It’s a great transition, says Mickey, except that the story about Whirljack and Blackjack comes before the story about Owen.
Both stories branch off the incident of the attack on the Atlas Tree. Which I already related, many chapters ago.
But why not just tell them in chronological order?
Because the story about Whirljack and Blackjack will lead into the story about Chase. And the story about Chase…
The story about Chase is difficult. It is buried in a swirling fog of pain, opium and amnesia.
“Jack!” Tara hides her reactions, but never for Whirljack. We don’t mind that she’s always so glad to see him. We’re always so glad to see him, too.
We were really glad to see him this time. But.
There’s a problem.
This time is special. Tara hasn’t seen him in ages. Tara was starting to worry that she would never see him again. Like Owen. She tries not to think about that. Whirljack is someone she cannot afford to lose.
They shag enthusiastically for over an hour. “I wasn’t sure I liked your hair pulled back like that,” she says. “But it was convenient to not have it falling in my face.” She flops back on the pillow. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re usually more talkative. You seem like something heavy is on your mind.”
“I’m absolutely fine, baby,” he says, pulling her closer. “And I intend to stay that way.”
There’s a big problem.
The big problem is that the real Whirljack is chained in the basement.
Whirljack was silent for a time. For a long time. For a while, Owen’s branch was silent, too. But I and I put significant resources into regrowing it. He knew how upset Tara was about the attack. He knew how worried she was about Owen and Whirljack. As soon as it was of significant size, Lugh manifested. It wasn’t quite the answer they had hoped for, but it was an answer. I and I was satisfied with it. Lugh was outrageous, over-the-top, likeable. Tara liked him too, but it didn’t replace Owen.
Whirljack was another matter. His branch had actually taken less damage – the whole thing was still there. So there would be no loss of memory or personality traits. It was just split down the middle.
There’s a certain feeling I get when I know I and I is going to swap one of us out. It’s hard to describe. I had the feeling a number of times over the course of that year that I and I was trying to swap Jack in, but it didn’t happen. A lot of the other emanations had that same feeling.
It became clear to us that I and I was worried. I and I doesn’t worry. When the Atlas Tree fell, He was silent. When Tara feigned her death, He was silent. But this time, He seemed to be in considerable distress. Something was terribly wrong.
And then He finally manifested Whirljack. For about two seconds, we were relieved, even though we had a splitting headache. It was so bad, we were seeing double.
Then we realized that we were seeing double because we were seeing through two sets of eyes. Whirljack was looking at himself. Except it wasn’t quite Whirljack. He slumped a little. He wore a worn leather jacket. His long hair was untidily pulled back out of his eyes.
It was more than that, though. Something about him was just a bit off. Our immediate response was to feel that it had gone wrong, that it was a terrible mistake, that we had to change back into the mothman and start over.
Now that was a terrible mistake. Blackjack is paranoid as it is. “You all want to get rid me,” he said.
Whirljack was completely disoriented. His body had been so strong, so powerful; he could always feel the connection between his feet and the roots extending into the soil, the deep taproot down toward the source of energy at the center of Dolparessa. Now it was all so distant. He looked at Blackjack, but it didn’t quite register. Is that me? he wondered.
And then Blackjack jumped him, knocking him to the ground.
When we recovered from the shock, we started screaming at Blackjack to stop doing that. Whirljack was really getting hurt, and he didn’t seem to have the power to repair it.
And then we felt a decisive groundswell of disapproval. I and I was going to take care of it. I felt a little tingling shove at the back of my heart that I knew meant I was being swapped in.
Nothing happened.
I tried to concentrate on manifesting. I might as well have sat there, saying, “Arm, move.”
And then I stopped trying, because we could all feel I and I giving a hard, desperate shove to Cillian. Time to bring out the big guns.
“Fuck you! Fuck all of you!” Blackjack shouted.
“Why?” said Whirljack. “Why do you hate me?”
“You’re the one! You’re the one who wants to destroy me. Because…”
We all realized it at the same time. A cold spike, like an ice-bladed Volparnian wind whipped through us.
“Because there are two of us, but there’s only one Tara.”
For over a week, Blackjack keeps Whirljack prisoner. Whirljack is tired, hungry, sick, and injured. He also doesn’t seem to be able to fix any of that, even though the Atlas Tree is perfectly healthy. Well, the roots are perfectly healthy. Jack’s branch is dropping leaves at an alarming rate.
Blackjack tells Tara he had come back because his career had been on hold for too long. It is time to record a new album. He’s going to take it in a new direction. Harder. Darker.
It’s actually quite good. The media execs are excited. Whirljack had always leaned towards the softer, more romantic kind of thing, but this is edgy. It is a great mid-career re-invention.
But the lyrics are unsettling to Tara. Whirljack had done his fair share of depressing love songs, but there is something about this new batch which is full of pain and desperation. Jack had suffered, but there was always a dignity to it. Something about his growling delivery makes this new Jack seem a bit like a cornered dog.
“Jack, maybe we should talk,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s maybe too much to expect that you could take damage like that and come out perfectly fine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me! Just shut the fuck up!”
Tara looks like she’s been punched in the face. Blackjack can’t take it; it’s like a gut punch back. He runs from the room, slamming the door behind him. He slumps against the wall, shaking.
He has to kill Whirljack. He has to do it before Tara finds out the truth, or it is all over.
Of course, somebody else might tell her. So Blackjack would simply have to stay in control of the human body. That didn’t seem to be a problem. Nobody seemed to be getting in or out as it was. He could just stay playing Jack forever.
She’s going to start missing Patrick! Ailann yells. She’s going to need me if the power grid needs recalibration.
I can be all the man she needs, Blackjack mutters. I can figure out the stupid power grid.
I can’t, says Whirljack. At the height of my power, I couldn’t…
Shut the fuck up!
Blackjack has reached the basement level. He’s locked Whirljack in the dungeon. When Court Emmere was built, four hundred years ago, they were popular. It isn’t exactly a real dungeon, like on Volparnu or Skarsia, where they actually kept prisoners. It’s more of a decorative dungeon where one can hold that sort of party. Whirljack is manacled to the floor, but there are couches and fluffy pillows, and he can get to a bathroom. The real problem is that the room is soundproofed, and he has no food. And it shouldn’t be a problem. He should be able to transform pillows into javamelons. But he has no strength.
“I’m going to kill you,” says Blackjack.
“You don’t have the guts,” says Whirljack.
“I wouldn’t push your luck.”
“You don’t have the guts. That’s why you’re starving me. But haven’t you noticed that it’s affecting you?”
“It’s not.”
“It is. You can’t do anything. You couldn’t even change dirt to diamonds right now. You don’t even know where Tara is.”
“Actually, she’s right behind you,” Tara says. “I followed you. Stealth was never one of Jack’s notable qualities.”
“Tara!” screams Whirljack. “That isn’t me! It’s some freak caused by my injury. We have to get rid of him!”
“Fuck you! I have a right to live!”
“No, you don’t! This life is mine.”
Blackjack turns to Tara. “He just wants you all to himself.”
“I do?” Whirljack says.
“Stop it,” says Tara.
“I do? Who the hell is the one chained in the dungeon and starving? You’re the usurper here.”
“I said to stop it,” says Tara.
“What, are you taking his side? Tara, he’s evil to the root!”
“Oh, that’s low,” says Blackjack. “You can’t understand what it’s like. I never had a chance from the start. All of them are against me, all of them. The only way for me to survive is to get Whirljack out of the way.”
“And that’s why Blackjack has to be destroyed.”
“No one is destroying anyone!” Tara screams.
“I should’ve fucking killed you that first day.”
“I and I will fix this, sooner or later. He’ll get rid of you. He’ll make your side of the trunk die back.”
“Ash, don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare!”
“Tara,” says Whirljack, “You’re just not getting it.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t get it, Jack! He’s you! He didn’t just sprout up from nowhere. He’s you.”
“He is not me! He’s a freak of nature.”
“We agree on one thing – I’m not him. He hates me, and I hate him. Only one of us can have you, so we’re bound to detest each other.”
“What do you think I am, Driscoll’s statue of Daphne? You don’t own me. Do you think you can duel and award me as the prize?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” both Jacks say in unison.
“Go fuck yourselves,” says Tara, slamming the door.
“Look what you did!” they scream.
“I’m gonna get her, and drag her back,” says Blackjack.
“Oh no, you’re not,” said Whirljack, tackling him.
“What are you fucking doing, you lunatic?”
“What are you doing? Yelling at her? Manhandling her?”
“We’re gonna lose her.”
“We’ve already lost her,” says Whirljack. “I can’t seem to locate her.”
“I can’t either,” says Blackjack. “It’s been so hard to see things lately.”
18 voices and one silent man scream, YOU’VE LOST SIGHT OT TARA, YOU MORONS.
“I’ve lost sight of Tara,” says Whirljack. “Have I lost my mind? This is worse than Suibhne.”
“We gotta find her.”
“What do you mean, we?”
“I mean that two of us will have a better chance than one.”
“Do you think I trust you?”
Fucking stop reality, says Cillian. Do you two Jack-offs have a clue what just happened?
There’s no way Tara would accept any sort of pruning, says Ailann. Look how she reacted when I suggested we prune back Cillian. Even when it was a matter of life or death, she wouldn’t let Sir Kaman prune Tommy.
Blackjack, you’re so wrong about all of this, says Suibhne. You have to trust her.
“It isn’t her I don’t trust,” mutters Whirljack.
You have to stop that, says Ailann. You have to work together.
Blackjack throws himself down into a chair and buries his face in his hands. “I just want a chance,” he says.
“Will you fucking unlock this thing?”
“You’ll try to kill me.”
“Look, if you couldn’t kill me, do you think that I can kill you? We’re in a huge mess. Ailann’s right.”
Could you just concentrate on trying to find her? Tommy urges.
Blackjack unlocks the manacles. “I’m trying,” said Whirljack. “I can’t believe that I can’t even see her. I’m not at half my strength. It’s much less.”
It’s less because Blackjack is fighting him, says Davy. And he’s fighting Blackjack.
“I am not!” they say.
No, you are, says Tarlach. Each wants to be the one who finds her first.
“All right,” says Whirljack. “Let’s get on the same pad here.”
There’s a moment of silence. “She’s on a shuttle,” both blurt out in horror.
I feel like such an idiot, says Blackjack.
The problem is that you didn’t have a mirror, says Dermot.
What?
I get it, says Tarlach. When he needed to know who he was, all he could see was Whirljack. But Whirljack isn’t a reflection. He’s an entity.
Blackjack could only formulate a sense of identity in opposition to Whirljack, says Dermot.
But we’re supposed to form an identity in relation to Tara, says Whirljack.
He knows that. That’s why he tried to steal your identity.
OK, what now? I ask. We’ve reached a point again where we didn’t witness a major part of the story. Dramatic reconstruction or summary?
Well, she told Chase what happened, says Driscoll. Didn’t she?
Oh, says Chase. Is it my turn?
Almost, I say. We’re setting the stage. But we need to fill in some missing information. The next thing we know is
Tara has left Dolparessa. Whirljack and Blackjack can’t follow her. After a few days of self-recrimination and quarrelling, they come up with a plan. They record a song together to show they can get along. A week later, and the song is number one in 14 independent systems, but no Tara. Then they start to hear the rumors: the Matriarch has abdicated. The Matriarch has been kidnapped. The Matriarch has fallen back into her Gyre addiction.
It’s not about them anymore; it’s about Tara. Even Blackjack has to admit that they have a big problem that he can’t fix. They need to leave the planet, which means either an emanation that can do it on his own power, or the ability to tap into the power grid, which has been impossible for them. Full of remorse, they really wish they could turn back into I and I. And then suddenly, they do. It’s that simple. They just have to agree on it. It’s the one time when I and I is truly helpless – if His will is divided into two forms, his power is completely in their hands. Based on that, you might think that neither would be allowed to manifest again – or later, Owen and Lugh would never be given a chance. But it’s not the case. I and I works in mysterious ways.
I and I soars out over the Sea of Illusions and makes a sudden right angle, plunging up into the sky.
This isn’t at all like I thought it would be, says Blackjack. It’s warm here.
Welcome home, says Suibhne.
This is a fucking team, says Cillian. Even me and the Sublime and Holy Shithead over there are on the same team. If one of us wins, we all win.
Lugh sits down next to him. It’s ok, man. I got hurt in that blast pretty bad myself. Lost a big chunk of memory, of who I was. But I’m nothing special. We’re all wounded here.
Except Tarlach, says Driscoll. Tarlach never had one bad thing happen to him.
My job is to sort everyone else’s heads out when bad things happen to them, says Tarlach. It isn’t easy.
You ain’t gonna make me undergo analysis? says Blackjack. Somebody, gimme a beer.
In short, although we are in the midst of a crisis, things are pretty much business as usual. And then we reach the thermopause; I and I reaches down deep into his roots, deeper still into the power grid, preparing to propel himself through the crystals.
Everything blanks. Static. Ailann screaming in agony. The water coming up so fast.
We’re falling again, says Daniel.
Then, nothing.
But before we get to that point, we have to tell what happened to Tara.
Let’s see, says Chase. I’m thinking.
Jaysus H. Juniper, says Cillian, what a stoner. Tarlach, what we really need is for you to start a recovery program.
He just needs a sense of direction, says Tarlach. Give him something to do and he’s fine.
Chase leans back, staring up into the churning chaos of the infinite cosmos. She begged me for forgiveness, he says. I didn’t even know what the fuck was going on. I couldn’t remember. One minute nothing meant anything, and the next, she meant everything, and then she’s down on her knees.
You don’t have to understand, I encourage. Just let us see.
I should mention that Chase’s branch, which grew in response to the attack that created Blackjack and Lugh, grew at a very strange angle. The explosion had shifted the ground, tilting the tree forward at a precarious angle above the sea. It was as though Chase was trying to restore balance by shoving in the opposite direction. But Chase had grown directly out of the exposed roots, and was not an outgrowth of a central system of trunks, like the rest of us.
This is probably the reason for a lot of what happened. But now that Chase has grown larger, he’s fused with the main trunk. Now he can remember us, and we can remember him.
“I don’t know what to say, Ash. I never should have left you. It’s the one thing that I can’t take, when you turn against yourself. I love you. I love you! I know I should have said that before now. And I don’t just mean I love Patrick or Daniel or whoever. When I was a girl, I fell in love with a tree, and in the stupid way little girls do, I pretended you were a real person. How could I know you were a real person? Or five, or ten, or fifteen…how many is it now? I don’t care how many. I love all of you, Ash! You just never should have lied to me. Daniel should have told me the truth. Didn’t you know how much I loved the Atlas Tree? You had the tanzaku! But if you hadn’t lied to me, then I wouldn’t have any of you. Did you know that all of this would happen? Did you plan all this so I could have the branches? It doesn’t matter. Even though I loved you, I still held you to blame for all the pain I suffered on Volparnu. Even though my uncle murdered you! Even though the Matriarch was plotting against us from the start. Oh my god, I need you. Or should I say I need you, my god? This mess is all my fault. Please forgive me.”
It is the first time in twenty years that Tara has admitted to anything.
Chase shakes his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Chase,” she says. She rises and takes his hand. “I’ll explain…”
“It doesn’t matter, all right? But you can keep talking. Even if it doesn’t make sense, it makes sense.” He lies back on the bed. “Wanna hit?”
She takes the bowl from him, takes a draw. “Black Opium-27,” she says. “It’s shit. I make so much better stuff at RR-2 labs. Better for you, too. A few years back, all those lambdastroniate derivatives were trendy, but they leech calcium badly. You could tell the LS heads from their rickets. So my LS-Fortified has sixteen added vitamins and minerals.”
“Ace. Can we drop some?”
“Later. But there are other things we need to accomplish first.”
“OK. Just tell me what to do.”
“Fuck me.”
Chase considers. “Sweet Blonde Suzanna wanted that too, but I couldn’t. She said the drugs had screwed me up.”
“I’m going to bury that little croustade aux pommes so deep that they’ll need a team of archaeologists to find her.”
“What’s a croustade aux pommes?”
“A cheap tart. Look, Chase, have you noticed any difference between me and Suzanna?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Such as?”
“Um, well, the galaxy is different than a shoelace.”
“I don’t know quite what to make of that, but it’s certainly true. Anyway, the point is…oh, fuck it.” She lies beside him, sticks her hand between his thighs. She puts the pipe down. “I’ll suck on something better,” she says.
“Tara,” he whispers. “I had a weird dream.”
“Any dream is a weird dream,” she says sleepily. “You never sleep.”
“I sleep a lot,” says Chase. “In this dream, I was a tree. It felt so real.”
“Chase, I’m afraid I have news. It’s the other way round. The tree is dreaming it’s you.”
Chase considers. “I’ll accept that,” he says.
“Tarlach was right.”
“Who’s Tarlach?”
“He’s your analyst. He said that sex always straightens you out.”
“I have an analyst? What the hell happened to me?”
“You don’t remember anything?”
“Wandering down the beach, not knowing where or who I was. I remember wandering into a town and looking into a window, seeing my reflection and thinking, “Oh, I’m Donovan Chase.” I thought it would get easier after that, but it didn’t. I just had this unbearable sense that I had to find something, but I didn’t know what. So I started smoking. It took the edge off.”
“What I’m going to say probably won’t make sense right now, but I’m going to tell you what happened.”
“Everything you say makes sense, even when it doesn’t,” he says. “I found what I was looking for.” He looks surprised. “I’m happy. I never expected that.”
“You needed me, and I left you. I’ll never forgive myself for that. But worse, I let myself be counseled by evil advisors. I went to Eirelantra to get away from the situation. I only expected to be gone for a few weeks. I was hoping that by then, you would have gotten your heads on straight. But when I was there, I ran into Clive. I made the mistake of telling him what had happened.”
“He told me that he’d been talking with a few people – the Vizier, my uncle, Christolea. He said that they all had some concerns – ever since the incident with Suibhne, they’d had concerns. They didn’t think the Archon was mentally stable. He said it only made sense – the power grid was designed to work with an Arya consciousness. The mind of a Cu’enashti was much different. And Ashtara was unstable for a Cu’enashti. He had over twice as many emanations as the next largest of his kind. Sooner or later, he would go off the deep end. Although I suppose that Ashtara had already gone off the deep end, both literally and metaphorically, several times.”
“Clive said that he’d been thinking about that Arya circuit arrangement and that if the connections were arranged in parallel, and the trees were artificially insulated, it would probably work. He said that we could restart the Aion, and that without all that power running through you, you could be a normal tree. As if you could ever be a normal tree, Ash!”
“Long story short, it was a trap. Once I’d called for the end of the Aion, I was attacked by Christolea. She’d promised Clive that they’d take a more aggressive stance against CenGov. Also Clive hates you, and Molly really hates you. Why does Molly hate you so much?”
“I don’t know who Molly is.”
“What my uncle wanted was obvious. I’m just shocked that the Vizier turned against me. I ended up spending a horrible six months on the run. And Clive’s circuit was about as practical as an antimatter toilet-cleaner. There were brownouts and surges all over the system, including Skarsia. The weather was fine on Dolparessa, though. The Arya take care of their own interests.”
Chase stares at the ceiling. “Do you want to fuck again?” he asks.
Tara sighs. “I’m so glad you’re starting to act normally.”
“I don’t know who Molly is” was a good answer, Ailann says.
Well, I didn’t, says Chase. It was true.
So basically, I and I was cut off from the power grid, but He didn’t realize it because of all the drama with Whirljack and Blackjack, says Tarlach. When He tried to use it, it wasn’t there anymore, and it caused a blackout. And enough trauma to grow another branch.
Chase isn’t that branch, though, I say. We got one behind again. Chase was the branch that grew in response to the attack against the Atlas Tree. But I and I focused on regrowing Lugh’s branch, and then on Whirljack and Blackjack. No one paid any attention to Chase.
I suspect that was intentional, says Dermot. The only reason we survived the coup is that Chase was truly anonymous. If he had remembered who he was, he’d have been caught.
I’m the child of the blackout, says Lorcan. It explains a lot.
OK, Chase, keep going. Let’s go back to the beginning of your story.
Now wait, says Chase. Now you want me to tell what happened before that?
Yes. Like a flashback.
But technically speaking, says Evan, Tara’s story was a flashback. So this is like a flashback within a flashback.
S’ok, says Chase. I have flashbacks all the time.
His hands are resting on the bar, but the bar is still light years away. He knows what to do in circumstances like this. He orders another drink.
It is the only thing he knows how to do. He doesn’t need a drink. He doesn’t really care for alcohol. But as long as he drinks, he can stay at the bar. As long as he looks drunk, he probably won’t be bothered. Alcohol is legal, Black Opium-27 is not. Sparkle is not legal either, but the laws concerning Sparkle are never enforced. Sparkle is harmless. Black Opium-27 is not.
Black Opium-27 is the most powerful of the hallucinonarcotic series. If Coleridge had smoked Black Opium, “Kubla Khan” would be the length of the Odyssey. But then again, he would probably never have bothered to publish it. Black Opium-27 is very addictive.
Chase needs Black Opium-27. It is the only thing that keeps him sane.
A woman walks into the bar. She’s blonde and chesty. Underneath all that flesh is a core of steel. Chase doesn’t know her, but there’s something about her which makes the emptiness at his center start to howl. She reminds him of something. That isn’t good. He needs another hit.
“I’m looking for a few cowboys,” she says. “I’ve got myself a mission. The pay is decent.”
A man next to Chase at the bar mutters, “I don’t care how good the pay is. I’m never working for Sweet Blonde Suzanna again. That bitch is crazy.”
Chase looks up at the bartender in distant curiosity. “She takes all the jobs that no one else would touch with a decontamination suit,” he says. “If you value your life, stay the hell away from Sweet Blonde Suzanna.”
Chase smiles, a blindingly handsome smile. “I don’t value my life at all,” he says. And besides, opium is expensive.
“The job is simple. We have to pick up a package and deliver it to some friends of mine. That’s it.”
Besides Chase, Suzanna has recruited three more people: Grover, Barbie and Alex. Grover is a speed freak who gets his kicks doing the most dangerous things he can find. Barbie always needs money; no one knows why. Alex is desperately in love with Suzanna.
They all have their reasons. Chase doesn’t have a reason for anything.
“What’s in the package?” Barbie asks. She’s the only one who cares.
“I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know,” says Suzanna.
“Probably apples,” says Grover. “It’s been harder and harder to get them since the Great Reveal.”
“And who are the friends?” Barbie presses.
“Some people I knew from Earth. Clive and Molly.”
Chase feels something pricking him, like a pushpin shoved into his mind. He needs more opium.
“It’s just that you always trust the wrong people,” says Barbie.
“And what does that say about you, sweet cheeks?”
Grover’s got issues. His mom was a Skarsian battlequeen, his dad was a hero of Volparnu. It was an instant physical attraction, augmented by alcohol, and culminating in a one-night stand. The weird thing was that Grover wasn’t aborted. He was raised in a world where men were scoffed at, knowing he half-belonged in a world where women were chattel. And he was such a momma’s boy, but he totally had things to prove.
Grover loves karaoke. He considers it part of his proud ancestral heritage. It becomes a nightly ritual on this long journey to nowhere to hear Grover bellowing off key in the cargo hold on deck two. Grover says it has the best acoustics. Chase doesn’t mind. Chase just tokes up, and then Grover sounds like a distant wolf bellowing in the wind.
Grover sings “Ratatatcha Love” by the Aldebaran Bimbos. He sings the entirety of Handel’s Messiah. He sings “Love Shack.” He even knows the “Hare Hare Yukai” dance.
There’s actually one song on Grover’s karaokepad that Chase likes. He likes it even though it makes the emptiness at his center start to howl. It’s called “Nights in White Satin.”
“Turn that off,” Suzanna grumbles. “It’s the most morbid thing I’ve ever heard.”
Suzanna doesn’t do karaoke. Suzanna sings shanties in a lovely alto voice. They are songs about the dark spaces between star systems and the things that lovers do to while away the endless hours sailing a sea without the comfort of lapping waves. They are songs about the amazement of seeing the birth of a star, and the perils of an antimatter drive malfunction. They are the product of a thousand years of human history that no one in the Domha’vei knows or cares anything about.
Chase doesn’t know or care anything about it either. But what actually surprises him is that it makes him recognize how much he does know about the pre-spacefaring history of Earth.
Their contact is a Volparnian man. He’s wearing a huge, dark cloak so as not to be recognized. Grover recognizes him, though, and nearly bites off his own tongue. It’s Ta’al Erich.
The shipment is only a single box, long and thin, with a holoseal across the latch. He hands it to Suzanna. “Expect trouble,” he says. “This is damage control. A lot of powerful people are going to want it back.”
“Oh joy,” says Barbie.
“I just pray that Rivers gets it right this time, or we’ve all had it,” says Erich as he leaves. “You tell him I said that.”
“Let’s open it,” says Barbie.
“It’s sealed for a reason,” says Alex.
Suzanna’s face gets set in a certain way when she’s making a tough decision. You can see individual pieces of logic marching through the backs of her eyes, like ants. “I’m not opposed to it on principle,” she says. “But if we break that seal, we’re in trouble. But I also get the point that it would be good to figure out what we’re dealing with. So let’s go see Nikki the Rat before we do anything else. If anyone can finesse that seal, it’s Nikki.”
Chase doesn’t care. Chase just wants to get doped up and listen to “Nights in White Satin.” But he’s on watch with Suzanna again.
Watch with Suzanna is getting more and more uncomfortable, primarily because Suzanna is wearing less and less clothing. In the foggy recesses of Chase’s mind, he realizes that she’s hinting at something. She wants him to do something. Flowers. Maybe she wants flowers.
Chase also notices Alex getting more and more agitated, and that’s a bother.
“Chase,” says Suzanna, “don’t you want to make something of your life?”
“No,” says Chase.
“I realize that you’ve got one hell of a problem…”
“Opium isn’t a problem. Opium is a solution.”
Suzanna pretends to ignore him, but her voice gets sharper. “You’re not like these other bozos, Chase. You’ve got class.”
Chase considers. He isn’t like anyone else. That much is obvious. But he really doesn’t care. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“Never mind,” Suzanna sighs, but she unbuttons another button on her blouse, and does a little wiggle.
On the whole, Chase is content working with Suzanna and crew. Content for Chase means that he never runs out of Black Opium-27. He’s tried other drugs, more harmless ones, more potent ones, but nothing else will do. It isn’t so much the pleasure of the rush; it’s the combination of complete emotional numbness and a head full of kaleidoscopic cotton candy crowding out all other thoughts that does it for Chase.
He knows he needs a hit when he starts thinking like Suzanna. When he starts thinking that life should have a point to it, a purpose. Because then he starts to remember that he forgot what that purpose was. And then his soul starts to shriek within him, like a bird sucked into a turbine.
When he doesn’t have a supply, it gets worse. He starts to feel alone, disconnected, rootless. It’s like he’s falling forever into an ice-cold sea, and no matter how he reaches, there’s no one to help him, no one to touch. It’s so bad sometimes that he wants to die. But killing himself doesn’t work. He’s tried it. He just blacks out and wakes up hours later. It’s like the whole thing never happened. Except for the empty bottle of pills that had no effect, or the blood-stained razor that left no scars.
It can get even worse. He starts to feel every star in the universe poking a hole through the back of his brain. Every star in the universe, every leaf, every particle of dirt becomes a piece of red hot lead he has to carry while it burns into him. At times like this, he feels like he’d kill for a hit to make it all go away again, safe and grey and fuzzy and distant. But he can’t kill someone else any more than he can kill himself.
The irony is, of course, that if Chase did remember who and what he was, he could easily make his own Black Opium-27. But he wouldn’t even have to bother. He could just induce the high through his own imagination – like he’s doing now.
The crappy little ship is rocked by a sudden burst of gunfire. “That’s the third time in two days,” Barbie bitches, running to man the guns. “What the fuck is in that box?”
Chase is flying. Suzanna prides herself on being a pilot, but she’s also a certain kind of realist. She noticed right off the mark that Chase is better than she’ll ever be. Chase is better than she’ll ever be, even when his mind is farther out than the Magellenic Clouds. It’s like Chase can see above, below and behind them. It’s like Chase can see ten seconds into the future.
Those missiles lock on target, and still Chase can avoid them. They would’ve been dead two days ago, if it wasn’t for Chase.
“Those ships,” says Alex. “They’re Skarsian. That one has the emblem of Christolea.”
“The fucking Matriarch is after us?” says Suzanna, whistling.
Chase freezes. A missile comes a little too close, close enough that the blast rocks the ship. “Christolea isn’t Matriarch,” he says, flatly.
“A bloody loyalist,” says Suzanna. “Chase, this isn’t the time for politics. Concentrate on what you’re doing!”
Chase and Suzanna are on watch again. It seems like Chase is never on watch with anyone else.
“When I was a little girl,” says Suzanna, “I use to look up at the stars and dream of flying. It just seemed so big and free. Sky’s the limit. But on Earth, the only way to fly is to join the service. I did for a while. I even cut my hair. I hated that.”
Chase nods. He’s learned that Suzanna doesn’t really want a response to her soliloquies.
“Then I met Clive. He was brilliant. Handsome. A great talker. He filled my head full of his dreams about the revolution that was coming. A day when people could speak their minds. When they would be free to fly.”
Chase doesn’t quite understand. Piloting a space ship is not the same thing as flying. Opium is closer to flying.
“He filled my mind full of crap, basically. I thought he loved me. But Clive never loved anything but his own ego. Barbie is right. I always trust the wrong people. So what about you? What did you dream of doing when you were a child?”
Chase looks at her blankly. “I don’t know.”
“Geez, Chase. Why do you have to be that way? What harm could come of letting me know just a little about you?”
“I really don’t know. I don’t remember.” Suzanna’s concern for him confuses Chase. He’s not quite sure if her concern for him is really because she’s concerned about him, or if it is because she is concerned about Suzanna. It’s clear that that Suzanna needs something from him. She seems to recognize something in Chase that is opaque to him. Chase wishes he knew what it was. He suspects Suzanna’s designs are more deluded than his opium dreams.
“That’s a pile of steaming sucksow excrement. Either that, or the opium has completely damaged your brain. You can’t remember because you’re high all the time.”
“No. I’m high all the time because I can’t remember. But I don’t think I ever was a child.”
“You know, when you get this mysterious, I start to make up stories. You’re on the run from the Ennead. Your father was SSOps, and he was killed by an Ennead Don. So you go undercover to get your revenge. But they find out the truth. You’ve got all this information on them, but they send out a telepathic assassin. So you fog your brain with opium deliberately so they can’t find you.”
“That’s some story. Like a movid. How does it end?”
“The hero is reunited with the love interest, and they live happily ever after.” Suzanna wiggles a little. “Chase, don’t you want to make something of your life? Maybe settle down and have a family?”
“No.”
Suzanna sighs. “You’re a restless kind of a guy. I can see that. After this, maybe we could pool our money and buy a bigger ship. One with a jump drive. We could go anywhere.”
“I can’t leave the Domha’vei.”
“Why the hell not? Think bigger. Damn it, Chase!”
Chase can’t answer. He really doesn’t know. But he’s certain.
“Chase, what you need is a good woman to straighten out your head. You know that?”
Chase considers. “You could be right.”
Suzanna takes that as an admission. But Chase can’t get it up. She blames the opium, and from that day on, keeps nagging him to quit.
Chase feels guilty. He likes Suzanna. Or rather, if he cared about anything, he would like Suzanna. If he cared enough, he would disabuse her of her notions. But he doesn’t. It’s easier just to let it all slide.
They land on a crappy little mining asteroid named Humvee. Suzanna and Alex go to meet Nikki the Rat. It’s a mistake. You don’t get a name like “Nikki the Rat” for nothing.
“Suzanna’s back,” says Grover. “I’ll go down to meet her.” Ten minutes pass, but no one comes back.
“This is weird,” Barbie says. “It’s been too long.”
“Should we go check?”
“No. I’m contacting Suzanna.”
“But she’s back at the ship.”
Barbie shakes her head, curls bouncing furiously. “Nope. The reading I get from Suzie’s transponder is that she’s still in the city.”
Chase stands. “Her passkey was used.”
“Not good,” says Barbie. “Suzie isn’t answering, either. I’ll try Alex.”
Chase calls up a scanner. “We’re reading three life signs on deck two. Maybe Suzanna lost her transponder.”
“No answer from Alex. Chase, it’s wrong. Don’t your guts tell you it’s wrong?”
Chase’s guts don’t tell him anything. But he’s willing to take Barbie’s word for it. He closes his eyes, tries to push a little past the opium haze. “They smell different,” he says. “Is that what you mean?”
“Huh?”
Barbie breaks out the sidearms. She hands one to Chase. “What do I do with this?” he asks.
“You shoot people,” Barbie says sarcastically.
Chase shakes his head. “I don’t kill.”
“I hate people with morals. Just stay here, idiot.”
Chase really, really wants a hit, but he knows that he’d better stay sharp. Well, not really sharp. Sharper than usual. He makes himself focus. He can hear Barbie screaming. It’s a horrible scream, like her soul is being torn away from her. He wonders if he should do something. Probably.
He looks at the gun. He sticks it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He really doesn’t intend to use it, but he doesn’t want to leave it lying around.
He goes down to deck two. Barbie is dead. Grover is still alive, but his eyes are empty, and there is a line of drool running out of his mouth. There are two other people, strangers, a woman with her dark hair pulled back so tightly it makes her skin look like the metal stretched across the rear bulkhead, and a dull, doughy-looking man. Chase doesn’t understand. There is no sign of a fight.
“It’s the last one,” says the woman. “I doubt he knows anything either. I’ll handle it. You go back into the city and find that blonde bitch.”
The man nods at her, leaves the room. Chase can feel him leaving the ship.
The woman smiles at Chase. There’s no kindness in it. “I’d like to say that this won’t hurt. But it will. It will hurt more than anything you can imagine. But it won’t last long, and then you’ll never feel anything again.”
Chase feels a shove. But she hasn’t touched him at all. It’s a shove inside of him.
Another shove. Then a gut punch. “Don’t do this,” he whispers. She laughs. She thinks he’s begging. But he’s not. He’s trying to warn her.
He remembers. He remembers playing cards with Grover and Alex. He remembers Suzanna doing a strip tease. He remembers staring out of the viewscreen at the stars. It’s all so distant. Fuzzy. Black and white.
“Goddamn opium,” the woman growls. “You’re a piece of worthless shit, you know that? You’re just making me work harder. You’ll regret it.”
Chase can feel her anger. He can also feel someone else coming into the open hatch of the ship. It isn’t Suzanna or Alex. It isn’t this woman’s companion either. But it’s familiar. So very familiar.
Bulkhead woman launches a furious assault. It’s like the scraping claws of an iron hawk. It’s shredding through his memories, shredding through his mind. There’s a swirl of screaming voices, voices of all the friends he’s been looking for. Chase reaches out to them, trying to grab hold, but he still can’t quite reach them. He’s pushed down into the darkness by the telepathic assault.
He’s a bird. A black bird with blue eyes. He remembers what it is like to fly.
“What?” says the woman. “What is this? What game are you playing?”
He’s flying. It’s like an opium rush. He’s flying, and then he’s falling again, falling towards the sea. It’s like someone pulled the plug – he has no power. He can’t even lift his wings.
“Do you think you can hide from me?” screams the woman as she follows him down. “Fuck you!”
“Don’t do this,” Chase whispers again.
Chase hits the water. The Sea of Illusion shatters, splintering into a thousand particles of light. Somewhere, a verdigris impala is running through the forest. The molecules within it twist. It could be a ra’aabit. A bloobird.
The water is infinite and it extends into the air, into the sky, into the stars. There are no boundaries, just a gradient shift. Like a sunset.
The sky is infinite, and the stars are a thousand particles of water. Somewhere, a ship that could be flying is sitting on an asteroid. A ship that could be flying is made of molecules that could be an impala or a ra’aabit. Somewhere distant, a woman is screaming like her soul is being torn away from her. Her hand jerks backward spasmodically, knocking over a glass of water that was sitting on a table. The spilling water is a thousand particles of light, is diamonds. The diamonds bounce and scatter on the floor.
Chase looks through the ceiling and up at the stars. Beyond them are galaxies. Behind them are universes. Everything is pulsing and throbbing with energy, with life. It is pulsing with the energy that is here, and the energy that isn’t here. Chase would scream, but he doesn’t have to. The woman who is using his eyes is screaming for him.
Chase needs a hit. But the door is open, and a woman has entered. He imagines her dancing. Her dress swirls and sweeps all the starlight up into it. He can almost see her face.
Chase finds Grover’s karaokepad and puts on “Nights in White Satin.” There’s something heavy in his pocket. It’s the gun.
Chase pulls out the gun. He leans back against the wall, stroking it. It’s smooth, cool metal. It could be feathers, though. It could be a pile of rustling leaves. He rubs the barrel of the gun against his lips. It’s firm and hard. Suzanna’s lips were warm and soft. Neither is correct.
Suzanna runs into the deck two bay. “Alex is dead,” she shouts. “We have to move.” She is holding something. It’s a stick embedded with jewels. Chase has some dim sense of recognition, but he doesn’t want to think about it too hard. Chase’s brain is broken, and thinking is like climbing a mountain with a boot full of thorns.
“Oh God!” Suzanna has noticed Barbie and Grover and the insanely screaming telepath. Then she notices the scattered diamonds on the floor. “What the fuck? Chase, why didn’t you…?” Then she sees Chase’s eyes. He is stroking the gun against his face, staring at the ceiling, singing along to “Nights in White Satin.” She looks again at the banshee on the floor, and reaches some measure of comprehension.
“Chase, I’ll tell you what. I still don’t know what this thing is, but it’s really, really important. So why don’t you take it, and I’ll take the gun, and we’ll go up to the bridge and get the hell out of here before more of those Ennead people come at us.”
Chase looks at her blankly. “Suzanna?” he says. “Is that you? I’m having trouble seeing right now.” He doesn’t resist when she pulls away the gun; he takes the stick she offers him. It’s heavier than it looks. Chase peers into it and sees a web of sparkling crystals extending through the Domha’vei. But he can’t see inside of the crystals. They can’t be water, or sand, or anything else. “I don’t know how to make these,” he says.
“Huh?” Suzanna shrugs and grabs his arm, pulling him after her. She is hoping against hope that he still has any sort of mind left. But for now, they’re alive, and she wants to stay that way.
Suzanna gets to the flight deck, but there’s a woman stooped over the console trying to jury-rig the launch system. “Stand up slowly, bitch. Stand up slowly and turn around.”
She stands up slowly and turns around. Her dress swirls, and sweeps all the starlight up into it. Chase sees her face. Tara sees Chase’s eyes.
“Do you have any last words?” Suzanna says, raising the gun.
“The end of an Aion,” Tara says. “Initiate Aion.”
“Archon detected. The Aion is established,” says the Staff. The crystals in the end glow brilliantly. Suddenly, Chase’s skin starts to burn away from within, a radiant blue glow matching the color of the crystals. Startled, Suzanna drops the gun.
The mothman fills the bridge of the tiny ship. He extends his hand, offering Tara the Staff of the Matriarch.
Poor Suzanna always did trust the wrong people.
OK, says Mickey. You’ve got to summarize now. You don’t have any choice.
Summary is an occasionally useful literary device, says Driscoll. But creating a scene generally has more impact upon the reader.
I’ll handle it, I say. But I may need to make a few things up.
It’s a few days later when Tellick, Governor of Sector 15, gets the communiqué. It’s encoded, sent on a top secret diplomatic channel.
Tellick is a flunky, appointed Governor of Sector 15 because his family is too important not to give him a position of some weight, but he is too incompetent to be trusted with anything significantly weighty. Sector 15 is a problem because it sits on the edge of the Domha’vei. The people of the Domha’vei are insane, completely irrational cyberphobes. Earth was happy to see them go. Earth would rather forget about them entirely. They are an embarrassment, in the way baby photos are embarrassing. Unfortunately, there is the business of that anomaly at the center of Dolparessa. It has caused a serious change in policy from “Ignore the Domha’vei” to “Conquer it.”
To that end, CenGov sent General Panic, well-known as a megalomaniac and psychopath. Tellick knows that it’s best for him to stay the hell out of her way. But Panic has, to be blunt, fucked it up royally. She’s been here for a decade, and still hasn’t gotten the situation under control. She wasted a fleet, lost the Prophet and the supply of apples needed to make Prophetix, managed to piss off the telepathic division somehow, and let that sniveling dog Clive Rivers loose again. And now Rivers is apparently behind the coup that put Christolea on the throne of the Matriarch, which is something nobody understands. Rivers and Tara were allies, weren’t they?
But something has gone wrong. The power grid is failing again. There are rumors that a countercoup is being organized, that the Staff of the Matriarch has been stolen. The rumors are that Rivers has the Staff, that Rivers knows the secrets of the crystals. The rumors are that Rivers has figured out a way to use the Staff without needing the Blood of the Matriarch.
If Rivers can do that, Earth is in serious trouble. Tellick is contacted by the President himself. The President expresses that he has lost a certain amount of faith in General Panic’s abilities. The President expresses the dire need to bring Rivers into captivity.
This is a task for which Governor Tellick is entirely unsuited. And so when the communiqué comes, Tellick accepts it like the hand of deliverance.
The rumors are wrong, but Tellick doesn’t know that. His intelligence service is worthless. The truth is Christolea refused to admit there was a problem. Christolea refused when Clive asked to study the Staff. She figured that he wanted to do exactly what the rumors had said. But the power grid was failing, and Clive didn’t understand why. He needed to understand why, or they were all in deep trouble. So he recruited Ta’al Erich to steal the Staff from Christolea.
Here’s the thing that Clive never could figure out: the power grid was failing because the Arya didn’t give a squirrel turd about it. The old Archon had felt a sense of obligation to keep his word to the Matriarchs. He saw it as a matter of life or death for his people. The Young Turpentines did as little as possible to keep the weather fine. They didn’t want power. They couldn’t be bothered with it. It was a lowly task better suited for a stupid Hina. And since it was proven that there was a Hina stupid enough to do it, the Arya Deus was Absconditus.
Clive and Molly were supposed to meet up with Suzanna. But Suzanna doesn’t trust Clive; he is her ex-boyfriend, after all. So she goes to Humvee instead. Christolea is an idiot, but the Vizier isn’t, and so he’s had Ta’al Erich tailed. He plans to get the Staff from Suzanna. He doesn’t want to arrest Erich. Erich, despite being Volparnian, has a good head on his shoulders. The Vizier sees Erich as a potential ally. He’d much rather rely on cool-headed men like Erich than these screaming bitches who, through accident of circumstance, happen to carry the right genetic code.
The Vizier is starting to see the limitations of absolute monarchy, which is enough to get him beheaded if he admits to it. Everybody knows that questioning monarchy leads to democracy, which leads to talk about inherent rights and equality. Before you know it, everyone has a shaved head, and the only color you can buy a hovercar in is electric puce.
Christolea is an idiot, but Tara isn’t, so after six months of playing cat and mouse, she’s managed to stow away on Christolea’s flagship. Tara is going to let Christolea find the missing Staff, and then restore it to its rightful owner – herself. All this hinges on Ash still being alive – which she isn’t sure of. She heard Molly saying that they should burn the Atlas Tree, just to be certain. In any case, Tara doesn’t know what effect cutting off the power grid had on Ash. Maybe he won’t want to shoulder the burden of being Archon again. Maybe he hates her. She wouldn’t blame him.
When they get to Humvee, everything goes wrong. Alex is killed, but Suzanna escapes. So Christolea hires a pair of Ennead enforcers to get information out of Suzanna’s crew. They’re stupid enough to leave the hatch open. Tara’s got a hunch that Suzanna will come back to her ship. Clive’s told her enough about Suzanna that Tara thinks it will be an easy victory. Tara is overconfident because she hates Suzanna with the blind, irrational hate humans reserve especially for a lover’s ex-partner.
The rest you know. Suzanna would’ve had the jump on Tara if it weren’t for a series of ironies completely unexpected by all the protagonists. By all rights, Tara should’ve been dead. Instead, Chase walks through the door, holding the Staff of the Matriarch.
The ending is as contrived as one of Suzanna’s mental movids. It makes one wonder if it was all planned. Or, as Tara would say, Ash doesn’t make mistakes.
Molly and Clive were set to rendezvous with Suzanna behind the second moon of Rimbaud. They wait and wait, but Suzanna doesn’t show. General Panic does.
They have only one chance – to beat Panic back inside of the range of the Skarsian defense grid. Christolea might hate them for their betrayal, but she’d never be stupid enough to let them fall into the hands of CenGov. Scratch that, the Vizier would never be stupid enough to let them fall into the hands of CenGov, and the Vizier still had nominal control over Christolea.
For the better part of a harrowing week, they elude her. But once they’re past Rimbaud’s fourth moon, there’s nothing but open space until they hit the orbit of Eirelantra. The fifth planet, Rotifer, is on the other side of the sun. They have to stake a lot on outrunning Panic. Fortunately, Clive’s ships have Lidrium drives, with their superior capacity for acceleration. Unfortunately, Clive has no Lidrium – he never did jack that shipment. He has to rely on the standard backup drives. Clive’s luck really does suck.
Nevertheless, Clive and Molly get almost to the edge of the defense grid, and it’s clear they’re going to make it. General Panic has let them slip away yet again. Earth’s President has been monitoring the situation, and he’s furious. Then he gets a call. It’s from Dalgherdia Station – it’s from Governor Tellick. What is Tellick doing on the science station? But his next statement is even more surprising: “Mr. President, I want complete authority to act on your behalf in any way possible that leads to the apprehension of these dangerous terrorists.”
The President considers. Rivers and Molly, between the two of them, are full of secrets. Secrets that could be damaging to him personally. Secrets that could bring newfound wealth and power to CenGov. Besides, what could Tellick possibly do to make the situation worse? He’s a fool, and the President doesn’t expect much. “As you will,” says the President. “But if you fail, I’ll let you answer to General Panic.”
Tellick pulls out a legalpad with a flourish. He signs. “This is a treaty of alliance with the Skarsian Matriarchy. It is signed by myself as the representative of the Central Government of Earth, and counter-signed by the only rightfully recognized ruler of Skarsia, the Sublime and Holy Tara del D’myn, 6th Matriarch.”
The door behind Tellick opens. The President’s jaw drops. It is Tara, who has been missing, presumed dead, these past seven months. What game is Tellick playing?
“And now, about that matter of extradition…” says Tellick.
“I think you’ll find that our border security is second to none,” says Tara, raising the Matriarch’s Staff with a flourish.
“Clive,” says Molly. “The power grid is activating.”
“You mean the defense grid.”
“No, the power grid. What do we do?”
“Keep running. I don’t know what Christolea thinks she’s doing, but I doubt she wants to destroy us just yet. I think she must have something in store for General Panic.”
“Panic is still coming.”
“That woman just doesn’t know when to give up. Keep running.”
“Clive, what’s that?”
There is an energy surge directly in front of them. It’s a blue spark which grows in size and starts to unfurl like an orchid.
“Shit,” says Clive. “Initiate evasive maneuvers.”
“What?”
“I said…”
But it’s too late. The mothman is in front of them. He grabs the skeins of energy emitting from the power grid, gathers them up like a cloth, and shakes it. The ripples toss General Panic’s fleet asunder as easily as they fling Clive’s tiny ship. When all is done, not a ship in the area has more than auxiliary power.
Scanners, communication, everything blacked out. The region is silent, except for the mental voice of a telepath. Ashtara, I will destroy you.
“Retrieve the terrorists,” Tellick orders. Tara looks at him significantly. “Also, I have an order for the arrest of General Panic. She is charged with the illegal detention of a Skarsian citizen, battery, assault, sexual assault and heresy. Extradition to take place immediately under the new treaty.”
A month has passed. Tara is home on Dolparessa, alone on the shoreline that sweeps away north from Court Emmere. She walks down the strand until she comes to the place where the corpse has been hung on a cross stuck in the sand. Matriarch’s justice. She could’ve commanded it from the beginning, no need for due process. According to Skarsian law, it isn’t a crime for a noble to kill a commoner over a matter of honor, even less so an Earther. But it was so much more satisfying to hold a trial and fill the jury with Cu’enashti nau’gsh, then appoint a Volparnian judge who had converted to Archonism on Restoration Day.
The corpse reeks of blood where the skin has been flayed off, and the bloobirds are already having a feast. Tara shoos them away, lights a torch, and sets fire to it.
It burns like a beacon on the edge of the Sea of Illusion. The smell of roasting flesh reaches up to the Atlas Tree.
“And now I’m done with General Panic,” Tara says.