No Longer Aliens: Symbiont Wars Saga, #2

Chapter 1 –  Demoness

Lynchburg, Virginia August 8th 1905

TIANA signed the letter on each of its sixteen pages, folded them together and slid the bundle into an oversized envelope. She stood—lifting her skirts—and tucked the packet behind the kukri knife strapped to her left leg. Moving to the window, she took a deep breath of the night air and listened to the cicadas and tree frogs singing to each other. The low voices of people in the street a block away added a mellow drone to the music as the perfume of magnolias drifted in through the open window.

She didn’t need a window screen to keep out mosquitoes—her scent lingering in the room made the parasites avoid entering.

Her fingers caressed the mahogany window frame and its leaf-patterned carvings. She loved this house, loved the craftsmanship in its dedicated details, its elegant architecture and the science hidden in its balanced design. From her vantage at the second story window, her eyes followed the path of the gas streetlamps as they wound along Main Street then east, down the gradual incline of the banks of the James River. The sad whistle of the Norfolk & Western passenger special from Richmond—still a few miles out—drifted to her ears as it worked its way up the grade to Union Station.

Then Edward’s cry from the basement changed it all.

Oh God no!

Tiana heard his feet flying up the basement steps.

Edward spoke—breathlessly quiet as he came—knowing she’d hear him even if he whispered. Tiana, message on the wireless telegraph. Men dressed in sheets have surrounded the Richmond office. They’ve blocked the exits and are burning the building. Jamie just now managed to send. He said they were going to make a break for it, but then the signal cut off. Twenty-three of our people are still inside.

Already running in his directiion, Tiana snatched the Borchardt machine pistol from the desk as she passed. She vaulted the stair railing to skip the flight to the first floor, and Edward met her at the basement steps.

Guard the door, Tiana snapped. I need to launch the nursery’s independent cycle. Don’t let me get trapped down there.

She dashed down the basement steps to the concealed door in the foundation wall, pushed the coded keystones and pulled the outer door open. The inner door was already sliding down the rails as she picked up the heavy canvas bag by the wall and followed close behind the massive block of reinforced concrete as it retreated down into the crèche. When the opening widened enough, she slipped into the white, domed chamber of the crèche, dropped the letter and bag into the chest by the wardrobe then sealed its lid.

Next, she bounded to the structure in the middle of the room. The nest, Edward called it. He said it looked like a huge weaverbird’s nest.

Tiana—being more intimately acquainted with its every detail, down to the molecular structure—disagreed. But humans were always finding patterns and similarities, no matter how tenuous, in things they saw. Her hands flew over the branches, adjusting nutrient bladders and feeder tubes as she reprogrammed the maturation cycle.

Too much to do—too little time.

If only she’d finished updating the memory crystal, but now there was no time to start a refresh.

One way out.

Finally finished with the launch cycle, Tiana paused for a breath and put her hand on the cocoon-shaped parcel in the midst of the tangled branches.

What am I doing? Praying?

Were Padre Alvarez’s homilies taking root after all these years?

Tiana wheeled and sped back to the tunnel, slapped the code into the keystones to release the counter weight that would lift the concrete door back into place then slipped into the upper basement and closed the stone veneered outer door. She ran her fingers over the edge where it met the surrounding wall, and the tiny gap in the mortar disappeared as its smart particles activated.

She turned to the stairs and leapt up the steps. The relief from leaving the crèche was like a weight lifting from her tail.

Edward stood across from the door of the stairway. He’d pushed the plantstand holding the ficus elastica out of the alcove when he’d taken cover in its niche. Back against the wall, a gun in either hand as he used peripheral vision to watch the hall in both directions. When Tiana came sliding into the foyer, he glanced at her and pushed a lock of his sandy hair out of his face. His eyes were haunted.

Can you think of any reason we should change our emergency plans? he said.

Tiana paused, listening anew to the sounds outside the house. The train is at the station even now. Once on it, we could move faster than any local threat, but there’s nothing to guarantee Thuggees won’t be waiting for us at the next stop. All options down that path can box us in.

She pulled a scarf from her pocket and tied it around her head to hidel her smooth, bare scalp. We already have saddlebags packed. Let’s take Snowfoot and Ranger. We can avoid the roads for a while.

Edward nodded. Is there anything else we need to bring?

Tiana pulled the Borchardt from beneath her skirts and chambered a round. No. Let’s go.

With quiet steps, they crept to the back of the house and picked up their emergency bags from the pantry. At the kitchen’s back door, Tiana paused, putting a hand on Edward's arm.

Why are there so many people on the street at this hour? she said.

Miss Ferguson’s coming-out party, said Edward, moving past her and nodding toward the house west of them. I had to decline most regretfully.

Tiana frowned.

What? said Edward.

Let’s go ... carefully.

Edward shifted the saddlebag on his shoulder to clear his preferred shooting hand. He flipped his own Borchardt’s safety off and quietly eased the back door open.

Wait. Let me go first, she said.

Your protective instincts— he said, stepping through the door.

Damn the man for a fool!

Tiana knew he’d been hit even as soon as the cough of the suppressed rifle shot reached her ears. She reached out as he staggered sideways and pulled him back inside. The metallic smell of his blood sprang into the air as he collapsed to the floor.

Why did you do that? She dragged him away from the door and across the dining room.

He gasped for air. Because even you can’t dodge bullets in the dark, Tia, he said.

Thank God, still conscious.

The bullet went through. It’s not bleeding too badly, she said. Tiana licked the wound to apply a coagulant then knotted her headscarf around his shoulder.

And where would we be if it were you wounded instead?

She hissed in frustration. Can you get to the hiding hole on your own?

"I can make it. See, good deeds are, sometimes, rewarded. If I hadn’t insisted on building a hiding hole for the Underground Railroad, you couldn’t go out and clear the rascals out of our way. I’d never have been able to do that on my own."

Yes, yes. It was brilliant of you, getting shot like that. Now go! she snapped, helping him to his hands and knees.

Clumsily—moving like a three-legged dog—he worked his way toward the safe spot.

Not stopping to watch him go, Tiana snatched her shoes off and stripped her clothes off in efficient ripping motions then crawled to the fireplace to keep below the windows.

Using a piece of her blouse, she reached up the flue and scrubbed soot onto the rag then wiped her face and hands with it until they were blackened. The rest of her red-and-black-striped limbs and torso were already dark enough. Tiana raised the Borchardt's holster—strapped just below her tail—to a more useful position in the middle of her back and pulled her knives from their sheaths. There was only one window in the house already open. Staying low, she skittered across the floor and up the stairs to her room.

Careful not to cast a shadow across the window, she moved to the opening and listened to the low voices outside, catching a few phrases.

Manushya-Rakshasi–

Mahila Danaav–.

They were speaking Hindi, talking about her.

That confirmed her theory. The Thuggee cult had been recruiting below the Mason-Dixon Line. She’d suspected her enemies, the niiaH, had absorbed the leadership of the Klan for their own purposes, but the level of integration of Thuggee and Klan must be deep for white southerners to begin using Hindi words.

Tiana took a quick glance at the grounds twenty feet below then spent a moment processing the image in her mind.

Three targets visible ... and they’re all focused on the house.

She gathered herself into a crouch, aimed for the target farthest away and dove out the window—blades ready.

Chapter 2 – Perchance to Dream

IN THE BEGINNING THERE were images void of meaning, and with them came sounds with sensations. As the clarity of self-awareness gradually coalesced, and the thread of dream unrolled, it took on meaning and color: nursing at her mother’s breast, learning to crawl ... then walk. The first self-reflective thoughts spilled out of her mind.

I am nii. A female, remembering my life.

But slowly, she realized ... it wasn’t her life. These were memories from elsewhere. Unease began to grow as her sense of ‘self’ clarified.

The dreams continued, now filled with long periods of peaceful community ... the faces of friends, family, lovers ... accomplishments of a full life.

Deeper understanding developed; receiving the memories this way meant she was branching.

The unease crystallized. There was only one reason she should be branching. The earlier branch was dead.

That was why she lived.

Without that death, she would not be here now. There would not be a ‘her’ remembering events that had never happened to this body. Until the memory crystal began releasing its information, she had been no more than potential.

Insurance.

That meant there would be a gap in her mind. She would never know exactly what happened after the earlier branch had planted the memory crystal into the chrysalis.

If she took the identity of an extension of her former self, she would be incomplete. The thought made her feel hollow. She didn’t like the—discontinuity. How could she cope with that?

She chose.

I will be someone new; I am born today.

Starting over was better.

It would be healthier as a new person who had inherited memories. She felt hopeful at the thought. And perhaps ....

It was possible ... barely ... that the earlier her still lived, somewhere far from her responsibility to this new self.

Perhaps she went home.

That thought left her feeling cold.

The memories continued unfolding. Now came a long period of strife and battles between the stars; planetfall to a primitive world; a period of time orienting to a new environment, the first partnering on this world then—much later— preparing the crèche and planting the branch.

An emergency contingency.

As the earlier her haad finally finished recording the memory crystal—she remembered the thought.

If you wake to this, you might be the only chance.

The memory stream ended. For a time she rested, assimilating. She’d been Tiana, a nii female. She was not sure who she was now, but part of it was still true.

She slept. Her dreams were troubled ....

∆∆∆

Our telemetry shows the escaping niiaH ship heading for this area. The defense coordinator pointed to the three-dimensional star chart, his finger landing half-way between the two major galactic spiral arms that radiated out from the bar-shaped center where two other minor arms branched. Your ship’s memory core has all the information we have on the area.

He touched the chart again, increasing the scale as though that would help uncover the enemy’s hiding place. Right now it’s not clear how the struggle is going in other sectors, but we’ve managed to lock the enemy forces in our sector into battle where we have the advantage and can eradicate them all. All but that one ship. I’m sorry to send you on such a long and dangerous mission, captain. But we need to eliminate them all and cannot spare another. Your host crew is loading now. Hurry, before the trail grows too cold to follow.

He touched her arm. We’ve given you the best tracking system we could put together. We’ll stay in contact as long as possible to pass on any other information we uncover. But the rest of the task force will be departing for the encounter with the remnant of the Tyrant Empire in two cycles. We must stop them. You might be the only chance to make sure this doesn’t start all over again.

∆∆∆

Waking hungry, she raised her hands, wiped the protective sealant and cocoon fragments from her face and opened her eyes. As she moved, the expended nutrient tubes disengaged from her arms with a series of light tugs as they fell away. The green phosphorescent globes in the crèche were dim, but she could see to move.

She crawled from the tangle of the ... nest ... the very memory of Edward saying the word stung.

She stood, wobbling at first.

Looking up at the ceiling tiles made her wonder if—above her—the house still stood. She reached out to where the nearest light globe revealed a rotary switch and turned the knob. When the bulbs in the twelve grease-sealed sockets failed to light, it didn’t surprise her. She—her earlier self—had set the crèche to complete its cycle in ten decades. It was enough that she’d survived so long. There was enough light to prepare for emergence.

She sniffed the air. The passive ventilation system was working. Faint smells of the outside world filtered in, some familiar—roses, grass, magnolia—others were not. The crèche would have finished its cycle near the end of summer. It was probably August 1995, using the Gregorian calendar.

The crèche had survived intact, all walls still standing. The room was a sixteen-foot dome. White ceramic tile floors and walls were clean; all the seals against dust had held. The water tank was full.

A shelf full of canning jars filled with drinking water—each containing a small silver ingot—occupied the east wall. Walking—carefully—to her supplies, she took a cotton towel from one of the sealed cedar chests and wiped the gel from her hands. Then she opened a jar and drank in a steady stream.

Her neural net wakened as her body hydrated. She put the jar down with a happy sigh. The almost automatic human reaction to satisfaction sparked a hope that all the hard-learned mannerisms she’d acquired in her earlier life were still in place. She smiled. Yes, that was the appropriate thing to accompany amusement. She wondered what her new face looked like.

The next order of business was bathing. She unsealed a charcoal filter and screwed the canister into the water system then opened the valve and vent to allow the water to run through the showerhead. The sound of the tank losing its vacuum seal assured her the water supply had survived uncontaminated through the decades.

She waited for the water to come through the pipes and flush the powdered charcoal from the canister, then stepped under the water and stripped the gel from her skin.

The next jar contained her favorite bathing soap. Memories awakened by the smell filled her mind as she scrubbed her body. It was good she was a new person; she would have felt the loss of the former life too keenly. It was still difficult to realize that everyone the earlier branch had known was gone.

The water sluicing over her body stimulated her skin’s sensory net. After a few seconds of luxuriating in the sensation, she turned the tap off, stepped out of the shower and walked to the cedar wardrobe. She opened the doors, revealing mirrors on the backs and a row of sealed outfits of clothing. None of it would be in fashion, f course, but it would be better than going out in nothing. Especially considering that, without clothes, she’d never pass for human, even with any conceivable adjustments to her new body.

It was still too dim for seeing fine details. She reached up to the chain that turned on the overhead light. The emergency generator’s motor clanked then rose to a steady hum as the five-hundred pound weight that drove it began the slow descent from ceiling to floor. The incandescent light began to glow. She’d have five hours of light before needing to lift the weight back to the top of the track.

She surveyed herself in the mirror then made a mental adjustment to try to see what a human would see.

Straightening her spring heels to match human posture, she checked her height by the marks on the doorframe. Standing like this, she was seventy-one inches tall—three inches taller than her previous body. It would make her stand out, but wasn’t an unheard of height for a human female. Her shoulders sketched a shrug.

Her skin was—once again—her native swirl of dark chocolate and deep red; she admired it for a moment before resigning herself to a paler, more uniform future.

It would be so much easier to pass as negro, she could probably make the changes to her stripes to match that shade in a matter of weeks. But unless society had changed drastically, she’d eventually have to assume a white identity to be able to wield any kind of influence, and that would take a year of painstaking work. It was frustrating that skin color was so much harder to influence than changes to features and musculature. For the first time in her new body, she vowed again ...

I will not let skin-color injustice continue.

It had been Edward’s dream, but she owed that much to justice alone.

Head, legs and arms all aligned roughly with the human phenotype, but then, she could name dozens of species conforming to that shape in the history of encounters with her own people—even without including the other primates on this planet. But her prehensile tail peeking over her shoulder ... that was a major difference. She swished it back and forth, experimenting. It was a bit longer than her last one. A loose dress would be enough to hide the telltale difference. She smirked; thinking how Edward would have groaned at the pun then caught herself.

Edward would probably be gone or dead too of course.

Otherwise he’d be here.

She pushed on, devising a plan for concealing her non-human traits. The body she could cover with clothing. The peculiar joints of her hands, wrists and lower arms could be concealed with sleeves and gloves. Her gait from different muscle and joint structure could be disguised with her long practice in human mimicry.

But her face was the main problem. Her eyes were all wrong—her features too sharp. Unfortunately, she might have to settle for makeup and a veil or the concealing shadows of the evening for now.

Her internal nutrient supply would deplete soon, and she didn’t have enough time to make any major changes. But after she fed, she might do something about the nose.

The hunger was distracting. She glanced at the pod to see if it had finished breaking down into its consumable form

The pod case had fallen in on itself—shrinking to a gourd-shaped container the size of a gallon milk bottle. She walked to the crèche, took the pod and swirled the liquid inside. It held all the nutrient value left in the crèche. She lay down and spread her legs—moving the pod to her life orifice—and took the spout inside. Its nourishment flowed into her bagua for absorption.

Bagua—she recalled—had been Edward’s name for her life orifice.

'The circle of eternal giving and receiving' he'd said, making it sound like a joke, but he had meant it too. Edward had been an information sponge and something of a philosopher, unusual traits for a man of his time and place, even if—or maybe ‘especially since’—he was as rich as a Rockefeller.

She doubted anyone else in the county would have ever heard the Chinese word. She supposed it was better than cloaca or any of the terms for what a human woman held between her legs.

But she would think of it as her bagua to honor his memory.

She drew the nutrient solution deep inside herself using the shaft and filaments of her inner bagua. The proteins and building block chemicals in the soup would have meant nothing to a human, but for her they meant life. The sensation of strength pouring into her body relaxed her.

When the pod was empty at last, she pushed it all the way inside with her fingers then caressed the last bit of sustenance from it with the filaments of her inner shaft while enzymes finished breaking it down—turning it into energy and raw material for her transformation.

When finished, she stood and returned to the mirror. She considered choosing a new name ... 'Boadicia' or 'Hypatia' perhaps ... but that might require some research into what was fashionable.

First, the nose.

Hers performed the same general functions that a human’s would, of course, but her sense of smell was much more developed. It was even more efficient than a bloodhound’s but able to detect a far wider spectrum of information.

The trick would be changing the shape without losing any of the effectiveness. In her mind, she flipped through characteristics that would be a match for her current coloring. It couldn’t be too flat without losing efficiency because of the special scent and pheromone receptors she needed. Also, she wouldn’t want it to be exactly what the previous branch had chosen.

These fashion statements were important.

Her current nose—soon to change—wrinkled as she smiled.

At last, she settled on a North African variant—for now. Long and pronounced, a touch aquiline with enough width to provide plenty of room for all the needed equipment, it would be both beautiful and efficient. And she would have plenty of strength left to change her other facial features to match.

Sculpting from within, she began. Her face broadened and her cheekbones rose as her new nose took on a more human shape. She plumped her lips and adjusted the lines of them. All the rearrangements took hours. The long almond-shaped eyes would have to stay pretty much as they were until she had more time. She’d loved the dark, lustrous color and lashes of the earlier branch’s. Perhaps she