“How do you mean?”
“Well, soon as we came on the city, these jerkwads surrounded us. Her Highness tried to amoeba-out on them, but she couldn’t. Don’t know why. ‘fore we got here she’d eaten a bunch of nasty fuckwhats, got her shit back together, but somehow ... here ... somethin’ blocked her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we. Neither does she, or that’s what she says.”
“I doubt she would lie about that.” Thoughtfully, he added, “Atomic Sea infection doesn’t penetrate here.”
“Noticed that. Think they’re connected?”
“How could they not be? Layanna’s power stems from the sea. The infection is the sea, or its effects. For whatever reason, this city, or something in it, blocks Atomic properties. But ...”
“Yeah?”
“... with the fact of the ghost flowers, and the maggot men, it evidently has properties all its own.”
“Great.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see Sheridan trailing behind him, Janx just behind her, keeping a careful watch on the admiral, not that she could have bolted in any case, not with all the infested beings about.
“But it’s Layanna they want,” Avery said. “Not us. Correct?” Just like the priests in Ezzez.
Hildra rolled a shoulder. “They spoke to her, in that weird static voice they have, and she seemed to understand. She nodded, and they took us into the city.”
“How did you find us—Sheridan and myself?”
“You were the only Atomicly-infected thing in the city, bones—at least, the only one not taken over by maggots. Blondie could sense you.” In a low voice, she said, “She almost seemed ... well, excited to see you again. I think she’d been worried about you. Between you and me, I think she was about to give you some nookie.”
He hung his head. The worst part of it was, he wished he and Sheridan had finished what they were doing. In fact, he had half a mind to drag her into the next alley and do just that. At the thought, he felt an uncomfortable strain in his crotch.
Kill it, he thought, again hearing Hildra’s voice. Kill that fucker dead.
“There’s more bad news,” Hildra said. When Avery raised his eyebrows, she said, “They took our weapons. They took everything ‘cept our clothes.”
“We can still collect the nectar. Find some way to use it.”
“Maybe.”
He pulled in a breath. “Layanna called these things the Colony.”
Hildra nodded. “I think that came from them. I had a different name in mind.”
So did Avery. The Infested, as he thought of them, led the group into a larger road, where an elephant stood waiting surrounded by more Infested. It was a colorful scene, as the riot of different lifeforms, some bearing bright crimson plumage like the Nisaar, or colorful silver-green scales like a few of the infected humans, or iridescent and irregular spots like the toad-creatures known as gromids, with the great tusked pachyderm towering overhead complete with gold-brocaded palanquin, the sun making each filigree shine ... but Avery saw only grayness and grimness. They all crawled with maggots underneath, even the elephant, which answered his question from the previous day. They were walking corpses, some of them, the reek of death curling off in odious waves, while others would die soon enough—though in truth they were all already dead, really, their original minds gone, now corrupted to the service of these insectile vermin, who seemed to only be able to enslave their host when the infesting colony grew large enough—when the host Became. Then, what? It developed a rudimentary mind?
That had been what the priests of the Restoration did to their victims, he supposed, when they clamped their hands on their flesh. The priests had poured their maggots into the bodies of the victims in large enough quantities for the victims to almost immediately Become. To die and rise again in service to the Colony. To become part of the Colony.
The elephant sat, and the Infested made Layanna and then the others climb into the palanquin. Without being told, the elephant rose and marched through the streets toward the city center, simply one of the group following some sort of group will or, what ... directed from afar? Avery thought this likely. The creatures were drones. Somewhere there was a queen or the equivalent—the boss, as Hildra had said. Perhaps more than one. These poor shambling creatures were merely extensions of that overall will or wills.
Avery saw why the elephant had been necessary. The city was huge, in proportion with its buildings, and traversing it by foot would have taken forever. His eyes had been fooled into thinking it was smaller than it was when seeing the buildings from a distance, but up close he saw their true dimensions, and his mind reeled. The original inhabitants of this place must have been giants. The other Infested rode their own mounts, horses and great lizards, one group a huge fuzzy white worm—all taken by the maggots, of course.
As the elephant passed through a city square (or what looked like one; who knew what sort of city planning and culture the vanished race had possessed?), Avery beheld a great statue, and he couldn’t help but let his jaw fall open. The thing must stand fifty feet high or more, and at first he thought it to be a representative figure, larger than life, but no—it fit, somehow. Its size looked almost natural amid the cyclopean city. It was life size. Amid the bird feces and abundant flowering vines, Avery couldn’t tell at first what the figure was, but slowly he made it out, and shook his head. The being depicted resembled something like a giant upright cauliflower, irregular and covered in bushy lumps, with no easily definable figure, but various gnarled, tangled limbs that might have been its version of arms and legs, a riotous bloom of a head, and a thick, knotty torso.
“Mother’s balls,” said Hildra. “That what I think it is?”
“An original occupant of the city,” Avery said. “It must be.”
“Hell of a thing,” Janx said, which, while not strictly spoken to Avery, was not strictly spoken to anyone else, either. Avery took it as a good sign. Though tempted to say more, to start a dialogue with the big man, Avery decided not to press his luck.
To Layanna, he said, “Do you know them?”
She eyed the statue with a frown. “I’ve read of a similar race, but it exists across the sea, in Ruiglin.”
“Bullshit,” Hildra snorted. “I bet you know just who they are.”
“Believe it or not, but we—that is, my people—have little presence there, across the sea.”
“There are more of the old races there,” Sheridan said quietly, and, reluctantly, attention turned to her.
“Wouldn’t that make her people more likely to have a presence there?” Janx said, indicating Layanna.
“I think they picked humans because we’re young,” Sheridan said. “Impressionable. Malleable. They picked us because we were easy. That’s why they never went over there. They didn’t need to.”
Hildra glowered at Layanna. “That true, blondie?” When Layanna didn’t answer, Hildra turned back to Sheridan. “Speak for yourself, bitch. Octung was the easy one, not the rest of us. You people were the gullible bastards.”
“We nearly seized the world by the throat,” Sheridan said, “and might yet.”
“I had you by the throat not long ago,” Janx said. “Keep squawkin’ and I might give it another go.”
