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Ran Prieur blog

Part 6

The Days of Tansy Capstone

Part 7: Return



"She is ever shaping new forms: what is, has never yet been; what has been, comes not again."
-Goethe, On Nature



58

Time Pit


"Better not kill it in youth
You might pass through that portal
Better not count on dying
You just might be immortal"

-Faun Fables, Live Old

Was I the Moon the whole time? Or were all the weird kids of the world competing to see who could be the Moon first? There is a right answer to that question, which I would later learn, but first those buildings were cliffs after all -- and what cliffs! The rock was soapy and chippable, and indigenes or hermits had carved cavities in line with the strata, to live in, so they were buildings after all.

Around a bend the rock roughened. You're not supposed to look back but I did, and the buildings were gone. The sun was directly overhead now and the shadows made it obvious. I could see them move and knew something was up, it had just been morning. It would be dark soon and I should find a place to camp.

Camping for a ten minute night was completely stupid, but that's the way I was thinking. And when I stopped, so did the sun. I turned around and the shadows jerked. I took a step back the way I came and the sun plunged.

I was in a time pit. Lots of people have been in them, and what not one of them says is, I dove right in, I chased that time to its very heart. What they say is, I didn't panic, I took the lost years and climbed out. If they tell a story of how they dallied, they tell it in an old-timey accent.

What else could I do? I had to dally. I had to feel the ins and outs, down to the inch and deeper, how slow downstream to make the sun quiver, how far up to make him flip. And somewhere I noticed, or I'd still be there, that it wasn't me that time was running away from. It was something in my pack.

The sky wheeled as I rifled through it. This was all because I split my avatar. Some item I carried was too important to exist in two places at once. I pulled out the Synchronators one by one, jiggled them all, and the sky strobed on indifferent.

Rolling my eyes, I pulled out Vance's dumb gun, and still a jiggle did nothing. Never will I be so happy to stay longer in a time pit. I dumped out the pack and the sun passed the persistence of vision, a white streak now, lightly waving with the seasons and then I saw it: the badge I got from the trashpicker.

I snatched it up and swayed with the seasons. The sun-streak wobbled like a top. I cocked my wrist to throw it and the sky-spin spread to a great stripe of everywhere the sun could be. I flung the badge with a hard spin, like skipping a stone, and the moment it left my fingers, it froze. It was all I could do to not touch it as I gathered my pack. In a million years it will clatter down the canyon. The sky settled to a gentle arc and I noped out.

I came out in summer, more verdant than the one I left. Desert marigolds were blooming, round and yellow like the sun, which what the fuck, was larger. Not any hotter, but how far had I timestretched? The cliffs didn't look any different and I was almost disappointed. If they were buildings they'd barely sagged, and it wasn't had to find that one spot. My circle of blood, if you knew just where to look, had fed a subtle greening in the lichens.

I squinted my eyes and there it was. Buildings, cliffs, buildings, cliffs, could it be this easy? I took a long last breath of the desert air, settled on buildings, and walked into Vegas.

I know where the other Tansy came out because that's where I came out, and we're the same person. All that stuff I just had her do, was partly cobbled from books and witnesses and dreams, and mostly just what I would have done. If I'm an unreliable narrator, I'm still the most reliable narrator in the world.

So what she must have seen is what I saw, but younger, the conapts just leaning and not half fallen over, the fireplugs not corroded into gargoyles, the adobe more chippy, the beam not rusted past recognition, the rubble more chunky. The first thing newer was the canal, which now smelled of strawberries, which meant I was even deeper in Utopia. In my time we'd never save every poop for berries.

I heard far drums and the bang of a pyrotechnic. It must be a festival, probably the solstice, the sun had been up a long time. That scent was so cloying that I climbed to get away from it, over broken breezeblocks and through an extruded neighborhood that was even more birdy. Sure enough, the first person I ran into was a birdwatcher, an old lady with her big butt on a picnic basket, one eye to a scope and the other under a monocle. If Vegas was still gamified, she'd fill me in.

"A russet-vested teenager," she said, "just out of timestretch."

"What gave it away?"

"Those dungarees!" She pointed to my pants, flax and simsilk from the Leaflings and ripping at the seams. "Those are vintage gold. The Prince of Staves would kill for them. Not really. We haven't had a murder since the last time I saw a grebe."

"What year is it?"

"99!" she said proudly. "Tonight."

"99 since what?"

"Oh, you don't know!" She pulled up the monocle, it was probably a placebo to read my aura, while she told me the news: "The Moon is back."

In ancient myth, there's a princess who splits her avatar, one to sit on the boring throne and one to go off and have adventures. I didn't know yet which one I was. Maybe the time pit was the throne, and the other me was out liberating the evil longitudes, or disgracing the good ones, while I waited for her to die.

But if the moon was the throne, and she had already been on it for 99 years, then what was I doing all that time? I'd timestretched for nothing. If I'd flung that badge at the first sign of trouble, I could have seen Mom and Dad again. Now it was all new people, unless some old people also timestretched.

I got an intuition, which I never get. I said, "You must see a lot of timestretchers."

"There's a time pit out past the far suburbs, no one can find it from this direction, but now and then someone pops out."

I said, "You've looked for it."

"The birds of the future," she sighed. "Time was I'd follow your footprints back, but they always peter out in the slabs."

"I got to the pit," I said, "by riding a spotted horse south out of Catscratch, with free rein into the sun."

"Huh," she said. "That's not at all what the last one said."


59

Festival


It wasn't far to the festival. I could smell sausages and hear yelps of the early revelers. Past the extruded suburb was a great slab of disused squats, then newer cabins, then the grounds, grass freshly cut and staked-down tents, just like at the Oasis.

The moon took a long time to come up. It's shy in summer, and while we waited they performed the Spectacle of the Redemption of Time. This was where I started to think I never woke up, and I still don't know from which sleep. But up on the stage, the Prince of Staves fought the Princess of Swords to a standstill, in front of a big clock. She cut his head off -- red lace and a hood -- and he fought on and flattened her. His dying act was to stick his big staff through the rings of the clock, triggering a clever mechanism that catapulted candy to the audience.

I said to the guy next to me, "Did that really happen?"

"They're still both alive," he said, and up on the stage, the performers popped up, took a bow, and the crew stripped it down for the main event. I listened in on chatter. This was the 99th anniversary of the Moon coming back, which made it the beginning of the 100th year. For people who counted it that way, it was a bigger deal. Some signs said 100, some said 99, in the evil longitudes they would have a holy war but here they took turns chanting.

In the southeast, a blue glow spread and the crowd hushed. Then up it popped, a great ghost white rim. I gasped. Everything the sky ever promised, here it was. Candy turned to cotton candy, mind's eye to eye's eye, third person to first person, I'm in! "It's real," I muttered. Luckily no one heard me. First there was a shocked silence that I took for awe, and then unhappy gasps, groans, oaths, wails. Trying hard to hide my ecstasy, I asked the guy beside me what was happening.

"Are you blind?" he said.

"Yes." I stared blankly.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I don't know how to say it. The Moon is dead."

I headed for the exit. "Hey," the guy said, "you're not blind."

"I'm sky-blind."

"I've never heard of that."

"You will."

The people were pretty herd-like and I was trying a shortcut when I bumped into the Princess. Her pants were a cheap knockoff of my exact pants. Her vest was pretty close, and she looked a lot like me. "Wow!" she said. "Your costume is really good. Is that a real sword?"

"The blood of the Prince is still on it."

"Whoa! Don't tell anyone. Weapons are illegal. Where are you from? None of my business!"

"Your play," I said. "Did that really happen?"

She gaped. "You're dressed as her and you don't know? You," she tapped my chest, "are fictional. But the Prince was a real guy, with a big staff, who saved the clock and lost his head. You should visit the museum. I'd offer you a ride, but we're going straight to Riffinheim."

"Riffinheim?" Sorry, I've been timestretching.

"Riffinheim has been there forever! Best chems in the west." She sniffed greedily. "The strawberry ester, they made it. Lance and I are taking the diffusers back. If you want a ride, we're going now, to make the most of the Moon."

"Lance?"

"The Prince of staffs, silly." She stuck out her hand. "I'm Daisy."


60

Museum


"Around and round you go
They'll never know what you've seen"

-Mark Lanegan, Museum

What is a place? To the late ancients, place came before even being. The void itself was gridded for future development. But before, and since, the person carries the place, a little basket of landscape that you roll out to serve your needs. They showed us models in metaphysics class, the monad throwing out its tendrils, turquoise knob and tinsel foil. If the tendrils of two should meet, and reach agreement, then you've got a folie a deux. From there on it only gets more boring.

What the moon did was just what I used to do: rubber-stamp the manifestations. Daisy and I closed our eyes so Lance could be alone with her, and though he steered us out of town, he kept complaining. "I hope the moon is sick," he said, "and not this way forever. I can barely skip and can't stretch at all."

"Let me try," said Daisy. They switched and Lance and I closed our eyes. I listened to the clumpity clump of the mules against the whuff of the shock absorbers until I heard the rhythms phase.

"This is about normal," said Daisy. "I'm stretching double and hardly skipping. But I have to confess. I never saw what was so great about the moon. A rock in the sky, it's nice to have the light up there, thanks moon, but what is everyone so so woo-woo about? And now they're all boo-hoo and to me it's the same old moon."

"That's why you're faster," said Lance. "The magic is gone but you never used the magic."

"Yes! Now I have the jump on all of you!"

"You can't be the only one," I said. "It has to be a thing, people who can't see in the sky, what opti-typicals can see."

"Cool," said Daisy. "They must call it sky blindness."

Out on the old highway, Daisy finally let me drive. I'd been itching the whole time. I could see what the moon knew about the land, and would show me, if only those two would look away.

The Moon told me a riddle. "If a road goes through a land where no one's looking, then what is a road?" There is no place without a person, so either the road isn't a place, or where is the person? The answer is, the person is in the mind of the traveler, every person who ever walked the road, but why should I listen to them if they're all going different places?

Under her fullness, I had an understanding deeper than mere stitching. Sure, if you have your own water, the part of the road that passes the pump doesn't need to be there. But if you are your own person, what's a road but where you need to go?

We came out of the trees at the exact spot where I came out not two weeks ago, and there was Vance still sitting on that rock.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," said Daisy. "Whoa, where are we?"

Vance's statue was already old enough to be discolored. He was sitting in exactly the same position, but instead of leering smugly, he was all saintly and vacant. The real Vance would hate it, and also the bird poop.

I was about to break in, but Daisy used to volunteer there and knew where they hid the key. I had her wait by the door while I went in, shaking his flashlight and there he was, the real Vance, the skull that they couldn't stop from looking evil no matter how much they whitened it. "You'll be a villain again one day," I said. "When this clock has been scavenged for marauding engines, and when the empires that did that have been forgotten, I see your petrified skull on the staff of some wizard king."

"What?" said Daisy. She switched on her flashlight, a sepia cone that outshone Vance's blue beam on a single shake. "Let's swap," I said, and gave up a holy artifact for a light that worked.

Deeper in those golden gleams were glass cases: the staff, the shovel, and the scribe tool. Up on the wall they had the whole story of how the prince of the Sky Dividers levered out the boulder, how he broke the glass, and face to face with the Clock he had a conversion. At the top of the mountain he prayed to the Sun, who passed down the solar alphabet for all mankind.

The Clock itself, after threats from Subjectivists, was behind a heavy wall with iron doors, anyway I'd just seen it. The burns on my knuckles hadn't even totally healed, and scholarly theses on the runes were gathering dust. Time, what a trip.

I thought about leaving a note, telling the curator to check the radial angles on the axe strikes used to shape the staff, because they had to be made by a smaller person. But I didn't. I'm glad they don't know.


61

Riffinheim


We all went down to Riffinheim
To trade a pail of turpentine
For one clean dram of dream elixir
Said the master, see my sister

Up in Eifelheim we found her
Days like leaves all blowing round her
We gave her all our bliss and pain
She sent us home with urethane

-Children's song, circa ¤ ¥

Riffinheim was a clean glide. I probably slowed us down looking at the sagebrush, while Lance smoked a spliff and told me all about the Angel who came down in a skyplane and gave the monks Chemistry.

I said, "Did that really happen?"

"Who knows? They probably just bought a kit from Dugworth's." He took a huff. "Without Riffinheim Deet, you'd never get across Transcanadia."

"OK," I said, "Pretend I have no idea what you're talking about."

"About what?"

He was dumb enough for both of us, so I got right to the point. "Tell me about the mosquitoes."

"Tripsie Skeets, right! Once I went camping and got bit ten times. I thought the tent was trying to eat me."

"Do people do it on purpose? Get bit?"

"Oh sure, the Skeetheads." He said it like it was a bad thing.

"You're hard sussed right now, how is Lucy worse?"

"Oh, it's not Lucy. It's Skeet. Lucy's so frizz, half a dram will buy you a trip around the world to sell it. Skeet takes you inside yourself in an unclean way. It's a primal substance. I wouldn't do it on purpose."

I was absolutely going to do it on purpose. Right now I was craned around watching the moon. "Whoa," I said, "it gets bigger at the horizon."

"That's an illusion," said Daisy.

"No," said Lance, "it really does get bigger."

"Says who? Measure it with your hand, you dolt."

Before they could settle the argument, we got there. I saw the great wings waving in the last moonlight, aluminum gleaming like new, gossamer filters coruscating with every caught molecule. For a moment I thought I had looped back in time, to the last age when the original condensers were made. But it was only that the monks had reverse-enginered the paradigm.

Lance explained how they didn't have monks anymore. The Congress of Faiths said they had to integrate monks and nuns, so they abolished both monks and nuns, and made everyone a Chemist. They have special Chemists for the condensers, called Accumulators, drawn from Scruffs and Quats who don't know how water and air are supposed to work, and you're not supposed to tell them if you want to keep bathing.

"Quats?" I said, but just then we came in view of the tower. It was like an ancient refinery tower, and about as big, all patched out of scraps and glassy in the last light of the moon, and ringed with catwalks all the way up. That was where they made all the most important chems, and I wanted so bad to sneak up and dose the Deet with Lucy. That would definitely be wrong, and I would have done it if Daisy hadn't laid out my sack. Sorry evil, you'll never be as good as sleep, and I didn't get another chance.

In midmorning I awoke to the hiss and whuff of Chemists sparging the towers. There must have been a hundred. The big one was next to a stone lodge all festooned with vents for experiments. The younger Chemists lived there, and the senior Chemists had their own cabins and their own little towers. Even the outhouse had a hookah.

They never offered us a tour, but they fed us oatcakes and mead, enough that Lance and Daisy stayed around to wait for the next job. I went to say goodbye, and Daisy pulled me aside and said, "Look in my eyes."

I did and it was nothing, just her eyes and mine, clear as the sky. I didn't see her soul and she wasn't afraid.

She whispered, "I saw what you did on the road. You're her, aren't you? The real princess."

"Shhh."


62

Shrinking


I looked in Daisy's eyes and knew it. I thought I'd landed in friendlier times, because people were so chatty, but it was just that I'd lost the stare of the void. Cedric was right, that wasn't me who came out of the Oubliet. She was better than me. Propelled by fate and stars, she bounced around like a pinball and fell to the sky. Now it was just old me.

When the Ancients talked about becoming a better person, they called it growth, that was like their thing. But it always feels to me like shrinking. Some part of me that wasn't doing any good is, maybe not killed, but turned into a mouse, peering from the corners of the self. If the other me had taken one of my powers, had she taken all of them? Could I rectify? Could I not land-bend?

It turns out that whole "there is no road" thing is really hard, and you need a good reason. Now I was just out testing my wheels, and under a gibbous moon it was like Lily and I used to be, and this time I got to be Lily, looking at the actual unfolding of the land, and crashing.

The key to manifesting, said Father Ripple, is to imagine youself not getting the thing. That's the dumbest advice I've ever heard. I mean, when a forager comes back loaded with honey mushrooms, or a land-bender outraces the pigeons, or a mech reaches into his case and pulls out a tool he maybe never bought, he doesn't say, the key to manifesting 5/8 is to imagine 7/16. But every time I wiped out in some arroyo, I tried it, manifested myself taking the actual slow steps that I was taking, nothing more, and pretty soon the land picked it up. I felt the distance, the pull of canyons and push of mesas. I navigated by the stars and they didn't even get nervous. I must have dragged sagebrushes for miles in my wake, like they care.

Every night she got up later, and smaller, and at half moon it was less than half a bend. After a long night, I limped into Nephi at sunrise, and came up to a great blocky sign: NEPHI-MERIDIAN RAILROAD.

I just knew that I was going to see a giant statue of Nix, but there was nothing, not even a placard in the station about whoever did this. I was on time for the morning shuttle but didn't have the ten shoes fare. The train rolled off while I waited for the treasury to open, and they wouldn't take Devlin's spurs, they said I had to go to a museum. So I went to the outfitter and traded Daisy's flashlight for a box of nutbars and two shoes for the slow train.

We were all packed on a flatbed. The other rabble didn't smell any worse than I did, and I squirmed up front to watch the land unravel, exactly as fast as it was supposed to. It was kind of hypnotic after all the bending. I went into a trance where nothing impossible happened. The engine, a great bank of barrel capacitors, did not throw sparks to mock the stars, nor tune the hum of the Absolute. The rails did not remember their pre-scrap sleekness, nor the ties skip up the powers of two. The other passengers just ignored the zonked out girl and we rattled on.

At Spanish Fork we stopped to swap out the bearings. I heard them cracking the whole way, and now they pulled out the cartridges and popped in new ones. We had to wait on a siding for the shuttle to pass. We watched them bouncing along on their springs, wearing their poncy hats and not even looking around. They probably rode faster horses.

At Lehi they were trying to bring the lake back, and we passed through a swamp where nozzles misted the whole cattlecar with Deet. I regretted not dosing it, it would be fun to see this crowd flip. I couldn't wait to get back to Meridian and get bit, but Salt City had something I wanted more.

The Hall of Records was a great grey ziggurat of poured concrete, windowless, its terraces bristling with cacti and blooming with light collectors. Inside the building the light was all tubes and mirrors, and in the great atrium, when I saw the sim-sunbeam not even in the same direction as the actual sun, I knew I could never trust these people.

I waited in line for a monk and queried: Tansy Capstone. He came back with nothing. I waited again and queried: Daysie Mayhem, and on some dim-lit wall of scrolls he found her.

Daysie Mayhem: Apocryphal. Villainess invented by turn-of-the-moon Nativists, blamed implausibly for numerous anomalies. Passed out of lore with the death of Saint Tony.

I didn't want to wait a week for all my queries, and luckily I hadn't gone so far into Utopia that they wouldn't take bribes. I gave the monk a silver spur, he showed it to a Meister, and I got my own monk. This is some of what I found.

Deva, Jackaroo. Fictional protagonist of Providence (rel+8) author and socialite Jack Pentameron.

Pentameron, Jack. Though apparently never leaving his home continent, he spun wild tales of far-flung adventures that captivated a decade of youths. Titles include Jackaroo Deva at the Academy, Jackaroo Deva in the Evil Longitudes, and Jackaroo Deva in Gondwanaland. (b m-20, d m+84, m Yarrow, ch 1)

Rectifier: Pre-Moon phenomenon in which one person was reported to have the objective zonk of a great many persons. Of many claimants, the best known is the anonymous Rectifer of the Long Now.

Long Now: Giant timepiece crafted by the ancients at at least three longitudes, the primary at (rel 0) and inscribed with a novel set of year glyphs, since adopted by folklorists.

Nix, Pinkerton. 59th Grand Divizier of the Sky Dividers, and the first since Ambrose to be excommunicated for divisiveness, after boasting of the extra-judicial disfigurement of a maiden. An accomplished wizard, he is believed to have fled into timestretch. (b m-26, d ?)

Synchronator: Fad flasher circa m 0. Briefly enabled acausal messaging, but soon regressed to midline divinatory.

Dugworth, Carvil. Founder of Dugworth and Sons, major extant Birdland outfitter. Grew his business on a replica lighter, a line of neo-indigenous trailwear, a novelty strobe light, and a bestselling last age memoir, Proofs of My Return. (b m-34, d m+50, m Bella, ch 5)

Devlin, Roger. Jiang, Evelyn. Ripp, Levi. No record.

Capstone, Radagast. Chair of Pareidolia at Threeforks Institute, best known for expanding tree pareidolia to grass. (b m-34, d m+50, m Tetra, ch 0)


63

Shoes and Loafs


I took that roll of spurs to all the moneychangers, only showing them one, and they all said that's auction only, let me sponsor it.

I didn't want to wait for an auction, I had to go get bit. But I had no scrip, and the only other thing I had that anyone wanted was my pants. I took the synchronators to every gadget shop and nobody even knew what they were. I didn't want to show the gun, and I was about to sleep in a fountain when I saw it.

Hanging in a case was a modest native-made safari suit, hand-stiched and skin tight to one person: me. The Leaflings had made it a size too big, and also it was dumb colors, puke beige and forest green. I took the russet and olive that fit me, but it was a weaker fabric, and now it was threadbare and priceless on my ass, while this one was tough as nails and not for sale.

I said to the proprietor, "Suit for suit."

He frowned like that was ungenerous, and pointed out the superior condition of his dweeb scoutmaster uniform to my trendy outlaw duds. I said, whatever, and pulled out a spur. He fell to his knees. "I'm sorry, I was overbargaining. The one you offer has three times the value. Keep the coin, I'll give you something more."

He went in back and I checked out the suit. It already smelled like me, and also like snow. Then he came out with what he'd looted from one of the pockets. It was the white synchronator, the one I already had.

In the end I traded everything down to my socks for the newer and better version. Even my condenser was an heirloom. He wouldn't take the spur and gave me a roll of shoes and a roll of loafs, both non-depreciating, and a roll of silvery decishekels. They would drop hard at the winter solstice, but I wasn't going to be around that long.

A shoe is one city one day. I didn't want to blow a whole shoe just to get back to the station, so I walked, paid a loaf for bed and breakfast, and the next day I paid most of my shoes for a full rail shuttle to Meridian. It took off not even as fast as a landbend, and so bouncy that every seat had a barf bag, but I was loving it, and wondering who did all the work to build the tracks.

At Bountiful there they were, a whole colony camped on a siding: Quatheads. We're supposed to call them Quats, now that they're useful, but they did hardly any work. For every five or ten who were lounging or singing or eating or discreetly boning, one or two would be digging or grading or laying ties.

The porter saw me looking. "They only keep moving," he said, "because they run out of places to bury their poop. The townsfolk bring pies and suss, as long as they stay on the line surveyed by the local rectifier. That there will be the main track when it's done, and this is a prime crew, don't look like much but they do a mile a year and smooth. Other towns are trying to lure them away..."

I zoned out on what he was saying, and listened to their song:

I'll be workin' on the railroad
In just a few more days
First I gotta smoke a bale, lord
Go thy, go thy way

Dincha hear the whistle, cousin?
No I slept all day
Doncha hear the bees a buzzin'
Go thy, go thy way


64

Afield


Tripsie Skeets are bad at sucking blood, that's why they have to be symbiotic. In the tiny volume they can inject, the psychs bump the anticoagulants until they're sucking lumps while you're tripping balls.

I could see them as we neared Meridian, off in the trees in the night, the ghostly lanterns waving. Tripsie skeets glow green in UV, so the Skeetheads know just which ones to get bit by, and which ones to snuff. It's a huge advantage wherever there are dweebs.

In Meridian I spent a loaf on a soft bed and a stack of pancakes, and blew a shoe on a rickshaw to the source. The Skeetheads built their shrine in the wrong place, so the actual place was still abandoned. Some of the building where we made the Lucy was still leaning, and I hacked through brush to the ancient half basement where I stashed the barrel.

What if that barrel wasn't still there, and filthier than ever. The ancient polyethylene just shrugged off a century like I did. "Hello old friend," I said, and set up camp.

What is the sound of one hand clapping? Because that's the kill move of the Skeetheads. After a lot of field testing, they get one hand slightly wet, and clap that non-madness-inducing insect to a paste. It sounded fun, but they wanted five decishekels for the crappiest lantern, and the hand-dampening sponge was gross. I just decided to let all the mosquitoes bite me, and at sunset I took the tiniest sip from my steel flask.

The last thing I remember is trying to feel, from the pricks of the bugs, which was which. The next thing I remember, I was floating above my body. It was so cool! The psych was working like it was supposed to. I tried to rise up, but the Earth held me, so I ran through the ruins, fast as a bullet, light as a ghost, over the highway in a leap and out into the scrub. A canyon loomed. Too wide to leap, I tumbled to the bottom and rode the water south, then it was up a bumpy plateau, and over a pass to Catscratch. At this speed I could practice stitching ridges, and I cycloned the sagebrush until I heard a voice.

"Tansy, help me!"

This had to be some kind of evil scam, but I had to know how they knew my name. I stopped just short of a gully and listened. Up from the crack came Lily's voice. "Tansy," she said, "it's really me. I've been tracking you for the shadow walking academy. You have a quality we're seeking, and I was on my way to tell you, but I fell and broke my leg. Tansy, are you there?"

I imagined Jack, his angelic voice by the fire, and there it was.

"Tansy," he said, "it's really me. I came through your latitude and cakewalked your passing, but I bonked the impression and broke my leg."

"Vance?" I said, and sure enough, out from behind a rock popped an enormous vulture. His beak was sharp and crow-like, his eyes black and gleaming. He even had that grin.

"What did you do with his soul?" he echoed.

Okay, this was definitely a bad trip. I drew my blade.

"Cut his head off!" said my mom. It was a different bird, behind me. "More food for us!" Two more birds landed.

"I was right about you," said Cedric. I swung hard and he dodged it, but with my other hand I plucked a big feather from his wing. "Ow!" said my dad. "That hurt."

I spun as three more landed. Whose dream was this anyway? I tried to fly and couldn't. They dodged my swings and pecked at my back. "You're so predictable."

I fought hard, but those birds ate me. "Hot and sweet!" exulted Vance, spearing a chunk of my liver. "You should do therapy," I gritted, and passed out.

I woke up back at camp, sweat-soaked and itching everywhere. I rolled over and threw up, and staggered down to that nasty barrel to rinse. I flopped down under the stars and finally noticed what my left hand still clutched: the feather.


It's a good thing I didn't dose the Deet. I needed it to not get bit again while I recovered enough to not show up in my hometown looking like a Skeethead, which I was. It took about five days and I had time to scrub that barrel and refill it, get cleaned up, and experiment with the Synchronators.

"Quantum entanglement," explained Devlin, "means that if two particles have ever touched, one can flip, and the other will flip with it, even across a billion light years."

"Science is so romantic!" I said. "But doesn't the light get bored, just crossing your empty universe for a billion years?"

"Actually, from the perspective of a photon, no time ever passes."

That blew my mind. I said, "I bet everybody wants to get reincarnated as a photon."

"No, no one does. Science doesn't believe in reincarnation."

"What a waste."

I held the two devices up and played spot the difference. The trick is to cross your eyes so they perfectly overlap, and any difference will jump out. What jumped out was, this is one thing. The grains of wood were the same, that I expected, but what I didn't expect was that the scuffs were the same. How could they do that?

With my left thumbnail I made a tiny indentation above the dial, and felt it appear with my right thumbnail. My right thumb spun the dial and the one dial spun. I tried to fight it with my left, and both thumbs threw a tickle down to my elbows. They were moving together because they wanted to move together. I couldn't make them fight. The part of me that even saw two thumbs was forgotten. The tickle climbed to my shoulders, and this was not a time I felt like taking chances. I dropped that thing and marveled at my two hands.


65

Threeforks


"'However far you may journey,' it is said, 'you will always come back to the point of departure.'"

-Henry Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis

I spent my last shoes on the stagecoach to Hog Heaven. With the moon waxing I could have walked there faster but I wanted to put my feet up. The "stage" was every time the mules felt like stopping, and at one place they stopped so long that a crew of Quats almost caught up with us. I listened to their call-and-response:

Dig, brother, dig -- The rocks are against us
Big, brother, big -- So is the sun
Rest, brother, rest -- Unzip your tent, sis
Blest, brother, blest -- Let's have some fun

I'd already heard about it, but it was something to see. Hog Heaven had been totally taken over by Quats. The town looked like a birdsnest. Everything square and airtight had been replaced by something round and leaky, roofs of matted thatching and walls of clayed-up firewood. I thought it would be more smoky but they had deep-burning stoves and tall pipes barely bending the air with their fumes.

Right in the center of downtown was a fountain, just like the one I got shot by, and now I could tell what it was supposed to be: a dahlia. The whole place was full of them in bronze flowers and actual flowers, and there was a double life size statue of a dopey Quat holding out his hands like a priest. One hand was full of seeds and the other was full of turds.

A plaque read: "Saint Barkevius summons the Fairy of Verve." Wow, they almost got it right.

I walked the river road to Threeforks, and the snoots must have moved down from the hills, because all along the river were their manors, great square beams and metal roofs, all surrounded by native plants tastefully arranged when they'd rather run riot.

The Garage Mahal was still pumping out. There was a sign-up sheet as long as my arm, and daguerrotypes of people holding up books and pens.

I didn't see any willows I recognized. They don't live that long. And coming into town, more and more of the trees were food-bearing. There wasn't even a community garden any more, it was all garden. They were going to have to drive off the coyotes who eat whatever eats the fruit, because I gorged on salmonberries and barely made a dent. What would happen in the fall with apples?

Over where the playfield used to be I saw the tops of great chestnuts, and that little bridge was trellised with peachy modquats. It was newly planked and I walked up and down until I found the squeak. The bridge probably hadn't noticed yet.

Our old house, what else, was Quats. My dad would be horrified, three Quatbabies in his old bedroom. People ask, how can you tell them from normal humans? How can you not tell? First it's like they tuned the sloth oracle, they can't move fast even if they're on fire. They don't care what they look like, and they rarely bathe, but okay, neither do I. And you're not supposed to say it, but their heads are definitely smaller. And good for them. The bigger the head, the bigger the mistakes. I'll say this for Quats, which I would never say for normal humans. Sometimes I wish I was one.

I had to climb the hill to find out who was living up there now, with the snoots on the river. That's right, it was the Leaflings. Their layout was just like the Ranch, a great hall and a hundred hovels. I heard hammers in workshops and the faint dice of gamers. Oldsters out sunning barely noticed me. On the back side of the hill, they had turned all the racket courts to pig pens, and the fields to pig-grade wingnuts.

It was Saturday evening. I found a pump to drink from, a shed to sleep in, and got up early for church.

The Pansolipsists weren't there any more, or they had fallen out of fashion and moved to a smaller building. Now it was the Socinians. I'm a place person, not a people person, so whatever religion it turned out to be, I went in for the service. In the end it wasn't that different from the Pansolipsists. They used the word "monad" a lot, and loved to talk about God's limitations.

"The Ancients wondered," said the priest: "Can God make a rock so big that He can't lift it? I wonder: Why would God do anything else? For in becoming the God who can lift it, we as One as we as all, become we know not what. Go with God."

Then he tapped the wine barrel while the hippies came out to sing, and my jaw hit the floor. It was those same fucking hippies.

For a moment I thought I was a girl again, that I'd dreamed the whole thing and would turn to see Mom and Dad beside me. It seemed like a hundred years ago, and it was. They hadn't even changed the words:

Peace which passeth proper thinking
Deep beneath my sleep be slinking
Dreams that I forget on waking
Days of paths more sweet for taking
Up the other side of nowhere
Who will go if I don't go there?
Through the stars to my last landing
Peace which passeth understanding






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