by Gafford, Sam
“Unless what?”
“Unless there is another aspect of work, some factor that encourages mutation and difference.”
“So is there a danger that we’ll mutate?” asked Tazim.
“Change is not always for the bad,” said N’rell.
“You can’t mean that. You saw those things.” What strange vistas did the abhumans see with their dragonfly eyes?
“Abhumans are perfectly adapted to living in the valley,” said N’rell. “If we’re to build homes here we must adapt, too.”
“That’s an unorthodox opinion,” said Mona.
N’rell laughed. “I like being unorthodox. Just being here makes me freer. I think different thoughts outside the Five Cities. Can you understand that, Tazim?”
“The road led to the West,” said Mona.
Tazim was surprised. The road led to the West was an isolationist slogan.
“You’re scaring the new crewmate.”
“Not at all,” said Tazim. “Do really think that we shouldn’t be outside the Five Cities, Mona?”
Mona winked. “I only say it to annoy N’rell. What do you think, Tazim?”
Joke or not. The road led to the West was a strange thing for a vanguard to say. Tazim had an uneasy sense that she was being tested. “Some should go,” she said, “but only those who are prepared.” It’s what she’d always been taught.
*
There was a palpable increase in tension within the bug as they drove closer to the Cerulean Labyrinth. Tazim could understand that. They wanted payback for their lost crewmate—the woman whose place she had taken.
“Drive carefully,” advised N’rell. “The lights can have a distracting effect.”
“I will,” replied Tazim. She concentrated on the terrain, making sure not to venture too close to the flickering, mile-high lights that marked the boundary of the labyrinth. She knew that the Cerulean Labyrinth was a dangerous place.
“There!” said Zeenat, who was scanning the landscape. “At 300 degrees.”
Tazim had overlooked them. A group of abhumans stood watching the bug. They stood still as stone, bathed in blue light shadows. They were a different group from the abhumans they’d encountered in the land coral. They were taller than a normal human, but well-fed without the look of emaciation. They carried tall spears, crackling with static electricity.
“The same type who attacked us a month ago.” The commander leant forward, staring intensely at the drive screen. “Come on, my beauties. Come on. Attack us again. You know you want to.”
A spear arced through the sky. It clattered impotently off the ironclad’s armor.
“Lock the dispersal gun,” said the commander.
A few moments later it was over. Shreds of white flesh lay in the fields.
“Shall I continue?” asked Tazim.
“No. All-stop,” said the commander. “Let’s root out the nest of them. Be wary, Tazim. The lights can have a hallucinatory effect.”
They took hand armaments from the locker. They said little, but Tazim could sense the crew’s eagerness. She shared their excitement. She stepped out of the bug, for the first time walking on valley land beyond the Final Pylon.
She’d been well warned. The Cerulean Labyrinth was disconcerting; the myriad columns of light overwhelmed her senses. Somehow Tazim felt as if the lights were singing, although they made no noise. They followed the abhuman tracks though the labyrinth of blue lights. There was no vegetation here, only overwhelming light and the shadows. Comms were impossible. The group moved forward, led by Zeenat’s hand signals. Tazim concentrated on the task, trying to avoid the pathways of light that opened up before her. Her suit was slick with perspiration, her mind intensely conscious of the fact that this was her first opportunity for face-to-face engagement with the enemy.
A spear landed at Tazim’s feet. She spun around, but she could see no attacker. Tazim moved a few paces forward and stepped into the pathway of a flashing light. She lost all sense. The light was singing, singing to her, in some ancient song that throbbed to the heart-beat, pulse-back of her blood. Beautiful, alluring, mesmerizing. She knew that it was wrong and somehow she managed to break the spell. She turned away. How much time had passed? The crew was gone. Fear flooded her mind, until she saw a dark shape. Not knowing if it was human, she ran toward it. It was N’rell, standing helplessly in front of another hypnotic light. Tazim reached out her hand. Out of the forest of lights came a worm, silent, gliding, massive. The blue lights played off its velvet skin, off its massive, misshapen head.
“N’rell!” Tazim drew her gun. The worm slid closer to N’rell. The lights were dazzling, yet Tazim realized the beast was mutated, a horror, a three-headed thing. “N’rell!” In the flashing light Tazim wasn’t sure of the shot. She might hit N’rell. Tazim half glimpsed its central head. Its maw was a vicious thing, lined with concentric circles of teeth. Tazim’s gun was fully charged. N’rell wasn’t moving. She had to take the shot. “N’rell!” she shouted a third time. The worm whipped its ancillary heads toward Tazim. She froze at the sight of the human faces buried in the flesh of the worm’s heads—human faces moving their mouths as if in silent supplication. Abomination. It hypnotized her, but there was no mind power here, only the fact of it, its unconscionable existence, that froze Tazim into immobility.
N’rell screamed.
Zeenat ran toward them. “Kill it, Tazim. For Road’s sake, kill it.”
But Tazim was helpless. Zeenat fired her gun in an arc of plasma. The smell of ozone and burning flesh assaulted Tazim. Zeenat moved in for the kill, severing the worm’s three heads.
Tazim had failed. Just as her mother had seen in the ash. Overwhelmed, Tazim fell into darkness.
*
N’rell dissected the worm beast in the small science room in the Lady Bug. “This is symbiosis,” she said, “or mutualism of some form.”
“Nasty thing,” said the commander.
“I’m sorry, N’rell,” said Tazim, walking into the room. “I’m sorry, Commander. I expect that I’ll be replaced when we return to the Five Cites.”
The commander laughed. “That was your first face-to-face encounter with an abhuman, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Not quite what you expected?”
“No, Commander.”
“That’s the fear, the feeling that it was wrong crawling in your skin. You’ll get used to it.”
“I . . . Yes, Commander.”
“Thinking that you don’t want to get used to it? Thinking that if you do get used to it, it might make you something less than human?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“This land will change you, Hari. But congratulations. You’ve just lost your cherry.”
*
“You did okay,” said Abra. “Hardly anyone manages to do anything the first time. I turned tail and fled.”
“You did?”
“For sure. Next time will be better.”
*
At times the movement of the passing landscape was entrancing. All the strangeness seemed to blend in a continuous stream viewed through the safety of the Lady Bug. Onwards and onwards and onwards. Yet the sight of the impossibly steep-sided Endless Canyon broke Tazim’s reverie. This was another oddity, another discordance in the valley, this time rendered in the fabric of the valley’s geography rather than flesh.
“We cannot measure its depth,” said N’rell. “And the strange thing is that our surveys tell us that this canyon is an older than the Cataclysm. I think it is waiting under the earth, waiting to be revealed. What lies in its depths, I wonder?”
A gray chill glanced Tazim’s spine. She felt that, too—that something loitered at the bottom of the canyon, waiting.
“Reports from the Weevil have told of hooded figures walking this area.”
“I think I dreamed of this canyon when I was a child,” said Mona.
Tazim shuddered. What a nightmare for a child! “Do you still dream of i
t?” she asked.
Mona shook her head. “Now I only dream of the Ascomycotan fields. Do you dream, Tazim?” she asked.
“No,” said Tazim, thinking of Mother’s countless dreams. What use were dreams or patterns in the ash?
“Of course she doesn’t,” said the commander. “Tazim’s a soldier, not a dreamer.”
“A pity,” sighed Mona. “I would have liked someone to share my dreams with.”
*
They drove along the shore of the Diayta’s Ocean. This was the beginning of the Ascomycotan Fields.
“The fungal filaments grow for tens of miles,” explained N’rell. “The main fields lie south of the Diayta’s Ocean.”
Tazim had a growing sense of unease. The crew was quiet, as if inhabited by some malignant silencing principle. Tazim felt isolated. She wondered if the crew regretted her assignment. It’s early days yet, she told herself. There’s time enough to fit it. Yet the few days traveling in the bug seemed a lifetime. She understood what N’rell meant when she said that Tazim would need to change to be part of the crew. The crew seemed to work together so seamlessly, anticipating one another’s requests with never a word spoken.
One more day of traveling took them south of Diayta’s Ocean and into the fields. The camp was set up in silence, the habitation unfolding like origami. At least they would leave the confines of the Lady Bug for a time.
*
“We’re home now,” said N’rell. “This is where we’ll be spending most of our time.”
“Show Tazim the fields,” said the commander, “while we finish up here.”
Under the red sky, the ascomycotan fungi thrived. The fields were abundant, lush with life. Some specimens grew three fathoms or more above the ground—a monstrous forest of flesh, layered with the lace of white hyphal threads. Many fungal trees were heavy with solitary or clustered fruits: cup-shaped, club-shaped, spongy, seed-like, oozing, coral-fronded, feathered, plated, a myriad of variety. Red, orange, yellow, brown, black, the Ascomycotan Fields mirrored the colors of the sky.
Scorpions, land crabs, centipedes, clasp worms, ants, lobopods, moss piglets crawled on the floor and over the fungus. A beetle covered in red fungus seemed particularly prevalent.
“A mushroom beetle,” said N’rell. “It has a symbiotic relationship with the fungus. Glorious, isn’t it?” N’rell’s hand swept to encompass the vast fungal fields.
Glorious wasn’t the word Tazim would have used.
N’rell looked like a wraith moving through the pale forest of trees. “The ascomycotans are the dominant species. They’ve
adapted well to the limited sunlight. In time, this fungus will feed the Five Cities.”
“They look unappetizing,” said Tazim. She touched a leathery fruit. To her disgust, it split at her light touch to reveal a gelatinous inner flesh.
“Be careful what you touch,” said N’rell. “Some of the fungi secrete power enzymes. Touch this one and it will dissolve your skin-suit. It’s likely that many of these fungi have medical properties.They give us penicillin and all its derivatives, immuno-suppressors. We grow insulin, human growth hormone, and Tpa in fungal cells.”
“What’s that awful smell?” asked Tazim.
N’rell pushed back a curtain of mycelium. “It’s a great slow river.”
The festering stench was overpowering. “What is it?”
“The mushrooms are voracious. They can feed on almost anything organic by secreting powerful digestive enzymes. This river runs through the fields. It’s the partially digested bodies of dead mushrooms and all the animals that feed on them.”
“It’s disgusting,” said Tazim.
“To the mushrooms it’s a river of ambrosia,” said N’rell.
*
They took it in turns to work the fields. N’rell showed Tazim how to harvest the fungal spores. Other times, Tazim was in the bug working on maintenance, especially in cleaning the fuel system where degradation sludge from the bio-fuel tended to accumulate. All the new samples of fungi needed to be indexed. The worst times for Tazim were spent in the silent company of the twins and the commander.
At least N’rell liked to talk. She spoke endlessly about the adaptability of the fungus, the relationships it grew between animal and plant life. “These are the fungal gardens of leafcutter ants. These are the bark beetles carrying the fungal spores in tucks in their skin. The beetle larvae feed on the fungus. These sheets are lichens, a relationship between the fungus and algae or cyanobacteria. Lichens are an ancient symbiotic relationship. They can grow in the most extreme environments. For all we know, the world above the valley is awash with lichen fields.”
“I’ve always been taught that there is nothing above—everything is cold and dead. That’s why we descended.”
“Maybe,” said N’rell. “But life is tenacious.”
N’rell delighted in the vitality of the mushroom fields. She seemed keen to share her finds with Tazim. She had a kinship with the land, which Tazim did not share. But Tazim was grateful for the sound of N’rell’s voice.
The days seemed endless under the red ascomycotan sky. Tazim did her duties well, but she felt alone. Conversations died when she came into the room. She felt she had been judged and found unworthy. Was this mother’s prophecy?—she was alone and isolated under the red sky.
*
Tazim was cleaning the bug’s recuperator filters when the voice broke into the silence like a ghost.
“Distress. Unknown attack. Co-ordinates. @alpha z, 56. Point 7. Gray Attack.”
Tazim grabbed the radio. “This is Hari of the Lady Bug, come in. We are eight hours away, come in. We will . . .” The message repeated itself, and only then did Tazim realize that the distress signal was on an automated loop.
She commed the commander and quickly apprised her of the situation. The commander lost no time in gathering the crew. “The Cicada has been attacked.” The commander checked the logs. “We’re closest. Suit up. Driver, set course to the co-ordinates.”
“Yes, Commander.” This was what she was here for, not for gathering mushrooms, but to fight. They would rescue the crew of the Cicada. She felt it, like a precognition, although she had never had anything but the weakest of night hearing. Tazim knew that the next few hours would define her career.
*
It was a long journey. Five hours south at maximum speed, with Tazim concentrating furiously trying to calculate the most efficient route among the fungus-covered crags.
Tthey found the Cicada immobilized in a field of black shoots. It was covered in fungus.
“A fungus has attacked them,” said Tazim.
They were all suited. Tazim waited for the command to go outside. “Commander?” she asked.
Zeenat stood gazing at the fields.
“Commander, we should leave,” said Tazim.
“Look,” said N’rell. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
“We need to rescue the crew of the Cicada,” said Tazim.
“They are where they should be,” said N’rell.
“They are . . .” said Mona.
“They are . . .” said Abra.
“Commander?” said Tazim fearfully.
“They are . . . with the all-in-one,” said Zeenat.
Commander Zeenat, N’rell, the twins. “You’ve been infected with something.” Tazim took her knife from her belt.
“The mother fungus,” whispered N’rell. “We hear her when we are close. We are . . . gestalt, with a common purpose, a symbiotic fungal/human mind. Growing and reforming, endless and splendid, but not human, more than human. We are the spore to the new life.”
Outside, the door of the Cicada slammed opened. A dozen men and women emerged, covered in black fungus. They walked slowly, shambling things. Their movements choreographed in alignment.
“We must go back to the Five Cities for treatment,” said Tazim.
“Don’t fight it,” said Zeenat, quietly. “It’s worse if you fight it. I fought i
t very hard.”
“What do you choose, Tazim?” asked N’rell. “Will you be part of the land or will you fight against it?”
“What do you choose?” asked the twins. They were swaying slightly, in one accord.
Tazim raised her knife. “I choose the Five Cities,” she said, ripping her knife like a scream through the fabric of her wrist.
“She’s killing herself,” said Zeenat. “We must be quick.”
“Even if she dies, the mother fungus will revive her,” said N’rell.
“No,” said Tazim. “It’s not my death here. I am sorry.”
Spores clouded the air. A derivative of Ergot was implanted in a capsule under the skin of Tazim’s wrist. It caused paralysis and death. For a moment Tazim feared that the fungal nature of their infection would give them immunity. But no. Zeenat, N’rell, Mona, and Abra fell to the floor.
Tazim stood for a long moment over the bodies. She was immune to the airborne poison, following months of incremental exposure to the spore. Fintrar had prepared his agent adequately.
The crew of the Cicada advanced upon the Lady Bug. Tazim targeted the dispersal gun upon them. Afterwards she turned the flame throwers upon the Cicada, upon its dead crew, and upon the mother fungus. She consigned the bodies of Zeenat, Mona, Abra, and N’rell to the cleansing flame.
*
It was fine to ride under the wine-dark ocean of sky. Fine, but not safe. In that matter the isolationists of the Five Cities were correct. The valley was a dangerous place.
Tazim drove the Lady Bug back west, searching for a soft stop in the geomagnetic current so that she could make her report.
