The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [41]
“Something in here that’s—” He stopped. Or rather tried to. Easier to stop talking than to stop thinking. “Who’s saying that?” His own mind was betraying him. Something was present; stealing his thoughts, repeating them out loud in a voice that was quavering but comprehensible. This was not something that could be shut down or cut off by the edge of a blade.
Peering at the single figure within, the Lord Marshal nodded to the Purifier. “Touch is established. Any time.” Turning, the Purifier passed a hand over one lens among many that was set in a control panel.
Inside the grotto, focused gravity caught Riddick in its invisible grip and shoved him to his knees. The weight of his own body had suddenly become barely bearable. Hands pushing against the smooth surface, he fought to keep from being crushed all the way to the floor.
From a balcony above the chamber, elite soldiers watched the drama unfolding below. No matter how effective the tightly focused gravity or how helpless it appeared to render the subject, they had been instructed to be on full guard at all times. While privately questioning the need for what seemed to be excessive vigilance, they silently obeyed the orders they had been given. Standing opposite the guards, Vaako and his consort followed the play intently, knowing it could only have one ending.
In the center of the grotto Riddick struggled against a bond he was not only unable to break, but one he could not even get a grip on. As he struggled to keep suddenly heavy lungs working, he caught a change of light and shadow out of the corner of one eye. There was movement beyond the gravity lens that restrained him. Movement within the dark hollows that lined the far wall.
The shapes that came sliding out were tall and rounded. Whorls and inscriptions decorated their sides. They resembled the ancient ammonites of old Earth, but there was nothing primitive about the technology that drove them. Each supported, both physically and organically, a single body draped in a diaphanous shroud. Symbols and signs on shrouds and motile disks testified to the importance of the bodies they bore.
The bodies themselves did not move. They existed in a condition difficult even for accomplished biologists to properly describe. Commonly, they were known among the Necromongers who revered them as the Quasi-Dead, representatives of a unique order founded by Kryll himself. The same technology that preserved their bodies from final decay allowed the desiccated remains to serve as housings for minds that were as ruthless as they were insightful. All but freed from their physical forms, these minds were capable of inserting themselves into the mental pathways of others. They were able to view—and to search.
A wary Riddick tracked the apparitions as they trundled into place, forming a circle around him. Visually nothing more than a bunch of creepy corpses fastened to supportive platforms, mentally they were far more impressive. Almost immediately, they commenced their probing of the single subject pinned down before them.
“Wondering,” the voices chimed. Looking at them, appraising them, Riddick was unable to tell whether they were all male, all female, or a mix thereof. It did not matter. Inside his head, they were all the same.
“Wondering about us . . . realizing now that we’re in his mind. Beginning to fathom the Dark Thought. Trying to shut us out, shut down the here-and-now. Resisting—anything to resist. But vainly, so vainly. Cannot think not to think without thinking about it. The inevitable conundrum. It will fade and fail, as they all do.”
Eyes shut tight, Riddick flinched as a mental thrust tore through his brain. Doing everything possible to resist, he quickly realized there was nothing he could