Radiant

scooped water from a puddle and washed off the various residues smeared on her uniform.

When she was clean, she stood up and interrupted Li’s tirade. 'Did you see where Tut went?'

'How could I possibly keep track of…'

'Tut!' she called, ignoring the rest of Li’s sentence. 'Tut! You can come out now. The Rexies are dead.'

No answer. Tut was already out of earshot, moving south through the bush. He still wore the mask… and occasionally, he went down on all fours and growled, 'Grr-arrh! Grr-arrh!' Pretas hovered around him. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to possess him or simply marveling at the sight, wondering what in the world he was doing. But whether by plan or by accident, he was heading south — toward the Stage Two station.

Festina, Li, and Ubatu would soon turn that way too: the two diplomats couldn’t be left on their own in the jungle, and they refused to go back to Drill-Press. Ubatu could walk — slowly, with a limp, muttering inarticulately thanks to her slack jaw — so proceeding forward was the best of a bunch of bad possibilities. Anyway, Festina wanted to get back to where she’d left me, to make sure I was safe. Who knew how many more Rexies might lurk in the darkness?

I knew. Two more Rexies were approaching fast from the south. They’d been coming this way all the time, following Festina and me as we’d gone back to help the others.

The Rexies would reach me long before Festina would — with her glow-tube destroyed she’d have to stumble through near-total blackness, while the Rexies came on, unerringly guided by pretas. I could even tell I’d been singled out as the animals’ target; I was helpless, and they were zeroing in on me, timing their pace to arrive simultaneously.

Aloud I said, 'The next few minutes are going to be tricky.' Then I began pulling myself along the ground, heading for the river.

It was hard going. My legs were useless, nothing but deadweight. I could pull myself forward with my arms, but when the foliage was low it was slippery under my hands, and when it was high I had to bulldoze my way past countless stalks and tangles. The mustard smell of Muta’s ferns was thick and pungent this close to the ground, made stronger as plants in my wake were crushed to pulp beneath me. I didn’t have far to crawl to the river — only forty meters from where Festina left me — but getting there took the effort of a marathon.

Even as I crawled, I scouted ahead mentally. The bank itself was much like the one where Festina had just finished her own battle — a low, sandy cliff, slightly less than a story high and overgrown with a breed of tall, thin ferns that unfortunately had evolved primitive thorns. The area between me and the bank was slathered with the same sort of weed, mercilessly scratching my face and hands. (The rest of my body suffered no harm, thanks to the Team Esteem uniform. Nanomesh can’t withstand rain, kicks, or Rexy bites, but at least it’s resilient enough to shrug off a few plant prickers.)

I had one great advantage in the coming confrontation: my total mental awareness. I knew exactly where the Rexies were; I knew where to find a fist-sized rock that could be pried loose from the wet mud; I knew which sections of the bank were solid and which were ready to crumble if you put too much weight on them; I even knew how much weight was too much. I thought to myself as I crawled along, I’m living a Bamar folktale — one of those stories where a saint is threatened by ravenous beasts and wins out by the power of enlightenment.

Of course, in my ancestors’ folklore, 'winning out' didn’t always mean surviving. Sometimes the beasts still got you, but you earned a really good rebirth.

I reached the lip of the bank mere seconds ahead of the Rexies… but along the way, I’d dug up the rock I needed. I held the stone tight as I waited on the edge of the drop-off.

The Rexies appeared moments later — the first time I’d seen them with my real eyes. They both looked tall and imposing (at least to a crippled woman sitting on the ground). I knew they’d screech before they attacked; all the other Rexies had done the same. Perhaps it was a standard tactic to freeze their prey with panic… or perhaps the Rexies were crying in agony as the pretas in their skulls jolted their brains into action. Either way, their auras gave away the exact instant when they began to open their mouths. I threw my rock at the closest and scored a perfect hit: straight to the back of the throat.

The Rexy blinked in surprise. It tried to shriek, but only managed a wheeze. Then it coughed, trying to dislodge the blockage in its windpipe. The animal wasn’t completely choked up — the rock I’d chosen wasn’t a perfect fit. Still, the Rexy could barely draw air around the edges of the rock, and its instincts would force it to hack and wheeze until it gagged up the obstruction.

One Rexy neutralized, at least temporarily. One more to go. It charged… not a smart thing to do when the target is right on the edge of a cliff.

I rolled aside at the last split second. The Rexy still got a chunk of me; though my upper body evaded fast enough, my legs straggled limply behind and my right calf got gouged by the Rexy’s claws. Since my right calf no longer belonged to me — it was now strictly Balrog territory — I didn’t feel pain. I simply saw the claw stab in… and I couldn’t help laughing as Balrog spores under the skin beat a hasty retreat to avoid being seen at the edges of the wound. A moment later, the nanomesh uniform (briefly torn by the incoming talon) sealed itself back up, hiding the spores beneath.

As for the Rexy, it kept going, unable to stop its momentum after trampling me. Right over the lip of the bank, belly-flopping into the water below.

The Rexy could swim — not well, just the usual frantic paddle of land animals that find themselves in deep water — but I trusted the beast wouldn’t drown. Not even in the fast-flowing flood from the rain. It was, after all, far lighter than a mammal of comparable size: almost as light as a bird. The Rexy would ride the torrent, head above water, till the current washed it ashore… and if we were all lucky, the shore where it landed would be the far side of the river. Ending up over there, the Rexy would lose its usefulness to the pretas. There was no easy way to get the animal to our side of the river again, since it couldn’t swim against the Grindstone’s heavy current, and the only bridges were back in Drill-Press. Therefore, if the Rexy washed up on the opposite shore, the clouds would have no further reason to keep it enslaved. They’d release their hold on its brain and let the animal return to its normal life.

At least, that’s what I hoped. I had no wish for the Rexy to die. I had no wish for anything to die… including the Rexy who remained in front of me, still trying to clear its throat.

I wondered if there was any way a woman paralyzed from the waist down could administer the Heimlich maneuver to a dinosaur.

But that proved unnecessary. With a heave of its lungs, the Rexy finally coughed the stone onto the ground. It turned its head toward me, eyes bleary; it held my gaze for a moment, as if saying, 'To hell with the pretas. Now this is personal.' Then it screeched and came for me.

It didn’t make the mistake of charging. Even if the Rexy itself wasn’t bright enough to learn from what happened to its companion, the pretas realized another precipitous rush would only end up in the river. So the Rexy advanced with slow deliberation. I waited, equally stolid — I was sitting up now on the edge of the bank, legs slack in front of me but with my fists raised in what I hoped was a convincing ready-to-fight stance. If the predator tried to chomp my upper body, I’d fend it off as best I could.

But the Rexy (or the pretas) went for the easiest target: my legs. They were the closest body parts the Rexy could reach — limp and unmoving flesh, beyond the swing of my fists. Apparently helpless.

So my would-be killer took the bait.

The Rexy firmly, deliberately, clamped its teeth into my left leg, right at the knee. Blood squirted; incisors scraped bone. The bite was so crushing, one of the Rexy’s teeth broke off from the force — deep, deep, the animal getting an unbreakable grip in preparation for shaking its head and ripping the leg clean off. I waited till the bite was irrevocably committed… then I pushed myself backward and off the cliff.

I don’t know if the Rexy was capable of letting go; its teeth were so solidly embedded in my flesh, it might not have been able to release me even if it wanted to. But it didn’t want to — its aura showed nothing but determination to hold on, no matter what. Which is why, when I started to fall over the edge of the cliff, the Rexy came with me all the way. Its birdlike weight was far too light to hold me back, and its feet had no purchase on the slick muddy ground. Together, the Rexy and I tumbled over the bank. After a deceptively quiet moment of free fall, we smacked down into the flood.

Deep water, deeply chilled. The momentum of my backward cannonball dive plunged me more than a meter below the surface… but the featherweight Rexy, still fastened to my leg, had the buoyancy of a life preserver. He rose fast and pulled me with him, the two of us bobbing into rainy air that was almost as cold and wet as the river.

I expected the Rexy to splutter with panic at its sudden immersion. It didn’t. Maybe the pretas suppressed all fear reactions. More likely the animal was so focused on taking a chunk out of me, it didn’t have the brainpower to think about anything else. It bit down; it shook its head hard, as violently as the water allowed; and after a moment of thrashing, my leg came off at the knee, as easily as pulling the plug in a bathtub.

Immediately, the Rexy and my detached limb began to drift away in the torrent. I swam a few strokes to increase the distance between us. The animal continued to chew on the bloody stump as it disappeared into darkness; my sixth sense told me the Rexy avoided swallowing my putrid-tasting meat, but gnawed and gnawed and gnawed until the bones were ground into mash.

Through all this, I felt no pain. Nanomesh fabric closed seamlessly around the jagged remains of my knee. Then the Balrog, concealed by the uniform, closed off my spurting blood vessels, tidied up the bone ends, and pulled the remaining flaps of my skin to make a smooth outer seal — better than the work of any Technocracy surgeon.

I’d expected no less. The spores had proved they could repair other kinds of damage to my anatomy; why shouldn’t they handle an amputation? And I trusted them to save me from other threats too… like hypothermia, now that I was drifting helplessly in heart-chilling water, with no more protection than a sodden skintight uniform. Perhaps the Balrog wasn’t legally compelled to help me survive; I’d thrown myself into the river of my own free will, knowing quite well that humans often died of exposure under similar conditions. If the Balrog let me freeze to death, the League of Peoples wouldn’t object. Superior lifeforms can’t be held responsible if a lesser being takes suicidal risks.

But the Balrog would save me anyway. Not to preserve its good standing with the League of Peoples. Not because I might still be necessary to its plans. It would save me because it was not a callous creature.

I saw that now. The Balrog was no villain. In fact, it was deeply compassionate… in its inhuman way.

Everything the Balrog had done to me — for me — had been a gift… at least from the moss’s alien viewpoint. It believed it was improving me: making me less human and more like a 'civilized' species. If the process scared and dismayed me, that might be cause for pity but not for backing off. When you take a beloved cat to the veterinarian, the animal may struggle and yowl; but you know you’re acting in the cat’s best interests, so you don’t let yourself give in.