David Farland - Beyond the Gate

“So the dronon who abandoned this world betrayed it, leaving behind weapons for the Inhuman to use.” Gallen breathed deeply. “Ceravanne, your people are in far graver danger from the invaders than even you had imagined!”

Maggie was watching the distant image of the dronon hive city, crawling down the mountainside like a huge spider, when a second crested the ridge. And then she saw something else, a knot of large birds in the darkness, their body heat registering white, hurtling across the distant valleys. She wondered how far away they were, and her mantle flashed an image before her eyes. Two hundred and twenty kilometers.

“Gallen, there are scouts flying this way, hundreds of them.”

“I know,” Gallen said. “The Inhuman is coming for you. It knows where we are, and because of the interference my mantle offered, it has guessed at our purpose.”

“It could only have learned our location from the transmitter in your head,” Maggie said, and she looked at Gallen sharply.

“I know,” Gallen admitted. “The Inhuman sent a message to Zell’a Cree in his last moments, telling him to pull off my mantle so that the downloading could be finished. The Inhuman could only have sent that message if it were tracking us and knew that Zell’a Cree and I were together.”

“Of course,” Ceravanne whispered. “Then if it knows where you are,” Maggie said, “the Inhuman only has to follow you to find us.”

Gallen looked about helplessly, threw up his hands. “Unless Maggie can remove the transmitter, or we can somehow block it, then you will have to leave me.”

Gallen took Maggie’s hand, looked steadily into her eyes, and touched it to the back of his head. “Here is where the Word burrowed into my skull. I can feel a small bump there. It only makes sense that the transmitter is still outside the skull; the Inhuman would not try to beam messages through bone. Perhaps the tail end of the Word is the transmitter.”

Maggie had suspected this possibility before, but dared not admit it. The implications horrified and sickened her. She didn’t want to have to pry this thing out of Gallen’s head. “I know what you’re going to ask, Gallen, and I can’t do it. The Word has inserted itself into your brain. I can’t just pull it out!”

An image flashed through Maggie’s mind, a vision of neural wires slicing through the gray matter of Gallen’s brain as she pulled.

“We have to try something,” Gallen said. “I want you to try now to cut away anything outside the skull. And if that doesn’t work, you must pry the Word out. I know it’s dangerous, but it is the only way for me to remain with you. Unless you do this, I might as well be dead.”

Maggie looked nervously to the south. “What of the scouts?”

“They will not make it here for several hours,” Gallen said. “And we can hide from them tomorrow.” When next he spoke, Gallen spoke not as himself, but as the Inhuman, and it was reflected in his demeanor. “For six thousand years, I’ve lived in this land. I can guide you to Moree like no others, except those infected by the Inhuman. But I cannot help you, unless you do this for me. And perhaps it will avail nothing.”

Maggie looked to Ceravanne. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“I can, maybe,” Ceravanne said. “I’ve mended festering wounds, and I’m handy with a knife. But I’m not sure what you’ll require of me.”

“Do you have any more Healing Earth?” Maggie asked.

“A pinch, perhaps, no more,” Ceravanne said. “He can have a few drops of my blood.”

Maggie wondered where to perform the surgery. It seemed ghastly to do it here in the stable, in the dim lamplight surrounding Fenorah’s pale corpse, but it sheltered them from the chilly night air and from prying eyes. Maggie looked for some clean straw. Some of the horses nickered querulously as she pulled the hay from a crib and sprinkled it on the floor. Ceravanne brought the lantern near, and Tallea brought her sharpest dagger from its sheath.

Ceravanne bit her lower lip, and her hands shook as she did the cutting, opening the back of Gallen’s neck down to the blue-white bone. She pulled Gallen’s hair gently, opening the flaps of severed skin so that she could see more clearly, and Maggie had to use a bandage from her pack to daub the blood away.

There was a small, perfectly circular hole in his skull, and two small wires dangled from what had once been the Word’s hind feet. Maggie couldn’t be sure what the wires were for, so she ran up to the wagon at the front of the inn and got her mantle of technology, then came back and looked closely at the wires. The sensors in her mantle magnified the image. From the Word’s hind legs, tiny microfilaments, like veins, had grown out in a gray web, wrapping themselves around Gallen’s skull. It was not a particularly powerful antenna for either receiving or transmitting information, but Gallen’s skull acted as something of a dish.

“This is it,” Maggie said. “This is the antenna. This is a more complex design than I’d imagined, but it’s also easy to defeat-at least I think we can keep them from tracking us.”

“Do it,” Gallen said.

And to her own surprise, Maggie found that she was able to take the knife from Ceravanne. “It’s too intricate to do this without a mantle,” she explained. She severed the web in a circle, then dug out as much of the wiring as possible. She tried to clear her thoughts, concentrate only on doing the job. She watched for several seconds, to see if the web would grow back, but apparently this component of the nanotech weapon was too unsophisticated to regenerate. After thirty seconds, the wound so filled with blood that she could no longer see well.

Maggie blotted it away again with the bandage. “I’m done,” she whispered.

“Try to pry the Word out,” Gallen said.

“There’s no need,” Maggie argued, imagining how the webs of metallic neurons would slice through his brain if she pulled. “I’ve already cut off the antenna.”

“I don’t want it in me,” Gallen shouted, his voice muffled as he yelled into the straw. “Cut it out! Pull it out partway, if you can, and then cut it in half.” Maggie found herself breathing hard, imagining the possibilities for infection in the wound, the possibilities of brain damage. She touched the tail end of the Word with her knife, wondering if it could be pried out. Suddenly, as if it had been burned, the Word lunged forward into Gallen’s brain, and blood began gushing out from Gallen’s brain cavity.

“Ah, God,” Orick cried out in fear.

“What?” Gallen asked, moving a bit.

“Nothing,” Maggie said, suddenly terrified, her knees going weak. “I’ll close now.”

Ceravanne held out her finger, and Maggie cut it, dropped a bit of Ceravanne’s Immortal blood into the wound, and in moments the cut began to heal. Gallen lay quietly while Maggie washed the blood from the back of his neck. And when Gallen sat up, he replaced his mantle on his head and asked Maggie, “Did you get it out?”.

“I couldn’t get the Word out,” Maggie said. “It dug itself in deeper. But I cut all of the connections to the antenna, and I dug out part of the wiring. I think the Word will be permanently disabled.”

Gallen considered, got up, and gazed off to the south. “I fear that my presence could be a danger to you even still. I will not guide you south, unless you all desire me to. But I warn you in any case that we may not be able to elude the Inhuman-a great race is afoot. I suspect that those marching hive cities have come searching for us, as have the scouts. Our enemies hunt us by land and air.”

He looked back, into the faces of Orick, Tallea, and Ceravanne. “Will you have me?”