Sarah’s eyes widened, and then she was kissing me back, her hands sliding around to cup the sides of my head, fingers weaving themselves into my hair. She’d never kissed anyone before this trip and neither had I, but she was a quick study and I followed her lead, holding her up as she melted against me, closing my eyes and kissing her like it was the last thing I was ever going to do. Which, if she planned to go ahead with destroying the world, it might be.
It was worth it. Not worth the world being destroyed, but worth dying in Iowa, thousands of miles away from the rest of my family. It was all worth it if it meant that when I died, I was dying with Sarah. Not dying at all would have been better—way better—but I guess I always knew that we couldn’t win forever. That’s not how the universe works. Sooner or later everyone has to lose. Even the good guys.
Sarah pulled back first, smiling wanly at me. “Why didn’t we do that years ago?” she asked.
“You were in Ohio.”
“Before Ohio.”
“Before Ohio . . .” Maybe we could have changed everything if we’d just gotten around to making out before Ohio. Before Sarah had followed Verity to Manhattan and broken herself against the unmoving wall of family loyalty, opening the door onto metamorphosis and instars and cuckoo women who wore her face like it was some sort of uniform, claiming to have some ownership of her just because they shared the same blood. Maybe.
But maybe never really means anything except for “I have regrets,” and all the regrets in the world weren’t going to change where we were standing. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we were waiting for the right time.”
“Is this the right time?”
“You’re sort of about to do the big extra-credit math problem that unmakes the world, so if this isn’t the right time, it’s the only time we’ve got.” I shook my head. “This sort of sucks.”
“I’m sorry.” She winced again, putting a hand against her temple. “I feel like I’m going to burst. Artie, I don’t think I have a choice about doing this equation. Now that it’s inside me, it has to come out. No one’s supposed to contain it for very long.”
I hesitated, thinking of the cuckoos in their concentric rings, their eyes glowing like tiny stars. “Are the rest of the cuckoos helping you do it?”
“I wish.” Sarah chuckled darkly. “They’re keeping it from getting away from me. It wants to spread itself. It’s like a disease. It wants to infect, so badly that it burns.”
Mark and his accidental avoidance of homicide. The way the process of metamorphosis gave young cuckoos more and more access to their history with each instar, until they understood as much as they could about the structure of Johrlar, back before they’d been exiled, back before they became cuckoos.
“The Johrlac came from a hive mind society,” I said, slowly.
“What?”
“The Johrlac came from a hive mind society,” I repeated. “Your ancestors, the ones who got kicked out and banished—they were a hive mind. I don’t know whether they had individual identities or not, but they did everything together. They could balance their data demands across multiple minds. Don’t you see? Deleting the information that it wasn’t safe to leave in their exiles wasn’t just a means of trapping them, it was a way to protect them.”
Sarah looked at me blankly. “I don’t understand anything you just said.”
“Oh, crap. You weren’t there when we shook Mark down for information. Okay, look. You know how when you want to do something massive, you don’t keep it on a single computer?”
“Well, yeah,” said Sarah. “SETI needs to be widely distributed or they wouldn’t have the processor power necessary to scan as much data as they’re receiving.”
“That’s the problem with this equation! It’s too big for one brain, but no one knows that anymore. They won’t let it in. You’re the queen—”
“I’m the what?”
“—I think that means you have to direct the equation, but if you can just put some of the load elsewhere—”
“Seriously, I’m the what?”
“Sarah! Don’t argue with me about terminology! Just listen!” I grabbed her hands. “You need to break the mental connection. You need to throw me out of your head so that I can get Annie and James to ditch their anti-telepathy charms. And then you need to grab every brain you can get your mental hands on and