“Valentin?” Tara exclaims. “What are you doing here? What happened to Wynne?”
“My superior capacity for observation and sensory analysis is needed. We need to enlist Chef Yuric in an exploration of Floatfish cuisine.”
“Let me get this straight. You’ve emanated to eat diatoms,” says Tara.
“It wasn’t my idea. I’m not particularly looking forward to the experience.”
“Why don’t I see if I can scrape up the money? I could sell the Kyrae estate. Or how about putting RR Labs on the stock market? I’ll bet I could raise that money with an IPO.”
“Your mother’s retainers at Kyrae would be devastated. And could you imagine RootRiot with a Board of Directors?”
“I could always move all the Kyrae retainers to Eirelantra, and you could make them immortal. That would be a fair compensation.”
“I’ll eat the diatoms, Tara. I’ve heard from Driscoll that Chef Yuric has become quite adept at plankton dishes.”
“We’ll go for lunch, but we’ve just eaten breakfast.” She gets that look on her face. Then she unbuttons her blouse. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. Let’s go back to bed.”
I don’t see the flaw in her logic. We’ve nothing planned for today; it’s the day after the gala and most of the aristos at Court Emmere, with the exception of the industrious Lord Danak, are still sleeping off the evening’s libations.
On the side table, I see the pack of trading cards. My card is plain; my score pathetic.
Who would blame me for wanting to improve my place in the world?
*****
By the time we leave for the café, it’s well into the afternoon. It’s a lovely day. It seems quite natural for me to hold Tara’s hand as we stroll through the palace grounds. The long meadow between the topiary display and the Japanese garden bustles with purple in the gentle breeze: heather and lavender. More specifically, Lavender latifolia, Portuguese lavender, and Calluna dolparessis, a species genetically modified to thrive in the Dolparessan sunlight. The many gardens are Tara’s pride and joy, and showcase over 1100 Earth and modified Earth species. I can name them all.
Spare us, says Driscoll. Concentrate on plankton.
We pass by the topiary. The current display celebrates humanity’s incorporation into the Combine. Each shrub has been styled into the form of a member species. The use of rosemary to simulate the fur on a Hreck is quite ingenious. The only species missing is the SongLuminants, which are represented instead by the foam rising from the fountain in front of the café.
“You want to what?” asks Chef Yuric. “I’d advise against it.”
I won’t be dissuaded. I order his most popular Floatfish offering: krill ceviche on a bed of fresh plankton. The krill tastes a little like shrimp, and is nicely balanced by the greengrain vinaigrette and sprinkling of freshly-toasted sesame seeds. The fresh plankton, however, is atrocious. Diatoms are incredibly tiny, but they’re hard shelled. The effect is like eating bitter, rotten, slime-flavored chalk.
It’s even better swallowed. Humans once used diatomaceous earth as a pesticide because the sharp edges of the tiny particles would scrape the carapaces of insects, making them vulnerable to dehydration. It was fed to chik-henns, which wouldn’t notice. That’s because chik-henns eat gravel to fill their gizzard. On the other hand, to the incredibly sophisticated sensorium of the Cu’enashti – and to mine in particular – it’s like having a stomach full of finely ground glass. It’s mildly irritating, and congeals into a heavy lump.
I try not to make a face seeing that the presence of the Matriarch has attracted the papis.
“Problem,” I say. “There must be a hundred varieties of diatom in this.”
There are hundreds of thousands of diatom species on Earth, says Cüinn. There’s no exact number because they’re always finding new ones, and arguing about how to classify the old ones.
“From the Floatfish perspective, it has to influence taste and texture. Developing a single diatom species with the necessary parameters won’t satisfy them. They’ll find the dish incredibly bland.”
No way am I creating hundreds of diatoms, says Davy. That’s so boring.
I’ll do it, sighs Malachi. But I’m not sure I can get it done by tomorrow.
We have to return to our original conception, says Owen. Forget engineering the diatoms. We need to add something to the water to affect plankton growth.
Light, says Lucius. We need to add light.
Interesting concept, says Owen. How do you suggest that we do that?
Cavitation bubbles, says Lucius. Send the right frequency of sound through the layer of diatoms. The bubbles will aerate the water, which will fluff the layer out a bit, and the sonoluminescent phenomenon can provide the light necessary for increased growth.
Will the noise from the wave generation affect the diatoms? asks Barnabas. Or potentially irritate the Floatfish?
There’s a better way to do this, muses Cüinn. Certain varieties of shrimp produce sonoluminescent phenomenon. It’s actually called shrimpoluminescence.
Rather than engineer the diatom, we can engineer the krill, says Malachi.
Krill eat diatoms, though, says Cüinn. Putting them in the same tank is problematic.
There’s a bigger problem, says Owen. The heat from the cavitation bubbles will cook everything in the tank. Plus a mantis shrimp can generate enough force to break glass.
We’re making this far too complicated, says Ethan. Just use simple bioluminescence.
That’s right, says Davy. Some plankton on Earth are already bioluminescent.
I ask Chef Yuric. He shakes his head. “I tried it. I thought it would make a spectacular presentation, but it failed with the customers. The fish thought it had a chemical aftertaste.”
What if we engineer the krill to produce the right spectrum of light to stimulate the diatoms? asks Ethan.
The krill can eat the diatoms as long as there’s a significant net gain, says Cüinn. We’ll have to engineer our krill to be very energy efficient.
Owen, if you can give me specifics on frequency and intensity of light, I’ll make the krill, says Malachi.
Chef Yuric offers me his famous plankton mousse. “It’s far more subtle,” he says. “It’s made from an algal cultivation suited to the tastes of both humans and Floatfish.”
I politely decline. I’ve had enough fish food for one day. “How about a strong drink instead?”
Yuric brings out a seaspray cocktail – rhybaa infused with sage and starleaf, rimmed with salt. It’s very good, but a little subtle to follow plankton. Worse, I’ve got a bit of krill wedged in my teeth. The minute I try to dislodge it, some photographer will catch it on camera. Top of the media push – the 29th emanation of the Archon, picking his teeth.
I close my eyes, concentrating on the molecular stew on the inside of my mouth and change it all to rhybaa. That’s much better. Who needs oral hygiene when you’ve got alchemy?
Lord Danak is approaching. I can smell him walking through the garden; the composition of his sweat indicates a high degree of anxiety. More problems – wonderful. I consider sneaking out the back. But Yuric is coming this way with an enormous chocumber confection of some kind. There’s no way Tara will abandon chocumber.
Danak enters the café and says a few words to the maître ‘d. A few moments later, he joins us. “We’ve got problems.”
“What a surprise,” says Tara.
“There’s a riot in the Tasean capital. A group of Fenntians tried to blockade the entrance to the Skarsian consulate. They started screaming that the souls of Taseans were being corrupted by our iniquity. It escalated into violence.”
Tara sets her fork carefully on the rim of her plate. “I can’t believe that we’re offering them a chance at potential immortality, and people are protesting. What the fuck do they want?”
“To be allowed to rot in their own mess,” says Lord Danak. “Besides, they don’t trust us.”
“Cillian says that he’s realized that physical conquests never turn out well in the long term. He says that we should grant independence to Tasea, and then subvert their culture by targeting Two of Jacks media push at their children,” I tell them.
“That sounds about right,” says Tara. “Now that Earth isn’t a real threat to them, let’s dump Tasea.”
“It isn’t so easy,” says Danak. “It will hurt your standing here. The heroes of Volparnu and the Skarsian battlequeens will say that the Matriarch has gone soft. Perhaps we could give Tasea some measure of home rule, but that’s about it.”
Tara stands abruptly. “Other than send in troops to stop the riot, is there anything that can be done?”
“We need to reconsider what to do about the Fenntians,” says Lord Danak. “But that can wait for tomorrow. Especially if you’re still hung over from the gala.”
Tara hasn’t had a hangover in years – we wouldn’t allow it. She’s just frustrated.
She nods and heads for the exit, leaving the chocumber pastry half-eaten. She must really be frustrated. Before I go, I signal the maître ‘d, telling him to send a box of those up to the palace kitchens.
*****
We sit together for a long time on the couch in our suite. “That was smart of you, getting them to send the pastries,” says Tara, nuzzling my neck. “You’re so good to me, Valentin.” Her face grows serious. “What Lord Danak said…Valentin, I’ve been thinking. What if the Taseans were responsible for what happened back at Nightside? What if Clive wasn’t the target?”
“Taseans wouldn’t have the technology,” I say quickly.
“But CenGov has backed them in the past.”
“In the state they’re in, CenGov doesn’t have the backing strength to matte a watercolor, let alone support a terrorist cartel.”
“Then how much sense does it make that they attacked Clive?”
“There’s a lot we don’t know. We’re working on it.”
I feel sick.
We can’t lie to her about this forever, says Whirljack.
I don’t see a reason to lie to her at all, says Ari.
She has a temper, says Ailann. If she finds out the truth, she’ll be furious. That won’t be good for anyone.
She has a right to know, says Whirljack.
“Valentin?” Tara asks. “You look upset.”
“Not at all,” I lie. “I just realized that I’ve never been on Dolparessa before. I’ve never actually seen the Atlas Tree in person.”
Tara’s face lights up. “Oh, we can go there! I haven’t been to the park myself in a long time.” Then she frowns. “It’s because there are so many tourists that when the Matriarch goes to the Atlas Tree, it becomes a spectacle. When I was a little girl, I used to go there every day. I miss that. I miss touching the warm bark of a nau’gsh. Maybe we can go late tonight, after the park closes.”
“For now, why don’t we just go down to the music room and look at it from the window?”
“All right. Then you can play the piano.”
“I don’t know how to play the piano.”
“You said you would learn, remember? You’re half Evan – you must have the talent somewhere in your branch.”
We go down to the music room. I know exactly what the Atlas Tree looks like – if I close my eyes, I can sense it – but it’s different to see it first-hand. It’s down the coast, but it’s impressive, even at a distance. The perspective gives me a sense of just how large the tree really is.
My tree, Goliath, has exactly the same volume and surface area. But Goliath is in the middle of a flat plain of grain. There’s nothing nearby to establish a relative sense of its size.
I sit at the piano. The early evening light in this room is lovely. Tara sits next to me on the piano bench and rests her head against my shoulder.
I stare at the keys. I’ve never played before. Do I have Evan’s talent?
I reach into Evan’s branch, remembering the sensation of his hands upon the ivory. My fingers start to move. There’s a sense in Evan of an emotion which moves the hands, a power of feeling that flows through the music, but that’s a distant echo. For me, it’s different. I start to recognize patterns. Patterns made by my fingers, patterns made by the notes and their resonance with each other. How hard I strike each key will affect the loudness of the tone, but that in turn is affected by the shape of the room, the material of the walls. The way the music fills the space allows me an entirely new means of perception.
Lady Lorma comes in with tea and the pastries from the café. “That’s lovely,” she says. “Almost as good as Evan. I didn’t know you played.”
“Neither did I.” I’m a little hesitant to stop, but she’s handing me a teacup. As the music dies, I realize something interesting. My temporal sense was totally different while I was playing. As long as I kept time, I could keep time.
*****
In the morning, we meet up with the Floatfish. The demonstration is set up at the old RR-2 main lab. The place is fairly quiet now that it has gone legit –contraband development and production have been completely relocated to the former Terran science station on Dalgherdia. Tara and Lord Danak accompany me. I have to make the sales pitch – which is something quite out of my area of expertise.
“Ash is being weird again,” mutters Tara. “Why not emanate Ross?”
Good question. “Ross is coaching me. And Cillian.”
“Cillian?”
We had set up a large, fairly deep tank – quite different from the pools in use by the Floatfish. Those were much longer, but less than a meter high.
“This is one days’ worth of growth,” I say, pointing to a thick layer of plankton floating near the top of the tank. “As you can see, our miracle product, Plankton Power, has allowed for a much greater growth rate than your tanks.”
“The layer is too thick,” says the lead fish. “It has to be rancid. Also, what’s that sparkly stuff?”
“Feel free to taste,” I say, scooping a ladle through the center of the muck. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize the sparkly stuff, as you call it. It’s glowkrill. Standard plankton growth procedure in the Domha’vei.”
The fish begin to laugh, glowing green gas seeping from their float-bladders. It has a distinctive smell. Now I can recognize it – they all have diatoms on their breath. It reminds me of my recent culinary adventure. My stomach does several impressive aerial maneuvers never intended for the digestive tract.
“We’re no good at genetic engineering,” says the first.
“We pitched that idea to the SongLuminants. Actually, what we’d asked for was glow-Hreck to tend the tanks,” says the second. “They turned us down.”
“The SongLuminants aren’t much for helping a fellow sentient get a fin up in the universe, if you catch my drift,” says the third.
“The SongLuminants are the biggest assholes in the galaxy,” I reply. “I really don’t understand how they managed to end up running everything.”
This time, there is so much green gas in the room that Lord Danak runs to open a window. “You’re so unbelievably naïve,” gasps the first.
“Dry behind the gills,” the second agrees.
“Don’t you understand that’s how politics work?” the third says incredulously.
The first dips a fin into the sludge. “Not bad,” he says. “The glowkrill add a bit of umami.”
“Wouldn’t that be great with a greengrain vinaigrette?” I suggest.
“I’d serve it with kelp, lightly sprinkled with lemon,” says the second.
“This is all well and good,” says the third. “But it’s not quite up to the level of teleportation.”
“You have to remember that we don’t really need to make long trips,” says the first. “Our wormhole paths are all under a few days.”
“Ah, but there are two things you’re forgetting. The first is exploration. You can never do any real exploration without ships capable of travelling through new wormhole paths. It can take months.”
“Exploration is not our thing,” refutes fish two. “We’re merchants.”
“The second is efficiency – and that’s something you’re surely concerned with. It’s much more cost effective to transport large numbers of beings at once. Each ship has an operational overhead. More food means that you can increase crew size.”
“We could even have passenger liners,” muses fish three. “There might be an untapped market in cruise tourism among our species.”
“It’s still not as impressive as teleportation,” says fish one.
I’ve run out of Ross’ sales-pitch. Now Cillian feeds me his strategy. “I think it is. I think you’re getting the better part of the deal.”
The fish stare at me, their tails flicking impatiently.
“You see, I’ve already guessed the punch line of the joke. Your teleportation technology is worthless to me.”
“What?” says Tara.
“What?” says Lord Danak.
“It doesn’t work on nul-energy, does it? That time your people came to rescue Seth in the Dalgherdian tunnels, they didn’t teleport him out even though he was injured.”
The fish break into uproarious laughter. “Maybe you’re not quite as dumb as you look,” gasps the first.
“Cüinn predicts that if I tried to use it, the destination would receive a corpse, and I’d be forced to emanate a new body at the starting point.”
“That’s macabre,” says fish two. “Actually, the truth is much less dramatic. The teleportation device just won’t scan you. It won’t scan anyone with sap running in their veins, as you say. We found that out when we teleported the spackle mimes after the Everybody Goes to Tommy’s Opening.”
“You teleported the spackle mimes? That’s news to me.”
“Only three of seven. They were a Dolparessan troupe. The four that wouldn’t teleport all had their patterns of consciousness altered by the presence of nul-energy passed on from their parents.”
“It makes the system considerably less useful,” says Lord Danak, “if it only works on some of our citizens and not others.”
“Then what was the point of all this?” Tara says irritably.
Exactly. Why was I subjected to that culinary adventure if it was all a scam?
“The point is that you’d be granted an exclusive license for the Domha’vei,” says the third. “Meaning, we wouldn’t sell it to anybody else.”
“It wouldn’t do to have humans being able to get around faster than their god, would it?” the first states triumphantly.
“I think that the technology I’m offering – which would be a nice improvement in efficiency for your species – is a fair exchange for giving me a technology I can’t use, which I’m only going to suppress.”
The fish huddle. After a gurgly conference, they turn back to us. “Deal. You drive a surprisingly hard bargain. We’ll be back with the unit in a few moments.”
After they leave, I turn to Lord Danak. “It isn’t a total loss. SSOps can use it for classified operations. But we’d better not tell the High Council, or they’ll want it as a convenience. Then we’ll have to make it available to the general public – the last thing we need is yet another privilege of the aristocracy.”
“You have to admit, saving a week or more of travel between planets is pretty convenient,” says Tara.
“We’re making them immortal. They’ve got time on their hands.”
“We can’t let it go public, at least not until we think it through,” says Lord Danak. “It isn’t just a matter of undermining our religious propaganda. Imagine the military use of teleportation. Troops can appear instantly at the most vital spot. We can’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”
“Owen says that given time, we can probably develop a way to shield against it.”
The fish reappear with a black cube approximately half a meter on a side. “That’s it?” says Tara. “For some reason I was expecting something enormous – big control panels and platforms, maybe.”
The fish snicker. “Nope,” says the first. “Just set the dial on the top with the galactic standard coordinates, and then touch the gray square. The green triangle is activate, the blue circle is recall, and the magenta octagon is cancel. When you hit activate, everyone registered since the last use will be teleported to the entered coordinates. It will remember their registration, and recall them as long as they don’t move more than 50 kilometers away from the teleportation area. You can only send up to fifty users in one go, so sometimes you’ll need to do multiple sends in a row. It will keep track of everyone’s recall data, so don’t worry about that. It does have anti-stupidity failsafes, so no one will ever teleport into a space already occupied by a solid. That means if you try to teleport 50 people into a closet, some of them will end up in the hall or the upstairs bathroom, which might not be what you intended. It can only protect you from so much of your own stupidity, after all. Also, it bundles you into a containment field that will pre-evict any liquid or gaseous molecules from the teleported matter area. We use it under water a lot, but that means the anti-stupidity failsafes won’t prevent you from teleporting into a lava flow or airless space. One last thing – if you touch the gray square by accident, just hit cancel once. If you hit cancel twice, it will cancel all the registrations in the buffer. That wouldn’t be good if you need to recall someone.”
“Sounds simple enough,” says Lord Danak. “Shall I try it?”
“What if we want to teleport two people someplace and only bring one back?” asks Tara.
“Then you need the deluxe model,” says the Floatfish leader. “That will cost an extra two billion megabucks.”
The Floatfish set the coordinates for several meters from the box. Lord Danak touches the gray panel. He then hits the green triangle. He seems to pop suddenly across the room.
“That was awesome,” says Tara. “Did you feel anything?”
“A little rush of air,” says Lord Danak.
“That’s the molecules being cleared out as you arrive,” says fish two.
“Cüinn wants to know if there’s a compensation for relative velocity.”
“Well duh,” says fish three. “Otherwise teleportation between ships would be a pain in the gills.”
Tara pokes the recall circle. Lord Danak pops up next to the teleportation device.
I get it, says Cüinn. But there’s no way the Floatfish made that.
They got it from somebody else, says Mickey. Probably a species the SongLuminants erased. I’ll bet they don’t even know how it works.
There’s no way a species that can’t even engineer glowkrill could come up with this, agrees Owen.
Valentin, smell it. Smell it hard, says Davy.
It smells like diatoms. Everything smells like diatoms.
No, not that. The metallic smell.
Polonium bilegrothate?
Yeah, thanks. Well, I guess now we know why you emanated.
It’s obvious, I reply.
Exactly.
I was being sarcastic. Why the fuck did I emanate?
It’s obvious, says Davy.
Tara is popping Lord Danak all over the facility. He’s apparently already terrified a lab assistant, which really doesn’t suit our plans to keep this technology highly classified. But the Floatfish keep staring at me expectantly.
“I’m not going to tell you how it works,” I say.
Their fins droop slightly. “Busted,” one sighs.
“You must have a limited supply of these. What do you do if they break?”
“Oh, we can fabricate them,” the leader says haughtily. “The fabricator we got from Species 37 can replicate anything by scanning its molecular pattern.”
“Now there’s something we could use,” says Lord Danak. “Our printers need to work from very complicated blueprints.”
“Absolutely not,” says the Floatfish leader. “We’re merchants. Do you think we’ll give away the store?”
“You pillaged it from an extinct species,” I accuse. “And wasn’t Species 37 in Sextans A, the home galaxy of the Twist?”
“The Twist don’t care when we salvage tech from their exploitation galaxies,” says the second. “It’s not like they can use it.”
“And I thought erasure was supposed to get rid of everything.”
“Right, like it got rid of the Skarsium mine and the rotation grid under the Dolparessan surface,” says fish three. “The Champions of the Skylight Spin are careless.”
“But don’t they get angry when they find out what you’ve done?”
“Finders keepers,” says fish one. “What are the SongLuminants going to do about it? We’re Advanced Sentients. They can’t erase us. It’s against their own rules. Especially now. They can’t erase anyone.”
“So you’re really not going to tell us?” says the second fish. “Oh well, can’t blame a fish for trying.”
“Ciao!” the fish say in unison, waving their tails goodbye as they vanish.
“At least they’re good losers,” says Lord Danak. “They have a sense of humor.”
“I’ll say,” says Tara, batting away a cloud of green vapor.
I pause for a moment after they’ve left to make certain the area is secure. I wouldn’t put it past them to have monitoring devices to listen in on what I’m about to say.
“Well?” asks Lord Danak impatiently. “I assume that you have analyzed it.”
“Cüinn says that the devices rather ingeniously make use of a phenomenon known as slider universes. These are universes where spacetime is so naturally flexible that they’re useless for wormhole paths. The amount of energy needed to generate a wormhole causes the immediate space in the slider universe to squirm around like cooked spaghetti. However, these teleportation devices use a much smaller amount of energy due to the low masses and short ranges involved. It’s that and their ability to adjust for relative velocity which makes them practical. They basically seal the person to be teleported into a containment field and pop it into a slider universe. The device then either pushes or yanks back the spacetime in that universe depending on whether it’s sending or recalling. The size of the objects that can be sent is limited by the same phenomenon which makes it impossible to evoke a wormhole inside of a gravity well. You could send something perhaps the mass of an oliphant. Get outside of the star system, and you could potentially teleport a small ship, but it would have a range of maybe a light year, so it isn’t very practical for interstellar travel. On the other hand, you could maybe teleport a buzzibei to another galaxy, but who would want to do that?”
“You still can’t use it. Come to think of it, I can’t use it. I’ve got sap running through my veins, too.”
It’s something we’ve always wondered about. Somewhere in Tara’s ancestry is a Cu’enashti. It’s strange she doesn’t mention it more. Although the human Chosen must be long dead, the Cu’enashti is probably still alive.
“Oh, and it would be relatively easy to change the parameters on the scan and recall controls and build the deluxe model ourselves. We could easily recall people on a timer, for example,” I tell them. “Or we could teleport inanimate objects. Barnabas seems to think that that eventually we could figure out a different scanning mechanism which would not be jammed by the presence of nul-energy.”
Lord Danak strokes his beard. “Well,” he muttered. “Well, well. I think we’d better consider this carefully. It has great potential application, but could be most dangerous if used against us.”
“Caution is indicated,” I agree.
“Set the coordinates for the palace,” he says. “I want to scare Lady Magdelaine.”