"Oh." It made me kind of sick, thinking this copy of me might have been with Samantha. For all I knew, they could have produced kids already. But when I thought about it, that wasn’t so likely: Sam had been so busy running the war, she wouldn’t have time to go through pregnancy; and on Troyen, she’d have a hard time finding another human woman who could act as surrogate mom. All the humans had been evacuated twenty years ago.

Still, this clear-chest guy — this version of me or my father — it made me feel horrible, thinking of him and Sam together. Was he smart? It was such a dumb jealous question, but was he smart? Was he witty and charming and all, a real equal who could keep up with her and not some halfwit moron who always needed to be babied? Because if he was stupid, maybe I could stand the thought of him with Sam, her giving him orders, do this, do that… but if he was so smart that sometimes he got the better of her, and sometimes he said, "This is what I want," and she did it…

That would make me truly, truly sick. I don’t know why but it would.

Kneeling beside Festina, I bent over the man and sniffed… as if I could somehow smell whether or not he was clever. I couldn’t tell you what I expected to find, but I do know what actually hit my nose: the odor of buttered toast.

Uh-oh.

The hairs on the back of my neck curled cold and clammy. I was remembering something from back on Celestia, as the glass-chested recruiter stood in the hatchway of his skimmer. There’d been that tiny dot of red shining in his belly, like the tip of a ruby laser… but back then, I hadn’t known enough to be terrified of little glowing specks.

Gingerly, I flipped the man’s vest all the way open. Inside the glass torso, his lungs lifted up and down; his heart thudded behind his ribs; and there in his gut, tucked among the folds of his small intestine, was a glowing pinprick of red.

"Look," I said, pointing. I made sure to keep my finger high above the glass.

Festina squinted, then sat back abruptly. "Jesus Christ. Is that Balrog?"

"Smells like it," I told her.

"In his stomach. How could it get into his stomach? How could you smell it in his stomach?"

That was a real good question. For the first time it occurred to me maybe I wasn’t really smelling stuff at all. Maybe I was just kind of sensing it, the way Kaisho could see things even though her eyes were covered with hair. That could explain why some people smelled like sounds or colors: I wasn’t actually using my nose. Or at least I wasn’t using it for everything. Mandasar queens might secretly have a sixth sense, like ESP or something… and now I had the same thing. Considering how Balrog spores were supposed to be all telepathic, maybe other telepaths could sense them pretty easily — as if they were giving off strong signals on the ESP channel.

But I could think about such things later. I told Festina, "I don’t know how I smelled it, I just did." I took a deep breath. "That other guy had a Balrog too. The recruiter on Celestia. I noticed a little red speck glowing in his stomach, but didn’t know what it was."

"Oh, fuck," Festina whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." She quickly turned to Tobit, and snapped, "Put a Bumbler back together. Fast."

Two minutes later, we were staring at the Bumbler’s vid-screen, looking at a mocked-up anatomical diagram made with X rays and ultrasound. The clear-chest man did indeed have a Balrog in his belly; but it was locked in a thumb-sized containment chamber that must have been surgically implanted. The chamber itself was glass, which was why you could see the spore glowing inside; but it also had a set of black tubes sunk into the intestinal wall, and a bunch of wires leading back to the man’s spinal cord.

"Got to be some kind of life support," Tobit said. "Those tubes into the intestines — they’re probably siphoning nutrients from the guy’s digestive system. Feeding the damned moss."

"And everything is glass," Plebon pointed out. "Balrogs need sun as well as food, correct?"

Festina nodded. "They have to get solar energy every day… and some warped fool must have replaced this guy’s chest with glass, so light could get in. Drastic, but it does the job. That’s why he prances around in just a vest — a shirt would get in the way."

"But why would you want a Balrog in your belly?" Dade asked. "If that glass container ever broke…"

"It can’t be real glass," said Festina. "Neither is the man’s chest. They’re both some transparent polymer… probably as tough as armor."

"But why keep a Balrog at all?" Dade insisted. "Dangerous little parasites, who can see the future and read your mind…"

Something went click in my head. "Communication system," I blurted out. "What do you mean?" Plebon asked.

"Festina said some folks believe all the Balrogs are in telepathic contact with each other… instantaneous communication, no matter how far apart individual spores might be. Suppose someone figured out a way to use Balrogs as, um, relays. You lock one up inside you, hook it to your brain — through those wires there, straight to the spinal nerves — then you kind of use it like a broadcast link. This guy’s thoughts go into his Balrog, and get transmitted instantaneously to Mr. Clear Chest on Celestia. Mr. Clear Chest’s thoughts come back the same way. They constantly hear what each other is thinking." I stopped a second. "For all we know, their thoughts may go back and forth so fast they scramble together. Like one joint brain inside two separate heads, light-years apart. A little hive-mind of their own."

"Bloody hell," Festina whispered. "If your father can not only make superhumans, but keep all their brains in synch so they don’t fight among themselves… staying in instantaneous contact even when they’re spread across the galaxy…"

"They’d be worse than the damned Balrogs," Tobit growled. "Speaking of which, imagine how the mossy little bastards feel about this: their fellow spores taken as slaves and used as someone else’s phone line."

"They hate it," Festina said softly. "And they hate the people who built it." She turned to me. "That containment chamber looks like Fasskister technology — Fasskisters are masters of hooking machines to organisms and vice versa. Remember what Kaisho said back on the orbital."

I nodded. The Fasskisters know full well why it’s right and proper to lock them in their precious metal suits, with physical needs taken care of, but their minds slowly going crazy. That’s why the spores had taken over the Fasskister orbital: tit-for-tat vengeance against the folks who’d sealed up spores in little glass cases.

"Makes you wonder," Festina said, "who really got the idea of dumping spores on the Fasskisters. Did Queen Temperance think of it herself? Or did the Balrog plant the notion in her head?"

"Generally," a voice whispered, "we stay out of the heads of lesser creatures. But we do make exceptions."

Kaisho hovered in her chair at the top of the nearby ramp. Behind her, the stairwell blazed as bright as a forest fire.