The Engineer ReConditioned Part 28

"Yes, I did."

"I have an interest in parasites, and I have come here to study them."

Beck looked at her. The only parasites he knew anything about were sheep ticks.

Erlin went on, "There is a parasite here with a very strange life-cycle. Its eggs hatch out in the mountain springs."

"I don't see the relevance."

"Well, parasites have all sorts of strange strategies for survival, breeding ... sometimes they use more than one host, though I don't think this one does. There's one on earth that actually gets into an ant, makes the ant climb to the top of a blade of gra.s.s and there cling on until a pa.s.sing sheep eats it. The sheep is its next host you see - "

"On Earth sheep eat ants?"

"No, gra.s.s."

Beck snorted his disbelief. "If you're not going to tell me why you want a blood sample, just say so. I don't need this bulls.h.i.+t. I had enough of it in the Church."

"No, really, I'm not lying."

Just then there came a coughing snort from the shade of the heather trees. This was followed by a low moan and a raspy panting. Erlin pulled her weapon from its holster and looked around carefully. Beck glanced with idle curiosity at little flas.h.i.+ng red lights on the gun. After a moment he said, "No need to worry yet. That's only a sugar dog. Save your worrying for when we get beyond the trees. It's flockland there." To himself he muttered, "Gra.s.s indeed."

The sugar dog came out of the trees far to their right, paralleling their course. Erlin stared at it in fascination, took a device from one of her pockets and pointed it at the creature.

"What are you doing?"

"Recording images of it."

Beck studied the glinting little device she held. It was just the kind of thing Morage would like to steal. How it must burn him that she had escaped him.

"Why?" he asked her.

"I've never seen one before. It looks like a cross between a bloodhound and a bull frog."

The words were familiar to Beck, but not in that combination. Bull he knew as a word for untruth, just as he knew of the little black frogs that lived in the southern swamps, that 'hound' was another word for dog, and that 'blood' was red in his veins and green in the translucent flesh of sugar dogs. So much was different about Earth. Perhaps if he had not been so wrapped up in his own concerns he would have been fascinated by this. Perhaps she hadn't been lying about the sheep.

The sugar dog huffed and wuffled through the leaves near them as they followed the trail, then it moved away to the West. In the distance, on the faces of the hills, flocks of sheep could be seen hunting, but they were no danger to sugar dogs. Sugar dogs were as poisonous as the plants they ate.

"Do you know why they are called sugar dogs?" Erlin asked.

"Because they like sweets," said Beck.

"Sugar kills them though."

"Yes, it also kills anyone caught feeding it to them."

Erlin waited for an explanation.

He told her, "They are protected by Church and civil law. Anyone caught feeding any form of sugar to a sugar dog is executed by posting."

"Posting?"

"Chained to a flockland post."

"Sorry, I don't understand."

"You will soon." He pointed ahead to a distant object jutting up out of the leaves. They walked in silence until they reached it. Here was a steel post cemented into the ground, from which hung a chain and a steel collar. All around it the leaves were trampled and scattered with chewed human bones. At the base of the post lay half a human skull that had been sc.r.a.ped empty. Erlin quickly grasped what it meant to be posted.

"The sheep don't attack Baptisers, so the Church tells us. I don't believe everything the Church says." With that Beck drew his gun and checked it, as he had done a number of times since leaving the church. He also made sure the sh.e.l.ls in his belt were easily accessible, despite the Gurnard pot hanging at his side.

"Isn't that a bit awkward?" asked Erlin, indicating the pot.

"The discomfort would be greater if I did not carry it," said Beck. "Let's keep moving." He gestured with his gun and then kept it in his hand as they continued walking.

The sun was a blue-green ellipse on the horizon with the box moon in silhouette just beside it, when they saw their first sheep close to. A flock of twenty of them had trapped a ground skate and were levering up its wings with their claws and biting off chunks of fishy flesh.

"Sheep are nothing like this on Earth," said Erlin, then regretted speaking when two sheep turned their curled-horned heads towards her and exposed yellow fangs.

"Quiet. Keep walking," Beck whispered.

The sheep returned to their easy meal and did not pursue.

"Their heads are like the heads of Earth sheep and they have hooves on their feet, but on Earth, sheep are quadruped. They don't have claws." Erlin s.h.i.+vered. "They're like something out of Christian fable: Satan, or satyrs."

"You've never seen our sheep before?"

"No."

"Surely, when you came to the church?"

"I was dropped off there by air transport directly from the port."

Beck was vaguely aware that somewhere there was a s.p.a.ceport, and he had often seen the transports flying overhead and the occasional flash of a star drive starting up out beyond the moon. It had been his intention to find out about these things. Then the impulse had taken away all his choices. It made him sad and it made him angry. I am only just become a man, he thought, and my life is not to be used to my purpose. He considered suicide and awoke pain in his guts.

"Tell me about parasites," he said.

"Will you listen?"

"I will there," he said, pointing at a low stone sheep sanctuary - a building that in another place might have used for protecting sheep from predators, but not here.

Within the sanctuary, c.o.ke was provided for a fire but there was no kindling to set it burning. Erlin started the fire with something that flared red and left burning bars of afterimages in Beck's eyes. He placed the Gurnard pot near the fire and removed the bung. A dead-fish smell filled the sanctuary, but movement in the pot showed that the Gurnard was not dead. Thankfully the smell of the burning c.o.ke soon displaced that smell. Beck and Erlin sat then before the fire and ate from their respective provisions.

"You know, any fish from Earth would have died in such a container."

"Why?"

"Earth fish require oxygenated water. Your Gurnards require no oxygen whatsoever. Oxygen is in fact deleterious to them, which is why they seek out still water at the end of their journey."

"Journey?"

"I was going to tell you about parasites."

"Do so, then."

"I am not entirely sure of some aspects. I don't know why there is only one Baptiser for each church. I can only presume messages are pa.s.sed by pheromones or some such."

"This is about me," said Beck.

"Yes."

He nodded and Erlin continued. "I'll describe to you a life-cycle. You know what I mean when I say that?"

"I am not a complete idiot."

"Very well. As I said: The eggs hatch out in the mountain springs. After that males and females travel downstream, in water and on land, to the richer feeding grounds in the lowlands ... where the churches are. After it has reached first maturity the female finds a pond - usually recently vacated by another female - and there starts laying unfertilized eggs out of which hatch the neuter parasites. These infect the water supply and end up being ingested by most life forms that drink from the pond. These neuters grow inside their hosts and can, to a certain extent, control them. The neuters are in turn controlled by the females, though I've yet to work out the mechanism of that ... Second maturity for the female impels it to return to the hatching grounds to lay more eggs there. It is carried by a neuter-controlled host to do this. I believe that at one time the only hosts were sugar dogs, though I am relying on someone else's research for that information."

"I'm a sugar dog," said Beck. He wanted to explain to Erlin that it felt too dangerous to say outright that he understood.

She nodded and continued her narrative."Sugar dogs vomit food into the ponds. The Clergy bring consecrated offerings to the tank room. All are infected."

Did that relieve them all of responsibility, Beck wondered, but he said nothing.

"All this while the males had been feeding in the same areas. The males have a higher resistivity to oxygen and feed mainly on land, on the various blanket funguses. When they reach maturity - they only have one kind - they head for the hatching grounds as well. Males and females from the same hatching do not return at the same time, which prevents interbreeding. Upon arriving at the hatching grounds, the females get their neuter carriers to place them in the waters. In those waters they lay eggs, usually attaching them to the bottom, to rocks, in the sand. The males, by the time they are mature, are usually averse to water and too big to get all the way to the hatching grounds. They release sperm packets which travel alone to the mountain springs to burst in the water in which eggs have been laid."

"Water worms," said Beck. "No one I know ever had a reasonable explanation for that. In some places they call them suicide worms. It never made any sense to me."

"Well, you have the sense now. They have one purpose in their brief lives and that is it."

"What are the males?"

"We saw one today."

Beck nodded. "Of course - ground skate." He felt slightly sick. So there was something inside him, jamming its spines into his guts. He realised some other things as well.

"The Eucharist, that's when we get infected."

"Quite likely." Erlin slipped into her sleeping bag and rested her head back against her pack. "I imagine that right about now the Wife of Ovens is having the ponds around the church netted in search of the Reborn Gurnard. Of course it won't be found until that one," she pointed at the pot, "is out of the area. Adolescent Gurnards don't encroach on a mature Gurnard's territory. Perhaps in the past they were killed, or perhaps it is because the hosts are all used up. I don't know."

Beck rolled himself in his blanket. He had the answer; the eighth moon netting of the ponds and the killing of the Gurnard Ghosts. That then was just the killing of immature Gurnards. He told Erlin about this.

"Yes, that makes sense," she replied. "Once established in its territory the new gurnard sends out the neuter-controlled hosts to kill off the compet.i.tion, and keeps killing off the compet.i.tion. I take it this netting and killing is continuous?"

"Every eighth moon," Beck confirmed. Then he asked, "What about the neuters left behind - from the old gurnard?"

"They die, their purpose served. Most of their hosts survive it, and survive to become hosts to the next Holy Gurnard."

Beck thought about the priest coughing up blood in the church and it took him a long time to get to sleep. He lay there listening to the sheep sharpening their claws on the stone walls and tried to come to terms with harsh truths.

There were no windows for morning light, but it did filter through cracks in the walls. Beck was beginning to feel discomfort as the impetus to move on grew in strength, when the door crashed open and figures crowded into the single room. For a moment he thought that sheep had learned to operate the locks and in panic groped for his gun. A heavy boot came down on his wrist and the b.u.t.t of a heather wood staff pressed on the centre of his chest to hold him down.

"Do not struggle, Baptiser. I do not wish to strike you."

Beck recognised the two thugs from the church. One of them had Erlin pinned in her sleeping bag, the barrel of a gun, much like Beck's own, pressed against her forehead. After them, momentarily silhouetted in the doorway, came Morage, grinning unpleasantly. Morage was a master of unpleasant grins.

"Oh Baptiser, you have a travelling companion. Even the Wife will not berate me for my actions now. The Baptiser must seek loneliness and purity in prayer," he said.

"Sugar dog c.r.a.p," said Beck. The thug holding him pinned was uncomfortable with such blasphemous profanity. Morage turned his attention to the thug who was holding Erlin.

"Let her up."

Erlin kicked out of her sleeping bag and stood up carefully, her gaze locked on the barrel of the gun.

"Now, Earther," said Morage. "I want you to undo your belt and drop your weapon to the floor." This Erlin did and Morage grinned his unpleasant grin again. "Now I want you to empty your pockets of all those wonderful gadgets." Erlin began to do this also, dropping device after device on her pack.

"This is not about religion. This is robbery," said Beck.

"Be silent, Sirus Beck, I will deal with you presently," said Morage without turning.

"You would delay me?" asked Beck, expecting some result of his query, perhaps some wince of pain from their captors.

Morage turned and grinned nastily at him. "I suppose she has told you all about the parasites?" Morage's grin got nastier when he saw Beck's surprise. "Do you think such knowledge would be lost to us? The Wives know, as do all members of the Inquisition. It is best that we are the only ones to know. You see, we keep ourselves pure, and we never truly take part in the Eucharist."

"You are free of neuter parasites," said Erlin.

Morage glanced at her.

"Yes, as are my friends here," he gestured at the two thugs, "which means there are things we can do that so many others in the Church cannot do."

Erlin shot a warning look at Beck, but he did not need it. He knew that Morage intended to kill the both of them. He noted that the thugs were uncomfortable with what was just beginning to occur to them. Well they might be; there probably had not been a Baptiser in their lifetimes, and now they might be told to kill one.

"Strip that garment from her," Morage instructed the one who held Erlin at gunpoint. "I don't want to have missed anything before she goes to the post."

Lying where he was Beck had a view of the door and realised that no-one else was looking in that direction. He swore at his captor to keep his attention. The thug became even more uncomfortable. The other thug was reaching for Erlin when Morage screamed.

The sheep had come in quickly and sunk its yellow teeth into Morage's upper arm. Beck knocked the staff from his chest, caught the foot of his captor and shoved him off-balance. There was a flash of red between Erlin and the other. A hand, severed and smoking at the wrist, thudded on the floor still clutching a gun. Beck came up onto his feet holding his own gun as he was grabbed. He sunk the barrel deep into a fat belly and pulled the trigger once. With a m.u.f.fled boom and a horrible grunting sound, his attacker went up off his feet before thumping face down on the floor. Beck turned, saw the sheep fleeing from the sound of the weapon, saw Morage on his knees cradling an arm from which all the flesh had been stripped between shoulder and elbow. He was screaming. Beck pulled the trigger again and Morage flipped backwards out of the door, most of his head left on one of the door posts. One shot left. White shapes beyond the door baaing and snarling over Morage's corpse. Time. Beck turned. Erlin was back up against the wall, her face pale. The one left was trying to take his gun from his severed right hand with his left, while the stump of his right wrist squirted blood. He looked up, began to yell, the bullet went into his chest then out from his back, folding out one shoulder blade like an escape hatch. The impact threw him at Erlin's feet where he made bubbling sounds and died. Time. Beck cracked open his gun, pulled hot sh.e.l.l cases from their chambers, the skin of his finger-tips sizzling, put in three fresh rounds. He did not allow himself to think of anything else until he had done this. Then he stepped towards the door, shooting the first sheep as it came in, trapping the head of the second in the door as it tried to follow, shooting it through the eye then managing to get the door closed against the rest of the flock. Locking the door.

"Sirus ... Sirus."

The thumping and battering against the door was shortlived. Beck rested there with his forehead against the wood, trying to get his breathing under control. s.h.i.+t, that had been close. When sheep went into a feeding frenzy, G.o.d help anyone who got in the way.

"Sirus."

What the h.e.l.l does she want now? Look after herself. Hah.

Beck turned and regarded Erlin. She stood in the middle of the room, distaste writ on her features. She pointed down by the fire. It hit him at once; the wrenching tearing in his gut. The pot was spilled, and the Gurnard lay on the stone, bulbous stalked eyes blinking, mouth gaping occasionally, spines fanned out around its head. Before he knew what he was doing Sirus scooped it up and put it in its pot, oblivious to the spines piercing his fingers. He then emptied his water canteen in it. It wasn't enough. He took up the pot and headed for the door.

"They'll kill you if you go out there. I'm sorry about this," said Erlin.

What is she talking about?