"I thought about what you said," Theresa was continuing. "I thought about dying. And I thought about dying without feeling that love, that belonging, ever again. I couldn't face that."
"So you went back to them," I repeated.
They came to me, actually," she corrected. "In Denver. It was as if they knew I was there, and they knew that I needed them. They came to me, and they offered to love me, and need me."
"And possess you," I almost spat, "and steal your goddamn fragging soul!"
My sister looked at me sadly. It was a… a complex sadness, that's the only way I could describe it: regret, alloyed with understanding, and something that could almost be compassion. I hated the expression in her eyes. I feared it.
"That's not how it is, Derek." Her voice was as gentle as a breeze stirring the leaves of an elm tree. "I am me. I'll always be me. But I'm more as well. I am the Hive Queen. I am the other members of the Hive. And they are me.
"In a sense I'll never die. As long as one member of the hive remains, I remain. Some of my memory-some of who I am-will continue to live. Forever, maybe. There's no loss, Derek, none. It's a gain. I'm Theresa, just as I always was… but more so."
Now I did pull my hand back, and I did cover my face. "No," I said. That's all, just, "No." I couldn't bring myself to say what I was thinking-that she had lost something. Her humanity, if nothing else. And with it, she'd lost the ability to know that something was lost.
Someone touched my arm, gently. Not Theresa; I knew her touch. I took my hands from my eyes.
It was the gray-faced man, the insect shaman. I flinched back from him as though his hand had been a white-hot iron bar, searing my flesh. I stared at him, at his glassy eyes, at the face that had once belonged to a human. I thought I'd hated before in my life. I was wrong. I think I smiled as I reached for the Manhunter stuffed down the waistband of my trousers.
The pistol was clear. My thumb flicked off the safety as I brought the big gun up. On came the laser, and I tracked it onto the shaman's right eye. The ruby light gleamed from the watery-looking cornea. I took up the slack on the trigger, then squeezed it.
And stopped, just short of the break-point. The shaman hadn't reacted in any way. He just watched me. Frag, his pupil didn't even seem to have contracted under the laser's light.
Suddenly, I became aware of the tableau around me. The three bodyguards all had their nasty little SMGs out. Kono and the one they called Lupo held dead aim on the shaman. Pohaku's weapon panned back and forth between me and the shaman, as if he didn't know what the frag to do. The woman, Akaku'akanene, was staring at me with those bright, birdlike eyes of hers. I think she understood what I was feeling-I think it was understanding in those eyes. But there was determination there as well. Deep down, in the base of my brain, I had the unshakable conviction that if I'd actually tried to fire my pistol into the Insect shaman's head, I wouldn't have been able to do it. The final member of the tableau was Theresa. In her eyes was something that, in another, I'd have had to call genuine sadness.
"Chill, people," I said quietly. I put up my gun and safed it. Just to spare myself from temptation, I turned and scaled the big hunk of metal onto the bed. Then I turned back to the gray-faced insect shaman. "Well?" I said quietly. "Speak your piece."
The small man nodded. "You find yourself in an interesting situation, Mr. Montgomery," he began. His voice was as gray, as nondescript-as empty-as his face. "Through no choice of your own, you've been drawn into important events.
"These events have been developing for some time," he continued quietly. "The beginning of the pattern was woven"-his lips twisted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes, and that contained no human amusement-"well, the weaving began long before you were born, as a matter of fact. Now, circumstance has conveyed you into the middle of affairs, and the weaving of the pattern has changed because of it."
I looked at him, and I shook my head. "I haven't got a fragging clue what you're talking about, chummer," I said flatly.
"It's self-evident, isn't it?" the shaman asked rhetorically. "You have been woven into the pattern, Mr. Montgomery. You are now part of the tapestry of events, not just an observer. There are those who can sense this about you." And now he shot a sidelong glance at Akaku'akanene. "The weaving of the pattern is almost complete."
I snorted. "Look, I'm not in the mood for sophomoric philosophy, okay?" I snapped. "Cut to the fragging chase."
The Insect shaman paused, then nodded. "The Hawai'ian Islands have several sites of power," he said quietly. "Puowaina, Haleakala, Honaunau Bay… among others. There are ways to draw mana from those sites, for those with the knowledge, and the willingness to pay the price.
"There are those who wish to use those sites for their own purposes," he went on. "They consider those sites to be like motherlodes of mana, from which they can draw magical energy."
"I didn't think that was possible," I put in.
"For most mages or shamans, it isn't," he confirmed. "But there are ancient techniques that allow it. They're complex, though, and they're time-consuming. And they all carry with them a significant risk."
"What risk?"
"Power of any kind has to come from somewhere" the shaman said. "Within the Gaiasphere, it's generated by living material-by the 'biomass' itself. Certain sites of power, though, are like conduits to other"-he paused in thought- "other places," he continued carefully. "Mana can be drawn through those conduits."
I nodded. This suddenly seemed to be making at least some sense. To some degree it was tying in with the thoughts I'd had when I'd visited the sacrifice site in Punchbowl. "I scan it," I said. "You don't want these slags to get their mitts on all this power, is that it?"
The shaman shook his head firmly. "That wouldn't be a concern. On a local level the amount of power available is considerable. On a more global scale, however, it's insignificant."
"Tacnukes as compared to city-buster ICBMs?" I suggested sarcastically, thinking of Chicago.
He surprised me by nodding. "A reasonable analogy. But that's not the concern." Oh, really? I thought. "The issue is that the… the places from which the mana comes…" He trailed off, as if seeking just the right word.
"They're occupied, aren't they?" The words were out of my mouth before I was even fully aware of the thought process behind them. Chilling-and even more so when the Insect shaman nodded agreement.
"There are certain entities in these other places," he agreed judiciously. 'The same barrier that prevents the free flow of mana also denies them access to the Gaiasphere."
"And if you weaken that barrier enough to suck through the mana…?" It was my turn to trail off.
His silence was enough of an answer.
"What are these 'entities'?" I wanted to know.
The shaman shrugged. "Their exact nature varies unpredictably. It's enough to say that nobody would be well-served should they be able to penetrate the barrier."
Something just didn't hang together here. 'This is bull-drek," I said slowly. "What about the slags who are trying to siphon the power? Don't they know about these entities?"