For a while, there is silence.
That was a great chapter, says Cillian, except that we sound like a bunch of fucking losers.
You just don’t like it because Tarlach is stronger than you are, says Lorcan.
Stop it, says Ailann. The last thing we need is stupid fighting. You don’t know how hard it is to write. How hard it must have been for Patrick to write that.
It’s OK, I say.
Are you sure? says Ailann. I could take over for a while.
I’ll be all right.
Then why don’t you tell the story about Cillian and the microbes? Maybe that will make him shut up.
And maybe sucksows will fly, says Davy. Oh, we already did that.
Or you could tell how Ailann became Archon, says Cillian.
For Cillian to say anything positive about Ailann must mean he’s more upset than he wants us to know. But we’re all upset. We’re upset at all the ways we failed Tara. We’re upset at the way we treated Ross.
I don’t think that kind of thing could happen again, says Owen. Lugh wouldn’t let it happen.
He took care of me, says Blackjack, even when I was such a fuck-up.
Let’s hold hands and sing Kumbayah, says Lorcan. I don’t want your fucking sympathy.
Everybody stares at Lorcan. Finally, Tarlach says, I don’t know what to do. I can’t reach him.
It’s ok, says Lugh, putting his arm around Tarlach. You’ve done your best. Just don’t give up.
If I don’t do something, Lorcan is going to make another snide comment, and then Cillian really will pound the living mulch out of him. That’s exactly what Lorcan wants. He likes to provoke destruction – even his own.
All right, I say. I think we need to lighten the mood. Let’s do a chapter on things that went our way. I’ll start with the story about Cillian.
It was a ridiculous pastiche of a fleet; if not for its size, it was laughable. But it was twice the size of the CenGov and Skarsian forces combined, which meant it wasn’t funny.
The microbes had no sense of style. They were used to employing any bodies they could infect. To them, a spaceship was just another body to be infected. The ships in their fleet were ones they had taken after infecting the crews. Unfortunately, this made an alchemical attack near-impossible. All the ships were different. They’d have to be targeted one-on-one, unlike the CenGov fleet, where all the ships shared the same design philosophy.
They had no sense of style, but they certainly had a strategy. The loss of General Panic’s fleet in the War on Trees had left Sector 15 wide open. The invaders had already cut a swathe through the IndWorld Alliance. Three of the IndWorlds had completely fallen. At Erasthmus, they didn’t even bother to attack – in fact, half of their ships were incapable of it, having only the most basic defense capabilities. But all it took was a few successful invaders to spread the microbes planetside. They didn’t need to win the battles in order to win the war.
Now the bugs were headed for the Domha’vei.
The Matriarch had confounded the Domha’vei’s rival military orders by appointing a unified fleet admiral, one Cillian Whelan. There was a logic to it: no Skarsian commander would take orders from a Volparnian one, or vice versa. But nobody knew who Whelan was, or what he could do. The only thing they knew was that the Matriarch had full confidence in him.
The entire fleet was on standby, ready to mobilize. But Whelan shocked the other admirals by saying, “Nah, let’s not tip our hand. They dunno what we’ve got. This fleet never got involved in the last two wars.” Instead, he launched a patrol of twenty ships – twenty against some two thousand – with himself in command of the flagship, the recently renamed Victorious Tara.
“Only attack the small fry,” he said, “and make sure you toast ‘em. Anything that gets away, escape pods, debris, anything – think of it as spores.”
They pushed forward and fell back. Pushed forward and fell back further. “With all due respect, Sir, we’re only antagonizing them,” said Rear Admiral Naveeta.
“Veeta, sweetheart, you got a good head on those tits. I’ve got a plan, just follow orders.”
There was a moment of silence in the fleet as Naveeta counted to ten. Some of the commanders wondered if she would open fire on the flagship. But her military discipline was paramount. She could always challenge the obnoxious oaf to a duel of honor later.
“As you wish, Sir. It’s difficult to believe you’re from Dolparessa,” she said with acid sweetness. “You talk like a man of Volparnu.”
“A man of Volparnu would’ve just noticed your tits and not your brain,” said Whelan, closing communication.
Push forward and pull back again. They were getting dangerously close to Eirelantra.
Push forward and pull back again. They had crossed Eirelantra’s orbit, and now were approaching Volparnu. “What the hell is he playing at?” whispered Wing Commander Tra’aling. “We don’t want to make a stand here – the defeated microbial ships might crash into the planet.”
“Did you notice,” hissed Captain Darvina, “that he didn’t bring any Volparnian ships? Maybe there’s an ulterior motive. You know how much the new Matriarch hates Volparnians.”
“That’s callous,” said Tra’aling. “I can’t imagine…”
“I really wouldn’t mind if Volparnu were gone,” said Darvina. “Think about it. The microbes take care of the Volparnians, then we wipe out the microbes, and then send Skarsians to recolonize. The infrastructure is already built – the mineral wealth ripe for us to take.”
Of course, Cillian could hear all this chatter in the corridors. But he really didn’t give a squirrel turd what anyone thought. “Hold course,” he said.
And then the fleet started to get close to Skarsia. Naveeta and Darvina conferred on a closed channel about the possibility of mutiny. Of course, Whelan had the majority of the fleet in reserve. He must be planning an ambush. He must be ready to give the mobilization order at any minute.
Closer to Skarsia, closer. “Watch the tail end of the fleet,” he said. “Tell me when the last ship is past the orbit of Eirelantra.”
“Sir, part of the microbial fleet is breaking off. It looks like they’re turning towards Volparnu.”
“Fucking compost. How many outside of Eirelantra?”
“Around fifty, Sir. Forty-five.”
Whelan sighed. “Looks like this isn’t going to be as clean as I’d hoped. The main fleet is gonna have to do a little mop up.” He turned to face his crew on the bridge of the Tara. “OK, what you’re gonna see right now is classified, got it? If someone asks, just describe the stuff that’s gonna be seen by everyone on the newsvids.”
He raised his arms, and the ship was engulfed in blue radiance.
The microbes had been waiting for this. They knew who the real enemy was, from the destruction of their scout. They had been playing a game too, hoping to draw him out. They fired everything they had at the mothman.
But Cillian’s a tough-ass, and while they were attacking I and I, they weren’t noticing the reconfiguration of the nodes in the power grid. A network of thousands upon thousands of crystals configured to supply energy to an entire system. Thousands upon thousands of crystals which, for a moment, stopped their normal transmission, and instead sent out a focused particle beam at a decontamination frequency.
Ten minutes later, the following message from Rear Admiral Naveeta was conveyed to the Matriarch: “1947 microbial ships incapacitated and drifting. No life signs present. 43 ships now fleeing the Domha’vei system. Request backup fleet for pursuit. Admiral Whelan rocks.”
I love that story, says Tommy.
So do I, says Cillian.
Why don’t you do Wynne next? suggests Ailann.
I’ve been avoiding it, I say, because Tara isn’t in it. But it occurs to me that Tara has never heard it. It’s probably something she’ll want to know.
She’ll love it, says Hurley. It’s so funny.
I suppose it’s amusing, in a crude sort of way, says Evan. But it’s really not the most suitable subject matter for your lyrical style.
Don’t underestimate me, I sniff. I can do comedy.
Next thing you know, he’ll want to play Hamlet, says Cillian.
Cuinn had thought of everything. And wrote each possibility down on a playing card.
Wynne has instructions to shuffle and draw, and then act.
He leafs through the cards. They all say things like, “Interrogate known Gyre dealers,” and “Check port records for CenGov transports.” Wynne shakes his head. “This isn’t luck,” he says. “These make perfect sense. All Cuinn is doing is imposing an element of randomness on a logical solution.”
Wynne decides to go out for a drink. He orders a double rhybaa with a RootRiot chaser. In the center of the bar is a holoplatform, showing some kind of sporting event. It’s MayaXtreme, a version of the Mesoamerican ballgame played under anti-grav conditions. In about 15 minutes, he’s figured out the rules, and learned a great deal about the current season from the incessant chatter of the commentators.
Someone sits next to him at the bar. “How ‘bout those Rageravens?” he asks with a winning smile.
“They’re ok,” says the newcomer. “I’m a Bendigra Tigron fan, myself.”
“Barkeep! Give this man a drink,” says Wynne. “Any Tigron fan is a friend of mine. Man, that game the other day against Dunskeene was something! That riposte off the wall right into the hole!”
“Classic, mate, classic. But that was nothing compared to Skinner’s goal against the Pride of GalCen.”
After another half an hour, Wynne’s new friend was more than a little intoxicated, and telling an interesting story about something that had happened at work. “I’m a dock worker up at Albion Port-of-Call. So we get these orders to bring down these pallets off a skimmer. It had that smell – you know that smell? That smell that it came from up north. Now you and I know that you can’t go up in the high forests without a permit. That whole area’s been off-limits for years.” He laughs. “Nature preserve my ass. It was to keep people away from the forbidden fruit. Now they say it’s to preserve the privacy of the Arya. It’s still to keep people away from them apples. So you know what’s gotta be on the pallets.”
Wynne whistles. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t say nothing. You don’t mess with people like that for no reason. But I remembered all the numbers – the serial numbers on the crates. If the police come round, I’m gonna spill. I’m not risking my job for some lowlife pushers.”
“Oh, come on! You can’t tell me you remember the numbers on the crates. No one could do that!”
“EGD-249704352-bnnki57,” he said. “So there.”
Wynne whistled. “That’s how you keep all those Tigron scores straight. Man, you should be a commentator. You know better than those morons on the viddy.”
The man sighed, holding up his glass. Wynne motioned for the bartender to fill it. “If I had your looks, I’d go for it. But I’m just an ugly mug. What can I say? Some of us get born lucky.”
The logical thing for Wynne to do would be to contact someone with government security connections – that would be Mickey – and track down where that crate had gone.
“Nope,” says Wynne.
Instead he goes out shopping. He sees a jacket in a store window – a red velvet sport coat. Now that’s snazzy. As he’s trying it on, he notices a newsviewer on the wall. It’s featuring a lifestyles story about turning old industrial lofts into trendy apartments. The picture is of the dockside area of Vasregal on Skarsia. In the background is a crate numbered “EGD-249704352-bnnki57.”
He buys the jacket.
Wynne thinks it makes sense to go to Skarsia. So he buys a ticket for Eirelantra instead.
His transport is held up by pirates. What terrible luck. It’s the same crew that was supposed to be working with Clive.
They are working with Clive. Now this is interesting. This is fun. Clive has no idea who Wynne is, of course. Wynne engineers the situation so that he is taken hostage. Cuinn’s with him on this one. Between Wynne’s improbably good luck, and Clive’s improbably bad luck, General Panic’s psychic should hit an impenetrable smokescreen of unlikeliness.
The pirates don’t get past the gravity well of Volparnu before they are intercepted by Skarsian police. Clive insinuates that he knows the Matriarch, and asks that the police captain contact her superiors.
The police captain hits Clive across the face with a nightstick. Wynne isn’t going to try his luck with this one.
Wynne notices something about her that’s weird. She’s wearing a wig. Well, all sorts of hair modifications and extensions are fashionable, but not really practical for an on-duty police officer, unless…
“Hey mate,” Wynne whispers to Clive. “You’re from Earth?”
“Why do you care?”
“I was just wondering…do you think she’s from Earth, too?”
Clive looks, and he gets it. “The wig. Look what she’s hiding.”
“A butch crop.”
Here’s what Wynne was talking about: in their effort to eliminate all sources of difference that lead to distraction and disunity, gender equality on Earth was absolute, and obvious gender displays were frowned upon. All CenGov officers shared the same close-cropped hair that Mickey wore. In contrast, Skarsian women wore their hair in long, elaborate hairstyles to accentuate gender difference. One reason why the Skarsians tolerated Volparnu – instead of having the Matriarch simply cut power and freeze them all – is that their detested chauvinism was an alternative to the unacceptable ubiquity of Earthers.
“I meant the chip,” says Clive. “Behind the ear. She’s got to be important – and ballsy. That would get more than her hair cropped, here.”
Here’s what Clive was talking about: Earth’s elite class received their data directly through microimplants. In the Domha’vei, chipping was forbidden under penalty of death. Everybody knows that unlimited data access results in a culture where people are expected to act with unlimited efficiency. Humanity and culture are sacrificed in the name of information.
Clive shakes his head. “What the hell is going on here?”
“When you raided the transport, did you take a crate numbered EGD-249704352-bnnki57?”
“We took a bunch of crates. Is it yours?”
Wynne smiles. “Nah. It’s theirs. But I bet I know what’s in it.”
“Let me guess…armaments?”
“Nope. Apples.”
“You’re crazy. CenGov wants to wipe out the…” Clive stops. He knows the truth. They really want to keep the nau’gsh out of the hands of people other than themselves. “Then they’re still doing those experiments.”
Wynne plays innocent. “Experiments?”
“Who are you?” says Clive.
“Wynne Rafferty, professional gambler. I’d shake hands, but they’re kind of tied up right now.” He lifts them, indicating the handcuffs applied by the pirates.
“Have we met before, Rafferty? You seem familiar.”
“Why would I know you? I don’t rub shoulders much with pirates. Different station on the underground, if you catch my meaning.”
“I’m not a pirate by trade. I’m a political dissident.”
“Oh, we’re not even on the same line, then. Except when we’re all taking the express.”
“The express train’s convenient sometimes, Wynne, when you have the same destination,” Clive says, slyly. “Those apples are worth a lot of money.”
Wynne looks around quickly, feigning nervousness. “I don’t know…it means going up against CenGov…”
“And I thought a gambler makes his livelihood out of taking risks.”
This is rich. Wynne’s such an operator, he’s got Clive trying to convince him that they should do the thing Wynne wants to convince Clive that they should do. “Calculated risks,” he says. “Like what are the odds of getting out of this alive?”
“Pretty low, if we don’t do something. They can’t let witnesses loose. So either they’ll dump our corpses in space, or we’ll end up in some CenGov gulag.”
“Wouldn’t they have killed us already?”
“Not if they want something.” This is great – Clive is doing his thinking for him. All he has to do is let Clive scheme, and do the opposite.
But luck intervenes in their clever plans. One of the faux-police comes back into the hold. “Which of you bumboos is Vera von Dammler?”
“I am,” says Wynne.
“You are?” She’s not amused. “I’m looking for a woman.”
“I was reassigned.” Clive looks like he’s going to swallow his beard. “You have no idea what it’s like to live on Skarsia your whole life, and have this inner need to express your masculine side. All the kids made fun of me at school. They said I was a freddiegrl and called me stud muffin.”
Even the police captain is laughing at this. “I should just blow your head off,” she says, but she can’t keep a straight face.
“I’m her,” says another one of the hostages, a steely, composed, middle-aged woman. “Took you long enough.”
“Now I will blow your head off. The fucking crates are empty.”
“What do you mean, empty?”
“I mean ‘containing nothing; not filled or occupied,’ you stupid cunt. What game are you trying to play with us?”
“I’ve been with them the whole time. I was with them on Dolparessa when they loaded them onto the transport, and I got myself taken hostage by the pirates. So ask him,” she says, glaring at Clive. “Maybe they emptied them.”
“What crates?” says Clive innocently. Clive looks about as innocent as a man dressed in black and carrying a lantern, one who just happens to be wandering through a jewelry store at three in the morning.
“Let’s talk,” says the police captain, hauling Clive to his feet. “Or rather, I’ll talk, and you’ll scream. How about that?”
When she’s gone, von Dammler smiles at Wynne. “Thanks for trying to cover for me,” she said, “even if it wasn’t very effective.”
“Chivalry is not dead,” says Wynne. “For example, I didn’t tell them that you left the contents of those crates in Vasregal.”
The uber-cool Vera von Dammler turns a bit green. In the background, Clive is howling. It’s a nice touch. “How did you know that?” she whispers.
“I’m SSOps,” he says. “My name is Mickey Riley.”
As you might well imagine, we are all busting a gut at this revelation.
“You’ve been on to us from the beginning,” she says, deflated.
“We don’t care about you. We want the prophet.”
“You do know everything! Look, you may not believe me, but the reason I dumped that fruit is because they’re using a little girl. She can’t be more than seven years old. They say a blank slate is better for the visions. But Prophetix isn’t like Gyre. It’s a hell of a lot more precise, but it hurts her.”
“You dumped the fruit?”
“Well, I sold it on the black market for a profit. A slight profit. But that was just being practical. I knew that once they found out I’d betrayed them, I’d need a whole new identity.”
“I’m prepared to offer you a job with the new products division of RootRiot. Just tell me where they’re holding that little girl.”
“What good will that do, seeing that we’re in no position now to help her?”
Wynne holds out his arms, brandishing the handcuffs. He makes a little shrug, and the steel transforms into dried leaves which scatter upon the floor.
Vera half closes her eyes, smiling bitterly. “Oh my god, you’re a tree. I should’ve guessed.”
The rest plays out like clockwork. Clive was freed – not that much the worse for wear – and the fruit confiscated. Cara the Arrow finished the job. With no way to make Prophetix, the conspirators were taken completely by surprise. That little girl, Nan-zee, is now the legal ward and protégée of Wyrd Elma.
Slickweasel Vera was a lucky find, says Wynne. If we’re talking success stories, you should write about that.
I agree, says Tarlach. I remember when Vera came to see us when she was the head of distribution at RootRiot. That was before Chase took over. She spotted that accounting problem.
Well, Vera has a legitimate job now, I say. Sort of.
Vera comes to Tara to discuss a “distribution problem” at RootRiot. Tara knows this has nothing to do with the panoply of health products aimed at the Cu’endhari. It has to do with the panoply of unhealth products aimed at humans.
“We’re making too damn much money,” she says.
“And this is a problem how?” asks Tara.
“I mean that our contraband is making too much money to launder through the legitimate business end. We’ve been doctoring the books right along, but I think we need radical surgery.”
“Can’t you take care of it?”
“Hon, I’m not a numbers gal. You need an accountant. A good accountant. A crooked accountant.”
“We have an accountant,” says Tarlach. “His name is Ross Adare.”
“Isn’t that the guy from Big Tree that bought all that land on Dumati from under CenGov’s nose? We’ve got contracts with him to produce cercrotic mulch. He’s an accountant, too?”
“And a lawyer. He’s really a genius. And honestly…” Tarlach shoots a glance at Tara, “we underutilize his skills.”
“Well, that’s a good idea then,” says Tara brightly. “Send Ross over to RR-2 to have a look at things.”
There’s a little background to understand this story. In the past, it had been pretty easy to hide income through RootRiot. It was easy because Tara was in the unique position of being the only aristo in the Domha’vei who owned a business. Business was for the merchant classes. The ruling class owned all the natural resources of the worlds of the Domha’vei, and lived by selling the rights to mine or farm. There was no accountability – no one had the right to question how much money an aristo was making. It would be vulgar. So the money made by the contraband products line of RootRiot was written off as investment money supplied by Tara.
But both product lines of RootRiot were doing spectacularly well, and that Tara was sinking in so much investment cash was becoming more and more implausible.
“Cooking the books won’t work,” says Ross. “But there’s a simple solution. Start another business. Tara could pour investment money into that for years.”
“I think you’re missing a vital point,” says Vera. “We don’t actually want to spend that money. We just want to hide it.”
“Well, the new business has to be a spectacular success from the start.”
“That’s a simple solution,” says Vera dryly. “If I had simple solutions like that, I wouldn’t be working for RootRiot.”
“You’re not working for RootRiot. You’re working for Skarsian Secret Ops.”
Vera raises an eyebrow. “Just how deep are you in, Mr. Adare? Do you know who you’re dealing with? Cooking the books or starting a shady business is one thing, but maybe there are some places you don’t want to go.”
“Ms. Von Dammler, I assure you that when it comes to places you don’t want to go, I’ve had the grand tour,” says Ross. Slickweasel Vera steps slightly backwards. She thought he looked classy, legit, but now she sees there’s something dark about him, and it’s a little scary.
Slickweasel Vera steps slightly forward. She didn’t get this far in life by being afraid of shadows. “So what’s your great plan, golden boy?”
“RR-2 is sitting on a goldmine – a patent it’s held for years and never exploited, probably because it doesn’t fit with the rest of its product lines. The javamelon.”
Vera breaks out laughing. “You’ve got to be joking.”
Ross is not joking. The javamelon has a limited popularity in areas where drought and famine are common, but it’s never had its full potential exploited. In fact, it’s far more common in the IndWorlds, which lack a perfect agricultural planet like Dolparessa.
Ross knows the key to success in the Domha’vei is not the javamelon’s practicality. It’s to position it as a luxury branded product. And to appeal to the greatly untapped Cu’endhari consumer.
Vera is promoted to president of the new company, and Ross hands her a marketing plan. Soon, No Beans About It is everywhere, selling frothy coffee-free cappuccinos and freshly cooked dough-notnuts. Being cognizant of Terran history, he knows the power of franchises, and opens outlets in spaceports and casinos. He also lands a few brilliant endorsement deals – trendy artist Driscoll Gannon and talk show host Tarlach Tadgh, whose personal tragedy has translated into a small personal fortune.
Ross doesn’t resent Tarlach for unintentionally profiting from his loss. Ross is a businessman. If anything, Ross resents Tarlach for turning his shame and pain into a series of platitudes and public service announcements. But he has to admit that it does seem to be doing some good.
There’s only one small glitch in Ross’ design: the campaign featuring Whirljack Riordan has to be put on hold. Riordan’s agent says prior commitments. Everyone knows this means Whirljack has issues. He’s having a celebrity meltdown. People say it’s Gyre. They say it’s Black Opium-27.
Ross knows that the real issue is that Jack’s trunk has been split down the middle by a terrorist bombing, so he cuts Whirljack some slack.
Let’s put that one off for now, I say. What next?
Owen has a suggestion. How about what happened when Hurley went to the High Council?
I agree, says Dermot, because so far we haven’t told any stories about Hurley.
In all fairness, Hurley hasn’t had a chance to be in many stories, I say. He’s relatively new.
Dermot hasn’t had a chance to be in any, says Cuinn.
Only one, says Dermot. The denouement. We’ll get there.
Lorcan laughs. Owen only wants you to tell that story because Lugh is in it. Talk about twincest.
Strictly speaking, says Dermot, it isn’t twincest. It’s bromance.
We aren’t perverts, says Owen. Not like some people.
Why the hell not? says Tommy.
“Her Most Sublime and Holy Eminence the Matriarch, and Prince Consort Hurley O’Niall,” the herald announces.
Today’s meeting is an Open Council. The people are allowed access to approach their rulers with petitions and suggestions. Tara thinks it will be good for morale. Even though the clean-up is done, and life seems to be back to normal, Eirelantra is still battle-shocked after being occupied by enemies for five days.
Of course, it’s a security nightmare, especially considering the recent attack. Mickey has done all sorts of fancy things to reassure the police. But Tara’s real security isn’t Mickey at all. It’s Hurley.
Hurley is a psionic. Hurley can see into your dreams.
Every petitioner is a bag full of secrets, and almost every secret, which seems monumental to the person who hides it, is insignificant to everyone else. The first man, who talks about the damage to his business – he’s dreaming about his mistress. There’s a connection that Hurley can sense through the haze of symbols. It isn’t as clear as telepathy. But it’s also impossible to finesse through careful thought control. The man’s mistress is a demanding woman, and the loss of business means he can’t buy her what she wants. He’s afraid he’ll lose her. And in a way, he wants to lose her because he sees that she is worthless. And in a way he likes to be used.
Hurley smiles. He’s always on the verge of laughing. He’s also always on the verge of crying. That’s what you get when you open a bag full of secrets. That’s what Pandora found out.
There’s a lull in the petitions due to a technical matter. Hurley gets bored and starts to look around the council. There’s Battlequeen Escharton. Whoa. He’d never thought of an egg topper in quite that way. He feels like he needs to scrub his brain with an antimatter toothbrush after that one.
There’s Clive. Clive’s dreams are nightmares. Hurley sees that Clive is frozen because it is the only way he has of preserving the one little piece of himself that is still human. Hurley looks through the layers of scars and understands that war with Earth is inevitable.
There’s the butler’s daughter, Premma. Premma is dreaming of a ballerina queen who saves the universe with her rainbow power. Looking at Premma’s dreams is a very pleasant exercise, for a while. Then it’s a bit nauseating, like eating a dinner of sugar cubes soaked in maple syrup. Hurley isn’t sure how Ashpremma can stand it. But then again, Ashpremma is probably baffled about how Ashtara can cope with Tara’s love of thorns.
There’s Wyrd Elma. Hieronymus Bosch would’ve killed for a look at Elma’s dreams. She winks at Hurley. She takes so much Gyre that she’s more omniscient than I and I – if we grant that the concept of “more omniscient” isn’t a complete violation of language. Unfortunately, she’s almost always so gyred that she’s completely incoherent, and she has a bizarre sense of humor, and babbles on in mysterious couplets like the Delphic Oracle. She’d be completely useless, if she weren’t so useful.
There’s an old woman in the back who isn’t an old woman. Hurley doesn’t need to look at her dreams to know this. Like all of us, he can look directly into her metabolism and see that she’s at least thirty years younger than she appears. She’s disguised.
It’s a good thing that Hurley doesn’t need to look into her dreams, because she doesn’t have any.
Hurley sends a text to Tara’s datapad. “The woman in the back row, sixth from the pillar, is a telepath,” it reads.
There is an intermission for lunch. The woman exits. She leaves something attached to the bottom of her seat. It isn’t a bomb, or anything so obvious. Hurley would see that immediately – but Mickey’s agents would take care of that as well. After the invasion fiasco, there’s no way any sort of bomb or other weapon is getting past them.
It’s just a piece of tape with a tiny crystal attached. A Skarsium crystal.
Hurley guesses that she knows he is watching her. He caught her watching him. And apparently she is smart enough to have a Plan B. The crystal will boost her signal so she won’t have to be here. The crystal will boost her signal so that she can watch without being watched.
There’s only one person who would know to use Skarsium like that, only one person who had access to Skarsium, the same person behind the attack on Eirelantra.
Molly.
After lunch, the council reconvenes. “Her Most Sublime and Holy Eminence the Matriarch, and Prince Consort Owen Carrick,” the herald announces.
“Two in one day!” Battlequeen Escharton whispers.
Wyrd Elma laughs her weird laugh, and holds up her ticket for the pool.
Tenzain Merkht hits his forehead with his fist. “It. Isn’t. Fair.”
But the interesting stuff isn’t happening in the council anymore. Molly is in the commissary. She’s pretending to read a newspad, but she’s really watching Owen. She’s enjoying the irony. She will never forgive Owen for what he did to Traeger. Later, when Molly is interrogated, we’ll learn that when the Atlas Tree was attacked, Owen’s branch was specifically targeted. What happened to Whirljack was just collateral damage.
Everything that happened to Owen afterward was Molly’s doing. But I don’t want to get into that now. This is the chapter on things that went our way.
Molly has never seen Lugh before. There’s only been one public picture of Lugh – the holo included with the disclosure. Because of the retinal scan, he wasn’t wearing his trademark shades. And technically speaking, he’s a mining engineer, like Owen. But he’s never actually worked a day in his emanation. Also, the fact that he shares Owen’s last name is the only indication that there’s something different about him. It isn’t like Whirljack and Blackjack, who look alike and do public performances together.
No one recognizes Lugh as Ashtara. And why would they? Ashtara is sitting right next to Tara in the council chambers, in the person of Prince Consort Owen Carrick.
Molly barely notices the handsome man two tables down, the one who keeps his shades on even when eating a dough-notnut. It would be easy for Lugh to apprehend her now. Clive said that she was one of the motivating forces behind the attack on the station. But is Clive to be trusted? During the coup, Clive betrayed Tara. But during the takeover, he helped her.
Cillian would just as soon kill Clive. But Lugh thinks about what Hurley saw. Clive is dark and complicated and very sad. Also, Clive lost Tara, and Lugh can’t imagine how awful that would be. Clive could very well be telling the truth. But Clive could also be lying. Still, if they take Molly into custody, the truth will come out. She’s clearly spying, which means she’s up to something.
We’re not going to apprehend her, says Cillian. We’re going to fucking kill her.
Lugh also remembers that in the Skarsium mine, Molly tried to stop Traeger from torturing Tara. Lugh remembers that before she looked into Jamey’s mind, she tried to stop Guinnebar from torturing him, too. They aren’t evil, Molly and Clive. They are human, and have human flaws.
No, they’re evil, says Cillian. Why does “nice guy” have to equate to “idiot”?
I’m not a killer, mate, says Lugh. He goes to sit next to Molly. “Afternoon,” he says, smiling. “Want some javajuice?”
Molly looks up from her newspad, annoyed. “I only drink real coffee,” she says.
“If you’ve never tried it, javajuice tastes just the same. It’s got caffeine and everything.”
“I’m human,” says Molly. “Humans drink real coffee.”
It’s the tone of her voice that does it. It’s a good thing that Lugh wears shades, so Molly can’t see the tears welling up in his eyes. He knows now that he has to arrest her – as soon as he recovers from his first taste of something incomprehensible to him: hatred, pure blind hatred.
Jamey has something important to tell Tara. Really, really important. But he can’t talk. Jamey’s lips are cracked, and his tongue is swollen, but that’s not the issue. No one knows why Jamey can’t talk. He has to suffer in silence. It’s just the way he grew.
Much later, when he’s made imperial gardener, he’ll learn to use GSSL – Galactic Standard Sign Language. He’ll pick it up in about three minutes. The communication barrier remains for the several months it takes everyone else at Court Emmere to learn it.
Jamey can’t talk, but right now, Jamey has other issues. Jamey can barely stand. He’s been hanging on a cross for a fortnight in the blistering heat. Normally, this isn’t our idea of fun, but we could bear it. The problem is that the blistering heat is caused by a drought that has lasted over a month. The problem is that the Atlas Tree’s root system is still severely damaged. Despite the emergency efforts at cloud-seeding, despite Sir Kaman going each morning with a hovertanker full of water, I and I has only managed to extend a few frail leaves. It just isn’t enough. The tree is enormous, and gravity is going to pull the water downward, and the soil isn’t holding the water because it’s still loose and settling from the reconstruction of the mountain. And Jamey, hung out to dry in the most literal sense, is taking a significant amount of the tree’s resources to prevent him from becoming a bony scareavion.
Tara has an idea. “We’re going to the palace,” she says. “Have the servants prepare my bath.”
Tara’s so-called bathtub is the size of a small swimming pool. It should be – she spends enough time in it. By the time they arrive at the palace, it’s full of tepid water. “Strip,” she says. Jamey looks at her with wide eyes. “Come on. Now is not the time to be modest.”
She leaves her chambers, and returns a few minutes later with a two-liter container of RootRiot. She dumps it in the bath. “Hydroponics,” she explains. “I’ve seen your people drink this stuff, so I think this ought to work.” She’s right – just as damage to the human form has an impact on the tree, the tree’s well-being can also be affected by positive remedies.
Jamey gets into the bath. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever felt. A combination of falling into a cool pool on a hot day and a shot of morphine, maybe. He rubs the rope-burns on his wrists. He’s thankful that Guinnebar didn’t use nails, even though it would have been more appropriate – the stigma of all wood. I’m grateful too. The symbolic foreshadowing would have been tacky in its heavy-handedness.
Of course, if Guinnebar had any sense of symbolism, she could’ve used large-gauge screws and an industrial drill. She was singularly lacking in imagination, for which we are very grateful.
There’s a hesitant knock at the door. It’s Lord Danak. He enters, then turns red at the sight of a naked man in the Empress’ bath. “Excuse me, Highness, I’m sorry to interrupt…”
She laughs. “It’s all right, Danak. Jamey’s a tree.”
“Oh,” says Danak, not even sure why that’s relevant, but deciding it would be wisest to accept it and move on. “Anyway, I thought you would want to know – Baroness Christolea is here to see you.”
“Christolea?” Tara frowns, unsure of what to make of this development. An emissary from the Matriarch, perhaps? The Matriarch has not supported Tara during these troubles at all – not against CenGov, not against Guinnebar. Tara has narrowed down the possible reasons to two – the first is that she’s being tested to see if she actually has the strength to rule. It’s a logic that would hold for the Pretender’s insurgency – the Matriarch might want to see what Tara would do to protect her home ground before taking action. But it was a damn risky test to run against CenGov, considering that Dolparessa doesn’t have a space fleet of its own. No, the second possibility is far more likely – and more ugly. The Matriarch really has sold out to CenGov. She intends to allow them to eradicate the forests, and saw no problem with using Guinnebar to that end. There’s an advantage to that – she can then claim it was an internal conflict, and avoid the loss of face caused by seeming to capitulate to Earth. If that’s the case, it means war – and a war Tara isn’t likely to win. But it’s a war Tara must win, for the sake of the nau’gsh – for the Arya, and Cu’ensali, the Cu’enmerengi and Cu’enashti, but most of all, for the Atlas Tree.
Tara is completely wrong.
“Tell Christolea I’ll attend to her shortly – I’m filthy from the battle.” Danak nods and exits. Lady Madonna hovers at the door. “Come on, then. What are you waiting for?” Tara says impatiently.
Lady Madonna covers her eyes and points towards Jamey. Tara laughs. “Am I threatening your innocence, milady? Have you never seen a handsome lad in the bath?”
Jamey is paying no attention to Lady Madonna at all. He’s laying back, eyes closed, in a blissed out world of RootRiot.
“But Your Highness…”
Tara stretches out her arms.
Lady Madonna frowns, then begins the process of removing Tara’s heavy armor. Suddenly Jamey’s eyes aren’t closed. He’s sat bolt upright, staring as Tara is undressed.
“My lady!” the servant whispers.
Tara laughs, squirms out of her breeches, yanks off her shift and throws it into the corner. She strides across the room naked and gets into the shower.
Jamey feels like his bath has suddenly gotten very much hotter.
Tara makes a point of giving a good show. She’s being cruel – or maybe getting a measure of revenge. Jamey doesn’t know yet, doesn’t know that Tara knows everything.
“You’re looking much better, boy,” says Tara, exiting the shower. “Towel me.”
“Your Highness!” Lady Madonna’s face is like a cherry bomb in the process of exploding.
“Milady, why don’t you get him some suitable clothes while I see what Christolea wants? And Jamey, wait for me here.”
He’s got a lot to be thankful for. He seems safe, for the present, and very much more comfortable. He thinks of what she said on the beach, how she stood up for the Atlas Tree. All he has to do is avoid thinking about the thing with Molly.
He dresses quickly, then slides into a recliner. He closes his eyes, not sleeping, but nevertheless dreaming – of Tara in the shower.
The wind howls fiercely outside of the grand picture window. It’s a hot, sterile wind that brings no life, but tears at the branches of trees. Christolea is sitting at the piano. She stands as Tara enters. “It’s about time you knew the truth,” she says.
“Truth. What a droll concept. My friends have always lied to me, and I don’t even want to think about the lies my lovers have told. About the size of,” she pulls back the curtain which is always closed, “that tree over there.”
In her private chambers, on the other side of the palace, Jamey nearly jumps out of his chair. Of course he can hear.
She turns back to Christolea. “But I can surely rely on my enemies to tell me some measure of truth, especially when it’s unpleasant.”
Christolea snorts. “How about the destruction of our entire civilization? Is that unpleasant enough?”
Tara gestures for her to sit. “Do tell. I’m waiting to see if that statement was hyperbole for effect.”
Christolea leans forward. “Judge for yourself. The Archon is dying.”
“How can the Archon die?” asks Tara. “The Archon is, at best, a fabrication, at worst, a god. Death is not included in the definition.”
“The Archon is neither a legend nor a god. The Archon is the leader of the Arya nau’gsh. The Archon is the conduit connecting the Rip to the Skarsian power grid. No Archon, no power. And the Archon is over six thousand years old.”
“That’s very interesting,” says Tara. “That’s very interesting. And I take it there are no plans for a successor?”
“The current Archon made the pact with the 4th Matriarch. The deal was that the Archon would provide the link to the energy, she’d provide the crystals as a means of channeling the energy, and everyone would benefit. She’d get unlimited power for Skarsia, and the trees would get an enormous boost in their ability to control the weather on Dolparessa.”
Tara looks down the beach, sees the branches of her tree whipping in the wind.
“Skarsia and Dolparessa,” Christolea continues. “But the 4th Matriarch used that power to force a treaty with Volparnu, and then the 5th Matriarch used the power to put atmosphere on Sideria, and sent colonists. And it worked because the tree kept growing. The Archon is the largest tree on Dolparessa. But now, none of the others is big enough to handle the demand. We’ve been trying for months. We can’t find a replacement, and the old Archon is dying.”
“How considerate of you to warn me of our impending doom,” says Tara. “I’ll order sandwiches.”
Christolea takes a deep breath. “Don’t you understand anything, your self-centered slut? Why do you think the Matriarch sent you to that university on Earth? If anyone can save the Archon, it’s you.”
“You mean my education is of use? I knew I should’ve studied poetry.” Tara understands now that the reason the Matriarch would allow a Skarsian noble to go to Earth was exactly the same reason CenGov would permit one to study there – both sides had need for a nau’gsh specialist.
Christolea grimaces. “Oh all right,” Tara says. “Tell me what’s wrong with the tree.”
“It’s six thousand years old!”
“Yes, but trees don’t have set lifespans, only life expectancies. In a perfectly normalized climate like this, there’s no reason they have to die, well, ever. So there must be something wrong – a blight, an environmental imbalance, something.”
“What’s wrong with it is that it’s dying. It’s been in decline for several years, and we’ve tried everything we can think of. We’ve had to institute a schedule of set brownouts to ration the power we do have – and cut back the capacity of the fleet. Why do you think we need you?”
So that’s why the Matriarch has been an absentee monarch. Tara sighs exaggeratedly. She knows full well the import of what’s happening, and she’s probably more concerned about the nau’gsh than they could ever be. But she hates Christolea, she hates the Matriarch, and she’s going to be a bitch. “If I must, I’ll have a look at it. But you owe me.”
Jamey is waiting by the hovercar. He really wishes that he could speak. If he could, it would be so much easier to explain all this to Tara. Even better – he wishes he had the strength to become Whirljack. But he’s still weak, and she’ll have to figure it out on her own.
“Who’s he?” asks Christolea.
“Let him come,” says Tara. “He might have some insight into this.”
They head north, following the coastline. Despite her studies, Tara has been in the Great Northern Forests only twice, and never in the deepest woods. It’s the 4th Matriarch’s Indigenous Conservation Act, made law only after the mass destruction of species on Skarsia, made law despite the fact that transported species won’t grow in a nau’gsh forest anyway. But everyone knows the real truth – it’s meant to limit the trade in Gyre.
Scratch that. She knows it’s to prevent people from discovering, as she – and CenGov – did, that the Arya are sentient.
Scratch that. She knows it’s because the Matriarch doesn’t want anyone messing with the Archon.
About an hour down the cost, and it’s freezing. She curses herself for not heeding the reports of snow. It’s never been this cold on Dolparessa. And whatever’s wrong with the Archon, the bad weather can’t be helping.
She sees it from a distance. It’s the kind of thing that looks closer than it is because it’s so big.
It’s the kind of thing that looks much closer than it is because it’s so big. Half an hour, and they still aren’t there yet.
Finally, they’re at its foot. It’s bigger than the whole of Starbright Mountain. It makes the Atlas Tree look like a shrubbery.
All of the trees here are big. The Arya are much bigger than the Cu’endhari – the “Hina” or little nau’gsh. Now Tara really understands where the names came from. “And none of these trees will do?”
“Look around you.” Tara does. The Archon is twice again as big as any of the others.
She’s trembling. She glances at Jamey and sees that he’s trembling too. Their eyes meet, and she’s certain they’re sharing the same thought: it is a god. It is the closest that they’ll ever come to seeing a god. The lives of 24 billion people depend on this amazing being.
Jamey wraps his arms around his chest, hugging himself. I and I feels humbled.
Tara gets over it, pulls out some equipment and starts to take measurements. “This isn’t right,” she says.
“What isn’t?”
“Under natural conditions, a tree’s root growth will spread 3-6 times the diameter of the crown. But it’s fairly shallow, keeping to the oxygenated layer of the soil. It’s different for a nau’gsh, one of the distinguishing features.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, there’s also the nutrient bump mystery – that is, the nutrient layer beneath a nau’gsh tree extends significantly farther into the soil than other places on the Dolparessan surface. For years, the theory was that the nau’gsh would only grow in regions where the nutrient layer was anomalous. Then Pauly and Derminnin did the famous experiment where they measured the nutrient layer of a field and transplanted a common nau’gsh seedling. The tree didn’t die – the nutrient layer expanded as the seedling grew. On a planet where alchemy is rumored to work, that should have been a clue. That and the telltale presence of cercrotic acid.”
Christolea yawns.
“Actually, the most obvious way to identify nau’gsh, if you can’t recognize them from the bark or leaves, is that true trees are the same temperature as their surroundings, but nau’gsh are warm, slightly warmer than human body temperature. But that’s not relevant to the issue at hand.”
Christolea yawns wider.
“What I’m really referring to is the taproot. The taproot of a nau’gsh is enormous. It extends far below the nutrient layer. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s a waste of the tree’s resources – not just in its growth, but to maintain it, since oxygen has to be transported where there is none.” Tara finally notices the glazed look in Christolea’s eyes. “Here. Look at this.” She passes the scanner. “Notice anything?”
“This isn’t right,” she says. “The Archon is so much larger than the other trees, but the taproot is shorter.”
“Our research at RR-2 theorized that the taproot is reaching for a nutrient – for energy from the Rip. And if the Archon is supposed to be conducting energy from the Rip into the power grid, that small taproot is a big problem. But there is something we can try as an intervention. Tara pulls a tarp away from the back of the hovercraft. “My secret weapon. RootRiot.”
Jamey grins. It’s brilliant. RootRiot will save the world.
But it didn’t. Because Tara is wrong again.
The Matriarch is waiting for them at the palace. Together, they monitor the Archon’s progress over the course of the next week. The RootRiot treatments seem to have no effect. This is in contrast to the RootRiot treatments brought up to the Atlas Tree each morning by Sir Kaman. Now that I and I is not wasting resources to keep Jamey alive, the tree is budding again, and Jamey’s branch has grown thicker.
“I’m calling in a favor,” says Tara. “Clive Rivers owes me. And he’s got the perfect skill set – he’s a physicist, but he still has memories of being xenobiologist Edom St. John. Of course,” and then Tara looks across the table, looks straight at Jamey, “the person I could really use is Cuinn Cleary.”
Jamey’s heart drops straight into his rootlets.
“And I sent for Lady Claris.”
The Matriarch is also looking directly at Jamey. “The Cu’endhari should know their place and stay right out of this.”
“But why?” asks Tara. “If they can help…”
The Matriarch shakes her head scornfully. “The little nau’gsh are lesser life forms. Merely imitative. I can’t possibly imagine how those vacuous sprites and dryads could be of any assistance. They should obey their betters and keep out of the way.”
Jamey’s jaw is clenching. But from the doorway behind him comes a familiar voice: it’s Claris, who came in with Clive. “You see what we’ve had to deal with all of these years?” she says. “The Arya barely tolerate our existence, and if we disobey, they threaten to sabotage our weather and soil conditions.”
“Interesting tactic,” says Tara, looking at the Matriarch. “I wonder where they learned it?”
“But ever since the Archon has been dying, we’ve dared to assert ourselves. And now it’s time to throw off the Arya yoke forever.”
The Matriarch claps. “What bravura,” she says. “Do you think it will keep you warm?”
“We know what the problem is,” says Claris. “And while the current Archon can’t be saved, we do have a plan. In return, the Cu’endhari want a place on the High Council.”
The Matriarch is incredulous. “Not even the Archon has a place on the High Council.”
“The Archon isn’t the most articulate being in the galaxy, despite being a so-called higher life form,” says Claris. “Leave the Arya to their lofty meditations; we lower life forms will get down and dirty in the political world.”
Tara is grinning. “And I take it you’ll be that councilor?”
“Of course. I’m our people’s natural leader.”
“Well, I was just thinking that it might be good, perhaps, to choose someone a bit more…useful…say, someone who is capable of defending this planet from a CenGov battle fleet.”
Claris sneers and points at Jamey. “Him? The current Archon would make a more eloquent diplomat, don’t you think?”
“Oh, come on, Claris,” says Tara, smiling, but her eyes don’t smile at all. And then her words turn cold, stone cold, like a chainsaw blade cutting through an ice floe. “We all know that Patrick is a better diplomat than you. And that the natural leader of your people is Whirljack.”
There is complete and utter silence; it is broken by the barbed wire of Wyrd Elma’s laughter. The Matriarch looks furious, Clive looks astonished, and Jamey looks like he wants the ground to open up and swallow him, roots, leaves and branches.
But Claris smirks. “Took you long enough to get it, you stupid bitch. Fair enough – we’ll have two council seats – one for the Cu’enashti and one for the Cu’enmerengi.”
“Done,” says Tara. “What’s your plan?”
“Now wait a minute,” the Matriarch sputters.
“You really aren’t in a position to say no,” says Tara. “We’re all sliding into hell pretty damn quickly. I think two council seats aren’t a bad price to keep your throne – and, for that matter, stop doomsday.”
“The problem,” says Clive, “is that these trees really weren’t designed to be power conduits. They opportunistically evolved to draw upon the nul-energy in the same way they draw minerals and water. In certain ways, the nul-energy acts a lot like radio waves. Now imagine, if you will, one hugely thick and long copper wire drawing current. What will happen?”
The Matriarch, Christolea and Tara stare at him blankly. Tara feels a fool, but physics were never her strong point. But Jamey grabs a touchpad and fumbles with it. He isn’t exactly a trained typist. He pushes it to the center of the table. It reads
“Cuinn says: skin effect.”
“Very good,” says Clive. “Wait, he’s Cuinn, too?”
“What the fuck is skin effect?” says Tara.
“Internal impedance. High frequencies tend to travel on the surface of a wire, which means they’ll be transmitted with less power than the low frequencies in something very thick and long, like the Archon. It’s a bad design, and over time, the resistance in the trunk has been causing the roots to die back. So we have a new design,” says Clive. He pushes his pad across the table. “We use a grove. Instead of one big tree, we’ll use a half-dozen smaller ones. It will solve your problem of not having a tree large enough, it will solve their problem of shorting out at the roots, and it will also be a long term solution, for whenever the power grid needs to grow, we can hook another tree into the circuit.” Clive looks so much like a felinoid who swallowed a bloobird that we can almost see the scaly feathers stuck in his teeth.
There’s only one problem: they’re wrong again.
Back to the deep woods. This time, it’s so cold they’re all bundled in parkas, and they’re still shivering. Tara notices that the Arya needles are starting to droop, a bit brown at the ends. “We have to move. Conifers can take the cold better, but once the damage starts, they don’t recover as well. This whole forest could die.”
“They’re not true conifers, though,” says Claris. “Are you sure they’ll react the same?”
“No,” says Tara. “Since the climate on Dolparessa has always been perfect, we’ve never seen the nau’gsh under stress. So maybe they’ll be fine. Maybe it’s already too late. Why don’t you ask them?”
“How exactly did the 4th Matriarch establish contact?” asks Clive. “I doubt she wandered into the forest and said ‘Take me to your leader.’”
Tara pulls down an apple and hands it to Clive.
“That’s right,” says Claris. “The nau’gshtamine amide alpha produced by the Arya induces a state of consciousness which allows a limited psionic communication between humans and nau’gsh. Gyre amplifies that, so that humans – with the right genetics – actually start to perceive time and space in the way the Arya do.”
“The Arya made the first move,” says the Matriarch. “The 4th Matriarch’s original plan was to cut down the forests to make room for more human habitation. The Archon made a counter-proposal where he’d provide the power to expand human habitation if the forests were declared off-limits and the secret of the Arya kept.”
Clive is puzzled. “But all the nau’gsh produce some form of nau’gshtamine, even though they’re very different species. And it doesn’t all have the prophecy effect. Why is that?”
“Damned if I know,” laughs Claris. “But my apples are bad. Don’t eat them. Cu’enmerengi don’t really have a need for that sort of communication, anyway, since we can just talk to you.”
“But the Cu’enashti do,” says Tara. “The difference in the chemical formula of the nau’gshtamine derivative is biologically keyed to their mate.”
Claris gapes. So does Jamey. “How do you know that?”
“The serpent tempted me, and I ate the forbidden fruit. Or rather, I used it as a replacement for the nau’gshtamine alpha in a batch of Gyre. It was an educational experience.”
“Well.” It’s all the Matriarch says, but it hangs in the air like the toll of a funeral bell. She looks from Tara to Jamey and back to Tara. “You would do well to remember that Ashtara cannot leave Dolparessa.”
Suddenly everyone understands the stakes. “But Mickey did,” Clive blurts out.
“You know about that?” asks Tara.
“From the AI at RR-2. But Claris made me promise not to tell you.”
“Yes,” says Tara, glaring at Claris. “Mickey lived on Dalgherdia, and so did Tommy, and Patrick got as far as Eirelantra.”
“Wait,” says Clive. “TOMMY? Tommy is a tree?”
“Eirelantra nearly killed Patrick,” says the Matriarch. “And you wanted him to go to Earth.”
“You set me up.”
“The catalogs,” says Clive, boggled. “The elegant Santriss Silver Birch.”
“Your aim was to keep me away from Ashtara,” Tara accuses.
Wyrd Elma laughs.
Tara turns to her, hands on hips. “All right. Say it. You’ve been waiting for this occasion for over thirty years, you barmy old coot, so say it.”
“The one who loves you to the throne will raise you; twice will he fall, thrice will he die afore you claim the Staff.”
“Daniel fell and Daniel died. Sloane died. Mickey died. Then the whole damn Atlas Tree fell.”
And then Clive starts laughing. “You mean he’s Daniel, and he’s Sloane. I never had a fucking chance. I never had a fucking goddamn chance.”
“Do you honestly care?” asked Tara.
“I hate losing.”
“Can we get on with this?” says Claris. “Before the whole fucking planet falls and dies?”
“I agree,” says Christolea. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen – or imagined – such a festering stew of dirty dealings.”
“That’s why you’re weak,” said the Matriarch, “and unsuitable to replace me.”
Tara shakes her head. The Matriarch is still playing them off each other.
“I’ll finish making the circuit,” says Clive. “But one of you had better talk to those trees to let them know what we’re planning.”
The Matriarch takes the apple from Clive’s hand and bites into it. Then she approaches the old Archon and lays her hand upon it, gently. Tara has never seen her be gentle with anything before. “It knows,” says the Matriarch. “It saw its own death from the beginning.”
“For a being capable of seeing into the future, it has a decidedly poor sense of planning,” says Clive. “All right, I’ve hooked in the AI at RR-2 to monitor this. We should be able to adjust dynamically. Are you ready?”
The Matriarch nods. “In order to do this, it will be necessary to halt the flow of power for the duration of the transfer. There will be blackouts on Sideria and Volparnu, and the weather on Dolparessa will be completely unpredictable. We’ll need to establish the new Archonate as soon as possible in order to minimize the damage.”
Jamey has barely been listening. He’s stunned – all of us are stunned – at this series of revelations. Tara knows everything. The Matriarch had been playing us since the beginning. The Matriarch engineered the disasters that happened to Evan and me. Jamey is a peaceful soul, but he wishes her dead.
Then what the Matriarch just said sinks in. A minute too late. Jamey leaps to his feet, gesturing wildly.
“The end of an Aion,” says the Matriarch dramatically, brandishing her staff.
The golden fire flashing in the Staff’s embedded crystals suddenly dies.
And then the Matriarch dies. And the Archon dies. Like two little dried up husks, the hollow body of a dead wasp and a gigantic piece of driftwood.
“She was six hundred years old,” gasps Christolea, realizing what should have been painfully obvious. As if on cue, a bolt of lightning blasts a stand of trees behind her.
“Aren’t you going to ask me to say it?” says Wyrd Elma.
“Say what?”
“Ding dong, the witch is dead. I’ve been waiting for over five hundred years to say that.”
“Five hun…” Tara stops. Elma couldn’t be that old. Unless. She’s the most renowned Gyre prophetess in all of the Domha’vei. That means she must be Dolparessan. “Somebody else thought the story of Theresa and Ashtheresa was bullshit,” she says.
“Where do you think the story started?” asks Elma. “That old dead bitch made it up. She told the Cantor to use it to keep the Cu’enashti in line – and if she didn’t, the Archon would change the climate of their forests into permafrost. You didn’t know that, did you?”
Tara shakes her head, dumbfounded.
“You’re a smart girl, but you don’t know everything. You need to take more Gyre. If you had, I’ll bet you’d know the Cantor’s name by now. You don’t know the Cantor’s name, do you?”
Tara shakes her head, dumbfounded.
“Elma’ashra. Well, aren’t you going to get on with it? Saving the world, liberating our people, all that?”
“Christolea,” says Tara, “what now?”
“You take the Staff and say ‘Initiate Aion.’”
“What do you mean I take the Staff?”
“I’m weak and unsuitable,” says Christolea. “And you have a prophecy to fulfill.”
“Shit,” says Tara, grabbing it out of the dead woman’s grasp. Little dusty bits of former Matriarch tear away when she does so. It’s pretty disgusting. “Initiate Aion.”
“Unable to detect Archon,” says the Staff.
Clive jumps up. “Wait. Let me check the connections.”
“Detecting uneven energy flow,” says the AI. “The separate trees are having trouble coordinating their efforts.”
“One of them has to be the control unit. Tara, tell them that.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“How did the Matriarch do it? Eat an apple.” Clive points to the half-eaten one on the ground.
“I’m not eating that one. I’m not finishing a dead woman’s apple.”
“When did you get so squeamish?”
“Unable to establish Aion. The Archon is unstable,” says the Staff.
“What is going on, Clive?” Claris snaps.
“It’s going to take a minute, that’s all. They’re all different sizes. I’m trying to get them to take varying amounts of system load depending on what they can handle.”
“Should this pounding headache worry me?” says Tara. “Should the fact that my eyeballs are starting to feel like burning coals worry me?”
“There might be some circuit feedback,” says Clive. “A little.”
“Skin effect detected. Some of the units are too close together. Arya bark is a poor insulator,” says the AI.
“Maybe we should’ve artificially insulated them. Like a Litz wire,” says Clive. “The Arya are a bad design.”
Claris is insulted. “How can a tree be a bad design?”
“Well, it isn’t a good design. A good design would be shorter, with a thick bark. While we’re at it, if we could have more than one trunk…”
Suddenly, everyone is looking at Jamey. He shrugs, rips open the circuit regulator and sticks his hands directly onto the sparking panels.
There is a blue eruption of light, and the mothman emerges from his human cocoon.
“Archon detected. The Aion is established,” says the Staff.
Wow, says Tommy. That was really…
Long-winded, says Cillian.
If this is Tara’s story, it should end here, says Davy. But it isn’t Tara’s story anymore, is it?
It’s our story, says Dermot. And the story of a tree has to end with the fruit.
Don’t leave out the best part, says Daniel.
Just like that, it’s over, the disaster is over.
Later, Tara will discover that efficiency in the power grid has increased by some 248%. It’s attributed to two factors. The deep-rooted, multi-trunked little nau’gsh is simply a better designed conduit. And the first thing I and I did was to reconfigure the nodes in the grid.
The old Archon, never having experienced a human form, had no real idea what the energy was used for, and thus, the whole system was a morass of bloat and redundancy. The Arya were also little better than the Cu’enmerengi at alchemy. They had kept their enhanced perceptions, but had never bothered to use them for anything further than adding nutrients to the soil. Their interests were lofty; they had never studied the small, the subtle. They had never played with squirrels.
Tara, Clive, Claris, Elma and Christolea pile into the hovercraft. Seven went out, five return. Nevertheless, it’s a lovely day. Another perfect Dolparessan day.
They travel south along the shoreline, and so from a distance they can see the Atlas Tree. They can see a new trunk next to Whirljack’s. It’s hard to miss, since it’s half again as big as the mountain. It’s a bit grotesque, the tree all out of relationship to the landscape. When the other branches come, it will fill out and restore some sense of proportion.
“Is that a big log, or are you happy to see me?” says Tara.
As they draw closer, she notices a figure standing on the beach. She stops the hovercar and gets out.
The man is dark and bearded. There’s something entirely regal about him. His eyes are blue and yet fire at the same time. They are the kindest eyes she’s ever seen. Sloane’s eyes. Daniel’s eyes. Evan’s eyes. Whirljack, Mickey, Tommy, Patrick, Cuinn and Jamey’s eyes.
Ashtara’s eyes.
“I’ve been waiting all my life for you,” she says.