"Oh, fuck," Festina whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." She quickly turned to Tobit, and snapped, "Put a Bumbler back together. Fast."
Two minutes later, we were staring at the Bumbler’s vid-screen, looking at a mocked-up anatomical diagram made with X rays and ultrasound. The clear-chest man did indeed have a Balrog in his belly; but it was locked in a thumb-sized containment chamber that must have been surgically implanted. The chamber itself was glass, which was why you could see the spore glowing inside; but it also had a set of black tubes sunk into the intestinal wall, and a bunch of wires leading back to the man’s spinal cord.
"Got to be some kind of life support," Tobit said. "Those tubes into the intestines — they’re probably siphoning nutrients from the guy’s digestive system. Feeding the damned moss."
"And everything is glass," Plebon pointed out. "Balrogs need sun as well as food, correct?"
Festina nodded. "They have to get solar energy every day… and some warped fool must have replaced this guy’s chest with glass, so light could get in. Drastic, but it does the job. That’s why he prances around in just a vest — a shirt would get in the way."
"But why would you want a Balrog in your belly?" Dade asked. "If that glass container ever broke…"
"It can’t be real glass," said Festina. "Neither is the man’s chest. They’re both some transparent polymer… probably as tough as armor."
"But why keep a Balrog at all?" Dade insisted. "Dangerous little parasites, who can see the future and read your mind…"
Something went click in my head. "Communication system," I blurted out. "What do you mean?" Plebon asked.
"Festina said some folks believe all the Balrogs are in telepathic contact with each other… instantaneous communication, no matter how far apart individual spores might be. Suppose someone figured out a way to use Balrogs as, um, relays. You lock one up inside you, hook it to your brain — through those wires there, straight to the spinal nerves — then you kind of use it like a broadcast link. This guy’s thoughts go into his Balrog, and get transmitted instantaneously to Mr. Clear Chest on Celestia. Mr. Clear Chest’s thoughts come back the same way. They constantly hear what each other is thinking." I stopped a second. "For all we know, their thoughts may go back and forth so fast they scramble together. Like one joint brain inside two separate heads, light-years apart. A little hive-mind of their own."
"Bloody hell," Festina whispered. "If your father can not only make superhumans, but keep all their brains in synch so they don’t fight among themselves… staying in instantaneous contact even when they’re spread across the galaxy…"
"They’d be worse than the damned Balrogs," Tobit growled. "Speaking of which, imagine how the mossy little bastards feel about this: their fellow spores taken as slaves and used as someone else’s phone line."
"They hate it," Festina said softly. "And they hate the people who built it." She turned to me. "That containment chamber looks like Fasskister technology — Fasskisters are masters of hooking machines to organisms and vice versa. Remember what Kaisho said back on the orbital."
I nodded. The Fasskisters know full well why it’s right and proper to lock them in their precious metal suits, with physical needs taken care of, but their minds slowly going crazy. That’s why the spores had taken over the Fasskister orbitaclass="underline" tit-for-tat vengeance against the folks who’d sealed up spores in little glass cases.
"Makes you wonder," Festina said, "who really got the idea of dumping spores on the Fasskisters. Did Queen Temperance think of it herself? Or did the Balrog plant the notion in her head?"
"Generally," a voice whispered, "we stay out of the heads of lesser creatures. But we do make exceptions."
Kaisho hovered in her chair at the top of the nearby ramp. Behind her, the stairwell blazed as bright as a forest fire.
42
ACCEPTING THE INEVITABLE
Zeeleepull leapt in front of her, his pincers wide and ready. "Back, you," he snarled. He looked more mad at himself than at Kaisho, because he’d let her sneak up on our backs.
"Dearest boy," Kaisho whispered to him from behind her veil of hair, "you might stop me, but not my colleagues." She waved a lazy hand at the spores all around her. They gleamed on the surface of the ramp like a burning red carpet — not advancing but thickening, as if more and more of them were climbing up from below, accumulating layer after layer of alien fuzz.
Zeeleepull didn’t flinch. Mandasar warriors have a crazy fondness for doomed last stands. "Back," he said again, and made a snipping gesture with his claws. "Smelly un-hume."
Kaisho chuckled. "Easy, my dashing innocent. We aren’t here to swallow you up… just for a little justice."
Festina straightened to her full height. "Justice against whom? Mr. Glass Chest here?"
"Amongst others," Kaisho said.
"Because the Balrog doesn’t appreciate being used."
"That’s right."
Festina snorted. "Some aliens can dish it out but they just can’t take it. The damned Balrog had no moral qualms enslaving the woman you once were, Kaish — twisting your mind and body for its own mossy convenience — but heaven forbid a human ever takes advantage of a single fuzzy spore. Not that I’m defending our glass-chested clone here, but don’t you see the irony?"
Kaisho lowered her head. "I’m not enslaved," she whispered. "Not quite. But I’m bound close enough to the Balrog to feel the suffering of the spore in that man’s stomach. Can you imagine the humiliation — the degradation — of being imprisoned like an animal, forced to transmit bestial human thoughts every second of the day? Barely kept alive by glimpses of sunshine and the cast-off waste of a human’s gut? Used as a debased go-between, a conduit for sordid schemes of violence and domination…"
Her voice broke into a sob. A real sob, out loud. When she spoke again, it was a normal human voice — no whispering, no taunting, just a genuine person talking. "Festina… all of you… I know you think the Balrog is evil. You see it as a threat because you imagine some terrible parasite eating you, stealing your soul. But it’s not like that. It’s… beautiful. Just beautiful. It’s wise, and honest, and gentle, and caring; I love it with all my heart. Of course I’m scared how I’m changing, and I have my moments of doubt… but I love this creature inside of me. I do. Because it’s so much more holy than anything I ever dreamed possible."
She tossed her head defiantly, flicking the hair away from her face. Her mouth was a fierce line, and her eyes blazed with reflected red light from the moss as she stared at each one of us — daring us to argue. "Think how this bastard is using the spores he’s captured. There are three of them linked together: Admiral York on New Earth; this clone here; and that recruiter on Celestia… who’s another York clone, an earlier model without the fancy DNA. He had his features changed with plastic surgery so he wouldn’t be immediately recognized by people using the recruiters’ services, but it’s still the same old Alexander York, Three versions of the same man, touching mind-to-mind, thoughts kept perfectly in synch so they’re effectively the same person."
Kaisho gestured to the man at my feet. "This is your father, Edward — body and brain. The cloned zygote was planted in a surrogate mother right here on Troyen, and born a few weeks before the war started; that glass thing was installed in the baby’s stomach a little while later. From that day on, the child’s brain was so dominated by transmitted thoughts, the infant had no chance of developing a separate identity. He is Alexander York: helping Samantha on Troyen, leading the recruiters on Celestia, playing Admiralty politics back on New Earth. A man with blood on his hands in three separate star systems, and the League can’t touch him because he never physically crosses the line.