Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  But . . . Josh’s green eyes reflect all the green around them. The vine-jungle is so soft, so thornless, that nothing ripped his tee, but in places soft green pulp smears it, looking like guacamole. His blond hair falls over his forehead, which glistens with sweat from the incredible heat. His clothes cling to his gorgeous body. He gazes directly into her eyes.

  “I see projections,” she says slowly. “I just told the doctors I didn’t.”

  “Why?” He sounds genuinely puzzled, and the wave of reluctance in Caitlin’s mind crests into a tsunami. If they are all runaways, why should Josh trust the authorities at the Institute so much? Why would he be so puzzled that Caitlin doesn’t?

  She says, “I didn’t tell Dr. Jensen because I wasn’t really sure. I only ever saw my . . . my projections just after I woke up, and I thought they might just be dreams. I’m still not sure.”

  He gazes at her steadily. They both know she is lying.

  Seena says peevishly, “Isn’t anybody interested in what I just remembered?”

  “Of course we are.” Caitlin turns to her in relief.

  “Okay. I was living in this little city in Virginia, Suwaquahua, and sleeping in a, like, abandoned tunnel or something near the highway. It was a good squat. Then I was woke up by this flash of light and I thought—fuck me, I really did—that somebody dropped a bomb. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is me, dying in a nuclear blast, big deal,’ and then I started to cry—”

  Caitlin tries to picture Seena in tears, and fails. Seena—tough, bony Seena, with that edge that Caitlin envies and covets, the edge that lets you take risks and damn the consequences—Seena, crying in a tunnel either because she was going to die or because she wasn’t. And Seena now, sitting cross-legged in this impossible jungle, her red tee a spot of color among the green and her bikini panties negligently exposing as much as they covered, bringing out the memory as if it were just another day of Group, of one-on-one, of in-facility school and bells for bedtime.

  “I crawled out of the tunnel an hour after the big light. Maybe longer, I dunno. And everybody was gone. Almost everybody. I saw somebody a block away in front of the bakery, but he saw me and just ran. So I run around going, ‘What the fuck! What the fuck!’ and then the buildings, they . . . they . . .”

  “What?” Josh says. His eyes are now fastened on Seena, and Caitlin feels jealousy uncoil in her stomach.

  “The buildings start to crumble. Yeah, crumble into some sort of powder but not all at once, just getting softer at first and flaking off like dandruff. So I run into this open area full of weeds and broken glass and shit, and I stay there where nothing can fall on me and watch Suwaquahua just . . . just . . .”

  Josh puts his hand on Seena’s arm. She shakes it off and glares at him. He says, “Sorry. Go on.”

  She shrugs, once more the Seena that Caitlin knows. “Ain’t any more ‘on.’ I stayed there until the city was gone and the sky was full of planes and helicopters and fuck-all, and goons in hazmat suits picked me up. And then the assholes at the Institute made me forget all of it.”

  Caitlin considers Seena’s story. A whole city that just crumbled away . . . some sort of advanced terrorist weapon? Is that even possible?

  None of this is possible.

  Josh says to Seena, “And your projections? You always made up stuff, nothing real.”

  Seena’s glare deepens. “Why the fuck do you care about my projections?”

  Josh smacks one fist into his other hand, a gesture so violent that Caitlin jumps, backing into a thick, looping vine. Josh shouts, “We have to survive out here or go back—don’t you get that? Any information at all might help! How the fuck do I know what information we need to understand this mess?”

  “Okay, okay, don’t come in your shorts! Jeez! I see the same four people, that’s all. An old lady in a rocking chair, two kids dressed real old-timey, and a man carrying a shovel. He’s dressed like some dumb history play, too. Now tell me how that’s going to help us!”

  “I don’t know,” Josh says. “Like I said, I don’t know what will help. But we need to figure this thing out. I told in Group what my projections are. Caitlin?”

  His green eyes gaze at her, but not angry as they were with Seena. Josh is gentle again, his face beseeching. Something turns over in Caitlin’s chest.

  He takes her hand.

  Danger.

  She says, “I only saw my projections once, just as I woke up, and I think they were just dreams.”

  “What dreams?”

  “How can dreams help us?”

  “We don’t know that yet.” Still gentle but still just out of reach, tantalizing her. Suddenly Caitlin is angry. He is just one more of the million things in the universe that she can never have.

  She says, “Only two people, a boy in jeans and sweatshirt and a woman with a baby. Maybe the woman was my mother.”

  Josh drops her hand.

  He says, “We’re either still in Manhattan or we’re not, so—”

  Seena interrupts him with “No way this is Manhattan!”

  Josh doesn’t answer and Caitlin sees the moment that Seena gets it. Seena says, “You mean this is what Manhattan turned into, that it got nuked just like Suwaquahua.”

  “We don’t know,” Josh says.

  Caitlin doesn’t think there had been any nuke, but she keeps quiet, having nothing better to offer. Despite the heat, her hand that Josh dropped feels cold. He says, “I think our best bet is just to crawl in a straight line until we get out of whatever this jungle is. To someplace that isn’t jungle.”

  Seena says, “How are we gonna keep to a straight line?”

  Josh shows them the tiny compass set into the head of his flashlight.

  Seena shrugs. “Okay. I guess it’s a chance.”

  For what? Caitlin thinks but doesn’t say. She wants to be back inside the Institute. She wants Josh to hold her hand again. She wants this day to begin over. “Call back yesterday, bid time return . . .”

  She follows Seena into the jungle.

  Hours later, hours of crawling under vines, climbing over vines, pushing aside vines, exhausts all of them. They escaped from the Institute after dawn but before breakfast, and by now it must be late afternoon. Caitlin’s stomach rumbles with hunger.

  “Too bad that gizmo of yours doesn’t have a machete, too,” Seena mutters. “We’re resting now, macho man.” In two minutes she’s asleep.

  Eventually Josh sleeps, too. Caitlin hears him snore, surprisingly deep and loud. She can’t sleep. Every muscle aches. She lies on her back, looking up at the layers and layers of vines and branches and soft pulpy leaves, and all at once she wonders why they haven’t just climbed as high as they can to see how far the jungle extends. Why hadn’t Josh suggested that?

  Why didn’t she?

  Seena moans in her sleep. Josh snores louder, flat on his back. Then rain starts, pattering softly on vegetation, and Caitlin sits up. She rolls a leaf into a cup, waits for it to collect several dozen drops, and drinks. The leaf unrolls. On its wet, glistening surface, Caitlin sees the man.

  Only it’s not a man. It’s . . . something else.

  She bites her tongue to keep from crying out. The image, wavery and green from the leaf behind, is the head and bust of a pale creature with two eyes, no nose, and a siphon where a mouth should be. The head rises to a single horn like a rhinoceros, but the eyes are not those of a beast. Large, pink, with dark pupils flecked with green.

  Fingers trembling, Caitlin shreds the leaf. The rain keeps falling. She closes her eyes, picks another, and holds it so it will coat with water.

  This time the image is more blurry, a smear of green-tinged color, but by turning the leaf this way and that she can make it out: the man in eighteenth-century knee breeches and silver brocade waistcoat. He’s partly turned away from Caitlin and she can’t see his expression. She blinks to focus her vision, and when she opens her eyes again, Josh is staring at her.

  “This leaf,” she says, holding it ou
t to him, “do you think it’s edible? I’m so hungry.”

  “Don’t risk it,” he says softly. “We don’t know if it’s poison. Caitlin, come with me . . . please?”

  He’s up and worming his way through the vines. Caitlin follows; she can’t help herself. No more than ten steps and the thick curtain of vines hides Seena. Josh stops in another clearing, much smaller than the first, and sits. There’s barely room to fit both of them. He says, “I’ve been thinking about what Seena told us.”

  “Yeah?” She can smell his sweat, his hair. She feels dizzy.

  “What if we aren’t in Manhattan but they brought us to Suwaquahua . . . to what Suwaquahua became after the people mostly vanished and the buildings crumbled and this bloom started.”

  Bloom. The word makes Caitlin think of roses in a June garden. But Josh means something else, more like deadly algae on the ocean. She says, “Why would the government put a mental institution for kids right in the middle of the bloom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I guess not. Nothing makes sense. Caitlin . . . I don’t want to die.”

  She doesn’t want to die either, but says nothing.

  “I especially don’t want to die a virgin.”

  She goes still. More still—she thought she was motionless before but this is something much different, a halt in time itself, a caesura in the universe. Rain, filtered through leaves and vines and spiced air, patters on her bowed head.

  Josh reaches for her.

  Gently he pushes her onto her back, undoes the buttons on her soggy pajama top. Caitlin closes her eyes. If she looks at him, she will shatter. If she stays quiet, she will shatter. So she whispers, “Seena . . . she’s so beautiful . . .”

  “It’s you I want. Oh, Caitlin . . .”

  He slides down her pajama bottoms, wads them beneath her ass. His fingers touch and probe her but very gently, and for a long time, until she feels warmth and wetness where they have never been before. When he slides into her, there is only a brief second of pain and then pleasure again. Later, after he’s finished, he doesn’t stop touching her until the pleasure crests and Caitlin cries out, clinging to him, tears flowing from her still closed eyes.

  She can’t believe this is happening. Not to her.

  He cradles her as they lie together. She wishes he would tell her . . . what? About himself, how someone who looks like him could still be a virgin, how he knew to . . . but Josh’s mind is still on the bloom. He says drowsily, “If this is Suwaquahua . . . if Cathcart Syndrome . . . God, I wish I had more information. For instance, why you don’t see any projections at all, sweet Caitlin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You really really don’t?”

  “No.” She doesn’t want to talk about this. She wants him to say he’s in love with her, or at least that he liked sex with her. Instead, he falls asleep again.

  Well, she’s read that men do that after making love. Making love—the phrase seems so adult, so much something she never thought would be connected with her. She wants him to want her again. She wants to please him and is terrified that she won’t, that he won’t continue to want her. She will do anything to keep his arms around her, anything.

  “Josh,” she whispers, ‘I think I took AP science courses. I remember a lot of physics.”

  He doesn’t stir. When he wakes, she will tell him. About her projections, about spacetime, about the theory that has been growing in her mind. She and Josh and Seena might die here, and this is all she has to give. In the rainy green light, even his profile is beautiful, sharp and strong as a Roman statue, an Egyptian god.

  Caitlin knows she’s being sentimental but she doesn’t care.

  Ten steps away, Seena screams.

  By the time they reach her, Seena has gone rigid on the jungle floor. Her eyes are wide open, staring upward. Her body looks like concrete. Josh, who got there first because Caitlin took seconds to put her pajamas back on and all he had to do was pull up his shorts, kneels between Seena and Caitlin. He is shining his miniature flashlight inside her mouth. “Got to keep her from swallowing her tongue!”

  It doesn’t look to Caitlin as if Seena could ever swallow anything again. But after a few moments Seena’s body relaxes. Josh withdraws the flashlight. Seena moans, twitches, opens her eyes.

  “You’re okay now,” Josh says. He stands.

  Seena scowls. “ ‘Now?’ What happened?”

  Caitlin says, “You had a fit.”

  “I don’t have fucking fits!” Seena is furious at the mere suggestion. She gets to her feet, glaring at them both. Darkness starts to gather.

  “It’s okay,” Josh says soothingly. “Maybe you just cried out in your sleep.”

  “I don’t do that either, asshole!”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re one tough chick.” He says it so comically, in such mock terror, that reluctantly Seena laughs.

  “I am. And don’t you forget it.”

  “No chance. So what do we do now, tough chick? Your call.”

  Seena considers. The greenish light is almost gone. “Can’t do anything until tomorrow, except sleep some more. Shit, I’m so hungry. Caitie, you okay?”

  “Yes,” Caitlin says. She wants to sleep beside Josh, their hands touching, their thighs pressed together. But he says “Bathroom break,” and vanishes into the bloom.

  Seena grumbles, “How can he piss when he hasn’t drunk anything? God, I am tired. Still.”

  She lies down. So does Caitlin. When Josh returns, he curls up as far from both of them as he can get in the little clearing, and Caitlin lies in the total, impenetrable dark feeling her heart split along its seam.

  It is hours, years, eons before she can sleep.

  Josh and Seena are gone.

  The jungle is still dark and silent. No insects, no birds. Time stretches like taffy. But eventually Caitlin sees the thin beam of light, hears them creep back into the clearing. Josh whispers something, unintelligible. Seena gives a muffled laugh. Her voice is louder than his: “. . . terrific in the sack, Josh.”

  Caitlin says, “I’m awake.”

  They both pause.

  Caitlin says clearly, “Seena, what happened when you were first taken to the Institute?”

  Seena says, “What?”

  “You heard me. When you were first taken to the Institute, where were you and what did you see?”

  “Caitie, what’s wrong with you, girl? You know none of us remember that shit!”

  Caitlin looks at Josh. “It was in the flashlight, wasn’t it? The flashlight you just happened to have when there just happened to be a black-out. The flashlight with a compass and enough of that drug to keep the patients from recalling too much, because they go catatonic when they do, right? Like Seena did, like all those ones you doctors lost when you first started messing with our so-called ‘projections’—”

  “He’s no doctor, he’s a patient like us!” Seena says. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “He’s no patient,” Caitlin says. “But you’re right, he’s no doctor either.” She feels almost like two people, one watching the other with astonishment, eyeing this Caitlin who can talk in such a dead-quiet voice even as her guts collapse in her belly. “What are you, Josh? An actor, a pro? Playing the role of a patient, and willing to do anything for a certain kind of information. Including sex with both of us.” Caitlin might have been a virgin, but she read books. Josh’s control, his intimate knowledge of how to make a girl ready . . ..

  Seena makes a strangled noise.

  “Why is it so important that Seena and I tell you our projections? What do you suspect we see that you haven’t been able to get out of Roth, or poor stupid Pam, or Seth, or any of the others rotting away someplace before you found a drug that blocked memory?”

  “Caitlin,” Josh says, and then all at once his voice changes. He stops shining the flashlight on Caitlin and switches it off. She can still see his outline, gray agai
nst gray-green; dawn is beginning. “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you? All right, yes. They were walking a very narrow line here between losing you survivors and getting information out of you. Your minds somehow got altered when the bloom happened and nobody knows how. Too much memory and you collapse. Too little and they couldn’t learn anything. It was a—”

  “So you convince us we’re all mentally ill and destroy us that way? In the name of science?”

  “In the name of—”

  Seena suddenly shrieks, “I’m nobody’s lab rat!” and launches herself at Josh.

  He’s not expecting it; he was focused on Caitlin. Seena knees him in the balls and he shouts in pain. Her nails rake his face, and then she points two fingers and goes for his eyes.

  Caitlin deflects her barely in time. Caitlin doesn’t even think first; she just launches herself at Seena and her greater weight takes them both down, crashing into the wall of soft swaying vines. Josh is doubled over in pain. Seena scrambles off the ground before Caitlin can recover from the fall. She dives at Josh again.

  All Caitlin has—all she has ever had—are her words, her mind. She says quickly, “I know what the jungle is, Seena! I know how to save ourselves!”

  It works. Seena slows, glances back, kicks Josh once in the stomach, and turns toward Caitlin. “How?”

  “Not in front of him.”

  Seena nods. She jerks Caitlin upright—how can that skinny starved body be so strong?—and half-drags her away from Josh, bleeding and gasping on the ground. Caitlin says, “Will he—”

  “He’ll live, the asshole. Come on!”

  Caitlin snatches up Josh’s flashlight and lets Seena lead her on. The light brightens; the jungle seems less dense here, or at least walking is easier. Something glints through the trees, disappears, glints again. Abruptly they emerge on the banks of a river, vines trailing in the water and crowding a tiny island a hundred yards from shore, an island that is mostly exposed rock rising in three regularly spaced humps.