As for me, I was frozen. Once again, I’d fallen victim to the reflexive paralysis programmed into me by the Outward Fleet: when taken by surprise, every muscle in my body went rigid. I had time to think, Why now? Why freeze in front of this alien and not when the Rexy pounced on Tut? But I knew the answer: I’d never expected the Fuentes to attack the instant he caught sight of me. Why would he? What had I done to provoke him? And if he was just attacking from undirected rage or confusion, why would he cross the room for me when Tut was right beside him?
So I froze. And Festina fired. And Tut said, "Hey, what’cha doin’?" None of which slowed Mr. Puffy as he leapt across the room, landed in front of me, and shoved his bloated hand into my mouth.
His urine stink had been bad before. This close up, it would have made me gag — if I hadn’t already been gagging from his fat foul fingers sticking down my throat. The taste of his flesh was putrid beyond description; even now, just remembering, I feel my mouth pucker. Vomitous. I would have thrown up then and there, but the moment my stomach began its first flip-flop, some powerful force suppressed it. Like a plunger pushing down the bile, preventing the puke from rising. For a second, I had the crazed idea Mr. Puffy had extended his hand all the way down my esophagus and was physically doing something to stop my stomach from erupting. Then a more rational explanation struck me: the Balrog had taken control of my body to forestall unwanted regurgitation. Perhaps that was another reason why I’d gone frozen — the Balrog wanted me to let Mr. Puffy’s fingers tickle my tonsils.
Even as that thought crossed my mind, I felt my teeth bite down. The action wasn’t my own — if there could be anything more nauseating than the taste of urine-flesh stuffed into my mouth, it was the thought of biting that flesh and breaking the skin: spilling unknown body fluids across my tongue. But my jaw clenched anyway, without my volition; I bit full force, as if I wanted to chew off the alien’s hand and swallow it.
The puffed-up flesh split in several places. Juices gushed out, squirting. Some ran down my chin; some dribbled into my throat. The alien’s blood added a sulphurous taste to the repugnant flavors already in my mouth. Once more my stomach tried to vomit… and once more something cut short the process, paralyzing the muscles needed to spew my most recent meal.
The next moment brought a new horror: a flood of something pouring from the roof of my mouth. I could feel it streaming around the edges of the comm unit that had replaced my soft palate — as if the contents of my sinuses were suddenly spraying down at high pressure, forcing fluids past my implant to top up the goo already in my mouth. What could the fluids be? Blood? Mucus? Gray matter squeezed from my brain?
Then my teeth eased open. The Fuentes withdrew his hand… and just for a moment, in the bleeding bite marks made by my own incisors, small red dots glowed against the lab’s faint light. Their glimmer faded instantly as the crimson specks swam deeper into the bloated flesh, entering Mr. Puffy’s bloodstream.
Suddenly, the paralysis holding me rigid slumped away like a pregnant woman’s water breaking. Splash. I doubled over and threw up gratefully. The taste of vomit was clean and pure compared to everything else I’d just ingested.
Then a hand touched my shoulder, and someone asked, "Are you all right?"
The words were spoken in Bamar, my first language. When I looked up, it was Mr. Puffy.
I gaped. How could a creature sixty-five hundred years old know my mother tongue? The Bamar language hadn’t existed when Mr. Puffy went into stasis — in those days, my ancestors spoke some Indo-European dialect far removed from anything my modern ear would recognize. Besides, even if the Fuentes had visited Earth in the ancient past, and even if Mr. Puffy had learned the language of a minuscule tribe in the Irrawaddy river valley, how would he know to address me in that tongue? Telepathy? Could he pluck my background from my mind? Could he even learn my first language by drawing it from the whorls of my brain?
Then I remembered the red dots in Mr. Puffy’s bite wounds and the fluids that had poured from my sinuses.
Spores. Balrog spores.
I almost threw up again. The whole thing, with the hand in my mouth and my involuntary chomping down, had been a data transfer. Mr. Puffy had taken one look at me and had seen the Balrog inside. He’d shoved his hand between my teeth and I’d helplessly injected him with spores — as if I were some rabid animal frothing crimson at the mouth. Moss had skittered into the Fuentes’ wounds, then headed for his alien brain.
Now Mr. Puffy had a link to any data the Balrog chose to share. That included the Bamar language, which the Balrog had taken from my own memories. Demon! I thought. Demon, demon, demon.
I straightened up. Wiped vomit off my face with my bare hand, then cleaned my fingers by rubbing them on a nearby tabletop. Checked my clothes, and thanked whatever reflex had helped me throw up without getting puke on my borrowed Unity uniform. Taking a deep breath, I told Mr. Puffy, "Use English. Explain what’s going on."
In a soft voice, speaking English with an accent identical to my own, he said, "What do you want to know?"
This time, it was Tut and Festina who reacted in shock. I enjoyed the looks on their faces.
Festina recovered first. "Who are you?" she asked.
"Ohpa," the alien said. Its mandibles twitched. "Does that irrelevant fact enlighten you?"
Festina gave a humorless chuckle. "Fair enough. I’ll ask something more meaningful. How can you speak English?"
Ohpa waved his hand. "Also irrelevant." He didn’t look in my direction. I wondered if he was keeping the Balrog’s data transfer a secret for my sake, or if there was some other reason not to speak of it.
"All right," Festina said. "Relevant questions. What is this place and what were you doing here?"
"This place is a playroom of reductionism and control. What you would call a laboratory." Ohpa shook himself and hopped toward a cadaver on a nearby table. Under his breath he muttered something in a language I didn’t know, then extended his hand in a gesture of blessing. He turned back and told Festina, "I’m here because I succumbed to hope and ambition. I volunteered to be a test subject." He spread his arms to display his hairless body; his tail gave a spasmodic jerk. "As you can see, the experiment was unsuccessful."
"What was the experiment supposed to do?"
"Make me Tathagata."
I gasped. Festina looked my way, then asked the Fuentes, "What’s Tathagata?"
Ohpa waved as if I should answer — a movement so human, he must have learned my body language from the Balrog as well as spoken words. I told Festina, "Tathagata means ‘the one who has come at this time.’ It was an honorific for Prince Gotama, the Buddha… to distinguish him from other Buddhas who’d lived in earlier times or might come in the future."
Festina turned back to Ohpa in surprise. "The experiment was supposed to make you a Buddha?"
"Tathagata."
"A living Buddha," I said. "One who’s enlightened right now… as opposed to someone who might become a Buddha in a million more lives. Theoretically, we’re all Buddhas — we all have the potential and will get there eventually — but a Tathagata has Awakened in the current lifetime."
Festina made a face. "I’m not thrilled when an alien claims to be a figure from Earth religion. It’s way too convenient."
"Ease up, Auntie," Tut said. "Ohpa likely peeked into our heads with X-ray vision, and Youn Suu’s brain happened to have an approximation for what he really is." Tut turned to the alien. "You aren’t really Tatha-whosit, right? That’s just the closest equivalent you could find in our minds."