Planet Hate, page 18
The thing had been called by Ullikummis, whose psionic bond with the rocks allowed him to speak to them, to command them as easily as he did the simple-minded apekin that covered this planet like a rash. The stone-clad Annunaki stood there, willing the rocks to burst from beneath the surface, to push themselves into the humans and create new life-forms, in much the way his Annunaki forefathers had created their Nephilim, forging them from the human forms.
Ullikummis could control the rocks in an alchemical way, altering their properties and making them into something semisentient. He had need of warriors, had quested for them since his return to Earth less than four months ago. He had tried the weak flesh of the apekin, making human fight human as they struggled to prove themselves to him in the most brutal manner imaginable. And all that had served to do was bore him, proving once and for all that the Annunaki were far superior to anything this pathetic race of jumped-up monkeys could ever achieve. He had waited then, seeding the world with his thoughts, letting the story change and drift, the promise emanate in words the humans were drawn to. When they came to him again, after these scant months, they came willingly, with newly conquered hearts and minds.
Fifty-nine worthless human shells writhed in agony in front of Ullikummis now, eliciting a chorus of pain as the rocks bore into their useless, fragile bodies, driving into their flesh without mercy. Ullikummis watched emotionlessly and if he made any connection to the genetic tortures that his father and Ningishzidda had bestowed upon him millennia ago, he did not acknowledge it.
Standing stock-still, Gregory Samms felt needles of shooting pain drive up his legs, and he swayed for a moment, wanting to fall over just to take the pressure off his legs. But he could not fall; savage stone spikes now held him in place, emerging out of the floor and driving up through his legs like nails.
This is the future, he told himself. God is merciless.
Then the stone splints climbed up his legs, tearing his flesh apart as they drilled through his fragile human body, reknitting torn muscles and ligaments into something new. Samms screamed as the stone writhed within his erect body, twisting, burrowing lances erupting inside his legs with white-hot pain. The old cobbler rocked in place, held upright purely by the stone shards that had pierced him, driving through him with infinite delicacy. Already he was in so much pain that he could not hear anything other than his own shrill cry, and he was no longer aware that he was just one voice in a chorus of agony that echoed through the lengthy corridors of the Castle of Bensalem.
Then, just when Gregory Samms thought the pain could not get any worse, the stone growths reached up into his groin, entwining themselves with his testicles, clutching and solidifying wherever they touched as they drilled down the shaft of his penis.
Samms’s mouth was stretched wide, his scream a shrill and rising note as the stone growths continued upward, wrenching his nervous system apart with jagged spines, ripping through his body like nails through wood. He felt the stone tree within him, running up his legs, his groin, into his abdomen. Then he felt it wrench at his guts, piercing his intestines and colon, ripping up through his belly with icy fingers. He shrieked again, trying to remember how beautiful the future would be, how he would be a part of that brave new world.
By then, the growing stone had reached the cavity of his chest, and Gregory Samms felt it deflate his lungs, crushing his breath from within as it filled the capacity there. It was as if concrete was being poured down his throat; he could feel it mass and solidify within him, crushing the breath and the life out of him. He screamed once more as the forming stone tugged at his upper arms, oozing through the flesh of his forearms, his hands and fingers, filling them from the inside out. Suddenly his hands felt cold, all sensation leaving him as the stone took the place of his flesh, ossifying him from deep within.
Gregory Samms was still screaming as the coiling stone clawed its way up his throat, driving spikes through his neck and filling his mouth with its solid coldness. Abruptly, his scream ceased, the noise cut short by a voice box now changed beyond comprehension.
The cobbler felt the stone move onward, rising up into his brain, oozing behind his eyes like liquid as it took control of his sight. At that moment, for just a second or two, Gregory Samms lost consciousness, blacking out as the pain of the alien invasion finally became too much.
When Gregory Samms woke up, he found himself changed where he stood into a monstrous creature of the glorious future god. As he stood there, Gregory felt the stones still shifting within him, but it was less forceful now; they seemed just to be settling into their final places. He stood hunched over, his back bowed as if in supplication to his new master. His skeleton had been altered, and so had those of the people around him, the bones and flesh ossified, entwined with the penetrating semisentient stone that Ullikummis had commanded to change these people. Because of the bent-over manner in which he stood, Gregory Samms was just five feet tall now, but his limbs had stretched, becoming long and rangy, the hands now far ahead of his body. His jaw had changed, too, its stone parts clacking together in an elongated muzzle that bore little similarity to that of a human.
His mind was gone, just the slightest vestige of what he had been before remained, nagging at him like a distant candle flame in the darkness. He had been overcome by the entheogen, the beautiful sense of the god within.
Abruptly, the stone shafts that had penetrated his feet pulled from the floor, emerging and locking in his body, no more stone needed to complete the alchemical task of altering his form. As they disconnected from the floor, Gregory Samms sank to his knees, his long arms sagging forward to prop himself up. All around him, others of the loyal acolytes were sinking to the floor, as well, adopting the same pose as he did. They looked more like dogs now than men.
Ullikummis looked at his war dogs, their loyalty unquestioned. A combination of thinking creature and solid stone, they were more like statues than men, living statues, waiting for him to give them their orders.
Of the fifty-nine applicants, just fourteen had survived the horrendous metamorphosis; the others had lost too much blood in the transformation. It mattered nothing to Ullikummis. Humans were a cheap commodity, more could be found as he needed. These creatures would be his final gift to the world, and they would serve him in his ultimate pursuit of his father, Enlil.
BRIGID LEAPED ASIDE as the upturned table in front of her suddenly split. A lance of plasma shot through it and zapped across the room in a line of yellow-green light. She could smell burning, and when she looked, Brigid saw that her cloak was on fire, flames licking at its hem.
Brigid reached for the neck clasp of the cloak with her left hand, and in an instant she had shirked the heavy cloak from her shoulders, letting it smolder as it sank to the floor behind her.
Up ahead, another plasma beam cut across the eight-by-twelve room, cutting through a shelf of ancient carvings that Balam had carefully arranged along one of the cold stone walls. As the artifacts clattered to the floor, Brigid brought her TP-9 semiautomatic up once more, caressing the trigger and snapping off another burst of gunfire. She gritted her teeth as the shots went wide, cutting through the loose indigo-colored robes that Balam wore around his slender form.
In the back room, Little Quav crouched beside the heavy stone range, hugging her rag doll tightly as she pulled one hand over her ear. The cacophony of the shots in the next room terrified the little girl, who had never had to witness violence before. She had never seen Balam lose his temper, never seen him strike out for any reason, and her contact with other people had been negligible at best. Having a vicious firefight suddenly erupt like this in her own home left the girl shocked and quivering with fear.
There came another brilliant burst of plasma as Balam attempted to cut Brigid down as she sprang toward him. Brigid felt the burning heat of the beam play across her back, cutting through her leather armor and atomizing it where it had covered her right shoulder blade. The red-haired woman grunted as she tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, her exposed back raw from that horrendous blast of heat.
The slender figure of Brigid Haight lay still on the floor, her face against the stone, her chest rising and falling as she drew breath. Balam held the ASP emitter on her for almost a minute, watching carefully as the woman quietly breathed, the exposed flesh of her back turning an angry red where the plasma beam had sideswiped her, the edges of her leather armor still smoldering around the wound.
After a minute Balam lowered his weapon, keeping it ready in his long-fingered grasp.
“Uncle Bal-bal?” Little Quav asked, calling from her hiding place where she cowered in the kitchen. “Is everything all right now?”
“Stay where you are, Quav,” Balam instructed, pacing toward the fallen form of their red-haired attacker. As Balam came near, Brigid moved, her right arm pumping out like a boxer delivering a knockout punch, the TP-9 she held bursting to angry life. A burst of bullets struck Balam, slicing through his dark robe and cutting into his side.
Balam stumbled a single step before crashing to the floor, the ASP emitter clutched uselessly in his grasp. Brigid lifted herself off the floor, gazing down at the fallen alien form, a wisp of gun smoke drifting from the barrel of her TP-9. In a moment, the flame-haired woman had ejected the used ammo clip of the semiautomatic, tossing it aside as Balam lay on the floor in front of her, then slapping another into its vacated breech.
“Come out, Quav my darling,” Brigid said as she approached the open door to the kitchen. “It’s time to leave.”
The terrified girl looked up at Brigid as she entered the kitchen, her feathery blond hair in disarray around her face, salty tears glistening on her cheeks.
“It’s okay,” Brigid said, extending a black-gloved hand to the hybrid girl. “Everything’s going to be all right now.”
Slowly, tentatively, Little Quav reached her hand for Brigid’s, taking the hand of the only person left to take care of her in the underground city of Agartha.
Chapter 14
Watching from the ground, Domi and Rosalia gasped as Grant’s bulky form came sailing over the edge of the nest. The ex-Magistrate toppled over the side and began hurtling through the air, his arms windmilling as he struggled to find something to grab on to. To Grant’s right, the knocked bird went sailing away with the force of his brutal kick, its own wings flapping hopelessly as it struggled to prevent itself falling to earth along with its attacker.
“Stupid Magistrate.” Rosalia spit. “He’ll get us all killed.”
Hearing Rosalia’s disparaging comment from where she sat against one of the trees, Domi shot a fierce look at the dark-haired woman. But Rosalia was already moving, running back to the monofilament line that hung from the neighboring tree and using it to pull herself upward, running up the tree trunk at an angle.
Up above, Grant’s arms batted against the smaller branches as he fell through the tree cover. Automatically, he had commanded his Sin Eater back to its hidden holster, freeing both hands to make a grab for something—anything. But his hands merely brushed through twigs and leaves, his speeding weight snapping even the larger branches as he whipped past them. He was a dozen feet from the fast-approaching ground when Rosalia called out to him.
“Go limp!”
Without a thought, Grant did as instructed, letting his muscles relax as the dark-eyed beauty kicked off from the tree and barreled toward him through the air. Then Rosalia’s swinging form slammed into Grant’s, the force of his momentum knocking the breath from her body in an angry burst. Grant felt the woman’s arm grasp around his chest as they swung on the monofilament, sailing through the air between the towering tree trunks. Then her hand loosened its grip on the wire, and together they began to sink gradually earthward, swinging back and forth like a pendulum.
Nearby, the woozy bird of prey slapped into the earth, a clump of leafy branches tumbling in its wake.
In another second it was all over and Rosalia let go of Grant as his feet touched the ground.
“Nice move,” he acknowledged, brushing his right index finger to his nose for a moment. The gesture was a private code between himself and Kane known as the one-percent salute, something they had developed during their years as hard-contact Mags and referred to missions with marginal chances of success. Quite why Grant had used the gesture with Rosalia, who had no clue what it meant, he couldn’t say, but afterward he would realize it marked a sea change in their relationship, the first instant when he had felt that just maybe he could trust her with his life.
Domi looked up at the two of them from where she rested with her back pressed against a tree. “You guys okay?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Grant nodded.
“I’m just talking to Lakesh,” Domi continued, gesturing to her ear where the Commtact was buried. “Trying to get a bead on Kane’s transponder now.”
“Good idea,” Grant agreed, engaging his own Commtact and hailing Kane. He tried for a few attempts, but there was no response. “Guess he’s busy,” he muttered lightheartedly, but he was clearly concerned.
“Busy isn’t good when you’re talking about Kane,” Rosalia observed.
“You’re right,” Grant agreed. “Domi? What do we have?”
“Lakesh is working out our relative coordinates now,” Domi replied.
THE AMBER MIST swished around her legs as the semiclad woman in the Chalice of Rebirth took a step toward Kane, her supple fingers playing through the air enticingly. “Come, come,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, “out of the shadows with you, blind man.”
Kane almost started at the words, but he managed to maintain his poise at the edge of the vast cavern. The dog, however, scrambled forward, rushing to get closer to the mysterious woman and the circular pit she stood within, sniffing at the vapors swirling around her body. Slowly, easing himself off the rock shelf, the broad-shouldered ex-Mag following the dog as it hurried around the cavern, hefting the compact carry case that contained the precious interphaser. As he did so, Grant’s voice came to his ear via his hidden Commtact, but Kane tuned it out; he didn’t want to give this mysterious woman any hint that he might not be here alone. As he got closer to the familiar Chalice of Rebirth, Kane saw that its amber surface was mottled with other colors, colors that had been hidden by the floating mist. A circle of blood red drifted in one corner, a streak of blue close to the center, a shuddering splash of green shaped like a flatfish. Something had infected the healing chemicals there, changed them in some way that Kane could not yet comprehend. Then he saw that the near-naked woman was staring at him, watching him carefully with haunting eyes.
“I’m not blind,” Kane said by way of greeting.
The woman peered up at his face, studying his eyes for a few moments, the twin streaks of blood glistening on her cheeks as the flickering candlelight caught them. “No, not yet,” she agreed. “But soon.”
The hairs on the back of Kane’s neck rose. “What do you know about it?” he demanded.
“I can see it, see you,” the woman said. “You’ve lost something very dear to you and you wear that loss like a shirt.”
Kane glared at the woman, wondering what she was talking about.
“A friend,” the mysterious woman elaborated in her hiss of a voice, “a woman. A soul mate, I think.”
“Soul friend,” Kane corrected irritably. The woman was talking about Baptiste, his anam-chara, and dammit all if Kane didn’t want to find out how. “My name’s Kane. You have a name?” he asked, struggling to keep the rage from his tone.
The strange woman looked at him, and Kane watched those streaks of red glistening on her cheeks like twin tears, as if she had been crying her own life’s blood. “They’ve taken to calling me Maria, but I’ve had other names before that,” she told him, “as have you. You and the woman—this soul friend as you call her—you fit together like lock and key. You feel lost without her.”
Kane began shaking his head, stopped himself. “Look, what the hell?” he growled in frustration.
“Take a seat, Kane,” the woman who had called herself Maria said, indicating where the blanket lay beside the rocks. “I’ll be with you in a moment, and then we can talk.”
Reluctantly, Kane shrugged his shoulders and made his way across to the blanket, feeling that strange weight behind his blind eye. “Come on, boy,” Kane called to the dog, encouraging it over to his side with a pat on his thigh.
Maria stood in the glowing pit, washing herself with its mistlike contents and uncapping and placing the contents of several vials into places in its surface. As she did so, Kane saw the amber color wash away, replaced by a new color, a new chemical. Whatever this woman was, she seemed to perform the operation by sense alone, adding a few drops here and there like a chef preparing a meal.
After a couple of minutes the woman seemed to be done, and she stepped from the circular pit, reaching for her dress as Kane watched. She seemed shameless, unbothered by his eyes playing across her supple, youthful form. She looked to be perhaps thirty years of age, her skin tight and exceptionally pale. Kane watched distrustfully as she dressed, making no secret of his interest in her.
“So, Kane,” Maria began as she retied the clasp at the nape of her neck, hiding away the pendant that dangled there, “what brings you here, to my realm?”
“Your realm?” Kane asked. “Huh. I thought it was just a big ol’ crack in the ground, didn’t realize someone owned it.”
“Don’t be supercilious.” The woman berated him. “Nobody owns the Earth, Kane.”
Kane laughed irritably, thinking of the Annunaki and their master plan for world domination. “Know a whole load of people who might disagree,” he said. “One of them probably owned that puddle of goop before you came along, matter of fact.”
