I’m surprised that I’m still here; I’m not emanated often and never get to stay long. After what happened at the Everybody Goes to Tommy’s opening, Cüinn came up with a theory. He thinks that I and I only emanates me when it’s important because I screw up probabilities too much. The same phenomenon that makes the Twist virtually immortal also keeps ice from melting and butter from going rancid.
You’re emanated because there’s something coming, says Lens, and our chances are better with you around.
Something coming? Like what?
It’s blurry. But it looks dangerous. Like a blurry Tasean wildebeest running at Tara.
Tara has noticed that I’m distracted by my inner voices. “What are you talking about?”
“You, of course.” It’s true. Only a slight prevarication.
She frowns, leaning in, sensing that I’m hiding something. “You weren’t talking about my tits.”
I try to change the subject. “Not exactly. Oh, Davy says that Ashvattha will have ten branches, with each emanation embodying a spiritual virtue.”
“For some reason, that sounds vaguely familiar. I hope they won’t be boring. Could he reconsider using spiritual vices instead?”
“Now aren’t you glad I stuck ecstasy in there? And fortune? As long as we can have sex, drugs and gambling, we’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad I asked you and not Evan. We might have gotten stuck with chastity and modesty.”
There’s a knock at the door. “Lord Danak is here for your morning meeting,” Lady Lorma announces.
“Ugh, we’ve been up all night,” Tara grumbles. “We haven’t even dressed yet.”
“You don’t look at all tired,” says Lady Lorma. “You’re lucky. A woman needs her beauty sleep, especially a woman of your age.”
“A woman doesn’t need sleep. She needs a Cu’enashti. Look at you. You’re getting younger by the day. In another ten years, you’ll look the same age you were when I was a child.”
Lady Lorma pauses to gaze at her image in the mirror. She pulls at a ringlet of hair. “I should have it modded,” she says. “I never bothered with the genework because I felt it undignified for a woman to go chasing after her youth. But the color is coming back to it now. If it’s not going to be gray, it might as well be brown. Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a group of Floatfish asking for an audience.”
“School,” says Tara. “The proper term for a group of Floatfish is school. What the hell could they want?”
“We’ll never know unless we ask,” I say. “Besides, I’ve got a hunch that my luck is about to kick in.”
Danak enters; shortly behind him is Heyan, bearing breakfast. “Oooh, sucksow sausages,” says Lady Lorma. “I love these, but I never used to eat them before His Holiness started correcting my metabolism.”
Danak sits; we heap our plates with gluttonous amounts of sausages and fritters. Then the fish enter – three of them, smoothly swishing their tails in unison to steer them through air.
“As your mentor species, we’ve decided out of the goodness of our circulatory systems to make a once in your immortal lifetime offer,” says the leader. “We’re prepared to sell you teleportation.”
Lord Danak stops chewing in mid-fritter. “We’re interested,” he says, tiny crumbs sticking to his beard. “How much?”
“A bargain at only 250 trillion galactic megabucks,” says the second.
Tara looks like she’s going to spit up her vodka. “All my industries combined won’t make that in a decade.”
“It’s a good price,” says fish two, “considering that you’ll have an unlimited production license for the Domha’vei.”
“Let’s try for a limited production license,” I suggest.
“Nope,” fish three replies. “Usually, we don’t sell the technology at all. We sell sealed teleportation devices to the consumer market. They’re built to self-destruct if tampered with, to protect our trade secrets. But in your case, once you have access to one, Ashtara, you’ll figure out exactly how it’s constructed.”
“The felinoid will be out of the bag, as humans say,” added the leader. “Did you know that it’s actually very difficult to bag felinoids? We tried it once. It’s much easier to put them into boxes. Set a box on the floor, and the felinoid will jump into it.”
“It’s just an expression,” says Tara irritably. “Why would you want to put a cat into a box anyway?”
“I don’t know,” says the fish, spewing green fumes. “Ask Schrödinger.”
The fish explode with laughter.
“All right,” I say. “We walked right into that one. But seriously, a limited production license would keep me from sharing the secret.”
“How, exactly?”
“Through the terms of the agreement, of course.”
This time, the room is so thick with glowing green gasses that it’s impossible to see. The Floatfish continue to laugh unstoppably for several minutes. Their fins actually tremble with exhaustion. I start to worry about them.
“We’re sorry,” gasps the first. “That was the funniest thing we’ve heard in a standard galactic rotation. It exceeds even Lorcan’s poetry in sheer preposterousness.”
“But we anticipated the punch line,” says the second. “The history of intergalactic intellectual property rights.”
“Whirljack makes so much money selling music,” says the third.
“He doesn’t sell music. He sells clothing,” Tara corrects.
“Our point!” the fish say in unison.
I feel a little inner nudge from Ross. You need to trade them something of equal worth, he says.
Like what?
Plankton Power, says Cüinn.
That sounds like a really scary political slogan.
The Floatfish ability to travel for long periods of time is limited, says Ross. They need a certain amount of fresh plankton in their diet, and that means growing it in large tanks on their ships. It isn’t very efficient. The idea is that they can use something similar to RootRiot to increase production.
Wait. Do we actually have a product named Plankton Power?
Working on it, says Cüinn.
You want me to sell them something we don’t have.
Don’t worry about it, says Malachi. It’s easy, much easier than something like the mushrooms. Plankton should respond to cercrotic acid. In fact, it’s so easy we should be able to farm it out to employees at RR-Labs without having to develop it ourselves.
“We’re prepared to trade you exclusive distribution rights to Plankton Power, a plankton growth stimulant made by the manufacturers of RootRiot.”
“We are?” says Tara.
The fish looks dubious. “I don’t see how a growth stimulant will solve the bloom or bust problem.”
There’s a moment of perfect inner silence. Unlike humans, inner silence is not a desirable attribute in a Cu’enashti.
Does anybody have the faintest clue what he’s talking about? asks Mickey.
“There’s nothing I hate more than a gluey diatom,” says the second Floatfish. “They need to have a certain crunchiness.”
“Al dente,” agreed the third. “Al pharyngeal dente.”
Tell him we’ve solved it, says Ross.
“We’ve got that taken care of,” I say. It’s a good thing I’m an expert at maintaining a poker face.
“Really? We’ll see a demonstration, of course.”
“Right. Well, our schedule’s pretty booked, so how about…”
“Tomorrow,” says the fish. “We’re leaving the Domha’vei day after next.”
“Tomorrow it is,” I say, smiling as they depart.
“Plankton Power,” says Tara, after Lord Danak has gone. “What is Cüinn on, mindmelt? Crack? Dobergator tranquilizers?”
She picks up her datapad and connects to the Matriarch’s library. “Bloom or bust,” she murmurs, scanning the text. “Basically, when too many diatoms are competing for resources, they start to sink to the bottom of the tank. Some varieties form mucilage which sticks them together. Floatfish find that enormously distasteful. If we stimulate too much growth with cercrotic acid, we’ll render the crop inedible. So whose bright idea was this?”
I take the datapad from her, quickly scanning the article.
Let’s do this, says Cillian. Teleportation could provide some great tactical advantages.
Maybe we can engineer a new kind of diatom, says Cüinn. One that won’t lose its crunch. Like javamelon cereal is naturally resistant to milk.
I designed it that way, says Davy. I’m in total sympathy with the Floatfish here. I hate soggy cereal.
Why don’t you just use alchemy to remove the moisture from it? asks Mickey. Isn’t that easier than redesigning the cereal?
It’s a slapdash solution, says Owen. And it wastes energy.
It doesn’t take much energy to dry a bowl of cereal, says Cillian. You engineering-types are just lazy.
You can go too far in the opposite direction, says Driscoll. I imagine dried diatoms are like granola from hell.
Why don’t the Floatfish just eat seaweed? asks Tommy. Seaweed dries well.
Or krill, adds Cüinn. Krill can be frozen or canned.
Diatoms make up 58% of the Floatfish diet, says Driscoll. I found that out in the course of party-planning. They’ll have digestive problems if they don’t get enough. Apparently, the Floatfish digestive tract is very touchy.
Why don’t they just put the harvested diatoms in stasis? asks Lugh.
They claim that fresh ones have a higher nutritional value, says Cüinn. It’s probably pseudo-science. They’re just being fussy.
We’re approaching the problem the wrong way, says Barnabas. We need to inhibit the mucilage production when the diatoms sink.
Not all diatoms produce mucilage, says Ethan. But they all sink.
What makes them rise? asks Mickey.
Strictly speaking, upward currents, says Valentin. But they stay afloat if there are enough nutrients and sunlight. The nutrient problem is a no-brainer. The first thing the Floatfish tried was adding more silica to the water. The problem is actually the light. If the layer gets too thick, then the diatoms on the bottom can’t get light anymore, triggering the sinking problem.
What if we put lights on the bottom of the tank? asks Owen.
That’s such a stupidly easy solution the Floatfish must’ve thought of it, says Cillian.
They did, says Cüinn. If there’s light coming from the top and bottom of the tank, the layer gets thicker until the ones in the center can’t get light and would normally sink. But they end up trapped and go rancid.
Just reengineer the fucking diatom and be done with it, says Cillian.
There’s no guarantee that the fish will like the taste, says Driscoll. Floatfish are fussy. Chef Yuric is always complaining about how difficult it is to prepare something for them that they will like. Given time and focus groups, we could do it. But not by tomorrow.
I can’t even believe that we’re discussing a focus group on Floatfish cuisine, says Whirljack. What happened to the colonization project?
Teleportation technology would make so many things so much easier, says Owen. It’s worth the effort.
I can make a diatom that photosynthesizes more efficiently, and won’t produce mucilage, says Malachi. The issue is the taste.
Taste is just a means of perceiving chemical composition, says Ailann. Some of us are extremely adept at determining chemical composition from the sense of taste – like Valentin.
So we emanate Valentin, and have him taste-test the new diatoms against the variety the Floatfish are currently eating, suggests Cüinn.
The next thing I know, I’m inside, and Valentin is emanated.
I don’t like this, says Ari. There’s something fishy about it.