They’re watching. They’re watching me in bed with this woman, but my flowers are opening because I’m a tree. I’m a man, but I’m a fucking tree. I’m a tree that is fucking. How did this happen?
For a moment, I blank out, lost in pleasure. And then…what is going on? I’m…
Tara is straddling me, laughing. “Tell me, Hyde,” she says. “As the Galaxy’s foremost expert on nau’gsh biology, I have a right to know. How does Ophion pollinate?”
« It has nothing to do with science, » says Lorcan. « She’s got a prurient interest. »
Will I ever get used to all these voices? It was so much quieter when I was in the water. “My, ah…my flowers are being fucked,” I struggle to explain. My flowers are being fucked, and it feels so good.
“Be more specific, Hyde,” says Tara. “Talk dirty to me.”
“Darts. Little darts full of pollen. They kind of target my, ah, my…”
« The stigma becomes engorged and the central channel spreads, » says Tarlach. « It’s hard to miss. »
« Do you have to be so clinical? » says Cillian. « It’s fucking obscene. Those sepals are so… »
« I want to lick one, » says Tommy.
Tara is poking me, forcing me to find words. “The darts, ah, impale the stigma, and then the tip breaks off, and they’re full of pollen. But not sticky powder pollen, but in a liquid suspension. And it runs down the style, and oh…”
Just let me close my eyes and feel this.
“And…?”
« Tell her that the current knocks the dart away, » says Tarlach. « When the pollen-liquid hits the water, it solidifies, forming a plug to keep the pollen inside. »
I just want to breathe. Breathe deeply. It’s bliss. I feel completely possessed. How will I react when I see by Benbow and X’khaim for the first time? Maybe I’ll fall on my knees and agree to give them anything they want.
Tara rolls over. “We should get cleaned up before dinner,” she says.
When she returns from the bath, my swollen sepals are still throbbing. She puts on a robe and sits next to me, perched on the edge of the bed. She’s smiling again. There’s something unkind about it. “Look at you,” she says. “I own you, don’t I?”
The obvious truth is pouring from my eyes; I see no point in repeating it.
“Another lesson from Ash, I suppose,” she says. “You attacked me. It’s satisfying to put you into your place.” She stands. “Don’t worry. I won’t be too cruel. But we really should get dressed.”
My world has become a delicious nausea. I never wanted this entanglement, never! Not with Tara, and not with the other emanations. I should have just left her alone. Aggression is a form of contact.
Maybe this really is what I wanted. Maybe my aggression was to express my resentment for wanting it. It doesn’t matter anymore; I’m sick with lust and longing. There’s no way I could ever stand to be alone again. I threw that away forever.
I feel clubbed and skinned.
I’m trying to hide my mood from her, my thoughts from the others. The first probably isn’t working, the second definitely isn’t. I take a quick shower, but I can’t wash her off me.
“Normal Cu’enashti undergo what is called in popular parlance the pollen poof – they release concentrated amounts of pollen which are then lofted by manipulating the heat of the air currents near their blooms,” she’s saying. “They rely on gravity and alchemy to get the pollen where it’s supposed to go, and only where it’s supposed to go. They don’t want opportunistic insects carrying off precious bodily powders. But under water, that won’t work. The water currents will have a lot more effect than gravity, and all the pollen will get swirled away. Ash had to come up with a different mechanism.”
She’s my lover. How can she talk so clinically about it?
« This is important, » Tarlach says. « Usually unfertilized flowers simply remain receptive until the next poof of pollen is released. But these might not get targeted…this is an enormous cross-pollination opportunity. Remember to get in your requests for X’khaim and Hyde. »
It’s like I’m being peddled on the open market. As the dryer blows the last moisture from my skin, I’m suddenly self-conscious, feel a need to cover myself. I grab my shirt. It’s a replica sports jersey for the Bendigra Tigrons. “I wonder how the Tigrons did against the Pride of GalCen last night?” I mutter.
“I can invoke the sports push,” Tara answers. “You like MayaXtreme?”
“I’m a huge fan of the Tigrons. They may not be the best team in the league, but they’ve got that underdog spirit…”
Tara is laughing at me. “You think sports are funny?”
“I think you’ve never even watched a game,” she says.
Furs. I need my furs.
« Animal hides to hide the animal that is Mr. Hyde, » says Lorcan. « Just the kind of semantic game that I and I likes to play. »
“Fuck you,” I mutter under my breath.
« Too many people lately with an attitude problem, » says Cillian.
« You bit Tara, » said Lorcan. « No one’s ever going to forget that. »
I feel like crying. I feel like crying because I’m not that spark of energy, not anymore. I synchronized. I integrated. Davy gave me a name, a body; Driscoll gave me a face; Tara gave me a purpose. Somehow, I got a personality, something crafted by the thing called Ashtara from the shadow of one of Tara’s dreams. A hazmat specialist who roots for the Bendigra Tigrons, a team I’ve never seen.
I feel like crying because I am so in love with Tara, I can’t see the start or stop of it, and it is a glorious misery. But Davy was probably right. I bit Tara, and I’ll never forget the taste of her, of life. The forbidden fruit.
Tara notices.
“Don’t look so sad,” she says, grabbing my fur collar. She kisses me roughly. “You’re in,” she says. “Would you rather be in or out?”
I can’t help it; the tears come. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I bit you.”
“Is that an apology or an expression of regret?” I look into her eyes, shocked. I don’t know the answer. But that she’d ask the question – she sees me. She sees everything.
She places her hand on my chest. “Ash,” she says sternly, “why don’t you just show him?”
Show me what?
« This, » says Malachi. The vision fills my mind, the mandala, the individual pieces shining. And there’s an overarching presence, made of those pieces, but not in pieces, a unified whole of a capacity beyond imagining. And beyond that, the thing they call Tara’s Destiny.
I realize that I’ve been used. It doesn’t matter anymore; it’s what I am. Of all the emanations, I didn’t choose it. I wasn’t given a choice. I gave up my right to choose when I attacked Tara. Like a convict, I forfeited my freedom.
I would not have chosen this.
I would have been wrong. I won’t lose this now, not for anything. I don’t want to be out, not of the pleroma, not part of Ashtara, not a lover of Tara. Alone, worthless.
But there’s still some anger. Maybe I’m angry at myself.
Tara takes my arm. “We’d better go to dinner. The vegetarians are going to love your coat.”
“Vegetarians?” I stammer. What kind of a universe is this where such a horror could exist?
Frangfrang is quite different from Cybae, at least if I compare it to the memories of Patrick and X’khaim. The Cybaens seemed like they wanted to impress us with excess, with an ill-considered and tacky opulence. The Frangfrangians, on the other hand, seem proud of a deliberate rusticity. The dinner of state is held in a large, outdoor pavilion. We sit on rough wooden benches behind a table covered with a paper cloth. All the dead trees make me a little queasy. In the back of my mind, Quennel is ranting about being insulted again, but I’m not sure it is deliberate. I think Frangfrangians are just clueless.
Tara is on my left and the Frangfrangian Minister of Internal Affairs is on my right. The Prime Minister had passed around the highweed earlier, and the MIA has clearly taken a toke too many. “I’ve always believed it was unethical, unspeakably cruel, to eat animals,” she says, “but now I see that it’s unethical to eat plants, too. Maybe that’s why so many of us refused to believe that the Cu’endhari really existed. We have to rethink everything. Not that everyone here is a vegetarian, but, you know, now I feel like I should only eat synth foods. But how can I eat something that’s not natural? Maybe I’ll starve myself.”
« Perhaps you should help her to explore her moral dilemma, » Seth advises me. But how would I know what to say to her? She’s an idiot. She’s making it all too complicated. You’re hungry, you eat. It’s that simple.
« That’s the same philosophy that got you into trouble, bud, » says Cillian.
I wrack my brains for some appropriate response. “Don’t eat anything that could take revenge on you,” I counsel.
“But I really don’t understand – if the Cu’endhari are both animal and plant, then why does eating plants offend you more than eating animals?”
Tara leans across me and says, “If I were to oversimplify, I’d say this: I know of many animals who think it’s perfectly all right to eat other animals. I’ve never met a plant who thought it was okay to eat another plant.” As if to emphasize, she takes a bite of the sausage. The sausage! I warned her about the sausage!
“What is the point of having a food-taster if you’re going to ignore his advice?” I ask.
“It smells delicious,” she says. “Live a little. It’s not going to mutate me overnight.”
“We’re going to wish that all Frangfrangians were vegetarians,” I mutter.
Two hours later, Tara is doubled up on the bathroom floor with intestinal cramping. “Those sausages were full of native microbes,” I sigh. “The locals are used to them.”
“Arrgh,” Tara replies.
I search branch memories for a possible solution. I don’t have the alchemical skill to deal with human illness – but I might be overthinking it. “Let me get the ship’s doctor,” I suggest. “Humans developed effective medications for this sort of thing back in the Exploitation Era.”
“No,” groans Tara. “I haven’t used a doctor in years. Ash always takes care of it. If anyone finds out that you haven’t got the power to fix this, it will be like painting targets on our foreheads.”
“Let me get Lady Lorma.”
“What will she do, other than lecture me about not sticking random sausages into my mouth?”
“This trip was a mistake,” I murmur. “We should go back home to Dolparessa.”
Tara starts laughing. “What the hell are you talking about? Your spark is from the area of the nul-universe running parallel to the Cybaen system, and your tree is in the Circinus galaxy. You’ve never even been to Dolparessa.”
“I mean that…” Really, I don’t know what I meant.
« Stockholm Syndrome, » says Tarlach.
« Shut the fuck up, » says Cillian.
“If we’d never come here, then you wouldn’t even exist,” says Tara. “Not in this form, anyway.”
“Maybe that would’ve been better.”
“Is that what you want?” asks Tara. “To not exist?”
I shake my head. “It’s too late now. You can’t unbite the forbidden fruit. I love you. I just want you someplace safe.”
“I appreciate that, I really do. But now, I would like to be alone. There are some bodily fluids which just aren’t meant for sharing.”