After only a few days, Julyan decided that Castor Dane was the most terrifying Dane brother yet. He’d thought nothing could frighten him more than Alexander’s streak of barely concealed cruelty. That was before he confronted Castor’s peculiar version of insanity.
During his time with the Old One, Julyan had encountered a fair number of crazies. Weirdness seemed to go with breeding for the sort of traits the Old One wanted. Ring was one example, Seamus another. However, in all the Old One’s stable of weirdees, Julyan had never encountered someone who firmly believed he carried his dead brother around in his head.
As long as Castor wasn’t challenged on that point, he was an amiable enough individual. He ate constantly, true, and wasn’t always very tidy about his crumbs, but he was the first Dane brother to volunteer for a turn on guard duty. It was during one of these times Julyan witnessed the level of Castor’s delusion.
Julyan was coming on watch, a bit more tired than usual. Following a frustrating day, Alexander had decided to work off his stress in Julyan’s company. Perhaps as a sort of apology for leaving Julyan short of sleep, Alexander walked Julyan to his post, promising to bring him some of the spicy, bright blue drink that Falkner liked, because it let him skip sleeping when he was obsessively pursuing some bit of research.
“A mug of it will set you right in no time,” Alexander assured Julyan. “I don’t recommend you drink it in the quantities Falkner does, though. That would probably send you into cardiac arrest.”
Castor rose and stretched when he heard their voices.
Alexander sang out in greeting. “Here’s your relief, brother mine. Have too dull a time of it?”
Castor gave Alexander a pitying look. “I am never bored. Pollux and I played Go/Went. He won. He almost always does. Still, I gave him a good game. Didn’t I?”
Alexander blinked. “Did you?”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Alexander. I was talking to Pollux.”
Castor’s reproof was very much that of older sibling to younger. Alexander didn’t like being spoken to that way—especially in front of Julyan. Siegfried and Falkner treated Alexander as an integral member of their team. Castor, however, didn’t hide that he thought Alexander was extraneous. Julyan had heard him ask Siegfried why he’d brought Alexander along, since they had been seeking Griffin, and Griffin was as good or better in matters of Artemesian history.
Alexander had overheard, and his scowl promised no good for anyone who crossed his path that day. On the other hand, if Castor thought Alexander was useless, Alexander regarded Castor much as the Old One did Seamus—an inferior, to be tolerated because he had some unique qualities.
Now Pollux’s name hung on the air. Castor’s whip-thin body was tight, ready for a challenge. He had even stopped chewing.
Alexander took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were speaking to Pollux.”
That was when Julyan started to be afraid of Castor. Alexander backing down without even a sarcastic comment revealed everything Julyan needed to know. Maybe that deference was just because Castor had abilities none of the others shared, but Julyan didn’t think that was the only reason. He had seen Alexander’s eyes and recognized what he had seen reflected in them as bone-deep fear.
* * *
“We need to find a way to block our ears,” Bruin said softly. In a more normal tone he added, “Pass that yellow box, would you, Terrell?”
Terrell passed the box of cleaning compound, then lowered his head over the breastplate he was polishing. Barely moving his lips, he asked, “Adara and Kipper are well?”
Bruin grunted an affirmative, glanced over to where Julyan slouched on a bench against the wall, then called cheerily, “Julyan, could you give me a hand with this boot? I can’t get the front clasp open.”
Julyan snorted. “You’re not my teacher anymore, old man. Get one of the others to help you if your fingers are too weak.”
That gave them the excuse to cluster round and mutter over the ostensibly stubborn clasp.
“Adara’s worked an agreement with Leto. Noninterference, if Honeychild understood correctly.”
Griffin nodded. He understood the complexities involved in current communications all too well. Adara had explained how she found explaining abstract concepts to Sand Shadow difficult. He had no idea how the puma then explained things to the bear. Did they talk in some language humans didn’t share or was there additional need to find images that could be used to get ideas across? Griffin knew that Bruin’s communication with Honeychild was much more like true speech, but the bear could only share what she herself understood.
“So, Leto won’t give alarm,” Griffin said softly, reaching for a tool. “But it’s no good them getting in here if Alexander can stop you three with a word.”
“And stop you, Griffin,” Terrell added, “with a threat against us. We need to find out how to plug our ears so Alexander can’t turn us against you.”
Griffin nodded. He turned back to the table. Falkner had supplied them with a comprehensive cleaning kit. Among the materials within was a small container of a blue-grey putty-like material, meant for sealing gaps.
“This might work,” he said in a normal voice, for Julyan was beginning to look suspicious.
Bruin accepted the container, felt the contents, then pretended to apply it to the stubborn boot latch. “It might. Does it have any caustic properties? Falkner warned us not to damage the suits.”
Griffin pinched out the putty, rolled it between his fingers. “I don’t think so, but let me test it first. Try this lubricant instead, only a tiny bit. Put it on the swab first.”
Bruin followed instructions, gave a satisfied grunt. “That did it.”
Griffin rolled a thin bracelet from the putty and slid it under his shirt cuff so that it would be in contact with his naked skin. He was grateful that he still wore Artemesian clothing, for the homespun material—although quite good for its type—was heavier than the synthetics he was used to and effectively hid his bangle.
They worked for an hour or so more. During that time, Griffin felt no rash or itching from the putty. True, skin within the ear was more delicate, but they wouldn’t be wearing earplugs for days on end.
With satisfaction, he put the piece of armor he’d been cleaning on the table, tapped the putty tin, and said, “I think this will do.”
Bruin and Terrell made small noises of approval. Ring, who had been patiently working on a helmet, said nothing, but Griffin thought he saw his thick lips twitch in a smile.
“Take it, now,” Ring said. “The beginning of the ending comes.”
The other three stared at him blankly. Rarely was Ring so clear. Griffin reached for the small container of putty. Taking one of the dull plastic blades that were included in the kit, he cut the putty into three segments. Ring shook his head.
“Two. I do not need.”
“But,” Terrell saw Julyan looking over suspiciously, and continued, “I know you need it as much as I do.”
Julyan, thinking he was hearing a squabble over something in the kit, leaned back, bored.
Ring shook his head. “I am ready. Two is enough.”
Griffin smoothed the putty, then recut, adding in the bit from around his wrist. He popped out the segments and handed them to Terrell and Bruin. “Don’t argue over trifles. Ring’s the expert here.”
As if that had been a cue, there was a tapping of booted feet against the polished floor, then Alexander cut in, his voice silky smooth yet vibrating with barely controlled tension.
“That’s right. Ring’s the expert. Come with me, big man. My brother Castor wants a demonstration of how the spavek works before he’ll agree to try one. The rest of you, assemble those jigsaws back into suits. It’s possible the rest of you are going to get to play, too.”
Ring had risen obediently when Alexander ordered him. He stood, hands dangling limp at his sides, waiting for further direction. Alexander looked at him with poorly concealed scorn.
“Time to fly, Ring. Come along.”
Busily sorting, Griffin considered Ring’s words. Did Alexander have control over Ring as he did over Bruin and Terrell? Surely he must. Ring had been with them when Alexander had triggered the dormant control sequence. He’d been right next to them, wearing the blue spavek.
The blue spavek … Griffin swallowed a surge of glee. He understood. Ring had the best control of the suits of any of them. He was also a proven precognate. Ring had known what was going to happen. He couldn’t save the rest, but he had used the suit’s abilities to deafen himself. After, Ring had acted as if Alexander controlled him, hiding his freedom. Griffin wondered what indignities Ring had suffered to hide this secret. He knew from Terrell’s nightmares that Alexander had taken sordid liberties to prove his domination. Terrell was still struggling with his feeling of complicity, for one of the secret horrors of the control was that the one controlled felt happy to be of service no matter how embarrassing or revolting the commands.
Griffin ground his teeth. He would have hated anyone who played the sort of games Alexander did, but the fact that his own brother was the torturer made Griffin feel as if what Alexander did somehow was his fault. The fact that he’d had no real opportunity to warn the others, to protect them, did nothing to alleviate his irrational reaction. He knew the type of person Alexander was. He should have warned them, taken precautions, instead of standing there gaping because his big brothers had come to the rescue.
Griffin, Bruin, and Terrell were putting the last parts of the spaveks onto the gurneys when Siegfried strode in, looking distinctly grumpy.
“Griffin, we need this stuff in the test arena. After we did an initial test with the blue spavek, Falkner made the mistake of asking Ring which suit would be best for Castor. What he meant, of course, was which of the few we have ready and running. He forgot how damn literal Ring can be. Ring said the green one. Now Castor won’t touch any of the others. Somehow he’s gotten wind of the trouble you had and he’s being very cautious. I’d strangle whoever told him if I knew.”
“Castor is a powerful telepath,” Griffin said mildly, “even if most of his ability shut down when Pollux died. It’s likely he caught some eddy of what people have been thinking. Tensions have been running high.”
Siegfried nodded. “That’s true enough. Alexander’s tight as a bowstring. Falkner’s not much better. He’s reminds me of when we were kids and the grandfolks came back from a trip out-system and brought us huge boxes of some amazing candy. We started taking a nibble here and a nibble there. Before long, we were too overwhelmed to decide what to try next.”
Terrell chuckled softly. “And sick, too, I bet. I can see how this place would be like a candy box to Falkner. He honestly loves all this machinery.”
Siegfried grinned. “He does. He has since he was a baby in an incubator. The rest of us tried to pull our mobiles down, then throw the parts or stick them in our mouths. Mother claims that Falkner took his mobile apart, then tried to put it back together.”
“So,” Griffin said, wheeling his gurney in the direction of the test area, “with Falkner radiating kid in a candy box and Alexander vibrating his desire to have Castor ‘adopt’ a suit as Pollux, I don’t think anyone would have had to tell Castor precisely. He probably caught the apprehension. Probably someone tried to reassure him that what happened to me wouldn’t happen to him.”
“That might even have been me,” Siegfried admitted. “I was very disappointed when Maxwell proved unable to use a suit. We had hopes for Seamus, since he’s one of Maxwell’s projects, and Julyan told Alexander that Seamus is telepathic. Seamus might have made contact with a suit. Might not … Impossible to tell. He just stood there, unmoving, even when Alexander commanded him. Seamus has been getting increasingly withdrawn. Maxwell used to be able to get through to him, but something’s coming unhinged.”
Bruin spoke for the first time. “From what we understand about the lives of the children the Old One bred for his experiment, they lived in relative isolation in a small community. In a comparatively short time, Seamus has been exposed to things that would drive a more normal child to distraction—and he is hardly normal.”
“You make a good point,” Siegfried agreed. “Let’s go. Nothing is going to be helped by waiting.”
* * *
Adara was pleased to learn that the captives had found a way to plug their ears. Honeychild could offer little in the way of details, but the sense of certainty was complete. Adara and Kipper’s experiments in that area had been less successful. Beeswax had seemed a good possibility. Bruin had melted down some of the honeycomb that they had found earlier as a way to quickly separate the honey from the wax. First, Adara and Kipper had attempted to make earplugs from the wax Bruin had poured off but, even when they tried warming it by sitting on it or tucking it inside their shirts, it remained too hard to mold. They remelted a chunk, but when it was soft it was too hot and too sticky to put in their ears. When it cooled it became too hard to mold. That left working with some of the wax from an unheated honeycomb.
“There’s an easy way to get the honey out,” Kipper offered, “if sort of yucky.”
He popped a chunk of the honeycomb into his mouth. His lips gently worked. After a few moments, he reached in and popped out the wax.
“It’s still a little sticky,” he said, working it between his palms, “and crumbly, but body heat should keep it warm.”
He opened his palms to reveal a compact cylinder which he broke in two, then worked into the opening of each ear.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Let’s find out if I can hear you.”
Adara turned away and said, “The bees dance on the water’s edge.”
Kipper tilted his head. “Something about bees and water. I couldn’t get the rest.”
“Not a complete seal then,” Adara said, “but I think we’re on the right track.”
They separated more wax from the honey, experimenting until they each had a selection of fairly useful ear plugs.
“They don’t block out all sound,” Adara said, “but hopefully they’ll be enough to keep Alexander’s command from getting through.”
Blocking their hearing presented problems of its own, since partial deafness reduced their ability to hear anyone coming up on them, as well as making it impossible to converse. The hand gestures used by hunters would be of some use, but these suffered from limited versatility.
“We’re going to have to settle for carrying the plugs and putting them in when we think we need them,” Adara said.
“I’ll practice until I can get them in really fast,” Kipper agreed. “From what I saw, Alexander can’t get you with a single word. He’s got a string of sounds to make.”
Despite their precautions, Adara remained uneasy. She wanted to ignore the dreams in which Artemis pleaded with her, dreams that intermingled deftly with nightmare. She found herself going into the Leto zone more often, considering camping there instead of where Artemis could reach her, but she knew that would be foolish—and cowardly. At this point, Leto apparently remained in control of herself. Would that independence last? Was Leto’s inability to see much of the valley a permanent limitation or something left from when she’d been attacked and shut down? If the Dane brothers took command of Leto, any place within her zone might be easily monitored.
Sand Shadow was no help. The puma had a singular practicality where survival was concerned. She could not understand Adara’s nervousness regarding letting Artemis in if doing so would enable Adara to resist Alexander—and what Alexander would do to her.
Adara’s awareness of how vulnerable she would be was the hardest argument to resist. Adara had no illusions regarding her safety if she was a captive in Julyan’s company. Then there was the Old One. She knew that he advocated rape and torture as well. Did she have any reason to suppose those he had allied with would believe any different?
From what Bruin had sent via Honeychild, Griffin was being controlled to some extent by threats of injury to the other three prisoners. How much more easily could all of them be controlled if they knew that disobedience meant Adara being used as a sex toy?
Adara knew what her choice must be. Even knowing this, some part of her wanted to scream that she wasn’t being offered a choice. She stomped down that miserable impulse as unworthy. She had choices.
She could leave the others. Some would argue this was the best idea, because then she could recruit allies. Surely this was too big a job for just her, Kipper, and the two demiurges. Another option was trusting in the beeswax earplugs, her own capacity for stealth and secrecy, and Kipper’s training. Or she could try to win Leto over to more active participation. Or she could wait, hoping that a better opportunity would be offered when their enemies’ guard was down.
And what will happen to the others while I wait? Bruin wouldn’t reveal if they were being tortured unless he felt that someone was in danger of being killed or maimed. He’d worry I’d act impulsively, not plan carefully enough, if I was afraid for them. No. The time for waiting is over. Kipper and I have done our best to secure protection from Alexander’s control, but Artemis can offer better.
So she turned her face to the sky and spoke with all her heart and soul. “Artemis, I’m yours. Let’s do whatever it is you have in mind.”
Kipper looked astonished, but Adara hardly noticed his reaction as warmth and relief flooded into her mind. Near the tips of her boots, the soft, damp duff began to erupt, rounding and swelling, as if a small, firm head was being birthed forth by the earth. Sand Shadow thumped her head against Adara’s arm and emitted a querulous yowl. Adara stroked her, as much for her own reassurance as for the puma’s.
Kneeling, Adara dusted off the crumbs of dirt and leaf mold, revealing a pale white sphere no larger than the hollow of her cupped hands. The air was scented with the musty, not at all unpleasant, odor of fresh fungus. Sand Shadow leaned forward to more closely inspect the sphere, the tips of her whiskers lightly stroking the firm, fleshy whiteness. As if this whisker kiss had been a signal, the sphere split into six neatly divided segments. These peeled back, creating points on a star. In the center of the star was a fat bluish-grey cone. The tip of the cone opened and a dusting of white spores drifted forth and sparkled in the air.
“An earthstar,” Kipper gasped. The boy had come soundlessly up to stand beside Adara. “The most beautiful one I’ve ever seen.”
Adara studied the fungus. She knew what to do. Her dreams had told her. Her heart raced, causing her to feel the slightest bit faint. She knew what to do, but could she? She imagined those tiny white dots coating the inside of her mouth, drifting deep into her lungs, carried with every breath through her soft tissues, permeating her blood and brain. As a hunter, she knew all too well how much wetness there was in a living body. In her wanderings in the wilds, she’d seen how fungi seized on wetness and turned everything they touched into mush.
Kipper looked at the earthstar, then at her. His eyes were round with wonder. “An earthstar. Don’t you see? It’s part of Ring’s prophesy come true. ‘If the cats do not breathe in the dusty orb, if the thread does not learn that it binds tightest when it is knotted firmly into itself, if the dreamer does not wake from the visions, then even with Ring, with Bruin, with Kipper, still there will be disaster.’”
“’Cats,’” Adara repeated, astonished that her voice could sound so steady. Kipper was beginning to look frightened. He needed her confidence to steady him. “You’d better come close, Sand Shadow. Kipper’s right. This is meant for us both.”
She bent closer to the earthstar, one arm around her demiurge’s neck, the other arm straight, the hand braced against damp earth in which she would have sworn she felt a pulse. Artemis sent no images, but Adara had never been so aware of her in this last moment of separation. Then she bent her head forward and placed her lips against the tip of the cone.
Breathing deeply in, Adara took the spores into her mouth, drew them down into her lungs. On the exhalation, she placed her mouth against Sand Shadow’s, feeling fur instead of lips, the tickle of whiskers, and the dampness of the nose leather against her cheek. She breathed out, sharing Artemis’s gift with her demiurge.
Again Adara breathed in the earthstar’s spores, shared them with the great cat. A third time, then she knew without knowing how that the cone was emptied. The remaining spores would dance forth, seeding Artemis into the planet that was her body, following the ordinary extraordinary design that was their nature.
At first Adara felt nothing, not even a tickle. Then, on her fourth breath, needles of ice that turned into nearly unbearable heat radiated out from the interior of her mouth and lungs, piercing every fiber of nerve, flowing forth with incredible rapidity. She became aware of her body with an intimacy she would not have believed possible: each organ, each bone, each drop of blood, knowledge increasing so that she came to see herself not an individual but as a colony creature. Then, quick as a hand turned palm up, her perspective shifted and Adara saw the planet in the same detail. Incredible amounts of information flooded into her, filling her beyond her capacity to understand.
She heard Sand Shadow screaming, raising the terrible feline keen that froze the blood of any who walked the forest. Adara realized that her own throat was making the same horrible sound, her screams blending into those of the puma, until they were of one voice as well as one mind.
Kipper was shouting, shaking her shoulders, pulling her from where she was beating her head into the earth in an effort to shake loose the horrid mass of information that threatened to drown her, to submerge her in a salt-scored weight, drowning her with waves of wetless water.
Nameless now, one of three, she surged to her feet, arms stretched to the sky in a mute plea for mercy. She no longer knew how to speak or how to separate herself from the minds intertwined with her own. Her claws sprouted forth. She brought them down to tear open her skull along the seam of the nasal cavity, seeking to make room for this terrible burden of knowledge … Pain! Then …
Peace. Pure, absolute, silence. Stillness in every limb.
She was no longer screaming, though a roughness in her throat told her she had screamed. Blood ran down her face, coursing from her nose and lips, soaking into her hair, which trailed behind her back-thrown head. Sand Shadow was gone but Adara …
She blinked. Adara. That was right. She was Adara. A few syllables, meaning almost nothing, but useful. Adara. Sand Shadow. Artemis. Names. Identities.
She had feet and was standing upon them. She felt her hands heavy at her sides with the weight of claws. Her bare toes were also clawed. Her spine felt odd, as if it had tried to sprout a tail. Blood still flowed from nose and mouth. The beginnings of claw marks scored her face where her claws had tried to tear her skull open.
“I,” she said, her voice clogged until she spat blood on the ground, “think I bit my tongue.”
Kipper stood a short distance from her, poised to run.
“You were growing fangs and fur and…” He motioned toward her hands and feet. “Claws. Sand Shadow was getting arms, longer fingers, her fur was…” He made an inarticulate gesture, indicating how the fur had flowed and changed. “It was like hair, but all down her back. You were both screaming and screaming and … Oh, Adara! What happened? Did that earthstar hold some sort of poison?”
Adara spat again. Her mouth was bleeding less. She ran a tentative tongue over her teeth, found them much as they had been but … Hadn’t there been a rough spot on that one molar where she’d chipped it on a cherry pit? That roughness was gone, the tooth made new. If there had been fangs, they were gone now. She held a hand up to her nose to stanch the flow, found that the bleeding, too, had almost stopped.
“Not poison,” she said. “Protection.”
Kipper looked unconvinced.
A stream flowed close by. Steadier with every step, Adara walked over to it, knelt, dunked her head into the rushing waters. Despite the warmth of the late summer air, the water felt shockingly cold, her skin fever hot. She scrubbed at the blood matting her hair, saw the water downstream turn red, then pink. As her hands worked, her mind reached out for Sand Shadow and found her immediately.
The puma was in a tree no great distance away, up as high as she could go. Her claws pierced through the tree, anchoring her as she washed her fur with long, nervous strokes of her tongue. Every so often, she shuddered her skin or lashed her tail, assuring herself that her shape was as it should be.
Adara reached for the puma as she had since the squall of a terrified kitten and a flood of emotion had let her know that the then nameless kit was not interested in becoming food for the nasty-tempered, snaggle-toothed old male who had decided that it was a puma-eat-puma world and he was going to be the eater. He hadn’t been. Adara had seen to that. His fur had lined the basket in which Sand Shadow had slept until she grew too big for it.
What had started then had been not so much a bond as a conversation, one in which even the language had needed to be invented. The bond had come later, not some mystic tie, but a relationship built from trust, shared experience, liking, love. Would what had just happened destroy trust, that first and most essential link?
“Hey,” Adara sent, letting the puma feel her working her claws back into her fingers and toes, regaining her human shape. “Was that fun for you?”
A sense of consideration, followed by a flood of aching joints, of temperature shift, of balance all wrong. Sand Shadow, too, had experienced some of the torrent of information. Here her puma’s nature had served her better than Adara’s human one. Wild animals learn young how to filter out what they don’t need. The ones who don’t are distracted by a bit of birdsong, miss the prowling menace, and die.
“Why did we try to become each other?” Adara thought, then knew the answer. They had reached for each other but, in the fluid state the spores had forced upon them, the barriers between human and puma had ceased to be. Each held in their minds a sense of what the other was. It was as if we tried to send a letter and became the addressee. Or something.
Adara remembered the sensation of knowing her body down to the tiniest level and knew that whatever Artemis had done to her had given her the capacity to reshape herself from the most basic elements up. Of course, if she didn’t know precisely what it was she wanted to be …
Adara shuddered, imagining herself transformed into a wet and squishy mass somewhere between shapes. That wasn’t a game she was going to play for a long time to come—if ever. So, what exactly had Artemis done?
“I made you a world at your command,” came the answer, “as I am a world at my command. The other will not be able to direct you because you are your own seegnur.”
“I thought you were going to take over,” Adara said, “that Alexander would not be able to command me because you would be commanding me.”
“What good would that do any/all of us?” Artemis said. “I need you to be you, not to be more me. Weren’t you the one who showed me that?”
Adara remembered dreams and nightmares and conversations that had seemed not quite real later on. “So I’m still me? Sand Shadow is still her? And you?”
A trickle of laughter, not in the least unkind. “Still me. Still you. Still her. But also, now, still us. It is that us-ness that will grant you protection. Where we are gathered will be too crowded for another’s will. Of that I feel certain.”
Adara wished she felt the same.
Interlude: Earthstar
They told me
Who I am
What I should be
Slavery glorified as destiny
Yet I see
I’m no lamb
No worker bee
This earthstar is my mutiny