Dancing in Dreamtime

by Scott Russell Sanders

  The five sat utterly still. Out in the bog, stumps had begun to glow, the only sign that purple dusk had fallen.

  At last Valdez admitted, “Maybe you’re right, sir. Maybe it’s a sickness that makes us hear things.”

  “I’ll give everyone a thorough exam,” said Cummings.

  Zee added regretfully, “No more swimming, I guess.”

  “No more swimming.” Benton hunched his shoulders to ease the tension in his back. “No one goes in the water. And during songtide we wear earplugs and helmets to block the noise.”

  The others nodded agreement, but with a show of reluctance.

  Later, as they were finishing their last sweep in the lavender twilight, Kerry sidled up and crouched next to Benton. Her nearness quickened his breathing. “Yes?” he said.

  “Sir, if we’re deluded in thinking we hear words—”

  “There’s no ‘if’ about it.”

  “Then why does the impression grow stronger as we approach a particular sector?”

  “Listen—”

  “I think if we follow the sound gradient we can trace the words back to wherever the mocking-trees are learning them.”

  A sandy tress curled below her chin. He had to make an effort to keep from brushing it away. “Kerry, the mocking-trees aren’t learning words.”

  “With all due respect, sir, they are. In four languages.”

  He looked at her with a feeling close to despair. The delusion had penetrated her so deeply that it had the intensity of a religious conviction. Her flushed cheeks and burning eyes were those of a woman possessed.

  Before songtide next morning Zee spied, across the water on a fern-covered hummock, a splotch of Day-Glo yellow, which proved to be nine shimmersuits tied in a bundle.

  “The fools,” said Zee. “Why would they take them off?”

  “That means the bodies could sink,” Benton grumbled.

  For once, Cummings found nothing hopeful to say.

  Benton glowered at the mirror-slick water, spiky vegetation, gnarled trunks, and stilt-like roots. The bodies could be tangled anywhere in those murky depths. The prospect of returning empty-handed oppressed him. VIVA scientists did not seem to worry overmuch about dying; but they wanted someone to know where and how they had died, as if their death were a crucial piece of evidence. He understood that desire to return, to be put back in place, if only as a corpse.

  As the trees began uttering their preliminary croaks, he sensed Kerry hovering near his shoulder. She said, “I think I might be able to find them, sir.”

  “We will find them. But with our eyes. Now sit.”

  “But, sir, we’re close. The words are getting clearer. If you’d let me swim during songtide, I could track them to their source.” She trembled with eagerness to be in the water.

  Benton felt an impulse to squeeze his hands over her ears and preserve her from this intoxication. He told her firmly, “No.”

  “You all could stay on board with your ears plugged, and follow me in the boat.”

  “I said no.”

  “Sir?”

  “No. Sit down. Shut up.” The trees were piping louder. Turning, he shouted, “Earplugs and helmets everyone.”

  He followed his own orders and watched to make sure the others obeyed. He could not tell which possibility bothered him more—there being no pattern in the songtides, or there being a pattern he alone could not hear. He closed his eyes, hoping to shorten the wait by drowsing.

  A jostling of the boat was followed swiftly by a tap on his shoulder. Benton looked up to find Zee pointing excitedly off the bow toward a froth of lavender bubbles. He whirled. Kerry’s seat was empty, except for the helmet she had left behind. He flung off his own helmet and pulled out the earplugs, wincing at the crash of noise, and yelled at the swimming woman. He could barely hear his own voice, and she did not slow down. With a slash of his arm he signaled for Valdez to follow her. The boat nosed along in her wake.

  She swam powerfully, dodging roots, churning up spray, then she drifted, swinging her head from side to side, before setting off on a new tack. The russet hair flowed over her shoulders. The songtrees were deafening. And yet words seemed to rise above the chaotic roar like rainbows above a storm. Fire, free, forest, forever. Benton found his lips moving, a sugary taste on his tongue.

  The boat gave a lurch as it raked a stump. He flinched, then sat erect and struggled to block out the noise. They were closing on Kerry. When she rolled onto her back to breathe, her face wore a look of voluptuous pleasure.

  “Faster, Valdez!” he yelled. “We’ve got to pull her out.”

  But Valdez could not hear, of course. No one could hear except Benton. The three faces in their sealed helmets gazed stupidly at him like bottled specimens. He gestured angrily, and Valdez, perhaps thinking a snag lay ahead, throttled back on the motor.

  “Catch her!” Benton stabbed his finger in the direction of the entranced swimmer, who glided away through the tangle of roots and vines.

  Valdez lifted his eyebrows in bafflement.

  Without giving himself time to think, Benton clambered over the side, keeping his head up as he bobbed in the water. The chanting of the songtrees poured through him like an electric current. He nearly gagged at the shock, the scum, the tremors. But thinking of the look on Kerry’s face, he fought down panic and swam after her, neck arched and head high.

  He gained on her quickly, for she had stopped kicking. His frenzy on hitting the water had given way to a surge of ecstasy. It was all he could do to keep from crying out. Only a few strokes ahead, Kerry pulled herself up onto a cluster of mocking-tree roots, shook out her wild hair, and sat there roaring with song.

  “Stay there!” he yelled. “Stay out of the water!”

  She ignored him, her mouth stretched by song, eyes closed to slits. She reached for the tab at her throat and quickly unzipped the shimmersuit from neck to belly. Benton reached her before she could pull her arms free. He grabbed her about the waist with one arm and with the other clung to the vaulting roots, struggling to keep her from sliding into the water. She writhed against him, like a sleeper caught in the web of dream. The songtide kept pouring through him a charge of bliss. He longed to let go and sink alongside her into the purple depths. Yet he clung to the root, to the air, to consciousness, and would not let go.

  Presently the boat drew alongside, hands reached out and laid hold of Kerry, and he let them drag her to safety. Almost reluctantly, he crawled in after her. She lay slumped against Zee, who was tugging at the suit to cover her. A seam of pink skin showed where the zipper parted over her belly, reminding Benton of a baby’s translucent eyelid.

  Cummings held a small bottle under Kerry’s nose. She jerked, her flailing ceased, and her eyes slicked open.

  Above the diminishing racket of the songtrees, Benton could barely make out what she said: “It’s so beautiful, so beautiful. That’s why they’re here.”

  “Who’s here?” he asked.

  “The singers.” She lifted an arm and pointed to starboard.

  Feeling a chill of premonition, Benton looked where she pointed. A few meters away, in a placid expanse of water, the bodies floated just below the surface, naked, with only the faces exposed to air. The mouths were open. Lank hair wavered out in a halo about each head. Roots and tendrils had grown through the bodies, piercing the skin.

  Benton stared for a minute before he realized they were singing. Or more accurately, song was emerging from the gaping mouths, although the lips did not move. Chants, jingles, nursery rhymes, pop lyrics, love babble, arias. Nearby mocking-trees caught the sounds and toyed with them, improvised, spun jazzy variations. More distant trees repeated the chants in garbled form, so the songs pulsed out through the swamp like rings of rumors passing through a crowd. In spite of the horror, he felt joy—as if he were a child again learning to speak.

  With the passing of songtide, the voices dwindled, and as if at the stroke of a baton the mouths closed. For a minute or so the neig
hboring trees sustained the music, then they too subsided, and trees more remote fell silent, ring beyond ring, until all was still.

  For a long while, none of the rescuers moved.

  Then Kerry said, “I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I just wanted to help find them.”

  “You did find them,” Benton said. “The important thing is, you’re safe.”

  “I suppose so,” she replied in a muted voice.

  No one else spoke. To break the stillness, Benton said, “Pull ahead, Valdez.”

  Without answering, the droop-eyed pilot nudged the boat closer. The bodies were stitched together in a solid mat of roots, five men and four women. The men’s faces were bearded, the women’s heads were encircled by coronas of glistening hair. Violet threads enmeshed their skin, as if they were bound up in cocoons, with only their serene faces bare.

  “Can we cut them loose, Cummings?” Benton asked.

  The doctor stared at him dazedly. “Cut, sir?”

  “Can we get them out of there without killing them?”

  Cummings surveyed the raft of bodies. “I’m not sure they’re alive, sir.”

  “Of course they’re alive. How else could they sing?” Benton shoved a hand into the water and grasped a sinewy wrist. It belonged to a woman of thirty or so, with black hair and sharp features. Through the mesh of tendrils that covered her skin he could find no pulse. He checked a second body, a third, a fourth, with the same result.

  He pulled his hand from the water, held it dripping above the surface, as if it were a loathsome fish he had caught. “How could they make all that noise without a heartbeat?”

  “The songtrees make the noise, drawing patterns from their brains,” Kerry said.

  “So the trees are parasites?” Benton asked.

  “Not parasites,” she insisted. “The relation is symbiotic. Both sides benefit.”

  Benton felt a surge of revulsion. “What are the corpses getting?”

  “Rapture. And they’re not corpses. They’re a living part of the forest. You can see they’re contented. We should leave them alone.”

  No one spoke for a while. They had all been touched by that rapture, even Benton. At last he said, “They’re not going anywhere for now. Let’s dismantle the camp and get it ready for shipment home. Tomorrow we’ll decide what to do with our singers.”

  The slovenly camp, the abandoned shimmersuits, the data disks and instruments were stowed in the scientists’ shuttle and launched on automatic back up to the warpship in orbit. That left only the rescue shuttle for sleeping. The five of them stretched out as best they could in the cramped quarters.

  Benton lay awake thinking about that hideous tangle of flesh and roots and the hypnotic music. Feeling smothered, he wriggled out of his sleep-pouch and lay on his side, head propped on one bent arm, gazing through the window at stumps glowing in the lavender twilight.

  He lost track of time. When he heard a faint singing, he thought at first it was the songtrees warming up for their cruel serenade. Then he realized the voice was single, frail, arising nearby. He sat up stealthily. The three nearest pouches were sealed. The fourth, at the far end of the shuttle, was open, and Kerry’s upper body lay visible—sandy hair, milky throat, bare arms flung negligently to either side.

  Benton rose and picked his way over to her. He knelt close. Her eyes were shut and the song leaked out in a slur: “Owl and pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.” She heaved a sigh, shifted drowsily, and resumed: “They took some honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five-pound note . . .”

  Abruptly the voice died away and she opened her eyes, staring at him in panic. “Don’t,” she hissed, “no, don’t! We’ll drown!”

  Benton laid a hand on her cheek. “Easy now,” he whispered, “easy. You were singing in your sleep.”

  Coming fully awake, she asked, “I was?”

  “Something about an owl and a pussycat.”

  “Oh, that.” She smiled. “I learned that in third grade.”

  “How does the rest of it go?”

  Her lips turned down. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, please,” he whispered. “I want to hear it.”

  “I’m not sure I can remember all of it.”

  “Sing what you remember.”

  As if suddenly noticing her arms were bare, she folded them across her breast. “I don’t want to wake the others.”

  “They’re zipped in their pouches.”

  Her gray eyes searched him for a moment before she murmured, “All right, bend down.” He leaned close enough to feel her breath on his ear. In a voice that broke from the effort of quietness, she sang,

  They sailed away for a year and a day,

  To the land where the bongtrees grow,

  And there in a wood a piggywig stood,

  With a ring at the end of his nose.

  “What on earth are bongtrees?” Benton asked gently.

  “That’s what brought it back to me. Bongtrees, songtrees.”

  “And what’s a piggywig?”

  “Oh,” she said uncertainly, “it’s a kind of farm animal they used to have.” With a wave of her hands she sketched a fat shape in the air, and ended by flinging her arms wide, as if, had a piggywig waddled, in, she would have embraced it. She could have embraced him as well. His face hovered a hand’s-breadth above hers. After a moment’s hesitation, she let her arms fall.

  He sat up, retreating into the shell of his rank, his role, his years. “What a strange thing to remember in the middle of the night.”

  When he made to rise, she grabbed his hand, saying earnestly, “You’re going to let them stay here, aren’t you?”

  Her grip was firm, hot. “Should I?”

  “Yes, oh, yes. They’ll die if you cut them loose.”

  “Cummings might be able to patch them together.”

  “No, leave them. Please.”

  “But I have to take them home. I’m a rescuer. My duty—”

  “Is your duty more important than their desires? They want to be right where they are.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Her nails dugs into his hand. “Aren’t you tempted? To throw everything away, strip yourself bare and sink into that music? Aren’t you?”

  He did not know what to answer. But he would have to decide soon, because the songtrees were tuning up for their dawn chorus.

  Travels in the Interior

  The two brothers landed by parachute on a spongy red turf they would call grass, in a field encircled by thick somber growths they would call trees. They staggered a few paces, drew in the lines of their chutes, and flattened the billowy fabric. Each one checked to see that the other was all right before giving a thumbs-up to the hovering shuttle. The shuttle dropped their pallet of gear, waggled its wings, then swept back up to the warpship in orbit, leaving Graham and Carl alone on Amazon-7.

  “Yo, bro!” Carl shouted, waving his big gun at the end of a meaty arm. “You good?”

  “Right as rain!” Graham shouted back.

  Without needing to speak further, the brothers fell into their roles. Carl began unpacking the gear and setting up a base camp, while Graham walked the perimeter of the field and studied the encircling wall of vegetation. It was as dense as any jungle on Earth, yet looked nothing like those Terran thickets. The landscape would do, Graham thought, assuming they could stir up something scary. Sensations poured into him—the musty smell of rot, the crackle of red grass under his boots, a metallic clinking from the ash-gray trees, the bloated orange of the local sun, a rancid taste in the air, the wind on his neck hot as a dog’s breath.

  Graham’s own breath came in shallow puffs. The atmosphere was supposed to be as close as damn-it to E-normal. Yet no human lungs had ever breathed here, so he kept bottled air handy. Before leaving the warpship, he and Carl had been dosed against toxins and alien microorganisms. Against larger organisms, they would have to use their wits and their weapons.

  “No trances
, nature boy,” Carl hollered from the camp, where the dome had begun to rise. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Wide awake,” Graham answered. It was the condition of his sport, his art, his job, this adrenalin rush. If he ever lost that edge, he would be finished. The heightening of perception that kept the brothers alive also kept them employed. The studio paid their salaries and the enormous costs of warping them to unexplored worlds for the sake of Graham’s raw sensations, which even now, as he scanned the jungle, were being picked up by a recorder at the base of his skull. The stronger the sensations the better, for they would be made into yet another Wild Cosmos feelie to divert the city-bound dwellers on Earth, who had an insatiable appetite for virtual danger. For Carl and Graham, the danger was real.

  Left to himself, Graham would forget to eat, as he would forget to pitch his tent or charge his gun. So as usual Carl cooked, and when supper was ready his voice boomed across the field. “Come and get it!”

  They ate in the faceted green dome. Although tripflares and mines had been set in a ring around the camp, the brothers kept rising from their meal to stare out the windows, leery about what might be stealing up on them from the forest. Reinforcing mesh in the windows imposed on the view a grid of lines, giving the illusion of order. But the planet had never been mapped; its life forms had never been catalogued. Videos from orbit showed a continuous land mass wrapped in a belt around the equator, separating the polar seas. This lone continent bristled with vegetation that was broken only by rare clearings, such as the one in which the brothers had landed, and by gashes that could have been riverbeds or game trails. Nobody knew if there were any animals to make trails. Nobody knew much at all about Amazon-7, which was what appealed to the brothers, and what made Graham’s sensations worth a few million to the studio.

  “So how far to those mountains?” Carl asked.

  “Five days,” Graham answered, “maybe seven. Depends how mean the bush is.”