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Given a really extreme problem, there’s no substitute for extreme adaptability!
Erik Acharius Bateson was a kind-hearted young man with an easy sense of humor and a meek disposition. Yet the morning of his twentieth birthday, he awoke and gave the armed wardens surrounding his bed a glare so venomous that four of the six tough veterans took a step backwards.
“My trial happens today,” he said. “So I get to do what I want and go where I want. Unless the Queen’s reneged.”
Chief Fuchs, the only warden present with a cross as his forehead Kin tattoo, frowned at the unpatriotic comment but let it slide. “You got until noon. After that, you go where Her Majesty wants.”
“Then take me to Hooke Park. Now.” The park was Erik’s favorite place in the entire level. If he wanted to enjoy it again he needed to hurry because by tonight, he’d be dead. “The Queen can wait.”
The warden’s hard face all but petrified. “We serve at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Anything special you want for breakfast, boy?” If his rough voice didn’t drip with irony, it was only because the irony seemed to cling.
Yesterday, Erik would’ve backed down fast. Instead, he met Fuchs’s iron stare with eyes that appeared to gaze toward a final emptiness and it was the warden who first looked away.
“Not so hungry,” Erik said. “Soon as I’m dressed, we’re on our way.”
He threw off his blankets, swung around to get his feet on the bamboo floor, and stood up. Every guard’s hands darted toward holsters. As a journeyman biologist, Erik knew better than most what the blunt weapons could do. These were flesh-eating bacteria launchers, often called “devolvers.” Short-lived designer germs within their projectiles, targeted to his DNA and held in suspended animation until impact, would consume his heart and brain within ninety seconds should he be shot in a toe. They’d kill him faster if he were shot anywhere else. Since his DNA was changing, the gram-positive nastiness had been updated weekly.
No one would explain why so many wardens had been assigned to him, or if Liana Adari, the woman who’d also “won” the annual lottery, had her own half-dozen peeping toms. And he couldn’t imagine why his sextet carried the deadliest small weapons in the Queen’s Armory. It made no sense. If he survived the latest antiviral—fat chance!—the Royals would finally have their cure and he’d be a national hero. If he died like so many others before him, what threat could he pose? Surely Queen Vanessa, Her Glorious Majesty Cori IV, wasn’t worried he might run away? He’d gotten the final injection two days ago. No point in running now.
So why were his guards constantly on edge?
There can be no place in the universe, Erik thought, more soothing than right here. Sitting on a cracked wooden bench, he drank in Hooke Park, its shining dome of a Buddhist stupa, its birches and oaks, and the big central pond with its lotuses, meter-long koi, and frogs. He had a crazy urge to dive in. As always, he felt larger here, more grounded and accepting of whatever life, or death, might bring. Even the wardens couldn’t spoil this effect, not entirely. It helped that he’d had time to adjust to his fate although the year had been heavy with grief. He hoped his female counterpart was finding a little peace.
With the artificial sun risen to quarter mast, the frogs had little to say, but bubbles rising from the pool’s center, not Batrachian related, produced an endless series of expanding ripples and tranquil plashes. According to Erik’s uncle Niels, who’d married into the secretive Plumber’s Guild, an immense tank lay hidden beneath this park. The tank not only supplied the pond, it fed every decorative water feature from Fermi Falls to the Queen’s Jeweled Fountain, closed to the public since the Royal Plague appeared fifty years ago.
Erik found the notion of underground pipes and pumps here hard to accept. The scenery looked so . . . natural. In a sense, he supposed, it was. Real trees and bushes, dirt and stones and sparkle likewise. Honest scents of greenery and air clean enough to squeak. Of course the sky was faked, and its sun, while a genuine source of light and heat, had more in common with a light bulb than it did with a star.
Hooke Park was seldom crowded, but three families with small children had been visiting when Erik and his entourage arrived. The parents had seen them, gathered up their sparse flocks, and departed with willingness that bordered on panic. The park became quieter after that.
Remembering those families, Erik contemplated what life might be like in a society where people were allowed more than two children, where heterosexuality wasn’t discouraged. Then he got distracted. Someone new showed up and calmly sat down on the opposite side of the pond. Erik blinked hard, twice, but the newcomer remained nonhuman. Erik had never seen a Gelpie from so close.
Some warden muttered a very audible “Gaadt,” earning a glare from Fuchs.
According to historical reports, Gelpies had been visiting the level for a century, but sporadically. Every one that had shown up previously had meandered for hours before departing, so constantly on the move that anyone wishing to converse with them had to do so while walking. A few biologists had theorized that like sharks, Gelpies couldn’t breathe while still. So much, Erik thought, for that theory. Typically, this one had thick, ivory-colored fur except for black patches around its eyes. But its stationary behavior was, so far as Erik knew, unprecedented.
He studied the creature, reminded of the giant pandas he’d only seen in pictures; but here was a mutant panda after a starvation diet: perhaps one and a half meters tall, with a tube-like mouth and the long skinny arms and prehensile tail of capuchin monkeys. Each arm had twin hands—opposable hands, not thumbs—with six flat fingers on each; the tail had a few extra finger-ribbons. Its amber eyes were huge, as proportionally oversized as those he’d seen in antique Japanese comics. Erik couldn’t guess the gender, assuming Gelpies had genders.
Strange beings for sure, not just cloaked in mystery but encased in the stuff. No human knew where they came from, how they came and went despite attempts to catch them in either act, how they’d become fluent in Pol, or why they could speak any human language considering their oral anatomy. No one could even say why they came and they always ignored the question. Still, they were welcome visitors because they occasionally shared invaluable knowledge. Without them, not even the level’s most brilliant scientists might have ever discovered that many other levels existed, or that all levels were part of an unimaginably colossal structure Gelpies translated into Pol as the “Tower of Worlds.” Without them, no human would’ve heard that creatures even more mysterious than Gelpies had assembled the Tower and maintained it: the Captains.
This particular alien kept his anime gaze on Erik, which visibly upset the wardens although they couldn’t do a thing about it. Queen Cori’s order was to never risk offending a Gelpie. The strangest thing for Erik was how such inhuman eyes seemed to radiate human compassion. . . .
A sadness more poignant than miserable stabbed Erik, making him yearn for things that would never be. He’d never find a mate or have children. He’d never get answers to those big, classic questions concerning reality and the meaning of life that so often filled his thoughts but never seemed to interest his parents, siblings, or friends. Likewise the lesser questions: who or what inhabited other levels? How had his ancestors gotten here? Where, in the universe, was the Tower? Was it actually a building with stacked levels, which seemed impossible, or some super-titanic horizontal structure? Did humans still exist elsewhere? And why the hell was that Gelpie staring at him?
He winced at a new thought. If his parents’ religious beliefs were valid, maybe he’d get more insight into the Big Secrets after being reincarnated. But he wouldn’t necessarily return here, so his chance at the lesser answers could be lost forever. He’d always been dying to know what purpose the Tower of Worlds served. Now he was dying ignorant.
His left forearm itched but as he reached to scratch it, a warden with a triangular Kin tattoo grabbed his right wrist. Erik turned to glower at the man and then realized that every warden’s attention was focused on the itching arm. With a twinge of anxiety, Erik looked down to see what everyone found so fascinating.
Halfway up his forearm, the skin had split along a hairline crack longer than his thumb. As he stared, the crack widened to reveal a streak of underlying tissue that gleamed a shocking yellow. The wound itself should’ve been agonizing, and the exposed tissue implied some novel form of cancer, yet all Erik felt was itchy—not counting the cold void of mortal terror. He clamped his jaw shut to block a whimper.
“Seems you’re baked early, son,” Warden Fuchs pronounced. “Belamy, getthe cuffs. Fleming, Donn, Zaiger, carry the poor bastard and follow me. Hustle.”
But it’s not noon yet, Erik wanted to shout if only his mouth worked.
Metal cuffs bound his wrists behind his back while a larger pair gripped his ankles. Two wardens carried him belly-side down using his arms as handles, which made his shoulders feel as if they were ripping apart. Meanwhile guard three, in front and facing forward like his fellow pallbearers, draped Erik’s pinned feet over one broad shoulder and kept his crew in step with a marching mantra. It didn’t help the prisoner that one guard stank of old sweat and rotten cheese.
To Erik, his new role as baggage in agony seemed interminable. Finally, the leading warden dropped Erik’s feet while his two cohorts lifted him upright and hoisted him into a “slapshot,” one of the level’s few powered vehicles. The cohorts pushed Erik into one of the padded chairs and sat on either side, never taking their eyes off him. When everyone was seated, Fuchs muttered something into a microphone then activated the transportation system, running a finger along his intended route to ensure that his path was clear and would remain so. Satisfied, he flipped a switch. The streamlined car rose to hover over buried maglev rails and Fuchs pressed a pedal. Turbines whined, scaling up in volume and pitch as they fed air to the rear jets. The car gradually accelerated.
The four-quadrant maglev system was reserved for Royals, and only used in transporting common people or goods to Chokorgon Castle when the Queen was in a tearing rush. It was never used to carry commoners anywhere but Chokorgon. Erik had no idea why the guards were taking him there; he’d been scheduled to die behind Laoyu’s thick walls, far from the castle.
Outside the window, the ruins of Newton House flashed by, a skeleton of its former glory thanks to the constant demand for building materials. He wondered if any of his captors had fought in the battles that had cemented the Queen’s position. The last rebel had been executed a year before Erik’s birth, but as everyone knew, the Newtons had pre-avenged themselves by engineering the Royal Plague and releasing it some thirty years earlier. Only Royals knew the depth of their own suffering.
It seemed like no time at all before Fuchs killed the current rear jets and triggered the front ones. The slapshot eased to a stop. After it wafted down, Erik’s outriggers hauled him outside. He stared at the fence of tall, close-set posts ahead and a nearby massive gate, recognizing the castle’s back entrance from the many times he’d wandered by.
“What’s going on?” he asked in a strained voice.
No one answered. The wardens looped a steel chain tightly around his neck, dragged him to the fence, and padlocked the chain’s free ends to a post. Then they jogged away without responding to his cries for an explanation.
He was alone only for a minute. He heard the chonk-chonk of bolts snapping free of their housings and the gate opening. Next came the thud of heavy footsteps, but the neck-chain prevented him from turning enough to see what was coming. Then he didn’t need to turn.
Two men stood before him, just out of his reach—not that he wanted to touch them. They wore Royal Janissary uniforms, but Erik had never seen even janissaries this big. He’d never imagined humans could get this big. When he looked up to see their faces, he wondered if these two were, in fact, human.
The taller one had a grotesquely extended jaw and sharp spikes jutting from his forehead, which distorted his Kin tattoo beyond recognition. The other bristled with thick, red hairs sprouting from every visible part of his skin including his hands, wrists, and face, hiding his own forehead tattoo.
A bushy right hand, clutching a key, reached down to open the padlock. An equally bushy left unwound the chain from Erik’s neck.
“What’cha think, Larsen?” the hirsute giant asked. “Viable?”
“Seems so,” Larsen answered in a voice blurred by unnatural anatomy. “But Rinpoche showed me a picture of what they were aiming for. This ain’t it. And the kid looks too alert to risk the . . . makeover. Her Majesty will be pissed, particularly after the screw-up with the girl, but she won’t let this one live. Care to do the honors, buddy? No one kills as cleanly as you.”
“Happy to oblige, but shouldn’t we check with the assessor first?”
“Shit, Tomeo, I didn’t mean kill him here; sometimes I wonder if you came through with any smarts.” Larsen bent down to peer into Erik’s eyes. Erik recoiled at the spoiled-meat odor of the man’s breath. “What’s twenty times twenty? Answer me, kid, or I will hurt you.”
“Four hundred,” Erik gasped. “I don’t understand why—”
“Shut up or get shut down, that’s all you need to understand.” Larsen straightened to his full height. “Check out his eyes, Tomeo. Someone really botched the recipe. The skin alone means he won’t make the cut, and this far into the change, no way a candidate for Queen’s pet could do math. But Her Majesty would flay us alive if we didn’t make this official. Let’s get him in the Compound.”
“Yeah. The bite grass could use fresh meat.”
“Screw the grass. After Netti got word from Fuchs that the kid had popped early, she told me the assessor would be waiting out front.”
“Why the hell in front?”
“Maybe so the Queen can see some blood from her boudoir. She’s been bored lately.”
Leaving his ankles and wrists shackled, each giant placed a hand under one of Erik’s armpits and carried him through the gate, into the Royal Compound, and around the castle, following a flower-lined path paved with gemstone gravel. The hybrid flowers seemed odd somehow, but Erik had bigger concerns. He heard the hiss and roar of the fountain long before he saw it.
His porters finally stopped just past a puddle where the morning pollination wind deflected spray from the towering geyser, batting it beyond the fountain’s gem-encrusted basin. Erik’s parents’ house, where he’d lived until the last lottery, would’ve fit inside that basin with room to spare.
A troop of armed janissaries trotted into the plaza, huge men all, but only one blond reached Larsen’s stature, although this man had no obvious deformities. He looked to Erik like depictions of the Greek god Apollo that he’d studied in Art History class. The giant pointed to various spots around the plaza and his subordinates rushed to take up the indicated positions. For an instant, Erik could’ve sworn Apollo winked at him.
The activity gave him a moment to drink in the scene: the sparkling fountain centered in an acre of multicolored glass tiles, the twin reflecting pools bracketing the Royal Plaza, in turn parenthesized by two curved lines of stately trees made uniform through topiary surgery, and the front edifice of Chokorgon Castle, its smooth architecture compromised by protruding gun-turrets. A hint of steam from the roof’s giant rain-collector rose into the sky; the Royals only trusted their private water supply. He tried but failed to glimpse the Queen watching from behind one of a hundred tinted windows. Did she wear her body wrappings even at home? A minty smell in the air shifted to citrus as variable-perfume bacteria in the fountain released a fresh batch of esters. Then Erik’s attention narrowed to the white-robed old man with a dorje tattoo standing nearby, leaning on a cane. The man sniffed and hobbled the few steps necessary to peer closely into Erik’s eyes and palpate his neck.
“Tell me your name,” the ancient wheezed.
“Erik. Erik Bateson.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, sir. We met two days ago, when you gave me the final injection. You are the Tenth gSoba Rinpoche, Queen Cori’s personal physician.”
“I am also your judge and jury for this trial, but not your executioner. Do you understand me? What is my name?”
“I don’t—I only know your title.”
The man nodded, loose flesh under his chin waggling. “So we’ve now ascertained that your facilities remain intact.”
“Check out his color, Doctor,” Tomeo demanded.
Erik turned his head and twisted his arms around his back far enough to peer down at his left arm. It looked like a molting python. Sheets of dead skin dangled from the forearm, and the underlying tissue was glossy, gold, and scaled. The sight made him realize he’d been itching all over for some time; he’d been too scared to notice. Meanwhile, the old man’s head rotated like one of the castle gun-turrets until it was aimed at the hairy giant.
“And who anointed an ox to instruct the level’s leading medical expert?”
Tomeo bowed stiffly. “My apologies, Rinpoche.”
The doctor sniffed and returned his attention to Erik. “This,” he said, reaching over to pull a clump of dead tissue off Erik’s nose, “doesn’t signify. Your eyes alone decree that you must be put down despite your continued health and intelligence; the Queen feels that such unintended variations may indicate deeper unreliability. Still, I suspect you will find death preferable to the alternative.”
“I don’t understand. What does any of this have to do with the plague?”
“The plague? A convenient fiction.”
Fiction? Erik’s sense of shock and betrayal almost dwarfed his terror for a moment.
The old man’s face shifted into an expression suggesting regret but colder. “A pity. I would love to see your completed transformation, but the autopsy will provide sufficient data and we all have our duties.”
“Wait—won’t you at least tell me—”
The doctor was already walking away. “Dispatch him now,” he muttered over his shoulder.
“Might as well hold still,” Tomeo suggested. “It’ll hurt less.”
It seemed Erik’s body had developed an independent mind of its own. He felt a bizarre melting sensation in his arms. Suddenly, his hands were free of both the manacles and the janissaries’ grips. The giants tried to grab him, but he hopped out of reach. Overwhelmed with terror, he threw himself toward the basin. Unfortunately, he slipped on the damp tiles and fell short, smashing into the rim with his chest. The pain would’ve ended his escape attempt right there, but momentum slid to his rescue and he only had to add a tug to pull himself over the rim and into the water. Holding his bruised ribs with one arm, he dived to the bottom, surprisingly far down. Waterfall roar filled his ears.
At least it’s a clean getaway, he thought with hysteria-induced humor. The surface above was a blanket of bubbles, hiding him completely, but this deep, the water was amazingly clear. He’d never, while submerged, been able to see so perfectly.
But he had no place to go and couldn’t keep holding his breath. How the hell had he gotten out of the handcuffs? He pulled his sandals off and tested the leg restraints. They remained tight as ever. With that unhappy thought, his ankles tingled, his feet seemed to fill with jelly, and they twisted into twin helices. As he gawked, the cuffs slid off his now screw-like feet, making a double clunk when they hit the bottom, nearly masked by the general racket. The freed feet un-kinked and he felt the bones within harden.
What had he become?
The submerged light around him had a wavering quality, producing the illusion that his new scales were pushing in and out. No—they were moving.
An idea popped into his head, one so horrible that he tried to shove it right back out. Things had gotten too damn weird. Could all this be nothing but a hallucination? Maybe his transformation had gone wrong last night and he was actually in his own bed, dying. That would explain why he felt no need for air.
He ran his fingers over the jeweled surface beneath him. It looked pretty but felt slimy. The sensation was so distinct and unexpected that he rejected the hallucination theory. This is reality, he warned himself. And you don’t have much time left to experience it.
He glanced up at the choppy surface. Could he grab a quick breath but stay hidden in bubbles and spray? Surely he’d been underwater for at least a minute; he was bound to run out of air soon. What choice did he have?
He swam closer to the central fountain then came up slowly, just far enough for his eyes to rise above the water line. As he’d hoped, visibility was terrible from this position; surely, no one would notice his head sticking up. Then the spray cleared for just long enough for him to see that the plaza had filled with soldiers. They were armed with enough rifles, rocket-spears, and devolvers to take on an entire rogue Kin. Panicked again, he forgot about air and dove for the bottom.
Any moment now, he thought, some genius up there is going to shut down the fountain. He swam along the bottom seeking an escape that couldn’t possibly exist. Then he came upon a drain hole, blocked by an inset grate secured by knurled bolts. He managed to untwist the bolts barehanded. His head fit into the hole with room to spare, but his shoulders were too broad.
Or were they? If he could . . . jellyfish himself from the neck on down yet survive, maybe he’d fit. But then what? How could he propel himself through the pipe? And, of course, he’d drown. By all rights, he should’ve drowned already.
Something small zipped past his head, bounced off a garnet cabochon inlaid into the surface below, and came to rest near the hole: a ceramic bullet, slowed enough by water to remain intact. He heard multiple hisses as more bullets followed, none coming close to him. The janissaries had apparently had gotten so eager to kill him that they were willing to risk cracking one of the Queen’s gems.
Suddenly, the drain hole seemed quite appealing. He pushed his arms inside and willed his body to follow. The melting sensation in his shoulders, ribs, hips, and legs was becoming more familiar. His arms and hands felt weak in this configuration, but they found enough traction against the ringed circular wall to pull him deeper. A mild flow of water helped him move along. A few meters down, the pipe gently curved to nearly horizontal while maintaining a slight downward vector.
Guess this part of the system, he thought, runs on gravity.
His ribs no longer hurt, a small miracle since he’d hit the fountain rim hard enough to break several. Maybe his new flexibility had extra benefits. Thinking about ribs, it dawned on him that in his present condition, he couldn’t breathe even if the pipe were dry; his diaphragm had no purchase. Yet he also had to admit that his hunger for air was purely psychological. Something was meeting his oxygen needs and he suspected the moving scales were responsible, a cheering thought in a bleak situation. Another oddity: his presently tubular body had to be blocking what little light could get into the pipe, yet he could see. The wall containing him glowed an eerie red as did passing bubbles. Why would anyone put illumination here?
The noise level fell to near silence. Erik surprised himself by grinning. He wished he could see the janissaries’ faces—through strong binoculars—as the pool calmed to perfectly clear.
Pull right, pull left, do it again. His progress remained steady but slow enough to have made him frantic if he’d had a destination in mind. Still, he strained to keep moving, amazed he wasn’t already exhausted. He felt fine except for the itching. Perhaps a last-instant save from death was particularly energizing. Or maybe the water contained stimulants. Certainly water was entering his body; right now he tasted tamarind.
Since the ester-generating bacteria only thrived under full-spectrum light, the flavor faded with dilution. His clothes began to abrade, tearing in places, releasing clumps and occasionally sheets of his former skin. Small wads of tissue worked their way past him, pulled by the drainage tide; others brushed his feet or clung until he kicked them away. His scaled hands and forearms appeared pumpkin-colored in the ruby light. I can’t wait, he thought grimly, to look in a mirror.
Gradually, the solitude and hard work eased his tensions and numbed his mind. With no possibility for answers, what was the point in asking questions?
After what he guessed was an hour, he reached a junction where his pipe merged with three others into a conduit that seemed roomy by comparison. He felt his shoulders and ribs expand a bit, giving his arms and torso muscles better leverage. From then on, he dragged himself along faster, but the journey went on so long that if he weren’t angling mostly downward, he might’ve concluded he was going in circles.
Then again, he thought, maybe I’m heading down an endless spiral.
Soon, however, he noticed an encouraging hint of white ahead, which grew brighter as he proceeded. Finally, he popped from the pipe, falling a short way into a long and narrow pool. He swam far enough to get past the waterfall landing on his head and looked around. Obviously, he was deep underground, but a daylight blaze poured down from unfamiliar, hexagonal fixtures high above. The pool traversed an immense room, part laboratory but mostly storage facility, before resuming pipe-hood at the far end. He was alone. A workbench with test tubes, beakers of colored reagents, and assorted equipment Erik recognized as analytical devices suggested a water-testing and treatment facility. Huge stacks of metal bars, bins full of other scarce commodities, and piles of raw lumber insinuated that the Queen had secreted away materials for an unscheduled rainy day.
I’ve gotten quite the reeducation since this morning, Erik reflected. Wonder what’s left to unlearn.
By Royal laws popularly known as “ecomandments,” no citizen of the level could build so much as a birdhouse without a repurposing permit for the screws or nails. This made sense to him. While the level had abundant energy derived by tapping the great generator powering the sun and moon, it had a fixed amount of metals and no ores for increasing the supply. The Royals, it appeared, had been holding out.
Erik barely noticed his body reconstruct itself or how easily he pulled himself out of the pool and onto the white tiled floor.
Across the room, a tall ladder reached from ground level to a circular hatch in the ceiling; its color and texture matched the wall behind it. It looked like his only way out without more pipe-crawling, and he currently felt no love for pipes or crawling. He jogged toward the ladder but stopped after a few steps. The wall stood at least a hundred meters away, but he could distinguish each tiny, hexagonal bump on its surface. He glanced around. It was true: his eyesight had become impossibly keen. Objects, near or far, had a larger-than-life clarity that made everything appear disturbingly flat. His skin erupted in gooseflesh, or rather it felt that way and he didn’t care to learn just yet what the sensation meant in terms of his scales.
Then his goosebumps gave him a second helping of themselves by reminding him that he’d just departed chilly water and now stood, dripping, in an unheated room that wasn’t much warmer. He should be shivering. Instead, he felt the cold, but it didn’t bother him. For that matter, while he was plenty scared, shouldn’t he be huddled in a ball, paralyzed from terror? Had his defective transformation rewired his emotions? Or perhaps the last terrible weeks had melted away his . . . baby fat of the soul.
“One thing for sure,” he told himself, “I’m hungry.”
That was an understatement. He didn’t need telescopic vision to see the tall refrigerator by the workbench, and the vacuum in his belly insisted he seek food before escape. He knew someone could show up at any moment, but he’d never been so ravenous.
The fridge’s contents exceeded his hopes. A cold feast awaited, including six, large, paper-wrapped goodies with dated handwritten labels declaring the contents as spiced refried beans with various flavors of soy meat, swaddled in sandwich-kale leaves. He glanced wistfully at a small blast oven that could’ve turned his stolen meal hot in seconds, but feared that someone, somewhere, might notice the energy drain in this supposedly unoccupied location. Or was that just an excuse to get calories down his throat faster?
He tore into the first wrap, almost forgetting to remove the paper first, and found it savory but oddly easy to chew. He practically inhaled the rest of it and downed another at a more dignified speed. Gratitude filled him along with nutrition as he became acutely aware that every bite he enjoyed stemmed not only from nature, but also from the labors of countless people, through generations of botanists, soil scientists, and farmers, down to the soon-to-be-disappointed owner of the meal he’d just stolen.
What a crazy time, he thought, for new insights. Or was it? Maybe getting shoved out of the human race provided sufficient objectivity to perceive human networks more clearly. Or maybe the transformation had screwed up his brain.
He washed his meal down with a pitcher of hybrid fruit juice, then stuffed two more wraps in his tattered pockets and closed the refrigerator.
In his hunger, he’d ignored his reflection in the refrigerator’s metal door. Now he stared at it. Then he couldn’t help himself: he stripped off his clothes to learn just how seriously he’d been deformed. Wads and sheets of his remaining former skin fell to the floor in a rain of soft tissue. Almost unconsciously, he pulled away the final shards clinging to his scales and let them drop.
It was bad.
His face had retained much of its characteristic architecture. But his cheekbones angled out farther and tiny scales textured his facial skin, covering the Bateson lotus on his forehead. His eyes spooked him. They were larger, and as he watched, clear nictitating membranes blinked over them. Worst, the irises burned an impossibly intense red. He shaded them from the overhead lamps with one scaly hand.
He hadn’t imagined it. They glowed. That explained the conduit’s illumination.
The rest of his body wasn’t reassuring. The change had rendered him taller but leaner, muscles clearly defined. He’d lost all body hair but gained a slew of scales, bright gold except for cobalt blue ones on his throat and chin. His penis curled like a fiddlehead and had mostly tucked itself between his legs; urinating would be an adventure. His scrotum appeared to be on sabbatical, tucked into his body, judging from sensation. His feet were longer, particularly the now-webbed toes. When he turned, he noticed something long and ropelike depending from the base of his spine. He reached down to touch it and felt only a hint of pressure from his fingers.
“Just what I didn’t want for my birthday,” he snarled. “A tail. And more exciting, a numb tail.” The new appendage twitched in response to his mood and his lips pulled back in an appalled grimace, revealing his teeth. At first he thought they gleamed so bright by contrast with his cobalt chin, then he decided they really were absurdly white. Sharper too.
He shook his head. “Grow up, Erik. You’re alive. How about making an effort to stay that way?” Properly chastened, he pulled on his damp, eroded clothes, certified the food was secure, and trotted toward the ladder. His new body felt lighter, springier. And the way he failed to trip over his altered feet made him wonder if his coordination had improved.
The ladder was slick from condensation, but he found it so easy to climb that he shifted his attention from the rungs to the little protrusions on the speckled wall so close to his face. He’d seen identical bumps on the Primary Generator, a squat pyramid supposedly built by Captains; and also on the vast, circular wall surrounding the level, whenever he approached close enough to dispel the illusion of continuing landscape. No human had managed to scratch or chip the stone-like material, let alone analyze it. So the ladder had been glued rather than bolted to the wall.
When he reached the ceiling hatch, he sighed with relief to find it unlocked. He pushed it up gently and just far enough to make sure no one waited on the other side, but got a scare when brightness flared in the hallway above. Two ordinary light-emitting-plastic fixtures provided this illumination, and since the hallway was deserted, Erik supposed a motion sensor had triggered the lights. Reassured, he climbed through the hatch, walked a few paces, and began ascending a new ladder in a vertical passageway that stretched up ninety meters or more. As he climbed, the LEPs below shut off while new lights above came on. The laboratory’s waterfall burbling faded although its ghostly echoes kept him company. Meanwhile, a soft hum emerged from widely spaced wall grates. Dehumidifier ports, he guessed. Certainly these rungs felt dry and he smelled no mildew.
His climb ended with another unlocked hatch and he tilted it upwards with extreme caution. Daylight flooding in dazzled him as the piney scent of spruce-bamboo hinted at his location. When his eyes adjusted, he poked his head through the opening. Sure enough, both terrain and vegetation confirmed that the pipe had taken him farther than he would’ve believed possible, to the level’s largest forest, Pasteur Park, more commonly called “The Wild.”
He didn’t dance with joy, since it seemed doubtful he could avoid capture much longer, but he couldn’t have picked a better hiding place: over three hundred fifty acres of wilderness in a rough crescent, bristling with the level’s tallest trees and incised with streamlets. He climbed up and closed the hatch behind him; its upper surface wore a shaggy Chia coat that made it hard to spot within its bezel of mossy soil. Whoever used it would have to know precisely where it was.
He stood in a small clearing with scant underbrush except for two berry bushes and one stunted babool vivid in yellow, globular flowers. Erik regarded it, puzzled. He’d never encountered acacia in the Wild and a volunteer this far out of context seemed improbable. Then he understood: it had been planted as a living beacon to mark the hatch’s location. Mystery solved, he would’ve hurried away from the hatch, but the little tree began strolling toward him.
As a biologist, Erik kept up with the latest products from botanic technicians; no one, to his knowledge, had yet created a walking tree.
Disoriented, he just stood there, wide-eyed.
As the babool approached, its flowers vanished and its upper branches lowered, becoming two slim arms. Feminine legs replaced the suddenly bifurcated trunk. In the space of three heartbeats, the tree had become a young woman, seemingly varnished from feet to head, but otherwise naked.
The stranger grinned at him. “Nice trick, huh? You must be Erik.”
Even on a day infused with strangeness, this transformation was something special; Erik’s mind latched onto that word “trick” and used it to grip sanity.
He jumped to the obvious conclusion but waited until his heart slowed to a mere gallop before responding. “You’re Liana, right?” She lacked the Adari star tattoo, but if the universe made any sense, this had to be the woman who’d drawn the lottery’s other short straw. He was accustomed to feminine nudity: by Royal decree, clothes were banned at public swimming spots in an effort to prevent over-sexualizing the human body, a minor gambit in the level’s crucial birth-control program. But he found the addition of . . . glossiness unsettling.
“Liana Presse Adari, girl changeling, at your service.” She bowed in a parody of Royal Court manners. “Been waiting for you. My, you came out a lot more, um, dramatic than I’d expected.”
“I didn’t expect any of this.”
“Not criticizing, just commenting.” She looked him over carefully. “You always so cruel to your wardrobe?”
“I don’t usually,” he snapped, “spend hours crawling through—” He finally noticed the twinkle in her eyes. “Look, there’s some kind of lab below us. Shouldn’t we find a safer spot before we discuss my flaws?”
“No rush, Erik. Should be hours before the next water test.”
“How could you know that?”
Liana’s smile deepened, revealing dimples. “Personal research. And I’ve had three kinds of help. Don’t be so jumpy; the wardens are looking for us hard but in the wrong park. We’ve got an ally who’s misdirected ’em.”
“Really? Who?”
“Same Samaritan helped you escape from Chokorgon.”
He stared at her for a second. “No one helped me.”
Deeper dimples. “Oh? I heard the plan was to hold off on the shooting until you jumped in the fountain. Think back.”
He did. Janissaries were known for hair-trigger reactions and he hadn’t broken any speed records getting into the water. He felt an unfamiliar tension between his eyebrows. Scowling felt different with scales.
“You’ve got a point,” he admitted. “An oversizedoldilocks commanded the guards and I never heard him say ‘fire.’ He’s our ally?”
“One of ’em, the normal one. Name’s Gregor Bellamy, a first cousin of mine although his ma married into another Kin. But wait ’til you see his partners! That reminds me. One’s watching for you beyond the Wild, in case you kept following the pipeline. I should let him know you’re here.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
She chuckled. “You couldn’t keep up. My mod made me faster. Besides, you must be starving. See that oak? There’s a basket behind it with snacks. Just wait there and I’ll be back in no time.”
A sliver of guilt made Erik uneasy. “Well, thanks, but I’ve already stuffed myself.”
“With what?”
“Wraps in the lab fridge. Got more in my pockets.”
Random patterns in red and orange flashed across her skin as she glared at him. “That, my new friend, was an awesomely dumb move. Now, when the Royal Chemist comes to check the water, she’ll know you’ve been in the lab.”
Her new skin, he’d learned, could do colors. Could his still blush? “But Liana,” he said weakly, “how could I know about you or your allies? And I was starving.”
Her lightshow faded as she nodded. “True. Sorry I was harsh, but your lunch messes up our plans. Stay put and we’ll see if Gregor or Disy have any suggestions.”
“Who is—?”
He was posinga question to an empty forest. Sure enough, he couldn’t have kept up.
“And how did you mimic a tree?” he muttered.
As he waited, pacing, guilt about stealing lunch invoked his self-justifying skills. Had it really been such a bad move? There’d been only one drain inside the fountain, so once the water cleared, the guards would’ve known he’d gone through it despite its size. They would’ve expected him to drown or reach the lab eventually, ergo he had no cause for shame.
Impeccable logic, he thought, feeling a lovely three seconds of relief until a question arose: if so, why weren’t janissaries waiting for me at the lab considering how long it took me to get there?
After a cheery round of fresh self-castigation, he decided to wring his clothes so they could dry faster. He was warm enough despite Climate Control’s ersatz autumn, but found the dampness against his skin oppressive. He stripped, twisted the fabric to squeeze out water, and hung his clothes on a convenient branch. That’s when he noticed his hands shaking.
It didn’t take genius to work out why. Here he was, feeling something he’d never expected to feel again: hope. While he had no idea what Liana et al. had in mind, they clearly had a plan involving him. For a year, despair—or, more honestly, surrender—had been his main insulation against fear. Hope stripped away that protection. He wasn’t used to having something to lose.
Acknowledging fear fanned it into raging panic. Good thing he’d learned a technique to quell panic.
After his lottery number had popped up, he’d spent a week shivering in terror. His relatives had been devastated as well, but soon began to withdraw from him. In desperation, he sought advice from his Kin guru who’d outlined a multistage contemplative exercise named Padmijhan, meaning “expansion,” to help Erik relax. The first stage, guru Chamatkari promised, would increase perspective and pluck tranquility out of nightmare. The following stages were intended to lead the practitioner to profound levels of consciousness.
Erik sat on the ground in half-lotus position, closed his eyes, and spent a minute gently observing his breathing without regulating it. When he stopped shaking, he visualized his body sitting and gradually extended his visualization to the Wild, and beyond to the entire level. From there, he had to abandon experience as he conceptualized the complete Tower, then on and on until Erik’s mind held, to some degree, an entire universe including electromagnetic wavelengths beyond human perception. “This vastness,” he chanted in accordance with the guru’s instructions, “is what I am part of.” Suddenly, he felt a new sense of connection, an unfamiliar . . . weight to his awareness, as though he’d found more awareness to work with. Encouraged, he decided to try the next and far more difficult stage of the exercise.
The goal here was to maintain the previous perspective while diving into exponentially-ramifying inner space through a series of empathic quantum leaps. This entailed imagining the simultaneous viewpoints of countless life forms who themselves were experiencing the universe according to their individual capabilities. This stage theoretically culminated with conceptualizing the combined perspective of every sentient being practicing a similar exercise, a hall of mirrors reflecting near-absolute complexities.
Only the legendary Rishi was reputed to have achieved the final stage, which took all previous elements and added all of time to the mix. Privately, Erik considered the Rishi a myth. Even if he or she had indeed existed, he doubted that anyone human could do more than flirt with stage three.
Erik began stage two with envisioning his own cells and other microscopic denizens of his body, guessing that these experienced only need and satiation. He worked his way up to nearby plants and insects. But when he tried to pile on local animals, something went wrong. His focus narrowed to a stereo image of his sitting form as seen from a few meters away. Then he smelled something so rank that he opened his eyes.
A monster stood far too close, staring at him. It had a bulging head with milky eyes on fleshy stalks and jagged teeth in a jaw with crocodile pretensions, too many teeth for the mouth to fully close. Instead, it gaped wider and a split-second later, Erik found himself halfway up the tall tree from which his drying clothes hung, gazing down at the animal. Nice, he thought, that my fight-or-flight response is making sensible decisions today. Even nicer that I can climb squirrel-quick. But what the hell is that horror?
For genetic diversity, an extensive variety of Earth plants and animals had been assigned to the Wild including dangerous species, such as bears, that roamed fenced-in areas. The zoological confection below, Erik knew, hadn’t evolved on Earth.
The beast lifted its head to stare up at him through oval pupils and made a noise disturbingly close to a chuckle. Its eyestalks moved independently. Its body was squat and boar-like, covered or perhaps armored in gelatinous-looking segments embedded with long spikes. Its bad dental work came in shark-like rows.
Thank Shiva, Erik thought, this abomination can’t climb. Then he got a triple shock. The animal placed an apelike foot on what had become Erik’s favorite tree, long claws squeezed out from between the toes, and the beast sprang up the tree before Erik could retract his thanks.
He climbed upwards with the speed of terror, hoping the heavy thing wouldn’t dare get too high. He risked a glance. His pursuer had slowed but not stopped. And his prospect of out-climbing it shrank: its body had thinned and stretched, distributing its weight. What now? Should he keep going up, sneak around the trunk and try to descend quickly enough to get away, or work his way outwards along some branch and take his chances from there?
That last alternative gave him an idea. He climbed to the nearest dead branch and managed to snap it off without quite falling in the process. Suspended from a healthy branch by one arm while bracing his feet against a protruding knothole, he menaced his attacker’s eyes with his new best friend.
The beast snapped at the friend, catching it in its mouth and tugging just enough to break Erik’s hold on the tree. For an instant, the jaws held the branch, with Erik at the end, dead perpendicular.
On the bright side, this kept him from falling into those appalling teeth. On the obverse, the ground waited some thirty meters below. He looked for a new branch to grab, but couldn’t spot one within grabbing distance all the way down. So he kept a tight grip on the sad excuse for a spear but shifted his weight, trying to pole-vault to a better location and praying the beast wouldn’t stop supporting his improvised pole.
Possibly he’d underestimated the combination of his mass, leverage, and momentum. Involuntarily, he swung down and around. Then he was both falling and about to crash into the tree trunk. He used his legs to rebound from the corrugated bark, trying to push upwards to slow his fall, and succeeded just enough for two surprisingly heavy teeth, no doubt extracted by his own sudden weight, to rap his head on their way down. A masterpiece of bad timing, but the least of his problems. He still held the pole, which had failed him on all counts, and failed again when he found he could use it to reach various branches, but do no more than tap them in passing.
When he jerked to a stop, he feared that the beast had jumped down and grabbed his tail—he’d felt a tremendous tug on it.
He turned and stared at what that tail had become: six ropes ending in hooks. The hooks had dug long furrows into the wood before they’d caught enough to stop him.
Above him, the monster howled, a windy roar with operatic vibrato, a sound repeated from two other locations: one to his right and close, then another distant and from somewhere behind him. Not echoes. The beast spun around and began climbing downwards headfirst, slamming its claws into the truck to retain purchase.
Acting autonomously, every tail-hook save one pulled itself from the trunk and Erik slid downwards, accompanied by the hiss of tearing bark. He was grateful for the rescue and delighted to be moving in the right direction, but wished he was sliding faster. Three meters from the ground, an encounter with a hard knot knocked the last hook free. Erik fell, his landing gentled by tail sections that reached below him and eased him to the ground.
A useful appendage for sure, he thought while checking for the best escape route; but if we live much longer, the tail and I better have a talk about who’s in charge.
A second monster, larger than the first but built along similar lines, leaped over a cluster of saplings and landed so close to Erik that a ribbon of its hot drool splashed over his bare feet. Its jaws were set sideways, which made it easy for the animal to see past its mouth as those fanged pinchers gaped wide. Then it sprang.
Two of Erik’s tail sections flailed out, churning twin bullwhip-snaps from the air. The beast screamed and curled up mid-flight. An outer side of its jaw bashed Erik’s forehead, while a scaled shoulder knocked him sideways. The two blows were far from caresses, but they pushed him aside and the beast didn’t fall on him. Dazed by the head-blow, he stumbled halfway across the small clearing before he could turn to assess the situation. Monster one stood above its crony, shaking its head in a bizarre parody of human disbelief. Number two lay moaning, its eye-sockets empty pools of blood.
A rustling from behind alerted Erik to a third monster entering the scene.
“Okay, tail,” he muttered, “get us out of this.” After a moment he added, “Don’t just hang there. Do something! Look, you can be in charge.”
The tail just twitched. Erik guessed his new flesh was willing, but like any muscle, it could only do so much before it had to rest. Trying to keep watch on both functional monsters—no easy task since they flanked him—he glanced around for any kind of club.
He noticed a fallen branch with potential and took his eyes off the beasts for an instant. They sprang towards him with a stereo twang and all he could do was dive forward and hope. He was almost fast enough. The original monster missed him, but the other managed to shove enough fangs into his left arm to get a solid grip. As the beast landed, it used that purchase to flip its victim entirely over its body. Erik smashed to the ground, back first. For a terrible instant, he couldn’t move or protect himself when the beast released his arm and went for his throat.
Those long jaws didn’t need to open especially wide to enclose Erik’s neck. They closed with appalling force, crushing his larynx and riddling his neck with fangs.
A normal human would’ve died instantly. But the bones and tissues of Erik’s neck softened as the jaws closed, and the scales began pumping air into his arteries, proving they were more than mere gills.
Then a wall of pain fell on him, and he passed out.
It seemed only seconds had elapsed, but when he opened his eyes, five monster corpses littered the clearing. The two he hadn’t seen before had shorter legs than the others, three-part jaws, and sideways-curving teeth. He presumed the eyeless one had died of its wounds, but the other four appeared intact except for viscous brown fluids seeping from their mouths, nostrils, ears, and anuses. Even upwind, they stank.
He sat propped up, his back against something soft and warm. His dried clothes lay draped over his legs. He turned and found Liana’s face very close.
She smiled. “Disy figured that if I held you upright and pressed my hands against your wounds, you’d be fine.” She showed him her blood-covered palms. “Paat must’ve told him about—”
“Disy? Paat?” Erik explored his neck with his fingertips. He felt wetness, but no holes.
“You’ll see. Disy’s short for S’rdis S’git S’tang. He went to fetch the others.”
It dawned on Erik that he liked the sound of her voice. He wriggled into his pants without getting up, but his journey through the pipe had weakened the material and it ripped in the back. Not ideal for modesty, but at least his tails could get out and play. “Those are strange names.” He examined his tunic and wrote it off.
“On this level, yeah. Brace yourself. First time I saw Disy, I screamed. He’s a Theill, and they’re not a pretty species.”
“Is he the one who,” Erik waved his hand at the bodies, “killed these?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “Sonic weapon. He said it burst their guts.”
“Shiva! Remind me not to annoy him. Did he do anything to heal my neck aside from using your hands as a tourniquet?”
“You fixed yourself. The arm, too. One second you were bleeding rivers, then your skin went mushy. When it firmed up, all good. Guess I’m not the only one with clever dermis. Oh, there he is. And behind him, the rest of our crew.”
Despite Liana’s warning, Erik barely choked back a yell. His restraint depended less on politeness than with hoping to avoid the Theill’s notice. Disy made his associates seem ordinary and harmless by comparison. One was Liana’s huge cousin, Gregor, mounted on a bizarre animal; but Erik was more surprised by who shared the steed, riding sidesaddle behind Gregor: the Gelpie who’d appeared in Hooke Park, or a clone. The three newcomers held a private conversation in a language seemingly assembled from rude noises.
“What are they riding?” Erik whispered.
“Paat calls it an urz,” she replied just as quietly. “Paat’s the Gelpie, of course. She brought Disy along for muscle. Some crew, huh?”
He lowered his voice even more. “Terrific. I’d bet we’d win grand prize in some all-Tower weirdness competition.”
Her laugh cheered him. Still, her team made him nervous: a giant human, a female faux panda, and a . . . something roughly cow-sized excluding its eight limbs. In Erik’s view, Disy suggested a mélange of vampire bat and spider. He had a pushed-in nose, needle fangs, and upright ears scaled for a colossus. His bulbous abdomen, hanging between and below six hairy knees, sported vivid black and red stripes. The middle knee rose higher than the rest. Completing the limb roster were mantis-like arms, small artifacts dangling from their apparently sticky sides. The arms terminated in many small tentacles, hardly Disy’s sole departure from Chiroptera or Araneae stock equipment. Two leathery sacs descended from each side of his barrel-shaped thorax, inflating and deflating in sequence. A larger but translucent sac, hanging in front of and below Disy’s head, remained inert.
The six beady green eyes, arranged in an arc on the Theill’s forehead, proved dichroic. They flashed orange as Disy turned slightly and spoke while the formerly slack sac twisted and vibrated. His lugubrious tone reminded Erik of the donkey Eeyore from antique Winnie The Pooh animations he’d watched as a kid in the Library Archives.
“A gathering of the doomed heroic us are, five among nearly that many powers of eight living in thrall to well-netted authority.” Despite the pronoun misstep and an unusual accent—pronouncing “er” as “or”—Erik had understood every word. But the sentence baffled him.
“What,” Erik asked respectfully, “do you mean?”
“Us regret any un-clarity,” the spidery creature lamented. “S’Theill lack the gab gifts of ours nobler associates, S’Gelpies. Thus them are Captains’ upper limbs and us are deservedly relegated to distals.” He pointed a front limb at the Gelpie. “Perhaps, Paat, yous care to explain?” Erik’s head filled with so many questions, they formed a logjam at his throat.
“Not here,” the Gelpie cautioned in a flute-like but somewhat muffled voice. “Local authorities are focusing their search elsewhere, but someone thought to release hunters in this forest. Since the hunters will not be returning, our continued privacy is unlikely.”
Gregor vaulted off his steed. “Actually, explaining should be my job since this is my level. We’ll get to it soon enough. First, you two all right?” he asked Liana and Erik.
Liana nodded.
“Good. So that blood you’re wearing isn’t yours?”
She tilted her head toward Erik. “His. But he’s fine now.”
The big man observed Erik for a moment, frowning a bit. “I’m Gregor. Feel well enough to get moving, son?”
“I think so. Moving to where?”
Paat spoke up. “Safety. These hunters located you so swiftly that I suspect some flavor bacteria from your escape clings to you, sending a subtle, fruity message on the wind. You must depart this leveluntil the search for you eases. A few more of your hours should suffice.”
Erik’s jaw dropped for an instant. “We’re going to another level?”
“Not quite,” Paat said.
Without asking permission, Gregor hoisted Erik off the ground and onto the urz. Meanwhile, Liana climbed one of Disy’s legs to reach a perch on the hairy back. She made it look easy. From his new position in front of Paat, Erik could see that the steed was even stranger than he’d thought. It resembled a hairless horse with a giraffe’s neck, but its hooves seemed to have multiple small legs of their own so that the beast appeared to stand on the backs of enormous tarantulas. Also, the heavy, wrinkled hide confused the eye with its blue, teal, and olive streaks—camouflage for some alien forest. But an illuminated instrument panel inlaid into the long neck capped the oddity.
“This thing I’m sitting on. Is it alive?”
Gregor looked harassed. “No. Grab the mane and grip with your legs. Paat will handle the driving.”
The Gelpie, as far as Erik could tell, didn’t so much as twitch, but the machine began trotting—soundlessly. Erik risked leaning over and saw a front hoof with its platoon of mini-legs pass over a soft patch of bare soil. The hoof assembly left no print. So it seemed the thing flew, its leg motion strictly for show. But who, he wondered, was the show for?
They were within a kilometer from the nearest section of wall, but by the time they reached it, Gregor was panting like a dog in a sauna. Despite carrying Liana, Disy’s breathing sacs worked no harder than when he’d started.
As always, the wall displayed realistic vistas, constantly altering shadows and lighting to match the hour. This section presented a distant, snow-capped mountain, also part of a valley and glints from a central, immense lake. Close-up, the illusion failed as the human eye focused for apparent distance rather than actual distance. There, the scene disintegrated into abstract blotches, and tiny hexagonal knobs texturing the surface became noticeable.
Natives were too accustomed to this level-girdling animation to consider it impressive or even interesting. But when Paat slid to the ground, walked to the wall, touched it casually, and a large doorway irised open, Disy had to reach out a steadying leg to keep Erik from falling. In the young man’s spinning mind, the gap violated fundamental laws of reality.
Liana nodded. “Got to me, too, first time.”
Paat remounted and steered the four-legged machine through the opening and into a shadowy space beyond. The others followed. When everyone had passed the wall, the gap closed and a domed ceiling high above brightened into a silver-blue glow. Paat dismounted and stretched herself like a cat.
* * *
Erik glanced around, amazed at the room’s spaciousness. The air smelled exceedingly fresh. A Bateson Kin banquet could’ve been held here if some bulky tanks, a few exotic machines, and six metal canisters were cleared away. Every artifact appeared pristine except for the pitted and rusty canisters.
Erik thought the ceiling was rising until he realized that the urz’s legs were shrinking. “What is—” he hesitated, startled by the tinniness of his voice, “—this place?” Swinging a leg over the urz’s back, he made the short hop to the floor.
“We are within a vehicle,” Paat offered. “It responds to mental commands from agents such as myself, and I called it to meet us here. Please forgive my impoliteness, but I will now make myself more comfortable.”
The tube-like structure of her mouth expanded, and she spat out a circular, ornately pierced disk and placed it in her version of a kangaroo-style pouch. “That feels so much better.” Her voice sounded clearer, but higher in pitch. “Carbon dioxide,” she explained, “is slightly toxic for my kind, but replacing most of it with helium provides a common denominator for us all. Is everyone content with this environment?”
Disy made a sound between a creak and a groan. “Gravity could be lighter, and we don’t care for that ozone stink, but we suppose it’s survivable.”
“High praise coming from you, my friend.”
“Can this, ah, vehicle travel to other levels?” Erik asked.
“If it doesn’t break down,” Disy volunteered.
Paat ignored the remark. “That’s its purpose, Erik Bateson. Before we discuss the current crisis, have you any queries of a general nature?”
“You bet! Where are we?”
“As I stated, in a vehicle that—”
“I meant the whole Tower of Worlds. Are we on Earth or someplace else?”
The Gelpie paused before responding. “I didn’t invite inquiries quite that general. I’m so sorry, but the Captains forbid me from disclosing such facts.”
“Paat won’t even tell me,” Gregor admitted. “And I’ve been working for the Captains, indirectly, for fifteen years.”
Paat reached up to caress Gregor’s shoulder with a two-part hand. “You have earned this knowledge, my dear friend, but it could be dangerous in the wrong minds. Your queen isn’t the only twisted intellect in the Tower.”
Paat turned back toward Erik. “I’ve no doubt you are trustworthy, yet humans are not proof against torture or drugs.”
“And you are?”
“I can die at will.”
“Can you at least tell me if we’re on a planet?”
She hesitated again. “I dare offer no specifics. Still, would you mind abating my own curiosity despite my reticence to abate yours? Where do you suspect we are?”
“My guess? The Tower’s in deep space, on its way to some distant star system.”
Gregor whistled a low note. “You don’t think small! What kind of spaceship could carry even our level?”
Erik shrugged. “I’ve read that, theoretically, you could hollow out a big asteroid and fit it with rockets or something. It might start off slow, but should eventually get to wherever you aimed it. But if its passengers aren’t in suspended animation, a trip across light years could use up many generations. Atmosphere and ecology would have to be self-perpetuating, of course.”
He wondered how Liana was taking this, but couldn’t read her expression.
“Ridiculous,” Gregor muttered.
Erik felt a bit stung. “Why? Wouldn’t that explain the Tower? And beings who call themselves ‘Captains’ ought to be running some kind of ship.”
Gregor snorted. “What do you say, Paat?”
“Only this: Erik Bateson: your intuition is . . . not altogether misdirected, but you underestimate the Tower, its nature and attributes, by several orders of magnitude. It is not a structure you have a word for or are likely to imagine. Pardon me. I have spoken too freely.”
Erik stared at Paat, peripherally aware that everyone including Disy was doing likewise. The silence was nearly absolute. No birdcall, animal-rustle, or whoosh of wind penetrated the wall.
Finally, Gregor cleared his throat. “Well. That’s heavy food for thought, but let’s focus on our immediate problems.”
“Most sensible,” Paat said. “You still wish to do the briefing?”
“Yeah.” Gregor turned to face Erik. “First off, the Royal Plague is a damn hoax.”
“I know. You were there when the Rinpoche told me.”
“Couldn’t hear him over the fountain. He actually admitted it?”
“He expected my death, so when I asked about the plague—”
“Some beings,” Disy interrupted, “cannot resist correcting others.”
Paat performed an odd, sideways bow. “I believe you slyly refer to me, S’git, but I never correct anyone. Kindly continue, Gregor.”
“Sure. Erik, did the Rinpoche explain the deception?”
“No. But you can?”
“Count on it. Queen Cori has the morals of a virus, but the Royals have always been heavy strategists. They calculate every move to accomplish as much as possible. They faked the plague to justify plenty: the annual lottery, executing the Newton Kin, and hiding the physical appearance of all Royals.”
“I still—”
“Bear with me. A century ago, Newtons and Coris allied against the Tsui and Ramanas.” Gregor stopped Erik from interrupting with a raised palm. “All traces of Tsui and Ramanas were erased.”
Paat added, “Still, without them, your language and genetics would be far poorer.”
Gregor raised an eyebrow. “Skip the footnotes, Paat?”
“I shall refrain.”
“Good. Anyway, the Newtons remained in favor until they got wind of the Royals’ plans to . . . expand their territory.”
Erik lowered himself to the floor because standing was suddenly too much work. “Expand? Didn’t they already control everything by then?”
“Everything here.”
“You can’t mean they planned to invade other levels.”
“No?”
“That’s insane!” The idea of visiting such places thrilled Erik; the thought of attacking them appalled him. Disy alone had slaughtered a pack of monsters with some unknown weapon. How many unknowns would confront a human invasion? “But,” he asked, “wouldn’t that take an army? A big one?”
“Not with a smart plan and the right fighting force. They’ve been plotting this for decades.”
“Local time,” Paat insisted. “Your 360-day unit is far from universal.”
Gregor looked at Paat. “Mind ratcheting that restraint you promised another notch?”
“I merely hoped to shift this young man’s thinking toward the cosmopolitan perspective needed to grasp the full situation.”
Erik waved a hand. “Hold on. Not even the Queen knows anything about other levels including how to reach them.”
“He’s almost there,” Liana called out.
Gregor was less enthusiastic. “She means you’ve glimpsed our problem. The Queen definitely has the means to reach other levels.”
“Her has already sent and retrieved spies,” Disy volunteered. “Ours own brave spy uncovered this.”
Liana acknowledged the compliment with a smile. “You can thank my new skin.”
Gregor reclaimed the conversational wheel. “See the implications, son?”
“Not really.”
Gregor’s face turned bleak. “Queen’s getting outside help. Maybe a traitor Gelpie.”
“Or a Captain,” Disy observed in a tone that sounded discouraged, even for him.
Questions coalesced from the confusion in Erik’s mind. He met the big man’s eyes. “Why do Royals wear bandages if there’s no plague?”
“Queen’s orders. Seventy years ago, she—”
“You mean the last Queen? Vanessa isn’t nearly that old.”
“Older, actually. Vanessa was Queen Alize.”
“What?”
Liana cut in. “Gelpies keep long records, Erik. Seems that three generations back, our mystery traitor told Alize how she could carve out an empire, not just a dynasty. But not quickly. She’d be ancient or dead before she had an empire’s worth of levels under her wrinkled thumb. So she had medical teams waste their lives trying to making the Royals immortal.”
Gregor dredged up a sour smile. “Her doctors didn’t do badly. That’s why for fifty years, Royals have wrapped themselves from head to foot whenever they appear in public.”
“Because longevity treatments turned them hideous?” Erik asked.
“Because they look like teenagers.”
“That’s . . . interesting. Look, I get how the Queen might defeat another Level if the people there can’t or won’t fight back, but how could she grab enough real estate to call it an empire? Obviously—” Erik pointed at Disy “—humans aren’t the toughest species around.”
“It’s doable if you know enough about the levels and conquer them in the proper order. You invade weak but useful levels first and exploit the locals for what’s required to take over the next targets.”
“Supplies and materials,” Paat added, “personnel to be trained as soldiers or however needed.”
“Right,” Gregor continued. “When all’s ready, you move on.”
Erik shook his head. “Sounds tricky. How do you control people who speak a different language? Or does everyone in the Tower understand ours?”
“Hardly. That’s another area where the Queen would be stuck without the traitor.” Gregor’s eyes flicked toward Paat, then back. “You wouldn’t believe Captain-level technology. Sure, Disy’s grammar could use buffing, but then again, he learned Pol in five minutes. By taking a pill.”
“It were ingested,” Disy objected, “not taken.”
Erik barely heard the Theill. “A pill?”
“Think. Every kind of brain has to store information, right? So it figures there’s a way to, uh, stuff it in artificially. Not that different from tailoring bacteria to recode DNA; even barbarians like us manage that much.”
Erik surprised himself by speaking his mind. “It’s very different. This may not apply to Disy, but I can’t see human soldiers fixing inter-level communications with tablets. Aside from trivialities like ferrying drugs through our digestive system and the blood-brain barrier; DNA is information, but language involves associative habits, neural arborization, muscle memory. And we’re talking about alien languages and alien physiologies. The Captains would have to know a hell of a lot more about us than . . . us.”
Gregor looked thoughtful. “Seems they do. Couple years ago, Paat sent me solo to a level where primitive humanoids live. Right away, I had to talk with them plus know my way around. One pill did the trick. Changed my tongue shape for days.”
“Huh. Language, a mutagen, and a map.”
“So the Queen’s all set, assuming the traitor comes through for her. Her main problem is that our species isn’t adapted for alien environments. That’s why it’s taken her so long to prepare.”
Erik let Gregor’s words percolate through his mind.
“Erik?” Liana called.
He hadn’t realized his eyes had closed. “Little tired,” he murmured. “Sorry.”
“No worries. But are you getting the picture?”
“Starting to. I see how the lottery fits in. The Queen wanted test subjects for some fancy gene work.” His lips felt thick and awkward, but describing what he understood deepened his understanding. “She’s got to have soldiers who can handle at least two kinds of atmosphere.” He couldn’t stifle a yawn. “Wherever they start and wherever they invade. She’ll probably need specific change drugs for each level.” He yawned again.
Liana moved closer and patted his hand. “Been a long day, huh? Know what else the Queen might need? Soldiers that can breathe water and swim really well.”
Erik’s eyes opened. “Oh. That explains the new me.”
“Not entirely,” Paat said. “We added modifiers to your change cocktail. The original recipe didn’t include multiple tails, your skin color, your enhanced strength, or your . . . elastic qualities.”
“I see.” Erik tried to sound calm, but anger leached into his voice. “You gave me a way to escape. Much appreciated. But why the hell turn me gold?”
Paat’s huge eyes seemed to glow with empathy. “We regret the necessity, truly. But we had to insure that you were taken to the castle for final assessment, not to Laoyu. Laoyu’s prison cells lack large drain pipes.”
“Our Queen,” Gregor said, “figures that anyone who comes out too different from human norm might identify with aliens and betray her. She has the, uh, dubious cases brought to Chokorgon. If the subject can still think after a change gone wrong, they’re slaughtered on the spot unless the attending doctor finds reason to study them.”
“And if they can’t think?” Erik’s fury had snuffed itself out, leaving him weak and empty.
Paat took over. “Your Royals possess change drugs with appalling effects. You’ve witnessed one result yourself. Those unfortunate creatures Disy dispatched in the forest had mostly been lottery selections. Sadder still were the results from the Queen’s initial attempts to develop amphibious humans.”
Erik felt too numb to be properly horrified. Why, he wondered, had he thought this room quiet? Or was the roaring inside his head? Liana’s lips were moving, but he only heard the words “lost a lot of blood.”
“Wait,” he said in a croak that would’ve fit in perfectly at his favorite pond. “What do you all want from me?” He made a tremendous effort to focus and was startled to realize that he faced the ceiling. When had he gotten so . . . horizontal?
“I want you to rest,” Liana said. “Tonight, you need to be ready.”
For what? Erik tried to ask, but a dark blanket seemed to float down on him and when it covered his eyes, everything faded away.
Copyright © 2011 Rajnar Vajra
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