Third Don: Ardulum, #3

by J. S. Fields

  Atalant was busy negotiating with Eie, the planet around which Ardulum now orbited. There were negotiations during the day, mandatory to keep the Eieans from deeming Ardulum an invader and attacking, and the evenings were filled with state dinners and celebrations to mark the ascension of the new Eld. In what little time remained, Atalant, in her capacity as an eld, had tried to fix things for Emn by giving speeches to the Ardulan populace about flares. Emn understood the constraints on Atalant’s time, but talks weren’t what was needed.

  Arik, the male eld, had been reluctant to help at all. This too, Emn understood, although her understanding came laced with anger. Arik wasn’t even into his third don, and that was required to be an eld. He had been a flare, before the planet moved. Regardless of his age, he was an eld now and commanded respect, but his position was tenuous. Atalant had given a speech about how it had been the andal that killed the old Eld, not Arik, but that had just turned the near-riots into gossip. Arik’s role in the destruction of the capital and the slaughter of its citizens was too close to memory. He was afraid, and Emn had to check her anger over his cowardice. The other flares were here, at the palace, working with the “normal” Ardulans and trying to make amends. They were suffering the same glares and condescension she was, while Arik got to avoid it all because of his status—got absolution for a so-called sacrifice.

  Emn slammed her fist into the branch beneath her. She had expected pain and so gasped when her hand plowed through to the dirt below. The unexpected give put her off-balance, and as she tried to right herself and pull her hand back through the shattered wood, crumbling brown detritus flaked around her wrist.

  “Huh?” Emn asked the still air around her as she scooped a handful of the dusty wood and brought it to eye level. It was dull brown with a sheen that resembled weathered wood. It was wood, she realized as she looked closely, but it was broken somehow, as if its insides had been scooped out and only the bones remained.

  Emn tossed the brown chunks back to the ground and stood. She’d mention it to Atalant—if she saw her tonight. It might be some residual effect of the Eiean sun and its radiation on the andal, or maybe it was normal and she just hadn’t spent enough time in andal forests. What she did need to do was get back to the palace and clean up the glass.

  “Eeeeeeee!”

  Emn slammed her hands over her ears and turned back to the slash pile of branches, looking for what small animal she had angered. She couldn’t see any movement, but the branches were well shaded by the cluster of andal saplings. What was different, Emn was sure, was the white patch of…of slithery something draped across the area where she’d just been sitting.

  The white thing raised two thick cords from its mass and waved them in the air. Emn dropped her hands from her head and eased forward, her upper lip curled as she considered the thick, spongy-looking texture of the thing. When she was about three handspans away, the cords smacked together and began to rub. It created a lower-pitched squeaking that, as Emn strained her ears, sounded like…like words?

  “Hello?” Emn asked once the sound stopped. She forced her face into a neutral expression and got down on her knees. “Are you…alive?”

  When the cords beat against each other this time, they did so slowly, deliberately, and the words were much clearer. “We are lost, Ardulan. Where is the banquet hall for the state dinner with the Eld?”

  Realization hit, and Emn rolled her eyes at herself. She extended a hand, and the white mass slapped their cords forward and then pulled themselves off the branch and onto her arm.

  “I’m so sorry,” Emn said in a rush as the fungus settled on her shoulder. “You’re a few kilometers off. I’ll get a ground transport and take you there myself. I know the way, Representative…?”

  “Hepatica.” The fungus patted Emn’s cheek as moisture from their body wicked into her flight suit. “We apologize for your wood. We’ve been lost for several hours and needed food. From observation, this wood did not appear to be in use.”

  “No, it’s fine.” Emn tried to ignore the seeping wetness on her arm as she skirted the palace. She mounted one of the small ground skiffs near the top of the hill that overlooked the former marketplace. She would have to apologize for the glass tomorrow. Intergalactic politics trumped flare integration, surely. At the very least, they didn’t need a fungal search party out looking for Hepatica and rotting all the wood they came across in the process.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Representative Hepatica.” Emn gave the fungus a nod before securing the hatch of the skiff and setting a course for Sorin. Could they see her? They must have been able to, somehow. Patting them would just seem patronizing. “I think you will enjoy our celebratory dinner tonight. We’ll be there in approximately ten minutes.” Emn set the skiff on auto and then tried to face the fungus, hoping it wouldn’t be considered impolite. “I’m glad we ran into each other and that I can help out. The Eieans are most welcome on Ardulum.”

  I wish I was, too, Emn added silently as the ship sped towards the city of Sorin.

  Chapter 3: Sorin, Ardulum

  The High Priest of Neek knelt on the most holy of planets. Of the female eld, he asked, “How could you return to ones such as ourselves?”

  The female eld replied, “How could I not come home?”

  —Excerpt from the final chapter of Atalant’s Awakening, published in the Charted Systems, 235 AA

  JANUARY 18TH, 2061 CE

  “You have no right to be here!” The pink clump of fungus shot giant ochre spores into the air as they finished their sentence. A thick cord of hyphae slapped the andal table and then curled back in on itself. The spores danced through the cross-breeze and finally settled on the tabletop, the light specks contrasting with the black heartwood.

  Atalant let her head fall back and exhaled through gritted teeth. Around her and Arik, a chorus of squeaking, corded hyphae—all struggling with Common—echoed Ambassador Scytalidium’s frustration. Ardulum, the sentient planet that she’d somehow become in charge of, had been orbiting the planet of Eie for several weeks. In that time, Atalant had tried to explain that Ardulum traveled of its own accord, that she had no say in where it went when it wanted to reproduce, that she was sorry for the gravitational issues and the lunar issues, and that she was working on getting the planet to leave. The dominant sentients, a broad group of what appeared to be giant fungi, were losing patience, however. Tides had changed. Habitats were being destroyed. Ardulum had somehow managed to situate itself well enough that the primary moon hadn’t crashed into Eie, but the orbit of the moon was still erratic. Today’s meeting was supposed to have been about plantings—the andal that made up the core of the Ardulan planet wanted to reproduce on Eie—but the locals would hear none of it until an action plan for Ardulum’s departure was decided upon.

  The makeshift Eld council room was no more than the dining room of the inn where she, Nicholas, and Emn had ended up after the destruction of the capital. It was currently crowded with Eieans of various ruling parties. Their colors varied wildly from whites and tans to bright pinks and blue-greens. Some were nothing more than masses of tendrils, some had elongated stalks, and some sported delicate cups or lattice veils. Each species spoke their own language, and although they’d acquiesced to all use Common during negotiations, the accents and differences in cultural mores between species made any form of negotiation next to impossible. Atalant had no diplomatic training. She was a pilot, and an exiled Neek pilot at that. She did her best work with ships and guns, not sitting at long slab tables listening to sentient fungi butcher Common.

  In what appeared to be a show of frustration or anger, the representative from the smallest southern continent, a phallus-shaped fungus with a white lattice veil, smacked what Atalant assumed was their head against the table, detached their veil with thin hyphal “hands,” and then threw it over the quivering mass in the next seat over. The veil landed on the yellow, gelatinous thing, which shrieked—a horrible, chalky sound—and then oozed th
rough the veil’s gaps and onto the floor.

  “You ask us to partition, to share, but it’s not your land to give away!” the gooey mass yelled from underneath their chair. They oozed up the rear leg of their chair, coming to rest once again on the seat.

  “Their trees have to go somewhere so the bipeds will leave. You don’t use the land you have. Give up a few hectares for the benefit of Eie.” The phallus sent some hyphae down to first recover the veil and then reattach it. “You see the problem, Eld Atalant,” they said. “It is not our inability to understand your situation. Rather, it is the execution of the solution.”

  “We’ve not agreed on a solution!” The pink mycelial mass of Ambassador Scytalidium quivered on the table, hyphae flailing to either side and ochre spores puffing above their body. “I don’t want that tree on our world. How will it affect our native species? What diseases will it introduce? If we are even thinking of importing it, we need a containment plan.”

  Atalant had had enough.

  “Would you all just calm—” A strip of crown molding exploded above her head. The fungi uniformly flattened themselves to the table and chairs, but Arik and Atalant didn’t flinch. Soft cellulose particulate floated down around Atalant’s head, and she batted it away.

  Skip another training day with Corccinth? Arik asked, amused. You’ll have to figure out how to either control your Aggression Talent or control your temper, or the inn won’t be standing much longer.

  Yes, yes, the irony is palpable. I get it. Can we focus on the issue at hand?

  Arik snorted.

  Atalant glared at him and then turned back to the Eieans. “My apologies, representatives and ambassadors. It’s been a long, trying day for all of us. Would you like to discuss a containment plan? We would be open to it.”

  “The best containment plan is for no trees at all!” the phallus shrieked.

  “The trees are a new potential food source,” Ambassador Scytalidium argued. “We could at least discuss it.”

  “Discuss it for your land, then!”

  In an effort to rein in her temper, Atalant let out another long sigh and rubbed her temples. They’d been at this same circular argument since arriving, and what little patience she had would not last much longer. If Emn were here, sitting next to her perhaps, holding her hand as she listened to the droning of rightfully enraged fungi, it might not have been so tedious. Atalant might not have just decimated that molding, either, nor the back half of the conference table yesterday. But, Emn wasn’t an eld, wasn’t one of the triarchy of Ardulum rulers chosen by the andal. Atalant had to keep reminding herself that Emn was a flare, a genetic anomaly, a construct of Risalian science and Ardulan negligence. She had no place at these meetings. That meant that Atalant, a Neek who by all reasonable rights should have had no place in Ardulan governance, had to sit and mediate while Emn and their contracted Journey youth, Nicholas, got to enjoy being outdoors.

  There was so much reconstruction to do in the Ardulan capital—rebuilding the palace, resettling, clearing land for new homes and the marketplace. The entire city’s infrastructure had to be rebuilt from scratch. Which part of the palace Emn and Nicholas were overseeing today, Atalant wasn’t certain. She could have asked—prodded her telepathic link with Emn for more details—but she’d risk being drawn into the other woman’s comforting presence and enveloped in the bond they shared. That would lead to Atalant telling the Eiean people to just go fuck themselves, which wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  “We hear you, Ambassador.” Arik held out his hands and tried to sooth the now flailing fungus. His golden robes were wrinkled and stained at the bottom. The sleeves were rolled up high, and the markings for his Science Talent—three interwoven circles on the inside of each wrist—were stark against his translucent, yellow skin. “As Eld Atalant and I have explained before, we don’t know how or why the planet picks a location. We’re trying to find a suitable uninhabited world to orbit so that Ardulum may fulfill its reproductive needs. It’s taking time, as you’ve noted. We’re working as fast as we can. Until then, perhaps we could revisit the proposal on the table today.”

  A blue-green cup fungus pulled themselves up onto the table through some sort of strangely coordinated jump and jiggled dangerously close to the edge. Thick hyphae spread around their base, anchoring the fruiting form to the table. “Your proposal to seed our habitable moon with your tree species is feasible, but we have no reason to believe you will stop there.” Blue-green pigment dripped from the fungus, staining the andal wood. “Assurances are required before we can consider your planet’s request.”

  Atalant sat forward. She didn’t know where to look at the cup fungus. They didn’t have eyes or ears that she could discern, and she suspected that each time she tried to address them, she was somehow talking to the wrong area. “I can’t give you anything except my word that I will try to talk to the planet. We have to start somewhere, and Eld Arik and I are just as confused as you are about the dynamics at play here. Ten hectares. Twenty. We just need a bit of land for planting, and then we should be able to open negotiations with Ardulum.” Atalant rapped her knuckles against the tabletop. “Think of it as an investment! The trees are yours to harvest upon maturity, and while you don’t personally use cellulosic technology, many other systems do. Andal cellulose is worth more than most standard currencies. Your moon grows andal already. It is of a different species, but it’s the same genus. Plus, the primitive bipedal species that inhabits the area prefers wooded habitats, as your own studies note. We can also keep the new andal isolated to prevent cross-pollination, if that is a worry.”

  The cup fungus spat more pigment across the tabletop. “From what we have read of your planet’s history, you also have problematic interactions with bipeds. I do not trust your judgment around genetically compatible species.”

  The cup fungus had a solid point. Ardulans had quite the history of genetic colonization. Atalant herself was a descendant of some Ardulan who had interbred with her Neek ancestors hundreds of years ago, when Ardulum had last been in the Neek system. Atalant, however, had no plans on letting that history repeat itself. “You have our assurances that there will be no interbreeding. That nonsense is done, and we’ve told Ardulum as such. We’re not here to destroy ecosystems or genetically conquer. We just want to plant a few trees. That’s it.”

  The cup fungus rotated to another ambassador and snaked a hypha along the table. The filament wrapped around the other ambassador’s filament while Atalant waited, unfortunate memories of being nearly strangled to death by hyphae during first contact filling her mind.

  Seedseedseed, the andal whispered, pushing the images away. A new home, Atalant. New companionship.

  Atalant ignored it. The andal would take no offense, and she needed to focus.

  The blue-green cup slid off the table, returning to their seat. Pigment dripped from the edges of the table in their wake, falling silently to the wooden floor. “We will allow you five hectares,” they said. The smut fungus in the chair next to them sent up a plume of spores, but remained silent. The phallus fungus slapped their veil on the tabletop but also did not speak. “We will monitor the land closely for impact. Any adverse effects will result in the andal’s removal. In return, you will hold a meeting with your planet and deliver to us a timeline for your departure and you will consent to hosting a representative of Eie during any off-planet trips until such time as Ardulum has left our system.”

  It was as good a deal as they were likely to get. Atalant received a mental affirmation from Arik and then stood. Hopefully, this time, the andal would be willing to listen. “Agreed. The seeds are prepared. If you could have the coordinates to us by nightfall, we will prepare a crew and skiffs to do the planting in the morning.”

  “I’ll oversee the planting myself,” Arik added as he stood as well. “I’m familiar with the soil and mounding requirements.” Proud images leaked from Arik to Atalant of him planting andal seeds and nurturing saplings in his family’s
forests throughout his youth. It had been the connection to those saplings that had allowed just Arik and Atalant, without the help of a third eld, to move Ardulum to its new location. Arik had a right to be proud of his unique connection to the planet. Atalant had no such relationship.

  “Agreed.” One of the matted ambassadors flopped to the floor, using their hyphae to pull themselves towards the inn door. “Our scientists will meet you at the coordinates tomorrow at daybreak. We will attend the banquet tonight, but we do not wish to hear from you before then.” The rest of the delegation filed behind them and left the inn, the cup fungus bringing up the rear and leaving a smear of blue-green on the floor.

  A wad of hyphae slammed the inn door shut. Atalant rested her head on the table and closed her eyes.

  “Success?” Arik asked her. “Aside from the molding, which can be repaired.” She could hear his footsteps as he approached from the other side of the table. He sat down several chairs away and looked at her, his mind tentatively questioning. Like everyone else on this damned planet, he kept his distance.

  “I guess,” Atalant muttered into the wood. “Maybe the moon is enough for Ardulum. I’ll ask tonight, or you can ask. It doesn’t matter to me. Right now, I just want to get some sleep.” She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until she’d put her head down. Now, the heaviness of her eyelids slowed down her breathing. She could just nap right here. No one would bother her. No one spoke to her, not directly, except for Arik, Emn, and Nicholas. The inn owners and the Ardulan populace were too reverent to address an eld. She was a god of her own gods, and it grated.

  “You can handle the evening ceremonies, right? And the banquet?” Atalant asked Arik, her tone slightly pleading.

  “I think so. The population seems to be more forgiving of me than the other flares, likely because of the andal choosing me as an eld.” He tapped his side and then stood and moved to the door. “I know the ceremonies are tiresome, but Ardulum celebrates for five months after the new Eld is in place. We’ve had a few weeks, and right now, after a move, I think tradition is important for our people. Especially when you consider their current Eld are a former flare and a subspecies and we are missing our third eld, which goes against all tradition. Our people need unity.”