by A. Omukai
The two women looked at each other, then another cough jerked her out of her apathy. What was the situation, and what could she do about it?
Deirdre had just used up the last piece of pinewood she had brought to the planet. There was none left on Gliese 667 Cc, with none to be harvested, since this plant didn’t grow here. She couldn’t get a new piece of pine from Brilann either.
The consequences were clear straight away. There was no way for her to open the gate now, and with the transport boat unavailable, she was now trapped on this planet, unable to escape.
Deirdre moaned, disoriented, trying to sit up, but sinking back to the ground when the strength left her arms.
“Fucking gravity,” she cursed.
“What did you mean by that?”
She shook her head. “Not sure if you really wanna know.”
“Try me.”
Her surroundings were dancing around, and it took her another moment to regain control. When she tried to get up the second time, her stomach revolted and threatened to spit out her last meal. She couldn’t let this happen. Vomit would clog the suction pipes, get into the supply pipes, and block oxygen from flowing into her helmet. A nightmare for any astronaut. Asphyxiation was among the last points on her bucket list.
“Are you familiar with how we druids perform magic?”
“Not in detail, no.”
“We do rituals. Part of that is the use of channelling items, needed to call upon the power of one of our three elements.”
“And you used up the last one, and now you can’t repeat the spell.”
“How did you… I guess that was kinda self-explanatory, wasn’t it?”
“That, and you cursing like a・ they will call it ‘like a druid’ in the future, if you keep it up like that.”
Deirdre hooted, and not even the cough could stop her.
“You’re right, I have a filthy mouth.”
She grinned an angry grin.
She wasn’t quite defeated yet.
So she wouldn’t be able to escape from here, and the infection was spreading throughout her body, but she wasn’t dead yet. Two goals, one of which she had failed to reach, while the second might still be achievable. Though what to do about the planet’s out-of-whack balance was still unclear, she knew what she had to do first.
She grit her teeth, fighting her own unwieldy body until she sat in an upright position, moaning again when pain spiked through her spine from the tailbone. How could she have forgotten that particular pain?
She hadn’t. And her body wouldn’t let her either.
It would keep kicking her ass, and maybe that was what she was needing right now. Anger gave her strength. She slowly rose, fighting for centimetres. Deirdre MacBreen was no pushover. She would return to the Wisp as fast as she could, even though she had no hope left for herself. Ailbhe would probably okay. She wasn’t infected.
This thought didn’t sap her strength. It fuelled her flame, and she rushed back through the tunnel, despite the pain.
Deirdre needed to hear from Brilann first, then she would see what she could do. She could reverse the effects her presence had caused, or would she fail again? She would do what she could, or die trying, and this thought made her feel better.
***
Finally, back at the Wisp. Sitting inside the airlock and waiting for the disinfection procedure to end and the inner door to open felt like a terrible waste of time, especially now that she herself was already infected and spreading whatever it was inside the vehicle. The latest message about those plastic eating organisms on the planet hadn’t been very uplifting either.
She accessed the communication logs of the Wisp. Attempts at establishing direct communication twice, and the second time, they had left a recording for her. She could watch it inside her helmet, but chose not to. Just a minute, then she would sit inside and watch it on the large screen, together with the marine. They were both in the same boat.
Deirdre took a break, sitting on her usual spot on the bench, stretching out her legs and stifling a yawn. With how much time she had been spending lying down lately, there was no excuse for being tired, but it was what it was. She had to accept the facts. She wasn’t in top form, and she would not get in anywhere near the shape she was right now anymore in the future.
“All right, I’ll start the video now. You ready?”
Ailbhe nodded. She had taken off her helmet while Deirdre hadn’t paid attention, and now it was too late to scream at her. Meh, the Aes Sidhe was an adult, she’d know how much she was willing to risk, and Deirdre was not one to talk, anyway.
She started the video feed, and Brilann’s face appeared on the screen. He was not on the bridge. Where he had taken the recording, she didn’t know, but she assumed he had been in his quarters.
“I felt something similar to a shock wave of magical energy coming from the planet, all the way here, at the edges of the system. Deirdre, are you okay?”
The druid looked agitated, his hair, and his beard was dishevelled, as if he had been fidgeting with it nervously and not gotten to brush it yet.
Was it possible that Brilann had sensed the failed ritual? What else could it have been? There was nothing else happening on this giant rock. She was the only one casting spells here, after all.
“This was not an emission from a successfully opened gate. Something else is going on down there. Tell me about it.”
The Tuatha De Danann, while theoretically almost in reach, was realistically further away from her than the Earth was from the sun. Unthinkable distances, both of them. If Brilann had felt the ritual over such a distance, the amount of magical energy that had been released must have been enormous. All that energy, and she had still failed to open the gate. Failed to accomplish her goal, and worse, there was nowhere to go now.
“If you can hear this transmission, please send a reply. Give me a sign of life.”
She would answer the call. If nothing else, she would at least let him know she had survived the event, even though her prospects of staying alive much longer were rather bad.
“In case you are listening to this message, I have thought about the balance problem you told me about.”
Deirdre listened up. This was what she had started the replay for.
“I agree with your assumption. It seems to me as though the planet is going through regular cycles. We saw Gliese 667 Cc eject an object we think is a pod of spores. This happened a while ago. It might have been the end of the prior cycle.”
A pod of spores? The mushrooms shot seeds into space? She wouldn’t rule anything out. This place was full of surprises, but this was bizarre.
“It’s possible that the planet has since started a new phase, and something we can’t make an educated guess about has caused the next cycle to gain too much momentum.”
Oh, she had a pretty good idea what that trigger had been. The planet had shown her.
“It seems to have too much energy. What I think will help, is to locate the source of the energy through the place of power. You must trace the flow back to the energetic centre of the planet and redirect it.”
How would she go about that? She might find out where the energy originated, but redirecting the flow? She’d have to think hard to come up with a formula that could accomplish that.
“You need to channel by drawing from the core, else you won’t have enough energy to erect a new dam, to at least slow it down. Please keep in mind, this is me sitting at the edge of the system, grasping at straws. I am not there, I haven’t seen the phenomenon with my own eyes. This is just something you could try.”
In other words: ‘I have no idea, here’s some wild guesses.’
“How you decide to deal with it, depends wholly on what you think. You are the druid present at the scene. I am here if there is anything you need to know. Contact me. Even if there is nothing, contact me, please. I’m worried.”
Translated: ‘Good luck, you’re on your own’.
“So it seems like he does not know ho
w to help you,” the Aes Sidhe summed it up.
“That’s what I was thinking, too.”
“It’s probably hard to make a judgement based on second-hand information over a long distance.”
“I was hoping he could give me some new input, something tangible.”
“What did you expect?”
Yeah, what had she expected? It was as he said; he was far away, no way he could give her proper advice. Asking him had been a waste of time. She knew it, he’d know it, and he’d probably know she knew.
She smiled. This was also the longest speech she had ever heard the old man give.
Before she’d send a reply, she would change her suit. She had sweated and could use a proper shower, but the Wisp had no such accommodations. Deirdre knew she was already squeaky clean, the suit had taken care of it, but the irrational drive to change her clothes stayed.
Her cough had subsided a little, but her fever had gone up. According to the diagnostic device of the Wisp, the infection had spread past the tissue surrounding her lungs, deeper into her body. It had now grown throughout her thorax. How long would it take to get to the vital parts, or to cause a fatal reaction? She’d find out eventually.
Deirdre was strangely at peace, and she grabbed a new suit from the inventory of the vehicle. Maybe she wasn’t at peace at all, maybe it was fatalism. Anyway, she now had a rough idea how to proceed. The least she could do was to express her thanks, even though she didn’t feel like opening a live connection and saying goodbye. She sucked at farewells. She smiled and wiped something out of her eyes.
29
Establishing Communication Compatibility
Deirdre had stopped counting the number of times she had entered the grotto now. She’d drive the Wisp inside, if that was possible, but the vehicle was too large to fit the narrow tunnel in places.
She had to be at the place of power to trace the flow of magical energy back to its source, if that was even possible, and that place was inside this grotto.
The further the infection spread through her body, the stranger her senses reacted to everything around her. Her skin had gained sensibility. She felt the friction of her clothes and the protective suit, something her brain had filtered out easily up to this point. Her hearing was unchanged, but there were echoes of voices from time to time, like traces in the air passing her by before she could catch them. Two hours ago, the first signs of the coming sunrise had appeared in the sky. Orange traces, the sky illuminated from above, announced the event which was still hours away and would last for long enough to give her ample opportunity to enjoy it. But now, she had completely different things to think about.
She turned her back towards the harbingers of the new day and set foot into the shadow of the tunnel that led up to the place of power.
The deeper she wandered into the opening in the rock, the clearer her vision became, as if darkness had the opposite effect on her eyes. This was not the case.
What got clearer was her mind.
She’d try something new this time. She’d go slow.
The little island lay ahead, greeting her like an old friend, or expecting her to fuck up again, hard to tell. The spot where she had conducted the catastrophic ritual earlier looked unchanged, but now she experienced the pulse of the magical stream below her feet, as if she had gained an additional sense. There was a constant murmur in the back of her head, someone or something whispering incessantly.
She checked the suit’s systems again.
The air comprised Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon and Carbon dioxide. Nitrogen was lower than on Earth, only about seventy-four percent, Oxygen higher at twenty-five percent. All the other gasses were similarly balanced in ways that differed from their Earth standard composition, but the bottom line was the same.
She could breathe here.
It would be cold, at minus two degrees Celsius. Atmospheric pressure was higher, too, along with the slightly thicker atmosphere and gravity of Gliese 667 Cc, but none of this was a big problem, at least not over short periods of time. What had kept them from trying had been the uncertainty of pathogens in the air — a problem she no longer worried about.
She already had the fungus inside her body. At the current rate, she would most likely die. Might as well get rid of the helmet, breathe the native air, and feel the planet’s soil directly. What better way to get in touch with nature than… actually getting in touch?
Opening the helmet caused alarm, but she switched it off. It would have been reported to the Wisp, too, and maybe even get forwarded to the Tuatha De Danann, but it was fine.
She put the helmet down next to her, outside her circle. Next, she opened the many fasteners of her suit one by one. It was sitting on her body as though it had been fit to match her stature, which wasn’t quite the case.
Her rugged breath turned into clouds in front of her face. She shuddered, but it could have been worse. She was still wearing clothes inside the suit, something she’d not normally do. The dense black fabric was made to conserve body heat.
It wasn’t as cool inside here as it was outside, and there was no wind, which made the grotto comparatively cosy.
She didn’t wear gloves, and her ‘shoes’ were just extensions of her pants. The ground felt cold, and it penetrated the fabric, but it wasn’t too bad either.
Deirdre folded the suit and put it next to her helmet on the ground. She breathed in through her nose and took in the smell - a rich, Earthen aroma, similar to wet fallen leaves in autumn. A rough cough forced its way up her airway, and she spit out dark blue mucus. She’d not think about this right now.
The sounds she heard came mainly from drops of water falling from the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and a distant whistle told her about the wind outside. Then there was her stomach, growling comically loud. The sound must have been audible all the way to the entrance. She grinned, but reminded herself to focus.
Deirdre walked up to the same spot she had used for her ritual earlier.
She drew the usual circle on the ground.
“The ritual begins.”
Formalities, formalities.
She wiped the thought away, it would only disturb her concentration.
No guardians of the corners this time. She didn’t want shielding from the outside — she wanted to invite it in.
Whatever there was to influence the ritual was welcome to do so.
She had shut out the planet for long enough.
Deirdre closed her eyes and did nothing but breathe for a long time. She didn’t bother keeping track of time. She’d bend it soon, anyway.
She hadn’t finished the usual “Where am I in this body” mantra when she discovered the spot. She couldn’t believe it at first, but double checking confirmed her first impression. Her essence sat in the centre of her infection, inside her chest. Her concentration deepened, her breath returned from conscious to unconscious again, and when she squatted down to touch the ground with her hands, she felt the connection to the current of magic below her. The raw power was wild and without restraint.
It hadn’t been clear whether it was a good idea to take off her suit. This thought seemed silly now. Expecting new results using the same old methods didn’t strike her as very smart.
She reached into her rune bag and pulled out three acorns inscribed with Sail, Ruis and Ailm. A piece of willow tree would act as the channelling ingredient, and her finger touched it the moment she opened the respective pouch, as if it had waited for its turn already. She put the acorns down in exactly this order.
Deirdre grew roots, very similar, or even identical to the fungus of the planet, wide, but not deep. She took her time and let it go whatever way it wanted, not trying to prescribe a way to grow. She would trust her intuition and focus on growing upward as well.
If the form her spiritual body had assumed last time hadn’t been alien enough, it doubled down this time and went full mushroom, not even remotely resembling anything existing on Earth. Her body turned into a trun
k, and a wide cap formed above her, with spores between the gills, occasionally raining down next to her, spawning more fungi around her feet, connecting her with the existing parent network she had grown in this spot.
How futile all her earlier attempts at growing into a grove had been. There was no grove here on Gliese 667 Cc, no trees. There were mushrooms and colonies in their stead, which was the natural shape of the floral life on this planet.
The willow tree in her hands was developing a life of its own.
If she could see herself from an external point of view now, there was no question what she would look at. A large, bulky mushroom with a thick stem and a rather slim cap. Perfect. You had to dress for the occasion, after all. Even deep in concentration, she grinned.
Her roots were taking in the energy greedily, and she sensed the surrounding stream, formerly flowing into the monolith, now filling her instead. She was in flames, but the fire didn’t burn, it invigorated her.
Deirdre had never been this full of energy.
The longer the flow rushed through her trunk/stem, the more violently the piece of willow shook, until she finally invoked Calas, the Earthen element, forcing her spell to create stability, as it manifested in the world. The effect set in immediately, even though there was no visible component about it.
In a bubble around her, time slowed down, just a little at first, then rapidly, as if it collapsed onto itself. She didn’t intend to stop it completely, and it wouldn’t, but time inside this small enclosure of the universe was now a lot slower than outside. This was what she had needed.