"Hey," said Tut, turning to Festina and me. "I found the monster that scared off the clouds."
The bald Fuentes stank — a stench like ancient urine, piercing and vile. I wondered if that was the natural odor of his species, or if this particular specimen, with his lack of hair and engorged flesh, was unique among his kind.
Of course, he’s unique, I told myself. After six and a half thousand years, he’s still alive.
I felt stupid for thinking "Mr. Puffy" had been dead — he was, after all, locked in stasis, where not a single microsecond had passed over the centuries. Since the room’s other Fuentes were cadavers, I’d assumed the ones in stasis would be too. Team Esteem must have jumped to the same conclusion… which shows the stupidity of taking anything for granted when exploring alien planets.
But Mr. Puffy was alive. His breath rasped in and out, his tail and mandibles twitched. He looked like an angry animal in search of a target to bite. Perhaps the only thing holding him back was the strangeness of his situation. When he was first put in stasis, the room must have been full of his fellow Fuentes, plus working machinery and full-strength lights. Now the only Fuentes in the place were corpses, the machinery was half disassembled, the lights were dim as dusk, and he faced a trio of unfamiliar aliens. However upset Mr. Puffy might be, he had the sense to restrain himself till he figured out what was going on.
Tut, of course, showed no concern standing nose to nose with a newly exhumed mutant alien. "Greetings!" he said, holding out his hand. "I’m a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. How’s about some Hospitality?"
The Fuentes stared at him a moment with mandibles knitting themselves together in a complex pattern. Tut lifted his own hands to his mouth and twiddled his fingers in response. I made a soft, choking sound — when confronted with an infuriated alien, Explorers should not try to imitate the alien’s actions. But Mr. Puffy ignored Tut’s response. Instead, he turned to me. He gazed in my direction for a heartbeat… then suddenly, he charged.
Off to my right, something whirred: Festina firing her stun-pistol. She must have drawn her gun the instant Mr. Puffy came out of stasis, but she’d held off shooting till the Fuentes showed hostile intent. Not that it made any difference. Mr. Puffy wasn’t fazed by the pistol blast; he didn’t even slow as Festina pulled the trigger several times in succession.
As for me, I was frozen. Once again, I’d fallen victim to the reflexive paralysis programmed into me by the Outward Fleet: when taken by surprise, every muscle in my body went rigid. I had time to think, Why now? Why freeze in front of this alien and not when the Rexy pounced on Tut? But I knew the answer: I’d never expected the Fuentes to attack the instant he caught sight of me. Why would he? What had I done to provoke him? And if he was just attacking from undirected rage or confusion, why would he cross the room for me when Tut was right beside him?
So I froze. And Festina fired. And Tut said, "Hey, what’cha doin’?" None of which slowed Mr. Puffy as he leapt across the room, landed in front of me, and shoved his bloated hand into my mouth.
His urine stink had been bad before. This close up, it would have made me gag — if I hadn’t already been gagging from his fat foul fingers sticking down my throat. The taste of his flesh was putrid beyond description; even now, just remembering, I feel my mouth pucker. Vomitous. I would have thrown up then and there, but the moment my stomach began its first flip-flop, some powerful force suppressed it. Like a plunger pushing down the bile, preventing the puke from rising. For a second, I had the crazed idea Mr. Puffy had extended his hand all the way down my esophagus and was physically doing something to stop my stomach from erupting. Then a more rational explanation struck me: the Balrog had taken control of my body to forestall unwanted regurgitation. Perhaps that was another reason why I’d gone frozen — the Balrog wanted me to let Mr. Puffy’s fingers tickle my tonsils.
Even as that thought crossed my mind, I felt my teeth bite down. The action wasn’t my own — if there could be anything more nauseating than the taste of urine-flesh stuffed into my mouth, it was the thought of biting that flesh and breaking the skin: spilling unknown body fluids across my tongue. But my jaw clenched anyway, without my volition; I bit full force, as if I wanted to chew off the alien’s hand and swallow it.
The puffed-up flesh split in several places. Juices gushed out, squirting. Some ran down my chin; some dribbled into my throat. The alien’s blood added a sulphurous taste to the repugnant flavors already in my mouth. Once more my stomach tried to vomit… and once more something cut short the process, paralyzing the muscles needed to spew my most recent meal.
The next moment brought a new horror: a flood of something pouring from the roof of my mouth. I could feel it streaming around the edges of the comm unit that had replaced my soft palate — as if the contents of my sinuses were suddenly spraying down at high pressure, forcing fluids past my implant to top up the goo already in my mouth. What could the fluids be? Blood? Mucus? Gray matter squeezed from my brain?
Then my teeth eased open. The Fuentes withdrew his hand… and just for a moment, in the bleeding bite marks made by my own incisors, small red dots glowed against the lab’s faint light. Their glimmer faded instantly as the crimson specks swam deeper into the bloated flesh, entering Mr. Puffy’s bloodstream.
Suddenly, the paralysis holding me rigid slumped away like a pregnant woman’s water breaking. Splash. I doubled over and threw up gratefully. The taste of vomit was clean and pure compared to everything else I’d just ingested.
Then a hand touched my shoulder, and someone asked, "Are you all right?"
The words were spoken in Bamar, my first language. When I looked up, it was Mr. Puffy.
I gaped. How could a creature sixty-five hundred years old know my mother tongue? The Bamar language hadn’t existed when Mr. Puffy went into stasis — in those days, my ancestors spoke some Indo-European dialect far removed from anything my modern ear would recognize. Besides, even if the Fuentes had visited Earth in the ancient past, and even if Mr. Puffy had learned the language of a minuscule tribe in the Irrawaddy river valley, how would he know to address me in that tongue? Telepathy? Could he pluck my background from my mind? Could he even learn my first language by drawing it from the whorls of my brain?
Then I remembered the red dots in Mr. Puffy’s bite wounds and the fluids that had poured from my sinuses.
Spores. Balrog spores.
I almost threw up again. The whole thing, with the hand in my mouth and my involuntary chomping down, had been a data transfer. Mr. Puffy had taken one look at me and had seen the Balrog inside. He’d shoved his hand between my teeth and I’d helplessly injected him with spores — as if I were some rabid animal frothing crimson at the mouth. Moss had skittered into the Fuentes’ wounds, then headed for his alien brain.
Now Mr. Puffy had a link to any data the Balrog chose to share. That included the Bamar language, which the Balrog had taken from my own memories. Demon! I thought. Demon, demon, demon.
I straightened up. Wiped vomit off my face with my bare hand, then cleaned my fingers by rubbing them on a nearby tabletop. Checked my clothes, and thanked whatever reflex had helped me throw up without getting puke on my borrowed Unity uniform. Taking a deep breath, I told Mr. Puffy, "Use English. Explain what’s going on."