He managed to extricate himself from the crowd that had assembled around the storytellers and started looking for him, but with no success. He walked the entire length of the tent, checking out every person he passed. Everyone in the colony seemed to be present except for Wayne.

  As he passed Sally Chang she looked up at him. “Who are you looking for?”

  “Wayne.” He said it loudly enough that others could hear him. “I’m looking for Wayne Reinhart. Does anyone know where he is?”

  “Off to take a piss,” Lan Nguyen offered.

  “That was ages ago,” Jeff Hodges said. He pointed to a bowl full of stew that looked conspicuously out of place amidst all the empty ones. “Look, his food hasn’t been touched.”

  Anna chuckled. “Probably watching one of his movies. Because, you know, the first real food we’ve had on a new world ISN’T EXCITING ENOUGH FOR WAYNE.”

  Bill grinned. “I’ll eat his if he doesn’t want it.”

  Wayne’s long absence was probably nothing to worry about, Leo told himself. Maybe just an upset stomach. But his face must have betrayed his uncertainty, because when Jeff looked at him his own smile faded. “I’ll check on him,” Jeff said. “Gotta piss anyway.” He coughed. “That stuff that isn’t beer goes right through you.”

  Leo nodded, accepting the offer. Best to treat this as a casual concern for now. He started pacing while he waited, but then realized there were people watching him, and the look on their faces communicated a common question: Do we need to be worried about something? So he stopped, and he smiled at them, and acted as if he was not worried at all.

  Someone screamed. It was a gut-wrenching sound, resonating with fear in a way Leo had never heard before. And it was coming from the waste disposal area. Leo started in that direction, but by the time he rounded the table others were already running downhill toward the waste tent, and some of them got there before he did. They didn’t enter, or even approach the tent itself, but stood a few yards back, their attention fixed on something by the entrance. When Leo caught up to them he saw what it was.

  Jeff.

  The man was crouched by the door flap with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head lowered; his whole body was shaking. As Leo approached he looked up, and the sheer horror in his eyes was chilling. “Don’t go in there,” Jeff whispered hoarsely. “You don’t want to see.”

  But being colony commander left him no choice, so Leo drew in a deep breath, pushed the flap aside, and entered the tent.

  Inside it was dark, with only a single dim lamp to see by. But that was enough for him to make out the form of a body lying at the edge of the compost pit. The shape of it was human, but the head seemed oddly flat, and the arms and legs were bent in ways that human limbs should not bend. It looked like a rag doll that someone had thrown to the ground.

  He looked around the tent to make sure there was nothing crouching in a corner, then approached the body. Though he knew whose it must be, it was still a shock to see the face clearly. This was Wayne, all right—or rather, had been Wayne. Leo crouched down by his side and reached out a tentative finger to the man’s neck to check for a pulse. But when he pressed on Wayne’s skin it sank beneath this touch, as if the flesh beneath it was not human tissue, but jelly. He pulled his hand back, drew in a few deep breaths to steady himself, then looked more closely at Wayne’s face. The head was not merely flattened, he realized, more like . . . deflated. Like a balloon that was half-full, with human features painted on it. He reached out to take Wayne’s hand, then thought better of it and took hold of the sleeved forearm instead, unwilling to touch the grotesque balloon-skin. He wanted to see if the limbs were any more solid than the face and neck. But the forearm was sickeningly slack; had there not been skin and clothing to contain it, the flesh might have flowed out of Leo’s hands.

  Now he understood what had spooked Jeff so badly. He turned away to be sick, barely managing to lean over the edge of the compost pit first.

  A flicker of light entered the tent from behind him, as someone opened and then closed the door flap.

  Please God, he thought, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, don’t let anyone else come in here and see this.

  “You okay?” It was Lise.

  He shook his head. No. No. Not okay. Light-years from okay.

  She moved closer to Wayne’s body, to get a better look. Her eyes widened in horror as she realized exactly what she was looking at, and she instinctively took a step backward. To her credit, she managed not to be sick.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered. “Holy shit. What the fuck happened?”

  He forced himself to lift Wayne’s arm again, so that she could see how unnaturally it moved. “No clue,” he said hoarsely. When he released the arm it flopped back down to the ground like a dead fish. “You’re the doctor, so you tell me. What could do this to a man?”

  “God knows. I’ve never seen anything like it.” She edged a bit closer again, to take another look. “There are venoms back on Earth that can dissolve flesh. But not as quickly as this. Jesus, he was fine an hour ago!”

  “Can those venoms dissolve bone like this? Leaving the rest untouched?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know anything on Earth that could do something like this.”

  “Flesh-eating bacteria?”

  “Pulping an entire body like this, in an hour? I guess theoretically it’s possible, but . . .” She prodded Wayne’s arm with a finger; it sank into the jellied flesh with no resistance. Testing a thigh got the same result. “All four of the first colonies said that local pathogens didn’t affect them for the first few months, as alien germs need time to adapt to our biochemistry. So the likelihood of this being caused by a pathogen is very, very low.”

  “Which means it’s unlikely to be contagious?”

  She hesitated. “Unlikely, yes.” She glanced back toward the tent entrance, beyond which most of the colony must be clustering nervously by now. Waiting for word. “That may not be enough to keep others from panicking. Especially after Tia’s death.” She leaned down to take a closer look at the body. “The ears are intact. That’s odd. And I think I see a protrusion where the tip of his nose must have been, but there’s no sign of the rest of it. I’d need to get him to the lab to figure out what all this means.”

  She stood up. “We need a body bag. And an explanation to give everyone else.” She nodded toward the tent flap. “No lies, right?”

  “You’re the medic,” he said quietly. “What do you suggest?”

  She considered for a moment, then walked to the entrance and pulled its flap aside. “Wayne’s dead,” she announced. “We’re not sure what killed him. Possibly a toxin from some animal he ran across on the way here. Nothing like what happened with Tia. I need to get him into the lab before I can tell you more. James, could you fetch me a bag from the clinic, please? Thank you.”

  There were some muttered protests, but evidently she’d been convincing enough—and calm enough—that they were willing to follow her lead. Wayne had been bitten by something. There was no need for people to crowd into the tent to see that for themselves.

  Looking down at Wayne’s body, Leo wondered how the hell he was going to carry it so that no one realized the thing in the specimen bag wasn’t a human body anymore, just a bag of jelly with a face.

  “Well, Ian? Is this what you expected?”

  The red-headed botanist looks up at the towering trees in awe. They are old growth—ancient growth—not the product of human reforesting efforts, but nature’s own work. To be surrounded by trees that could be older than human civilization itself is like standing in a sacred temple. Ian shuts his eyes for a moment to drink in the forest’s perfume: the crisp scent of pine needles, the smell of early spring flowers, the pungent odor of decomposition. “It’s incredible,” he breathes. “Absolutely incredible. I can’t thank you enough for this, Eric.”

  His friend shrugs. “Perks of the job. I could only get you a permit for four hours, though. It’s to protect the preserve, you understand. There aren’t many places like this left.”

  “I understand.”

  The breeze carries a sharp acrid scent to his nostrils: perhaps the territorial marking of some passing animal. The concept that wild beasts can do that here—living and dying and hunting and mating without human guidance or interference—is intoxicating. “I wonder if there’s a way to sense it,” Ian muses aloud. “Maybe smell it when it fruits aboveground. But how would you pick out a scent like that, when you’ve never smelled it before?”

  Eric blinks. “Sorry, you lost me. Smell what?”

  Ian gestures toward the trees. “There’s a network binding all of these together, Eric. Fragile strands of fungus deep underground, connecting tree to tree so they can share water and nutrients with each other. Mycorrhizal symbiosis. Some even think that trees can communicate with each other—on a primitive level, of course—by sharing chemical signals through the network. A sort of arboreal internet.” There is awe in his voice. “Think about it! One single being, perhaps as large as this whole forest, branching out endlessly to make new connections. Like neurons in a human brain. It’s right under our feet. We can’t see it. Our ancestors had no idea it was there. But the health of this forest depends upon it.”

  Eric chuckles. “So—just to be clear—you wanted a permit to hike through one of the few remaining forest preserves in order to commune with a brain-like network you can’t see, smell, or hear?”

  Ian grins. “Pretty much.”

  “There are trees closer to where you live.”

  “Reconstituted forests planted by humans after we destroyed the originals. But once we tear up the mycorrhizal network, just replacing trees won’t repair it; the fungus has to start connecting all over again. But in an old growth forest like this, where humankind has never tilled the earth, it can grow for millennia, undisturbed.” He looks back at Eric. “The life-form under our feet may be older than the pyramids.”

  His friend shakes his head. “Has anyone ever told you you’re crazy?”

  Ian grins. “Not this week.”

  “Well, sane or not, your permit’s good for four hours, starting . . .” He presses a button on his chrono. “Now. You’ll get a reminder at the half-hour mark, and again at fifteen minutes. You know the way back?”

  Ian nods back toward the ranger station. “I think so.”

  “If you get lost, GPS it. If that doesn’t help, call me. Unless you’d rather try spinning a magnetic needle, like they did in the days of the pyramids.” He pauses. “You owe me big time for this.”

  “Yes,” he says quietly. “I know.”

  “All right then.” Eric pats him on the shoulder. “Enjoy the trees, my friend.”

  Ian shuts his eyes. As his friend departs he listens as the leaf-crunching footsteps slowly recede into the distance. Then all that is left is the forest.

  He lowers himself slowly to the ground, lies back upon a bed of damp soil and leaves, and stretches his arms wide, splaying out his fingers like tree roots. Or perhaps like mycorrhizal strands? If he stays here long enough without moving, like a tree, will the fungal network eventually detect him and try to connect to him? Or is a human being too alien to attract it?

  For a while he gazes up at the trees that tower overhead, allowing himself to be mesmerized by the patterns that the sunlight makes as their branches shift in the breeze. Then, with a sigh, he shuts his eyes again, focusing on the sound of leaves rustling and the smell of the soil, imagining what it would be like for a whole planet to be covered in forest like this, millions upon millions of acres of it. Earth was like that, once. Other planets still are.

  Maybe this world is not where he belongs.

  Ian was the first to arrive for Leo’s meeting, so he was able to claim the most comfortable seat, a real folding chair. Two benches had been set up for the others, using planks from the cargo pod. Not luxurious accommodations, but sufficient to accommodate the first people Leo had awakened on the seedship, now serving as his advisory council.

  The others filtered in one by one. All of them looked tired, but that was to be expected. No one in the camp had been sleeping well, least of all the nine people who knew all the gory details of Tia’s death. Thus far they’d chosen not to share the more bizarre details with anyone else, just nod in agreement when someone referred to her “being killed by an animal.” Whether that was because they wanted to have more information to offer before they did that, or because the thought of discussing the matter awakened a visceral fear in them, Ian couldn’t say. For him it was a mixture of both.

  Lise and Leo arrived last. The colony commander had circles under his eyes that were dark enough to be visible even against the color of his skin. Lise had a look in her eyes that suggested she had gazed upon the kind of horror one could never unsee. This was not going to be a good meeting.

  “Welcome, everyone.” Leo looked at each of them in turn, meeting their eyes, offering a nod of encouragement. Even when he must feel drained inside he could be a source of strength to others; Ian admired and appreciated that. “I called you here to hear the details of Wayne’s autopsy. Not pleasant stuff, I warn you. Afterward we’ll need to discuss some things.” He looked at Lise. “You ready to start?”

  In truth, she looked like she would rather be doing anything else, but she nodded. “Wayne’s body was in . . . let’s say, an unusual condition. That’s why we hid it from sight yesterday. Last night I did an autopsy on it, hoping to figure out what had killed him. What I found . . .” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “His bones were gone. All of them.”

  Pravda’s eyes widened. “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

  “I mean, not there. I mean, everything else in the body was right where it should be—muscles, tendons, internal organs—but the bones were missing. Every single one of them. Even the smallest. Cartilage was untouched. I have his ears—” For a moment she couldn’t continue. Leo took her hand, offering silent reassurance. Finally she nodded and continued. “I checked for any kind of wound which would suggest how the bones could have been removed. But the skin was all intact. No gaping wounds, no cuts, not even damage inside the natural entrance routes to his body to suggest the bones had been pulled out that way. And there were no bite marks to suggest a venom had been injected, that might have dissolved all his bones. They just . . . disappeared.” She paused. “I have pictures. Be forewarned, they’re pretty gruesome.”

  She turned on her tablet, cued it up to the right image, and handed it to Joshua, on her left. His face went pale as he looked at it, even more so as he scrolled through the collection of autopsy pictures. He looked slightly green as he passed the tablet on to Dani. The chaplain could only scroll through a couple before having to pass it on to the next person. Around the pod the tablet traveled, until it got to Ian. By that time he was too curious to refuse it, so he scrolled through the pictures Lise had taken, of a mass of flesh absent the structure that would have made it appear human. It was horrifying, but hard to look away from. His hand trembled slightly as he forced himself to pass it on.

  Botany classes hadn’t prepared him for anything like this.

  Eventually the tablet got back to Lise, who turned the display off. “You see what we’re dealing with,” she said quietly.

  For a moment there was silence. Then: “Any idea of what might have caused it?” Johnny asked.

  “Well . . . maybe. But you may find that detail more disturbing than the death itself. I asked Anna to go through his tablet, see if she could figure out what he’d been doing earlier that day. Maybe he’d gone somewhere we should check out, or had some kind of wildlife encounter that might be significant. Anything that might be a clue.” She looked at Anna. “I’ll let her tell you what she found.”

  Anna reached into her bag and pulled out Wayne’s tablet. It had a protective skin with a cartoon spaceship in one corner and stars painted across it. “I couldn’t find the kind of information Lise was looking for, but I did find something. The last thing he was watching before he died.” She turned the tablet so that everyone in the group could see the screen. “This is from one of his vintage science fiction shows. According to the log, he was watching it the night before he died.”

  “I fail to see how that—” Ted began. Lise raised a hand, urging him to wait.

  On the screen was the image of a rustic room filled with plants. There were three figures in the scene: a deformed creature in a ghillie suit, a human in a tight leather uniform, and a woman with blue skin and clothing. The blue woman told the others: “She’s a carcinovore,” and the leather-clad man asked, “She eats bones?” The characters continued on with a conversation about how a bone-eating monster was hunting for food and meant to devour the bones of one of them. When that clip had concluded, Anna cued up another, in which a body was found that had been torn to pieces by the creature. Its bones had been devoured.

  The screen faded to darkness.

  “I don’t get it,” Joshua protested. “What are you telling us? That a monster from some centuries-old entertainment video showed up and killed Wayne?” He pointed to the tablet. “That’s not even what Wayne’s body looked like.”

  “No,” Leo agreed. “It’s not. And no one is suggesting that this exact monster is what killed Wayne. But it’s hard to believe this is just a coincidence.”

  “There’s more,” Anna said. She turned the tablet to her and called up a screen full of text. “Leo asked me to see if I could find anything that related to Tia’s case. So I did a general database search for the details we knew about. And the search engine came up with this.” She started to read.

  The Tiyanak is a vampiric creature from Filipino folklore that disguises itself as a baby or child to attract victims. Typically it will appear in a heavily wooded area and cry like an infant until someone comes to rescue it. When the victim picks it up, the Tiyanak reverts to its true form and feeds.