It galled me to come back to the Domha’vei, especially to come as a beggar to those I wished most vehemently to leave behind. Unfortunately, the circumstances left me little choice.
I found Tara in one of the meeting rooms on the diplomatic level. She was conferring with Lord Danak and Abbot Deverre. Abbot Deverre – what a joke. The man was always odious to me, and the ease with which he changed sides, cynically adopting a mask of religious piety, disgusts me. He is also beholden – but one need not be slavish about it.
She was surprised to see me. Figuring I might as well get the supplication over, I made my request.
“Ash isn’t here,” Tara replied. “I don’t expect him back for a while – maybe weeks. He’s gone to establish an Ashtree in the Draco Cluster.”
“The colonization project,” I realized. “Tara, I don’t have weeks.”
“Why don’t you have a seat and a drink? And what do you mean, you don’t have weeks? What can be so urgent?”
“In two weeks, I’ll be a dead man,” I said dramatically. It isn’t often in life one gets such opportunities for justifiable histrionics; best not to waste them.
“In that case, you’d better have a seat and a drink.” She gestured towards the table. “You aren’t joking, are you?”
Ah, the tedium of the explanation. “I’m sure you’ve heard that CenGov used evictium bombs on Mars? I was at the perimeter. Unlike my comrades, who were killed instantly, I received only a mild scalding, which is causing a complete cellular breakdown. I’m on regens, of course – but the damage is happening faster than can be fixed. They’re buying me time. There are only three permanent solutions. Two of them – nanobots and transferring my consciousness to an android body – are technologies reserved for Earth’s elite. They are hardly likely to give me access to them. The third is a technology reserved for the elite of the Domha’vei.”
“Alchemy. You want Ash to help you.”
“I assume it will have to be him. From what I’ve seen of the other Cu’enashti, they don’t have the power or the subtlety to handle degenerative damage on this level.”
Tara handed me a double rhybaa. To my thinking, the Domha’vei’s greatest advantage over Earth lies in its liquid resources. The supplies of water and alcohol never seem to run dry.
“You never want something simple, like a new arm or leg.”
“I wouldn’t need a miracle from the Archon for that. In the Domha’vei, all limb regrowth requires is a lot of money.”
Deverre took that moment to butt in. “The Archon is generous. Surely he will help you. Of course, there will be certain concessions.”
“I expected as much.” I was hoping to dismiss the fool as soon as possible. “While I’m here, I need more fleshiwood, too. For those adaptive explosives I designed. I thought I’d have a lifetime supply – but then again, I never expected that Earth would come to a full-out revolution.”
“Tell him,” Tara said, looking at Deverre.
“Are you certain?” Deverre asked, gesturing at me. Were I a well man, I would have been strongly tempted to teach that foppish oaf a lesson about condescension.
“Tell him.”
“The revolution has been engineered by the Order of the Starless Sequester, a secret society that has existed upon Earth for centuries, and until recently, was aided and abetted by the Floatfish. Governor Tellick, while seeming to be a guileless fool, is one of its prime movers. Starless Sequester is behind the assassination of President Harmoulis as well as the dissemination of Archonist propaganda to the rebels. They aren’t exactly friends, however. They are also behind the Cantor’s move to banish the Living God from the Convocation of the Forest.”
I broke into laughter. “And you trust him to tell the truth?”
Tara poked at the ice in her drink. That’s a warning sign, like a snake with rattles. I’d always wondered how I’d do against Tara in a fight. My hand to hand skills aren’t bad, but hers are superb. On the other hand, I doubt she could outdraw me. Most likely, I’d have one shot to kill her before she killed me.
“Now why would I trust an ex-lover who once betrayed me for a political advantage?” she said. “Maybe because his immortality is dependent on being in my husband’s good graces?”
Touché. Ah Tara, you’re such a bitch, but you aren’t stupid.
“His story is confirmed by Ambassador Bllllllllllllllllllllrrrrrrrrrrrmm, formerly Tellick’s contact with the Floatfish,” injected Lord Danak. “Everybody is defecting to our side, it seems. They smell a winner.”
“Except you,” I riposted. “You’ve always been loyal to Tara. That’s why I don’t trust you. Never trust a loyal man, that’s my motto. You can’t count on a loyal man because he’ll do stupid things not in his own best interest. Opportunists are predictable.”
“At one time in my life, I was a cynic such as yourself,” said Deverre. “But now, having seen the light of grace…”
“Please desist,” I said, “before you choke on your own piety. Speaking of the light of grace, I can’t afford to sit around waiting for Ashtara to return. I’ll make whatever deal he wants, but I need access to him now.”
“Clive, you may not believe this, but I don’t actually want to see you die a horrible death. The problem is that I have no idea how to reach Ash. He used some kind of force field to protect him and went through the stable wormhole connecting the roots of Atlas to the roots of Yggdrasil. We can’t use that to follow him. We’d need a ship, and I don’t even have the coordinates to set the pathfinder.”
Being a man of superior intelligence, the problem was a simple one to solve. “Cüinn was working in the lab here. I’ll bet there’s some kind of record. At the very least, pathfinders maintain a log in the buffer.”
“That’s a good point. A very good point. Maybe I’ll go with you and surprise him.”
“Someone needs to stay behind, to run the government,” said Danak.
“You don’t honestly imagine that I’m going to stay here for months on end while Ash pops all over the universe establishing colonies? I’m his wife. I intend to be at his side.”
“The imperatives of state….”
“Lord love a filthfrog. Danak, I don’t stay on Eirelantra the full year. As long as I’m here when we convene the High Council, is it anyone’s business whether I’m on Dolparessa, Dalgherdia, Skarsia or some remote outpost in the Draco Cluster?”
I sensed an extreme advantage. Half her woman’s heart wanted the companionship of her husband. The other half was subject to the same fatal flaw that has plagued the members of her gender since the supposed time of Eve. “You’re curious, aren’t you?” I suggested. “You want to see what Ash is up to.”
“Of course I am. What scientist wouldn’t be? It’s a whole new galaxy, Clive. No human has ever left the Milky Way before.”
She had a point. In truth, I would far prefer to explore the mysteries of an alien galaxy than to return to the conflict on Mars and continue to risk injury, death and other delightful prospects. But I am nothing if not a determined man. This foray into the unknown would be brief and utilitarian. Then I would return to battle. I had, of course, no idea at the time that I would be strong-armed into voyaging to yet another galaxy. Well, for all the inconvenience, I suppose I can count myself one of the most well-travelled men alive.
“Show me his equipment,” I declared. “Trans-universal geometry is my area of expertise. I’ll be able to determine where he’s gone.”
Ten minutes later, we were in Cüinn’s lab. A brief search turned up a datapad. Tara flicked through its contents as I examined the pathfinder. “There’s an entry here by Ace stating which coordinates he thought were the most likely to be fortunate,” she said. “Do they match?”
“This can’t be right,” I murmured as I compared. “These coordinates are pathetically far off the mark. I can’t believe that Cüinn would make a mistake on this order of magnitude. I don’t even need to do any calculations to realize that this wormhole won’t go anywhere near the Draco cluster. In fact, it’s on the other side of the galaxy from, well, anything.”
Tara was silent, with her jaw set a particular way. It was not unlike the moment when the rattling stops, and you know the snake is preparing its venom. “It’s Tucana, isn’t it?”
“NGC 104? No, it isn’t near there…oh, wait, do you mean the Tucana Dwarf? There are a few galaxies in the region of Tucana. Yes, that could very well be it. It’s isolated from everything else in the local group. Very old stars. Why would Ash want to go there?”
“To start a war with giant soul-sucking centipedes.”
How very amusing. “Yes, that sounds exactly like the sort of stupidity of which Ashhole is capable. You really need to keep him on a shorter leash. Or maybe, in his case, binding him to a trellis would be more à propos.”
“That’s why he didn’t suggest that I join him right away. He’s doing something dangerous and lying to me about it.”
“And, of course, you intend to compound the stupidity by following him.”
“You’re going, aren’t you?”
“It seems to me to make very little difference whether I sit here and watch my cellular structure decay over the course of the next several weeks, or whether I get eaten alive by a giant centipede. Come to think of it, the centipede promises a less troubling demise.”
Before I knew it, we were on our way.