Tara was surprised to see me. “Seth? You know we have to leave to go to Eirelantra, right? We have to convene this year’s court. There’s no way around it – the Dol-lans are restless and some of the battlequeens are starting to say that I’m provincial. That means we don’t have time to further the investigation of Lilith.”
I nodded. “I have other investigations that can be undertaken on the journey, investigations for which I require your aid.”
“I’ll help in any way I can. Is there any chance that we can work in some leisure time?”
“What did you have in mind?”
She crossed the room to me, placing her hand on my chest. “Getting drunk and fucking.”
I studiously ignored any comments that Tommy was making at the moment. It proved far harder to ignore the commentary from my loins, which was, for all practical purposes, an exegesis. “Such a thing could well be incorporated into the fabric of my investigations,” I agreed.
“As long as we don’t need to document your research with microcameras. I think it’s quite enough for Lucius to be an inadvertent porn star. Of course, it’s not like we’ll get any real privacy, not with the Twist around.”
“The Twist?”
“Yeah, apparently there were 29 million of them in our hotel room back on Dalgherdia.”
I consulted the memories in Lucius’ branch. “They lied. They have an odd sense of humor.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“There were only a few thousand. At first, we didn’t see them because they live folded up in a Calabi-Yau Manifold, and we don’t normally look beyond the four usual dimensions. Now that we know what to look for, they’re quite apparent.”
“Those little jokers. I guess we can’t say anything about them without their knowledge.”
“NOPE.”
I was startled by the sudden intrusion, but Tara took it quite casually. “Oh, hello Connie, or is it Jeff?” she responded. “You’re a little loud again.”
“Ray. Connie left instructions for me.”
“It seems that the presence of your species is quite ubiquitous,” I commented.
“Mostly everywhere.”
“And you hear most everything?”
“We hear lots.”
“And the best Connie and Jeff could do was to say ‘Expect trouble from unexpected quarters?’” Tara injected.
“They thought it would be more fun to give you a challenge. But if you get into trouble, call us.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “You obviously have a remarkable intelligence network. May I ask why you’re being so helpful?”
“You’re the first one of the ASSes that gave a down quark about particle decay,” said Ray. “Like I said, we hear a lot, and if you think the SongLuminants are a bad bit of business now, wait until you see what pricks they really are. You’ll be dancing to their tune in no time.”
“The Mover is doing His best to act in righteousness. My mission is, in part, to determine what that is. But let me assure you that we will not act in haste without considering the ethical implications.”
“You’re so wet behind the ears, kid, that we could use your skull as a water-slide. You seem like a nice guy. Phil liked you. But the minute you do something the SongLuminants don’t like, it’ll be ‘Let’s call the Humans up for judgment.’ They strung along the StoneStolids like that for years. The ontological debate about the Quicknodes was so much malarkey. It~~~~~~~~~~”
There was a moment of silence. “Ray?”
“Sorry about that,” said a new and slightly different voice. “I’m Bradley. Ray’s gone.”
“He decayed?”
“Yep.”
“In the middle of the conversation? Wasn’t there any warning?”
Inside of my head, I could hear a faint thunking. It was Cüinn, banging his head against Daniel’s bedpost. Dude, he said, particle decay is a Poisson process. The probability of particle survival is an exponential distribution dependent on mean particle lifetime and the particle’s velocity. Don’t you know anything?
“Of course we can predict average lifespans within a given population. But for any given particle, decay is totally random.”
“How long is your lifespan, on average?”
“Three or four of your days. That’s long for a particle! Most garden-variety particles last a trillionth of a second. Although you get the opposite extreme – particles that don’t decay, like electrons. Honestly, dumb as posts, and they’re virtually immortal. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with an electron?”
“I’ll take your word for it. And there’s nothing you can do to increase your lifespan?”
“We’re subject to laws of conservation, like everybody else. We didn’t think anything of it, until we were invited to join the Combine. Now we’ve got a massive case of lifespan envy – especially of the StoneStolids. Do you know how long those rocks live?”
“An eternity?”
“Longer. But then again, it takes them forever to make decisions. They aren’t used to having to react quickly. You Nau’gsh are more our speed. Some of those Combine species are flipping morons. It took them billions of years to get to where they are? Give me a break! Give a million monkeys a million typewriters, and one of them will write a Shakespeare play.”
“What’s a typewriter?” I ask.
“I have no idea. It’s a human saying. Maybe she knows.”
“Um, no,” said Tara. “But you – that is, your species – seem to have a habit of using rather peculiar idioms.”
“Huh. We just analyzed 1500 rotations of broadcasts from Earth and made up a translation table. Then it became trendy amongst the young particles. For example, the hottest slang expression right now is ‘Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuucy!!!’”
“Lucy?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Stop looking so sexy,” said Tara. “What the hell is a lucy?”
“It isn’t a thing,” said Bradley. “It’s an expression of dismay at a fellow-being’s ultimate stupidity. Anyway, no one knows how long life will be. Some last seconds, others months, but on average, a few days. Our lives are governed by a simple principle – whack a smart particle into a phat particle, and you get an articulate particle. Then a few days later, the articulate particle emits two datons and decays into three thin particles. When we colonize a new galaxy, what we’re really doing is looking for phat particles. If we find a bunch, we can use the leftover datons to glue together another smart particle with what we call the force of intellect.”
I’m not certain whether this is a new quantum field theory or some elaborate satire on the modern intelligentsia, said Cüinn.
It sounds like a questionable diet fad to me, said Davy.
“I’ll be on my way then,” said Bradley. “I’ll leave instructions for my successor.”
“That conversation was both surreal and depressing,” said Tara. “What was it you wanted my help with?”
“I’m not quite ready for your input,” I said. “I have a bit of data-gathering to do first. But perhaps we should make preparations for our journey?”
*****
I intended to follow up on Ailann’s suggestion: rather than understand evil, I decided to understand love. If anything, the information I found upon preliminary investigation was even more contradictory. For one thing, “evil” was assumed to be a unified principle, even though the definition of its constitution was fuzzy, at best. But “love” was universally understood among humans to describe a number of disparate but connected phenomena. The most ancient and widely cited model broke “love” into three general categories: philos, eros and agape. The general consensus among humans was to preference the selfless agape.
This, to a Cu’enashti, was obviously wrong. Agape was a bloodless, sapless ideology that rarely existed in practice. It seemed mostly a tool to pressure other humans into making charitable contributions. Clearly, the superior form of love was eros. One reason humans gave for believing eros to be inferior was its transitory nature. But among the Cu’enashti, it was not. N’aashet n’aaverti was a perfected form of eros. Furthermore, the line between philos and eros seemed both artificial and arbitrary. Some human friendships were not erotic. Some human friendships were very erotic. But for a Cu’enashti, it was always desirable to be considered a close friend of the Chosen – to share mutual interests and to look out for the Chosen’s well-being unselfishly. This, I realized, was another flaw of eros. Eros almost always resulted in selfish actions. But n’aashet n’aaverti was by definition unselfish.
It did not take me long to realize that from an intellectual standpoint, n’aashet n’aaverti was in every way superior to human love. Just as Cu’endhari were, in every practical way, superior to humans. From an intellectual standpoint, the SongLuminants were right – we were wasting our time.
But the Cu’endhari would not exist if it were not for evolutionary interaction with humans. Humans were our model for sentience, for culture, for behavior. They possessed something we needed.
By that logic, so did cattle. And perhaps, like some of the artificial intelligences created by humans, in certain ways we have outstripped our makers.
But one thought prevailed to eradicate this sea of pointless reasoning: Tara. The logic I applied to other humans from an objective point-of-view could not possibly apply to her. She was everything. She was the center of the universe. How could I dismiss humanity as inferior when it had produced the one thing in this universe or any other worthy of love?
*****
Tara was waiting for me, in her enormous bed. It was her eyes I saw first, immense and shaded. How strange that each of us reacts to her so differently – Tommy would’ve noticed her breasts, one nipple only half-covered by the finely woven sheets. Aran would’ve noticed her hair.
So differently, except so much the same. There is an ancient human phrase – “head over heels” – which I understand far more literally than it was intended. The world seems to invert around her. Everything else is gray and faded, and she, the only source of color, saturated with colors imperceptible to the human eye.
We need a focal point for our senses, a model for our sentience, but why this? The thought that begins She isn’t so different from other humans slams into the surface of the sun. Its logic has no power to move past that corona. She engulfs my eyes.
Why do I have to love her? Didn’t Lorcan ask the same thing?
Why do you have to think so fucking much? asked Cillian. She’s waiting for you.
You’re being handed what a lot of us had to work very hard for, said Patrick.
But it makes sense that we have to keep her nearby. It makes sense that we have to protect her. It doesn’t make sense…
Don’t you remember the Mover’s vision? asked Malachi.
Even that doesn’t make sense.
It’s like growing towards the sun, said Dermot.
But growing towards the sun makes sense. This isn’t like that at all. Is it?
“Seth?” she queried. “Is something wrong?” But her tone is playful, and she allowed the sheet to drop just a little lower, revealing more of the creamy expanse of her skin.
It was a game. She was playing a game.
So just lose already, said Tommy.
My hands moved to the collar of my shirt. My fingers felt enormous, and they could sense every particle of dust on the buttons.
“You’re ridiculously detached. Almost as bad as Wynne,” she said, suddenly lunging forward. The sheet fell back and her naked body was on a trajectory towards mine. So stunned was I by the apparition that she was easily able to grasp my wrist, pulling me off balance and onto the bed. I toppled onto her, but she quickly used my momentum to roll me over until her nude form was lying directly atop my sprawled body.
What do I do? I can’t think, I…
Thinking, said Ailann, is hardly required in this situation.
I could hear the sound of faint laughter. At least I’m not the only one who froze up, said Manasseh.
She was waiting. I moved towards her. Our lips met.
It was a fire, a purposeful heat that filled me with the sense of being alive. Quite the opposite of the cold confusion I felt the night I almost died. The word “passion” in Galactic Standard is not exactly the right word for what I felt. There is an element of recklessness to passion that was not present in this experience. N’aashet is usually translated as “passionate,” but the word implies rather an absolute clarity of focus, an unwavering devotion. “N’a” is a verb meaning “to cause cohesion, like the focus of a laser.” So it literally means “focused love.”
Focused love, the force that caused us to grow towards the second sun, towards sentience and beyond. “I can’t think,” I murmured. “The molecules of my skin are singing.”
“The tallest trees fall the hardest,” said Tara. “Why are you still dressed?”
*****
After having tasted the fullness of love in its physical manifestation, I was left with as many questions as answers. For example: Tara had demanded that in order to love her properly, the Mover had to love Himself. It was a paradox. It was here that I chose to investigate in earnest.
I chose Owen as the first subject of my interview. I don’t think I’ll be any help at all, he said. I’m a total failure.
As I understand it, self-love is essential.
It wasn’t self-love, it was selfishness on my part. I told myself that I wanted to serve Tara, but I wasn’t serving her at all. I was betraying my own heart for the sake of being like everyone else.
Why would you want to do that?
Looking back on it, it seems pretty stupid. I was worried that there was something wrong with me. Even Tarlach was looking at me funny, saying that what I felt for Lugh was a reaction to being traumatized. But I don’t think I ever believed that. What I felt for Lugh was a reaction to Lugh.
You loved him. But why?
Because he was a better version of myself. But then again, because he was different from me. I don’t know. I loved him, but that love never got around to realizing how he felt about me. Or maybe I took that for granted.
It’s likely that he still loves you. Our need for a survival instinct has not diminished.
I don’t give a fuck about our need for a survival instinct. I’ve hurt him, and by hurting him, I’ve indirectly hurt Tara. I have to do something to make it right.
I don’t think you need to worry about Tara – by that I mean that if Lugh’s happy with you, I believe she will be too. Of course, we all have to worry about Tara in the broadest sense.
Lugh doesn’t worry about Tara. Or at least, Lugh loves me more. But I…
You love them equally.
Yeah. And I think Tara is fine with that, but I’m not so sure about Lugh. I can’t help but think that I’m not good enough for him.
Thinking that way is not likely to solve your problem.
I know that! I have to make myself good enough for him, somehow. I’m an engineer. Maybe I need to redesign myself.
*****
The talk with Owen left me unsatisfied. His pain and confusion were exactly the reasons I had begun to question the necessity for love in the first place. What I had experienced with Tara was clearly powerful. It had a number of distinct evolutionary advantages. But it seemed to have an equal number of pitfalls – and even more for humans than for Cu’enashti.
I decided to consult with Tarlach. I’m glad you came to see me, he began.
I assume that as a psychologist, you have a wealth of knowledge about love.
Ever since you nearly died, you’ve been distancing yourself. Even a good dose of Tara only knocked you out of your disassociation for a few hours.
I…what? I want to know why love…
It’s a risk, you know, love. There’s always pain when a risk doesn’t pan out. But there’s more pain the more personally you take it. Wynne doesn’t get upset when he loses a poker hand because he knows the odds are ultimately on his side. But with love, it can’t help but become personal. You’re offering up your heart.
That’s my point, I think.
So the question is whether your fear of dying is stronger than your n’aashet n’aaverti.
How did it become about me? I came to ask about Owen.
I can’t talk about Owen. Client confidentiality.
I can access the memories of your therapy sessions in both your branch and his. There is no client confidentiality. You and I and he are part of the same being.
Don’t keep trying to change the subject. Is your love of Tara greater than your fear of dying?
I told Ailann that being on the verge of death made me aware of how much I love her.
And now you are pulling back from her – from everyone?
Perhaps I just have an analytical nature.
The word I would choose is “brooding.” But “brooding” is usually connected with “passionate.” Brooding people often tend to withdraw rather than face up to their own sensitivity. In the end, brooding only makes it worse.
I am beginning to see why Cillian finds you so annoying.
Look, if you want my advice, give up on analyzing love. Let Owen and Lugh work out their own problems. You’ve got a long, boring spaceflight to Eirelantra. Why don’t you and Tara do something romantic?
*****
A starship can be an amazingly claustrophobic place. Although Tara’s flagship was luxurious, everything was planned – from the meals to be served to the thickness of the blankets in the crew quarters. Excess mass was undesirable. In other words, it made doing something spontaneous near-impossible, and, as I have ascertained from my research, the essence of romance is spontaneity.
Alchemy was my greatest ally, but I needed some base matter to work from. Unlike the Archons, I did not have the power to create ex nihilo. And I would have to hone my skills. For some reason, elaborate creation seemed to come far more easily to the Atlas emanations.
In the end, I appropriated a pile of hand towels from a supply room. They were likely to be missed. Only Tara, myself and her officers were given towels. The rest of the crew used body-driers built into the showers and sinks.
I locked myself into a bathroom and began to practice. Approximately two hand towels would be the equivalent weight of one bunch of flowers.
Two hours later, I was sitting amongst what appeared to be several kilos of twisted plastic.
The towels are complex synthetics, said Patrick, like most everything on the ship. It’s always easiest to start with simple molecules, or at the least, something organic.
I gathered up my efforts. They were a group of brittle sticks, of varying shades of green and blue. On the ends of a few were sticky gobs of a purple rubbery substance, sagging pathetically.
Why don’t you try with water? suggested Patrick. Flowers are mostly water anyway.
It seemed a reasonable suggestion. I filled a bowl with water and focused my efforts. In a few moments, a purple plastic lily bobbed to the top.
That’s better, but…
Plastic is easier, I said.
Plastic doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi. Besides, it’s just another complex organic. Let Jamey help you.
Jamey. I reach into his branch. His memory is filled with flowers. I can smell them. The smell is a clue to their chemical composition. There’s a lily pond at Court Emmere, close to the tourist garden. The lilies are white, though. In order to get the color correct, I have to think of orchids.
“Seth?”
“In here.” I open the door, proudly proffering my offering. “I made you a flower.”
She takes the bowl from my hands. “It’s lovely. Is it some kind of orchid?”
“A water orchid,” I said. “A rare hybrid.”
“I see,” she said, noticing the odd array of plastic sticks stuffed in the trash bin.
I can fix that, said Davy, so it will really grow. But why does everything have to be purple?
It’s not purple. It’s violet-indigo. Because black is overdone.
“Dinner will be served soon.”
I nodded. Dining was also a traditional opportunity for romance. Philosophically, it was difficult to reconcile the consumption of other life-forms with the concept of love. It had to be connected to the sensory appeal of good food, perhaps strong enough to negate the latent contradictions. Or perhaps it was because romance was a kind of conquest, and the act of eating showed the prospective mate one’s abilities to subjugate the lesser species. I could only conclude that humans were entirely morbid.
Fair enough. I tucked my napkin under my chin as the salad was presented. Less than a week ago, these greens were harmlessly minding their own business, and now they were served up on a plate, a sacrifice to romance. So be it. I could not afford sentimentality – at least not in this respect.
“Seth,” said Tara, “you’re so weird, but I like you.”
My heart bounced into the plate, where it lay, covered in green goddess dressing. “I need to ask you,” I stammered, “some questions. About love.”
“Oh?” She leaned forward, intrigued. “What could I possibly teach you about love?”
“Is it the same…I mean how is it different…but then, how would you know if it’s different or not? I want to know if you feel the same way that I do.”
“That’s what everyone always wants to know.”
“And how do they find out?”
“They don’t.”
There was a long, awkward pause. “Then isn’t it possible…that there will be some inequality of feeling?”
“Not only possible, but likely.” She chewed her arugula thoroughly. “But it probably doesn’t matter.”
“How could it not matter?”
“First, unlike Cu’enashti, human feelings are dependent on circumstances. Attraction and the like tend to go in cycles. There are moments when the circumstances conspire to heighten the feeling, and moments when the body is tired or angered when the feeling seems muted. And then different individuals have differing styles of loving, and differing ranges of expressiveness. So it varies and it’s impossible to measure objectively. But above all that, love isn’t actually the feelings that accompany it. It’s something deeper, something inexplicable. I didn’t actually realize this until I got older, but it’s in those moments when you feel like you really really really want to kick someone’s ass into stationary orbit, but instead you say, ‘I forgive you’ that love is defined.”
This is a cause of concern. “You’ve wanted to kick us into stationary orbit?”
“Literally hundreds of times, my love. Why don’t you finish your salad?”
“I’m certain we didn’t mean to offend you,” I say, hastily jamming some bhotweed on my fork.
“If you review your absolutely perfect memory, I’m certain that on numerous occasions, you did. You might carefully examine the branches of Driscoll and Wynne.”
I did. I was unfamiliar with much of Atlas’ experience. I had delved into only those memories deemed relevant to my investigation, or those recommended to me as worthy of note.
Like the time that Cillian made up a new spanking game, said Tommy.
Shocking revelations awaited me. “Wynne…was flirting with other women?!?”
“Wynne’s a bastard.”
“But…I don’t even know how he could do that, let alone why.”
“Wynne likes to push his luck. And the why was to make me jealous – the flip side of the Driscoll fiasco, when Ailann was jealous and tried to test me.”
“I don’t understand. If love is a truly selfless emotion, what is the purpose of jealousy?”
“Do you think I know that? Look, all sorts of philosophers say that love without jealousy is a perfect sort of love. Nevertheless, show me a couple that has no jealousy at all, and I’ll show you a couple on their way to divorce court. Love means that you trust someone else with your heart. But at the same time, you don’t want to get ripped off. Argh, see it isn’t like you can just say, ‘Give me my heart back,’ like it was a rented hovercar. Because it’s more like a tree that grows its roots into someone else, so that if they give it back, it’s like being uprooted.”
“I understand perfectly,” I say, feeling somewhat queasy. “It’s pretty much the same for us, except…”
“Except that you don’t play fair,” Tara said, smiling. It wasn’t a happy smile. “When humans break up, they really break up. There may be a period of bad behavior where one partner tries tricks and tantrums to get the other back. Sometimes it gets pathological, like stalking, and then the psychocops have to be called in. But usually, people get over it and move on. Cu’enashti, on the other hand, just pretend to go away, but come back with another emanation. And another – as many as it takes.”
“But we can’t live without you.”
“In your case, it may be literally true, but believe me, many humans have said exactly those same words.”
The soup was served. I watched her, slurping slightly. I envied the spoon. “I’m afraid I’m jealous,” I said.
“Good.”
“I am completely confounded.”
“Why do you think Wynne played that little game with me? Because if you can evoke the jealousy response in your partner, then you at least get a partial answer to your first question – the jealous person must feel something for you. But it’s a mean trick to play, and only severely insecure people do it often.”
“I should’ve taken Tarlach’s advice. Understanding love is proving to be much harder than understanding evil.”
“Well, you’re not evil, so you can see evil objectively. It has no real stake for you.”
I raised an eyebrow – deliberately. “I would think that jealous love qualifies me for being at least a little bit evil.”
*****
The next morning, after discovering to my surprise that jealousy can enhance the act of physical love, I decided to interview Whirljack. Jack has spent much of his emanation writing love ballads and is renowned amongst us for his single-minded devotion. Well, it was single-minded until his trunk split, creating Blackjack. If need be, I would interview his brother as well.
I’ve got nothing to say, said Whirljack. Just listen to the music.
I have. The music expressively conveys the emotions of the singer. But the lyrics…in fact, most every love lyric I’ve researched seems conflicted. For example, I see little progression between
Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
and
You, how could you be
Avion of happiness
Dirty blues in a dark cantina
Every joy and every sadness
The difference, said Whirljack, is that Catullus was a genius, and I’m an imitative hack. Although one might say that he had the advantage in being alive early in the history of human literacy. The clichés weren’t as cliché back then.
But doesn’t the fact that something persists as a cliché mean that it embodies some essential truth?
That question is more Dermot’s speed than mine. I’d have to say that the key to great art is that you somehow manage to dig out authenticity from something that everyone everywhere has felt before. But my purpose was never great art. I needed to get Tara’s attention. I needed to found a political movement. That didn’t require art – that required media push. Popular music is just like fishing. You need a barbed hook to catch attention – but you want everything else to be as smooth as a nylon line. The hallmark of real art is that it’s either whip-smooth, so smooth you don’t notice the effort, like Brancusi, or such a rough ride, you initially dislike it, like Picasso. Or musically, perhaps Mozart vs. Stravinsky. Of course, sometimes bizarre things happen. Monet. Beethoven. You might say that they put in so many hooks the works started to look smooth from a distance.
Um, I said. I’m afraid an investigation into aesthetics will have to be pending.
That would explain the overuse of purple, said Whirljack. Anyways, the point is that while I’m completely focused on marketing, it’s all in Tara’s service. Even though I’m serving up four millennia of reheated crud, it comes across as absolutely sincere – because it is.
*****
I had to stop to ponder what I had learned. In my investigation of evil, my knowledge grew with every bit of information I gathered. But in my investigation of love, each datum subtracts from the sum. I knew even less than when I started.
I would think that the answer would be obvious, said Dermot. Evil is a philosophical conception, albeit a controversial one. It has no independent existence. But love is real. It’s real, and it’s messy, and it’s mysterious. That’s why Ailann said what he did. Sooner or later, evolved religions get to the point where they stop talking about evil and start talking about love, because love is ineffable. Notwithstanding that few religions wanted to purport an evil nature for their deity, love is a better metaphor for the divine.
So the problem of love is basically insoluble?
First, stop thinking of it as a problem. Second, consider that the answer is irrelevant. It’s the search that matters. Perhaps that’s what Tara was trying to tell you.
I am a jealous god.
Apparently so.
*****
When we reached Eirelantra, my first act was to proclaim Archonism as “the religion of love.” It wasn’t exactly original, but following Whirljack’s lead, it was smooth, catchy, and at the bottom of it, sincere. In celebration, I restored a long-neglected ancient holiday – the Valentine’s Festival. Held on Dolparessa, the celebrants were to enter the forest, choosing a Valentine’s Tree to deck with paper hearts. Following the offering of chocolate, they were to drink copious quantities of nau’gsh wine and then copulate in the underbrush.
The tourism bureau loved the idea. They had been pushing for years to expand the Nau’gsh Festival to a week’s length, but a second festival at a different time of year promised even more external revenues.