Junction

by Daniel M. Bensen

  “You are talking about my husband as if he isn’t trapped forever on an alien planet,” Nurul said.

  “Well, yeah,” Anne said.

  “‘Yeah’?” repeated Daisuke. “He is trapped forever?”

  “Don’t shout at me,” Anne said. “Yeah, he isn’t trapped. Unless something eats him before the wormhole reopens.”

  Nurul put her hands to her face and sank to her knees in the electric yellow grass.

  “You think we should have waited for him?” Anne asked. “I’m really mystified here. I thought you wanted to follow Misha to Imsame and organize a rescue party. That’s what it makes sense to do, anyway, so we can be some help to him when he comes out.”

  “Why didn’t you say any of this before?”

  Anne threw up her hands. “I thought that was obvious. The wormhole shuts off when the air gets toxic, then turns back on again when things are safe. Remember Misha’s question about supernovas?”

  Daisuke tried to think back to their conversation on the other side of the Toymaker Mountains, when he had been worried about things other than simply surviving.

  “The wormholes were designed with an automatic shutoff,” said Anne. “That’s why there are no supernovas or volcanoes spewing fire over Junction. That’s why the flooding of the Mekimsam doesn’t spread to New Guinea. And I bet that’s why—”

  “So Rahman might come back?”

  They both looked down at Nurul.

  “What am I doing here?” She rose in a smooth, athletic motion. “We must go back for him.”

  Anne put her hands on her hips “How? Don’t be stupid.”

  Daisuke winced, but had to agree. “We can’t survive a trip back to the Sweet Blood Country by ourselves.”

  “And can Rahman survive on the Oasis Planet by himself?” Nurul asked. “We must turn back! If you don’t have the courage, I do.”

  Daisuke didn’t know what to say. How much courage did he have? He couldn’t even tell Anne how he felt.

  “We can get help for him in Imsame,” said Anne. “He just has to hang on until then.”

  Nurul looked down. “I suppose…we still have a mission. This is all the more reason for us to hurry.”

  She was right. They hurried, and the wind whistled, the animals around them clicked, the grass rippled. None of it would pause if the three of them died. Only humans cared about other humans.

  They found the river, which ran clear, fast, and icy-cold through a gully overgrown with more of those grasslike plants. These blades were as tall as Daisuke’s shoulders, undulating in the water.

  “Turning the current into energy,” Anne said, as if to herself. “Probably via the flexion of piezo-electric crystals at the base of their blades. Maybe sucrose?”

  “This is where I got turned around,” said Nurul. “How can we cross it?”

  “I suppose we could try and make a bridge,” Anne said, but for once, Daisuke had a better idea of how to use the local environment.

  Daisuke looked around for land-asters. “I have a plan. We can make….” Hell. What was the word in English? “Flying rocks? Jumping rocks?”

  “Jumping…rocks?” said Anne. Stupid English. Why would the default meaning of that phrase be something entirely impossible like ‘rocks that jump’ rather than ‘rocks that are for jumping on’?

  “I understand,” Nurul said. “Walking rocks. Rocks for footing.”

  “What the hell are you two—” Anne blinked. “Oh. Stepping-stones. You see any rocks around here, Dice?”

  “No,” he said. “But….” He walked to the nearest place where the paddle-reeds parted and found a grazing land-aster the size of a kotatsu foot-warmer table. He flipped it over with a boot and pushed it down the embankment.

  The reeds hummed as the creature crashed through them, coming to rest at the edge of the water. It stayed there, its back broad and dry in the middle of a writhing nest of horn-tipped tentacles.

  “That’s one,” said Daisuke. “Quickly, we must get others. They move slowly, but they do move.”

  The land-asters were unused to attack from above, and incapable of moving faster than real starfish. Daisuke sent them rolling while Nurul pressed the hinged, reedlike plants into a sort of ramp. Anne placed each creature in the water, apologizing under her breath as she did so.

  Their immersion didn’t seem to bother the aliens. They kept moving in any case, inching their way closer to the nearest bank, slow and silent as snails.

  The sun was still high when Daisuke hurled the last land-aster into the shallows on the opposite bank. Aerogellies sparkled in air cold and sweet as shaved ice, tumbling through spotlights cast by the crystalline branches above. More blue gel stretched between the gently clacking reed-blades – something like spiderwebs, perhaps?

  Daisuke stood there, surveying his ‘stepping-stones’. No envenomed tentacle jabbed his foot. The nodding kinetotroph weeds did not zap him with electricity. No poisonous cloud fell on him. No monsters dropped from the trees or leaped out of the water to devour him. The many worlds of Junction were finally giving him a break. Knock on wood and pretend to be a mulberry tree….

  Something exploded above them with a sound like a thunderclap funneled through a foghorn.

  Daisuke jumped up the embankment in a single terrified bound and stood there, hair bristling, heart and head pounding. He caught a glimpse of a little brown ball as it flew up from the forest to the east and exploded in another noisy burst of red powder.

  “Is that a signal?” he asked once the echoes had subsided.

  Anne nodded. “That looked like a kelp-tree balloon. More of Sing’s so-called witchery, I guess.”

  “Who is she signaling?” Nurul asked. “Us? Or someone else?”

  “You think she’s signaling her people?” asked Anne. “Or the people Misha was trying to radio?”

  Nurul whipped around, staring at her. “Radio? What radio?”

  “The one that attracted the ferrofluid monster?”

  Nurul closed her eyes. “Anne, remember how we talked about externalizing your thought processes?”

  A petty part of Daisuke was glad to see that Anne’s social obliviousness hurt more than just him. But his more gallant persona demanded he say, “We are all tired and we have a long way to walk.”

  “Toward Misha’s signal?” Anne asked.

  Nurul shrugged. “There’s no better way to reach Far Side Base. And if Misha succeeded in calling someone there, I think we had better find him before they arrive.”

  The trees were sparser on the other side of the stream, the ground cover taller and more dense. Oar-shaped plastic blades came up to Daisuke’s waist. The blades resisted him as he pushed through them, as if the hinges at their bases were rusty. They hummed softly as they righted themselves behind him.

  “That radio must be why he pulled that stunt with the balloons,” said Nurul as they walked. “He was trying to get line of sight with Far Side Base.”

  The paddles had grown to shoulder height now, and he could see the tips of still taller blades rising to the east and north. South, the reeds grew shorter, and Daisuke could see a subtle pattern in their growth. Triangles pointed their apexes east, then north-east, then north, leading uphill in a contracting spiral like a nautilus shell.

  “No,” Anne said. “That doesn’t make sense. Misha couldn’t have just been in a hurry to phone home. He could have gone balloon riding days ago when we first crossed over the Toymaker Mountains. But Misha only abandoned us when…when what? When the Death Wind came up? When the wormhole closed? When Hariyadi died?” She smiled at Daisuke. “Ha, look at me, getting as paranoid as you were when you woke up with linguipods in your bed.”

  When I woke from near death and confessed my real fears to you and you ridiculed me? When you showed me that you preferred my actor’s persona to the real man I am? Daisuke sw
allowed the words, nearly choking as he struggled to keep his face blank.

  Nurul looked at him. “What’s wrong, Daisuke?”

  “Nothing,” said Anne. “He just had this cockamamie theory that someone was trying to murder us one by one.”

  Daisuke couldn’t think of what the Iron Man of Survival would say now. He could only stop himself from screaming at Anne.

  “Oh,” Nurul said. “I understand. Anne, you don’t realize that Daisuke is angry at you, do you?”

  “Angry? Why would he be angry?”

  Daisuke pushed aside another, taller paddle, and it bent at an angle, leading them uphill of their original path. “We have to be careful,” he said. “Try to go downhill at the next opportunity. We don’t want to turn around in a circle.”

  “Don’t avoid the subject,” Nurul said. “Daisuke, what’s going on?”

  He felt like a mussel being attacked by a starfish. Nurul was trying to pry him open.

  “Listen,” she said. “The man we are following may well be a spy. What if Misha is lying in wait for us? What if we catch up with him? Clearly he is trying to beat us back to Far Side Base. What does the Russian plan to do when he gets there? I suspect it’s nothing good.”

  “You’re not suggesting we kill Misha?” said Anne, and Daisuke swallowed. Next to this tale of betrayal and international espionage, his personal problems sounded ridiculously small. He couldn’t bear to speak them.

  Nurul came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “The longer you lie, the harder it becomes to tell the truth.”

  What, was she telepathic?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Daisuke said. “It is a personal problem, and right now it is more important just to survive.”

  Nurul’s hand was on his shoulder. “No. We have a higher mission.”

  “Maybe you do.” Daisuke shook her off. “I only want to live until we can return home.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Daisuke!” Anne whacked a paddle downhill of them. “Ow! Fuck, that hurt.” She rubbed her hand, glaring at him. “Why are you doing this to me? Trying to make me guess your bloody fucking mental state? I don’t know why people do things, I told you that.”

  “And what did I tell you?” Daisuke snapped back.

  “I don’t know! Lots of things!” Anne flexed the paddle back and forth. It was taller than she was. “You know I’m the kind of person who can tell that these paddles only bend in one direction in order to guide animals walking in them into a spiral so they can trap the animals’ kinetic energy. What I can’t figure out is what’s wrong with you.”

  Daisuke raged at her unfairness. “So I have to spend all my life with you explaining why I’m feeling what I’m feeling like I’m some kind of alien?”

  Anne’s eyes went wide. “You want to spend your life with me?”

  The English sentence arrived on Daisuke’s tongue, and without hesitating or considering how it would sound, he spoke. “Only if you don’t make me play a part. Let me show sometimes that I’m afraid.”

  Anne looked from the paddle to Daisuke. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Why can’t you understand?” Daisuke yelled. “I told you I was afraid someone was trying to murder me. Someone killed Pearson and Tyaney and Colonel Hariyadi.”

  “Oh no!” Nurul said. “You mean it was Misha all the time?”

  “Yes,” said Daisuke. “You wouldn’t believe me when I said he tried to kill me.”

  “Of course. With the linguipods,” Nurul said.

  “Maybe you don’t trust me or you think I’m stupid?” shouted Daisuke. “But I will not be the Iron Man of Survival for you. I need only one person with whom I can be myself.”

  All the color had gone out of Anne’s face. “Oh,” she said. “Oh shit.”

  Nurul steepled her hands. “This is good. I think you can both be happy together. But if Daisuke is right and Misha is the murderer, we are in great danger.” She pushed aside the paddle in front of them, angling farther uphill. “We must go.”

  “Shit,” said Anne. “Toxic linguipods, Dice.”

  “What are you talking about?” Daisuke had thought he was exhausted before, but now he felt like lying down in this energy-stealing trap of a grove and dying. He had shown Anne the small-minded, selfish, cowardly person under his professional mask, and she didn’t seem to care. Daisuke might as well have unloaded his terrible secrets to a land-aster.

  “Daisuke!”

  His head snapped around. Anne’s expression wasn’t angry or confused. She was terrified. Her eyes darted between Daisuke and Nurul.

  “Toxic,” she hissed. “Not venomous, and Misha knew that!”

  And Daisuke understood. “Anne,” he said, voice tight. “Stay back.”

  Anne stopped. She listened to him. She knew what he meant. “Yeah,” she said. “Yes, Daisuke.”

  The two of them were downhill of Nurul. Nurul, who had been with Pearson when the shmoo attacked, who had known how to attract the wrath of the toymakers, and had been alone with Hariyadi on the Oasis Planet. Who didn’t know that linguipods were harmless and tried to use them to kill Daisuke.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the murderer. Her voice sounded normal, but Daisuke could see how her hand strayed toward her pocket. He remembered the dark bulk that had tracked her through the mist of the Death Wind biome, attracted, Daisuke was suddenly sure, by the metal in the gun Nurul had looted from Hariyadi’s corpse.

  “You should be happy,” Nurul said, her body tensing. “You have your whole lives ahead of you.” And now her hand was in her pocket. How could she lie so well? Daisuke had to admit he was impressed.

  “Fucking now, Dice!” shouted Anne and Daisuke lunged. There was no thought, no choreography, no awareness of the camera on the murderer’s chest. No fear, only the actions he needed to perform in order to survive.

  Nurul’s shoulder jabbed into Daisuke’s chest. She was half turned away from him, shielding her weapon with her body. If he just had another moment to reach around her body and grab her right wrist….

  Nurul didn’t give Daisuke the chance. She stepped back and pivoted, turning inside the circle of his arms. The barrel of her gun jabbed into his belly, sending a wave of nauseating pain up his body.

  Nurul bared her teeth in a feral snarl of fear and anger and hopelessness. The gun nosed deeper into his intestines and Daisuke knew he would die out here in the wilderness, his guts turned into hamburger. Die of shock or cold or blood loss or sepsis even before the slow predators of this country could descend on him. But at least I know I am a real hero. I even got the girl. He wondered if he had time to give his dying speech.

  “Anne,” he said, and she barreled into him.

  Anne’s tackle sent Daisuke and Nurul reeling backward through the fence of yellow paddles. Electricity tingled over Daisuke’s skin. From much too close, the noise of the gun rang his skull like a bell. He stumbled backward, Anne pulling on his wrist.

  She was pulling him back through the gap his body had made in the yellow fence. Nurul fell away from him, mouth open in a silent scream, smoke trailing from the barrel of her gun as it swung to follow him.

  It was like pulling a trout from a stream in Kamchatka. With his free hand, Daisuke snatched the gun.

  Daisuke and Anne tumbled onto the ground and the broad plastic plants snapped back into position.

  The paddle had about the heft of a baseball bat, moving too slowly to do any real damage. The electric shock it administered to Nurul’s face, however, was more than enough to send the murderer reeling back. Daisuke could even hear the pop of the spark. Nurul screamed in pain.

  Daisuke put his hand to his chest. Tried to breathe. Tried to think. They had imprisoned the murderer.

  “Bonza!” Anne pumped her fist in the air. “Biology! To finally be able to predict something bad before it act
ually happened! Thank God she never listened to me when I talked about the local wildlife, or she might have exposed you to something actually dangerous.” Anne rolled against Daisuke. “Oh my God, Dice. You almost died. Again! Stop doing that!”

  Daisuke put his arms around her. “We won,” he said, and from a dozen hidden places around the trap-grove, people cheered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Confessions

  Daisuke had never been in such prolonged pain. Nor have I felt so grateful to still be alive to feel it.

  “We did it.” He rolled off Anne and tried to sit up. “We found people.”

  “The Nun.” Anne got to her hands and knees, but very slowly. “The signal from Sing’s pet toymaker must have brought them here. They must have known we would come this way so they hid. Let us stumble into this…‘trap-grove’, would you call it?”

  Daisuke closed his eyes. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just tell me I can rest.”

  “Yeah,” Anne said. “Good show. Now the question is if Nurul was killing all of us, why? And why did Misha run away? And how did he get the Nun to co-operate with him?”

  “I didn’t!” came a voice from farther inside the spiral of the trap-grove. “They held a stone knife to my throat and told me not to make a sound.”

  “Hello, Misha. So, the Nun were seeing whether they could trust us, maybe?” said Anne. “But now I’m curious about how they—”

  “Ask them if they plan to kill us,” Daisuke said, eyes still closed. He would prefer they didn’t. He had a lot of things to do once his body started working again.

  “Oh, right. Um, Nun, uh, nu deibuk do?”

  “No. You safe.”

  That was Sing’s voice. Daisuke opened his eyes and saw their guide emerge through the paddles of the trap-grove. Behind her, other Nun bent and tied the paddles to each other, creating a path back to freedom without triggering the plant’s electrical defenses.

  The men were short and wiry, with heavy features and well-defined muscles under beaded smocks and strands of yellow plastic. The same stuff formed their axes, bows, and arrows, melted around knapped stone or sharpened wood. All of the Nun were coated in aerogel, and many had floating toymakers tethered to their shoulders. The domesticated aliens tracked him and Anne with underslung crossbow bolts like the stingers of giant, clockwork wasps.