"Come on," Festina kept saying, "come on." Pulling me hard. I forced myself to keep moving, knowing I was slowing her down. If she just left me and ran, she’d get away clean — but I knew she’d never do it. Festina would rather die than abandon me… which meant I had to keep plodding ahead.

My foot suddenly splashed down, straight through the bridge. Like stepping into quicksand — another second and I’d sink clean out the other side. With the full force of my strength, I wrenched my arm from Festina’s grip and shoved her toward the open corridor. It might be the extra push she needed to get to safety… but no, she was sinking too, sinking through the bridge, liquid nano sludge, and we were both going down.

Something shot out of the corridor in front of us, something shouting in Oolom. Tic. He swooped over our heads… and I yelled at Festina, "Grab him!"

"You too!"

I’d never hold on to him with my shoulder out of commission. And Tic couldn’t support both our weights. With a sweep of my good arm, I pushed myself down faster through the goo of the bridge: out the bottom, falling free.

Looking up, I saw Festina falling too… but she’d caught Tic at the waist and he was slowing her descent like a hang glider.

"Faye!" she shouted. Angry to tears.

Survivor guilt, I thought. Welcome to Demoth, sister.

Then the world exploded into colors. Green and gold and purple and blue.

PROPOSALS

The shore of Lake Vascho.

I lay on the beach under the quiet blackness of a northern night — clouds still riding fast on the warm spring wind, but not so thick as in Sallysweet River. Stars shone through the cloud gaps, thousands of stars… and I thought of nights once upon a time, sleeping clear and girlish with the whole universe open above me.

The Peacock hovered gently over the water. He’d brought me here. Of course my father wouldn’t let me fall into a bottomless pit.

"Jai," I said. Thank you. Achy and woozy, I stayed flopped out on the sand. Nothing but stars overhead… till the Peacock fluttered up Dads-anxious, only a hand-breadth from my nose.

"I’m all right," I told him. "Well… if you can read my mind, you know I hurt like blazes. 8.5 on the getting-your-arm-torn-off scale. But it’s still minor. I think. How are you?"

Do no. Good.

"Where’s Xe?"

Tic.

"Did you say tico?" I asked.

Tic. Oov Tic.

With Tic.

"Short honeymoon," I said. "First time you two get together in three thousand years, and a day later, she’s off Riding mortals again."

Ve hadadda shunt. It’s what we do.

"You Rode my father, didn’t you?"

Gaha efliredd po. Copodd.

I didn’t Ride your father. I fused.

"Tell me about it."

Bit by bit, in his shy Oolom, the Peacock let his story trickle out.

It started long before the plague — the birth of a baby named Zillif. Or even before that: the very clock-tick of conception. The Peacock slipped into the zygote and Rode through embryo, foetus, infant, child, woman… till mushor changed the woman to a proctor.

The Ride was never fusion; but there was still a tiny mingling. A leakage of energies, Peacock to baby girl… and maybe the other way too, for all I know. Zillif grew up in the Peacock’s glow — as if there were some special element in the air she breathed, giving the woman her own faint shine.

I’d felt it myself. I adored her for it.

To the Peacock, Zillif was just another Ride; when he hitchhiked on someone cradle-to-crypt, it was common for his hosts to rise above the crowd. He liked that specialness. Maybe he even encouraged it to make the Ride more interesting, found ways to spill teeny bits of his brightness into his host’s life. But it was a teasy game, far from full fusion. He’d sworn he would never fuse again… not after the things he’d done while bonded to a Greenstrider, spurred half-mad by his fusion-mate’s lust to kill enemies.

(Oh yes, I’d been right about that. When the Peacock fused with the Greenstrider, the two-in-one creature seethed with all the black murder from the original strider’s heart. Xe’s germ factory may have scored the higher body count, but Peacock/strider fought hard to keep up.)

So. The Peacock Rode passively through Zillif’s life. He took no action, not even when the Pteromic microbe began slacking out Ooloms all over the world. The Peacock held himself back, because the last time he’d got involved, it led to disaster.

Or that was his excuse. Even superintelligent pocket universes lie to themselves, when doing the right thing seems like too much work.

Zillif herself became infected eventually. The Peacock watched, and thought now and then maybe something ought to be done. But not by him; he was out of it. He’d lived through the deaths of lesser creatures many times before: not just his hosts but the people they loved. Griefs and pains and rage at the dying of the light.

So what? So what if the Ooloms died? It wasn’t as if they were an important species. And if they didn’t get killed by this disease, they’d drop from something else. As an immortal, the Peacock prided himself on his sense of perspective.

Zillif resisted the paralysis better than most — part of the Peacock’s reflected shine, that tiny boost from his energies. But in time she succumbed; in time she landed on my roof and got carried to the Circus, where she dazzled a lovestruck girl a few days, then slipped off speechless. "Aaaaah gaah gaaaaaaah hah kaaaaaaaa."

At which point, you’d think the story would end: Zillif left mute, barely alive, waiting for the slacks to fall. The Peacock would Ride her to the end, then pick a new host — human of course, since all the nearby Ooloms were in deplorable Riding condition — and nothing would change. For damned sure, the Peacock wouldn’t intervene.

Except that Zillif was an old old proctor. And in her last three days lying slack, unable to talk, collapsing in on herself… Zillif Zenned out.

Here’s the thing, the crucial thing: Zillif somehow realized the Peacock was there. Maybe she felt the tiny spill of energy from him, maybe there was some burst of mystic intuition, or maybe (anything’s possible) Xe found a way to sneak the truth into Zillif’s brain. For all I know, the old woman may just have gone tico: not cosmic Zen anything, but plain old pre-death delusion. However it happened, Zillif got the idea an advanced alien entity was lurking in the neighborhood; and she began to plead.

She thought she was addressing some emissary from the League of Peoples — some telepathic thing watching from the aether. So she talked to it; she begged; she ranted; asking for a cure, not for herself, but for her people.

The Peacock found himself answering… the same way he talked to me sometimes, mind to mind. And for three days Zillif wrestled with him, angel by the ladder, fighting to break the Peacock away from passive watching, so that he’d goddamned do something.

I can’t tell you what she said; but her whole life had been devoted to speaking with powerful people, putting together common sense and good argument to shift folks away from ill-advised plans. To the last, Zillif was a member of the Vigil… and her silent one-on-one with the Peacock was the most important battle of her life.

The queer thing is I was there through it all, holding her hand, sponging her down, checking her IVs and catheters and monitor cords. I was there, I was with her, but I was pure bliss-ignorant that the war for the Oolom race was raging right in front of me. Zillif vs. the Peacock… doing something vs. staying aloof.

You already know who won.

When Zillif finally persuaded the Peacock to take action, he left her body — snipping off that tiny thread of spilled energy. Zillif died like a light clicking out, blink, like that. In the outside world, young Faye began to cry as her heart withered… not realizing that what looked like pointless defeat was actually the old woman’s greatest triumph.