Radiant

shut up!'

Taking a breath, I said, 'Look. Let’s start over. Was there a day we went to that temple and something extraordinary happened?'

'Why do you want to know?' Again, answering my question with a question.

'Why don’t you want to tell me?' I said, giving her another question back. 'You’re being so evasive, it sounds like something did happen, and you’re afraid to admit it.'

I paused. Mother said nothing — looking somewhere off-screen. 'Don’t be shy,' I said. 'It’s not like I’ll think you’ve gone crazy. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an Explorer, it’s that the universe is full of strangeness. I’ll believe whatever you tell me.'

Mother gave me a look. 'If you’ve finally begun to believe what I say, the universe is getting strange indeed.' She sighed. 'We were in the pagoda, Youn Suu. You were watching a pair of Neo-Tantrics doing their usual in a corner. You were pretending to meditate, but you were twelve years old, fascinated by all kinds of sex and not good at hiding your interest. People were watching you more than the Neo-Tants; you were so obvious, the way you kept taking oh-so-casual peeks at the couple in the corner, and I suppose a lot of folks found that cute.'

'Or they just couldn’t take their eyes off my cheek.'

'Maybe that too,' Mother said. 'You always drew attention. It was hard taking you out in public. I got so embarrassed…' She shook her head. 'I guess that’s what happened at the temple. I was embarrassed by everybody looking at you, so I thought I’d go outside for a few minutes. Get some air. Pretend you weren’t with me. But when I got to the door…'

'You went to the door?'

'Yes. And outside, a bunch of statues were covered with stuff that hadn’t been there when we came in. Purple jelly, black sand, lava… every statue had something crawling on it.'

'You saw the statues?'

'That’s what I’m saying. You were too busy staring at two not-very-attractive people having sex, but I saw what I saw.'

'What about the Buddha statue? The one inside the pagoda, in the fountain.'

'That was the strangest part,' my mother said. 'I came running back inside to get you — to drag you away someplace safe, in case the stuff on the statues was dangerous — and I glanced at the Buddha, just for half a second. In that instant, the statue was suddenly replaced with a woman in a wheelchair. She was moss from the waist down, Youn Suu: glowing red moss. And she was looking at you. You had your back to her, so you didn’t see. But she smiled at you. Her eyes were hidden behind her hair, but I could see her mouth, and she smiled. She lifted her hands toward you in the Wisdom mudra… then she disappeared, and the Buddha was back to normal. When I got you outside, the other statues were back to normal too. I hustled you away before anything else happened and never told you what I’d seen. Never went back to that temple either.' She gave me a probing look. 'Well? Was that what you wanted to hear?'

I couldn’t answer — once again frozen in surprise. Kaisho Namida, the mossy woman in the wheelchair… she’d shown up on Anicca? She’d been interested in me? And she’d made the Wisdom mudra: one of the many hand gestures used to symbolize virtues and principles of faith. Had she been suggesting I needed to strive for wisdom? Was she bestowing wisdom upon me?

If she had given me wisdom, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t understand any of this. My mother had just confirmed that the events of my 'memory' had actually taken place… but she was the one who saw the aliens, while I missed everything. And her account differed from my memory in several respects. She’d seen Kaisho in the fountain; I’d seen the Buddha covered with moss.

One thing seemed certain: the Balrog had played with my mind. Sort of. The spores had given me a memory of things I would have seen for myself if I hadn’t been a silly twelve-year-old distracted by sex. Thanks to that artificial memory, I’d contacted my mother to find out what really happened…

…and I’d learned that seven years ago, the Balrog was already interested in me. It had sent Kaisho to 'bless' me — perhaps knowing that my attention would be elsewhere and that I’d only be told the truth when my mother saw fit to share what she’d seen. The Balrog had been watching me (stalking me?) back when I was twelve: long before I became an Explorer. Now it had given me a false memory, possibly to prod me into calling my mother in search of the real story.

It wanted me to know about the temple. The Balrog was sending me a message. I just didn’t understand what the message was.

'Youn Suu,' Mother said, 'are you all right?'

'I’m fine,' I said in reflex — automatically shutting my mother out, refusing to yield information about how I really was. I forced myself to say, 'Actually, I don’t know how I am. I feel okay, but like I told you, I’ve got alien spores in my guts. Who knows what they’ll do to me?' I could have told her I might end up like the wheelchair-bound moss victim she’d seen in the temple, but why sensationalize? 'How are you doing?' I asked to deflect the conversation. 'Is, uhh… is this Raymond nice?'

Mother looked at me with suspicion — maybe worried I’d launch into a tirade. 'I told you, Youn Suu, he’s just a friend.'

'I hope it works out for you, Mother. Really.'

She stared at me a moment. 'You’re in bad trouble, aren’t you.'

'Yes. All kinds of it.'

Silence. Then: 'You’re strong. I told the man at the birth clinic, ‘Make her strong.’ And he did. I did everything I could to make you strong. You’ll be okay. Really.'

Part of me wanted to say, Don’t be ridiculous, Mother, you didn’t do everything you could. You paid a lot of money in the bioengineering phase, but once I was born, and you saw my face, you lost every drop of enthusiasm. After that, I was just a burden. But I stifled the words. 'I am strong,' I said. 'We’ll see what happens next.'

We both pressed our DISCONNECT buttons. Neither of us said good-bye.

Still too early for bed. I found I was surprisingly hungry, but couldn’t go down to the mess hall again for fear that Tut was still there. (What was I afraid would happen? Don’t ask. I refused to contemplate the possibilities.) With no other way to distract myself, I went back to my latest Princess Gotama statue. A few minutes later, when the door chirped to announce a visitor, I gratefully said, 'Come in.'

I thought it might be Festina, or perhaps Captain Cohen checking up on me in grandfatherly concern. To my surprise, it was Commander Miriam Ubatu of the Outward Fleet Diplomacy Corps… looking less like a VIP and more like an ordinary nineteen-year-old coming to visit someone her age. The diamond studs were gone from her nose (replaced by simple steel wire), and she’d changed from her gold uniform into unprepossessing civilian clothes: plain black T-shirt and plain black pants, with enough silver skin-embeds on her arms and bare midriff to soften the black-on-black 'ninja Amazon' effect. Still, she was a superior officer; I scrambled to my feet and gave a salute, which she waved away without returning. 'Forget the formalities, Youn Suu. This isn’t a business visit.'

'Was there something you needed?' I asked… thinking she might have run out of champagne or wanted her uniform pressed.

'No, I’m fine. I thought we could talk.'

I almost said, Talk about what? But the words sounded rude in my head, as if I doubted Ubatu and I had any common ground for conversation. Instead, I went with simple politeness: 'Would you like to sit down?'

She took the only chair — the one at my desk. I settled onto the bed… sitting perched on the edge rather than letting myself relax. Whatever Ubatu had come for, I doubted this would be a session of casual girl talk.

'So how are you feeling?' she asked — not meeting my eyes.

'You mean with the Balrog inside me?'

'Yes. Do you feel… different?'

'Not really. Whatever the spores are doing to my body, there’s no noticeable sensation.'

'I see.' Ubatu glanced my way, then averted her eyes again. 'Do you think the Balrog is affecting your mind?'

'Why do you ask?' My mother wasn’t the only one who could answer a question with a question.

'I just wanted…' Ubatu paused and bit her lip, as if trying to decide whether to say something. Finally she took a deep breath. 'Have you heard of Ifa-Vodun?'

'Is that a person?'

'No. Ifa-Vodun means Spirit of Prophecy. It’s a movement.'

'You mean a religion.'

She shrugged. 'I see it more as a sensible response to humanity’s position in the cosmos.'

'What position would that be?'

'The bottom of the heap, looking up. Above us are all kinds of aliens with varying degrees of power and knowledge… so it makes sense for us to reach out however we can. Contact some of those aliens and see what happens.'

'Don’t we do that already?' I asked. 'You’re in the Diplomacy Corps. Surely you know how hard the navy and Technocracy government keep working to establish relations with higher aliens.'

Ubatu made a face. 'Oh yes, they’re constantly trying to ‘establish relations’… old-fashioned diplomacy with official envoys, and embassies, and notes of accreditation. But our diplomatic protocols have always been geared for creatures on our own intellectual level, not for higher beings. In the four centuries since we left Old Earth, our diplomacy hasn’t got anywhere with elevated lifeforms. Sometimes an advanced entity will speak to selected humans for its own purposes, but it doesn’t work the other way. Standard diplomacy has failed to set up any back-and-forth dialogue.'

'In the Explorer Academy,' I said, 'our teachers believed that higher lifeforms don’t want back-and-forth dialogue… any more than we humans want dialogue with slugs and earthworms. As you said, higher lifeforms only interact with humans when it suits their own purposes. Otherwise, they have better things to do than chat with Homo sapiens.'

'Exactly!' Ubatu smiled as if I’d just proved her point. 'We’ve been trying to catch higher aliens’ attention for four centuries. If they wanted to talk to us, they would have. So isn’t it time to admit that conventional diplomacy doesn’t work?'

I kept my face passive, but internally I winced. When people announce that diplomacy has failed, there’s always a Plan B they’re eager to try. History is littered with disastrous Plan Bs. 'What’s the alternative to diplomacy?' I asked.