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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 (frompretas 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
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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.
All this I saw through my mental perception: how little of me was left from
hips to toes. And the Balrog hadn't finished. It was still mainly occupied
with emergency repairs to keep my condition stable. Once it stanched my
wounds, I had no doubt it would annex whatever flesh remained healthy cleaning
up unfinished business, but always invisible from the outside.
At least the pain was gone. The nerves at my injury sites had been
cannibalized to make spores, so my brain could no longer receive neural
messages of agony. No sensation at all below the pelvis. But my brain was not
the only player in the game of "Who Is Youn Suu." There was also that sentient
point in my abdomen (my womb, mydantien) which served as the seat of higher
perceptions. The Point ofMe. It watched with perfect clarity as my legs became
alien territory. When I finally tried to move them when I summoned the courage
to try nothing happened. The legs (no longermy legs) remained as limp as
death.
I found myself speaking aloud: "Consider this body! A painted puppet with
carpentered limbs, sometimes injured or diseased, full of delusions, never
permanent, always changing."
"Is that a quote?" Festina asked, grunting under my weight.
"From theDharmapada," I told her. "Look at these brittle white bones," I went
on, "like empty husks of fruit left to rot at the end of summer. Who could
take joy in seeing them?"
"Buddhism is such a cheery religion," Festina muttered. "Then again, my nana
used to recite similar lines from Ecclesiastes."
"This body is only a house of bones," I quoted, "and I have searched many
cycles of lives to find the house-builder. Who would construct such an edifice
of grief? But now I have seen it was always my own hands wielding the tools...
and knowing that, I shall not build this house again. I shall let the rafters
fall. I shall let the bones break. I shall let in the sunlight of wisdom, so
that when death comes I shall not be condemned to another prison of bones."
Festina suddenly broke into a true run not just the jog she'd been using. Her
aura showed some thought had upset her. I asked, "What is it? What's wrong?"
She ran for a few more seconds, then sighed and slowed to a walk. "You said
'when death comes'... how do you know it will?"
"Everyone dies, Festina."
"Every human does. But you aren't human anymore." She paused. "How much do
you know about Kaisho Namida?"
"I've readPistachio's files." I gave a weak laugh. "Since the Balrog first
bit me, I've read them at least ten times."
"Navy files are incomplete," Festina said. "The Admiralty lost touch with
Kaisho as soon as she left the rehab center. I was the only one she kept in
contact with. For a while, I... never mind. But know one thing, Youn Suu.
Kaisho was middle-aged when she got bitten by the Balrog; now she's a hundred
and sixteen, but physically, she's younger than me. The Balrog has rejuvenated
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her tissues."
"The few tissues she has left."
"The Balrog will never consume her entirely. That would be a nonsentient act.
As long as the Balrog's alive, Kaisho will be too. I'm not sure Kaisho will
ever die."
"Even the Balrog has to die eventually," I said. "If nothing else, it can't
survive the end of our universe."
"Can't it?" Festina began jogging again. "These creatures... the ones way up
the evolutionary ladder... they come and go from our universe... at least we
think they do..." She slowed, out of breath. Not even Festina Ramos could jog,
talk, and carry a full-grown woman without getting winded. "I was on Cashleen
when the Balrog appeared," she said. "Spores literally came from nowhere. The
Cashlings got it on camera: one moment there was nothing, then there were
spores."
"We know the Balrog can teleport," I said.
"But there was no trace of incoming matter or energy. It didn't look like the
Balrog was traveling in some other form through our universe, then
reconstituted itself into spores. There was no discernible transmission. The
spores just showed up. From elsewhere. From outside." Festina jogged a few
more steps. "Other species do the same the purple-jelly Fuentes, for instance.
Researchers think these creatures spend most of their time outside the normal
universe... whatever the hell that means. Anyway, the end of our universe may
not guarantee the end of the Balrog. It may have someplace else to run."
"Nothing lasts forever," I said. "Nothing is permanent. Even if the Balrog
doesn't die a conventional death, it can't just go on and on. Itcan't. Over
time it'll change into something different, the way rocks break down into
soil. Then the soil is used by plants, the plants are eaten by animals, and
everything keeps changing forever. If the Balrog lives in some universe where
entropy doesn't apply, there'll be something else that makes things change.
Impermanence is an inescapable fact."
I could sense Festina smiling, though I wasn't looking at her face. "That's
the voice of your upbringing," Festina said. "If my nana were here, she'd
lecture you onher inescapable facts: everlasting heaven, everlasting hell,
everlasting souls, everlasting everything else... except, of course, for the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]