Queer thing, that. I realized I’d been getting interested in who I might become.
Well. Bad timing, that was all. Even if I wasn’t quite so angry at myself as I’d once been, there was such a thing as responsibility. Duty. The Peacock was giving me a chance to help my world, and I was new-Faye enough that I couldn’t shuck this off on someone else.
"If it has to be done, it has to be done," I said aloud. "Fuse away."
Gentle as snowflakes, the Peacock shimmered down to touch my face.
Is there an opposite of data tumor? Data sunrise? Or maybe sunrise without the data, not a cold transfer of facts but a warm peaceful dawn.
The light of Dads’s love for me, still strongly remembered after so many years.
The shine of so many other loves, received by the Peacock as it Rode me down through the decades. Angie. Barrett. Peter. Egerton. Darlene. Winston. Lynn. All the kids.
Chappalar. Oh-God.
A flame from Festina. A twinkle from Tic. Even a battered spark from my mother.
All the radiance the Peacock had soaked up from those around me while I’d wallowed in fears of darkness: light blooming-blossoming-dawning in my mind.
Everything all at once.
Yes, there was darkness. Everyone has darkness — furies, pettiness, ugly impulses. Perhaps the Peacock shielded me, filtered some shadows out, I don’t know. I saw the darkness, but I felt the light. Blazing all around.
The Peacock’s Tail, spread for me to see.
Look at me. Look at them. Look at you.
Then the tail folded itself away. The moment faded. And I was only me again: not fused, not bonded, not two-in-one. Just Faye, with all her light and shadow. The Peacock hadn’t taken me, it had only given me one last shoot through the chute…
…and dumped me in the open air, just outside the bunker in Sallysweet River.
I got to my feet as I heard the sound of footsteps. Festina raced up the tunnel toward me, sprinting, wrapping her arms around my neck. Pulling my head down, kissing me hard.
Tic was right behind her. In the dark tundra midnight, he glowed.
"Xe?" I asked.
"Yes," Tic said. "We fused hours ago."
"Hours?"
"There was no point wasting time, Smallwood. While you and Ramos dallied with bad company, I was saving the world." He gave me a playful squeeze on the shoulder — thank God, not the dislocated one. "The medicines are finished, Smallwood! Mission accomplished. I’d already figured out the necessary formulas before you let me loose. Before you let Xe loose. Which is me because I’m Xe." He squeezed my shoulder again. "And Xe says it would be a staggering pity if the world lost your splendid physique, so get yourself some medicine as soon as possible."
I smiled; but my thoughts were jumbling back to Lake Vascho. The Peacock must have known he didn’t have to fuse with me — not if Tic/Xe had already whipped up a cure on their own. So why…
"To give you a choice, Smallwood," Tic said. Reading my thoughts, answering my question. "To see if you really wanted to stop being you. It was your chance to escape; and your chance to realize you weren’t so ready to give up on yourself as you thought. That man of mine has developed a positive mania for helping people with their lives…"
"Where is he?" I asked. "The Peacock."
"Gone off to be with the world-soul for a while. Which means, Smallwood, you’ll be sharing him with other proctors, but at least you’ll hear the nanites giggle." Tic rolled his eyes. "Demanding little brutes. Imagine playing mother to a few trillion of the rascals. It’s time for their father to do his share of the sitting. As for me…" Tic’s glow brightened. "After three thousand years, I deserve to get out and have fun. As the most ass-kicking mind-reading Zenned-out proctor this planet has ever seen."
With a laughing leap, he soared into the air: spreading his gliders, catching the wind, pushing himself higher with a few flaps of his arms, till he was flying above the trees, racing the clouds, heading God knows where. For a second, he looked back over his shoulder and roared, "1.000000001 with the universe, Smallwood!" Then his shimmery glow was lost in the night.
As Festina strapped up my aching shoulder, the world-soul (the Peacock) told me a police squad was already on the way. Cheticamp and the ScrambleTacs were getting dragged out to Sallysweet River yet again… thanks to my own link-seed. When the Mouth had got shot, one of the acid wads hit the radio-jammer he carried on his shoulder. In time, the jammer fritzed out; and there I was, back on the air, with all the world scanning for my frequency.
Tic/Xe got to me first, of course, tubed in by my own Peacock. But the cops were only thirty minutes away, screaming to my rescue — the spoilsport buggers.
At least Festina and I had the half hour.
A week later — after too much god-awful-tasting medicine, too much physiotherapy on my shoulder, and too much round-the-clock surveillance from the staff of Bonaventure General — Festina and I were officially declared healthy. Safe to walk the streets again without infecting others, or degenerating into the gibbering madness of poor Maya Cuttack. (Maya’s dead banged-up body had finally got fished out of the pit — she’d fallen through the bridge when it turned liquid, never even trying to save herself. When medical researchers finished picking at her corpse, she’d be incinerated to dust.)
Festina and I stepped out the front doors of the hospital, into a bright spring morning. The snow was gone; the trees were beginning to bud. "Gorgeous day," I said, spreading my arms wide in the sunshine. There was only the skimpiest twitch of pain in my shoulder — it’d soon be as good as new, curvy enough to attract Oolom lechers and strong enough to shove them away. "Want to wander down to the park?" I asked Festina. "They’ve got a nice little petting zoo."
"Aren’t your family coming to pick you up?"
"I asked them not to."
She looked at me with those sharp green eyes. "Okay. Let’s walk."
Cabot Park wasn’t very far off; Bonaventure is so small, nothing is very far off. Soon we were leaning against a tree, watching a leaner lean against the damaged wall of Pump Station 3.
I said, "So. Do you want to get married?"
Festina turned to me, mouth dropped open. She gaped for a count of three, then pulled herself together. "Aren’t you supposed to get down on one knee to say that?"
"Maybe on your home planet," I told her. "On Demoth, it’s usually more like rolling over in bed and propping yourself up on one elbow. Hey, you want to get married or what?"
She laughed, then looked at me keenly. "Are you serious about this, Faye?"
"Lynn sneaked into the hospital a few nights this week," I said. "We’ve talked it over, and she thinks it could work."
"So you can just add people to the group whenever you feel like it?"
"More or less. The others usually let me have what I want. Though Barrett won’t say yes unless you like dogs."
"Bloody hell," she muttered. "You are serious."
"Absolutely." I reached out and took her hand. "Sure, it’s complicated. And you don’t know bugger-all about my spouses, or the kids, or what marriage means on Demoth… any of that. But here’s the thing: I think you need a family, and I’m offering mine. All of them are good people, and you’ll have plenty of time to get to know them…"
"Faye," she interrupted. Just my name; and I could feel the no hanging heavy in her voice. "I have to go back to work. I have to leave Demoth."
"I know," I answered. "But does it need to be right away? The galaxy can get along without you a little while longer."
"Then I’d just be leading you on. A few laughs, then off I go."
"Festina," I said, "I’ll be all right. I’ve got a family. I may have a case of the wistfuls for a while, but I’ll bear up. You’re the one who’ll be heading out alone. And you’re going to feel it."
She lowered her eyes. "I know, Faye. I know. But I have to go back to my job. For the past two years, I’ve been spinning my wheels — trying to fit into my predecessor’s shoes, pla
ying the desk-job spymaster. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on Demoth, that’s not who I am." She gave a rueful smile. "I like getting my hands dirty. I like digging truths out of mysteries. God help me, I like exploring… which is as far as you can get from being an Explorer, but that’s where I am now."
"And with all that exploring," I said, "you’ll never come back to Demoth?"
"Faye." And this time, that one word meant yes, not no.
I pulled a package out of my coat pocket. "A going-away present," I said.
Festina looked embarrassed. "You knew I’d say no?"
"If you said yes, it would have been an engagement present." I pushed it into her hands. "Here."
"Where’d you get this?"
"From Lynn, last night. Open it."
Thank God, Lynn had been the one to wrap it. She always does a beautiful job. Me, I never have the patience. All energy, no finesse, our Faye.
Festina opened the wrapper, then the box. There, tucked up in tissue paper, was a clear glass bottle holding a water-owl egg. "From Lake Vascho," I told her. "The family went there for a picnic yesterday, so they could all say they helped get you the gift. In case you said yes. The other eggs were hatched and gone, but that one never opened. It happens sometimes." I took a deep breath. "So there you go. I’m giving you a dud egg."
She wrapped her arms softly around my neck and just held me. A tear trickled down her cheek.
Sometime, when she got back to the navy base or maybe up to her flagship, she’d take the bottle out of the box and find the other present I’d asked Lynn to hide in the tissue paper: my scalpel, retrieved by the cops from the dipshits’ skimmer, quietly passed by Cheticamp back to my family.
The egg was a gift from my other spouses; the knife was a gift from me. A sign/promise/oath that I was past needing it.
I’d wrapped the blade in tape so Festina wouldn’t cut herself when she found it. That knife had drawn enough blood in its time.
Its time was over. And the past, after all, was past.
Copyright © 1999 by James Alan Gardner
ISBN: 0-380-80208-2
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