Second Contact

by Guerric Haché, Keezy Young

  “I do not even know what that would mean.”

  “I’m not going to get eaten by a cougar.”

  He wheezed, as close to a human snort as he could get. “You like cherry trees. You told me once they bring you peace, though you never explained why.”

  “Yes, but why bother?”

  His ears perked up. “Ada Liu, you sleep on my couch, you eat my food, and you pester me with questions all day long. Those are the kind of things one inflicts on one’s friends. I decided to reciprocate. You might have left without ever knowing this was here.”

  It was true - she never would have thought to walk out into the woods. She reached out and laid a hand on his cloaked shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “You are welcome.” He glanced at her, slowly blinking. “Will you tell me why, exactly, the trees matter to you?”

  She took a deep breath. “I imagine you’ve never been to the Institute.”

  “It has been a long time since any of my kind visited it.”

  “Well, there’s a cherry grove in one of the courtyards. Seven trees, one in the middle and six equally spaced around it. There’s a golem that sweeps away the petals and brings them somewhere, I think to turn into dirt or mulch.” She sighed. “When I first came to the Institute, everything scared me. There were too many people. So I ran away from my parents until I found the cherry grove. It was empty, so I stayed there for a while, just enjoying the quiet. It was the only consistently quiet place in there.”

  “You did not care for the Institute much.”

  “No. But whenever I got stressed I could go climb one of those trees and close my eyes and just relax.” She remembered the feeling of her favourite crook in the southernmost tree, the way her back and legs bent to fit into it comfortably. “Most people got bored of them pretty quickly. I never did. They’re so hopeful.”

  Zhilik glanced sideways at her. “Hopeful?”

  “I guess your people don’t tell the same story my mother did.” She stepped into the grove, snatching one of the falling petals from the air. “Other trees and flowers bloom once and then let their flowers die off quickly. Cherry trees are in bloom all year long, unless it gets really cold - always losing petals, always growing new ones, even on top of their leaves. Isn’t that strange?”

  Zhilik grunted. “There is an artificial structure encircling the entire planet, humans can turn their hands into blades and cannons, and machines with long-forgotten purposes stalk the wilderness like animals. There are stranger things, Ada.”

  She smirked. He was right, she supposed. “Well, the story is that the gods saw the cherry blossoms and thought it was beautiful. Then they saw the blossoms die, and were heartbroken, so they gave it a gift of its own - they gave it eternity. It’s constantly being reborn, even as it dies. Or as my mother would say, the gods’ whims are life, death, and transcendence.”

  Zhilik hissed with laughter. “You hate the gods.”

  She turned back towards him. “Well they’re mischievous little shits. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t actually the gods who did this to the cherry trees, in any case - I’m pretty sure it was the ancients. They wanted to fix beauty in time, and they did it.” She reached up, running her fingers along one of the branches. “We live in the same world with the same flesh. If they could, then so can we. That’s what I hope.”

  He nodded slowly. “I hope so too.”

  “Thanks.”

  He glanced back towards the city. “I want to keep an eye on Jhoru’s progress. The walk back is not long, especially in a straight line. I will leave you the hauler.”

  She nodded, returning her gaze to the pinkish blossoms of the nearest twigs, blooming out from amidst a fan of deep reddish-purple leaves. “Sure. I’ll stay here for a bit, but I’ll catch up later.”

  She heard him turn away. “Do not stay too late. I may not be around much longer.”

  She grinned. “Go away.”

  He did, leaving her with the trees.

  Ada had never seen them grow so large, but walking up to the sprawling, thick trunks, they still felt entirely familiar. The feeling of the bark against her skin bound months and years of memory together. She wrapped her hands and fingers around the wood, pulling herself up into the twisting branches, watching a petal fall here, another there. Halfway up the tree she stopped, reached out to the nearest cluster of blossoms and touched it. How long did it take for a petal to regrow? What did the ancients do to make these trees different from all the others?

  She watched the goats tramping through the grove, older petals sticking to their hooves. They didn’t know their grove was destined to become a fair bit more dangerous. The outers were leaving, unless something went catastrophically wrong, and that meant a great many things to a great many people - not least to the outers themselves. But what did it mean to her?

  She leaned her chest against a thick branch. If she didn’t figure out how to cure the technophage soon, she would have to flee with as much equipment as she could jam into her ship. The Chengdu was obviously going to carry her wherever she was going next, but where would that be? It would have to be somewhere nobody knew her, recognized her, or knew she had worked with the ghosts. Far to the south, perhaps, or in whatever lands lay far, far to the west of the ocean.

  She felt the pressure of the locator stone in her pocket and reached for it. She followed its direction, westward into the clouds of blossoms rustling amidst the leaves in the wind, moving and shifting. Somehow, in the dark branches and light petals in that direction, Ada thought she caught a glimpse of a face, or a silhouette.

  Isavel.

  There was nobody there - of course there wasn’t. But she let her mind drift, eyes losing focus on the world and looking beyond, to the familiar shapes looking back at her. Branches extended towards her, a hand offering a dance. Straight trunks, straight backs. Bright, waving branches for all the world like the wings of light that had carried Ada, barely awake, down to the Earth.

  “Why are you here?”

  Nobody answered. Of course nobody answered - she was crazy to even be saying anything out loud. But Ada continued to stare, her mind wandering, picking through the memories she had of Isavel, the memories she had stolen from Venshi, fleeting images of things that had yet to come and might never be.

  “People leave. I leave. And I keep them out.”

  It was true. Her parents; Jinna; Tanos and Sam, though they had reappeared of their own accord. Dozens of others. When she was done with people she put them away, and they didn’t return to her mind unless they returned to her life. Not so with Isavel - she never seemed to leave her alone.

  Zhilik, curious scholar, still wanted to know the truth of his own people more than anything. Tanos and Sam were struggling with their own demons, with the chaos around them, with their small places in a vast world. The outers were leaving to try and find something they had dreamt of for generations, something that surely didn’t exist.

  Ada stood at the height of power. She could change the world, and she cared enough to do it. So did Isavel, in her own way. And yet there the woman was, offering to dance with her, smiling at her like they were old friends. What friends did Ada have who wouldn’t be swept away by howling winds of change?

  She felt the roughness of the tree bark, under her hands, the solid pillar of life she was standing on. Isavel’s back, as they danced in Hive, a ripple of muscle under Ada’s hand. Her arms, implacable as any ancient steel as they tangled under a snow-capped mountain. Her calm and open reply to Ada’s warning against Glass Peaks.

  Destiny. Ada had always struggled to control it, to subvert it. She had found the power to do so in the sigils of the ancients, in the words of the dead, in the cooperation of the gods, in the friendship of the otherworldly outers, in code and machines and outcasts. Destiny was hers to command, if she only had the time and the determination to do so. That was all she had ever tried to do - to take control of her life away from the chaotic forces that buffeted it.

  She watched t
he animals trampling below the trees, blissfully unaware of the human cataclysms that made room for their lives.

  Isavel looked back at her from the blooms and solid curves of the trees, smiling. Ada smiled back. A suspicious pattern turning up again and again in her life. Such patterns were normally a sign she was in trouble, but nothing about Isavel spelled trouble. There was something entirely different about her, an electric fire Ada felt whenever the woman was present, in the flesh or in spirit. She didn’t dull Ada’s senses; if anything, she put them on edge. She wasn’t something Ada wanted to run away from.

  Was that the answer, then?

  Ada wasn’t even sure what the question really was, but she knew the answer was Isavel, staring at her from every shape in the grove, humming to her through every rustle of dark crimson leaves.

  She raised the locator stone, drawing it further from her face, realizing that it was also pointing north-west, up into the heart of the island. Not unreasonable, all things considered. If only the locator stone could tell her distance, too.

  Ada had no idea how she missed the wingbeats, but all of a sudden she heard them, looked up, and saw the web-winged shape of a dragon descending towards the meadow. Shit. The goats scattered in fear, but it wasn’t here for them. The dragon landed looking straight at Ada, only a few meters away from the grove. He was here for her.

  She gritted her teeth and slipped down from the tree, landing in the petals with a squishy thud. She had never particularly liked the ghost dragons, so she tried to head him off even as she walked towards him. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  His voice rumbled calmly. “I’ve been busy thinking, human. I’ve been careful. Unfortunately, I believe I need your help.”

  The last ghost dragon was intimidatingly large. His wings were each almost twice as long as Ada was tall, and his lizard-like body, flexible and muscular, had a larger frame than any human she had ever seen. His shoulders were almost level with hers despite standing on all fours, and he held his head high on a muscular neck, eyes noticeably above hers. It was like he wanted to stare down at her.

  She sneered right back up. “You need my help? For what?” The notion seemed ridiculous.

  “I wish to capture the White Witch, and convince the last walker to allow me to possess her. She has killed my kin, though, and I do not wish to be next. You seem able to find and approach her more easily than others.”

  For a moment the words seemed to pass her by, but they quickly snapped back into her brain. How did he know that? Ada’s blood immediately started boiling. “What? No. I’m not helping you. Get the fuck out of my way - I need to get back to Campus.”

  The dragon growled at her, a grinding sculpture of muscle and ancient fire. “I’m not inclined to give you much choice in the matter.” A deep red glow flashed along the inside of his teeth as he stared Ada down.

  She snapped back at him. “Try me, lizard.”

  To her surprise, he did.

  Jagged, golden-red electric flames burst from the dragon’s mouth. Ada’s first instinct was to squeeze time to a crawl, eyes fixed on the brilliant light in front of her. She would have to repel it somehow, but she had a while to think about it. What was he thinking, attacking her like this? Did he just assume she could handle this? He could kill her, and he certainly wouldn’t get her help that way.

  Then Ada realized something - the dragonfire was not actually aimed at her at all. As it slowly churned through the air it angled away, coming within inches of her yet clearly not directed at her face. It was a warning shot. She could let it slide.

  She let time flow again, and as her head continued the turn she had set it on, she saw the dragonfire streaming towards the cherry blossoms.

  She swore and squeezed time still again as soon as she noticed, her hands awkwardly placed and her gaze barely looking in the right direction. Ada could already see the dragonfire searing through the first leaves and blossoms, though, so she had no choice. She had to act now.

  She let code flow from her fingers, creeping hurriedly through the air. Here and there she fumbled a spindle connection, snapping some of the bindings that would keep it all together, but she managed to reach the dragonfire quickly enough as it began to chew into the foliage. Force sigils - they were quick, easy, and did the job. She used seeing eye sigils to get a better view of the dragonfire from all angles, locating its core, the burning hexagonal heart that radiated the rest of the flame into the air.

  She reached into it with dark code, but the spindles burnt up as they got too close, so she had to pull back and set up a wall of force sigils as close as she could get, letting each of them go off as soon as it was ready, trying to smash the dragonfire back. Eventually she had done all she could. Would it be enough?

  She let time slide back normally. The force sigils exploded, the dragonfire launched back towards the dragon’s face, branches and blossoms smoked from the scorching, the core impacted on the dragon’s shield, and the code collapsed and dissipated into the air.

  The dragon recoiled in surprise, roaring as its golden shell of a shield rippled and hummed. “Idiot! That was simply -”

  Ada ignored him, slowing time again as she faced the cherry tree that had been struck. She reached out and, to her displeasure, stretched the code out into the tree and started picking off all the burning foliage and blossoms, disintegrating their connection to the tree itself and letting them fall as ashen flakes.

  Her work done, she let time return to its paces once more. Dozens and dozens of scorched or charred blossoms and twigs fell to the ground at once, leaving a dragonfire-shaped space visible in their absences. The tree would live, scarred.

  She rounded on the dragon and held up her hand, letting the dark code flow around it and staring the beast in the eyes. “ You watch yourself. ”

  “Being unreasonable over a patch of trees. You are useless.” The dragon didn’t look amused, but he was eyeing the trees again. His eyes were uncannily human, and she didn’t like the slyness she saw in them. Then his jaws were opening again, fire brewing in their depths. This time, she was ready.

  She remembered how large the core of the dragonfire was - remarkably large, all things considered. A little larger than the length of her open palm. She reached out with both hands and slowed time once again, throwing out code to build a lattice of dark spindles, connected in a hexagonal pattern, a wall between the dragonfire and the grove. She threw in reinforcement sigils too, hoping the code would solidify under its own effects. It had to - or could it reinforce anything else?

  Once the wall was up she let time speed up again, and the dragonfire crashed into the lattice of code, obliterating it but bursting in the process, leaving the trees unharmed.

  Ada wasn’t going to wait for him to try again. She reached for him with code, faster than he could even think to react, and began digging into his scaly skin, probing with dark lances, trying to find nerves of pain and letting the dark code’s own power flow into them. She prodded the soft skin and the hard scales alike, stabbed at his nose, dug into the flesh all at once. Then she let him go, let time flow, and the dragon was raging and howling, backing off in a massive hurry, wingbeats sending flurries of fallen blossoms through the air as he retreated.

  “Sorceress! Traitor!”

  “Traitor? You’re the one trying to break our deal! We all agreed - no more stealing bodies. You’re the one trying to set fire to the damned place!”

  Ada stepped towards the monster, uncowed.

  “Get out of here, dragon! If I see you again, or if anything happens to this grove, or if any harm comes to Isavel’s head, I will personally hunt you down and carry you out beyond the reach of Elysium and kill you myself! You’ll fade into a dark void and be gone, and I’ll laugh at your fucking corpse. You hear me?”

  The dragon beat its wings in anger, rising into the sky and leaving Ada staring up at it as it fled. She clenched her fists as it left, watching it fly north until it was no longer in sight. Then she turned around t
o look at the grove, mostly untouched save for the injuries to the nearest tree.

  Only then did Ada realize she had scared off a dragon.

  An angry dragon.

  It might come back. And she couldn’t guard the grove forever… could she?

  She was running to Campus before the thoughts formed, through where the meadows faded into half-buried ancient ruins, all the way to where Campus appeared in the distance. She waved at the guards on the wall and they flicked the gate off just long enough for her to keep running through, and then she was in the city, following the streets, back into the medical building where she did her work.

  Where was it?

  She found it in a box, right where she had left it.

  She pulled out the golem sigil, in all its complex chaos, and shrank it down enough to fit neatly into her hand. Then she was out the door, into the streets, towards the gate.

  “Ada?”

  She heard the voice but didn’t bother placing it. She needed to move. Back out the gate, down south, towards the cherry grove. It was alright. Nothing had attacked it… yet.

  She pried the golem sigil open, expanding it in size, and reached into her pocket. She stared at the sigil as she chewed on dried fruit. This might fail, or it might backfire, but she had to put her mind at ease somehow.

  She swallowed the rest of her apple strips, waited a few moments, and then set to work. In time dilation she supposedly thought faster, but this still felt like it took forever. Ada painstakingly reproduced the golem sigil entirely, and then plunged into the memory core at its centre, connecting it to her own. She hadn’t peeled this new one off of Venshi, or anyone else for that matter, so it was utterly blank. Convenient.

  Ada tried to shine a light through her mind, spotlighting the things that really mattered and forcing it into that core. She thought of every time she had seen a cherry tree, every moment spent in every grove, every thought and fear and comfort. She thought of every sigil she could remember, every battle she had ever fought, and again, every memory she might have of these places.