Page 35 of Butterfly Effects

I blinked. Fetch smiled. “I suppose you wouldn’t have cleaner plants where you’re from,” she said. “They’re harmless to anything as big as we are. They keep the bugs out of the house.” She held a hand out toward the nearest of the plants, which reached down with a tendril and caressed her fingers before withdrawing, apparently realizing that it couldn’t eat her.

Carry pulled another lever, and the interior doors slid open, revealing the house. Fetch motioned for us to follow, heading inside.

The first room of the house, which I assumed was cognate to a living room or parlor back on Earth, was large and high-ceilinged, with several windows scattered around the edges, and some surprisingly soft-looking furniture set in the middle, what looked like a couch and several easy chairs, all well padded and welcoming. There were no decorative pillows or anything like that, just plush fabric in a surprisingly delicate shade of yellow fading into orange. I blinked, and realized it was so delicate because it wasn’t fabric at all; it was soft cellulose, pressed into a massive flower petal. The furniture was actually furled flowers.

Looking at the room from that perspective, I could see how all the furnishings had grown up out of the floor or from the walls; the shelves were some sort of hard fungus, the chairs were closed flowers, the table was probably some kind of toadstool. There wasn’t much in the way of what I would have called ornamentation: no pictures on the walls or books on the shelves.

“You can put your bag down,” said Fetch magnanimously.

I dropped the bag on the nearest couch. “Explanation time now.”

“You did very well back there,” said Carry. “If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn you were domesticated.”

“I would like to know what’s happening, please,” I said. “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable by asking.”

“We did say we’d explain,” said Fetch, with a heavy sigh. “First off, you should know we’ve been hoping for something like this to happen for quite some time, and you can speak freely here. We’ve been encouraging the growth of a sort of fungus in our walls. It puts out hyphae and forms a mycelial mat that surrounds the hive and makes it difficult for anyone to casually read the people inside.”

“Best of all, it’s normally occurring in this region,” said Carry. “People are constantly having to call in the mycologists to have their property treated, but the treatment is expensive and we’re young people just starting our careers in earnest; no one’s going to question us allowing it to fester for a little while longer. We’ve encouraged the growth three times and had it removed twice, but it just keeps coming back, and people have started to suspect this whole grove may be infected. It keeps them from building nearby, and it allows us to maintain our privacy.”

“You’ll be as safe here as you can be anywhere,” concluded Fetch.

“Where is here?” I asked. “I mean, I’m assuming Johrlar, based on everything I’ve seen so far, but I can’t be certain, because no one’s been telling me anything.”

“This is Johrlar,” said Fetch. “More specifically, this is the territory of Neyvar, and the capital city of Ka’krin. I could give you our address, but I doubt it would mean anything.”

I didn’t say anything, just blinked at her. I had never considered that Johrlar would be more than just a single undefined location, but it made sense. Earth was huge. It had continents and countries and cities. It wasn’t just one place, undistinguished and unvaried.

“Was there something you specifically wanted to know about Johrlar?” asked Fetch. “Because we could show you, or at least tell you. We were both born and went through creche here in Ka’krin, so we don’t have firsthand accounts of other cities, but I’m sure we could find them if you wanted more information—”

“The only information I want is why I’m in Johrlar to begin with,” I exclaimed. “I didn’t come here voluntarily.”

“Well no, you wouldn’t have,” said Carry, sounding baffled. “No cuckoo ever does.”

“Let’s start there: you know what a cuckoo is. You called me a queen. The people who took me said I had reached ‘the forbidden instar.’ What does that mean? How can an instar be forbidden? The way it was explained to me, instars are a natural part of our life cycle. We don’t have a lot of control over them, or how they progress. They just sort of happen, and we go along for the ride.”

Fetch and Carry exchanged a look. “You ask for information beyond our caste,” said Fetch politely, turning back to me. “Would you be willing to speak to another to know what you require?”

“I’m not going off to see the Wizard or anything here, but if you have someone who can tell me what the hell is going on, I’d be more than happy to hear it,” I said sourly.

Fetch and Carry exchanged another look, this one more complicated, their eyes flashing white as they “spoke” to one another. Carry broke off, heading for the sliding doors to the outside, and pulled the lever, leaving me alone with Fetch.

“She will return,” said Fetch. “We anticipated your questions might be foundational in nature, and so we have a third who has agreed to speak with you on the matter. Carry is notifying Annalist, who will hopefully be able to join us shortly. If you’re willing to restrict yourself to questions of smaller scope, I can do what I can to answer them, but if you would prefer to go in order, I can also provide you with something to eat and a place to rest until such time as aid is available.”

“Okay—why did you break me out of there? And why did you have to? What were those people going to do to me?”

“We broke you out because we need your assistance, and as to why we had to, you would never have been allowed to leave of your own volition. A cuckoo queen is too dangerous to be allowed among the general population, and your comfort wouldn’t justify the risk. They were going to make you stand trial for your many crimes, and after you had inevitably been found guilty, they were going to punish and neutralize you.”

“Why do I have the feeling I wouldn’t enjoy this neutralization process?”

“Because it would be extremely painful? There is no reversing an instar. Once complete, they are forever. Your neutralization could not be achieved through a simple resetting of the self. You would have to be removed entirely.”

“So they were going to kill me because of crimes they decided I’d committed?”

“Yes. In mind, if not in flesh.”

“If they care so much about cuckoo crimes, why aren’t they spending more time arresting cuckoos for murder and genocide and all the other bullshit they get up to? The worst thing I ever did was skip out on the check for my morning coffee!”

Fetch radiated polite bemusement. “I don’t know what a check or a morning coffee are, but I assume they must be small infractions, like tardiness or carelessness with an assigned job. I am sorry you believe yourself to be law-abiding. This must be so much more painful when you’ve made an effort to live an unblemished life.”