| |
DUN FOUND HIS TIME was spent ping-ponging between Tribes-Moot meetings of leaders with hours of bickering and hours talking to OneLove. He preferred the latter but was conscious that he was using it as a stress crutch. OneLove didn’t seem to mind and seemed to enjoy Dun’s company even when he felt himself that he was just prattling on.
“How’s our mole getting along?” OneLove asked.
“Not heard back. Or at least Padg hasn’t. Laly seems pleased.”
“How long has it been now?” One of the things that OneLove always seemed to have trouble with was the passage of time. Dun couldn’t imagine telling the time when you were a combination of a million people’s brains. He guessed that Myrch being human and not Folk would mean his frame of reference would be different anyway.
“A few spans? I don’t suppose he’ll report back unless there’s something to say. I still wish you could listen in to them.”
“Ms Manners would never approve.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
Nev came in, Dun could tell it was him even before the door opened, he always had such a determined stride about him. Always on a mission to fix something. With the near inclusion in their burrow, Nev and Dun spent a lot of time in each other’s company, so just communicated with a brief huff. Whatever he was tweaking in there, it didn’t take long. He almost turned right around and went back out again. OneLove hardly noticed either. Nev had become a fixture in the Sanctuary too. Nev must have let in a cave moth on his way in or out. It disturbed Dun’s Air-sense, making pools and eddies in the space with its unwieldy flight. It fluttered to the edge of the vat, perhaps sensing the moisture content of the air above the pool. If it started drinking, Dun thought, would it be drinking people? He shuddered.
“What was it like?” Dun said, to give himself something else to think of for a moment, “Earth, I mean.”
“Oh, lots of things all at once: awful, beautiful, kind, harsh. Big, you’d have found it very, very big. Lots of oceans to swim in.”
“What are oceans?”
“Oh, like the biggest lakes you could possibly imagine, but bigger than that.”
“Bigger than Lakeside?”
“Much, much bigger. Three-quarters of Earth’s surface is covered with water.”
“What are the other humans like? Are they like you—like you used to—?" Dun felt himself flush and could smell his own cloud of embarrassment.
“It’s okay,” said OneLove. “I miss it sometimes, but not most of the time. There’s so much to experience being me—us—now, that none of that matters anymore. Mostly.”
“Do you not miss being mated?” said Dun then regretted it immediately.
“Yes.”
That hung between them for a long time. A fan booted up somewhere in the corner of the room and the air began to be pulled towards it, causing the pressure to drop fractionally. The moth fluttered upward.
“In answer to your question, there were some humans like me, I suppose, before. But all humans are so different.”
“Like Folk then in that way.”
“Yes, much like Folk in that way. But overall, much less humble.”
“What do you mean?”
OneLove made an odd breathy sound. How was that even a thing, it didn’t have lungs. Nev spent a large amount of time making sure the liquid in the vat was aerated enough and that the air was clean. It respired certainly, but not with lungs. “Humans can be many things, but all the things they do tend to be monumental—monumentally beautiful, kind, arrogant, and we’ve a huge history of being monumentally stupid too.”
“Huh.” The moth flapped frantically in the airstream, buffeted by the currents, but slowly and inexorably being drawn towards the far side of the room. “I’d like to meet some. Humans. More humans, you know?”
“Yes, you probably would, wouldn’t you, old friend.”
“Yes,”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
Dun left the chamber. He heard an ultra-high-pitched shriek cut short in the closing seals behind him.
