“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” I told Ailann. “You can just forget it. Because I also know exactly what Ash is thinking. That thing with Driscoll, and with Chase – he has no intention of abandoning Goliath. He wants those branches back.”
“Tara,” he said, “I’m going to have Cuinn run the numbers. He can figure out when the Goliath node will be closer than Dolparessa to Skarsia and Eirelantra. We can just avoid going there at those times. Of course we’ll never be able to go to Dalgherdia again. It’s too bad; Tommy will miss running his club in Dalgherdia City. Still, sacrifices must be made.”
“You jealous fucking bastard. You intend never to let them emanate again.”
“It has nothing to do with jealousy. Our first priority is your safety, something the Cantor quite rightly called me out on. While we slept, you were unprotected. Anything could have happened! I shudder to think of the condition of your arteries – you could have been done in by your taste for broiled filoped in a cream reduction sauce.”
“I could see a fucking cardiologist like everyone else in the Domha’vei. Our medical technology is damn good – not as good as Earth’s, but we don’t have disgusting nanobots crawling around inside of us. Miracles are mostly obsolete. People don’t really need them. They just like them.”
“So I’m useless, is that what you’re saying? I’m useless, so you can just throw me over for another tree?”
“Good grief, Ailann, you’re hardly useless. You control the power grid…”
“Aran can do that.”
“You are being childish. Get a grip.”
“I am a jealous god. Thou shalt put no other god before me.”
“How does Lorcan feel about that?”
“Lorcan is a psychopath. Leave Lorcan out of it.”
It was no use. Where my safety is at issue, it’s impossible to budge him. I supposed making the argument that the Goliath emanations were perfectly capable of protecting me wouldn’t go over well. And in truth, I wasn’t completely sure of that. They had all the power, in theory, but they seemed to be missing some vital chunks of their education.
“Well, you’d better do it soon,” I said. “We were supposed to go to Eirelantra, but we came back to Dolparessa instead because I was worried about Atlas, and because of the K’ntasari. But convening the court has already been delayed, and the Dol-lans are getting restless.” The Dol-lans were a certain set of socially-conscious aristos who commuted continually between Dolparessa and Eirelantra. They arose shortly after I took the throne, and they command a significantly greater percentage of media push than the stodgy old aristos still hanging around Skarsia and Sideria, the 5th Matriarch’s power bases.
“It may have to be delayed even more,” said Ailann darkly, “but I’ll get Cuinn right on it.”
“Do what you must,” I said, trying to sound dismissive. “I’m going to talk to the Cantor about the K’ntasari.”
By the time I got down to the verandah, I was sorry that we fought. Our relationship is so strange – I need and rely upon Ailann perhaps more than any other emanation, but we also bicker more. Perhaps it’s because he’s so stressed all the time: he’s got the weight of all the worlds on his shoulders, plus my goddamn destiny, whatever that means. But this time, I’m sure I’m in the right. It isn’t just my temper, or my willfulness. I looked back up at my window, and saw him looking out at me. He turned away quickly. I saw him pour a drink. He would be nova’d by lunch.
I didn’t bother trying to stop him. Besides the fact that it would be hypocritical of me, it’s not like he could ruin his liver, and he could be sober in an instant if he needed to be. Still, there have been enough incidents where the courtiers have come upon him in a completely incoherent state that the aristos realize the truth. The PR people are constantly vigilant that the populace doesn’t find out. It really wouldn’t be reassuring for the citizens to know that their Living God is a drunk.
Ailann’s problem is that he drinks to get through things. When I’ve got a difficult situation – like this meeting with the Cantor – I want an absolutely clear head. After it’s over, I’ll go on a bender.
I met the Cantor and Miranda in the lower gardens. There’s a lovely enclosed area there, tables and chairs set down in a depressed circle, surrounded by a riot of flowers and butterflybys. And blue angel moths, and the occasional firebird – Davy’s handiwork is never absent. It’s part of the redesign of the gardens done by Jamey and Driscoll for our wedding.
“What a pretty space,” said the Cantor. “It’s where the larch groves used to be, isn’t it?”
Ouch. I had forgotten. She’s not going to forgive Suibhne for that, even though he’s quite insane. Honestly, I don’t know why the Nau’gsh get so funny about ordinary trees. They are really little more than the equivalent of dogs. Actually, if someone killed a bunch of dogs for no reason, it would be pretty disturbing, the gratuitous cruelty and violence. I’d think the killer was a potential psychopath. Suibhne isn’t a psychopath, though. I hesitate to put a name to his disease – what’s healthy or unhealthy for the human mind isn’t necessarily the same for a Cu’enashti. Suibhne was tormented and delusional when he felled the trees. He wasn’t being cruel.
Lorcan, now Lorcan is a psychopath.
“Miranda,” I said, refusing to take the bait, “have your people decided what you want to do?”
Miranda nodded. “We will accept your offer of membership in the Skarsian Matriarchy. However, I believe we will need several years to prepare ourselves to function as citizens. There will need to be a massive education effort. Since the Cu’endhari are incapable of coming to Eden,” as she said this, I detected a slight note of smugness, and the Cantor’s smile twitched, “we will need to send more of our people to Dolparessa for training. Then they can return to Eden and pass the teachings on to the rest of the K’ntasari.”
“We’ve declared Eden off-limits,” I said, “so no one will interfere with your people until they are ready. I realize that this will be an enormous culture shock.”
Miranda shook her head. “We have only existed for a little more than three years. I have come to understand the absolute uniqueness of our position. Compared to the other sentient races of the galaxy, we hardly have something we can call a culture. To that end, we are happy to follow the Cu’endhari lead, understanding that there are some great differences between us.”
“There are also great differences between the three Cu’endhari subspecies,” said the Cantor. “Yet we find a way to exist harmoniously.”
I smile and say nothing. By “existing harmoniously” she means that the Cu’ensali are absolutely uninterested in politics and human society, and are perfectly happy to stay flitting around the forests. The Cu’enmerengi resent the fuck out of the Cu’enashti – they’ve still never gotten over the Cantor’s collusion with the 4th and 5th Matriarchs and the imposition of the Great Silence. We’re not even mentioning the Arya, who won’t communicate with what they consider a lesser species, and exist entirely in isolation in the Great Northern Forest. And the fact that the Cu’enashti are themselves divided in loyalty. They revere the Cantor as their teacher, but Ashtara has become a folk-hero to them. If it came down to a conflict between them, many might take Ash’s side.
And now Davy has made the K’ntasari, and thrown another variable into the mix. Who will they ally themselves with? I want to say Ash, but…my gut feeling is that they would follow Ari and Manasseh into a burning building, but Ailann…maybe not. There’s a sullenness about Miranda’s expression when she looks at Ailann, and I understand its source. She was in love with Manasseh, worshipped the ground under Ari’s roots. She sees Ailann as depriving her of them.
I have a sudden moment of panic. Would the K’ntasari consider attacking Atlas for the sake of Goliath? No Dolparessan Nau’gsh would ever consider the idea. But the K’ntasari were capable of killing, capable, if I understood the Caliban story correctly, even of violence against their own. In their human forms, they were altogether too much like humans.
And then I realized something else – there was no mention of a K’ntasari among the Terran survivors we’d captured on Eden. Which means that either Caliban had been killed, was still running loose on Eden, or had been taken to Dalgherdia and was maybe in hiding. I mention the possibility to Miranda.
“He’s one being,” she said dismissively. “Why even consider him?”
“He’s a seasoned warrior capable of stunning or killing his foes with blasts of nul-energy, who has an enormous axe to grind and who may be collaborating with CenGov. I consider him a problem.”
“If he has indeed survived, he would be foolish to consider acting against us.”
“You just don’t get it, do you? When someone is possessed by the need for revenge, they aren’t rational.” I said this remembering all too well the trouble we had with Molly the Telepath – and continue to have with Tasean malcontents.
Well, all right. I also remember setting fire to General Panic’s corpse. But she really did have it coming.
“If he were still alive, I’m certain we would have heard something.”
Another pointless argument. I let it go. I turned to the Cantor. “And how do your people feel about the K’ntasari issue?”
“There is controversy. Many agree that they are Nau’gsh and should be accepted into the Convocation of the Forest. Others argue that since they are not native to Dolparessa, they are not of us. Their roots share not the same soil.”
“But you think they should be admitted? Surely your people will accept your ruling?”
She drummed her fingers on the table. “Yes…it will go more smoothly with Ashtara’s open support.”
“Well, of course, he’ll give it,” I said, momentarily missing the source of the problem. Then I realized that she was pissed off at having to ask Ash for help. She really was furious with him. I wanted to ask her about it, but not in front of Miranda. “Miranda, I think we’re about done here, and I have something personal I want to discuss with the Cantor. It has nothing to do with the K’ntasari.”
“Of course.” Miranda stood, bowed, and took her leave. For a moment I allowed myself to dwell on what an elegant, dignified creature Davy had created. All of Davy’s creations were beautiful, but he had never created people before. Was this his dream of human perfection? She was willowy and blonde; I was squatty with compact muscles that tended to run to fat when I didn’t exercise, I had crazy red hair. I have been called beautiful, and I suppose I am, especially my eyes, but not like that. Not like her. If the two of us came into a room together, everyone would look at her.
Everyone, that is, except Ash. Ash’s eyes never leave me. There’s no reason for jealousy. I’m getting as bad as Ailann.
“The answer is no,” said the Cantor. “You are married, for all eternity, according to the Cu’enashti law you yourself had a hand in devising, to the Atlas Tree.” I was shocked by how obviously she’d anticipated my question. “I do not hold you accountable for your actions with those bastard emanations,” she continued. “Far be it from me to hold a human accountable for anything, especially our Sublime Matriarch. But I cannot legitimatize this unnatural thing, this spawn of Ashtara’s hubris.”
“Cantor,” I replied, “are you a tree, or are you a mothman?”
“I am Cu’enashti. We are both – there is no difference between them. Like all Cu’enashti, I call my truest self by the name I and I.”
I try to keep my tone polite. There was no point in antagonizing her. I would stick to reason. “That’s obviously wrong, or this couldn’t have happened. Ashtara is separate from Atlas, as separate as he is from his emanations.”
“It is an artificial condition, a freakish split caused by his own actions. Perhaps, in the deepest sense, we should consider him insane. He has violated the unity of his own being.”
“Your average Cu’enashti has as much unity of being as the Mimosa Tabernacle Choir in the middle of a football riot. Maybe you don’t understand since you’ve only got one trunk. It’s funny how everyone listens to you, but developmentally, you’re nothing more than an overgrown child. You’re almost a thousand years old, and you’ve never even fruited! How can you possibly understand the average Cu’enashti, let alone someone like Ash with his twenty-five, no, twenty-eight emanations.”
So much for not antagonizing her. I do have a bit of a temper.
The Cantor is one of the most non-violent beings I have ever met, but I swear to all the gods she was going to hit me. Well, I can take care of myself, but if she did, there would be open war between her and Ash – and in this matter, her people would entirely side with Ash. Such an affront to the Chosen could not be forgiven.
If she herself didn’t realize this, something did, because she raised her arms and the mothman unfolded. I had never seen her true form before. It isn’t something that the Cu’enashti tend to show outside their immediate families. It was surprisingly unlike Ash – the same milky blue energy, of course, but her wings and antennae were totally different. For something so non-human, it’s actually quite easy to tell the members of their species apart. I only saw her for an instant because she rocketed into the sky and out of my sight.
*****
When I returned to my suite, Cuinn was there. I wasn’t entirely happy about this. I had wanted to smooth things over with Ailann. Also, I really felt that Ailann should be more visible – the people needed the security of seeing their god after such a long absence. This emanation roulette was getting on my nerves.
“Here’s what Ailann wants to know,” he said. “We have to postpone holding court for another two months. Yeah, I know, Battlequeen Escharton is going to have to cancel her fancy dress ball. But court is pretty boring anyway. Now, let’s work on the real problem. Because I don’t think I can take Driscoll going on another crying jag. That was freaky, wasn’t it? First, we have to define the problem. The problem is not that we’re different entities – Chase’s druggy experiment proved that. There’s a resonance between the branches Davy made with the ones they were derived from. So it all comes down to wood. Our memory is in our branches. My memory is physically connected to the others, so that’s why I can access them directly. So basically, we need to connect up. Now the obvious solution is to transplant Goliath here. Put the two trees close together, and the roots will entwine naturally.”
I must have turned three shades of green. “Do you have any idea of the shock that would cause in a tree that big? And we have no idea how well it will take to Dolparessan soil.”
“Risk factor?”
“We’d better call Sir Kaman for an expert opinion.”
“Tara, you’re the galaxy’s foremost expert on Nau’gsh species. Your opinion is expert.”
“Yes, but doctors don’t operate on their own families. All right, just making predictions based on Atlas’ responses, which may be entirely different from Goliath’s, I’d give it a 50/50 chance of survival.”
“But Goliath is pretty much ideal. Atlas has had damage over the years.”
“And has had to adapt to far more hostile conditions – but Cuinn, I see that as a positive. Atlas is used to adapting. It’s grown stronger over the years. Goliath’s ideal conditions may have made it more fragile.”
“Huh. 50/50 is way not good enough. Then how about we cut off Ari, Manasseh and Aran’s branches and graft them to Atlas?”
“That’s pretty risky too. We don’t know how they’ll take. Owen’s did, but Owen was being grafted back to his own tree. And there’s a psychological risk, too. Their roots are in Goliath. Remember how awful it was when Owen was being stored in that hydroponic facility? He had his own roots, but not being part of Atlas was driving him mad. What effect will being connected to Atlas’ roots have on them? And…”
And I remembered something else. My Gyre dream. “Tommy.”
“Tommy? Oh, right. He had to be grafted back, too, when Atlas fell off the side of the mountain. But that was pretty immediate. It healed well. Would’ve healed even faster if Atlas hadn’t been uprooted at the time.”
“Actually, not Tommy. Thomas. I thought it was Tommy, but it wasn’t. It must’ve been another Goliath emanation. In my Gyre dream, he said he didn’t know if he would be allowed to be born, but he wanted to live so that he could love me. I thought it was just some nonsensical hallucination…”
“Aw, geez, Tara, you’re gonna make Driscoll cry again. But you mean to say that those other branches are already emanated?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes it takes your branches a while to emanate a human form, but does that mean that the personality isn’t already in there? It’s not reasonable to assume that it just occurs spontaneously, in an instant. Perhaps it grows with the branch.”
“Which means, if you’re right, that we’d be abandoning 22 more of us. Crap. Well, I guess that means it’s time for the non-obvious solution.” I could have been imagining things, but Cuinn seemed to look decidedly gleeful. He produced a datapad, waved his hand over it to call up a holographic simulation. “Now this is a topographical map of the spacetime geography of the region.” I nodded. Frankly, I studied xenobotany. Physics was never my strong suit.
“See, I have an idea. Here it is: wormholes. Not wormholes like get eaten in our wood by pesky boremites – ugh, it’s so disgusting when that happens. Fortunately, Sir Kaman keeps us well-pruned. Good pruning is essential for hygiene. Now where was I? Wormholes – like we use for interstellar travel.”
“I know what a wormhole is.” I’m bad at physics, but not that bad!
“Right. Well, our drives work by evoking ad hoc wormholes which allow us to take shortcuts through other universes. It requires a ginormous amount of energy, but because we don’t need them for long, they collapse almost immediately. Because wormholes aren’t stable in our universe. However, according to these figures right here, you can clearly see that wormholes are stable in the nul-universe. At least, according to mathematical predictions. There could always be variables we don’t know about. But look at the delta of tzaddi minus Alghazd’s constant. Stable as this table. Hey, that rhymes! Maybe I could write a poem, like Evan. A wormhole poem.”
“You lost me at the delta. But I do know bad poetry when I hear it. Where are you going with this?”
“All we needed was a pathfinder – a simulator that locates the best shortcut between universes out of the safe choices. Most universes aren’t any good for travel. Like the nul-universe. I don’t want to think about navigating through the bendy bosons and the pudge, ugh! Anyway, all the trading companies have pathfinders, so it was easy for Roger the AI to hack into one. I used the pathfinder to find routes between Atlas and Goliath. Then I tested the best routes to see which ones went through universes that also had predictions of maintaining stable wormholes. And voila! I found a promising one.”
“You did all this in the time I was gone?”
“You were gone a while. Plus, I have a good brain.”
“Right, so you can form a stable connection between the position of Atlas and Goliath in the nul-universe by using a wormhole in another universe. So what then? Send carrier pigeons through the tunnel?”
“Tara, I’m disappointed in you. We’re trees. The taproot is already growing into the nul-universe – that’s how we developed sentience in the first place. This wormhole is only .65 kilometers long. Isn’t that awesome? All the way from here to the asteroid belt in .65 kilometers!”
“But our position relative to Eden changes enormously in the course of a rotation.”
Cuinn slapped his forehead. “The wormhole doesn’t go across our universe, Tara. It’s running under the hooves of three-legged cattle on some multiversal backwater prairie. All we have to do is grow our roots through the wormhole. Only .65 kilometers – no, .325 kilos for each tree. Easy peasy!”
It was quite possibly the most ridiculous proposal I’d ever heard. “I have my doubts,” I said. “But unlike the other solutions, it couldn’t really hurt.”
As it turned out, I was very wrong.