The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

WALKING STICK FIRES Alan DeNiro

On All Hallows Eve Eve, Parka sat on his motorcycle in the unending desert. The moon was a low-hanging fruit. The blue fires of Casino were off in the far distance to the north. Parka pulled an apple out of his jacket pocket, cut it in half with his claw, and offered one half to his fellow traveler, Jar.

“The apple has a pleasing scent,” Jar said before he ate it, crushing the apple into pulp with his mandibles.

“I would have to agree,” Parka said.

“Where did you procure it?”

“In a house outside of Casino.” He indicated the blazing pyramids and monoliths with his claw. “Two days ago. I forgot I had it. There it was, sitting on a kitchen table. Red and perfect.” When he finished eating the apple, Parka brushed off a posse of stick insects that landed on his shoulders.

“Hey, cool, walking sticks,” Jar said, brushing them off Parka’s jacket.

“Is that what the locals call them? I just don’t know where these bugs come from,” Parka said.

“They are everywhere,” Jar said, cleaning his mandibles with his fingers afterward.

Parka watched the walking sticks rattle on the hard desert ground.

“All right,” Parka said, kicking his motorcycle to life. The reactors shot into clutch for a second and then hummed. Jar followed with his. “Santa Fey then?”

“They are expecting us.”

Parka patted his satchel, the one containing the Amulet of Ruby Webs, which he had extracted from Casino at great cost.

“Yes they are. I do not expect traffic. Or to encounter those we disposed of.”

Parka was thinking of the Worm-Hares.

“Not under the mountains.”

“Nope.”

Parka leaned forward and his bike shot ahead. Jar soon followed. After they broke the sound barrier, Parka put on his headphones. He liked Toby Keith.

In the great tunnel underneath the mountains, they stopped at a rest stop. They hydrated and Jar sulfurized his joints. There were a couple of other travelers at the rest stop. Others sped by on their motorcycles and flaming chariots. Every once in a while there would be a rumbling sound that would shake the wire grating of the low roof and send dust to the ground. Once there was a low growl far above, like a brane gun backfiring.

“What’s that?” Jar asked once.

“Taos,” Parka said, not looking up from his hammock and his well-thumbed copy of The Toby Keith Review.

“Ah,” Jar said, going back to his sour acupuncture.

The human child who was indentured to the rest stop looked up from his abacus. He had a nametag that said SHARON. “They’ve been going like that for a fortnight. The Black Rooster Company is finally yielding their fortress against the Azalean Gullet.”

But the two couriers ignored him. Blushing, the child went back to his figures.

“Say,” Parka said, “what are you going to be for All Hallows Eve?”

Jar pulled the needle from his spine and blew on the tip. “I was thinking Jack Nicklaus.”

“Really? I love As Good as It Gets!”

Three of Jar’s eyelids quivered, a sign of confusion and then mild amusement. “No, not the actor. The golfer.”

Parka raised his eyebrows. “Really? Do you golf?”

Jar shrugged. “Who are you going to be?”

“Dwight D. Eisenhower,” Parka said without any hesitation.

“Really? I love World War II!” It took Parka a few seconds to realize Jar was being a sarcastic mimic.

Parka sighed.

“But seriously,” Jar said, perhaps sensing Parka’s exasperation, “I would have sworn that you’d be one of the indigenous musicians.” Jar pointed at the cover of The Toby Keith Review, in which Toby was performing in his moon-slave cage for various Being seneschals.

“I’m not quite so easily typecast, friend,” Parka said. “Not quite so easily in one box or another. I have a lot of interests.”

“Uh-huh,” Jar said.

“Anyway,” Parka said, wanting to change the subject a bit, “it won’t matter if we can’t make Santa Fey by tomorrow.”

“Ha ha,” Jar said. “Don’t worry. We’re in the slow season. We’re deep underground. The winds of war are incapable of blowing upon our faces.”

“I am not quite so sanguine,” Parka said, closing his magazine and hopping off the hammock. “We should go.”

“So soon?” Jar said. “I still need to sanitize my needles.” He held a glinting needle out. The tip wavered.

Parka was going to say something clever and lewd but the sound of an approaching caravan drowned out any coherent thought. Three motorcycles and a black Camaro. They were slowing down and resting at the rest stop.

“Hey. Jar,” Parka shouted, before the caravan stopped.

Jar looked over. It was a caravan of Casino dwellers, all Worm-Hares.

“Ugh,” Parka said. “Like I said, let’s go.”

“Hey!” the prime Worm-Hare said, slithering out of the Camaro. It was too late. “Hey!”

“What?” Parka called out.

The other Worm-Hares had hopped off their motorcycles and were massing together. The prime pointed at the Amulet of Ruby Webs that was half-hidden in Jar’s satchel. “I believe you have something of ours!” he said.

“It’s not yours anymore,” Jar said. “So you should have said, ‘I believe you have something of yours!’”

Parka had to shake his head at this. Even in danger, he had trouble not to break out laughing. This, at least, gave them a couple of seconds while the Worm-Hares tried to parse this out.

“The Amulet of Ruby Webs is a sacred symbol for our community through many generations and systems,” the prime said.

“Well, it’s your damn fault you brought it down from orbit then.”

The prime paused. The other Worm-Hares were getting antsy, stroking their floppy ears with their tentacles. They likely surmised that Parka and Jar would be

difficult to slay in close-quarters combat. Or perhaps they were worried about damaging the amulet.

“How about we race for it?” the prime said brightly.

“No, you can’t have a good race in the tunnel and you know that,” Parka said. “Hm, I will kickbox you for it though.”

All of the Worm-Hares laughed as one. “Seriously?” the prime said. “Um, okay. Sure.”

“Great. If I win you’ll have to leave us alone. And…” Parka thought about it. “Give up driving your Camaro for a year. No, wait, you’ll have to give it to him.” He pointed to the human child. “Aw yeah, that’s right. Are you ready?”

The prime nodded and smiled, but then grew grim. “But, listen. Hey. I’m being serious here. Whatever you do, do not—do not—touch the red button on the center of the Amulet of Ruby Webs. Okay?”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Parka said dismissively. “I’m no amateurish idiot.”

“Fair enough,” the prime said. “I am going to enjoy kicking your ass.” The residents of Casino were known for their kickboxing prowess, and the Worm-Hares learned such local arts after they followed the Beings down to the surface.

“You sure about this?” Jar said to Parka, putting his hand on Parka’s shoulder as he was doing stretches.

“Not really,” he said. “But this is the only way they’ll stay off our ass. So we can make it to Hallows Eve.”

Jar nodded. “Right. Hey, look at that kid’s face.”

Parka looked over. The face was beginning to fill with walking sticks. Circling the neck, darting down the cheeks. The child was fearful, but was unable to brush the insects off, because of the chains.

“What is with that?” Parka said, as he stepped into the makeshift kickboxing ring, an enclosure of the Worm-Hares’ motorcycles. “Seriously, do any of you know what is going on with those insects?” He pointed to the human. None of the Worm-Hares paid Parka any mind. The prime took off his leather jacket and Parka did the same. Then the Worm-Hares—and Jar too, for that matter—counted down to ten and the kickboxing match began.

Parka then entered a trance-like state, without his consent or volition. When he snapped out of it, the prime Worm-Hare was sprawled on the asphalt, his head twisted backward, tentacles twitching here and there.

“Wow,” Jar said. “What happened?”

“I have no idea,” Parka said. “What did happen?”

“He tried to kick your face, but you spun away. Then you kicked his face.”

“Oh.” Parka felt a few of the walking sticks scurry and drop off his shoulders, which felt sore. He didn’t realize that they had landed on him. The other Worm-Hares were motionless and scared.

As Parka and Jar drove away, they noticed that the human child’s body was entirely covered in the walking sticks. Parka tried to make eye contact, as a way of saying, Hey, the Camaro’s yours, I hope you get to drive it someday, but there were no eyes visible to connect with.

A few hours later in the tunnel, they had to stop again. Flashing lights and a tall human woman wearing a sandwich board.

“Bypass,” the woman said.

“Oh, for the love of God,” Parka said.

“Cave-in,” the woman elaborated. She also had a nametag that said SHARON. “You’ll have to go to the surface.”

“You think?” Parka said.

“Hey, she’s just doing her job,” Jar said.

“I know that, Jar,” Parka said. “And don’t lecture me like I’m some kind of phobe. I mean, I’m the one who gave a Camaro to a human child. I’m a friend of these people, believe me.”

“Whatever you say,” Jar muttered.

“Shoot,” Parka said, trying to focus. “Let’s see, we’re about three hours away from Santa Fey by the tunnel. But who knows now. Is it hot up on the surface?”

The woman was about to say something, but she was drowned out by a quaking roar from above, and then a series of blossoming explosions.

“Well, I guess that answers your question,” Jar said.

“Okay,” Parka said. “I hate this. We’re going to miss Hallows Eve.”

“Stop whining,” Jar said. “The amulet is the important thing, remember? Priorities?”

“I wish I had more apples,” Parka muttered, revving his motorcycle and easing into the detour that the woman directed him to. He meant to ask her about the walking sticks.

Parka and Jar’s motorcycles climbed to the surface. The surface was full of bright light and wispy ash was in the air. The couriers were in the desert foothills. An Old Being was hunkered down, sprawling in the desert. Eagle-falcon drones—it was hard to tell what mercenary company they were attached to—swooped, bombed, and soared away from the Being. Parka and Jar stopped and assayed the narrow road ahead, and where the road stopped.

“Ugh,” Parka said. “The Being’s in the way.”

“Yeah.”

The Being ate mountains. Finishing those, the Being would move to the badlands and mesas. Sparks shot off its slimy, translucent fur as it swept its mammoth pseudopods across sheep farms and little casinos. There were kites on stiff strings protruding from its upper reaches. When the Beings landed on a planet and sucked out the nitrogen, galactic civilizations would follow. After a few years, the Beings would be full, and then calcify, leaving several seedling Beings in their wake, who would then transport themselves to new systems. And then the residue of the Being’s wake could be properly and safely mined. This residue powered the vast interstellar transmutation ships. Until that time, there would be war around the perimeters of the Beings, dozens of mercenary guilds and free companies jostling for position.

“There’s no way we can drive around it?” Jar asked.

“Too many gullies.” Parka put on his telescopic sunglasses and squinted at the Being. “Well, it’s possible to… no.”

“What?” Jar said. “Tell me.”

More ships screamed above them, fast-eagle merlins that carpetbombed a trench right in front of the Being. Prisms trailed in the bombs’ wake. Counter-fire from the trench screamed upward.

“We’ll jump over said Being,” Parka said.

Jar started laughing so much that sulfur tears began streaming out of his ducts, splashing upon his upholstery. “Whither the ramp, friend, whither the ramp?”

“What, you can’t do a wheelie?”

“No… I’ve—I’ve never tried.”

“And where did you learn to ride again?”

Jar paused. “On the ship.”

“Hell, no wonder. You have to learn on the surface. I learned in Tennessee, before its flattening. Everyone wheelied. Well, anyway, it’s easy. You just have to utilize the booster with the correct timing. You want to practice?”

“No, I’ll watch you first.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yeah.”

Parka leaned forward and put a claw on Jar’s carapace. “Well, don’t be. Okay, let me make my approach.”

Parka put his motorcycle in reverse about a half a kilometer and considered his approach, licking his lips. Jar crossed his arms and looked back and forth from the Being to Parka. The Being began humming, with resonances of local accordion noises. Parka leaned forward, kicked his motorcycle on, and then he roared forward, shooting past Jar in an instant. Then Jar turned on his motorcycle as well, and revved, and soon enough was a few lengths behind Parka.

“No, Jar!” Parka shouted, looking behind him. But there was no way for Jar to hear him, both traveling at the speed of sound. The Being was before them. Through its diaphanous surface, Parka could see about a thousand humans, and also four hundred birds of various types, five herds of cattle, a parking lot of used cars, several giant tractors, many boulders/reprocessed mountains, broken casinos, and a few off-worlders who were too stupid to get out of the way.

Parka hunkered down and wheelied and hit the booster. He soared, gaining clearance by a few meters over the Being. There were white kites protruding from the gelatinous skin of the Being, the kites’ strings puncturing the surface and spooled far below. The eagle-falcons’ bombs had accidentally scarred the Being in many places, but they weren’t able to break through the surface.

When the booster gave out, Parka held out his arms and leaned forward, just clearing the Being. He skidded to a halt and spun the motorcycle around, watching Jar.

Jar had accelerated too late, and he seemed to hang over the Being, suspended like one of the eagle-falcons.

Jar gave a thumbs-up sign.

Then one of the kites snapped to life and whipped at one of his legs, and the thread tangled around the limb. Jar careened forward and separated from his cycle, which slammed against the surface of the Being’s skin—the booster still on—and ricocheted upward. With the booster still going at full capacity, the motorcycle slammed into the wings of one of the low-flying fast-eagle merlins that was overhead. The eagle merlin spiraled out of control and careened into the side of a mesa about ten kilometers away. Parka felt the backblast as he watched Jar try to pull at the kite, tearing at the ashy paper. But the thread held. He landed, almost gently, on top of the Being. He tried to stand up, but in a few seconds he was beginning to sink into the Being.

“Jar!” Parka shouted. “Hang on!”

“Sorry,” Jar shouted back, his legs already consumed. He looked down. “There’s some serious alternate reality shit going on in there,” he said.

“Keep fighting!” Parka said, but he knew it was hopeless.

Jar held up all of his arms and slid into the Being.

Parka hunched over his motorcycle, his head sinking between the handlebars. About a dozen walking sticks landed in his fur. He ran his claw over the hair, scooping them up and eating them. They tasted like Fritos.

“Nasty,” he said, spitting them out.

He started riding again to Santa Fey in silence, with the shriek of the pre-mining operational maneuvers above him and to all sides. He put on his Toby Keith, but even this wouldn’t soothe his guilt.

When he saw Santa Fey on the horizon, and the glow of the madrigal lights along the city walls, and the faint thrum of fiddles and cymbals and electric guitars, he became light-headed and also ridden with shame, which was far worse than guilt. He stopped his motorcycle and revved it, his gills fluttering.

At last he thought of Jar and also tried to consider what his life meant, in the end.

“Screw it,” he said, and he turned around, back toward the Being.

About a kilometer away, Parka stopped and took the amulet out of the pouch. He knew, whatever happened, that his diplomatic career would be over. He would never be able to set foot in Santa Fey again, and they would in all likelihood hunt him down, if he lived. He would likely have to leave the planet he had grown fond of. Slowly, he slid the amulet around his neck. The walking sticks rose to the occasion, then. Soon there were thousands congregating around him, wedged in his joints and lining his shell. They felt warm and they tickled. The Being gurgled in the distance.

He remembered, with a sudden pang, what he had forgotten at the time—that the walking sticks were in his joints in much the same way during the kickboxing match.

A Camaro pulled up beside him, revving its engine. The boy, Sharon, was driving it; he was still covered in insects. Actually, Parka couldn’t tell whether there was a boy there at all. Parka’s own insects dropped off him and scurried up the car and through the open window to be with Sharon.

“Get in,” insect boy said. His voice was deep and unwavering.

Parka turned off his motorcycle and parked it, and then got in the Camaro. He was nearly too tall for it, but he bent his head forward. He saw that the sandwich board was in the back seat.

“How did you get free of your post?” Parka said.

“Liberation takes many guises,” Sharon said, revving the engine. “Enslavement is the pure heart of industry.”

“Alrighty,” Parka said.

Sharon turned toward him. “Therefore you shall be the Dwight D. Eisenhower of enlightenment and camaraderie.”

The Camaro shot forward, and Parka fumbled for a seat belt. But there was none. They were driving right toward the Being. Parka was beginning to think this was a bad idea.

“I have an idea,” Parka said. “How about we kickbox? If I win, you have to stop the car.”

But the boy ignored him, and continued to accelerate. A few of the walking sticks from the boy scurried onto Parka’s arm. He was too afraid to swat them away.

“Seriously,” he said as much to himself as Sharon, “there has to be some underlying goddamn plan to this endeavor.”

Sharon didn’t turn as he said, “Not really. No.”

They shot toward the Being, which soon was their entire horizon. The walking sticks were rattling with the velocity. The amulet was hot against his carapace. Parka closed his eyes.

In a blink of his outer eyelid, he expected one of three conclusions to his current predicament.

The first involved a high-impact collision against the outer husk of the Being, flattening him and the beautiful Camaro.

In the second, the Camaro would puncture the Being’s skin and come to some kind of high-impact collision inside the Being, with any number of the farm animals, people, and other physical remnants of the aboriginal civilization surrounding him and either flaying him or welcoming him into a pathetic intra-Being community.

In the third, Sharon would halt at the last second, or dodge the Being somehow, because he was really trying to mess with Parka’s head, which he was doing a spectacular job with already.

He missed home all of a sudden, the home he had tried so hard to forget, his twenty parents who all had contradictory advice for his well-being, and who hated interstellar travel—

“It won’t be long,” Sharon muttered, and then the Being was upon them, and they were upon the Being, and the Camaro screamed. It really screamed as it blew through the outer shell of the Being, causing an explosion in its wake and argent and vermillion sprays all around the car, and strands of Being fur flying. The front windshield shattered and the pieces blew away like tiny feathers. Then the top of the car ripped off.

They were inside the Being. But the Camaro didn’t stop. In fact, it seemed to gain an extra level of speed once it was inside the Being. The walking sticks glowed like solar flares or brane-gun bullets from a galactic transmutator. Past the blue and green haze, Parka couldn’t see much—shapes moving around that were vaguely aboriginal in form. The only things he could see clearly were the local sorcery-

powered vehicles that were known as “monster trucks.” They raced toward the Camaro, dozens of free-floating kites strung to their menacing hulls, but they were far too slow to reach the rocketing black Chevrolet stock car. The inside of the Being smelled like ferrous oxide, phlegm, sinew, and transdimensional energy. Before he was able to formulate the thought to look for Jar at all, the Camaro had burst through the other side of the Being with a roar. More fine, plush incandescent Being fur surrounded them. Then the light grew sharp and bright, and Parka shielded his eyes.

When he moved his pincer away from his face, he saw that the Camaro was sailing in the air above a deep canyon, which the Being was on the edge of.

“I want to warn you,” Sharon said, “that you might want to brace yourself.”

The Camaro seemed to be suspended above the dry riverbed far below for a few seconds, and slowly began to arc down. The other side of the gully seemed impossibly far away. The walking sticks, still glowing, began to thrum.

And then he touched the button on the center of the amulet, the one forbidden thing. The red rays embedded in the metal burst out, and solidified into strands many meters long, following the contours of his arms. Then they ballooned out like wings.

They were wings.

Without really thinking—and it might have been the amulet thinking for him—he stood up and stretched his arms out. The wings were massive, and the Camaro wobbled but righted itself. As it fell, Parka could hear the Being on the other side of the canyon shrieking, and feel its reverberations around his neck.

Parka leaned forward and the Camaro landed right on the edge of the canyon with a thud. Sharon hit the brakes and the Camaro spun around. The Being was, in fact, in the throes of dying. Eagle-merlins from above were trying to maneuver out of the way, but aquamarine slime burst out of the Being like sulfuric geysers and coated the carpetbombers, which spun around and veered wildly. Parka could hear a high, sonorous call from many miles away—the continental emergency siren from Santa Fey.

Sharon was still. But then he pointed.

The Worm-Hare posse was there, gathered around a minivan, each with a brane gun strapped to its arm.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Parka said. He tried to get out of the car, but it was difficult because of his nascent wings. He ended up crawling forward through the glassless windshield and onto the hood. The wings settled around him like a reptilian cape.

“We want our damn car back,” the prime Worm-Hare said. It was a different prime from the one Parka had defeated in kickboxing. The sliding door of the minivan was open, and Parka could see the original prime in the back of the minivan in a shimmering heal-sac. “To say nothing about the amulet, one of the key symbols of our people, which you’ve gone on and messed up as well. You know that your corporation is going to hunt you down for triggering ‘dragon mode,’ right?”

Parka laughed. Dragon mode. “That’s great. Anyway, you seem to forget that I won the car fair and square. I don’t know why you’re so upset about that, considering your current sweet ride.”

“We don’t care,” the prime said, hoisting his gun at Parka, ignoring the jab about the Honda Odyssey. “We just want a souvenir to take back with us off-world.” He indicated the dying Being in the distance. “This planet is a cursed cesspool. There’s nothing here anymore. But nothing would make us happier than to disintegrate your sorry carapace and take this car into orbit with us.”

Parka spread his wide wings—which didn’t hurt at all—because he thought it would scare them. But it didn’t, at all. He sighed. He realized that sometimes it’s the smallest moments that could change a creature’s life. He had given the Camaro to a human as a prize, and had thought nothing of it. But here he was, about to die from the Worm-Hares after all, and with weird wings. But all the same, he felt good about his generosity, even if Jar wasn’t there to share it with him.

With that in mind, he wasn’t going to back down.

Sharon was motionless, but then he looked in the backseat and started laughing. It was such a quiet, tinny laugh that it shocked everyone into stillness.

“What?” the prime Worm-Hare said, exasperated. Then there was a red dot on his spiny forehead. Parka stared at it.

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” the Worm-Hare said.

Then there was a whooshing sound, and a crossbow bolt hit the Worm-Hare’s forehead where the red dot was. The bolt went through his head, blasting into the front windshield of the minivan. The prime slumped over.

Parka turned around. There was someone in the back seat.

“Hey,” Jar said, sitting up, slinging a laser crossbow over his shoulder and looking groggy.

“Christ on a—” Parka said, but he stopped, because he didn’t know what to say. Instead, he ran to Jar and wrapped his leathery, demonic wings around his friend in a familial embrace.

“Look at you,” Jar said, still sleepily. “With wings and stuff.”

“It’s the amulet,” Parka said. The remaining Worm-Hares were forgotten, but they had made their pathetic escape in the minivan. “But, anyway, priorities. How the hell did you get there? You weren’t there all along, were you?”

Jar shrugged. “No, not really. I was in the Being and then… um, I don’t remember much about that, but I saw this sweet Camaro cruising through, and then stop in front of me, and I said to myself, hey, maybe I should hop on board, so I did. And I must have picked up this crossbow. I guess I was on a shooting range for awhile or something?”

Parka had no recollection of the Camaro slowing down enough for anyone to jump aboard.

He disengaged from Jar. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“Well, you came back, friend. That’s the important thing. I’d still be in there without you.”

“The Tree requests your presences,” Sharon said.

“What?” Jar said.

“Ah, the kid, he’s like that,” Parka said. He waved toward Sharon. “Okay, okay, the tree. But first, we need to get a beer.”

Later that day Jack Nicklaus and Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sharon met for a summit over a few of the local beers.

“How’s things?” Jack said.

“Super,” Dwight said.

“Awesome,” Jack said.

Sharon was silent. They were in a basement tavern somewhere north of Albuquerque, at a circular table. It was the off-season, and likely everyone in a 500-kilometer radius was trying to flee the potential blast zone of the Being, so they had the place to themselves. The beer was warm but the off-worlders didn’t care. Sharon didn’t order anything, so Parka had the bartender make him an Arnold Palmer. Toby Keith was playing on the speakers and everything was all right with the universe, at least for a few minutes.

“I’m going to miss Hallows Eve with the gang,” Jar said. “But it’s a small price to pay.”

“Yeah, it would have been fun. I’m glad we dressed up anyway.”

“You know, I wonder if Eisenhower would have won the war faster if he had wings like yours.”

“It’s very possible,” Parka said. The amulet against his chest pulsed like his second heart. The walking sticks swirling around Sharon clicked and skittered.

“What do you want to do after we, er, look at some tree that might very well be imaginary?” Parka said.

“I don’t know,” Jar said, taking a sip of his Budweiser Light. “It’s hard to say. Go back home, maybe. Start over with a new corporation. How about you?”

“Well, maybe I’ll stay here,” Parka said. “I haven’t decided. But I like it here. I still have no idea what the hell happened.”

“With the amulet?”

“A little. But mostly with the Camaro. And the Being.”

“Ah, that’s understandable,” Jar said.

Parka leaned forward, which was awkward because of his wingspan. “What I want to know is… I might not never understand, ever, what’s going on with these walking sticks. But they’re trying to say something, trying to do something. They’re trying to survive on this godforsaken planet we—I mean, not us personally, I mean the mining ventures—sucked dry for resource management. And for what? So we can get more fuel for our transmutators to find more planets to suck dry and destroy?”

Parka was melancholic, but not just for geopolitical reasons. He realized that this might be one of the last times of relative normalcy with his good friend.

“Yeah,” Jar said. “You make a good point. Maybe I’ll stay too. And learn how to properly ride a motorcycle and do a wheelie.” He laughed and then downed his beer. “Come on, Sharon,” he said. “Finish your drink.”

They rode for an hour in silence through the empty desert, and could see the Tree from many kilometers away. A towering, shadowy shape. Sooner rather than later—Sharon wasn’t exactly following a speed limit—they could see the enormity of the living structure. Parka stood up in the car, letting his body poke out of the shorn top, letting his wings free.

“Holy shit,” Jar said.

The Tree was as tall as the highest peaks that the Being had desiccated, many kilometers high. And the Tree was on fire. Smokeless fire. The tree pulsated with orange light. The branches were leafless, but they spiraled in gargantuan yet intricate patterns.

About a thousand meters away, Sharon stopped the car. Everyone got out. The walking sticks encompassing Sharon, or perhaps embodying him, were glowing in syncopation with the Tree. Then it became clear that the Tree was made up of billions of the walking sticks.

There were many other abandoned vehicles all around the Tree in a ring.

“Why are the walking sticks doing this?” Jar whispered.

Parka shook his head but didn’t say anything. He had no idea.

Sharon turned to the two of them and said, “We need you two, the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jack Nicklaus of interpersonal diplomacy, to carry a message back to your people. You will relay terms for peace.” Sharon began walking toward the Tree.

“Wait, Sharon,” Parka said. “What will happen if we do?”

“What will happen if we don’t?” Jar said.

Sharon paused for a second and said, “My name’s not Sharon.” Then he began walking toward the Tree again.

Parka watched him for a little while, and looked at Jar, who shrugged.

“Who the hell knows,” Jar said.

As the general and the golfer followed Sharon to the base of the tree, Parka swore he heard Sharon, who wasn’t in fact Sharon, humming a tune, one of Toby Keith’s more recent songs about exile on the moon and earthly liberation. Or maybe it was only the sound of the walking sticks and the desolate wind making music together, which wasn’t meant for a stranger like him, wasn’t for him to understand.