I climb the enormous scaffold next to Yggdrasil. Lens’ branch is in fruit. I pick a particularly sumptuous specimen: rounded, plump, juicy, a richly intense cyan flushed with emerald. The perfect fruit, just as we had promised. It is almost too pretty to eat. I hope that Tara won’t think so.
I climb down to the platform. When she joins me there, I present it to her. “A bit of a change from all that juice,” she says. “In the past two days, I’ve had Tommy, Constantine, and Manasseh. Manasseh was sweet and Tommy had a lot of zest. Constantine was almost flavorless. I think we need to work on Constantine.” She looks thoughtful. “We need work in a lot of areas. I don’t even have samples from Ethan and Barnabas.”
I clear my throat. “At least I’m not the only virgin.”
She laughs. “You won’t be for long. Seriously, you look like the kind of guy I could bang in a closet, not like Lens. Lens is delicate.”
To my surprise, I find that I am exactly the kind of guy she could bang in a closet. Unfortunately the architecture was not designed with the needs of my throbbing crotch in mind; the Hreck don’t separate personal space by using doors.
“I wish Ethan and Barnabas would emanate. Personally, I think they got pulled out in an emergency, and now Ash doesn’t know what to do with them.”
I felt badly for them, but I wasn’t likely to solve their problem – or mine – by standing here fluttering my leaves. “What’s the plan? I’d like to get things moving as quickly as possible.”
“I’d say the first priority is the planting of the seedlings. Then we set up house.”
“How long will the seedlings take to emanate?”
“I can tell you about how rapidly nau’gsh typically grow, and then I can tell you how fast they can grow if they’ve got exposure to nul-energy and a mind to do it, but the age of first emanation isn’t something I’ve been able to study. Ask Tarlach. He might know.”
She was right. In the course of research for his talk-show and series of scientific papers, Tarlach had collected an incredible amount of personal interview data. “He says that most Cu’enashti have emanated by age fifteen, but the youngest he’s ever known was four, and the oldest fifty-three.”
“That’s bad,” she says. “Bad on the obvious level – are the Denolin Turym going to wait four years, or decide they’d rather have butter-broiled Hreck in the meantime? But it’s also bad on a non-obvious level. Most of the Cu’ensali trees are hundreds of years old. That means that they’ve decided not to take the leap.”
Cu’ensali? I’d never considered them important. Actually, I’d never considered them at all, but perhaps that was because I half-believed I’d never get to see Dolparessa. But now that Tara mentioned it, I was baffled. There was no question that a Cu’ensali nau’gsh was identical to a juvenile Cu’endhari. They flowered, but never bore fruit. There was no discernible difference between a sapling that would eventually emanate a human form, becoming a Cu’enmerengi or a Cu’enashti, and one that would continue to emanate as pure nul-energy.
“Do you remember being a Cu’ensali?” Tara asks.
“What?”
“I’m probably asking the wrong person. Ask one of the Atlas emanations.”
“Daniel says he was never a Cu’ensali. Tarlach says he doesn’t know of anybody who emanated first as a Cu’ensali and then changed. There may be no biological difference between the trees of the adult Cu’ensali and juvenile Cu’endhari, but Cu’ensali don’t grow into something else. Also, those trees that are hundreds of years old aren’t Cu’ensali – they’re juvenile. They aren’t even emanating the sprites.”
“There’s so little about your people I understand,” she sighs. “Ask Tarlach if the age of emanation depends on the size of the tree, or on emotional maturity?”
“A combination of both, plus the presence of a suitable Chosen.”
“Well, we can see if a combination of RootRiot and regens might speed things up. Let’s just hope the Denolin Turym are patient. From the way they’re waving their tentacles, though, they don’t look very patient. I’ll start unloading the seeds.”
She is right. There is definitely something stirring them up – and more of them conglomerating. For now, at least, they haven’t done anything hostile. “I hope Neliit isn’t misreading them,” I say. “I hope they aren’t massing the troops for an all-out offensive.”
I don’t tell Tara that the reason Lens has been on edge is due to a vision he had while wearing his spectacles. I want – but am afraid – to ask him what he saw.