Radiant

end of my arms.

'You’re having her dream,' the other Youn Suu said. 'She can’t have it herself — she’s awake.'

'Besides' — Kaisho chuckled-'Festina would hate receiving messages in dreams. Such a rationalist! If she dreamed two plus two equaled four, she’d automatically mistrust it. You, on the other hand, will pay attention. Oneiromantic prophecies are in your blood. Literally.'

'You mean my veins are full of Balrog spores?'

'Shush,' Kaisho told me. 'There’s one universal rule of prophecy, recognized by every thread of human culture: you don’t get to ask clarifying questions. You just listen and suck it up.'

'Then,' Youn Suu added, 'if you’ve got a milligram of sense, you interpret the message like an intelligent mensch, rather than some self-centered oaf who’s never learned the concept of ‘double meaning.’ '

'I know how prophecies work,' I said. 'The wise benefit, while fools work their own destruction.'

The second Youn Suu turned to Kaisho. 'Pompous little bint, aren’t I?'

'She’s quoting,' Kaisho replied.

'I knew that.' The other Youn Suu turned back to me. 'Are you ready to hear the message?'

I nodded.

'Okay,' the Youn Suu said. 'Give her the message, Kaisho.'

Kaisho frowned. 'I thought you had the message.'

'How can I have the message?' my double said. 'I’m just Youn Suu. I have no words of wisdom, and I certainly don’t know anything about the future.'

'Well, I don’t have a message either,' Kaisho said. 'I’ve been the Balrog’s meat pasty for decades, but do the blasted spores tell me anything? Not bloody likely. I get sent on errands all over the galaxy, and most of the time I don’t have the slightest hint what I’m supposed to do.' She glanced at me. 'Get used to faking it, sister. Our mossy master loves us dearly, but he never spells things out.'

'So we go to all this trouble,' the other Youn Suu muttered, 'for an honest-to-goodness dream visitation, and we don’t have anything to say?' She looked down on me from her place above the fountain. 'This is a great steaming mound of embarrassment, isn’t it?'

'I get the message,' I said.

'You do?'

'I do. But did you have to lay it on so thickly? I’m just Youn Suu. I have no words of wisdom, and I certainly don’t know anything about the future. Spare me the gushing humility.'

Youn Suu gave me a dubious look. 'That’s the message you think we’re sending? Some crap about having faith in yourself? Sweetheart, if tripe like that was all we had to offer, we’d send you a goddamned greeting card.'

'You’ve stopped talking like me,' I said. 'I don’t swear, and I don’t use words like ‘sweetheart.’ '

'How about words like ‘fucking smart-ass’?' My own face glowered at me, then turned to Kaisho. 'Come on, moss-breath, we’re done here.'

Kaisho gave me a piercing stare. 'Are we done? Do you know what you have to teach Festina?'

'How would I know that?' I said. 'I’m just Youn Suu. I have no words of wisdom. I certainly don’t know anything about the future.'

The thing that looked like me made a growling sound in its throat. 'Buddhists! You can have them, spore-head. They’re all yours. Give me a hot-looking glass chick with legs and an attitude, and I’ll make the galaxy my bitch!'

The Youn Suu look-alike winked out of existence. Kaisho looked apologetic. 'Sorry. He can never resist putting on a show.'

'Who was he?' I asked.

'A friend of the Balrog’s.'

'Some great and powerful alien?'

'Of course,' Kaisho said. 'He and the Balrog are working together on a project. Along with a good many others in the League.'

'What are they all up to?'

Kaisho smiled. 'You’ll figure it out. When you do, tell Festina. It’s time she knew.'

'No hints?'

'Sure, here’s a hint. Become enlightened. Then you’ll know everything.'

'How do I become enlightened?'

Kaisho shrugged. 'It’s easy. Just wake up.'

I woke up. Dream over. And despite the lack of direct information, I felt I’d learned a lot.

I’d learned that when I reached out to the Balrog — when I needed the solace of contact — the Balrog was ready to answer.

Oblique, frustrating answers… but enough to assure me I wouldn’t live my life in numb solitary confinement.

I rode peacefully on the flooded Grindstone. The rain had stopped. Above me, the sky was full of stars.

An hour before dawn, I reached the lake created by the Stage Two station’s dam. The current was slower but still perceptible; muddy water poured thick as cream over the dam, taking with it leaves and other debris floating on the lake’s surface. I could easily swim against the pull. Taking my time, conserving my strength, I stroked toward the station.

My skin had not turned to moss; that hadn’t been necessary. When the nanomesh uniform sensed my body temperature dropping to unacceptable levels, it had puffed itself up: from a skintight sheath to a thick layer of fabric filled with air bubbles. It held my body heat like foam insulation, even stretching itself to cover my hands and most of my head — just the face left bare so I could see and breathe. I offered my thanks to the Unity’s foresight, giving their survey teams all-weather clothes.

The outfit reminded me of a cold-water diving suit I’d worn during scuba training at the Academy… except that the Unity uniform was still colored in multihued camouflage patterns matching the local foliage. I attracted much interest from plant-eating fish who thought I might be a tasty mat of ferns floating on the surface. My slow swimming kept them from coming too close (even mid-Triassic fish were smart enough to know that plants didn’t do the breaststroke) but I accumulated a crowd of followers who wistfully hoped I might prove to be food.

Onshore, Festina and the diplomats continued toward the station. Their journey wasn’t as easy as mine; walking through semi-jungle gets tiring. At least they had adequate light for traveling — Festina carried a number of spare glow-tubes. The Bumbler also helped. It could scan ahead for trouble, letting them pick better routes and reducing the need for backtracking. Still, they hadn’t had a pleasant time. Ubatu was injured and weakened from blood loss. Li was in decent physical shape for a civilian, but came nowhere near matching Festina’s level of endurance. He whined… demanded frequent rest breaks… didn’t push himself to keep up.

Once Li stopped and refused to go any farther. By sixth sense I heard him say, 'This is absurd! We’re stumbling around in the dark. I’m not budging another millimeter till morning.' Festina took her time responding: probably deciding what tack to take with a stubborn diplomat. Ubatu, however, just grabbed Li by his pricey silk shirt and shook him, making incomprehensible sounds of rage through her ruined mouth. It worked far better than rational argument — a few hard cuffs, and Li started moving again.

Deeper out in the bush, Tut was also on the move. He had to be: if he slowed down, he’d die. A beanpole like him, with little insulating fat and no clothes but masks, could only survive the cold damp by staying active. By dawn Tut was racked with shivers, despite his constant capering. The foliage through which he moved was soaking wet, drenching him whenever he bumped against a rain-laden frond. Once the sun arrived it might warm him a bit, but the season was still late autumn. The day would remain cool for hours… and if Tut collapsed in exhaustion, even the heat of noon might not restore his body to a life-sustaining temperature.

For the time being, though, he was still on his feet. Pretas surrounded him, urging him on. They’d helped him through the night, jolting him awake whenever he came close to dropping from fatigue. I was sure they’d keep him on the move until… until he did whatever a planetful of frustrated ghosts wanted him to do.

We were all alive and moving — Tut, Festina, Li, Ubatu, the pretas, and I. All of us converged on the station, like actors approaching the climax of a VR melodrama. I wondered whether events had been planned this way from the beginning… by the League, the Balrog, the purple-jelly Fuentes, or any other godlike aliens who liked playing puppet-master. But as the Youn Suu in my dream had said, it really didn’t matter who was pulling the strings. The important thing was what we did with whatever small freedoms we had.

The first gray light of the coming dawn glistened on the water — a perfect time for a swim.

At the far end of the lake, the station rose above the beach. It was built in the shape of a Fuentes head — black marble skin, bright glass eyes with hundreds of facets, huge chrome mandibles framing the mouthlike entrance — but the forehead was circled with a crown of golden spikes: not pure gold but some gleaming alloy, each spike ten meters long, square at the base and tapering out to a point as sharp as a lightning rod.

The lightning rod resemblance wasn’t accidental. If the station had done its job sixty-five hundred years ago, bolts of power should have shot from that golden crown, uplifting every EMP cloud in the neighborhood. But I perceived no energy being emitted. In fact, I perceived little from the station at all. My sixth sense encompassed the building’s exterior, but stopped blind at the doorway… as if the world ended there, and the station’s interior was part of some other reality. A pocket universe like the research center in Drill-Press.

I wondered if even the Balrog knew what lay inside the building. It might be as blind as I was. Or perhaps the moss knew exactly what the station held and wanted to keep it secret; the spores never missed a chance to spring a surprise on lesser beings. The Balrog had a childish fondness for catching people unawares… unless there was some deeper motivation for the moss’s actions. Zen masters also loved springing surprises, in an effort to shock students out of conventional patterns of thinking. As one sensei famously said, 'Sometimes a slap is needed for a newborn child to breathe.'

Kaisho Namida had been a student of Zen. The Balrog had certainly jolted her out of conventional ways. Were the spores trying to do the same with me — not startling me for the fun of it, but doling out disorienting shocks in the hope of Waking me up?

'Just for the record,' I told the Balrog, 'my form of Buddhism isn’t like Zen. We prefer the slow but steady approach… without undue surprises. Trying to achieve enlightenment in a single lifetime is considered needy.'