I need to write something a little less trying, I say. I’ve had a hard night.
Battlequeen Escharton and her consort Trey are lovely people, really, but they obviously aren’t native Dolparessan. Their luxurious spacecraft is entirely fitted out in antiquities – extravagant without being tasteless. Hardwood furniture, wooden floors, the walls paneled in elaborate boiseries. It was stomach-churning, like holding a dinner-party in a morgue.
So as I sat upon the bones of the deceased, we were treated to a dessert made by Trey himself, who has a reputation for being a talented cook. A molten torte au chocolat with redberri sauce.
As a matter of diplomatic protocol, I forced myself to eat it. And it was…absolutely delicious. As long as I didn’t think about the dead babies.
Davy and Cuinn exchange glances, pointing at each other and saying simultaneously, “Chocomelon!” Now there’s an idea worth another few million a day.
Well, from an artistic standpoint, it’s a good place in the narrative to ease the tension a little, says Driscoll. Let the reader breathe.
Hey, write about him, about the time that Driscoll and Tara duped Rivers, says Lugh.
And then I get a flood of suggestions: write about Tara and Cuinn at the lab. Write about Driscoll and the High Council and Davy and the pocket-puppies.
But there’s something I want to write about first.
I’m drunk and depressed, reeling with it. I wish I could do the human thing and pass out. But I don’t ever sleep. That oblivion is denied to us.
The past few hours have been spent staying far enough away and getting numb enough that I can’t feel what is happening between Tara and Rivers. But I can’t stop thinking about it; the alcohol simply makes my thoughts disordered and accentuates their bleakness.
I’m feeling my way back to my quarters, so messed up that it takes me much longer than usual to know that she’s waiting there. In my quarters. I straighten my head out fast, before I walk through the door. If she’s there, it means that Rivers isn’t, which means that things went badly.
“What happened?” I ask, putting on my best sympathetic face.
“Clive asked for something unreasonable, I gave it to him, and he left.”
Now I’m burning with anger. Tara has been waiting for days to see him, and he breezes in and out after using her. “That was insensitive of him,” I say, trying to keep my temper out of my voice.
“Oh, I sent him away. I told him I had other plans.”
I’m dumbfounded. I have no idea what she’s thinking.
She gets up, crosses the room to me. “Truth is, I’m fed up with him.” She places her hand on my chest. “Since the other night, I’ve been thinking that maybe you and I might try being husband and wife for real.”
I don’t know what to say, or think. I don’t even know how to think anymore. My brain has stopped dead. It’s as though someone told me, “Oh, by the way, God dropped by and left you a bag containing the whole universe.”
“If that’s ok with you,” she says.
Tell her you love her! says Whirljack.
“I love you,” I stammer, and then, “I love you more than anything. You’re everything in the universe to me, you’re…”
“I know,” she says, silencing me with a kiss.
Later, when she sleeps in my arms, there is silence. It’s the hush of a cathedral, the voices in my head stilled in a wordless prayer to stay like this forever.
And when I catch my reflection in the mirror the next morning, there’s a certain radiance, the kind of glow I’ve seen in human women when they’re pregnant. If I close my eyes, I can feel my branch, heavy with fruit.
Evan is bawling like a baby. Fucking hell, says Cillian. He cries when he’s sad, he cries when he’s happy, he cries at rainbows and sunsets and cute little dogs. I think I’m gonna be sick.
I can’t help that I’m sensitive, says Evan. It was a beautiful story.
Little dogs. All right, then let’s tell that story next.
Driscoll swaggers into the High Council Chambers before the herald completes the announcement, “Her Most Sublime and Holy Eminence the Matriarch, and Prince Consort Driscoll Garrett.”
Driscoll takes his seat at the forefront of the chamber, leans back, cuts the air with a sweep of his cigarette holder, blows enormous smoke rings in the air.
Lord Danak shuffles a stack of papers nervously. He clears his throat. Finally he says, “Your Highness, smoking is forbidden in the Council Chambers.”
“Why?”
Danak is caught off-guard. It’s just a rule; he never questioned it. On Earth, smoking is actually illegal. Which means it was revived passionately in the Domha’vei. Then the insurance companies got involved. Anticarcinogens are expensive. Of course, aristos like to flaunt their wealth. “Well…”
“Do you think I’m trying to poison you? You don’t think I’d actually allow any of you to get some kind of horrible lung syndrome. You can’t possibly imagine I’d be as gauche as that.” Driscoll rises to face him. The chamber is silent. Then Driscoll wheels suddenly to face the assembly, coattails swinging in air.
“You people have to change your thinking!” he exclaims, waving his arms. “Disease is out of fashion. Death is so last year. I suppose at some time in the future it might make a retro appearance on the runway, but I don’t think so. There’s absolutely no reason why any of you has to die. No reason why anyone important has to die. Or their families. I can take care of it.”
Driscoll sits, smiles, enjoys the shock on the Councilors’ faces as his words sink in. He waits a bit, timing the punch line, before he says, “So let’s just stop all that ridiculous business of trying to assassinate me.” He snuffs out his cigarette on the arm of his chair.
“That was masterful,” says Tara. “There will never be another assassination attempt. You’re such a bitch, Driscoll.”
“I meant you, too, Tara.”
“Me?” She pours two drinks, chilled vodka for herself, a mixture of kasmilmilch and javamelon liqueur for Driscoll. It’s a White Dolparessan, the trendiest libation in the Domha’vei.
“You have to stop thinking like that. Every night you call out for I and I in your sleep. You’re still waiting to lose us. But you’re not going to lose us.” He takes the drink from her. “Cheers,” he says.
Tara sips hers, nods. She believes him in her heart; in her head, she still doesn’t believe him.
“I’m serious Tara. You haven’t aged a day in fifteen years. It’s not happening. You’re not going to get sick. You’re not going to die. The normal life expectancy for a Cu’endhari nau’gsh is some four thousand years, but Davy thinks that by drawing off the power grid, we can prolong it indefinitely. You have to trust us, Tara.”
“It isn’t you I don’t trust,” she says. “Four thousand years. I’ve always lived for the moment. Perhaps I’d better come up with a game plan.”
When she wakes the next morning, Davy is next to her. “Was Driscoll bored already?” she says, sleepily.
“Oh no, he’s mad, ‘cause he wanted to work more on his paintings. But I wanted to go to the Council today, and I and I agrees with me.”
A few hours later: “Her Most Sublime and Holy Eminence the Matriarch, and Prince Consort David Gannon,” the herald announces.
“Who had Davy?” Battlequeen Escharton whispers.
“Not me,” says Lord Danak. “I always let mine ride on Patrick. He’s here at least half the time.”
“It’s me,” cackles Wyrd Elma, holding out her hand.
“She always wins,” sulks Tenzain Merkht. “A prophetess shouldn’t be able to get in on a betting pool.”
The business of the day commences, a tedious discussion of tariff agreements between Skarsia and Volparnu. Davy looks visibly bored. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dog.
It’s a fluffy dog with thick amber fur and enormous blue eyes, and it’s smaller than the size of Davy’s palm. The dog yips, rolls over, and looks at Davy pleadingly. It’s irresistible; there’s a moment of collective heart-melting within the Council. Davy smiles and pulls a biscuit from his other pocket.
Lord Danak opens his mouth and closes it. He wants to point out that pets are not allowed in the Council Chambers, but given Driscoll’s screed of the day prior, he doesn’t want to tempt fate. He has no idea how Davy would react – nobody does. At least Davy seems pretty much harmless, unlike Suibhne.
“That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen,” the Battlequeen gasps.
Davy hands it to her. “You want it? I’ve got a whole litter.” He pulls another from his pocket.
“My nephew would love something like that,” says Lord Danak.
“It’s not much use for hunting, though,” says Merkht, but even he is smiling. “Maybe Meliss would like one? You know how she is about penguins and things. She likes cute stuff.” Meliss is Erich’s wife and Merkht’s lover. They’re a good match – it’s an open question as to which is stupider. Erich doesn’t mind at all – if his idiot wife and his idiot brother amuse each other, he has more freedom to run the state.
Davy gives the second puppy to Danak, another to Ta’al Erich, another to Rear Admiral Naveeta, and yet another to the herald. Within five minutes, half of the Council has a puppy. But Wyrd Elma declines, laughing her creepy laugh.
Davy flops backwards onto the bed. “Why don’t you come sit on my dick?” he says.
“You have a way with words,” Tara replies, removing her enormous diamond earrings.
Davy closes her eyes. “Battlequeen Escharton is taking a shower,” he says. “She’s pretty nicely built, under all that armor.”
“WHAT?”
“Merkht is listening to Meliss talk about something one of the servants did yesterday. That woman can turn a ten-second sound bite into a thirty-hour epic. I don’t know how he can stand it.”
“Oh, he never listens to her anyway. He adores her because he’s convinced her womanly virtue restored his manly virtue, so to speak. He’s too stupid to realize that I put an anaphrodisiac into his groatmeal the last six years I lived on Volparnu. But how did you know…?”
“Looks like Lord Danak has a little business on the side moving nau’gsh wine to the Fomalhaut corridor. Tax free.”
Tara sits on the bed, stripped to her underwear. She slaps his fingers away from her bodice. “Not a hand on me until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
“It’s the puppies,” says Davy, smiling broadly. “Ailann was worried about security, so I made them so I can see through their eyes. They also reproduce real quick, so soon everyone is going to have one. Thing is, I’m the only emanation they’re attuned to, so if you want to spy on someone, you’ll have to ask for me.”
Davy looks at her pleadingly with his enormous blue eyes.
“Oh, all right,” she says, pushing him down and straddling him.
That’s a great story, says Cillian. But also, those puppies were fucking useful.
Yes, but it got ugly when Molly got involved, says Mickey.
It always gets ugly when Molly gets involved, says Ailann.
I’ll talk about that later, I say. I’m in a good mood now, and I don’t want to ruin it.
Then tell the other story about Driscoll, says Tommy. About the statue.
Clive comes to her with a proposal. It is a proposal about armaments. Their relationship had been on the rocks too long for any other kind.
“The Vend-IIX-warhead,” he says dramatically. “The mechanism depends on fleshiwood. With fleshiwood, it’s a whole new day for weaponry.”
“And what do you want from me?”
“Consider it an investment.”
“I want to see the plans.”
“They’re proprietary.”
“And I’m supposed to just throw money at some pie-in-the sky promise?”
Clive grimaces. “I thought you trusted me, Tara. And you know I’m always right about things like this.”
Clive started his career as a physicist, but pretty much what he’s done for the last two decades is develop weaponry and ways to infiltrate security. Tara knows this. She’s just being a bitch. “Maybe I should call my lawyer to draw up a contract. Ross Adare, have you met?”
“Very funny.” He pulls out a datapad, handing it to her at an angle so that the thing on the floor – Callum – can’t see the specs. Honestly, Clive doesn’t know what Tara’s gotten to these days. Clive doesn’t know what Ashtara’s gotten to these days. Is she going out of her way to embarrass Patrick? As if the rumors she’s having an affair with her personal trainer aren’t enough to create a scandal. Of course, he’s assuming Callum is another emanation. Maybe Tara did buy a sex slave. He wouldn’t put it past her.
In the end, Clive decides, it’s so much better I didn’t get stuck with her.
“Interesting,” she says. “All right. But I’m a silent partner. I’ll give you money, but you deal with production.”
As Clive leaves, Callum smiles sweetly at him. “Imbecile,” Clive mutters under his breath.
Clive is back two weeks later. “We have a problem,” he says.
“We do?”
“There’s no fleshiwood anywhere to be found. It’s all been bought up by some artist.”
“An artist?”
“It’s supposed to be used in some kind of animated statue.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“I’m not. ”
Nevertheless, Tara and Clive go to the Clover Apollinaire, one of the capital’s trendiest galleries. Tara’s got her hair stuffed under a large-brimmed hat, and is wearing big sunglasses, and really hopes she won’t get papped. There’s a line to get in, and an enormous crowd gathered around a pedestal in the center of the main hall. “It’s popular,” she says.
“It’s incredible,” shouts a man in the line in front of her. “A truly new form of art!”
“It’s not just a gimmick, though,” says a woman behind them. “Wait until you see. It’s beautiful.”
The statue is called “The Apotheosis of Daphne.” It looks like it is made from a single, solid hunk of wood. No obvious joints or connections, and it’s clearly not a holoprojection, either. In it, a wild and beautiful woman transforms into a tree, and then back into a woman. The level of detail is amazing, from the swing of her hair to the trembling of her leaves, everything moves in gracefully planned arcs. Clive has never seen anything like it. Also, the woman looks vaguely familiar. A little like Tara, actually.
Tara picks up a brochure from a stack. It reads:
The tale of Apollo and Daphne is one of Earth’s most famous legends. It is also one of the most misunderstood. To decipher the true meaning of the story, it is necessary to know the nature of the god Apollo. He is the god of beauty, music, and, as is little known, the god of wolves. But primarily, Apollo is known as a sun god.
Why would Daphne run from such a being? Firstly, the legends are full of cautionary tales about approaching such deities in their true forms, tales such as Semele and Icarus. But it is not necessary to resort to myth when simple common sense will do. What happens to a human upon direct exposure to the sun? Sunburn. Heat stroke. Skin cancer.
Critical to the understanding of this tale is the concept of transformation. Daphne could turn into anything to escape the god – wind, rain, a swarm of bees. In the ur-text itself, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, there is even a tale of a woman, Echo, who becomes nothing but pure sound. So why, then, if it is Daphne’s intent to escape, does she choose the one form absolutely incapable of running?
In the crucial moment, Daphne’s decision is a product of enlightenment informed by love. She sheds the limitations of her animal form – in short, she sacrifices everything she knows and is. Observe the glittering of leaves in the light, the way they spread themselves in the warmth, the branches that grow in the direction of the sun, and ask yourself: Has Daphne not become the very thing capable of embracing her lover’s eternal caress?
“How much is it worth?” says Clive, irritated. “Let’s just buy it, and salvage the fleshiwood.”
“We’ll do no such thing! It’s a masterpiece!” She tugs the sleeve of the man from the line. “Who’s the artist?”
“Driscoll Garrett,” he says. “He’s got to be the foremost Dolparessan artist right now. Maybe ever.”
Tara grabs Clive by the arm and pulls him from the gallery, running. She doubles over in laughter.
“I don’t know what’s so damn funny,” says Clive.
“Come back to Court Emmere. Let me show you something.”
Tara brings Clive to a room full of toys, all sorts of toys. Little plush animals that feel warm to the touch. Toy soldiers that march across an imaginary battlefield. Life-sized marionettes.
He’s disconcerted. Tara has no children. A room full of toys in the palace is a little creepy.
“These belong to Davy, one of Ash’s emanations,” she says. “They all have fleshiwood. Just take whatever you need.”
Clive smirks. “Ashtara won’t be pleased. He hates me.”
“Well, Ash kind of owes you.” Tara starts to giggle again.
“I fail to understand the source of your amusement.”
“Driscoll Garrett is another of his emanations,” she says. “Callum knew we made this deal, and Ash didn’t like it. I guess he decided to take matters into his own hands.”
Clive laughs, picks up a doll. “There’s probably enough in two or three of these to make bombs to obliterate a whole planet. Maybe he won’t even miss them.”
“However much you need. But then I’m out. My power base depends on the Archon. I really don’t need to get on Ash’s bad side.”
Clive shrugs. “Fleshiwood is expensive. This will more than make up for your investment. Are you sure?”
“I wash my hands of it,” she says. “No need to pay me back.”
Clive leaves, feeling very satisfied with the way things resolved. A moment later, Driscoll appears.
“Cuinn’s designs were a lot better,” he says.
“Yes, but I don’t want my name associated with a dirty weapon like that. Of course it’s useful to have them, and if need be, I can call in a favor from Clive and get my hands on one immediately.”
“And was all this subterfuge necessary?”
“Well, if he understood my hesitation, he’d use my involvement to blackmail me later. Besides, Clive hates Ash. Since he thinks you tried to stop him from producing those warheads, now he’ll let nothing in heaven or Skarsia get in his way.”
Everyone is laughing. No matter how smart he is, says Tommy, Clive is a fucking idiot.
Tell the story about Mickey and that Ennead Don, says Lugh. The punch line is incredible.
When Don Giovanni Ngon Harbrace realizes how badly the twist has betrayed them, he almost blows a blood vessel. He calms himself. Blowing her head off seems a better way to reduce stress.
But first he has to catch her. He’s got eight goons scouring the garage, but she eludes them. She’s fast, and stronger than she looks. She took out Ferdinand the Whale with a side kick to the kneecap. They can’t let her get away, not with what she knows about the apples. The big boss would dump Giovanni on Volparnu with a cement parka.
She’s finally cornered in the basement. He raises his gun. “Now talk,” he says. “Who do you work for?”
She says nothing. She’s strangely composed. She doesn’t even look winded.
“C’mon, hon, it ain’t worth dying for.” He’ll kill her anyway, but she doesn’t have to know that.
“When I was a child,” she says, “I had a bad heart. I couldn’t run like this. I couldn’t play, could barely go outside. My life was a series of unsuccessful medical interventions. Then, when I was eleven, my mother took me to Eirelantra for the ascension. She was hoping for a blessing, and she got one. The Archon put his hand on me, and I haven’t had a day of bad health since. My heart has never failed me. So the way I look at it, every day after that is owed to him.”
Don Giovanni is about to say that it’s the most sanctimonious piece of claptrap he’s ever heard, but he sees the look in her eyes. Her eyes are steel, the steel eyes of a religious fanatic. There’s no point in talking. Even now she thinks God is going to save her.
Actually, God is going to save her. Suddenly, the garage is swarming with police.
Don Giovanni reaches for his gun, but finds he’s holding a mushy handful of groatmeal. “OK,” he says, raising his hands. “I know the better part of valor. Get me a lawyer.”
The police leader steps forward, shaking his head. “We’re not regular troops,” he says. “Mickey Riley, Skarsian Secret Operations.”
“Fuck me,” says Giovanni, “This ain’t treason. We ain’t terrorists! We’re businessmen.”
Mickey smiles at him, a warm, incongruous smile. “You’re IndWorld businessmen. You don’t just come into the Domha’vei without knowing the rules.”
“The rules?” This is sounding less like a police raid and more like a rival gang shakedown.
“The Gyre trade is strictly controlled, and comes from only one source.”
Giovanni isn’t completely stupid. “The government. That’s how it gets out of them protected forests.”
“Don Giovanni, you’re going to take a message back to the Ennead to stay the fuck out of the Domha’vei. If they want Gyre for their own turf, they need to contact the big boss here, a man named Donovan Chase. Until I hear back from you, this pack of idiots will be rotting in a Skarsian dungeon so foul it makes a Volparnian urinal look like a summer garden. I take no responsibility for returning them undamaged.”
Don Giovanni is aghast. He turns to the mole and says, “Do you really think your god is smiling on this, little girl?”
Cara the Arrow snorts and points at Mickey. “He’s my god.”
Cara is tough as the nails on a dobergator’s collar, says Cillian approvingly. She’s come through for us more than once. Did you sense that when you healed her, Ailann?
Ailann shakes his head. I think that I and I did. All I saw was a little girl with a broken heart.
I and I has plans for her, says Davy. He wants one of the seedlings to choose her. He says she understands loyalty.
What seedlings?
The ones that have been growing on the side of Starbright Mountain since Tara had it made into a national park.
Jamey jumps out of his seat. His face is glowing with excitement.
I don’t know what to think. We have seedlings. Why weren’t we told of this before now?
We’d probably better look at that, says Ailann. We’d probably better take Tara.
How do you think she’ll react?
It’ll be fine, says Cuinn. Tara is good at absorbing information and adapting flexibly to circumstance. The problem is really that she gets bored. We have to keep thinking of new ways to amuse her.
Four thousand years, says Tarlach. That’s a lot of branches.
We can improvise, says Hurley. Her dreams are rich, imaginative and perverse.
Besides, says Cuinn, we can always fall back on science.
Tara sees him standing in the hallway in front of a restricted area. He’s a small man, wearing a lab coat that’s slightly too big for him, handsome in a goofy sort of way, with a lopsided smile that kind of reminds her of Daniel. He also reminds her of Edom: it’s the glasses. Not that his glasses are anything like Edom’s – Edom wore thin, metallic frames; this man’s frames are thick and black. It’s just that in both cases, it’s an affectation. Why not have genework to fix their eyes?
How did he get past security, anyway?
He sticks his right hand out to shake. “Cuinn Cleary,” he says. “I’m a scientist. I want a job.”
“We aren’t hiring right now,” says Tara. “You can put in an application with human resources.”
“Give me five minutes of your time. Five minutes, and you’ll see why you want to hire me.”
Tara knows the wise thing to do is to throw him out. But there’s something about him, a natural sweetness. She can’t imagine him being up to anything nefarious. “Five minutes.”
“I want to talk to you about alchemy, see?” Tara raises an eyebrow. “I’ve been studying wormhole theory. Now we’ve known about wormholes for a more than a thousand years, right? Wormhole theory is why the jump drives work. We’ve actually got a really good map of the galaxy in terms of good and bad places to put wormholes. The Domha’vei is a really good place. That’s why it was one of the first places to get colonized. It’s really easy to get here. But you know all that.”
“Anyway, you can’t really understand the reason why unless you do some calculations in multi-dimensional space. Now if you look at these,” Cuinn hands her a mathpad full of calculations that are completely incomprehensible to her, “it predicts the geography of spacetime. And it shows that spacetime here in the Domha’vei is really, really thin. In fact, thin enough for holes to poke through.”
“OK, let’s change perspective. We’ve also predicted for years that there have got to be other universes, right? Well these calculations,” he pulls up another screen, “show that the universe right next door to us ought to be a transpose universe. That means the universal laws get reversed. At least some of them do. Most importantly, this one, e=mc2. In layman’s terms, it means that it takes a lot of energy to make matter. Well, that isn’t quite true. It really means that mass and energy are the same thing. But it does predict that atomic bombs are very bad. We also have entropy, which means that systems tend towards dispersion.”
“But according to these calculations,” he pulls up another screen, “in the next universe, the equation will be m=ec2. In other words, it takes a lot of matter to make energy. Well, that isn’t quite true either, because c isn’t the same constant. The speed of light is different. Well, actually, it isn’t quite light. I’m oversimplifying because, you know, bosons and stuff, but I’ve only got five minutes. I can’t even touch on the theories of transpose particle decay. Even the gravitons are weird, which makes that universe sort of bendy.”
“Mr. Cleary, you are aware that this is a biopharmacological facility?” She’d have him thrown out as a madman – except what he’s saying sounds like the animated cartoon version of what Clive has been trying to explain for months.
“Bear with me. I’m going to bring it home. The point is that the kind of energy there makes it really easy to create matter. And in that universe, thermodynamics are screwed up, too. Which makes the energy stick together instead of equilibrate, which has some pretty interesting implications for the development of consciousness independent from attachment to a physical structure. But it’s different energy from the kind you find in this universe. You can’t detect it unless you look for it. But it can be used. It can be transformed. And this is the place to do it because it’s leaking into the center of Dolparessa. But then I got to thinking. Cuinn, I thought, someone must’ve thought of this before you. We’ve had all this theory since the 22nd century CE. Although maybe five people in the Domha’vei still understand it, since they’re pretty much encouraged to take technology for granted, and they’re not allowed to be chipped, and a lot of them can’t even read. But that wasn’t always true. And then I thought, duh! Where is the power in the power grid coming from? Nobody knows because of those darn crystals. They’re so unstable, you can’t even study them. Not that you could anyway, since they’re all hidden, so they can’t be sabotaged. But I’ve seen the early work done by Brezynski before his lab exploded. Wow, have you ever read some of the conspiracy theories about that? Anyway, he didn’t get very far. Use an electron microscope, and poof! Well, it’s more like kapoppa kaboom, but you get the point. But I started thinking. Cuinn, I thought, what if they’re matter from that other universe? And I did all these equations,” he pulls up another screen, “that predict exactly what seems to be the case – it’s really unstable, but doesn’t produce as much energy as you might expect when it decays.”
“OK, I said I was going to talk about alchemy. It’s another thing that has been possible – has been done for years. Basically, everything is made of a handful of particles. It’s a matter of rearranging them. We make unstable heavy elements all the time. But it takes a lot of energy. Turning lead into gold isn’t practical. It costs a lot more than just buying the gold. Although, actually, it’s harder to turn gold into lead, but who would want to do that?”
“I retract that. It isn’t practical unless you have a limitless source of energy. Or a kind of energy which produces enough stuff to make it worth the trouble. Now turning lead into gold is actually pretty simple. One element to another. It’s straightforward. One compound to another gets more difficult. And then you start dealing with organic stuff. Have you ever thought about how complicated a leaf is? Or a feather? Fabricating something like that is extraordinarily complicated. The problem isn’t just getting the stuff, but the amount of information it takes to put it together.”
“I’m out of time. Can I get more time? I’m just getting to the trees.”
Tara nods. She wants him to get to the trees. The joke has to have a punch line.
“Now even if we had this magic energy, human beings couldn’t do alchemy because it requires them to perceive things that their senses just can’t handle. They’d need a ton of tech to control the process. But trees are different. Trees sense all sorts of things, and without sensory organs like eyes and ears. They sense chemicals. They communicate through chemicals – one tree will warn a grove of an insect attack, and the others start producing pesticides. They communicate to humans through chemicals too – ask any ayahuasca shaman. Did you know that harmaline was also known as telepathine? Plants are natural alchemists.”
“Think about it. What’s the most prevalent indigenous form of life sitting on top of this really thin piece of spacetime? Trees! The proof of all this is the nutrient bump under every nau’gsh. The trees are alchemically producing their own nutrition. And the 4th Matriarch figured it out, but she encouraged people to get stupid so she could keep control. But the people on Earth aren’t that stupid, which means they probably used the same logic I did, and know that we’re sitting on a goldmine. A goldmine the size of a universe. More than that, because of the way those crystals react to plain ol’ garden variety energy from our universe. Which means that we’d better figure out what’s going on, or we’re cooked. But we can’t study the crystals! So what do we do?”
“It’s easy. We just ask the trees. But first, we have to talk to them. And how do we do that? Nau’gshtamine. There. I’m done.”
Tara stands there for a moment, dumbfounded. Then she says, “Welcome to RR-2 Labs, Mr. Cleary.”
The team Tara puts together to get to the root of the mystery is Clive, Claris and Cuinn – she calls them the three C’s. Clive’s attentions are divided. On the one hand, he’s fascinated by the physics and overwhelmed by the practical applications. On the other, his attentions are pulled by the resistance group he is forming. His eyes have never left Earth.
The tensions in the group are strange. Clive still resents Tara for dumping him. He’s not sure if he wants her back or not. It took all his self-control not to kill her when he found out about Jack. He wanted to, but in the end, he had priorities. She is still too useful to his cause. But he’s sure now that she isn’t the kind of woman he can rely upon. He’s paranoid, and he’d see betrayal around every corner.
But then again, Clive hates to lose. Maybe he should seduce her and then dump her. That would give him closure.
Claris is 100% dedicated to the work. Her people have been oppressed under the Matriarchy, and if they can figure out how the power grid works, it will buy a lot of freedom. Unfortunately, 100% of Claris is 35% of everyone else. She has very little attention span, and no head for science. She makes assertions that she can’t explain – or won’t. Tara knows that she’s still keeping secrets.
At certain moments, Claris will shoot a significant glance over to Cuinn. His eyes will widen, then he’ll shrug. And after that, Claris is in a bad mood for hours. Tara has no idea what these exchanges mean.
Tara really enjoys working with Cuinn. They have the same synergy she had with Edom. Better. Cuinn has to be the most intelligent man she’s ever met. He’s able to do complex equations in his head; he grasps the implications of any theory almost immediately. But Cuinn is more fun than Edom. Cuinn has a sense of humor.
Clive resents Cuinn more with every moment. Cuinn makes Clive feel stupid. That’s not a sensation that a natural alpha-male like Clive enjoys. Clive is used to being the smartest one in the room. Fortunately, Cuinn is a natural beta-male. He doesn’t care about dominance. He’ll smile, and joke, and smooth things over. He’ll let Clive have his way.
There are things that Tara doesn’t tell Cuinn, though. She thinks it’s best to shield him from the political secrets that have proved so dangerous to herself and Clive. So when the great blight comes, she gets him working on the antidote, but she doesn’t tell him that she’s sure it’s a bioweapon developed by CenGov. And she certainly hasn’t told him the secret Claris revealed – that the trees are sentient.
Of course, Cuinn knows that already, but he doesn’t tell Tara. He and Claris are busy keeping the secret that he’s one of the sentient trees.
One day, Claris comes into the lab and says, “Carnival this week.”
“Really?” says Tara. It takes her by surprise. Political tensions have gotten so high between CenGov and Dolparessa, and also between her moderate government, the independence arm of PLANT, and Guinnebar’s reactionary followers. She wants Earth to leave them alone. PLANT wants to secede from the Matriarchy. Guinnebar thinks they should fight – now. Tara is certain that in the long run, Jack is right, but they can’t afford to secede. They’d be crushed. If only they could figure out the secrets of the crystals, they’d have a wedge.
In the midst of this mess, Carnival seems incongruous. But she thinks about it. They really need a break.
Clive demurs. Clive is no fun at all. So she goes with Cuinn and Claris. It’s quite a party, the empress going to Carnival. She has to take an army of retainers. She’d forgotten what public appearances are like. The lab is so peaceful in comparison – no other aristo would be caught dead doing anything as déclassé as research.
Claris is like a child, running from ride to ride – and half the men following her. It’s just like when they were girls at Court Emmere. Tara was always the outsider in her own home. Claris, the festival exchange, fit in perfectly. Perhaps Tara was the only one who noticed that Claris could go from flighty to sullen in two seconds flat.
Tara notices for the first time how many of the travelling entertainers and vendors have that peculiar shade of green eyes. She notices how many blissfully happy couples have one partner with that peculiar shade of blue eyes. It doesn’t quite mean what it seems – the Cu’endhari can pass those eyes on to their children. Those eyes have the second sight, though.
Tara reflects that the divorce rate on Dolparessa is remarkably low, despite the world’s reputation for being a libertine fleshpot of drugs and sex orgies. She’s always attributed it to the incredible weather.
Cuinn is also, apparently, an expert marksman, and wins an enormous stuffed ra’aabit for Tara. “The guns are rigged, though,” Cuinn whispers to her. “And the targets are weighted, so that nothing behaves like you expect.” Tara is surprised that he didn’t simply assume that from the start. Sometimes Cuinn is oddly naïve.
Tara gives the toy to a member of her retinue, the butler’s daughter, Premma.
“Let’s take a picture,” suggest Cuinn. Tara is shocked at the image on the datapad. She is smiling. When was the last time she smiled? And then she realizes that for a while, she has been holding his hand.
No. It’s all too much – Clive and Jack and Patrick. She hasn’t even filed for divorce from Patrick. The thought makes her feel ill.
She needs to be faithful for once. She needs to stay true to science. “Cuinn,” she says, “I have to be honest with you. My head is a mess right now. But when I’m ready, you’re first in line.”
It was worth the wait, says Cuinn.
That could be the title of this book, says Mickey.
How about Pseudoscience for Idiots? says Cillian. What the hell was that explanation about?
I told her I didn’t have time to explain about the bosons, says Cuinn, drooping. Spin is everything.
All right, says Driscoll, time for payback. Let’s have a story about Tommy.
That time Tara got completely nova’d on those Chalkolo Juleps, and called Tommy from Eirelantra, Cillian suggests. You don’t need a degree in six-dimensional topography to understand that one.
Six-dimensional topography and Chalkolo Juleps go together like matter and antimatter, says Hurley. When you’re done, there’s very little left of the brain.
Tara’s had one too many, and she’s lilting on the chaise, playing with the ice as she always does when she has a problem she can’t figure out. Tommy’s on the viewscreen. She hasn’t seen him in person since she was crowned Empress of Sideria, but she still keeps in touch. She needs him. He’s her best friend; he’s the one she can tell anything, the one she looks to for advice.
“Do you think I did the right thing?” she asks him. “About the marriage.”
“It’ll be fine,” Tommy reassures. “You were right about the problems with all the other choices. And Patrick seems like a really nice guy. Trustworthy, you know what I mean?”
“Clive’s pissed off. Can’t say that I blame him. But I think he’s more pissed off about not becoming Prince Consort than that I’m marrying another man. Although he does get jealous. Ever since…”
There’s a pause. “Ever since?” asks Tommy.
“Tommy, can I tell you a secret? Promise that you’ll never tell anyone?”
“Cross my heart, kid,” says Tommy.
“This last Nau’gsh Festival…well, you know Clive wouldn’t go. Said something about it being a barbarous custom, a drunken orgy. Which it kind of is, but it’s sacred. Clive just doesn’t get it.”
Tommy nods, keeping his face impassive. He knows exactly what’s coming, but he doesn’t dare let on.
“Anyway, you can probably guess what happened. I took a festival lover, and Clive found out about it. And he’s blown it all out of proportion.”
“He’s an Earther. He just doesn’t understand that a festival lover doesn’t mean anything.”
Tara is silent.
“A festival lover doesn’t mean anything, right, kiddo?”
Tara knocks back the rest of her drink and pours another. “He was the best lay I ever had,” she says.
“The guy at the Nau’gsh Festival?”
Tara leans forward conspiratorially. “Wanna know who it was?”
“Of course I want to know who it was.” Tommy knows who it was. “Dish!”
“Whirljack Riordan.”
“No!” says Tommy feigning shock.
“Yes,” slurs Tara. “I suppose it’s because he’s had practice with all those groupies.”
“I don’t think he’s like that,” says Tommy uncomfortably. “He seems like he’s got his feet on the ground, well-rooted, you know what I mean? More interested in activism than fame.”
“How well d’you know him?”
Tommy shrugs. “Well enough, I guess. Entertainers talk to each other, and we’ve got the same politics.”
“I dunno. I’ve been thinking that maybe I wanna hook up with him again, you know? But Clive would kill me if he found out. Kill both of us. Besides, now that I’m getting married, it will get too complicated.” She flops back in her seat, grinning. “That Patrick’s a hottie, don’t you think?”
“You want my honest opinion?”
“Why d’you think I called you, to lie to me? Geez, Tommy.”
“Well, I don’t think you do. I think you’re going to get mad if I say this.”
“Say it, Tommy.”
“Whirljack impresses me. He’s strong, he’s got his head on straight. He’s a man of integrity. And Patrick impresses me, too. He’s a gentleman. He’s diplomatic. He’s kind. I don’t think you could go wrong with either of them. But Clive…”
Tara starts laughing. “Clive’s a rotter.”
“You know it, kiddo. So why do you do this to yourself? For once, why don’t you pick a good apple?”
It brings down the house. Oh, but she remembered it later, says Lugh. Remember what she said?
We all say it at once: I’ve missed your objective advice.
There’s a story worth telling.
“Tommy!” she squeals, running up for a hug. She hasn’t seen him in ages, and she’s missed him so much. He’s funny and sweet and sympathetic. They share the same tastes in music and in wine. He’s cultured when she needs cultured, and crude when she needs crude.
Tommy is the perfect confident. She’s so damn comfortable around him. She knows she can count on him. So she has made a point of ignoring that he’s very sexy. An aristo as rich as Tara can’t throw a rock without hitting a pretty guy, but a real friend is like gold.
But this time, it’s different, because she knows now he’s Ashtara. She knows that he was born to protect her, to take care of her in any way possible – but also, to smooth the way for Jack, and later, for Patrick. Her expression changes suddenly – perhaps it’s best to imagine a wolf which realizes that it has been the butt of a practical joke. “I’ve missed your objective advice.”
Tommy blushes. “Aw, geez, kiddo…”
“Oh Ash, you play so many games. If only you would have told the truth.”
“I wanted to. I wanted to, so many times.”
She pulls away. “It hurt. It still hurts. I understand about the Great Silence, and Ashtheresa and all the bullshit. I get it. I don’t blame Daniel or Evan. But you…I thought you were my friend. How could you keep this from me?”
He doesn’t have an answer. I and I just wouldn’t let him tell her. Even near the end, when it was clear she was starting to figure out the truth about the nau’gsh, I and I wouldn’t let him tell. She had to figure it out herself. “I’m so sorry, kid.”
And then Tara is sorry too. She remembers Eloise saying, “He always looks right at you when he’s singing.” But Tommy never took his eyes off her. It’s Tara that couldn’t see. “All right, Tommy. We’ll both stop playing games,” she says, and shoves through her hesitation.
Tara is always surprised at how different these lovers are. Jack, for example, is a long, slow ride on a powerful spaceliner. Tommy is a hovercraft tour that makes short, frequent hops between islands. Each island is different. One is an amusement park, one a shopping hall, one an opium den. Tommy is a tour guide who knows everything about all these places, and where to get big, cheap drinks, and enough jokes to keep you laughing.
The last hop is supposed to end in the shower. She and Patrick are giving a dinner party for several important ambassadors. They can’t be that important; she can’t seem to remember who they are.
She’s supposed to be getting clean, but this is the dirtiest shower of her life. Tommy is showing her all kinds of interesting things to do with adjustable water flow. She hopes that by dinner, she’ll be able to walk without shaking.
“Patrick is going to need to get ready,” says Tara, reaching for a towel.
“Patrick has fucked you 147 times in the past year. I’ve only fucked you eight times. I have some catching up to do.”
“Eight times today. And how did you know that about Patrick? Did he tell you that? Is he keeping score?”
Tommy’s a little surprised. He’s forgotten that she doesn’t know how it works. How could she? “Um, no, Patrick doesn’t keep track. But I do.”
Actually, Tommy doesn’t just keep track. He’s replayed every one of those memories multiple times. He ranks them in order of preference. His favorite is the one with Cillian and the handcuffs and the riding crop. My tastes are simpler: Whirljack the second day of the Nau’gsh Festival. But I’m more likely to replay a romantic moment than a strictly erotic one.
“You see, we kinda…I don’t know how to explain this…we’ve got one human body that we all just share.”
“You can only manifest one emanation.”
“But the others don’t just go away, kid.” He points to his forehead. “They’re all in here.”
“In your mind?”
“Yeah. No. More like we’ve got ten minds in one body.”
“And they’re conscious?”
“Yeah.”
“They all watched us. They all…”
“Um, yeah. No. Not watched. Experienced.”
“Ash,” she says. “You’re Ash. You’re all the same person.”
“All the same being. Not person. We’re different people who are the same being.”
“Oh my god,” says Tara. “This is so kinky.”