Then again, maybe that was a good thing. Everything should cost. Birthing should never be entirely free of pain. If it were, how would we know when it was over?

David smiled slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “After I … After, will I be able to understand them too?”

“I think so,” I said.

“If you can’t, I’ll teach you,” said Tahlia. She rose, walking over to rest a hand gently on David’s arm. She looked at me. How had I wound up in charge? Why should my opinion matter more than anyone else’s? I didn’t know, but I had, and it did, and I was stuck. “Don’t worry about him. I’ll make sure he comes to no harm he doesn’t ask for.”

Meaning she would lead him to the flower, but she wouldn’t press his hand against its heart. Under the circumstances, that was the best I could have hoped for.

David, meanwhile, was looking at Toni, his big hands empty and spread wide, like he was showing her he had nothing left. “Are we going to be cool?” he asked. “Are you okay with this?”

“You think I didn’t know my father paid you to take a job at the observatory he funded to keep me out from underfoot?” Her answer seemed to have nothing to do with his question. She shook her head. “You were supposed to be my keeper. You weren’t supposed to be my friend. You asshole. You weren’t supposed to be somebody I would actually care about. How dare you do this now.”

“We’re all going to do it sooner or later,” he said. “I guess I’m tired of waiting. I want to get on with the business of seeing space. I’m going to touch the stars. Not just look at them. We’re going to be part of them.”

“Assuming you take the coward’s view of the transporter problem, sure,” she said. “The one where you don’t have to examine anything, don’t have to question anything. The one where it’s still you on the other end.”

“The one where we have a chance.” David shook his head. “All I want is for us to have a chance. For something of what humanity is supposed to be to survive. Is that so wrong?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m not wrong either. It’s not wrong to want to have a heartbeat for a little while longer.”

Graham blinked, turning to look at me. “You don’t have a heartbeat anymore?” he asked.

“Not quite,” I said, unwilling to explain further. My blood—my sap—still moved in my veins. If it hadn’t, I would have been as frozen as any pine, unable to do anything other than stand perfectly still and pray for a thaw. But it wasn’t driven by a drumbeat, not shoved through my body by something fierce and thudding and unforgiving. It moved more slowly, eased along by the thudding pulse of a dozen small internal structures, while my heart sat like a sculpture at the center of my chest, preserved as a memorial to my humanity, otherwise unneeded and forgotten.