For the Good of the World

Chapter Four

"I don't know who's watching this," Via's grandmother continued. The recording seemed so realistic that she could have been standing in Via's bedroom. "But if you're someone who knew and loved me, then I'm so sorry for what you must be going through right now."

Inky darkness surrounded the old woman, but a strange light shone from her forehead. Via squinted, then smiled as she recognized Kaitlyn's favorite headlamp, the one the woman always took into the field when collecting samples of night-side flora.

Kaitlyn ran a hand through braided white hair, revealing the delicate silver wristband that the unmodified woman had used to command nanites. "It feels strange to offer condolences for my own death, but I do." Her eyes softened. "I'm so sorry I'm not there with you anymore. Know that I love you dearly."

Via's jaw trembled, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

Oblivious, Kaitlyn's shoulders sagged in a sigh. "To be clear, I might be dead of perfectly natural causes, so don't get all up in arms just yet. I'm old. I may still have a few decades left, especially with Lifesupporters lurking around to heal every paper cut and sniffle. But I'm entering my twilight years. I'll be seventy tomorrow, after all."

Via frowned. Her grand ma had created this recording a little over a month ago, then. But why? What had she been afraid of?

"So yes, if you're seeing this, it's possible I died of natural causes." Kaitlyn offered a rueful smile, "But if my death was by less-natural causes, then you need to know why." She drew a deep breath, then jerked her head to the side. "Take a look at this. Nanites, follow the line of my gaze."

The view swung away from Kaitlyn's face, and Via's heart lurched. "Wait!" She reached for her grand ma, but the recording couldn't hear her, of course. She swallowed hard as the scene expanded and her grand ma disappeared.

A narrow black lava tube opened into a vast cave. Via recognized the natural basalt columns that seemed so common in night-side rock formations. Yet her jaw dropped. There was nothing familiar about this cavern.

"Strange, isn't it?" Kaitlyn's voice seemed to come from just behind her.

Strange was putting it mildly. Suspended between hexagonal basalt columns and hanging stalactites like a massive hammock, an enormous tangled web dominated the chamber.

The outermost edges stretched into the lava tube, and as Via reached out to touch, the recording fed her sensory information that the nanites had collected. Faintly warm, the fibrous substance left traces of a tacky amber resin on her skin. She lifted her hand to her nose, taking in a sweet scent, and then pressed a fingertip to her tongue. A flavor reminiscent of honeyed barley bread filled her mouth even as a sense of indigestible macronutrients filtered into her mind. Like so much else native to this world, the substance couldn't nourish any Earth species, but local lifeforms might be able to eat it.

As she accessed the recording's telescopic capacities to zoom in, she realized her mistake. This wasn't just a food source but some kind of elaborate structure. The breath caught in her throat as she took in the woven walls and support columns, yawning openings, and thin fissures in giant tuber-like protrusions.

And xenos. The entire thing crawled with xenos. The fuzzy blue and white creatures drifted up and down to access the openings. They squeezed out of the fissures like stuffing from a child's teddy bear. They caressed the support columns, weaving glistening strands of fiber into new web. They carried globs of resin to and fro between pups that tackled one another in the spaces between the bulbous chambers.