Before he could finish, Tasha said, “Over eighty thousand years old. That makes it over a hundred thousand on Earth. The oldest living things in the universe.”
“Until they discover something older next year.”
The strange words were spoken in an excited manner. I needed to know their meanings.
I flowed along the interior surfaces until I reached the place where Tasha reclined. I flowed through the fibers of her coverings and was surprised as she jerked her leg away from where I had touched her. “What’s the matter?” asked Curt. “A bug get in your sleeping bag?”
“I don’t know. Just a chill. Put the strength tests on the readout.”
The picture changed as I pondered the thing she had called “a chill.” Some aspect of my touch had been foreign to her senses. I studied motion, and the motion had been less than the billions of beings that inhabited her skin. I studied color, but the creature appeared not to have a sense of vision beneath the covers. She seemed to have no sense of thought touch at all, and, compared to her stench, I had no odor at all. Her leg was warm. I altered my temperature and once more touched her leg. She did not notice and I flowed to the end of Tasha’s leg and toward her head and over to her other leg. Soon I filled her. I touched her, felt her, became her, my mind released to enter the being of each cell, the thing of her, the reality of Tasha’s world: strange feelings, strange passions, strange purposes, curious goals.
The readout on the screen now meant things to me. The body of my mother, cut into pieces, could endure a variety of forces. Other readouts and the content of Tasha’s mind showed the pieces of my mother’s body could be exchanged for numbers in a computer, and that the numbers converted to wealth and survival for Tasha.
Tasha and Curt had taken all of their money, all of the credit they could obtain, and all of the money they could beg from family and friends, to bid for the development claims on a world that had but a number. A morning away was their ship. Elsewhere other humans were testing waters of lakes and seas, collecting biological specimens, and minerals. The reports from all of the teams were incredibly glowing. I could feel what Tasha felt. The golden dawn was within her grasp.
There were a few technical problems. How to cut down a tree fifty meters in diameter. Beam cutters could do it, but how to keep much of the valuable product from shattering as the top of the huge tree struck the ground. Perhaps they would have to lower the trees to the ground with hover mules. Perhaps the wood was strong enough to take the shock of being felled. Nothing mattered. The market for good wood was lucrative enough to justify almost any expenditure.
Tasha closed her eyes and rolled until she was upon her back. She allowed the warmth of success and victory to cuddle her moment. So many had told them they were insane. So many had hidden their own cowardice by calling Curt and Tasha’s courage and sense of adventure “immaturity.”
“Still thinking about what your uncle said?” Before Tasha could answer, Curt’s lips nuzzled her ear. “Screw ‘em. Screw the whole chicken parade.” He kissed her lips and I became frightened as waves of strange feelings flooded through Tasha. I joined with the feelings, became them, knew them.
“We have won, haven’t we, Curt?”
“Are you kidding? With what we and the other teams’ve turned up? You bet we’ve won. Right now I could take what little we know and sell our rights for a hundred thousand times the money we put up, and that’s nothing compared to what we’ll be pulling down in investments, and that’s nothing compared to what we’ll be producing in three or five years.” His hand slipped beneath the covers and cupped one of Tasha’s breasts. “God, baby, we are winners. We are goddamned genuine winners.”
Later, as Curt entered Tasha, I flowed into him, became him, knew him. The feelings were explosive, but I rode them until the pair at last fell asleep. As mist I flowed from them to a place in the wall where I now knew my sister was being held. I pulled on the handle and peered into the icy depths of the box. Pieces of my sister, still in the strange shape of the gargoyle, were in the box along with many other creatures of root and leaf, flesh and stench, and slime. I searched through them all, a sickness spreading throughout my center; a sickness that confused me. I paused and allowed the feeling to be.
It was pain. It was sadness, loss, anger, loneliness, love destroyed. These were the things Curt and Tasha would have felt had they discovered their own sister sectioned and stuffed into a refrigerator. I put the feelings aside. There was something I needed to do, and I could not do it if I felt. Besides, the feelings were not mine.
None of the dishes within the box contained the seeds, which meant they still had to be within my sister’s body. I poked among the bagged parts until I found a large piece of the torso. I removed it from the box, startled at how cold it was. Its outside had been hardened by the cold. I flowed through the wrapping and searched until I found the pocket of plaited grass deep within her.
She had done well. There were the seeds of many thousands of fireblade children. I gathered them within myself and returned again through the wrapping.
“What in the hell are you?”
I looked toward the humans. Curt was standing naked upon the floor, a beam weapon in his hand. Tasha was sitting up, facing me, a beam weapon in her hand, as well.
I allowed the memories of my cells to make my mist into a Tasha, which gave me a voice. “I am a child of my mother,” I answered.
Their faces appeared strange. I brought back both Tasha’s and Curt’s feelings and memories. They were horrified at what they saw. I became Curt, and that horrified them even more. I became both of them and Curt screamed, “Stop it! Stop it, damn you! What are you? What are you?” I again became mist.
“I am what I have always been.” How else could I answer their frantic questions?
Curt moistened his lips, took a breath, and pointed his weapon at my sister’s pieces. “Those belong to us. What were you doing in there?”
“Recovering the children.”
“What children?” asked Tasha.
“The children of the fireblades. My sister had them when you killed her. I took them from her body.”
Again Curt pointed toward the cold box. “That thing was your sister?”
“Yes.” I whirled my mist and looked at the pieces of my sister. She had been too slow. Both of my sisters were dead. They had both been too stupid and too slow. It was the time of changing.
“We’re sorry about your sister,” said Tasha as my mist thinned and filled the small compartment.
“Hey!” Curt called. Where are you?”
“Where you are,” I answered. “I am you, I am Tasha, all of us are for the changing.” I dissolved us and flowed from the shelter, the sounds of their screaming vibrating my aura.
When I reached a place in the forest where I could see my mother’s crown, I could see leaves of yellow among the green. Without someone there to guard her and to care for the children of the fireblades, something had gotten through. Already she was dying.
“See?” I said to the humans within me. “See, she dies.” I found a clear place upon the forest floor and began scratching the ground to make a new circle. Once the ground was soft, in a ring I planted the children of the fireblades. I stood in the center of the ring and watched the days and nights it took for the children as they broke through the soil, grew, and began to color red.
The humans begged and pleaded, shouted their apologies, made endless promises, and begged some more. It was all there in their memories, however: their plans for my world. Their plans interfered with my purpose. Once the fireblades were thick and strong, my task was to care for my own children. Then, in turn, my children would care for the children of the fireblades.