Ascending - James Alan Gardner [151]
“I’m fucking thrilled for you,” Festina replied. “Now before you go all jiggly, please release our ships…or even better, tell your computers to obey our instructions and let us take care of—”
“Before any of that,” Immu interrupted, “we have to make sure the Blood Honey is effective. It’s been centuries since anyone used it, and some of the ship’s systems are failing from sheer old age. Therefore, we must still try our experiment.”
She turned to stare directly at me.
“Uh-oh,” Festina said. She turned toward me too.
“What?” I asked. “What experiment?”
Then I remembered. “Oh.”
The Nature Of Cowardice
“The fountain shouldn’t hurt you,” Esticus said, his shovel-tail twitching nervously. “We’ve analyzed the Blood Honey as well as we can. We think it’s still all right; we just aren’t sure.”
“But it will turn me into jelly! Purple jelly!”
“If it works,” said Immu, “you’ll be a million times more than you are now. Transcendent. With power and intelligence far beyond your wildest dreams.”
“But I will be purple jelly! I do not wish to be jelly, regardless of the quality of its dreams.”
Immu stepped toward me. It was the first time she had ventured out of direct contact with Esticus. “Weren’t you the one who called us cowards for refusing to change?”
“You were cowards!” I cried. “And you still are—if you cannot muster the courage to act unless I do it first.”
“All right,” Immu said, taking another step toward me. “So we’re cowards. We’ve thought of ourselves that way for thousands of years—the most cowardly dregs of a race noted for how much it loved to hide. We’re willing to do one last cowardly thing.”
She took another step toward me. Festina moved in between us. “You don’t want to do this,” she told Immu, ignoring the mandibles that twitched right in front of her face. “If you dump Oar into the fountain and it kills her, the League of Peoples will consider you murderers. You yourself said it was too risky to try with a living person.”
“At this point,” Immu answered, “I’m willing to take the gamble.”
“And it isn’t really a gamble,” Esticus said, scurrying up beside his wife. “We’ve done everything possible to check that the honey’s okay. So long as we make our best efforts to ensure Oar’s safety, we won’t be held responsible if something goes wrong.” He reached out tentatively to touch my arm. “It’ll transform you into something amazing. Really.”
I pulled sharply away from him. “I do not find jelly amazing. I should very much hate turning soft.”
“But,” said Immu, “it will cure your Tired Brain.”
Suddenly, I felt as if everything in the world had gone silent. The fountain continued to burble, the Shaddill swished their mandibles together, Festina breathed softly…yet those sounds all seemed very distant. Very quietly I said, “It will cure my brain?”
“Yes,” Immu replied, her translation cloud sliding closer to me. “The honey adjusts cellular activity and DNA…especially anything related to mental capacity. It vastly expands your intellectual power; and in the process, it will correct the genetic blockages that make your brain Tired.”
“That’s right,” Esticus put in most eagerly. “We’ve, uhh…you’re not the first of your people who’s gone through this test. Back at the very beginning, when we were certain the Blood Honey was still good, we…we captured one of your men and we…he thanked us afterward, he really did. Before he left to join the Soft Collective. He thanked us, then teleported away by sheer force of will. So there’s nothing to be afraid of, and everything to be gained.”
I turned to look at the fountain, still gushing with thick-flowing honey. Out near the edge of the basin, the surface of the pool was calm—like a mirror of clear crimson, barely rippled by the splashing in the middle.
It did not surprise me to see two fiery red eyes glimmering up from the liquid’s glossy surface.
The Pollisand had led me to this room. He had promised to cure