It’s a while before I can return to writing. Tara and Ailann had no appointments this morning, so I and I decided to be Mickey. Tara and Mickey like to work out together. This started shortly after the fight she had with Ailann over Davy. At that time, I and I made two decisions. The first was not to reveal any of the emanations after Davy to Tara. And for a long while, He did hide Wynne, but circumstances forced Him to reveal Owen a few weeks after emanation. And then she figured out Driscoll, and asked for Ross herself, and I and I pretty much decided that despite what she’d said, she could handle new branches.
The other decision had more impact. I and I started to realize that to her, the emanations were not disposable, and He might need to bring some of the older ones back into play. So when Tara started to complain that she had no one good enough to practice with, He decided to try Mickey. Mickey was really an unknown quantity. The position he’d assumed at the space station was calculated to best protect Tara, and to best have access to information needed to keep her safe. However, he didn’t have the best access to Tara herself. She knew who he was and was on friendly terms with him, but their conversations were brief exchanges of pleasantries. She’d have no reason to become friends with a CenGov officer, especially one St. John termed, “The idiot who engaged a tailor in the produce department.” That’s a dig at Mickey’s pretended stupidity, and also his off-duty wardrobe. He has a blue shirt patterned with gokswaws and pineapples that seemed to particularly irk St. John.
But Mickey did fulfill his role perfectly, and had saved Tara’s life, and Tara seemed suitably grateful. So I and I thought it seemed little risk allowing Mickey to have a go.
“Why not fight me?” said Ailann.
Tara spun around to face not Ailann, but Mickey. He grinned at her. Mickey has a beautiful smile. “I’m combat-trained,” he said. “I can keep up with you.”
Tara grinned back. “Bring it,” she said.
They suited up in the loose fitting practice attire common among Skarsians. Every member of the Skarsian aristocracy is trained to fight from childhood. No difference is made between the sexes; everyone learns to defend honor equally. If anything, the pressure is on the women because they will rule, and to rule is to fight.
Tara had spent half her young life in this environment, and the other half in lazy days on Dolparessa with its perfect weather and placid farmers. “I believe in peace, love, and hand-held particle cannons,” she once told me.
Tara and Mickey sparred for a while, testing the other’s strength. Then Tara went at it for real. She has the physical capacities of a woman half her age – I and I had seen to that – but a wily combat intelligence that can only be gotten through experience. Nevertheless, she was human, and Mickey was not. Mickey’s body appeared to be human in every way, but he could draw on all the energy reserves of the Atlas Tree, and could repair any damage near-instantly. Mickey was also no slouch at the martial arts. As the combat went on, she began to tire, and he gained the advantage. Finally, he tossed her lightly to the ground and pinned her. “Give?” he asked.
And in a second, their positions were reversed, the tips of Tara’s index and forefinger pressed against Mickey’s jugular. “You give,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re stronger. You’ll never win because you don’t have the will to defeat me.”
It’s a moment we all remember so vividly, sweating, out-of-breath Tara, her body pressed hard against Mickey’s long, lean form. Mickey grinned. “It’s true. I don’t have the will to defeat you. But perhaps my definition of victory is different than yours.”
“You really aren’t all that dumb,” said Tara, flinging off her shirt.
Now that’s what I call a story, says Tommy, except I would have put in more description about…
I don’t think there’s any need for that level of detail, I say.
Why not? says Whirljack. If this book is for Tara, maybe she’d find it arousing.
Now that’s an invitation if I’ve ever heard one. Just remember that you asked for it, Jack.
“It was wrong of me to leave,” she says, “and I’ve paid dearly for it. But I can’t have you at each other’s throats. I can’t deal with your self-destructive tendencies, whether it’s Ailann trying to amputate Cillian, or Suibhne planning to immolate, or you two trying to kill each other.”
“That’s why we recorded that song,” says Whirljack. “We didn’t know where you were, but we were sure it was going to get media push, and sooner or later, you would hear it.”
“We wanted to show you that we could get along. That we could kiss and make up. Like this.” Blackjack wraps his arm around Whirljack, twirls him around, dips him, and plants a kiss on his lips.
Tara looks like she just sat on an antimatter generator and flipped the switch. “Twincest,” she murmurs. “That’s hot.”
“Twincest? What’s that?” asks Whirljack.
Blackjack begins to giggle. “It means I should’ve used my tongue.” And he does.
Whirljack pushes him back. “What the hell are you doing?”
Tara’s face is flushed, and she has a funny little smirk. It’s an expression we’ve never seen before. “The others can only emanate one at a time,” she says. “So I’d never considered the possibility before…”
Blackjack looks like a sentient felinoid left alone at a sushi bar. “You mean being the meat in a nau’gsh sandwich?”
“What?” says Whirljack, blinking.
Tara bites her lip. “Can it really be classified as twincest? In your case, maybe it’s a weird kind of masturbation.”
“I can only get off if you do,” says Whirljack, “so there isn’t any point in masturbating.”
Blackjack makes a gun with his hand, points it at Whirljack, pulls the trigger. “He really is thick, ain’t he?”
“Well, his trunk was the thickest of all before the two of you split,” says Tara. “Does that mean he’s only half the man he used to be?”
“Well, I’m twice the man that he is,” says Blackjack.
“You see?” says Whirljack. “You see how he provokes me?”
Tara wags a finger at them. “I see that you’re going to have a hell of a time deciding who’s on top.”
I’m so embarrassed, says Whirljack. You might as well write all this up and append it to our papers of disclosure.
It’s not like we don’t know about it, I say. All of us were there. We felt all of it.
It’s different, having a brother, says Lugh. When I’m inside, I know everything that the emanation does, and there’s no need for privacy because I am him. But when Owen is with Tara, it’s like I’m watching.
I try to look away, says Owen, but sometimes I don’t. It’s kind of hot. Lugh is pretty good-looking.
You morons don’t get it, says Cillian. She was really into that threesome. She likes being drilled in both holes. Just like she likes to use C&B torture on Callum. She likes Tommy’s little leather and tittie fantasies. She likes me to smack her around and hold her down. Maybe we made her an insatiable whore by fucking with her hormones, but we didn’t make her a fucking pervert. That twisted bitch made us fucking perverts.
A blunt, but potentially accurate assessment, says Tarlach. Did you notice in that scenario she was getting off on Whirljack’s discomfiture? It was similar to the enjoyment she took in deflowering Evan.
It’s not fair, says Whirljack. We used to have such good sex together. Incredible sex.
That’s true, I suggest, so why don’t you two try giving each other some space when you emanate?
You mean leave him alone with her? Blackjack says, appalled.
And you alone with her as well.
Oh no, says Whirljack. Not on our lives.
The two of you will never learn.
Lugh snorts. You just don’t get it, Pat. He and Owen exchange a glance. They just can’t admit that they don’t want to be away from each other, he says. They just can’t admit how much they like being together.
It’s different, says Owen, having a brother.
Why don’t you get back to Owen’s story? Lugh suggests.
The scream is Tara. I and I knows in every leaf and rootlet. Traeger is interrogating her.
So stunned is Owen that he freezes in his tracks; the zombies mindlessly shove him out of their path. She can’t be here, he thinks. She’s on Eirelantra.
Something snaps within him, and he can feel Cillian pushing at the back of his mind, but he shoves back, saying, I’ll deal with it.
You’re not supposed to be a killer, mate, Cillian says.
Owen doesn’t listen. He’s listening to what he can hear clearly through the crystals. “There’s no need for you to hurt her,” says Molly. “She really doesn’t know where he is.”
Owen thinks it through. He can hear them through the crystals, but they can’t hear him. If I and I hides under the Owen personality, the telepaths won’t find him unless they specifically look. But if he taps into the power grid, if he does anything involving alchemy, or transforms into the mothman, they’ll know. If he asks the others for guidance, they’ll overhear the telltale chatter of our multiple minds. And if they find him, they have a very important hostage.
Owen hears an ominous rumble. Owen hears his perfectly designed miner’s instincts screaming, time to get out.
Fuck, he thinks. He should come up with a plan to grab Tara and go. But then all of the zombies will die, and none of this is their fault.
Tara screams again.
“Traeger!” says Molly sharply. “She’s not the enemy. It’s that tree…”
“All of the braindeaf are our enemies,” says Traeger. “Someday, we’ll rule over them. They’re evolutionary flotsam. Look at how easy they are to control. They don’t have anything I’d rightly call a mind – only a Sargasso Sea flooded with illusions.”
“I don’t want to rule anything. I just don’t want to be a slave. Not to a monstrosity, and not to a machine, either.”
“Call it freedom, then,” says Traeger. “I’ll call it destiny. But either way, these crystals are the key.”
Ezra Pound, says Cillian. The Sargasso Sea thing.
Doubtful, says Tarlach. The allusion is not something Traeger would appreciate. Telepaths dislike poetry.
I can’t understand telepaths at all, says Hurley. When I pass one in the corridor, it’s like walking past a piece of cardboard.
You know, when Traeger goes on about ruling the universe, it really sounds crazy, says Lugh. But when Tara says it…
When Tara says it, it’s true, says Ailann. The Matriarch will spread her empire through every corner of the galaxy, and a new race will rule, an evolutionary hybrid of animal and plant, a leap in evolution for both our species. We will make it true.
It would help for that every corner of the galaxy bit if we could leave the Domha’vei, says Mickey.
Working on it, says Cuinn.
Owen doesn’t give a rotten javamelon for telepathic political philosophy. His only concern is Tara. He knows why she is screaming. He remembers Jamey. He remembers what a deep scan feels like.
“I’ve had enough of your gratuitous cruelty,” says Molly. “I’m going to check on production. We should pull out as soon as we have enough crystals. We know they’re onto us, and sooner or later they’ll come looking for their little princess.”
“Maybe not,” says Traeger. “There are at least two dozen aristos in the Domha’vei that would benefit from her death. They might not be so eager to rescue her.”
It’s simple. Let Molly go down into the tunnels. Let Molly be crushed when the walls cave in. Considering what Molly knows, her death will make a lot of things easier.
You aren’t meant to be a killer, mate, says Cillian.
Owen shakes his head. Owen ignores the tears streaming down his face.
Owen picks up one of the crystals. Ailann was used to dealing with them in the context of the carefully calibrated equipment of the power grid, but he knows them, yes. Maybe Traeger can use them, but so can he.
He knows his way around the mine far better than his enemies. He has studied it, has been looking for flaws, weaknesses, more efficient ways of digging the riches from the ground. He circles around where he knows Molly will go, moving towards where he knows Traeger must be.
He kicks down the door of the main office. Traeger wheels, pulling a gun. But it is a feint, and they both know it. Owen doesn’t even bother to turn the firing pin to clay. The real attack will come from the crystal in his hand.
Traeger’s mind is like a cat, like a wolverine, all teeth and claws springing, ready to shred.
Owen just has to bear the pain for a minute. He can see everything, but he’s a miner, not a neurosurgeon. But now he doesn’t have to hide. Now he can ask Ailann for help.
There, Ailann pointed. That section of the brain is different in unmodified humans.
The crystal, glowing dull orange, suddenly changes to an electric icy blue.
Traeger screams. In an instant, the world of voices is closed off to him, and he is shut inside his mind, a human mind, shut inside a head full of dreams.
One of the reasons humans can’t hear the thoughts of others is that they are muffled by the elaborate internal constructions of their minds. The extreme example is schizophrenics who claim to be unable to hear a person speaking over the sound of the voices in their heads. So in order to induce telepathy, it is necessary to reduce the functioning of the subconscious mind as much as possible. Telepaths don’t dream – they don’t sing, make art or write poetry either. CenGov considers this a reasonable trade-off – unnecessary pleasures sacrificed for an extraordinary skill. On all the worlds of the Domha’vei, inducing telepathy is illegal, punishable by death. It is considered barbarism.
Owen doesn’t kill. Owen has solved the problem by giving Traeger back his dreams. But what Owen didn’t anticipate is how much dreams would look like insanity to someone not used to them.
Owen doesn’t kill Traeger, but Traeger dies anyway. Molly is in the doorway, holding a gun. “He’s better off, after what you did to him,” she says. Her lip trembles. “I was right. We can’t co-exist. Humans aren’t the real threat. Telepaths will always be useful to humans. But to your kind…”
Before Molly can finish, Tara jumps up and punches her in the gut. The gun falls to the ground, and Tara grabs it. She grabs Owen by the other hand and pulls him towards the door. “My ship is on the landing pad!”
“We have to evacuate,” he says. “The mine is about to collapse.”
“Shit,” says Tara, “the refinement process.”
“I got a good look at the equipment, doll-face,” says Owen. “I think Cuinn can reconstruct it.”
There is another, louder, more ominous rumble. Owen knows he is out of time. He thrusts the crystal into Molly’s hand. “Tell the miners to get the hell out.”
Owen and Tara make a dash for it. He can hear Molly in his head. She says, “Kill the two people running for the landing pad.”
“Well,” says Tara, “that wasn’t one of your better ideas.”
“You forgot,” says Molly, “You depleted the shuttle fuel to make the crystals. It will never get off the ground if I take all those people. They might as well die doing something useful.”
Owen looks at Tara. “It’s a single seat racer,” she says. “I’m going to have to fit you in my lap.”
“No you won’t. I got everything covered. I’ll meet you back home.”
Tara runs for her ship. Behind her, the mothman stretches his enormous wings, blocking the mind-controlled zombie miners. He can feel the ships leaving, first the shuttle, then Tara’s racer. There aren’t that many miners at the pad. Many of them are already trapped underground.
I and I touches the power grid, pulls in the energy he needs to stop the collapse.
He can’t. He can’t do anything. The asteroid is shot through with Skarsium, and alchemy won’t affect it. It’s insulating him from the miners beneath the surface, too.
Now that Molly is gone, the miners on the landing pad are starting to come around. I and I wraps them in a force bubble and drags them away. They watch as the mine cracks open, allowing the artificial atmosphere to leak onto the surface. They watch the planetoid ignite in flames.
But I and I does not look back.
They all died, says Cillian. Owen killed them as surely as I killed the microbes. And those miners hadn’t even done anything to us.
We don’t know for sure, says Cuinn. Our salvage operation didn’t go deep for fear of setting off another collapse. We never got a full body count.
Molly escaped, says Davy. Maybe others got out alive, too.
And maybe sucksows will fly, Cillian snaps.
“What the hell is that?” Tara says. Oh, she’s surprised. And it takes a lot to surprise Tara these days.
“It’s a flying sucksow,” says Davy.
Her expression is guarded. It’s funny how old habits die hard. She knows I can pretty much sense her reactions from the presence of neurochemicals in her brain. Although I can’t read her thoughts, I can be pretty sure she’s thinking something like Uh oh.
“It’s not a surveillance thing, like the pocket-puppies, is it?” she says. “Because it seems a little awkward.”
“Oh no,” says Davy. “I was just making a point.”
“Um, what are we supposed to do with a sucksow flying around Court Emmere?”
“Well,” says Davy thoughtfully, “they’re good eating.”
Great point, Davy, says Cillian, laughing.