The sludge coated the black stone of the Observatory interior, and dripped down like lumpy, viscous mud, covering the vines, the pipes, clouding the clear waterfalls the guys had made. Flowers were squeezed shut, windows were blackened. It was everywhere, a mass of ugliness, halfway down the sides of the central chamber.

The Big Smart Bees were rallying, zapping it with their little needles of electric death. It wasn't helping. The tar was relentless. It covered their hive. The Queen was in there, and I knew the Bees would either die defending her or try to get her out.

"Anyway back to my original proposition," Harrigan said breezily over the little Radio shard around my neck. "Do you read me? Over. This is Doctor Jeffrey Harrigan broadcasting to Mr. and Mrs. America all the ships at sea!"

"I hear you," I said. "Go on, I'm listening."

"I'll bet you are. Not looking good down there, yeah? Anyway, I need you to help me with my project, remember?"

"Leave the Bees alone, Doctor."

"You mean these Bees, here, the ones too big and ugly to live?"

Because some of the Bees were covered in the tar. They couldn't fly, but they could crawl. Two of them, right while I was watching, burst like water balloons, their yellow innards mixing with the gray sludge that had squeezed the life from them.

"God DAMMIT," I said. "I told you I was listening, Doctor, give me your pitch!" I ran across the floor, bare feet slapping into the tar. Because there was as lot of it now, pooling in gelid puddles throughout the room.

"You sound upset, Owen. Watch this, maybe it can entertain you." Because a mess of the tar had coated some more Big Smart Bees, and while they couldn't fly, they could walk and wield their tiny weapons. "Let's make 'em fight!"

The coated Bees began clumsily slashing and stabbing at their sisters. Tiny bolts of lightning surrounded the hive as the uninfected Bees took action.

"Stop it," I said. "Stop. Tell me what you want to tell me."

"What's that noise," he said gleefully. "Could it be?"

Because I could hear it, outside, some kind of impact. It was a slow woodpecker sound, deep and horrible. Thump thump thump thump. "Tell me what you want!"

"Earth is a disaster by now. You can get anything you want if you have any money at all. Ever hear of the mark 22? You can attach it to a drone. It's a machine gun, but no bullets. Fires depleted uranium grenades. I'd never heard of that, have you? Anyway, based on tech developed in the Vietnam war, then again in Afghanistan. Just lying around. Earth is full of treasure if you know where to look."

Boom boom boom boom, want the noises outside, shaking the floor beneath me. "Can't get through your Magic shield thing, Owen, but I figured I'd clean up your crustacean problem. They're out here trying to get my drones."

Boom boom boom boom. "Stop," I said. "You wanted to talk so talk!"

"I wanted to give you a job, Owen. Look, I'm reasonable. I know when I'm just not cutting it. Forty-five years, remember. You've been out here what, a few weeks? Less? And you've cracked the code, man!"

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"What code, there's no code!"

"Yes there is! A literal code! The passwords to this dome, and the other thing, the flying colosseum thing parked on the beach! You think I don't know? You found out that fat girl was in trouble or whatever and you just ran across the ocean and became a two-for-one-superpower!"

"Stop. I'm listening to you, I really am." Because the fight was heating up over there as more Bees were coated and started attacking their own.

"I'm gonna start grabbing those weather balloon animals too, but they're not as easy to catch. I just want you to know that this is very important to me, yeah? What I'm doing here today has a substantial monetary commitment. I've been working on it for quite a while, almost since you landed here."

"Try burning it," I said to Husband, because the sludge looked like it might be oily. "Be careful."

"So I think I've been going about this all wrong," Harrigan said. "I should have contracted you from the beginning. It was my original business model, I lost sight of that. A failure of vision on my part, I fully cop to it."

"Tell me what you WANT!"

"I want you to make the dreams of my backers come true! Isn't it obvious? You and the guys, as you call them, you can do practically anything! I need to outsource you!"

"Stop! Stop it, leave them alone!"

But he went on, jovial, chummy. "And don't deny it. I've been able to listen to every conversation you've had. This whole place has been bugged since Nilsson arrived. The tar was on the bottom of the raft, and it was easy to spread. She never even knew. Women, am I right?"

Husband and his crew began with some kind of blazing orange strobe, trying to burn the tar. It wasn't working. They kept at it.

"I know what you're thinking," Harrigan said. "If those Bees have a soul, how come the tar works on them? It's a brute force thing. This is a bio-weapon that went out of style in the 2040's. Banned by treaty, actually. But it's working out great here! I've integrated it into my skillset, as we used to say in HR. Can't burn it, by the way, but good try."

"I won't help you turn us into a farm for blank souls," I said.

I'd arrived at the hive. I didn't know what to do; I started throwing the coated Bees away like grenades, where they rolled and flopped in the pools of the stuff. I was stabbed in the hand, and jumped with the electric shock that came with it. Slashed with a tiny sword, impaled with a miniature halberd.

"Woops," Harrigan said. "You sure you won't change your mind? It's not that big a deal either way, and I'm sure you know why."

"Owen," said Husband. "Leave for the babies."

Because he was coated in the stuff. He twitched, rolled on the floor, kept in place by strings of the tar, webs of it. All of the Hunters were caught. They struggled in it, unable to rise, to run or fight. They slashed with their Magical weapons, and the tar simply rolled over them, covering them after each cut.

"Leave," he said again. I knelt and began pulling the strands from him.

"Oh no, not the guys," Harrigan said, voice full of mock worry. "You will help me, you know. I figured it would go this way, you saying no no no never! But you will."

The tar was covering Husband, covering his mouth, his eyes. I pulled it away, tearing clumps of fur with it. He tried to pull tar from me as well, and neither of us had any success…

"Uh oh, who's that?" Harrigan said. "Coming in the main door! Who could it be?"

It was a tall, thin figure, coated in the tar. Feminine. Carrying something in her arms, something wrapped in the tar, something writhing.

"I can wear Humans like a suit, and Cassie's perfect for it. Don't need the brute force. Ever wonder why some people get souls and some don't? I sure did, for a long time. I reached a conclusion, Owen. With me, with you, with Sean, with Nakahara."

Cassie was slow-walking to the central defense engine; it was still roaring, unstoppable despite the advance of Harrigan's tar. Zombie steps.

The bundle in her arms squirmed. It had a tail.

Three tails. One long one, two tiny, curled ones, squirming from the gray sludge.

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