by Ian Watson
The hunchbacked, sallow-complexioned proprietor asked, in the common language of Sabulorb, ‘Seeking lodgings?’
Any assassin was already fluent in major dialects of Imperial Gothic as well as a number of human languages which had drifted far enough from their origins as to bear no resemblance to their roots. An assassin constantly added new languages to her repertoire. Meh’Lindi had done likewise, using a hypno-casque – a knowledge-inducer – on the cargo ship en route to the sandy world of the giant red sun. The electronic tattoo on her palm currently declared her to be the daughter of a planetary governor intent on a pilgrimage.
‘Preferring lowest room,’ she replied. ‘Being from cavern world, surface uninhabitable. Suffering from vertigo and sky-fear.’ She pulled the capacious hood even further forward, implying that this headgear was her private cave. She paid the proprietor a week in advance in Sabulorb shekels, exchanged at the spaceport against Imperial credit programmed into her tattoo, and added a shekel as a modest sweetener.
‘Being cellar rooms under your caravanserai?’ she asked. A reasonable question, given her explanation. She allowed a hint of vulnerability and pleading to colour her voice, though a harder overtone – of someone accustomed to be indulged and obeyed – warned that she was not to be taken advantage of.
‘Being, indeed... though not habitable.’ The hunchback’s palm seemed to itch. ‘Being even an old tunnel, perhaps, if this guest is preferring to visit the Oriens by risking sticky cobwebs, but avoiding open sky.’
‘Oh no,’ she demurred. ‘Being pilgrim, same as others. But thanking you for offering favour.’ She slipped him an extra half-shekel.
NEXT MORNING MEH’LINDI took the full-scale guided tour of the Oriens temple, alert for signs of covert genestealer infestation, such as any four-armed idol, however small, tucked away in however inconspicuous a niche.
A scrawny, long-nosed priest guided her party. In the Hall of the Holy Fingernails, robed guardian deacons sat hunched on tripod stools around a tall crystal jar of parings, nursing what seemed to be some kind of stun gun of local manufacture. While the guide enthused about the miracle of how the Emperor’s nails continued to grow, Meh’Lindi pretended that she was about to make an offering. She contrived to spill some half-shekels far and wide from her purse. Recovering her coins, she stooped to squint inside the hoods of the guards.
Two of those deacons certainly possessed the sharp teeth and glaring mesmeric eyes of hybrids who could hope to pass for true human, at least in shadow.
Massive candles burned, rendering the rune-mosaics of the walls waxy as the inside of a beehive. Bowls of smouldering incense flavoured the honey of the air. She thought of cellars under the caravanserai, and of the tunnel. Under this elderly temple there must be crypts and catacombs, and tunnels extending who knew how far beneath the ancient city...
‘Now conducting you to the Hall of Femurs,’ announced their guide.
Her journey through the warp to Sabulorb had been brief enough, but some years of local time would have passed since whichever spy of the Imperium had left to report his or her suspicions. The infestation by genestealers had plainly been under way for a number of generations. Genestealers would hide, seeking to maintain a facade of normality for as long as possible. Ultimately the evil brood would hope to control the city through their more presentable offspring, and even the planet, while still maintaining the pretence that life was normal. Long before that stage was reached, the Imperium ought to take utmost measures.
Meanwhile Tarik Ziz judged – cunningly, or rashly? – that there existed leeway for an experiment... Had he consulted with the supreme director of Callidus? Had the supreme director consulted with the grand master? And had the grand master consulted with... whom? The lord commander militant?
An instrument of Callidus should not dream of asking such questions. Nor did Meh’Lindi understand the hierarchy of the Imperium in its complex entirety. She was but an instrument.
Yet she was aware that the rapid and total destruction of genestealers, wherever found, was a military priority. ‘Please coming this way, pious pilgrims—’
In a crypt beneath the temple, the genestealer patriarch – the first of the evil aliens to pollute a victim – would roost on its throne, attended by its offspring in hybrid or quasi-human form. By the fourth generation, these would each be able to sire or bear new purestrain stealers. Had that stage yet been reached? The nominal leader of the brood, the charismatic, human-seeming magus, would undoubtedly have become high priest of the Oriens temple, which would seem to continue to worship the Emperor of all Mankind.
Humans who had been polluted by stealers were mesmerized. The human-seeming offspring heeded a brood-bond so that they loved their bestial cousins and uncles intensely. Would Meh’Lindi, in her altered body, possess enough chameleon empathy to fool that brood-bond?
She almost ignored the sacred, pitted thigh bones of the Marine poised in their reliquary. At that moment, beneath her feet perhaps lurked the fierce, bloated, armoured, cloven-footed patriarch...
Just as inside herself there lurked an example of its bastard progeny, as if it had kissed her deep with its spatulate, seed-planting tongue...
When presently she saw the partial skeleton of the supposed “daemon” in that copper cage, filigreed with hexes and a-crackle with blue sparks – energized so that no daemonic claimant could return – she wondered whether the hunched alien bones were actually those of a purestrain stealer, set up sardonically in that place of honour by the patriarch while the real relic languished elsewhere... The tour lasted for two hours, comprising lavishly decaying halls, sacrariums, and lesser shrines. She saw some evidence of on-going embellishment and repair, yet evidently wealth was not being squandered on the Imperial cult.
The donated shekels, and those gleaned from sale of relics, would be sustaining an ever-extending family of unhumans underground.
When Meh’Lindi and her party at last returned to the great courtyard, a liturgical pageant was about to begin. ‘Seeing the blessed Emperor defeating the daemon you were witnessing within!’ cried a herald.
Daemons and aliens were creatures of a very different stripe; and genestealers certainly fell into the latter category, of natural beings. The less known about the daemons of Chaos, the better! Ironically the herald – knowing no better – blared out something forbidden so as to advertise whatever flummery would be staged...
‘A shekel apiece, good pilgrims, so that we may be proceeding!’
A scrofulous dwarf scurried to and fro, collecting coins in a sawn-open skull fitted with silver handles, till he was satisfied with the height of the pile. The herald clapped his hands.
The illusion of a huge and ornate, though melancholy, throne room sprang into being all around, cast by hidden holographic projectors. The sandy ground of the courtyard now seemed to be tessellated marble. A horde of gorgeous, abject lords and ladies grovelled before a leering, green-hued, sag-bellied monster sprawling in a great, spike-backed throne. Mutant guards wearing obscene and blasphemous armour kept vigil, cradling bolt pistols and power axes. The “daemon” glowed luridly. Jagged threads of lightning flickered between its froggy hands. Meh’Lindi was wryly amused.
At that moment a parody of Space Marines with brutish, bulbous heads burst into the throne room. They fired explosive bolts at the guards, who fired back in turn. Caught up in the illusion, the audience of pilgrims screamed. Rapidly, as if matter met antimatter, all of the guards and all of the mock Space Marines died and vanished. So did the lords and ladies, leaving the stage clear...
A tall, aura-cloaked figure entered, wearing a flashing golden crown. A mask of wires and tubes hid the “Emperor’s” face. From his outstretched hands sprouted nails which were as long again as his fingers. He gestured challengingly at the daemon – or alien – lord. As Meh’Lindi stared, transfixed, these nails swelled into claws, and an extra set of hands, and arms, burst forth from the sides of the “Emperor’s” rib-cage.
Plainly this pageant was designed to confuse the beliefs of onlookers – already confused – so that they would identify the holy Emperor with the image of a genestealer... who would soon tear the fat green daemon-alien apart and claim that throne... ‘Fool!’ cried a voice. ‘This being the climax, not the prelude!’
Behind the goggling, gasping pilgrims a tall purple-cloaked man was rebuking the herald, whom he was hauling along by the scruff of the neck. Like a ventilator cowl or a radar dish, the newcomer’s high stiffened hood cupped a long, menacing, yet enchanting face. His cranium was shaved bald. Knobbly bumps above his brows were tattooed with butterflies unfurling their wings, as if beauteous thoughts were bursting forth from chrysalises there.
It was indeed a magus.
Meh’Lindi slipped closer to him.
‘Not noticing our error, exalted one,’ babbled the herald. ‘Being outside of the holorama. Apologizing. Soon rectifying. Recommencing the performance—’
As Meh’Lindi concentrated all her attention on the magus, the man seemed to sense her scrutiny and gazed towards her piercingly. His nostrils flared like a horse scenting fire on the wind.
His gaze was compelling... but did not compel her.
Shucking her hood further forward, the more to gloom her shadowed face, she withdrew, and walked through the illusory walls of the throne room. She strolled away across the gritty courtyard back towards the boulevard and the caravanserai. The bloated sun of dull blood was sinking.
Let her not be distracted by grief at what she must now do! Let her not betray her shrine – even if her shrine had, in a sense, betrayed her. She was an instrument. And now the shape of the tool must change.
THAT EVENING MEH’LINDI crept through a twisting, turning, cobwebbed tunnel, exerting her chameleon instinct. Best that she should be quite close to those whom she copied. The metamorphosis would proceed more speedily; and she by no means wished to linger over it.
The electrolumen in her hand feebly lit ancient, rune-carved stones matted with dusty spider-silk in which the bones of little lizards hung.
Presently she reached an appendix to a deserted crypt, in which a solitary nub of candle burned low. Ahead were branching catacombs lit by the occasional oil lamp, leading towards a brighter glow and the moan of a distant choir.
Her robe was loose, and would accommodate the changes, but she dropped it nonetheless. She did not wish to disguise her new form.
She injected polymorphine, and swiftly hid the tiny empty syringe in a crevice where no one should ever find it. She had left her assassin’s sash in the caravanserai. With her hands transformed into claws, she could hardly have manipulated garrottes or knives, let alone a miniature jokaero gun that was meant to slip on to a fingertip. She hoped the device she had rigged up in her room to re-inject her and restore her, would penetrate her toughened body. Maybe she would be obliged to inject through her eye.
A wave of agony coursed through her, and she blocked it.
She hunched over. Her body was molten. As she focused her attention, the implants began to express themselves. Bumps thrust up along her bending spine. Her jaw tore open, elongating into a toothy snout. Her eyes bulged. Her arms swelled, and the phalanges of her fingers became long thick claws. Her hips distorted. Now her very skin was hardening into a tough carapace, which she knew would be a livid blue, just as her cordy ligaments were a purple-red in hue.
Fairly soon, she was an extreme specimen of genestealer hybrid, whom no one could surely suspect to be anything else underneath the skin, underneath the carapace.
SHE EXERTED ALL of her empathy as she loped onward through the catacomb... and into a great subterranean chamber, pillared and vaulted, awash with torchlight, alive with brood kin, many of whom were brutish, others of whom might pass muster as human.
The hiss of many throats silenced the unhuman choir that was serenading, or communing with, the patriarch on its horned throne. Human-seeming guards directed weapons at her. Broodkin rushed towards her, snarling.
Oh, the hunchbacked steward of the caravanserai had dreamed of a pretty prank to play on this high-born pilgrim daughter from another world. He must have been well aware of what he would guide her into.
Hybrids, more human than herself, formed a menacing circle around Meh’Lindi.
On his throne, nostrils flaring, the patriarch bared his fangs. Through the midst of the deadly cordon, strode the magus, cloak swirling.
‘I...,’ Meh’Lindi hissed, ‘seeeeking sanctuary... with my kiiind.’
Issuing from a distorted larynx, over a twisted tongue, her voice was far from human. Yet the magus must be well accustomed to such voices.
‘Where coming from?’ he demanded, fixing Meh’Lindi with his mesmeric gaze.
‘Hiiiding on starship,’ she replied. ‘Imperials destroying my brood, all of my clan but meeee. Craving sanctuareee—’
‘How finding us here?’
‘Wrapping myself in robe... skulking by night... checking temples. Temples being where maybe finding my distant kin.’
The magus scrutinized Meh’Lindi searchingly. ‘You being first generation hybrid... Excellent stealer body, mostly...’ He locked his gaze with hers, and she felt... swayed; but was trained to resist ordinary mesmeric enchantments.
The magus chuckled. ‘Of course we are not compelling one another... We are only compelling the human cattle. Our own bond being one of mutual devotion. Of heeding the calls, which you cannot heed, being not of our brood.’ He turned. ‘As I am now heeding... our Master. Be coming with me.’
The patriarch was gesturing with a claw.
‘Escort her carefully, brothers and sisters,’ the magus told the guards with a radiant yet twisted smile.
And so Meh’Lindi approached the monster on the throne: a leering, fang-toothed, armoured hog of a grandsire alien. Its eyes glared at her from under ridged bony brows. One of its lower, humanoid hands, adorned with topaz and sapphire rings, contemplatively stroked a fierce claw-hand that rested on its knee. One of its hooves tapped the floor. Loaves of armour-bone jutted from its curved spine, and it rubbed these against the carved back of its throne grindingly, as if to dispel an itch. Its spatulate tongue stuck out, tasting.
Meh’Lindi bowed lower than her stoop dictated, thrusting from her mind any hint of assassin thoughts, soaking up and re-radiating as best she could the ambience of grotesque, evil worship.
‘Craving sanctuary, greatest father,’ she hissed.
This was the crucial moment.
The patriarch’s nostrils flared, sniffing the faintly oily odours of her spurious body. Its violet, vein-webbed eyes, at once odious and alluring, scrutinized her intently. Its gaze caressed her and pried intimately like some dulcet scalpel blade smeared with intoxicating, aphrodisiacal mucus. The grandaddy of evil clicked its claws together contemplatively. One of its hooves drummed the flagstone which was worn, at that spot, into a rut.
No, not evil... That was no way to be thinking of this fine patriarch!
Empathy was the key to impersonation.
Identification.
How Meh’Lindi’s yearned to flee from this den of monsters and demi-monsters! – though of course it was far too late to flee. Flee? Ha! While the very same monstrosity resided within herself? In such circumstances, fleeing made no sense whatever. For she was monstrous too.
So therefore she must perceive the patriarch as the incarnation of... Benevolence. Fatherliness. Wisdom. Maturity.
The armoured monster that confronted her personified love. A profound depth of love. Love which quite transcended the passions and affections of mundane men and women – whatever such sentiments might feel like to the possessors.
Meh’Lindi had certainly mimed such emotions in the past. With an assassin’s eye she had studied the victims of amorousness, lust, infatuation, and fondness, even if she herself had not been vulnerable...
This genestealer patriarch radiated such a powerful, protective, brooding love – of its true kin, and of itself, of th
e monster that it could not help but be: the perfect, passionately dedicated, self-sanctified monstrosity.
Yes, love, fierce, twisted love.
And utter, biological loyalty.
And a dream that possessed it, almost like some daemon: an inner vision of its mission.
The mission was to perpetuate its kind. Human beings seemed to manage this same feat almost incidentally and accidentally – all be it that the result was a thousand times a thousand human worlds, many pulsing to bursting point with the festering pus of the human species.
Genestealers were compelled to try harder. They couldn’t simply writhe in copulation with their own species and produce a litter of brats.
Genestealers would willingly – nay, compulsively – infiltrate any species. Human. Ork. It didn’t matter which. Eldar. To bring about, incidentally, the corruption and downfall of those species.
In a sense, a genestealer almost represented cosmic love. A love that knew no boundary of species. That heeded no distinction between male and female. Between human and abhuman, human and alien.
So this patriarch was love incarnate! Hideous, enslaving love. Almost...
Its mission also demanded hair-trigger, homicidal fury in defence of its own destiny.
And, at the same time, cunning restraint – intelligence.
Its intelligence knew naught of machines, of starships or bolt pistols, of dynamos or windmills. Tools? Our broodkin can use those things for us! Yet its mind kenned much of glands and feelings, of hormonal motives, of genetic and hypnotic dictates.
The patriarch’s rheumy, violet, magnetic eyes, set in that hideous magenta countenance, considered Meh’Lindi in her hybrid guise... Seeing... true kindred?
Or seeing through her? About to turn down its claw? Loving you, she thought. Revering you. Admiring you utmostly. In the same fashion as she revered Callidus. As she honoured her omega-dan director... (No! Not that one. Not Tarik Ziz!)
In the same way as she reverenced... the Emperor on Terra. This clever, loving patriarch was her Emperor here. Her great father-of-all.
