At the top, spangled wings glittered in the cold light, and Octoff marvelled at the great insectile creatures who bore them, and at their almost human features. The steps beneath were crowded by short, broad humanoids, their pale naked bodies marked with purple ideograms. Below them peacock lizards spread glorious throat sacs. Great crimson-eyed toads stood on two legs and wore silk clothing of elegant cut.
Every alien eye was fixed on Octoff.
A huge wolfhound with the head of a patrician woman padded forward to stand before Octoff. “Welcome, New Husband,” it said to him in a soft sweet voice. “This is Speaker.” On its smooth cheek, like a tiny perfect birthmark, was the Biomantic’s mark.
The pain rod struck him twice across the kidneys. He fell writhing, agony taking his breath. He caught a flash of Lanilla’s calm, smiling face before she turned and spoke to the dog.
“I am the New Husband. The man is my property,” she said.
“As you say.... May I take you to your quarters?”
“Immediately.”
Octoff was only dimly aware of the two dwarves who picked him up with gentle hands.
He woke in soft warmth. the woman-faced dog sat quietly by the foot of the bed. “Good morning,” it said, rising to all four feet, wagging its tail.
Octoff was in a plain white-walled room, empty but for the bed and a bench. The hot blue light of the sun poured through an arched window.
“New Husband still sleeps,” the dog told him.
He looked down at the bed. The fur-lined coverlet bore a disquieting resemblance to living skin, and when he looked closely, he saw a network of blue veins.
He scrambled out, to stand naked against the wall, his own skin crawling.
The dog cocked its beautiful head to one side. “What distresses you?”
“The bed... it’s alive.”
“Everything here is alive. I have questions, not-Husband.”
“To ask me?”
The dog gazed at him, the human eyes wide and guileless. “New Husband will not answer.”
“She doesn’t answer me either,” Octoff said.
The dog shivered. “I fear her. She’s given a terrible order. She tells me to send my Exotics to the reclamation vats. As if they weren’t beautiful and good. She even wants me to destroy the flesh poems of Old Husband, and them I could not bear to hurt.”
“Flesh poems?”
“Two of them carried you here, after she hurt you.”
Octoff remembered the patterned dwarves. Flesh poems.
The dog spoke again. “New Husband is female, is she not?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. My Husbands have always been male.” Speaker dropped its eyes, appraisingly. “You are male.”
“Yes.”
The dog moved away, to stand by the window in an attentive posture. Octoff followed.
The early sun threw long shadows across the Biomantic’s manicured fields. Under the window, a line of fantastic creatures passed slowly out of sight, filing into a dark opening in the long grassy slope that fell down from the manse. When the last one slipped from view, the tunnel closed, leaving no trace.
“You won’t betray me, not-Husband?” The dog watched him, lovely face raised, tail drooping.
“My name is Octoff.”
“Octoff. Will you help me, Octoff? I can’t hide them forever. What can I give her, to soften her heart? What must I say to her?”
“I don’t know.” He touched the choke band around his throat.
“But if I think of anything, I’ll tell you.”
“Thank you, Octoff.... By the way, you may speak freely to me.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Micro-motiles examined your body while you slept and found several surveillance devices. I could not have them removed, but at times like this they will transmit garbled data. Perhaps you will find this privacy pleasant.”
Octoff felt a disproportionate sense of gratitude. “Yes, I will. Thank you.” A pang of hope touched him. “What can you do about the collar?”
The elegant head dropped. “Nothing. Biotech has advanced greatly since my birth, which was very long ago.”
The hope disappeared, leaving another little hole in Octoffs heart.
“Ah well,” he said. “What shall I call you? Speaker?”
It laughed. “Do you think you’re talking to a dog? No, you’re speaking to me. I am the Biomantic: the fields, the motiles, the manse... all of this. Despite appearances, Speaker is just a pretty animal, no brighter than any good dog; right now, she’s thinking about her breakfast.”
“I don’t even know what a Biomantic is.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Well, you must call me whatever would please you. That’s always been the rule. Old Husband called me Titania. A fine romantic name from Lost Earth, he said. New Husband calls me Babylon. It’s not such a nice name, is it?”
Speaker’s expression was so woeful that he brushed a comforting hand along her furry back. He jerked his hand back when it struck him how strange this was, but she wiggled with delight, like any dog. Her human eyes were suddenly dreamy.
“I’ll call you Beauty,” he said.
“I have something to show you,” Lanilla said, beckoning Octoff through the door into her apartment.
On the floor beside her bed two corpses lay, each knotted in the grotesque back-arched position of a person who had been beaten to death with a pain rod.
“I thought we were alone here,” Octoff said, moving reluctantly. He looked down at the bodies. Both the man and the woman might have been exceptionally beautiful before the distorting agony of their deaths, though it was difficult to be sure.
“We were, and are.” She stood beside him. “These were gifts. The male is some sort of bovine; the female is a mixture of simian and feline, I would guess.”
“Ah,” said Octoff. From the corner of his eye, he saw Speaker hovering at the door, head low, tail between her legs.
“Gifts,” Lanilla said. “Bedroom toys. It tried to please me.” Octoff looked at Lanilla. Was there a trace of regret in her gaze?
“Do you know why we’re here?” Lanilla asked him later, as they sat at opposite ends of the long table, eating poached eggs.
“I know one reason I’m here,” Octoff said, thinking of the dead creatures in Lanilla’s suite.
“Do you?” Lanilla smiled and buttered her toast. “Well, perhaps. But I have another task for you. Aren’t you curious?”
A baboon motile ent ered the dining hall, bearing platters of fragrant melon, sliced and arranged in bright spirals.
She bit into a red crescent and the juice ran down her chin. “Good,” she said. “Your task, now. I want you to become Babylon’s friend. That shouldn’t be too difficult. You’re a pretty boy; it’s a woman, in a way.”
“Babylon?”
“The Biomantic. This thing we’re in. This farm.” Lanilla drummed her fingers on the table. “I’d have done better to brief you on the crawl here, instead of... never mind; pay attention. The Biomantic’s a colony organism, with a million motiles and other specialized units; its brain is an array of organic processors, very powerful. Long ago it was imprinted with the personality of a woman, but don’t be confused; there’s nothing human about it.
“Think of the land as its skin; it feels everything that happens in its fields. We’re sitting in its skull. It’s tasting us.” She shuddered.
After a moment, Lanilla went on as if reciting from a text. The first colonists had bred the Biomantic and her sisters as an answer to the virulent Selevand biosphere, the swarming alien life that had made conventional farming impossible. They had hoped these sapient farms would be able to cope with Selevand’s inimical life forms, and they were right.