Song of Scarabaeus (28 page)

Everything looks the same as the mission briefing begins. Everything is the same—but Lukas isn't there. He retired, they tell her, but she knows it's a lie. He would never leave without saying goodbye and explaining why. More than that, he would never leave at all.

It will be her sixth mission, departing in a few days. The fifth without Bethany, the first without Lukas.

For the first time in two years, she runs. They'll find her soon, but for a few hours she's anonymous and free as she follows the endlessly twisting caverns of Halen Crai. In the outer loop she enters a shop and a crowd of toms descends on her. Toys, really. Ridiculous species of all shapes and colors, flashing lights and chattering, waving their appendages as they wheel aimlessly around the floor. One runs over her foot and she nudges it aside. Confused, it spins around a few times, speeds off, and bangs into a wall. Others bump into her ankles, staggering around like blind drunks. She's never seen such disorder and cheery nonsense, and she likes it.

The vendor emerges from a back room to apologize. “Fringer junk. Non-standard teck. They can't tune to the local navbeacons.”

She sympathizes. She's never felt at home here, either. “I could take a look at them, maybe reset their protocols…”

The vendor eyes her appraisingly. “You a teckie? What will it cost me?”

She pulls something from her pocket. Everything that belongs to her, Natesa takes away—but she's managed to hide this for two years. It's all she has left.

The vendor steps forward and touches it with her finger. Each of the woman's fingernails is pierced through with a gemstone, and the nails grow around the gems in distorted ridges. It's beautiful and grotesque at the same time.

“That's what I want.” So they can never take it away.

“So what is this? An insect or something?”

“Can you graft it onto my skin, like you've done to your fingernails?”

“Suppose that would work. Is it worth anything?”

“Only to me.” A reminder of Scarabaeus, the world she saved, and now of Lukas, who she couldn't save.

With a nod of approval, the vendor says, “When you find something you care about, you got to hold on to it.”

 

As the seal hissed open, darkness greeted them. Finn shone the lamp into the jungle, etching the twisted milky vines with a bluish light and casting distorted shadows on the surrounding vegetation. Scattered pieces of equipment were the only indication humans had ever intruded. There was no sign of the slaters, no sign of the bodies of the three serfs who'd died here, or of Zeke.

But she'd saved Finn.

With the shield off, Edie could smell the jungle properly for the first time and she breathed deeply. Clean, moist, earthy, but sharper than seemed natural. The nanoteck in their bodies would take care of any reactive substances they inhaled—or so she hoped. And if not, there was nothing more she could do about it. They'd know soon enough.

Finn leaned against the outside of the BRAT, checking his rifle. “Smells like standard-issue soap.”

He slung the weapon over his shoulder and handed Edie her pack. His endearing nervousness about the nanoteck had evaporated. The jungle was a danger he could shoot at, notwithstanding her warnings—shooting might set off the jungle's defensive reaction again. In any case, he only had a few rounds left in the rifle.

Together they looked out at the jungle, lit by the puddle of light from the lamp. The vine growth matted into a dense network low over their heads. Beneath that lay the tangle of wide supporting stalks of arboreal species, surrounded by pale open-faced flowers with crooked petals stitched together like patchwork.

Everything was drained of color, washed out and semi-translucent. Unlike the original ecosystem, photosynthesis could no longer be the main process that sustained these organisms. Yesterday Edie had seen only one green species of plant winding its tendrils up through the vines toward the light. Maybe the organisms fed like funguses—absorbing nutrients directly from the soil and air, and perhaps from each other.

Edie checked her compass and set off, due north as planned.

“Wait!”

“I know, I know, stay close,” she muttered, glancing over her shoulder at Finn.

He was a few paces away, shining the lamp over her head. She looked up to see a slater, suspended by a silken thread. Its legs were curled under its carapace, and the jaws on its underside twitched. She couldn't detect any eyes, but it was aware of her. Its legs started to unfurl.

Finn spoke between gritted teeth. “I thought you said—”

It pounced, its multiple legs scrabbling for purchase among the flaps and ribbing on the shoulder of her jacket. She dropped to her knees, into the soft mud. Its grip was surprisingly powerful, its weight heavier than expected for a flat creature not much bigger than the palm of her hand. Then it was on her neck, its jaws gnawing against her flesh. She forced herself to endure it.

“No!” she yelled as Finn advanced, and he pulled up short.

Its bites were superficial—she knew that from having seen what they did to Zeke. It had taken dozens of these creatures to rip off his flesh in thin layers, gradually working down to the bone. She could handle a few bites—but damn, it hurt.

Around her, the jungle rustled with movement. Finn's boots crunched on the moist litter as he turned around warily, rifle at the ready.

“They're everywhere,” he said.

“It's okay.”

The slater scurried down Edie's chest, over her hip, and across a meter of ground before launching a pale glossy thread into the vines above and clambering away. In the tangle of vines above her, dozens more slaters—some dangling from threads, some clasping the vines—were just visible in the dim light. They remained motionless for several seconds. Then they moved, but not to attack. They swung across the vines on their pendulums of silk, scuttled over the jungle floor. Some opened up their wings and flew across the clearing. Going about their business.

Finn hunkered down beside her, dumping his pack and rifle on the ground. Having realized the slaters were ignoring them, he turned his attention to the graze on the side of Edie's neck.

“It needed to have a taste,” she said.

“I can see that. Jeez…” He had the medkit open and started wiping the wound.

Edie watched the jungle. “It worked. Its cyphviruses recognized my biopattern from the baseline I programmed into the BRAT, and the BRAT told it to leave me alone.”

“And they'll all leave you alone now?”

“The jungle is like one organism. Everything talks to everything else.”

“What about me?”

“The slaters weren't interested in you.” There must be a reason why. Then she saw the back of his hand, where the
skin was lightly peppered with tiny marks. “The jungle already knows you. Look.”

“Something bit me?”

“An insect bite, looks like. Whatever passes for insects in this place.”

He smeared medigel on her wound and it set into a thin, transparent layer, the anesthetic numbing the stinging. Then he snapped shut the medkit and packed it away.

“Let's get out of here. And no more surprises, okay?”

 

Without e-shields it was cold in the depths of the megabiosis. They moved as fast as possible to keep warm, weaving around trunks and boulders and cushiony growths of pallid fungus, cutting through hanging foliage and bracken on the ground, and avoiding the sharp crystalline vines. The pale, moist vegetation glittered in the ghostly predawn light so that the jungle no longer seemed dank or dangerous.

Life rippled around them. Edie swung the lamp to examine as much as she could. Wormlike invertebrates burrowed into fleshy flower petals and tiny multilegged creatures crawled in neat lines along their feathered veins. Some species were physically attached to the stalks and vines by tendrils and nodules, blurring the boundaries between plant and animal.

After three long, tiring hours, there was enough weak light filtering through the canopy to conclude that dawn had broken. Within minutes, the vines lost their crystalline rigidity and became translucent again. Nine hours after the bomb blast, they seemed to retain some memory of that violence, because they moved restlessly, knitting and unknitting in a sluggish dance.

Finn estimated they were more than halfway to the perimeter when they stopped briefly to eat and rest. With the end in sight, Edie couldn't hold her main fear inside any longer.

“What if the
Hoi
's gone? The skiff can't make that jump.”

“We can use the satellite to send a distress call through the node.”

“But the nearest ship is probably that patrol vessel with Natesa on board.”

Finn raised his shoulders in a small shrug as he chewed on a pro-bar. “Let's hope not. First hurdle is Haller. If he's seen even a fraction of what we've seen, I'm betting his mind's still set on taking biocyph from that BRAT and using it to create something he can sell.” Something unique and dangerous and valuable—a tempting combination. “He'll send you back in there, with or without me.”

She knew what he meant. Haller would kill Finn if he had to. “So what's the plan?”

“Let's veer off course a little, in case he's digging through to meet us. We'll exit a few hundred meters from where they expect us and make our own way back to the skiff. I'd rather deal with Cat than with him.”

As he took another bite, a flash of purple and red crossed his knuckles. Edie stared at her own hand, where color streaked across the skin. She looked up and drew in her breath.

All around them, the once colorless jungle lit up with glimmering rainbows. The translucent vines, glistening with moisture, refracted the sunlight, acting like an endless network of shifting glass prisms. Shafts of light vibrated through the mist creating ethereal curtains of jeweled lace. Everywhere the jungle wildlife shimmered with dappled flecks of every hue.

Her catastrophic failure had transformed into an exquisite wonderland.

“Look at what I made, Finn.”

He watched her, a smile playing on his lips. “It's just physics.”

More than that: she'd have one good memory to take away from this place.

As they continued on, the effect faded whenever the sun moved behind clouds, only to burst into a radiant kaleidoscope again minutes later. For a full hour they walked through the dazzling new world, and then the sun moved
higher and the angle of light changed, and the jungle was again reduced to ghostly shades of gray.

After another hour, the vegetation thinned out noticeably and they picked up the pace. Occasionally they caught glimpses through the undergrowth of open land and mountains. From the initial flyover, Edie knew the terrain out there was pretty rough, but it couldn't possibly be harder to move through than the jungle itself.

A glint caught her eye, several meters ahead. This wasn't another trick of the light—it was a flash of metal. She pointed it out wordlessly for Finn, two paces behind her, and he signaled for her to get down. It could only mean one thing—they'd met up with Haller and his team. But that shouldn't have happened. They'd deliberately gone off course.

They crouched and waited, listening. The sounds of the jungle permeated the air—the chirps and calls of concealed creatures, the scuttling of tiny legs, the rustle of slithering vines overhead. But nothing human, other than their own breathing.

Finn hesitated, and she knew he was uneasy about leaving her unprotected, but they had to know if Haller was nearby. As Finn moved off, Edie quickly lost track of where he was. For a big man, he moved with amazing stealth. Then came the click of the rifle engaging. She tensed. But there was no shot. Moments later he was back at her side.

“One of the serfs. Must've decided to take his chances in the jungle instead of with Haller.”

“He's dead?”

“Stripped to the bone, like Zeke.” His tone was unemotional, but from the abrupt way he stuffed his things back into his pack, Edie could tell he'd been affected by what he'd seen.

He started moving again. Edie jumped up to follow.

“Maybe the slaters dragged him there.”

“I don't think so. All his stuff is still with him—belt, pack, shiv. That's where he went down. It was—”

He stopped, turned to her, changed his mind, and kept walking.

“Finn?”

“From what's left of him, I think it was the guy from the engine room.”

“The one you saved?”

“Yeah.”

He moved faster, perhaps still not entirely convinced they were safe from the slaters.

Within half an hour, the layers of vines overhead became a loosely woven web, a matted roof that curved downward, so low Edie could reach up and touch it. They were meters from the perimeter, where the vegetation was both less varied and less vigorous. This was the growing edge, the boundary between the new world and the old. They pulled aside the drape of vines and stumbled into the open.

“There she is.”

Finn pointed to a plateau several kilometers away, the only flat land in sight. In the bright noon sunlight, the skiff glowed. Just one skiff. Cat had said that an engie was coming down in the other one, but there was no sign of it.

They followed the perimeter of the megabiosis for a hundred meters, checking for further signs of Haller's team, and then Finn turned sharply away and headed out across the uneven scrub.

Edie looked back at the megabiosis, a tangled infestation spilling out from the central BRAT, latching on to and mutating the existing native wildlife, and sprouting up from the earth from the BRAT's network of rootlets.

Look at what you've done.

The words of Bethany's killer. She didn't want to think of what she'd done. Her childish folly had recreated a world and it had tried to kill her. Let it fester now, or fail. Scarabaeus had given her its song, and she was determined to use it.