I understood. “And that’s when you stole your first body.”
Palamun showed his teeth for a split second and spat to the side, his expression disgusted. “I didn’t steal anything. I found a warrior, much like you, in fact. He had been paralyzed and was in the process of starving himself to death. He didn’t want to be a drain on the tribe if he couldn’t contribute his skills to them anymore. Personally, I find his decision a bit hasty, but that’s not important. I spoke to the warrior, told him who I was and what I needed, and he agreed. I used a process like that which we had used to free our slave minds. I set up my machine to take my mind out of my own body and transfer it into a cloud of machine spirits. Then I infected the dying warrior’s body and repaired it. I made him stronger and tougher than he had ever been before. He went on to serve his people well for another two or three lifetimes. He was still alive and aware, I just rode around in the back of his mind and gave him advice sometimes. In exchange, he let me take over the body and work on my experiments sometimes. He was the first Deepseeker, though he didn’t work for your tribe. We traded ‘blessings’ as we called them, to the other tribes and helped them protect the people that the Stormcallers couldn’t shield from the cold. We claimed that the longevity of our body came as a blessing from Palamun. The people had already started worshipping Ravanur and me, and I used that to protect us from the curious prying of the priests and the Stormcallers. When the time came that the warrior tired of life, we traveled to another village and found another dying man. I spoke to him, infected his body and mind, and let my first host finally rest.”
I was simultaneously horrified and intrigued. “So why is your current host… the way he is? Why do you seem so mad?”
Palamun grimaced, restraining another frantic spasm of facial twitches. "That was an unfortunate turn of events. I was working for the Erin-Caval at the time. I tried to turn their course away from their insane plan to find this ship. But their High Priest was determined, and much like our friend Vassa, he was the sort of man who didn't take ‘no' for an answer. He got the public on his side, and to make matters worse; he actually had a good idea where the Urn was. I have no idea where he got this location, but he had it. I snuck out of the village the night before the expedition was to begin, and tried to seal it up so that no one could enter it. Unfortunately, I hadn't been aboard the Heaven’s Hawk since I had taken my seventh body, and some unknown species of mold had gotten inside. I think this mold had some element of the power of the Dark Ones in it, because it infected my host's lungs very quickly, very aggressively. I turned on the ship's decontamination procedures and returned to my host's home to wait out the disease. I believed that my enhancements would allow his body to defeat the mold spores. I was wrong."
Palamun stopped, wiped his face with one hand, and continued. "When I woke the next morning, the mold had grown out of my own pores and had covered the entire inside of my hut. When I went outside, I found it blanketing every hut in the village. Anyone infected by the spores died horribly. And almost all of the Erin-Caval were infected. I managed to hobble and crawl my way back to the Heaven’s Hawk and put myself into a container, telling it to run decontamination procedures on me and recycle my blood, cleaning out any trace of the disease. The damage was already done to this body, but I needed to be able to find a new host without immediately infecting him with the plague.”
“And we, the Erin-Vulur, sent Korval and several others to investigate what had happened to the Erin Caval.”
“Yes. Most of them were infected and died, but Korval hadn’t entered the Caval village when I caught him. The infection was just starting in his body, but it wasn’t in full swing. I explained myself and told him I could try to save him. He agreed to the procedure. At first, it worked fine. I contained his infection while it was small and purged it, filtering his blood several times until I was sure every last spore was gone. Unfortunately, the mold had already affected his brain. By the time I realized he was deteriorating, there was no one else alive from the Erin-Caval, and I doubted they would be sending more rangers. The Erin-Vulur could use a Deepseeker, and I could use a job. Eventually, when Korval’s mind had completely gone, I took over completely. Though there’s still enough of him in here to make me act strangely.”
A plague of mold? I could remember nothing like that ever spoken of by my people. “How did you keep the plague from reaching us, too?”
"Ravanur. I asked her for help, and she turned all the air in the village into a poison gas. Then, when everything was dead, even the mold, I made a machine to burn everything that was left. We sealed the ashes in ice, and I left them behind. When I returned to the ship, there was no more trace of the mold that nearly killed a whole tribe."
I stared at the Deepseeker, seeing him in a whole new light. "You're just like Ravanur. You're not a god; you're a person who toyed with powers you couldn't fathom." I looked up at the twin, connected glass sarcophagi standing ominously before me. "And you saved me when Lot killed me because you thought I was dead. You thought you could resurrect my corpse and then you would finally have a body all to yourself." I felt simultaneously sick and exhilarated. "And you brought me here to make me your new host. Today."
Palamun didn’t move. “Yes. It’s all true.”
“Why should I let you infest me? What makes you different than a Dark One? You inhabit machine spirits and infect people who have no real way to stop you. You take advantage of the wounded and convince them to be your puppets. Why shouldn’t I just kill you and end all this forever?” Though I wasn’t wearing my weapons, I was sure I could break the old man with ease. Unless he had awesome powers I didn’t know about, I could kill him with my hands.
Palamun didn't say anything for some time. He just stared at me for a long while, his face occasionally rippling with spasms. Then, he turned away from me and pointed at one of the crystal-faced caskets. As I watched, the casket's crystal face slid open and slammed shut. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Over and over, faster and faster until the crystal face cracked and began to shed splinters everywhere. He clenched his fist, and the casket stopped its frantic slamming. He waved one hand at the unseen ceiling above him, and a pair of lights flared, brightly illuminating everything around us until something broke inside the lights and they went out with a loud pop. "I can do that to any machine I can see. The nanite spirit within my body can take control of almost any construct. I understand the inner workings of all of this, and I can use it to help protect your people. If you, as you are, will agree to be my host, you can use all of this power to help your god in her war. I will not make myself known except to assist in these goals and to offer advice. When you don't need me, I will sleep. I have been alive for a very long time. I have no need of a body most of the time. But if the Akkandaka can capture her wayward spirit, I will need to be there to carry out the plan and destroy the Dark Ones forever."
“You still haven’t told me how this is going to happen.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“So tell me what you’re planning. Maybe I’ll go along with this.”
So Palamun told me about his plan for Joanna’s corrupted spirit, Barbas. It wasn’t an elegant plan, but it had a chance of succeeding. The only problem with the plan was that it was completely insane. When he was finished, I just stared at him as my mind tried to wrap itself around what I had just heard. “Well,” I said finally. “At least if it fails we’ll all die right away.”
I knew what I had to do. Joanna had already done it. She had already given up a part of herself for the sake of her people and mine. Could I call myself her champion and refuse to do the same? Palamun scared me. There was a chance that this was all a lie, and I wouldn’t be in control. There was a chance I would be nothing but a meat suit, little better than Kotikedd, the inquisitor, in the end. But he was right. The Dark Ones had escaped before. They would escape again, eventually. And if we didn’t do something, there wouldn’t be anyone strong enough around to stop them. “I’ll do it. I’ll bec
ome the next Deepseeker. Just try not to screw this one up. I would rather not end up brain-dead like old Korval, here.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Volistad
Deepseeker
I returned to the village just an hour later, alone. Without the Deepseeker in my mind to keep everything working, the ancient ranger, Korval, had swiftly died. I carried his body out of the ship, found some woody mushrooms to make a fire, and I sent his body and soul back up to the Firmament. I didn't know who ruled up there, anymore. It surely had never been Palamun. But now, sharing a mind with the Great Father of my people, I understood something that he could never have explained to me, not if he had had a thousand years to lay it all out in terms simple enough for a primitive tribesman like me. The simple truth was this: none of us knew if there was really a God in the universe. We threw around the word god with little care as to its significance, never once considering that the things we were dealing with here weren't divine, and they never were. Palamun had not lied. I was not sharing a skull with a whole other person, and I didn't feel like my body belonged to someone else. I just felt… awake. I was awake for the first time, and I knew all of the things that he knew. I felt the immense weariness that he knew from being alive since before the distant precursors of my people came down from the trees. I knew the crushing guilt he felt at having brought such an inexorable doom to the universe, even though his part in it was so very small. It wasn't my guilt, but at the same time, it was mine. I was Volistad, the ranger, warrior of the Erin-Vulur and chosen champion of the Akkandaka, Joanna. And I was Palamun, ancient rebel god and Great Father of the Erinye. I was all of that and more besides. I was the Deepseeker.
To my new eyes, the village was utterly different than the little, peaceful home I had known as a child and fought to protect as a ranger. My eyes had been altered, just as my mind and body had been altered. Now I saw a system, a hive, a hundred interlocking pieces all working together in perfect balance to protect and preserve a fragile fifty-thousand lives. I understood then, somehow, that fifty-thousand wasn't enough for us to persist. I knew that though there might have been other tribes of Erinye hidden in the ice, chances were that the only hope for my people's future was a group of a hundred-thousand humans traveling from a distant star. We needed new blood, new people, a new culture, a new soul. If we could rid ourselves of the fear of the Elder Gods imprisoned below, we could become something so much greater than a frozen little tribe. We could make our own great wonders; make our own mark on the wide universe.
I returned to the Deepseeker’s- to my hut. I had only ever had a bunk in the ranger's lodge, and I hadn't even seen that in several weeks. It was strange to have a hut of my own. I hadn't thought I would ever have more than a bunk unless I was fortunate enough to catch the eye of a woman from further down in the mountain. Most rangers lived and died as such.
I pushed aside the door-flap and regarded the shape under the cloth that lay on my worktop. The dragon-pipe. The grenade launcher. The words of Joanna’s language no longer felt unfamiliar to me, though making some of the sounds was still difficult. The “fah” sound, in particular, was not well suited to a mouth full of fangs. I wondered how Palamun knew Joanna’s tongue, and abruptly a memory surfaced of a previous Deepseeker hunched over a console in the Heaven’s Hawk. He- I- was listening, feverishly, excitedly to a signal broadcast from impossibly far away. It was a signal from a place that was called Earth. A place that I remembered. Most of it was nonsense, an entertainment broadcast or something. But one thing had caught my attention. It was a news story, about the creation of the first "Strong AI." I remembered spending much of that particular Deepseeker's life- was it the fifth? The sixth? I remembered spending much of that life researching this concept; sure it matched with the concept my people had abandoned so long ago. It was the project I, myself was struggling to create. Then, sure that this world was a chance for me to end this ancient war, I sent out a signal of my own. Nothing complicated, nothing dramatic. It was a simple repeating pattern of tones, meant to catch the attention of anyone listening. As soon as I detected that the first scanning signals were coming back my way, I shut my signal down. I needed them to come to me, to bring this "strong AI" so that I could use it. I needed them to be curious. They did not disappoint.
I was just finishing stowing my armor under my bed when I heard footsteps scuffing the stone outside my hut. I rose and turned in time to see Joanna push her way through the door flap, her cheeks pink with exertion, her clothes and skin covered in a rapidly thawing sheen of frozen sweat. “We got the gun. Unfortunately, Barbas wasn’t there. We’ll just have to find him again. We-” She stopped and frowned. “What are you doing in here? I honestly came up here to see the Deepseeker so we could discuss his plan. Is he away?”
"No," I said simply. I thought about how to tell her, considered trying to divert her attention with a change of subject, but ultimately I decided against deception. I was in love with her, plain and simple, and I couldn't lie to her face. "No, the Deepseeker is not away. I am the Deepseeker now, and we do have a plan to discuss."
Joanna was confused. “Volistad, I don’t understand what you mean. You’re the Deepseeker? I know he casually threw away that line about making you his replacement, but you can’t have learned everything he knew in an afternoon. And where is he? Is he still in the village?”
I laughed. “Joanna, it’s alright. I am the Deepseeker. It's a little complicated, but if you let me, I'll explain it to you. But we should get some food brought up here. You've been fighting, and this is a long story. It's not the sort of thing you should sit through on an empty stomach."
Joanna’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but she acquiesced, and after a hilariously awkward conversation with a passing messenger, I ordered some food brought up to us. When it arrived, we sat down, I made another fire, and I told her everything that Palamun had told me.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Volistad
Deepseeker
The fire had turned to embers by the time I finished my story, and the food was long gone. There had been no meat today- that sort of thing was to be saved, except when a new burug was brought down- but dinner had been filling and delicious, and left little more than errant stains of grease on our fingers. Joanna and I just sat in silence, watching each other, as she thought through all that I had said. I was still nowhere near as physically dangerous as she was, but now, in a way, both of us were gods. Or at least we were pale imitations of divinity. Her skin shone almost gold in the dwindling embers, and at that moment I was sure that real or not, she made a pretty convincing deity.
“So are you still… you?” Joanna asked, trying to soften the question and failing.
“If I wasn’t, how would I know?” I smiled with my eyes to let her know I was trying to be funny. “I think that I’m still me. I still remember everything that I knew yesterday. But now I just know so much more. There is a lot more that I understand.” Remembering suddenly, I tried to contain my excitement and said, in Pan-American, “For example, I can speak your language now.” The word ‘speak’ came out more like ‘spheak’ around my fangs, but that was alright.
Joanna returned the smile with her lips. “Alright, I suppose it’s not entirely fair for me to grill you on this when I just went through the same thing not a week ago.”
“Well, I didn’t get my heart ripped out, so I think I got the easier deal,” I joked.
Joanna smirked. “But you can’t strike people with lightning. I’d say that’s worth a little heart-transplant.”
We just sat there together for a while basking in the glow of the fading fire and enjoying each other’s company. When the embers finally died, and all that remained was ash and a circle of stones, I asked, “Has Perwik gotten you set up with a place to sleep yet?”
Joanna shook her head. “Not as such. He has had his hands full stamping out all the little fires that idiot Vassa started. Not to mention Lot and his people. Fortunately for us, I think the
other Stormcallers are a little afraid of your sister. Something about her ‘ripping down’ my barrier storm ‘when Lot and all his people were barely hanging on?’ I think Thukkar has been telling stories at the ranger lodge, and the myths are already being made.” She stood. “As for a place to sleep, I’ll probably bed down in the ranger lodge. They have extra bunks, and maybe that will help with my image- make me ‘just one of the people’.”
I shook my head. “Nonsense. This hut is mine now. You can stay here. You take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor or the worktop. Tomorrow we can see about getting you a proper home.” I tried to keep any trepidation out of my voice, hoping that my suggestion had come out casual and unassuming.
Joanna wasn't fooled. Her smile was slow and wicked. "I wouldn't dream of making you sleep on the floor in your own home, ‘Deepseeker.' You must sleep in the bed, I insist."
Sensing a trap, I plunged blindly ahead anyway. “There is no way I’m letting a woman sleep on the floor of my hut while I’m sleeping comfortably in a bed.”
Joanna’s smile widened. “I didn’t say anything about me sleeping on the floor.”
I knew it was coming, and still the kiss surprised me. We were pressed together, all of a sudden, touching and tasting, the heat rising between us. Through the intoxication of her scent, her touch, her voice, I had the presence of mind to stand and pull her with me into the hut. People would talk anyway, but there was no sense in making it easy on the gossips.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 37
