"Youn Suu," Festina said, "this isn’t going to work. No matter how strong Ubatu may be, she can’t move quickly with you weighing her down. Besides, she’s injured. And you’re injured. You’re both liabilities I can’t afford. I have to go in alone."
"Not a chance," I said. "You’ll need me inside. I’m sure."
"Why? What’s inside?"
"I don’t know. That’s why you’ll need me. I have to see what’s in there before I can help you."
"If you get in my way, we all might die."
"If you go in without me, you’ll be out of your depth."
She glared at me. "Why? Because you’re an enlightened Buddhist know-it-all, and I’m not?"
"Because every mythic hero needs some brainy beauty to explain how to kill the hydra or escape the labyrinth."
Festina made a face. "I’ve always considered myself the brainy beauty."
"No, you haven’t. Neither have I. We grew up thinking we were Ugly Screaming Stink-Girls… which is ridiculous, because we are brainy beauties. But now I’m wise as well as brainy, so you need me. Western heroes never wise up till it’s too late, and everyone else is dead. Just ask Oedipus. Or Hamlet."
"Just you wait," Festina said. "When this mission is over, I’m going to study Eastern mythology so I can make cheap-ass put-downs about your metaphysical shortcomings."
"Ooooomph!" Ubatu yelled. Or some similar sound of loud urgency.
Festina looked around as if there might be some looming danger, but Li (who’d followed on our heels and eavesdropped) said, "She’s trying to tell you, for God’s sake, shut up! Eastern, Western, this, that, as if those are the only two options!"
"Mph!" Ubatu said, nodding.
"And as if," Li went on, "Eastern and Western haven’t interbred to the point where the two can’t be separated. Look at me — my father came from a colony that was mostly Chinese, my mother from one that was mostly Belgian, but both planets were so thoroughly mainstream Technocracy, the only difference was the street names. I suppose you people were raised on Fringe Worlds that still cling to vestiges of your original ethnicities; but let me tell you, the Technocracy Core is the proverbial melting pot. Everyone is a mongrel, and the lifestyles mongrelized too. East and West have blended with African, Polynesian, Aboriginal, and Inuit… not to mention Divian, Cashling, Fasskister, and all the other alien cultures in our neighborhood. So don’t give me East and West. The terms are meaningless. At least they are now. Maybe back in Confucius’s day…"
"Ooooomph!" Ubatu yelled again. Her arms clenched around me. For a moment, I thought she’d use me as weapon to smack Li across the face. But the impulse passed; her grip relaxed back to normal.
"Behave, you two," Festina snapped. "Behave, or I really will make you wait outside."
She turned and walked toward the station. When the rest of us followed, she said nothing.
CHAPTER 18
Bodhichitta [Sanskrit]: The awakened heart/mind/spirit. Every living creature already possesses bodhichitta. The purpose of skillful practice is to remove klesha (poisons) that prevent one’s bodhichitta from making itself known.
Since the station was a giant Fuentes head, its door was placed in its mouth: a curtain of dark energy centered between the four huge mandibles. By "dark energy," I mean a field of silent blackness — an intangible thing that blocked off light, but didn’t register on any of the Bumbler’s sensors. When Festina reported the lack of readings, Li said, "Stupid machine. What good is it?"
"If it can’t be used as eyes," Festina said, "we’ll use it as a hat on a stick."
She pushed the Bumbler into the flat curtain of blackness (making sure to keep her fingers safely out of the field). She waited a moment, then pulled the little device back. "No apparent damage," she said after checking it over. "And it still works. Let’s hope that means we can pass through without our intestines exploding."
Festina stepped through the sheet of blackness. A moment later, Ubatu did the same with me in her arms. Immediately, I went blind.
I still had my normal vision. Light entered the building through two glassed-in domes overhead: the faceted Fuentes eyes high up on the station’s "face." The general glow was dim — outside, the sun hadn’t quite reached the horizon — but the tepid illumination showed we had entered a narrow corridor circling the edge of the building. The corridor’s interior wall was as smooth and white as an eggshell. It curved upward to join the outside walls a short distance below the spiked crown. The actual contents of the station (whatever they were) sat in a great white bowl inside the Fuentes head. This corridor ringed the middle of the bowl, in the gap between the inner and outer walls.
All this, I could see with my physical eyes. My sixth sense, however, stretched no farther than my skin. I could perceive everything inside my own body — millions of Balrog spores, and what little remained of my own tissues — but I could see nothing beyond… not even Ubatu’s life force, though she was pressed against me, still holding me in her arms.
A deep, abject blindness.
Within me, the Balrog stirred. Its life force wasn’t nervous or dismayed, but it was definitely disoriented. Disconnected. Its glow had shut down the moment we crossed the threshold — as if it was saving strength.
Ah. I understood.
The Balrog was a hive creature: each spore linked with all others, a gestalt spreading through the galaxy. The spores shared everything instantaneously — thoughts, strength, brainpower — which is why they could keep glowing, even inside my body. For normal creatures, producing light where no one could see was just wasting energy… but for Balrog spores, such squandered output would instantly be replenished from reserves in other spores. Probably, the Balrog had trillions of spores doing nothing but soaking up sun on well-lit planets, then feeding solar power to spores like the ones under my skin. The moss in my belly could draw upon huge amounts of energy as needed…
…until we’d entered this station. Which somehow cut off my spores from their fellows. Not only were they blind, devoid of their sixth sense; they were isolated. On their own.
I could almost imagine bits of moss snuggling up to my own cells for comfort. As soon as we passed through the station’s black entrance, the spores had ceased to be the Balrog. Now they were piteous orphans, not dominating me but depending on me.
From this point on, we could expect no help from the Balrog as a whole. As for the small supply of spores I carried in my body, I assumed they were there for a purpose, but I couldn’t imagine what. They had limited brainpower, limited energy, and probably limited abilities. There’d be no dramatic feats of telekinesis to save us from the station’s dangers. If I got injured, perhaps the spores wouldn’t even be able to keep me alive.
We humans — we Explorers — we champions — were finally on our own.
"What now?" Li asked behind me. He’d taken his time coming through the entrance’s energy field, but had finally gathered enough courage to join us.
"Now we look around," Festina said. "And before anyone wanders off, let’s use the Bumbler." She took a quick sensor scan. "No good," she reported. "We can’t see through the inner wall."
"How about the Stage One microbes inside you?" I asked. "I don’t suppose they decided to stay outside?"
Festina raised a questioning eyebrow. "The EMP clouds keep their distance from this station," I said. "It makes them nervous. Maybe the microbes that are trying to mutate you want to stay out too."