by S. L. Viehl
I had no time for mysterious conversations with alien women who didn’t exist, and who might or might not be my machine-mother. I needed to return to Vtaga, and find a way out of the strong-hold and back to the city. “How do I leave this place?”
“When I’m done talking to you, you’ll regain consciousness, spit up the dust you’ve inhaled—that’s going to be nasty, by the way—show the mad scientist that you’re not suicidal, and convince him to let you go.” She rolled her eyes. “Which is pretty much your job description whatever mess you’re in, honey.”
“He tortured Cherijo, and claims she destroyed his head,” I informed her. “I do not think he is going to release me. Not when he could harm me again. Help me to escape him.”
“Jesus, you’ve completely lost your backbone, too.” She seemed disgusted. “Is that what that iceball was? The Planet of Spineless People?”
“Akkabarr was a slaver world.” Her irreverence became more annoying by the moment. “As we speak, people are dying. I am needed elsewhere. Help me.”
“People are always dying. Actually, it’s one of the few things they do very well. Right up there with breeding and killing.” She yawned and stretched out her arms before rising to stand, and then tilted her head and looked past me at nothing. “Wait, something interesting is developing out there. We might have a backup plan. Those big blueberry people certainly do get attached to you.”
“The Jorenians?”
“Never mind; we have more important things to discuss. I haven’t exactly explained myself and your mind is accepting the physical memory of me but nothing else. So, here’s title deal.” She squared her shoulders. “We’ll call me an alien life-form, never mind which kind. I’m dead and I will not be coming back in an altered or more evolved form.”
“How terrible for you.” I had to force the words out, but I needed her.
“Don’t pretend you’re sorry for me. You don’t even know me.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Your dad could not have engineered you without my assistance. I meddled; you were born. You were created by him to be the perfect physician, and although you’re a lot more I still don’t have a problem with that.”
“I am so glad.” No, I wasn’t. “Can we leave here now?”
“Pay attention.” She tapped the side of my scalp where the old wound had been. “There is one very tenuous connection left, and that’s what is letting me speak to you and pass some memories to you now. That and a little of the really ugly guy’s freaky dust, which is acting like a booster.”
“He said it was powdered bone.” If SrrokVar was correct about the properties of the powder, then my former self had been afraid of Maggie. More afraid of her than anything else. But why?
“This is the genuine, scary, fucked-up part of the whole situation,” she was saying. “Somehow, someway, that tin-headed psychopath managed to get his claws on some Odnallak bones. That’s the reason you’ve got to shut him down. They can’t leave this world. They have to be destroyed here and now.”
“I am locked up and evidently unconscious,” I reminded her. My head hurt, and I could feel a stream of images and sounds pouring into it. “I have no weapons, and no help. I rather doubt I am going to be doing anything.” I stared into her face. “Unless you do something.”
“I told you, I can’t,” she snapped. “The Odnallak were very nasty people who lived a long time ago. They were the last of the ancient shape-shifter crowd. We didn’t like them. We really, really didn’t like them.”
“We …?”
“Me and the Jxin, mysterious alien beings that also no longer exist in your reality.” She produced a slim tube of white, lit one end with a flame from one of her lengthy crimson nails, placed the unlit end between her lips, and drew in. “It’s the Odnallak’s fault; they wanted to improve their shifting ability.” She blew out a small stream of smoke. “They manipulated DNA the same way my people did, but, I’ll admit, they were a little better at it. And they weren’t exactly interested in doing nice things like me and my people. That’s when it happened.”
I waved a hand in front of my face to disperse the smoke, and in that moment remembered everything about Cherijo’s life on Kevarzangia Two. “It?”
“The disaster. The infection. Whatever you want to call it. The Odnallak pushed things too far, and created the black crystal.” Maggie turned and gestured to the series of cracks running through the clear plas tube. “That stuff.”
She was talking about the rock cracks while I was reliving the memories of a plague on K-2. Perhaps SrrokVar’s dust had driven me insane already. I caught my breath as I discovered through the flood of memories that Cherijo had been in love with a Jorenian who looked exactly like PyrsVar.
“It looks harmless, but it’s not. It’s malignant. It’s aggressive. And over the seemingly endless stretch of linear time in which it must exist, it’s gotten hungry.” She gestured with the thing in her hand. “It now wants to eat up everything living in your universe.”
The smoke made my eyes sting, as did the memories of what the plague had done to the colonists of K-2. “You speak of this mineral as if it were sentient.”
“It’s not a mineral. It’s not a vegetable, or an animal. We don’t know what the hell it is. It just shows up and starts causing problems, generally for our little soldiers like you.”
“I am a soldier? I thought I was the perfect physician.” I remembered Reever linking with me the first time, kissing me the first time … and having sex with me the first time. “Which is it, and will you put out that thing? It’s making me sick.”
“Stop taking me literally, and complaining about my cigarette. It’s annoying.” Maggie pushed some of her curly red hair back from her face. “There is some justice in the fact that the first species the black crystal ate was the Odnallak, because they were trying to use it as a weapon.”
“A wise crystal.”
“Yeah, it’s a smart little bugger. It turned on them at a crucial moment during a very large war and gobbled up most of them. Then it came after me and my people, and we tried fighting it. Big mistake, and PS, it ate most of us, too.” She regarded her cigarette. “Those who survived—that would be me and a couple of others—scattered and began to prepare the countermeasure.”
I watched Kao Torin’s death through Cherijo’s eyes, and wiped tears from my face. “What has this to do with me?”
“The few Odnallak who survived the crystal invasion were changed by it. They lost all the knowledge they had gathered to create the damn thing. They don’t know how to control it or kill it, the way their ancestors did.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. “They’re no longer a threat to anyone but themselves. It’s the black crystal that is becoming a very big problem for your reality. It’s traveling now, and it’s infiltrating planet after planet. It’s indestructible, and it will only remain dormant for a few thousand more years at the most. Once it has spread through the universe, and contaminated every inhabited world, it will wake up and it’ll be dinnertime.”
“If there are thousands of years before this happens, why tell me?” I demanded. “I need to know how to get out of here, now, and help the Hsktskt.”
“Screw the Hsktskt. We made you and the others to take up the fight where we left off.” Maggie smiled. “That’s why you were made immortal, Joey. We need you to stay alive for a long, long time.”
Her logic made my head ache—or perhaps it was the smoke wafting into my face. “I could be killed any number of ways. Why didn’t you wait?”
“Christ, you’re as oblivious as the Hsktskt.” She made the cigarette vanish, and with it the smoke she had exhaled. “I didn’t want to have to do this. We wanted you to have a certain amount of free will—it motivates you better than we could—but there’s no other way now. You’re not going to develop a spine until you have Cherijo back in your head.” Her long, crimson fingernails began lengthening and forming sharp points.
“How do you intend to put her there?”
; “I can imprint my memories of her on you.” Maggie flicked a hand at one wall, which moved away, creating a larger space. “Lie down. This is going to take awhile, but as long as you cooperate I can give you back yourself, and you can—”
I resisted the memories of my former self, shoving them away from me. The flood of that life stopped. “No.”
“—get the hell out of …” She stopped and squinted at me. “What did you say?”
“I do not want her memories, or yours. I do not need them.” When Maggie lifted her hand, flashing her daggerlike nails in my face, I ducked and lunged, driving my shoulder into her abdomen and pinning her against the rough plas wall.
“Joey!”
I caught her neck with one hand and grabbed her hair with the other, and put my face close to hers. “You release me from this place now, or I will choke the life out of you.”
She didn’t breathe, and didn’t seem to need air to talk. “I guess it wasn’t the Planet of Spineless People. It was the Planet of Psychopaths.” The corners of her mouth curled. “I told you, little girl, I’m already dead. You can’t hurt me.”
“I will find a way,” I assured her.
Maggie stared into my eyes. “Yes, I believe you would. Two personalities, completely opposed. The things you discover in your experiments when you don’t have a body or a lab anymore.”
“You need me,” I said, “and I wish to live. There is still a great deal of time before the black crystal becomes active. The Hsktskt do not have such time. I will do as you wish, but you must help me now.” When she said nothing, I added, “Will Cherijo be as cooperative as I have offered to be?”
“Probably not.” She thought about it for a long moment. “All right … Jarn, isn’t it? Let me go now, and I’ll kick you out of here, and you can go and save your Hsktskt pals. But you will keep your promise to me.”
“The word of an Iisleg cannot be broken.” I didn’t move my hands. “You’re coming with me.”
“I’m energy—”
“Shut up.” I gave her a shake. “This is a mental construction, you said. So you will move it into my head and stay in my mind. Guide me. That is what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It’s going to hurt.”
I released her. “Everything hurts.”
“Not like this.” Maggie smiled a little. “Take a deep breath.”
I inhaled.
The daggers of her fingernails stabbed into my temples and began slowly pushing in toward my brain.
The pain became everything for a time, and I endured it as I had everything else in this bizarre place. After a time, how long I did not know, I moved through the pain and fell into a strange dream.
Maggie was there, standing and watching me from a distance. So, too, was Reever, on the other side of my consciousness, but he was running toward me instead of standing. The distance between us never changed.
Was this my choice? Had I somehow betrayed Reever by agreeing to Maggie’s demands?
“Healer.”
The vision faded from my eyes, and I became aware of my surroundings. I stood in the chamber where SrrokVar had left me. I turned toward the viewer and saw PyrsVar standing beyond the clear barrier. Snow—no, Odnallak bone dust—whirled around me as I watched him lift a pistol. He meant to shoot me, and part of me felt an inexplicable flood of relief. I opened my arms wide, ready, almost eager, to accept my end.
The clear barrier shattered, and the dust rushed out of the room.
SrrokVar appeared then, and tried to wrestle the pistol from PyrsVar, who was covered with dust. He struck the renegade Jorenian in the face, but PyrsVar returned the blow. The monstrous Hsktskt fell away out of sight.
I will have to wait my turn, I thought, and lowered my arms. As I did, darkness closed around me, jerking me away from PyrsVar and into the blessed blackness of oblivion.
My skull felt as if it were still splitting in half when I next opened my eyes. I was being carried in strong, blue arms. I could smell blood, but not my own. I focused on the face above me, and went stiff as I recognized PyrsVar as the one carrying me.
He was muttering under his breath. “Not one. Not the other. Not one. Not the other.”
“War Master?” I said, my voice strained. Icy wind slapped my face as he walked from the stronghold to the small transport pad. “What happened? Where are you taking me?” My wrists and ankles were bound again, but I couldn’t see SrrokVar.
“He deceived me, just as you did.” PyrsVar’s white eyes shifted down. There was green and purple blood on his face. “My chest hurts. Burns.”
I saw traces of the Odnallak dust on his nostrils and in the corners of his mouth. “You took me from the chamber.” I could remember it clearly now.
“He was going to suffocate you in that dirt.” He carried me onto the scout and snarled something at the pilot before dropping into a seat with me. The scout’s engines engaged. “I should have known. He has suffered much, and cannot …” He looked down at me, and his expression changed as he pushed me off his lap. “Warm-blooded. He should have killed you.”
I remained where I had fallen on the deck. “He meant to, I think. When he was finished tormenting me.”
The renegade Jorenian pressed his hands to the sides of his head, and then pulled them away and stared at them with visible horror. “What has he done to me? He has made me like one of you. How can this be?” Now he was speaking in the hissing tone of the Hsktskt.
“You were like the people once. He said you were an outlaw and that he changed you. Alterformed you to look like a Jorenian.”
“ToruVar.” He stared past me. “That was my name. ToruVar.”
“He made you with Jorenian DNA, so that you would be able to travel to other worlds.” I felt a terrible pity for him. “The Jorenian he used for this was someone I once knew.”
Too much information, Maggie’s voice said from inside my mind. He’s going to lose it if he doesn’t reconcile the two sides of his persona. Which makes him a far better match for you than Reever is, now that I think about it. Pity I didn’t know about him when I designed your comeback.
“Whatever SrrokVar did to you,” I said to PyrsVar through gritted teeth, “cannot be changed. I know. I was another woman before I, too, was harmed and changed. I have to live with what she was, and the things that she did, but I do not have to be her. I am myself.”
PyrsVar’s rapid breathing slowed. “I was a thief. I remember it now. I stole because we had nothing. My siblings were starving. The war … the dishonor my father brought upon our line when he deserted …” He shook his head and met my gaze. “We are going back to the desert. You will stay there with me until I can think of what I must do.”
“What happened to SrrokVar?”
PyrsVar did not answer me, and sat for the remainder of the flight in silence, staring at the mountains we passed.
The outlaws had moved their encampment to a bleak region of stone cliffs, enormous boulders, and lifeless sand. The scout landed on a flat-topped outcropping and remained there only long enough for PyrsVar and me to disembark before flying away.
After the frigid climate of the mountain stronghold, the heat and humidity-heavy air seemed particularly thick and unpleasant. I saw the outlaws had tucked their camp below, in the maze of rocks and passages at the base of the hill.
“Come.” PyrsVar took hold of my arm and led me to a winding passageway that had been cut into the rock, and gradually descended into the dark interior.
SEVENTEEN
I thought he might tie me up or lock me in another cage, but once we had entered the rough, cavelike enclave he was using as a shelter, he removed my bonds and gestured for me to sit.
“Be very careful, Jarn,” Maggie said. “The self-controlled bastard may not look like it, but he’s just about to go over the edge.”
I knew what she meant, for I could see it in his eyes. Tension and fear, and a curious confusion that muddled the mind reeling beneath them. I had bee
n to that same place too many times since waking up in Cherijo Torin’s body.
“You should tell your men to stay away from us,” I said cautiously. “They will become infected by the dust.”
“They are raiding one of the outer settlements,” he told me. “They will not return for several hours.”
“All right, he’s calmer, but you have to talk fast now,” Maggie said. “He needs help with accepting the truth of what he just learned about himself.”
Which is? I thought back.
“The fact that he was created by Dr. Tinhead solely to torment you,” Maggie said. “SrrokVar told him that just before he shot out the viewer and dragged you out of there. What he needs is a friend now, Jarn. Someone who will tell him the truth.”
If I could befriend the renegade Jorenian, and somehow convince him to take me back to the Hsktskt city, then I might still have a chance to stop the plague.
“I can see your thoughts on your face now,” he said, crouching down by the fire and warming his hands. They had patches of dark skin on them, as if he had snowbite. “I could not do that before I breathed in the dust. It is changing me.”
“SrrokVar said that it invokes our deepest fears.” I sat down on the rug nearest to him. “I think it brings some alteration of awareness as well.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” Maggie said sourly. “I’ve always wanted to be a phobia crossed with a drug-induced hallucination.”
“My sire is not a simple man,” PyrsVar said slowly. “I knew this as he brought me into being. I admired him for it. I believed the things that he told me. But the hatred he has for what the people have become …” He shook his head. “It is like his hatred of you. They became entwined. Whatever happened between you altered him inside. It drove him insane.”
I couldn’t disagree with that. When he said nothing more, I went to his stores and busied myself preparing a pot of the dark beverage the outlaws brewed.
“You aren’t afraid of me anymore,” he murmured.
