The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  "I perceive possible priority conflict."

  "You have to preserve yourself to carry out your instruction to protect me. True?"

  "Yes."

  "Water can damage you. It can't damage me. If I choose to go there, I go. You stay away from the water."

  A delay. "Recorded."

  He frowned, hitched the pack up and looked askance at her, then cast another, longer look backward.

  Build a bridge, perhaps? Make the other side accessible for Anne? The thought of going beyond her range made him uneasy—if he should run into difficulty, need her—

  There were the com units. The portable sensors.

  He wanted to go over there, to know what was there. And not there.

  The microscope turned up a variety of bacteria in the water. He sat in the lab, staring at the cavorting shapes, shaken by that tiny movement as if it had been the sight of birds or beasts. Something lived here and moved.

  Such things, he recalled, could work all manner of difficulties in a human gut. He called up Library, went through the information gleaned of a dozen worlds. The comparisons might have told Sikutu something, but he found it only bewildering. They might be photosynthesizing animalcules, or contractile plants.

  Heat killed the specimens. He shoved the plate into the autoclave and felt like a murderer. He thought even of walking back to the river to pour the rest of the vial in. Life had become that precious. He nerved himself and boiled the rest—imagined tiny screams in the hissing of the bubbles. It left pale residue.

  Two days he lay about, thinking, distracting himself from thought. He sat in Anne's observation dome at night, mapped the movements of the system's other worlds; by day, observed the sun through filters. But there were the charts they had made from space, and looking at the stars hurt too much. It was too much wishing. He stopped going there.

  And then there was just the forest to think about. Only that left.

  He gathered his gear, set Anne to fetching this and that. He unbolted a land-crawler from its braces, serviced it, loaded it to the bay and loaded it with gear: inflatable raft, survival kit.

  "Let it down," he told Anne. "Lower the cargo lift."

  She came out afterward, bringing him what he had asked, standing there while he loaded the supplies on.

  "Assistance?"

  "Go back in. Seal the ship. Wait for me."

  "My program is to protect you."

  "The pseudosome stays here." He reached into the crawler, where the sensor remote unit sat, a black square box on the passenger seat. He turned it on. "That better?"

  "The sensor unit is not adequate for defense."

  "The pseudosome is not permitted to leave this area unless I call you. There's no animate life, no danger. I'll be in contact. The unit is enough for me to call you if I need help. Obey instructions."

  "Please reconsider this program."

  "Obey instructions. If you damage that pseudosome, it's possible I won't be able to fix it, and then I won't have it when I need you. True?"

  "Yes."

  "Then stay here." He walked round, climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine. "Recorded?"

  "Recorded."

  He put it in gear and drove off through the grass— looked back as he turned it toward the forest. She still stood there. He turned his attention to the rough ground ahead, fought the wheel.

  A machine, after all. There were moments when he lost track of that.

  The sensor unit light glowed. She was still beside him.

  He dragged the raft down the sandy slope, unwieldy bundle, squatted there a moment to catch his breath on the riverside. The wind whispered in the leaves. No noise of motors. He felt the solitude. He saw details, rather than the sterile flatnesses of the ship, absorbed himself in the hush, the moving of the water.

  He moved finally, unrolled the raft and pulled the inflation ring. It hissed, stiffened, spread itself.

  Beep. Beep-beep-beep.

  The sensor box. His heart sped. He scrambled up the sandy rise of the crawler and reached the box in the seat. "Anne. What's wrong?"

  "Please state your location," the box asked him.

  "Beside the river."

  "This agrees with my location findings. Please reconsider your program, Warren."

  "Anne, you keep that pseudosome where it is. I'll call you if I need you. And I don't need you. I'm all right and there's no danger."

  "I picked up unidentified sound."

  He let his breath go. "That was the raft inflating. I did it. There's no danger."

  "Please reconsider your program."

  "Anne, take instruction. Keep that pseudosome with the ship. I've got a small communicator with me.

  The sensor box weighs too much for me to carry it with the other things I need. I'm going to leave it in the crawler. But I'm taking the communicator. I'll call you if there's an emergency or if I need assistance."

  "Response time will be one hour seventeen minutes to reach your present location. This is* unacceptable."

  "I tell you it is acceptable. I don't need your assistance."

  "Your volume and pitch indicate anger."

  "Yes, I'm angry."

  "Be happy, Warren."

  "I'll be happy if you do what I told you and keep that pseudosome at the ship."

  A long delay. "Recorded."

  He took the communicator from the dash, hooked it to his belt. Walked off without a further word. Anne worried him. There was always that conflict-override. She could do something unpredictable if some sound set her off, some perception as innocent as the raft cylinder's noise.

  But there was nothing out here to trigger her. Nothing.

  He slipped the raft away from the shore, quietly, quietly, used the paddle with caution. The current took him gently and he stroked leisurely against it.

  A wind signed down the river, disturbing the warmth, rustling the leaves. He drove himself toward the green shadow of the far bank, skimmed the shore a time.

  There was a kind of tree that flourished on that side, the leaves of which grew in dusters on the drooping branches, like fleshy green flowers, and moss that festooned other trees never grew on this kind. He saw that.

  There was a sort of green flower of thin, brown-veined leaves that grew up from the shallows, green lilies on green pads. The river sent up bubbles among them, and he probed anxiously with his paddle, disturbed their roots, imagining some dire finned creature whipping away from that probing—but he only dislodged more bubbles from rotting vegetation on the bottom. The lilies and the rot were cloyingly sweet.

  He let the current take the raft back to the far-shore point nearest his starting place. He drove the raft then into the shallows and stood up carefully, stepped ashore without wetting his boots, dragged the raft up by the mooring rope and secured it to a stout branch to keep the current from unsettling it by any chance.

  He took his gear, slung the strap over his shoulder, looked about him, chose his path.

  He thumbed the communicator switch. "Anne."

  "Assistance?"

  "Precaution. I'm fine. I'm happy. I have a program for you. I want you to call me every hour on the hour and check my status."

  "Recorded. Warren, please confirm your position."

  "At the river. Same as before. Obey your instructions."

  "Yes."

  He thumbed the switch over to receive, and started walking.

  Ferns. Bracken, waist-high. Great clumps of curling hairy fronds: he avoided these; avoided the soft vine growth that festooned the high limbs of the trees and dropped like curtains.

  Beyond the forest rim the ferns gave way to fungi, small round balls that he thought at first were animals, until he prodded one with a stick and broke it. There were domes, cones, parasols, rods with feathered fringes. Platelet fungi of orange and bluish white grew on rotting logs and ridged the twisted roots of living trees. Color. The first color but green and white and brown, anywhere in the world.

  The trees grew ta
ller, became giants far different from the riverside varieties. They loomed up straight and shadowy-crowned, their branches interlacing to shut out the sun. The light came through these branches in shafts when it came at all; and when night came here, he reckoned, it would be night indeed.

  He stopped and looked back, realizing he had long since lost sight or sound of the river. He took his axe; it took resolution to move after such silence, more than that to strike, to make a mark. He deafened himself to the sacrilege and started walking again, cutting a mark wherever he passed from view of the last. Chips fell white onto the spongy carpet of eons-undisturbed leaves. The echoes lasted long, like eerie voices.

  "Warren."

  His heart all but stopped.

  "Anne. My status is good."

  "Thank you."

  Com went off again. He kept walking, marking his way, like walking in some great cavern. The way seemed different when viewed from the reverse, and the trees grew larger and larger still, so that he had to cut deep to make his marks, and he had to struggle over roots, some knee-high, making going slow.

  He saw light and walked toward it, losing it sometimes in the tangle, but coming always closer—broke finally upon a grove of giants, greater than any trees he had seen. One, vaster than any others, lay splintered and fallen, ancient, moss-bearded. A younger tree supported it, broken beneath the weight; and through the vacant space in the forest ceiling left by the giant's fall, sunlight streamed in a broad shaft to the forest floor, where soft green moss grew and white flowers bloomed, blessed by that solitary touch of daylight. Motes danced in the sun, the drift of pollen, golden-touched in a green light so filtered it was like some airy sea.

  Warren stopped, gazed in awe at the cataclysmic ruin of a thing so old. The crash it must have made, in some great storm, with never an ear to hear it. He walked farther, stood in the very heart of the sunlight and looked up at the blinding sky. It warmed. It filled all the senses with warmth and well-being.

  He looked about him, ventured even to touch the giant's mossy beard, the bark, the smoothness where the bark had peeled away. He walked farther, half-blind, into the deep shadows beyond, his mind still dazed by the place. All about him now was brown and green, bark and leaves, white fungi, platelets as large as his hand stepping up the roots; ferns, fronds unfurling waist-high, scattering their spores. The tangle grew thicker.

  And he realized of a sudden he had come some distance from the clearing.

  He looked back. Nothing was recognizable,

  He refused panic. He could not have come far. He began to retrace his path, confident at first, then with growing uncertainty as he failed to find things he recalled. He cursed himself. His heart pounded. He tore his hands on the brush that clawed at him. He felt as vulnerable suddenly as a child in the dark, as if the sunlit clearing were the only safe place in the world. He tried to run, to find it more quickly, to waste no time. Trees pressed close about him, straight and vast and indifferently the same, their gnarled roots crossing and interweaving in the earth as their branches laced across the sky.

  He had missed the clearing. He was lost. All ways looked the same. He ran, thrust his way from trunk to trunk, gasping for breath, slipped among the tangled wet roots, went sprawling, hands skinned, chin abraded by the bark. He lay breathless, the wind knocked from him, all his senses jolted.

  Slowly there came a prickling of nerves in the stillness, through his spasmodic gasps, a crawling at the back of his neck. He held himself tremblingly still at first, his own weight holding him where he had fallen, awkward and painfully bent. He scrabbled with his hands, intending one swift movement, clawed his way over to wave it off him.

  Nothing was there, only the brush, the vast roots. The feeling was still behind him, and he froze, refusing to look, gripped in sweating nightmare.

  Of a sudden he sprang up, ran, favoring his right leg, sprawled again his full length in the wet, slick leaves, scrambled and fought his way through the thicket The chill presence—it had direction—stayed constantly on his right, pressing him left and left again, until he stumbled and struggled through worse and worse, tearing himself and the pack through the branches and the fern, ripping skin, endangering his eyes.

  He broke into light, into the clearing, into the warm shaft of sun. He fell hard on his hands and knees in that center of warmth and light, sobbing and ashamed and overwhelmed with what had happened to him.

  He had panicked. He knew his way now. He was all right. He sank down on his belly, the pack still on his back, and tried to stop shaking.

  Strangeness flowed over him like water, not quite warmth, but a feather-touch that stirred the hair at his nape. He moved, tried to rise and run, but he was weighted, pinned by the pack like a specimen on a glass, in the heat and the blinding daylight, while something poured and flowed over his skin. Sweat ran. His breathing grew shallow.

  Illness. A recurrence of the plague. He groped at his belt for the communicator and lost it, his hand gone numb. He lay paralyzed, his open eyes filled with translucent green, sunlight through leaves. The sighing wind and rush of waters filled his ears and slowed his breath.

  Deep and numbing quiet. Ages came and the rains and the sun filtered down season upon season. Ages passed and the forest grew and moved about him. His body pressed deep to the earth, deep into it, while his arms lifted skyward. He was old, old, and hard with strength and full of the life that swelled and struggled to heaven and earth at once.

  Then the sun was shining down in simple warmth and he was aware of his own body, lying drained, bearing the touch of something very like a passing breeze.

  He managed to stand at last, faltered, numb even yet, and looked about him. No breath of wind. No leaves stirred.

  "Warren?"

  He stooped, gathered up the com unit. "I'm here, Anne."

  "What's your status, Warren?"

  He drew a deep breath. The presence—if it had been anything at all but fear—was gone.

  "What's your status, Warren?"

  "I'm all right—I'm all right. I'm starting home now."

  He kept the com unit on, in his hand, for comfort, not to face the deep woods alone. He found his first mark, the way that he had come in. He struggled from one to the other of the slash marks, tearing through when he sighted the next, making frantic haste. . . away from what, he did not know.

  5

  He was ashamed of himself, on the other side of the river, sitting in the raft, which swayed against the shore, the paddle across his knees. Clothing torn, hands scratched, face scraped by branches, his left eye watering where one had raked it. . . he knew better than what he had done, racing hysterically over unknown ground. He wiped his face, realized the possibility of contaminants and wiped his bleeding hands on his trousers. Hallucination. He had breathed something, gotten it when he had scratched himself, absorbed it through the skin. . . a hundred ways he had exposed himself to contaminants. He felt sick. Scared. Some hallucinogens recurred. He needed nothing like that.

  "Warren?"

  He fumbled out the com unit, answered, holding it in both hands, trying not to shiver. "Everything all right, Anne?"

  "All stable," Anne replied. He cherished the voice in the stillness, the contact with something infallible. He sought a question to make her talk.

  "Have your sensors picked up anything?"

  "No, Warren."

  "What have you been doing?"

  "Monitoring my systems."

  "You haven't had any trouble?"

  "No, Warren."

  "I'm coming back now."

  "Thank you, Warren."

  He cut the com unit off, sat holding it as if it were something living. A piece of Anne. A connection. His hands shook. He steadied them, put the unit back at his belt, got up and climbed ashore, limping. Pulled the raft up and anchored it to a solid limb.

  No taking it back, no. The raft stayed. No retreats. He looked back across the river, stared at the far darkness with misgivings.

  There wa
s nothing there.

  Light was fading in the drive back. The crawler jounced and bucked its way along the track he had made through the grass on the way out, and the headlights picked up the bent grass ahead, in the dark, in the chill wind. He drove too fast, forced himself to keep it to a controllable pace on the rough ground.

  "Anne," he asked through the com, "turn the running lights on."

  "Yes, Warren."

  The ship lit up, colors and brilliance in the dark ahead of him. Beautiful. He drove toward it, fought the wheel through pits and roughnesses, his shoulders aching.

  "Dinner, Anne. What's for dinner?"

  "Baked chicken, potatoes, greens, and coffee."

  "That's good." His teeth were chattering. The wind was colder than he had thought it would be. He should have brought his coat. "Are you happy, Warren?"

  "I'm going to want a bath when I get there." "Yes, Warren. Are you happy, Warren?"

  "Soon." He kept talking to her, idiocies, anything to fend off the cold and the queasiness in the night. The grass whipped by the fenders, a steady whisper. His mind conjured night-wandering devils, apparitions out of bushes that popped out of the dark and whisked under the nose of the crawler. He drove for the lights. "Be outside," he asked Anne. "Wait for me at the cargo lock."

  "Yes, Warren. I'm waiting." He found her there when he had brought the crawler round the nose of the ship and came up facing the lock. He drew up close to her, put on the brake and shut down the crawler engine, hauled himself out of the seat and set unsteady feet on the ground. Anne clicked over, sensor lights winking red in the dark. "Assistance?"

  "Take the kit and the sensor box out and stow them in the lock." He patted her metal shoulder because he wanted to touch something reasonable. "I'm going inside to take my bath."

  "Yes, Warren."

  He headed for the lock, stripped off all that he was wearing while the platform ascended, ran the decontamination cycle at the same time. He headed through the ship with his clothes over his arm, dumped them into the laundry chute in the shower room, set the boots beside, for thorough cleaning.