AELIN
Ulio Station was vast, confusing, crowded, and frightening. Lost, Aelin flitted from corridor to corridor for more than a day, trying to stay in hiding, even though Elisa was surely gone by now. Or maybe not. Whenever others stared at him, he tried to act as if he had a destination; thankfully, in the ever-changing mass of traders, visitors, and workers, few people paid attention to him at all.
Aelin had eaten little since departing from the Iswander extraction yards, and his energy reserves were depleted. His stomach rumbled, and he felt weak. He found a large cafeteria complex inside the second refurbished Ildiran warliner and managed to scavenge food left on tables or from packages discarded in waste bins.
On Theroc, there was such an abundance of fruits, nuts, insects, and fungi that no one ever needed to go hungry. Back at the Iswander facility, a commissary provided regular meals. It was different here on Ulio Station, though. This was a busy trade center, but all food, water, and air had to be brought in, and the people here weren’t so generous. Despite the apparent anarchy, the people policed themselves and dealt harshly with anyone who cheated, stole, or didn’t play by the rules.
Aelin knew he had to be careful.
A squarish, potbellied woman spotted him from across the cafeteria and strolled up to him. Aelin saw her coming and froze, ready to run. He had never seen this woman before. Her demeanor was businesslike rather than threatening, her expression no-nonsense. Even in the station’s low gravity, she moved with a ponderous rolling gait. “Green priest! I need your services. Are you for hire?”
“For hire?” He was confused. “I … No. I don’t have a treeling.”
“Then what’s the point of a green priest at Ulio Station—”
“I lost my treeling. I hope to rectify that soon, but right now I have no way of sending telink messages. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” It was a quick excuse, but also true.
“The main green priest for hire is Dauntha,” interrupted a man with long dark hair. He was lounging at a cafeteria table next to two young boys, obviously his sons, each about ten years old. All three wore the uniform of a private transfer ship; the two boys did their best to emulate their father. “Reasonable rates, but she doesn’t advertise her services.”
The squarish woman had already dismissed Aelin from her field of view, since he was no use to her. “If she doesn’t advertise, then how do I find her?”
“Warliner number three, around deck twenty, I think.”
“Twenty-two,” said one of his boys.
The father smiled indulgently. “Twenty-two it is, then.”
The squarish woman sighed. “I just came from warliner number three.” She turned and left without a second glance at Aelin.
The father gave him a once-over. “You’d better get a tree soon, green priest—you look scrawny.”
“I’m hungry,” Aelin said.
The man wiped his mouth and slid a plate toward Aelin. “You can have the other half of my glazed sandwich.”
“You weren’t going to eat it?”
“It’s more important to teach my boys generosity.”
Aelin wolfed down the sweet sandwich and felt satisfied. He thanked the man and hurried off, now that he had a goal in mind. He knew exactly where to find a compassionate ear, or at least good company.
* * *
Dauntha was actually on deck twenty-five, but Aelin managed to find her. She was a wiry and hairless old woman, her green skin darkened with age. Numerous tattoos along her arms, cheeks, and forehead indicated her areas of expertise. On the walls of her quarters, Dauntha had painted a bright mural of ferns and tall golden-barked tree trunks. She wasn’t particularly talented as an artist, but her energy and passion shone through.
She was surprised when he appeared at her doorway. “Aelin? Your name sounds familiar.” She quickly touched the potted treeling that sat on her metal table, and her eyes fell half closed as she accessed the verdani mind; when she found Aelin’s name among all those memories, she came back out with even greater surprise. “We haven’t seen you in a long time! Your treeling died, and we thought you had died as well.”
“My treeling was incinerated in a burst of…” He did not know how to explain the surge of energy from the magnificent bloaters, didn’t want to reveal any of the things he knew. “I’ve been out of contact.”
Dauntha’s voice took on a husky, somber tone. “And your brother was Shelud. We all know him. We followed him as everyone died aboard the derelict Onthos city.”
Aelin felt a lump in his throat. “Yes, everyone watched them. Poor Shelud.”
He had been so swept up in the euphoria of revelations and his urgent quest to save the bloaters that he hadn’t thought about his brother in a long time. Now those memories came crashing back. “I was with him by telink when he died.” Now he found it hard to breathe.
With their connection throughout the worldforest mind, green priests could share their lives, their experiences … even their deaths. Shelud had done that with his last gasp of energy, speaking directly to his brother, though when one green priest spoke, all priests could listen.
Tears welled up in Aelin’s eyes. His brother would never know what he had seen inside the bloater mind-flash, how the colors and sounds and smells had acquired a new intensity. No other green priests would know it either, because Aelin simply couldn’t share it … unless they experienced it for themselves. For now, he had to keep the secret of the bloaters; he already feared he had blurted out too much to the Roamer man when he was stumbling through the station.
He didn’t think Dauntha could understand how his mind, his heart, his soul had been altered by the revelations from the bloaters. He wasn’t sure anyone could. That was why he had been unable to make Lee Iswander comprehend the damage being done by draining the floating nodules. But he could still hear them faintly, sense their cosmic music, their thoughts. He knew.
Aelin sat heavily on one of the cushioned chairs that Dauntha provided for her telink customers. He could smell echoes of the forest in the room’s secret scents. Though small, this single treeling had a verdant energy, exuding freshness.
“You look lost and lonely. Stay here with me. Green priests help each other, and I have room.” She slid her potted treeling closer to him. “You should reconnect with the verdani mind. Go ahead—I can tell you need it.”
Aelin trembled with relief and anticipation. He had been far from the worldforest ever since he’d joined Lee Iswander’s industrial operations, and he had used his own treeling like a spy inside a fortress, observing closely but sharing little. But even that connection had been taken from him when the bloater surge had incinerated the potted treeling at the same time it changed his mind and soul.
Now with access to the worldforest so close, he longed to have that contact again.
He eagerly reached forward, touched the thin treeling, ran his fingertips along the fine scales of the bark, and wove his thoughts into the tapestry of telink while keeping part of his secrets carefully walled off. He fell into the welcoming embrace across many worlds, many people. His consciousness rushed outward, following untold billions of trees, threads of thought, strands of knowledge. He explored, and he sent messages to the other green priests so they would know where he was, who he was, where he had been.
He felt guilty having to hide what he knew about the bloaters, but he dared not inspire swarms of eager exploiters who would drain more and more of them. He held that part back. From the trees, he received a flood of new information, catching up on a waterfall of lives and events that had all happened without him.
Most fascinating, he learned that the Onthos, the alien builders of the plague-ridden city where Shelud had died, were still alive, at least a handful of refugees who had gone to Theroc. The Gardeners. Now, through telink, he drank in images that the Onthos had reawakened in the verdani mind—an alien world filled with another worldforest, magnificent trees connected by bridges and walkways, shining towers that poked above the canopy under an orange sky. And many verdani treeships, piloted by symbiotically connected aliens, sailing the emptiness of space as explorers.…
As he let his thoughts wander through this feast of new information, Aelin smiled. The bloaters had given him a taste of the incomprehensible, but this was magnificent as well. Even though he didn’t experience the same energy and wonder as before, Aelin’s joy made tears well up again.
When he eventually let go of the treeling, a weary Dauntha reached out to touch his forearm. He heaved a shuddering breath, blinked his eyes. “Thank you. It has been a long time.”
Dauntha gave him a reassuring smile. “But that wasn’t enough. I can sense an emptiness and a hunger inside you. You’re looking for something.”
Aelin nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly correct. But I’ve already found it. I just wish I could tell you.”