Chương 26: Should have resisted

Bringing a skill from Rookie to Amateur requires little more than repeated use - particularly in situations where the stakes are real. Reaching Pro level is a different matter. It demands finding new applications, new contexts, new ways of asking the skill to do something it hasn't done before. - Linda Hemsworth, First Regional Head of the First Brain's Faction, Mercury Region" The demonstrator this time was a biologist, and Moghli had pulled more strings than he usually preferred to pull in order to get her here.

He did not regret it. Luna Treehugger was one of perhaps a dozen people in the world who worked at the intersection she occupied - the deep chemical language of plants, and the ways that language could be shaped and directed by human intent.

Her tribe had been custodians of the southern jungles of Area 2 for generations, and what had once been a traditional knowledge system had, over the last few centuries, become something that even the most rigorous scientific institutions in the twelve Areas had stopped being dismissive about. She was forty-five and looked thirty, which was either genetics or a side effect of spending most of her life surrounded by things that were very good at chemistry.

He waited at the entrance of the School of Management with Phinx and Kara. This was his first time meeting Kara since the selection. The greeting had been straightforward: two people who had each sized the other up well before the formal introduction, now confirming what they already suspected. Kara had questions. Moghli could see them sitting in him, held back by a decision that now was not the time. The restraint, in itself, was informative.

The demonstrator emerged from the Council building flanked by Adam Mink and Xi Gho. Moghli activated his Analyze Subjects skill as they approached - a habitual first step with anyone he was meeting in a professional capacity, the same way a doctor checked a pulse before asking how the patient was feeling. He ran it and set it aside and then simply looked, because some things did not require a skill to register. She was, by any measure, striking.

Her skin had the colour and smoothness of polished bark - a deep warm brown, entirely unblemished. Her hair was black and elaborately dressed with flowers woven through it, and on her head sat a crown woven from vines and thorns where another would have used metal. Her clothing was leaves - a crop top and knee-length skirt that moved with her, exposing a toned midriff, the whole ensemble looking less constructed than grown.

Around both wrists were bracelets of the same thorn-and-vine combination, and where the thorns met her skin at the inner wrist, where the veins ran closest to the surface, there was no blood. The thorns simply sat there, integrated. As the group drew closer, the scent arrived before they did. Pleasant and complex, botanical in a way that was not perfume - something that had been produced rather than applied, the difference being that produced things were in the control of the producer. It was a warm smell.

Shoulders lowered around him without anyone deciding to relax. The Analyze Subjects results had come through by now. Mink was deeply engaged, which was visible enough without the skill to confirm it. He was leaning fractionally forward as he walked, his attention entirely on Treehugger, the conversation clearly the most interesting thing in his immediate vicinity. Moghli did not blame him. The skill gave him the fuller picture - genuine fascination, as much from her words and ideas as her physical presence.

Gho was present in body, her attention already redistributed toward whatever she needed to be doing next. She contributed just enough to the conversation to avoid being absent from it. Treehugger herself was the most interesting read of the three. An excellent conversationalist - timed nods, well-placed questions, every move calibrated to make the other person feel heard. But underneath it, with some clarity, she wanted out of this particular conversation and was being polite about it.

The skill completed its assessment. Moghli put it away.

"Moghli, good to see you." Mink's smile was genuine. They had a cordial history - Mink had tried to recruit him to the Disciplinary Committee more than once.

"Ms. Treehugger, I'll leave you in Moghli's capable hands from here. I'll be at the demonstration - looking forward to it." Treehugger thanked him with warm and seamless grace, and the moment Mink and Gho had turned away, the quality of her attention shifted entirely. She looked at Moghli, then at Phinx, then at Kara, the managed quality gone, present now in a way she hadn't been a moment before.

"Hi, Moghli and team. Glad to make your acquaintance."

"The privilege is ours, Ms. Treehugger. We're fortunate you were in the Area. I trust the journey was comfortable."

"Very much so. Thank you for the transport." Her voice carried a melody to it, somewhere between studied and natural, the cadence of someone who spent most of their days outdoors. They made their way inside. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The Restricted Arts classroom had been the right choice for demonstrations since before Moghli had joined the committee.

Three hundred seats, acoustics that treated the front row and the back equally, and walls that had been reinforced at some point in the building's history for reasons the administrative records were diplomatically vague about. The fortification had proven useful on two or three occasions that Moghli was personally aware of and preferred not to dwell on. Backstage, he led Treehugger through the brief orientation - dressing room, refreshment room, the basic logistics of how the session would run.

She moved through it easily, skipping ahead in places, no stranger to giving demonstrations and sure of which parts of the prep actually mattered.

"Any final preparations before we start?" he asked.

"The audience should be seated."

"Not really." She paused.

"I do have one request." He nodded.

"For one of the skills I'll be demonstrating, I'll need a live subject. I'd normally call someone from the audience, but if you have someone available backstage - ""Kara could help with that." Phinx offered this before Moghli had formed his own response, with the casual tone of someone making a practical suggestion and not the expression of someone testing a hypothesis. Moghli glanced at her. She looked back at him with the expression of someone who was definitely making a practical suggestion. He let it proceed.

Treehugger seemed honestly pleased. Kara accepted, showing no signs of being surprised at suddenly being put on the spot. She explained what was involved. Mild poisons. Localised effects. Completely reversible. She had antidotes on hand and had done this dozens of times without incident. Nothing beyond a brief demonstration of chemistry in action. That did not sound like a particularly pleasant experience, even if it was being done under the supervision of a seasoned professional. Kara considered for a moment.

He did not seem worried exactly, more like he was calculating something. He raised a mild objection, which Phinx and Treehugger talked him past, and he acquiesced. He did not look too happy about it. Moghli noted the sequence and set it aside. He would think about it later. The demonstration opened beautifully. As she made her entrance, a strong, pleasant smell wafted across the entire hall, much stronger than what it had been just a few moments ago.

"Do you all smell that?" she started without preamble.

"Well, no need to answer, I can see from your expressions that you do," she chuckled. The audience already seemed to be enraptured by her.

"That, my young friends, is the power of plants. Now, how about this?" Suddenly a revolting smell spread across the room, leaving disgusted looks and scrunched up noses. Luckily, it didn't last very long. She worked them through the chemistry of it, fluent from long repetition and still plainly delighted by it - the way plants communicated, attracted, repelled, the speed and precision of a chemical language humans had taken thousands of years to begin understanding. The audience was with her from the first minute.

When she called Kara forward, Moghli was watching from the side of the stage. The applause, the positioning, the first injection. And then the wait. And then more wait. Moghli observed Treehugger's face as the expected reaction failed to materialise. The slight confusion that crossed her features was genuine - she had not anticipated this, which meant the poison was reliable in her hands and this fell well outside anything she had seen. She tried a second. A third. A fourth. Each time, nothing.

Moghli watched all of this, thoroughly puzzled. A complete absence of reaction to four separate compounds, each with distinct mechanisms - that would require either a very high-level skill or something operating on a different principle altogether. He did not know Kara's skill profile. He had not asked, deliberately, because the selection process was not an intelligence-gathering exercise and he had other ways of learning what he needed to know about people. He was now wishing he had at least checked the basics.

Kara made a decision - Moghli could see it - and leaned in toward Treehugger. They exchanged words. The exchange was brief and intense, and Moghli made the deliberate choice not to use his skill or lip-reading training to follow it. Whatever was happening, Kara had not wanted the situation to unfold this way, and reading the conversation without permission felt like compounding something that had already gone sideways. He filed the moment carefully. He would ask, later, in the right context, in the right way.

Treehugger recovered with impressive professionalism - the laugh, the explanation about the journey affecting the compounds, the smooth pivot to a different demonstration. The audience accepted it without difficulty. She finished to sustained applause, the awkward middle section already being processed as a minor quirk of a very engaging hour.

The moment she came offstage she asked for Kara and crossed to him with a directness that had nothing professional in it, a woman who needed to understand something and had decided the niceties could wait. She closed the door behind them and left Moghli and Phinx with the instruction not to interrupt until she came out. Moghli and Phinx looked at each other. He shrugged.

They had Council members to see out, feedback to collect, the administrative tail of a demonstration that had been two thirds excellent and one third strange. He got on with it. The strangeness stayed with him, though. He carried it through the remaining formalities, content to set it aside, certain there would be time for it later.

Kara was eager to connect with him - Phinx had mentioned it more than once, and he had seen the questions sitting in him during their brief meeting today, held back with the same discipline that had kept his face clear throughout the EQ test and the skills reading. There was a great deal he wanted to understand about him. The pull was personal rather than clinical - he had run into something that fascinated him, and he wanted to know more for no better reason than that. He would make the time.

Sooner rather than later, now. He had a hundred other things due by yesterday. He would find the time anyway.