Huh, says Tarlach. No one must’ve ever told Clive that comatose people are sometimes capable of hearing.
Claris and Clive, says Tommy. Who would’ve thought?
Just keep going, Ailann snaps. There’s something edgy in his voice, a little rushed, like we’re running out of time. Well, I guess that is probably true.
Ahem, I say. Tell my story. Where to begin…
There once was a penguin named Phil. Phil the penguin. Of course only his friends called him Phil. Acquaintances called him Phillip. Actually, since he was a penguin of Kawaiian heritage, distant acquaintances called him Phillip-san, and closer ones called him Philip-kun, but only the closest friends called him Phil-chan. Phillip-kun lived on Volparnu, where a lot of the Kawaiians settled. Humans think the climate of Volparnu sucks, but, as you might imagine, the penguin perspective is quite different.
Why, asks Mickey tersely, are you talking about a penguin?
I like penguins. On land, they’re so funny and awkward. But get them in the water and whoooooosh! Like little missiles. They can top out at 14.4/kilometers per hour. It’s a lesson to us all. Whenever something seems awkward, that means it’s out of its element. It’s personal. Just look at how impressive I and I is soaring through the stars. Then look at me. I used to dress like Napoleon, but I started to think that Napoleon messed up pretty bad. So now I dress like Admiral Nelson. I did a lot of research to get the details right. I have all four orders of chivalry: the Order of the Bath, the Order of the Crescent, the Order of St Ferdinand, and the Order of St Joachim. Also, the left epaulette is damaged, nicked by the musket ball that killed him. There’s one thing that’s inauthentic, though. I’ve still got two arms. I don’t think that Tara would like it if I got rid of my right arm.
Do we actually have to listen to this? asks Mickey.
Let him talk, says Dermot. Everyone does his bit.
Anyway, Phillip-kun was enjoying life pretty much, sliding in the snow, eating lots of fish – oh hey, is it politically inadvisable to say that? Um, maybe we can have him eating kelp. Kelp-flavored ice cream. Except that mammals aren’t native to Volparnu, so that’s improbable. Um, but neither are penguins. Dammit, the story was going to be about how Phil-chan’s – I think we can call him that now since we’re deeper into the story – life was disrupted by seeing humans for the first time, but the humans must have brought the penguins in the gene banks.
OK, just use your imaginations. He’s an allegorical penguin. Allegorical! Anyway, one day, a beautiful princess came to Volparnu. She was very sad. She was sad because her rat bastard uncle had pushed her boyfriend off a cliff, and now was forcing her to marry the biggest idiot in the galaxy.
This is fiction, you know. Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Phil-chan saw her, and suddenly the whole universe made sense. He knew exactly what he had to do. He trained all the other penguins in hand-to-hand combat, and they attacked Fort Frostbane, and killed everyone except the princess. And then the princess became queen penguin, and Phil-chan was her consort, and they took lots of drugs and she became feared throughout the galaxy for her hordes of peng-ninjas. Kind of like Hassan-i-Sabbah. The end.
Wow, says Tommy. Just wow. I don’t even know what to say about that.
It needs more violence, says Lorcan. For example, how did the penguins kill?
Garrote. And power-kicks to the head.
How can a creature with flippers possibly garrote someone? asks Mickey. We won’t even think about the power-kicks.
Well, how would you do it? You’re the martial-arts expert. Shuriken?
Honestly, the only way I can see it working is if suicide-penguins strapped little bombs to their backs. Wait, how did I get sucked into this?
All right, says Hurley. The SongLuminants are pretty amused, but they know that we’re stalling for time.
I’m not going to tell my real story, I say. I don’t want to talk about it.
You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Suibhne, says Ailann. His voice is almost gentle. He’s going easy on me. Ailann never goes easy on me. Ailann resents me.
I don’t resent you, he says. Tara was right. I was the one who screwed up. I and I only emanated you because I fell apart.
I’m not good at holding it together, either. Especially like now, when we can’t see Tara. What if we never see her again?
I can’t help it. I start weeping.
If we never see her again, it’s because we’ll be fucking dead, so it won’t matter, says Cillian. It won’t be worse than what you went through.
What I went through. I thought Tara was dead. I thought that I would have to live without her and be Archon forever because the Domha’vei couldn’t last without the power grid. I couldn’t let her down. Every day was like my brain being pulled out of my head and stuck into liquid oxygen and thrown against the wall until it shattered into razor sharp bits, and then being ground into my face. Everywhere I looked there were bits of my shattered brain in my bleeding eyes. Do you know why I cut down the larches? I cut them down because they were so smug. They didn’t care that Tara was dead. They just stood in their grove, basking in the sunlight like nothing had changed when the whole universe had turned into a rotting corpse. And I was put in charge of making sure the maggots had light bulbs! And for Tara I would do that, and none of you gave me any help. Even I and I didn’t give me any help.
I and I didn’t give you any help because He knew damn well that Tara had faked her death, says Dermot.
It’s true, says Ailann. We’d wondered about it before, but now that we’ve seen the vision – he knew she’d be alive in the future.
The world goes red. I’m screaming and screaming, kicking at the foot of Daniel’s bed, tearing at my hair. It goes on for a while. I don’t know how long it goes on for. Then I hear a voice calling to me. At first, I think it’s my own voice. But then I realize it’s Ari’s.
It’s all right, he says. Tara knows. Tara thinks you’re a hero.
Tara doesn’t ever forget what we suffered, says Ross.
Through the haze of my tears, I can see the startled fish, pressed back against the painted plaster of Daniel’s wall. It’s the first time he’s lost his cool, and it’s pretty funny. I wipe my sleeve across my face. Now I’ve got snot on the wool of my authentic dress coat. I’ll have to send it out to be cleaned.
You can just use alchemy, says Tommy.
We’re inside, squirrel-brain, says Cillian. He doesn’t have to use anything, since it’s an imaginary coat stained by imaginary mucus.
That’s right. That isn’t so bad then. Shall I tell another story? Maybe the one about the squirrel and the mushroom?
Don’t sweat it, says Cillian. I think I’ll take my turn now.