Do we really want Tara to read this? asks Evan. It’s getting really dark.
And that, “Sometimes she hates Ash.” bit, says Cillian. Whoa.
If I and I really wanted to stop us, we wouldn’t be able to write it, says Dermot. In fact, we wouldn’t even think of the idea.
Maybe He’s not worried because He knows no one will be able to understand any of it, says Mickey. Patrick is great at exposition, but he sucks at finishing a story. He was going to tell us about Wynne instead of Owen, but instead he tells us about Ross, Sloane and Lorcan.
It’s harder than it looks, says Ailann. It’s so difficult to get to the heart, to the root, and then to be able to find the right words.
What’s so difficult? Narrative is just a matter of putting down information in the correct order, Mickey replies. As a matter of fact, I’ve already written my story – a short synopsis of the situation at the Dalgherdian science station. I figured we’d need it, since what Ailann wrote was incomprehensible.
All right, Mickey. Let’s see what you’ve got.
After finishing her studies on Earth, Tara is persuaded by her old acquaintances Johannon and Traeger to take a position on the CenGov science station at Dalgherdia. She meets Edom St. John, a famed xenobiologist from Earth. She is given carte blanche to continue her research into Dolparessan plant pharmacology; St. John’s position is to examine the effects of Dolparessa’s unusual climate on human physiology. Both are curious why CenGov is pumping so much money into the study of Dolparessan life forms. Unknown to them, Johannon had reported his observations of Tara’s remarkably accurate premonitions under the influence of the drug Gyre. The truth is that CenGov has long been intrigued by the legends of so-called paranormal phenomena on Dolparessa. Traeger’s true role is kept secret: he is a telepath charged with keeping St. John under control. The real Edom St. John died several years previously, but a record of his memory was made and implanted into one Clive Rivers using a technique called the palimpsest process. Rivers is a dangerous seditionary, but in order to make use of St. John’s memories, it was necessary to find a host mind intelligent enough to understand them. Clive is far from an ideal candidate – his native intelligence and natural ability to resist brainwashing keep compromising the St. John persona, and it is necessary for Traeger to give him regular “headache treatments” to keep Clive’s own memories in check.
In the background is Mickey Riley, a security guard and custodian at the station. Mickey is really the fifth emanation of Ashtara. Relying on the resources of the now enormous “Atlas Tree,” Mickey is unique in two ways – he is the first Cu’endhari ever capable of living in space for extended periods of time, and he is the first emanation generated solely by volition and not as a reaction to some physical or psychological trauma.
St. John receives a series of mysterious communications which point him to examine the relationship between the evolution of Dolparessan native species and a strange energy emission at the center of the world. The energy is from a rip in spacetime allowing a bleed through from a zone they name the nul-universe. Tara and St. John theorize that life on Dolparessa evolved due to exposure to this radiation, and “alchemy” is the result of it through some unknown mechanism. Tara realizes that the rip is the source of the energy in the Skarsian power grid, and that the 4th and 5th Matriarchs have built their dictatorial reign by exploiting Dolparessa. During their research, Tara and St. John grow closer.
Meanwhile, CenGov is pressuring Skarsia to destroy the nau’gsh forests on the grounds that nau’gsh wine and Gyre are public health issues. The “War on Trees” is really a means to push control of the substances into CenGov hands.
Tara and St. John go to the planet surface to take specimens. Tara is interested in something St. John thinks is irrelevant –the bizarre lifecycle of the little nau’gsh, the one nau’gsh species that does not produce a useful psychoactive. Realizing it is one of the few blue-flower bearing trees she knows of, Tara visits the Atlas Tree for the first time since the death of Daniel.
On Dolparessa, St. John is approached by Lady Claris, who turns out to be his hidden informant. In defiance of centuries of tradition, Claris tells him the truth – the Arya and Hina species of nau’gsh are sentient. Her people call themselves the Cu’enmerengi. They can take whatever human forms they choose, co-existing with their forms as trees. They can also convert into beings of pure nul-energy, recognized by Dolparessan folk tradition as “dryads.” They appear having human size and shape, but with vivid green eyes, pointed ears, and radiating a pale green glow.
St. John and Tara return to Dalgherdia. Not realizing the truth about Traeger, St. John goes in for a headache treatment and CenGov learns everything. The sentience of the nau’gsh species prompts CenGov to alter their policy from research/control to war/conquest, and as such, General Panic is dispatched to take command of the operation. Under her orders, St. John is shot by Johannon – in her opinion, Rivers is too unstable, and is to be replaced by another palimpsest. He survives and attempts to warn Tara, who is nearly killed in an attempt to sabotage their lab at the science station. She is saved by Mickey. It will be quite some time before she learns that this was no coincidence. Mickey is not the fool he appears to be – he has been keeping constant tabs on everything done by his superiors at the station. He knows about Traeger and St. John. Ashtara has prepared for this moment by growing yet another branch – a lounge singer named Tommy – who purchases a nightclub of dubious repute in Dalgherdia City. The intent is to provide a bolt-hole for Tara when the situation deteriorates. Tara returns to meet St. John, but St. John no longer exists. The Rivers personality has reasserted itself. They are attacked again – Rivers kills their assailants with remarkable efficacy. Tara escapes and is taken in by Tommy.
That’s fucking amazing, says Cillian.
It reads like an incident report, says Evan. It lacks the poetry, the music of Patrick’s accounts.
It makes sense, says Tommy. All the details fit.
It’s accurate, says Dermot. That doesn’t mean it’s true.
It’s true, says Mickey. I didn’t lie about anything. And I didn’t have to make stuff up, like Ailann did.
But the truth of your heart isn’t in it, Dermot counters. All those nights you watched over Tara on the security monitors. The time that you spat into St. John’s borscht.
Um, does Tara really have to know about that? says Mickey sheepishly.
The night Tara fell in love with Edom St. John.
Now Mickey is angry. It’s in a twig, he says. The wind took it.
It’s a ridiculous lie, and everybody knows it. Nothing important ever goes in subsidiary twigs. They’re like hair or fingernails. Mickey just doesn’t want to remember.
It’s late, and they are the only two people at the commissary. “This tea is terrible,” says St. John, spilling hot water all over the counter.
“Let me take that,” says Tara.
“Someday, I’ll have to invite you back to my place. We’ll have real Russian tea, from an old samovar I bought in Vuernaco.”
“Isn’t that contraband technology?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Making tea isn’t harmful.” Edom is miffed.
“I was only joking.”
“It’s just the attitude of the people here. Like you think that CenGov doesn’t have reasons for our laws.” Edom reaches into his wallet. There’s a photograph there. Tara shakes her head a little, wondering how the man ever got to be a scientist when he won’t even keep photos on a datapad, like a normal person.
He hands the picture to her. “It’s my wife and son.”
Tara is startled. “I didn’t know you had a family.”
“I don’t. They were killed by terrorists.”
“I’m sorry,” says Tara, and she truly is. She knows about loss. Edom’s eyes meet hers, and he’s surprised. He didn’t expect genuine sympathy. He’s never gotten it before.
The tender moment is broken by the sound of whistling from down the corridor. It’s Mickey, on janitorial duty again. He smiles, nods, empties the trashcan. “Do you have to make that racket all the time?” says Edom.
“Sorry,” says Mickey, but he isn’t. His whistling is meant to annoy them. It’s meant to let them know he is coming. It’s meant to let them know they are constantly being watched by security.
It’s meant to stop this conversation here, because Mickey knows it is a lie. Edom St. John’s wife was killed in the same government raid as the real St. John. They were founding members of a group called Equal Access to Evolution that was put on a government blacklist. Their son is still alive. He turned them in.
Mickey knows that Edom’s work was too valuable to let go, and so his memories – to a point – were implanted in the only suitable host, one Clive Rivers. Rivers was the only available prisoner who had the two essential characteristics needed for the palimpsest: he was abnormally intelligent, and he was not chipped.
Rivers was not chipped because he was identified from childhood as having anti-social tendencies. Rivers’ early life was a series of behavior camps and personality altering drugs. Rivers has real reason to hate CenGov.
Mickey is not without sympathy, but he also knows that the suggestion to show the picture was implanted by Traeger, who is trying to get St. John and Tara to bond. He knows about the analysis Traeger has run on Tara, and the conclusion that “shared trauma” is an effective tactic.
And Mickey still can’t tell her that he is Daniel. He can’t tell her that he is Sloane.
Mickey’s whistling echoes down the hall, but Tara thinks there’s nothing happy about it. It’s like an empty wind, or maybe an old torch song.
Great, Mickey says. What was the point of that? It doesn’t go anywhere, and it’s depressing.
No, I say. I see the point. Tara doesn’t know any of that. When Tara remembers that in her own mind, she’s feeling sorry for the wrong person.
I don’t want Tara to feel sorry for me, says Mickey.
In that case, might as well flush the manuscript, says Lorcan. The sob story of our great suffering.
Why don’t you just shut the fuck up, says Cillian.
And there’s just so much more that needs to be in here, continues Dermot. Patrick’s wedding kiss, when it felt as though his heart would explode. The time that Tara and Suibhne broke into the Clover Apollinaire and put fake mustaches on all the statues. The afternoons when Sloane would press his face against the misty windows of the conservatory for the chance of seeing her. The party for Ta’al Erich’s betrothal to Meliss, when Merkht didn’t know the steps of the saltarello, and Tara had to dance with Evan. The day when there wasn’t enough alcohol in the Domha’vei to keep Ailann from locking the door to his study and weeping and weeping and weeping until Suibhne finally came.
Those aren’t stories, I reply. They’re poems. Maybe Evan could sing them.
Then talk about the grand jeté.
I don’t think it’s possible to describe the grand jeté with words.
Try, says Dermot.
If I and I wanted us to write, he would have cultivated a novelist, says Blackjack. We should just give it up.
Just the kind of attitude I’d expect from you, says Whirljack. When have we ever given up?
Now for that question, I actually have an answer.
“That’s it, then. Checkmate,” says Tara.
Ailann can smell General Panic’s satisfaction, even through hyperspace communication. “You could always appeal to the Arthvian ambassador,” she taunts.
“I think not. There is some dignity in knowing when you’re beaten.” Tara draws her hand sharply, the signal to cut communication.
Ailann doesn’t get it. “We can still win,” he says. “Ask Governor Tellick to intervene. He hates her almost as much as we do.”
“And the more favors we ask for from Tellick, the more we owe that little suckfrog. It isn’t worth it.” Tara shrugs. “We lost. She outsmarted us. Can’t win every time.”
Ailann just stands there for a moment, and the various lords, ladies and diplomatic staff gathered in the war chamber are faced with the rather disconcerting sight of their omniscient Living God with a slack-jawed confounded countenance. “Why not?” he says finally.
Later, in their chambers, he pursues this line of questioning. Tara looks at him, a little exasperated. “Well, for one, it violates the laws of probability.”
Ailann brightens considerably. “But that’s why Wynne was cultivated. Maybe we should have Wynne approach the ambassador.”
“This isn’t a matter of luck,” says Tara, “although I’d considered it. Wynne’s incredible charisma might have won the day. Then again, if it didn’t, we’d lose face. The harder we try, the more we’ll look like fools if we fail.”
“Then we don’t fail.”
“You just can’t let this go, can you?”
“I and I never lets go of anything.” Tara realizes that she is speaking to a tree 180 meters in height, 54 meters in girth, comprised of 21 thick sub-trunks, which hangs off the side of a mountain some 400 meters above the sea. No, Ash never lets go of anything; he just digs in deeper.
“Do you know what happens when someone wins at everything? People get jealous. They feel like they can’t win anything for themselves. Winners become hated. Or haven’t you noticed?”
Ailann considers. “The assassination attempts. The political intrigues. They seem to escalate the more successful we become. So you’re saying that the occasional loss can be part of a greater overall strategy.”
“Machiavelli said that it wasn’t necessary for the successful prince to be loved, only feared. But really, the most successful rulers are both.”
“The most successful rulers are needed; they make themselves indispensable.”
Tara turns to him; there is something in her face he can’t read, something halfway between elation and despair. “You wrote the book on that, Ash.”
Maybe that’s the book we’re supposed to be writing, Davy suggests.
If it is, I don’t even understand what it means, says Ailann.
Pawns don’t question the king, says Dermot. And the king doesn’t question the hand that moves him.
He means that every one of us is a stratagem employed by I and I to make Himself indispensable to Tara, says Tarlach.
I and I is supposed to be indispensable, says Ailann. Not us. We’re disposable. So why does Tara insist on protecting us?
This tree can use a little pruning. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? asks Cillian.
It’s simple, says Tarlach, ignoring what Cillian implies. Human attachment.
Human attachment, says Blackjack, is like starch and water paste. Cu’enashti attachment is like molecular level fusion.
Shut the fuck up, asshole, screams Suibhne. We’re all sure it’s time for one of his mad rants. But this time, the story he tells makes sense.
Covey – CenGov’s new attaché – is waiting for Suibhne at the foot of the Atlas Tree. An enormous crowd of onlookers has gathered on the sands below. The faithful are wailing as if it’s doomsday – and it just might be, since the loss of the Archon will mean that huge sections of Dolparessa, Sideria and Volparnu will become uninhabitable. But these implications are not widely accepted. For most, Archonism is seen as a convenient means of social control. No rational person would believe that a so-called God has anything to do with the power grid – it’s another trick devised by the Matriarchs. Many have come to jeer – Volparnians mostly, and the xenophobe contingent which has laid low since the defeat of Guinnebar the Pretender. Another group is merely curious. Will the Living God really attempt suicide? If he really is a god, how can he die? Will somebody attempt to stop him?
Suibhne, dressed in a top hat and tails, looks like a refugee from a Victorian novel. He has decided against Napoleon: he’ll never cut his hair. He bows, doffing his hat to the crowd. “My people,” he announces. “I come here today in response to popular demand. For a ruler is ever servant to the will of the people.”
On the beach below, a group of people is chanting “Amat’i Archa, Amat’I Suibhne, Ama Ama Skarsia,” which means, translated loosely, “The life of the Archon is the life of Suibhne, is the eternal life of Skarsia.”
They mean it to be encouraging, but Suibhne responds with the other half of the traditional chant: “Vend’i Matracha, Vendt’l Tara, a Vehn’a Vohnitz’ia Domha’veia.” “The heart of the Matriarch is the heart of Tara is the heart of the sun of the Domha’vei.” The people fall silent. Everyone still believes Tara died in the shuttle malfunction. It is a fallacy Tara herself encouraged.
There are Cu’endhari in the crowd. They think they understand the truth of what is happening. Every Cu’enashti sympathizes with Suibhne, no, more than that, approves of what he is doing, even as they are planning frantically to save their Chosen from the coming disaster. The Cu’enmerengi are furious and disgusted, but what can they do? If there was another option, an Arya capable of being Archon, the 5th Matriarch would have found it.
“I have failed my people, and I have failed my Chosen, and so what is left but for me to set fire to the tree that birthed and sustains me?”
“Think again, my Lord Archon,” Covey urges. “Think of your duty. The Matriarch might have forgiven you before the end. Surely she did, as her nature was gentle enough to tolerate your sin however much it disgusted her. She would have wanted you to live on through the millennia, fighting back your endless grief in thankless service to the people of Skarsia – the recipients of her deepest love.” If that didn’t make Suibhne want to die, Covey didn’t know what would. But the fool only needed a little match thrown on the kindling, so to speak. If he would just get on with it – General Panic’s fleet was waiting eagerly for the moment the Skarsian defense grid failed.
With a flourish, Suibhne pulls back a tarp revealing a hovertanker. The tank is bright red, marked with the symbol of fire which is so obvious and useful that it has persisted through thousands of years, thousands of light years, thousands of dialects of human languages. He uncoils a thick, powerful hose and sprays the tree with a viscous liquid.
People are sobbing now; even the curiosity-seekers are moved. Maybe by the pathos of Suibhne, but maybe by the tree itself. It’s a wonder like no other in the galaxy; even the disbelievers feel there’s something holy about it.
Suibhne takes a deep breath, lights a torch, and throws it into the branches. The tree bursts into flame. There is a gasp, some of the people scream. Covey takes a step back to protect himself from the heat, scarcely containing his glee. In a moment, he won’t have to. Suibhne will die a horrible death.
Covey takes a step back, but there is no heat. And Suibhne seems remarkably composed for someone who is burning.
Covey steps forward. There’s no heat, and the tree, still brightly blazing, looks unscathed. Gingerly, he touches the trunk.
“It’s firebird oil,” says Suibhne. “I may be crazy, but I’m not an idiot.”
There is the unmistakable sound of a cocking round, as Covey realizes he is surrounded by snipers, hanging from various places on the side of the cliff. And then, from inside the tangled forests of the multiple trunks, from somewhere behind Whirljack, where Suibhne branches off of Ailann, a figure emerges. It’s Tara.
“It seems there are traitors here, who have plotted against the person of the Matriarch and planned to defile her sacred nau’gsh,” she says. “What should we do with them, my Lord Archon?”
Back at the palace, Suibhne still isn’t sure he’s understood what just happened. Understanding is not one of his strong points. Understanding his situation was a positive detriment to survival. But now Tara is back, and that means everything will be all right. He doesn’t know what all right means.
All he knows is how to distract himself with increasingly elaborate spectacles, increasingly bizarre behavior. Outside was a universe of data which threatened to overwhelm him, inside a chorus of voices, some who spent the several months of Suibhne’s existence weeping – they were the easy one to deal with. The others lost themselves in a tree’s dream of a memory of a woman. Having no memory of Tara himself, Suibhne could only feel the hole where his soul was supposed to be.
But she’s back, and there’s joy, joy beyond joy, and the universe has fallen back into place. No, the rightness of it all is absolutely incomprehensible to him.
And then Tara pulls him down on the bed. Her hands are on him, her lips pressed against his, and he can’t stop the tears from his eyes. “Why? I’ve done nothing to deserve this.”
“You deserve so much better. Suibhne, the other branches couldn’t cope, and left the weight of the world on your shoulders. You’re stronger than you know – and you’re still my Ash.”
Suibhne learns so much that day, about joy, about love, about pleasure. And then that night, he learns something not so agreeable. She is asleep in his arms. She moans softly. “Ash?”
“I’m here,” he says. Suddenly his eyes widen, a cold shock through his body. Suddenly, Suibhne knows fear.
He’s never known fear before because he’s never had anything to lose before. And now he has everything to lose. What if she gets angry at him? What if somebody attacks the palace? What if she goes on another trip out of his reach, beyond his ability to protect her, and they lose her for real?
Suibhne, says Ailann, you can rest now. This is something I can handle; I and I made me to handle this.
In the morning, Tara wakes in the arms of a different man.