Tara comes into the room. “As usual, the Glofungus was overcooked. I didn’t expect better from the Duchess’ terrible chef. I think she’s sleeping with him – it’s the only explanation. Are you still at that?” She crosses the room to me. “You must be really serious about it.”
“It seems so. I just feel a desire to explain myself.”
“First Driscoll, and now you.” She’s referring to a series of artwork Driscoll is doing in every media imaginable – from clay to oils to truecapture holography to mixed media to old style darkroom photographs to pencil sketches. I think the only thing he hasn’t tried is finger-paints, and he may get to that yet. The series is entitled “Self-Portraits Not of Me,” and he intends to have a big gallery opening once he’s finished. “Are you going to be like him and not let me see until it’s finished? I hope you don’t take as long as he’s taking.”
The reason Driscoll is taking so long is that he’s made hundreds of images and destroyed most of them as unsatisfactory. So far, he’s kept three of me. There is an acrylic in the pointillist style, all bright colors, where I am smiling like a mischievous boy. Another is an oil of me in ceremonial dress; I am standing to the far left, taking only a small portion of the canvas. The effect is that I am overwhelmed by shadow. Lastly, an old-style photographic plate, but one deliberately damaged with water and scratches, so my smiling face and formal wave seem ghostly and fading. All of the images are really, really good, which makes them disconcerting – it’s as if Driscoll captured some essential truth about myself that was just beneath the surface, hidden from public view.
“Well, it’s probably not important,” I say. “I suppose we just need something to occupy ourselves.”
“Of course it’s important. It must be more important than, say, Cuinn figuring out how the Skarsium crystals work. But Ash never makes mistakes.” She kneels behind my chair, linking her arms around my neck. I can feel her face pressed against my shoulder. At this moment, if the galaxy was being swallowed by an army of carnivorous fish, I wouldn’t get up to stop it.
“Actually,” she continues, “that’s the answer to the question you asked this morning. At the time, I think I said something about that man Sidleigh, how he was acting suspiciously. And it was true – but mostly I said that to Owen because I didn’t want to admit that I had changed my mind. The real thing that was bothering me was you – or rather Ailann. I mean, if anyone had a reason to want more crystals, it would be him – for extending his power as Archon. The more I thought about it, the more I thought his suspicions must have had some foundation. Ash picks up on things outside of the human senses of his emanations, and if he does something, it’s for a reason. So I decided to go to the asteroid and check it out myself.”
I stand and pull her to me. “You should never have gone somewhere so dangerous by yourself.”
“If I had towed along Admiral Naveeta and the 49th fleet, it would hardly have been a surprise inspection. Besides, neither should you.”
“It’s not like a mining collapse would kill me. Worst case, my human body dies, and then I and I falls back to Dolparessa, and the Atlas Tree grows another branch. Sometimes I miss those days, having emanations that could sneak around without being followed by an honor guard and 4000 reporters.”
“I worry about you,” she says. “As powerful as you are, you aren’t immortal.”
“I know. My life has value. I and I changed our priorities.”
“Ask the 24 billion people in the Domha’vei system if the Archon’s life has value.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I love you.”
“That I care about.”
And now I can finish Owen’s story, and discover that it’s a story I really don’t want to finish. In fact, I’ve been taking every possible opportunity to divert the narrative from the place I don’t want to arrive: Tara screaming.
I wish Traeger wasn’t dead, says Cillian. I would’ve enjoyed killing him.
I didn’t want to kill him, says Owen.
What you did was worse, says Lorcan. And then you let all those people die.
Owen’s first priority was to save Tara, says Lugh. He did the right thing.
We had to cut our losses, says Cillian.
Tara doesn’t think like that, says Tommy. If Tara believed in cutting losses, I wouldn’t be here.
That analogy isn’t even close, says Cillian.
She was kind of risking all our lives, says Mickey. Not that I think she did the wrong thing.
She was trusting her luck, says Wynne. She won.
Lorcan laughs. More like she was in denial.
Now I’d better tell that story, I say. Or this whole conversation is going to be out-of-context.
The whole book is out-of-context, says Mickey. You just don’t want to finish the story about Owen.
They arrived by the dozen on the shores of the Sea of Illusion. Landscapers, engineers and tree surgeons, called to work side by side with the medics and military officials. They arrived bleary-eyed, torn from their beds by frantic, demanding messages. They arrived dazed at the new prestige of their profession, not knowing where to begin. They had never been trained as emergency responders. Trees were their vocation, their passion, their love, but they had never accorded them the gravity of human lives.
Everything had changed overnight. It was on every media network from Skarsia to the IndWorlds. All the legends about spirits that lived in the trees of Dolparessa were true. And one particular tree had saved the world.
The fleet that General Panic had been massing in Sector 15 was suddenly on the move. It was clearly a hostile act. Governor Tellick did not respond on diplomatic channels. Tara called for help from Skarsia, but got no response. The Matriarch’s bitter history with Tara shouldn’t have mattered; it made no sense at all that the old battleax wouldn’t defend her territory against the hated CenGov. For whatever reason, Tara knew that with no assistance from the Skarsian Spaceforce, it was only a matter of time before they were invaded. She forged a hasty alliance with Clive’s radical (read terrorist) friends. They wanted a safe haven, and Dolparessa was a damn comfortable one. Clive’s handful of ships was the only protection they had, but they were outnumbered, and CenGov’s tech was superior.
Four CenGov troop carriers got through, landing in the Sea of Illusion; the easiest, most obvious incursion site was Starbright Point. Tara led her troops there to meet them, and for a while the battle raged. Both sides had advantages. CenGov’s troops were cybridized, which meant they were physically far superior to the Dolparessans. But they had no passion to win, no instinct for battle, and had to wait for orders through their chips. In contrast, Tara’s elite force had been trained since childhood on Skarsia. To Tara, the contest was personal in more ways than she could count – not the least being that the mechanized scum were defiling Daniel’s grave.
The Dolparessans held their own until the bombs started to fall, an orbital bombardment ordered by General Panic. She intended to create a firestorm. CenGov wanted full control of the Rip; the Arya were necessary to provide Gyre, but every Hina that burned was another obstacle out of the way. Explosions shattered the white hot sands, but Tara refused to retreat. She was the Empress of Sideria now. She would not bow to Earth; she would not sacrifice their trees.
She looked back up the ridge to the gigantic Atlas Tree – her seed of destiny. Suddenly, she was calm. They would burn together. She accepted it.
And then the Atlas Tree started to radiate electric blue. Before she had time to be shocked, Tara heard Lady Claris laughing behind her. “The sleeping giant awakens at last,” she said. “I knew he would never let you die.”
Something was forming in the sky above them. It looked like an orchid unfolding, like a nau’gsh rose. But the petals of the flower unfurled into wings, the stamen into the body of a moth, into the body of a man with no face, the skin a pearlescent and shimmering blue, like opal.
Bombs sprayed her with smoking debris, but Tara no longer noticed. “I know you,” she said. She remembered him reaching for her, falling away as she shot up into the sky.
It was happening again, but it was upside down. The mothman rose like a shooting star reversing its course, back into the sky, back into the stratosphere, torn away from her again.
Seconds later, there was complete silence. Only later did Tara learn what happened. The mothman flew into the center of the enemy fleet. General Panic recognized him too, from the day she killed Mickey. She remembered how he rose smiling, burning away his skin, a vengeful angel, loosing havoc on the science station with his alchemy. “Open fire,” she commanded.
A thin blue ring of energy radiated out from the mothman, passing through the enemy ships. And then the ships stopped. It was the simplest of alchemy. The conduit fluid had turned to honey, the antimatter in the drives changed to lead. He wasn’t the Archon yet, he had only the strength of his enormous tree, and it took all of it.
Everything was gone, everything but life support. Drives were out, communications blocked, shields and scanners malfunctioning. The entire fleet was laid waste in an instant.
But General Panic wasn’t quite finished. She had one trick left up her sleeve, one vengeful little trick that would accomplish nothing to salvage the embarrassment of her utter defeat. She had the defensive warship that had been stationed on Dalgherdia.
It was so small; she had been using it for surveillance. It was on the other side of Sideria from the CenGov fleet. Panic ordered it to target Starbright Mountain, making a winning bet that the mothman was too preoccupied to notice.
The mountain fell, tons of rock spewing onto the beach as the surviving troops ran for their lives. The Atlas Tree lurched horribly, held by its impossibly long, strong roots, holding to the half of the mountain that remained while the other half poured down upon it. There was a sickening snap as it swung forward, hitting the rock beneath it. A branch tumbled onto the ruined beach; the tree dangled like a wounded spider clinging to the remains of its destroyed web.
Tara screamed, a howl of spontaneous grief that froze in her throat when she saw him, a blue meteor slamming back into his broken tree, an angel cast from heaven, a moth whose wings burned in the light like Icarus.
Oblivious to the human wounded, Tara spent the next few hours screaming insane directions at a swarm of engineers and horticulturists while the Vizier and Lord Danak tried desperately to get her attention. They had just won a great victory, but nobody quite understood how, and some official announcement had to be made. The people needed their empress. But Tara raged at them to handle it, to leave her alone. She had learned long ago that grief and terror were easily hidden in a flurry of howling anger. If she yelled loudly enough, she could browbeat all opposition. If she yelled loudly enough, she couldn’t hear her own thoughts.
It certainly worked on the head tree surgeon, Kaman Rafmin. Drawn to the silent peace of the gardens and groves, he was ill-prepared for this sort of violent aristocratic fit, especially from a woman with the power to order that he lose his head if he displeased her. The Vizier and Lord Danak had the advantage; this was business as usual for them.
Rafmin knew damn well for a nau’gsh this size to survive such trauma would be miraculous. He cleared his throat several times before timorously warning Tara to expect that the nau’gsh would drop its leaves. That’s what deciduous trees do when they’re in shock.
He needn’t have. Really, she was much better qualified for the job than he was.
He then suggested a clean cauterization of the stump where the branch had broken would better insure the tree’s ultimate survival. He met with Tara’s screaming disagreement. “Graft it back on! And if you don’t stop clearing your throat, I’ll have you drawn and quartered!”
“It’s not going to take,” he stuttered. “The tree will need all its resources to regenerate its roots.”
“I said to graft it back on. It’s not an ordinary tree. You don’t know what the loss of that branch will do to him.”
Rafmin walked away, shaking his head. “This is a mistake,” he muttered. “She’s acting like that branch is her best friend.”
Actually, that branch is her best friend. It’s Tommy. Unknowingly, Tara had saved his life.
Before you worry too much about Sir Kaman, I should tell you that he’s currently a gentleman-in-waiting to the Archon. He’s still such a nervous little man, taking his elevation to the peerage so seriously, even waxing his moustache for the Solstice Ball. He’s a good man, though, a caring physician. I have spent many pleasant afternoons at garden parties thrown by his husband. I recommend the homemade gourd salad.
Finally, when Tara felt that there was nothing more she could do for the Atlas Tree, she let Lord Danak lead her away. She had an announcement to make. The speech that she wrote in the twenty minutes it took the hovercar to get to the Capitol Building would go down in history as the Great Reveal.
“People of Dolparessa,” she began, “you are no doubt aware of the unprovoked and perfidious attack upon our world by the Central Government of Earth. I’m sure you are well aware of the circumstances leading to this conflict. Earth has made no secret about their contempt for our culture and traditions.
But there is a secret, one that has been kept from you at the demand of the Matriarch. It is a secret that is no secret; it is a secret that lives in the heart of every native-born Dolparessan man, woman and child. The nau’gsh are not mere trees. The nau’gsh we call the Hina and Arya are, in fact, fully sentient life forms.
These gentle beings have lived and moved among us, guiding and helping us, some of them in human form. They have been here since humankind first settled on Dolparessa. They are our family, friends, workers and employers. Their sap is mixed with our blood. They are also the source of prophecy, the source of alchemy, the source of the miracles we take for granted that happen here and nowhere else. If anyone in your household has the second sight, starts fires with a thought, changes water to wine, then you know the roots of your family tree. And in every house, there is someone who can do these things.
CenGov’s attack was motivated by envy, greed and xenophobia. In the coming weeks, more, much more will be revealed. But for today, know this: the Matriarch did not respond in our most desperate hour. Our salvation came in the form of one of our own, a heroic being you may know as the Atlas Tree. In light of these facts, there is only one right course of action. All Hina nau’gsh are immediately granted the rights of citizens upon demand. Any harm done to the person of a Hina or Arya nau’gsh in any form will be treated with the same gravity as an assault upon a human.
We will never sacrifice our loved ones nor our unique way of life – not to anyone, be it to CenGov or the Matriarch herself. In our uniqueness is our strength. Today’s victory is the proof.”
The Atlas Tree was still in grave shape two weeks later. Its roots had been badly damaged, roots which it needed to absorb not only water and nutrients, but nul-energy. As long as the root system is good, a nau’gsh can draw the energy it needs to heal itself, which is why it’s much easier for us to repair or completely regenerate our human bodies than to fix serious damage to our trees.
Tara visits the tree on a daily basis, to check on its progress. But then one night, she comes after dark. She isn’t going to be able to observe much, not that much had changed. But she didn’t come to observe. She came to talk. The fact that she is a little drunk might have something to do with it.
She doesn’t know where to start. She thinks that the tree looks terrible – hell, the mountain looks terrible, but who gives a fuck about that? The tourism department, probably, but between the War on Trees and now that stupid bitch Guinnebar, they were hardly having a banner year.
She squares her shoulders and jumps in. “Hi, remember me? Of course you remember me. You saved my life. You saved my life, and you saved my empire, and you have no idea how grateful I am.” She takes a deep breath, not quite sure what to say next. It had been easier when she came here with St. John. It had been easier when she was a child, telling the tree everything that happened to her during the day. It had been easier when she thought it was just a tree she was pretending could hear, and not a giant glowing moth-angel who might actually be listening.
“There have been times – like most of my childhood – when I felt you were my only friend in this world, do you know that? The other children thought I was cursed because of the prophecy, and uncle didn’t like for me to have friends anyway. That’s why I wrote that tanzaku. I hope it didn’t put you in an awkward spot. You’ve probably got some nice girl living in Dusq’inn Port-of-Call.”
Tara falls silent. She had been babbling. This was the first time the obvious truth had actually occurred to her. By this point, she understands pretty clearly how the Cu’enashti live. If I and I was manifesting as a mothman, he had to have Chosen. Which meant that her tree might very well be someone else’s tree. But he had come to save her. He had to be her tree. Didn’t he?
She thinks back on her hospital visit, on those blue-eyed people so devoted to their beloved families. She has no one in her life like that. No one.
“This might seem a little selfish,” she says, choking on her words, “But I need you to live. I need you as a friend, and as a champion of the realm. In fact, it’s an order. I command you to live.” She’s angry now. Why should a stupid tree mean so much to her? How stupid was she to allow herself to care?
She goes home and drinks a lot more because it was only ever a tree to her, and she’s not jealous, not at all.
The next morning, Sir Kaman runs into her office, nearly tripping over the Grand Vizier. “The Atlas Tree!” he yells, gesturing for her to follow.
“Can it wait?” asks the Vizier in annoyance. But it’s too late; Tara has already gone.
Sir Kaman shows Tara what he has discovered: a new branch, a scraggly little branch struggling to put out leaves. Jamey.
I love that story, said Evan. Tell more stories like that.
I like it too, says Mickey, but Patrick has got to stop getting sidetracked. It’s obfuscating the narrative.
Obfuscating, says Cillian. I’ll bet you never used that word on Dalgherdia.
Nah. I would’ve said the narrative is all fucked up.
You’re good at playing dumb, I comment.
Not good enough to fool General Panic. She said a dumb, pretty blond was the oldest trick in the book. She said that right before she shot me.
But you got her back, says Cillian. You fucked the science station but good.
Mickey grins. You should have seen her face when I changed back into I and I. She looked like she was gonna shit herself.
All right. Let’s get back on track. I’ll force myself to finish the story about Owen.
I hate to say this, says Ailann, but maybe you should tell the story about Molly and Jamey first.
I really don’t want to tell that story.
It’s the story of Theresa and Ashtheresa all over again, Cillian says. Fucking bullshit.
It’s one of the most important stories, Dermot says. We need to face it.
I look to Jamey. His eyes say everything. He wants me to tell it. It’s part of who he is.
“He can’t speak,” says Guinnebar. “Or rather, he won’t. He is able to sing.”
“Is he important, this boy?” asks the woman who has just arrived at the camp, the woman wearing a CenGov uniform. Then the rumors are true: despite her former rhetoric about Skarsian autonomy, the Pretender is now backed by Earth. There’s a logic to it: Guinnebar and General Panic both want to destroy the trees. In the weeks after the Great Reveal, Guinnebar has rallied her troops under the banner of a reactionary xenophobia.
“He’s one of them,” says Guinnebar. “I know it. Look at his eyes. Look at the color of his eyes. Those aren’t human eyes. But no matter how much I torture him, he won’t break. Usually the Christmas trees get to a certain level of pain or injury, and they can’t maintain their mockery of a human form.”
The newcomer considers. Her face is calm, her eyes thoughtful. She worries Jamey much more than the rash Pretender. “That means he is either very strong, or that you are wrong.”
“I’m not wrong. I can smell it. Have you ever smelled them? They smell of resin, of pine and pseudocedar and frankincense.” She says this with distaste, as though she is describing the smell of rotting flesh.
Guinnebar’s hatred is real, not just a political pose. She is a natural xenophobe, her fear and disgust towards the unknown outweighing humanity’s natural affinity for trees. The human race’s perception of the tree as a positive archetype has probably saved us a hundred times over. If our people were arachnid in form, we would have been exterminated by now.
“So you want me to do a deep scan, is that it? I’ll tell you now, there isn’t much on the surface. He’s hurting and afraid, as anyone might be.”
“He should be afraid. All of them should be. I’m going to raze those forests to the ground.”
The woman shrugs. “As you will.” She turns to Jamey. “Don’t try to resist me. The more you fight, the more likely it is that I’ll do permanent brain damage. Unlike some of us, I don’t enjoy that prospect.”
And then Jamey feels – we all feel – her thoughts invading our thoughts. There are nine of us, and our reactions are not uniform. Evan tries to hide from her, Mickey wants to fight.
“There’s more than one mind here,” the woman says, confusion apparent in her voice. “It’s not a schizoid symptom either. I’ve encountered multiple personalities – they’re fragments of one root personality. These are entirely separate entities. And yet, there’s something below them.”
We feel a push, a firm push, then a harder one. Then the equivalent of a mental body slam. And suddenly, it’s like a spike hammering through wood. There are splinters everywhere. The woman stumbles back, her hands reaching blindly for a table to steady herself. “What the hell…what is this? It doesn’t make any sense. Its thoughts are all encoded in symbols, which keep looping back on themselves. There are no conscious thoughts for me to read – it’s like the unconscious mind is brought to the surface. I can’t understand it at all. I’ve never encountered something so alien.”
“Are you all right?” Guinnebar asks, but there is something perfunctory about her tone – she couldn’t care less about the well-being of the telepath. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“I’m a little nauseous – vertigo. But this isn’t normal – I don’t think it’s normal even for them. This is something…” Her eyes narrow, and she lunges forward. “I still haven’t gotten to the heart of it.”
Jamey screams – or rather, he would have screamed if he could. She has dropped the pretense of gentleness – if Jamey had been human, her attack would have ripped his mind to shreds. What happens instead is that she forces her way through us, through the Atlas Tree, and right into the center of I and I.
And then she is the one screaming, rolling on the ground and screaming.
Guinnebar runs over to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking. “Molly! Molly, come out of it! What did it do to you?”
Molly is choking through sobs. “I can’t explain. There’s nothing there, no thoughts, no personality, no coherent identity. It’s a void, an emptiness. A monstrosity.” She’s on her knees, rocking, tears streaming down her face. “There’s no way to understand it. We can’t communicate with it. It negates everything we are.”
“I told you so,” says Guinnebar smugly. “It’s evil. Pure evil incarnate. That’s why I intend to destroy them.”
Molly’s head is jerking, a funny sideways twitch in her neck like a nerve has been severed. “This isn’t just any tree. It’s the big one that destroyed the CenGov fleet. It destroyed the CenGov fleet,” she says, as though she just realized it. “That’s how powerful these things are. They can wipe us out with a thought. Alchemy. They can turn the iron in your blood to copper, and the oxygen to argon.”
But I and I left your life support systems intact, Jamey wants to say, because trees don’t kill.
“The Atlas Tree,” says Guinnebar. “He’s more than an enemy leader. He’s a symbol of everything they stand for. Destroy the Atlas Tree, and you break the enemy’s spirit. But killing this piece of shit won’t do a damn bit of good. In fact, kill the body and you release the soul.” She grabs Jamey by the hair. “Isn’t that right, boy? I’m better off keeping you here, a prisoner, than killing you and freeing that insect-thing.” She’s right – but she never could have laid a hand on us, never, if the Atlas Tree weren’t still recovering from having a mountain fall on it.
The corner of Molly’s mouth is beginning to twitch too. “He needs water,” she says. “Let him dehydrate.”
“Let’s make an example of him,” says Guinnebar. “Hang him on a cross and leave him in the sun. We’ll advance our forces down the coast until we reach the Atlas Tree, and when we take it, we’ll nail him to that tree, and set the whole thing ablaze.”
Guinnebar sees the look of total devastation in Jamey’s eyes, and she laughs. She thinks he is afraid of her. But what Jamey is really afraid of – what we are all afraid of – is what Molly said. If it is true, if Tara were a telepath – would she have the same reaction? Better then to remove the blot from the universe which offends our beloved, to remove it with fire.
You shouldn’t have written that, says Sloane. Take it out. Just say that Jamey was tortured. Tara is going to read this.
But we have to know, says Whirljack. We have to see how she’ll respond. If she really wants us dead, we have to die.
That’s just the sort of idiotic compost I’d expect from him, says Blackjack.
We could lose everything, says Ailann. Why would you want to do that? Why now, when everything is so perfect?
Because it’s a cheat, says Cillian. Like it would be if we forced her to stay with us. We have to tell her the truth.
Absolutely no good will come of it. If she reacts like Molly, we’ll have to immolate, says Ailann. And then there won’t be anyone to protect her. Then there won’t be an Archon, and her empire will fail.
I get it, says Mickey. The best thing for Tara is not to know. It’s selfish to even suggest it. Take the passage out, Patrick.
Don’t, yells Suibhne, don’t fucking do it! And we all stare at him, and he says, Don’t you trust her?
I trust her, says Ross. Leave it in.
We decide to vote. I abstain. Daniel, Sloane, Evan, Mickey, Cuinn, Ailann, Owen, Callum, Lugh, Blackjack, Chase and Lorcan vote to take it out. Whirljack, Tommy, Jamey, Cillian, Davy, Wynne, Driscoll, Ross, Suibhne, Tarlach, Hurley and Dermot vote to leave it in.
Well, that was instructive, says Cuinn. 12 and 12.
I think it is, with no sarcasm on my part. I understand why Ross, Jamey and Suibhne trust Tara’s affection; I understand why Sloane, Mickey and Evan don’t. But I would’ve expected Owen, Lugh and Callum to trust her, and Whirljack, Tommy and Driscoll to want to let things lie.
Blackjack’s vote is predictable – whatever Whirljack does not want. And it isn’t a matter of whether Wynne trusts Tara or not. Wynne trusts his luck.
Patrick has to be the tie-breaker, Cillian suggests.
I can’t. I wrote it. I’m not really objective about it.
Why don’t you just keep writing, Driscoll says. We’re not going to show it to her until it’s finished. We can always decide to take it out later, when we’ve had time to think.
No one is going to change his mind, says Tarlach.
I and I doesn’t want us to write about Jamey’s crucifixion, Lugh argues.
But he didn’t say anything about the interrogation, counters Tommy. Besides, Patrick has written a lot of things he wasn’t supposed to write.
If I and I didn’t want him to write that, Patrick wouldn’t have been able to, says Dermot. It occurs to me that the answer to this question is the very reason we feel compelled to write.
This book, says Tarlach. Tara isn’t a telepath. This book is us trying to explain ourselves to her, so that she can judge. We have to be as honest as possible.
Then you better start writing, Mr. Psychologist, says Cillian, because you’re the branch who grew to explain us to us.
I can’t believe you’re even considering this, says Ailann. Why would you even consider this?
Because it doesn’t mean anything if she doesn’t love us, I say.
Nothing can mean anything if your perspective is false, adds Dermot.