Nightborn, page 17
“Not like we have a choice,” Leo agreed.
Suddenly a scream sounded from the far end of the tent, followed by others. Leo rose quickly to his feet, knocking over his chair in the process, and turned toward the source of the sound. A large beast was atop the table—twice the size of a man, at least—and it was unlike any creature Leo had ever seen. Its head was rat-like but its torso reptilian, and black spider legs jutted out on both sides. Its tail had the diamond patterning of a snake, with a long stinger at the end. A dark and viscous fluid dripped from that stinger, and when the tail whipped toward a nearby colonist—who quickly jumped out of the way—drops of it splattered across the table.
All this Leo saw in an instant, and then he was running toward it, Lise following close behind. What he was going to do when he reached it, he had no clue.
People were screaming and running in the other direction, and one of them almost knocked him over. A few people were simply frozen, and they stared at the beast in horrified helplessness as it grabbed Tom Bennet by the neck and shook him from side to side like a dishrag. Several others had pulled out their guns, and Leo did so as well. One shot rang out from across the table, then another; the first one missed the beast and whizzed by Leo’s head, dangerously close. The beast twitched as the second bullet struck it, but otherwise seemed unharmed. It turned to focus on the shooter.
And that was when Lise charged it. She was carrying a chair, which she swung full force into the thing’s head. It rose up with a roar, and she jumped quickly back. Now it was possible to get a clean line of fire angling up at its head, and as Leo aimed and fired, shots rang out from all sides. The creature wasn’t bleeding—visibly at least—but from the way its head jerked back and forth as bullets struck, it was clear the barrage was having some effect. Waves of bullets slammed into the creature. One of them pierced its right eye, and now there was only a black hole on that side. One of the shooters barely jumped out of the way in time as the glistening stinger whipped past his face.
Steve broke through the circle of shooters with a long iron spit in his hand, wielding it like a spear. “Get the fuck out of my mess hall, you motherfucker!” As the creature turned toward him he thrust the black rod into its chest—deep, deep into the hellish flesh. Whether he hit a vital organ was anyone’s guess, but he must have stabbed something important, because the creature howled in pain and rage, and stopped trying to attack people. It began to draw in on itself, legs curling up against its chest like those of a dying insect, neck and tail pulling back into its body, a grotesque contortion. It began to shrink—no, dissolve—features running down its face in rivulets, legs melting like wax, all of it sinking into a pool of undefined flesh that was taking on a strange blue light. It was exactly what Lise had described from the fight in Leo’s pod, and he watched in horrified fascination as the blue light grew stronger, the flesh lost all definition—and then suddenly it was all gone. Only Tom’s body remained, so mangled that it hardly looked human.
From the other side of the table there was the sound of someone weeping, and a voice saying “Help him! Please!” Someone had gotten hit during that first careless volley, and the bullet that had passed through his shoulder had probably shattered bone. Lise called for her assistants to fetch a stretcher, and tried to staunch the flow of blood while she waited for it. But each time she applied pressure on the wound her patient cried out; even Leo could guess that there were shards of bone inside that wound. At last Lise’s team returned, and with her help they got him onto the stretcher, then carried him off to the clinic to be diagnosed and treated.
His throat tight, Leo looked around the mess tent. Those who had fled were returning now, and he heard a few asking what had happened. But those who had witnessed the creature’s demise didn’t answer. Some of them looked like they were in shock. One stood with his arms wrapped around himself, visibly shaking. A third was vomiting.
They now know what we have known for days, Leo thought. That the mysterious force which permeates this planet is connected to the monsters which have been attacking us. Which means the wall won’t stop them; anywhere there is fae, there is danger. That creature might not have killed many people, but for the survivors, it had wounded their capacity to hope.
He saw Angie standing by a tent pole. There was no horror or fear in her expression, more like a dark fascination. After a moment he walked over to her.
“Spider and rat,” she said quietly as he approached. “Lizard and snake. That thing wasn’t shaped by the fears of a single target, but by the common fears of our species.” She gestured around the tent. “And it had nearly two hundred specimens to harvest fear from.”
It will have even more fear now, Leo mused darkly. Since everyone now understands just how vulnerable they are. The fae is everywhere—invisible, malevolent. How can we fight such a force? The key battle from now on would not be against alien monsters, but human terror and despair.
“Put up your wards,” he told her. And before she could respond he headed back to the place where the monster had been, to comfort those who were still too shaken to move away.
A pounding on the door woke Leo up.
Disentangling himself from Lise’s left arm and the blanket, he had to step carefully over two other people to get to the door. Now that all the colonists wanted to sleep indoors, every square foot of available space had been commandeered for that purpose, including his new office. Thank God Lise had foreseen the need for this, so they already had the longhouse ready and waiting. If she hadn’t . . . well, people would have had to be very, very friendly.
The knocking sounded again, this time louder. “Coming!” Leo yelled. Force of habit. It woke up Pravida and Ted, whom he’d invited to bunk with him so the exo team could stay together. Well, most of the team, anyway. Dani was in her own office, and until he knew what was going on with Ian, Leo was loath to trust him with anything sensitive.
Finally he got to the door and pushed it open. Rod from the construction team was waiting, alone. Behind him was an empty camp awash in dawn’s cool light. Leo looked at the visitor for a moment, then said, “Do you remember the night we got wasted together at Orientation?”
Rod looked surprised for a moment, then realized what Leo was doing. “Pina coladas. How could I forget?” Now that he had proven himself a genuine human being and not a doppelganger, he nodded back across the camp. “Dani needs you. She said to bring the exo team. Whatever that is.”
It was the term they’d coined for the members of his advisory council who had skills related to the analysis of alien life, or—in Dani’s case—its effects on humans. “Give us a few,” he said. He looked at his podmates. “Grab your clothes, we’ve got work to do.” The fact that Dani had asked for the whole group suggested something significant had occurred. Not exactly the kind of thing one wanted to deal with first thing in the morning, but time and the fae waited for no man.
Stepping outside, Leo saw a camp as still as death, utterly devoid of any human presence save their own. The only sound they heard as they crossed the south field was the stirring of tent flaps and something rattling in the distance. Maybe the cook’s tent? Was Steve awake, trying to do his breakfast prep before everyone else appeared? Other than that, the place was a ghost town.
As soon as they entered Dani’s pod, they saw why they had been called. A body lay in the middle of it, still as death. Where skin was visible, there was an odd sheen to it.
“Sally Chang,” Dani told them. She was leaning against the desk with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Normally she was good at staying composed in the face of tragedy, but the discovery that a dead body had been lying beside her while she slept had clearly shaken her badly. “It happened while we were asleep. Nothing else in the pod was disturbed. The door was still closed when I got up, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in this place.” She looked down at Sally. “Maybe it took her in her dreams.”
Whatever had attacked Sally, she hadn’t seen it coming. She was in the same position she probably had been while sleeping, curled up on her right side with one arm beneath her head and the other resting on her hip. Her skin seemed unnaturally smooth, giving her the aspect of a polished statue rather than human flesh.
“Touch her,” Dani urged. “Go ahead. But gently.”
Leo reached down and gingerly touched Sally’s hand where it rested on her hip. It was as cold as ice—colder than ice—and hard as stone. Frozen? He looked up at Dani, perplexed. Then Lise knelt down beside him and felt the body as well, less tentatively than he had. Hand, cheek, leg. All of it as hard as stone, and so frigid to the touch that when she was done she rubbed her hands together to warm them. “Can we turn her over?” she asked.
“We can try,” Dani said.
She and Leo took hold of Sally and tried to ease the icy corpse onto its back. But as soon as they started to move her there was a sharp cracking sound, and the hand that lay on Sally’s hip shattered like glass into a thousand small pieces. Leo pulled his hand away quickly. “Hell,” Lise muttered. “You didn’t even touch her there.”
“We were wrong,” Pravida whispered. Lise looked at her sharply, but the xenobiologist didn’t elaborate, just stared down at the frozen corpse in horrified silence.
Lips tight, Lise looked at Rod. “I’ll need to take some samples before we try to move her again. Would you mind fetching my tools from the clinic?”
“Sure thing.” He looked grateful to have a job to do, other than stare at Sally’s corpse.
“There should be a black bag under my desk labeled ‘specimens,’” Lise told him. “That’s got everything I need.”
He nodded. “I’ll get it for you.”
“And some salt,” she added quickly. “Ask Steve to give you some from the kitchen. I won’t need much, just a tablespoon or so.” She turned her attention back to the frozen body, cutting off any opportunity for questions.
When he was gone Ted shut the door behind him. “What was that about? Salt?”
“Time.” Her expression was grim. “The bag isn’t where I told him to look, so he’ll have to search for it, and Steve won’t give up any of his precious salt without a fight. That’ll buy us a few minutes for exo talk, without having to fill in someone who hasn’t been updated on everything.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Pravida. “What do you mean, we were wrong?”
Pravida looked down at the frozen body and shuddered. “The heat was drained from her flesh. Tia’s heart was removed. Wayne’s bones were gone. You told us that Leo was mysteriously dehydrated.” Her mouth tightened. “Each time these things attack us they remove something. It’s a different thing each time, but there’s always something. So do they really want to kill us? Or is that just a side effect of them taking whatever element they hunger for?” She ran a hand through her hair. “The fae isn’t creating those creatures, but we are. We reach out unconsciously to an alien force that connects all the living things here, and we shape it with our thoughts and our memories, giving it a form we recognize. We’ve been assuming the resulting creature wants to kill us. But what if it doesn’t? Maybe it’s just an illusion when it first appears, without volition or desire. But once it exists—once it is an independent being—it responds as if it were truly alive. It needs to feed. And because it comes from us, and in a way is still part of us, we are its natural food source. Maybe its only food source.”
She looked at Leo, a terrible tenderness in her eyes. “It’s just a theory, you understand . . . but if I’m right, maybe when your son’s doppelganger appeared it just wanted to talk to you, to offer the comfort you needed. That was the Julian that your own mind created. But once it gained substance it had needs of its own, that you couldn’t control.” She was silent for a moment. “That’s my current working model.”
“If you’re right,” Dani said slowly, “this planet doesn’t see humans as pathogens, invaders, or anything else. The antibody response is an illusion.”
“But how does that change anything?” Ted asked. “We still have to defend ourselves against assault.”
Pravida nodded. “But if we understand why those attacks are happening, maybe that can point to a way to prevent them.” She sighed. “Look, natural forces don’t care about us. They just exist. Fire, wind, and water are neither benign nor malign; they simply are. Controlled, they can serve us; uncontrolled, they can kill us. I’m suggesting that’s how the fae works. It doesn’t care if we are alive or dead. This whole planet doesn’t care. We have to let go of that whole model, and focus on the part we are playing in this.”
Leo nodded slowly. “It’s a new perspective. Perhaps a more credible one.”
“Something to brainstorm with the rest of the council,” Dani suggested.
Leo hesitated. “I’ve got something I need to take care of before our next meeting. After that, we can discuss this as a group.” The last thing he wanted to do was to tell them he was coming to distrust Ian, and didn’t want the group to meet until he was more sure of the man’s mental stability.
Lise understood. She looked back down at the body and said, “We’ll need to get this to my lab so I can really study it.” She paused. “Might have to wait for it to thaw a bit first.”
“You think it will be less brittle then?” Dani asked.
Lise shrugged. “Who the fuck knows?” She looked tired—not physically, so much as spiritually. Leo’s heart ached in sympathy.
She looked up at him. “We need to talk. After the work crews have gone out for the day.”
He nodded. “All right.”
She started to gather up the shattered pieces of Sally’s hand. Dani knelt by the other side of the body to help. By the time Rob returned with the tools, the bits of frozen flesh were all stowed in a specimen bag. Waiting for whatever kind of test might tell them what the hell had happened.
God willing, some test would be able to.
There was no announcement about Angie’s project, but word-of-mouth travelled quickly through the camp, and many were at the south gate when she got there. Good, she thought. The more people present, the better.
She’d already nailed hooks into the palisade at the four cardinal points—north, east, south, and west—so she was all ready to go. She took out the plaques which she’d spent the morning designing and printing and held one of them up high for all to see. The background was colored like natural wood and the black lines on it looked like they’d been burned in with a hot iron: very rustic-looking.
“These are the signs and symbols that our ancestors used to safeguard their homes and temples,” she announced. She was used to addressing college classes larger than this, so her voice carried easily through the crisp air. “Tradition says they can help protect those within their circle. If you offer up prayers to any god, spirit, or ancestor in front of it, or even just give voice to your hopes, it will connect you to it, and serve as a ward against the negative energies of this place.”
Lise walked to where Leo was standing near the back of the crowd, arms folded across his chest. That he didn’t approve of Angie’s choice of words was clear from his posture, but he’d given permission for this performance, so he was voicing no protest.
“You free for a while?” she asked quietly.
“I can be.” He looked at her. “You going to tell me what this is about?”
“Not here.”
In silence she led him to the north gate. There were crude spears leaning against the wall next to the door, available to anyone whose business required them to leave the camp. Steve had proven that such weapons were more effective than bullets in dealing with fae-monsters, so the construction team had spent the morning printing spearheads and attaching them to the straightest branches they could find. Few were straight enough to be thrown with any accuracy, but the heads were viciously sharp, and they’d work for both bludgeoning and stabbing anything that came too close. Ugly but effective.
When they got to the gate Lise reached into her pocket, took out a small item, and handed it to him. “Here, put this on.”
It was a small silver-colored medallion on a long cord. Turning it over, he saw the same symbols that were on Angie’s plaques. “Oh, no. No way.” He offered it back to her.
“Leo, this isn’t about superstition. We know that the fae responds to our emotions. If this can trigger the right mental associations, then it’s worth trying.” She took it from him and slipped the cord over his head. He didn’t bend down to make it easier, but he didn’t pull away from her either.
When the medallion finally lay on his chest he frowned at it, then said, “Wait, you’re right. I can feel new emotions rising inside me. What is that one? I feel . . .” He glowered. “. . . annoyance.”
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Smartass.”
He tucked the medallion into his shirt where no one would see it as she chose the two straightest spears for them. Then they passed through the gate, locked it behind them, and started down the same path that Sky had used earlier.
“I’m curious what you think of Pravida’s theory,” she said.
He exhaled in a soft hiss. “On the positive side, it’s a much more rational model for the fae. More scientific, if you will. We’re still missing a few crucial pieces of the puzzle, but it’s easy to believe that when we find them they’ll be consistent with her hypothesis. Not to mention, it frees us from the concept of a planet-wide force determined to eradicate all human life, which has considerable psychological value. On the negative side—how the hell do we fight something like that? Must we spend all our time here exchanging passwords like spies in a grade-B vid, sharing stories of pina coladas and snow angels and God knows what else to prove we’re human, with no end in sight? When something is your enemy at least you can figure out its motive and try to address that. But when it’s just a force of nature, as inexorable as fire or wind, with neither desire nor agenda—or even hate—what would you be fighting?” He paused. “Neither offers a clear path to follow, but I think Pravida’s has more potential.” He looked at her. “You?”
