Story Excerpt: Partners

Shifaz scanned the room, ticking off its contents against the inventory in his mind: desks, chairs, the hum of near-silent tech—and just two warm bodies, his and Fred Kemmer’s. He crept over to Kemmer’s workstation, leaning in to whisper with a sibilant urgency, “Sir, Johnson’s a mole. May I terminate him?”

Kemmer’s nod came with the solemn weight of command: “Yes, proceed.”

Kemmer watched as the Antarian slinked out of the office with a flutter of colorful ceremonial robes. For weeks, the duo had been keyed into Johnson’s duplicity, but Antar’s convoluted protocol demanded this charade. Now, tradition appeased, Shifaz was free to expedite the matter. And expedite he would—once given leave, Antarians made swift work of closures. By twilight, this chapter would be sealed.

Kemmer tipped in his chair and sighed. Being the Interworld Corporation’s local manager had more compensations than headaches, despite the rigid ritualism of the native society. Since most of the local population was under his thumb, counterespionage was miraculously effective. Take the recent case of Johnson—a model spy, adept and crafty, yet exposed within two days of setting foot in Vaornia.

Kemmer closed his eyes. Under his administration, there would be a sharp rise in the mortality curve for spies detected in the Vaornia-Lagash-Timargh triangle. With the native judicial system dancing to IC’s tune, his hand moved unchecked, so long as appearances were immaculately maintained. Spies gambled with their lives, fully aware of the stakes when dabbling in corporate affairs.

Kemmer yawned, stretched, turned his attention to more important matters.

Albert Johnson rummaged through the barren food tin before he pitched it aside. Stocky and ordinary, with a face as open and unremarkable as his moniker, he made for an ideal investigator. His current predicament, however, left him standing out, despite his efforts to blend in by snapping photos of the local Sanitary Processional like any run-of-the-mill sightseer.

He’d been planted near the Vaornia Arm since the early part of the day, staking out the path to Lagash, and dusk was creeping in. Impatiently, he muttered about the native’s loose grasp on punctuality—a trait not unique to Antar, though here it was honed to maddening perfection. A rumbling belly didn’t help his mood. While the locals might shrug off hunger for days, Albert’s solid frame craved consistent refueling, and it was loudly voicing its discontent.

Glancing around the worn path through the dimming outline of Devan Forest’s Vaornia Arm, he noted the Sanitary Processional wrapping up their day’s toils, hurrying their daks along. The coming night was no friend; the nocturnal creatures cared little for distinctions between litter drop-offs and potential meals.

Using the forest’s edge as a refuse chute suited the Vaornese well as predatory wildlife rarely left leftovers. And given the elaborate waste disposal rituals minus any plumbing infrastructure to speak of, one might forgive their apathy towards the occasional disappearance of an unwary visitor or native.

Albert didn’t consider the forest’s potential handiness for making certain problems disappear until three natives wielding knives peeled off from the Sanitary Processional and converged on him. They came from three directions, effectively boxing him in, and Albert realized with a sick certainty that he had been double-crossed, that Shifaz, instead of being an informant for him, was working for the IC. Albert turned to face the nearest native, tensing his muscles for battle.

Then he saw the Zark.

It stepped out from the forest dark and time froze. For a heartbeat, the charging Vaornese were statues. Then panic kicked in, and they bolted back to civilization.

They might have stayed and finished their work, but at the moment the Zark was energizing a toothy horror that humans called a Bandersnatch—an insane combination of talons, teeth and snakelike neck mounted on a crocodilian body that exuded an odor of putrefaction from the carrion upon which it normally fed. It had been brain-dead for several hours, but neither the natives nor Albert knew that.

It was a tribute to a Zark’s ability to maintain pseudo-life in a Bandersnatch carcass that the knifemen fled and a similar panic seized the late travelers on the road. Albert stared with horrified fascination at the monstrosity for several seconds before he, too, fled. Any number of natives with knives were preferable to a Bandersnatch. His initial freeze was merely the absence of the ingrained survival reactions, shaped by eons among Antar’s formidable fauna, that he simply did not possess.

Albert was some twenty meters behind the rearmost native, and, though not designed for speed, was actually gaining on him when his foot struck a loose cobblestone in the road. Arms flailing, legs pumping desperately to balance his toppling mass, Albert fought manfully against the forces of gravity and inertia.

He lost.

His head connected with another upturned cobble. His body twitched once and then relaxed limply and unconscious upon the dusty road.

The Zark winced a little at the sight, certain that this curious creature had damaged itself seriously.

It started forward on its four walking legs. The Zark wasn’t certain what it could do, but perhaps it could help.

Albert was mercifully unconscious as it bent over him to inspect his prone body with a purple-lidded pineal eye that was blue with concern. The Zark noted the bruise upon his forehead and marked his regular breathing. Deciding the human was largely intact, the creature remained, driven by curiosity. Humans were new to its history and its kind didn’t often stray from the seclusion of the woods.

Albert stirred before the Zark remembered its present condition. Since the Bandersnatch no longer needed to consume in its essentially dead condition, it wasn’t useful to consume Albert, but it was energizing a Bandersnatch, and, like all Zarks, it was a purist. A living Bandersnatch would undoubtedly drool happily at the sight of such a tempting tidbit, so the Zark opened the three-foot jaws and drooled.

Albert turned his head and his gaze met rows of serrated teeth framed by a triad of sinister eyes. A globule of spittle landed with a plop, heralding his doom as the monstrous visage inched closer. Overwhelmed once more, darkness claimed him.

This peculiar behavior warranted further scrutiny. Intrigued, the Zark extended a shimmering tendril from the mouth of its Bandersnatch form, delicately weaving it through Albert’s skin to the optic nerve and into his brain. The intricate network embraced the complexity of the man’s mind, an empty vessel ripe for habitation. The creature was beautifully complex, and, more important, untenanted. He would make an interesting host.

Without delay, the Zark abandoned its guise as the energy demands were too steep. The Bandersnatch slumped to the ground with a soft sound as the Zark pulled itself free and enveloped Albert in a quicksilver sheath. It absorbed into him, spreading tendrils along blood vessels and nerves, weaving itself into his tissue.

Time was critical. The Zark had to acclimate swiftly, or risk losing its newfound host. However, this human’s composition required extensive adjustment, more than the Zark could manage with its waning energy. It tapped into Albert’s surfeit of body fat, borrowing for this nascent symbiosis.

As Albert’s body contorted through the transformation, he abruptly came to. Minutes had ticked by but the union was already complete. His senses returned; the Bandersnatch lay lifeless by his side. Pushing himself up, he staggered towards Vaornia, too dazed to run.

Unscathed, he marveled at his survival. There were no wounds, only a deep unease and questions about what had slain his would-be predator. And hunger.

Inside the city walls, Vaornia assaulted Albert’s sight, hearing and smell simultaneously. Natives slithered past, garbed in long robes of garish color. Sibilant voices cut through the evening air like thin-edged knives clashing against the grating screech of the ungreased wooden wheels of dak carts. Odors of smoke, cooking, spices, perfume and corruption mingled with the all-pervasive musky stench of unwashed Vaornese bodies.

It was old to Albert, but new and exciting to the stowaway Zark. Its taps on Albert’s sense organs brought a flood of new sensation the Zark had never experienced. It marveled at the crowded buildings studded with jutting balconies and ornamental carvings. It stared at the dak caravans maneuvering with ponderous delicacy through the swarming crowds. It reveled in the colorful banners and awnings of the tiny shops lining the streets, and the fluttering robes of the natives. Color was something new to the Zark. Its previous hosts had been color blind, and the symbiont wallowed in an orgy of bright sensation.

Albert might have found humor in the Zark’s wide-eyed wonder, its tourist-like enchantment mirroring his own façade. But Albert had no awareness of the Zark, nor mind for distractions; his focus was singularly on his target—Shifaz, the turncoat who’d nearly trapped him in a deadly snare.

Muscling through crowds with blatant disregard for local manners as advised by IC guidelines, he forged plowed toward the Kazlak market where Shifaz plied his trade as a guide.

The Zark busied itself internally while sampling this visual feast. It methodically mapped and audited Albert’s physiology without disrupting its sensory indulgence. The host was in fair shape; repairs were minor—a routine job beneath the layers of fat.

In quiet contemplation of its next move, the Zark tackled a cholesterol blockage within Albert’s artery, substituting weakened spots with its own cellular material—a temporary reinforcement until Albert’s body could compensate. Its grasp of human anatomy was rough, but its instinct for anomalies was keen. Repairing the host brought satisfaction; after all, to be helpful was in the Zark’s very nature, and this was its new home now.

Shifaz was at his regular stand, practicing his normal profession of tour guide. As Albert approached, he was in the midst of describing the attractions of the number two tour to a small knot of fascinated visitors.

“And then, in the center of the Kazlak, we will come to the Hall of the Brides—Antar’s greatest marriage market. It has been arranged for you to actually see a mating auction in progress, but we must hurry or—” Shifaz looked up to see Albert shouldering the tourists aside. His yellow eyes widened and his hand darted to his girdle and came up with a knife.