The first thought in my mind, even before I looked in the mirror and knew my own name, was this: your purpose is to understand the nature of the thing that humans call “evil.”
I knew then that I had not been created to infiltrate and eventually destroy the cult of vampires. I was created to come to an understanding why such a thing was able to exist – what attraction did it hold for humanity?
Vampires are considered a symbolic embodiment of evil. And yet, if a vampire were really to exist, what would differentiate it from another predator? A star-toothed felix would most certainly kill a human for food if hungry enough, but it would hardly be considered evil. It acted purely on instinct. It was incapable of moral reasoning.
Humans also killed for food, as did Cu’endhari. It was the nature of animal life. Then were animals evil? A plant might think so. Was the act of eating evil? Sweet, kind Lucius, at such pains to disguise his horror at the most evil act a Cu’enashti could conceive: the killing of one’s mate. And yet, High Chancellor Matek Lopen *click* Bar Treven *click* Sanis Poltra *clickclick* was likely acting on instinct. She was merely hungry. The synthetic intelligence Thoughtful 45 had responded, “It’s no one else’s business.” And the SongLuminants would agree. The SongLuminants would say that Lucius’ reaction was sentimentality.
Tara’s people would say that Quicknode civilization was evil, simply for existing. They would use an AI’s lack of sentiment as evidence supporting that assertion.
Hypothesis: A non-sentimental individual would claim that evil is an entirely sentimental construct, akin to morality. Therefore, only sentimental individuals are capable of it. A sentimental creature would claim, conversely, that all non-sentimental creatures are evil by nature, and therefore the claim that the opposite is true is tainted.
The salient question, I suppose, is whether Lorcan is evil, and therefore, by extension, is the Mover capable of evil? Am I personally capable of evil? Part Suibhne and part Blackjack, both emanations committed acts that could be defined as evil. But Blackjack acted out of ignorance and fear, not malice. Suibhne is insane. Compared to the definition of evil, the definition of insanity is relatively straightforward. It is a sort of disordered thinking that results in personal distress and/or social maladaptation. Because the boundaries of social acceptability change over time, the decision of who is to be labeled insane is fluid. But the ontological category is stable.
Blackjack and Suibhne have committed evil acts, and yet both are good at heart. Notice how easily I utilize the terminology without any clear understanding whatsoever. Because I am both Blackjack and Suibhne, the Mover has determined that I have a unique perspective from which to understand the problem. Interestingly, it was posited to neither Ailann nor Aran. Apparently, “God” is not to be concerned with the question of good vs. evil.
I understand intuitively. Aran has styled himself the “evil demiurge” of Archonism, but his threats of hellfire and brimstone are play-acting – a political expediency designed to facilitate the greater good. Ailann, on the other hand, is truly a “good” god, meaning he is compassionate – read sentimental.
All these thoughts ran through my mind as I followed Lilith’s acolyte into the tunnels. And then, as expected, I found Eloise. She posed a problem closer to hand. Lilith planned to murder her by absorbing her blood. The act in itself could be considered evil – the methodology doubly so for reasons quite obscure to me. But why would she do such a thing? As far as I could tell, Lilith was entirely human. That meant she could be Cu’endhari, but certainly not a vampire. And I could not even be certain she was Cu’endhari – although she was wearing brown lenses, which was strange for a human, it was not entirely unheard of. In fact, if Lilith was trying to disguise herself, a not-unreasonable action for the head of a secret society, she might find it useful to switch eye color more precipitously than gene modding would allow.
The whole thing had to be an elaborate ruse. It made no sense. And yet humans had bought into it, bought into it as blindly as Cara’s worship of Ailann. If religion fulfills a human need, is evil also a necessity?
Dermot tells me one commonly advanced argument is that the existence of evil is necessary in order that beings might be able to discriminate the good. The argument is ludicrous. It presumes a necessity for good which would be redundant without the concept of evil. The two must mutually exist or be meaningless. Then perhaps monsters like vampires exist because God cannot exist without them?
Lilith was moving closer to Eloise. I could have stopped her – but then my identity would be discovered, and I would never find the reason behind the vampire cult’s existence. Lilith did not seem like the type who would talk under interrogation. There was a certain confidence in her bearing, a sense that she could not be hurt – yes, she had to be Cu’endhari. Humans carry their mortality with them, spiral into it like a snail-shell. A mortal coil. Trees know only breaking free of seed. No tree is afraid of dying.
She must be Cu’endhari, but without seeing the true eye color, I could not tell whether she was Cu’enashti or Cu’enmerengi. However, it was doubtful that a Cu’enmerengi would have the strength to get this far. They are small trees who sacrifice their alchemy for autonomy.
And a Cu’enashti does not. Which meant that if she was Cu’enashti, her Chosen had to be around here somewhere.
Ah, the acolyte. Behind me. I glanced towards him briefly, but he was not there. For a second, I was sure I saw…Tara. But how? There was a moment of panic, panic that must have registered upon my face, because in the moment it took me to realize that it wasn’t Tara at all, the acolyte pulled a gun.
“No! Not yet…” Lilith cried, but the shot rang out. A simple projectile weapon. I prepared to transform the bullet into something harmless, something which would not waste energy and concentration – water perhaps. But there was no bullet.
No bullet?
The bullet hit me. I could hear the others inside of me screaming and knew by instinct that this pain was like no other we have ever experienced. We had been hit by projectiles before – in fact, Sloane had “died” taking a bullet for Tara. But this was entirely different, a cold, electric agony extending from the site where the bullet had lodged behind my rib. I buckled to the ground, trying to focus. I should have been able to transform the bullet, absorb it into my system and heal the wound. It shouldn’t have been that difficult except…
…there was no bullet. And the torment from the bullet which did not exist was making the possibility of focus grow more and more distant.
“He knew,” said the acolyte. “I could see it in his face. He would’ve used me as a hostage against you.”
“Damn it, Esau, he’ll die if we leave him like that. But if we remove the nullet, he’ll recover in ten seconds, and then we’re in for it. The cage isn’t charged to full power yet.”
I pulled myself onto my knees. “I was your target from the start.” I forced a smile. “I suppose the contact lenses didn’t fool you.”
Lilith stood, legs slightly apart, fists planted on her hips. It was an inappropriate posture, neither hostile nor regretful. If anything, she seemed annoyed. “You aren’t even an authentic emanation. You’re a Goliath emanation, which means you’re just a mash-up. Suibhne and Blackjack, right?”
“Observant,” I said. “Not even Tara got it on the first try.” The act of talking caused me to cough. To my surprise, there was blood on my lips.
“That’s because Tara’s a fucking idiot,” Lilith said, “and so are you if you don’t think your own daughter would recognize you, even with that stupid purple hair.”
My…what?
It was then I remembered: “The vampyre’s fangs are sharper than a serpent’s tooth.” It was an allusion to the famous line from King Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” In her own wyrd way, Elma the prophetess had been trying to warn me. Cillian’s sapling. Of course. Cillian’s sapling hung off the same cliff as Atlas, extending over the ocean. We didn’t understand why, but we knew that branches that grew in that fashion were naturally capable of living away from the home planet. My own capacities were abnormal, augmented by using the nearest crystal in the grid as an energy source.
Lilith had apparently inherited that ability from Cillian. Had she also inherited his ability to kill?
During this interval, the other emanations were hardly passive. Ailann and Aran were desperately trying to emanate as Archon, but couldn’t. The throbbing pain, the worsening lack of focus, was disrupting our connections with our trees.
It’s that nullet, said Cuinn. I’m guessing from the name that it’s from the nul-universe, like the grid crystals. Our senses can’t penetrate it, so our alchemy can’t affect it. That’s probably how they’re disguising those bombs. Whatever it’s made of is disruptive enough to keep Seth from healing. At this rate, it will cause the death of his body. When that happens, I and I should be able to re-emanate.
We’re in far worse shape than that, said Malachi. It’s disrupting the Mover’s energy cohesion. Right now, Seth’s body is what’s holding us together. If Seth dies, the Mover will dissipate. It will be a final death, more final, perhaps, than the death of our trees.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, half to distract myself from the pain, and half because I desperately needed to know. Why would Cillian’s sapling want to destroy her father?
But the look on her face was puzzled, almost childlike. “Why did you put Tara on the throne of the Matriarch? I’m doing it because Esau wants this. Or specifically, he wanted me to put a stop to the trade in Gyre, ending prophecy in the Domha’vei, and also he wanted me to trap you. The vampire cult was my idea. I had to get your attention, get it in a way which would make you investigate personally and not assign it to SSOps. And I wanted to force you to use a new, inexperienced emanation. The last thing we needed was for Mickey to get involved – his instincts are too good, and his combat ability is unparalleled. I needed to come up with a group so outlandish that Mickey couldn’t possibly infiltrate it.”
“We need to study you as a whole,” added Esau. “We couldn’t learn enough just from studying Owen’s branch. He didn’t have the Archon’s power. And if CenGov is going to use the rip, we need to figure out how to do it without the use of trees.”
“You don’t have to,” said Lilith. Her voice was petulant, perhaps a little hurt. “I could be Archon.”
“You aren’t a big enough tree yet,” Esau replied. It was a lie. I knew it was a lie. Esau was using Lilith, intending to get rid of her. Why couldn’t she smell it? When I looked at him, I saw…no, the image was shifting. I felt it again, the presence of Tara. I knew it was an illusion, but still it gave me hope.
Suddenly, there was a shimmer in the air, and my adversaries found themselves looking down three laser-sights. Three laser-sights attached to three laser harnesses strapped around the gullets of three enormous floating fish.
“Huh?” said Lilith. Of course, she could have used alchemy to easily disable them, but she was stunned by the apparition – as any sane being might be. In that few seconds, Esau tumbled back, the recipient of a flying kick that sent the gun sailing from his hands. Before he could recover, a black-clad figure dove through the doorway, rolled on the ground, grabbed the weapon and pointed it at Lilith’s head. But I could feel it before I saw. Even in my disoriented state, it was like a sudden shaft of sunlight in the darkness.
“So I’m a fucking idiot?” said Tara, the real Tara this time. “You need to learn manners, little girl.”
“You owe us,” said the Floatfish leader. “Humans aren’t supposed to know that we have teleportation capacities.”
“And if they’d succeeded in killing Ash, then the entire human race would be slated for erasure, correct?”
“Of course. Killing an Advanced Sentient is a grave offense.”
“In that case, there wouldn’t be much point in keeping that secret, would there?”
Before anyone could attest to the value of her logic, Tara cried out as the gun became red-hot in her hands. She tossed it involuntarily into the air, and in that instant, Lilith grabbed Esau and shoved him through the door.
“Are you just going to float there and do nothing?” Tara yelled. “After them!”
“I think not,” said the Floatfish. “You asked our assistance in the rescue of Ashtara, and we did, as a gesture of brotherhood to our fellow advanced sentient. However, long wisdom advises us not to become involved in what is basically a family squabble. Toodles.”
And with that, the Floatfish evaporated, belching a trail of glowing gas as they left.
Tara passed her hand over a holocom on her wrist. “Clive, we need a medic down here. Also, tell SSOps that Lilith and Esau are loose in the tunnels.” She knelt on the floor near me. “Those lazy asses are used to letting Mickey do all their work for them,” she grumbled. “I must be paying them for something.” She kept talking, but even past the pain, past the sense that my consciousness had been put in a salt shaker and was being sprinkled across the universe, I could feel her. Her heart was racing, her skin was clammy, her pupils dilated. She was trying not to panic for my sake. It helped. Her presence helped. She was the center of the universe, an obvious point of focus.
“How did you know where we were?” I asked, forcing what was left of my concentration into every word. I needed her to keep talking. The universe was coming undone, and her voice was an anchor in the tempest.
Behind us, there was a soft moan. Eloise was regaining consciousness.
“CenGov had these tunnels scoped out. There were microcams hooked into the monitoring system at the science station, so I ended up using their old rig to spy on them. When I figured out what was happening, I called in the Floatfish. Ambassador Bllllllllllllllllllllrrrrrrrrrrrmm and his school were here for the club opening – they wouldn’t miss a party for the universe – and I figured they owed us.”
It was becoming harder to hear her; the world kept buzzing with hazy static. I tried to speak, found I had to stop in order to avoid retching. After a minute, I managed to blurt out, “Tara, you have to remove the nullet.”
“Nullet?”
“Projectile.”
“The medic will be here soon. But why can’t you just heal yourself?”
“Nul-matter,” I gasped. I could feel it now, feel the Mover’s energy losing coherence. The voices in my head seemed so far away.
“Shit, you’re shaking all over. Hang on…”
“It’s killing Ashtara. It’s killing the mothman.”
I could feel her panic trace blades across my skin. On any other occasion, such a reaction from her would have been traumatic, but I could barely feel it. I could barely feel her. White numb, then static, then agony. My vision blurred. It took me a moment to realize that the blur was saline, involuntary tears streaming from my eyes.
“Nul-matter,” muttered Tara. She stood, began looking frantically around the room. “Dammit, I need a knife. You think that a vampire cult would have some kind of ritual blade or a wooden stake or…”
“Corkscrew,” said Eloise groggily.
“No,” said Tara, “I don’t think vampires usually carry them.”
“But bartenders do,” said Eloise, handing the instrument to Tara. “Open core, surgical-grade titametal.”
“I am now going to remove a bullet with a corkscrew,” said Tara. “This is not going to be the most fun we’ve ever had.”
“Callum and Lorcan beg to differ,” I said. “Just hurry. I can fix damage if…” I coughed yet again, spattering blood on the purple velour of my greatcoat.
“I get it,” said Tara. She grimaced. “Hang on.”
“I’m not going to look,” said Eloise. “Also, you can keep the corkscrew.”
“I’ll give it to the Archbishop,” Tara replied, probing into the wound. “It’s a holy relic. He can use it to open the communion wine. Is there communion wine? I should know this. I’m the mother of the church. Or maybe I’ll use it to open the first bottle of nau’gsh wine at festival.”
Tara was babbling to keep her fear under control. I said nothing. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would scream.
“We’re in luck,” she continued, “It’s a hollow-point bullet. Of course, they wouldn’t want to use ammo with a significant chance of passing through the target – that would defeat the whole point. But if they really wanted you dead, they could have used fragmenting rounds. I guess their studies require a live subject.”
I could barely hear her. The flashes of pain, and then static, static blinking into utter whiteness, continued. The moments of agony were getting shorter, the whiteouts longer. Would I even have the strength to heal the wound this far away from Eden? Ailann or Aran could tap into the power grid, but changing emanations was probably not the best idea. In the shape that we were in, the Mover might not be able to sustain himself without my body as a matrix. The Mover could die, a final death for all of us. I didn’t want to die.
No tree is afraid of dying.
I was afraid.
My hand clutched blindly for Tara. Her voice was so distant, rising like waves of heat in the summer air. “I think I’ve managed to hook one of the mushroomy bits with the tip of the corkscrew,” she said. “But your rib is in the way.”
I remembered something about a rib. “Take it to Eden,” I murmured. “Make Eve.” Lilith was certainly a disaster.
“I’m going to choose to interpret that allegorically” said Tara. “I’ve got it. The bullet, that is, not the rib. Where are those fucking medics?”
“I’ll go look,” said Eloise. “They may have gotten lost in the tunnels.”
Suddenly my body was heavy, pressed hard against the concrete floor. The whiteness was gone. There was only pain, human pain. It felt good. Not enjoyable in the sense that Callum would have it – just that the pain meant I was still alive.
Tara held my hand. She was shaking. In her eyes was anguish, such divine sympathy. To dismiss such a reaction as mere sentimentality was obscene. The Mover chose this, chose her, which meant choosing evil as well. “Fitting,” I murmured, “for an apple tree in Eden.”
Look at her, said Tommy. You know, you can leverage this to get laid.
I laughed, which became a painful cough, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, I knew that we would live.
Eloise came in with the medics. They had been delayed by an encounter with Lilith and Esau, resulting in a short gunfight. No one had been hurt, but our foes had escaped. In an instant, three people were holding me down, sterilizing the wound, pumping me full of painkillers and accels. The accels actually seemed to work – which shouldn’t have surprised me, since our emanations are entirely human. They were much slower and less efficient than alchemical healing, of course, but they did help to stabilize my condition. The painkillers, unfortunately, were counterproductive, keeping me from focusing on the healing process. Normally, we could easily neutralize any drug, but I was at my limit. I allowed the medics to strap me to a gurney and transport me to a nearby hospital.
All that time, Tara stayed with me. Her presence soothed me enormously. I was absolutely exhausted; I found myself wishing that I could experience sleep. When Atlas and Goliath were separate, we found the experience of unconsciousness incredibly disturbing. But this experience made me realize that sometimes there is a value in resting, in not having to be eternally aware.
Chase can sleep. As far as we know, he’s the only Cu’enashti emanation capable of it. We have no idea why. I didn’t have the strength yet to finish healing my wound, let alone emanate Chase, though.
And then I realized that one way or another, tomorrow we’d have to emanate Lucius. Fortunately, the Floatfish left before the seriousness of my injury became apparent. If it became known that Esau had attempted to kill an advanced sentient, the human race was in deep trouble. And therefore, I had to cover.
I felt like crying again. I just wanted rest. Above all else, I wanted to be with Tara. But instead, Lucius would have to spend the morning in telepathic control of a body on the other side of the galaxy. We would do it because Tara was human. Even though we could protect her, we would do it because the destruction of humanity – of any sentient species – was wrong. Evil.
We would do it because our god is a sentimentalist.
Tara was not going to be happy. Using sonoluminescent-telecontrol is taxing. In our condition, there was no way Lucius would be able to possess a K’ntasari, or even Cara. He was going to have to work with Suzanna again.