“What do you see?” Hayes asked him, thinking it might be important. “Tell me.”
Lind just lay there, staring holes through the ceiling. “I see, I see . . . “ He began to thrash, a wet and tortured scream coming from his mouth. And it almost seemed more like a shout of surprise or terror. “The sea . . . there’s only the sea . . . that big, big sea . . . the steaming, boiling sea . . . and the sky above . . . misty, misty. It’s . . . it’s not blue anymore . . . it’s green, Jimmy, shimmering and glowing and full of sparkling mist. Do you smell it? That bad air . . . like bleach, like ammonia.” He started to gag and cough, moving in boneless gyrations like a snake, sweat rolling down his blistered face. He was madly gulping air. “Can’t . . . breathe . . . I can’t fucking breathe, Jimmy, I can’t fucking breathe!”
Hayes held onto him, trying to talk him down. “Yes, you can, Lind! You’re not really there, only your eyes are there! Only your eyes!”
Lind calmed a bit, but kept gulping air. His eyes were huge and filled with tears and madness. His breath smelled unnatural, like creosote.
“Take it easy now,” Hayes told him. “Now just relax and tell me what you see. I’ll help you find your way out.”
And Hayes figured maybe he could, if he could find out just where the hell this place was. Sharkey was watching him, neither approving nor disapproving of what he was doing. Just standing by with a hypo if it came to that.
“It’s hot, Jimmy, it’s hot here . . . everything is smoking and misting and those, those great jagged sheets of glass . . . sheets of broken glass rising up from the sea and shattering into light . . . that green, green, green sky . . . purple clouds and pink clouds and shadows . . . those shadows coil like snakes, look how they do that . . . do you see? Do you see? Shadows with . . . veins, veins . . . living shadows in the green misting sky . . . “
“Yes,” Hayes said. “I see them. They can’t hurt us, though.”
“I’m sinking, Jimmy, don’t let me go, don’t let me go down there! I’m sinking down into the sea and the water is warm, so very warm and thick . . . like jelly . . . how can it feel like that? The depths, oh those glittering emerald depths. The sea lights itself up and it shows you things . . . and . . . and I’m not alone, Jimmy. There are others here, many others. Do you see them? They swim with me . . . swimming and gliding and rising and falling. Yes, yes! Them things, them things like in the hut . . . but alive, all of them alive, gathering at the city!”
It could have been the city beneath Lake Vordog, but Hayes seriously doubted it by that point. Wherever this was, it was no place man had ever trod. Some awful, alien world with a poison atmosphere. And the crazy thing was, although Hayes could not see it and was glad of the fact, he could feel it. He could feel the heat of the place, that thick and turgid heat. Sweat was running down his face and the air was suddenly close and gagging, like trying to suck air through a hot oven mitt.
Jesus.
Hayes was nearly swooning now.
He could see the heat and it was coming from Lind, rolling off him like shimmering heat waves from August pavement. Hayes looked over at Sharkey and, yes, her face was beaded with sweat. It was incredible, but it was happening.
Lind was like some weird portal, some doorway to those seething alien wastes. He was there, his mind was there, and he was bringing some of it back with him. Because now it was more than just the heat, it was the smell, too. Hayes was gagging, coughing, his head reeling, the room saturated with an unbearable stench of ammoniated ice. Steam was rising from Lind now and bringing the smell of that toxic atmosphere with him. It reminded Hayes of wash day back home when he was a kid. That eye-watering, nose-burning stink of Hilex bleach.
Sharkey wisely opened the door to the infirmary and started a fan going. It cleared the air a bit, at least enough where Hayes wasn’t ready to pass out.
Lind was talking on through it alclass="underline" “ . . . seeing it, Jimmy? You seeing it? Oh, that’s a city, a gigantic city . . . a floating city . . . look how it bobs and sways? How can it do that? All them high towers and deep holes, honeycombs . . . like bee honeycombs, all them cells and chambers . . . “
“Are you still with them, Lind? Those others?”
Lind chattered his teeth, shook his head. “No, no, no . . . I’m not me anymore, Jimmy, I’m one of them! One of them spreading my wings and swimming and diving through those pink honeycombs and knowing what they think like they know what I think . . . we . . . we’re going to . . . yes! That’s the plan, isn’t it? That’s always, always, always been the plan . . . “
“What’s the plan?” Hayes asked. “Tell me the plan, Lind.”
But Lind was just shaking his head, a funny light in his eyes now like a reflection from a mirror. “We’re rising now . . . the hive is rising now . . . through the water and ice into the green glowing sky . . . thousands of us into the sky on buzzing wings, thousands and thousands of wings. We are the hive and the hive is us. We are the swarm, the ancient swarm that fills the skies . . . “
“Where are you going?”
“Above, up and up and up into them clouds and thickness, sure, that’s where we go . . . up beyond into the cold and blackness and empty spaces. The long, hollow spaces, long, long . . . “
“Where are you going? Can you see where you are going?”
Lind’s breathing had slowed now to barely a rustle. His eyes were glazed and sleepy and lost. The air in the room no longer stank like bleach. It was cold, very cold suddenly. The temperature plummeting until a bone-deep chill settled into Hayes. Sharkey killed the fan and cranked the heat up, but it was barely keeping an edge on that glacial cold. Hayes could see his breath coming out in frosty plumes.
“There are winds,” Lind said in a squeaky whisper. “We drift on the winds that carry the hive and we dream together . . . we all dream together through the long, black night that goes on and on and on . . . nothingness . . . emptiness . . . only the long, empty blackness . . . “
Lind stopped talking. In fact, his eyes drifted shut and it seemed he had gone out cold. He was sleeping very peacefully. He stayed that way for ten or fifteen minutes while Hayes and Sharkey could do nothing but wait. About the time Hayes decided to pull his hand free, Lind gripped it and his eyes came open.
“The world . . . the blue world . . . the empty blue world . . . this is where we come, this is where the hive goes now. Oceans, great oceans . . . black, blasted lands . . . mountains and valleys and yellow mist.”
Hayes knew where they were now. They could be nowhere else. “Is there anything alive there, Lind? Is there any life?”
But Lind was shaking his head back and forth. “Dead . . . dead . . . nothing. But the hive, the hive can seed it . . . create organic molecules and proteins and the helix, we are the makers of the helix . . . we are the farmers, we seed and then we harvest. The primal white jelly . . . the architect of life. . . we are and have always been the farmers of the helix, the hive mind, the great white space, the thought and the being and the structure and . . . the helix . . . the perpetuation of the helix, the surety and plan and the conquest and the harvest. . . the makers and unmakers . . . the cosmic lord of the helix . . . the continuation of the code the helix the code vessels of flesh exist to perpetuate the helix only exist to perpetuate and renew the helix the spiral of being... the primal white jelly... the color out of space... “
Hayes tried to pull away now, because something was happening.
Lind’s eyes were now black and soulless and malevolent, filled with a dire alien malignancy. They were black and oily, yet shining brightly like tensor lamps. They found Hayes and held him. And those eyes, those bleeding alien cancers, they did not just look through him, they looked straight into the center of his being, his soul, coldly appraising what they found there and contemplating how it could be crushed and contained and converted into something else. Something not human, something barren and blank, something that was part of the hive.