I glanced at her grim face. Was she tortured by the possibility that history was repeating itself?
On Demoth, the plague had claimed sixty million lives.
A lot of death. A lot of death.
At six o’clock ship’s time, Captain Cohen was called away to talk with the Executive Officer — routine business about the next day’s arrival at Muta. Festina took the interruption as an excuse to adjourn our "conference"… not that we’d been conferring much. We’d read the files in silence, Festina and I concentrating on planetological data while the others went through daily logs and personnel reports. Ubatu and Li got the occasional snicker from what the Unity chose to record ("Lieutenants Yardley and Juarez fined ten credits for disturbing the peace through contentious disputes on the taxonomy of slime molds"), but none of us found any glaring clues to Muta’s hidden danger.
In retrospect, we shouldn’t have expected obvious warning signs. Unity surveyors were smart and cautious. If they’d run into overt prospects of danger, they’d quickly evacuate their settlements. Even if they didn’t have a luna-ship waiting to take them away, each team had an emergency escape shuttle that could blast off from the surface and go into stable orbit until help arrived. According to the files we’d received, all those shuttles were still on the ground. The teams had been completely blindsided — they hadn’t seen what kind of trouble they were in, and, reading their records, neither could we.
So the meeting broke up. Li and Ubatu invited Festina to dinner in the VIP suite, but she said she wanted to inspect Pistachio’s landing equipment. When the diplomats had gone, however, she sat back down in her chair. "Youn Suu?"
"Yes?"
"How do you feel now?"
"No different than usual," I said. Which was true. Whatever the Balrog might be doing to me, I couldn’t sense the changes… any more than I could tell if my "memories" of the aliens at the pagoda were real or artificially constructed.
"Have you checked yourself with a Bumbler?" Festina asked.
I nodded. "The Balrog has spread everywhere."
"If I were in your position," Festina said, "I’d be terrified. Probably screaming my lungs out."
"I doubt that."
"Oh, I wouldn’t scream out loud. But inside my head…" Festina shrugged, then gave a bitter smile. "Inside my head, I’d beat myself up — saying a normal person would scream and what was wrong with me that I never had normal reactions? But I’d still feel like shit."
"I feel like shit too," I assured her.
"Good." She smiled. "That’s a normal reaction." Then she said, "You know I can’t trust you, right?"
I suppressed a shiver. "I don’t trust myself."
"And that partner of yours…" Festina made a dismissive gesture. "When we get to Muta, I’m tempted to go down solo. I’m the only one I do trust."
My turn to make a dismissive gesture. "But you can’t go solo because it violates regulations. No one can go into danger alone when other Explorers are available as backup."
"The precise words of the regulation are ‘when other competent Explorers are available as backup.’ Between myself, Captain Cohen, and Pistachio’s doctor, I’m sure we could find grounds to declare you and Tut unfit for duty."
"I don’t doubt it." I looked at her. "But you aren’t going to do that?"
She shook her head. "The Balrog clearly wants to take part in this mission. If I said no, it would find a way to tag along in spite of me — probably by taking over your body and doing something drastic."
A prickle of fear went through me. "That would be bad."
"I agree. So I’ll let you come to Muta. I just won’t trust you." She looked at me with sad eyes. "Which means I’ve already ordered the ship-soul not to let you near the Explorer equipment rooms unless I’m there to watch you. I can’t take the chance that the Balrog will use you to sabotage our gear. I have previous experience with the goddamned moss. It likes to play games."
Festina waited for me to say something. I didn’t. After a moment, she said, "If it’s any consolation, I’ve told the ship-soul to keep Tut out too."
"Will you let him go with us to Muta?"
"I haven’t decided. Do you want him along?"
"Yes. He’s part of this too."
"Is that Youn Suu speaking or the Balrog?"
"I don’t know." I took a breath. "From this point on, I’ll never know who’s speaking, will I?"
"No. You won’t." Festina lowered her eyes in thought, drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. "Okay," she finally said, "I’ll give Tut the choice. This is a dangerous mission — possibly lethal. He can decide for himself whether he’ll volunteer."
I thought about the Balrog giving me a similar choice down in Zoonau. If I’d known what it would entail… suddenly I was conscious of the tiny pain from the wounds on top of my feet.
Festina must have seen some change in my face because she asked, "Is there anything I can do?"
An idea popped into my mind: a way to check whether the pagoda incident actually happened. "Arrange for me to call my mother," I said. "Tonight. A direct link as soon as possible."
"I can authorize that." The navy seldom allowed direct calls home, but the great Admiral Ramos could undoubtedly pull strings to circumvent the bureaucracy. "Anything else?" she asked.
"Yes. Kill me if I start talking like a brainwashed zombie in love with the damned moss."
"Do you think that might happen?"
"I have no idea what I think. I don’t even know who’s thinking." My eyes felt hot. Before I embarrassed myself by crying, I walked stiffly from the room.
CHAPTER 6
Dharma [Sanskrit]: A word with many meanings, all related to "truth." In Gotama’s time, any teaching was called a dharma — the teacher’s view on what was and wasn’t true. Subsequently, Dharma (often capitalized) came to mean the Buddha’s teachings in particular. Dharma can also mean the whole of reality: the ultimate truth of the universe.
From habit, I returned to my cabin… but as soon as I got there, I knew I couldn’t stand being cooped up in a tiny room. All my instincts said, "Go check your equipment. Make sure everything’s perfect." But Festina had barred me from doing that. I felt like a mother cut off from her children.
For something to do, I went down to the mess. It had been hours since my last meal, and I knew I should eat, even though I had no appetite. (Why wasn’t I hungry? Had the Balrog already replaced my digestive system? I imagined the moss photosynthesizing inside me, pumping unknown alien nutrients through my veins, mutating my internal organs. The idea was ridiculous — how could spores in my lungs or liver get enough light to photosynthesize? More likely, they were feeding off me. So why didn’t I feel hungry?) Nevertheless, I forced down a few mouthfuls of the vegetarian dish of the day: a casserole whose components had surrendered their individual identities and blended morosely into a homogeneous mush.
At least the mess’s dining area was empty. I’d come in after the normal supper hour… which was good because I didn’t have to put up with regular crew members asking questions about Festina. ("What’s she really like?") On the other hand, eating alone in the silent room got on my nerves. I felt an irrational urge to shout obscenities or throw my bowl of mush against the wall. If somebody caught me, so what? The Balrog infesting my flesh was worse than any punishment the navy could impose. Besides, I had a perfect defense: I could claim mental incompetence because of the spores. "They made me do it, your honor!" Like a free pass that let me flout petty regulations.