“This is impossible,” I say. “You are not here. You are dead. You were killed; it was my fault for betraying you. This is all a dream, another of the dreams I have been having.”
“Oh no,” Plotar says with a smile, “it is not a dream but a fact and you must listen to what Nala says. You must try to believe her, Quir, and see situations as they exist. I have been on this ship all the time. I have something to tell you,” he says and leans forward closely, putting his wet mouth near my ear. “I never meant to escape. There was never any plan.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Never any plan at all; it was just a means for you to betray me. We had it all worked out between us, the masters and I; if I came to you and told you of a plan then you would betray me and if you thought that I was killed you would be so overcome by guilt that you would create some kind of plan yourself, anything so that you would not believe yourself to be a coward. It was a cunning plan, Quir, and it worked well. You behaved predictably. Everything you did was always predictable.”
“No!” I say. “Away!”
“I’m just sorry about the rituals,” Plotar says, moving his head away from mine, musing. “There was so much I wanted to do; so many plans I had in mind: I wanted to combine the fertility and sterility rituals in a new framework to show that they were the same. I said to them ‘grant me this at least, that on the homeward bound voyage I may extend my technique.’ But they refused, they said that it was most important to follow the plan as they outlined it to me. So I can no longer be ritual master. It is such a loss, Quir; such a loss. A ritual master develops his talent for twenty years to have the opportunity to practice. Of course I never had any luck at all. My timing was never right. But let me tell you, Quir,” he says, “there will come another time and another voyage and then I will be able to perform the rituals I want and there will be an honored place for you. We will have to reexamine your whole place in the hierarchy; unquestionably you are entitled to a higher position. You have done well, Quir; you have been underestimated. There is a big place in the process for a creature like you and I want you to know that you will receive your due.” I reach for him then, reach toward Plotar, mean to grab and shake him and extract some answers, some understanding as to how he could have lived in the ship for all this time without the support system and how he could have collaborated with the masters to such an end and what he means by saying that there is a place for me in the process but as I lunge from the bed reaching toward him, shouting, my hands close on air and my eyes open. I tumble to the floor and see that it is nothing, it was only a dream; there was no Plotar, I have imagined it all. Plotar was a dream, his speech was a dream, and I repeat this to myself over and again until finally I believe it and I settle back into the bed again, but for the rest of that cycle I cannot sleep for fear that if I do he will come again and with no way of getting hold of him I could hardly bear it.