"If you’re Tut’s patron," I said to the jelly, "who’s Festina’s?"
"That will be revealed at a time of her patron’s choosing… assuming, again, we aren’t lying."
"And in the meantime, the patron just lets me sweat in ignorance?" Festina asked.
"Ignorance is necessary," the jelly replied. "If we influence you too much, we prevent you from acting spontaneously. That defeats the whole exercise. We cannot guide you, or we may unwittingly steer you away from… whatever you might discover. For the same reason, we cannot rescue you from every trouble that arises. Dealing with life-or-death situations is when you are most likely to make a breakthrough." The jelly paused. "Or at least that’s one school of thought."
Festina growled. "So you just keep manipulating Explorers into one potentially lethal danger after another to see how we react?"
The jelly chuckled. "Admiral… that’s what ‘expendable’ means."
EPILOGUE
If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him: An adage that warns against one last fixation — you can become unskillfully attached to Buddhism itself. You have to discard this final dependency too.
Poised on the beach outside the station, Festina, Tut, and I watched pulses of gold light spread from the spikes in the crown. My sixth sense told me the radiation blanketed an area fifty kilometers in radius; any preta within that zone ascended after a few seconds of exposure. As I’d expected, the news had spread to every EMP cloud in the world. The whole smoky population of the planet was now on the way, simmering toward us at the speed of sound. Within twenty-four hours, every preta on Muta would be free.
"You realize," I said to Festina and Tut, "you two can still become transcendent. The microbes are working on your bodies. In hours or days, you’ll disintegrate. Next thing you know, you’ll be demigods."
"No," Festina said, "next thing I know I’ll be purple jelly." She waved her hand dismissively. "No thanks."
"Maybe only Fuentes turn into purple jelly. Maybe humans turn into green jelly."
"Ooo!" said Tut. "Could I turn into green jelly? Or gold jelly. That would be even better."
Festina raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to ascend, Tut? I don’t see the appeal… unless you’d like to thumb your nose at the jelly Fuentes. Once you’re jelly yourself, they can’t use you as their champion."
Tut thought about it a moment. "Nah, Auntie. If I ascended, I might go all serious. Wouldn’t want to wear masks… wouldn’t want to eat cookies… wouldn’t want to pull down my pants and-"
"We get the point," Festina interrupted.
She pulled a Sperm-tail anchor from her backpack, flicked the ON switch, and set it on the ground. Unclipping her comm from her belt, she said, "Captain Cohen, we’re ready for home."
"Very good, Admiral. The Sperm-tail’s on its way."
Seconds later, the tail whisked out of the sky above the lake. Small waves rippled placidly, glinting in the soft early sunlight. The tail seemed to play in the fresh air, flicking this way and that, admiring its reflection in the water’s surface. Then it remembered its duty and flew to the anchor, forming a fluttering pillar reaching all the way to Pistachio.
"So that’s it?" Tut asked. "Nothing else to do?"
"Nothing but fill out a million reports," Festina replied. "We didn’t rescue the survey teams, but we’ve done all we can. They must have ascended by now… and I assume they’ll be polite enough to inform the Unity they’re safe."
"The Admiralty won’t be thrilled," Tut said, "considering the Unity has just acquired a few dozen gods, and the Technocracy gets stuck with nothing. The balance of power’s been thrown out of whack."
Festina shrugged. "Who knows what the survey teams will do, now that they’re elevated? Maybe they’ll help the Unity… but maybe they’ll decide there’s more interesting things to do than hang out with mere humans."
"Maybe," I said, "the uplifted survey teams will create their own champions in the Explorer Corps."
"It’s possible," Festina agreed. "Assuming the whole champion business isn’t bullshit. You have to realize, Youn Suu, the Balrog may have planted that notion in your mind as a joke. Or to mislead us from something else."
"You’re going to ignore the possibility?"
"No, I’ll investigate the crap out of it… but quietly. The navy treats Explorers badly enough already. The last thing I want is the High Council deciding we’re dangerous minions of alien masters, planted in the fleet to do God knows what. The corps could end up in jail… or worse. So I’d appreciate the two of you not mentioning the champion theory in your reports. Let me look into it discreetly."
"Fine with me, Auntie," Tut said. "I don’t understand it anyway." He looked at the anchored Sperm-tail. "Ready to go?"
"After you," Festina told him.
Tut grinned. "You two want to be alone?"
"Go. That’s an order."
Tut gave Festina a sloppy salute and bent over the small anchor box. A moment later, he disappeared upward: sucked into the Sperm-tail’s pocket universe and propelled all the way to the ship.
Festina turned to me. "Now… are you really coming back? Or does the Balrog have other plans?"
"The Balrog doesn’t give me orders," I said.
"Not that you’re aware of. How do you know your mind is your own?"
I just smiled. A breeze gently ruffled the nearby ferns, and waves lapped at the sand. Farther off, amphibians chirped in search of mates, insects nibbled on multicolored vegetation, and pretas — hungry ghosts — finally found the sustenance they’d been missing for six and a half thousand years.
After a while, Festina asked, "Are you coming back to the ship, Youn Suu?"
"What use does the navy have for an Explorer who can’t walk?"
"You can do research," Festina said. "I could get you assigned to my staff. Then you could help investigate somebody’s bizarre allegation that aliens are messing with the Explorer Corps."
"Would you trust me to do that? Or would you suspect every word I said, wondering if it was all disinformation planted by the Balrog for its own nefarious ends?"
She gave me a sheepish look. "I mistrust damned near everyone, Youn Suu. Even when they aren’t infested with smart-ass alien parasites."
"You’d treat me as an enemy spy. An aggravation you didn’t need." I patted her leg gently. "Don’t worry about me. And don’t feel guilty. I’ll be fine."
"What will you do?"
"The Balrog can teleport me anywhere. I’ll go someplace I’m needed."
"Where?"
"I don’t know yet. Perhaps I’ll contemplate the universe until an answer comes to me."
"Until the Balrog plants an answer in your mind."
"I choose not to see it that way." I held out my hand to her. "We’ll probably meet again. I have a sense that when everything comes to a head, we’ll all be there together."
Instead of taking my hand, she bent and kissed my cheek. The one with the mark of a champion. "Western heroes ride off into the sunset," Festina said. "Eastern heroes end up sitting alone in the dawn." She kissed me again. "I like your way better."
Then she was gone.