by Tony Daniel
“Andre, you know what I am.”
“You’re my boss.”
“Beside that.”
“You’re amanifold . You are a Large Array of Personalities who was specially constructed as a quantum-event detector—probably the best in human history. Parts of you stretch across the entire inner solar system, and you have cloud ship outriders. If you say you had a vision of me and this new Tree, then it has to mean something. You’re not making it up. Morton, you see into the future, and there I am.”
“There you are. You are the Way’s expert ontime . What do you think this means.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” said Andre. That the new Tree is obviously a further stage in sentient evolution, since the Greentree isus ?”
“That’s what Erasmus Kelly and his people think. I need something more subtle from you.”
“All right. It isn’t the time towers that this has to do with.”
“What then?”
“You don’t want to hear this.”
“You’d better tell me anyway.”
“Thaddeus Kaye.”
Filmbuff shrugged. “Thaddeus Kaye is dead. He killed himself. Something was wrong with him, poor slob.”
“I know you big LAPs like to think so.”
“He was perverted. He killed himself over a woman, wasn’t it?”
“Come on, Morton. A pervert hurts other people. Kaye hurt himself.”
“What doeshe have to do with anything, anyway?”
“What if he’s not dead? What if he’s just wounded and lost? You understand what kind of being he is, don’t you, Morton?”
“He’s a LAP, just like me.”
“You only see the future, Morton. Thaddeus Kaye canaffect the future directly, from the past.”
“So what? We all do that every day of our lives.”
“This is not the same. Instantaneous control of instants. What the merced quantum effect does for space, Thaddeus Kaye can do for time. Heprefigures the future. Backward and forward in time. He’s like a rock that has been dropped into a lake.”
“Are you saying he’s God?”
“No. But if your vision is a true one, and I know that it is, then he could very wellbe the war.”
“Do you mean the reasonfor the war?”
“Yes, but more than that. Think of it as a wave, Morton. If there’s a crest, there has to be a trough. Thaddeus Kaye is the crest and the war is the trough. He’s something like a physical principle. That’s how his integration process was designed. Not a force, exactly, but he’s been imprinted on aproperty of time.”
“The Future Principle?”
“All right. Yes. In a way, heis the future. I think he’s still alive.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I didn’t until you told me your vision. What else could it be? Unless aliens are coming.”
“Maybe aliens are coming. They’d have their own Tree. Possibly.”
“Morton, do you see aliens coming in your dreams?”
“No.”
“Well, then.”
Filmbuff put his hands over his eyes and lowered his head. “I’ll tell you what I still see,” he said in a low rumble of a voice like far thunder. “I see the burning Greentree. I see it strung with a million bodies, each of them hung by the neck, and all of them burning, too. Until this vision, that was all I was seeing.”
“Did you see any way to avoid it?”
Filmbuff looked up. His eyes were as white as his hands when he spoke. “Once. Not now. The quantum fluctuations have all collapsed down to one big macroreality. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, butsoon .”
Andre sighed.I believe , he thought. I don’t want to believe, but I do. It’s easy to have faith in destruction.
“I just want to go back to Triton and balance rocks,” he said. “That’s really all that keeps me sane. I love that big old moon.”
Filmbuff pushed his lhasi glass even farther away and slid out of the booth. He stood up with a creaking sound, like vinyl being stretched. “Interesting times,” he spoke to the café. “Illusion or not, that was probably the last good lhasi I’m going to have for quite a while.”
“Uh, Morton?”
“Yes, Father Andre?”
“You have to pay up front. They can’t take it out of your account.”
“Oh, my.” The cardinal reached down and slapped the black cloth covering his white legs. He, of course, had no pockets. “I don’t think I have any money with me.”
“Don’t worry,” Andre said. “I’ll pick it up.”
“Would you? I’d hate to have that poor waiter running after me down the street.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow after meditation.” This was not a request.
“We’ll talk more then.”
“Good night, Andre.”
“Night, Morton.”
Filmbuff stalked away, his silver mane trailing behind him as if a wind were blowing through it. Or a solar flare.
Before he left the Westway, he turned, as Andre knew he would, and spoke one last question across the space of the diner.
“You knew Thaddeus Kaye, didn’t you, Father Andre?”
“I knew a man named Ben Kaye. A long time ago,” Andre said, but this was only confirmation of what Filmbuff’s spread-out mind had already told him.
The door slid shut and the Cardinal walked into the night. Andre sipped at his tea.
Eventually the waiter returned. “We close pretty soon,” he said.
“Why do you close so early?” Andre asked.
“It is very late.”
“I remember when this place did not close.”
“I don’t think so. It always closed.”
“Not when I was a student at the seminary.”
“It closed then,” said the waiter. He took a rag from his apron, activated it with a twist, and began to wipe a nearby table.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
“They tell me there’s never been a time when this place didn’t close.”
“Who tells you?”
“People.”
“And you believe them.”
“Why should I believe you? You’re people.” The waiter looked up at Andre, puzzled. “That was a joke,” he said. “I guess it does not translate.”
“Bring me some more tea and then I will go.”
The waiter nodded, then went to get it.
There was music somewhere. Gentle oboe strains. Oh, yes. His pellicle was still playing the hymn.
What do you think?
I think we are going on a quest.
I suppose so.
Do you know where Thaddeus Kaye is?
No, but I have a pretty good idea how to find Ben. And wherever Ben is, Thaddeus Kaye has to be.
Why not tell somebody else how to find him?
Because no one else will do what I do when I find him.
What’s that?
Nothing.
Oh.
When the backup is done, we’ll be on our way.
The third part of Andre’s multiple personality, the convert, was off-line at the moment getting himself archived and debugged. That was mainly what the retreat was for, since using the Greentree data facilities was free to priests. Doing it on Triton would have cost as much as putting a new roof on his house.
Why don’t they send someone who is stronger in faith than we are?
I don’t know. Send an apostate to net an apostate, I guess.
What god is Thaddeus Kaye apostate from?
Himself.
And for that matter, what about us?
Same thing. Here comes the tea. Will you play that song again?
It was Mother’s favorite.
Do you think it could be that simple? That I became a priest because of that hymn?
Are you asking me?
Just play the music and let me drink my tea. I think the waiter wants us out of here.
“Do you mind if I mop up around you?” the waiter said.
“I’ll be done soon.”
“Take your time, as long as you don’t mind me working.”
“I don’t mind.”
Andre listened to mournful oboe and watched as the waiter sloshed water across the infinite universe, then took a mop to it with a vengeance.
Jill
Down in the dark there’s a doe rat I’m after to kill. She’s got thirteen babies and I’m going to bite them, bite them, bite them. I will bite them.The mulch here smells of dank stupid rats all running running, and there’s nowhere farther to run because this is it, this is the Carbuncle, and nowI’m here and this is truly the end of all of it, but a rat can’t stand to know that and won’t accept me until they have to believe me. Now they will believe me.
My whiskers against something soft. Old food? No, it’s a dead buck; I scent his Y code, and the body is dead but the code keeps thumping and thumping. This mulch won’t let it drain out and it doesn’t ever want to die. The Carbuncle’s the end of the line, but this code doesn’t know it or knows it and won’t have it. I give it a poke and a bit of rot sticks to my nose and the grist tries to swarm me, but no I don’t think so.
I sniff out and send along my grist, jill ferret grist, and no rat code stands a chance ever, ever. The zombie rat goes rigid when its tough, stringy code—who knows how old, how far traveled to finally die here at the End of Everywhere—that code scatters to nonsense in the pit of the ball of nothing my grist wraps it in. Then the grist flocks back to me and the zombie rat thumps no more. No more.
Sometimes having to killeverything is a bit of a distraction. I want that doe and her littles really bad and I need to move on.
Down a hole and into a warren larder. Here there’s pieces of meat and the stink of maggot sluice pooled in the bends between muscles and organs. But the rats have got the meat from Farmer Jan’s Mulmyard, and it’s not quite dead yet, got maggot resistant code, like the buck rat, but not smart enough to know it’s dead, just mean code jaw-latched to a leg or a haunch and won’t dissipate. Mean and won’t die. But I am meaner still.
Oh, I smell her!
I’m coming, mama rat. Where are you going? There’s no going anywhere anymore.
Bomi slinks into the larder and we touch noses. I smell blood on her. She’s got a kill, a bachelor male, by the blood spore on her.
It’s so warm and wet, Jill.Bomi’s trembling and wound up tight. She’s not the smartest ferret.I love it, love it, and I’m going back to lie in it.
That’s bad. Bad habit.
I don’t care. I killed it; it’s mine.
You do what you want, but it’s your man Bob’s rat.
No it’s mine.
He feeds you, Bomi.
I don’t care.
Go lay up then.
I will.
Without a by-your-leave, Bomi’s gone back to her kill to lay up. I never do that. TB wouldn’t like it, and besides, the killing’s the thing, not the owning. Who wants an old dead rat to lie in when there’s more to bite?
Bomi told me where she’d be because she’s covering for herself when she doesn’t show and Bob starts asking. Bomi’s a stupid ferret and I’m glad she doesn’t belong to TB.
But me—down another hole, deeper, deeper still. It’s half-filled in here. The doe rat thought she was hiding it, but she left the smell of her as sure as a serial number on a bone. I will bite you, mama.
Then there’s the dead-end chamber I knew would be. Doe rat’s last hope in all the world. Won’t do her any good. But oh, she’s big! She’s tremendous. Maybe the biggest ever for me.
I am very, very happy.
Doe rat with the babies crowded behind her. Thirteen of them, I count by the squeaks. Sweet naked squeaks. Less than two weeks old, they are. Puss and meat. But I want mama now.
The doe sniffs me and screams like a bone breaking and she rears big as me. Bigger.
I will bite you.
Come and try, little jill.
I will kill you.
I ate a sack of money in the City Bank and they chased me and cut me to pieces and just left my tail and—I grew another rat! What will you do to me, jill, that can be so bad? You’d better be afraid of me.
When I kill your babies, I will do it with one bite for each. I won’t hurt them for long.
You won’t kill my babies.
At her.
At her because there isn’t anything more to say, no more messages to pass back and forth through our grist and scents.
I go for a nipple and she’s fast out of the way, but not fast enough and I have a nub of her flesh in my mouth. Blood let. I chew on her nipple tip. Blood and mama’s milk.
She comes down on me and bites my back, her long incisors cut through my fur, my skin, like hook needles, and come out at another spot. She’s heavy. She gnaws at me and I can feel her teeth scraping against my backbone. I shake to get her off, and I do, but her teeth rip a gouge out of me.
Cut pretty bad, but she’s off. I back up thinking that she’s going to try to swarm a copy, and I stretch out the grist and there it is, just like I thought, and I intercept it and I kill the thing before it can get to the mulm and reproduce and grow another rat. One rat this big is enough, enough for always.
The doe senses that I’ve killed her outrider, and now she’s more desperate.
This is all there is for you. This is oblivion and ruin and time to stop the scurry.
This is where you’ll die.
She strikes at me again, but I dodge and—before she can round on me—I snatch a baby rat. It’s dead before it can squeal. I spit out its mangle of bones and meat.
But mama’s not a dumb rat, no, not dumb at all, and does not fly into a rage over this. But I know she regards me with all the hate a rat can hate, though. If there were any light, I’d see her eyes glowing rancid yellow.
Come on, mama, before I get another baby.
She goes for a foot and again I dodge, but she catches me in the chest. She raises up, up.
The packed dirt of the ceiling, wham, wham, and her incisors are hooked around my breastbone, damn her, and it holds me to her mouth as fast as a barbed arrowpoint.
Shake and tear, and I’ve never known such pain, such delicious . . .
I rake at her eyes with a front claw, dig into her belly with my feet. Dig, dig, and I can feel the skin parting, and the fatty underneath parting, and my feet dig deep, deep.
Shakes me again, and I can only smell my own blood and her spit and then sharp, small pains at my back.
The baby rats. The baby rats are latching onto me, trying to help their mother.
Nothing I can do. Nothing I can do but dig with my rear paws. Dig, dig. I am swimming in her guts. I can feel the give. I can feel the tear. Oh, yes!
Then my breastbone snaps and I fly loose of the doe’s teeth. I land in the babies, and I’m stunned and they crawl over me and nip at my eyes and one of them shreds an ear, but the pain brings me to and I snap the one that bit my ear in half. I go for another. Across the warren cavern, the big doe shuffles. I pull myself up, try to stand on all fours. Can’t.
Baby nips my hind leg. I turn and kill it. Turn back. My front legs collapse. I cannot stand to face the doe, and I hear her coming.
Will I die here?
Oh, this is how I want it! Took the biggest rat in the history of the Met to kill me. Ate a whole bag of money, she did.
She’s coming for me. I can hear her coming for me. She’s so big. I cansmell how big she is.
I gather my hind legs beneath me, find a purchase.
This is how I die. I will bite you.
But there’s no answer from her, only the doe’s harsh breathing. The dirt smells of our blood. Dead baby rats all around me.
I am very, very happy.
With a scream, the doe charges me. I wait a moment. Wait.
I pounce, shoot low like an arrow.
I’m through, between her legs. I’m unde
r her. I rise up. I rise up into her shredded belly. I bite! I bite! I bite!
Her whole weight keeps her down on me. I chew. I claw. I smell her heart. I smell the new blood of her heart! I can hear it! I can smell it! I chew and claw my way to it.
I bite.
Oh, yes.
The doe begins to kick and scream, to kick and scream, and as she does the blood of heart pumps from her and over me, smears over me until my coat is soaked with it, until all the dark world is blood.
After a long time, the doe rat dies. I send out the grist, feebly, but there are no outriders to face, no tries at escape now. She put all that she had into fighting me. She put everything into our battle.
I pull myself out from under the rat. In the corner, I hear the scuffles of the babies. Now that the mama is dead, they are confused.
I have to bite them. I have to kill them all.
I cannot use my front legs, but I can use my back. I push myself toward them, my belly on the dirt like a snake. I find them all huddled in the farthest corner, piling on one another in their fright. Nowhere to go.
I do what I told the doe I would do. I kill them each with one bite, counting as I go. Three and ten makes thirteen.
And then it’s done and they’re all dead. I’ve killed them all.
So.
There’s only one way out: the way I came. That’s where I go, slinking, crawling, turning this way and that to keep my exposed bone from catching on pebbles and roots. After a while, I start to feel the pain that was staying away while I fought. It’s never been this bad.
I crawl and crawl, I don’t know for how long. If I were to meet another rat, that rat would kill me. But either they’re dead or they’re scared, and I don’t hear or smell any. I crawl to what I think is up, what I hope is up.
And after forever, after so long that all the blood on my coat is dried and starting to flake off like tiny brown leaves, I poke my head out into the air.
TB is there. He’s waited for me.
Gently, gently he pulls me out of the rat hole. Carefully, carefully he puts me in my sack.
“Jill, I will fix you,” he says.
I know.
“That must have been the Great Mother of rats.”
She was big, so big and mean. She was brave and smart and strong. It was wonderful.
“What did you do?”
