This is the Tale My Father Told

Tags

morana, morrigan, myth, short story

Yesterday I promised a story, even though there’s no Kudzu update to be had. So, here’s one with a bit of an odd narrative structure (and thus a difficult sell…).

 

by Bernie Mojzes

 

The air ruins it.

Otherwise, it’s not so different, here in this pitiful outpost at the furthest rim of the Empire, from the land of my birth. These hills are cold and barren, your mountains in the north even more so, and the winter wind is brutal and deadly. The sheep and goats outnumber the people, and outsmart most of them, too. The people are poor — farmers and herdsmen just trying to get through another year. Even your kings are poor. I never felt this homesick when I was in Rome, or as at home.

Except for the air. Everywhere here, it smells of brine, like the sea that batters these shores. Maybe it is different, further inland.

Put aside your sword, boy. You’ll find no threat in my home. Here, let me pour you some uisge. I wish I could offer you a proper drink, but I haven’t seen a worthwhile plum since I got here.

U Zdravje. Or as you Scoti say, Slainte Mhath.

Eh. Don’t rush me. I’m an old man and I deserve some respect, even if I am just a slave. And I have a few things yet to teach you before your overeager friends take my head.

Come, child, walk with me. Bring the bottle. Bring two.

~

What are you looking at, boy? The fighting’s over. You don’t want to involve yourself in what comes next. Come along, this way. Let me tell you a story while we walk.

This is a tale my father told me, an old, old story of my people. I did not understand at the time, and I am not sure that you are ready to understand. But perhaps now is the right time to tell it to you, and you will understand when you need. How did it go? Ah, yes.

A long time ago, in a kingdom very near here…

Nje. Don’t interrupt. That is how the stories of my people all start. A kingdom very near here. Maybe it is on the other side of the forest. Maybe it is on the other side of the world. But maybe with the Romans, the other side of the world is now very near here. Otherwise, we two would not be talking now, yes?

A long time ago, in a kingdom very near here, there was a great and wise king. When he was young, he was a hero, fighting many demons and dragons and other evil creatures. He was such a great hero that even great Svarog looking down from the sky noticed his deeds.

Svarog is a god of my people. You would recognize him, I think, though you would call him by a different name. But what is a name worth? The Romans say that God gave to Adam the right to name all the creatures in the world. But when has a god given a man anything of value? Not without taking something of greater value in return. Never mind the names, eh, and listen to the tale.

Svarog wished to reward the young hero for his great works, and he granted him one boon. Whatever he wished, his greatest desire: he had just to ask. But the hero had no great desires to fulfill. He had no need for riches, for he was already rich, and he had no desire for a woman to make his wife, for he had already found the girl whom he would marry. So he decided to save his wish for later, when his need might be greater.

In time, the hero became king, and he took the woman as his queen, and had two strong sons and a beautiful daughter. His kingdom was blessed with fertile lands and good weather, and soon it was the greatest and richest kingdom in the world.

Ah, but here we are, already.

~

They call it Hadrian’s Wall. Names again. Named it after Emperor Hadrian, who ordered it built after he met some of you folk. Wise man, some say, but he’d have been wiser if he fled back across the sea. The wall runs from here all the way across your dismal little island to Coria and the Sea in the East. They’re great builders, the Romans. The best, except for maybe the Egyptians. Did I ever tell you about the years my master was deployed to Egypt? Ah, well, then I won’t bore you with it now.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Hadrian’s Wall. It is truly a masterpiece. You people have been throwing yourselves at it for a couple hundred years, and only now have you finally breached it, now that the Empire has lost interest in these Isles. Come here, lad. Have you seen the wall from this side?

Yes, up here. Mind your step, it’s been a while since anyone’s tended the mortar, and there are more than a few stones loose. Up you go.

There. That’s your Caledonia out there, as far as the eye can see, and farther. Land of the Scoti and the painted ones, the Picts. Cold and brutal, and full of crazy, half-naked barbarians and savage, ancient gods.

And all that stands between us and them is this pitiful heap of rocks.

Yes, I said ‘us,’ for you stand here with me staring at the abyss at the edge of the Empire, and together you and I are ‘us,’ no matter the paths we took getting here, or where our paths take us tomorrow. Right now, we are here, together.

Come along, child. I’ve been your teacher these last five years, and just because you’ve killed off the man who sold your father my services doesn’t mean I’m done teaching, or that you’re done learning. Everything before was just preparation. Your real education begins today.

I was maybe your age, maybe a little younger, when my own education began. When the Huns drove us out of our village. We followed the river until we found a new place to build. Then the Huns came again, and drove us out again, right into the arms of a Roman Legion.

Nje. It’s all right. I got to see the world. I’ve seen temples built of marble as white as the purest snow, and of the blackest obsidian. I’ve seen the pyramids that rise like mammoth gods from the desert floor, older than time itself. I’ve studied in the Library in Alexandria. I met Sophia.

Ah, now there’s a story I’ve not yet told you. Her hair was black as night, and fell to her waist. She had a gap between her front two teeth that made her whistle when she spoke. Her name means Wisdom, and I was so young, and so foolish.

Here, sit. My knees are weary, and we’ve got as good a view here as anywhere else.

So tell me, boy. What do you see?

Yes, yes, of course. Luguvalium in flames. Have I taught you these five years so you can be an idiot? Then don’t tell me what any idiot can see. Tell me what you see. You’ll be king soon enough. Show me you’re worthy of it. Most people decide what is important, and then see only that. That’s backwards. See everything, then decide what is important.

Ah, yes. Better. The black rocks, wet from the melting ice. The first sprouts of spring pushing through the earth. Almost time to sow the fields. The bodies. Too many to count? When you’re king, you’ll have no choice. Yes, now is the time to mention the fire. And that building on the left? You are not seeing wrong. Your people and the surviving Britons and Romans are working together to save that building. The seed for this year’s planting is in there. If that building burns, next winter will kill more than this battle has.

And it will burn, unless they can find a way to pull the very sea to their aid.

Pass the bottle, child. There’s a cold wind come down. And you have so much to learn.

Come. This way.

~

If you were king, would you execute the man that set the fire that burned the storehouse?

Yes, I know he was acting on your father’s orders. Will that matter come February? Wouldn’t he then be just one more mouth to feed?

I’m not asking you what your father would do. Your father doesn’t matter.

Ah, here we are. Here’s where your men first overran the Romans. This man here, his name was Telerius. He had two wives and five children. One of them is old enough to fight, barely. Your age. He is also my student, but on the Roman side of the wall. I don’t know what’s become of him. As for the others, what will you tell them, when you are king, and winter comes? ‘We must feed our warrior who burned the seed, so you will have to starve?’ How about this man here? Don’t look away. What was his name? Faolan, yes? Your friend Tynan’s father, if this feeble, old mind does not mislead. And Faolan’s family? What happens to them now?

Do you have any idea how dependent you people have become on Roman grain?

Why do I keep asking you these questions? What did I tell you about observing everything? Didn’t you see the blood? Didn’t you see your father press his hand to his gut, and favor his right side? Could you not see Her shadow on him?

Come, boy. Tomorrow you will be king, but today you are still my student. Let us leave this spot. There’s too much blood here for my tastes. Leave this place to Her.

~

A great victory? Haven’t I taught you to count?

Once upon a time, the Emperor stationed a full Legion in Britain. Six thousand men. What was left guarding this post? Just over half a Century? Perhaps eighty percent of those slain. I counted forty dead Roman soldiers, and maybe a dozen held prisoner. How many Scoti died today?

There are many tales of such ‘victories.’

~

My story? Ah yes, my story. I almost forgot. Where was I? Hmm. Boy, dragons, king, rich. Yes, I remember.

The king ruled wisely and well for many years, and his kingdom prospered. The neighboring kingdoms, which were not so lucky, nor ruled so wisely, grew jealous. And one day, when it was least expected, they waged war.

The battle was long and bloody, but at the end the king won the day and drove the attackers away. But the king’s rejoicing was short-lived. Soon, the battalion commanded by his eldest son joined him. Their banners were lowered, and they carried the king’s son on a stretcher. He had been mortally wounded, and none could save him.

As the king grieved for his eldest son, the battalion commanded by the king’s second son returned. Their banners also were lowered, and they carried the king’s second son on a stretcher. He too had been mortally wounded, and none could save him.

The king brought his dying sons back to his castle so that the queen and his daughter could make their farewells, but as they approached, they saw smoke on the horizon. The enemy had sent a company of men to flank them and assault the castle directly. The guards had been killed, and the castle set to the torch.

The queen ran to the king as he approached. “They have killed our daughter,” she cried.

Some victory, eh?

So what happens now? You’ve taken Luguvalium, and you’ve lost half your men doing it. What happens when the Romans send a larger force to retake it?

Or what happens if they don’t? And you’re the king left here, looking back over the wall into Her realm? Remember. Anyone sitting on this side of the wall is one of ‘us,’ part of the Empire. It matters little where you came from or what your intentions were.

No, this was a war that you could never have won. The Empire is never defeated. The Empire never goes away. The Empire is eternal. Oh, Rome will abandon these isles soon enough; that much is clear even to the Romans. But you’ve lived under their shadow for hundreds of years now. The idea of the King of Kings is here, and that idea will live forever.

Empire is not like a nation. Remember this, boy. It is not a tribe, or a tribe of tribes, or a country of countries. It is a tapeworm that feeds on our minds. You’ll never be free of it. And every segment you cut out just grows to infect another victim.

Perhaps it will be the Scoti. Perhaps you yourself will unite your tribes and lead them to victory over the painted ones and the Southlands, and perhaps even across the sea. The thought has crossed your mind already, I see. Or maybe the Britons will rise up to fill that role as the Romans abdicate, and one day a great British Empire will dominate the world.

You laugh. The Roman’s slaves, become rulers of the world? But who better than a slave to learn his master’s ways?

Leave it to them, child. There’s more honor in being a slave than a slaver.

~

Help me down here, boy. Its time for you to meet someone. Yes, yes. Someone on ‘your’ side of the wall. I’m old, but I still have my wits about me.

Who? Heh. An old friend. A very old friend indeed.

Of course it’s not safe.

You know, the wall does look more imposing from this side. Mind you don’t step on poor Eadan there. Or Osgar.

You’re surprised that I know their names? For five years I have been visiting your people, and you think I’d not notice who is there? Slaves and kings have one thing in common — neither is ever really free. Neither has the luxury of not paying attention. An oblivious slave is a dead slave. The same is doubly true for kings.

Tell me, who was the first to fall? Ah. The horse boy. Corc. Pity. I liked him. He was always very kind to a feeble old man. Show me, child. Show me where he fell.

~

It is time to finish this tale, I think. Where had I left it? The daughter. Yes, the daughter had been stabbed and burned, and was dying. I told you this already, yes?

The king’s daughter lay in the rubble of the castle’s gate, in the shadow of the great arch. This was as far as the queen could drag her, away from the flames that consumed the castle. She was not yet dead, but there was no saving her.

“Look!” the people cried, and they pointed to a figure who crouched, perched atop the ruined archway, watching the king’s daughter. Waiting for her to die.

~

Yes, child, you are right. We are near. I can feel Her. There. Feeding.

Look at Her. Is She not terrible? Is She not beautiful?

In the land of my birth we called her Morana. You have another name for Her, I think, but it is not so very different, is it?

Tell me, child, do you pity poor Corc? Or do you envy him the honor? By tonight, tomorrow at the latest, you will wear your father’s crown. And your father? Will you give him to Her? Or will you try to save him, to give his soul to the Roman God? Will you stay here and rule, and stretch your kingdom across this island? Will you embrace Empire? Will you take up the cause of that which builds beyond reason and decays from within? Or will you go back to your sheep and your mountains, to your petty regional squabbles? Which darkness will you embrace?

My tale is not yet done. I had wanted to finish before we found Her. Please forgive an old man’s wandering wits. But I must finish. Listen.

The king stood over his dying daughter, and drew all his authority to him. “Morana, this is my kingdom, and my word is law. I forbid this.”

The Demon Goddess laughed. “You are a leaf,” she told him, “already beginning to brown, a withered flower, already gone to seed. They are mine, and in the end, so are you.”

The king heard her words and knew they were true. But his daughter lay at his feet, gasping her last breath, and his two sons lay nearby, the last of their blood draining from their wounds. He turned his eyes to the sun, and he cried out. “Svarog, you have promised me one request! I call on you to grant it now! Drive the Demon Goddess from my kingdom, and banish her from it forever!”

Svarog looked into the eyes of his old friend, and he said, “You do not want this thing. Choose something else.”

But the king’s reason had left him. “This is what I choose,” he said. “Give me my due, Lord Svarog, or be made a liar and cheat.”

Svarog blinked his great eye, and for a moment the world was black, and when it was once again light, Morana had gone.

From then on, it was always summer. Nothing died. The crops grew and grew, producing harvest after harvest, until the Earth itself grew weary. No wound would slay a man. No disease, however terrible, would kill him.

One day, the king gathered his wife to him, and his two sons and his daughter, and all of his subjects who were not too ill to walk. And he raised his eyes to the sun, and he cried, “Great Svarog, please, I was wrong. Lift the ban.”

“Do you know what you are asking for?” Svarog asked.

The king kissed his children, doomed by his foolishness to be forever dying, but never dead. “Yes,” the king said.

And Svarog blinked his eye.

This is the tale my father told me, and this is the tale that I have been given to tell you.

Go to Her now, child. Introduce yourself. Do not be afraid. She is not here for you, yet.

Soon it will be your time to make choices. Best to know Her before then. Best to know her well.

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The Balticon Diversion

Greetings from Balticon, where I’ve been running about madly these last few days. On Thursday we published Issue 5 of The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, containing seven fantastic stories from seven fantastic authors, accompanied with seven fantastic artworks by seven fantastic artists. The only thing missing is the seven brides. And the seven brothers.

The convention has been busy. We had a book launch for A Bard in the Hand, an anthology containing a story called Embarrassing Relations, which I co-wrote with Bob Norwicke.

On Friday night I was rooked into a panel called “Erotica a la Carte: Iron Chef Erotica.” The basic idea is that 3 authors are given a secret ingredient and given exactly 15 minutes to write smut. We then read the results out loud and were judged.

It took 2 martinis to get me in front of an audience writing smut.

And then, damn it, I won. Now I have to do it again, competing against the winners from Farpoint and MarsCon. Tonight.

This will require 3 martinis.

Which I shall now endeavor to accomplish.

There will be no Kudzu chapter this week. Tomorrow I’ll post up a different story for your reading pleasure, and we’ll return to our fearful, neurotic adventurers next week.

 

Kudzu, Chapter 45

Tags

book 6, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 45

 

Eric Tharp had been daydreaming when he heard the voices. Or maybe really dreaming. The chamber in which he floated was so vast, so lush, it really was like something out of dream. Where the outside of the kudzu had been sprinkled with shiny black-and-silver leaves that simultaneously sparkled and sucked light, the inside was dotted with the opposite — softly luminescent leaves that filled the chamber with a pulsing, green glow. Over the hours, the lights had become hypnotic. Combine that with the fact that he’d started rationing his oxygen, and things were getting kind of trippy.

Which probably wasn’t a good sign.

But it was better than thinking about what an utter failure he’d been. He’d killed them all. First Ash and Slim, then Michael and Colleen, who had surely asphyxiated by now. And then he’d run in abject terror from whatever the fuck thing Jaworsky’s hand had become, dooming everyone else in the process.

Including himself. Without the ship, he was as good as dead.

Maybe it would be best to just take his helmet off now. Get it over with.

Because his hallucinations were haunting him.

“That’s just not right,” Slim’s ghost was saying. “That’s some creepy shit, there.”

Michael’s ghost replied, “I keep feeling like I should know what the word means, like I’ve heard it before, or read it somewhere.”

“Probably better that way,” Slim’s ghost said.

“Colleen doesn’t know what it means, either.”

“An ossuary—”

Another voice broke into Tharp’s hallucination, cutting off Slim’s ghost, a voice he’d never heard before.

“Well, don’t go spoiling the surprise for them, dearie.”

Ossuary? Tharp had been to the ossuary outside of Prague, back when he was a student, traveling for the summer. A church built of human bones. He’d had nightmares about that place for years, finding himself in it, and all the skulls had his friends and family’s faces superimposed on them. He’d never been able to watch zombie movie without imagining a real person, full of hopes and dreams and love and heartbreak, behind each decomposing face.

“Slim? Michael? Am I dreaming this?”

“Tharp?” Michael said. “Goddamn, it’s good to hear your voice.”

Tharp heard a woman’s voice in the distance. Away from the microphone. Colleen’s voice.

“Hah, that’s a first.”

“For the record, Captain, I’m glad to to hear from you, too.” Slim’s voice came high and fast in raccoony excitement.

“I don’t understand,” Tharp said. “How is this possible? There’s no way your oxygen would hold out this long.”

“Are you kidding me?” the unfamiliar voice said. “What do you think the point of growing kudzu in space was? It’s a plant. It produces oxygen. That’s what plants do.”

Tharp’s brain stuttered, trying to grasp what was happening. He felt like he should respond, but what do you say to that?

“What about the others?” Slim asked. “Amelia? Jaworsky? Talk to me.”

Tharp bit his lip. He tasted blood. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. This was a conversation he couldn’t have. This time, there was no hesitation. He pulled his helmet off in a quick movement. If luck was with him, he was in a vacuum, and would die a quick death without ever having to face the consequences of his cowardice.

Luck wasn’t with him, and he gasped, lightheaded in the heady, rich air.

~

“So here’s the plan,” Amelia said, half her body still inside the wall. “These little guys are mechanical, yeah, but they’re not really put together in any rational sense. They’re not built, not motorized, per se. They’re mobile and self-propelling and all that, but there’s nothing I can think of that allows for fiber optics to move independently. Fiber is just a thin strip of glass in a plastic sheath. No moving parts.”

“Tell that to these fuckers,” Susan said. “I can’t get them to stop staring at me.”

“Yeah, so something else is going on there, and I haven’t got a clue what it is. But. They’re able to generate a magnetic field that lets them stick to metal surfaces. Which means—”

“An electricity source. Brilliant. So there’s a battery in there.”

“Or a tiny generator. Either one works for our purposes.”

Susan looked at the creatures she was holding. They were… hand sized. “Not to rain on your parade,” she said, “but there’s no way these things have enough power to open that door.”

Amelia extracted herself from the wall.

“Don’t need it to open the door. That’s what you’re for.”

She returned several tools to her belt pouch and rummaged for something else.

“This will do,” she said, extracting a heavy wrench. “All I need is enough power to reset the locking codes. Then we can manually override the door. Give me a hand, here.”

“Um. My hands are kinda full right now.”

Amelia’s laughter was halfway between a bark and a chitter. “No, I mean give me one of those hands.”

The Jaworsky-hand struggled as Amelia braced it on its side against the wall. She swung the wrench hard against the base of the thumb. Susan winced at the sharp crack. Her own thumb ached in sympathetic pain.

Amelia shucked the hand quickly, leveraging it open with a screwdriver and popping the back of the hand off. The hand went into spasms. Amelia poked at its innards.

The other one, the one Susan was still holding, started struggling frantically, eyestalks thrashing. It clicked its fingers together, until Susan used her free hand to hold them still.

“Yeah, this should work,” Amelia said.

She extracted some pre-stripped wires from her pack, jabbing them one by one into the guts of the hand, and then twisting them tight.

She repeated the process with the second hand, though it struggled more strenuously than the first. Its fiber-stalk eyes searched wildly into the darkness behind them, as if it was waiting — hoping — for something. For rescue? Susan shined her light out into the darkness, but the other hands were all keeping well away from them. It took Amelia three strikes with the wrench this time, with all the squirming the hand was doing, to crack it open.

Once the two hands were gutted and wired together, Amelia crawled back into the access panel with two of the wires.

“Moment of truth,” she said.

There was a spark, and a sizzle. Both hands jerked, and then became immobile. Something inside the wall clicked.

“Holy shit,” Amelia said. “That actually worked. I can’t believe that actually fucking worked!”

“So now what?” Susan asked.

“What are the hands doing?” Amelia asked, as she extracted herself from the wall.

“Nothing. I think they’re dead.”

“No, I mean the others.”

“Just…” Susan frowned. “Nothing. They’re just watching us.”

“Eh. It could be worse. Let’s get this door open.” Amelia handed Susan a massive flathead screwdriver. “This is probably more useful than plastic piping.”

Susan fit the head into the seam of the door and tried to twist. Nothing. She couldn’t get it deep enough to get it to catch. Amelia handed her the wrench, which she used as a hammer. Was it…? Yes, it was open, just a crack. A soft, green glow shone through it.

There was a sound, coming from all around them. The click of thousands of little fingers on metal. Susan swung her light in a wide arc, but no, the hands were still keeping their distance.

She pushed the screwdriver deeper and levered the door open further. Amelia jammed the PVC tubing in the gap and pulled at it. Susan gripped the edge of the door, got her foot into the gap, and strained against it.

Slowly, it slid open, until the gap was wide enough to fit Jaworsky through. Susan’s muscles screamed at her, and she let her body sag in relief.

It was done. They were free. On the other side of the door was a vast, green forest that had once been the Beagle’s docking bay. Beyond that, the kudzu opened into a wide cavern. Luminous leaves were scattered throughout the darker foliage, creating the eerie, pulsing glow that streamed through the open door.

Fascinating, Susan thought.

“Oh, fuck,” Amelia said.

“What?”

Susan followed the cone of Amelia’s headlamp. Back into the depths of the ship.

Dark shapes moved toward them. Hundreds. Thousands. They flowed like a sea, scuttling across the walls and launching themselves through the air, converging from all sides until the sheer mass of them obscured all vision.

Kudzu, Chapter 44

Tags

book 6, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 44

 

When Amelia went off hunting the Jaworsky-hand knockoffs, she had turned off her helmet lamp. Then she launched herself into the dark. Susan heard the scampering of little fingers like thousands of centipedes, heard a crash and scuffle, and concentrated on her assigned job in an attempt not to think about it.

Susan had taken apart and reassembled countless computers and tablets in her time, mucking about in hardware so miniaturized that it required a jeweler’s glass to see the slots in the tiny screws. But she’d always had gravity as an invisible helper: the screws came out of the equipment and went into a bin on her desk, and they stayed there until she needed them.

Here, everything acted as if it had a mind of its own, the tensile strength of the materials interacting with the inertial mass of other materials in calculable ways, if you know what values to plug into the equations. Without those values, Susan found them completely unpredictable.

Susan had had a short-lived affair with a mechanic, when she was still in grad school. Helene, whose calloused, dirty fingers had taken her places she didn’t know existed. Susan still couldn’t remember what she’d said, one drunken evening, that caused Helene to walk out of the bar. She’d left a dozen voice-mails before getting a curt text back.

I can’t be with someone who can’t see that people can be smart in different ways. Don’t write back.

Of course she wrote back: Stupid cunt. And she’d gone back to boys who were all too happy to worship her, body and mind.

Jaworsky or Amelia, or even Slim, could have taken apart the panel with their eyes closed. They’d know instinctually what the materials would do. They wouldn’t need the math; they’d be able to calculate it by sight and feel.

Half the screws had floated off into the darkness. One of the wires had pulled loose when the panel twisted, and she couldn’t figure out where it was supposed to connect.

“I think I fucked up,” she said.

Amelia’s voice came through her earbuds. “You’re only human.”

When Amelia drifted back to the loading bay airlock, her eyes glittered metallic green in the darkness, reflecting the light of Susan’s helmet lamp before any of the rest of her was visible.

“Got two of them,” she said. She held them out to Susan.

“I don’t want them,” Susan said, instinctively backing away. The damn things creeped her out, with their segmented fingers and waving eyestalks.

“Fine, I’ll hold them. You rewire the airlock.”

Susan snatched one of the hands away from Amelia. She held it up in front of her helmet. Its fingers wiggled as it tried to twist free, and its eyestalks waved, as if it was surveying everything. Plotting. She turned the Jaworsky-hand away from her, but the eyes curled around to face her.

“How do I get it to stop staring at me?” she asked.

“Eat its eyes,” Amelia said.

Susan didn’t realize she’d made a noise until she heard Amelia laugh.

“You don’t actually want to do that,” Amelia said. “Fiber optics are as high in glass as they are in fiber.”

“Give me that,” she said, snatching the other hand away from the raccoon.

Amelia immediately turned her attention to the control panel. She pulled some tools from her belt and placed them against the wall. They stayed there.

“They’re magnetized?” Susan said.

“Uh, yeah. Of course.”

“Oh. You could have told me. I almost lost your screwdriver.”

Amelia pulled her head out of the hole behind the access panel and peered at Susan. “It’s been a legal standard for spacecraft maintenance for at least fifty years,” she said. “Or a hundred fifteen now, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, I work on computers, and we don’t trust magnets.”

“Whatever,” Amelia said, and stuck her head back into the access panel.

Susan resisted the urge to pull her tail.

~

Colleen watched the old woman watch Michael as he scrambled to get his pants up from around his ankles. She wiped her hand on Michael’s shirt and handed it to him.

She was, Colleen decided, more weathered than old. A rough life aging her faster than time. Her skin and hair said she was in her late forties or early fifties. Her eyes proclaimed her infinitely older.

Which also meant that the woman’s parents had probably been in kindergarten when the Beagle had departed Earth’s orbit for Triton.

The woman’s clothes were a patchwork quilt of fabrics, tattered and threadbare, but clean. She’d obviously stopped brushing her hair years ago; it was matted and bedraggled, too straight and thin to make proper dreadlocks like Michael’s, so it ended up looking more like a nest made by a schizophrenic bird.

“I’m Colleen,” she said.

“Yes, I know,” the woman said. She crossed her arms and leaned against wall, watching Michael with hungry eyes.

“You’re very rude,” Colleen said.

“Am I?” The woman laughed. “You hear that, Astrid? I’m rude. Proud of me now?”

Colleen looked around. She didn’t see anyone else.

“Is that your name? Astrid?”

“My name? Gods, no. I may have learned how to be rude, but I’ll never be that manipulative and narcissistic. No, no, I’ve given up on names. No need for them up here. You’ll see, when you’ve been here long enough. No need for them at all.”

~

It was hard to tell if the woman was just being deliberately evasive, or if she was insane. As they walked through the winding passageways to the kudzu, she and Colleen maintained a conversation that could hardly be called a dialogue. More like two verbal streams that occasionally intersected.

Michael followed the two women, and worked on getting his radio wired back into his space suit’s battery pack. As much as possible, he’d been using power drawn from the kudzu lamp-leaves, to conserve the battery. But this woman made him uncomfortable, the way she had stared at him, and he wanted to touch base with Slim — and even Ash — to find out more.

The radio popped and hissed as it came online.

“Hey, Slim, you there?”

No response.

They climbed a set of stairs that wound like RNA into a large chamber. The woman led them along the wall for a short distance, and then into another twisting corridor.

“Michael?” Slim sounded out of breath. “You still there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Sorry, I was playing with the kitties.”

“Playing… I hope that’s not a euphemism.”

“What? Ew. They’re animals, for fuck’s sake.”

Michael’s face burned. He tried to think of a way to make what he’d said less offensive. There really wasn’t.

“So, we’re following the lady you sent to find us.”

“Yeah? So what do you think? She’s a piece of work, isn’t she? You fucked her yet?”

“Have I what?” Michael nearly tripped over his own feet.

The woman glanced back at him. “You okay back there?”

“I’m fine. Got Slim on the radio.”

“Oh yeah? I love that little guy. He’s just adorable.” The woman stepped in so she could speak into the radio microphone. “Don’t you worry, Slim,” she said. “You’ll be seeing your friends in no time.

She stood way too close, her breast pressing against Michael’s arm, her thigh against his. Her breath against Michael’s neck. She smelled like sex.

Of course, Michael probably also smelled like sex, but why? No, he didn’t want to ask. He wasn’t going to ask.

“Are we going stand here gossiping,” Colleen asked, “or can we keep moving?” She looked perturbed, Michael thought.

What did I do this time?

No, too easy to fall into old habits, old patterns. Taking the blame for other people’s behavior. He pushed passed the woman.

“This way?” he asked.

The woman nodded. “Yup. Straight ahead til you hit the ossuary.”

Ossuary?

“Oh man,” Slim said into Michael’s ear, “that’s just not right.”

Kudzu, Chapter 43

Tags

book 6, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 43

 

 

“I wish Jaworsky was awake,” Susan said.

Amelia bared her teeth. Jaworsky wasn’t awake, and wouldn’t be until they could get him some medical attention. Which meant he might never wake up. In the meantime, Susan was losing her shit, flailing ineffectively against the airlock door with a length of PVC piping.

In the meantime, the things in the shadows had come out of hiding. They crawled from behind crates, out of ventilation grills. They broke open access panels and crawled out of coon-holes. They gathered on the edge of visibility, creeping closer as their numbers grew.

They all looked like Jaworsky’s hand.

As they got closer, Amelia could make out more details. For the most part, they weren’t as slick or elegant as Jaworsky’s hand. They were constructed of all sorts of materials, pipes and springs and wires, metal plates and bits of fiber optic cable. No two the same, but all bearing a horrific similarity to Jaworsky’s mutinous appendage.

There were too many to count.

One of the hands sailed past, floating through the air right in front of them. Susan swung at it with the pipe. She missed. The thing followed them with fiber optic eyes as it went past and disappeared into the darkness.

“You tried the manual override?” Amelia said.

“For the thousandth time, yes.” Susan slammed her fist against the door. The sound rang dully. “Tharp must have gotten out before the power died, and left the other side open. We’re completely fucked.”

Amelia looked out at the sea of hands. Fiber optic eyestalks waved, fingers gestured. They crawled over each other like crabs.

Which were even tastier than cockroaches.

“Mmm, butter sauce,” she said.

“What?”

“They’re like crabs,” Amelia said. “Looks like they’ve magnetized the tips of their fingers. I wonder…”

“What?” Susan said, again.

“Shut up,” Amelia said. “I’m thinking.” She closed her eyes and envisioned wiring diagrams. Her fingers traced imaginary circuits in the air.

She grinned at Susan. “Yes, this might actually work.”

Amelia pulled a screwdriver and a Torx set from her belt pack and handed them to Susan.

“Here. Get this panel open for me. There are two sub-panels inside. Pull the top one out so the wires are exposed. Try not to break anything. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

Amelia’s grin was feral. “Hunting crabs.”

~

Eric Tharp was beginning to regret his actions.

He’d gotten to the docking bay without difficulty, getting as far away as fast as possible from the horror that was Jaworsky’s hand. Odds were, by now the others were all dead, and him the only survivor.

Problem was, he wasn’t a survivor quite yet.

He’d opened the docking bay door without thinking. Without strapping himself down to anything.

The door had opened to the interior of a vast kudzu cavern. Air from inside the kudzu had rushed into the evacuated docking bay. Rushed in and swirled around, catching up everything that wasn’t strapped down. And then flinging it all out into the cavern.

Tharp had floated across the cavern for hours, watching the Beagle’s loading dock slowly diminish in the distance. Not getting appreciably closer to any of the other walls. It might be days at the rate he was going before he reached the other side.

Still, he was away from that thing.

He tried his radio again, just in case. Before, all he’d gotten was static. Nobody on the other side.

That didn’t mean anything. They could still be alive. The kudzu did strange things to radio signals. They’d seen that when Michael and Colleen had gone in earlier. For all he knew, they could still be alive, too. Alive and abandoned.

How do you apologize for abandoning someone?

How many people can you leave behind to die, and still be able to live with yourself?

Once again, all he got was static.

He exhaled in relief.

About an hour later, he drifted into an air current.

~

Colleen held two fingers up in front of Michael’s face.

“How many—”

“Two. How many times are you going to ask? My vision’s fine. I’m fine.” Michael slapped her hands away. The movement made him dizzy.

“You’re a bloody mess. Stop fighting and let me take care of you.”

Colleen tore a piece of her t-shirt off and wet it from her waterskin, the one without the fish. She dabbed at Michael’s face.

“You’re not going to stop, no matter what I say.”

“Nope. We’re going to be rescued soon. You want to look your best, don’t you?

“All right, fine.”

Colleen peeled his shirt off, got his legs untangled from his pants. She helped him lie back against the glass sphere. It looked like he was resting on infinity.

She washed the blood from his face and chest, and rinsed as much as she could from his dreaded locks.

“You’re going to need a proper bath,” she said.

“I’ll get right on that,” Michael said.

“Maybe stitches, too, if we can find a needle or something. There’s got to be some old stuff left behind in some of these satellites.”

Her hand lingered in the coarse hairs on his chest. Then she slipped it down his belly to wrap around his cock. It swelled at her touch.

“What are you doing?”

“You can’t tell? Maybe you do have a concussion.”

“No, I mean, I thought…”

Colleen leaned forward to take one of his nipples between her teeth, and he groaned.

“The way I remember it,” she said, her hand working the supple flesh over its rigid core, “we were rudely interrupted, just before you were about to come. We’ll be reunited with Ash and Slim pretty soon, so who knows when we’ll have any privacy.”

“Colleen,” Michael said. His hand cupped her ass. Slid to her hip. His fingers dug into her flesh.

“Shush,” Colleen said. She kissed his chest and throat, sank teeth into his shoulder.

Michael’s cock jerked in her hand, spilled across his belly and coated her fingers.

“Oh, fuck,” Michael said. “Colleen, there’s some—”

Colleen touched a finger gently to his lips.

“Shush.”

“Yeah,” a voice said, coarse as used sandpaper. “You just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t mind little old me.”