The Twisted Vine

by Alyce Caswell

  Kuja bit his lip to keep from correcting the man. He had emerged into the rainforests as Bagara when he’d been about twenty. The mortals didn’t know he was older than his reign.

  ‘You Chippers get your name from your use of the chips,’ Kuja said instead. ‘You only have your powers because of that tech — even if,’ he went on when the agent opened his mouth, ‘the Creator God allows it, he didn’t give them to you. Your abilities are unnatural. Bagara doesn’t bestow any powers on his people because he trusts that they can succeed with their own abilities. He sent Gerns and me here, because of her knowledge and because of my compassion, so that we could protect the Sarenites.’

  The man lifted his now empty cup, as though toasting Kuja. ‘Okay, great, Bagara is doing something to help these people. Good for him. But I’ll tell you this. Sometimes…I can actually feel my god. And when I do, I know I’m living my life the way I’m meant to.’

  Kuja picked up his own drink and licked around the metal rim, scouring the sugar crusted there. He wasn’t sure he should brave consuming what was inside the cup. ‘So you are meant to abandon the Sarenites to starvation because they cannot donate to your organisation, either directly or through TerraCorp.’

  ‘My superiors usually know what they’re doing.’ The agent paused, his lips curling. ‘Usually. Sometimes I wonder. Major Minsra banned us from drinking any coffein and she’s been downright unpleasant in the morning ever since. It could be affecting her judgement, huh? Now that I think about it, I didn’t have any coffein the day the Creator God called me to his service…’

  Kuja clapped a hand over his mouth, but he was too late; the laugh had already escaped. He detached his fingers from his face and waved them up and down the man’s torso, indicating his purple outfit. ‘If you’d had that coffein, what would you be doing instead of this?’

  The man fiddled with the zipper on his jumpsuit. ‘Oh. Well. There was a woman I could have married. But we weren’t right for each other. We’d’ve both been miserable. So I let her go. She deserved a chance at happiness.’

  Kuja nodded slowly. ‘I understand. Sometimes it is better for them if we leave. You know, I’m glad I gave you this chance. I’m Kuja Rforine.’

  ‘Zareth Sins,’ the man said, extending a hand.

  But Kuja recoiled. ‘Zareth Sins. You are the one who broke Feiscina Neron’s heart.’

  Zareth’s hand dropped to his side. ‘You know Fei.’

  ‘Did you realise that abandoning her would cause her to lose faith in your god as well as herself, or was that something you cared little about?’ Kuja didn’t so much as set his drink down as slam it. The liquid sloshed over his fingers, staining them.

  Zareth slid along the counter, away from him. ‘I can’t talk about this. I won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Kuja demanded. ‘Because you would have to admit that your joining GLEA hurt someone and created the kind of casualty that Bagara wants to be there for?’

  The trees standing above the town shivered, begging to express Kuja’s ire — but other plants resisted and even scolded him. Unused to this reaction from those that were meant to be under his control, Kuja blinked and refocused on Zareth, who seemed more interested in studying the bright red residue left inside his cup than in defending himself.

  ‘Not sure what you want me to say,’ Zareth said at last.

  ‘I’m not the one you should be talking to. Fei is the one you hurt.’

  Something shifted in the depths of Zareth’s eyes. ‘I know. And I’ll have to live with that. But I won’t undo what I did. I’d never have made her happy. She deserves better.’

  ‘She does,’ Kuja said, unable to keep the bite from his tone.

  ‘Why did you have to go and make this about her anyway?’ Zareth asked, frowning slightly.

  ‘Because I love her — and I’ve seen not just you but an entire organisation of people like you do their best to destroy her,’ Kuja rushed out in one breath.

  ‘You love her?’ Zareth’s face exploded into a grin and he leaned over to slap Kuja’s shoulder. ‘That’s great, man. That is. I wish I’d managed to.’

  Kuja stared at him. ‘You…did not love her? But you proposed marriage to her.’

  ‘It felt like the thing to do,’ Zareth said helplessly, shrugging his shoulders. ‘She wanted it. I think she did, anyway. She had so much trouble telling me anything and I…I guess I didn’t care enough about losing her so I never put in the effort to figure out what she wanted.’

  ‘You never listened to her,’ Kuja accused. ‘You didn’t even try.’

  Zareth’s expression hardened. ‘Look, man, I knew it would suck for her, losing me the way she lost her dad, but it would have been worse for her if she’d found out I didn’t love her. My way was kinder.’

  Kuja’s retort died on his lips when his mind was suddenly flooded with images of Fei. She was busily hammering away on the keys in front of her on Yalsa 5, muttering to herself in a language better understood by a console than a living being — and then she said the words that struck him like a physical blow to the gut.

  ‘I miss you,’ she murmured. ‘God, I miss you. I still don’t understand why you left.’

  Kuja blinked away the tears before they fell. I treated her no better. ‘I’m sorry, Zareth. Can we perhaps reattempt our conversation?’

  Both men sat there at the counter for several more hours, drinking and trading words, but never mentioning Fei or GLEA. Those would be arguments for another time.

  Kuja perhaps shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was when he and Zareth became so boisterous that the bartender called Gerns to come and remove them. The Jezlo was a good deal louder when she remonstrated them than she needed to be.

  Kuja made a mental to note to never again forget to supply her with a badly needed drink.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Fei had wanted to spend her day going over the error messages her new simulation program, designed to work with twenty-nine machines that Bock wasn’t even allowed to use, had spat out during the latest test suite, but instead she had to devote herself to defending Yalsa 5 against GLEA’s next form of attack — a smear campaign on the Web. The Agency was trying to erode any support Yalsa 5 had from the rest of the galaxy. Fei couldn’t let this happen.

  She braced her fingers against her temples as she watched yet another Webcast from yet another mediaist on her vidscreen. Fei sighed. ‘So they’re saying this entire planet is a hotbed of criminal activity and there are bodies strewn through the streets.’

  ‘Doesn’t help that GLEA has the footage from those old gang fights, hey,’ said Jalen.

  ‘Should we send up our own images? Of quiet streets and smiling children and things like that?’ Fei asked, wincing at the devastation in the footage. It had happened years ago, but the people watching the Webcasts might not realise that.

  Jalen clucked, two tentacles thumping the desk in front of her. ‘That’d be hilarious, doncha reckon? Everyone will think “hey, crime looks really good, let’s try it out”.’ The Jezlo sobered. ‘But we have to do something quick or Atsa’s gonna lose all its tourism, even after that blockade goes. That’s a huge chunk of the governor’s income.’

  ‘And, by extension, our income too,’ Fei noted. She smiled when Jalen’s tentacles clapped over the Jezlo’s oddly-shaped mouth, a sign of the other woman’s horror. ‘Okay, but simply throwing images up on the Web is nothing compared to what GLEA can do to us.’

  ‘Let’s worry about what we can do,’ Jalen suggested.

  Fei cradled her forehead between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Tell Bock and Ala we need some promotional material. Footage. Something. Anything.’

  Jalen scampered away. Since the woman could have just used a communicator, it seemed likely that Jalen had wanted to rest her eyes. Fei’s were burning — it came from looking at vidscreens for hours. She dropped her head onto the desk, intent on leaving it there, but the keyboard built into the surface pinged unhappily at her. Muttering under he
r breath, she pried herself off it and tried to decide if she should risk checking over the results from the test suite. Her new simulation program should have been finished by now. But whenever she dared to think about working on it, there was always some other problem to deal with.

  Like all twenty-nine of the terraforming machines suddenly booting up on their own.

  Someone was remotely accessing them. GLEA was getting ready to destroy Atsa City.

  Fei groaned. ‘Of course whoever made that firewall of theirs could get through mine and figure out how to use only twenty-nine machines. That was stupid, Fei, stupid! I should have gone out to every single machine and taken them off the Web. Ugh!’

  Jalen exploded back into the room. ‘Gods, you should see it. It’s bad.’

  ‘Can’t, busy,’ Fei muttered as she re-hacked her way into the machines. She erected another firewall, but she wasn’t sure how long it would last.

  ‘The machines started up and — ’ Jalen began.

  ‘Yes, I know, I just shut them down again, but if I don’t keep them that way everyone is going to die — and if they die it’s all my fault!’ Fei broke off, gasping. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just tell me what to do,’ the Jezlo said, flying across the room on her own chair.

  A loud screech of static greeted them from the window, which was sealed shut and supposedly soundproof. Whatever was causing the noise had to be seriously loud.

  ‘Tell me Bock doesn’t have those giant vidscreens he’s got plastered all over the buildings hooked up to the Web,’ Fei said out of the corner of her mouth.

  Jalen’s silence was answer enough.

  Fei slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Okay. Get ready to listen to some propaganda. GLEA’s hacked the screens.’

  She tried not to be distracted by the exterior vidscreens as they conducted the booming voice of some Chipper who was insisting that sub-level gods didn’t exist but, if they did, surely they could not offer anything better than the protection of the Creator God, conveniently meted out by the Galactic Law Enforcement Agency.

  ‘Fei!’ Ala stormed into the room. ‘Bock’s not gonna want to shoot down them screens. And don’t forget about those starkin’ machines! What’re you doing about it?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ Fei gritted out. She allowed two blinks to moisten her eyes.

  ‘I’m tryin’ real hard to do that right now!’ Ala said and let loose a string of curses.

  Fei considered giving her boss an apology, then very visibly shook her head. It wasn’t her fault. And there was no time to blabber on like it was.

  Kuja, I need your help, she thought. I just can’t seem to throw off this other programmer and I’m afraid all these people will die because of me. Stark, I meant Bagara. Bagara help me!

  Fei had barely finished her plea when a raging khaki and hazel torrent engulfed her. She opened her mouth to scream but never got the chance to unleash it — because suddenly she was in a dingy basement, standing behind a boy hunched over a vidscreen. His ankles were encased in bulky lascuffs that looked completely out of place on someone half Fei’s size.

  ‘So you’re the one causing me all my problems,’ Fei said as he continued to smash the keys lit up on the desk in front of him.

  ‘No, please, I’m doing what you want — ’ The boy broke off when he finished spinning around. His eyes lost some of their panicked width. ‘Oh. You’re not a Chipper.’

  Fei arranged her face into a smile, hoping it didn’t look as strained as it felt. ‘No, I’m…I’m the programmer on Yalsa 5.’

  ‘Uh, no, you’re not on Yalsa 5 because they’re halfway across the galaxy!’ the boy said, diving back into his work. ‘Don’t distract me. If you distract me, I can’t break their new firewall and get the machines under my control again. I can’t fail — the Chippers’ll kill my mother and I can’t let them! I won’t let them!’

  ‘GLEA threatened to kill your mother if you didn’t terraform Yalsa 5?’ Fei asked, horrified.

  ‘Yes! You win the jackpot! Now shut up.’

  ‘But you’ll kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people!’

  ‘My mum’s more important,’ the boy said. ‘I don’t give a shit about anyone else.’

  Fei’s eyes dampened. ‘Bagara. I can’t do this. I can’t be responsible for his mother’s death. Please, give me another way to do this.’ She knew her god could hear her; it felt like he was standing right behind her.

  The boy released a groan of frustration. ‘You still haven’t shut up yet! Who or what are you talking to?’

  ‘The rainforest god,’ Fei answered.

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard about him,’ the boy said, his face glued to his vidscreen. ‘The Chippers don’t like him, say he’s bad news, which must mean he’s real because they wouldn’t be so worried if — stop distracting me!’

  ‘Bagara,’ Fei said, raising her voice. ‘Look at what the Chippers have done to this boy! He is a casualty. He needs you just as much as Yalsa 5 does right now and I can’t do anything, I can’t convince him — but you can!’

  What would you have me do? Bagara asked in Kuja’s voice.

  Fei closed her eyes and used her thoughts to respond to him. You brought me here, to another planet entirely, which means you can teleport people.

  The god sounded reluctant. Yes…

  So teleport this boy and his mother to safety, somewhere GLEA can’t get at them!

  She knew she didn’t imagine his hesitance. She also knew, somehow, that she was the only mortal he’d allowed the privilege of moving between worlds.

  You can’t give me special treatment, she told him, furious. It’s not fair to everyone else who needs you. Who will need you.

  No, it’s not fair, Bagara agreed. You make an excellent point, Fei. I’ll do it.

  I love you, Kuja’s voice added, but those words couldn’t possibly have come from him — or from the god.

  Fei watched the boy disappear inside a vortex of swarming vines, finding this method of transportation no less alarming to watch from the outside. She hoped the boy’s mother was safe. She’d just have to trust that even though she couldn’t see it, Bagara was doing as she’d asked.

  Funny how I never had that much faith in the Creator God, she thought wryly.

  Within moments her own personal vortex came and carried her back to the techroom on Yalsa 5. Fei leaned against the nearest console, breathing heavily, tasting bile. The room was starting to spin a little less by the time Ala touched her shoulder, a soothing pressure that grounded Fei.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Fei managed in a wheeze. ‘Is the firewall still holding?’

  ‘Yep, looks like it — so what’d your god steal you away for anyway?’ Ala asked, correctly guessing who was responsible for Fei’s disappearance.

  ‘The Chippers forced a boy to launch those Webattacks on us,’ Fei answered, sinking into the hoverchair that Jalen had steered towards her. ‘They held his mother hostage so he’d work for them — they probably picked a planet where kidnapping isn’t illegal. But it’s alright. Bagara agreed to help the boy and his mother even though they aren’t from a rainforest world.’

  ‘For real?’ Jalen’s tentacles weaved with excitement. ‘That’s cool. Do you think he’ll take on an extra planet? I mean, we’re not even terraformed yet but…’

  Ala removed her hand from Fei’s shoulder to grip one of her lasguns. ‘Those fuckers, threatenin’ a boy. And they call us the criminals.’

  Fei thought she might have agreed out loud, but it was hard to tell when she was buried in her work. First she strengthened her firewall, then she wrote some code which convinced the machines that they weren’t on the Web (it might slow down the next Webattack since it wasn’t an expected method of defence). Fei couldn’t be sure how long this all took, because everything in her peripheral vision had faded to black long ago. When she finally looked up, Jalen had gone home. Ala remained, however, her red artificial eye glowing in the gloom.

  Seeing that she had Fei’s atten
tion, Ala jerked her head at a vidscreen off to the side. ‘Message came through for ya. At least I think it’s for you, ’cause it looks encrypted and you’re probably the only one who can open it.’

  Fei recognised the boy immediately once she had managed to get the vid he’d sent to play. He spent several minutes explaining what the Chippers had done to him in detail, then he looked straight at the vidcam and said, ‘Use this against them, lady. Get ’em good. For my mum. I’m going underground. See ya.’

  ‘I didn’t ask him to do that,’ Fei murmured. ‘Do you think Bagara arranged it?’

  Ala shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ve got ourselves some ammunition against GLEA now.’

  ‘It might convince a few people, but it — ’

  ‘Won’t convince GLEA to stop coming after us, I get it,’ Ala finished, sounding grim. ‘But maybe we can get enough of TerraCorp’s clients to demand refunds and hurt them a little.’ Ala eyed Fei for a moment. ‘I’d tell you to get some sleep, but you’n me both know this vid needs to go viral.’

  ‘It’ll be a lot easier to do that if I give the vid to the mediaist I know,’ Fei told her.

  Ala pursed her lips. ‘Do it. Anythin’ else you want to suggest? We’re flyin’ blind here, Bock and I, so any little bit helps.’

  Fei leaned back in her chair, giving it serious thought, appreciating that Ala seemed willing to wait her out. Finally, Fei decided, ‘We need to get our side of the story out there.’

  ‘And this mediaist friend of yours won’t make us look like right douchenozzles?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fei said honestly. ‘But we should give our fight a face, someone the galaxy can see and sympathise with. Because right now we’re nobody. Everyone knows GLEA but they don’t know us. Ton Tinel can help us change that.’