“No need for worry,” Glimmer flashed. “All will be well.”
“But won’t the others…” She started to ask if the other worms wouldn’t be angry or upset by his decision to leave most of their number on Slag to die, but then she broke off, turning to Tobias.
“I think he knows what he’s doing,” Tobias said. “Besides, he can’t spend the rest of his life in a tank.”
As they prepared to dump Glimmer into the water, a glowing bundle of worms rose out of the depths in front of them. It was Neon, who began flashing back and forth with Glimmer.
“I can’t believe it,” Liz said. “How, out of all that chaos, could Neon have gotten himself into the mix? We left him more than a mile from the site where the crew uploaded the worms. How could any of them have gotten to the upload site?” Yet it was clear that they had, because as she watched, dozens of glowing bundles rose toward the surface of the dark water. Neon, Limelight, and all the rest had somehow managed to get themselves onto the transport.
Tobias squinted thoughtfully down at the glowing bundles. “I’m not sure it’s as amazing as you think.”
“How can you not be amazed?” Liz asked. “The statistics are…” She started to say that the statistics were more than improbable, but in truth they were outright impossible.
Despite the rescue of Glimmer and the others, Liz spent a restless night worried about the worms and what was going to happen to them on Paradise. She tried to tell herself that she’d exaggerated the hardships, that somehow they would adjust; but when she reached the hold the next morning, she saw that the conditions on Paradise were the least of the worms’ problems. The glowing colonies that she’d watch rising toward the light the day before had dissolved into gelatinous masses that drifted aimlessly. Even the individual worms that had circulated between the bundles were dying. Those that still moved were now floating on the surface, their contorted bodies slowly coiling and uncoiling in the murky water.
“This is horrible,” she cried when Tobias reached the hold. “We have to do something. We have turn the ship around and take them back to Slag.”
“Even if we could convince the crew, Cantrell would never stand for it,” Tobias said. “Besides, I’m not sure Slag is still there. At least not in anything like its original form. With the ships cutting down through the crust, the surface will be nothing but molten magma by now.”
“But the worms didn’t understand what would happen,” she said. Fighting back her tears, she knelt beside the water. “They had no idea what the trip would be like. No way of knowing.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to make any difference to Cantrell,” he said grimly. “This is a Consortium transport. There’s no one we can appeal to.”
“We can tell the crew,” she said. She rose to her feet, thrusting out her chin. “We can make them and Cantrell look at what they’ve done.”
She knew it would do no good, of course, and in the end, she simply sat on the catwalk, watching as the last of the worms ceased to move and their bodies slowly putrefied amid the darker masses that had once been the colonies. With no hope of changing the situation, her anguish gradually gave way to numb resignation. Finally, too tired to think, she climbed to her feet and made her way slowly back through the ship’s winding corridors to her quarters.
The next morning Liz almost decided not to return to the hold. She wasn’t sure she could face the scene that would be waiting for her, but she felt that she had an obligation to go—if only to grieve over the corpses of the beings she’d been unable to save.
When she arrived, however, there were no corpses. The amorphous masses that she’d left drifting just beneath the surface had solidified—they looked like rubbery, translucent cocoons—while the individual worms floating between them had dissolved away to nothing, turning the water into a clear, organic broth.
Kneeling on the platform, she peered into the depths. The cocoons were pale yellow in color, with what looked like darker masses inside. Sometimes one or another of the darker masses appeared to shift, to turn ever so slightly, but she could determine nothing about their shapes.
“Not quite what you’d expect, is it?” a voice said, startling her.
She turned, rising to her feet to find Tobias gazing past her into the water.
“What do you think is happening?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“I thought you had a theory,” she said. “When we first brought Glimmer down here, I couldn’t figure out how Neon and the others got here, but you seemed to think it all made sense.”
“I thought it did,” he said. “But now…” He sighed. “Now, I have no idea what’s going on.”
During the day, the shapes inside the cocoons began to coalesce, extruding small nubs that reminded Liz of limbs or fins. By late afternoon, when the masses had coalesced completely, they began to twist and turn, sometimes abruptly, as though alternating between sleep and sudden bouts of restlessness. As a result, when evening came, neither she nor Tobias were ready to return to their quarters. Instead, they remained in the hold, waiting. For what, Liz wasn’t sure, but there was no question in her mind—new life was taking shape in the dark water before her.
Liz didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until she awoke, slumped against the bulkhead behind the catwalk. For a moment, her eyes refused to focus on the figure standing in front of her. Then she realized the problem wasn’t her eyes; it was the figure itself. It wasn’t human.
The creature stood upright on a pair of segmented appendages that were too slender to be human legs. It also had two sets of thin, multijointed arms arrayed up the sides of its chest. Its body was divided into three large segments, like a human-sized crustacean with a flexible, translucent exoskeleton. Instead of eyes and ears, it had two branched antennae, along with a short, hooked beak. As the filaments on the ends of its antennae slowly fluttered, waves of pastel color moved over its body in patterns similar to those she’d seen on the bundles of worms. Two more of the creatures stood further along the catwalk, their pliant exoskeletons glistening in the pale light. The creature directly in front of Liz hung over her, its antennae wavering back and forth just a few feet from her face.
Instinctively, she lurched backward, pulling herself against the bulkhead with her knees drawn up to her chest.
“I don’t think they’re dangerous,” Tobias said in a bemused voice. He sat just beside her, his legs also pulled up to his chest, though his hands hung loosely over his knees rather than clutching them as Liz’s did.
“What are you?” she asked, gazing uncertainly up at the creature.
The creature swayed unsteadily from side to side. “Not sure,” it whispered. “Our metamorphosis… not yet complete…” It’s voice issued from its beak in a ragged hiss. As it spoke, the waves of pastel color flowing over its body followed the cadence of its voice.
Tobias squinted up at the large crustacean. “The Anunnaki modified your DNA, didn’t they?” he said. “They knew hydrogen sulfide wouldn’t provide enough energy for your higher neurological functions.”
The creature swayed again. “The Anunnaki…?” it whispered. “I… we… not sure what you mean…”
“Can you remember from before?” Liz asked. “From when you were under the ice? Back on Slag?”
“You gave me name…” the creatures said, straightening slightly. “We spoke…”
“Glimmer,” she said, struggling to her feet. “I called you Glimmer.”
“You can call that thing whatever you want,” a voice growled from behind her, “but I call it an abomination!”