"Because you don't love me anymore?" said Irina.
The sun shone through her green and purple clusters of crystals, glittering within the intricate web of facets. Her fiery parasites zipped around her like schools of flaming fish, weaving in and out of her vent slits.
The sunlight and firelight danced when she moved, and I felt again the way I'd felt so long ago, watching her during the pre-mission briefings in the auditorium on our homeworld. For better and worse, it had been the one constant in my life.
Even now, after everything. Even now.
"I will always love you," I told her.
She gave me a look I couldn't fathom. "What did you realize?"
"You need me. You always have," I said. "And the galaxy needs a new Lenin."
*****
Five years later, I'm on the terrace of a villa in the heart of the Colombian jungle, sitting across from a fellow extraterrestrial who looks like Senator Joseph McCarthy. He's killed twelve of my men, whose bodies still smolder in the hot sun around us, and now he wants to know where Irina is.
The truth, which I'm not about to tell him, is that I don't know exactly where she is at this moment...but I do know she's on her way.
I down another swig of vodka and look at McCarthy through the cut crystal bottle. He's still so blind, so backward, so limited by his all-consuming sociopolitical ideology. I feel like I'm watching a primitive lifeform as it struggles in the mud, wholly unable to comprehend the full potential of the complex landscape around it.
"Where is she, Lenin?" McCarthy's voice is a snarl. "Where's your commie she-devil mistress?"
"She's not a communist anymore," I tell him. "And she's not my mistress. Keep up, Joe."
With an angry roar, McCarthy flips over the glass table, which shatters on the cobblestone terrace. I barely manage to save the vodka bottle, which I was just about to set down on the table's blue-tinted surface.
"No more beating around the bush!" McCarthy springs from his rattan chair and swats the bottle from my grip. It smashes to bits against a wrought iron light post. "You'll beg to tell me by the time I'm done with you!"
I smile as McCarthy lunges forward and wraps his thick hands around my throat. "Wait! I'm prepared to make you an offer!"
He lets up the pressure but doesn't let go. "That was fast." He shrugs. "I would've guessed you had more tolerance for torture, you pinko bastard."
"Join us." I lock eyes with McCarthy, trying to draw him in with sheer force of will. "Forget capitalism. Forget communism. Forget all that."
"A new sales pitch." McCarthy sneers. "How original."
"Help us end the wars on Earth and the war in space," I tell him. "Help us move beyond the hidebound systems of the past. Help us spread a revolutionary new philosophy conceived by a radical new Lenin."
"Would this new Lenin happen to be you, comrade?" says McCarthy.
When I look over his shoulder, I smile. "And her." My makeshift heart beats faster. She has arrived not a moment too soon, machete in hand.
The love of my life. My guiding light in smooth times and rough. My true partner now, reborn after the battle of the Indian Ocean tsunami, committed to a life of change from a new point of view.
McCarthy starts to turn. Irina draws back and swings the machete, lopping off his head with the graceful elegance of a ballerina.
I leap from my chair and sweep her into my arms. The machete clatters to the cobblestones as we kiss. As the two halves of the new Lenin bind themselves one to the other once more.
This is the formula that eluded her for so long, the one that was staring her in the face from the start. Again and again, she turned me away, when what she should have done was embrace me. Accept me as an equal and consult me for balance. Go forth driven by love instead of self-righteousness.
Now see what revolution has hatched from this union. We bear a new gospel born not of conflict, but compassion: harmony among peoples by way of shapeshifting. Empathic metamorphosis. Truly love your neighbor as yourself by becoming your neighbor. Literally walk a mile in his shoes...and feet, and body, and life.
Yes, human beings can learn this, and we've been teaching it for the past five years. Using shapeshifting as a bridge to understanding instead of a weapon. It's really gone viral, and the movement's about to reach critical mass. Next stop, we take the show back home and end the galactic civil war.
All because of one simple secret it took us a century to figure out.
"Welcome home, darling." Smiling, I touch the side of her face. I run my fingers through her soft red hair.
"I love you." Irina says it with tears in her eyes.
The secret is this: We are nothing without each other.
Shrooms of Benares
Father Gavín Obregón lifted the hem of his black shirt, peeled back a flap of skin just below his bottom left rib, and drew out three fresh-baked wafers of communion host from the cavity there, still warm from his flesh.
"The body of Christ, given up for you." Father Obregón said the words softly as he held up one of the round white wafers between his thumb and forefinger.
Piotr Punzak, a squat farmer with shaggy brown hair and beard, stood before him in the dusty farmyard. To one side, the gleaming silver domes of his farmhouse and barn sprawled in the mid-morning light...light cast not from a sun, but from huge fungal sun-blooms drifting across the sky.
In the other direction, the rolling hills were carpeted with fields of morel, boletus, oyster, and matsutake mushrooms, ready for harvest. The fruits of planet Benares, like all native life on the frontier planet, were fungus through and through. In all the world, only the human settlers could claim non-fungal origins.
As a rough breeze shivered the nearby morels and matsutakes, farmer Piotr tipped his head back. "Amen." Just as he opened his mouth for the host, one of the nube oveja--the self-propelled fungal "cloud sheep" herding in the sky overhead--slid away, allowing the light from the nearest sun-bloom to cast his face bright gold.
Father Obregón placed the host on Piotr's tongue. Piotr closed his mouth and bowed his head.
Then, it was time for the wine. Father Obregón turned over his right arm and popped the tiny cartilage pour-spout free from his wrist. "Blood of Christ, shed for you," he said.
"Amen." Piotr opened his mouth and closed his eyes.
Father Obregón held his wrist spout over Piotr's mouth, then squeezed the soft, oblong bladder implanted in the underside of his arm. Ruby red wine trickled into Piotr's mouth, sparkling in the light of the sun-bloom overhead.
It was just another Mass for the genetically engineered multi-faith super-chaplain of planet Benares. Just another communion for a human Swiss army knife on the fringe of the farthest frontier in human history.
*****
An hour later, Father Obregón was racing away from the farm in his hoversled, zipping through a forest of giant fungal towers.
He was also speaking without moving his lips.
"I'll be there in three days, Shen." Father Obregón spoke in his mind over the planet-wide Soulnet that kept him in touch with his scattered congregation. "Plenty of time to make your daughter's bat mitzvah."
Shen Ping's words flowed into his brain like warm water. "You're a mensch, Rabbi. I know you won't let us down."
"Have I ever?" Father Obregón chuckled in his head. "Relax, Bubbi! Two hundred miles of wilderness, and I'll be whipping you at arm-wrestling again."
"Doesn't count!" said Shen. "You're a splicer! How can I ever beat a genetically modified rabbi slash preacher slash cleric slash whatever?"
Father Obregón's thoughts bubbled with laughter. "You better pump some iron, Shen! You know I won't let you win."
Shen responded with the mental equivalent of a snort. "Maybe I'm the one who's been letting you win! How else am I gonna score points with God?"
Just then, another call buzzed for attention in Father Obregón's head. Such was life in the remote wilderness for the clergyman with a switchboard in his brain.
All seven hundred humans on Benares had a direct telepathic line to the super-chaplain at all times. How else could one man tend the spiritual needs of a flock scattered to the far corners of a huge and untamed world?
Still, sometimes he wished for a respite. Sometimes, he longed for a little peace and quiet in which to commune with no one but God.
The caller buzzed again, and Father Obregón opened the link. Just as he started to say something, a flock of creatures burst out of a stand of morels in front of him. Reflexively, he swerved the hoversled to one side, barely missing the incredible lifeforms as they took flight.
He gazed in stunned wonder as he glided past. Yet again, he'd come across a new species--a flock of what looked like winged pizza shells with a hundred writhing white tendrils underneath. They twirled skyward all at once, twelve of them at least, trailing some kind of neon blue mist. Even as Father Obregón swung his hoversled wide in case the mist was toxic, he marveled at their magnificent strangeness, their utterly alien design. Like every other non-human lifeform on Benares, they were fungus-based, similar to fungi back on Earth yet possessing a multitude of uniquely alien traits.
What a world. How many times a day did that thought run through Father Obregón's mind? I love this planet.
"Hello? Can you hear me?" As Father Obregón got his hoversled back on track, he tried to reconnect with the caller he'd cut off because of the pizza shells. But no one answered.
Nothing but silence on the line.
*****
Amazingly, an hour went by without a single call in Father Obregón's head. The constant queue of souls banging on his door was empty and silent.
At first, he passed it off as a fluke. He decided to continue toward his next stop and make the most of the rare quiet by indulging in some meditation amid the stunning sights of Benares.
When he topped a ridge and gazed out over a sprawling valley he'd never seen before, chills raced up his spine. Giant multicolored rills of fungi fanned out over the valley floor, arching like ranks of rainbows under the cloud sheep and luminous sun-blooms in the shifting, golden sky. It looked nothing like the Heaven he'd been taught to expect, but it made him think of Heaven nonetheless.
As Father Obregón crossed a mountain pass under canopies of towering toadstools, glittering silver showers of spores swirled around him like snow. Curtains of lacy lichen hung dancing from the clifftops, making a sound like high-pitched singing as the wind filtered through their fine traceries.
Then there were the creatures in all their multitudes, great and small and every size in between...every one of them mycozoa, fungi with the mobility of animals. They flew and crawled and swung and darted through the landscape, screeching and squawking and roaring and croaking.
I need to do this more often. That was what Father Obregón thought as the splendor of Benares continued to unfold around him. As the second hour of peaceful contemplation passed. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to appreciate God's wonders without constant interruptions.
But by the middle of the third hour, a knot had formed in the pit of his stomach. The sights of Benares couldn't distract him from what he now knew to be true.
Something was wrong. The Soulnet was malfunctioning, or something was blocking the calls...
Or something had happened to the callers.
*****
With the Soulnet apparently down, Father Obregón turned elsewhere for human contact. Parking in a mountain meadow of red and blue puffballs, he switched on the radio in his hoversled, grabbed the microphone from its hook on the dashboard, and called out over the airwaves.
"This is Father Obregón," he said into the mic. "Can anyone hear me? Please respond."
No answer.
"Father Obregón here." As he said it, he watched a pack of pale wolflike creatures with spiked snouts and springs for legs chase what looked like a pink beachball across the far side of the meadow. "Someone, please answer!"
Still nothing. Across the meadow, the beachball turned on the remaining four wolf-things, flung open a huge maw on its face, and bounced after them. It ran down and gobbled up one, then two, then three of them, getting fatter each time.
Yet another new species, thought Father Obregón. I love this planet.
*****
One more hour passed before Father Obregón finally heard another human voice.
"I hear you, Father."
For an instant, he thought it was coming in over the radio, but he quickly realized it was inside his head.
"Hello!" He thought the words and said them aloud at the same time. "Thank God, hello!"
The new voice in his head was a woman's. "I was starting to think you were dead, Father." He recognized the low, throaty tone right away: Naima bint Fouad bin Hakim Al-Aziz, an exobiologist. He recognized it though he hadn't heard it for five long years.
She'd refused to call him for five years. Out of all the settlers, she alone had cut herself off from him.
"You thought wrong." Father Obregón chuckled, trying to sound calm, though his heart was suddenly racing. "So how are you, Naima?"
"I've had better days." Naima's voice was stiff and strangely flat. "I'm at the end of my rope, actually."
"Tell me what's happening, Naima."
"Wellll." The slightest quaver crept into Naima's voice. "Everyone's dead up here. Everyone but me."
Father Obregón felt a horrified chill rush through him. "Everyone?"
"Yes, Gavín," said Naima.
"Dios mío." Father Obregón shook his head in stunned disbelief. Thirty-six people, counting Naima; that was how many had been stationed at the research camp with her. "What happened to them?"
"You know how we hadn't found any signs of sentient life on Benares?" said Naima.
"Yes, of course."
Naima choked back a sob. "We weren't looking hard enough."
*****
Father Obregón had first met Naima on the trip from Earth aboard the starship that had brought them to Benares. She'd been a teenager at the time, but the truth of it was, they'd both been 21 years younger. He'd been barely out of his teens himself.
Their personalities had been a perfect match from the start. Not such a shocker maybe, considering the 700 settlers had been selected for general compatibility...but he'd always felt something special with her. Something beyond computer-predicted affinity.
Their reasons for making the trip were much alike. Naima had come for adventure, to witness never-before-seen wonders in the name of science. Father Obregón had also come for adventure, to witness such wonders in the name of God. Both of them were idealists, driven by wanderlust, curiosity, and faith in the power of universal truths and forces.
Drawn together by complementary callings and natures, they'd spent many hours together gazing out at the passing spectacles of space, talking about everything. Imagining the great discoveries they would make on the scientific and spiritual frontiers. Dreaming up schemes for turning their brave new colony into utopia.
Dreaming up ways to be together on Benares, too, though their assigned duties would keep them far apart. Because the longer they knew each other, the more they knew they had to be together.
Everything between them was perfect, from the meshing of their personalities (they were both thoughtful yet outgoing) to the meshing of their bodies (thankfully, chastity was no longer a mandatory vow for priests in this day and age). They were soulmates, and they had to find a way to stay together even as their work pulled them apart.
Maybe, if Naima found sentient life on Benares, she could get her assignment changed to assistant chaplain; Father Obregón would need an exobiologist to help minister to alien lifeforms, wouldn't he?
Maybe, his genetically-engineered splicer body would have trouble adjusting to the alien environment--with a little help from an undetectable nano-phage tweaked by Naima--and he'd have to stay put at her lab.
Or, failing either of those, he would figure out a way to always keep her thoughts foremost in
his mind. He would scam the Soulnet, whipping up a psychic hideaway for the two of them in the midst of the mental traffic from the other settlers.
One thing alone had been carved in stone: the two of them would find a way to overcome any obstacle the frontier or their fellow settlers threw at them.
*****
Shivering, Father Obregón looked around the mountain meadow, staring at the larger clumps of puffballs, the shadows of the distant toadstool treeline. He wondered if he was being watched by something with intellect and malice.
What troubled him most, though, was the possibility that sentient native lifeforms had taken action all over the world. That the reason no one but Naima had answered his calls was that the lifeforms had murdered them all.
"Are you safe?" Father Obregón said in his mind.
He panicked briefly when no answer came...but then Naima spoke. "I've sealed myself in the lab."
"What do they look like?" said Father Obregón.
"See for yourself," said Naima. "You have my permission."
Father Obregón's pulse quickened. "You mean...you can see them? They're with you?"
"In the building." Naima said it matter-of-factly. "Come through and I'll show you."
Father Obregón hesitated. It had been a long time since he'd been inside her head. He hadn't gone there in five years, since the two of them had split up.
Though for 16 years before that, he'd visited her mind every day. In spite of their schemes for togetherness on Benares, it was the only way they'd actually managed to be together at all in spite of the miles that were almost always between them. It was the one thing they'd shared that was special to the two of them, the one thing no one else could interrupt.
Because while everyone else could enter his mind on a whim, Naima was the only person in the world whose mind he could enter.
Father Obregón took a deep breath and steadied himself. This time, he knew, going into her mind was crucial; he had to do it to see what they were up against.
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