Chương 13: an orchard

A monstrous worm is curled in a city block-sized crater, its massive rubbery folds and spines blossoming with moss and towering fungal growths. Without seeing the lamprey mouths and manifold eyes of its blunt head, an observer might believe that my sister Saoirse is a chaotic garden, or a festering fen, so intermingled is the decay and renewal pursuing itself across her. Bina's main body is already here, roosting next to her. My younger sister's spiracles trill a cheerful greeting.

I drift over Saoirse and send a cautious hail, a request to manifest in her demesne, and the smell of fresh earth after a storm. She returns a flood of serene affection and a fond invitation, along with a detailed description of everything she's currently cultivating across her huge and fructiferous body. I'd reproduce it here, but I'd need a couple thousand pages and I worry I'd bore you. This sort of instant transfer is a useful part of being a creature like me.

I'd love to give my story to you this way, so that you could ascertain, in the space of an instant, every minute detail of every scene in its telling, from its barometry to its ambient noise threshold. Unfortunately, our language would cause your brain to denature and pour out of your nostrils. So I suppose you'd better keep reading instead, my delicate audience. Remember to take regular breaks to combat eye strain.

I hastily reconfigure my Irene body with skin that can survive Saoirse's caustic environs and lungs that can filter her many spores away. No offense to my sister, but we have different ideas about closeness, and I don't fancy the idea of spitting bits of moldy lung out when I'm back inside myself. Then I enter Saoirse's kingdom of decay. I pass slime molds and glowing redcaps; I maneuver around fungi oozing fecund poisons.

Lattices of protein and pupae, ripe with the sickly-sweet scents of many thousands of life cycles devouring their own tails, bloom to rot to bloom to rot again. With every step, I crush dozens of tiny shoots and growing things; they fertilize my footfalls, such that new colorful bursts of ever-mutating life mark my passage. This is not the place for you if you have trypophobia, or mycophobia, or mysophobia, or really any kind of phobia. Even my well-tempered resistances find repulsion here and there.

But Saoirse is beautiful, as all my sisters are beautiful. Even Eight, menace she may be, has a great and terrible beauty. Saoirse waits for me in her largest growth chamber. Her tumescent form is suspended gracefully over a churning terrarium, drifting spores from manifold species into her latest project. A forest of jewel-toned dragonfly wings, spreading from her like a woven cloak, keeps her aloft with a harmonious buzz.

Imagine, if your stomach is fortified for it, a glamorous fairy queen made of death caps and teratomas. Surrounding her, each in their own cell of a vast honeycomb, are her blooming servants. Her newest is still identifiably human, his face a picture of restful repose as the fungi which feast on his brain flood the gaps they leave with endorphins. I genuflect to her.

"Sister. Thank you for welcoming me in." The pinpoint lights within her weeping eyeholes burn brighter as she smiles.

"Irene. Dear heart. Hello."

"Where's Bina? I saw her outside." Saoirse waves a knotty hand toward one of the overgrown channels tunneling through her titanic body.

"Exploring. She was waiting faithfully until I mentioned a fruit orchard I've been growing. She got excited. Shall I call her back?"

"That's our Bean for you," I say.

"She can take her time. Let's catch up."

"Of course, darling." Saoirse floats to the chamber floor. The delicate hem of her dress is a curtain of mycorrhizae, which curl into the loam around her as she sits on the lip of her terrarium.

"You are here, I think, to negotiate. And I am here to listen. Nectar?"

"Please," I say. She presses a bowl into my hand, and a drizzle of amber-colored fluid discharges from the canopy above our heads, filling it to the brim. I take a sip and savor the sweetness, then regurgitate a long, thready parasite, which I gingerly remove from my mouth.

"This is delicious," I say, "but can I request you stop trying to infest this manifestation? I've been doing my best to keep from having to reconstitute it."

"Sorry, dear. Force of habit." Saoirse takes the plasmoid from my hand and tucks it into her teeming mantle.

"From what I hear, you've been getting plenty of that from Ganea."

"Have you been talking to her?" Saoirse chuckles.

"Talking, fending off. Same thing with Gan-Gan. She tells me you're making some sort of play."

"That's right," I say.

"My latest warlock, Bina's first. There's real potential here. And I want to bring you in."

"And you've thought about my terms."

"I have," I say.

"Let's talk about it." Saoirse is kind, and Saoirse shares my affection for you and your world. But Saoirse has a very different idea of Heaven than I do, and a very different idea of what makes you happy. This isn't the first time we've had this conversation. Bina pokes her wolfish head out of one of Saoirse's tunnels. A persimmon's gleaming pulp runs down her jaw.

"Hello!"

"Hello again, Bean," Saoirse says, and our youngest sister frowns at the propagation of her nickname. She perambulates down the wall like an octopus and sits on her haunches next to me.

"Bina and I need to get our warlocks from Chamchek to Pastornos," I say.

"Do you still have your guy there?" I hesitate to use the world warlock. Saoirse doesn't have warlocks like we do, not exactly. Saoirse works differently. There's a man you may meet, some day, at a concert. Or a pretty girl at a party. They'll be interested in you. They'll ask you about yourself, and they'll really listen. They'll laugh at your jokes and they'll brush your hand. They'll invite you somewhere, tonight or tomorrow night.

They've been paying close attention to you; they're good at guessing where you'd like to meet them next. Stolen novel; please report. A day will come when they ask you if you want to have some real fun with them. They'll offer you silo. Maybe they'll call it by a different name: glory dust, p. semi, The Special. When you take it, either up the nose or under the tongue or vaporized into your lungs, you are Saoirse's. You'll have your first dream of her that night. You'll behold an indistinct shape.

You'll hear tuneless music. You'll wake up feeling desperately deprived. There is no comparison to the bliss Saoirse's offering will give you. None on Earth, anyway. You'll upend your existence for more. You'll do anything for more. And you'll need more, and more, in larger doses. Saoirse will wait until your life's already hollowed out by your own hand, and then she'll appear to you. What she offers you isn't the power of a warlock, not exactly. She gives you a simple deal.

Every night, you will slumber in her demesne, and sleep a beautiful, dreamless sleep, with all the silo your reconfigured brain hungers for. You'll be immersed in it. No thoughts, no ills, no needs or wills. Just unthinking bliss. In exchange, you'll be called on, now and then, to do her a favor in your waking days. Eventually, that favor will be a spell, the only spell she'll ever teach you, the last spell you'll ever cast.

And then she'll free you from what's left of your body, and bring you into herself, and you'll have that silo bliss forever. And she'll have more living gardens to tend. It's a lot more haphazard and chaotic than how the rest of us operate, and her servants are more delicate than ours. But it's a rather ingenious way to get around the one-warlock limit the rest of us struggle to breach.

"Chamchek. Let's see." Saoirse stands, her dress tearing its filaments from the earth with a silky hiss. She sways past row upon row of slumberers.

"Chamchek, Chamchek. Chammy cham—Ah, yes. You're talking about Perry, here. The flyboy." She reaches out and plucks a morel from an overgrown mass, which shifts and sighs in response. I can just make out a human figure beneath the excrescence.

"Pretty Perry. Oh, he's sprouting so well."

"And he's still working with the private airship people?" Bina asks.

"He is." Saoirse strokes Perry's forehead.

"I believe I understand where this is going. You've need of my servant to get you an unchartered flight. Well, but of course." She gives me a laceration smile.

"Let's negotiate for it." Saoirse, should she obtain the key, would turn all of Heaven into her night garden. You'd be fertilizer for her unending creations. Of all the sisters I'm competing with, hers is the gentlest victory. The spores would steal your mind and end your freedom, but they'd flood you with so much pleasure you'd miss neither.

"Here's my offer," I say.

"When Heaven is being reshaped, you'll have dominion over every mortal soul whose paradise can only come from the destruction of another's. The genocidalists, the arsonists, the serial murderers, the billionaires. The people whose happiness must emerge from the greater whole's sorrow. Them you can plant in your gardens. I've watched their dimension closely. You won't be wanting for raw material."

"And in return, my Perry flies your warlocks."

"That's right," I say.

"A simple endeavor with a rich reward."

"You've thought this one over, haven't you?" She lets one of her larvae crawl across her splayed-out fingers.

"And, you know, it's quite reasonable." A silly hope springs up in me. She clicks her tumorous tongue.

"But I'm afraid I'll have to ask for more."

"Sersh—""You needn't convince me of your intentions," she says.

"Ganea already gave me the outlines and Bina here has filled in the rest of the spiel." I slant my gaze to Bina, whose tail thumps nervously.

"Then you understand the field."

"I do."

"And the threat our oldest sister poses."

"Very much. Alliances are necessary. But I have you, it would seem, over a barrel."

"There are other ways to Pastornos," I say.

"If there were, you'd have taken them." She shakes her head.

"No. You need me. And I believe I could see my way to needing you, beloved sister."

"Do you have an additional price in mind?" I brace myself.

"Yes. Two additional conditions." Saoirse holds up a flowering finger.

"First: when your pretty humans are finished with their old world, when the last one dies, I want Diamante. The whole thing." I chew my lip.

"Promise me you won't hasten their extinction?"

"No hastening. You have my word." She brushes my wrist.

"You love Diamante for the Diamantans. I have quite the fondness for its more primeval processes. Once your little humans blow themselves up, or however they go, the world that remains will be an intriguing canvas."

"What's condition two?"

"Pretty Perry is being held prisoner," Saoirse says.

"By some gentlemen at a gambling parlor called the Platinum. I understand it's something about debts he's racked up. One reason I've just been letting him fertilize. He's perfectly content and quite beyond any pain they try to inflict on him, but I believe they're preparing to dispose of him. If you want him, you'll need to break him out."

"How does an airship pilot in prison help us any?" I ask.

"It's not a state prison. His credentials remain, I believe, in place." Saoirse smiles and shrugs.

"He still knows how to fly. My gifts have left him that. If your warlocks can lift him from the Platinum and take him home, he has his lovely little uniform, his papers, his job. At least for a few more days."

"So we just have to break your druggy airship pilot out of a casino prison and maybe he can get us on an airship." Bina munches on another persimmon.

"And you get a slice of Heaven and an entire planet."

"Yes." Saoirse pats her velvety head.

"Sersh," I say.

"You're lucky I love all my sisters, you know that?"

"I know and am in awe of it, Irene, darling."

"You have yourself a deal." I stick my hand out.

"Oh, wonderful!" Saoirse bypasses my hand and brings me into a tight hug. I return the gesture, surreptitiously brushing off the tiny questing lifeforms that creep from her to explore my skin.

"It's a shoddy deal on your end, I know," she murmurs into my ear.

"I hope you don't resent me and that it all works out wonderfully."

"If it doesn't, we won't be able to deliver on your side," I say.

"If it doesn't, I do believe our eldest sister is going to eat us all." Saoirse lights a twinkling laugh.

"And it will be a moot point. I'd quite given up on obtaining that key, my dear. I'm so glad you've come here to include me."

"Does that mean that you'll activate a sleeper or two for us in Pastornos?" I ask.

"Of course. Provided you give me a bit more of that reward."

"If I'm your last hope to avoid our big sister's jaws, perhaps we've both got each other over a barrel."

"Oh, Irene." She laughs again.

"You might, if I were afraid of dying. But really, I do think it might be interesting, being killed and eaten." She plucks a young chute from her forearm and watches it dry and wither.

"Nothing is forever." I squeeze her shoulder.

"We'll see about that."

"My determined sister." Saoirse beams.

"Good luck, Irene. Love you, dear."

"Love you too, Sersh." With that, I click my heel and turn from the eroded fairy and her hall of decomposition.

"Come on, Bina. Let's go free ourselves a fungus-brain."

"Bye, Saoirse!" Bina waves.

"Thank you for the persimmons!"

"You're so welcome, darling." Saoirse lights back into the air, turning lazy, pollinating circles as she waves us adieu.

"Check your system for parasites," I say to Bina, sotto voce.

"Saoirse probably wants to nose in."

"Oh, I'm not worried," Bina says.

"I'm just going to liquefy this manifestation and make another. You ought to as well."

"You're probably right." Bina snickers.

"But I bet you won't. Cause you spent like a million years on this one. Cause you got a crush." I give her a playful swat.

"Can you just turn into goop already?"

"Reenie wants a kissieeee," sings Bina, her flesh sloughing from her bones.

"Reenie's got a cruuuuubhbhhb." The last word trails off as her vocal cords unravel and her manifestation's gleaming skull falls to the floor. It crumbles and flakes like ash.

"We are not doing Reenie," I tell the puddle.