Murasaki, page 6
He tried to sit up, and could not.
That was another surprise. Not a pleasant one. He lifted his head to look down at his supine body and saw that he was covered with something like a huge leaf—like an electric blanket, too, because he could feel with the heat on his face that it was radiating gentle warmth. But it wasn’t electric. As he pressed against it with his chin it squeaked a faint protest and shuddered before relaxing to cover him again, like a disturbed kitten sleeping at the foot of its master’s bed. The thing was alive.
He could not pause to wonder at that, though, be-cause he was preoccupied with the bad news. He could not move his body at all. Not any part of it below the neck; not arms or fingers or legs or torso.
The good part of that was that none of them was drowning him in pain, as they had been before. They felt nothing at all. His head still hurt—to be sure; a bearable pain, after all the worse ones from his crash.
And his senses had not de-serted him. Even his sense of smell was still working. He recognized the stench of the urine the creature had drenched him with More than that, there was another stink, more familiar, a lot less pleasant. Was it, perhaps, the rot of his own damaged body? He could not answer that; yet he was still alive. His eyes could look around; his ears could hear.
There wasn’t much to hear. The sighing of the thin wind in the trees; some minor, unalarming sounds of ani-mals, perhaps, that might have been stirring, sighing, snuf-fling in their sleep. He couldn’t see them, He did see some little creatures hopping about in the trees—almost like squirrels, he thought, though their tails seemed to be flat and tapering to a point, like a dagger, rather than long and furred. It was—interesting to see them, silhouetted against the disk of Genji, as they silently frol-icked from limb to limb. Kammer watched them with pleas-ure until they moved out of sight.
Then there was nothing much to look at for a while. Kammer could see that he was deep in the forest, and won-dered how he had got there. He wondered, too, what had happened to his body, and why he was not racked with the pain of his broken limbs. He wondered what the blanketlike thing was that was keeping him warm, and who had put it there. He wondered what was going to happen to him next ... but he did not enjoy wondering about that, and dis-missed it from his mind.
He even wondered, for quite a while, why he was calm enough to lie there wondering, when he should have been in a panic, or in pain—or, more likely, dead.
There wasn’t any point in raising questions like that, though. Whatever had been done to him had at least left him conscious and not in pain. It was pleasant enough sim-ply to be lying there, with no problems to face because there was nothing he could do about them.
He wondered, too, why he felt at home. It was a fact, though a puzzling one, that everything about him looked both strange and familiar at the same time.
Then he realized why.
What he was looking at was his own home, or at least his home the way he wished his own home was, Chujo was really another Mars—a Mars blessed with air (though not much) and water (even less), but a Mars with trees and living things moving about freely on its surface. In short, the Mars he had dreamed of as a child.
He laughed out loud at that—and quickly gasped with pain; because the motion had somehow twisted his neck, and something very painful made itself known at the back of the neck, just under his skull.
Then he became aware of a stronger smell, pungent as the urine that had drenched him. He heard a sound of movement. And a great skull-like face was looking down on him.
It was one of the creatures.
With the leisure he had now (nothing but leisure left to him!), Kammer could see that this creature was not a troll. It was not like a troll at all, not even a gracile version of them. It was no more like a troll than Kammer himself was like a mountain gorilla.
“Hello, there,” he said, gasping a little. That was when he realized he had lost his nose mask somewhere along the way; but it seemed he could get by as long as he didn’t overexert himself.
And, in his present condition, there seemed no chance of that.
The creature listened attentively. Then it whistled softly, as though trying to reassure him. It leaned to-ward him, reaching toward the back of his neck with its ill-shaped hands—did they have the right number of fingers?
“Watch it,” Kammer gasped in alarm. “What are you trying to do to me?”
The creature chirruped gently, and stroked his head. The long claws did not touch his skin; it was only the pads that he felt, and they were more soothing than not. But the thing was persistent. It lifted his head carefully, and he could feel it doing something to his spine. Kammer could feel very little, though.
The sensation was very strange; it felt as though thorns or needles had been stuck into him. They didn’t hurt. It was almost like a hypodermic going into nerve-blocked flesh. It took a while for the creature to get the—the whatever they were—adjusted to its satisfac-tion, and Kammer could feel them moving as they were coaxed this way and that
It was all strangely relaxing; and then, without warn-ing, he was asleep again.
The stable system that was Aaron Kammer’s life was at last moving toward the last of those slow changes that ended it.
Of that he was more certain each time he woke. He never stayed awake very long, because sooner or later something would begin to hurt. Then one of the things would come chirruping toward him and readjust whatever it was that they had done to his spinal cord. He was grateful for that. Less grateful, once, when one of them lifted the living rug off his body to inspect it and low in his field of vision Kammer caught a glimpse of his own body. His legs were bent in the wrong way. His naked belly was oozing slow trickles of pussy blood. He stank.
“Sorry about that,” he said, apologetically joking as he stared up into the noseless face. It wasn’t much of a joke. The Chujoan didn’t laugh, of course, but it did some-thing better than that. It offered him cool, clean water out of something like a wineskin—but it seemed to be made of a kind of fabric. with embroidery on its side—and when Kammer had swallowed a little it reached behind him and put him back to sleep.
In the little bit of life Aaron Kammer had left it seemed he had more time than he had ever had before. That was very strange, and he enjoyed pondering over the paradox. The thing was, he only had time. There was nothing he could do. Look around, as best he could, in those short periods when he was conscious. Maybe accept a few sips of water (but even that began to be tiring; just swallowing had become hard work). Watch what he could see
Some of the things he saw were quite interesting. It was worth noting, for instance, that for reasons of their own it seemed the Chujoans had systematically disman-tled his buggy. Parts of it lay spread under the trees, and he spent a pleasurable few waking minutes once watching a tall one and a little one (a child?) soberly rolling one of the great wheels back and forth to each other, while large four-legged animals grazed on the lower tree branches nearby. The Chujoans were playing a kind of game, Kammer realized. It pleased him to find out that his res-cuers had pet animals (or work animals?) and played games, though he was saddened for a moment to see that his camera and transmitter had also been dissected. That was a pity. But, looking on the bright side (which was the only side Kammer had left to look on), it meant that even if. Nicole had managed to persuade the captain to try to mount a rescue party there would be nothing to lead them to his position. And that was good, because he was quite sure there was not going, to be any benefit for him in being found.
He saw, too, the way the Chujoans cooked a meal. One cut fruits and roots into a pot, while another stood whistling softly into the trees. One of the creatures he had seen in the branches hopped into the Chujoan’s outstretched hand; the Chujoan stroked it gently, then wrung its neck and tossed it to the cook. What a very efficient system, Kammer thought, approvingly.
It was a pity that he couldn’t eat any of the stew that resulted, but he simply did not have the strength.
Apart from the fact that it might well have killed him at once ... but of course, things like that didn’t matter any more.
What might have mattered—at least, for a moment Kammer thought it might—was the sudden apparition of those three great trolls in the shadows of the forest. It was night again (how many times had it been night? Kammer couldn’t tell), and his hosts seemed to be asleep. Kammer was nearly certain that the trolls were stealthily approaching one of the four-legged animals, asleep as it leaned against a tree. He tried his best to yell. It wasn’t a very good at-tempt. It wasn’t much more than a harsh gasp, but one of the Chujoans looked up from sleep and saw them; whistled commandingly at them. The trolls retreated grudgingly; the Chujoan strolled over to the draft animals, leaped on the back of the nearest of them, and urinated on each, in turn. (Kammer was interested to see that this Chujoan was per-haps female.) Then she came over to him, and gently put him to sleep again, and that was the end of another period for Aaron Kammer. It was, he thought interestedly when he was awake again, in some ways quite a lot like the inter-stellar trip. These short intervals of consciousness were a species of time dilation; Murasaki rising and setting in its long day-and night, but himself experiencing only a few minutes of wakefulness at a time. That was worth men-tioning to someone, he thought, if only he had someone to mention it to.
He thought, without regret, of all the someones he had left behind on the ship. Most of them had mattered to him lately only as unavoidable pains in the ass, but it hadn’t always been that way. When the ship started out the crew had seemed like well-balanced, easygoing people. A decade and change of living in each other’s pockets had soured all that, but still
It was easy to forgive them everything, Kammer thought, now that he was sure he would never see any of them again.
He did miss Nicole—a little. At least, he thought of her with fondness, though not much regret. But that didn’t matter. He knew that he was growing weaker and that, finally, the last thing he had left to do was to die.
His last thought was that this was a good and friendly place to do it; and perhaps a gentle death was the greatest of the treasures Chujo had to offer.
5
When, the ship was five months along on its long voyage home, Captain Blow-Your-Horn made love to his, wife. It was an occasion for him. It had not happened very often, because she blamed him for Kam-mer’s loss. There had been a week of raging at him as they collected the crews from Genji, made all the worse because she was hopelessly outvoted. Unanimously, the rest of the crew supported his decision to go home, agreed there was no point in trying to find Aaron Kammer (or his body), accepted
,
(or pretended to accept) the captain’s assertion that Kammer was certainly dead, in that unwelcoming place, among all those savage’trolls; and of course Nicole put all the guilt for that on her husband. Then there had been a month and more of cold and silent anger, when she would not sleep in the same harnessed bid with him. Ul-timately, she did return to his bed. Sometimes now they did make love, more frequently they did not, but always, however much she shuddered and gasped, she seldom spoke to him.
Captain Washington did his best with his tempera-mental wife. He spoke of the lost man seldom; and only very kindly. In bed he deferred his own pleasure to her satisfaction, even when it became boring work; but there were certain things on his mind.
Then, five months after departure, on one morning, having waked her from sleep with caresses and certain that he had given her as many orgasms as ever in their life together, he pushed himself kneeling over her, swaying a little with the resilience of the harness. He looked down at her naked body, and could no longer ignore the contour of his wife’s belly.
“You are pregnant, aren’t you?” he asked.
She laced her fingers over her navel and thought for a moment before saying, “Yes, of course I am.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, speaking softly in order to keep the anger out of his voice.
“Having a baby on the ship—it’s going to be a damned nuisance,” he pointed out. She just closed her eyes without answer-ing. “What if the other women decide to get pregnant, too?”
She didn’t answer that, either, but began to unhook the bedstraps to lift herself out of it. The captain watched her, thinking sentences he didn’t want to say to her. There were a lot of things on his mind. He had plenty of ques-tions, all of which reflected on her irresponsible behavior. What if the baby turns out wrong because of some virus or something from Genji? What if Boulat Kotsvili turns out to be no good as an obstetrician? What if
She was pulling on her boiler suit without looking at him, turned away as though to hide the embryo in her belly from him. But he knew it was there.
He tried to look at the more attractive aspects of the situation. He knew there were some. In a way, the captain told himself, it could be kind of interesting to arrive at a Spacer dock, bowing to the hurrahs of the welcoming crowd, leading a—what would it be?—a strong young son, or even daughter, of nine or ten. He decided to forgive, so he grinned at her. “I guess,” he said, patting her belly, “that women are women, after all, aren’t you? And it’s kind of flattering, I guess.”
“Flattering?” she said, her back still to him, her tone perplexed.
“I mean,” he explained, “for me to know in spite of everything you wanted to have my child—”
But then she turned and looked at him, and the captain saw the unexpected information that was in his wife’s face.
“Oh, I see,” he said, no longer flattered at all.
World Vast, World Various
by Gregory Benford
1. The Cusp Moment
The vortex wind roiled stronger, howled across the jagged peaks to the south, and provoked strange wails as it rushed toward the small band of humans.
The sounds seemed to Miyuki like a chorus of shrill, dry voices. Three hundred kilometers to the south these winds were born, churned up by the tidal surges of the brother planet overhead. Across vacant plains they came singing, over rock sculpted into sleek submission by the raw winds. Gusts tore at the twenty-three Japanese in their air masks and thick jackets. A dusty swirl bedeviled them with its grit, then raced on.
“They’re coming,” Tatsuhiko said tensely.
Miyuki squinted into the cutting cold. She could barely see dots wavering amid the billows of dust. In her rising excitement she checked again her autocam, belt holdings, even her air hoses. Nothing must go wrong, nothing should steal one moment from this fresh contact between races. The events of the next hour would be studied by future generations, hallowed and portentous. As a geophysicist, her own role was minor. Their drills had taught her to keep Tatsuhiko and the other culture specialists in good view of her autocam, without being herself conspicuous. Or so they hoped. What if beings born of this austere place found smell, not sight, conspicuous?
“They’re spreading out,” Tatsuhiko said, standing stick-straight. “A sign of hostility? Maneuver?”
Opinions flowed over their suit comm. Tatsuhiko brushed aside most of them. Though she could not see his face well, she knew well the lean contours of concern that would crease his otherwise smooth, yellowish complexion. Miyuki kept silent, as did all those not versed in the con-summate guesswork that its practitioners called Exo-Analysis.
The contact team decided that the Chujoans might have separated in their perpetual quest for small game. This theory seemed to gain confirmation as out of the billowing dust came a peri and two burrowbunnys, scampering before the advancing line. The nomads doggedly pursued, driving game before them, snaring some they took by surprise.
I hope they don’t mind an interrupted hunt, Miyuki thought. They seemed stolid, as if resigned to the unre-lenting hardship of this cruelly thin world. Then she caught herself: Don’t assume. That was the first rule here.
She had seen the videos, the scans from orbit, the an-alytical studies of their movements—and still the aliens startled her.
Their humanoid features struck her first: thin-shanked legs; calves muscled and quick; deep chests broad with fat; arms that tapered to four-fingered hands. But the rest...
Scalloped ears perched nearly atop the large, oval head. Eyes were consumed by their pupils. A slitted mouth like a shark’s, the rictus grin of an uncaring carnivore. Yet she knew they were omnivores—had to be, to survive in this bleak biosphere. The hands looked wrong—blue fin-gernails, ribbed calluses, and the first and last fingers both were double-jointed thumbs.
These features she took in, as the aliens strode forward in their odd, graceful way. Three hundred and twenty-seven of them, one of the largest bands yet seen. The wind brought their talk to her from half a kilometer away. Trills, twitterings, lacings of growls. Were they warning each other?
“Showing signs of regrouping,” Tatsuhiko called edgily.
As leader of the contact team, he had to anticipate trouble of any sort. The aliens were turning to bring the vector of their march directly into the center of the humans. Miyuki edged into a low gully, following the team’s direc-tives. Swiftly the Japanese formed a triangular pattern, Tat-suhiko at the point.
To him went the honor of the cusp moment.
The pale morning light outlined the rumpled peaks to the west, turning the lacy brushwork of high fretted clouds into a rosy curtain, and their light cast shadows into the faces of the approaching aliens.
Miyuki was visible only to a few of the tall, swaying shapes as they made their wary way. She thought at first that they were being cautious, perhaps were fearful, but then she remembered the videos of similar bands. They perpetually strode with an open gait, ready to bound after game if it should appear, eyes roving in a slow search pat-tern. These were no different.
With gravity fifteen percent less than Earth’s, these creatures had a graceful, liquid stride on their two curiously hooflike feet. They held lances and clubs and slingshots casually, seemingly certain that whatever these waiting strangers might be, weaponry could keep them at bay. They were only a few hundred meters away now, and she felt her breathing tighten.
