I’m alone in the office when I get the feeling that Tara is about to enter the room. Except it isn’t quite right. It isn’t coming from any particular direction, and I’m certain that Tara is in the reception room, discussing trade agreements with Lord Danak. And it doesn’t feel right, either. Tara is a warm brilliance; this is a dark heat, like glowing metal.
But it is Tara. She appears to me, suddenly, in the center of the room. But it’s not. There’s something wrong about her. She moves like shrapnel; the pupils of her eyes are flat, matte, like gun metal.
“Ash,” she whispers.
There’s an answer – I and I senses the answer. “You’re from the future,” I say. “How many years?”
“Almost four hundred.”
“Did we establish the Empire?”
I’ve never seen such misery conveyed in a smile. “At the moment I left, my fleet sits poised at the edge of the Earth system. By tomorrow, I will rule all of humankind.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“I would throw it all away in a heartbeat. I have done terrible things to achieve it, Ash. I am well-hated.” She moves closer to me, tentatively, almost as if she is afraid I will run. “This temporal projector was created by my enemies. They planned to use it to strangle me in my crib.”
“I would never allow that.”
“Oh, I knew all along, and I allowed them to complete it, so I could seize it when they were finished. I brought them before me, and they were in despair. They believed that I would use it to conquer all of time as well as space. I laughed in their faces. ‘And this is the fantasy of those who see no better use of this amazing technology than to murder an innocent child,’ I said. I told them I had no intention of conquest. I told them that I planned to finish their work for them, to eliminate the monster that had left such a trail of fire and blood these past four centuries.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have to understand!” She rushes me, clutches the fabric of my jacket. Her grip is strong; her hands hardened, like the claws of a hawk. “We don’t have much time. Ash, at this moment, there is a man in a skimmer on the Sea of Illusion. There is nothing that makes him different from a hundred other pleasure sailors. He has no weapon. He has only fuel. He’s a suicide bomber, Ash.”
I should probably do something about that. But I and I is silent.
“Your martyrdom is the force that unites the squabbling factions of the Domha’vei. It turns farmers, merchants and miners into soldiers. It turns the trees into a war machine. There will be blackouts, but I’ll be able to get the Arya circuit hooked back in. I’ll make my peace with Rivers, and he’ll get it right this time. After that, nothing will stop us.”
“I see.” I don’t know what else to say.
“My government has a wartime policy called C/R. It stands for Cleansing or Reforestation. It means that if a world resists me, if it has no trees, we burn it. If it has trees, we release a fast-acting microbe to wipe out the human life on the planet, returning the world to its forests. Once I interrogated a prisoner whose world had been targeted for C/R. He said to me, ‘Don’t you have a heart somewhere beneath all that armor?’”
“I told him that I would look. And then I said I was sorry, but it had been burned years ago, and the only thing left there was Ash. The poor fool was ignorant of the poetic irony of that statement. Of course, I suppose he would’ve been too concerned about the immanent destruction of his planet to appreciate my literary subtlety.”
I’ve stopped talking. Even if I did know what to say, I don’t think there would be a point.
“You still don’t understand, do you? I could’ve lived in a thatched hut in Merenis Port-of-Call with Daniel and thought myself queen of the universe. But you had to go and make yourself everything – everything – to me, and then take it all away. Now I have the universe, but I lost the only thing I cared about, and all I know how to do is destroy. I love you! Damn you, Ash. My only hope now is that after these few minutes we have together, I’ll dissolve into nothingness, and not find that I’ve returned to my glorious palace ten seconds after I left.”
Her cold eyes are moist, and she presses against my breast with sharp, heaving sobs. It reminds me of freezing rain. And then she is gone.
I am alone in the room. I am alone. I can’t sense I and I. I can’t hear the voices in my head. I don’t know what to do.
I have priorities.
- Tara’s safety.
- Tara’s destiny.
- Tara’s pleasure.
- Being in Tara’s presence as much as permissible.
It should be clear. I have seen a future in which she is safe and fulfills her destiny. But it doesn’t make any sense. I need Cuinn’s logic.
Tara’s destiny. Is I and I so ambitious that He’ll sacrifice Himself to achieve that aim?
She was so unhappy. I ache with it. But her happiness is a subsidiary consideration.
Why have I been left alone to decide this?
The image which is strongest in my mind is Lorcan’s hands pressed upon Tara’s throat. If he was left to decide how far we would go to be free, than I am left to decide how far we will go to stay true to our purpose. And I imagine them all, how they must feel behind that wall of glass. And I don’t need to hear them. I know what they will say. Ailann would sacrifice himself. Whirljack would do whatever Tara wants. Lugh would want to protect Owen.
I am the one to decide this.
Tara enters the room. I have been so preoccupied that I didn’t even sense her coming. There’s a light in her eyes, the light that is always there when she first sees me.
She loves me. She loves me.
My life has value.
“I have something to attend to,” I say.
We bring the terrorist in for interrogation. His name is Nikolai Farlow; he’s Tasean. He’s a hangdog man; now that his great act has been thwarted, there’s nothing but rags and pieces. It won’t take long to break him.
Tara is raging, absolutely raging. She’ll tear these scraps into bits and stomp on them after.
“My family died in the war,” is all he says.
“Why don’t you blame your government?” Tara screams. “We didn’t want that war.”
“It was a bloodbath.”
“Cuinn calculated that an absolutely brutal engagement at the beginning would significantly cut the casualties from a long conflict,” I say. It’s true. It was the right thing to do. It sounds ridiculous, insulting to this man’s misery.
“You can’t understand!” he screams. “Look around you. Look at this! We had nothing. After the famine, the people were starving.”
“And so you blame me for a good government that brings prosperity to my people? That famine wasn’t our fault. Would you rather that my people would starve, too?”
“Yes! Then you would understand our suffering.”
We should just put him down, I think. There’s a point when pain is so overwhelming, all the heart knows is pain. And it inflicts its hell on others. I look at Tara, but she doesn’t see.
“My children are all dead!” he screams. “And the next day, I see the broadcast. That thing…that thing…” He points at me with such sharpness and venom that I take a step backwards. “He gave you my planet as a wedding present.”
Once again, I have the sensation of being completely alone, the sound and light sucked out of the room. Cillian didn’t think…couldn’t see the ramifications of his actions. I perceive everything, but understand nothing. My priorities are a box with a pinhole that I use to view the universe. In the distance, I hear Tara saying, “You didn’t do this alone. You’re too stupid to do this alone.” But even the light from Tara is fading. I can’t see the forest for the trees.
That night, I explain to her how I knew about Farlow’s plan. She hits me.
“How dare you hesitate?” she screams. “You are not expendable!”
The next morning there is a new man in her bed. She’s shocked; this hasn’t happened in quite some time, and she wouldn’t have thought yesterday’s trouble would have been enough to cause it. No real harm was done.
He’s beautiful. She’s never seen a man so beautiful. It aches to look at him, but she never wants to look away. “I’m Dermot,” he says. “I’m the fruit of Daniel’s flower. He made a covenant to always be with you. You can think of me as the visible sign of that covenant. Just as the rainbow is a truce made between the sun and the rain so that all the forms of light unite in harmony, I am the balance point in I and I, the perfect peace of all His emanations.”
“Ah, but in the mythos you’re alluding to, there are two trees. One is knowledge, one is life. Which apple are you?”
“As to which is knowledge and which is life, the trees in Eden will have to settle that amongst themselves. I and I is no garden tree. He is a tree that grows from the stony ridge of a mountain. The only thing that will thrive under those conditions is love.”
“Speaking of love,” she says, pulling him towards her.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says.
“Mmmmm. I’m sure I don’t have to, but when an amazingly beautiful man appears in my bed, opportunity knocks.”
“You don’t have to make love to me to assure that I’m not considered expendable.”
Tara looks crestfallen. She didn’t think she was that obvious.
“I’m the covenant, remember? And that’s the covenant. I will always be with you. None of us is expendable.”
Thinking back on it, says Driscoll, that’s when I started the self-portraits. Just after Dermot emanated.
It wasn’t so long after that when I started writing, says Ailann.
That’s true, I say. Maybe Dermot should have written this.
I’m the fruition of the Self, says Dermot. I bring the capacity for self-awareness, but I didn’t experience any of this. You are the ones who have to reflect. You have to make sense of our life.
I and I did make a mistake, says Daniel. He is a creature of single-minded purpose. But the root of that purpose is love. That root brought me into being.
Love isn’t even a priority, says Ailann.
The priorities are fucked up, says Cillian.
It’s not a priority. It’s the meaning of all the priorities.
That’s the point of the story, says Ailann. Then we’re done.
Well, there’s one more scene we need, says Dermot. The resolution. And it’s the just end of the book. The story will go on for thousands of years, if we don’t screw it up.
Tara bursts into the room triumphantly. “We finally broke Molly,” she says. “And guess what we found out?”
I know. I didn’t know, but suddenly the truth is glaringly obvious. “She’s the leader of Farlow’s cell,” I say.
Tara looks a little disappointed that I guessed. “We’re bringing her here for judgment.”
“I still don’t understand how this happened. I thought she was finished after we handed her over to CenGov.”
Tara’s eyes are a lot sadder than I would’ve expected. “They used her as part of a larger plan against us. I didn’t want to say anything at the time because you were so worried about Owen. But how do you think those Tasean terrorists got the money for a state-of-the-art research station when the old Tasean government couldn’t afford to buy their soldiers new boots? And how did that singularity get outside the asteroid belt – hop in a hovercar?”
Of course. It’s so obvious. How did I miss it? “Do you think Tellick is playing us?”
“Maybe. He’s a weasel, but he’s also a coward. But it could be anyone in CenGov.” She frowns, realizing something. “For all we know, they made a palimpsest of General Panic. In any case, they’re content to wait us out, to go along with Tellick’s alliance. But they aren’t going to forget about the Rip. Remember, they went through the trouble of getting a branch from you. They were studying it.”
I understand. “If CenGov takes the Rip, they’ll need an Archon.”
There’s a strange feeling of formality about this. Tara dons her most elaborate armor. She even retrieves the Staff of the Matriarch from its display case. I take my cue from her, wearing my dress uniform.
Molly is dragged in by an armed escort, but she doesn’t look like a threat to anyone. She looks like SSOps had her for lunch and then reheated the leftovers. I feel conspicuously overdressed. Tara motions for the escort to leave. They salute and exit, knowing that there’s nothing they could do that I couldn’t accomplish ten times more effectively.
“Why?” asks Tara. “You turned Clive against me. I don’t believe in his radical solutions, but ultimately, I’m sympathetic to the seditionaries on Earth. Instead you stab me in the back, and practically push me into CenGov’s arms.”
“You can’t help us,” Molly says. “Not while you’re the puppets of those things.”
The sap freezes in my xylem. My leaves tremble in the wind.
“I never would’ve thought a telepath would be such a xenophobe,” Tara says. “I would think you’d have faced enough suspicion in your own life to have a little empathy.”
“It isn’t human,” Molly says, gesturing at me. “You can’t use human standards to judge – compassion and empathy don’t apply to it. There’s only one way. You have to see for yourself.” She grabs Tara by the arm, dragging her across the room. Tara is so stunned she allows it. “Look at him. Look.”
And then I feel Molly shoving her way into my mind…and dragging Tara with her. She shouldn’t be able to do that, except…Tara is holding the Staff. Molly is using the crystals in the Staff to augment her ability.
“Molly, stop! Don’t do this, please…” I cry. But there’s no point, is there? I’d beg, but there’s no point.
I could destroy her with a thought. Ailann wants to, and Cillian stops him. The world is upside down.
Molly is pushing a window into the Atlas Tree now, pushing a window into I and I. “Look at him!”
She lets Tara go, and for a moment Tara staggers, reeling from the vision. The color has drained from her face. Her hand flies to her mouth, the Staff of the Matriarch drops from the other hand to the ground. I don’t know what’s in her eyes. I don’t dare to look at them.
The next thing I realize is that Tara has somehow grabbed Molly in an armlock, and shoved her against the wall, and is beating her head against it. Hard. There’s blood on the wall. If she doesn’t stop, Molly’s skull will smash like a ripe javamelon. “Tara! Stop! You’re killing her!”
She looks at me dryly. “I know,” she says. And then she has a gun, the gun she keeps in the hidden compartment in the desk drawer, and the barrel is pressed tightly beneath Molly’s ruined jaw. “Think carefully, Ash. She knew exactly what she was doing. She meant to destroy you.”
“It’s finished. She’s finished. Let it go.”
Her voice drops low, a winter wind of a whisper. “Pop quiz, Molly,” she says. “Be sure to answer correctly, as failure will have unpleasant consequences. There are three people in this room. Which one is the most human?”