I’m really fucking sick of this shit. You’re all acting like it’s some sort of game. It’s not a game.
Lugh, take it easy, says Owen. Ailann knows what he’s doing.
I can’t. I can’t take it easy. Maybe I’m just too soft-hearted.
The average cloud has more tensile strength, says Lorcan. Owen growls at him.
Owen turns back to me. It’s pretty clear that playing for sympathy won’t work with the SongLuminants. We have to handle this with calm heads.
We could lose here. And I know the stakes. The SongLuminants think we’re playing for “the fate of the Nau’gsh,” but what we’re really playing for is “Tara’s destiny.” But if “Tara’s destiny” means our destruction, that’s the price we’ll pay. Except that I won’t have it.
Lugh, says Ailann, now is not the time.
I won’t lose you, Owen.
Aw fuck, says Cillian. You had to go and do it, didn’t you? Now you’re on trial.
You’re not just a pervert anymore, says Lorcan. You’re a traitor.
Maybe you don’t want to say anything more without legal counsel, says Ross.
I will damn well speak for myself. Everybody else has.
I and I created Owen to defy Tara. To go behind her back in order to handle a situation she was being stubbornly reckless about. All of you know the details. And it went bad, and Tara was hurt, and a lot of people died, and Owen got blamed for it even though it was really the fault of those psychotic telepaths.
Tara never blamed Owen, says Ross.
And then Owen was attacked, his branch blown off by a terrorist bomb, the same one that split Jack’s trunk. And none of you questioned how the bomb didn’t take out the whole tree. It was a surgical strike. They just wanted the branch for their experiments. They never intended to destroy Atlas.
Why did I and I let that happen?
He probably didn’t see it, says Cuinn. Tara wasn’t there, and it didn’t hurt the long term plan.
It didn’t hurt? Why don’t you ask Jack about that? About all the pain and confusion he went through when Whirljack and Blackjack first emanated?
Actually, says Patrick, I’m pretty sure I and I didn’t anticipate that. There was a pervasive sense of panic at the time.
Right now, I continue, I’m not prepared to say that He didn’t know what would happen. That we weren’t being jerked around again. And I grew in Owen’s place, knowing that I’d lost a huge piece of myself. I had some of Owen’s early memories, and then they stopped, and I grew in a different direction.
And in the meantime, Owen’s branch was in a hydroponic tank, forced to grow its own roots, and he was going insane. He wanted to die. When Cillian found him, he begged for immolation. But Cillian wouldn’t do it because of Tara’s potential reaction.
Is there a problem with that? Cillian asks coolly.
You weren’t so cool at the time, though.
No, I wasn’t, he says. I’ll admit it. I’d never imagined such an atrocity. For a man to be cut off from his roots…
But you took Owen back to Dolparessa to experiment on him some more. And all that time I was with him. I was the one who spoke to him. I spoke all night and all day because he didn’t have anyone else to listen to, and the silence in his head was driving him crazy. I promised him that I would never allow him to be alone again. Don’t you understand? He was a part of myself that I had lost, and he was in such pain. And then you amputated the rootlets he had grown and burned them. I never want to hear a scream like that again.
Neither do I, says Patrick, and I think I can speak for all of us.
Lorcan looks like he wants to say something, but for once, he doesn’t.
We didn’t know what would happen. We could have lost him again.
I agreed to it, says Owen. It was the only chance that made sense. I didn’t want to live otherwise.
Our eyes meet.
I couldn’t live otherwise, he says. I’m sorry.
I don’t blame you.
But the graft worked, he says. It worked because I really wanted to be back on the tree where I belonged. Even if I was a useless failure.
Don’t, says Dermot. We need to stop thinking like that. Especially now, we can’t afford to think like that. We all have something vital to contribute.
I could feel you waking up. Owen, I was so happy to have you back again!
I was so grateful to you, he says. You were so beautiful and kind – everything I should’ve been.
When we found out that we would emanate together, like Whirljack and Blackjack, it was difficult at first. Because, in a way, I was more distant from you. You weren’t in my head anymore, and the only way I could communicate to you was for the others to relay a message. So then the whole thing with Tara got strange.
I know, he says. I wanted to give you guys some privacy, but then, I couldn’t stop looking at Tara. And if I looked at Tara, I’d see you. Lugh so beautiful and perfect. Lugh and Tara, the most wondrous things in the universe. How could I not want to look at that?
I have a confession to make. At the time, I’d rather have watched Owen with Tara than to be with Tara myself.
You are a sick fuck, says Callum.
I don’t reply. In a way, I know he’s right. I’m a deviant. But it doesn’t feel deviant to me. It feels like the most natural thing in the universe.
And then that thing with Whirljack and Blackjack happened, I continue. I know they’re – ambivalent about it. I think BJ finds it amusing, and Whirljack embarrassing. But then Owen and I emanated. I and I made us do it. I think we were both thinking about it, but neither one had the courage to say something. I and I forced our hands because he knew that Tara would enjoy it.
It’s ridiculous to be embarrassed, says Cillian. Catering to Tara’s kinks is completely normal and natural. The fucked up thing isn’t that you’re getting it on with your brother. It’s that…
Your preference for Owen and for Tara is about equal, says Tarlach. As far as I know, that’s unique in the albeit rather short history of Cu’enashti psychology. I’d publish a journal article about it if it weren’t so personally humiliating.
Whoa, says Cillian, whack me with a compost-loader. Tarlach is humiliated? After that whole thing with Ross?
The two aren’t even comparable, says Tarlach.
That is so fucking obvious, says Ari. I never fail to be amazed at how well the Cantor brainwashed the Atlas emanations. Ross never did anything wrong! Ross is a victim. Lugh, on the other hand, is diseased.
I blame myself, says Tarlach. I understood immediately that Ross was traumatized and in need of support. What I’ve ignored is the impact of Owen’s separation from Atlas. Of course that would be exceedingly traumatic on a psychological scale. Owen and Lugh never received the therapy they needed, and so they’ve developed an unnatural co-dependence. They are to be pitied, not blamed.
I do not need your fucking pity.
I love him.
I love Owen.
I will not allow anyone’s agenda to hurt him – yours, I and I’s, the SongLuminants, Tara’s, the mythical omnipotent demiurge of this universe – I do not fucking care.
Lugh, says Owen, I love you, too. I love you so much. But don’t…don’t make me choose sides.
“All right,” says the Floatfish, swishing its tail impatiently. “The SongLuminants agree to let you communicate the question about quantum entanglement to the human Clive Rivers through your currently animate emanation Blackjack, upon one condition. The condition is that we are spared another boring, irrelevant and melodramatic testimony such as this. Can we please move on?”