Read Radiant for Free Online

it?" Ubatu asked. "Nothing happened?" She didn't bother to hide her disappointment.
    Without answering, I walked to a tiny control console stuffed into the bridge's back corner. The console saw little use on Pistachio —it was the station from which we Explorers would operate reconnaissance probes if we ever got a planet-down mission. Once a week in the middle of the night, Tut and I used the station to run drills and diagnostics; otherwise, the equipment gathered dust.
    I sat down to search through some files. When I found the photograph I wanted, I displayed it on the vidscreen, replacing the footage from Zoonau. "This," I said, "is Kaisho Namida today."
    The picture showed a woman in a wheelchair. Her face was hidden behind long salt-and-pepper strands of hair; these days, she combed her hair forward to conceal her features. But I doubted if many people ever lifted their gaze as high as her head. They'd be too busy staring at the continuous bed of glowing red moss that reached from her toes, up her legs to her pelvis, and on as high as her navel.
    Though it couldn't be seen in the photo, I knew the moss wasn't just an outer coating. Her legs had no flesh left, no blood, no bone—they were solid moss through and through, still shaped like the limbs they'd once been, but entirely nonhuman.
    No one knew what remained of Kaisho's lower abdomen. Three years after her "accident," she'd checked out of rehab, got discharged from the navy, and refused further medical exams. Now, with the moss grown above her waist, did she still have intestines and reproductive organs somewhere beneath? Or was there just moss, a thick undifferentiated wad of it from belly to spine?
    Ubatu and Li leaned forward. I'd finally caught their full attention.
    "Is it eating her?" Li asked.
    "Not precisely," I said. "The spores get most of their energy from photosynthesis, so they aren't consuming her for simple sustenance. They are breaking down her tissues and using the component chemicals to build new spores."
    Li was now holding his stomach instead of his head. "Why the hell doesn't the League do something? This Balrog is devouring a sentient woman."
    "But it's not killing her. Kaisho is still very much alive. And given the speed at which she's being consumed, she'll live a full human life span before the moss finishes her off. Possibly longer. The Balrog isn't just absorbing her, it's changing her. The spores keep her arteries free of plaque; and her heart is as strong as a teenager's, even though she's now..." I looked at a data display on my console. "She's now one hundred and sixteen years old."
    "Oy." Captain Cohen was also leaning forward in his chair, staring at the moss-laden woman. "So what does poor Kaisho think about this? Me, I'd cut off my legs as soon as I saw moss growing."
    "That wouldn't have helped," I said. "The moss had permeated her internal organs long before it showed outside. Amputate the visible spores, and there'd still be plenty in her heart, her lungs, her bloodstream—everywhere. As for Kaisho's opinion of what's happening to her..." I tried to speak without inflection. "She's thrilled to have been chosen as the Balrog's host. It's transforming her into something glorious. She admits that her primitive brain sometimes panics at the thought of being cannibalized, but her higher mental functions soon reassert themselves, and she recognizes the privilege she's been given. Kaisho is deeply, joyously, in awe of the Balrog and loves it without reserve."
    "In other words," said Li, "she's been brainwashed."
    "The spores," I said, "have suffused every part of Kaisho's nervous system, including the brain. When she speaks, we have to assume it's the Balrog talking, not whatever remains of the original woman."
    "You think there's some Kaisho left?" Cohen asked.
    "The Balrog can't entirely obliterate her human personality; that would upset the League. The spores must have preserved enough of Kaisho's psyche that she's still