Chapter 14 #2
He smiled weakly. “Yes. Hundreds if not thousands of dead drokha-cats, rotting in giant tanks of water polluted with the guiding web. Only through this is the domesticated web able to learn how to infest and control such a creature. And only such a creature. So you can see that if we have a strain of web that works on humans…”
My bones turned to ice within my flesh. “You are suggesting,” I said, “that whoever made this strain of the web that can control humans…”
“Achieved this by breeding it in waters full of human corpses? As mad as it sounds, I can think of no other way! That is the only known method of training the fungus. Perhaps there was a flooded sepulcher, or tomb, or battlefield from the titans…Grisly to speculate, true?”
There was an unpleasant silence. Tauri glanced back at the surgery bay. “Ah!” he said. “The threadvine ripens.”
I squinted at the vats of soil about Zansay’s head.
Tiny, pale filaments began to emerge and then creep across the table, seeking out her skull.
They attached themselves to the lines of purple reagent Tauri had painted there.
More sprouted and did the same, until they grew quite dense.
It was like watching someone work a loom, creating a horrid, glistening tapestry about the girl’s shaved pate.
“It will take a bit longer for it to split her head,” murmured Tauri.
“Remarkable, is it not? The human skull is strong enough to withstand numerous blows—yet we’ve taught a simple weed to part it as if it were cold tallow…
” He sipped his concoction again, pulled a face, and muttered, “So much damned calcium in these aquifers…”
“Tell me how the web conditions the cats, please, Commander,” said Ana. “I know there are notes, tunes, pitches, and the pipes—but how do these get written into the brains of the little bastards?”
“Well, it’s not just a matter of tones,” said Tauri.
“The right tones must be played in the right order. First, there’s the awakening tone.
Makes all the fungal growths in the host’s brain wake up, makes its ears sensitive to the proper pitches.
The host is now receptive to the next stage, the conditioning tones—the pitches played to associate a specific behavior with a specific act.
They play these tones while the act is performed the first time, and the creature will then be compelled to reenact it whenever they hear that same tune after. ”
“But this version of the web doesn’t spread, or fruit, or kill them?” asked Ana.
“Well, no…that’s not quite correct. The more the host hears the conditioning tones, and reenacts their performance, then the more the fungus shall spread in the host’s brain, until…” He trailed off.
“Until it cracks out of their head,” I said, aghast, “like a duckling from a damned egg?”
“More or less, yes. Or, that would happen if the cat herders and bean farmers didn’t treat the cats to prevent this very thing. They mix a medicine in with their feed, I’m told, to ensure the web is held in check.”
“It all sounds like fucking madness!” said Ana. “All the cats of this entire damned region could fruit from the skull if they skipped their medicine?”
“That was the issue we identified when the plan was first proposed,” sighed Tauri. “But the cat-trainers have also conditioned the cats to consume the medicine to ensure this never happens. Thus, we were told, all is well…”
“And what happens if the little beasts miss the dose?”
“Then they, ah, begin to exhibit very curious behaviors. And the web spreads each time they hear the notes of the pipe, until it kills them.”
Ana stopped rocking, face taut. “What manner of behaviors? Might the web affect their sleep?”
Tauri blinked in surprise. “Hum! You ask me for much when you already seem to know all! Yes, true—the cats begin re-creating their conditioned behaviors while they sleep. Nocturnal disruptions, they called it in early tests. The cats wander about their enclosures as if sleepwalking, attempting to pick beans or anything that even slightly resembles them.”
I thought rapidly while I absorbed this. It all made a dreadful sense: Castus had dreamed of serving in the flensing halls; Sagma and Gevma had dreamed of being kept still, standing in their rooms. It suddenly seemed very likely they had been conditioned to do exactly these acts.
Tauri glanced between us. “This means something to you.”
“All the Armenta children experienced very curious dreams,” said Ana, “before abruptly behaving very strangely—suicides, hangings, accidents, murders. You see the shape of it.”
“Yes, but…I can’t quite comprehend that,” said Tauri slowly.
“The web is used to condition simple actions within cats—picking fruit or going to a specific location. But you are talking about hangings, yes? That can’t be so, because more complex actions are much more difficult!
Such a feat should be beyond its capabilities! ”
“Unless,” said Ana, “this is a third kind of web that can do something new. Which we suspect more or less is the exact case, since it can now infest human beings!”
At that, Tauri was struck silent. An unsettling creak issued from Zansay Burav’s head—her skull trembled a little—but it did not split.
“If that’s so,” Tauri said quietly, “then I’ll have to alert my superiors in my order. I’ll need specialists, trackers, testers from the Orbiis and the Apoths to ensure the fungus hasn’t spread.” He sighed and sipped at his concoction.
“But if it did,” said Ana archly, “wouldn’t it be spreading through the water, sir?”
He paused, lips puckered. He glanced down at his brew, then swallowed. “No fear there, I’m afraid. My body is so sensitive, I’d taste the web quite easily. This well is clear—has a bit too much sulfur in it for my liking, true—but there are dozens if not hundreds of other wells in the city.”
“Can you test them?”
“The technique is easy enough. It is a mere scrap of paper. When it’s dipped in waters with a high concentration of the fungus, its hue changes.
It would work on any reservoirs or foodstuff or even the saliva of the hosts.
But a test isn’t always accurate, especially on the human body!
It can take time for the fungus to build up in a host until the test proclaims them infected. ”
“And if they are infected,” I said, “is there a cure?”
“Well, a cure is…harder. This is a neuro-fungus. It infests the brain. We can do many wondrous things in the Empire, but anything with the brain is delicate and difficult.”
“Meaning?” demanded Ana.
“Meaning, we can make a cure, but it shall take time. While we wait, we do have the same treatments we give the cats—it can restrain the fungus but not cure it.”
Ana laughed lowly. “So the poor bastards won’t die from the fungus, but they will still cut their own throats at the whistle of the killer’s pipe?”
“Yes,” said Tauri. “If they are conditioned to do so, that is true.”
She glowered for a moment. “Then we test first. But we must test carefully.”
“Yes. It’d be damned tricky to test so many wells and waters without starting a panic—or without the objections of the local gentry. They don’t like us Orbiis doing a damned thing on their lands, though we’ve a mandate to do so.”
Ana paused. “But speaking of the gentry, sir…Din here informed me that you asked some very pointed questions about Burilis Burav when he first told you of the death. Why might that have been?”
“That is true…” said Tauri. “I suspect you haven’t had the time to research him yet. If you had, you might not have trusted me enough to come to me.” He took a quick breath. “Because Burilis Burav was once a member of my order.”
“What!” squawked Ana. “Burav was Orbiis?”
“Indeed.”
She whirled on me. “Din! You didn’t say anything about that!”
“Because I didn’t know, ma’am,” I said, flustered.
My eyes shimmered as I pulled up my memory of meeting Burav on our first day here.
He had gestured to his greatly augmented face and told me—I served my time in the Imperial Iyalets myself, as an Apothetikal.
“Burav commented he’d served the Apoths, not the Orbiis. ”
“So he was, originally,” said Tauri. “But the Orbiis pulls officers from both the Apoths and the Engineers, as it takes the arts of each to maintain the stability of the cantons. That’s why our uniforms are striped in the colors of each order, you see.”
“When did he serve under you, sir?” asked Ana.
“Oh, not under me! He was here thirty years ago—so, some twenty before I ever stepped foot in this canton. In fact, I’ve never met the man.
Yet many elder officers say that when he left us, he did so under a cloud of suspicion and dislike—though none have ever claimed enough to constitute an actual crime.
And just after he left the Orbiis, he suddenly proclaimed that he had developed a most marvelous innovation… ”
“The agrarian web,” I said.
“Correct. We have all found it rather unsettling.” He eyed Zansay’s corpse warily. “Now you see why I suspected he might want his daughter’s corpse returned speedily! If he knew she was infected…”
“Then he’d also know she’d fruit!” hissed Ana. “A clear signal to anyone that she had the web in her!”
“Which he would very much want to hide,” said Tauri. “As to how or why this could be done to his own daughter, I cannot say. But I’m not surprised by it.”
“Why not, sir?” I asked.
A strange expression crept over the commander then. He looked still at Zansay’s pale corpse, but there was a deadness to his gaze, as if she wasn’t a human being but a twist of tissue upon his dissection tray.
“The cattle families are peddlers of flesh,” he said softly.
“Their lives are measured in the slashing of knives and the creaking of bloodied scales. They bicker and fight for many reasons, but one surely is that they no longer quail at the sight of gore. What’s the difference between a killer and a murderer? Personally, I cannot sa—”
Then Zansay Burav’s skull burst open.
—