"Then what are you going to do?" Kaisho asked, a bit smugly. "Um," I said. "Give me a second."
In my mind, I tried to imagine a stench that would make moss wither… like really bad breath, something that could knock you straight off your feet, except that it’d only work on Balrogs. The Balrog could obviously smell stuff humans couldn’t, like royal pheromone; so maybe I could produce a stink so powerfully awful to Balrog senses, the moss would kind of shrivel. Not die — I didn’t want it to die. I just wanted to turn its stomach. If I started with its own buttered-toast scent and pictured the toast going all green and moldy…
"Teelu," Kaisho said sharply. Talking out loud, not whispering. "Stop it!"
"Stop what?" I asked, trying to sound innocent.
"You know what," Kaisho snapped, "but you don’t know what you’re doing. Given time, you might find something that would cause serious harm."
"What’s she talking about?" Festina asked me.
"Teelu and I are playing a little game," Kaisho answered, "and he doesn’t understand his own strength. Biochemicals can be more than smells, Your Majesty — one species’ pheromone is another species’ poison. If you muck about too much, you might hurt someone… and it could be humans just as easily as Balrogs."
"What?" Festina demanded. She stared straight at me. "What are you doing?"
"His own form of diplomacy," Kaisho said. "Talk softly and carry a big stink."
Festina looked like she wanted more answers; but at that moment, the moss in front of us simply rolled aside. A parting of the glowing red sea. The spores in the center of the ramp slid right or left, till they left a clear walkway up the middle-bare concrete floor, walled on either side by heaps of glowering fuzz. The buttered-toast smell turned a bit edgy… as if even a higher lifeform could get ticked off.
"Did you do that?" Festina asked me. I shook my head as Kaisho answered, "I did. Or rather, the Balrog did it at my request. Go ahead — the moss will leave you alone. I promise."
"She promises," Tobit muttered. "That fills me with loads of confidence."
"You two stay here," Festina told Tobit and Dade. "Edward and I will go in. If anything happens to us — like we get our toes bitten by spores — arrest that bitch for assaulting an admiral. Even if the Balrog is sentient, I have faith the High Council can devise an appropriately unattractive punishment." She lifted her hand to her throat implant. "You heard that, Kaisho?"
"You lesser species can be so suspicious. I said the Balrog would leave you alone, and it will. It won’t try to touch you as long as you’re on this orbital."
"Great," Festina muttered. "That sounds like those promises the gods always gave in Greek myths — loaded statements with nasty loopholes. But," she continued, staring at the open path through the moss, "I would dearly like to ask a Fasskister what the hell happened here."
She looked at me, as if I had some kind of deciding vote. I thought of what Captain Prope would say if we came running back at the first sign of trouble… not that I cared about my own reputation, but I didn’t want Festina to look bad. "Let’s go," I said.
So we did.
The ramp led to another hatch that should have been closed but wasn’t — it had jammed partway open, leaving a gap in the middle. Our path through the moss led right up to the gap and beyond.
"Looks like the Balrog has fouled up the gears," Festina said, examining the hatch.
"Do doors have gears?" I asked.
"Don’t go literal on me," she answered.
We squeezed through the gap and into a world glowing crimson. At one time, this must have been a pretty standard orbital — forty square kilometers of land on the cylinder’s inner surface, a lot of it dedicated to parks and agriculture. Orbitals always go heavy on the fields and forests, so people don’t fixate on being closed in; even if you can see the other side of the cylinder overhead, it’s not so bad if you’re surrounded by trees and grass.
So the Fasskisters’ home had probably been filled with their own native versions of nice little woods, quiet meadows, and the occasional rustic village. Now it was filled with Balrog, and it looked like some classic version of helclass="underline" scarlet, scarlet everywhere, like fire and lava and blood.
The orbital had a long white sun, kind of a fluorescent light tube stretching down the middle of the cylinder; but here on the ground, the whiteness of the shine was tinted crimson as far as the eye could see — as if we’d stepped inside a cherry-hot blast oven. The temperature was actually a bit cool, but the sheer look of the place made me break into a sweat.
"Dante would have been proud," Festina murmured, staring at it all. The red light shone up from the ground onto her face, casting weird shadows and giving her eyes little pinpoint dots of scarlet. I didn’t like the effect.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"Damned if I know," she answered. Looking off to our right, she said, "There’s a village over there. Let’s see if anyone’s around."
As soon as we aimed ourselves in that direction, the moss in front of our feet slipped aside to let us pass. Underneath was bare dirt. There must have been plants here once, grass or vegetables or something; but the Balrog had eaten clean down to the soil, gobbling whatever it found. It had probably eaten the support life too — all the worms and bugs and bacteria that orbitals need to keep the land healthy. The little animals weren’t sentient, so they were fair game for food… but still. It made me kind of squeamish to think of them getting dissolved by mossy digestive juices.
The path continued to open in front of us… and close in behind us. Not comforting. But the moss kept its distance, sifting away like drifting snow as we approached the village.
The huts in the village were half-sphere domes molded from glassy crystal, with millions of facets catching the light. The light was crimson, of course, glinting as if each dome was a cut-glass bowl plopped over a campfire. Twelve huts in all, and nobody in sight… till we got to the central square and found a single lumpy figure.
When Fasskisters aren’t dressed as some other species, they live inside "utility bots" — egg-shaped torsos with all kinds of legs and arms. I truly mean all kinds: ones that are clearly mechanical, as well as ones that mimic other species. If ever they have to deal with human technology, for example, it’s useful to have a human-shaped arm with lifelike human fingers; makes it easier to punch buttons, lift levers, and all that. So a utility bot is designed to have one of everything… a human arm, a human leg, a Mandasar Cheejretha, a pincer, a tentacle, a pseudopod, and so on.
Of course, these weren’t exact duplicates of the original limbs; since the robot had no head, each arm had its own eyes… and maybe ears and nose too. I can’t tell you how the Fasskister in the central egg keeps track of sixteen eyes at once, but I guess that’s none of my business. Anyway, it didn’t matter to this particular Fasskister: all its eyes and arms and everything were completely clogged over with moss. It had to be blind; it also seemed to be frozen in place, as if all that fuzz had gummed up its works.
"Aw," Festina said, "poor Tin Man. Need some oil?"
A strangled sound came from inside… maybe the actual voice of a Fasskister: what you got when you shut down the electronic amplifiers they usually used for speaking. It didn’t sound like words, at least not in English. I’d heard people say Fasskisters always spoke their own language; then circuitry in their suits converted their speech to a language their listeners understood.
Festina lifted her hand to her throat. "Kaisho," she said, "can you clean this guy off?"