Although her husband continued to laugh, Lusah Sahsan calmed down. “No jowk,” she said. “Wee laff 'cuz
danyew'ee
deyud da sayhm ding ta'uz, mannee”âanother jumble of consonantsâ“ago. Et es thar wahy.”
“Did what to you?” Kyra peered at her. “I don't understand.”
“Yew well . . . en ty'yum.” She raised both her hands, palms spread open and outward. “Sayah noh moh. Yew muhst fohnd truff foh yohsehylves.”
Sean and Kyra glanced at each other. For whatever reason, Lusah Sahsan wasn't willing to explain everything she knew. But it also appeared as if the
arsashi
hadn't been told everything about Hexâor
tanaash-haq
, as they called itâwhen they'd come here for the first time. Sean wondered how long ago that had been; again, the translator was unable to interpret the
arsashi
measurement of time into human terms.
“All right, then,” he said. “I guess we'll just have to . . .”
“What about Mark and the lieutenant?” Sandy asked. “We need to do something about them.”
Sean nodded. Like it or not, they wouldn't be able to take the bodies with them. The gyro had limited cargo space, and as much as he hated himself for thinking this, he wasn't keen on the idea of sharing its tiny cabin with two corpses. He turned to Lusah Sahsan again. “Before we leave, we'd like to bury or cremate our dead.” He hesitated, then added, “This is what we do in our culture. You may have another way of . . .”
“Don't say that,” Kyra murmured, urgently shaking her head. “The
arsashi
don't like to talk about their practices, but we believe that they ritualistically eat their dead.”
Sean felt something cold slither down his back, and Sandy scowled in disgust. But Lusah Sahsan merely regarded him with what seemed to be sympathy. “Wee haf ouh custums, buh we donoh spec yew ta fallah dem.” Her hand swept toward the covered bodies in an almost dismissive gesture. “Et duzzent mattah. Leev dem dere.
Tanaash-haq
well claym dem ass ets owhn.”
Sean blinked, not quite understanding what the tribal leader had just said. “Just . . . leave them here? Just as they are?”
Lusah Sahsan slowly nodded. “Yesh. Ass dey ah.
Tanaash-haq
well tayk dem.” She pointed to the bodies. “Luk . . . see foh yohselvz.”
Sean suddenly found himself hesitant to look beneath the silver emergency blankets. Something that Lusah Sahsan had just said gave him the creeps. But Sandy didn't share the same reluctance. She walked back to where the bodies lay and bent down to pull back the blanket from Mark's body . . . and screamed out loud, dropping the blanket as she recoiled in horror.
Sean dashed to her side. Sandy was trembling, and from behind her airmask he heard nauseated gasps. “Easy, easy,” he said, grasping her by the shoulders and turning her away from the uncovered body. “Whatever you do, don't throw up. You'll clog up your mask and suffocate.”
Sandy nodded and let Sean hold her in his arms; she was shaking, her eyes tightly shut behind her goggles. Hearing another startled cry, he looked around to see Kyra staring down at Mark.
“Sean, come over here.” Her voice was unsteady. “You need to see this.”
Sean took another moment to make sure that Sandy was all rightâshe wasn't, but at least she was no longer on the verge of vomitingâthen he left her and walked over to where Kyra stood. He didn't want to see what the two women had found, but he knew that he had to. When he did, though, he was sorry that he'd made that choice.
When he and Cayce had pulled Mark's body from the lander, one of the first things they'd done was to remove his skinsuit helmet to make sure that his neck was broken and that he really was dead. They hadn't put it back on again, but had simply closed his eyes and stretched him upon the ground, placing his hands at his sides and leaving the rest of his skinsuit on. Sean figured that, once they had a chance, he'd find a place to bury his friend and perhaps say a few words over his grave.
Obviously, that wasn't to be.
Above the skinsuit's neck ring, Mark's flesh had taken the appearance and texture of cottage cheese. His hair was almost completely gone, his eyes had shriveled deep within their sockets, and the outline of the rest of his skull was visible beneath skin that had become as white and mottled as the snow upon which it lay.
Sean was glad that he couldn't smell anything through the mask; otherwise, he had little doubt that the odor of mortification would have overwhelmed him. But when he forced himself to bend down to look closer, he saw that what was going on was more than just decay, as accelerated as it might be.
Beneath the back of Mark's neck and head, tiny crystalline formations, vaguely resembling coral yet a ghastly shade of pink, had grown up from the ground, rising from beneath the snow to touch, embrace, and pierce the flesh of the dead man.
Sean pulled the blanket away a little farther. The same formations hadn't yet grown up around the skinsuit, which indicated to him that they weren't fond of inorganic matter. But the delicate crystals had crept into the bottom of the helmet ring, and he had no doubt that, were he to unzip Mark's suit and open it, he'd find the same process taking place across the rest of his body.
“My God,” Kyra said quietly. “He's dissolving.”
“Heh ef bing tahken ba
tanaash-haq
.” Accompanied by her silent husband, Lusah Sahsan had walked over to join them. “Dis es da way daded ah claymed hare. Wen der bohdees ah fownd, dey . . .”
“Disintegrate.” Sean swallowed a mouthful of bile, then made himself walk over to Cayce's body and pull back its blanket as well. The lieutenant hadn't been dead as long as Mark, so he was still reasonably intact. Nevertheless, it was apparent that the same process had already begun; coral-like formations were touching the back of his head and neck, along with his bare hands, and his skin looked like it had developed a postmortem case of acne.
“Yesh,” the
arsashi
leader said, and when Sean looked up at her, he saw that her mouth had stretched back in a broad grimace that looked frightening until he realized that it was a smile. “Do noh greev. Et es ah fon def. Dey ah becohmin won widda wold.”
They are becoming one with the world.
Again, Sean wondered what Lusah Sahsan meant, until he realized that his own culture had an expression that was a close parallel to what the
arsashi
had said. Something that he probably would have said over Mark's grave had he been given a chance to do so.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he whispered.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
A
NDROMEDA EXAMINED THE APPLE IN HER HAND.
It was small and, while not perfectly round, fit comfortably into her palm. Tinged with autumnal streaks of dark red and pale gold, it resembled an Empire or a Cortland, the kind of apples she'd grown up eating, but in fact was a Midland Tart, a hybrid of a couple of different Earth varieties that had been created by botanists to produce a fruit that could survive Coyote's cool climate.
She'd pulled the apple from a lower branch of one of the trees she'd found upon stepping off the escalator that had carried her and the others down from the tram station. Of all the things she'd seen since the
Montero
had docked with Hex, this small and rather mundane item had surprised her the most. Not because of what it was but simply because it was there.
“This is impossible,” she said softly. Then she bit into the apple; for an impossibility, it certainly tasted sweet.
“Yes, it is.” Tom D'Anguilo studied another apple that he'd picked up from the ground beneath the tree. It appeared to have recently fallen; most of the other apples on the ground were in various stages of decomposition. He turned it around in his hand to show her the small wound in its skin. “And I bet, if you cut into this, you'd find a little brown impossible worm deep inside.”
Andromeda grimaced. “Thanks for ruining my appetite,” she muttered, and was about to toss her apple away before reconsidering. After a week of processed ship's rations, a fresh apple was an unexpected treat. “This shouldn't be here,” she added. “Same for the worm.”
D'Anguilo dropped his apple on the ground, gazed up at the tree from which it came. It was about twenty-five feet tall, the same height as the others around it. They belonged to a small grove at the base of the biopod's southern range, with a few younger ones growing from the mountainside's lower slopes. A nearby creek meandered downhill, quietly gurgling as it passed through the grove and into the broad, grassy plains on the valley floor, eventually flowing into the biopod's central river. Rolf had already surmised that the creek, along with others like it, captured condensation trickling down the ceiling window and fed it into the river.
“If you think this place was created yesterday . . . yeah, I agree,” he said. “But apple trees take years to grow to maturity, and it looks like this one has been here awhile. So unless
danui
bioengineering methods are as advanced as their construction techniques . . . not that I'd put it past them . . . someone seeded this place long before they knew we'd arrive.”
Andromeda didn't reply. Munching on the apple, she sauntered out from beneath the tree to look up at the escalator ramp. A long monorail made of the same stony material as the biopod's outer walls, the ramp led straight up the mountainside to the tram station. A flatbed lift, open except for a safety rail around its edge, was slowly moving up the escalator; it was large enough to carry twenty or more passengers at a time, or a few people and a lot of cargo. There was a footpath, too, running parallel to the ramp, but it would probably take someone an hour or more to hike all the way to the top; the escalator was an obvious necessity.
The lift was about halfway up the mountainside; she couldn't see Melpomene or Rolf, who were on their way back to the node. Since the
Montero
sometimes traveled to worlds whose inhabitants had made little or no provisions for human guests, the ship carried equipment they'd need in order to set up camp on an alien planet: pressurized dome tents, sleeping bags, a portable stove, lamps, collapsible chairs and tables, even a chemical toilet. No sense in remaining on the ship if they didn't need to; Andromeda asked Melpomene and Rolf to return to the
Montero
and fetch the supplies. She'd told Jason that he was welcome to join them if he wanted to do so; however, Anne would have to stay behind in order to watch the ship and maintain the communications relay with Sean's team.
Which left Andromeda alone in the biopod with D'Anguilo, or at least for the time being. Although the astroethnicist was sometimes an annoying presence, Andromeda could put up with him for a while if it meant that she might get some answers to a few puzzling questions. Like why they were finding apple trees in a place where no human had ever gone before.
“So what do you think?” she asked, turning away from the escalator. “The
danui
knew we were coming, so they created a bipod suitable for us?”
“Isn't that obvious?” D'Anguilo left the tree to wander over to the creek. Squatting on his heels, he reached down to pull up a handful of the tall grass growing on its banks. “Just as I thought,” he said, a smile upon his face as he examined their roots. “Sourgrass . . . same subspecies as the stuff in Midland's mountain valleys.” He looked around himself. “If we were to conduct a natural census, my guess is that we'd find that almost every plant and animal here comes from the same part of Coyote . . . because that's where the original specimens were collected.”
“The
danui
have never been to Coyote.”
“No, but the
hjadd
have. Although they've usually kept to themselves in their embassy on New Florida, when I was at the university, I read reports that they'd occasionally sent some of their people to places like Midland and Great Dakota.” He shrugged. “So it wouldn't have been much trouble for them to gather living specimens, then send them to the
danui
for this very purpose.”
“I hope that didn't include boids.” The flightless predatory avians that inhabited the lowlands of Coyote equatorial regions had been the nemesis of early settlers; the thought of finding them in Hex made her nervous.
“I hope not either.” D'Anguilo brushed bits of grass from his hands as he stood up. “But if the purpose of all this is to provide us with a safe and comfortable place, it doesn't make sense to stock it with man-eaters. Especially when we've also been deprived of the means to defend ourselves.”
“You think that's why they built Hex? To give us . . . I don't know, a home away from home?” Andromeda was skeptical. “Seems like they went to a lot of trouble for something as simple as that.”
D'Anguilo didn't immediately respond. Instead, he strolled over to the escalator ramp and sat down on the low parapet surrounding its base. “I don't know,” he said at last. “It's a mystery to me, too . . . why we weren't told exactly what was here, why no one contacted us until we'd sent out the survey team, why we haven't heard from the
danui
themselves. It's like we've been handed pieces of a puzzle, and we're expected to put them together ourselves.”
“I thought you said you had a theory.”
“I do, but I'd rather see more before I tell you what I think.” He raised a hand before she could object. “Look . . . first and foremost, I'm a scientist. That means it's my responsibility to make observations and gather evidence before forming a hypothesis, not vice versa. It's like when I first saw the pictures of this system. I thought it might be possible that there was a Dyson sphere here . . .”