I caught snippets of the broadcast as I made my way to the train.
Valia met up with me in the street, straightening her outfit.
“Did he say a Therezian is here? How is that possible?” she asked.
Like the clones, Therezians had been the shock troops of the civil war. When Naked Guy had started the war, he gave one enemy faction tanks and chemical weapons and biological weapons and clone soldiers. He gave the other side a single Therezian.
If I had been there to wager, I would have put my money on the Therezian.
I didn’t really have a religion, but if there was a Creator Species somewhere, they started with the Therezians. Then, to celebrate building the perfect race, they got stinking drunk. The next day, when they were hungover, they built the rest of us.
The only reason the Therezians had not dominated the galaxy was because they had no technology. None. Species create technology in response to their environment and to overcome their shortcomings.
Therezians needed nothing. They had no shortcomings.
On the train everyone was talking about it and the loudspeaker report was growing more and more shrill.
“Is it a practical joke?” Valia asked.
“If it is, I’m going to arrest that person,” I said.
I found myself checking my guns for some unknown reason. Guns wouldn’t do anything to a Therezian.
“Hank, are you going to fight the giant?” someone asked on the train.
I saw everyone looking at me expectantly.
“I doubt there is one,” I mumbled.
Outside the docks, the streets were jammed with people.
At one point there had only been a thousand Therezians roaming the entire galaxy. I had since heard their home planet had been destroyed to prevent any more of them from leaving, but I wasn’t sure.
“Move!” I shouted. I pushed through the herd with ease, parting the mob with my arms. Valia was close behind me.
A hundred voices were calling out asking questions. These weren’t just curious spectators. They were worried. This was just what I needed. The Boards were going to crash again.
Whoever was making this news report was going to—
And then I saw him.
He must have been about fifty feet tall, dwarfing all the buildings on either side of the street, and he was walking this way.
How did anything that big even get to Belvaille? Could he fit in a freighter?
There were screams and yelling and pure terror. I didn’t look back, but I didn’t have to. From the sounds of their voices fading, the throng of people was beating a hasty retreat.
The Therezian wore black. A vest, aged and torn. Shorts that might have once been longer pants. Bare feet. Bare arms. Therezians only had three fingers and no joints on them. The species were sexless from what I had seen in the past, but they had overall masculine physiques—just blown up to gargantuan size.
I heard an electric whirring beside me and Zadeck, in his golden wheelchair, drove out in the street in front of me. What was he doing?
“Wallow?” Zadeck creaked.
No! It couldn’t be. Wallow was never that big. Wallow was sucked out into space seventy-eight years ago. It couldn’t possibly be him.
“Zadeck,” the Therezian boomed.
That voice had given me ten thousand nightmares. It was him!
“Wallow!” Zadeck repeated, full of emotion. “You’ve returned! I-I missed you. Everything has changed. But you’re back!”
He was still more than two blocks away.
Wallow had grown somehow. I remember him being maybe thirty-five feet tall. Was it just perspective? No, he was definitely larger. His arms were bigger. His legs. That ugly, rotten face with its ridges and bones. Had he only been a child when he was here before?
Zadeck had been Wallow’s old boss—more than that. Wallow was almost a pet of Zadeck’s. And now Wallow was back. Zadeck was the King of Belvaille.
Garm might reign in City Hall, surrounded by her fortress, but Wallow could knock it all down like it was tinfoil. Governor, City Council, Supreme Kommilaire, all that stuff was meaningless now that Zadeck had Wallow again.
Guess I’d be retiring sooner than I thought.
I turned back and saw the street was indeed clear except for a few reporters, Rendrae, and—
“Why are you still here?” I asked Valia.
“Because you are,” she said calmly.
“Get out of here. That thing is a psychopath.”
“I’m not scared,” Valia said defiantly.
“Then you’re stupid. I’m scared. Now go.”
“Boss,” Wallow said. Yet there was something about his tone.
He took what looked like a half-dozen steps, and jumped into the sky!
I had never seen Wallow jump before. I had to crane my head back as far as it would go to follow him.
BAM!
Wallow came down with a crash and the shockwave flung me back onto the bare metal road.
All the roads in Belvaille were sprayed with a tacky substance to provide grip and compression. When it got damaged, we simply sprayed more. Wallow’s splashdown ripped up the entire road and flung it against the buildings where it collected in heaps.
I managed to look back and see Valia land about twenty feet behind me. She scrambled to her feet and ran like she was custom built for running. I’d never seen anyone sprint so fast.
Zadeck.
Wallow slowly straightened and I realized he had landed on his former boss. There wasn’t the smallest sign of him left. Whether he was stuck to the bottom of Wallow’s feet or crushed into a black hole, I didn’t know.
The monster was ten feet away from me and I was prone on my back. I couldn’t get up, let alone run away. And even if I could, Wallow was faster than anything on this station.
Wallow stared at me, slowly cocking his head.
“Hank,” he said.
Wallow had loved Zadeck and now Zadeck was reduced to atoms.
Wallow had always hated me.
I think I was hyperventilating. And my age, my illness, my prostate, my fear, all joined forces and decided to be super helpfuclass="underline" I peed my pants. At least I’d get Wallow’s feet smelly when he squashed me.
Wallow pushed his face closer to my helpless form. He had to put two fists on the ground beside me to lean so low.
His face. It must have been around seven feet tall. Every two inches or so was some scar. A pockmark. A cut. A crater. A gash. Burns.
Wallow didn’t have so much as a blemish when he was on Belvaille before.
This was a creature who had been fighting for seven decades. Warring for seven decades. Who must have confronted everything a galactic civil war could throw at him.
And he was still here.
“You look fat,” Wallow said. “And old.”
I wanted to say something. To not die just sitting here in a puddle of piss. But I couldn’t talk. I don’t think it was a heart attack. I was just really really frightened.
He looked at me a long time. His eyeballs were gigantic. You could bowl someone down with one. Why was I thinking that?
He suddenly stood up. He walked past me a few steps and stopped.
“Is that grain storage still in the northeast?” he asked me.
I spun myself around so I could see him.
“Uh, n-no, it’s not. Been gone a while,” I answered, anxious to be helpful.
I noticed that Wallow no longer spoke in halting, guttural Colmarian.
Wallow turned away and began walking. Some suicidal instinct gripped me.
“Wallow! Hey! Do you want a job?”
Why did I call out to him? He was leaving!
Wallow turned back around and I saw his face, which looked perpetually angry, look even angrier.
“I don’t work for anyone anymore!” Then his voice dropped to merely a semi-deafening roar, “I’m… tired.”