Chapter 25: Event Horizon — Part 10

Across the world, the spores of the symbiont were spreading throughout the dust and sand. The symbiont spread into the plants, into the air and water, and once aireborne, spread across the atmosphere to Niger. The sky turned brown with the pollen of thousands of plants, all transmitting the symbiont spore as they came into violent bloom. The water bubbled up into the desert from deep in the ground, turned bluegreen with the spores of symbiotic alga. No part of the planet was safe from the change — wherever water flowed, wherever wind blew, the symbiont traveled, growing strong with each host that accepted it.

Master Toen has chosen me. Vodia has chosen me. Do the people of Vodia accept me?

The people and creatures of Vodia were no more unthinking servants than Laura had been to Susan, and though they now shared the kind of telepathic interface that Laura had come to take for granted, they were not slaves to the nature of the Symbiont. There were scores to be settled, plays to be made, and fights to be had across the entire surface of two worlds. At first, the change was brutal and terrifying, and those hume that managed to avoid exposure rose up with their weapons and encased in their biohazrd suits and airtight weapons, they sought to purge the death the plagued them. Raging war with change, the hume soon learned that even a newly borne symbiote, be it hume or animal, would show no mercy when cornered. Blood flowed in rivers as the revolution of planet, body, and mind turned bloody.

Unconcerned with the petty squabbles of dying armies and desperate politics, Laura focused on the inevitable future and protected her capital city from all who sought to conquer it. Many powerful Priests accepted their new forms and the powers they gained with it, and rose to challenge her position. Many an electorate called for a democratic election to determine through debate the best choice for Master Priest. She accepted the challenges and offers to debate with grace and candor. She fought as savagely as C’rona had in her younger years, and debated as smoothly as Susan often did. Susan would never have had to fight — she had an aura of authority about her that Laura was still developing. She also had wisdom, and patience, and a willingness to sacrifice herself for her people’s needs that went beyond any leader Laura had ever known. Laura faced the last of the priests, winded, bleeding, having won the election, and now having to keep that election through force, skill, and determination.

I’m in the square of testing. Face me, and you’ll be given one chance to take Leadership of Vodia. If you’re worthy, I’ll leave you in charge and go back to Antans. If you’re not, I hope you’re smart enough to bow out before I have to kill you.

Joni and Trina sat on either side of her jade throne, as they had for Master Toen so many decades before, though now they were hardly helpless victims in a cruel system. They dispatched with assassins, both hume and symbiotic, protecting the new mother of their world with a savage grace not seen on Vodia since the attempted expulsion of the Storm Clan some three generations prior. They preened like kittens after a fight, proud to be hands to the most powerful woman on two worlds.

“My children, do you think I did the right thing?” Laura said, knowing that countless millions had died, unable to accept the symbiont as part of them.

Joni smiled his answer, his bare teeth glowing brightly in the light of a sunny day. “Let them come and prove us wrong.”

One by one the opponents had come. Hundreds of them journeyed from all over the globe, each choosing to fight her or debate her for their own reasons. Some were wise, and chose simple tests, games of skill, wit, and integrity — wanting merely to assure themselves that Laura was a worthy Leader. Some, however, tested her prowess in battle, and nearly half of them were intent on mortal combat. Laura fought without mercy. Seven men and four women died in three days time, before those that thought they could take her learned the incredible power of Laura’s mind and body. Hers was not a rule of force, however. Once the fighting stopped and people grew comfortable with change, Life went on for all with much the same pace it had before. Peace was finally a reality on Vodia, and Laura, newly bonded Leader of her people, was finally at peace with herself.