Radiant

at the Divine. 'If those spores are as weak as I think, this should burn them to a crisp. We’ll take cover behind all this fancy equipment.' Festina reached for the Bumbler with her free hand. 'Give me a few seconds to analyze where we’ll get the best protection from the blast…'

She didn’t have those seconds. Ubatu snatched the egglike object from Festina’s palm with the speed of a striking eagle. I tried to stop her but wasn’t quick enough — Ubatu moved inhumanly fast, beyond even my bioengineered reflexes. Either her designers had discovered some new genetic tricks, or she’d been amplified with illegal implants: artificial glands that could pump a barrage of chemicals into her bloodstream when she needed an extra boost. I barely managed to catch her leg as she was bolting away… but she shook me off and dashed across the floor, hollering, 'Ooommmph! Ooommmph!'

Straight toward the Divine.

The gray spores rippled at Ubatu’s approach… in fear? In anticipation of another hearty meal? But they took no obvious action. Ubatu stopped short of the mound and abased herself, holding out the little pink-and-green ovoid like an offering to an idol. Beside me, Festina turned dials rapidly on the Bumbler, scanning, scanning, scanning. Still looking for a place to take cover if the grenade went off? Was there really a chance of accidental detonation? I had no idea. I knew nothing about Unity minigrenades: not a subject we’d studied in the Explorer Academy. I didn’t know a grenade’s power, its volatility, the timing on its fuse…

Oh.

No…

Oh again.

Eastern champions don’t always think quickly, but sooner or later they do catch on.

'Be careful with that!' I shouted to Ubatu. 'Don’t you know not to make sudden moves with a bomb?'

'A bomb?' The words squealed from Li’s mouth as the mound of moss went wild: variegated patches of gray thrashing against their neighbors. The patches remained separate, but their boundaries blurred. I wondered how much they’d been mind-linked in the past few minutes; enough to coordinate their efforts in eating Li and speaking through his mouth, but not to deal with matters of life and death. A motley — a mosaic — individuals with no real community. 'A bomb?' the Divine repeated, as if they’d never entertained the thought they could be threatened in their own sanctum.

'Ooommmph!' Ubatu cried. She pulled in her outstretched hands, clutching the little blob of pink and green to her breast for a moment, before hurling herself on top of it. 'Ooommmph,' she said to the Divine. Softly. Reverently.

'What is she doing?' the Divine shrieked, still rustling with agitation.

Since Ubatu couldn’t answer, I did. 'She’s showing that she’s willing to throw herself on a grenade for you. Demonstrating her readiness to sacrifice herself for your magnificence.'

Ubatu nodded eagerly.

Even without my sixth sense, I could almost feel the gray moss staring at her. 'Why would she do that?' the Divine asked.

'Because she wants to win your favor. She wants to worship you… in the hope that you’ll share some of your knowledge and glory. None of the other advanced aliens in the galaxy will grant such boons to lesser beings… but Commander Ubatu believes that if she enacts the correct rituals in a spirit of true obeisance, you’ll make her your priestess.'

'Priestess? Priestess?' The gray mound shivered. I doubted the spores ever considered the possibility of acquiring a priestess. If sentient beings had wandered into this station anytime in the centuries before our arrival, the Divine probably just gobbled up everybody — no attempt to form a congregation. But now that Ubatu had made the offer…

'Is the bomb safe now?' the moss asked.

'I don’t think it’s going to explode,' I told them truthfully.

'Then approach, priestess,' the Divine said. 'Approach and let us assess you.'

Ubatu leapt to her feet, then bowed deeply. 'Ooomph!' She straightened and took a few steps forward, up to the edge of the mound. Only then did she glance down at the front of her uniform. The gold cloth was smeared with a gooey blot of orangey yellow.

'What’s that?' the Divine asked.

'Ooommph?' Ubatu said, still staring at the mess.

'Looks to me like egg yolk,' I told them. 'Better clean it off before-'

My words were drowned out by screams: sudden agonized howls from the Divine. This time they weren’t using the dead Li as an intermediary — the cries of pain came directly from the mound itself. Somehow the spores, with neither mouths nor lungs, wailed like dying animals. 'What have you done? What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?'

I’d done nothing… but Festina had. I looked back and saw her standing beside a brass pyramid almost exactly her own height. While Ubatu and the egg/grenade captivated the Divine’s attention, Festina had used the Bumbler to scan the station’s equipment. She’d found what she was looking for, then crept silently across the floor and popped open an access panel. Reaching inside, she’d detached a wire: a single slim strand of yellow that she now held in her right hand. Her left hand was out of sight, inside the pyramid’s guts.

The room had gone silent — the hum and hiss of machinery dwindling to nothingness.

'Hey, Youn Suu,' Festina said. 'I found the off switch.'

The silence lasted another heartbeat. Then the Divine cried, 'Traitor! Deceiver!'

Ubatu was yanked off her feet and pulled into the mass of gray — swallowed with merciless brutality. She made no sound as she disappeared under the spores… perhaps hoping the Divine might just possess her rather than consume her. Or maybe she didn’t mind being eaten; maybe she was so fanatic she’d revel in any kind of attention from 'advanced lifeforms.'

Ifa-Vodun’s first martyr.

While Ubatu was vanishing into the heap, I murmured to Festina, 'Pity you can’t tell the difference between an egg and a grenade.'

'Yeah,' she said. 'Real shame.'

'You found the egg in the huts you searched?'

'Sure. One of Team Esteem’s naturalists had gathered a nice set of samples — eggs from the nests of local lizards. I’ve always liked little colored eggs; I couldn’t resist taking the prettiest. Breaks my heart Ubatu smashed it.'

'Didn’t do the baby lizard much good either.'

'Don’t blame me,' Festina said. 'I wasn’t the one who sold out to the enemy.'

'You suspected Ubatu would?'

'I suspected she’d do something stupid. Back on Pistachio, I read her personnel file. She has a record of irrational behavior in pursuit of advanced aliens… and flagrantly preaching some religion called Ifa-'

The rest of Festina’s words were drowned out by more screams from the moss. They’d finished dealing with Ubatu; they’d ripped her apart because they thought she was a hypocrite, falsely offering to be their priestess just to distract them. Now they were turning to the real source of their distress: the woman who had shut down the station. 'Put that wire back!' they shrieked at Festina. 'Fix it, or we’ll kill you!'

'You were going to kill me anyway,' Festina said. 'If you try it now, I’ve got my left hand around some glass thingamajig the Bumbler tells me is fragile as hell. There’s foamy orange liquid inside the thingamajig; if I break the glass, it’ll spill all over. I haven’t a clue what the stuff does, but I’m willing to bet the orange liquid is a complex chemical you can’t replace. I’m also willing to bet the liquid is essential for running this station — my Bumbler says this pyramid is a central hub for all the wires and pipes in the building. Mess with me, and I snap the thingamajig to pieces… splatter orange goo everywhere. That’ll put this place out of commission a lot more permanently than a loose wire.'

'Put the wire back, human! Reattach it now. Don’t you realize the sacrilege…

'Sacrilege? Bullshit. You aren’t gods. You’re opportunists who were in the right place at the right time to suck on a magic teat. You’ve been slurping the milk of heaven ever since, but you’re no more divine than I am.'

'If we can’t touch you, what about your companion?' I felt a wave of hate from the gray moss aimed at me — a palpable flash of loathing so strong it registered on my dormant sixth sense. 'Reattach the wire,' the Divine told Festina, 'or we’ll kill your friend.'

'Honestly,' Festina said, 'can’t you talk about anything but killing? First you were going to kill us for lunch. Then you were going to kill me for sacrilege. Now you’re going to kill Youn Suu for extortion. The more you make death threats, the more you convince me there’s no point striking a deal. You’re lousy at negotiation.'

'Perhaps it’s because the Divine have just eaten Li and Ubatu,' I said. 'Neither of them were good at diplomacy either.'

'If they ate you, would they get all enlightened?'

'If they asked politely, they could have the bottom half of my right leg. It wouldn’t be enough to bring out their entire Buddha nature… but it might raise their IQ forty or fifty points, and it would even me up nicely.'

'Bilateral symmetry is so important,' Festina agreed.

'Shut up, shut up, shut up!' the Divine shrieked. 'Shut up and tell us what you want.'

Festina laughed. 'What do you think we want? Get your fuzzy asses off the energy emitter. Let this station work the way it was intended.'

'But we need the energy! We need it or we’ll die.'

'Nonsense.' Festina held up the detached wire, still in her right hand. 'You’re already cut off, aren’t you? And you’re still alive. So don’t give me sob stories. Maybe if you stop overdosing on weird-shit energy, you’ll transform the way you were meant to: into real higher beings, not just psionic blowhards. Besides,' she added, 'I don’t care if you do die. You killed Li and Ubatu. That makes you dangerous nonsentient lifeforms. The League of Peoples will give me a gold star for ending your useless lives.'

'But…'

'No buts! Get off the emitter… now. Otherwise-'

Three things happened in rapid succession.

First, Festina’s left hand was thrown back out of the pyramid. Somehow the Divine had telekinetically ripped loose her grip on the glass thingamajig without