A swarm of the insectoid creatures buzzed down the corridor. They were four to six inches long with segmented bodies and large, membranous wings. The first few passed them by and went straight to the feeding chamber, and Brennan thought they were safe. But then one stopped and landed on Mai. Another joined it, then another and another. She looked down at them calmly. One landed on Brennan's shoulder. He stared at it. Its mouth parts consisted of multiple mandibular arrangements. One set of mandibles began tearing at the fabric of Brennan's shirt while another stuffed fragments of cloth into its little mouth.
Brennan brushed the thing aside distastefully and stepped on it. It crunched loudly under his foot, like a cockroach, but two had already taken its place on Brennan's body. He heard Fortunato swear and knew they were crawling over him, as well.
"Let's try to move away from them," he said quietly, but that did no good. The bugs followed and landed on the three in increasing numbers.
"Run for it," Brennan called, and they took off down the corridor.
Some of the swarm continued on to the feeding chamber, but more followed them down the passageway in an angrily buzzing cloud. Brennan batted at them as he ran, knocking some out of the air. He slapped at the ones crawling on him, but there were many to take the place of those he knocked down or crushed. They landed on his face and arms and he could feel their thousand little feet crawl all over him. They seemed to be most interested in his clothes, and, more importantly, his bow and arrows. It was as if they were scavengers programmed to dispose of nonliving matter. But that didn't make them harmless. Brennan felt their sharp mandibles tear into his flesh nearly as often as not. The buzzing of their wings and the clacking sounds of their mandibles were loud in Brennan's ears. They had to get away from them.
They reached the point where the passageway divided into the Y, looking desperately for something, anything, that would enable them to shake the little scavengers. Fortunato ran down the other branch of the passageway and Brennan and Mai followed. The floor was slick with moisture. Its surface was uneven. The moisture caught in shallow pools that set off a fine spray of liquid as they slogged through them. The liquid was warm and clear, though murky. They splashed down the corridor and the swarm of insectoids seemed to pull back. Fortunato flopped down into a shallow pool that had gathered in one of the deeper hollows, and rolled around and around, dislodging and crushing the insectoids that were crawling all over him. Brennan and Mai joined him. Brennan kept his lips shut tightly, but the murky liquid drenched him from head to toe. It looked, and smelled, like tepid water with fine particles suspended in it. Brennan was not particularly eager to ingest any of it.
Brennan glanced at his companions as they crouched in the shallow pool. Their clothes looked like they had been attacked by a legion of moths, and they had numerous cuts and gouges, but no one seemed badly injured. The swarm of persistent insectoids hovered over their heads, buzzing, it seemed to Brennan somewhat angrily.
"How do we get rid of them?" he asked, irritated himself. "I may have enough left to send those little mothers somewhere," Fortunato ground out.
"I don't know-" Brennan began, and never got a chance to finish.
The surface below their feet fell away as a sphincter opened. All the liquid in the passageway gushed downward and they went with it. Brennan had time to take a deep breath and a tight grip on his bow. He reached out and grabbed Mai by an ankle as she was sucked down into darkness and he swirled down after her, cursing as he lost half the arrows in his quiver.
There was more liquid in the passageway than he had realized. They were caught in a rushing vortex with no air to breathe and no light to see by. Brennan held tight to his Mai's ankle, remembering Tachyon's silent warning.
They splashed down into a large chamber, totally submerged in a pool of liquid the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Brennan and Mai bobbed to the surface and treaded water, glancing about. Fortunately, this chamber was lit by the same blue phosphorescence as the passageway above. Fortunato swam over to join them, fighting against a current that was drawing them to the other end of the pool.
"What the hell is this?" Fortunato asked.
Brennan found that it was hard to shrug while treading water. "I don't know.
Maybe a reservoir? All living things need water to survive."
"At least those bugs are gone," Fortunato said. He struck out for the side of the chamber, and Brennan and Mai followed.
They scrabbled up the slope, going slowly and cautiously because the surface was wet and slippery. They finally flung themselves down, panting, for a moment's rest. Brennan patched up the worst bug-bites with bandages from the small first-aid kit he carried on his belt.
"Which way now?"
Fortunato took a moment to orient himself, and then pointed. "There."
They went on through the belly of the beast. It was a nightmarish trek through a strange realm of organic monstrosities. The passageway they followed opened up into vast halls where menlike creatures mewling in half-formed idiocy hung by umbilical cords from pulsating ceilings, led through galleries where sacks of undifferentiated biomass quivered like loathsome jellies while awaiting sculpting by the will of the Swarm Mother, passed by chambers where monsters of a hundred alien forms were being manufactured for what purpose the Swarm Mother alone knew. Some of these last were developed enough to be aware of the interlopers, but they were all still attached to the body of the Mother by protoplasmic umbilical cords. They snapped and snarled and hissed as Brennan and the others passed by, and he was forced to put arrows through the brains of a few of the more persistent creatures.
Not all had the inhuman forms of swarmlings. Some were manlike in shape and appearance, with human faces. Recognizable human faces. There was Ronald Reagan with slickedback hair and a twinkle in his eye. There was Maggie Thatcher, looking stern and unyielding. And there was Gorbachev's head, strawberry-colored birthmark and all, set upon a mass of quivering protoplasm that was as soft and puffy as a human body sculpted from bread dough.
"Sweet Jesus," Fortunato said. "It looks like we got here just in time."
"I hope so," Brennan murmured.
The passageway began to narrow and they had to stoop, and finally get down on hands and knees and crawl. Brennan looked back at Fortunato and the ace nodded them on.
"It's ahead. I can feel it pulsing: feed and grow, feed and grow."
The flesh of the tunnel wall was rubbery and warm. Brennan disliked touching it, but he pushed himself forward. The tunnel narrowed until it was so cramped that Brennan realized he couldn't bring his bow to bear. They were helpless, and traveling into the most dangerous area in the Swarm Mother, her nerve center. He shoved on through a crawlway of living flesh for a hundred yards or more, Mai and Fortunato following him, until at last he popped out into an open space.
Fortunato followed and they both helped Mai down.
They looked around. It was a small chamber. There was hardly room in it for the three of them and the large, tri-lobed, gray-pink organ suspended in the middle of the chamber by a network of fibrous tendrils that penetrated into the floor, ceiling, and walls.
"This is it," Fortunato muttered in an exhausted voice.
"The nerve center of the Swarm Mother. Its brain or core or whatever you want to call it."
He and Brennan turned to Mai. She stepped forward and Brennan took her arm.
"Kill it," he urged. "Kill it and let's get out of here." She looked at him calmly. He could see his reflection in her large, dark eyes. "You know I've sworn to never harm another sentient being," she said quietly.
"Are you crazy?" Fortunato cried. "What did we come here for?"
Brennan released her arm and she walked toward the organ suspended in the net of nerve fibers. Fortunato looked at Brennan. "Is the bitch crazy?"
Brennan shook his head, unable to speak, knowing that he was losing another. No matter which way this turned out, he was losing another.
Mai slipped around the tendrils 'and placed her palms against the flesh of the Swarm Mother. Her blood began to flow down the organ of the alien creature.
"What's she doing?" Fortunato asked, caught between fear and anger and wonder.
"Merging."
The narrow tunnel that led to the Swarm Mother's sanctum began to dilate.
Brennan turned to face the opening. "What's happening?"
Brennan nocked an arrow to his bowstring. "The Swarm Mother's resisting," he said, and shut his surroundings, shut Fortunato; shut Mai even, from his mind.
He narrowed the focus of his being until the mouth of the tunnel was his universe. He drew the bowstring to his cheek and stood as taut and ready as the arrow itself, ready to shoot himself into the heart of their enemy.
The fanged and taloned killing-machines of the Swarm Mother poured through the opening. Brennan fired. His hands moved without conscious direction, drawing, pulling, loosing. Bodies piled up by the mouth of the tunnel and were cleared away by the creatures trying to push their way inside and by the blasts of the explosive arrows. Time ceased to flow. Nothing mattered but perfect coordination between mind and body and target, born from the union of flesh and spirit.
It seemed like forever, but the resources of the Swarm Mother were not inexhaustible. The creatures stopped coming when Brennan had three arrows left.
He stared down the corridor for over a minute before he realized that no more targets were in sight and he lowered his bow.
His back ached and his arms burned like they were on fire. He looked at Fortunato. The ace stared at him, shook his head wordlessly. Brennan's consciousness returned from the pool where his Zen training had sunk it.
A sudden movement caught his eye and he turned. His hand dropped to the quiver at his belt, but stopped before it drew an arrow. There were three forms, man-sized, man shaped, at the mouth of the tunnel. A sense of dislocation swept through Brennan like a cold wind and he lowered his bow. He recognized them.
"Gulgowski? Mendoza? Minh?"
He went forward as if in a dream as they stepped over and around the blasted bodies of the swarmlings, coming to meet him. Brennan was numb, caught between joy and disbelief.
"I knew you would come," Minh, Mai's father, said. "I knew you would rescue us from Kien."
Brennan nodded. A feeling of vast weariness swept over him. He felt as if his brain were isolated from the rest of his body, as if somehow it had been wrapped in layers of cotton batting. He should have known all along that Kien was behind the Swarm. He should have known.
Gulgowski hefted the briefcase he carried. "We've got the evidence here to nail the bastard, Cap'n. Come here'n take a look. "
Brennan dropped his bow, stepped forward to look into the briefcase Gulgowski proffered, ignoring the shouts behind him, ignoring the blasting roar that reverberated through the corridor.
Gulgowski, holding out the briefcase toward him, staggered. Brennan looked at him. It was odd. He had only one eye now. The other had been shot out and thick green fluid was running sluggishly down his cheek. But that was all right.
Brennan seemed to remember that Gulgowski had been shot in the head before, and lived. He was here, after all. He looked at the briefcase. The handle melted into the flesh of Gulgowski's hand. They were one thing. The mouth of the briefcase was lined with rows of sharp teeth. It jerked at him, the teeth snapping.
He felt a sudden shock as something hurled itself at his knees from behind. He went down and lay with his cheek pressed against the floor of the chamber, feeling its pulsating warmth, and glanced back in annoyance.
Fortunato had tackled him. The ace released his hold on Brennan, kneeled, and drew the .45 again. Brennan looked up at his men. Fortunato shot pieces of them away, part of a face here, a bit of an arm there. Fortunato cursed in a steady stream as he fired the .45 and Brennan's men died again. Brennan felt a surge of tremendous anger. He half-stood and closed his eyes. The roar of gunfire stopped as Fortunato ejected an empty clip, but the stench of powder was in the air, the thunder of gunfire was in his ears, and the hot, humid smell of the jungle was in his nose. He opened his eyes again. Ghastly caricatures of men, faces and body parts shot away, dripping green slime, were shambling toward him. They weren't his men. Mendoza had died in the raid on VC headquarters. Gulgowski had been killed by Kien later that night. And Minh had been killed years later by Kien's men in New York City.
Although his brain was still foggy, Brennan picked up his bow, and shot his last explosive arrow at the simulacra. It hit the caricature of Minh and exploded, sending gobbets of biomass everywhere. The backblast knocked Brennan down and took out the other two simulacra as well.
Brennan took a deep breath, and wiped slime and crushed protoplasm from his face.
"The Swarm Mother took their images from your mind," Fortunato said. "The other things were just buying time so it could prepare those walking wax-dummies."
Brennan nodded, his face hard and set. He turned from Fortunato and looked at Mai.
She was almost gone, nearly covered by the gray-pink flesh of the alien being.
Her cheek rested against the pulsating organ and the half of her face that Brennan could see was untouched. Her eye was open and clear.
"Mai?"
The eye turned, tracking the sound of his voice, and focused on him. Her lips moved.
"So vast," she whispered. "So wondrous and vast." The light in the chamber dimmed for a moment, then came back.
"No," Mai murmured. "We shall not do that. There is a sentient being in the ship. And the ship itself is also a living entity. "
The floor of the chamber shook, but the light remained on. Mai spoke again, more to herself than Brennan or Fortunato.
"To have lived so long without thought . . . to have wielded so much power without consequence . . . to have traveled so far and seen so much without realization . . . this shall change . . . all change . . ."
The eye focused again upon Brennan. There was recognition in it that faded as she spoke.
"Don't mourn, Captain. One of us has given herself to save her planet. The other has given up her race to save . . . who knows what? Perhaps some day the universe. Don't be sad. Remember us when you look to the night sky; and know we are among the stars, probing, pondering, discovering, thinking innumerable wondrous things."
Brennan blinked back tears as the eye in Mai's face closed. "Good-bye, Captain."
The singularity shifter began to throw off sparks. Fortunato slung the pack off his back. He looked down at it, startled. "I'm not doing that. She . . . it ."
They were back on the bridge of Tachyon's ship. The three men stared at each other.
"You succeeded?" Tachyon asked after a moment.
"Oh yeah, man," Fortunato said, collapsing on a nearby hassock. "Oh yeah."
"Where's Mai?"
Brennan felt a stab of anger cut into him like a knife. "You let her go," he cursed, taking a step toward Tachyon, his hands clenched into quivering fists.
But his eyes told who he really blamed for Mai's loss. He shuddered all over like a dog throwing off water, then abruptly turned away. Tachyon stared at him, then turned to Fortunato.
"Let's go home," Fortunato said.
After a while, Brennan would remember Mai's words, and wonder what philosophies, what realms of thought, the spirit of a gentle Buddhist girl melded with the mind and body of a creature of nearly unimaginable power would spin down through the centuries. After a while, he'd remember. But now, with a sense of pain and loss as familiar to him as his own name, he felt none of that. He just felt half past dead.
JUBE: SEVEN
There was a knock on the door. Dressed in a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts and a Brooklyn Dodgers tee shirt, Jube padded across the basement and peered through the spyhole.