The Antags flank us, all that remains of our pitiful little party, and guide us through the curvy alien regions to the hatch, which is presently shut tight. From behind us, out of glimmering shadow, emerge four more Antags in light armor. Between them are slung two squirming gray bags.
Through Bird Girl, I feel that another Antag is on her way to join us, with her own escort. The picture I’m getting is that this is the connected one, and she’s a basket case.
Then we see her. She’s spiked and awry, covered with a damp, sweaty sheen, wings drooping, feet and hands clenched. Her four eyes are crusted with snot and she’s all twitch and quiver—in worse shape than Ulyanova. Maybe the Antags have been working her over, trying to force her to tell them what they need to know.
Bird Girl advances to the bulkhead that holds the mystery gate. The three commanders bring the droopy Antag toward the gate and hand her leash to two armored officers. DJ, Ulyanova, and I are urged forward by two more officers, who let us drift up next to the bags.
Our fellow Skyrines and Kumar and Borden hang back, for the moment, eyes wide, glad they’re not us, not Ulyanova. The starshina’s previous calm, her dotty smile, has turned brittle. She’s shivering, but that might be because we’re all half-naked, in minimal pajamas, and the air around the gate is chilly.
The Antags unclasp and peel the bags, revealing two bundles of wet gray fur with floppy ears and wide, sleepy eyes. Here’s the other that Ulyanova said was necessary—but isn’t. Not if I’m around. Their sleepy eyes track us, humans and Antags, as if they would burrow deep into our heads. Eyes that do not concede any ground to our domination, our control.
God, I do hate them.
Ulyanova shudders but does not look away. She tilts her head back, curves her lips, and gives them a sharply angled look, as if she’s a dragon about to spit fire. The Gurus jerk and try to shrink away.
“Look,” Bird Girl announces, and presses a circular indentation to the left of the hatch. The hatch opens, six pieces sliding aside and back, all somehow very standard, very expected. We’ve been spending far too much time on alien spacecraft. Give me a simple pressure hatch anytime, give me a rocket, a capsule—
Then we all have to look, no choice—like facing the mouth of hell. But inside the gate, this time there’s only a neutral beige emptiness, not easy to look at, to look into, since it seems to promise the nullity I’d like to avoid, thank you—but nothing like the horror we experienced before.
Ulyanova and the connected Antag are kept about two meters apart from the Gurus. Ulyanova’s nose is bleeding. DJ tries to help, raising the back of his hand, offering to dab as blood flows down her lip and one side of her chin—but she punches his arm aside, then gives us a hard, steely look. The scruffy Antag doesn’t do much of anything.
Then, as if waking from a nap, the beige nullity gets active. Spinning gears take shape, followed by knives, suggestions of endless misery in a variety of fates and forms.
Ulyanova’s dragon flames fly now as furious words. “This place… is disgraceful,” she rasps. “Push Gurus through, first one, then the other!”
The translators work for the armored commanders, but Ulyanova seems to be in charge, not them—they’ve given up that much in their desperation.
“Will that be enough?” Bird Girl asks.
“What do you care, really?” Ulyanova says. “If we do not feed them to puzzle, if we fail, all who look will be crazy. Try, or we are all mad!”
The scruffy Antag tries to lift a wing, makes sad scrutching noises, along with high-pitched wheeps. She apparently does not agree with Ulyanova.
And strangely, that tilts the game. Bird Girl makes a hatchet chop of one wingtip.
The Gurus squeak.
Kumar moans, then tries to break free of our group—
“Hold him!” Joe calls out.
The little rabbit bundles squeak again, but that doesn’t stop two of the armored Antags from pushing one forward, sack trailing like an afterbirth, into the growing, awful gate. Sending a Guru into Guru hell. The squeaks rise to wailing shrieks. The illusion inside the hatchway seems to reach out and grab, pin the little rabbit bundle, yank it from the gripping hands of the Antags, almost dragging them in with it, but they let go—
Together, Ulyanova and the pitiful Antag make sick musical sounds, like a small orchestra about to throw up. The other Guru squirms and suddenly changes shape without growing or shrinking, looking for a few seconds like a miniature Antag, then a small human, then something I’ve certainly never seen before—
The inner illusion of the hatch turns black as night—
And spits out pieces of flesh and fur. My God, is that magnificent! Isn’t that absolutely what we need to see!
But then the dead puzzle returns. The madness starts all over again. We try to turn away and can’t. “Fuck!” DJ says, drawing it out in classic DJ style. We’re all on the line, or way over it.
Ulyanova makes a little hmm, then looks back at me, at Borden. “Does not seem good,” she says. “Not convincing. There is more than two!”
And she’s not talking about me.
The eyes of the second Guru sink back into its rabbit-puppy skull.
“It would be most interesting,” Ulyanova says, “if both die, and there is a third that needs to die also before I can take their place. I have their minds, their thoughts. We do not need any of them.”
Bird Girl and the Antags are not at all happy with these results, or this suggestion. I can’t blame them, really. One Guru down, only one left that anyone can see, and the same thing seems very likely to happen if it’s fed into the gate. After all, why would the Gurus allow one of their ships to be accessed by unauthorized personnel, even Gurus? And who knows what the Gurus think about personal death, about sacrifice?
The scruffy Antag seems entranced by Ulyanova’s words. She reaches out as if to touch the starshina, but the armored officers deftly push aside her wing-hand. Ulyanova intervenes and to our surprise grasps that hand—clenches it tight, and surveys us all with her head drawn back.
“It is offering to solve puzzle,” she says. “But we must not let it help us. If I am become what it is…”
Her eyes turn to mine.
I see the chamber vibrate like a remote that wants to change the channel but can’t.
The scruffy Antag makes distressed, angry sounds that are not translated, but the other Antags listen close. Ulyanova says, “This is disgraceful. It is not interesting. The Guru says, it thinks, there is way to add to drama. We will be more entertaining if we let it teach and guide us. That must not happen. Instead,” and she looks back over her shoulder at me, “if it lives, it will block everything we must do. There will be no Gurus on this ship! I will become!”
She’s following through. She gestures for me to come forward, and this time she grabs my hand. The translator buzzes and makes strident musical notes. There’s disagreement and confusion between Bird Girl and her commanders, and apparent concern that we’re all about to make a huge mistake. This I get through the ragged connection with Bird Girl. They do not want to put control of this ship, even assuming we can take control, into human hands.