“Oh,” says Tara. “I didn’t expect the two of you. Is Patrick done with writing, then?”
“I think he’s getting close to the end,” says Lugh. “But we’re here because…” he shuffles nervously.
“I and I wants us to ask you a question,” says Owen, looking at his feet.
Tara waits for a moment. “Do you need a prompt?”
“Well, uh, it’s just that, uh…”
Lugh jumps in, “Would you like us better if we were perverts?”
For a brief moment, Tara is dumbfounded. And then she laughs. And laughs. And laughs.
“You know, I have something which I think will clarify the issue,” she says, when she stops laughing. She gets out a bottle of nau’gsh wine.
In the morning, I’m back. “I hope it isn’t a bad sign that they’re gone already,” says Tara.
“I just need to get back to writing,” I say.
Tara cocks an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really. Well…”
“They have issues with their sexuality. I pushed them too hard, didn’t I?”
I shake my head. “It isn’t about sex at all. If you told Ailann that you wanted him to wear stockings filled with pudding, he’d happily do it.”
I would not, says Ailann.
“Oh my god, no. I never want to see that,” says Tara.
“The real problem is that Lugh and Owen love each other.”
“That’s a problem? Or is it that they don’t love me?”
I rarely get annoyed, but now I’m annoyed. “If you could entertain that thought for a second, then you obviously understand nothing any of us has said for the past twenty years.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
“The problem is that their love is divided. Feeling something for each other is in conflict with their single-minded devotion to you.”
“So you’re saying that you don’t feel anything for the others? For Daniel? For Whirljack? You have such a boy-crush on Whirljack, it’s pathetic.”
Busted, says Tommy.
“It isn’t the same.”
“It isn’t? Then why are you blushing? All right, consider the biology of the situation, then. A single branch won’t produce fruit. Your branches cross-pollinate.”
I don’t know what to say.
“Maybe the norm for Cu’enashti sexuality is the hot threesome.”
Now we’re in trouble, says Cillian.
“Or the orgy. You guys all watch each other, don’t you? Do you race, like a circle jerk?”
“There’s no point in racing since we all get off at the same time. And I’m not into that sort of thing.”
“Who is? Cillian? I bet he wants everyone to see his cock.”
This conversation has gotten way too weird. “I’m going to get back to writing,” I say. “I have a big scene to do – the attack on Eirelantra.”
The explosion is completely unexpected. It can’t be an ordinary device – Tara knows Ash would’ve sensed that easily. But He predicts it – by seconds – and Patrick throws himself over the bomb.
There is a gigantic flash of blue light, and he is gone. Amidst the panicked screaming, Tara is just aggravated. All that will do to Ash is force him to return to Dolparessa. All that will do to Ash is make him grow yet another branch.
“We’ve lost power,” says Captain Darvina.
“What?” says Tara. Well, deal with it first, figure it out later. “Activate auxiliary generator.”
Eirelantra is huge by space station standards, but compared to a planet, it’s nothing. After disastrous losses of power twice in the past decade, Tara had a complete antimatter generator system installed – just in case. It’s enough to power the station for over a year, if need be. She’s been trying to get wind and geothermal backups on Volparnu, but they’re sorely lacking in engineers, and her education program is met with resistance. She’s had much better luck putting solar panels on Sideria.
“Power restored,” says Darvina “But Highness, the grid is functional. There’s no reason why…”
“It’s right there,” says Malik. “Can’t you see it?”
Malik, by the way, isn’t the humble car-park he’d have you believe. Derek didn’t end up throwing himself off a cliff. On my advice, Ashpremma did something audacious: he had himself transplanted to a hillside. Malik grew from the resulting trauma. Malik is an overhanging branch capable of following Premma when she attends the court at Eirelantra.
“Um, no?” says Tara.
“A tiny singularity. It’s right between us and the currently active cluster of crystals. It’s absorbing the power transmission.”
“Well, that’s odd,” says Tara. “Why didn’t we discover that before?”
“Because it wasn’t there before,” says Darvina. “It will block our power transmission for around three days. Shit.”
“Well, this sort of thing is exactly why we built the auxiliary system.”
Darvina shakes her head. “Shit means it’s affecting the orbit of Dalgherdia. Ever so slightly. If the effect continues for six days, Dalgherdia’s orbit will be affected enough to send it outside the belt and into space. But Dalgherdia won’t be completely out of range for ten days. If the singularity’s effect continues for the duration, Dalgherdia will be put on a collision course with Volparnu. It will go straight into the FrosteeFreez Ocean.”
“That would be bad, wouldn’t it?”
“Running simulation now.” The simulation was not what one would call a day-brightener. It depicted the heat generated by the massive asteroid strike vaporizing the ice in the ocean, creating a massive climactic disaster that would basically render Volparnu uninhabitable.
“This was planned,” says Tara. “This was planned by someone very, very good. Ash would’ve sensed it. Ash would’ve stopped it. He can still stop it.” He’ll ride the power grid to Volparnu, and then fly out to the singularity. Except…Tara knows a little too much about the way Ash thinks. “Which is closer to Volparnu, the singularity, or us?”
“We’re closer. Why?”
“No reason.” She doesn’t want to say what she is thinking. She knows Ash’s priorities. He’ll come to Eirelantra first, to assure her safety, and by then, it could be too late. “Can we get a message through?”
“Communications are disrupted.”
“Did the singularity do that?”
Darvina shakes her head. “We’ve got a more immediate problem. Reports of fighting on Level 3.”
“A panic already?”
“Soldiers. We’re under attack.”
Admiral Whelan runs into the yard at Court Emmere, calling for security. His first impulse is to ride the power grid right back to Eirelantra, but then he realizes that I and I must’ve put him down here for a reason. It does make sense. He has to figure out the situation.
Since the royal household was staying on Eirelantra, there’s no one of real authority left at the court – just a handful of security guards, groundskeepers, and the flock of minor aristos who permanently maintain the place. The lieutenant in charge is able to take the admiral to a command hub built in the back of the old cathedral of war, in the days when Siderian nobility would gather here for councils.
By now, the people on Dalgherdia have figured out what’s happening. Communications to Eirelantra are completely down, and there’s no way to know whether the bomb that Patrick intercepted was an isolated incident. Cillian delivers his assessment of the situation. “This is fucked up,” he says.
The lieutenant finds that assessment crude, but accurate. But when he turns to his commander, Admiral Whelan is gone. Instead, he’s replaced by a much smaller man wearing a white lab coat. “I and I thought I’d be more use under the circumstances,” he says, sticking out his right hand. “Cuinn Cleary.”
“Lieutenant Pol Mauvern.” Mauvern takes a deep breath. He hasn’t been assigned here long. He knows all about the Archon’s emanations – who doesn’t? But he’s never seen it happen before.
Cuinn flips through screens of scrolling numbers faster than the human eye can perceive. “Cillian’s right,” he concludes. “This is fucked up. If I go to Volparnu now, it will take me five days to fly the remaining distance to the singularity. It will then take me another three to fly to Eirelantra. It will be four days if I go directly from Volparnu to Eirelantra.”
“Why would you go to Eirelantra, Sir?”
“Because it’s under attack, and Tara is there, and that’s my first priority.”
“If you go to Eirelantra first, the damage done to Dalgherdia will be irrevocable. Shouldn’t you prioritize neutralizing the singularity?”
“If I were trying to minimize damage, yes,” says Cuinn. “However, my first priority is Tara’s safety.”
Mauvern hopes Cuinn doesn’t notice the tremor in his voice. But Cuinn notices everything. “In this case, Sir, minimizing damage means saving millions of lives.”
“I know that,” says Cuinn. “So what would you do if I wasn’t here?”
“I’m just palace security. I really wouldn’t know.”
“Who would? We’ve still got communications to Dalgherdia, don’t we? Maybe their science station has already figured something out.”
Mauvern nods, signaling for a channel to be opened. When he turns back, Patrick is there.
“Milord,” he squeaks.
“Dammit,” says Patrick. “I’m supposed to do damage control. But what kind of damage control can I do? When the people find out that their Living God allowed the deaths of millions because…” Patrick stops, drumming his fingers on the counter. “That’s it. That’s the point of this whole attack. If it were just a matter of disaster, we could all pull together. The point is to completely undermine the faith of the people in their government and their God. Which means Tara’s destiny is at risk. Which means that I have to decide whether the risk is greater to her life or to her destiny. She might be able to handle the attack on her own – she’s tough and intelligent. But I don’t know what we’re up against. And the consequences of being wrong…Cuinn’s decision is logical. I see why he wouldn’t risk it.”
Mauvern has been trying to listen to Patrick’s monologue at the same time as monitoring the science station channels. “They’re in bad shape,” he says. “A series of explosions there, too. Whoever planned this wanted to cause enough chaos so that they’d be of limited ability to help. Just like Eirelantra, probably.”
“I had another thought,” says Patrick. “What’s the situation on Volparnu?”
Mauvern nods and opens another channel. Patrick reads the chemicals in his brain, knows the news isn’t good an instant before the horror catches up to Mauvern’s face. “They’re readying a contingency plan. They’re planning to blow Dalgherdia out of the sky.”
“I thought as much,” says Patrick. “If it gets to the point where Dalgherdia is doomed anyway, why not just destroy it? It’s perfectly logical – but it will still provide the rationale for CenGov to declare war. Of course, we’ve probably got enough ships to evacuate the science station personnel. That will go down a storm, won’t it? Evacuating Earthers instead of our own people?”
“You have to stop the singularity, my liege.”
Patrick shakes his head. “I have no idea what’s happening on Eirelantra. I’m not prepared to take that risk.” Suddenly, Patrick sweeps his arms upward, and Mauvern sees it this time, flickering for just a second, the radiant figure of the mothman as it folds itself into yet another form.
“But I am,” says Wynne. “Risk-taking is what I do. Tara’s a big girl. She can handle this. And she’d be really pissed at me if I fucked this up.”
“They’re on Level 9 now,” says Darvina. “Highness, it seems like they know what we’re going to do before we do it.”
Tara bites her lip. CenGov couldn’t have another prophet, could they? Cara and Mickey were certain that the only apple-dealing left in the Domha’vei was being run by Chase.
Absently, she strokes the tiny pocket-puppy on the console. It looks up at her with its sweet brown eyes.
“Aren’t you a darling wookums?” she says. “You know, people, these things are adorable, but I don’t think they belong in the command center during a crisis. Let’s collect them all and put them in the atrium garden for now.”
There’s a bit of grumbling, but six puppies are gathered into a box. They whine pathetically, their enormous brown eyes pleading to stay. Tara shakes her head. Battlequeen Escharton gives Tara a disapproving look. This is bad for morale, and also a waste of time. But Wyrd Elma laughs.
When the door closes behind Escharton, Elma says, “Yup, a telepath. That Molly, I think. But it’s too late now.”
“But Molly was extradited, which means…”
“Your Highness, the attackers are on Level 12. They’re going to be in position to attack the Command Center within the hour at this rate.”
“Then let’s not be here.”
“Highness?”
“This has been surgically precise. They must have a plan to take over command. Let’s sabotage it, cut all but life support power, and play a running game.”
“If we run, sooner or later we’ll lose.”
“All we have to do is stay alive. Four days if we’re unlucky, eight if we’re lucky.”
“Pardon, Your Highness, but that makes absolutely no sense.”
“Stay out of sight of those damn puppies. And pray that your god really is infallible.”
Darvina runs for two days before she runs into trouble. She finds herself staring down the gun barrels of six enemy commandos.
She’s no lightweight, but hand to hand isn’t her thing. She’s an attack ship captain. She doesn’t really have a chance. And then, before she can grasp what is happening, there is a hail of gunfire. The six men are down, and she’s standing. They were taken down by someone with amazing skill and accuracy.
“Molly’s lost it,” says Clive. “Molly hates Ashtara more than she hates CenGov. I played along until I could make a break for it.”
From the corner of his eye, Clive sees a flicker of movement. He fires, shredding an adorable puppy into stew meat. “Was that really necessary?” gasps Darvina.
“Molly can see through those dogs’ eyes,” says Clive. “I’ve been killing them wherever I find them.” He grins. “I hate cute. I’m really enjoying this.”
Cuinn’s analysis showed that the gravitational singularity – popularly known as a black hole – was small enough to be unstable. Leave it alone, and it would disappear of its own accord. However, it wouldn’t happen in time to avert the disaster. The other implication is that it had to be artificial. It couldn’t have arisen spontaneously in empty space, and the positioning and timing was just too perfect.
Cuinn’s first impulse was to hasten the singularity’s decay, but the only way to do that is to lower the background radiation. He could do that – but there isn’t much background radiation in empty space. The time he could buy would be insignificant. This is why Wynne decides to put all his chips on the double zero.
I and I rides the power grid to Volparnu. But he doesn’t fly out to the singularity in five days’ time. He takes a shuttle halfway to the black hole. The shuttle takes three days. From there, he can fly to Eirelantra in two and a half days. Five and a half instead of four – Wynne thinks that’s acceptable.
“All right, big guy. You’ve got to handle it from here,” says Wynne.
Wynne is relying on something that I and I knows, encounters daily, takes for granted as a fact of life and pretty much ignores. It’s kind of the way humans treat oxygen. In four dimensions, matter tends to clump up a little. The resulting phenomena are called galaxies. In five dimensions, spacetime tends to clump up a little. The resulting phenomena are called universes.
The Domha’vei is a place where spacetime clumps up a lot, and the two closest universes rub up against each other, wearing a little thin. It really isn’t the best place to put a singularity of any sort.
Wynne has relied on Cuinn’s calculations. He’s able to draw a direct line from the nearest grid nodes to himself to the black hole without intercepting any inhabited areas. He’s not quite sure what exposure to the enormous amount of nul-energy he needs will do to any life forms it encounters.
He’s not quite sure what it will do to him, either, but fuck it. Let it ride.
A black hole is just something very dense, so dense light can’t escape.
I and I knows how to convert energy into mass. He does it all the time.
I and I folds his arms into Ailann. Why do I get stuck with this shit? he says.
Ailann reaches out, touches the power grid, pulls an unbelievable amount of energy from the nul-universe and reifies it into a snifter of Scotch and RootRiot. Just practicing, he says. Creation ex nihilo is so demanding.
He takes a sip of his drink, and then fires up the power grid again. This time he throws everything he’s got at the location of the black hole.
He throws more than what he’s got at the center of the black hole.
He throws a helluva lot more than what he’s got at the black hole. He’s never even thought of pushing it this far before, and he can feel some of the crystals in the grid are breaking down. He hopes they’ve got enough replacements from the ones they salvaged from the collapsed mine.
Working on it, says Cuinn.
The black hole is getting bigger.
Back on earth, Mauvern has been monitoring the situation. “This can’t be good.” he says.
On the Dalgherdian science station, and at observatories and military facilities throughout the Domha’vei, a chorus of voices echo that sentiment. I and I didn’t exactly warn anyone about his plan. He’s kind of a lone tree.
The black hole is getting bigger.
Ailann’s drink is dry. I should’ve made the whole bottle, he curses.
Just fucking keep it together, says Cillian. Just a little more.
It’s not lack of power. The nul-universe has more power than can be imagined. It’s channeling that power, controlling it. It’s the conduit.
Ailann realizes to his chagrin that the weakest link in the chain is the Atlas Tree. I and I just grew a new branch because Patrick had been killed in that explosion. But Ailann wants – needs – another one. That will make three that Tara hasn’t seen. And what could this one possibly be like, grown under these circumstances?
Ailann gives it one more go. The black hole gets bigger. If it gets much bigger, it will stabilize. Sooner or later, it will start to pull in matter from the asteroid belt. That would be very, very bad.
It gets bigger.
And then Ailann feels it. It’s horrible, unnatural, and he staggers, pressing himself against the wall to stay upright.
If you imagine the famous analogy of spacetime as a sheet, dimpled by heavy weights that represent gravitational fields, a singularity is so dense that it will pull the sheet in a completely vertical direction. It takes a good sheet to stand that kind of stretching. But the sheet in the area of the Domha’vei is threadbare.
The black hole is gone. It tore a hole in spacetime and fell through it. In its place is a second rip, pouring nul-energy into the universe.
My turn, says Davy. Let’s make a nice little planetoid with a rip in the center. All it needs is some atmosphere and a few trees.
The enemy commander has finally found Tara. He’s a Tasean, but his gear doesn’t look Tasean at all. It’s meant to be disguised, but Tara’s sure it’s CenGov tech. He doesn’t look happy. She’s eluded him for five days, and managed to kill a dozen of his troops in the process.
He punches her in the face. “I’ll make you pay, you oligarchical swine.”
“Who writes your dialogue?” she says.
He punches her in the stomach. Antagonizing him is probably not a good idea. It doesn’t really matter what they do to her – Ash can fix it if she manages to stay alive. But she’s never managed to keep a civil tongue for a day in her life.
“I’ll take you apart, bitch, and hang what’s left of you in the Grand Atrium as an example.”
Tara is defiant. “I sense you’re trying to intimidate me.”
“I’m a terrorist. Terror is my job. I consider it my calling to educate people on the meaning of the word.” He pulls out a nasty-looking knife.
In the corner, a pocket-puppy is watching the scene with its enormous blue eyes.
Tara sticks out her tongue.
Clive and Darvina have run out of luck. Or to be precise, Clive never had any luck; he’s run out of ammo.
But he can read the face of the sergeant who captured them. He’s running scared, looking for hostages. Which doesn’t seem right. Clive knows that CenGov figured that it would be five or six days before reinforcements could arrive from Volparnu, but with asteroids deflected towards their planet, they might not bother about Eirelantra at all. In that case, at least two weeks before the Skarsians came to retrieve their Matriarch.
Ashtara could do it in eight – four, if God decreed that the apocalypse should proceed. Clive was staking his life on four, and is a little shocked that there still seem to be invaders on the station. That tree is nothing if not predictable. Clive wishes he could evoke such loyalty.
Clive has an epiphany. He’s more jealous that Tara got Ash than that Ash got Tara. Tara’s not all that exceptional. Maybe if he can get back in her graces, he could run naked through the forests on Dolparessa and settle down with a little shrub of his own.
It wouldn’t work. The Cu’enashti can’t leave the Domha’vei, and he still has to liberate Earth. He should just hook up with Suzanna again.
The sergeant shoves them forward. The lights go out.
“Dammit,” screams the sergeant. “There should be emergency lighting down these corridors. Somebody get a torch.”
One of the troops unclips a torch from her belt, flips it on. She screams.
The walls are crawling with spiders. Thousands of them.
“What is this shit?” yells another soldier, an enormous man who looks like he’s seen more than his share of combat. He shoves Clive forward as the group breaks into a run. Clive can hear spiders crunching under their feet.
They turn the corner, and a wall of flame jumps up before them. The soldiers are scattered. Clive tries to make a break for it, but he’s clipped in the arm by a shot from the leader and stumbles into the fire. Darvina screams, yanking Clive back from the raging flames.
The sergeant grabs Clive by the collar, dragging him as the group makes its way back the way it came. But this time, there are no spiders. There are snakes. The air smells foul and chemical, stinging the eyes. Suddenly, the hissing of the snakes desists. The bleak stillness that surrounds them is even more unnerving.
There is a sudden thud. The ground drops out beneath them, and they fall. It seems like forever, falling through pitch black, but gravity is reduced. When they land, it isn’t too rough. One of the soldiers twists his ankle.
Spears shoot out from the walls. Clive ducks as one sails past him. The sergeant isn’t so lucky – one hits him in the leg. But Clive has no luck – so it can’t be luck. He smiles.
“We’re going to die,” Darvina whispers. “And I don’t even know what’s happening. This isn’t part of the station – at least it isn’t in the station plans.”
“We’re not going to die,” says Clive. “I just miscalculated the timing.”
“Miscalculate? I don’t understand. How can you know that?”
“The flames didn’t burn me.”
Before Darvina can respond, the sergeant is screaming, “What the fuck is this?” Standing in the corridor before them are four glass statues. They are perfect replicas of soldiers dressed in the same uniforms the terrorists are wearing. The faces seem oddly familiar. One looks remarkably like their commander.
“Someone is fucking with us big time,” says the woman with the torch. Clive bends over, poking at the sole of his boot. He pulls loose the remains of a crunched spider. “Fleshiwood,” he mutters.
“Fuck this!” screams the sergeant, opening fire. At that moment, the emergency lights come on.
“I wouldn’t do that…” says Clive, but it’s too late. There’s shattered glass everywhere.
But it’s not shattered glass. It’s chunks of flesh. Blood spatters the exposed lighting and bubbles from the heat.
The light casts a long shadow down the corridor. There’s a man standing before them, running his thumb down the edge of a knife. He’s wearing a trench coat, and his features are hidden by the rim of a tilted fedora. It’s hard to tell where the shadow ends and he begins. “That was rash,” he says.
“What the fuck did you do to them?” the sergeant screams.
“Did I do anything? You shot them.”
“You did,” says the big soldier to the sergeant. “You fucking killed the commander!”
“It wasn’t him! It was a statue! I swear! You saw it!”
“You fucking killed the commander!” the soldier screams again.
“Now wait a minute, Franzyk,” says the woman. “I did see it. It was a trick of the light…”
“Stay the fuck out of my way!”
“Put the fucking gun down, or I’ll blow your head off!”
“Like you killed the commander?”
“I didn’t fucking kill the commander.”
“Chill out, both of you!” yells the woman, stepping between them. The sergeant, aiming at Franzyk, shoots her instead.
“You fucker! You’ll kill all of us!” Franzyk screams. He takes another shot at the sergeant, who falls, but is able to shoot one last round. The soldier staggers back, hit, but not mortally wounded.
“Nice one,” says Clive. “Trees don’t kill – but you got them to kill each other. You’re quite a sadist.”
“A sadist?” He removes the hat, bowing slightly and grinning. He gestures towards the carnage at the end of the hall. “But all I wanted was for them to reflect on their actions.” He smirks a bit at his own joke.
Franzyk is near tears. “What the hell,” he stutters. “What the hell did they do to deserve that?”
“Your commander hit my wife. He left a mark on my wife’s body. I think I showed remarkable restraint in allowing him a quick death. Now you take a message back to whomever is running you, and I don’t just mean your stupid little terror cell, I mean the ones really pulling the strings.” He hands Franzyk a legalpad.
Franzyk looks at it, looks at the face of his captor, looks back again. “I don’t understand,” he says. “This is an invoice. Twenty-thousand CenGov credits payable to Lorcan Fearghus for professional development.”
“When it came to terror, your commander had an exceedingly limited skill set. It’s hardly my fault that most of your troops won’t be able to employ their retraining.”
The morning after, when Tara wakes, there’s another new man in her bed, one as different from Lorcan as day from night. He has wavy red hair, a smattering of freckles, an open smile. His eyes are wide and full of dreams.
“What a lovely way to be born,” says Hurley, kissing her.
“Another already,” says Tara. “You must’ve grown when Patrick threw himself on that bomb.” Hurley nods. “Lorcan is gone so soon?”
“Lorcan probably couldn’t be gone soon enough,” says Hurley. “That boy has issues.”
“I kind of liked him,” says Tara.
“You’ve got issues too,” says Hurley. “It explains a lot.”
Tara laughs. “You know, I never could figure out why you chose me. Aren’t gods supposed to pick virtuous women, ones that are meek and holy, like Mary, or ones who run away, like Daphne?”
“You’ve got it backwards,” says Hurley. “You chose us. You planted the seed. You made us become a god. Nothing else would do.”
“Perverse little seed that would grow into a rock at the side of a mountain,” says Tara. “One that would bind me to everything at the moment I was looking for an excuse to let go.”
Hurley grins. “You were lying to yourself. You never let go of anything, just like us. You won’t let go of Lorcan, even though a smart woman would push him off into the abyss. You’ll use pure love and filthy sex and make him into a tool you can use, just like Cillian, and Suibhne, and Blackjack.”
“Hmm,” says Tara. “Are you a psychologist, like Tarlach?”
“No. I can just read your dreams.”
“Read my dreams?” Tara is surprised and amused. “What does that mean?”
“This last incident convinced I and I that we needed a psionic. But we can’t do telepathy. Our minds won’t work that way. I and I’s root mental state is analogous to your dreaming, to your subconscious. I can see that, and communicate with that directly.”
He touches Tara, and she has the sensation that roses are blooming all over her body. It’s subtle but quite unique. “That’s wonderful,” she gasps, “but does it have a use? I mean, telepaths are so powerful.”
“It’s not as powerful. That’s a good thing. It’s a lighter touch. I can tell if someone is guilty or innocent, and sense their motivation, without brutally invading their thoughts. I can also walk in and out of people’s dreams. That should be fun.”
“Really?” says Tara. “You can be in my dream? Oh, I want to try it! But I can’t. There’s too much work to do to get things back to normal.”
“I have work to do also,” says Hurley. “I’d better come up with a plan to handle Eden.”
“What’s Eden?”
“The new planetoid surrounding the rip where the black hole used to be. Davy put trees on it. Sooner or later, they’ll develop sentience.”
“Davy. Put. Trees. On. It.” Tara repeats carefully.
“Yes. I’m afraid he really is God now.”
“Fucking hell. Ash, you scare me sometimes. Do you know that? Do you know how much you scare me sometimes?”
“I scare myself. Look at Lorcan.”
“Lorcan is nothing. It’s Davy. Does he know what he’s doing? His puppies went bad.”
“It’s quite possible that the puppies were designed with an intentional flaw. This incident has resulted in the development of Eden, and the growth of two branches, of which I, with my psionic abilities, am one.”
“I was wondering why Patrick didn’t sense the bomb – or whatever mechanism was used to place the black hole – until the last minute. That was uncharacteristic. Ash doesn’t make mistakes.”
“I and I works in mysterious ways. Like letting His fate hinge upon the result of a card game.”
Tara considers, but she can’t work it out. “What do you mean?”
“When Jack’s trunk was split. That caused a lot of trouble for us. I and I was considering allowing it to die back, but He knew how much you love Jack. So just like this time, He put Wynne into play to work it out. Wynne’s a strange attractor.”
“Wynne certainly is strangely attractive,” says Tara. Then it hits her. “He got Blackjack.”
“Exactly. That’s how using Wynne works.”
Tara gets out of bed. “As much as I’d like to see how you work, I suppose I’d better put in an appearance. Improve the morale of the cleanup crew.”
Hurley tucks a blue flower into his buttonhole. “It’s fine,” he says. “We’ve plenty of time for dreaming.”
Tara receives a message to meet with Captain Darvina. To her shock, Clive is there. “I’m surprised you’re not rotting in the Starsend Gulag,” she says.
“Molly found me useful. Molly’s a V.I.P. now, special attaché to the President on Cu’endhari affairs. The fact that I’m still alive means that I’m seen as less of a threat to CenGov than Ashtara. It hurts to admit it, but that assessment is probably accurate.”
“Unfortunately, Molly is quite insane,” he continues. “She’s been getting less stable for years, but something happened with the TRF – the Telepathic Resistance Front. I don’t know the details, but Traeger was involved, and somehow he ended up losing his telepathic abilities, and then he died. And Molly blames the nau’gsh for it. I don’t get it, but she’s obsessed. And that apparently was a desirable qualification for her new job. The official CenGov policy on the solution to the nau’gsh problem will be issued soon. It’s deforestation. Once that happens, your buddy Governor Tellick will be hung out to desiccate.”
“Deforestation,” says Tara. “Will we never know peace?”
“It’s overrated, “says Clive. “Really, your best defense is a good offense. You should ally yourself with me to liberate Earth.”
“I can’t imagine why I should trust you,” she says.
“Because you need me,” he says. “Loyalty is better than love, but necessity is best of all.”
All I need is Ash, she thinks. But she’ll see where this conversation takes them. “What makes you think you can win against Earth? I’m pretty arrogant, Clive, but my ego isn’t large enough to believe that I can take them on their home territory. For one, their ships are more advanced, for two, the size of the CenGov Armada…”
“Their technology is useless against Ashtara. He took down an entire fleet in thirty seconds.”
“Ah, but my greatest weapon can’t leave the Domha’vei.”
“Cuinn is working on it,” says Clive, grinning.
“We’ve been thinking of expanding the power grid, but that would take enormous resources, even to get as far as Tasea…” She stops. She realizes she’s been looking at this wrong. Now they know how to make rips. They can put one wherever space-time is thin. They can strew the universe with gardens, each with its own demiurge. Why worry about little details like having a sun when you’ve got nul-energy?
The Empire won’t look like a monarchy, with one human at the head. It will look like a forest, a convocation of trees. And of course squirrels, jumping from branch to branch. Monkeys.
But she’s looking thousands of years ahead. Clive’s looking at the next few months. It’s as Driscoll said – she has to think differently. Clive is a brilliant man, but he’s looking out through a closed door. “Clive,” she begins. “What would Edom say?”
Clive frowns. “Edom St. John believed in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I’m an applied scientist.”
“Nevertheless,” says Tara, “it can be useful to have more than one point-of-view. Extrapolate from what happened here. What would Edom say?”
“He would say that the human politics of this situation are transitory. In a thousand years, pure homo sapiens will exist only in pockets. It’s already happening on Earth – some of the elite have so many mods that they’re barely recognizable as having an organic origin. In fact, the palimpsest process makes virtual immortality possible, except that it is demonstrably unstable.” Clive’s grin seems to accentuate the raw bone of his skull pressed against his skin. “The solution, of course, is to transfer the information into androids. Earth’s elites are not going to die.”
And neither are ours, Tara thinks, remembering what Driscoll said to the High Council. “And what do you say?”
“You’re not going to understand this, Tara. The revolution on Earth is not because we want a rainbow of hovercars or to read Richard III. It’s because we want free access to information – and that means wetware.”
“That’s barbaric.”
“You’re barbaric.”
“Cuinn can do anything some chipped-up freak can do, and he’s pure.”
“Cuinn’s not human.”
“Who cares? Why are Earthers such xenophobes?”
“Why are Skarsians such cyberphobes?” Clive shrugs. “Cultural differences. Perhaps irreconcilable ones.”
“War,” says Tara. “Who will win?”
Clive has to lay all his cards on the table now. “The one with the best technology. Earth’s tech is better than Skarsia’s…but mothman technology is best.”
“Mothman technology,” says Tara, in the sort of tone Volparnian mothers use when they describe how Santa freed the sun.
“Human science has hit its limit. We can theorize until we turn blue about the way alchemy might work, but we can’t do it because it’s a truly alien technology. The only ones who know how it works are the mothmen. It’s funny because the way energy behaves in the nul-universe, consciousness probably couldn’t arise there. Edom would say that the mothmen are a product of that structured energy encountering the structure of organic matter. It produces something unique to both universes: a completely anti-entropic life-form.”
“An anti-entropic life-form,” says Tara, “sounds like a definition of God.”
“Conceptually accurate, although I dislike the sentimentality of the nomenclature.”
“I do need you,” says Tara, “but not for the reasons you think. I need you because Ash is a God, and he’ll do whatever I say, and I’m only a woman. I need someone with a big mouth who’ll tell me the truth, and enough intelligence to understand what the truth is. Also, I have Suzanna. She’s still messed up about Chase. You can pick her back up on the rebound.”
That night Hurley comes into Tara’s dream. “There are no rules here,” he says. “Through me, I and I has discovered the way to completely negate impossibility. So in your deepest mind, in your deepest heart, what is it you want?”
Tara touches him. His skin burns away, revealing His radiant blue interior.
Tara raises her arms. Her skin burns away. She is a shining white butterfly. Psyche. The human soul.
They embrace.