Breath of Life

by Christine Pope

  “What about your world?” I asked, and popped a forkful of something rich and savory into my mouth.

  “It resembles some parts of it, perhaps.” He lifted his water glass and drank. “These plants have been gathered from a dozen worlds, any that support a Gaia-class atmosphere.”

  That was the standard designation for a world where humanoids could breathe the air without assistance, but it still seemed a little odd to hear an alien use such a Gaia-centric term. Privately, I’d thought for some years that it was the height of arrogance to land on an alien world and try to transmute its atmosphere into something it wasn’t, but I’d known better than to utter such heresy in my parents’ home. Anyway, the Zhore didn’t appear to share my scruples, as they were here terraforming Lathvin IV right along with us humans. At least this scrubby little planet didn’t have any indigenous sentient life, and barely any animal—a few rock borers that lived beneath the surface, some insects that probably no one except the xeno-entomologists would miss. And its plant species could be counted on the fingers of two hands…even if you were a twelve-fingered Zhore.

  “It almost feels like we’re outside,” I ventured. “That is, outside someplace where you can sit and not asphyxiate.”

  “You’ve never experienced that, have you? To live on a world whose environment isn’t inimical, where it’s safe and even desirable to walk around on the surface without protective gear?”

  “No,” I said, and set down my fork. Some would say you couldn’t miss what you never had, but somehow his words awoke a wistful longing in me, a desire to know what it would be like to walk outside and lift my head to the sky and the wind and not have to worry about breathing apparatus or a containment suit. “Have you?”

  “Of course. Zhoraan never suffered the same ecological disasters as Gaia—it is a world of great natural beauty.”

  Zhoraan, I repeated silently. To my knowledge, no one had ever learned the name of the Zhore home world, just as no outlander had ever been allowed to set foot there. Since I had the notion that Sarzhin did very little by chance, he must have given me his world’s name as a gift, perhaps something to further establish trust between us.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “No.”

  Startled, I gazed across the table at him, at the obscuring cloak and low-falling hood. Not for the first time I wished I could see something of his expression, even if I might not have been able to read it very well. “Really? Even though it’s so beautiful?”

  His voice level, he replied, “Why should I? I have everything I need here.”

  Again I found myself flushing, so I busied myself with drinking some more water and then having another mouthful of the delicious whatever-it-was. But that only lasted so long, and since he didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, I knew I’d have to come up with some sort of reply. “You’re a better person than I am. I’ve never liked this planet.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Indeed. Oh, some days I could almost convince myself that I didn’t totally hate it, but…” I trailed off and sighed. “Really, it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it, except that it’s got gravity and other surface conditions in the habitable range. I suppose by the time I’m an old woman it’ll be really livable, but right now it’s just damp, dark, and pretty darn inconvenient.”

  He laughed then, a rich amused laugh that somehow made me think of the dark chocolate bars my father used to get for Libba and me as holiday presents. “When you put it that way, I suppose I can see your point. And of course I would assume that your life as a homesteader would be rather different from the one I live here.”

  “Just a little.” Yes, he had two atmospheric generators on the property, but I’d never seen him do anything to maintain them. That was probably part of the mech’s duties, I supposed—the generators were supposed to run pretty much unattended, in theory. But that theory didn’t cover substandard replacement parts or filters which clogged up or flat out rusted, and so babysitting the generators became pretty much a full-time job for most of the homesteaders. Because if your generator didn’t produce its quota in a given month, then somebody from the Atmospheric Development Agency came by, and the next thing you knew you’d been given a fine that would postpone your payoff date for the homestead by a good two or three standard months.

  I somehow guessed Sarzhin didn’t have to deal with anything so mundane. I added, “Don’t mind me. I’m sure my feelings about Lathvin are probably more jealousy than anything else.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Because my sister got to go to college on Eridani, and I got stuck here. Oh, she got a full scholarship, and probably I could have if I’d tried for one, but there are always odds and ends that a scholarship doesn’t cover, and my parents just couldn’t afford to send me off-world, too. So here I am.”

  It somehow seemed too intimate to add that I’d felt I would be abandoning my parents to manage the homestead on their own if I’d applied for a scholarship and left them behind the way Libba had. Yes, I’d left them behind to come here, but five kilometers’ worth of separation was a far different thing from five hundred light-years.

  “Yes, here you are.” He was silent for a moment. I could somehow tell he was watching me intently from within the confines of that dark hood, and I did my best not to blink or look away. “I hope you will forgive me if I say I am very glad that you were, as you put it, ‘stuck here.’”

  That makes one of us, I thought, but of course I didn’t say it aloud. For one thing, it certainly wasn’t his fault that I hadn’t been able to get away from Lathvin IV, and second of all, he had done his best to make my time here in his home as comfortable as possible. Besides the dreaded marriage proposals, of course.

  I smiled at him, since that seemed to be the best reply I could come up with. Perhaps noticing my awkwardness, he went on to talk about the trees surrounding us, and how he had worked very hard on the greenhouse setup so it could provide micro-climates for the dizzying variety of plants he grew there. It actually was very interesting, and I found myself gaining new respect for him, for the determination that drove him to create this little piece of paradise hidden away from the rest of the world. I would be lying, however, if I didn’t say I was more than a little relieved when our lunch ended with nary a proposal of marriage in sight. So perhaps he really did reserve those for the conclusion of our evening meals.

  At any rate, he let me go back to my room afterward with no protest. I actually did have more studying to do, and he seemed to accept my explanation for how I needed to spend the rest of the afternoon. He said he would see me at dinner, and left it at that. An importunate suitor, he was not. Maybe he thought he had plenty of time. After all, there had been no discussion of how long my tenure here was supposed to be.

  I didn’t want to think about why he had left the whole situation so open-ended.

  Another day passed, and then another. We fell into a regular routine, sharing meals more often than not. Dinner, however, was sacrosanct, as was the inevitable question at its end. And every night I had to answer no.

  It wasn’t that I disliked the Zhore, or even resented him all that much for compelling me to take up residence in his house. If I were forced to admit it, well, my life here was much easier than it had been in my parents’ homestead. True, if given my choice, of course I would have returned home, but it wasn’t as if he had locked me up in a dungeon or something—not that any could have even existed on Lathvin IV, given the planet’s high water table. But of course it was impossible that I could consider becoming Sarzhin’s wife, not when I had never even seen his face.

  I worked hard at my studies, as much because I didn’t want to fail my parents as because it gave me something to fill up my time. And I did do very well, my midterm scores higher than they had been in previous semesters, so obviously all the free time was of some benefit.

  All seemed to be going as well as it reasonably could, given the circumstances, but that didn’t seem to make much of a d
ifference.

  I retired early one night, my latest refusal to Sarzhin still ringing in my ears. As always, he had accepted my demurral with quiet acceptance, but I wondered how long this possibly could go on. By that point I had lived under his roof for a little more than a standard month. Surely he didn’t intend to spend the next year listening to me tell him I could never be his wife.

  Usually I didn’t dream, or at least I had a difficult time remembering my dreams when I awoke the next morning. This time, though, I clearly saw myself wandering through the corridors of Sarzhin’s home, even though in my dream it was somehow bigger yet darker than it was in real life. I seemed to be looking for him—I called out his name, but got no reply. Finally, I approached a room I had never seen before, one my dreaming mind told me was his private chamber, although of course I had never seen it with my waking eyes. In a far corner I saw his dark shape, although something in its outline appeared horribly wrong to me. I stepped toward him, and he turned.

  The hood was down. And above his shoulders was…nothing. Only a dim space filled with shadows, where his face should be.

  I screamed. My eyes snapped open, and I realized I lay in my own bed, with the familiar shapes of my bedroom furniture all around me. Off to one side, the chronograph glowed faintly into the darkness. It was just past two hundred hours.

  My breath came as quickly as if I had just spent an unprotected seven minutes outside in Lathvin’s inhospitable atmosphere. I sat up in bed, and tried to tell myself that it had only been a dream. A terrible dream, to be sure, but no more real than my dreams of getting off this rock one day.

  Shaking, I slid out of bed and went to the bathroom so I could pour myself some water and try to get my disarranged thoughts in order. What had brought on such a dream, after all this time, I had no idea. Surely my time for having nightmares about Sarzhin should have been weeks in the past, back when I didn’t know him.

  I drank some water, and then splashed some on my face for good measure. Most likely I was just feeling overburdened by schoolwork—I had two papers due by the end of the week. Yes, that had to be it. After all, stress could manifest itself in all sorts of ways, many of them completely illogical.

  A soft knock at the door. “Anika? Are you all right?”

  How he could have known I had been awakened by a nightmare, I had no idea. I took a deep breath and smoothed my hair down as best I could, then said, “I’m fine, Sarzhin. One moment.”

  I was far from fine, but I knew I shouldn’t leave him waiting out in the hall. After taking another sip or two of water, I went to the door and opened it. Sarzhin waited outside, as black and enigmatic as he had been in my dream. With one important difference, of course—the hood that peered down at me seemed to be quite occupied.

  “I heard—that is, I thought you screamed.”

  “A bad dream,” I said at once, even though I wondered how on earth he could have heard me through a shut door and with who knows how many empty hallways between us. I still had no idea exactly where his chambers lay, although I knew they had to be a good distance off.

  “What was it?”

  There was no way I could tell him what I had dreamed. “Nothing,” I said. “It was silly, really.”

  “It most certainly didn’t sound silly.”

  No, and it hadn’t felt silly at the time. “Our minds play tricks on us,” I told him. “That’s all. I’m fine now.”

  He didn’t move. “Tell me, Anika.”

  His voice had a note of quiet command I had never heard before. “I’m sorry I woke you,” I said hastily. “Especially for something as stupid as a bad dream. It’s nothing—”

  “It didn’t sound like nothing.”

  It seemed clear to me that he wasn’t about to let this go. I sighed, and crossed my arms. “If you have to know, it was about you.”

  “I?”

  “I dreamed—” Oh, this was ridiculous. “I dreamed I saw you without your hood…and you had no head. I told you it was stupid.”

  For a long moment he didn’t move. Then he reached out and took my hands in his gloved ones. He had always been very careful to avoid touching me, as if he had known I wanted to keep as much distance as possible between us, but now his grip was firm and unhesitating. I didn’t dare pull away. Something in his touch told me he did so now only out of necessity.

  He raised my hands to his hood and placed them against the heavy fabric. Beneath the rough, slightly nappy material my fingers traced the definite outline of a skull, one more or less of the same proportions as a human’s. For a few seconds he held my hands in place, and then he lowered them gently and released his gloved fingers from mine.

  “You see?” he said quietly. “I am as real as you are.”

  That much seemed obvious. I could still feel the shape of his head beneath my fingertips. No horns at least, although I still couldn’t comment on the fangs or tentacles. I asked, “Then why do you hide from the world?”

  A silence then, one so long I was sure he didn’t intend to reply. He let out a little breath and said, “Because I must. Perhaps one day you will understand why.”

  I wished there were some way I could get him to confide in me. Maybe there was one, actually, but I knew I wouldn’t become his wife just to learn his secrets. And yet something in his dark, still shape spoke of a sadness I couldn’t begin to understand, one I suddenly wished I might do something to dispel. Surprising myself, I reached out and laid a hand on his forearm. I heard a sudden intake of breath, but I made myself give his arm a gentle squeeze before I let go. He really didn’t feel any different from a human—at least, a human who was well-muscled. The flesh under my fingertips had been firm and unyielding.

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” I said. “But I’m fine. I really need to get back to sleep. That paper—”

  “Of course.” His normally calm accents sounded a little ruffled to me, but he only went on, “Now that I know you’re all right.”

  “I am.”

  “Then good night, Anika.” He might have nodded; it was difficult to tell in the darkness, which was barely broken by the light of a sconce at quarter-power somewhere down the corridor.

  “Good night, Sarzhin.” I shut the door and returned to my bed.

  But although I had told the Zhore I needed my rest, I lay there for a long time and stared up at the ceiling. Somehow I still felt his gloved hands holding mine, the shape of his head beneath the muffling cloth. It would have been so easy for me to grasp the hood and pull it away, but for some reason he had trusted me not to do such a thing. Truly, the thought hadn’t even occurred to me, not until I was lying in bed and replaying the scene in my mind.

  What I had done to earn such trust, I didn’t know.

  He didn’t speak of the incident afterward, and so I said nothing, either. From time to time, though, I caught myself watching him out of the corner of my eye, wondering what he would do if I did reach up and push all that concealing fabric away.

  What I would see.

  Of course I didn’t have the courage to do that.

  Later that week he asked me if I would like to assist him in the greenhouse.

  “It’s a worthy occupation,” he told me, as the mech cleared away our breakfast plates. “You have said that you’ve helped your father, and so it seems you already know some of the rudiments of gardening. Would you like to learn more?”

  I actually was curious; even the bits and pieces I had picked up so far seemed much more interesting than nursing along a few hydroponic vegetables. If my circumstances had been different, I would have considered how valuable such knowledge would be if I decided to narrow my studies to xeno-botany. Specialists in that area were hot commodities for the GRC’s advance reconnaissance teams. But since I had no idea whether Sarzhin intended to ever let me go, I wasn’t sure whether acquiring those skills would do much more than help vary my often monotonous days.

  It seemed to me, though, that Sarzhin had offered the diversion out of a spirit of generosity
, and it would be foolish to turn him down…even though helping out in the greenhouse meant we would be spending far more time together. I didn’t know quite how to feel about that.

  Speaking quickly, before I could change my mind, I replied, “That sounds wonderful. Thank you, Sarzhin.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Even though I couldn’t see his face, the warmth in his tone told me how pleased he was. He added, “Shall we?”

  I hadn’t expected to start so soon, although breakfast was over and I had a light day as far as schoolwork was concerned. Maybe I hesitated, just for a few seconds. But then I said, “Absolutely,” and got up from my chair. He rose as well, and led the way back to the greenhouse.

  By then it was familiar enough to me—the humid air that somehow managed to be close without cloying, the scents of hundreds of growing things. This time, though, I wouldn’t merely be observing the rich plant life, but helping it along, encouraging it to bud and blossom.

  “We will start here, I think,” Sarzhin told me, pausing in front of a tallish plant in a heavy pot. It had sword-like green leaves and waxy five-petaled flowers. “It is a forgiving specimen, one from a place on Gaia called Hawai’i. Your people call it a plumeria.”

  A heady, sweet scent, unlike anything I had ever smelled before, seemed to swirl out from the plant. I reached over with one finger to touch a flower’s petals, then hesitated. “I won’t—I won’t hurt it, will I?”

  “No. It is quite sturdy, despite its appearance. And easy to propagate as well. Let me show you