The Last Green Tree

by Jim Grimsley

  He was sitting on the floor now, embracing himself. He was seeing Sherry’s face, dead, knowing she was gone, and feeling a long tearing begin in his middle, a jagged feeling that raced through him, made him sag onto his arms and breathe in a sob.

  “You see?” She was standing over him now, looking down at the top of his head. “You’re a mess, Keely. You’ll never get better.”

  “You’re not supposed to do this,” he said, and his voice sounded older now, sounded like itself. “You’re not supposed to make me remember.”

  “Don’t tell me what I’m supposed to do,” she whispered, and suddenly he was knotted with pain, his throat closed so that he could hardly make a sound. He felt as if his bones were breaking, as if Nerva’s fingers were tearing at his flesh, sharp as hooks. “What does it matter anyway? I can say what I like to you, in here. I’m going to make you forget it all anyway.”

  He could hear her voice but only in a distant way. She was lifting the math box out of her ample skirt. He tried to shake his head but the pain grew worse; he lost control of his legs, of his bladder, pissed himself and lay prone on the carpet.

  “You’ll lie in your piss till you’re done,” Nerva said. “I’ve turned off the smart carpet; you’ll just have to lie there in your own filth.”

  “Please,” he said.

  “Such a big boy, acting like such baby all day. And then acting like a different kind of baby every night. If you weren’t so good at wearing this box, I’d throw you out the window into the ocean.”

  “Please,” he managed, biting his own tongue, hard enough to hurt but not to break the skin. For some reason a pain he caused himself distracted him from whatever it was Nerva did to wrack his body with that feeling of agony.

  “If you weren’t so good with this box, you’d never see that spaceship you want to ride on,” she said, and fixed the headset over his head.

  In the midst of the pain that washed over him began that other tearing that affected only his head, the feeling that the math box was reaching into him, writing something onto the cells of his brain; gradually even the pain subsided and the world of the box engulfed him. He was surrounded in a stream of numbers that swam into each other, relationships that somehow became concrete; he was learning numbers of all kinds, in all relations, and after a while they filled him, and he was aware of nothing else.

  How long that lasted he was never certain, but at some point he found himself in bed, the math box taken away from him. He dreamed of a sphere that floated near him, that unwrapped wires from itself and inserted their needle-sharp tips into him, coiled metal arms around his throat.

  Sometimes in the dream Father was there, different from the father Sherry had described, the one who was in prison in the Reeks for killing their mother and some other people; this was a father bright and new, kind and good, vague in the face but warm in presence. Keely dreamed of him after using the math box.

  Tonight Father was helping Keely play with a new Disturber toy with a complex shape. “You like to play with shapes,” said Father. “You’re talented.”

  “That means I do them well,” Keely said, feeling the glow of the light around him.

  “I choose children who do things well,” Father said. “I’m a good judge of character.”

  Keely was changing the shape of the toy now, seeing new kinds of curves and twists.

  “Do you want me to choose you?” Father asked.

  The thought made Keely feel warm inside. He tried to keep from saying anything, he even tried to keep from nodding, but the question made him feel so special it showed, even in the dream, even though he knew he was sleeping.

  “The music in your head is like the math in the box,” said Father. “Do you like it?”

  He allowed himself to nod the smallest possible nod. He was afraid he would wake up and find out he could not return to the dream. He liked the Father dream when it came, but it only came sometimes. “I hear the number-shapes all the time in the background,” Keely said.

  “That’s good,” said Father. “That means you’re adapting.”

  “Is adapting like this?” Keely asked, and he reshaped the curves in the toy again, to make it into a fortress.

  “Sometimes.”

  “I adapt,” said Keely.

  “When you’re afraid of Nerva, Keely, remember that one day you’ll be much, much stronger than she is.”

  The thought made him very quiet. Father had never said anything like this before.

  “When she hurts you, remember that one day you’ll be as strong as I am, you’ll have me inside you, and you’ll be able to hurt her.”

  He put part of the toy in his mouth, started to chew it. He could taste the plastic, feel the texture against his gums.

  “Do you think you’ll like that?” Father asked.

  “Yes,” Keely said, and he felt warm all through.

  A feeling that he was younger, that he was small again settled over him. By morning it was as if he had always been that way, with no memory of either the math box or the dream.

  4.

  When the day came to move to the farm on Aramen, Uncle Figg booked passage for them all on the Anilyn Shuttle. They waited out the processing of their emigration papers in Skygard after the long ascent on the pulleypod. Keely watched Senal recede beneath him, the curve of the planet emerging as the car rose over everything he could see. He was glued to the window, quiet with wonder at the vision, feeling small.

  By then Keely had turned eleven and sometimes felt very old. Furthermore, he was still shy of Uncle Figg at moments, when he was in certain moods, and this was one.

  “Don’t press your nose against the glass,” Uncle Figg said, “it might not be clean.”

  “Come and sit with me,” said Nerva, a shawl spread over her lap and peel from an orange dropping onto the yarn. She was using the good voice and Keely had only the faintest memory of the other.

  “I’m all right.” Keely, careful to keep his nose away from the glass, turned sidelong to look at her. She was hired to look after him. She was an old lady with a big bosom and a wide lap, and she came from a long way to work for Uncle Figg.

  “I’ll give you a piece of orange,” she said.

  “Is it a good idea to bribe him with food?” Figg asked.

  Nerva gave him a warning look. “I’m not bribing him, I’m offering him a piece of orange.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Keely sat on his rump for a moment and looked around the compartment. He was sitting on the side with Figg and Nerva was sitting on the other side, taking up most of the room. She wore a wide, long garment of a fabric that smelled like the park on a sunny day, pale blue, with darker patterns in it that were a kind of plant. Keely forgot the names of things but Nerva would remember. Keely held out his hand for a piece of the orange after a moment.

  “I thought you weren’t hungry.”

  “I’m thirsty,” he said.

  She nodded that this would do and gave him a bit of orange while Uncle Figg handed him a bottle of water. “Drink out of your own straw,” he said. “We have to share that.”

  So he sipped out of the blue straw and chewed the slice of orange slowly afterward. The pod was rising far above the clouds that looked like streaks of fishbone, into a zone of violet blue, and beyond it, the fierce points of light that were called stars and planets and worlds and moons and galaxies and black holes. He had seen them all before on episodes of Sky Captain of the 35,000th Century and the other Sky Captain serials.

  “Fasten your seatbelt tight,” Uncle Figg said. “You’re floating off your chair.”

  On Skygard, after the pulleypod ride, Uncle Figg’s spider crawled out of his hair and nestled on his arm, and Keely floated out the arrival commons into the central cylinder of the station. He had never been weightless before, but Nerva had him tethered to her hip, the requirement with children in free fall, and made him keep hold of the guy ropes and pull himself along like a good boy. They were treating him like a kid, as usual, an
d he didn’t feel altogether himself, for some reason. He would have liked to push himself off from the wall to see how it felt to fly to the other side, but he followed hand over hand behind Zhengzhou, the bodyguard.

  They were all supposed to be flying on a shuttle from Skygard, and Keely kept looking for it everywhere. When Nerva told him it would be outside, not inside, he started looking through all the windows. They came to the part of the station where Keely had weight again and Nerva helped him take the last step off the transfer point. His stomach did a flip-flop and he looked at Nerva as if he was going to throw up.

  “Use the bag I gave you if you’re going to lose that piece of orange you ate.”

  “I think I’m all right now,” he said, holding his stomach dramatically.

  “That’s right, now we’re on the part that’s spinning. That’s how they make gravity.”

  Keely’s knees were wobbly but he looked at her with scorn, since he knew perfectly well that gravity didn’t come from spinning, centrifugal force did, and that was what they were feeling. He had a lot of information in his head now that he was learning; Uncle Figg said his head might burst if he learned too much and that would be that for him. This was also not true but made Keely laugh anyway. He liked the thought of someone’s head blowing up, like in the cartoons from the Surround.

  In the shuttle lobby he finally saw the spaceship, the Glory Bee, another name that made Keely giggle. He stood in the window and watched it. There was nothing nice about it, there was no needle shape like Sky Captain of Glindy had in the Verti Viniga. The ship had no visible cannons or missiles or fighter bay doors. It looked a great lump of metal with boxy stuff all over it and a billion antennae sprouting from it. He was terribly disappointed and sat down. “It doesn’t look like a spaceship,” he said, looking down at the toy box ring on his finger.

  “Do you want some goo?” Nerva asked. “It’s all right for you to play in here.”

  “I said it doesn’t look like a spaceship.”

  “Well, it is one. Do you want some goo for your ring?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She rummaged in her bag and found the container, scooped him out a good heap, and he touched the ring to it and the toy matrix downloaded and the goo assembled itself into a slinky, which he tossed back and forth in his hand.

  “Don’t get that tangled in anything like your hair,” Uncle Figg said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Keely said, a phrase he had been using whenever he could because it was on Corny Cornberg on the Surround.

  Uncle Figg was talking to a priest wearing the whole outfit, hood and all. Keely studied the priest for a while. Uncle Figg was talking about Keely as if he weren’t there, the way adults often did. “He’s the one,” Uncle Figg said. “But we don’t talk about what happened to Sherry right now. He doesn’t even remember her. We’ve had him regressed a few years in age, for therapy.”

  “He did seem a bit big for his speech,” the holy man said.

  “Are you a holy man?” Keely asked.

  “Yes,” Nerva said, “he’s very holy, so holy you mustn’t talk to him. Play with your tinky.”

  “Slinky,” he said, and rolled his eyes. He was beginning to think she mispronounced the word on purpose, which was corny like an adult.

  “He’ll remember her later, when we get rid of some of his therapy issues. He grew up in the Reeks; he had a rough time.”

  “I know,” said the priest, “I saw the vid special about him.”

  Uncle Figg frowned. “My attorney tried to prevent that. But that was about the time the new laws kicked in and I lost my money.”

  An awkward moment passed; Keely could feel it, and it troubled him. He concentrated on the slinky but held it still.

  “I know that a lot of your people are upset with the Mage about that.”

  “It’s a bit of an understatement, that, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My family lost more money than a lot of factions ever see. Along with the property.”

  “I understand.” The priest made a gesture, and Keely copied it. The gesture said, who knew? “Most of my Hormling friends are furious. I wonder if even the Mage will ride it out.”

  “That’s the bitching problem,” Uncle Figg said, and he glanced at Keely and then at Nerva, who was frowning with her wrinkly forehead. “Sorry.”

  Keely was not understanding much of the talk but he understood the bad word and knew he should not laugh at it, especially in public, where Nerva would be most likely to scold him, since it was for show. A scolding in front of other people was always for show, but sometimes that was only a small help.

  “That’s the problem,” Uncle Figg continued, “the Prin will pull it off. They always do. And the Mage has Hanson in her pocket. Hanson is the whole inside of the machine at this point—if he takes away your money it’s gone and if he takes away your stocks they’re gone and if he says you don’t own your property anymore you don’t. So the Mage will take care of the ministries and any rebellion, and Hanson will take care of anything else.”

  “The same thing happened in Iraen,” said the priest, and Keely’s ears pricked up, since fairies lived in Iraen, and so did witches, and other monsters.

  “And?”

  The priest shrugged. He drew down his hood. He was about the same age as Uncle Figg and had a funny long nose and thin dark hair. He was like an old man in a cartoon. His skin was the color of chocolate. “People complained. Rich people complained, I mean. Poor people didn’t mind the redistribution.”

  “All the same laws? The abolition of inheritance?”

  “Yes. He wanted to get rid of money altogether but couldn’t figure out how to do it without the danger of people reinventing it right away. So he had to compromise.”

  “He? Great Irion?”

  “Yes, the person the Mage takes her orders from. If he is a person.” The priest opened the long garment, which hung nearly to the floor. Keely wondered what it would be like to sit inside it between the priest’s feet. Would it be like a tent?

  “I tried to see him once,” Uncle Figg said.

  The priest laughed. “You did?”

  “My one trip to Iraen. The one where I met you, actually. I applied to go north with some of the missions that were opening up trade there.”

  “You were going to work?”

  “Yes. I’ll have you know I’m no stranger to hard work, Dekkar.”

  “You’ll pardon me if I’m skeptical.”

  “Laugh into your hand, go ahead. Everyone’s laughing at me now that I’m poor.”

  Nerva looked at Uncle Figg as if she would like to scold him in public for show, but it was only a mild kind of want, so she held her tongue.

  “Fineas,” said the priest, “I know perfectly well you were left enough of your money that you’ll have a good deal of trouble spending it all in your lifetime. Which you’ll have to do, since you can’t leave it to your ward.”

  “I thought I’d rescued him from all that hardship.”

  The priest made a spitting, laughing noise.

  “What’s hardship?” Keely asked.

  “Be quiet and play with your ring. I’ll give you more goo if you want it.”

  “Keely will have just as much chance as anybody else does to take care of himself.”

  There were a lot of voices overhead and around but suddenly the adults were all listening to one of the voices, booming in a tinny way.

  “We’ll talk more about this on board,” the priest said. “I’m traveling with you as far as the port on the other side, anyway.”

  “Are you Uncle Figg’s friend?” Keely asked the priest.

  The man had nice eyes but Keely thought his nose was crooked and he ought to get it fixed. Maybe Uncle Figg would get it fixed for him.

  “Yes,” the priest said. “We’re very old friends. I met your uncle when I lived in Iraen and we’ve known each other ever since.”

  “I don’t know when that was,” K
eely said.

  “My name is Dekkar,” said the man. “I know yours. It’s Keely.”

  Keely nodded.

  “How long does the regression last?” Dekkar asked Uncle Figg.

  Uncle Figg looked at Nerva, who said, “This stage ends in two or three days, by the time we get to Jarutan. He’ll seem older then and have some of his old memories back.”

  “You’re his therapist?”

  “She’s my aunt,” Keely said.

  “I’m his all-around,” Nerva said.

  “You’re from Iraen, too,” Dekkar said.

  “Yes.”

  “I like to have your people around me,” Uncle Figg said.

  “We’re not the same people,” Nerva said, politely. “This gentleman is Anin. I’m one of the elder people.”

  “She’s Erejhen,” Dekkar said, with an amused smile. “They were there first.”

  “By quite a considerable number of years,” Nerva added, her tone not haughty so much as severe, as if it were a fact that ought already to be known.

  “My mistake,” Uncle Figg said. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s a complicated world,” Nerva said. “Gather up your things, Keely. Melt the toy and give me the goo.”

  “You’re my aunt,” Keely told her again, looking her in the eye, as he gave her the toy stuff.

  “That’s right,” Nerva said. “But only because someone has to be.” She took his cheek between thumb and forefinger, giving him a grimace like she wanted to eat him. He was supposed to be afraid and pretended he was, as Uncle Figg and Dekkar got to their feet.

  “Are you a fairy, Aunt Nerva?” Keely asked.

  “No. There’s no such thing. Don’t drag your feet when you walk. Mind and let me fasten the tether, we’re going into free fall again.”

  So Thin a Thread

  1.

  Each morning Fineas Figg woke to the news of the world, preread and already queued up for his attention.

  Figg’s personal head-space was orderly, neat, and compartmentalized, old memories trimmed and compacted to make room for new memories to which he might need more access; his aging consciousness was boosted just a bit by streams of newfangled neurons manufactured by the cell factory nestled into the back of his skull. Because he was wealthy and had always been wealthy, there was no sort of modification or enhancement that was out of his reach. Prereadings of the daily news were expensive, requiring the intervention of a human consciousness to do the initial reading, but even in his reduced circumstances, nearly impoverished by the Mage’s war on inherited property, he felt he must maintain a certain level of style in his daily life.