Radiant

masters of the world but living on lizards and insects. If we could make them overextend themselves, we might find a way to avoid being eaten like Li. But first, we had to listen to them pontificate.

'Long, long ago,' the Divine said through Li’s half-eaten lips, 'we were technicians at this station. The ones who readied it for Stage Two of the Ascension. We did exactly what we were told. Exactly! We followed the scientists’ directions to the letter.'

'Fine, we got the message,' Festina said. 'You just followed orders, and you weren’t the ones who screwed up. What happened?'

'The Ascension happened!' The Divine apparently liked to shriek. This particular yell sounded more breathy than those previous; I wondered if the spores had started snacking on Li’s lungs. 'It happened just as predicted. First, the microbes pulled apart our bodies. Then, the energy projectors in this station activated themselves. It was glorious.'

'What went wrong?'

'From our viewpoint, nothing. In the form of clouds, we gathered at the energy projectors. We felt ourselves change — growing more powerful. New strength flooded through us, and we used that strength to feed on the radiation. We gathered it to us; we drank it in; we reveled in it. All that power for ourselves.'

'For yourselves?' I asked. 'What about the people in Drill-Press? Weren’t they supposed to get their share too?'

'There wasn’t enough to go around! The scientists must have miscalculated. After we ascended, we drove the others away; otherwise, they would have stolen what was rightfully ours.'

'You’d already ascended,' Festina said, 'but you kept sucking up the power pumped out by this station?'

'The power belonged to us. Our treasure. Our due.'

'Oh boy,' Festina muttered under her breath. Raising her voice, she said, 'Let me get this straight. This station could produce enough energy to uplift everyone in this part of the planet, including the entire city of Drill-Press and God knows how far beyond. Instead, your team of grease monkeys, who happened to be closest to the source, were the first shoved up the evolutionary ladder. You acquired fancy new abilities and immediately used those abilities to grab the energy for yourself. For the past sixty-five hundred years, no one else has been able to ascend because you’re hogging the juice… and you yourselves are getting a million times the intended dose of radiation, which means you’re-'

'Divine and glorious,' I put in before Festina finished her sentence.

She paused for a moment, then said, 'Right. Divine and glorious. Absolutely.' She gave me a look, then turned back to the moss. 'I suppose the same happened at other projection stations?'

'At all of them,' replied the moss. 'We’re in constant mental contact with our counterparts around the planet. Our thoughts are… sublime.'

'I’ll bet. Because you guzzle sublime radiation. The more you get, the more you want, right?'

'The more we absorb, the more our majesty increases.'

'We get the picture… don’t we, Youn Suu?'

'Indeed.'

Personally, I was picturing a group of people on Anicca called Crunchers. They caught and ate small snail-like creatures whose shells contained powerful hallucinogens. Crunch, crunch, crunch as the snail shell went down… then they’d pass out or go off wandering in a daze. Every few years, safety officials talked of exterminating the snails as a means of ending Crunch addiction; but monks and nuns howled in protest at any mass killing — even snails. Besides, the snails played a role in Anicca’s ecology: a protein in their slime trails helped keep the soil fertile. The snails couldn’t be slaughtered for fear of environmental disaster. Anicca’s safety officials never carried out their threat, and the crunch-crunch-crunching continued.

Festina probably wasn’t familiar with Crunchers, but she’d be picturing something else — a different drug, or perhaps wire-heading, sex-melds, surgical deverbalization, or any of the other ways Homo sapiens embraced delusion. If life didn’t offer enough opportunities for fixation, people doggedly sought more inventive obsessions. And the enthusiasm for honey traps wasn’t restricted to human beings; these gray spores, these former Fuentes, had succumbed to a similar temptation. When the Stage Two energy flowed, they were supposed to let it wash over them, like bathing in a pleasant stream… but instead, they’d got a taste of uplifting energy and instantly wanted it all. They’d gobbled so much in those first few moments, they’d overdosed. Yes, they’d gained telekinesis and perhaps other powers too, but they’d damaged themselves in the process. Burned out their brains. Instead of gaining enlightenment, the Divine had become virtually infantile… but infants with godlike strength.

'So you’re still basking in the station’s radiance,' Festina said. 'I’m surprised the equipment keeps working after so many millennia.'

'We are the Divine!' the moss shouted. 'Do we not have the power to do what we will?'

'They were technicians,' I reminded Festina. 'Now they’re technicians with TK. They know how to keep the machines operational. Anyway, Fuentes technology can last a long time without outside maintenance. Remember the research center in Drill-Press? Whatever kept the pocket universe stable… remember how well that equipment worked?'

'Ah… yes…' Festina said. 'I remember how stable the research center was. You think the equipment here is the same?' She thought for a moment. 'You’re probably right. Wherever I go, Fuentes artifacts all seem in similar condition.'

I.e., on the verge of falling apart. Just as the rainbow-arch research center had flickered constantly, perhaps the machines around us were ready for massive failure. The Divine spores could perform routine maintenance on the station’s facilities, but how would they manufacture new parts when old ones broke beyond repair? Some time soon, there’d be a malfunction the gray moss couldn’t handle; then it would all be over.

Perhaps that explained why the Balrog had finally come to Muta. The Divine might be vulnerable now. In the past sixty-five centuries, while the station still worked, the gray spores had been unassailable… but now when the system was weakening, perhaps the moss could be beaten. Besides, the Balrog might want to resolve the mess on Muta before this station suffered permanent breakdown; otherwise, there’d be no way to propel the pretas into Stage Two. Our arrival may have been timed for a unique window of opportunity: when the station’s output was precarious enough to debilitate the Divine, but still sufficiently functional to elevate the pretas.

All we had to do now was persuade the Divine to share the station’s energy with their fellows: the EMP clouds, the pretas, the hungry, hungry ghosts.

'Where does the station’s power come from?' I asked the Divine. 'Hydroelectric generators in the dam? Solar collectors? Geothermal? Fusion using lake water as a hydrogen source?'

'All those,' the moss replied. 'There’s also a sizable amount of plutonium buried beneath the building’s foundations. Well shielded, of course, but it provides ongoing heat.'

'Tremendous,' Festina said. 'What prevents a runaway chain reaction? Control equipment sixty-five hundred years old?'

'You need not worry about nuclear explosions, human. Your death will come as we feed on your flesh.'

'What do you need flesh for? Don’t you feed on this station’s energy.'

'We bask in that glory, yes. But we also require small replenishments of chemical nutrients. We can obtain simple elements like oxygen and nitrogen from the air, but we have long since depleted all nearby iron, calcium, and the like. We spend much of our time dormant to reduce our needs… but the flesh of four humans will allow us to remain awake for years.'

'Glad to be of service,' Festina said. She looked at the surrounding equipment: the metal spikes, barrels, and pyramids. 'Do all these things project the energy you eat?'

'They are part of the chain of production. The actual emission center is directly beneath us.'

'There’s a basement?'

Li’s head cackled with laughter. 'No. The emission surface is embedded in the floor on which you stand. We have positioned ourselves on the primary projection outlet. Originally, the power was supposed to be transferred to broadcast rods on the exterior; but we couldn’t permit it to be squandered on the world at large.'

In other words, the Divine were sitting directly on the central emitter — like a dragon sprawled on its hoard. Or like a plug holding back the flow. If somehow the moss was cleared away, the Stage Two radiation would be released as originally intended: it would spark across the gap to the station’s roof and shoot from the spiky crown on the giant Fuentes head. Nearby pretas would be uplifted. Clouds farther off would learn what was happening, thanks to their shared mental links… and pretas around the world would fly here as fast as they could, yearning to be freed from their smoky existence. I didn’t know how long it would take for every cloud to make its way here and be transformed — hours? years? — but that didn’t matter. If clouds in the immediate neighborhood were elevated, we’d be safe from angry EMPs. We could set up a Sperm-tail anchor and return to Pistachio, where standard decontamination procedures would purge us of Stage One microbes.

All that stood in our way were the spores, corking up the energy flow. Remove them, and the problems of Muta would be solved.

Festina must have followed the same train of thought, because she murmured, 'All right, your Buddha-ness, any suggestions for a fuzzy gray exorcism?'

'We could try gentle persuasion. Show them the error of their ways.'

'Or,' said Festina, 'we could kick their ass.'

'The moment you try, you get eaten like Li.'

'Never underestimate a Western champion, you Eastern also-ran. We always have a trick up our sleeve… a magic sword, a flask of holy water, or spiffy ruby slippers.'

I wanted to ask what trick she intended, but the Divine might overhear. So would Ubatu… who’d listened to Festina, and now had a worrisome look in her eye. It occurred to me, I’d never told Festina about Ifa-Vodun and Ubatu’s goal of toadying up to godlike aliens. Surely though, that wouldn’t matter — Festina had never trusted Ubatu (or anyone else, for that matter), so there was no risk Festina would say too much with Ubatu in earshot. Right?

Festina glanced cautiously toward the heap of Divine, then said very softly, 'Back at Camp Esteem, when we first searched the cabins for survivors, I found something. Something I took, just in case it came in useful.' Her hand slipped into her backpack. When she pulled it out again, a small object lay in her palm: egg- shaped, no bigger than the tip of her thumb, colored in swirls of pink and green. 'It’s a Unity minigrenade. Doesn’t look like much, but there’s antimatter inside — enough for a good-sized explosion. Team Esteem must have packed it in case they needed to blow their way into some Fuentes security vault.' She cast a sideways look