Ammonite

At the right moment, when she felt her lungs would fill forever with the no-longer-alien sticky resin smell of green and dirt and small mammals’ nests, when it seemed the world waited for just a brief hitch of time, when she heard and felt and was the electromagnetic pulse of Jeep, its laugh, its breath, she rose up onto her knees, lifted the wooden rod she held in her right hand and struck the gong with the padded end. Vibration seeped through Ollfoss like the smell of grass after rain, resonating with the pulse of the world, its heartbeat. She sat back down on her heels. Long after the sound faded, she sensed the air humming as the gong quivered on its ropes.

The metal’s vibration slowed. She sat and breathed and watched the reflection of her face reform. The reflection watched her back.

She was not who she had been. Like dull, raw glass in the hands of a skilled blower, she had become something different. Something cold, brilliant, and still. On her left hand were two fingers, a thumb, and two scars. The face that had been beaten into a different shape on Beaver carried new marks. Once again it was no longer her face.

She contemplated that while she listened to the waiting green silence of Moanwood, to the slow breath of the world: the muscle of its dirt, the bones of its rock, the blood of its seas. She heard the world humming deep in its throat, and when it rang with its soft pulse, she leaned forward to strike the gong.

Again and again her face shivered to splinters; again and again it re-formed.

Marghe knew that this meant something: she listened to the world with her body; she hit the gong; her new face swam apart and came back together.

Strike the gong.

They were connected: the world, her body, her face. Perhaps she should not be asking who she was but, rather, of what she was a part. The world was telling her: her blood, the tides in her cells, and the fluctuations in her nerves already beat to its rhythm, just as they had once resonated to the electromagnetic surges of Earth. Her body rang with this world. She had a place here; she could take it up, if she chose.

Strike the gong.

Marghe drank down the cold, still air, felt it suck heat from her lungs. She expelled it gently through her mouth in a deliberate cloud of breath crystal that dulled the surface of the gong. Her mark.

She raised her head. The sky was covered with endless round humps of dark cloud, like a shoal of blue-backed salmon broaching the sea, poised forever before diving. A nerka sky. Those clouds were made of her breath and the breath of a million women who had made peace with the world; women she had set out to study, like seashells.

No longer.

It was possible now for her to put aside that person she had been and choose to accept Thenike, or Cassil or Holle and Shill, even Danner and Lu Wai and Letitia Dogias, as nothing more and nothing less than equals from whom she could learn and derive comfort, to whom she could offer advice or a strong hand. If she chose.

Strike the gong.

She struck it harder than she needed to and set it dancing on its rope. The sound clashed and jarred around the clearing. Choose, it seemed to be saying. Choose. But there was no real choice; that decision was made already. All she had to do was accept it: Jeep the world, Jeep the virus, would become part of her now whether she wanted it or not. There was not enough FN-17 to last her back to Port Central. Even if she was fit enough to travel, even if the tribes and their feud were not making it impossible to cross Tehuantepec, even if the weather didn’t mean no ships could make the passage south until the Moon of the Aches, there was not enough. There was not enough. The virus was going to invade her, cell by cell, sliding cold fingers into her cells and curling around her genes. She would never get rid of it. Never.

She could stop taking the FN-17 voluntarily, let Jeep in with open arms. It was coming anyway. This way she could prepare herself. It might make a difference, Thenike said; she might stand a better chance of living if her mind was not fighting her body, if she was struggling toward the possible, toward staying alive, rather than fighting for the impossible, to keep the virus out, right out from under her skin.

To make that choice, to voluntarily set aside the FN-17, she would have to take a step into the unknown; she would have to step out from behind her professional persona and be naked, vulnerable. Herself.

Marghe squirmed. Maybe she should keep taking the vaccine. After all, it was possible that Danner even now might be working miracles, might be establishing new relays, or moving satellites, or sending Mirrors north to track her SLJC. Then she could go up to Estradebefore the six months were over. She would not have the virus. She…

No. All dreams. She would contract the virus; she would be infected and survive, or she would be infected and die. The rest was just details.

Strike the gong.