"Balrog," I said. "Can we talk?"
Water rushed around me. Darkness filled my eyes.
"Balrog. We’re joined, you and I. Merged. Closer than husband and wife. Can we talk?"
Only the river and the night.
"I’ve given up a lot," I said. "You’ve got the better of me over and over. The things you’ve offered in return… you’ve helped when I asked, and even saved my life, but… do you understand loneliness, Balrog? You’re a hive creature. Maybe loneliness is beyond your comprehension. But if you and I are going to be together — for the rest of my life, till death us do part — I’ll shrivel inside if we don’t connect. If I’m just the lowly human and you never ever share… please, Balrog, don’t make me live like that. It’s too cold."
Blackness. Silence.
"When Kaisho Namida talks about you," I said, "she makes you sound like a lover. She makes it sound like she loves you, and you love her back. I don’t ask you to love me…" (Oh, would no one ever love me? I yearned so deeply to writhe with passion, and would even open myself to the spores if it would ease my longing.) "I don’t ask you to love me, but please… please. Meet me halfway so I’m not alone."
Nothing. And yet…
Floating gently, my eyes slipped shut. I dreamed.
Once again I was at the pagoda: the gravesite of Fuentes civilization, with its fountain and orchard of minichili trees. Once again I saw statues of heroes in the arboretum — one coated with purple jelly, another surrounded by sandy black grains, a third turned to glass and lava — but in my dream, the statues had changed.
Now the marble figure enclosed in jelly looked like Tut… the one with black sand had become an Arabic man carrying a huge four-barreled gun… the one in glass and lava was no longer Hui-Neng the Patriarch, but a beautiful naked woman… and all the rest within sight were similarly changed, some to people I recognized (students and professors from the Explorer Academy), others to people I couldn’t name but who seemed familiar, as if I’d met them in other dreams. Or other lives.
I turned toward the fountain in the middle of the pagoda. False memory said the fountain had contained a golden Buddha overlaid with Balrog moss. My mother said she had seen Kaisho Namida in a wheelchair. Now… now I saw both Kaisho and myself, the two of us sitting in lotus position, facing each other, knees touching. Our eyes were open, gazing on each other as we floated in midair two meters above the fountain. We both were moss from the waist down: glowing a warm-hearth red that filled the space around us with light. Kaisho’s hands made the mudra gesture for Birth, while mine made the gesture for Enlightenment. The pair of us smiled with sisterly gentleness.
Comfortable with each other. Not alone. Reassurance.
I dreamed this as if I were a third person standing in the temple’s doorway: with a view of the arboretum outside as well as Kaisho and me inside. No one else was part of this. Just the statues of heroes, plus a levitating Kaisho and Youn Suu. Did it mean something that I saw the scene from the threshold between the temple and the outer world beyond? The boundary between the sacred and mundane?
"It means whatever fits," said Kaisho. She and the duplicate Youn Suu turned, rotating in air until both could look at me. "None of it’s really predetermined. At least we hope not. We throw a lot of things your way, but only you decide what to use."
I asked, "Who’s ‘we’?"
The Youn Suu in front of me smiled. "You want to know who’s pulling the strings? Irrelevant. The important thing is what you do once your strings are cut loose. I’ll have to remember to teach you that."
"You’re going to teach me?" I said. "You are me."
"No. Look at yourself."
I did. My hands weren’t my familiar dark brown, but a much lighter shade that showed multiple scrapes and scratches. My clothes were Unity nanomesh, but not colored in motley Mutan camouflage; just a solid sheen of black stretching down to the white boots of a Technocracy tightsuit.
Festina had taken the black nanomesh. Her tightsuit was white and her hands, gouged and nicked in her trip through the bush, were exactly like the ones on the 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."