44: Shrine Evening
THE Humans insisted on caring for their own, and I listlessly agreed, leaving Paul at the Commonwealth Embassy. He lingered between unconscious and incoherent, having inhaled a complex of Mareepavlovax pheromones presumably designed to promote a hibernation state, and flat in bed was safer. The med-tech described his condition as nonthreatening and “blind drunk, with a good hangover to follow.”
Sammy was happy to sample his blood. Not at all to see me again and, if not for the success in the valley this morning, I daresay the scientist would have me arrested for destruction of embassy property.
Pearl hadn’t been property.
“Here we are,” Evan announced cheerfully.
He’d been nothing but cheerful, despite being assigned the vastly unimportant duty of keeping me busy and away from Sammy. I felt a vague curiosity. “Shouldn’t you be writing reports and whatever?”
A lighthearted shrug. “Senior Polit M’Lean and the Ambassador decided I deserved the rest of the day off. They’re heading to the Libstry-ni—it’s the nearest large festival hall—for the Dokeci celebration of our success.”
Ah. Human politics. “They’re taking credit.”
“They’re welcome to it.” He grinned as he waved me through an ornate metal gate, looking happier than I’d ever seen him. “It’s chain of accountability. The Senior Polit’s name is on the request—and expense—to send the Mistral to Botharis. My—let’s call it a temporary field promotion—was his gamble and the ambassador’s.”
I harrumphed. “And your success.”
His grin softened. “Ours, Esolesy, and I’m beyond grateful to you and Paul. And you, Siokaletay-ki.”
I’d tried to ignore the ticktick of her poles behind us as we walked along Embassy Row.
“Your superiors will remember your achievements,” she assured him. “Your grace in accepting reality high among them.”
If she meant that for me, too? My stomachs rumbled angrily. To forestall an eruption I might enjoy, if no one else, I focused on our surroundings.
Riosolesy-ki’s Shrine to Teganersha-ki.
There was the gate, through which we passed, though no fence. As one we stopped to appreciate the shrine itself.
The long low building was shaped like a greenhouse and as transparent as one. Rays from the setting sun entered from behind—
—to be refracted by gems into a cascade of rainbows. The effect was breathtaking.
If you didn’t know the gems were Tumbler excretions. Ersh’s to be precise.
To enhance the play of light, the Dokeci—never ones to say “enough is enough”—had installed ponds and fountains around the building, creating a confusion of colored sprays and twinkling reflections. Light poles in the conceit of trees stood ready to shine over it all once the sun no longer cooperated or, I supposed, to sparkle on cloudy days.
At least there were real flowers, plus a dense soft turf underfoot.
“Teganersha-ki would hate it,” Skalet said. I glanced at her, unsurprised by the dismayed wrinkling of her skin.
She wasn’t wrong. That wasn’t the point. “Riosolesy-ki would love it,” I countered. Could Skalet taste the web-mass here, as I did. Feel its pull?
Did she grow hungry?
“It’s only open alternate weeks now. I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange for you to go inside, Esolesy.” Evan nodded at the large double doors at the end nearest us. They were transparent, too, allowing full view of a life-sized bust, floating serenely above a glowing ring.
Of Ersh.
“Like all exhibits, popularity wanes when the next arrives.” Siokaletay-ki waved the tip of her pole at the empty paths and vacant hip cradles. “I predict there will be something new here soon, given the excellence of the location.”
And her intention to destroy it. Skalet didn’t know her imploder, in pieces, was about to lift from the planet in the Harvester. To be fair, I’d my carryall clutched to my chest. Snacks remained a useful excuse, though I hadn’t eaten—
I burped as my stomachs gave an unhappy lurch.
Evan patted my arm with cautious but sincere affection. In that much, I’d improved his opinion of this me. “You must be exhausted, Esolesy. Let me call you an aircar, to take you back to—” At a guess, he’d been about to say the embassy, then remembered Sammy. “—to your accommodations in the shipcity. I’ll stay with Paul.”
That wasn’t the plan.
“What I really need, after today, is a good wallow.” I waggled my ears in charming fashion. “Like that one.” I pointed to the larger pond, edged in floating plants. Should be mud in the bottom, I decided, halfway excited to find out.
“But—” The poor diplomat was horrified.
I regarded him with all the wide-eyed bizarre secret alien ways innocence I could muster; Paul would be proud. Or concerned. “Surely the Dokeci expect Lishcyns such as myself to visit and appreciate their shrine. Why else would they provide such excellent facilities?”
“But it’s a pond—” Evan turned to Siokaletay-ki. “Isn’t it?”
My web-kin regarded me with suspicion, well aware what I wanted. Them gone. “Art must be appreciated to truly live,” she mused aloud, as though giving his concern serious consideration, and not trying my patience.
I eased toward the pond.
Evan came along, as if he believed he could stop this larger me from doing what came so naturally I grew dizzy with longing. Maybe he also believed he knew all the ways this could go badly. I could tell him a thing or two.
“Wallowing to view art is a Lishcyn custom familiar to us,” Siokaletay-ki said, finally helpful, if lying through her beak. “This—art—clearly needs someone to care about it.”
I glowered for Lesy as I removed my caftan and put it on a bench with the rest of my belongings, then showed Evan my tusks. “Exactly.”
A Lishcyn didn’t step daintily into a promising wallow; a Lishcyn leaped.
The resulting splash missed Skalet, who’d been ready for it and moved; it did soak Evan from the waist down in glorious mud and plant bits. I submerged to my snout, savoring what was indeed a delightfully deep layer of ooze and organics, and waggled my ears at him again.
Being Evan, he chuckled. “How long will you need to fully appreciate the shrine?”
While I could wallow for a good long time and—ahhhh, the relief from all the itches—would love to do so now, we’d a starship to catch. Granting Paul was space-ready by morning. I sighed to myself. Duty called.
Before I had to answer, Siokaletay-ki did. “Leave Esolesy Ki to care for herself, Evan. She looks—” three eyes stared down at me; I waggled my ears at her, too, “—comfortable. Come with me. We’ll go to the Libstry-ni for tonight’s well-earned celebration.”
We both blinked at her. Evan recovered first. “I would love to do that, Siokaletay-ki, but I’m not on the guest list.”
Smug. “I am. You shall come with me, as my guest. After—” with a flash of amused pink, “—you procure dry clothing.”
He wanted to go; I could see it. Deserved to celebrate. Being Evan, he worried about leaving this me.
I settled things by sinking below the surface, blowing languid bubbles.
And waited until I was alone.
The Ycl and a Web-being had something in common. Or I did. I hadn’t noticed my elders ever thinning themselves to a few molecules; then again, they’d cycled in closets until I’d caught them at it, on the notion I’d continue my attempts to hold a form without exploding if I believed it was easier for them.
A considerable amount of my early years involved deception along those lines.
The shrine’s doors were designed to keep out the rain and art thieves, not a thinned Web-being, so it didn’t take me long to find a gap and slip myself through—a reminder I really should add such useful gaps to the Library doors when Duggs wasn’t looking. She was a little too good at her job.
I condensed into my proper teardrop before the bust of the infamous Teganersha-ki. Alas, to my web-senses, the statue was so much inert material and uninteresting, despite a shape I knew.
Ah, but the taste? I extended thin pseudopods, following the gradient. Yes. Lesy. Lesy . . .
LESYLESYLESY!
Had I been more fluid, I’d have frozen in shock. As it was, I sloshed a little, torn between choices. Web-mass close enough to touch.
Web-mass enough to drown in, beyond the next door.
Skalet had been right. Here could be all of the busts Lesy had signed with her own flesh.
Except Evan’s. I’d already decided to let his alone. Paul carried a scrap of me in his pendant. If Evan carried a scrap of Lesy when he traveled, as he had?
I could find him. If I were close, and probably would need to be in web-form to be sure, which was its own complication because Evan was not ready for that much me—
I was dithering. As a tactic to help me resist the powerful instinct to consume all the Lesy I could taste as quickly as possible, it was helpful. As a means of making a decision what to do with it? Not so much.
And I didn’t have all night. Evan would change, go with Skalet, attempt to enjoy himself, then bolt at the first hint he’d been noticed by his seniors. Using a wallowing Lishcyn as an excuse.
Leaving Lesy’s bits here was not only distracting—and likely impossible for my web-self, now that I was here—but dangerous. This much web-mass available to be analyzed was the risk. The time would come, if centuries from now, when Lesy’s careful dabs of glue would dry and flake away, when the Ersh excretions large and small would either be collected or lost, and some clever ephemeral grow curious about the immutable blue left behind.
It was up to me to protect my Web—now and as long as we existed.
To work, then.
Like many, if not most of my plans, it wasn’t until after I’d committed myself past the point of no return that I noticed a problem.
The reason my elders didn’t thin? Because it was hard. Hard to resist the hysterical compulsion to resume my normal shape. Hard to control a wide, thin, extended me.
Above all, hard to maintain a sense of self.
Fortunately, web-flesh hungered for more of itself. I didn’t need control as I reached the giant pile of Ersh heads. Lesy-taste drew me irresistibly along.
All I had to do was remember one thing: not to assimilate any of it. Not yet. I’d no idea how she’d affixed smears of herself to the statues and I’d no intention of absorbing that knowledge and find it somehow affixing me to them, too.
My shudder caused a localized avalanche. I supposed I should be grateful the Dokeci hadn’t glued the little busts together.
I thinned and thinned . . . found Lesy . . . gathered Lesy . . . and shunted that web-mass toward one remote portion of mine. Pulse after tiny pulse, collecting, carefully apart from Esen.
I started at the top, spread like a blue blanket over the entire exhibit, letting gravity and appetite draw me down and through, flowing like blood through every cavity. By the time I reached halfway, I’d lost any understanding of what I was doing, only the hunger and the primal caution to keep apart—for now.
When I reached the floor, I’d lost myself, but who I was hardly mattered because there was more web-mass THAT WAY!
I condensed through the channels I’d taken and made, growing thicker along this line and that. Ersh busts began tumbling and bouncing. Air rushed in, new tastes, new sensations. Had I been sufficiently condensed to think, I’d have realized my now-frenzied contractions into myself were sending Ersh busts flying merrily through the glass walls of the shrine and into the ponds outside.
But I was only instinct and wanted MORE.
I flowed back and into myself, reclaiming every precious bit of ME.
Teardrop again.
Aware, again. I’d been clever, leaving the life-sized bust till the last so its Lesy would draw me—
Something was wrong . . .
Wrong with me . . .
TOO BIG! Ersh-memory was precise, the instinct of what to do about it clear, if not at all reasonable considering I was still inside the shrine.
Give birth? Not an option, even if all I had to do was bud off that annoying lump of not-me—because I couldn’t carry it through locked doors, could I?
Be rid of it, then. Use it. Change that useless web-mass into energy and, what, fly? As if that would work, I thought crossly. Paul had the part of me that knew how. For Good Reason.
I could use it to cycle into something bigger—then what? Use Ersh’s head to try and break out of her shrine?
Ersh . . .
The realization I’d a much larger problem than a large me struck like lightning.
Ersh . . . ?
It wasn’t a word. It was memory.
And it wasn’t mine.