"I can’t move my foot," he said.
"Why not?"
"I just can’t."
Festina almost took a step forward, but I shot out my hand to catch her. "Scan with the Bumbler," I said.
"Forget the damned machine," Li snapped. "I’m… I’m paralyzed. Maybe I’m having a stroke."
I knew that wasn’t true; Li probably did too. But he couldn’t bring himself to admit he’d been caught in a mossy trap.
"I’m getting electrical readings," Festina said. "From the gray spores."
"EMPs?" I asked.
"Not that strong. But a pattern of electrical discharges are focused on Li, and they’re interfering with his nervous system. Signals aren’t traveling properly between his muscles and brain."
"If we get too close, will the same happen to us?"
"Probably." Festina shucked off her backpack and pulled out a coil of soft white rope. "I might be able to lasso him and drag him back…"
"No!" Li shouted. "Just come grab me. Hurry. I’m-"
His foot lifted. Li looked at it in surprise. I assume the motion wasn’t Li’s doing — electrical discharges from the mound were moving the leg against Li’s will — but I never found out for sure. The next moment, Li stepped into the bed of moss. Then his legs buckled, and he toppled backward.
Li fell more slowly than gravity would dictate: as if he were in a VR adventure where the action could suddenly go slow-mo for dramatic effect. His descent took at least ten seconds, drifting through the air, millimeter by millimeter, a feather wisping its way to the ground.
All the way down, Li screamed: a prolonged earsplitting wail, full of anger when it started ("How can you do this to me? To me?") but flooding with fear as the fall continued, then right at the end, transmuting to sorrow — regret? maybe even shame at how his life had turned out? — only to be cut off abruptly as he reached the middle of the heap, and spores swept in to cover him. An instant later, Ambassador Li Chin Ho was nothing but a fuzzed-over lump within the mound of gray.
The rest of us didn’t react for several seconds. Ubatu’s grip was tight around me. Finally, Festina let out her breath and checked the Bumbler’s readout. "Li’s fall was slowed by something the sensors couldn’t analyze. The effect left residual heat, but beyond that the Bumbler says UNKNOWN EMISSION."
"The emission came from the spores?"
"No way to tell… but if you ask me, that gray heap used telekinesis to drag Li in, slowing his fall so he wouldn’t crush any spores when he landed."
"That’s encouraging," I said. "If the moss was afraid of Li falling full force, the spores must be fairly fragile."
"Mmph!" Ubatu agreed, making stomping gestures with her foot.
Festina put her hand on Ubatu’s arm. "Crushing the bastards is certainly an option to consider… but if they can telekinetically grab prey and reel it in, let’s consider that option from a safe distance. I propose a strategic retreat and then we debate tactics."
"Strategic retreat sounds good," I said, and nudged Ubatu toward the exit. While Festina grabbed her Bumbler and backpack, Ubatu carried me to the curtain of energy where we’d entered the room. She hit the black sheet at a pretty good speed — unluckily for me, because the energy field had turned as solid as a concrete wall. Held in Ubatu’s arms, I thunked hard against the black surface, then was squashed in by Ubatu’s body for a moment before she realized what had happened.
"Mmph!" she muttered as she backed away.
"Festina," I said. "It seems to be a one-way door."
"Shit!" Juggling her pack and the Bumbler, Festina hurried over. She reached gingerly toward the black barrier. Her fingers stopped on contact. "Shit!" she said again… then she slammed out her hand in a palm-heel strike, as if brute force might shatter the blockage. The sheet of black made no sound when hit, but I could see the jarring impact travel up Festina’s arm, hard enough that the recoil made her step back.
"I believe you’re right, Youn Suu. It appears to be a one-way door."
From behind us came a cackling laugh. We whipped around to see the source: Li’s head protruding from the mass of gray, spores flecking his skin like pustules. The rest of his body lay submerged in moss, but at least his lungs were working — he had enough breath to laugh again.
Festina groaned. "Am I the only one on this planet who isn’t possessed by something?"
"Give it time," I told her. "The morning’s still young."
"Hah!" Li cried. "You’re trapped."
"Is that Li speaking?" Festina asked me. "Or the moss just using his mouth?"
"Likely the moss," I said. "Got inside him… infiltrated his gray matter… took over the speech centers and the neurons that understand English." I shrugged. "Eat someone’s brain, learn a new language."
"The planarian approach to linguistics."
"You’ll go the same way as me," Li sneered. "Soon, you’ll all be eaten."
Festina gave me a look. "Isn’t he supposed to twirl his mustache when he says crap like that?"
"He probably can’t," I said. "The spores swallowed his hands."
"Pity they didn’t get his tongue." She raised her voice. "Lot of good eating in a tongue. Mmm, yeah, tasty. I’d eat Li’s tongue myself, if that’d save us from one of those ‘You unsuspecting fools!’ speeches."
"You are unsuspecting fools!" Li said.
"Aww, jeez, here it comes," Festina muttered.
"Usually, we only eat vermin," Li gloated. "Scrawny lizards and meatless insects that wander in here to make nests. It’s been a long time since we dined on anything larger."
"Dined?" Festina said. "Who the hell uses words like dined? Not even a gasbag like Li would say dined."
"We are not Li," the leering head replied. "We are the Glorious Ones. We are the Divine."
"For God’s sake," said Festina, "if you have to possess the poor guy, would you please search his brain for the normal speech centers? Li wouldn’t be caught dead saying ‘Glorious’ or ‘Divine.’ "
"We’re content with the part of his brain we’ve claimed. Contact with this inferior creature’s mind disgusts us. We don’t intend to access more than necessary… but it’s been a long time since we had visitors, and we would speak with you."
Festina rolled her eyes at the phrase "we would speak with you." Personally, I thought we were lucky the "Divine" considered themselves too lofty to rummage through Li’s brain. Otherwise, they might learn things we preferred to keep secret. What would happen, for example, if the Divine discovered that my body contained Balrog spores? I might instantly become the next meal. Yes, they intended to eat me eventually — or as they might put it, they’d "feast on my succulent flesh" — but for the moment, the patchy gray spores appeared eager to inflate their egos at our expense.
I wondered if the Divine were naturally pompous, or if there was something in Li’s body chemistry that induced self-aggrandizement. Buddhists have always known you should be careful what you eat.
"So what do you want to gloat about?" Festina asked the moss. "How clever you were to mess up Stage Two for the Fuentes?"
"What?" Li’s spore-flecked head asked. "What do you mean?"
"My friend is implying," I said, "that you, the Divine, are responsible for this station’s failure. She thinks your presence here indicates you sabotaged the Fuentes’ attempt at transcendence." I glanced at Festina. "Alas, she views higher beings with suspicion. Magnificent ones such as you… she fears you may seek to prevent lesser creatures from achieving your own degree of perfection."