Perhaps it could be explained by the knee-jerk enmity between the Unity and the Technocracy… and by the raw pain Team Esteem must have felt in their newly disembodied condition. The Fuentes clouds had suffered in Stage One for thousands of years; when the Unity survey teams landed, the clouds knew that the newcomers would soon turn to harmless smoke. Even as pretas, the Fuentes had learned some patience and restraint.
But the Unity pretas had no such control. When we sent reconnaissance probes into their camp, Team Esteem’s ghosts must have whipped themselves into fury at the thought of hated Technocracy rivals "invading" Unity territory. The smoky Team Esteem had EMP’d our probe in outrage. When we showed up in person, they’d EMP’d us again… and even if the Fuentes pretas might have preferred to avoid direct action — or if the newly transformed Var-Lann told the others we were a rescue party, not opportunistic usurpers — hostilities had already commenced.
It didn’t help that we’d talked to Ohpa (whom the pretas hated or feared) and that we were now marching toward the Stage Two station. Perhaps the ghosts thought we intended to destroy the station, thereby destroying their only remaining hope for release. However the pretas usually handled visitors, this time they’d decided we couldn’t be left to be pulled apart by microbes. We had to be eliminated: the sooner the better.
Hence the Rexies. And hence, I had to do something. Which would have been easier if I’d had a stun-pistol, a Bumbler, or a comm. But I was just as ill equipped as Tut’s group… nor was I enough of a fighter to take on three homicidal protodinosaurs.
The Rexies would kill Tut. They would kill Li. They would kill Ubatu. If I was there, they’d kill me too… unless the Balrog played deus ex machina to save me, probably consuming more of my body in the process. Either way — whether I got eaten by an alien dinosaur or an alien clump of moss — it seemed so unreal, I couldn’t work up much concern over either prospect. As for the others, I disliked Li, I feared Ubatu, and Tut might become as dangerous as the Rexies if the pretas possessed him again. Letting them all die would solve a lot of problems.
But it wouldn’t solve my biggest problem: remaining human.
I didn’t want to become a thing who calmly let others be killed. I didn’t want to descend into what I imagined was the Balrog’s attitude: unconcerned with the fate of lesser beings. The thought of Li and Ubatu dying didn’t fill me with much emotion, but the thought of me casually letting it happen — watching them die with my sixth sense, seeing their life forces ripped from their bodies and cast off to dwindle into the ether — that made me shudder. I was absolutely terrified of changing into an inhuman entity devoid of compassion.
So I had to save them. I had to. Which meant I had to do the only thing that might rescue them in time.
I had to get Festina.
If I traveled fast, taking shortcuts, I’d have just enough time to catch up with Festina and bring her back to save the others. Persuading her to help wouldn’t be easy. First, I had to get close enough that she could hear me over the storm. (Briefly, I wondered whether the Balrog could amplify my voice… but every time I asked the moss for a favor, I lost more of myself. No.) I had to get near enough to be heard, which was also near enough for Festina to break my legs. She’d unhesitatingly carry out that threat unless I found the perfect words to stop her. Assuming words would stop her at all; quite possibly she’d ignore talk completely, thinking it was just a Balrog ploy to slow her down.
Nor would it be easy explaining how I knew the locations of six widely separated Rexies. Even the nearest was more than a kilometer away, hidden by night, rain, and shrubbery. But perhaps that problem would solve itself — by my estimate, I’d reach Festina about the same time as the first Rexy coming her way. A big toothy predator howling for blood would help make my point that our friends were in similar trouble.
But only if Festina gave me a chance to speak.
As I hurried forward through soaking wet ferns, I tried to devise a persuasive approach. No inspiration presented itself. Anyway, "persuasive" was exactly what she’d expect if the Balrog were speaking through my mouth… unless the moss decided to go for "fumbling and artless" in an attempt to seem more genuine. The more I thought about it, if I chose any effective approach, its very effectiveness would make it suspect. If I prostrated myself on the ground submissively… if I saved Festina’s life from a Rexy… if I got in front of her and built one of those noose snares so popular in VR adventures, where the victims are suddenly lassoed by the ankles and yanked off their feet to dangle upside down, helpless to do anything except hear you out…
I couldn’t believe those traps actually worked. In real life, they’d probably break your neck through sheer force of whiplash.
Broken bones were very much on my mind as I hurried through the rain.
I thought of no brilliant solution to my problem. No clever phrases to win Festina over. No inspired truths or lies to smooth everything out.
My Bamar heritage left me ill equipped for subtle-tongued persuasion. I don’t claim my ancestors were scrupulously honest, but they’d never revered slick speech as an art form. Other cultures have trickster folk-heroes who can wheedle their way out of anything… but the heroes in Bamar folktales are either Buddhist saints who never tell lies, or else noble warriors who get betrayed (by treacherous friends, two-faced lovers, deceitful relatives) and die in elaborately gruesome ways. The greatest heroes are combinations — warriors who achieve saintly enlightenment just before being killed. Such people may become semidivine after death: war-spirits chosen to serve Buddha himself as deputies and emissaries.
Perhaps I should have prayed to the nats; they occasionally granted supernatural protection to those deemed worthy. I even considered asking the Balrog for help — surrendering more of my body in exchange for a way to save the others’ lives. But I had other options of surrender open… and by the time I caught up with Festina, I’d made my choice.
Festina and I met in a meadow of blue ferns: none more than knee height, most much shorter. Nothing else grew in the area but that one fern species. My mental awareness said the ferns poisoned the soil with a toxin exuded from their roots, a weak acid they could tolerate but other plants couldn’t. It wasn’t a unique survival strategy — terrestrial oaks do something similar — but it seemed ominously symbolic.
I’d taken shortcuts to get ahead of Festina. The path she was following led straight through the meadow, so I settled among the ferns, sitting in lotus position, waiting for her to reach me. I’d arrived before the approaching Rexy by a slight margin; Festina would have time to deal with me before she had to take on the predator.
My sixth sense watched her draw near… but the first my normal senses could discern was a sharp beeping sound that cut through the drone of the rain as she reached the meadow’s edge. The beeping was the Bumbler’s proximity alarm, warning her of danger: me. She’d programmed it to consider me a threat — no better than a Rexy.
I sat where I was and waited.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Festina turn the Bumbler toward me: scanning, getting a positive ID. The expression on her face didn’t change. Her life force flickered briefly with anger, sorrow… then she tightened the Bumbler’s shoulder strap so it wouldn’t bounce and strode purposefully forward.
I wondered if she’d try shooting me first. It might have had some anesthetic effect. But Explorer training taught her not to waste a stun-pistol’s batteries when it wouldn’t do the job.