“..you can come on hard cold roads to the very gates of his country. Lots of his people will be there looking for guests, very pleased to take them straight to him, O yes. His Eye watches that way all the time. It caught Sméagol there, long ago.” ~Sméagol, from The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

The bio-weapon’s true name was Jimlenka. Before Andross had turned him into this, he had been a private in the Titanian mines’ small reserve army. When the Titanians had been overpowered and captured five months ago, they’d been charged with treason and executed, all except for Jimlenka. Andross had bigger plans for him.

If Jimlenka had still been able to think for himself, he would have cursed the name of Andross. In his present state, he could easily escape Andross, and maybe, if he dared, even go after the ape himself. But Andross’s mind link erased any possibility of that. Jimlenka’s entire essence had been forced into a back corner of his mind, and there it festered, not being strong enough to do anything. Jimlenka (his friends used to call him “Jimmy”) had never had a very strong will. He was smart enough, but not a genius; he was nobody’s fool, but never seemed to protest things he knew were wrong. And he was big. Andross had chosen him for his newest freak show because he was practically the ideal candidate. The ape would have been stupid to choose anyone else.

So here he was, a mindless chunk of rock prowling around on Fortunese dirt trying to exterminate a sniveling company of woodland critters. His name under Venomian files was “Gerdendrul”. A stupid code-name. So far his anchor in Katt’s mind hadn’t managed to learn anything in the critters’ camp. She had been unconscious when they took her to the camp, so he still didn’t know where it was; on top of that, that stupid bunny had been keeping her so drunk with those infernal sedatives for the past two weeks that her mind was hardly ever coherent enough for him to make sense of it at all.

The groping tendrils of liquid stone found something and curled curiously around it. Gerdendrul bent his head a little closer. Whatever it was, it was blue. A feather. It was a feather. Gerdendrul didn’t know it was one of Falco’s, but nonetheless it was, and as such it had his essence implanted on it, faintly, but there just the same.

Gerdendrul used the powers Andross had implanted in his mind to call to Falco. Even though he wasn’t in the system (indeed he wasn’t in the galaxy, and was very arguably even in that universe), he managed to catch a weak psychic echo fluttering about just outside the threshold of a black hole a few hundred miles outbound from Fortuna. “What a fool,” what was left of Jimmy’s real mind said. “If we were free, we wouldn’t fly into black holes, oh no, Jimmy. What fools they are, yes, what fools. They doesn’t know how lucky they are. And they doesn’t like poor Jimmy. They tries to kill Jimmy. We’ll make them crawl, nasty vicious animals, yes, we’ll make them crawl.” Scattered, gibberish, insane ramblings; but all the same they were not from Andross’s implantations and they were profoundly silenced moments thereafter.

He liquefied and flattened, the gritty slime that was his body expanding slowly. A lump formed somewhere in it, and then rose and became a long, thin tower, and at the tip of the tower the feather was held. Then feathery shapes sprang from the stone, and a rocky beak jutted out, and within minutes there stood a perfect statue of Falco. Gerdendrul channeled all the psychic energies of this one he had found directly into it, and soon there wasn’t just a statue, there was practically a Falco clone. Weaker-minded. But that couldn’t be helped. Lastly, Gerdendrul detached a small wormlike rope of stone, which wriggled right through the Falco clone’s ear openings and settled in the brain to wait for information.

“So much anger,” Jimmy’s mind said. “So much pain....what a nasty crude animal, we doesn’t like it, oh no, we doesn’t like it at all....and it hates us, doesn’t it, oh yes, hates us. So we hates it right back, doesn’t we.” Then his thoughts ended abruptly as Andross’s influence gained control once more. Gerdendrul looked on.

*  *  *

She was drowning in a thick, rancid sea, and the foul liquid was enveloping her. She couldn’t breathe...couldn’t move.... Katt opened her mouth to scream, but it was clogged with the disgusting mire before any sound escaped. She choked. It was the bio-weapon again....closing in....seeping in...rushing in through her mouth, her eyes, crawling into her ears, the odious creature. Couldn’t it leave? Hadn’t it done enough already....? As it worked further into her ears, the pain was too much. Spluttering and coughing up the slime, she opened her mouth for a final shriek....

And all at once the horrible muggy silence of the rock in her ears, the terrible stifling muddiness covering her nose and mouth, the taste in her mouth....they were gone, all of them. There was a different kind of silence now. Cold, biting, but peaceful. It was all gone--no, not all gone. The pain was still there. But it had been a dream.

Peppy ran to Katt’s cot. “What happened?” He struggled to rub sleep from his eyes--her scream had awakened him alone. Fox and Slippy were feeling no pain and hearing nothing. Bill was dead tired and stone drunk.

She tried to speak. “My ear hurts,” she mumbled. “I have something in my ear.”

“No, there’s nothing in your ear--don’t worry...just go back to sleep. Try to go to sleep without the sedative, we’re almost out--but don’t you worry, just back to sleep, yes, that’s it.” His soothing words belied his sense of puzzlement. Something in her...ear? Still heavily under the influence of her latest dose of Happy Medicine, she drifted off fairly easily, but Peppy sat up for a while, worrying. There were only three sedatives left, and two weeks of being the only being around in his right mind was starting to take its toll. “In her ear....” Peppy closed his eyes and pondered her words. Maybe she really does have something in her ear, but what? Peppy wondered. No, he thought to himself reproachfully. No, stupid, remember all those sedatives! Yeah, sure, she really has something in her ear, and there are really pretty colours everywhere, and there are things crawling up the wall... With those thoughts, Peppy fell asleep.

*  *  *

Peppy woke up the next morning with a cramped neck, a sore throat, a fever, and a cough. He wondered what time it was and painfully dragged himself to the tent flap to have a look outside. To his shock and intense worry, the sun was high overhead--it was noon, or a little later. Doubtfully, he turned his head back to the interior of the tent. Everyone was still asleep. Peppy’s mouth hung open in disbelief. Still asleep? What kind of lazy bums had he gotten hooked up with? No, he reminded himself. Katt, Fox, and Slippy had medical excuses. Bill had an excuse as well. And here he comes now, Peppy thought grumpily.

Radley McCoy paraded into the tent with a bottle of wine. “Hullo, brother Hare,” he said, eyeing Peppy. “Down on the floor then, aren’t you? Hadn’t you better get up? It’s not right for people your age to be wallowing in the dirt. Your young friends might have some excuse.”

Peppy glared profusely. “Now you look here, McCoy, this is my tent and these are my friends and they’re all sick now and so am I, and half of it is your fault, so if I were you I wouldn’t be so quick to come around here anymore if all you’re gonna do is insult my age and get the only people I have left drunk until they’re not fit for anything except to waste oxygen and make the air stink.”

To Peppy’s surprise, and much to his chagrin, Radley grinned broadly at this. “You always was such a kidder!”

“Always?” Peppy said weakly. “You’ve only known me for two weeks...”

“Ahh, but it feels like a lifetime. Two lifetimes. In fact, you take so long to do anything that a minute with you is like a lifetime! Now if you’re not going to be using this wine, I’ll be on my way now.” McCoy saluted and marched away through the frozen, mostly petrified forest.

Peppy just lay there in a daze as all hope slowly drained out of his body.

*  *  *

Falco stayed there in the chaotic but perfectly ordered black hole mass for thirteen days in our time. He tried to get away but also fled from any chance he had to leave. It was a strange experience, to say the least. His mind was completely jumbled up and he could not be sure of anything. I have to get out, he thought with sudden clarity. I’m not ready for this, not yet....

Suddenly, he heard the sound of someone singing in a clear voice. Where it came from, he didn’t know, but he felt drawn to it. It was a song he knew well from his childhood.

I know a place where fear won’t stay
I want to go back there one day
And when I see its fall leaves turn,
I’ll know I never shall return.
It is a place of peace and song
The sky is blue and the tears fall long
And when I see it in days of the last
I will know it from my past..
Though I’ve never seen it, I know it well
that’s where my heart shall ever dwell....

And with that sensation, the sensation of hearing, of remembering, he was out. He left that confused state of being and did not go there again as a living creature.

He knew then he was back in his Arwing, but where he was he could not say. He could feel the cool leather of the seat and the clammy plastic of the control stick. The sense of touch was so refreshing that he almost laughed with joy. As it was, he tried to draw in a deep breath and found it very hard to do. Then he realised with a feeling of stupidity and a tinge of panic that the bay doors had jammed and were still open. He had thirty seconds at best before he’d blow up, or worse. He whacked the button that closed the doors with alarming zeal and let his vision slowly return.

Stars spun madly and then sharpened into white-hot points of icy light, planets shimmered into view. He could see the control stick now, not just feel it, and he blinked, his mind still reeling from his incredible experience. He had just enough energy left to guide the battered Arwing into a planet’s atmosphere and land it, reasonably safely, before he fell asleep over the control panel and did not awaken for more than a day.

Chapter 6