed the package of moki meat into the shadiest part of the room. Sitting back against the wall next to Tessa, he reached for her hand.
"You’re bleeding," Tessa said, noticing his arm.
Crap! She’d noticed the bite.
"Just a scratch from the rocks. It’s nothing." He refused to frighten her.
"It’s a moki bite, yes?" Toko said.
"No, it is not a moki bite. I’d be dead by now if it was."
But Tessa had that anxious look on her face again. She reached for his arm, and he twisted awkwardly to put it behind his back so she couldn’t see the bite.
Toko smiled his wicked smile and held out his own arm. "I have a moki bite, and I’m not dead."
Startled, Jak looked at the boy’s arm. He’d thought Toko lucky to avoid the teeth and claws while fending off the big lizard, but he’d been wrong. There was a bite, two in fact, and deep claw marks on his left arm. Or they should have been deep claw marks; already, they’d healed to red scars.
Shoving Tessa behind him, Jak rose and scrabbled for his knife. It was the strangeness! This boy had to be part of the thing that had attacked him, and Jak was going to kill him right now.
"Wait, Jak," Kamura said, "what are you doing? He’s no danger to you or any of us."
Kamura knew, Jak thought, his eyes sliding to the girl. The Terran had known all along about the strangeness. Why hadn’t she said anything? What game was she playing? Glaring at the still grinning boy, Jak thought that believing Toko was no danger to them was like believing that banderri made nice pets. But the boy didn’t seem to feel exactly like the creature that had tried to eat his soul.
"I can feel the other one," Toko told him, as he slouched bonelessly against the curved black wall, "and I can feel you, not-so-ugly Jak. The thing in you is stronger now, but you’re separate, not part of the other, yes? And you can feel me."
Earlier, he’d been too busy fighting the moki and then filling his belly to notice much of anything else. But Jak realized he could feel Toko the way he felt Bolon, as a sense of presence, an impression of the mind inside the body. This was new. The strangeness in him was growing stronger every day. But the former mobbie’s mind felt fully human, crafty, twisty, and ruthless, but all human. There was none of the alien difference that he sensed in Bolon.
"Yeah," Jak admitted reluctantly, "I can feel your mind, and it’s creepy as hell. I don’t want to, but I can."
He sat back down on a big chunk of worm crap, and Tessa settled beside him, her blue eyes enormous with fear for Jak.
"It’s a type of sentient bacteria," Kamura said.
"Bacteria, yeah," Jak said, "a phage." That’s what Bolon had meant.
Kamura looked surprised that he knew the word. Did she think he was an idiot? Of course, she did.
"My Family calls it the Selok omniphage. The hereditary rulers of Shadriss carry a dormant form," she glanced at Toko, "a mostly dormant form of the bacteria in their blood. Apparently, just as you do."
So, the phage in him was dormant. It could get worse?
"But you won’t rule Shadriss, yes?"
"Rule Shadriss? No way! Wouldn’t have it as a gift."
"Good, because it’s mine."
"Yours?" Tessa questioned.
She had both hands tight around Jak’s right arm, above the moki bite, as if she would stop the flow of the poison. Too late for that. He’d seen hunters die of moki poison before. It happened fast.
Wait a minute! Belatedly, his brain caught up with what Kamura and Toko had said. The hereditary rulers carried the phage in their blood. Toko carried the phage. And he thought Shadriss was his? Toko thought that he was going to be the new Overlord?
Toko sneered, "You look like a fool with your mouth open, Jak no-clan."
"There’s no way you’re the next ruler of this dirt ball."
"He is the Prime," Kamura disagreed.
Tessa sputtered, "The Prime is in Tekena. You’ve been telling us that yourself since we first had the misfortune to meet you!"
"Toko has the phage! And he has the connector to the God Core. It’s made of the black secretions, and it’s on the back of his neck where the priests of Nish installed it. Toko is the real Luan n’Chall."
"If Toko is Luan n’Chall," Tessa mocked, "Jak must be his brother, Tain."
"Mice is Tain," Toko corrected, "but he doesn’t remember it."
"Sure," Jak said.
"I told you, Mice was just a baby when our nurse took us away. He only knows the pack. Mice is all mobbie. He never got to be Tain n’Chall."
"Toko is the Prime," Kamura insisted. "Look for yourself."
How could a mobbie fake the Prime’s connector to the God Core? Even in his short time on Shadriss, Jak had heard plenty of stories about the Prime—and the connector. The tale was that the first Overlord had made, or maybe found, the God Core some five hundred years after the founding of the colony on Shadriss. So, maybe there was something to the tales about her. The Overlords had been undisputed rulers since the days of Lingyang n’Chall, hundreds of years longer than any other dynasty. Jak had to wonder whether the first of the n’Chall line had been attacked by something similar to the creature that had tried to eat him. Maybe Lingyang n’Chall had been able to retain enough knowledge from that encounter to use the alien technology.
Jak sighed. This was too complicated for him. He could barely comprehend a mobbie Prime, and a mobbie Overlord was beyond all imagining. He eyed the remaining two reeds of water as the others continued their pointless argument. Maybe they’d all be better for a drink of water. Jak pretended to drink, just as he’d done sinc
e they left the river, and then passed the reeds to Tessa. She took a drink, and then looked at the mobbie. Tessa shrugged and handed one reed across the boy to Kamura.
"Uncle tried to kill me." It was plain that even Toko himself considered that a sensible action. "But I didn’t die. Now, I’m going back, yes? And he won’t like that. I’ll make sure he won’t like that."
"If you’re the Prime," Jak said, "then ‘Uncle’ is . . . ."
"The Regent Graff n’Chall," Kamura finished.
"So, that’s why he wanted to kill you? So you wouldn’t spot the ringer and warn Family Mobutu?"
"It’s worse than that," she said. "I suspect that Graff n’Chall is a primary Selok omniphage host."
"What does that mean?" Jak asked. "What does one of these Selok things want with Shadriss? And it sure doesn’t sound as if it likes Toko."
"Uncle likes me," Toko said. His free hand caressed the hilt of the knife tucked into his ragged, knee-length pants. His other arm was still wrapped firmly around Kamura’s waist. "He likes me dead. He likes all my family dead. He married my aunt before I was born, and he’s been killing n’Challs since then. Now, only me and Mice are left. And maybe just me."
"Jak, it wants the God Core," Kamura said. "The previous Selok host bodies on this world were the creatures you call worms. My Family has been able to decipher many of their glyphs, and we’ve learned that the device called the God Core is actually an enhancer. On its own, a Selok can control from three to six bodies, depending on its strength. With the device, a primary omniphage theoretically could control an entire world."
"It wants to take over everyone on Shadriss?" Tessa asked.
It couldn’t do that, Jak thought. But he had better sense than to say it aloud. The thing that had tried to eat him had been severely injured in the attempt. Multiply that by the million or so adults living on Shadriss, and it was disaster for the Selok.
"Not everyone," Kamura told Tessa. "It has trouble with adult minds."
Sure does, Jak thought.
"But it has no problem with infants and, embryos are perfect. With the God Core, it could take over the body of every newborn on Shadriss."
"So, what’s it waiting for?" Jak asked, his lip curling in disgust. The thing ate babies. Still, he wanted to get away from the subject of the Selok taking over adult minds.
"Uncle has no connector," Toko answered. "Can’t Join with the God Core without a connector."
"That’s true," Kamura said. "We believe the Selok’s adult host bodies have no connector. And it’s impossible to implant such a device in an adult human." She glanced at Toko, as if asking his permission to reveal more information. When he didn’t stop her, she went on, "Toko thinks there are two adult host bodies." Jak knew there were. "Both the adults are too old to have a connector implanted, but it does have one much younger host—the one it’s using in place of Toko, I mean Luan n’Chall."
"Toko is good. You can call me that," the boy told her.
"And it was able to have a connector implanted in that host."
"How?" Jak asked. "I mean, come on, even priests of Nish have got to notice that they already did it once."
"Yes, how?" Tessa asked.
"Uncle paid them," Toko said. "Or killed a few. Probably both."
"That would be enough?" Jak had never had a high opinion of priests of any sort, but surely somebody would have complained.
"Yes," Toko asserted. "Otherwise, there is no n’Chall Prime. Chaos. Revolution. No more government credits for the temple. So, they make a new Prime. It’s another one of their ceremonies. Big procession. Go to the temple. Get drowned. Get a connector. Only this time, they skip the procession, yes?"
"Get drowned?" Tessa exclaimed.
"In the n’Chall pool. Just like the first Overlord," Toko said.
Kamura explained, "We think there’s a weakened form of the omniphage bacteria in the pool inside the temple of Nish. If the phage can revive the child, he or she becomes the Prime. Then, when the old Overlord dies, or when the child reaches the age of fifteen, the Prime is Joined to the God Core. But the phage in Graff n’Chall and the false Prime is the same. So when the false Prime is Joined, the Regent becomes the Overlord of Shadriss."
"And this God Core does what?" Tessa asked.
Toko shrugged. "Who cares? If Join, then I’m Overlord, and Uncle feeds the banderri."
"If Toko doesn’t reach Tekena in time for the ceremony of Joining, the Selok will become Overlord of Shadriss."
"Not going to happen," Toko asserted. "Get me to the God Core, Big Jak, and I will be Overlord."
But Tessa exclaimed, "That wasn’t the deal! We let you get on the barge with us. That was all we agreed to. And as for you," she said looking over to Kamura, "we agreed to get your well bred ass to Tekena, nothing more."
"But we need your help," Kamura protested.
"Don’t be ridiculous," Tessa told her. "You’d need an army to get that mobbie boy inside the Black Palace. That’s even assuming that any of your silly story is true."
"You can sense the phage, Jak," Kamura insisted. Her large, dark eyes focused on him, willing him to believe. "And he has the connector. Toko, show him."
Shrugging, Toko leaned forward. Jak pushed aside the boy’s hair and looked at the back of his neck. There, so out of place against brown skin and smooth muscle, was the gleaming black of the worms’ work.
"Tessa," he whispered, "I think it’s real."
Omniphage Invasion Page 29
