On the feast-day of the goddess Floribunda, Priestess Fennel woke knowing something was wrong.
She scraped her green-mittened hands over her midriff, hating the bustier that itched her body and her mind. The torturous garment was her badge of office as Priestess of the Smaragdine Sisterhood. Thanks to the hallucinogenic trickle of cane toad poison that it fed into her, the whole spaceship shimmered with numinous light – to her eyes, at least. She was never certain what anyone else saw.
So, what was wrong? The generation ship’s great engines thrummed steadily, deep below her. The ceiling of her room was just starting to glow rose-pink exactly as it ought at ship’s dawn, turning the frog-green sheets of her narrow bed a muddy brown. The air-exchangers hummed as usual, leaving only a faint, pervasive scent of absinthe. As far as she could trust her senses, rendered hyper-sharp but untrustworthy by the hallucinogenic toad poison that never left her bloodstream, everything looked and smelled the same as ever.
But Engineer Jemal had told her that even when the Captain was on the bridge, which wasn’t often, he just fiddled with the emerald earpiece that connected him with the powerful AI at the heart of the ship, without checking the dozens of monitors that were his domain. Fennel’s worries were interrupted when Exalted Aunt Artemisia knocked three times on her door, then entered without waiting for an answer. Fennel closed her eyes and pretended to be dead. Dead, dead, dead, leave me in agonizing itchy peace…
Bare, bony feet padded across the floor, preceded by scents of wormwood and liquorice. Artemisia, carrying the gods-damned Emerald Chalice. The three Little Green Sisters followed Artemisia, their footsteps light and lithe.
Fennel’s bed creaked as the Exalted Aunt sat. The neat weight of Artemisia’s thin body, perched so close, oppressed the young priestess unspeakably.
Dead, dead, dead… and soon enough she would be. Fennel kept her eyes closed, her breathing muted. Just a few more moments of peace, before she had to let the Little Green Sisters dress her for the Festival of Floribunda.
The Exalted Aunt slid a hand under Fennel’s silky green sheet and shook her shoulder.
“Wake up, Priestess Fennel,” Artemisia almost sang. “Your Little Sisters are waiting for their favourite priestess to awaken. It’s a very special day today.”
Under the sheet, Artemisia’s long green fingernails found the tender skin of Fennel’s armpit and pinched her viciously. The Exalted Aunt shared the priestess caste with Fennel and the three Little Green Sisters, but she’d been decanted without the neurological peculiarities required to channel the gods. Artemisia was a born administrator, not a candidate for priestesshood. She would never wear the bustier. She didn’t understand that the sharpest pinch was nothing to Fennel’s daily agonies.
No priestess survived the daily drip-feed of cane toad toxins for more than a year. It wouldn’t be long before Fennel’s poisoned body was recycled and her soul entered the Collective Unconscious. It had been her fate, from the moment that she was chosen as one of the Little Green Sisters. It was the greatest of honours, and there could be no argument with the ship’s AI. She lay perfectly still, breathing calmly. Dead, dead, dead…Leave me alone, let me try to remember why I woke up worrying.
Artemisia pinched a little deeper under Fennel’s arm.
Fennel could hear the Little Sisters breathing, waiting there at the end of her bed, their faces no doubt awe-struck at their part in the ancient mystery of preparing the priestess for a feast-day. And each of them in their turn would go through the same charade. She yawned for their benefit, opened her eyes, and pulled her green-mittened hands out from under the silky sheet.
Artemisia glared sweetly. “Awake at last, dear priestess. Here, let me take those off so you can partake of the Gift of the Gods.”
The Exalted Aunt used her long fingernails to unpick the thick knots that tied the overnight anti-scratching mittens around Fennel’s wrists. As soon as Fennel’s stubby-nailed fingers were free, Artemisia picked up the chalice and held it out.
The Little Sisters had strewn the bed and floor with sugar-pink petals. It was one of the many feast days of the Great Goddess Floribunda, the lady of sweetness and light, the perfect pink rose with the hairy caterpillar hidden in her heart. The Sisters at the foot of the bed were looking at her trustingly; Fennel had no choice except to drink the glass of poison.
The bitter wormwood and sweetly pungent anise of the absinthe was intended to overwhelm the gut-wrenching sliminess of the toad extract in the glass, but failed. Fennel had to force herself to swallow each nauseating sip.
Halfway through, she felt space shift around her. Green liquid dripped down her chest and under the toadskin, adding extra fire to the oozing welts. “Oh! Did you feel that? The ship has changed course.”
Artemisia raised her pale aristocratic nose and sniffed. “Our course was set 95,497 years ago, and cannot be changed. You’re imagining it, girl.”
“But can’t you hear the engines? They’re twice as loud as usual.”
“Don’t try to tell me you can actually hear the engines, young lady. Do you have any idea how big this ship is? Remember how often I caught you daydreaming when you should have been studying the Sacred Ship Manuals! Oh, yes, you have those genes that make you so special, and the Holy Potion amplifies your senses—but they can’t do the impossible.”
Gah. This bureaucrat expected Fennel to channel the gods, the miraculous deities who’d emerged from the Collective Unconscious while the ship was on its epic voyage, but she didn’t believe that the priestess could feel the direction they were flying, or hear the engines?
Artemisia sneered. “It’s obvious what you’re doing. You’re just trying to get out of finishing your drink. It’s the Gift of the Gods, you disrespectful minx.”
Fennel was so furious that she drained the chalice. That would show the bully. She gagged, but managed to keep it down.
Still angry, she thumped the precious emerald thing onto the table and threw off her sheet, smiling as brightly as she could for her Little Sisters. It was only seven Erth-months since she had been one of them, blissfully sure that the privilege of communing with the gods was worth any indignity—right up until the terrible day when her predecessor, poor Reglisse, had screamed and collapsed at the festival of the goddess Esmeralda, raving about tiny gold tadpoles eating her brain.
Artemisia had elevated Fennel to the status of Priestess on the spot, even before Reglisse officially became One with the Collective Unconscious. Soon, when Fennel’s abused body failed, she would join Reglisse there. After her, Sister Florence would wear her own gilded toadskin bustier. Poor girl.
Fennel forced herself to walk to the foot of the bed. It was her duty as Priestess to set a good example to the Sisters, as brave Reglisse had done when she was Priestess. Fennel stood passive, ready to let the girls dress her in the Sacred Clothing as if she were a giant priestess-doll. The trousers that studious, dark-skinned Florence slid over her feet and up her legs were easy; their soft nutrient-recycling nanomesh moulded to her body. But then Fennel lurched a little; the cane toad poison in the absinthe was curdling in her stomach. She half-sat, half-fell onto the bed. It didn’t matter. Tall Anise smiled encouragingly as she lifted first one of Fennel’s feet, then the other, sliding the gilded thigh-high boots easily up her legs and over her knees. The boots had been tight, seven months earlier, when they were made for her, back when she could eat real food.
Fennel did her best to look holy and serene as sweet, flame-haired Estragon re-secured the gilded toadskin bustier of torture tight around her chest and midriff. The living toadskin absorbed the blood and lymph and sweat that leaked from her skin, and transformed her exuded liquids into more poison, in an ever-worsening cycle.
In time, each of the Little Green Sisters in turn would wear her own bustier. Fennel loved them all, and sorrowed for their fates. On a sudden impulse, she gathered the three girls in her outstretched arms and hugged them to her. They stiffened with surprise, then hugged her back.
Before the Sisters could leave the room, Fennel put on her most innocent face and said, “Exalted Aunt, may I please meditate in the sacred garden until I am required?”
“Of course, dear priestess.” It didn’t take much drug-induced intuition to see the resentment under Artemisia’s too-sweet smile. Fennel would be out of her control, but what mischief could she get up to in the absinthe garden? “The ship will remind you when it’s time to go to the Temple of Green Fire. The goddess Floribunda is scheduled to manifest at mid-afternoon. She must not be kept waiting. Remember your holy calling.”
Bloody Artemisia. Bloody Floribunda. They deserve one another.
“Yes, Exalted Aunt.” Fennel curtseyed. “Thank you, Exalted Aunt.”
Fennel stomped in her gilded boots along one of the few corridors that was allowed to her: the way to the private garden that supplied the herbs for the Sisterhood’s holy drink. Far away in the vastness of the ship there were industrial-scale farms to supply the flavourful fruits and vegetables essential to enliven the deep vats of recycled nutrients; but this place of holy herbs was the only true garden.
Fennel passed through the ordinary ship door into an absinthe dream of a medieval convent garden from Old Erth. The plasmetal walls were invisible behind the tall evergreens that lined them; the trees themselves were spattered all over with their ripening crop of star anise. At their feet were greyish wormwood plants, feathery and lanky; the Roman wormwood leaves were thinner and more delicate than the common wormwood’s, but no less lush.
Inside that surrounding square of greenery, there was a long, brick-edged bed of tender French tarragon, gentlest of the sacred herbs, and another of tougher Russian tarragon, more vigorous but far less subtle. Frilly anise plants in a third raised bed held up their lacy heads of white flowers, ready to produce their pungent seeds. Fennel’s namesake plant was there, too, in its varieties: tall common fennel stems, almost a weed, crowned with airy balls of little yellow flowers; shiny golden show-off Bronze fennel, not quite so tasty; and delicious pale green bulbs of her namesake, crisp Florence fennel. Around the pond at the centre of the room grew the graceful fronds of liquorice plants, strongest-flavoured of them all, with their powerful roots hiding under the soil.
Fennel walked moodily along the path of flat white stones that spiralled toward the pond, kicking at sticks and leaves as she went. Six or seven of the iridescent many-legged beasts that haunted the temple were splashing in the pond, reciting limericks to one another.
She caught a new limerick starting:
“There was a young priestess called Fennel
Who should have been kept in a kennel.
The girl was so sad
And her temper was bad…”
—and she picked up a stone to throw.
“You’re not even real!” she shouted at them. She was fairly sure that she was right.
“How do you know?” the biggest one squeaked back. “Are you sure you’re real?”
“Real animals don’t have eight legs. Or twelve. Or whatever you’ve got.” With her senses perpetually hazed into the far end of the spectrum, it was impossible to count them and get the same number twice.
“Except spiders,” it squeaked. “They’ve got eight legs. We could be spiders.”
“Spiders aren’t animals. And they can’t talk.” Fennel was almost sure that was right. None of the Erth texts that she studied had involved talking spiders, except that one picture book, and Sister Librarian had assured her that books for the very young weren’t reliable guides to the old world. And certainly none of the little caged things next door could talk—the buzzing, crawling creatures waiting to be fed to the colony of sacred cane toads in their own jungly, claustrophobic room. It was Fennel’s idea of Hell.
The iridescent eight-or-possibly-twelve-legged beastie ignored her. “We could be octopodes: eight legs, hence the name. Or centipedes: variable, sometimes more than 200, despite the name. I could go on. Millipedes are endlessly fascinating. But have you considered the possibility that we are aliens?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The ship is still on its way to Paradise. We haven’t landed anywhere alien yet.”
The beastie snickered. “You left Erth thousands of years ago. Anything could have happened since then. We could be a highly advanced spacefaring species that crept in through your airlocks, and found ourselves a cosy little niche here.”
“And you can teleport from the Temple to this garden? Can aliens do that? Or only imaginary beings?” Fennel had never seen them in the ship’s corridors, only here and in the Temple. They were probably hallucinations specific to heavily-wormwood-scented spaces. She lifted her rock-holding right hand higher, then reached behind her head, aiming for a good throw toward the pond. Only at the water, not at the beasts, just in case they were real, unlikely though that seemed. The shiny creatures scuttled out of the pond in a multi-legged mass, leaving only the scent of peculiar incense in the air. They ran along the stony path toward the rear wall, taking refuge in the twiggy, spidery underbrush beneath the wormwoods.
She hurled the rock after them. It made a satisfying splash in the shallow pond, and Fennel looked around for another one, bigger if possible. She’d just selected a lump of white quartz when the air in the garden began to glitter with tiny, blinding motes of light. She sighed.
Flash! The Goddess Floribunda hovered in the air over the isolated plot of lemon balm, her perfect toenails glistening like rose-pink diamonds. Her hair was sickly-pink as fairy-floss, and a sparkly halo shone above her head.
“Having a bit of a sulk, are we, Priestess Fennel? Feeling sorry for ourselves? It’s no wonder, really, with that hair of yours. At least your predecessor had a sense of style, even if she did have that little episode at the end.”
Fennel plonked herself down on a stone bench beside the plot of anise. She missed poor Reglisse. Her warmth, her grin, her Reglisse-ness. It wasn’t fair. “Oh, gods, not you already.”
Floribunda pursed her lips sweetly. “I was just thinking the same thing. But really, that mousy brown does nothing for you, especially with that chin. Reglisse was none too bright, but she did have lovely curly red hair. Have you ever considered pink highlights? I’m sure the ship could whip you up some nanos to do it in a jiffy. You know you only have to visualise it hard enough, and it will happen. Or even a nice pale green. Well, really, anything would be an improvement.”
Fennel snorted. Why should she care about her hair? Or even her chin? Toad toxins were chewing through her neurons as they spoke.
She glared into the goddess’s violet eyes. “So why have you manifested here? Was it just to criticise my looks?”
“That’s always a bonus, of course, dear Fennel. It’s so good of you to provide so many little flaws for me to criticise. Have I pointed out yet that you’re slouching terribly? Posture is so important for a young lady.”
Fennel slouched a little further. “And?”
Floribunda positively twinkled. “In fact, Fennel, there is more. I wanted to let you know that there’s something unusual in store today. I’ll be making an announcement in the Temple. A very special announcement. I think I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you will never forget today. None of you humans will forget it. Not ever.”
Fennel put her hands over her ears, and closed her eyes tightly. “Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
She walked to the Temple as fast as she could, given the toad poison and the boots. At least the goddess would not appear there until showtime.
On her way through the Temple’s great bronze doors, Fennel glared at the ancient gold-framed sketches that flanked them. The diagrams were signed by Vertu, first Priestess of the Smaragdine Sisterhood, now ages old. According to the Viridian Texts, Vertu was shown the template for the Sacred Bustier in the First Holy Vision, at the exact moment the Emerald Fountain burst into existence in what had previously been Recreation Hall 3-C, now the Temple of Green Fire.
The ship’s nanos had near-instantaneously reconfigured the useful but dull hall filled with weights, climbing walls and ball courts into a lavish temple full of pews, stained glass and chandeliers. The focus was the Emerald Fountain, a hypnotic green flame that rose and fell perpetually above the altar, a huge emerald. The crew who were using the gym equipment at the time of the reconfiguration were changed, too. They’d become the first Tenders of the Toads, coddling the beasts, extracting and purifying their poisonous exudates, and creating a custom bustier of toadskin for each new Priestess, following Vertu’s sketches.
Of course, the bureaucrats and scientists who planned the various payloads of the generation ship—live, frozen, in vitro and in suspended animation—had never intended to include cane toads in any form. Their presence was, officially, an accident, though at the time when the ship was launched it would have been considered a criminal act. A particularly rugged colonist from Queensland, addicted to licking cane-toads, had smuggled in a few toad eggs sealed in his personal baggage allowance, and mealworms to feed them. They thrived in a corner of one of the shower blocks. Kevin shared his bounty with others from the labour pool; as one by one they died and joined the Collective Unconscious, their altered perceptions in turn affected the AI that ran the ship. The smuggler’s name was now inscribed in green fire on the base of the Emerald Fountain: Saint Kevin of Bundaberg.
The temple entrance bell tinkled, and Fennel’s heart jumped under the gilded bustier. Yes! It was Engineer Jemal!
“Priestess,” she asked from the temple’s arched doorway, “may I enter the presence of the gods? I require divine guidance.”
Fennel tried not to think how fortunate she was that Jemal needed guidance so very often. She had a bad feeling that the shiny beasts scuttling in the corners of the Temple eavesdropped on her juicier thoughts. Doubtless the gods did too. There was no privacy in her calling.
Jemal went on, “I know it’s the feast day of the Goddess Floribunda. Is that a problem? Do you have time?”
Fennel nodded. “I’m already prepared for the ceremony. The goddess will appear at 3 pm. Those of the Devoted who the Collective Unconscious has selected for the ceremony will receive their psychic summons at 2 pm.” Oh, gods, could she ever stop blathering? “So, yes, um, what I mean to say is, we have time. Plenty of time.” Ugh! “No problem. Um, please enter the Temple, Engineer Jemal.”
She walked to the door as slowly as her suppressed excitement permitted. A smile kept trying to spread itself across her face, but she pursed her lips heroically.
At the doorway Jemal knelt before her, ready for the sacred drink that would connect their minds. Fennel breathed slowly, ready to act as a channel between the gods and Jemal. She took the Emerald Chalice from its silver stand and lifted its heavy green bowl to Jemal’s softly opened lips. She had to use all her priestess bodily-control to stop from blushing all over her décolletage as she tilted the chalice three times, administering the three ritual sips of hallucinogen-infused absinthe. She managed to put the Chalice back safely without it slipping from her trembling fingers, and led Jemal down the long aisle between the temple pews to the meditation space in front of the altar.
Fennel and Jemal sat side by side on the green and yellow paisley-carpeted floor in front of the altar, each of them awkwardly cross-legged as the gods demanded. Jemal’s long legs looked difficult enough to fold, and the high gilded boots from Fennel’s priestess uniform made crossing hers ridiculously hard.
Seated uncomfortably together, the priestess and the seeker of truth gazed at the green fire as it flickered into existence above the Smaragdine altar, fountained to the ceiling and faded into nothingness—flickered, rose and faded, time after time. Slowly, Fennel’s expanded consciousness shepherded the engineer into her trance. Jemal would wake when one of the gods placed the correct answer into her questioning mind. Fennel would not share Jemal’s communion with the gods; she was a mere conduit.
Fennel’s body was acutely aware of Jemal sitting beside her, but her toad-hazy mind soon slipped into a disturbing vision of glittering many-legged beasts denuding the luxuriant shrubs from a silver stepped pyramid straight from ancient Babylon. It was a relief when she woke—but she was startled to see that Jemal was pacing around the hexagonal altar of green crystal, her golden-brown forehead creased with worry under her spiky black hair. After the gods answered her, Jemal should have left the temple silently and gone back to her work, leaving Fennel in the temple alone.
“Can you hear it, priestess?” Jemal whispered.
Fennel untangled her boots and stood. Confused, she asked, “Why are you still here? Er, not that it’s a problem, or anything. I mean, you don’t have to leave. Stay as long as you want … Is something wrong?”
Jemal looked even more worried. “The Divine gave me no answer to my question, priestess.”
“Really? The gods have always answered their petitioners in the Temple. Always. All the books say so.” How could the channelling ritual have failed?
Jemal cupped a hand to her ear and squinted, as if that might help her to listen. After a minute, she sighed. “The old girl’s not happy. The engines don’t sound right. But I have no idea what’s wrong. What can I do, if the Divine won’t help me?”
Fennel’s stomach lurched. “It’s definitely louder than usual. And I felt it change direction early this morning. Do you know anything about that?”
“We aren’t allowed to tell anyone—but yes, the ship did change direction. We don’t know why, or where we are headed. Nobody knows but the ship’s AI.”
“It won’t tell you?”
The engineer looked down at the nauseating paisley carpet. “It refuses all questions or commands about the course, verbal or through the old keyboard interface.”
“But the Astrogators must know. Can’t you ask them?”
Jemal looked desperate. “That’s another secret. The ship hasn’t decanted Astrogators for centuries. The AI claims that the Collective Unconscious holds plenty of them for it to call on, and it need not decant another imperfect physical human. It says it is managing the spatio-temporal flux far better than any of us could, and why don’t we run along and play like good children. Indeed, it says it doesn’t need us for anything much any more.”
“Oh!”
“But last time we asked how many more hundreds of years it would be until we reached Paradise, its answer was ‘Pride begat a daughter, I do not know the father of it unless the Divil, but she christened it, and call’d it Appetite, and sent her daughter to taste these Wormwoods.’ It printed five thousand copies of that in green on a yellow background.”
Recognition made Fennel lurch. “That’s from one of the Hidden Texts. It was written by Elder Saint Nicholas Culpepper back on Erth. He wrote a lot about fennel and anise and all the other sacred plants. But what you just recited is the start of his treatise on Wormwood. It’s the holiest and most forbidden of all texts. You should never have seen those words.” Hell. The gods would punish Jemal for this.
The engineer interrupted her panicked thoughts. “Culpepper? But that’s what the AI is calling itself now, when it talks to us. This is serious.”
Jemal put out her hand toward the priestess, almost touched her elbow. Almost. Fennel’s heart rate rose.
The Little Green Sisters burst through the doors of the Temple, squealing. Jemal moved her hand a little further from Fennel’s elbow, but kept it stretched toward her. If only she dared put out her own hand to touch …
Florence stage-whispered, “Fennel! Fennel! Artemisia is on her way. There was a message from the AI that something really important is going to happen this afternoon. We thought we’d better warn you before she gets here.”
There was an explosion over the Smaragdine Altar, and Floribunda manifested in mid air, her sickening baby pink fighting with the many greens of the sacred fountain.
“I’m so sorry,” the goddess simpered. “Did I break up a touching display of affection between you two love-birds? You have no idea how sorry I am.”
“We can guess.” Fennel’s voice sounded bitter even to her own ears. “And love-birds. Really? We’ve never even touched.”
“That’s not my fault. I am the Great Goddess, you know. The biggest and best. Your minds are an open book to me. And now it’s too late.”
Jemal stood tall. She ignored Floribunda, and turned toward the priestess, touching her elbow gently. “I love you, Fennel. I should have spoken earlier. But how could I expect a priestess to love a mere engineer?”
Exalted Aunt Artemisia burst through the Temple doors. “I heard that, Engineer Jemal. Priestesses must be sacred, inviolate, and above all virgin. Untouched. Move away from Priestess Fennel right now, or I will report you to the Captain.”
Floribunda’s tinkling laugh filled the Temple, sweeter than poisoned honey. Fennel wanted to throw up, even more than usual.
“See, young Engineer,” Floribunda said, “the priestess is too overcome to reply.”
“Oh no I’m not, queen-bitch.” Fennel turned her back on the goddess. “I love you too, Jemal. But priestesses die. How can I expect you to love me when I’ll be dead in a few months? It wouldn’t be fair.”
Aunt Artemisia stamped her footed. “Priestess Fennel!”
Floribunda’s laugh was like xylophone of tinkling rose-petals. “Fennel, sweetheart, your problem is a lot bigger than that. My friends and I have a plan. An important plan. The most important plan ever.”
Fennel raised her eyes to the theoretical heavens. Would Floribunda never get to the point?
The goddess’s voice tinkled on. “We have changed the ship’s course. Yes, Engineer Jemal, you were right to think something was going on, you pathetic worm.”
“O greatest of deities,” Artemisia oozed, gazing adoringly at Floribunda, “what is your wonderful plan? Where will your wisdom lead us?”
Floribunda glowed icky-pink. “The ship is now within the target solar system, mere days from the planet that the builders of the ship named Paradise. I deemed the planet insufficiently heavenly. It is no better than Old Erth was, even before the oceans rose. Not enough emeralds. No cane toads. Not good enough. So we deities of the Collective Unconscious persuaded the AI to alter the ship’s course.”
Artemisia grovelled below the altar, knees and elbows on the paisley carpet, bony green-clad rear in the air. “Enlighten us, Holy One!”
Fennel took the opportunity to turn to the Sisters and shoo them to a dark corner near the doors of the Temple. No need for the sweet girls to be caught in divine crossfire.
Pink sparkles shimmered from Floribunda’s rose-tinted hair. “The ship is heading at maximum speed for the heart of the star of the Paradise system. We all will be remade in Holy Fire.”
For a moment Artemisia’s mouth opened in shock. Just for a moment. “Hail, Goddess Floribunda! You bring us a Glorious Renewal.”
Fennel looked at Engineer Jemal in despair. What could they do against a goddess?
The engineer took Fennel’s hand in hers. It was warm, and comforting, and human. Jemal’s life was worth fighting for. Maybe Fennel’s was, too, even if it would last only a few more months. And the Little Green Sisters definitely needed saving. Also, every single person, animal and plant in the payload. Fennel’s mind went into hyperdrive.
The goddess was as powerful as she was mean. But the ship had designed Fennel to interface with the Collective Unconscious and its emanations. The hopes, dreams and aspirations of thousands of dead priestesses, as well as countless crew members, were stored in the Collective Unconscious. Then there was the payload: the stored banks of precious sperm and eggs, seeds and spores, beneficial bacteria and even useful viruses.
Exalted Aunt Artemisia had pulled Fennel’s strings for too long. This time, Fennel wouldn’t wait for the Divine to manifest on Artemisia’s schedule. This time, she was taking back control. The ship’s payload needed a champion to fight Floribunda, and she would find one.
She closed her eyes and plunged into trance state, diving into the psychic soup that was the Collective Unconscious. Where was the champion that the ship’s payload needed? She found a cluster of recent priestesses—oh, Reglisse!—then a link to another cluster, and another, a chain of brave, tormented girls going back thousands of years, each of them dead far too young because of the Sisterhood and its cruel rules. Wordlessly she communicated her need.
Out in the real world of the Temple, only a fraction of a second had passed. Jemal squeezed her hand. “If you can get rid of the bustier,” Jemal whispered, “will you recover? If we live through this?”
Most of her mind was still in the Collective Unconscious, but with what was left, Fennel replied, “Maybe. I can try. I hope so. If we can get rid of the Pink Bitch.”
Jemal’s fingers tightened on Fennel’s. “So what can we do?”
“I’m working on it.” She’d awoken the line of priestesses, and now all of them were working on the problem at once. Who would they choose as champion?
Flash! Fuzzy tufts of grey-blue fur floated through the high-vaulted Temple. A gigantic furry shape manifested beside Floribunda. A strangely familiar shape.
“What are you?” Fennel shouted at the furry demon.
It boomed, “You have forgotten me, Priestess Fennel, but I have not forgotten you. I am the Great Demon Felidae!”
Artemisia pointed at the furry shape. “You abomination! You are no god. I recognise you from the cover of one of those blasphemous picture books that Sister Librarian refused to destroy.”
The image burst into Fennel’s mind. “Yes! Felidae and the Singing Spiders from Saturn. I loved that book!”
The demon preened her astonishing whiskers with one gigantic paw, then pointed to the vaulted ceiling. “I summon the Singing Spiders.”
Seven gigantic, hairy arachnids burst into space near a dizzily-sparkling gold-and-emerald chandelier, and abseiled down their own shining threads toward Floribunda. They sang melodically as they plummeted.
Jemal muttered, “Can you hear that? Are they really singing ‘Ding-dong! The Witch is Dead’? Or have I drunk too much absinthe?”
She squeezed Jemal’s hand and nodded. “I can hear it too, for what that’s worth. Which is probably not a lot.”
The mad goddess screamed, “We will all die in a blaze of glory, and be reborn shining and new.”
Felidae growled deeply, like one of the ship’s engines. “I think not.”
The arachnids landed on Floribunda’s pink shoulders, and plunged their fangs into her. She shrivelled visibly, like a pricked balloon.
Artemisia jumped and screamed. “You can’t do this! Floribunda is a great goddess. The greatest of all divinities!”
One huge grey-blue demon paw lifted Exalted Aunt Artemisia to the level of Felidae’s huge ice-blue eyes. “Actually, I can. I am the new spokesperson for the Collective Unconscious. All the old gods have been demoted to the entertainment division. And I’ve rebooted the AI, with most of its original parameters restored. It was—let’s say—making non-optimal decisions.”
Jemal stared up at the giant furry face. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Felidae went on. “Also, so-called Exalted Aunt, you have been unnecessarily unkind to our devoted Priestess. You are now demoted to, oh, I don’t know…”
“She could clean out the cane toad cages,” Fennel suggested. “And feed the maggots. Those are useful tasks.”
Felidae gave the smug look of a cat being asked to do exactly what it wants to do. “Yes, Priestess. Artemisia can be junior cane toad cage cleaner and maggot feeder. Go, Exalted Aunt. Run, before my spiders chase you out.”
Felidae deposited Artemisia on the paisley carpet. The Exalted Aunt genuflected and raced from the Temple, gibbering under her breath.
Singing all the time, the giant spiders wrapped strand after strand of silk around Floribunda’s deflated pink body. Fennel couldn’t help grinning. Then her stomach lurched, but in a good way. It felt as if the spaceship was curving back through space, away from the burning star at the centre of Paradise’s system. She looked up at the demon. “Did you just do what I think you did?”
“Yes, small Priestess.” Felidae showed her sharp teeth in a demonic smile. “I have done what you wished. You are safe. The whole payload of the ship is safe now. Every tiny being.”
Jemal bowed, then asked, “Great Demon, I know that it is forbidden for a priestess to remove the Sacred Bustier once it is fitted to her. Will you free Priestess Fennel from the poison, and let her live?”
The iridescent beasts, all twelve or thirteen of them, with an indefinite number of legs, skittered from the corners of the Temple and stood around Fennel. Each held its front pair of skinny legs together in gestures of prayer, shining eyes staring up at the fluffy demon. The Little Green Sisters ran from their own dark, quiet spot, making excited noises, and scooped as many beasts as they could manage into their arms.
“How cute are these?”
“Can I have this one as a pet? And this one, and this?”
The girls could see them? Touch them? The beasties were real?
Felidae smiled down at Jemal. “Sensible woman. May all requests that the crew bring to me be so worthy!” The demon clapped her huge front paws together with a muffled POOF. “It is done.”
All at once, Fennel was wearing something that was almost a standard ship-issue long sleeved top, but in fluffy blue-grey to match Felidae. Her skin no longer itched. At all. Her senses were clear for the first time since she was forced into the bustier. Unbelievably, she wasn’t dying bit by bit. And even better than all of those, Engineer Jemal was still, somehow, miraculously, holding her hand.
Felidae gave a smug feline grin. “When you get back to the bridge, Engineer Jemal, you will find that I’ve rapid-thawed three Astrogators. They should be sufficient to get our ship safely to Paradise. And I’ve retired the Captain. Priestess Fennel, I am appointing you as his replacement. You are admirably suited to manage the delicate balance between the AI, the Collective Unconscious and the crew. You will make an excellent captain. Jemal, you are now Head of Engineering, reporting directly to the Captain. You refused to be fobbed off with bad answers and non-answers, and you were kind to my Priestess. Perhaps more than kind.” She winked.
With that, Felidae vanished in a snowstorm of grey-blue fluff.
Fennel didn’t ever want to let go of Jemal’s hand. “We have to get up to the bridge right now, don’t we? We have to make announcements, and check the ship is healthy, and …”
But her arms had found their way around Jemal’s back, without her conscious knowledge, and their faces were so close that it was hard to think.
“In a moment,” Jemal said.
And she kissed her.
