studied it. “So I must have multiple margins.”
“Humanity lives within the Gaesporan collective,” John said. “Our biology shares margins with many beings, and the makeup varies from individual to individual. Some will hear nothing. Some will hear the song of the Slow God, and some the song of the Sad Gods. Loudest of all is the song of the UausuaU, which drowns out the lesser voices. You are one of the few who can hear the song of SaialqlaiaS. This allows you to hear the other voices more clearly. Your connection to SaialqlaiaS acts as a ward against the song of the UausuaU.”
“Then all the margins are completely random. If you become an elzi or a hip—it’s all just fate.”
“No!” John shouted, his calm shattering. He slammed the dashboard with his fist. “Fate is a retroactive narrative, a trick of the brain to condense information. It is beneath us. We are conscious beings with free will. Our biology and the accidents of our births may determine how our margins begin, but it is our actions that determine how they end. Humans are not victims of fate. We are conspirators in our own oblivion. Take care, Saru Solan, for you do have a choice, and the evil of the UausuaU is seductive.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what if I choose to ignore it all? To not have any margin? To quit all this bullshit!”
John opened his mouth and closed it a couple times. His anger sputtered out and he lost focus.
“I was a Gaesporan,” he said, half to her, half to himself. “I served loyally for years. I could have tried to rejoin my brethren. I could have stayed with the mistress. I chose not to. I chose independence.” He finished in a murmur. “Independence,” he repeated to himself, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
He grew agitated, twitching, and tapping the dashboard with two hands, and mumbling nonsense.
“Shit,” he breathed, and jerked the control column, so their plane blasted above the smog cover. The cockpit shook with the turbulence of the maneuver. Saru looked at her lap and found to her surprise that she was holding the sword again, running her fingers up and down the flat of the blade. Her reflection was caught in the sheen of the metal, and her eyes were a searing blue.
*
Hours passed, slogging or racing by alternatively, so that it all averaged out in the end. Neither of them spoke. Saru pored over what John had told her, trying to understand it, mostly looking for excuses to ignore it. It was all so far away from her own problems—the struggles of her species, and her planet, and the integrity of the universe. Why should she care? Why should she be the one to deal with it? Because you’re special, hon. Because your eyes glow blue, and magical flowers grow in your hair, and some aliens like the way you jive. Ha. So what? I didn’t ask for that. Didn’t want any of that. I just wanted to drink and fuck and feel good about myself every once in a while. So much for that dream.
They came upon a break in the clouds, a golden rust circle. John plunged their plane inside, down through the column of sunlight it formed, into a desert where the golden rust became sand and the spines of dunes. Drinking from the light was a field of crystal flowers, with flat leaves nearly transparent, and silver stalks like antennas bursting up from their centers. John brought the plane so low Saru felt she could have reached through the invisible walls and brushed her fingers against the tips of the antennas. As they neared she saw that each plant was the size of a house, and the antennas at their thinnest were thicker than her waist. Insects buzzed through the crystal flowers, glowing in the sun rays, forming mesmerizing heartbeat patterns that Saru imagined were the rhythms of the plants themselves—that these insects fucking and feasting around them were simple extensions of the plants, and that more wondrous organs burrowed and carved deep below the surface of the dunes.
John landed the plane on an outcropping of
“Humanity lives within the Gaesporan collective,” John said. “Our biology shares margins with many beings, and the makeup varies from individual to individual. Some will hear nothing. Some will hear the song of the Slow God, and some the song of the Sad Gods. Loudest of all is the song of the UausuaU, which drowns out the lesser voices. You are one of the few who can hear the song of SaialqlaiaS. This allows you to hear the other voices more clearly. Your connection to SaialqlaiaS acts as a ward against the song of the UausuaU.”
“Then all the margins are completely random. If you become an elzi or a hip—it’s all just fate.”
“No!” John shouted, his calm shattering. He slammed the dashboard with his fist. “Fate is a retroactive narrative, a trick of the brain to condense information. It is beneath us. We are conscious beings with free will. Our biology and the accidents of our births may determine how our margins begin, but it is our actions that determine how they end. Humans are not victims of fate. We are conspirators in our own oblivion. Take care, Saru Solan, for you do have a choice, and the evil of the UausuaU is seductive.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what if I choose to ignore it all? To not have any margin? To quit all this bullshit!”
John opened his mouth and closed it a couple times. His anger sputtered out and he lost focus.
“I was a Gaesporan,” he said, half to her, half to himself. “I served loyally for years. I could have tried to rejoin my brethren. I could have stayed with the mistress. I chose not to. I chose independence.” He finished in a murmur. “Independence,” he repeated to himself, as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
He grew agitated, twitching, and tapping the dashboard with two hands, and mumbling nonsense.
“Shit,” he breathed, and jerked the control column, so their plane blasted above the smog cover. The cockpit shook with the turbulence of the maneuver. Saru looked at her lap and found to her surprise that she was holding the sword again, running her fingers up and down the flat of the blade. Her reflection was caught in the sheen of the metal, and her eyes were a searing blue.
*
Hours passed, slogging or racing by alternatively, so that it all averaged out in the end. Neither of them spoke. Saru pored over what John had told her, trying to understand it, mostly looking for excuses to ignore it. It was all so far away from her own problems—the struggles of her species, and her planet, and the integrity of the universe. Why should she care? Why should she be the one to deal with it? Because you’re special, hon. Because your eyes glow blue, and magical flowers grow in your hair, and some aliens like the way you jive. Ha. So what? I didn’t ask for that. Didn’t want any of that. I just wanted to drink and fuck and feel good about myself every once in a while. So much for that dream.
They came upon a break in the clouds, a golden rust circle. John plunged their plane inside, down through the column of sunlight it formed, into a desert where the golden rust became sand and the spines of dunes. Drinking from the light was a field of crystal flowers, with flat leaves nearly transparent, and silver stalks like antennas bursting up from their centers. John brought the plane so low Saru felt she could have reached through the invisible walls and brushed her fingers against the tips of the antennas. As they neared she saw that each plant was the size of a house, and the antennas at their thinnest were thicker than her waist. Insects buzzed through the crystal flowers, glowing in the sun rays, forming mesmerizing heartbeat patterns that Saru imagined were the rhythms of the plants themselves—that these insects fucking and feasting around them were simple extensions of the plants, and that more wondrous organs burrowed and carved deep below the surface of the dunes.
John landed the plane on an outcropping of
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