Filaria - Brent Hayward [91]
“Calm down, Deidre, please! Calm down!”
She lay panting. Above her was a pale, lit ceiling.
“I’m dismissing them,” the voice said, “it’s all right, Deidre, you’re going to be all right. They’ve done their job, it’s over. Don’t freak out.”
Deidre had built up strength in her lungs to scream again but the larvae were on the move, leaving her flesh, marching off her body and onto the surrounding mattress. So she just drew a deep, shuddering breath.
This place was not her room. Here was no canopy bed.
She managed to sit up partially, propped on her elbows, watching in horrified fascination as the numerous creatures — still very much there, real, and alive — reached the rim of the platform she had been lying flat on and, with gentle plops, fell into numerous holes spaced around the perimeter.
She looked around. The room was small. That pale ceiling, just a few metres overhead. White, almost shimmering walls. A closed door to her left, no knob, an odd symbol embossed upon it.
Next to her hummed a delicate machine. Quivering, on an equally delicate stand. She regarded this device with growing fear; her father had a similar one in his private lab, where he sometimes tinkered and repaired staff. It was a gadget meant to keep the body alive and functioning while he operated, opening them up and poking around inside. Several attachments, resting in cradles or clips on the side. A cable, leading out of sight, reappearing to snake up over the platform, coil over her left leg, up her belly —
She yanked the cable away and when she touched the painful area above her ear where it had been taped, she felt warm liquid trickling. A patch, shaved on her head.
She whispered, “What have you done to me?”
And the spindly machine said, almost as quietly, “Not yet, girl, not yet. Now you’ve done it, silly.”
There was no one else in the room. She looked at the wound in her shoulder. Where it should have been, the skin was covered by a light dusting of whitish fuzz. Her instinct was to rub the fuzz away but she shied from the agony that would most likely ensue. She did not want to confirm that she had been hurt. That would make it all real.
The caterpillars were gone.
Lifting her face, she detected an absence of smell in the air. This was the most unsettling thing so far. She filled her lungs with cleanliness and sterility and understood, without a doubt, that she had left the world and all she had known behind.
The dreams had been real.
Angels brought her to this place.
“Where am I?” she asked, horrified.
“A seed terminal.” The disembodied voice came from all around, as if from the clean air itself. “But please, don’t panic again. It’s no good for either of us.”
Initially, upon waking, Deidre had pictured a man speaking, but now, she realized, she was picturing a woman. Did the voice emanate from some form of free-floating gram? There appeared no light source to support this idea. And even if a drifting gram were possible, a beam of light would be needed to keep it going. So who or what was talking? A ghost? “What is a seed terminal?”
“Not just any seed terminal! The seed terminal! Mine. I’m the one lucky enough to host you. All the others are fading away, right now, as we speak. Across the planet. All those little versions of myself, sad and disappointed, shrivelling up inside.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Not too long, Deidre. A few hours. Those little worms are very efficient. Now, you need to get your strength up. You’ll be leaving shortly.”
Deidre said, “They’re not worms. They’re moth larvae.”
“Moth larvae? Is that what they were? I’ll have to take your word for it. I don’t know much about these things.”
She swung her legs off the bed, trying to ignore the pain that jolted up to her shoulder. Since the source of the voice and the tones it spoke in did not remain constant, all she could be sure of was that whatever spoke was invisible, intangible.
“Are you sure you feel well enough to get out of bed?”
“I’m leaving. Right now.”
“Leaving?