A Princess of The Linear Jungle

self-renewing. The excavation has penetrated that deep, down to the Citybeast’s very hide. But it’s no regular exudation. I’ve seen what scale-hunting produces, and this is some admixture of Citybeast sanguinary fluids with an unknown tincture.”
    Durian Vinnagar startled them all by shouting. “Not Manasa, dam you! That imaginary whore! Vasuki! Vasuki! The Citybeast is male! And His gifts must be mine!”
    Before anyone could stop him, Vinnagar had dashed down into the pit!
    “No!” warned the Princess. “You will not be accepted!”
    But Vinnagar paid no heed. Careening just steps from the liquid, he hurled himself in with a violent splash!
    The pool grew unnaturally still. Then, a big thick bubble formed, swelled, burst—
    —and the body of Durian Vinnagar—the gelatinous, shapeless mass that remained of the professor—was cast back onto the slope.
    Instantly, a flock of Fisherwives dove down and honored his passage from life.
    Ransome Pivot was the first to speak. “Men and women do differ in their cellular and germinal composition, so I suppose….”
    But no amount of scientific rationalization could sway Merritt one way or another. She realized that only faith mattered now. Faith, and her ambitions.
    To live forever, to know much—
    The Princess laid a hand on Merritt’s shoulder. “Go naked, Merritt, to your reward, as I do to mine.”
    As if hypnotized, Merritt began to remove her clothes. Peart averted his eyes. Scoria and Ransome cast imploring looks at her, but did not interfere.
    She was soon naked, and beginning her sedate walk down the slope. Sharp stones cut her feet, but the wounds meant less than nothing.
    Closer, closer, she could feel an icy heat, smell the same foreign scent that clung to the Princess—
    “Out of my way, loser!”
    Shoved from behind, Merritt hit the ground hard, scoring her palms and knees. She saw a nude Cady Rachis race past her, and dive boldly into the red maw.
    Jumping up, Merritt turned toward a human sound that was part exhalation, part keening, part sustained bell-like note of some ancient threnody.
    The old Princess of Vayavirunga had aged beyond time, and crumpled in upon herself, collapsing downward to the earth in a pile of dessicated tissues.
    A storm of Pompatics dropped down to bear her withered mortal vessel off to her long-delayed reward.
    Merritt scrambled back up to the men. They stood frozen, the helpless idiots! She arrived in time just to witness the birth of the new Princess.
    Out of the Pit of Tears, a transformed Cady Rachis strode, her skin and hair colored in shades of the ennobling, empowering fluids.
    Smiling like a lottery winner, moving with sensuous grace, Cady attained the level ground. The men goggled at her redoubled beauty and majesty.
    Merritt felt herself boiling over inside.
    Cady began to utter her first royal pronouncement. “It pleases me now to choose a mate—”
    “Aaargh!”
    Unsuspecting, Cady went down easy under Merritt’s vicious assault. Straddling her opponent, Merritt grabbed Cady’s hair and began pounding Cady’s head into the turf.
    “You! Damn! Dirty! Thieving! Bitch!”
    Cady’s eyes rolled over to white, and she passed out.
    Huffing and puffing, Merritt stood up and regarded her supine foe. For good measure, she delivered a kick to Cady’s ribs.
    The men wore expressions of timid astonishment. At last Arturo spoke with mild advice.
    “Perhaps if you took the treatment now, Mer, Cady would wither up and die…?
    “Forget it! Who wants to spend a few centuries stuck in this green kindergarten! No, Art, the rest of us are all going home, with a hybrid escort, even if I have to lead Cady on a chain back to the Wall. And then, you know what?”
    “What, dear?”
    “You and I are going to write a book about all this, and it’s going to sell more damn copies than Diego Patchen’s Bright Lights of the Big Town !”

A PRINCESS OF THE LINEAR JUNGLE
    Copyright © 2011 by PAUL DI FILIPPO
    The right of Paul Di Filippo to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in November 2010. This electronic version published in January 2011 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.

    FIRST EBOOK EDITION
    ISBN 978-1-848632-32-5

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the