Three… two… one…

Tut’s suit exploded from his body. Literally. Shaped demolition charges blew out the seams that held everything together. His helmet went straight up, disappearing from sight as it bulleted toward the dome overhead. Tut’s sleeves shot off his outspread arms like jet-propelled bananas; the same with his pant legs, which flew apart in pieces and slapped into the upturned faces of nearby Cashling spectators. The breastplate cannonballed into the pulpit in front of him, knocking the lectern stand off its supports and toppling it onto the crowd. The backplate rocketed out and away over the edge of the ziggurat, probably falling on some unsuspecting Cashling several levels below. Other bits and pieces hurtled in random directions, belt pouches, shoulder pads, hunks of the crotch… until Tut was standing there, stark naked and hologrammatically enlarged, in front of all of Zoonau.

Huh. He’d been telling the truth. The gold wasn’t just on his face.

My egg reached the pulpit (now just a bare platform) two seconds later. For a moment, nothing happened. Tut looked down at me, beaming a big bright smile. I stared back from my egglike prison, a Princess Gotama just before all hell breaks loose. The Balrog did nothing. The Cashlings did nothing. I thought about drawing my stun-pistol and shooting Tut before he caused further trouble… but that might send the crowd berserk.

Two heartbeats of silence.

Then the Balrog egg melted around me — all the spores slopping straight down. My helmet visor became flecked with red, and my suit felt heavy with dust. Most of the spores, however, just dropped to the roof tiles and pooled around my ankles. Several square meters of them. They glowed a soft red.

"Thanks, Mom," Tut murmured. "Knew I could count on you." Then he raised his voice and called to the Cashlings, "Here’s how to show the bastards you don’t care. Swan dive!" And he jumped from the pulpit, straight into the pile of spores that had just dripped off me. He was like a child leaping into a mound of autumn leaves. A moment later, Tut rolled happily naked on the red moss, laughing out loud and crooning, "Ooo, it’s fuzzy!"

A murmur went through the Cashlings. A sigh. A cheer. Then they were running, sprinting at astonishing long-legged speed toward the patches of spores dabbed around the ziggurat. On the lower levels, people raced down to the city streets, crowds of them hitting the pavement and throwing themselves onto the first clumps of moss they found. If the Balrog had dodged, the Cashlings might have broken their bones as they struck cement-hard chintah; but the spores stayed in place, and the people plopped down on mattresses of soft moss. In seconds, 91,734 Cashlings were flipping and flopping deliriously, tossing handfuls of spores into the air, smearing red fuzz over their bodies.

Down by my feet, Tut grinned. "See, Mom? Problem solved. No one will go homicidal today — they’re having too much fun."

He looked up at me with spores covering his face and body: even on the gold parts where you wouldn’t think moss could stick. I smiled back vaguely, but only from reflex; inside, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Why? Because I knew this was far from over. The Balrog wouldn’t have caused such a fuss, only to let the uproar be defused by a lunatic doing a fast striptease and rolling in the red. As far as I could see, the Balrog hadn’t accomplished anything yet. All this sound and fury had gone nowhere… which meant "Stage Two" of the plan was still waiting to unfold.

But I said nothing. The Balrog was famous for showmanship. It was the sort of monster that held off its attacks until someone said, "We’ll be safe now," or "I think it’s gone." Above all else, the Balrog loved dramatic timing.

"So," Tut said, "looks like we’ve got this bitch under control."

I had time to wince.

Zoonau erupted in geysers of red. Spores shot up from the ground. More gusted down off the dome. Trillions of red particles tore away from the buildings. A crimson dust storm battered my world, thudding against my helmet, buffeting my body hard enough to be felt despite the tightsuit’s protection. Radio static roared in my ears. The heads-up display in my visor went black. A wind ripped the Bumbler from my hands, and a moment later, I felt the little machine’s shoulder strap break. The Bumbler bounced away in the tempest, but I didn’t see or hear it go — the only noise was static, and the only sight an impenetrable onslaught of spores.

Pouches tore off my belt. My backpack flew away. Even the weight of my stun-pistol, holstered at my hip, suddenly departed as the gun was snatched by the gale.

Then, abruptly, the fury ceased. Replaced by deep silence. The blinding red chaos was sucked away, leaving only a glimpse of the last spores sailing up out of sight into the sky.

Afternoon sun poured painfully bright through the dome. The glass was clear. The buildings had returned to their dull gray. The patches of moss where Cashlings had been rolling were gone, revealing nothing but bare chintah.

The Balrog had abandoned Zoonau. Just like that. Not a single spore left in sight.

"Uhh, Mom…"

Tut still lay on the roof tiles. I looked down. He pointed to my feet.

Both my boots were covered with spores, like fuzzy red slippers. I did nothing but stare at them dumbly — like a villain in a cheap action virtie, who looks down in surprise to see she’s been shot through the heart.

"Oh," I said. "Oh."

My boots vanished like smoke. The rest of my tightsuit too — totally consumed as the spores chewed upward, faster than the speed of thought. Even my helmet didn’t slow the spores down: they slashed past my eyes in a wash of crimson, leaving nothing behind but the touch of a light spring breeze blowing against my skin.

My suit was completely gone, eaten by the Balrog. Now all I wore was the thin, thigh-high chemise that most women put on under tightsuits for protection against chafing.

I looked at my feet again. The fuzzy red "slippers" were gone. Just two spores left, one on each foot, glowing in the center of each instep like Christian stigmata. I closed my eyes.

Two little kisses of pain, no worse than mosquito bites, piercing the flesh of my feet. When I opened my eyes again, I saw two pinpricks of blood, nothing more. They barely showed on my skin.

But now, the spores were inside me.

I felt nothing. Like Kaisho Namida, I couldn’t sense the Balrog as it colonized my tissues. Still, I had no doubt I was rapidly becoming riddled with spores. My heart. My womb. My brain. Perhaps my nervous system was screaming in agony, but the spores invading my brain didn’t let the pain register in my consciousness.

"Oh, Mom," said Tut. "You got bitten."

"I know."

"By the Balrog."

"I know."

"It’s in your feet."

"I know."

"They gotta come off."

"What?"

Tut didn’t answer. He scuttled across the roof tiles to a half-open equipment pouch that had fallen off my belt. My first-aid kit had slipped partway out of the pouch. Tut grabbed the kit, opened it, took out a scalpel.

"If those things spread, Mom, you’re in trouble."

"They’ve already spread, Tut. They’re deep inside me."

"You don’t know that. They could just be nibbling your toes."

"Tut, when the Balrog attacked Kaisho Namida-"

"When the Balrog attacked Kaisho Namida," Tut interrupted, "her partner didn’t do shit. Maybe he could have saved her."

"He didn’t do anything because she was infested from head to toe in seconds."

"How did he know?"

"He scanned her with his Bumbler."

Tut shrugged. "We don’t have a Bumbler."