[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post something new about every two weeks, with short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next update is planned for the week of July 9th.]

Previous: Chapter 44



Nothing was ever simple. Flicker contemplated Journeyman, temporarily frozen in the middle of refilling his teacup, in the cluttered compartment on the Learning Is About To Occur, outbound for Europa. A biogestalt watching a human she cared about very much, while she thought. Something she’d done countless times before.

Biogestalt was a funny word. Flicker had learned it from Doc; he’d used it as a loose translation of a Grs'thnk concept. If you scanned a biological brain and made a copy of it on a computer, you had an ‘upload’. Doc was cynical about them, with good reason. Theoretically you could run one in a suitable computer environment and give it input; let it change state, have experiences, make decisions, gain new memories, be a person. Freeing a mind from the shackles of a bio body.

When the Grs'thnk first tried that, they discovered the resulting minds had been freed to go insane very quickly. Bio minds had evolved to run in bio bodies; arranging the right conditions for one to run indefinitely on a computer was a big ask. Too big. They had settled for something that could run at high speed on computers for a limited time, then reintegrate with still-living bio minds and bodies. They called the result (and colloquially, any bio who used them) a biogestalt. They had also kept copious records of the many, many things that could go wrong with the process.

The Grs'thnk aid mission had been alarmed to discover Earth already had something very like their biogestalts. Stella and Three were apparently friendly and stable, but operating far outside of normal safety parameters. The Grs'thnk had coped. They’d been downright terrified to find out that Flicker was a biogestalt as well. Enough so that Learning, with his admiral’s approval, had arranged a careful sequence of not-quite-subterfuges to transfer a summary of some of their dangerous, hard-won biogestalt knowledge to those helping her.

Flicker had read it and found, not to her surprise, that she had symptoms of conditions ranging from 'serious’ to 'how are you even still alive’, as well as legacy issues from the thorny problem of using lossy compression to fit high speed memories back into a bio brain. She’d barely started working through the list when her time had been cut short. Signs of a new problem, possibly triggered by being far from Earth, had shown up while she was on Europa. And understanding an old one–her trust issues with Journeyman–had gone from 'important’ to 'life-or-death’. A long-deferred reckoning with awkward parts of his history could no longer be postponed. They had the rest of today and one night left.

He was her partner. To the end of the world. She slowed down and smiled at him as he finished refilling his cup.

“I’m not all that great at making potions,” he said. "Even though I started early. I know lots of alchemists who are better. But we get along pretty well, because they’re some of my best customers, and I’m one of their best suppliers.“

"Because you can teleport,” said Flicker.

“Because I can teleport and portal, and I know a lot of specialized herbalism; things like 'how do you tell if this difficult-to-grow-wort is the right kind for Potion X’, and 'how long do obscureberries stay good if picked in late fall’. It’s how I make a lot of money, favors, and assorted useful bits of magic in trade.”

He waved a hand. "So I’m always on the lookout for new alchemically interesting plants–or new supplies of old ones that have grown rare or disappeared. And a few years ago, I hit the jackpot. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of an herb called silphium?“

"No. But I’m terrible at remembering anything about plants except how flammable they are, so I can keep from starting fires.”

“This one is pretty esoteric. Silphium was an important trade item in classical antiquity, as a spice and a medicinal herb. It was important enough that the Minoans and Egyptians had glyphs for it, and the city where either the good kind or the only real kind came from–accounts differ–put it on their coins. It got used in potions, too–some of the oldest verified potion recipes used silphium. And… then shortly after the Roman Empire got started, it went extinct. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Opinions differ. It’s a good topic if you want to start a really messy interdisciplinary argument. What isn’t in dispute is that the good kind went away–probably wiped out by overharvesting. Whether the actual plant species survived, and what made it the good kind was soil chemistry or some local hybrid that couldn’t be cultivated–is still argued about. And all the arguments are complicated by the fact that as demand went up, it got very expensive, so people tried all kinds of substitutes and adulterants, and it’s really hard to tell now whether any particular account of it was referring to the good stuff or not.”

Journeyman smiled. "My first teacher had this big old tome of historical potion recipes, with three generations of marginal notes by successive alchemists on what actually worked, side effects, and the like. I still have it. And when I dug into the history of the first potion I ever made myself, I discovered that it was a variation on an ancient formula that used silphium. So when I started hunting for new old plants, I used a few tricks to check for silphium whenever I was anywhere that it might have escaped notice. And one day, in a place that was very difficult and dangerous to get to, I found it.“

Flicker frowned. "How could you be sure?”

“I tried it in some potion recipes that used silphium substitutes, and it worked. Then I tried in an old recipe that never worked with a substitute, and it worked in that, possibly for the first time in two millennia. It worked really well.”

“Wow. Where did you find it?”

“Kyrjaheim.”

“How did you get Golden Valkyrie to give you permission to go there?”

“I didn’t ask. I just went. That would be the dangerous part.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Ask who, and how? There’s no phone or net service in Kyrjaheim, Golden Valkyrie only rarely appears anywhere publicly visible on Earth, it’s even more rare for her to land, and when her Choosers show up, they’re usually very busy dealing with a disaster or crisis. Which left message drops, most of them with human gatekeepers. I was virtually certain that if I tried that, I’d get a form letter 'no’.

"But… I was pretty sure I had a loophole. A number of people helped by Choosers were later interviewed, and visiting or moving to Kyrjaheim was a common question. Uninvited humans weren’t unambiguously forbidden in Kyrjaheim–there was just a complete lack of transport, a ban on interfering with any existing portals or the Choosers means of coming and going, and a lot of stuff that was frowned upon. And I could portal, port, and tread lightly on my own.

"So I figured there wasn’t any point in trying to talk to them or her directly. She could see the future and she was busy. Either what I planned wasn’t a problem for her, and I’d be fine, or it was, and I’d show up to find a Chooser telling me to go home. And I’d listen.”

He took a sip of tea. "This was a bad plan. Bad overconfident reckless arrogant wrong bad. 'I’d be fine.’ Ha ha.“

"You got caught?”

“Yes. I knew that at some point I’d have to talk to someone, but I really wanted to test a few more things first, and I needed more silphium to do that, and… I got trapped at the point where I was most in the wrong. I managed an epic fail at 'better to ask forgiveness than permission’.”

Journeyman took a deep breath. "My first trip was a quick look around to verify portal accuracy. I found the silphium on the second. By the third, when I came back to gather more, I thought my camouflage and misdirection spells were doing the job. Then I got my first hint of how hard it is to hide from a Chooser. I was carefully brushing ants off a silphium plant when I heard a voice–from way too close behind me–say how she didn’t have to tell anyone she’d seen me.“

"Ouch,” said Flicker. "She must have been watching for a while.“

"Yeah, and wanted to see what kind of hole I’d try to dig for myself. I knew Choosers were more than just empaths–sensing character is essential to Choosing. And she pushed me right up to the edge between 'talk’ and 'run’. That meant she already knew a scary amount about me. I’d been detected on a previous trip–or possibly even before I arrived. I never found out for sure.

"I knew I was in trouble, and trying to hold back anything was a very bad idea, so I said that unless she was an ecologist or botanist, there was probably somebody she should tell. I did not want to be alone with her, and if I ran I’d never dare come back.”

“I’d bet that was Golden Valkyrie’s spymaster,” said Three.

Flicker frowned. "Why?“

"That’s the kind of thing you hit someone with before a recruitment attempt.”

Journeyman looked over at the monitor Three was using for her avatar. "Yeah… But I’d say 'Kyrjaheim’s spymaster’. Don’t assume Golden Valkyrie needed to micromanage everything. I made that mistake. Anyway, this interrogator told me that if I wanted a bigger audience, I’d get one. And five minutes later, I was in a clearing with more Choosers. I’d figured she’d keep it small–two or three others, maybe half a dozen. I got sixty. It was terrifying.“

"How mad were they?” asked Flicker.

“They were plenty annoyed. I’d spent too much time worrying about what Golden Valkyrie would think, and too little worrying about what her Choosers could, and would, do on their own. And I’d seriously underestimated how different their culture would be. They were never off-duty when they were on Earth, so it was easy to make wrong assumptions. And I was in their home, uninvited. The group looked like a cross between an emergency town meeting and whoever thought a 'Hey everybody! Guess what I caught!’ was worth a look. Some were in armor. Some were in work or casual clothes. But they all had their spears, they were all projective empaths, and they all had Opinions.”

Journeyman looked back at Flicker. "Did Yiskah ever tell you how overwhelming it can be to have a crowd of empaths all have Opinions at you at once?“

"I saw it–I found her in the bathroom the day I accepted the einherjar. She was pale and shaky and had almost started eating minds in self-defense.”

“Yeah. And instead of getting interrogated privately, I got interrogated publicly. I talked myself hoarse for hours, and got mercilessly cross-examined by a bunch of gardeners, a field biologist, several experienced medical professionals, an organic chemist, and several others. About more than just the silphium. A lot more. And then I was unambiguously reminded that Kyrjaheim was at war, and they started discussing what kind of deterrent was appropriate, and whether it required following me home and hunting me in shifts until I was too tired to keep porting away, and… It was bad.”

Journeyman looked down, then slowly took a sip of tea. The silence lengthened.

Flicker sped up. "Three? I don’t know what to say. It looks like he’s using breath control to stop a panic spike, and his eyes aren’t focusing. Is he having a PTSD flashback?“

"Possibly.”

“I didn’t want that! Why–”

“I’d prefer to spend at least a week on this,” sent Three. "We don’t have a week. The biggest manageable risks for tomorrow and after are failures of trust and stability. So we’re pushing. He knew it would be rough for him, too,“ sent Three. "But knowing that you’re still calm might help.”

Flicker thought about that for a while, then slowed back down. "I’m here, Mike,“ she said.

After a moment he looked up and half-smiled. "Thanks,” he said. "Anyway, my first interrogator eventually interrupted with a suggestion about a little task I could do for Kyrjaheim. One that could clear up all my problems. I’d be able to come back safely, and even gather a little silphium under supervision. If…“

He shook his head. "They all kept the pressure on, but no one objected too strenuously–which makes me pretty damn sure this had been planned, and had at least implicit approval from Golden Valkyrie. So, not without considerable trepidation, I tentatively agreed to step from the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad frying pan into the nice, easy, simple really, anyone could do it fire.”

“What did they want you to do?” asked Flicker.

“What my interrogator said she wanted me to do was a little light spying in the Nine Worlds. I’d been there before, and I wouldn’t attract the kind of immediately hostile attention that a Kyrjaheim Chooser would. I objected that the Norns would pick up on that very quickly, and then I would die very quickly, by porting straight into a trap. I was assured there was a way around that.”

Journeyman waved a hand. "But I think the idea all along was for me to act as a stalking horse or distraction. There were very few battles in the war between Kyrjaheim and the Wanderer, because there were Seers and skilled strategists on both sides, and whichever side was going to lose would see that and change something. There was this constant readiness and tension, but very little actual fighting.“

"That makes sense,” said Flicker. "Most of the battles would be inside unstable time loops that collapsed, and all people would end up seeing were some strange coincidences.“

"Well, I was a splendid candidate for conveying coincidences around. But I wasn’t about to jump into that seething mess without a little prep work first. Like, arrange for better backup, and find out a little more about the factions in the Nine Worlds–there weren’t just two sides in the war, there were at least four.”

“Yiskah told me a little bit about that. She’s still digging into it for me.”

“A lot of history there. I didn’t find nearly enough. Which was one justification for the spying mission in the first place, I’ll give them that. But I did manage to do something about the 'follow me home and hunt me in shifts’ business. That really bothered me–if the Kyrjaheim Choosers could do it, there was no reason Nine Worlds Choosers couldn’t.”

Journeyman smiled. "So I went and had a talk with Doc about something we’d been discussing for a while. Then we came out of the secure room, I told a joke about bad days, and asked you if you wanted me as your regular patrol partner. And the two of us went and had ice cream. I figure you might have a few memories of that day.“

Flicker closed her eyes and smiled. "Yes. I wasn’t a sidekick. I wasn’t a burden. I wasn’t a barely contained threat. I was a partner. That did so much for my sanity at a time I really needed it.”

“Helped me, too. See, if any hostile pseudo-mythological extradimensional entities tried to pursue me to Earth and–”

“Rocks. Plasma. Death.” Flicker opened her eyes again.

“Yeah, that. You are what is technically known as really effective backup.”

Journeyman took a deep breath. "So. All prepped and as ready as I was going to get, I portaled into the Nine Worlds. I started where the stream from the Norn’s pool meets the sea, a place called the Beginning and Ending Falls. By taking a dip in the plunge pool there, I could make it hard for the Norns or anyone else to tell what I’d been up to recently. Like getting recruited to spy. But there were issues. It washes away all spells and illusions, so I lost a bunch of personal protection, and had to leave my hat and clothes on shore, or I’d lose their embedded wards. Also it was frickin’ cold, and required full immersion.“

He waved a hand in agitation. "I finally managed to duck under, came up with teeth chattering, and have I mentioned how damned hard it is to hide from a Chooser?”

“Yeah.”

“She was standing on my hat, glaring at me, spear at the ready, other foot on my coat for good measure. I was stark naked and completely hosed. I was going to lose all my gear and probably never be able to come back–I couldn’t even try any spells, the only thing I’d be able to manage was a port–and you know what she says?”

“What?”

“'You are not the Trickster!’ Accusingly. Like that was the entire reason she was mad.”

Flicker stared. "Wait. What?“

"I know! It made a little sense, I guess. I was standing in the middle of the Falls, so no illusions, no shapeshifting, no tricks. I had to be exactly what I looked like–a skinny, naked, shivering, red-headed idiot who apparently looked something like the Trickster. But what a stupid thing to be mad about. And what a stupid way to…” Journeyman shook his head. "I snapped. I was furious, I knew I was going to have to port out, so why not burn that bridge right down.“

He stared down at his hands. "I yelled back at her. I said, 'Brilliant! I’m not someone dead. Red hair isn’t enough to fool you. And the Trickster couldn’t possibly have had any kids, could he have?’”

Journeyman looked back up. "And her eyes went wide, her face turned pale, and she said, 'Forgive me, Trickster’s Son.’“

*****

Journeyman sat motionless in human time while Flicker considered her reactions and exchanged messages with Three.

"The name itself doesn’t bother me,” sent Flicker. "The implications, maybe a little? But this Chooser…“

"Yes.” Three sent a sympathetic smile. "She was the real reason for avoiding the name. Because the first question you’d ask is how he got it, if he wasn’t literally the Trickster’s son. Everyone has been wary, because you’ve been putting patches on your patches for too long.“

"I know. But when I get like this–I know the way I interrupt is wrong. I can’t listen any other way and still talk. And if I start with the wrong words, sometimes I can get to the right ones. But they’re like an interrogation.”

“I’ll help keep you on track. And I’ve considerably narrowed down the possibilities for the biogestalt part of your trust problem by analyzing your telemetry and watching the two of you interact. It’s not simple jealousy or voyeurism–you don’t have either problem with Donner–but picking at those is helping me get the data I need. So I’ve kept pushing.”

“I understand. But if I lose calm, Journeyman might stop talking–and if I really lose it, I might have to compartmentalize and do a full swap. I… don’t want to do that, and I know it would upset him.”

“He’ll handle it,” sent Three. "And it will prevent disaster. You can’t run away and he won’t port. I’ll set up a better context, so you don’t have to worry about it. Ready?“

Let me out, urged a old familiar voice inside Flicker’s head.

No, she replied.

”…Ready.“

After Flicker slowed back down, Three made a throat clearing sound.

"What now?” asked Journeyman warily.

“Tea and calm was a good idea,” Three said. "Unfortunately it isn’t going to be sufficient. The good news is that I’m a lot closer to verifying Flicker’s problems–and indirectly, one of yours. You’ve been worried about hiding this ever since it happened, right?“

"Yeah.”

“Then spin it all out the way you do best, as if you don’t have to give a damn about offending anyone. I will assist Flicker in dealing with the emotional fallout–which may be psychologically rough on you, but will not include plasma, sudden catastrophic damage to the ship we are on, or any need to port. I personally guarantee it.”

Journeyman looked over at Flicker, moving only his eyes. "Partner? You okay with this?“

"It’s what we need,” she said.

Journeyman winced. "This is gonna…“ He closed his eyes, shook his head, then opened his eyes again. "Okay.”

He waved a hand. "I need to tell you a bit about Gisela. This isn’t going to be very objective. I didn’t really believe what was happening at first. I thought maybe I’d been hit with a hallucinogen while my wards were down–and I did get hit with a couple of strong psychotropics.“

"What were they?”

“The Valkyrie’s Kiss, with no warning and no wards, followed by sexual attraction from a powerful empath.”

Anger. "If she–“

Alert on her visor. 'Talk to me’ from Three. Speed up.

"What part of 'don’t have to give a damn about offending anyone’ did you not understand?” sent Three. "And who are you angry at?“

"Her! And… him for being so stupid.”

“Don’t yell at him over anger at her. Especially if what you’re really angry about is that it worked.”

That was fair. Unfortunately. Time to figure out how to end the sentence in a reasonable way.

Let me out.

No.

Flicker slowed back down. "–didn’t ask first, that sounds coercive,“ she finished.

"She said I looked cold and asked if I wanted to warm up. I did–freezing water, remember–and she warmed me up very thoroughly. And you’re putting me on a pedestal again. I could have said no. I could have ported out. I didn’t. Gisela knew how to press my buttons. I did want to know how she figured me out so quickly–and why she was there. And I recovered my hat.”

“That I understand.”

“So. You know a little about how Seers work.”

“Not enough,” said Flicker. "I understand the basics of how they interact with time loops, Golden Valkyrie told me a bit of 'What’, a little 'How’, and no 'Why’ at all, and there’s what you’ve told me. Was Gisela a Seer?“

"No. But the Norns were a big help to the Wanderer. They had their limitations, but he knew how to exploit what they could do–and just as importantly, how to coddle, wheedle, and support them. Gisela was part of that support.”

Journeyman waved a hand. "The Norns picked up a lot of sub-oracular grade insights. Scraps of visions and sounds from potential futures and lost pasts. Disconnected, but not always meaningless. And Gisela was good at putting the pieces together in interesting ways.“

"So she was like an intel analyst?” said Flicker.

“That wasn’t all she did, but yeah. She’d been at it for a long time, had an extraordinary memory, and had a talent for putting together something from thirty years ago, something from last week, and something new, and going 'Aha!’ She was wrong a lot, but she was right often enough to be frightening–and uniquely useful. And oh, did she ever know it.”

Journeyman frowned. "She also had an infatuation with the Trickster. Except it was really about her idealized vision of a cleverer, less self-sabotaging Trickster. The real one was never very close to it, but I’m not sure it’s fair to call that his fault. He was spitefully malicious to Gisela, but he was spitefully malicious to everybody. Apparently the most objectionable thing he did to her was to turn her down. She still blamed others for everything bad that happened to him, especially after he died, and was angry that the Norns were never able to clearly identify how he died or who killed him.“

"Because Stella did it.”

“Yes. Then one fine day, Gisela put together some clues that something might be starting at the Falls, flew over, and spotted me. And found my flippant rant utterly convincing, because her Chooser’s sense told her that whatever else I might be, I was closer to her ideal than the original Trickster ever was. I was the Trickster’s Son, the New Improved Trickster. I was her Trickster. She was so abruptly, intensely passionate because she thought I was who she’d been waiting for all along. There was just one small problem.”

“You were a spy.”

“Oh no,” said Journeyman. "That was no problem, she knew I was spying. Of course I was. I was a Trickster; what else would I do first? No, the problem was that we had dramatically different goals, values, morality–“

"She was evil,” said Three helpfully.

“Now that’s–”

“Oversimplified, but a good place to start.”

“It’s not where I started.”

“Indeed. But I warned Flicker not to yell at you because she was angry at Gisela; now I’ll warn you not to go easy on her because you’re afraid of how Flicker will react or judge you.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Um, I’m right here,” said Flicker.

“Yeah,” said Journeyman. He looked at her and took a deep breath. "I’m sure you’ve noticed me tense up sometimes when we’re together. Every now and then, that’s because you’ve done something that reminded me of Gisela. And not necessarily a bad thing.“

”…Oh.“

"She wasn’t a good person, but don’t caricature her, okay?”

“Okay.”

Let me out.

No.

Journeyman rubbed his forehead. "Gisela was never abusive or intentionally harmful to me. She was downright gleeful to finally have a clever lover to banter and plot with. She’d often listen to me when she wouldn’t to anyone else. She wouldn’t hear 'wrong’ or 'against the rules’ but she could hear 'waste of time’ or 'bad idea, here’s why’. So I dialed my rants up to 11, and we got along for a while. She thought I was overly squeamish and forgiving, but also that I was sufficiently malleable for her to 'fix’–she was a Chooser, after all.“

"She was the Gisela that Eirik was telling a story about,” said Flicker. "The day we went to the Box. Wasn’t she?“

"Yeah–he suffered quite a bit for a couple of poems he wrote about her. She was proud and vindictive to a fault; she never forgot an injury or slight. She was also the most prominent survivor of a… faction that the Wanderer had encouraged with the intent of solidifying a power base independent of Greta and the older Choosers. There were a lot of people she hated because of the fallout from that.”

Flicker frowned. "So why did everyone else believe you were the Trickster’s son?“

"I don’t think a lot of them did. But whatever the Norns said was consistent with me being some kind of trickster, and Gisela’s demeanor changed dramatically after I showed up. Gisela was happy; Gisela was smug. She started gloating instead of being grimly vengeful all the time, which was a significant improvement if you were an einherjar she disliked. So most of the einherjar were surprisingly okay with me.”

Journeyman waved a hand. "Skardi said he didn’t care who I really was–he liked me better than the old Trickster, and I was keeping Gisela out of everyone’s hair. Ragnar even offered some helpful tips for self-diagnosis of pelvic stress fractures.“

"Didn’t anyone care you were spying? What about the other Choosers, and the Wanderer?”

“No one besides Gisela even brought it up. I knew better than to go anywhere near the Hall, and Gisela didn’t get along with the other Choosers, so I rarely saw them. And I never saw the Wanderer at all. But about that… Gisela shared all kinds of outrageous theories with me, from her rummaging in the Norns’ prophecy wastebasket. One of them was that the Wanderer was afraid of me, for the good reason that I could kill him–with just a little help. Which she was happy–nay, eager–to provide.”

“How?”

“Very directly. She would portal in front of him and begin stabbing, making sure to get an eye early, then I would port in behind him, portal a chunk of lead inside his heart, then warp cut him into little pieces before he could recover from the resulting internal explosion. Then we’d dump all the now radioactive, cursed Wanderer chunks at the entrance to the Wolf’s cave for him to snack on, and I’d proceed to the Hall to be hailed as the new ruler of the Nine Worlds by right of conquest, with her by my side.”

“That sounds… ambitious,” said Flicker.

“A bit, yes. I told her that her plan seemed the sort likely to have unanticipated side effects, however successful.”

“How did she know you could do that?”

“Her frightening ability to put together old and new. That and a few other things scared me enough that on my next trip to Kyrjaheim, I planned to insist on speaking privately with Golden Valkyrie.”

“'Planned to’? What happened?”

“I was worried about the Wanderer tracking me, so I attempted some overly clever interdimensional bouncing around and ended up with three different, mutually inconsistent sets of memories of what happened that day. The most significant thing they have in common is Golden Valkyrie telling me I needed a lot more experience before I tried that again. I listened.

"I think–now that I know more, anyway–that it was a side effect from either cross-world amplitude addition or a timeloop collapse while I was not causally connected. Either way, it was more scary than what I’d intended to ask about, and 'what really happened’ may not even have a well defined answer. Do you remember the time I showed up all spooked and I asked you to tell me about physics or something you liked, we had a picnic on Samos, and you taught me about plasma and shockwaves and induced fusion for about four hours?”

“Vividly,” said Flicker. "It was the first time I felt successful at helping you with anything social. I was so happy.“

"Yeah, that was the day after my screw up. You helped ground me and reassure me I was actually back on Earth again.”

“So, all of this was going on while… Wait, was the spying, and Gisela, part of the 'Byzantine interdimensional magician mess’ you mentioned a few times?”

“Yup. And a couple of weeks later I started putting some old and new things together of my own, and came up with some scary guesses about who your parents were, and the origin of the war between Kyrjaheim and the Wanderer. And what was likely to happen when Gisela found out about you, or vice-versa.

"Then there was a battle–an actual battle in the Nine Worlds, which the Wanderer’s forces lost decisively. Supposedly the Wanderer listened to the one thing Gisela was wrong about and ignored all the things she was right about–but that was her version. I wasn’t around; ask Eirik or Osk if you want a more objective view. Gisela got blamed, and the next time we met she was due to be subjected to a banishment or ban or something. A new one–she was under several already.”

Journeyman looked down. "As we discussed what to do about it, she told me in detail about something she’d hinted at before. She’d committed an epic act of hubris some time before, and convinced the Norns to prophesy, in detail, about how she wasn’t going to die.“

"And that was bad?”

“Very. If you ask a real Seer to do something like that, and they agree, it’s like a very powerful, self-inflicted curse. With potentially horrific side effects. But it did severely limit the ability of almost everyone to even credibly threaten her–it might well have been why she wasn’t already dead. No one could kill Gisela in the Nine Worlds, or when they were in their own home world, or when they were both in the same world, and she couldn’t die under a whole bunch of other conditions that turned out not to matter.

"I knew immediately that she was almost certain to die in one of three ways, and the potential fallout from one of them went all the way up to 'end of the world’. So I told her about the second–that I would kill her using portal trickery. I said that I didn’t want to do that, but that I knew how prophecies worked, and that if we stayed together it was virtually certain. So I had to leave.”

“Why… Why would she even tell you about something like that?”

“I think there was some additional condition that she thought meant I couldn’t do it, and I was supposed to try to figure it out. Like some variation on 'cannot be killed by a trickster’, because she reacted with shock, but didn’t try to argue. Leaving was a very un-Trickster like thing to do. I wished her luck, ported out, and did my best to assure that the first way wasn’t worse than the second, because I really did not want to try to kill her. I never saw her again.”

“What was the third way?” asked Flicker.

“Self-inflicted portal mishap. Very unlikely, but it was the loophole that would get her if she tried something completely suicidal.”

Speed up. I do things that remind him of her–not necessarily bad things. But why… Oh.

If someone destroyed the Nine Worlds, Gisela’s immunity there would go away. And the person everyone was afraid would do that…

Slow down.

“When I was hunting the Wanderer,” she said, “there was a group from the Nine Worlds that opened a portal to Colorado. I detected them and closed the portal with rocks. There was a single flyer that had already gone through. I was in the Nine Worlds; she was on Earth. I threw my first rock through the portal and killed her. I never got a good look at her.”

Flicker’s stomach felt hollow. "Was that Gisela?“

Journeyman met her eyes. "Yes. Skardi saw her die.”

“Oh.”

They all knew. Every Chooser and einherjar by now. And Yiskah. They all waited. Out of… respect? Or was it fear?

Flicker thought about what she might have done, if she’d found out about Gisela when she was fourteen. Or fifteen.

“I wasn’t wearing my visor,” Flicker said. "I don’t have any recordings. I killed her, and I don’t even know what she looked like. That seems… disrespectful.“

"There are pictures,” said Three. "Would you like to see one?“

"Yes, I would,” said Flicker. Journeyman tensed.

“There are quite a few,” said Three, “Mr. Obvious Spy here took a camera with him. And someone seemed determined to make sure he came home with plenty of pictures of her.”

Journeyman stared into the distance. "She thought of digital cameras as a kind of magic; more pictures of her meant I was more likely to come back soon.“

"Pic on your visor, Flicker,” said Three, and an image formed.

Let me out.

No.

“She’s… very beautiful,” said Flicker. "I don’t like the way she’s looking at you, but I suppose that’s to be expected.“ She frowned. "I thought Choosers with long hair kept it braided.”

“Which–” began Journeyman as he glanced at his handcomp. "Oh. That one. Her hair is down because we’d just gotten out of the water and I hadn’t braided it for her yet.“

"You braided her hair?!”

“…Yes?”

Pain smote.

Let me OUT.

No!

Speed up. "Three! This hurts worse than everything else put together! Help?“

"Got it!” sent Three. "Do not slow back down. I’ve identified your primary problem.“

"Well, what is it?” sent Flicker.

“You have Post-Biogestalt Voyeurism Fixation, with complications. You masked and patched it with three different compensation strategies; projection is the most important. Lif doesn’t bother you because she’s socially awkward and has short hair, so projection is easy. Long hair is alien to your self image, but projection didn’t completely break down for Gisela until her hair became romantically significant. That was the key clue.”

“Nothing like that is in A History of Biogestalt Development and Pathology,” sent Flicker. “I’m positive; I’ve read the whole thing three times.”

“It’s not in the fifth edition; I have access to a more recent version. It wasn’t widely recognized until a lot of smart Grs'thnk who had abused homebrew biogestalt rigs as adolescents started showing common symptoms as adults.”

“What causes–No, forget that. How do we fix it?”

“Not quickly.” Three sent a wry smile emote. "A lot of deep work. And some research–humans aren’t Grs'thnk, and you’re more than just human.“

"Patch it for tomorrow?”

“Too likely to break–and we’d be adding a new existential failure mode at the last minute. Here is what I think you need to do…

*****

Flicker slowed back down, to a roiling mix of anger and other emotions. Journeyman was watching her closely.

"Found my problem,” she managed to say. "But Three thinks I’m going to–“

"Hang on,” said Journeyman. "Three? You’ve got a diagnosis?“

"Yes,” said Three, “Unfortunately–”

“Documented and backed up to DASI?”

“Yes, but–”

“Good. Let me talk to my partner for a sec.”

Journeyman stood, then crouched in front of Flicker and looked up into her face, his eyes intense. "Flicker? Partner?“

"Yeah?”

“I know you’re hurting. I went along with Three to get us to this point. But you don’t really want to do something you’re considering, right? Something drastic?”

Let me out!

No!

“No, I don’t.”

“Good. Don’t. Hold on for a little longer and I promise I’ll show you the best magic trick you’ve ever seen. But first I need to have a little talk with Three. It might get loud. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll manage.”

Journeyman reached out and gently touched her face. "That’s my partner.“

He stood and turned to face the monitor where Three’s avatar still gazed out impassively. "Three. Thank you for identifying Flicker’s problem. You can pick minds apart like nobody’s business, you’re great at diagnosis, and you’re the only person the Grs'thnk would trust with the needed background in time. But your plan for solving the problem is a bad plan. Bad overconfident reckless arrogant wrong bad.”

“How evocative. We don’t have much choice. You realize you’re just making things more difficult for Flicker?”

“No, I’m making things more difficult for Skybreaker. Who I’m sure is so much more stable and well integrated and better behaved and totally wouldn’t go around breaking arms, obliterating pocket dimensions, or gratuitously disrupting local spacetime topology if she gets out again. And she might truly be more comfortable than Flicker during the upcoming construction and space battle.”

Journeyman stared at the screen. "You know what she won’t do? She won’t meekly give Flicker her body and mind back after all the excitement is over.“

"I know you have a lot of experience with possession,” said Three. "So do I. But that isn’t a good model for–“

"I agree! I also have a lot of experience with dual-form, dual-identity shapeshifters with change conflict and emotional problems. Skybreaker isn’t a demon; Flicker is a were-starship.”

“Perhaps,” said Three. "But she is also a biogestalt, which I doubt was true for any lycanthropes you’ve worked with. Further, you are the object of her fixation, making it more difficult for you to help her with it. And finally, there is far too much we don’t know or don’t have access to here. I’m afraid I don’t fully trust your judgement. Maximizing the chances for universal survival requires–“

Journeyman looked up at the ceiling, pain on his face. "Three. No. I like you. And I hate making threats. But you’re advocating something that would cage Flicker in her own body. Don’t fuck with my partner. I can time-travel.”

There was a long silence. Flicker held her breath.

“You have a better plan?” said Three, and Flicker started breathing again.

“I do,” said Journeyman. "Flicker?“

He turned to face her and smiled and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

"Yeah?” she said.

“I promised you the best trick. Watch this.” He rolled up his sleeves, then spread his arms wide. "Nothing up my sleeves, as you can see.“

He picked up his hat and shook it vigorously. "And here we have a perfectly empty hat. But wait!” He turned it over and rummaged inside. "What’s this?“ He pulled out a small plastic rabbit. The head was hinged; he flicked it open with his thumb, revealing an electronic connector. "Why this looks like a data storage device. Say, DASI?”

“Yes?” replied DASI from a speaker on the side of her bulky portable node.

“You’ve been very quiet this trip. But I believe you have a conditionally locked decryption key, and some embargoed communications. Has the condition been satisfied?”

“It has,” said DASI.

“Wonderful! Decrypt this and release everything.” Journeyman plugged the rabbit into a data port and picked up his handcomp.

The 'You have mail’ alert flashed on Flicker’s visor, and she activated it. A picture appeared and her breath caught. It was an album cover, featuring two people very familiar to her, smiling and laughing.



Donner

Thunderer

With special guest Osk

Pre-release excerpt, Flicker’s cut. For personal and therapeutic use only, see attached instructions. Advisory: Lyrics.

Flicker looked up at Journeyman, who was paging through something on his handcomp. "Mike?“

"Yeah?”

“Donner sent me music. New music.”

Journeyman smiled. "It would be a stretch to make him appear in a puff of smoke. Radio can still catch up with us, though, so I left him two messages this morning, one using the same trick with DASI to delay it until we were on Learning and under the embargo. He’s had a busy day in the studio.“

"There’s a bunch of decrypted stuff here too…”

“I would expect no less.” Journeyman waved his handcomp. "But wait! There’s more! I now have, on this ordinary handcomp, a copy of A Partner’s Guide to Post-Biogestalt Voyeurism Fixation, by DASI and Dr. Stella Reinhart III. Looks real handy, and Three? You might be related to that second author.“

"How closely?” asked Three.

“I think that’s partly up to you.”

“There were a number of items for me as well. Which raises a disturbing epistemological question. Where did the data in that archive come from?”

“Good question! I have theories, of course, but I’m not sure. The encrypted archive was in one of my blind data drops when Flicker and I ported back from Europa, along with some very scary instructions. I’m sure you’ve both noticed I’ve been a bit on edge since. But I think the way it got there is what really upset the Floater safety guy.”

“Wait,” said Flicker. "You didn’t even know what was in it until now?“

"I wasn’t certain. And we had to go through all this,” he waved his hand, “for the trick to work. Nothing is free; someone has to be the first to figure things out. I can buy time, but if I hadn’t been willing to do what I did, I don’t think that archive would have appeared at all.”

Flicker sped up to read the instructions for the music. The first track, 'Unwind’, caught her eye. ’…should reduce stress from inter-identity cognitive dissonance and the assimilation of emotionally loaded information…’

She listened. Journeyman was discussing something with Three, but that didn’t matter because Donner and Osk were singing. Together.

The track finished, and Flicker considered her mental state. It hadn’t been a dramatic song–that wasn’t the point. But the room felt a little bigger, and Flicker could breath a little easier, and the artificial gravity felt more comfortable, and tomorrow seemed a little less insurmountable. And the voice had stopped bothering her, at least for now.

Flicker stood. Three seemed to have regained her sense of humor, and whatever she was talking to Journeyman about didn’t sound critical. "Three? Thank you for everything. Now I think I would like some time with just Journeyman.“

"Certainly,” said Three. "Call if and when you need anything.“

Journeyman raised an eyebrow as Flicker led him into the next compartment, his sleeping room. After closing the door, she put her arms around him, leaned her cheek against his, and just breathed contentedly for a moment.

"I haven’t solved everything,” he said softly. "Still… good trick?“

"Best trick,” she said. "Best trick ever.“

Next: Chapter 46

