Orson Card - Wyrms

Reck shrugged. "Will does what he wants."

"How long had he been there?"

"I don't know. Whenever I've noticed him, he was either coming from or going to your room."

Ruin chuckled. "He's a human male, after all, and you only came out of your boy disguise when I operated on you. Perhaps he likes looking at you. He's been celibate for a long time."

Patience was disconcerted for a moment, to think of Will perhaps desiring her as a woman. Then she realized Ruin was joking. She laughed-

"Don't laugh," said Reck. "I gave up trying to decipher Will's mind long ago, however, so my guess is almost worthless. He does what he wants. But I doubt he thought of having you, Child. I've never seen him want anything for himself. His life is nothing but service."

"A natural slave," said Ruin.

"No one could ever own him," said Reck. "He serves, but only where he thinks service is needed. I think that secretly he believes he's Kristos. Isn't that what the human god is supposed to be? The servant of all?"

"I'm a Skeptic," said Patience. "I don't pay attention to religion."

"Well, like it or not, religion pays attention to you," said Reck. "If you come out of this alive, you'll be lucky if they don't claim you're the Kristos."

"She's as good a choice as anyone," said Ruin.

"Or why not you?" said Patience. "That would stand them on their ear, to have a gebling savior."

Ruin laughed. "Why not? The goblin Kristos."

Patience laughed with him. As she did, she felt the Cranning call strengthen within her, as if it had been holding back, during her long madness, but had now awakened with the sound of her laughter. Lust for Unwyrm burned within her. She called for Sken, and Sken and Will readied the boat that afternoon. And in the morning, Patience herself took River's jar from the mantle piece.

"Wake up," she said to him.

He slowly opened his eyes, then clicked twice and made a kissing sound. The monkey scampered into the room almost at once, and began pumping the bellows frantically. "About time," River said. "About bloody time, what do you think I had them save my head for, to watch while a bunch of goblins redecorate a dullfish house? Get me down to the boat, and you may rest assured that I'll remember this as the worst, the stupidest voyage of my life!"

He scolded all the way down the hill. Only the rocking of the boat in the water stilled him; then he sang the most curious song to the river, a song without words, without even much of a melody. The song of a man returned to his body at last, the ecstasy of once again wearing his own arms and legs, of once again being himself. River restored to the river.

They cast off from Heffiji's ramshackle dock and sailed north on the last of the autumn wind. Patience could feel Unwyrm rejoicing that she was coming to him once again. This month of waiting must have been hard for him, not knowing what it was that kept her, not knowing if she was injured, or had gained strength to resist him, or had been captured. Now she was coming to him once again, and he made her body tremble with the pleasure of it.

PATIENCE KNEW THAT THE SCENERY UPRIVER OF Heffiji's house was identical to the scenery they had already passed.

The same massive oaks, the same beech and maple, ash and pine. But she knew more now. She was more. She could remember some of the earliest Heptarchs as little children, learning long catalogues of flora and fauna, all neatly split between native and Earthborn.

Oak and maple are Earthborn, so are ash and pine.

Beech and palm and fern are native, but were named for similar Earth species. Scrubnut, hotberry, glassfruit, and web are native; walnut is from Earth.

Like many of her earliest ancestors, Patience now saw clear divisions between Imakulata's native life and the life brought in the starship, and she began to understand the origin of the ancient enmity between humans and the intelligent natives they despised. They were ugly, strange, dangerous from the human point of view, while humans and the plants they had brought with them were safe and beautiful.

Yet Patience could also see what none of her ancestors had seen. Even though she could remember the world as it was seen by the fifth Heptarch, she had no memory of an alien world. The forests of Imakulata, by the fifth generation, had become exactly as they were today, almost entirely Earthborn.

And yet not Earthborn at all. The native species had not been replaced. They had merely put on disguises and become, in appearance, the Earthborn plants that the humans nurtured. What was the oak before? A little flying bug, a worm, a seaweed, an airborne virus on a fleck of dust? The whole world was in disguise, every living thing pretending to be homely and comfortable for the humans who supposed themselves masters of the world. Everything that truly belonged to human beings had been kidnapped, murdered, and replaced with mocks and moles. Patience imagined she could see through the disguise of the deer that drank at water's edge and bounded lightly away at their noisy approach. She pictured the secret self of an oak as a hideous, deformed baby leering wickedly at her from the heart of the tree. Changelings, a world of changelings, all conspiring against us, lulling us into complacency, until the moment that they finally begin to replace us, too.

She shuddered. And she imagined that Unwyrm whispered to her with the desires of her body. Come to me, come and bear my children, my children, my changelings, we'll steal into every house in the world, you and I, and creep to the children's beds. We'll lay our little wyrmling into the cradle, and watch as it changes shapes to look just like the human baby lying there. Then we'll take the human baby, carry it outside, slit its throat and toss it in my bag.

A thousand bags, each emptied into a garden, where the leering oaks suck the last dregs of life from the desiccated flesh. Patience thought she walked through the garden, brittle bones crackling under her feet, watching where her husband emptied another bag, then looked at her with his tiny wyrm's head and said, "The last. That's the last of them. There's only one human child left in all the world." He took a living baby out of his bag, its terrified eyes looking hopelessly up at her, and graciously offered to let her dine.

Instead, she ran away, to a place where the ground was soft and forgiving to her feet; to a small hut in the forest, where she could hear a mother crooning to her child. Here is a place we missed, she thought. A child that lives on. I'll protect it, I'll hide it from Unwyrm, and he'll grow up and thrive and kill the changelings-

She peered into the window and saw the baby, and he was beautiful, his delicate fingers wrapped around his mother's thumb, his mouth making sweet sucking motions.

Live, she said silently to the child. Live and be strong, for you are the last.

Then the child winked at her and leered.

Angel shook her awake. "You screamed," he said.

"Sorry," she whispered. She held to the gunnel and looked across the water at the trees. None of them seemed any different. Her dream had been nonsense. If it looks like an oak, if it cuts like an oak, if you can build with it like an oak, what does it matter that it has one immense genetic molecule, instead of many small ones? What does it matter if the deer is only half deer, and the other half of its bloodline is some strange creature of Imakulata?

Life is life, form is form.

Except my life. My form. That must be preserved.

Unwyrm's improved version of humanity is the death of the old, flawed, lonely, but beautiful Earthborn people.

My people.

Come, hurry, hurry, come, spoke Unwyrm's passion.

"Look," said Angel. "River sent Ruin up the mast, and he saw it at the last bend of the river. Skyfoot. For a few minutes, we can see it even from the deck."