Someone is touching me, shaking my shoulder. It’s Jamey. I blink my eyes a few times and groggily sit up.
I can’t feel…something’s not right. Perhaps Yggdrasil hasn’t connected properly?
Jamey shakes his head no. He signs to me, Lorcan is emanated.
Lorcan! I jump to my feet.
Geez, what’re you trying to do, wake the dead, mutters Blackjack.
Then he looks around. Holy compost, he says.
That’s right – BJ has never seen this before, but I have. Our little room is filled with comatose bodies, the other emanations of Atlas, lying stiff and unconscious.
He yawns and stretches. Yeah, it feels like Lorcan. That weird sense of being detached, behind a glass wall. This can’t be good.
Are you guys up yet? says a voice from the hole in the wall above Daniel’s bed. It’s Valentin, coming from the Goliath side. He swings his feet over the edge, then gingerly steps down on the bed, being careful not to kick Daniel’s head or tromp on Evan’s long blond hair.
I’m not so careful. I accidentally step on Callum, who is curled up on the floor. Sorry! I apologize.
He stirs and grins. Don’t worry about it, he says.
You guys are right, I say to Valentin. It is too cramped in here.
Jamey tugs at my sleeve. He’s pointing at the door.
It’s the front door to Daniel’s apartment, or, at least it was, when Daniel had an apartment on the outside. Inside, it doesn’t go anywhere.
Have you ever tried it? asks Valentin.
I look at BJ, Jamey and Callum. Callum shakes his head.
We just know it doesn’t go anywhere, I say.
You assumed, says Valentin, tugging at the doorknob.
The door opens. It goes out into an enormous circular balcony hanging over a central atrium. Hey, isn’t this the place from Tara’s dream? asks Blackjack. The amrita dream with Hurley?
I look up. The building towers 24 stories above us. Daniel’s apartment is on the second floor, just as it was when this condominium complex was a simple block of workman’s flats.
Hello up there!
I look down. There are three unfamiliar men standing in the inner courtyard of the ground floor. You must be the guys from Yggdrasil, I say. But how did you get in?
One of them, a medium-built man with spikey hair wearing garments of an oddly glowing fabric, points at the back of the building. There’s a corridor connecting the ground floor of this building to another that I can see just outside the window, a giant edifice of steel.
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there before, says Valentin.
I’m Axel, the man says. Lens is on my right, and Beat on my left.
Even though it seems a little strange to greet someone who is really another part of myself, I tell them it’s nice to meet them. I suppose if you don’t treat yourself with kindness, you’re in for a rotten life.
They get on the hilift and rise to the second floor. I’m Whirljack, I say, pointing to the others, Blackjack, Jamey, Callum and Valentin.
It’s much harder to see and feel what’s going on than when Lens or Beat were emanated, says Axel. Is experiencing the emanation of another tree’s branch always like this? Or is this just a side effect of the trees not being quite connected?
Neither, I say. It’s Lorcan.
Lorcan?
23rd branch of Atlas, currently emanated. You should be able to access it. I take his hand, showing him where the memories are.
He draws back. That can’t be good, he says.
I disagree, says the third man, the one they called Beat. He looks built for strength, not as handsome as we usually are. His face has character.
What I experienced…Lorcan was the right emanation to handle it, I’m certain, he says. I touch his hand. His memories are easy to find – there are so few of them. He was emanated for less than a day.
We remember – the overwhelming, overbearing sense of being loved, of being desired, the inclination to succumb to it wrestling with the utter revulsion at this alien touch.
I retract my earlier statement, says Blackjack. Better Lorcan than me.
It’s unbearable, says Callum. It surprises me; Callum rarely offers an opinion of his own.
It distracted us from our n’aashet n’aaverti, he continues. They have to die – all of them. The Cu’enashti can’t share a universe with them.
It was only for a second, says Beat. Tara’s locket brought me back to myself. Tara saved me.
You were incinerated by a laser, says BJ. That’s a strange definition of saved.
Cillian would be a better choice, Callum insists. He could kill them without regret.
Lorcan will think killing them is fun, says BJ.
That could become a problem in its own right.
There’s no point in standing around guessing, says Valentin. Is there any way to find out what’s actually going on?
I can see what’s happening through the left lens of my spectacles, says Lens. I can’t feel or necessarily understand it, but I can see what the mothman sees.
Everyone’s impressed. It’s going to be an enormously useful ability.
What’s happening now is Lorcan being distraught about Tara and screaming at the Hreck, Lens reports.
He’s not doing anything violent, is he?
No. He’s just upset. That’s understandable.
We should be upset. Why aren’t we upset?
That’s because Tara and her companions are safe on a friendly spaceship, says Lens.
You can see that? Valentin asks.
Lens looks thoughtful. We’re nearing an event of some great importance. A turning point of some kind. I’ve been able to see it for a while, but the closer it got, the more the image comes into focus. Something three days from now will be essential to her destiny. There are a lot of images like that far down the road. They blur into each other, like a blue haze on the side of a mountain, but if I squint, I can make them out one at a time. It gives me a terrible headache, though.
For a moment, he winces, and a shadow seems to cross his eyes. What did you just see? I ask.
It’s nothing, he says with a shaky smile. Clearly, it’s something, but he doesn’t want to discuss it. I don’t press it – right now, we have more important matters at hand. I’m tending to agree with Callum – Cillian would be a much better choice.
Let’s see if we can wake Cillian, I suggest. Maybe he can force a re-emanation.
I open the door to Daniel’s room. Axel laughs. Do all of you really live here?
Actually, says Valentin, I live back there. He points to the hole over the top of Daniel’s bed, leading to Ari’s cave. It’s a shortcut, he continues. It goes down to the basement.
That’s right. Goliath is actually beneath us. It’s interesting that Yggdrasil grew as another building alongside.
I guess we don’t actually have to stay in this apartment, says Blackjack. We just got used to hanging out together. None of us even thought to look outside the door. But what would be the point, anyway? I don’t want to be alone.
The building could become a kind of organizational structure, says Valentin. If you want to talk about sex, you can go to Tommy’s rooms, and if you want to talk about science, you can go to Cüinn’s. We won’t have to have ten conversations at once.
That is a very good suggestion. Now that there are forty-one of us, it is getting noisy.
By this time, Ari, Davy and Mickey have awakened. Cillian is still slumped back, his large form hogging most of the leather couch which sits perpendicular to the fireplace. His hand is flopped over Tommy, whom he has shoved uncomfortably into the armrest.
I poke at him gingerly. He is still cold. It’s really unsettling the way we become unconscious when I and I inhabits a nau’gsh independent from the grove.
The grove, says Valentin. I like that.
It’s a potentially viable legal term, says Ross groggily, pulling himself out of his chair in the corner. I think I’ll use it when I amend the disclosure paperwork.
Assuming that Tara wants to include Yggdrasil, says Axel. But we were grown surreptitiously. She might be resentful.
Trust her, says Ross. She isn’t going to reject you.
As if on cue, the room fills with light and warmth: Tara’s arrived.
Lens nods. Lorcan is expressing his relief by screaming at her, he says.
What the fuck are we going to do with that guy? Mickey laments.
When he gets back inside, I’m going to give him the thrashing of his life, says Ari. Nobody talks to Tara like that.
I wish we could just get rid of him. I hate to say that, but of all the emanations, he’s been nothing but trouble.
I don’t like that kind of talk, says Ross.
It isn’t that easy, says Callum quietly. Tara loves him. There must be some good in his existence.
Lorcan is also upset because there are two men with Tara whom he doesn’t like, Lens continues. Can somebody help me to identify them?
Show me, I offer. I reach into his branch, accessing his recent memories. Clive Rivers and Johannon Deverre.
No wonder Lorcan is upset, says BJ.
Ari bangs his fist against the rafters. It isn’t a stretch for him – he’s amazingly tall. His face is twisted into a grimace of misery. None of us would be particularly happy about this turn of events, but Ari is cursed with jealousy.
She’s deliberately trying to antagonize us, says Mickey. She’s upset.
Lens shakes his head. There’s something more to it, he says. The man called Rivers is ill. I wish I could see it more clearly.
It’s getting colder, says Axel.
Lorcan is running away from her, says Lens.
They didn’t have a fight, did they? I shake Cillian violently, but he’s still unconscious.
I don’t think so, Lens replies. I get the sense that he’s trying to do something for her.
This is infuriating, says Ari. We’re in the middle of a war with soul-sucking centipedes, we lied to Tara, she followed us, bringing her two ex-boyfriends, and we can barely see what’s going on. Worse, it’s all in Lorcan’s hands.
The soul-sucking centipedes aren’t a problem, says Davy.
What? You know how to deal with them?
He rolls his eyes. It’s obvious, he says.