And now that I’ve told about Daniel, what now? Start someplace random? That didn’t work so well for Ailann. I need to start someplace important. A moment that changed the world.
“Look who’s here,” says Johannon. “And not wisely.”
Out of curiosity, Tara has come to witness the protest. She’s surprised at how many people have bothered to show up. Nominally, they’re a cooperative of nau’gsh farmers, gathered at one of the biggest winegroves on Dolparessa. But it can’t be just the farmers. It’s as though every political activist in Sector 15 has bothered to put in an appearance. “It’s my planet,” says Tara. “As Marquesa of Dolparessa, I have some responsibility.”
“Then why don’t you responsibly call in the army to end this riot?”
Tara raises an arch eyebrow. “I thought from your presence, CenGov was doing that.”
“Come on, Tara. You know we wouldn’t interfere with a sovereign planet – unless asked.”
“Oh, I know. I feel so safe,” she says bitterly.
“I’ve already told you – that fire in the lab was never intended for you. We had to do something about Rivers…” But Tara isn’t listening to him anymore. His lies no longer disgust her. They bore her. He was never that amusing from the start. A phony. You can only get by so far on looks.
Right now, she is concentrating on the scene in the grove down the hill from them. It isn’t quite a riot. Whirljack would never endanger the trees. Once she sees him, she can’t take her eyes off him. He only has half of Johannon’s looks, but a hundred times the charisma. He’s like living lightning.
Lady Claris is with him. Tara feels a stab of annoyance that she won’t quite identify as jealousy. She’s always been annoyed with Claris, and that hasn’t changed even since she has learned that Claris is a tree. Claris was the kind of girl that commanded everyone’s attention. When Tara was fourteen, Claris showed up, three days before festival, and as customary, was taken into the house. No one but Lady Madonna ever paid attention to Tara, but everyone paid attention to Claris, most especially the handsome young men.
It wasn’t that Claris was more beautiful, more intelligent, or a stronger warrior than Tara. It was that Claris had the luxury of not having a geis that the men who loved her were doomed. This alone was enough to make Tara resent her. Things got really ugly when Tara finally found a boyfriend of her own. Claris couldn’t stand to allow Tara to have the least bit of success. Claris took one look at Daniel and flew off the handle.
What Tara didn’t know, doesn’t know, and won’t know for years, is that Claris took one look at Daniel and recognized what he was. It made her furious for reasons she couldn’t possibly understand.
It was only after Daniel’s death, after Tara had been taken away from Dolparessa, only then did Claris learn the words that made sense of her anger. “Quislings. Collaborators. If it weren’t for the Cu’enashti enforcing the Great Silence, we would’ve overthrown the Arya years ago.”
How ironic is it that Claris stands by him now? The boy Daniel that was killed is the same tree as the man Whirljack who founded PLANT, the man who is using his popularity as an idol to publicize the cause of Dolparessan autonomy.
She’s still a little bitter, Claris, because for all their grumbling, her people, the Cu’enmerengi, never had the temperament to get organized. Dryads have poor attention spans. They just want to be free, to have fun. They like to drift from town to town, trying on new clothes and new faces, going to carnivals, getting drunk, dancing until dawn. They like to go to restaurants and walk on the beach with their shoes off.
And every now and then, they’ll recognize a Cu’enashti man sweeping the stair of his storefront. He’ll be humming a happy tune, and his child, one of the half-breeds with blue eyes who can change water into wine, will come running out the door. He’ll smile, and there is something so smug about his contentment that the Cu’enmerengi will shudder in disgust, then run off to find a new dress – or a new lover.
Whirljack had turned out so much stronger than anyone expected. But the very thing that made him strong was the thing that disgusted Claris.
Despite Johannon’s warnings, Tara walks down the hill. She’s here; she might as well talk to Whirljack. She thinks that as Marquesa of Dolparessa – even though she’s been eschewing the title since her sojourn on Earth – she’ll probably get access to meet him. She miscalculates the situation greatly.
Whirljack sees her coming. Of course he does. He felt her coming when she was beyond the horizon. But now she is coming towards him, and her intent is clear.
He raises his arms to the sky, and in his pure voice, deep and rich as the soil itself, he chants “Vend’i Matracha, Vendt’l Tara, a Vehn’a Vohnitz’ia Domha’veia.” “The heart of the Matriarch is the heart of Tara is the heart of the sun of the Domha’vei.”
Tara freezes in her tracks. It’s treason. Everybody there knows it’s treason. Whirljack isn’t just advocating independence. He’s advocating usurpation.
Claris glares at him, her green eyes shining. That he would dare this, say this so openly. She doesn’t know whether she’s excited, afraid, or disgusted. That he would dare this, but doesn’t have the courage to admit to what he is. That he would dare this, but won’t dare to confess his undying love. His sickening, pathetic devotion.
She’s angry with him, but she feels a little sorry for him also. He can’t help what he is. And for his whole existence to be tied to that woman! Tara thinks she is cursed…well, Claris thinks, she has no idea what a curse it is, what a burden to bear, to be so in love with a miserable, vicious, self-centered slattern. Holding up the sky is nothing in comparison.
Now the crowd has taken up the chant: “Vend’i Matracha, Vendt’l Tara, a Vehn’a Vohnitz’ia Domha’veia.” Claris can feel their restless anger. Claris’s eyes are sharp. She spots Johannon at the top of the hill. She grins, reaches back to one of the trees, picks an apple and throws it at him.
That’s all it takes. The crowd is on fire, grabbing apples, rushing the top of the hill. Johannon, seeing the danger, sprints for his hovercar before he is pelted to death.
But Tara is between him and the car, and the crowd which venerated her moments before seems to have forgotten that she exists. In an instant Jack shoves forward, dashing past them. He’s an enormous man, physically powerful. With his hair streaming in the wind behind him, he reminds Tara of a racing lion.
Before she knows what is happening, he scoops her up and lifts her effortlessly to his shoulders. Jack is buffeted by the crowd as they surge past, but he holds his ground as firmly as if he were rooted.
When the crowd is clear, Jack sets her down gently and drops to one knee. “Milady,” he begins.
Suddenly Tara is jerked away back from him. “Skarsian Secret Ops,” yells a man flashing a badge. “You’re under arrest.”
“Take your fucking hands off her,” growls Jack. “She’s the marquesa.”
“Run!” screams Tara, as two men lunge for Jack. Tara swings, kicking, hitting one of the officers solidly in the groin.
“That’s enough, lady,” says the other, pulling his gun. Before he knows what is happening, Tara has disarmed him – very literally, as she found it necessary to break his arm to take his gun. Whirljack looks back at her, but she motions for him to keep going. He nods, and takes off at a loping gait, soon followed by Claris and the remains of the protesters.
That night, Lord Danak has to convince Tara that imprisoning the police who had treated her with such disrespect is a far more politically astute move than having them summarily executed. She’s within her rights – a noble can kill a commoner over a matter of honor like this. But they are the Matriarch’s special police, and killing them would mean trouble.
Stopping them from arresting Jack is trouble, too. But somehow, the local Dolparessan police seem little inclined to help in their investigations. It’s amazing how hard it becomes to find and capture a man who gives regular concerts in front of thousands.
That’s really not too bad, says Mickey. You did tend to be a little discursive, but it pretty much made sense.
It’s a great story, too, says Tommy. Not at all depressing.
Whirljack kicked ass, Cillian says appreciatively.
Tara kicked something more tender, says Lorcan, smirking.
It got into a lot of politics, though, says Tarlach. I think maybe now we could use a bit more context. More background. I had the same issue when I started doing the talk show. There are so many misconceptions about the Cu’endhari, the Cu’enashti, the Nau’gsh in general. I wanted to dive right into the social issues, but I found out that humans were really confused about basic history. They’d been kept ignorant of it for so many years. So I commissioned a little documentary film.
He reaches back into his branch to find the right episode. Ailann is right – there is nothing wrong with our memory. It’s absolutely perfect recall, like a holovid except with scents and textures and the atomic composition of everything. Tarlach’s studio always smelled a little like burnt plastic from the glare of the lights, but the home audience wouldn’t know that.
I remember that episode, says Whirljack. It’s propaganda. Danak censored the filmmaker. He said it made the 4th Matriarch look bad, and that would undermine the Matriarchy in general. So in the version released to the public, it doesn’t mention that her original intent was to raze the forests.
I compromised, says Tarlach. I think that the important material is still there.
It’s what Tara needed people to know, says Whirljack. That means it’s perfect.
“Hello and welcome to you all, ladies, gentlemen and gentlebranches. We’ve got a great show for you today, getting right to the heart – or root – of Nau’gsh psychology – romance. What do trees talk about when they talk about love?”
[The audience cheers and hoots.]
“I, as the known worlds’ only Nau’gsh psychologist, have researched the issue extensively. And personally [the audience hoots again]. Today we’ll peek first hand into the relationship secrets of several Dolparessan families who have opened their groves and households in the name of greater understanding between species. But first – to understand how we arrived where we are today – let’s have a look at the evolution of the Nau’gsh – the science and history which shape our emotional responses.”
[A short feature clip runs with the following V.O. narration]: Fleeing Earth in the wake of the Wars of Centralization, the FNA colonized the Domha’vei system 1121 years ago. It was some 9 centuries ago that the 4th Matriarch of Skarsia made a series of discoveries that would change life in the Domha’vei – and the fate of three species of sentient beings – forever.
The first discovery was of the spacetime anomaly existing at the core of Dolparessa, moon of Sideria. This rip in space allows a bleed through of energy from the nul-universe. Subsequently, the 4th Matriarch discovered that the energy had affected the evolution of the species of nau’gsh known then as Nau’gshtium arya, the noble nau’gsh. This treelike species had developed an advanced consciousness; furthermore, had developed a rudimentary understanding of how to manipulate the nul-energy to control small zones of climate on Dolparessa to the advantage of the Arya forests. The Matriarch proposed an alliance – the crystalline technology developed by her line was capable of transmitting and channeling the energy tapped into by the Arya. The spiritual leader of the Arya – the tallest tree on Dolparessa – sensing a mutual advantage, agreed, on the condition that the alliance was kept secret. This leader – subsequently known as the Archon – was justifiably cautious in its dealings with a race of beings so volatile – one capable of movement.
“In all honesty,” Tarlach injects over the narration, “the Arya find the idea of sentient animal life absolutely terrifying.” [Audience roars with laughter.]
In this newfound alliance, the Arya did not at all consider the two other species of nau’gsh. Why should they? The common nau’gsh demonstrated no more than rudimentary plant consciousness. And the species they haughtily termed the Hina, or little nau’gsh, was amused by playing with the squirrels. [Laughter.]
In truth, the Hina – or as they prefer to be called, the Cu’endhari, the people of the leaping – had much greater perception and control of the nul-energy than the Arya, and had used their rudimentary consciousness first to enter animal bodies and then to develop secondary animal bodies of their own. They really were playing with the squirrels.
I hate squirrels, says Wynne. Nasty creatures climb all over you and scratch the hell out of your bark.
My attitude towards squirrels is eloquently summed up in this motivational poster, says Cuinn.
But Earth squirrels are even worse, he continues. They aren’t even carnivorous. They eat nuts and berries.
Owen cringes. Nuts and berries? Earth must be a horrible place.
This is a point of etiquette rarely appreciated by humans outside of Dolparessa: the thought of eating seeds is absolutely repugnant to the Cu’endhari. And it’s one of the aspects of Cu’endhari life that has influenced Dolparessan culture, long before our existence was openly acknowledged. Dolparessan cuisine is heavily based around meats and fruits. Many abstain from root vegetables and grain; nuts are absolutely taboo. Lady Claris, one of the Cu’enmerengi – popularly called dryads – once said when offered a bowl of nuts, “When you visit my house, I’ll serve a bowl of toasted fetus.” Coffee is called black blood. Unfortunately, many Cu’endhari really like coffee. It’s an enormous ethical issue.
This is one of the reasons why Davy and Cuinn created the javamelon, used as their entry into the natural sciences/bioengineering division of the PanGal Prize. The javamelon’s flesh is starchy and can be dried and ground into an acceptable grain substitute; the center is full of a rich mahogany juice. The PanGal judges were won over by the melon’s versatile nature – it will adapt to almost any growing conditions. Of course, being served coffee and donuts indistinguishable from the Earth originals didn’t hurt. In addition to the prize money, Davy and Cuinn, partnered with Ross, have made a small fortune by opening a fast food franchise called “No Beans About It.” Of course this income was included in the disclosure.
This is something else that humans should understand: even though the smallest Cu’enashti is capable of using the energy of the nul-universe to transmute simple rocks and minerals – such as quartzite – into diamonds, we take great pride in our ability to earn money through forms of human employment. Diamonds are easy. So easy they’re suspicious – the Cantor’s third piece of instruction is given for a reason. Ever since Ross was cultivated, I have an even greater appreciation of this wisdom: dumping huge amounts of commodities on the open market could completely destabilize the economy. But we all cheat occasionally. We have to admit that Tommy paid for Tom O’Bedlam’s with rubies he’d made from a pile of slag metal.
Regular minerals are child’s play. Now amber, being organic, is more difficult. If I really want to show off, I’ll put in a perfectly formulated preserved insect. Most Cu’enashti can’t do that. They can’t do healing – they lack the subtlety of vision to see the anomalies in matter and energy systems. They lack the focus and minute molecular control to repair something as complex as someone else’s heart or a lung. Also, most Cu’enashti can’t influence the weather. They’re just too small to control that much energy. But we always could, even before Ailann became Archon. The Archon has the entire power grid of Skarsia at his disposal. But even so, Ailann can’t bring my amber’s fly to life.
Davy can.
Tara looks into the eyes of a man she has never seen before and recognizes them. The retinas are always the same, bathed in the telltale fireicy blue distinct to the Cu’enashti. “Ash,” she says. “Who are you now?”
“I’m Davy.”
“Davy. Did Cillian die?”
“Nah. But he took a huge hit in that battle. Caused enough root growth to force a new branch.”
Tara nods stiffly; she is upset. But she is used to tragedy. In comparison, this is really nothing, she’s lost nothing. Now she has twelve lovers. She’ll learn to accept it.
Davy is weird, even by Ash’s standards. He’s like a little boy possessed by a demon, sweet one minute and strange the next. He makes puppets. He makes marionettes. “You hold this one,” he says, thrusting it into Tara’s hands. He sticks his own arm into a cloth hand puppet. “This is me,” he says. “A skin full of meat. Except that my skin is full of I and I. And the other one is the Atlas Tree. A puppet made of wood, and you pull the strings.”
He’s an adorable manchild, and a part of her is terrified of him. “Don’t you like me?” he asks. No other branch of Ash would dare that question.
“Of course I like you, Davy.” And then Davy gets her in bed, and she likes him much better.
Davy makes simulacra, little toy animals and soldiers that march around the palace at Court Emmere. They contain a new compound, fleshiwood, an organic memory compound which can be programmed to repeat complex movements. Another source of income. And more – it turns out to have military applications. Such discoveries Tara takes for granted. It isn’t in her world-view to reflect on the unfairness of how easily money comes her way – not until after the Two-day War, the war that almost costs her everything.
One day, Davy makes a moth. It’s a beautiful moth, large and luminescent blue, like the fruit on the Cu’enashti nau’gsh, like the eyes of a Cu’enashti in human form, like a mothman. At first Tara thinks it’s another toy. Then she realizes it’s alive, really alive. She pulls back, her insides going cold.
“Don’t you like it?” Davy says, his hurt feelings showing clearly on his face.
“Won’t it be lonely?” she covers quickly.
Davy’s eyes open wide. “I didn’t make a girl! How stupid!” He opens his hand, and a second moth emerges. “There you go, Mr. Moth. Have some fun tonight!” He grins at the thought.
Later, Tara mutters something to Ailann about needing to do environmental impact studies. “Of all of us, Davy is closest to Ashtara, to the mothman,” he tells her. “He won’t make mistakes.”
He never does. His creations are always perfect, always fit perfectly into the harmony of the world. Even the firebirds, which Tara is certain will set the forests ablaze, turn out to have oils in their feathers that burn at a temperature low enough for the human hand to touch.
“It isn’t just propaganda,” she says to Ailann. “You really are a God.”
I dunno, says Tommy. It’s creepy. Don’t you think it’s a little creepy?
Davy is creepy. I can feel him grinning at me. He’d have to be – Davy is Cillian’s trauma.
Davy isn’t creepy. I’m creepy, says Suibhne.
It’s a different kind of creepy, says Tommy. You’re creepy in the way spiders are creepy. Davy is creepy in the way clowns are creepy.
Whereas you’re just sleazy, says Cillian. Fucking skin rags.
Suibhne is creepy in the way the mad are always creepy, says Dermot. His behavior is more than an inability to conform to social expectations. Those who consciously fail to conform are called rebels; those who try to conform and fail are called losers. But Suibhne’s behavior is actually prompted by his perceptions, which makes it impossible to ignore the disjunct between society’s unspoken consensus about the way the world functions, and the reality that most immutable truths are very negotiable. Suibhne’s creepiness is not caused by his lack of grasp on reality, but that his existence challenges your grasp on yours. Davy, on the other hand, isn’t creepy at all. Davy is scary.
Wow, says Tommy. If I thought all the thoughts that Dermot thinks, I’d be crazy too.
Suibhne ignores them. Earth spiders or Siderian spiders? These teeth are razor sharp.
Suibhne doesn’t so much grasp at straws. He builds entire villages of them. Metropolitan complexes. Worlds.
His latest straw hut is tradition. He has realized that tradition is a human means for maintaining continuity, which, in turn, imposes order on the universe. He understands perfectly that a need for tradition informs the Skarsian obsession with ancient Earth. The people of the Domha’vei, on every world but Dolparessa, blunt their terrible homesickness by telling themselves they maintain authentic human culture. There may be some truth to this. It is certain that contemporary Earth is nothing like the history they preserve.
Suibhne searches for an appropriate tradition, and thinks he has found it. Insane people believe that they are Napoleon. And he is a megalomaniacal dictator. So maybe he is Napoleon. His research is extensive and time-consuming. In contrast, it takes him only minutes to completely recreate the proper costume. After all, he is the Archon, and all of the power of the Domha’vei is at his disposal.
He is admiring himself in the mirror when he sees her behind him. Because it’s a reflection, he thinks it’s another hallucination. But when he turns, she is there. SHE is there. It isn’t a matter of optics. It’s closer to getting religion.
He’s never seen her before. He’s the only branch that did not grow in response to her need, bending and twisting in the direction of her light. All of us believed she was dead. Ailann couldn’t cope. Ailann ran into the bottom of a bottle. Ashtara has the distinction of being the first Cu’enashti space traveler, the first Cu’enashti scientist, the first Cu’enashti politician, and now the first Cu’enashti alcoholic.
For Tara, Ailann became God. Without her, he is nothing. This creates obvious difficulties. If the Archon can’t live without Tara, everything they worked for goes to hell. There’s no Arya large enough to direct the power grid now; if there were, the 5th Matriarch would have found it. If the Archon fails, millions of people on Volparnu, Sideria and Dolparessa will die, and the inhabitants of Skarsia will be left defenseless, at the mercy of CenGov and the increasingly troublesome Taseans. I and I will not allow this to happen. Even if Tara is dead, Tara’s dream will live. And so, from Ailann’s trauma, so much worse than the time General Panic’s gun blew open Mickey’s chest, Suibhne grows. Suibhne was created to live without Tara.
But overwhelmed by oppressive infinities of data, lacking the focal point which makes sense of two swirling universes, Suibhne is quite mad, and he’s fucked it up royally. Ailann had the knack of looking and acting like a god. Suibhne chants nursery rhymes and turns the cabinets in the war room to custard. He does not inspire faith. His heart is bleeding, and he doesn’t have the good sense to hide it. He makes a spectacle of it, a three-ring circus of pain and confusion. The men of Volparnu are near revolt, calling for the abdication of the Archon, not understanding this will mean the end of life as they know it. The people of Dolparessa, their blood having been hopelessly mingled with the sap of the Cu’enashti for the past nine hundred years, cling just as fiercely to their Living God, no matter how insane he seems. They are ready for yet another civil war.
Suibhne has fucked it up royally, but the worlds still have heat and light, and the weather on Dolparessa is still preternaturally perfect, which means that he hasn’t fucked it up in any of the ways that really matter. Yet in deference to the will of the people, he intends to immolate himself by burning the Atlas Tree. He’s happy with this decision. The voices in his head telling him to stop seem so far away. There’s only one thing that troubles him: he has nothing to wear. He’s not sure the Napoleon costume has that je ne sais quoi.
And then Tara is there, and his knees give way beneath him. It makes sense, it all makes sense. He never imagined it could all make sense.
She pulls out the gun from the hidden compartment in the desk and thrusts it into his hands. “If you want me dead, then do it yourself,” she says. “Don’t hire an assassin.”
At first, he doesn’t even understand what she is saying. He thinks it is because he is insane, but the voices in his head agree with his interpretation, with what the words seem to mean. He lets it tumble from his limp fingers, clattering on the floor. “How could you even imagine…” he stutters. “I mean, it’s you who must want me dead, that CenGov psychologist explained everything to me, about how alien I must’ve seemed to you, but you used me for my power. But it’s fine,” he finishes quickly. “Everything’s fine. Because it’s all for you, like Whirljack always said. Whatever you need, I’ll do it. I’ll become it.”
“CenGov psychologist? What are you talking about?”
Suibhne gets to his feet unsteadily. “Covey. The attaché who replaced Johannon. It’s OK. He showed me those vids of you confronting General Panic. It’s only natural that when she told you what Ross did, you’d just hate me, just be disgusted by me. So I’m killing myself tomorrow. See?” He grabs a newspad off the counter and waves it at her. The headline reads “Sweeney threatens Suicide: Government in Chaos.”
“Can’t even spell my bloody name right,” he grumbles. “I’m an Irishman! An Irishman!”
“You’re not an Irishman, you’re a Dolparessan tree,” says Tara. “And Covey is telepathic black ops – a brainwasher. He did the original work implanting St. John’s memories into Clive.”
Suibhne catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. He looks exactly like Napoleon, if only Napoleon had been a rabid puppy bashed repeatedly with a tree trunk. Except that Napoleon had short hair. Of course he did. Long hair was associated with the aristocracy; Frenchmen cut their hair after the revolution. “Should I cut my hair?” Suibhne asks worriedly.
“I like it long,” she replies. “As for General Panic, she showed me proof that the assassins were sent by Ailann. She said that he wanted to be free of me, wanted to rule the Domha’vei by himself. She said that Ash was driven mad by guilt, which is why He emanated you.” Tara closes the space between them. She places her hand upon Suibhne’s heart. It is light and music, the hand of God exploding in his chest. “It’s such an obvious fabrication. If you wanted me dead, you could stop my beating heart with a thought. But I still half-believed it. It’s because I’m human, and freedom is important to us. I could imagine a Cu’enashti wanting to be free. But you don’t want to be free, do you?”
“If I and I wanted to be free, He would have made the leap as a Cu’enmerengi.”
He sees understanding in Tara’s eyes. She hadn’t thought of it, but it makes perfect sense. “Of course. This is what you chose.”
Suibhne swallows hard and nods. Because she is everything to him, he can’t even begin to find the words to express her stupidity. It is the most numinous stupidity in the history of the universe. Her hand is on his chest, and he is prepared to make sandcastles from starlight, or to kill everyone in the Domha’vei if she asks him.
“That bitch set us up – turned us against each other.” Now Tara knows what the game was. It was never about killing her. It was about getting rid of an inconveniently omnipotent tree. Playing dead had worked exactly for the benefit of their enemies. Best not to tell Suibhne that now. “But General Panic didn’t say anything about Ross. What did Ross do?” Tara asks.
“Nothing,” Suibhne says quickly.
Tara is thinking now, thinking of Ross and General Panic. Ross never came back from Dumati; she woke up and Callum was in bed besides her. She’d assumed that Ross had died. She was used to that sort of thing by now – Callum was the seventeenth branch. She was used to waking up with a different man than she’d gone to bed with. She was used to occasionally coming home to a man she’d never seen before. She didn’t even know all of the existing branches. Because of that stupid fight they’d had, Ash still refused to let her meet Wynne.
Still, she should have known. Callum was different, sort of like Davy was different. But Callum wasn’t disturbing. He was a sweet little subby-boi. He was quiet, always looking at the ground and kneeling at her feet. Callum liked to be hurt.
“Did Ross give up information?” she asks. “Was he interrogated?” Suibhne turns away. “It’s all right. I just need to know what he told General Panic,” she says soothingly. “I would never blame him. Under circumstances like that…”
“None of us would break under torture,” Suibhne growls, turning back on her. “Never! Pain is pain, and then it passes. They can chop me into bits, and I’ll just heal myself. I and I will grow another branch, and come back stronger! There’s no way we would ever betray you. We can’t – literally can’t.”
“Then what did Ross do?”
Suibhne is pale now. All the voices in his head are telling him to lie. But Tara says “Tell me,” and he can’t lie. He literally can’t.
Tears stream out of his mad blue eyes, the eyes that all of us share. “He should have done something. But he was so far away from Dolparessa, from the Atlas Tree. General Panic knew how it works. Dumati is the edge. A little further out, and he would have snapped back home like a man on a bungee cord. But he was so weak. You remember how Patrick used to be on Eirelantra? He didn’t have the strength to do alchemy or change back into I and I. He didn’t have the strength to fight.”
“Suibhne, tell me, what did Ross do?”
“It was more of what he didn’t do. He should have found a way to die. He should have stopped them. But he couldn’t…” Suibhne staggers against the cacophony of voices. He can’t say it. He has to say it. “Panic gave him to her men.”
There is a moment of silence, electric and icy. Suibhne – all of us – are certain it’s over. And every one of us believes it is deserved. We horribly betrayed the absolute fidelity which is the root of our lives, and then lied about it. Suibhne could be right. Maybe it will be best for us to burn.
Then Tara speaks. “Do you remember what I said at the battle of Starbright Mountain? When I took Jamey down from that cross?”
It takes Suibhne a minute to access the memories stored in Jamey’s branch. It was before his time; he wasn’t there to watch over Jamey’s shoulder.
He remembers the pretender Guinnebar, young and sure of herself, he remembers the honor-challenge, her ferocious assault. Guinnebar was fast and light, a whirl of supple elegance. And Tara stepping back, back, pressed tightly to the defensive, blocking and moving aside. And then he remembers the sharp kick, Tara’s heavy, graceless foot connecting with the pretender’s head, the snap as the skull jerked back at an unnatural angle from the spine. He remembers how the corpse dropped to the sodden sand like a wet rag.
“You said ‘Stupid girl. You only have to hit once.’”
“No, not that. After that.”
He thinks again. Guinnebar’s troops were in confusion after their leader’s unexpected defeat. But under Skarsian law, Skarsian tradition, matters of politics were often decided by duel. Honor compelled the losers to accept, to put away their rebellion. And then Tara turned to address them – gesturing up the beach towards the enormous nine-branched nau’gsh which was still supported by an elaborate system of scaffolding hung on the side of the reconstructed mountain.
“You said, ‘If anyone ever touches my fucking tree again, I’ll use a broken bottle of nau’gsh wine to take his testicles and use them for wind chimes. Do you fucking understand?’”
Tara nods. “General Panic must think because she lacks the necessary appendages, she’s safe. I’ll have to devise something else appropriate. You’re an imaginative man, Suibhne. You help me.”
“I thought I and I said we weren’t supposed to talk about that,” it’s Callum, speaking so quietly we can barely hear him. But this story is important to him. Callum is Ross’ trauma, just like Davy is Cillian’s trauma. Just like Sloane is Daniel’s trauma, Evan is Sloane’s trauma, Whirljack is Evan’s trauma. Mickey, Tommy, Ailann and I got lucky. We were actions instead of reactions. No tree had ever done that before. It was Whirljack who made it possible.
I’m not telling the story directly, I say. I don’t think any of us want to live through that again.
You don’t want to live through that again, do you, Callum? Tarlach asks. There’s a tense moment before Callum shakes his head.
Now that I think of it, the lack of a response from I and I is a bit surprising. But then again, I and I didn’t attempt to stop Suibhne’s immolation. Of course, it never got to that point. Maybe He meant to swap Suibhne out at the last minute. Or maybe He knew that Tara would fix everything. I and I had a plan. He must have a plan now.
“Or maybe it’s because Patrick gets away with everything,” says Cillian. “Patrick gets away with murder.”
I feel him smiling. It’s a wolf-smile. Admiral Cillian Whelan. Whelan means wolf. He’s smiling because it makes us uncomfortable, but there’s a bitterness to it. Cillian would like to get away with murder, but Ailann won’t let him.
Ailann almost destroyed him, and he won’t let us forget it.
“Look at it,” says Ailann. “We should get rid of it. Cut it off now.”
Tara surveys the branch, twisted and black. “It’s part of you,” she says. “Cutting it off won’t kill the impulse.”
“It’s diseased. No nau’gsh has ever killed before. Trees don’t kill. Isn’t that what we tell humans when they start to get worried about our abilities? To keep them from thinking we’re a threat?” Ailann realizes that it’s bad for humans to think of the Cu’endhari as threatening. When humans feel threatened, they get violent. The Cu’endhari can’t exactly run away. Ailann is starting to understand why the old Arya Archon so preciously guarded the secret of their sentience.
“Patrick saved my life. There was nothing else he could do.” Tara is remembering now, remembering how they hid in the crawl space of the diplomatic flagship. It was a setup, a trap, and she had stumbled right into it. And still Ash came to her aid, even though it was at the edge of his range. He emanated as Patrick, the longest branch jutting out of the sea cliff of Starbright Mountain, the one grown especially to live on Eirelantra, the one who could exist farthest from home.
For hours, they dodged the assassin. The night that Mickey got her out of the burning science station, she wondered why it reminded her so much of the time that Sloane had hidden and protected her from her husband’s hired killer. This time, she didn’t wonder. Patrick was Sloane. Patrick was Mickey. But Patrick wasn’t Mickey or Sloane. Mickey was an expert martial artist. Sloane was tall and strong and could handle himself in a fight. Patrick was a diplomat, used to talking his way out of situations. But he was still Ash.
The assassin got the jump on them, kicking Patrick in the ribs. If they had been home, on Dolparessa, Patrick could have tossed their adversary easily across the dimly-lit cargo bay. But they weren’t at home, and it tired Patrick to walk short distances. When they lived on Eirelantra, he used to cover for it by saying he was anemic.
The assailant was good, neoninja, maybe. But so was Tara, and she managed to get the gun. They scrambled, and it went skidding across the floor. The assassin kicked, grazing Tara’s head, and as she reeled back, he drew his sword.
She fought for clear sight as the assassin towered over her. Then he buckled forward, sword falling uselessly to the deck.
Patrick stood, staring at the gun in his hand. He had killed. Trees don’t kill. Trees were not killers. He didn’t understand how this could happen.
Inside of his head, Whirljack said, We’ll become anything she needs us to be.
A killer, thought Patrick. I’m not a killer. I’m her handsome prince.
“Are you all right?” said Tara, fully understanding the implications of the act.
“I’m fine,” said Patrick, dazed. And he was. I and I absorbed the full impact of the trauma. When they returned home, they discovered an eleventh branch, jutting out of the cliffside, below Mickey, Tommy and Patrick. It didn’t look like the other branches. There was something distinctly wrong about it.
“It’s evil,” says Ailann. “We can’t let it emanate.”
“It’s not responsible for what happened. It didn’t kill – Patrick did. Sweet Patrick. It’s a scapegoat for Patrick’s sin.” Tara turns to squarely meet Ailann’s gaze. “I forbid you to harm it. Also, Ash, you’re never wrong. You must have a reason for this. It could prove to be of use.”
Tara was right. The ability to kill proved to be very useful.
That must have been difficult for you to write, Lugh says, putting his arm around my shoulder.
Lugh is the kindest emanation you’ll ever meet. It’s nice to have his comfort, but I really don’t need it. Not so much, I say. I just don’t feel anything about it. It’s like it happened to someone else.
You wrote about yourself in the third person, says Tarlach. That’s a distancing mechanism. It’s weird though…
Tarlach stops. Now that’s weird. Tarlach always says what’s on his mind. I ask him what’s wrong.
I’m our analyst. I’ve been through everyone’s memories. Daniel clearly feels being beaten and thrown over the cliff. Sloane remembers being shot and dying in Tara’s arms. Evan remembers the day Tara left Dolparessa. Every one of us remembers the trauma that generated a new branch. Even Ross.
I remember falling on that bomb on Eirelantra, I say. The one that resulted in Hurley. The flash, the pain, the nothingness, I feel it all. But I can’t feel what it was like to pull the trigger.
Now that’s creepier than Suibhne, says Lorcan, laughing.
Maybe we should have a happy story now, Lugh suggests.
I completely agree. It’s time to change the topic. What kind of story? I ask.
About sex, Tommy says.
Now there is a response from I and I. A warm wave of contentment that sweeps us away in a dream of flowers.