The Moldy Dead Read online

  “You think the Geuji—”

  “No,” Nirle said, harsh. “I think—” He choked off his words with a glare down the beach.

  Bha’hoi was trudging toward them from the west, his three muscular legs working awkwardly in the sand and rocks.

  Nirle’s sticky brown eyes fell to the Huouyt’s legs, obviously looking for signs that he’d been walking through the mold. One didn’t need to have sivvet to feel the suspicion in the Ooreiki’s gaze.

  The Huouyt reached them, then scanned the six faces gathered at the ship. Concern brushed Esteei’s sivvet. “Where’s Tafet?”

  “Not here,” the Ooreiki said.

  Bha’hoi’s white-blue eyes unreadable. “Where is he?”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Nirle said, starting to put his PPU away.

  The Huouyt saw the instrument and his gaze immediately sharpened. “Give me that.” He held out a downy, paddle-like tentacle.

  The two of them faced off, the shorter, brown-eyed Ooreiki glaring up at the taller, electric blue-white eyed Huouyt.

  Don’t fight, Esteei prayed, afraid to move. His sivvet were rated sixteenth in all of Congress for sensitivity. Fighting, especially between two different species, hurt.

  Reluctantly, Nirle handed the PPU to the Huouyt Overseer.

  Bha’hoi’s mirror-like eyes flickered to the screen only a moment. “There’s only five tags registered on your Planetary Positioning Unit, Prime Commander.”

  Nirle wrenched the PPU away from the weaker Huouyt’s cilia-covered tentacle. “We’ll find him.” Without waiting for further orders, the Ooreiki Prime Commander led his grounders back over the moldy black hills, toward the east.

  For a brief instant—less than a quarter of a second—Esteei felt satisfaction emanate from the Huouyt. Then it was gone, replaced with nothing.

  He’s pleased, Esteei thought, startled.

  Esteei was still staring at Bha’hoi as he climbed back onto the ship, leaving him standing on the beach alone.

  #

  It was well past nightfall by the time the Ooreiki groundteam finally returned.

  When their shambling forms neared the lights of the ship, Esteei’s internal pressures spiked.

  They were dragging a corpse.

  Esteei ran out to them, stretching his sivvet to capacity, straining to get any sign that Tafet was alive.

  “Don’t bother,” Nirle said, bitterness hardening his voice. He and the other four Ooreiki carried their friend aboard and set him inside one of the vacuum-casks set into the far wall. Seeing it in the light, Esteei recoiled.

  The corpse was still covered with black slime, and his head had been torn open.

  “From now on,” Nirle said, “We go out in twos or we don’t go out at all. Esteei, you won’t be going anywhere without at least three Ooreiki to guard you, understand?”

  “Commander, I really don’t need—”

  “You’re the most important person on this ship,” Nirle interrupted. “The rest of us, especially that useless Huouyt, are expendable. You’re our best chance of contact with whatever killed Tafet.”

  Esteei felt his eyes dragged back to Tafet’s corpse, to the sticky blackness clinging to it. “You don’t think it was the Geuji?”

  “It wasn’t,” Nirle said.

  “Then what was it, Commander?” Bha’hoi was climbing down from abovedecks.

  Nirle glared. “Not the Geuji.”

  “Enlighten us, since you obviously saw the tracks,” Bha’hoi said.

  Nirle remained silent, loathing filling the ship as he glared up at the Huouyt Overseer.

  “You found no tracks.” Bha’hoi did not bother to hide his smugness.

  Nirle looked ready to draw his weapon on the Huouyt. Behind him, his grounders fidgeted. “It wasn’t the Geuji,” Nirle repeated, his voice dangerously calm.

  Bha’hoi glanced at Tafet’s corpse, which was still visible through the lid of the cask. Black slime still coated his gelatinous body. “Then he simply decided to roll in the stuff before he died?”

  Nirle swiveled and left the ship. Alone.

  #

  No, this was all wrong. The aliens were killing each other.

  The aquatic one, the smart one, was hunting the others. It spied on them from beneath the Philosophers, then, when the others weren’t looking, it had dragged one of them underneath the Philosophers and killed it.

  It was framing them.

  But why?

  Crown’s peers were in an uproar, trying to determine what was going on. Was it simply an inter-species scuffle? They didn’t think so. They’d already pieced together most of the aliens’ speech, and from what they could tell, they were on the planet to seek out intelligent life.

  Yet the aquatic one was killing its companions.

  Why?

  #

  It was on one of the rare days that Esteei went out with the Ooreiki when another grounder went missing.

  One moment, he had been with them, laughing, joking. The next, Esteei’s sivvet were crushed with someone else’s terror. He fell to his knees in the slimy black Geuji, curling into an instinctive ball at the agony in his head.

  “What?” Nirle demanded. “Emissary?”

  The fear was so thick Esteei could not respond. He simply whimpered and curled tighter.

  Faintly, he heard one of the Ooreiki shout, then a commotion and weapons discharging. Esteei could not even bring himself to open his eyes as his chambers purged themselves over his skin.

  And still the terror continued to grow. The Geuji magnified it, contorted it, and made it so unbearable that Esteei had to choose between voiding his chambers a second time or exploding from the inside.

  Somewhere, he knew he was screaming, but it was a faraway place. Only the horrible pounding in his sivvet was real.

  “Get him back to the ship!” Nirle shouted. “Gratii can wait!”

  Two grounders carted Esteei back to the ship as fast as their meaty legs could carry them. As soon as Esteei was safely back in his room, they hurried back to rejoin their friends.

  It took Esteei several hours to recover. He lay in bed, enduring the pounding waves of the residual emotions like a seasick traveler endured the ebbing waves of a dying storm.

  When he finally managed to steady himself enough to look outside, the Geuji was rolling in rapid, eerie patterns, some of which almost made sense to him.

  Fearing he was losing his mind, Esteei went back to his room and stayed there.

  Later, during the night, the four Ooreiki returned with another body.

  It, too, was covered with Geuji mucous.

  “That’s it,” Bha’hoi snapped. “Nirle, no more outings. I’m declaring the Geuji a hostile non-sentient. I’m going to request eradication measures.”

  “It wasn’t the Geuji!” the Ooreiki Prime Commander roared, turning on the Huouyt. “It was something else. I saw a portion of it, right before Gratii disappeared. Like a Jreet, but thinner, without scales.”

  Bha’hoi was clearly irritated. “You saw a worm kill your grounder, Commander?”

  “It would explain why there’s no tracks.”

  “If it’s a worm, then it’s using the Geuji as cover. We wipe out the cover, the worms cannot surprise us, and no more will die.”

  “No!” Nirle snapped.

  The Huouyt cocked his head. “No, Commander?”

  “I think the mold is…” Nirle hesitated, catching Esteei’s eyes.

  Nervousness doused Esteei’s sivvet. Nervousness and suspicion.

  He was going to say ‘sentient,’ Esteei realized, stunned. And he doesn’t want to say it in front of Bha’hoi.

  “The mold is what?” Bha’hoi demanded, harsh now. When Nirle didn’t reply, he continued in a low, hard tone. “From now on, Commander, you will clear all excursions with me. I will have no more deaths. Your buddy system is obviously not working.”

  “Burn you, Huouyt.”

  Nirle grabbed his rifle and left.

 
“Ooreiki, go retrieve Commander Nirle and lock him in his room.”

  “No. He can go.”

  The Huouyt turned to Esteei. “Excuse me?”

  Esteei continued to watch Nirle depart. “Let him go, Overseer.”

  “But, little Jahul, military matters are clearly—”

  “You will address me as Emissary Esteei,” Esteei snapped, “Not ‘little Jahul.’”

  The Huouyt gave Esteei a cold look, then flung a cilia-covered, paddle-like arm at the other Ooreiki, “Put that body away.”

  Esteei turned to see the Ooreiki’s figure fade into the darkness.

  Suddenly afraid for him, Esteei jogged off the ship and sloshed through the tide after the Prime Commander. Behind him, he heard the Huouyt give orders for the other Ooreiki to stay.

  Esteei’s pores prickled at the thought of being out in the Geuji alone, but he kept going.

  A strange, percussive sound stopped him. Esteei hesitated outside the threshold of the ship’s light, turning back to glance at the figures on the ship. He thought he saw flashes from the inside.

  Is that weapons-fire?

  Then, This mission is getting to me.

  Feeling tired, Esteei hurried into the darkness after the Ooreiki Prime Commander.

  “Nirle!” he called, after the Ooreiki’s lumbering bulk.

  “Go back to the ship, Jahul.” Nirle didn’t slow.

  Esteei felt the first bit of Geuji squish under his feet, but he kept moving. Ahead, he could feel Nirle’s pain like hot irons in his sivvet. “Nirle, wait!”

  The Ooreiki slowed, his fleshy sudah flapping in the sides of his neck, betraying his anger. “Esteei, was Bha’hoi on the ship when the grounders took you back?”

  Esteei flinched, coming to a halt beside him. “I can’t remember.”

  “Think! This mission’s lost nine out of fifteen members. Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”

  Insanity, yet… “Why would Bha’hoi kill your grounders?”

  Glaring, Nirle turned to look the way they had come.

  In the distance, the ship’s lights were drowned out by the darkness of the night and the eerie blue light of the moon.

  All around them, waves of Geuji glistened in the night.

  Esteei got the distinct impression they were being watched, their every word consumed and analyzed by alien minds.

  “It’s sentient,” Nirle said, staring at the Geuji.

  The Geuji seemed to shudder, the texture shifting and changing, going from glossy to rough in ripples around them. Suddenly nervous, Esteei started backing toward the ship.

  Nirle caught his arm. “It’s not gonna hurt you, Jahul.” He sounded awestruck, like a creature in love.

  Esteei had the sudden concern that the Geuji could broadcast emotional energies, much like the Jahul could receive them. It would explain what was wrong with his sivvet.

  It would also explain why Nirle was acting so strangely. If they were lulling his fears, preparing him for some symbiotic organism to eat him…

  “Sit with me, Emissary.”

  Esteei recoiled. “Nirle, I really don’t think—”

  The stronger, heavier Ooreiki yanked him down with him, forcing Esteei’s six knees to collapse or break. Reluctantly, he sank into the squishy black mass with the Ooreiki Prime, uncomfortable at the way the Geuji pressed against his belly and legs.

  “Look,” Nirle said. He reached out with a tentacle and touched the Geuji in front of him.

  A wave of rolling black current spread outward, flowing away from them, disappearing over the hills.

  “They’re greeting us,” Nirle whispered.

  Esteei found it particularly disturbing that Nirle was communing with the mold so soon after finding another grounder dead. He tried to stand.

  Nirle kept him in place with a tentacle forged of ruvmestin, forcing Esteei to endure the tickling sensation of the slime against his belly. He began to panic.

  “Be still, Jahul,” Nirle said. “They’re curious about you. You’ve been avoiding them.”

  Esteei’s internal pressure climbed until his inner chambers were near bursting. He tried to stand again, but the stronger Ooreiki held him, entranced by the rolling waves of ebony.

  “Nirle…” Esteei began, fear burrowing into his soul like poisonous worms. “I don’t think you’re well.”

  The Prime Commander released him suddenly, laughing. “Maybe you’re right.” He glanced back at the mold. “But I’ve spent so much time out here—I know it’s not the Geuji killing my boys.” He absently began to draw lines in the glistening surface of the Geuji, symbols spiraling outward from a single point in the Congie style. In moments, he’d written the Ooreiki proverb, “Trust thyself, and thy works will soar.”

  Quietly, Nirle repeated it to himself. Then, “Emissary, I caught the Huouyt making a call off planet, short-wave. I thought we were supposed to be alone out here.”

  “We are,” Esteei said, frowning.

  Suddenly, Nirle’s writing vanished, the surfaces of the Geuji tightening into a glossy blackness. To Esteei’s amazement, the Ooreiki proverb appeared again a couple rods away, and it was not a copy. The words were bigger, with more flourish, and a tighter spiral. It was, in truth, better than Nirle’s writing.

  Esteei sank back to his stomach, stunned. “You can communicate with it?”

  Nirle looked as shocked as he was.

  Emissary instincts taking over, Esteei said, “Let me try.” Esteei leaned forward and wrote a simple note, “Do you understand us?”

  Nothing.

  “Speak it aloud,” Nirle whispered. “They’ve heard me and the boys chatting enough…maybe they understand our speech.”

  Though skeptical, Esteei did. “Do you understand us?” He drew the words for ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

  “Yes,” was the immediate reply. “Yes, yes.” Insistent. Like it wanted more.

  All around them, the land was rolling again, like it did when the Tafet and Gratii disappeared. The sight of it made Esteei tense. Is this where it eats us?

  Yes, yes, yes…

  Esteei wanted to run back to the ship, but now duty bound him to stay.

  Nervously, Esteei began his Emissary duties, introducing them and their purpose, but before he could finish, his medium went stiff, erasing his work.

  In an enormous, acre-wide spiral, the Geuji wrote, “No trust Huouyt.”

  Esteei stared.

  All around them, the Geuji was rolling waves of insistency, flashing patterns that only now began to make sense.

  “I knew it,” Nirle growled, tentacles tightening over his rifle.

  “How pretty,” a cold voice said behind them. “And they did it with such flourish. Almost makes you think they’re sentient, doesn’t it?”

  Even as Nirle was swiveling, rifle in hand, Bha’hoi fired an energy burst point-blank into the Ooreiki’s meaty head.

  Nirle collapsed without a sound, his body pooling on the ground in a gelatinous, boneless huddle.

  “Well,” Bha’hoi said, lowering the gun. “I can’t say I haven’t been looking forward to that.”

  The Geuji began to flash its message, angry, defiant.

  “No trust Huouyt. No trust…”

  The Huouyt fired into the center of the Geuji’s warning, and the Geuji flinched away from the wound, in obvious pain.

  Esteei stared at the gun in Bha’hoi’s grip.

  The Huouyt could change form. They could take patterns of other creatures as it pleased them, as long as they had water to negate it afterwards.

  It was him all along.

  “The Geuji didn’t kill the Ooreiki. You did.”

  Amusement wafted over the Huouyt’s sivvet as Bha’hoi looked at him. “What gave it away?” When Esteei did not respond, the Huouyt’s amusement increased. “Because I really want to know. Was it all the suicides? Was it the Geuji flashing warnings these last few days? Or was it the fact I just shot your friend in the face?”

  Glancing at the corp
se, feeling shamed and scared, Esteei backed away.

  “Now, little Jahul, don’t run off. You have a report to make to the Planetary Claims Board. Come with me.”

  “NO,” the Geuji flashed, over and over. “No, no, no, no…”

  Bha’hoi shot the Geuji again, but this time the message kept flashing. “No, no, no…”

  Esteei hesitated, caught between the urge to run and the fear of being alone on this alien planet. Even the Huouyt, who had murdered the Ooreiki in cold blood, was at least familiar to him. The alien blackness was not.

  But when Bha’hoi took a step toward him, his electric, white-blue eyes were more alien than anything Esteei had ever known. He ran. And, as an ancestral prey species, the Jahul were fast. The Huouyt, with his three legs, was not.

  Behind him, the Huouyt laughed. “I can always take your pattern and do it myself, Jahul!”

  Panic powering him, Esteei didn’t stop running.

  Once Esteei was out of range, he turned back to look. He saw Bha’hoi’s silhouette against the light of the ship, saw him climb aboard and watched the tiny square of light disappear as the gate drew up. An instant later, the ship began drifting into the night sky, blocking out the stars.

  In moments, Esteei was alone with the Geuji.

  #

  The hexapod wasn’t listening to them.

  Not smart enough, his peers thought.

  But Crown was skeptical. The hexapod wasn’t even trying to communicate with them. Like Crown, he was scared.

  He thinks he’s going to die.

  Apparently, he didn’t realize what the aquatic alien was doing. The aquatic alien wasn’t there to kill the hexapod. He was there to kill the Philosophers.

  And, Crown knew with horrible certainty, he would be back.

  #

  Bha’hoi returned, two days later. Esteei was burying the dead Ooreiki that the Huouyt had pushed off the ship and was collecting their oorei for transport back to Poen when the ship set down in the same indentions in the sand from last time, startling him. When the gate began to open, it didn’t even cross Esteei’s mind to pick up one of the Ooreiki’s weapons.

  He fled.

  When Bha’hoi stepped out, he was dragging a wooden crate. He saw the Ooreiki rifles still strewn on the beach, looked out at Esteei, and snorted laughter.