Radiant

As I hurried forward through soaking wet ferns, I tried to devise a persuasive approach. No inspiration presented itself. Anyway, 'persuasive' was exactly what she’d expect if the Balrog were speaking through my mouth… unless the moss decided to go for 'fumbling and artless' in an attempt to seem more genuine. The more I thought about it, if I chose any effective approach, its very effectiveness would make it suspect. If I prostrated myself on the ground submissively… if I saved Festina’s life from a Rexy… if I got in front of her and built one of those noose snares so popular in VR adventures, where the victims are suddenly lassoed by the ankles and yanked off their feet to dangle upside down, helpless to do anything except hear you out…

I couldn’t believe those traps actually worked. In real life, they’d probably break your neck through sheer force of whiplash.

Broken bones were very much on my mind as I hurried through the rain.

I thought of no brilliant solution to my problem. No clever phrases to win Festina over. No inspired truths or lies to smooth everything out.

My Bamar heritage left me ill equipped for subtle-tongued persuasion. I don’t claim my ancestors were scrupulously honest, but they’d never revered slick speech as an art form. Other cultures have trickster folk-heroes who can wheedle their way out of anything… but the heroes in Bamar folktales are either Buddhist saints who never tell lies, or else noble warriors who get betrayed (by treacherous friends, two-faced lovers, deceitful relatives) and die in elaborately gruesome ways. The greatest heroes are combinations — warriors who achieve saintly enlightenment just before being killed. Such people may become semidivine after death: war-spirits chosen to serve Buddha himself as deputies and emissaries.

Perhaps I should have prayed to the nats; they occasionally granted supernatural protection to those deemed worthy. I even considered asking the Balrog for help — surrendering more of my body in exchange for a way to save the others’ lives. But I had other options of surrender open… and by the time I caught up with Festina, I’d made my choice.

Festina and I met in a meadow of blue ferns: none more than knee height, most much shorter. Nothing else grew in the area but that one fern species. My mental awareness said the ferns poisoned the soil with a toxin exuded from their roots, a weak acid they could tolerate but other plants couldn’t. It wasn’t a unique survival strategy — terrestrial oaks do something similar — but it seemed ominously symbolic.

I’d taken shortcuts to get ahead of Festina. The path she was following led straight through the meadow, so I settled among the ferns, sitting in lotus position, waiting for her to reach me. I’d arrived before the approaching Rexy by a slight margin; Festina would have time to deal with me before she had to take on the predator.

My sixth sense watched her draw near… but the first my normal senses could discern was a sharp beeping sound that cut through the drone of the rain as she reached the meadow’s edge. The beeping was the Bumbler’s proximity alarm, warning her of danger: me. She’d programmed it to consider me a threat — no better than a Rexy.

I sat where I was and waited.

In my mind’s eye, I saw Festina turn the Bumbler toward me: scanning, getting a positive ID. The expression on her face didn’t change. Her life force flickered briefly with anger, sorrow… then she tightened the Bumbler’s shoulder strap so it wouldn’t bounce and strode purposefully forward.

I wondered if she’d try shooting me first. It might have had some anesthetic effect. But Explorer training taught her not to waste a stun-pistol’s batteries when it wouldn’t do the job.

Her first kick came down hard on my left calf. I was, as I’ve said, in lotus position: sitting cross-legged, with my feet lifted up on opposite knees. The position had already put stress on my tibia and fibula; Festina’s kick snapped both bones at my ankle, the sound nothing more than a dull pop surrounded by meat. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t react. I still couldn’t help a gasp. The pain centered on the point of impact — the stamped flesh, not the broken bones. But my perception let me see the damage under the skin, the jagged bone ends slicing into muscle and tendon, the irrevocable shattering of my ability to dance.

I’d always been a dancer. I’d always been able to use that as a means of freedom. Now, my dancing was done.

Of course I felt the other kicks. The one that broke the bones in my other ankle. The ones that turned my knees to useless gumbo. The ones that pummeled my femurs, but were unable to break such big strong bones against ground that was soft with rain. I felt Festina’s bootheel slam into me again and again; I felt it every time. But those kicks were only restatements of a truth I’d learned with the very first impact: While I’d been able to dance, I wasn’t quite a complete Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl. Though I never realized it, I’d been someone who could escape into blissful motion… and while I was moving, I could be radiant.

Now that was over. Lost. Squandered. As usual, I hadn’t realized what I was giving up until it was too late.

When Festina finally stopped crippling me, she stood motionless for a moment. She seemed so tall. I’d been the same height once.

Then she turned away and vomited into the ferns.

Seconds later, the Bumbler’s proximity alarm began to beep again: the Rexy, rushing toward us from the far side of the meadow. In Festina’s aura, I saw an impulse to let it come: she considered waiting there in quiet submission like I had. Quitting and letting it all be over. No more pursuit of duty. The pain of the Rexy’s claws and teeth, then nothing.

But the avalanche of karma propelled her onward. Wearily, she pulled her stun-pistol, steadied her aim, and waited for the Rexy’s charge. She fired three times as it hurtled down on her, then stepped aside as the predator’s body continued forward, unconscious, sliding through the wet ferns like a sled on ice.

Carefully, Festina picked up the Bumbler and scanned the great lizard to make sure it was unconscious. Then she forced herself to scan me too, to check her own handiwork.

When she set down the Bumbler the dampness on her face was more than rain.

'All right,' she said in a too-harsh voice. 'You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. What is it?'

I told her. Nothing about my sixth sense — just that Rexies were converging on the others, and they needed her help. When I was done, she closed her eyes: squeezed them shut as if they stung. She laughed without humor. 'Yes. Yes. Of course, I’ll save them. What choice do I have? Gotta do the right thing, don’t I? The right fucking thing.'

She sat down beside me on the rain-soaked ferns. Drizzle pattered around us. Finally, she asked, 'What do you think, Youn Suu? Did the Balrog foresee even this?'

'I don’t know.'

'But you knew what I’d do, didn’t you.'

'Yes.'

'And you did it anyway. To save people’s lives.'

'Not really.'

She looked at me. 'No?'

'Saving lives sounds too heroic. Just that… if I didn’t do it…'

I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. We both sat in silence for a few heartbeats. Slowly, Festina got to her feet, as if fighting a fierce arthritis. 'Does it hurt?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'Will it hurt more if I carry you?'

'Probably not.'

She tried to smile. 'Not much left to injure. If I take you with me, can I still make it back to the others before the Rexies?'

'I think so.'

'On Cashleen, I had to carry Tut. Now I have to carry you.' Her smile became a bit more real. 'Damned rookie Explorers, always getting themselves…'

Abruptly, she turned away. I wished my sixth sense would stop showing me the pain that threatened to crush her.

With a lurch, she picked me up. She must have thought if she held me so tight I couldn’t see her face, she could hide what she was going through.

CHAPTER 16

Arhat [Pali]: One who has achieved total enlightenment by heeding the words of the Buddha. Arhats are as completely transcendent as Gotama Buddha himself. The only difference is that Gotama perceived the truth on his own, without a teacher, while arhats needed assistance from the Buddha’s words.

Festina carried me in a firefighter’s lift, just as she’d carried Tut. I weighed considerably less than he did, so she managed to move at good speed: ten seconds jogging, ten seconds walking, over and over again. The jogging hurt as I bounced on her shoulder — hurt both of us, I could tell — but we pretended we couldn’t hear each other’s gasps over the rain.

Overhead the lightning had eased off, though another active storm cell would arrive soon. We were left with cool drizzle on mud. Puddles splashed under Festina’s boots, and her jogging feet kicked dirty spatters so high they sometimes struck my face. Within seconds, the rain would wash me clean again. Our nanomesh uniforms had long ago lost the fight to stay waterproof; Festina and I were soaked to the bone.

Soaked to what few bones I had left.

Outwardly, my legs looked intact — the Balrog continued to hide its presence from spying eyes (from pretas or anything else watching). Inwardly, however, my legs were a mossy mess.

The bones were mostly gone: their remnants broken down by the Balrog into basic elements, to be used as raw materials for constructing new spores. The spores had then moved on to dismantle adjacent tissues — the muscles, tendons and ligaments damaged in Festina’s attack. A number of important blood vessels had been severed by sharp bone fragments; if not for the Balrog, I might have bled to death through gashed arteries. But the spores had stopped the hemorrhaging… they’d reinforced my skin so no bone shards sliced into open air… and they’d restored blood flow to whatever parts of my legs remained human.