“Melanie, they aren’t trying to hurt me. I’ve become a venerated member of their tribe.” He told her of his botanical explorations, his discovery of the previous ship, the deaths of Cruz and Wilson, his captivity, and the nature of the mysterious organisms that were taking hold of him. “All those nucleotides it contains that I couldn’t account for… they allow the organism to germinate in living flesh. Fully grown, it has the appearance of a mushroom, but it’s an obligate parasite, and the natives who live here provide it with the host it requires. In turn, the high priestess consumes the mushrooms and experiences the visions she needs to guide her people. I have been selected to play an exalted role in all of this, one that I could never have played on Earth. Tell the marines they must not come. This planet must be allowed to flourish in peace.”
Melanie poured out her love and devotion to him, telling him she could never be happy without him. But Jag’s surging euphoria and sense of purpose overwhelmed any love or compassion he might have felt. Can she not see that I am the central figure in something much greater than the two of us?
By the time the procession reached the small sacred clearing where he had first observed the queen, Jag had entered the most towering state of ecstasy that the sprouting organisms could elicit in a human nervous system. The calamitous state of Earth was of no consequence. Melanie was barely a distant memory. He no longer had the desire or ability to communicate with anyone but the gods, and these he experienced not as individuals, but as overlapping waves of aimless joy.
Adjacent to where one of the crewmembers of the prior mission had lain, the natives dug a new, very shallow, rectangular grave. They gently placed Jag into it, and took care that none of the soil they laid upon him should cover the purple stems.
THE END.
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