As it turned out, there was a reason for Dig’s statement. It arose from a casual comment made by Cüinn.
« You know, » Cüinn says, « Canopus is building up a massive amount of energy, faster than our roots can normally assimilate. It’s a grove inversion effect. »
« A what? » asks Cillian.
« Well, it could maybe result in the kind of thing that your researchers were talking about, » says Cüinn. « A bomb. »
« An explosion? » says Caddoc.
« There’s a semantic difference between the phrases “grove inversion effect” and “bomb,” » says Cillian. « The second kinda causes more immediate alarm. »
« I’m running some numbers, » says Cüinn.
« It’s going to blow, » says Caddoc. « I’ve got a gut feeling. »
« It’s unstable, » says Cüinn. « I’m glad that Tara isn’t in the pleroma right now because if Canopus goes, the whole thing could go. A chain reaction, right back through all the trees. »
« If we emanate Canopus, » says Solomon, « will that stop the grove inversion effect? »
« Probably, » says Owen. « But why we didn’t notice it before now? » He looks directly at me. « Shouldn’t the Canopus branches have noticed? »
Good point. Maybe it’s because we’re all a little buzzed, getting energy directly from the root ball, tapping directly into the nul-universe, instead of the trickle fed to us through the crystals embedded in the pot. « It just felt so good to let our roots hang out for a change, » I mutter apologetically.
« We can’t emanate now, » says Mickey. « Not until Tara and Dig get back to the ship. If he transformed into the mothman, someone at SSOps would detect it. »
« Really? » asks Owen.
« After all that trouble with the Cu’ensali and Hellborne, I made certain that the scanners at my own HQ were capable of detecting nul-energy. We’ve got the capacity to find a sprite at over 1000 meters, so something as powerful as our own mothman would show up as far as 10,000 kilometers away. That’s why they had to take a flyer to the site and not just go by mothman. »
« We should’ve dipped ourselves in starslick, » says Lorcan.
« Starslick won’t stick to nul-energy, » says Cüinn.
« Neither does sarcasm, apparently, » says Lorcan.
« To answer Owen’s question, » says Solomon, « I think we’re building up that energy for some purpose. My suspicion is that the requirement including Tara in Dig’s achievement was to keep her distracted because the pleroma is dangerous right now. The Mover wanted to keep her safely outside. »
« O-kay, » murmurs Cüinn. « Once we emanate Canopus, the energy will have to go somewhere. Some kind of discharge. »
« So you’re saying that instead of exploding in here, it will explode out there, » Cillian interprets.
« Speaking for all of the Canopus emanations, » I inject, « we’re not very happy about this. »
« It gets tricky, » says Cüinn. « See, the locus of the energy is Canopus, so if Canopus is suddenly not in the pleroma, then where does the energy go? Does it go with Canopus? Does it go back into the nul-universe? Does it stay here? The pleroma isn’t exactly in nul-space. It isn’t in real space either. It isn’t, well, it isn’t really anywhere. It’s in imaginary space. »
« What kind of fucking compost is that?!? » snaps Cillian.
« It’s the same space where dreams exist, » says Cüinn. « Look, do the math. Just take the square root of a negative number, and you’re there. »
« You’re as crazy as Suibhne. »
« Look, we’re a complex entity composed of nul-energy housed in the physical locus of six trees scattered through four galaxies. But our consciousness, our mind, exists in imaginary space. »
« All of this means that Cüinn doesn’t know what’s going to happen, » mutters Mickey.
But that energy is not imaginary. It’s going to go somewhere.
« We’d better make a decision, » says Ailann. « They’re just about back to the Victorious Tara. »
« Tell Dig to emanate Canopus, » urges Cüinn.
« We don’t know what that will do to us, » says Owen.
« But we know what it will do if we don’t, » replies Caddoc. « Canopus will turn into charcoal, and we’ll all feel the after-shock. »
« And who knows what that will do to its emanations, » adds Malachi.
« The most important experiences of Quennel through Javor have been archived in the branch library, but I haven’t been able to do anything for the unrecognized ones, » says Darius. « It’s likely that they would have to start over, just like Hellborne did when Heavensent was burned. And you know how that turned out. »
« We do have much more emotional resilience than Elma’ashra, between the enormous number of branches, and the fact that Tara actually loves us, » says Tarlach.
« I can’t believe you’re even considering this, » says Owen.
« Nash, you’re the Archon of Canopus, » says Ailann. « It should be your decision. »
Fuck me with a freshly-roasted bluedog. Well, if it’s a choice between losing our tree, losing Selby and Palmer and Lennox and maybe damaging the other trees and the rest of the pleroma, a choice between that and something happening that we don’t know what, then it isn’t a choice, is it?
Except that if it discharges outside, Tara will be at ground zero.
Okay, think straight. It’s no coincidence, no oversight that me and all the boys didn’t notice our tree becoming a powder-keg. And if for one second the Big Guy thought that there was gonna be an explosion that would hurt Tara, there’s no way he’d allow Canopus to emanate. That means we might as well try. I give Dig the okay.
« Man, that Nash has got rootballs of steel, » mutters Ethan.
Nothing happens. For a sick moment, I think maybe I was right, and we can’t emanate Canopus because it is a danger to Tara, and that the bluedog that fucks me is gonna have a nice charcoal flavor. Then I realize that Dig is distracted.
Tara is taking off her shirt. “Your fellow branches would never forgive you if you missed out on a pollination opportunity,” she’s saying.
“You want to have sex…now?” Dig gasps.
“Well, I assume Mickey is going to want to emanate to keep an eye on the situation with SSOps. So we might as well gather the nau’gsh blossoms while we may.”
Dig is momentarily frozen between the sight of Tara’s breasts and the thought of imminent catastrophe.
« DIG!!! » we all scream as one.
He thrusts back his arms, flinging himself apart in a spray of light. The light falls inwards, strands which weave back into the form of Dig, but this time, holding Canopus. It has been repotted and wrapped in a bolt of cyan crepe that Javor brought back from the silk farm. It’s enormous. As Dig sets it on the floor, the tips of the branches brush the ceiling.
There’s a panicked chatburl from Briscoe: Holy fuck. What’s happening?
Then we see it through his eyes, the blue flame surrounding the mandala on the ceiling suddenly pulses with energy, expanding and burning like a supernova. It’s the energy we share, the energy that binds us, not the individual energies of the trees or the sparks. It grows and burns until it’s as bright as, brighter than the individual sparks. When I look around the room, our eyes are glowing with blue flame.
« Did you feel that? » gasps Ailann.
For once, Cillian’s emotions are present on his face. He grabs Ailann and embraces him.
I’m shaking all over. All I can think of is being with my posse, with Benbow and Solomon and Dermot.
Solomon is thinking the same thing. He grabs my hand. « That was totally intentional, » he says. « Increasing the binding energy by an order of magnitude to offset the fragmentary effect of incorporating so many new emanations at once. »
Outside, Tara is gaping at the enormous Canopus. Dig has collapsed unsteadily into a chair. “It’s all right,” he says. “That’s its final size.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to get it out of here,” she says.
“Jamey has some ideas for pruning.”
“Are you all right? You look a little peaked.”
“RootRiot,” says Dig. “RootRiot sounds really good. And I think you’re right about that pollination opportunity. Now would be an excellent time.”