who’d been conveniently lying on an operating table.
While the team’s medical and bio experts plied their trades, the hard-engineering types had busied themselves with dissections of their own: taking apart Fuentes gadgets that also occupied the room. I assumed the gadgets had been the usual things one finds in autopsy labs, like devices for testing the chemistry of body fluids or for checking the state of specific internal organs. Now that the Fuentes species had vanished, the machines weren’t useful in themselves, but analyzing their components might reveal important information about Fuentes technology. Team Esteem must have hoped they’d find logic systems more advanced than anything known, or cute little black boxes that could violate the rules of physics. Carefully, cautiously, warily, they’d begun to dismantle every mechanical object in the room. The resulting bits and pieces were arranged in trays awaiting analysis.
Since Tut and Festina immediately went to examine the corpses, I turned my attention toward the disassembled machinery. I had no special expertise in electronics, positronics, or neutrionics, but I decided to give everything a once-over with the Bumbler just to see if anything noteworthy stood out. It did. I turned to my companions. 'These parts,' I said. 'They haven’t been EMP’d.'
Festina raised her eyebrows. 'Are you sure?'
'No signs of EMP damage. Even nano-scale circuits are intact.'
'Hmm,' Festina said. 'So in sixty-five hundred years, no EMP cloud has come in here… even though the door was unlocked, there’s no security system, and we think the clouds were responsible for Rexy rampages just down the hall.'
'Jeez,' said Tut, 'sounds like the clouds were afraid of this room. Like maybe there’s some kind of monster…'
'Shut up!' Festina snapped. 'Not another word!'
For several heartbeats, all three of us stood in silence. No monster attacked. I reached out with my mind as if I still had a sixth sense, but I perceived nothing beyond what was already apparent — the corpses and dismantled machinery. At last, Festina let out her breath; she didn’t speak or drop her guard, but she joined me and checked the Bumbler’s data.
'You’re right,' she said. 'No EMP damage. Strange.'
'The clouds
'I know.'
'For six and a half thousand years.'
'I
'Like what?' Tut asked. 'What kind of equipment?'
'I don’t know. Something the clouds like — something that makes them feel good.'
'Or perhaps,' Tut said, 'something that would be dangerous if it got short-circuited.'
'Don’t you know when to be quiet?' Festina asked. 'Don’t you know not to tempt fate?'
'I’m just saying it’s possible,' Tut replied.
'Fine, it’s possible. But not likely. Not when you realize that
'Maybe when they’re smoke, they can see things we can’t. Or maybe old Fuentes smoke can talk to new Unity smoke and explain what shouldn’t be done.'
Festina looked like she wanted to argue… then she just sighed. 'Too many maybes, not enough facts. And I doubt if we’ll find any great revelations. Team Esteem was here for months; does it look like they stumbled across important secrets?'
'Nah,' Tut replied. 'But that’s how it is with the Unity: they’re so damned careful, it takes them years to do anything. Look at this.'
He went to one of the semitransparent balls of silver — a Fuentes stasis field. Inside was a body tucked into fetal position: arms squeezing knees, head down, tail wrapped tightly around the waist. Unlike other Fuentes in the room, the creature in the stasis sphere was entirely hairless, with bloated skin that bulged as if it were air-inflated. It reminded me of a soccer ball that’d been pumped up too much. Ready to pop its valve any second.
'See?' Tut asked. 'How long has Mr. Puffy been inside this field? Since the old days, right? Since the Fuentes were still alive. But Team Esteem hasn’t even opened the sphere. They saw all this stuff; and their first instinct was to draw up some long-term timetable for when they’d do what. Everything planned in cold blood. Heaven forbid they try anything on impulse… like this.'
He pulled back his foot and kicked. It was not a particularly skilled move; Tut wasn’t a dancer like me, nor had he done any more martial arts than the six-month course required at the Explorer Academy. Still, he had long, strong legs and plenty of time to deliver the strike: neither Festina nor I were close enough to stop him. I didn’t even bother to try — a sharp impact might pop Technocracy stasis spheres, but who knew if the same was true for advanced Fuentes fields? Maybe they could withstand a hit… including the toe of Tut’s boot driven full strength into the shimmering silver surface.
I was wrong. Fuentes stasis fields turned out to be just as flimsy as the Technocracy type.
The field dissipated with a hiss of released air, and Mr. Puffy tumbled onto the floor. A moment later, his spade tail whipped in a slashing circle, providing enough momentum to propel him to his feet. The alien stood there, tail writhing, mandibles weaving like daggers in front of his mouth… with Tut less than an arm’s length away.
'Hey,' said Tut, turning to Festina and me. 'I found the monster that scared off the clouds.'
The bald Fuentes stank — a stench like ancient urine, piercing and vile. I wondered if that was the natural odor of his species, or if this particular specimen, with his lack of hair and engorged flesh, was unique among his kind.
I felt stupid for thinking 'Mr. Puffy' had been dead — he was, after all, locked in stasis, where not a single microsecond had passed over the centuries. Since the room’s other Fuentes were cadavers, I’d assumed the ones in stasis would be too. Team Esteem must have jumped to the same conclusion… which shows the stupidity of taking anything for granted when exploring alien planets.
But Mr. Puffy was alive. His breath rasped in and out, his tail and mandibles twitched. He looked like an angry animal in search of a target to bite. Perhaps the only thing holding him back was the strangeness of his situation. When he was first put in stasis, the room must have been full of his fellow Fuentes, plus working machinery and full-strength lights. Now the only Fuentes in the place were corpses, the machinery was half disassembled, the lights were dim as dusk, and he faced a trio of unfamiliar aliens. However upset Mr. Puffy might be, he had the sense to restrain himself till he figured out what was going on.
Tut, of course, showed no concern standing nose to nose with a newly exhumed mutant alien. 'Greetings!' he said, holding out his hand. 'I’m a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. How’s about some Hospitality?'
The Fuentes stared at him a moment with mandibles knitting themselves together in a complex pattern. Tut lifted his own hands to his mouth and twiddled his fingers in response. I made a soft, choking sound — when confronted with an infuriated alien, Explorers should
Off to my right, something whirred: Festina firing her stun-pistol. She must have drawn her gun the instant Mr. Puffy came out of stasis, but she’d held off shooting till the Fuentes showed hostile intent. Not that it made any difference. Mr. Puffy wasn’t fazed by the pistol blast; he didn’t even slow as Festina pulled the trigger several times in succession.
As for me, I was frozen. Once again, I’d fallen victim to the reflexive paralysis programmed into me by the Outward Fleet: when taken by surprise, every muscle in my body went rigid. I had time to think,
So I froze. And Festina fired. And Tut said, 'Hey, what’cha doin’?' None of which slowed Mr. Puffy as he leapt across the room, landed in front of me, and shoved his bloated hand into my mouth.
His urine stink had been bad before. This close up, it would have made me gag — if I hadn’t already been gagging from his fat foul fingers sticking down my throat. The taste of his flesh was putrid beyond description; even now, just remembering, I feel my mouth pucker. Vomitous. I would have thrown up then and there, but the moment my stomach began its first flip-flop, some powerful force suppressed it. Like a plunger pushing down the bile, preventing the puke from rising. For a second, I had the crazed idea Mr. Puffy had extended his hand all the way down my esophagus and was physically doing something to stop my stomach from erupting. Then a more rational explanation struck me: the Balrog had taken control of my body to forestall unwanted regurgitation. Perhaps that was another reason why I’d gone frozen — the Balrog
Even as that thought crossed my mind, I felt my teeth bite down. The action wasn’t my own — if there could be anything more nauseating than the taste of urine-flesh stuffed into my mouth, it was the thought of biting that flesh and breaking the skin: spilling unknown body fluids across my tongue. But my jaw clenched anyway, without my volition; I bit full force, as if I wanted to chew off the alien’s hand and swallow it.
The puffed-up flesh split in several places. Juices gushed out, squirting. Some ran down my chin; some dribbled into my throat. The alien’s blood added a sulphurous taste to the repugnant flavors already in my mouth. Once more my stomach tried to vomit… and once more something cut short the process, paralyzing the muscles needed to spew my most recent meal.
The next moment brought a new horror: a flood of something pouring from the roof of my mouth. I could feel it streaming around the edges of the comm unit that had replaced my soft palate — as if the contents of my sinuses were suddenly spraying down at high pressure, forcing fluids past my implant to top up the goo already in my mouth. What could the fluids be? Blood? Mucus? Gray matter squeezed from my brain?
Then my teeth eased open. The Fuentes withdrew his hand… and just for a moment, in the bleeding bite marks made by my own incisors, small red dots glowed against the lab’s faint light. Their glimmer faded instantly as the crimson specks swam deeper into the bloated flesh, entering Mr. Puffy’s bloodstream.