Well, I did have the best intention of finishing Owen’s story. But here’s what happened: by this time, Tara had awakened, so I decided to ask her how she ended up at the Skarsium mine. She was in the bath.
“I need some information for my writing,” I say.
“Really? Or is that an excuse to watch me bathe?”
Busted, says Tommy.
“Well, now that you’re here,” she continues, “you can wash my back.”
This is definitely better than imagining it, says Dermot.
“You have such beautiful hands,” she says. “I love to feel them on my skin.”
Do all human brains lock down under these circumstances?
She gives me an arch look. “Patrick, why do you have to be so fucking perfect? Now I’m going to be late for my luncheon with the Duchess of Verhim.”
This is why we should be Patrick more often, says Wynne. He gets lucky even more than I do.
Long and short of it: Tara is at her luncheon, and I never did get an answer about the Skarsium mine.
S’ok, says Tommy. There were priorities.
You keep bringing up Wynne’s luck, but you haven’t explained it yet, Mickey points out. Maybe you can tell that story while we’re waiting for information to finish the story about Owen.
It might destroy the flow of the narrative, says Driscoll.
What flow of the narrative? says Evan. One minute there were telepathically brainwashed zombies, the next we were at a casino, and then…
Rub-a-dub-dub, says Cillian.
All right, let’s stick with Wynne, I say. At this point, I don’t see how it could make anything worse.
In order to make sense of Wynne’s story, you’ll have to tell them about the fight I had with Tara, says Ailann, and that’s so depressing.
It’s your fucking fault we got a branch behind, says Cillian. You didn’t want me to emanate.
You emanated at exactly the right time. Maybe I should tell that story instead.
Clive Rivers comes to warn them. “We’ve seen this before. Absolutely the highest level of classification in CenGov, but I know about it because Edom St. John was brought in as a consultant.”
“What’s the big deal?” Tara asks. “It’s not like we’ve never discovered a new life form. You can’t throw a rock in this galaxy without hitting a new life form.”
Clive shakes his head. Cuinn can sense that he is worried, and that is weird. Clive is normally as cool as a cucumber.
Why are cucumbers cooler than trees? Davy asks. They’re just a species of gourd.
Look at the shape, says Tommy. They’re like big cocks.
Shush, I say. This is a dramatic story, and you’re breaking the tension.
“These aren’t ordinary aliens. They’re actually one giant sentient bacterial colony. They spread by infecting an animal host. They’re so virulent that CenGov quarantined their whole sector.”
“Wow!” says Cuinn. “That’s exciting. That’s completely unique.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Clive says dryly. “They kill everything they encounter. We have to destroy that ship.”
“Maybe that’s a natural way of thinking for someone who descended from a monkey,” Cuinn says, “but trees don’t start wars.”
They go out in a shuttle to meet the alien craft. Clive accompanies Cuinn, “To protect you from your own stupidity,” he says. “I know it’s difficult for people descended from trees to figure out how a brain works.”
Actually, Cuinn has a very good brain. I and I cultivated his brain to have the maximum capacity for human intelligence.
The shuttle is immediately cleared for docking. “See?” says Cuinn. “They’re friendly.”
“Very friendly,” says Clive, “seeing as their intent is to take over our bodies and use them to infect the entire Domha’vei system.”
Clive kits up head to toe in a military issue decontamination uniform. Cuinn puts on a lab coat.
“Hi, I’m Cuinn Cleary, representative of the Matriarch and Archon of Skarsia,” he says, sticking out his right hand. “Nice to meet you.”
The aliens look at each other incredulously.
“Let’s get right to business. You guys are protozoans. We Cu’endhari are plants that evolved into animals. We aren’t in a kingdom anymore – we’re an empire. But we’re kind of rooted to the homeworld, if you know what I mean. And you guys have a really cool means of colonization. So we were thinking that maybe the protozoan kingdom could join our empire, and we could put our genetic inheritance together, and come up with some spores or something, and conquer the galaxy.”
That thunk you heard is the sound of Clive’s jaw hitting the floor. This is the first that any of us had heard of this. Was this what I and I was really planning?
The alien takes Cuinn’s hand. “We have no use for plants,” it says, “and animals serve us once we destroy their sentience.”
Cuinn’s face goes dark in a way that Cuinn’s face doesn’t normally work. “That’s too bad,” he says. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
There is an enormous flash of light.
When Clive’s vision clears, he finds himself in a force-field bubble, floating next to the great, glowing creature that is half insect, half angel. There is no trace of the alien ship at all.
Tara, monitoring the defense grid, had seen the flash. She is there when I and I returns with Clive in tow. The bubble bounces on the ground and tosses Clive loose. I and I spreads His arms magnificently and then crosses them, folding himself back into the container of a man.
A new man, one Tara had never seen before. He is compact and muscular, dressed in an admiral’s uniform, crew cut, steel blue eyes hidden beneath a pair of shadehuds. He salutes. “Admiral Cillian Whelan,” he says. Then he grabs Tara – the Matriarch of Skarsia, right in front of her High Council – and pulls her into a brutal kiss, accompanied by much groping.
“Hate to tell you this, baby,” he says when he comes up for air. “It’s fucking genocide time.”
That’s such an awesome line, says Tommy. “It’s fucking genocide time!” He gives Cillian a high-five.
I think I’m going to be sick, says Evan.
The point is that I and I doesn’t make mistakes, I say. Cillian didn’t emanate right away because he was being held in reserve. It had nothing to do with Ailann.
For whatever reason, says Dermot, the emanations started to be offset by one branch. The branch that was grown just then when Cuinn disinfected…
Spontaneous combustion is a pretty radical means of disinfection, says Hurley.
…that branch was Davy, but he didn’t turn up until Cillian took a hit in the Microbial War. And the branch that resulted from that injury was Wynne.
She waited until Ailann emanated. She never liked to argue with Patrick, perhaps because she has worried about his emotional state since he killed that assassin. Or perhaps because she feels so guilty about the time she sent him into exile. Or perhaps it’s just because she loves him most and won’t admit it.
Or perhaps it’s because it’s Ailann she’s dreamt about since she was a child, Ailann who is supposed to save her and make everything right.
“So is this how it’s going to be? A new lover every week?”
Ailann looks at her, puzzled.
“Seriously. Now I have twelve. Isn’t that a little excessive? Not that you ever let me see some of them.”
“I don’t have anything to do with that. I and I decides who and when we emanate. Although it isn’t quite decides the way a human decides. It’s more like a feeling, an instinct, like the Atlas Tree knows which direction the light falls, and sends a branch that way.”
She looks exasperated. “But you are Ash. I know you’re Ailann, but you’re Ash. You can’t get out of the responsibility saying “I didn’t do it,” because on some level, you did.”
“That’s like saying, “I didn’t kill that man; it was my hand that fired the gun.”
“My hand doesn’t talk back. My hand doesn’t engage in stupid sophistry.”
“What did you want I and I to do? Not have Cillian engage in that battle? Let the microbes destroy humanity? Davy emanated because Cillian was hurt.”
“You don’t get it, do you? How many times to I have to watch you die?”
“It’s not like we’re really dead. We’re all still here. We can emanate at any time.”
“Oh really? Then why can’t I see Sloane? Why hasn’t my Daniel come back to me?”
Ailann looks at her blankly, uncomprehendingly. “Because they were failures.”
I can’t believe she threw that fucking vase at you, says Cillian. That’s pretty good.
She has a temper.
She’s got more balls than a gravity-free golf course, says Cillian. That’s why I love her.
I probably shouldn’t have said that, says Ailann.
It was completely tasteless and lacking in sensitivity. You know she put Sloane on a pedestal – quite literally. And Daniel is special.
Of course he’s special, says Dermot. He’s the flower-face. Just like I’m the fruit.
From a distance, the girl thinks her eyes are tricking her. But as she walks down the beach, drawing closer, she sees that it’s true. Her tree is blossoming.
She runs now, nearly slipping in the globby wet sand, until she reaches the path at the foot of the cliffside. “Blue roses,” she gasps. “Blue roses!”
She feels inordinately proud of this. Of course her tree wouldn’t have common pink roses, or even green ones.
She has to slow down a bit; the path is hard going. About halfway up, she sees him.
Normally, she would be annoyed, very annoyed. Even though the beach is public land, it’s usually deserted, and almost no one ever walks up to the tree. She feels like it’s her special spot. Whenever anyone else is there, she is sullen and resentful.
But not this time. There’s something about this young man that makes him impossible to resent. He’s handsome, a bit too thin perhaps, which makes him seem awkward. His dark hair is a shade too long, and hangs into his eyes. But there is something in his face that radiates sweetness, innocence. He has the most intense blue eyes she’s ever seen.
He’s holding something – one of the flowers. As she nears, he holds it out to her.
I’m going to try something, I say. I’m going to do a dramatic reconstruction of something Tara told me once.
Why not just let her tell it? asks Evan.
It will have more impact through direct narrative structure than narrated indirectly, I say.
Look at fucking Hemingway here, says Cillian. Look at fucking Shakespeare. I thought you were gonna talk about Wynne. And you still didn’t tell about the battle, about how I saved the fucking universe.
That’s both an exaggeration and a matter of perspective, says Dermot. You saved humankind and the Cu’endhari. From the microbial perspective, you destroyed their civilization. From the microbial perspective, you’re Set, Satan, Ereshkigal and Ahriman rolled into one.
I’m Mr. Fucking Cleaner, says Cillian. Kills germs dead.
Fuck all, he knows his classic literature, says Tommy. Where is that from?
The Norton Anthology of Merchandising, says Evan. One of the greatest works of the 21st century CE. I have to admit that it never held the appeal to me of, say, Tennyson.
It is delightfully ironic, says Driscoll, that the crudest of us is also the most literate. Evidence of I and I’s artistic design. Since we are all archetypes, it would be easy for us to fall into stereotypes. Stock characters.
Tara would see through that immediately. She has too much taste.
You’re missing the point, Whirljack says to Driscoll. I and I produces emanations in response to Tara. If other trees seem banal to you, it’s because they chose a beloved with a banal imagination. If there’s anything of interest about us, it came from her subconscious mind.
She needed a god, says Ailann. So I became God.
“Do you really want to leave him, this handsome man? And these beautiful children?” Tara asks, picking up the holograph.
The woman in the hospital bed is weeping, tears streaming from her clouded blue eyes. “Theresa and Ashtheresa” is all she says.
How many times today has Tara heard those words? She has no idea what they mean. Maybe she’ll ask Lady Claris. The thing that doesn’t make sense to her – doesn’t make a damn bit of sense – is that all of the drifters in the poverty ward immediately admitted they were nau’gsh. A multitude of the stricken – entertainers, travelling salesmen, prostitutes. But the handful in the regular wards – the ones surrounded by family and friends – seem prepared to take their secret to their graves. “I won’t tell them. I won’t tell anyone. The forestry department doesn’t know why I’m making them prioritize certain trees. They think I’ve a screw loose – but it’s what they expect of the aristocracy.”
The woman puts her face into her hands. She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to die, really not. But it would be better than having Jon find out the truth. Jonashra would be destroyed if Jon rejected her. And she knew better than to tell. How many times had the Cantor said to her, “Don’t even hint at the truth. Learn to live as human.”
Tara knows the woman is keeping secrets. Tara knows all about secrets. She knows, for example, that the nau’gsh blight is genetically engineered, a perfectly targeted CenGov attack against a secret they shouldn’t know and won’t admit to knowing. “You do understand that if your tree succumbs, it’s a final death. There’s no recovery from root rot.”
But the Cantor never taught them what to do if humans confronted them with the truth. The Cantor never said what to do if the human was trying to help you – and the human was the ruler of your world, the Marquesa of Dolparessa herself.
“What’s this?” Tara asks, picking up a dried flower from next to the hologram. “A nau’gsh rose.” She has a sudden inspiration. “Is it from your tree?”
It’s all too much for the sick woman. “I gave that rose to Jon the day I first came to him,” she sobs. “You know what it means for a Cu’enashti to give you a flower? A flower is love – it’s all we know of beauty, of fragility, of sex. When a Cu’enashti gives you a flower, it means take me, take everything of me.”