No, seriously. I really wanted to know. Because there was maybe something really bad about gilded lilies. I’m dense like that.
“The letter, Davy. Did you read it?”
“No. It seemed like it was private.”
She handed the datapad to me. “He’d want you to read it.”
I read it.
Aw, fuck. Yeah, at that point, it all made sense to me, too. But a different kinda sense. Now was she crying because she was happy or sad or angry or what? And if I told her what I just figured out, was she gonna get mad at me?
She was looking at me kinda expectantly. I knew I had to say something. But I’m not good at explaining. So I thought I’d say, “Yeah, that’s why I and I had me make the K’ntasari. So you could rule the galaxy.” Which I figured wouldn’t do any harm, since everybody already knew that. It was obvious.
“Wait, he what?”
Uh oh.
“I thought this was personal, not about politics. Or is it that in order to love me, I have to be important enough? That my being Matriarch isn’t enough for him?”
“Nonononononono.” Ah, compost. Now she wasn’t upset – she was mad. Fucking festering compost with non-biodegradable plastic.
“Then explain it to me. Malachi’s letter made it seem like he was talking about some future version of me that was wise and evolved, but from the way you’re talking, it’s about conquest again.”
“But it’s the same thing, Tara.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“Yes it is! It’s obvious!”
“What in the hell is obvious about it? It’s the difference between Athena and Attila the Hun.”
“Maybe it’s Athena the Hun?”
Aw, compost, compost, mushrooms on a heap of compost. She walked out on me. Fuck, I shouldn’t swear like that anymore. We have to think different about mushrooms.
I tried to follow her, but I fell out of bed. Oh man, I was sick. I’d never been sick before. Which isn’t surprising. Only Jamey gets sick. Well, Malachi too, I guess.
So I was lying on the floor, shaking all over, and trying to figure out what I was gonna do to explain this stuff to Tara, how much I should tell her because I really think it’s better if Dermot explains it. Dermot would know what to say. He won’t screw it up.
I couldn’t get up. Fuck fuck fuck. I hope I don’t need a fungicide. If this doesn’t work, we’re branch-deep in reeking manure. Which is kind of too much of a good thing. Gilding the lily.
No, we’re branch deep in mushrooms. Cillian is NOT happy.
I was gonna barf. I was really going to puke my guts out. I had to get to the bathroom. Inside my head, I could feel Jamey giving me a shove. Kinda pushing my butt along the floor.
OK, toilet, toilet. They used to call this the porcelain god. Tommy actually has porcelain at the club. It cost a fortune. He coulda just made porcelain. The Cantor’s third rule strikes again.
Hey, maybe that’s the whole point – a god is something you vomit into. I think of all those people praying to Ailann, just dumping all their problems on him, expecting him to fix everything. That’s exactly it. The god just stands there, and you spew.
Gross.
It felt so much better once I got it over with. A religious experience.
Much better. Much much better. Even the colors in the room looked brighter. But what my human senses were saying didn’t really agree with what Atlas was telling me. And the weird thing was that I knew it was Atlas, not Davy, that was screwed up. Davy could see that he was sitting on the floor in his pajamas, kneading the bath rug between his hands. Atlas thought that the sun had turned inside out. Atlas thought that gravity was pushing the light away from the stars, and that electricity was pretty much the same thing as maple syrup.
And then I figured it out. The trees had finally stopped fighting the effects of the mushrooms. And they were that kind of shroom. And we were seeing three universes at once, and they were kind of flip flopping, not really back and forth, but into one another, and the laws of the universes were getting shuffled like a pack of cards.
I had to extend my roots. I lay on my back, arching my legs, pushing my feet hard against the bathtub. It wasn’t porcelain. Vinyalamo 15b, a metaplastic. Took me a moment to realize that no matter how much I strained, my toes weren’t going to grow, and it’s better that they didn’t. Roots.
Wait, the tub. Tara had been treating Malachi’s fever by bathing him in RootRiot. There had to be some around, but it would be better if I drank it.
Oh, it was actually bath salts, not the sport drink, or even the old stuff that you’d spray on roots. I dumped some in my mouth. It was actually pretty tasty, but it made me thirsty. Hey, I was in a bathroom! And I drank a lot before I realized that compost, we were on a spaceship, and that meant cleaning water wasn’t drinking water. It was recycled from – eew.
Did Tara have anything to drink in our stateroom? Yeah, she had quite a selection. Vodka, scotch, chocohol, m’plmek, t’kila. No mixers. I couldn’t even make a t’kila sunsrise? Screw it. I grabbed the vodka and took a slug out of the bottle. A big slug. Like half a bottle.
OK, my roots were growing. I was drunk and tripping and my roots were growing and it tickled.
My roots were growing really fast. That RootRiot had been pretty concentrated. It was meant to be diluted in bathwater. But also, there was power coming, loads of power, the crystals in the grid amplifying the power and sending it back to us, alchemy augmenting the natural process of growth, sort of like when Atlas assumed the power of the Archon and Ailann’s trunk grew, doubling the size of the tree in under an hour.
Something brushed up against my toes. I jumped up. I hoped it wasn’t a spider.
No, something bumped against my roots. I still hoped that it wasn’t a spider. You know, one of those hairy ones that dig pits underground and wait for stuff to fall into them. Why the hell did they bring those from Earth, that’s what I want to know.
You might as well ask Noah why he brought spiders and not unicorns, said Malachi. It’s doubly-baffling considering that Tara specifically asked for a unicorn.
I closed my eyes and I could see all of the guys banging on the wall behind the bed, opposite the fireplace. If they kept banging like that, they’d put a hole in the wall.
No, actually, the hole came from the other side of the wall. A fist came right through it. Whoa!
Whirljack grasped the hand sticking through the shattered plaster. You made it, bro, he said.
Now everyone was pounding, and the wall was coming down and I was tripping my leaves off and I knew what we really, really needed right now.
Pink Floyd.
No, seriously.
And then Tara came in and said, “We’ve got trouble. The first of the CenGov ships have come through a wormhole, and I need Ailann to…Davy, what the fuck?”
I was just laughing, rocking back and forth on the bathroom floor and laughing and there was vodka and RootRiot and maybe a little bit of vomit – sorry – all over the place. But I couldn’t stop laughing. And I said, “Sorry, it’s kind of hard to hear you. It’s really really loud in here with all those new people, and the cave kind of echoes.”
“We don’t have time for an explanation – not that I think for a minute it would help. Can you please get Ailann?”
That was fine by me. Because everyone on the inside was having fun, and I sure wasn’t. “One porcelain god, coming up!” I said.