“We can’t share this earth, can we, the two tribes so apparently similar and so utterly unalike?”
“No, we can’t share it,” Ash said, shaking his head with emphasis. “What race can live with any other? What religion with any other? War is worldwide; and the wars are tribal, no matter what men say they are! They are tribal, and they are wars of extermination, whether it be the Arabs against the Kurds, or the Turks and the Europeans, or the Russian fighting the Oriental. It’s never going to stop. People dream that it will, but it can’t, as long as there are people. But of course, if my kind came again, and if the humans of the earth were exterminated, well, then, my people could live in peace, but then, doesn’t every tribe believe this of itself?”
Michael shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be strife,” he said. “It is conceivable that all tribes stop fighting each other.”
“Conceivable, yes, but not possible.”
“One breed doesn’t have to reign over another,” insisted Michael. “One breed doesn’t even have to know about the other.”
“You mean that we should live in secret?” Ash asked. “Do you know how quickly our population doubles itself and then triples and then quadruples? Do you know how strong we are? You can’t know how it was, you have never seen the Taltos born knowing, you’ve never seen it grow to its full height in those first few minutes or hours or days or however long it takes; you’ve never seen it.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Rowan. “I’ve seen it twice.”
“And what do you say? What would come of my wanting a female? Of grieving for your lost Emaleth and seeking to find a replacement for her? Of troubling your innocent Mona with the seed that might make the Taltos or might make her die?”
“I can tell you this,” said Rowan, taking a deep breath. “At the moment I shot Emaleth, at that moment there wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that she was a threat to my breed, and that she had to die.”
Ash smiled; he nodded. “And you were right.”
They were all silent. Then Michael spoke.
“You have our worst secret now,” he said.
“Yes, you have it,” said Rowan softly.
“And I wonder,” said Michael, “if we have yours.”
“You will,” said Ash. “We should sleep now, all of us. My eyes hurt me. And the corporation waits with a hundred small tasks which only I can perform. You sleep now, and in New York I’ll tell you everything. And you will have all my secrets, from the worst to the least.”
Twenty-three
“MONA, WAKE UP.”
She heard the swamp before she actually saw it. She heard the bullfrogs crying, and the night birds, and the sound of water all around her, murky, still, yet still moving somewhere, in a rusted pipe perhaps, or against the side of a skiff, she didn’t know. They had stopped. This must be the landing.
The dream had been the strangest yet. She had had to pass an examination, and she that passed would rule the world, so Mona had to answer every question. From every field the questions had come, on science, mathematics, history, the computer she so loved, the stocks and bonds, the meaning of life, and that had been the hardest part, because she’d felt so alive that she could not begin to justify it. You know, you just know that it is magnificent to be alive. Had she scored the perfect one hundred percent? Would she rule the world?
“Wake up, Mona!” Mary Jane whispered.
Mary Jane couldn’t see that Mona’s eyes were open. Mona was looking through the glass window at the swamp, at the ragged, tilting trees, sickly and strung with moss, at the vines snarled like ropes around the huge old cypresses. Out there in the light of the moon she could see patches of water through the covering of still duckweed, and the knees of the cypress trees, so many dangerous spikes sticking up all around the thick trunks of the old trees. And black things, little black things flying in the night. Could be roaches, but don’t think about it!
Her back ached. As she tried to sit forward, she felt heavy and achy all over, and wanting more milk. They’d stopped twice for milk, and she wanted more. They had cartons and cartons in the ice chest, best to get to the house. Then drink