Morte (26 page)

Mort(e) blinked once to find himself in the Martinis’ living room, standing before the mirror. But in the reflection, Daniel’s son Michael stared at him. He wore the translator, his eyes vacant like a doll’s.

SEBASTIAN
, he said. Then he repeated it, only this time stretching each syllable out in a screeching sound, like the twisting beams of a collapsing building.

The noise made Mort(e) wince. Sheba’s barking cut through the sound. When Mort(e) opened his eyes, he was in the basement again, his safe place. Sheba was with him once more. There was a subtlety in her voice that he recognized. It was the same impatient tone she used on that morning when she gave birth to her little ones. She was begging him to understand something, and losing hope that he would.

The sound of it nearly made him weep like a human. He searched for a way out. The staircase was gone. The windows
sealed up. The lights dimmed. Sheba vanished. In her place stood a bearded man painted in shimmering silver and dressed in a long robe. The ring floating around his head made Mort(e) recognize him: St. Jude, the little man from the medallion worn by the old female dog, Olive. He stared at Mort(e) with metal eyes, the pupils smoothed out.

MORT(E) COULD FEEL
breath moving in and out of him. The oxygen permeated his entire body and then released from random apertures along his sides. He could move several appendages at once—he waved arms above his head and stretched another pair of arms that were linked to his waist. There was nothing unnatural about it. He accepted that this was how he was put together. He realized that he was experiencing things from the perspective of an insect. An ant.

The Queen.

A shiver of chemical signals told him that he was in a chamber. There were others arrayed about him, standing in a semicircle. Massive worker ants. The ants held smaller ones—baby Alphas,
yes
—in their jaws. Their chemicals made contact with Mort(e)’s antennae, stimulating his brain with scents, sounds, written words, throbbing pain, colors—all at once.

One of the workers offered a little one for him to inspect. Mort(e) extended his claws to the small creature. He cradled it. The Alpha spoke to him in rudimentary chemical phrases, signaling recognition and acquiescence to authority. And acceptance of whatever fate was in store for her.

Mort(e) understood that he was not simply communicating with the Queen—he was living her memories, absorbing each
moment in her thousands of years of life. This larva he held would be given the same data. It would spill outward from the Queen’s brain.

Moments from her life flowed past him. A march through the desert. An animal devoured by a horde of the Queen’s daughters. A tunnel winding into itself, then veering into an infinite number of directions. A parade of human artifacts taken from the surface—pages torn from books, a match, a thimble.

And then there was another Queen before him, a sickly thing, dying. The Misfit, Daughter of the Lost One.

As their antennae touched, Mort(e) felt the agony of thousands of years of despair and solitude. The current of memories stopped, coagulating into a pool around him. Mort(e) could not control himself—he sank his jaws into his (her) mother’s head and tore it off. The claws scratched at the massive fatal wound. The Misfit’s body slumped over.

Mort(e) saw everything now.

He felt the Queen’s rage against the humans. It welled up inside and became a part of her. The anger stitched her exoskeleton together, kept her blood pumping all these years. Mort(e) couldn’t breathe. It was like a choir of dying human children screaming in his ear, or a white-hot flame sucking in all the oxygen around it. The Queen lived with this every moment. She
re
lived it every moment. She was shackled to the past. There was no rest. Mort(e) tried to scream. The children’s broken voices burst from his mouth. Cries for help were no good here. He was lost. His body would be a shell, his mind absorbed into the Colony. A drop of ink in a pool of water, dispersed into nothingness.

He thought of Sheba dying somewhere. Sheba. Sheba would save him. If not for that thought, Mort(e) would have forgotten everything and melted away. He closed the jaws of his
mechanical insect mouth. He had to speak like an ant, think like an ant. He felt himself choking. But he concentrated and at last spoke again in the chemical language of the ants:

Requesting description of EMSAH syndrome
.

A VIRUS ENTERS
a bacterium. The virus multiplies. The bacterium adapts. The virus overtakes it.

The bacterium dies.

A virus enters a bacterium. Many viruses enter many bacteria. Many bacteria die. Many survive. Their defensive systems adapt, destroying the virus. But the bacteria have changed. They move differently, react to outsiders with more hostility. They cling to those that are similar, exchanging nutrients with them. They grope for the light as one.

The bacteria evolve.

A SCHOOL OF
fish. Moving as a unit, silver strands of thread in the water. They are starving. Hunted. Drawn to an ancient place. Mindlessly driven by their senses. They are picked off by predators. By disease. By exhaustion. They arrive at this sacred location, the place of their birth. Their senses confirm it, the chemicals pouring through their gills. Their brains pulse with excitement. They begin the ritual as one. Ravenous, they mate, their sperm and eggs exploding into the water, christening it with the chemical signals of their clan.

PRIMATES DESCEND FROM
trees. The leaves blot out the sun. They gather to watch a battle between the alpha male and a challenger. The alpha has ruled for three seasons, like his father before him. But this is a different time, when the trees have
begun to die out. The rains have become less frequent. Predators have grown more aggressive. They smell weakness.

The challenger waits for his opportunity. When the alpha lunges for him, the challenger dodges and pounces. The sycophants jump with delight, with the same mindless glee they would show for the alpha. The challenger seizes the advantage and pummels the leader until provoking a desperate squeal for mercy. The alpha is banished. His blood stinks of defeat. The challenger becomes the new leader. The others whoop and holler. They reach out to touch the coat of the new king. The females fawn over him, clawing at one another to claim him. The little ones offer scraps of food. The new leader holds his hands out to his subjects. He will protect them. But he will also prevent the next challenger from arising.

A MAN KNEELS
in prayer, wearing sandals and a robe. His village is under attack. An ant infestation. The elders have gone mad. They have already taken the whores to be sacrificed. But that has not satisfied their gods. So they took some of the wives, the disagreeable ones who blamed the men for the invasion. Now they have taken children to the altar. Screaming little ones, with scraped knees and elbows. The man’s daughter is dead at the steps of the altar, the last sacrifice before sundown. The high priest smears her entrails on his forehead, then wipes the gore onto the heads and shoulders of the firstborn males. A symbol of strength and purity. The others beat drums. The women wail and lament. The man is sad but hopeful. Surely this will be enough to sate the gods’ thirst for blood. Surely he will see his daughter again. They will race to each other across a breezy field of wheat. They will embrace in the shade of a passing cloud.

Yojimbo had said this would happen. Mort(e) had gone as deep as he could, and now backed out of the layers one at a time. He passed through the membrane that led to the Queen’s lair. One moment, he was in her head, surveying her empire. The next, he was one of her daughters, a baby Alpha being presented for her communion ritual. The Queen held him, her antennae probing. And then she lifted him to her jaws and crunched down, slicing his soft exoskeleton in half. Alarms sounded. But then another signal came through from the Queen, ordering him to be still, to embrace this essential role for the Colony. Death would bring forth new life.

MORT(E)’S MOUTH OPENED,
but he could not speak. He was in the basement again. He was alone, though he could still smell Sheba. And Michael.

He swallowed.

DARKNESS AGAIN. ENOUGH
light to see. The bunker is secure. The iron scent of blood hangs in the air. Sticking to fur and skin. A bullet has grazed Mort(e)’s right hand. Bruises and cuts on his body from the fall through the ceiling. No pain yet. That comes later.

Culdesac reloads his gun. The others have their orders. Red Sphinx soldiers collect weapons from the dead humans. Mort(e) approaches him. Culdesac does not need to hear any encouraging words. Mort(e) stands nearby until Culdesac finishes with
the gun. “They killed Tiberius,” Culdesac says. Voice all gravelly. He has not used the name
Tiberius
in months. Only
Socks
.

“This one’s alive, sir,” someone says. The soldiers gather around a dying human. The sound of congested, labored breathing. Frightened, exhausted eyes gaze up from the ground. There is a piece of metal on the man’s chest. A necklace.