The Stars Are Legion(42)

“I cannot be more disappointed than I already am,” I say, and I pray to the War God, and whatever gods Das Muni worships, that I’m making a true statement.





“WHEN I RELEASED THE MOKSHI FROM ITS ORBIT, I NEVER EXPECTED TO ENCOUNTER RESISTANCE ON THE WAY OUT OF THE LEGION. I SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SURPRISED HOW MANY FEARED THE FUTURE.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





18


ZAN


The recyclers are worse during the sleeping period.

Yet I insist on traveling during the blooming of the flora, the same ones that live now in my wounded leg. The bacteria glow from beneath my healed skin, a part of me. I fear sometimes that they will overtake me. Will they colonize me? But Das Muni has been here for a long time, and she assures me the bacteria will eventually assimilate with my body. Soon, Das Muni says, the glowing will cease as they are eaten and absorbed by my body. Yet it is disconcerting to wake each morning and see the pulsing green flora swirling up my thigh.

We walk for many cycles. I wake Das Muni when the blue worms begin to glow, and we walk. We say little. As time passes, endless walking through endless semidarkness, my strength begins to grow; at the same time, I feel my sanity begin to waver.

“Surely, you must have found an edge to this place,” I say after many cycles.

Das Muni only shakes her head.

It is twenty sleeping periods before we come upon a structure I recognize.

When I see it, I fall to my knees. It’s just as Das Muni says. There is no way out.

We have walked and walked, and here we are again, at the little hovel where Das Muni nursed me back to health, not far from the field of horrors where I watched my sisters die. This is the proof. There is no edge.

I make a choking sound. It’s a sob. Das Muni comes up beside me and holds my hand, and I wrap my arms around her because not even when I woke up without a memory have I ever felt so lost and alone. Here, Das Muni is the whole world.

“It is not a terrible life,” Das Muni says, stroking my hair. “We can live here together. We can—”

“Jayd,” I say. “Let’s choose a different direction. Tomorrow we go . . . we go . . .” I point ahead of us. We can divide the world into sections and explore each, like slices of a pie. I won’t be ruined by this. I won’t be put off. There’s no alternative to finding a way up. I’m not giving in.

Time becomes meaningless. We go on for seven more periods of slogging through the world, cowering from recycler monsters. I have resolved to step in front of the next monster I see and just offer myself to it.

That is when I see the rope.

It dangles ahead of us like a living thing, a tentacle or tubular growth, and as I approach, I suspect it may be that, too, but it is being used as a rope. I see a stout figure slither down its length. I rub at my eyes, just to be sure, but the figure is still there when I open my eyes.

“Do you see that?” I whisper at Das Muni, but Das Muni is snoozing against a trembling wall of filth. Shattered bones and calcified parts poke through the rotten organic matter, visible now in the swinging blue light of this strange evening in the belly of the world.

I crouch low and keep to the heaps, tracking the figure as it goes from pile to pile. It occasionally raises its head, and when it does, I freeze, hopeful that the shadowy lights will hide me.

When I am within a dozen paces, the figure’s face is lit by the swinging overhead lights, and I can verify it is human. The woman’s face is clean. She wears neat, whole clothes that appear remarkably wear-free for someone scraping along down here the way Das Muni is.

But in that instant, the woman’s gaze meets mine, a clandestine gaze in the wink of the light. Her eyes widen. Then she sprints away, heaving her plump body back toward the ropy tentacle.

I coast across a pile of refuse. I am nearly fully recovered, but most importantly, I know this world very well now, and I navigate the heaped mounds faster than my prey. I snatch at her tunic. Yank her back.

“How did you get in here?” I say.

The squat woman tries to twist away. I throw a punch, but the woman deflects. Scrappy, this one. I grab at her hair, but it’s too short to get a proper hold. I kick with my bad leg and connect with the woman’s stomach. The woman keels over, but so do I. Pain shoots up my leg, making me stumble.

The woman runs, faster than I thought she could on her muscular little legs.

I give chase; it’s a slow chase because we must climb over debris. I stagger after her like a drunk woman. I hear Das Muni yelling behind me, dimly. I’m not going to give this up.

The woman leaps for the tentacle. I leap too. I grab her legs and pull her to the spongy ground.

“All right, stop!” I say. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The woman gapes at me.

“I’m Zan,” I say. “This is Das Muni. We only want to get out of here. Up.” I point at the rope.

“Casamir,” the woman says. “I’m Casamir.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Can ask the same as you,” Casamir says. She rubs her leg. “I’m an engineer from Arokisa. Or that’s the best translation I can think of.” I note her accent and wonder what language is her native one.

“I don’t know what an engineer is,” I say.

“Yes, well,” Casamir says, “the bottom of every world is filled with the castoffs of others. It’s how the Legion has lasted so long.”