Radiant

CHAPTER 6

Dharma [Sanskrit]: A word with many meanings, all related to "truth." In Gotama’s time, any teaching was called a dharma — the teacher’s view on what was and wasn’t true. Subsequently, Dharma (often capitalized) came to mean the Buddha’s teachings in particular. Dharma can also mean the whole of reality: the ultimate truth of the universe.

From habit, I returned to my cabin… but as soon as I got there, I knew I couldn’t stand being cooped up in a tiny room. All my instincts said, "Go check your equipment. Make sure everything’s perfect." But Festina had barred me from doing that. I felt like a mother cut off from her children.

For something to do, I went down to the mess. It had been hours since my last meal, and I knew I should eat, even though I had no appetite. (Why wasn’t I hungry? Had the Balrog already replaced my digestive system? I imagined the moss photosynthesizing inside me, pumping unknown alien nutrients through my veins, mutating my internal organs. The idea was ridiculous — how could spores in my lungs or liver get enough light to photosynthesize? More likely, they were feeding off me. So why didn’t I feel hungry?) Nevertheless, I forced down a few mouthfuls of the vegetarian dish of the day: a casserole whose components had surrendered their individual identities and blended morosely into a homogeneous mush.

At least the mess’s dining area was empty. I’d come in after the normal supper hour… which was good because I didn’t have to put up with regular crew members asking questions about Festina. ("What’s she really like?") On the other hand, eating alone in the silent room got on my nerves. I felt an irrational urge to shout obscenities or throw my bowl of mush against the wall. If somebody caught me, so what? The Balrog infesting my flesh was worse than any punishment the navy could impose. Besides, I had a perfect defense: I could claim mental incompetence because of the spores. "They made me do it, your honor!" Like a free pass that let me flout petty regulations.

Only one thing stopped me from a heartfelt rampage. Suppose I tried to run amok, and the Balrog froze my muscles; suppose the spores didn’t let me make a fool of myself. They wouldn’t want me getting thrown in the brig — that would interfere with the Balrog’s plan. So I might find myself incapable of causing any sort of ruckus.

I didn’t want to put that to the test. I didn’t want to lose control of my body even for an instant… because that would prove I was lost. Better to retain a false hope that the Balrog couldn’t really make me dance to its tune.

Of course, if it could already plant false memories in my mind… but I still couldn’t decide whether the temple scene was fact or fiction. Pistachio’s comm officer had begun setting up a call to my mother, but it would take at least another hour before I could be put through. Don’t ask me why. Explorers weren’t taught the principles of real-time FTL communication, except that it was fiendishly complex and energy-consuming. Even with approval from the illustrious Admiral Ramos, I had to wait my turn for an opening in the schedule. After all that, I wondered if my mother would answer. She’d be home, of course — she was always home — but sometimes when calls came in she’d just sit in mouselike fear, holding her breath till the caller gave up. It’d be just my luck if the one night I really needed to talk with my mother, she’d be having one of her "spells."

With such gloomy thoughts going through my mind, I stared at the casserole mush and tried to gather strength to eat another spoonful. "Damn, Mom," said a voice, "that looks like cat puke. Can I have some?"

I looked up. Tut stood there, wearing his usual cheerful expression. (The edges of his gold eyes were permanently sculpted into a friendly crinkle. The mouth moved a bit when he talked, but the corners were perpetually turned up in an amiable smile. Tut might be crazy, but he’d had the prescience to mold his metal face into unending good cheer.) I was so glad to see him, I almost wept. "Tut!" I cried. "You’re awake!"

"Awake and feeling like I licked a dingo’s anus. Man, am I starved!" He poked a finger into my food, scooped up a wad, and popped it into his mouth. Speaking while he chewed, he said, "I notice you’ve still got your legs."

"No thanks to you. I should belt you a good one for that."

"Aww, Mom, don’t spank me. I was just trying to help." He looked down at my legs as if trying to see through my trousers and boots. "So, have you gone all red and fuzzy?"

"No." For some reason, I blushed.

"But you got moss all through you?"

"Yes."

"Checked out by the doctor?"

"Checked out by myself with a Bumbler."

His eyes narrowed beneath the gold — probably a dubious look, though it was never easy to tell with his face so hidden behind metal. Finally, he shrugged and sat down beside me. Plucking the spoon from my fingers, he started to eat my meal. "So what’s it like, Mom?" he asked between mouthfuls. "Being all alien inside."

"So far, not much different."

"Kaisho Namida got all spooky. Do you think you will too?"

"What do you mean, spooky?"

"First thing I did when I woke up, I searched navy files for Balrog info. Know what stood out? People have tried to kill Kaisho more than a dozen times. She gives some folks acute xenophobia."

It didn’t surprise me. Many humans are edgy around aliens, but a few suffer aversions so strong they lose control. One glimpse of a woman who’s half red moss, and a severe xenophobe could collapse into moaning fits. The panic might even turn violent: attacking the source of terror to make it go away. A deranged hysteric lashing out is no laughing matter… especially if the crazed person finds a weapon. "So," I said, "these xenophobes came at Kaisho, and she did something spooky?"

Tut nodded. "She just sat there… but she always saw them coming, even if they ran up from behind. And when one of the wackos tried to hit her, she grabbed their hands faster than lightning and held on so hard they couldn’t move."

"Impressive." Panicked people were noted for abnormal amounts of strength. I imagined Kaisho, sitting calmly in her wheelchair, snatching the wrists of a howling maniac and instantly clamping her attacker immobile.

"That’s not the spooky part," Tut said. "As soon as she caught hold of somebody, she’d pull ’em down so she could look in their eyes. Wouldn’t say a thing — she’d just stare. And five seconds later, they’d either faint dead away or go all calm like vanilla ice cream. They’d stay like that a few minutes, then get up and ask what all the fuss was about." He set down the spoon he’d been eating with, then turned and looked at me. "Can you do stuff like that, Mom?"

He waited… as if daring me to do something to his mind while our eyes were locked… or maybe he was hoping I’d affect him somehow. I held his stare for only a few heartbeats; then I dropped my gaze. "I can’t do spooky stuff, Tut. And if I could, I wouldn’t want to. Back in Zoonau, the Balrog gave me a vision — like it was letting me in on the way its spores perceived the world. Suddenly I had this sixth sense that could see the truth of people: their life force or karma or something. I put up with it for maybe three seconds. Then I yelled at the Balrog to take the visions away."

"Because the truth about people is scary? They’re evil and ugly or something?"

"Nobody was evil or ugly. I just didn’t want… it was like the Balrog was offering me an incredible gift, and I didn’t know what would happen if I accepted. I was afraid of what might be expected from me."

"Huh." He looked at me. "Am I sensing a sexual subtext here? Cuz I gotta tell you, Mom, you’re talking like a virgin who’s afraid she’s going to like it."

"Go to hell." I pushed him away and got out of my chair. "That’s the last time I confide in you."

"Oh, you were confiding? No wonder I didn’t recognize it. Hey, where’re you going?"

I was already halfway to the door. "I’m going to my cabin. You’ve eaten all my supper anyway."

"Okay. Do you want me to come with you?"

I stopped and stared at him. "What?"

"Should I go with you back to your cabin?"

"Why would I want that? I’m mad at you."

"Yeah, but… I got this message from Auntie Festina…"

"Auntie?"

He shrugged. "She’s obviously your sister, Mom. Think I don’t see the family resemblance?"

It was a waste of time trying to reason with Tut once he’d got an idea into his head. "Okay. You got a message from Auntie Festina. What did she say?"

"She asked if I wanted to go on some dangerous mission tomorrow. I said sure, why not? She started to give reasons, like maybe she hoped I’d back out, but I kept saying no, no, I’d come along. So finally, she told me okay, but it’d be a good idea if I got my affairs in order. Took me a while to figure out what she meant, but…"

I rolled my eyes. "You thought she was telling you to have an affair."

"Aww, come on, Mom — ‘putting your affairs in order’ is a figure of speech."

He sounded like I’d hurt his feelings by thinking he was stupid. "Sorry," I said. "My mistake."

"Auntie Festina meant I should take care of stuff in case I die tomorrow. I tried to think of anything I should take care of… and eventually, I thought of you." He rolled his chair back from the table, then turned it in my direction and kept rolling till he’d come right up to me. He was still sitting down, but with his tallness and my shortness, we were almost eye to eye. "Anything I can do for you tonight, Youn Suu?"

I couldn’t remember him ever calling me by name. It took my breath away. "What are you thinking of?" I asked.

"Anything you like. Want me to play harmonica? Read you your favorite stories? Fuck you till you turn to butter? Kill you in your sleep?"

"Kill me in my sleep?"

"Well, yeah. If you can’t stand the thought of becoming moss, I could save you from a fate worse than death. I haven’t figured out how to kill you without the League of Peoples killing me first, but if we both put our heads together…"

"No," I said, "you don’t have to do that." I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. The gold was warm with Tut’s body temperature… but it was just gold, and I wished it had been flesh instead. "It’s sweet of you to offer, but I’m fine, really. Shiny-finey. Best thing for both of us is to get plenty of sleep. We want to be sharp for the landing."

"Okay, Mom. But the offer’s still open. Not just killing you, but any of that other stuff too."

I smiled… and for a moment I imagined saying what the hell, why die a virgin? Why not have one night, even if it’s Tut? It would be painfully awkward — before, during, and after — and I couldn’t imagine drowsing languidly in his arms after he’d offered to kill me in my sleep — but if not Tut, who? And if not now, when?

Silence. Then a sigh. I couldn’t do it. It was too much like the fantasy scenarios that girls discuss when they’re thirteen: suppose you’ve got this fatal disease and the only guy you can sleep with is someone who’s okay, but you don’t love him at all…

I didn’t feel like a bubbly girl. "Good night, Tut," I said. "See you in the morning."

He watched me all the way to the door. As I walked away down the hall, I heard him start wheeling around the mess hall on his chair, slamming into things hard.

Back in my cabin, the ship-soul informed me that the call to my mother would go through in twenty minutes. I passed the time writing a preliminary report of what happened in Zoonau — preliminary because it was just a list of point-form notes. Without too much trouble, I could have fleshed it out into a complete linear narrative, but I liked the abbreviated format better: the last, hurried testament of a tragic heroine, doomed to die on Muta or be consumed by parasitic spores. I imagined future Explorers reading my words and thinking, "How brave she was! To keep to her duty, writing reports, while staring death in the face."

(Now I think, "How childish I was! To put on a show for unknown readers in the hope of winning their pity." I certainly was my mother’s daughter.)

I kept my eye on the clock as I wrote, hurrying so I’d be done in time. Exact to the second, the ship-soul announced that the call was going through… and almost immediately my mother answered.

"Raymond?" she said a bit breathlessly.

Her face on the vidscreen was made up Western style: lipstick, eyeliner, mascara. No thanaka. Though she was forty-five years old, YouthBoost treatments left her looking my age. I. In fact, she was almost my twin; the backstreet engineer had based me on Mother’s DNA, so we looked very much like sisters. I’d been designed to be beautiful, so my version of her features was a little better in almost every respect — better skin, better bone structure, more lustrous hair, more luminous eyes — but she didn’t have a leprous weeping cheek, which put her far ahead of me in the beauty contest. On the other hand, my face was washed and clean, not slathered with Caucasian makeup like a slut.

"It’s me, Mother," I said… unnecessarily, because she could surely see my face on her own vidscreen. A moment later, I knew she could see me: her eager expression fell when she realized I wasn’t the caller she hoped for.

"Who’s Raymond?" I asked. I knew it didn’t matter — his existence mattered, his actual identity didn’t — but I couldn’t help myself.

"He’s just a friend," my mother said, confirming all my suspicions. "Where are you, Youn Suu?"

Not Ma Youn Suu. Mothers weren’t required to address their daughters politely. Especially not when the daughter called with inconvenient timing. "I’m in space," I told her. "Light-years away. And I just have a single question."

"What?" Her voice went wary.

"When I was twelve, did we go to a temple together? The Ghost Fountain Pagoda. Is there really such a temple, and did anything strange happen there?"

She didn’t answer immediately. Whatever question she might have expected, this wasn’t it. (I wonder what she was afraid I’d ask. What secrets did my mother have that she feared I might uncover?) It took several seconds for her to switch mental tracks to what I’d actually said. "Of course there’s a Ghost Fountain Pagoda," she finally replied. "We went there once or twice, but I didn’t like it. Too many people. Too loud and crazy."

"Did anything unusual happen any of the times we went there?"

"How do I know what was unusual? I told you, we only went once or twice. Or three, four times, I don’t remember. Not often enough to know what was usual."

"But did anything remarkable happen while we were there?" I tried not to shout. Though I hadn’t talked to my mother in months, we’d fallen back into our old dysfunctional patterns: as soon as I asked a question, she instinctively tried not to answer it. But for once, I wanted to have a conversation with her that didn’t end up screaming.

"What do you consider remarkable?" my mother asked, still evading the question. "People having sex out in the open?"

"No." We’d seen that at a lot of temples. The Neo-Tantric sect had a constitutional right to copulate in public, and they exercised that right whenever, wherever. "If you don’t remember anything out of the ordinary, Mother, just say so."

"Why is this important?" she asked… yet again dodging the question. Despite my good intentions mere seconds before, I found myself losing my temper.

"It’s important because I’m being eaten!" I snapped. "I’m infected by a parasite that may be driving me mad, and I don’t know if I can trust my own memories. I thought, maybe, maybe, you’d help me decide if the spores were playing games with my mind. But of course I was wrong. You don’t want to help me with anything, Mother. You just want me to shut up before your precious Raymond calls."

She stared at me a moment… then let out an Oh-I’m-a-martyr sigh. "Really, Youn Suu. You look perfectly fine. Nothing’s eating you. Have you been taking drugs or something?"

"No. The parasite’s inside me. It’s an alien infestation that doesn’t show up on the surface until it’s too late."

"Then go see a doctor, you silly girl."

"Doctors can’t help. And neither, apparently, can you. Sorry to disturb you, Mother. I won’t do it again. I won’t last long enough, will I?"

I almost punched the DISCONNECT button: an ingrained reflex to cut off conversation after I’d delivered a good parting shot. But I stopped myself in time. Did I want to squander my chance for truth out of sheer petty pique?

On the vidscreen, my mother looked like she knew exactly what thoughts were going through my head. She wore a "Well, are you going to do it?" expression… based, I guess, on all the times I had hung up on her, or stormed out of the room, or just covered my ears and screamed, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Taking a breath, I said, "Look. Let’s start over. Was there a day we went to that temple and something extraordinary happened?"

"Why do you want to know?" Again, answering my question with a question.

"Why don’t you want to tell me?" I said, giving her another question back. "You’re being so evasive, it sounds like something did happen, and you’re afraid to admit it."

I paused. Mother said nothing — looking somewhere off-screen. "Don’t be shy," I said. "It’s not like I’ll think you’ve gone crazy. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an Explorer, it’s that the universe is full of strangeness. I’ll believe whatever you tell me."

Mother gave me a look. "If you’ve finally begun to believe what I say, the universe is getting strange indeed." She sighed. "We were in the pagoda, Youn Suu. You were watching a pair of Neo-Tantrics doing their usual in a corner. You were pretending to meditate, but you were twelve years old, fascinated by all kinds of sex and not good at hiding your interest. People were watching you more than the Neo-Tants; you were so obvious, the way you kept taking oh-so-casual peeks at the couple in the corner, and I suppose a lot of folks found that cute."

"Or they just couldn’t take their eyes off my cheek."

"Maybe that too," Mother said. "You always drew attention. It was hard taking you out in public. I got so embarrassed…" She shook her head. "I guess that’s what happened at the temple. I was embarrassed by everybody looking at you, so I thought I’d go outside for a few minutes. Get some air. Pretend you weren’t with me. But when I got to the door…"

"You went to the door?"

"Yes. And outside, a bunch of statues were covered with stuff that hadn’t been there when we came in. Purple jelly, black sand, lava… every statue had something crawling on it."

"You saw the statues?"

"That’s what I’m saying. You were too busy staring at two not-very-attractive people having sex, but I saw what I saw."

"What about the Buddha statue? The one inside the pagoda, in the fountain."

"That was the strangest part," my mother said. "I came running back inside to get you — to drag you away someplace safe, in case the stuff on the statues was dangerous — and I glanced at the Buddha, just for half a second. In that instant, the statue was suddenly replaced with a woman in a wheelchair. She was moss from the waist down, Youn Suu: glowing red moss. And she was looking at you. You had your back to her, so you didn’t see. But she smiled at you. Her eyes were hidden behind her hair, but I could see her mouth, and she smiled. She lifted her hands toward you in the Wisdom mudra… then she disappeared, and the Buddha was back to normal. When I got you outside, the other statues were back to normal too. I hustled you away before anything else happened and never told you what I’d seen. Never went back to that temple either." She gave me a probing look. "Well? Was that what you wanted to hear?"

I couldn’t answer — once again frozen in surprise. Kaisho Namida, the mossy woman in the wheelchair… she’d shown up on Anicca? She’d been interested in me? And she’d made the Wisdom mudra: one of the many hand gestures used to symbolize virtues and principles of faith. Had she been suggesting I needed to strive for wisdom? Was she bestowing wisdom upon me?

If she had given me wisdom, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t understand any of this. My mother had just confirmed that the events of my "memory" had actually taken place… but she was the one who saw the aliens, while I missed everything. And her account differed from my memory in several respects. She’d seen Kaisho in the fountain; I’d seen the Buddha covered with moss.

One thing seemed certain: the Balrog had played with my mind. Sort of. The spores had given me a memory of things I would have seen for myself if I hadn’t been a silly twelve-year-old distracted by sex. Thanks to that artificial memory, I’d contacted my mother to find out what really happened…

…and I’d learned that seven years ago, the Balrog was already interested in me. It had sent Kaisho to "bless" me — perhaps knowing that my attention would be elsewhere and that I’d only be told the truth when my mother saw fit to share what she’d seen. The Balrog had been watching me (stalking me?) back when I was twelve: long before I became an Explorer. Now it had given me a false memory, possibly to prod me into calling my mother in search of the real story.

It wanted me to know about the temple. The Balrog was sending me a message. I just didn’t understand what the message was.

"Youn Suu," Mother said, "are you all right?"

"I’m fine," I said in reflex — automatically shutting my mother out, refusing to yield information about how I really was. I forced myself to say, "Actually, I don’t know how I am. I feel okay, but like I told you, I’ve got alien spores in my guts. Who knows what they’ll do to me?" I could have told her I might end up like the wheelchair-bound moss victim she’d seen in the temple, but why sensationalize? "How are you doing?" I asked to deflect the conversation. "Is, uhh… is this Raymond nice?"

Mother looked at me with suspicion — maybe worried I’d launch into a tirade. "I told you, Youn Suu, he’s just a friend."

"I hope it works out for you, Mother. Really."

She stared at me a moment. "You’re in bad trouble, aren’t you."

"Yes. All kinds of it."

Silence. Then: "You’re strong. I told the man at the birth clinic, ‘Make her strong.’ And he did. I did everything I could to make you strong. You’ll be okay. Really."

Part of me wanted to say, Don’t be ridiculous, Mother, you didn’t do everything you could. You paid a lot of money in the bioengineering phase, but once I was born, and you saw my face, you lost every drop of enthusiasm. After that, I was just a burden. But I stifled the words. "I am strong," I said. "We’ll see what happens next."

We both pressed our DISCONNECT buttons. Neither of us said good-bye.

Still too early for bed. I found I was surprisingly hungry, but couldn’t go down to the mess hall again for fear that Tut was still there. (What was I afraid would happen? Don’t ask. I refused to contemplate the possibilities.) With no other way to distract myself, I went back to my latest Princess Gotama statue. A few minutes later, when the door chirped to announce a visitor, I gratefully said, "Come in."

I thought it might be Festina, or perhaps Captain Cohen checking up on me in grandfatherly concern. To my surprise, it was Commander Miriam Ubatu of the Outward Fleet Diplomacy Corps… looking less like a VIP and more like an ordinary nineteen-year-old coming to visit someone her age. The diamond studs were gone from her nose (replaced by simple steel wire), and she’d changed from her gold uniform into unprepossessing civilian clothes: plain black T-shirt and plain black pants, with enough silver skin-embeds on her arms and bare midriff to soften the black-on-black "ninja Amazon" effect. Still, she was a superior officer; I scrambled to my feet and gave a salute, which she waved away without returning. "Forget the formalities, Youn Suu. This isn’t a business visit."

"Was there something you needed?" I asked… thinking she might have run out of champagne or wanted her uniform pressed.

"No, I’m fine. I thought we could talk."

I almost said, Talk about what? But the words sounded rude in my head, as if I doubted Ubatu and I had any common ground for conversation. Instead, I went with simple politeness: "Would you like to sit down?"

She took the only chair — the one at my desk. I settled onto the bed… sitting perched on the edge rather than letting myself relax. Whatever Ubatu had come for, I doubted this would be a session of casual girl talk.

"So how are you feeling?" she asked — not meeting my eyes.

"You mean with the Balrog inside me?"

"Yes. Do you feel… different?"

"Not really. Whatever the spores are doing to my body, there’s no noticeable sensation."

"I see." Ubatu glanced my way, then averted her eyes again. "Do you think the Balrog is affecting your mind?"

"Why do you ask?" My mother wasn’t the only one who could answer a question with a question.

"I just wanted…" Ubatu paused and bit her lip, as if trying to decide whether to say something. Finally she took a deep breath. "Have you heard of Ifa-Vodun?"

"Is that a person?"

"No. Ifa-Vodun means Spirit of Prophecy. It’s a movement."

"You mean a religion."

She shrugged. "I see it more as a sensible response to humanity’s position in the cosmos."

"What position would that be?"

"The bottom of the heap, looking up. Above us are all kinds of aliens with varying degrees of power and knowledge… so it makes sense for us to reach out however we can. Contact some of those aliens and see what happens."

"Don’t we do that already?" I asked. "You’re in the Diplomacy Corps. Surely you know how hard the navy and Technocracy government keep working to establish relations with higher aliens."

Ubatu made a face. "Oh yes, they’re constantly trying to ‘establish relations’… old-fashioned diplomacy with official envoys, and embassies, and notes of accreditation. But our diplomatic protocols have always been geared for creatures on our own intellectual level, not for higher beings. In the four centuries since we left Old Earth, our diplomacy hasn’t got anywhere with elevated lifeforms. Sometimes an advanced entity will speak to selected humans for its own purposes, but it doesn’t work the other way. Standard diplomacy has failed to set up any back-and-forth dialogue."

"In the Explorer Academy," I said, "our teachers believed that higher lifeforms don’t want back-and-forth dialogue… any more than we humans want dialogue with slugs and earthworms. As you said, higher lifeforms only interact with humans when it suits their own purposes. Otherwise, they have better things to do than chat with Homo sapiens."

"Exactly!" Ubatu smiled as if I’d just proved her point. "We’ve been trying to catch higher aliens’ attention for four centuries. If they wanted to talk to us, they would have. So isn’t it time to admit that conventional diplomacy doesn’t work?"

I kept my face passive, but internally I winced. When people announce that diplomacy has failed, there’s always a Plan B they’re eager to try. History is littered with disastrous Plan Bs. "What’s the alternative to diplomacy?" I asked.

"Other forms of approach," Ubatu said. "Other ways of soliciting attention."

"Such as?"

"Ifa-Vodun. Which means recognizing that higher lifeforms are higher lifeforms. We can’t approach superior beings as if we’re their equals. It’s better to approach them as supplicants."

"Supplicants? Ah." I suddenly got the picture. "You’re setting up a religion to worship advanced aliens."

"We don’t put it like that. Ifa-Vodun adopts traditional methods of divine entreaty as an alternative to sterile diplomatic culture."

She’s quoting some pamphlet, I thought. "So instead of writing communiques, you get naked and chop off the head of a chicken?"

I meant it as a joke… but she nodded.

"Yes, we’re experimenting with animal sacrifice. Blood rituals of all kinds. And, of course, chanting, dancing, sacramental copulation. Ifa-Vodun is a new movement — we’re investigating a diversity of avenues to see what works."

"So… so…" I’d just realized the significance of Vodun in the name of Ubatu’s "movement." "Are you seriously telling me that members of the Dip Corps are trying to catch aliens’ attention through voodoo?"

"Don’t be dismissive," she said. "Traditional Vodun is a respectable faith — nothing like the way it’s portrayed in Devils’n’Demolition VR. Besides, Ifa-Vodun doesn’t ask you to believe Vodun theology. We’re just seeing if Vodun forms can win perks from higher beings."

"So you don’t even respect voodoo as a religion? It’s just a means to an end?"

"We would never trivialize…" Ubatu stopped herself and took a breath. "Our movement respects Vodun enough to adopt its practices. Doesn’t that speak for itself?"

Perhaps. I knew little about Voodoo/Vodun. Maybe sincere believers would take it as a compliment if navy diplomats co-opted Vodun rites to suck up to aliens. Probably a number of those diplomats were believers themselves; there must be a reason why they chose Vodun over all the other human religions that have sought to win favor with powerful spirits. And maybe the Dip Corps was full of such "movements." Ifa-Vodun struck a chord with people of appropriate cultural background. Meanwhile, maybe diplomats of Bamar origin did homage to advanced lifeforms by burning PARINIRVANA BRAND INCENSE-STICKS™.

But there was still one important question. "Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

Ubatu turned away as if the answer embarrassed her. Finally she said, "Do you know what it means to be ridden by the loa?"

"No. What’s a loa?"

"A Vodun spirit. There are lots of different loa, but most are benevolent, wise, and powerful. When a loa rides somebody, it means the spirit takes over the person’s body. The loa speaks and acts through the person being ridden."

"In other words, the person is possessed by the loa spirit."

"More or less," Ubatu said. "It’s a time when others can talk to the loa. You ask questions, and maybe the loa will answer."

"The loa become diplomatically approachable?"

"Exactly! Using Vodun rituals, you summon a loa to ride a chosen host so you can converse respectfully. Ifa-Vodun is very interested in loa possession… and in finding ways to entice the spirits to do it more often."

Ah. Finally, I made the connection — what this visit was about. I had spores inside me… or to use Ubatu’s terminology, I was being ridden by the powerful alien loa that called itself the Balrog. By the precepts of Ifa-Vodun, I was therefore a prime diplomatic opportunity. Maybe the Balrog would speak through me, sharing valuable knowledge about the universe. Even if that didn’t happen, Ubatu wanted to learn what I’d done to draw the spores into me: how I’d made myself a tempting vessel for loa/alien possession.

Thinking back on the past few hours, I realized Ubatu had displayed great interest in Balrog behavior. I’d interpreted that as ghoulish fascination at the thought of others being eaten… but I’d been wrong. This went deeper than casual curiosity. It was like some religious imperative, fostered by a secret society within the Diplomacy Corps and leading who knew where?

"You should go now," I told Ubatu. "I want you to go. Get out."

"All right," Ubatu said. "For now. You still have too much personal control to let the Balrog speak to me. But that will change, won’t it? The Balrog will slowly edge you out. Then I’ll find ways to win it over."

"Beheading a chicken and writing with its blood?"

"We’ll see."

She stood abruptly, a tall woman looming above me… and suddenly her black-on-black outfit with abstract silver symbols embedded in the flesh of her arms and belly struck me as much more than they’d originally seemed. I’d thought it was all just fashionable streetwear; but really she’d traded her navy gold for another uniform. An Ifa-Vodun priestess? A priestess who hoped the Balrog would expunge my Youn Suu personality, thereby becoming pure loa?

"Leave," I said.

"I’m leaving. Good night."

She made an odd gesture as she went through the door. I didn’t want to guess its significance.