Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio

Author:Al Sarrantonio [Sarrantonio, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2012-07-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

It was strange for Kay Free to be within a life-form again.

Especially one in the process of dying.

She could tell that the others were not enjoying the experience, either. Mel Sent was full of complaints, and Pel Front had regained his usual demeanor, one of churlish arrogance, which he especially reserved for Mel Sent. The two were like oil and water—well, not exactly, but that was a human term that applied.

“Life—now, there’s an interesting thing,” Pel Front said, the lips of his life-form, a half-man, half-vegetable mutant with leaves of translucent skin, curling in agony as Pel Front spoke. The creature writhed on the ground, in the throes of blindness and worse.

Immediately, Mel Sent, whose own choice had been a volelike thing with two heads and goggling eyes, spat, “You’ve said that before!”

“Yes, and meant it! But this time, it was meant with irony, not reflection. Not that you would know the difference!”

Kay Free was filled with a mixture of feelings, not the least satisfaction that her compatriots were back to their old selves. Perhaps it had been the inaction that had so disabled them all; but she knew it was deeper than that, and that this elation they all felt at the Calling might be only temporary. After all, look at where they were now.

Her own creature, a large, flat, round, tea-colored life-form symbiotically attached to the bole of an expiring tree, felt not only its own pain but that of its host. To Kay Free the experience was doubly unpleasant.

“This is not an affable world,” she said.

“Not in the least!” Mel Sent huffed. “Even without this disease, I would have passed it by. If you’ll remember, it was at my urging that we sampled the system’s life-forms on the second planet, not this or any of the others.”

“And left them as dead as we’ll leave these,” Pel Front sniped.

“That was inevitable,” Kay Free said, recalling with sadness their introduction to the system’s creatures, on Venus; she especially remembered Mel Sent’s majestic whale, its mammoth body at ease like a dancer in the depths of a burgeoning Venusian sea.

“Yes, as will this be,” Pel Front said, his tone less haughty when addressing Kay Free. “I can only hope that this will be over soon!” His life-form, in the throes of Puppet Death, pronounced the word as a whistling screech of pain.

“Strange, to have one with vocal ability, even though its brain is primitive,” Pel Front remarked, letting the creature have its own voice back to wail as its rubbery body began to twist into horrid shapes, nearly back on itself. “I don’t like this,” he appended testily.

“Mother thought it important that we experience death, as well as life,” Kay Free said.

“And I do hope Mother is all right!” Mel Sent blurted.

“I’m sure she is—” Kay Free began, but was interrupted by a cry from Mel Sent.

“Oh! This one is dying! I can feel it!”

In confirmation, the two-headed vole began to shake violently, and its bulging eyes burst outward as the body collapsed sideways, twisted into a circle on the ground, and lay still.

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