Anne’s hands came up to her mouth. “You’re killing them.”
Daisuke’s head jerked around. “Killing? What?”
“They’re already dead, Anne,” Misha said. “Take a smell.”
Anne sniffed. Even in the cold, the stench of toymaker biochemistry should have made the edge of the Dorado forest smell like a snowy sewer. But all she got now was a faint whiff of something deep and rich. Loamy.
Anne let Misha reassure Daisuke that nobody was in danger. No, the destruction was already done, wasn’t it? It was just even deeper than she had known.
Anne looked more closely at the stuff being prepared by the nearest Nun butcher.
The butcher removed and discarded a few calamari rings – naked toymaker worms, ringed with eyes and teeth. Black, stinking internal fluid was also quickly mopped away, leaving a brown mass as deeply convoluted as a little brain. The butcher carefully rinsed this wrinkled mass before dropping it into a cook pot. Anne sniffed again.
“Mushroom soup.” She turned back to Misha. “Mushroom fucking soup?”
“It’s a fungus,” said Misha. “From the Earth biome. It makes toymakers edible. It must have evolved—”
“I know how it must have evolved!” Anne snapped. There was a toymaker biome capping the mountains on the eastern border of the Earth biome. Nature abhorring vacuums as it did, it was only a matter of time before something from Earth figured out how to digest toymaker tissues.
“And I know we’re nowhere near the Earth biome now,” she continued. “The Nun brought these magic mushroom spores with them, didn’t they?” She even knew when the spores must have been planted. “The go-home dust!”
“What happened?” asked Daisuke.
Anne felt like spitting. “Even back before Farhad brought the forest down, the Nun were killing the toymakers.”
Misha held up his hands with an air of weary indifference. “This was all decided before we even crossed into the Dorado biome. We took a stand, with you, against Farhad.” His palms turned up. “Win or lose, we knew he would stop giving us supplies.”
“He never said that,” Daisuke said, taking Farhad’s side again.
“Of course he’ll starve them out,” Anne told him. And to Misha she said, “Of course you’ll starve. What’ll you do when your mushrooms run out?”
The lines in Misha’s face grew deeper and darker. “Our mushrooms should last us long enough to make it back to the Sweet Blood biome, even if you and Daisuke come with us.”
Anne took a step back. She’d been about to go with these people. If she had come out here an hour later, would she have even known what they’d done to the toymakers? Or would Anne have just eaten the mushrooms they offered, and wondered where all the toymakers had gone?
“No,” she whispered. And louder. “No, Misha! The toymakers trusted the Nun. I trusted you.”
Misha rolled his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. This is something the Nun do on every long voyage they make. The toymakers keep letting them do this, so either they don’t mind being eaten or they aren’t smart enough to prevent it.”
Anne understood all about not being smart enough to prevent disaster. Allowing herself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. A toymaker choking on spores.
Misha’s head twitched to the side and he lowered his voice. “And stop looking so horrified. People are talking about you.”
“Ha!” said Anne. “Since when do I care what people say about me? That’s always been the trouble with me, hasn’t it?” If Anne were a better manipulator, would she have been able to stop these disasters? Or would she have happily joined in the causing of them?
“Well, you’re still welcome to tag along. Although before you do, I suggest trying the soup.” Misha smiled grimly and gestured at the cook pot. “The taste takes some getting used to.”
***
“I take it you don’t plan to return to Imsame with the Nun? A good idea, since we’ll arrive back at Imsame before they do,” Farhad said. “You’re welcome to come up the mountain with us, Anne, Daisuke. In fact, I hope you do.” The tycoon leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. “It would be a shame to let those space suits go to waste.”
Farhad shouldn’t have been able to corner Anne like this. She wasn’t even in a corner, just in the middle of the caravan. Farhad looked like he’d simply chanced to be drinking his tea in the breakfast nook by the door, but must have been lying in wait.
“Stop,” said Anne. “Just stop.”
Farhad raised his eyebrows. “Of course you have my profound gratitude for all the help you’ve given this expedition. If you want to give up now, I understand, although I am disappointed.”
Daisuke frowned. “I don’t like what you’re doing.”
What was he doing? Anne felt her own face twisting as she figured it out. “You’re trying to fucking shame me. No! What did I do wrong? Nothing! Ethically, morally…” she waved her hands, “…speculative-biologically! I figured out this entire eco-economy on my own in two days and you spied on me and used what I learned to destroy this place.”
“A high price to pay, but—”
“But fucking what?” Anne welcomed the anger. It was like a bridge over this yawning chasm of terror and despair. And here she was, having walked out to the middle of it with a blindfold on! “What could possibly justify everything you’ve done?”
Farhad put down his teacup so he could shrug more elaborately. “I would love to tell you, Anne. I would love to show you what wonders I believe lie beyond the Howling Mountain wormhole.” He picked the teacup back up. “But you’ve declared very explicitly that you stand against me. How can I reveal my goals to you?”
“In other words your goals are fucking evil and you fucking know it! Look behind us, Farhad. What I allowed you to do in the Dorado biome – that’s what’s shameful, all right?”
Farhad’s cheeks darkened and his lips drew back from his teeth. He looked like Anne felt.
Something almost happened. Anne could almost see the spark in the air between them, like the spot of light at the focal point of a magnifying glass.
But his hand came up. Farhad smoothed down his beard, and the mask was back on. The tycoon closed his eyes and exhaled.
“When I was a boy I smuggled myself out of Iran in the back of a pickup truck.” He held up a hand to stop Anne from saying, ‘So bloody what?’
“I mention that, not because it was very hard and frightening and painful, but because it came between experiences that were…” another deep breath, “…worse. And ever since then, I’ve done my utmost to make sure that nobody I love ever finds themselves in a similar position ever again.” He watched his reflection in the window, superimposed over the ruins and the Nun. “And then, I turn on the news.”
“Um,” Anne said. She felt like she’d run into a wall that had turned out to be a painted curtain.
Daisuke was caught less flat-footed. “You told us before about your plans to move people to Junction.”
“Right.” Anne shook herself. “Your grandkids don’t need a second Earth, Farhad. They need to fix the one they have.”
Farhad looked back at her. “When the Titanic was sinking, is that what the people on the lifeboats told the people drowning in the Atlantic Ocean? ‘You need to fix the boat you have’?”
Anne floundered, and this time Daisuke was no help. What if he agreed with Farhad? What was the counterargument here?
Farhad didn’t give her the time to find it. “I empathize with you,” he said. “Both of you. You must be angry and hurt and frustrated that you can’t make me care about what you obviously care about so deeply.” He held his hands out to her. “But Anne, that’s why I hired you. Your passion.”
Despite herself, Anne felt moved. But she looked at Daisuke’s blank face and understood the trap. What was Farhad trying to distract her from? “What is it
exactly that you expect to find on the other side of the Howling Mountain wormhole? What is it you think will save mankind or whatever your crazy plan is?”
He sipped his tea. “I have several contradictory expectations. That’s why it’s an experiment.”
Anne crossed her arms. “That’s pretty bloody glib, isn’t it?”
The fake half smile slid away, but Farhad didn’t look angry. For a moment, he looked away, as if shy or unsure of himself.
“Understanding is like light,” he said, apropos of nothing that Anne could see. “Insight. Judgment, however, is like lightning. Do you see? One of them illuminates and nourishes, the other terrifies and destroys.”
Anne shook herself. She had to remember what this old villain’s game was. “You think I’m being too judgmental? Of who? You? Should I just roll over and let you do what you want?”
He chuckled, any vulnerability gone. “Ah, there’s that passion again. I should have predicted it would conflict with mine, and done more, earlier, to align our interests. I apologize deeply for not doing so, and I promise you that I will take actions now to redress my wrongs and make sure I never repeat them.”
He stood, and Anne nearly said, ‘Okay, bye,’ before she realized he was trying to dismiss her.
She stomped a foot. “I cannot believe this! I’ve saved people’s lives. I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t have this happen to me.”
“I feel like that too, sometimes,” said Farhad. “Like I want to shake my fist at the sky and curse the God that gave me this life. But God is merciful, Anne. God is compassionate. He gives us the tools we need, if we’re just brave enough to take them.”
Anne couldn’t help but snort. “Unbelievable. You mean God sent you to me?”
Farhad laughed too. “Quite the opposite, Anne. Quite the opposite.” He bowed his head slightly. “Thank you, both of you, for all you’ve done for me so far.”
Daisuke’s expression was deeply suspicious. “What do you plan to do?”
“Climb the mountain. With you, if you’ll accompany us.”
“Can you not?” Anne pleaded. One more time, she had to try. “Sometimes you just have to leave things be.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Anne. When you stop changing the world, you die. If you’ll excuse me.”
Farhad bowed slightly and walked toward the bridge. Only once he was out of sight did Anne understand that he had gotten the last word. Another win for Farhad.
***
“He knew.”
Anne looked around her lab, seeing nothing.
“Farhad knew I’d refuse to work with him, and he knew about this cruelty to toymakers thing the Nun are into. We can’t hike back to Imsame on our own, so we have no choice but to just sit here and wait until they get back.”
The others were preparing for a hike up to the wormhole at the peak of the mountain. They expected to spend no more than a day on the trip, but they weren’t traveling light. The ATV was loaded with, not food, but equipment, including what looked like a winch.
“Kaeru ka naa.” Daisuke was standing in the corridor outside the lab, face swinging between Anne and the others like the snout of a nervous golden retriever. “I’m worried that they won’t come back.”
“You mean they might all get eaten by monsters?” said Anne. “We should be so lucky! Maybe that’s what this expedition’s been missing. Culling.”
Daisuke paced back into the lab. “That isn’t funny. What if someone really dies?”
Anne considered the fact that, as bad as she felt, nobody had died on this expedition. The last time she’d been on Junction, there’d been a murder about every two days. Maybe that danger had focused her attention on what mattered. Now, with the immediate stakes so low and the distant-future stakes so high, she felt like she was being ripped apart.
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” she said. “Ask them nicely not to hike up the mountain? They’re not going to listen to us. Moon wants wormholes. Farhad wants a new world for his grandchildren to colonize. Boss Rudi wants a dowry for his daughter. Talking to Aimi or Turtle would tip Farhad off. Even Misha doesn’t give a damn about Junction except as a place for his wife’s tribe to live.”
Daisuke stared at her blankly.
Anne ground her teeth. “What? You think this is my fault? You think I’ve unmasked myself in front of my enemies and alienated my allies. Ha! ‘Alienated’. ’Cause you are what you eat, right?”
Daisuke took a breath. “No. I think we should go with Farhad and the others. I think we should protect them.”
“Oh no! We are not going with them.” Anne crossed her arms. “I am not going with them. I will not be a party to whatever Moon is going to do.”
“We can stop him.”
How many times had Anne heard that one? “How?” she said. “Slimy manipulation? Mouth false promises at him? Tell him what he wants to hear? ‘It’ll be okay’? ‘We’ll be fine’? Whatever you’re planning to say to me, I don’t want to hear it.”
Daisuke tried to make Anne look him in the eyes, but she wouldn’t. Anne felt cored. Scooped out.
“This was supposed to be a vacation,” she said. “This trip has been shitty, Daisuke. Really shitty. We’ve done more damage to Junction than anything ever. And everyone thinks I’m some sort of harridan for pointing it out, but in five hundred years, do you think people are going to say, ‘Boy, it sure is great the first explorers of Junction trashed the place’? No. They’re going to say, ‘Another world ruined. What a fucking tragedy.’”
Daisuke wasn’t listening. He was looking away down the caravan, massaging his sternum, expression pained. “I understand you,” he said. “But I also understand Farhad and Moon. If what we discover here can help people, don’t we have to discover it?”
“Oh, the ‘people’ thing,” said Anne. “The only difference between people and nature is that people ought to know better. When nature destroys itself, it’s just something that nature does sometimes. When people destroy nature, it’s evil.” Anne wished she’d told Misha all this.
Credit to Daisuke, he looked like he was thinking about what Anne said. Although, he was an actor. It might be that he just looked like he was thinking.
“I don’t agree,” he said. “I think there’s no difference between people and nature. I think ‘people’ is just something that nature does sometimes.” His eyebrows came together and he held his palm in front of his face. “It looks into a mirror.”
“Very poetic,” Anne said. “I’m sure your next TV series will be a big fucking hit.”
And you can make it without me. The sentence formed itself in her brain. Right there. You can make it without me because I am sick of this ‘humans are more important than every other species put together’ bullshit. It was true. It was right. It would hurt Daisuke so much to hear it.
Didn’t that mean that Daisuke was more important than every other species? Anne shook her head.
Now he was looking at her and Anne knew that it wasn’t even enough to not say what she was thinking. He was so empathetic he knew what she wasn’t saying. Silence wouldn’t be enough. Anne would have to say something. And not just anything. She’d have to reach into his head and say the thing he wanted her to say, with no clues from him. Because if Daisuke gave her any clues, he wouldn’t trust her to be telling the truth.
This was it. This was why Anne hated people. This was why she would spend the rest of her life in the wilderness, if only people didn’t drag her back into their stupid bullshit made-up world.
The mind. What a joke that was. I know what you know about what I know about what you know and on and on the recursive curse of intelligence. If people were the universe holding up a mirror to itself, that mirror contained nothing but an endless corridor of reflections.
“All this trip we’ve been debating about how we’d recognize sapient life if
we found it.” Anne spoke softly, unable to meet Daisuke’s eyes. “And I’ve been saying it’s just automatic processes that give the toymakers and cavaliers and coatls the illusion of intelligence. You lot never realized that the same thing is true of us humans. Intelligence is just nature fooling itself.”
Daisuke just looked at her.
“Stop it!” The words felt like something snapping off in Anne’s throat. “Stop showing me that mask face. You’re not fooling anyone. I know you’re miserable, Daisuke. Just fucking admit it!”
A muscle jumped on Daisuke’s cheek and Anne flinched.
“Goddamn it!” she said. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me figure out what’s going on in your head. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“You already know.” The words were mild enough, but they strained like a dam about to burst.
“You want me to guess? All right, here’s a hypothesis for you, Dice.” She jabbed her finger at him. “You don’t care about Junction. You just want to rescue me from monsters and be the big man. You want to be brave, but you’d stand by and watch this whole place fall apart as long as I’m safe—”
Daisuke slapped a hand to either side of the doorframe. The whites around his eyes showed. The hands he held out to her trembled. He opened his mouth. Closed it, jaw muscles standing out. He shook his head.
He was terrified. The insight clutched Anne’s brain with icy fingers. She was scaring her fiancé.
Anne turned away. She could not bear to look at him. She could not bear to be here. She had to get out of the caravan. Run away or make him run away. Close your eyes. Don’t let yourself see.
“You want me to choose between you and Junction,” she said.
It wasn’t like a scientific discovery. There was no thrill as the puzzle pieces connected. No wonder at the beauty of the picture they revealed.
Maybe because it wasn’t true?
But Anne was too tired to look under yet another rock. To find out more ways she’d been wrong. She was sick of exploration and she just wanted to stop.
Daisuke finally asked, “Anne, are you happy with me?”
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