Blood of Crystal
an excerpt

It's unusually quiet in Ardakan this evening, Mullani Rote thought.

I hadn't noticed. Perhaps the off-worlders are tired of the riots and mayhem. As they knelt on the floor, Rote Mullani kneaded his mate's back muscles with two hands while picking loose sulfur and red shards from her fur with the other two. She'd had a grueling day at work patching and repairing the canopy where a slab had collapsed from a tower above and crashed through to shatter on the floor of the city, sending crystal debris hurtling into the throng of refugees crowding the street. Thousands were injured, limbs crushed or torn, skin lacerated, organs pierced. Great swarms of moths descended on the scene to tend to the victims, their flittering adding to the mayhem, their translucent wings refracting the light and casting rainbows on the chaos. Then the scarabs arrived and began their brutal, necessary work

Mullani's back tensed. He felt a quick shot of her pain. I'll get that. With delicate fingers, he parted her fur and extracted a translucent sliver from her back. Crystalline blood quickly solidified to encrust the sliver, changing its color to opaque crimson. He tossed the fragment aside. A scarab skittered across the floor to salvage the fragment. In a blink, the insect disappeared back into its den on the far side of their dome.

Thanks. I couldn't reach that with any of my hands. How bad is the wound?

He focussed on the already-sealing puncture, zooming in to examine the torn tissues and damaged cells. The wound was the depth of his finger, but it was clean and had missed her organs. He sent his vision of the lesion to her.

I was worried it would be dirty. The sliver seems to have acted as a plug to keep out the dust.

He watched as the wound closed up properly. A scab formed, transformed to a small, bumpy scar, and disappeared as smooth skin reclaimed the area. From behind, he wrapped his arms around her waist. All better now. He sent her a wave of affection and calm. She relaxed in his arms. How did you hurt yourself?

In the turmoil on the ground, an unstable pile of debris shifted and I landed on my back. Still holding her, he experienced the sensation of her footing shifting, her sudden vertigo as she lost her balance, her levitation reflex kicking in fast enough to slow her fall but not fast enough to prevent her from landing on the wreckage, her sharp pain as the crystal stabbed into her back, the sound of crystal being crushed. Her sudden jolt of fear.

You were never in any danger.

I was afraid the scarabs would take me with the dead. Take me and tear me apart and dispose of me. As she lay on the debris, stunned, a large scarab had clattered up to her, paused, then pivoted and jumped to the body at her side, an off-worlder the likes of which she'd never seen before. An army swarmed to join it as it tore into the pulped corpse and cut away the man's tentacles. Others peeled off skin, vacuumed his blood and other unfamiliar fluids, pulled out organs, extracted bones, and dissected his body for cataloging. Moths plucked away usable parts for transplantation into the critically injured. Eons past, the dead would have been raised to life, but not now, not with the population explosion. The scarabs tunneled into the ground and hauled the unusable remainder away to the bogs to be recycled by Sidi Ifni into food and materials. Mullani levitated from their midst lest they turn their jaws on her.

Don’t think about the dead. Their numbers were insignificant, and in death their bodies will give to society instead of consuming from it. He returned his attention to grooming her fur. Raise your dorsal arms.

She lifted her upper arms to allow him to brush away the grit accumulated in her armpits. A hazard of her profession: when working on the canopies unsheltered, the winds blew sulfur crystals into every available cranny. He brushed out the grit. You were able to fix the break in the canopy?

It drained us - twelve teams of twelve - but we did it. She perched at the edge of the tear and trickled blood from her spinnerets to rebuild the canopy, spreading the crimson threads to a uniform thickness. The threads hardened into a crystal lattice and, in a few days, would fade to near transparency. The repair would be undetectable. Inspectors hovered above the new, soft crystal to inspect the work and dab at minor imperfections.

He began braiding her mane, part of their nightly ritual. He concentrated on twining long strands into a complicated macramé of geometric knots. In the daylight tomorrow, complex patterns and shadows would emerge. Rest well tonight. Sleep late into the morning.

She sighed. I wish I could. But with the arrival of another unwanted interstellar ark, I expect we'll be asked to prepare domes for another twenty million refugees. All workers will be asked to contribute.

I saw their arrival. Strange metallic white fish-men reeking of brine. They flounder in the streets, grime clogging their gills. I don’t know how they'll survive in this environment. And the Core won’t allow them to populate the seas. It cannot risk the safety of the aquaculture farms for the sake of the comfort of off-worlders. Plus, they probably wouldn’t be comfortable living close to the cthulhus.

She turned to face him, placing her hands on his shoulders, her unblinking eyes locked on his. Are the rumors true? Where the off-worlders come in great numbers, disasters follow? He felt her emotions flow into him - concern, trepidation, pleading. What has the Core told you? Are we safe?

He stared back into her eyes, allowing her into his deepest thoughts. He grasped her shoulders and opened his full emotions to her scrutiny. He would keep nothing from her deliberately.

She searched his mind for answers. From all I can read, the disasters are random occurrences. A result of entropy and overpopulation. But what is the Core blocking me from seeing?

Rote moved his hands to cup her face and caress her brow. That's unknowable. He may be blocking nothing. Sidi Ifni has its reasons for keeping the Council's business confidential. It's impossible for me to remember our discussions except when the Council is linked.

She bit her lip. The rumors are probably false. They feel false. An attempt by the off-worlders to plant fears and doubts in our minds. A type of rebellion against the Core.

He sent a wave of warmth to reassure her. That's a reasonable conclusion. He resumed knotting her mane.

She settled back against him. But I wish I knew for sure.