Ghost Planet

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  There were at least a dozen, half of them from Peter. Drying my sweating hands on my skirt, I touched the display to open the most recent message.

  I was an ass the day you left, I know I was. But for christ’s sake take 30 seconds to let me know you got there okay. — P

  I closed my eyes, flushing tears down both cheeks. Opening them again, I tapped Reply and started typing.

  I love you. I’m sorry.

  Digging my fingernails into my palms, I hesitated. How could I do this to him? I was nothing to him, or to any of them. Hearing from me would hurt and confuse them. And once they learned the truth, they’d hate me for it.

  I didn’t realize I’d picked up the empty mug until I felt it smash against the display, cracking the screen and knocking it from its base. The mug broke apart in my hand, leaving one clean slice across my palm. I dropped the shards and made a fist, watching blood drip onto the keyboard.

  Look, she bleeds.

  Running to the bathroom, I closed the door and shut off the light. The wave of grief spun my feet out from under me and I stumbled to my knees. My hand flailed out, seeking support, and slipped across the toilet lid. When my forehead cracked against the basin, I hardly felt it.

  I let myself slide to the floor.

  I listened to my breath going in and out.

  I begged for release from the nightmare.

  * * *

  My bed smelled like roses.

  The first rays of dawn penetrated the narrow slit of window above me, staining the opposite wall with orange light. The room’s other occupants remained in shadow—washer, dryer, refuse bins, mop and bucket.

  I had a dim memory of getting up off the bathroom floor and searching the apartment for a hole to crawl into. More animal than human in those raw moments. I’d found what I wanted behind a door off the kitchen, where I’d joined the collection of other things Murphy preferred to keep out of sight.

  As I stretched my arms, my stiff muscles protesting, I wondered how long I had lain here. Hours? Days?

  My eyes adjusted to the low light and I noticed a bookshelf at the foot of the narrow pallet. Crawling down for a closer look, I discovered it contained not books, but an assortment of personal effects. Clothing and handkerchiefs (folded neatly), a bottle of lotion (rose petal), an oval hand mirror and a hairbrush, a toothbrush. Vestiges of Aunt Maeve.

  One shelf contained a stack of brown paper packets. I picked one up and turned it over in my hands. It was weighty, like a bar of soap. There were no markings on the package. I peeled back the paper and sniffed—vaguely food-like. I tasted it. Gummy and bland, a bit sweet, like an energy bar. I returned the packet to the stack. I wasn’t that desperate. Not yet, anyway.

  I spent a few minutes sorting through the clothing. The sizes were inconsistent, and it was all pretty well-worn. I could probably wear most of it in a pinch. As I fingered a threadbare T-shirt, my hands began to shake.

  Clenching my jaw against a relapse of grief, I picked up the whole mess and flung it onto the floor. I might not be Elizabeth, but I wasn’t Aunt Maeve either. I didn’t want her clothes, her ghost food, or her life.

  I scanned the room frantically, for what, I don’t know—some way out of my situation, a tunnel back to a more comfortable reality.

  My gaze came to rest on a photograph stuck to the wall above the bed. The printout had been crumpled at some point, but someone had carefully smoothed it. Two teenage girls stood on a long strip of beach, arms around each other and laughing. A redhead was pulling a dark-haired girl toward the water, and they were a tangle of lanky arms and legs. There was a strong resemblance between them, and the dark girl especially looked like Murphy. I guess no one told Aunt Maeve she wasn’t Aunt Maeve. Or maybe she chose not to believe it.

  I ran a finger over the Murphy-like face. Then I gathered up the clothing and put it away. Glancing at the time display on the washer, I saw it was 7:00 A.M.

  There were lessons to be learned from Aunt Maeve, wherever she might be, and I wouldn’t do myself any favors by pretending I was somehow different from her. Lesson No. 1: Personal grooming. The ghosts I’d seen in the streets had been varying levels of kempt. Unkempt went with depression. With giving up. In my mother’s case, it had always been one of the first signs that her meds were failing her.

  I grabbed a bath towel from a stack on the laundry table and stepped out of the closet. The apartment was still dim, and a dozen or so motion lights—sunk into the base molding around the perimeter—blinked on in unison. I stood listening to the silence, wondering if Murphy was awake yet. The silence continued unbroken and I made my way to the bathroom.

  Stepping around the glass partition into the shower, I turned on the water as hot as I could stand it. My injured hand, which I had wrapped in a dishtowel and forgotten, throbbed under the spray. I removed the sodden cloth and tossed it onto the tile. Fresh blood ran down my arm as water dissolved the clot. Both the blood and the pain were a comfort to me—they were evidence I was more corporeal than shadow.

  Jets of hot water worked some of the tension from my body, and I realized what an idiot I’d been to destroy the computer display. I hadn’t yet thought much past my next meal, but I knew that at some point I was going to want to do some research. I remembered glimpsing a flat-reader on the coffee table. I could most likely access any resources I needed by that means … if he let me use it.

  How is he going to stop you? How, indeed. There was one advantage to being ignored.

  After my shower I rummaged around in the cabinets and drawers until I found a first aid kit. The gash across my palm was about two inches long, and deep enough that the edges of skin moved apart in a disturbing way. I sealed them with surgical glue and covered my palm with a bandage.

  I picked up my bloodstained shirt, realizing I’d have to wear something of Aunt Maeve’s until I could wash it. Wrapping the towel around me, I headed back for the utility closet.

  Just outside the bathroom door I collided with Murphy.

  For half a second, instinct overcame. My arms flew up to brace myself against his chest, and his hands came to my waist to steady me. Then he stepped back like he’d brushed a livewire, and my bundle of clothing—and my towel—sank to the floor.

  Face aflame, I ducked and grabbed the towel, securing it around me before hurrying away. Murphy, who had moved away in an instant, was already fiddling with a teapot in the kitchen. It was telling of my new status—the fact that a single, thirty-year-old man had not even paused for a peek at a naked woman.

  As I dug through Aunt Maeve’s clothing again, the humiliation caused by my degraded position evolved into something else. I yanked on a stretchy brown T-shirt and pair of pants with holes at both knees. On the verge of storming into the kitchen and forcing a confrontation with Murphy, I paused to breathe and think.

  Murphy hadn’t changed in the time since I met him on the tarmac. I was the one who had changed. I’d been willing enough to accept his behavior toward his ghost before. Could I judge him for it now?

  Yes, I could. Judge him and judge myself, because we’d both been wrong.

  Back in Seattle I had felt conflicted about the Ghost Protocol. Part of my reason for coming to Ardagh 1 had been curiosity about the ghosts. I’d felt the scientists had given up too soon on trying to understand them. Yet until that awful moment on the tarmac, staring into the face of my new reality, I’d believed the colonists were justified in the course they’d chosen. The protocol was a coping mechanism, preserving the colonists’ psychological wellbeing so that the Ecosystem Recovery Project could continue.

  But neither the aliens nor the protocol were a matter of scientific curiosity any longer. They were starkly, personally relevant.

  The question of who I was or wasn’t, however, had become academic, and therefore a waste of my time. No one here or back home would accept me as Elizabeth. Yet I didn’t know how to be anything but Elizabeth. And I needed all of her intellectual resources if I was going to come to any kind o
f understanding about my new identity. Or create any kind of tolerable existence.

  I was desperate for someone to talk to, to help me think through what had happened to me, but I wasn’t going to get that from Murphy. I was the enemy now. Yet if I couldn’t find a way to connect with him, to achieve some level of tolerance for what I needed to do, he could make it difficult for me to do anything but run along behind him.

  But what did I need to do, exactly?

  I returned to the thread of my earlier thoughts. Create a tolerable existence. There were three options open to me. I had ruled out two—ending my life, or living like the other ghosts—as a matter of course. But what was required for tolerable existence?

  I sank on the bed, dropping my head onto my folded arms.

  (1) Figure out what the hell I was.

  (2) Find a way to break from Murphy.

  Right. No problem.

  My stomach gave a hollow rumble, reminding me that if I expected my brain to work miracles I had to find something to eat. I turned my head, glaring at the stack of brown packets. There was bound to be real food in the apartment.

  I found Murphy seated at the dining table just outside my door, eating cereal, drinking tea, and staring at the flat-reader. I stood watching him for a moment, contemplating the awkwardness. I wasn’t a guest, or a roommate. I couldn’t ask, and he wasn’t going to offer.

  Sighing, I walked to the cupboard and got myself a cup and bowl. I sat down at the table and helped myself, daring him with my eyes to stop me. His eyes never left the flat-reader.

  From everything I’d read about the ghosts, they were desperate for connection. They forced interaction in the beginning, until neglect took its toll. There was a clue in this—an indication of symbiosis in the relationship. The ghosts needed communion with the colonists, the colonists withheld it, the ghosts deteriorated. This was clearly important, and suggested an area to begin my research.

  But for the moment I was hungry. I didn’t feel like I needed Murphy. I didn’t want to interact with him. I would have to follow him wherever he went, but the fact that he was obligated to ignore me did give me a certain power over him.

  I ate two bowls of cereal and sat sipping my tea. My gaze wandered to the other end of the room, where the destroyed display still rested against the window. I made up my mind to clean up the mess after breakfast. From my new vantage point Murphy had plenty of things to answer for, but my death and rebirth as an alien were not among them. And as angry as I felt—at him, at the other colonists, at the academy, at the universe in general—violent behavior was only going to help him justify his actions.

  My gaze drifted back to his face, and I wondered what, other than forced physical contact, might get a reaction out of him. I tried staring at him, my eyes moving along his angular jaw and the lightly freckled bridge of his nose. I stared at the round, icy blue eyes, willing them to lift.

  He reached for the teapot and, finding it empty, replaced it on the table.

  “Shall I make another pot, dear?”

  His eyes darted to my face and back down to the flat-reader. My heart jumped at the tiny victory—the fleeting connection. Surprising him into looking at me wasn’t exactly progress, but it had served a purpose. I knew he was aware of me. He was paying attention. He hadn’t closed himself off completely.

  I cleared my dishes and walked over to see what could be done about the display.

  The screen had cracked down the middle and the backside bowed outward. I picked it up, and a piece of the stand clattered to the floor. Somehow this struck me as funny. The idea that I had caused such damage was ludicrous. It was completely unlike me. I sat down in the desk chair, cradling the plastic remains in my lap and laughing quietly.

  But realizing that any kind of emotional outburst was unlikely to work to my advantage right now, I wiped tears from my face and carried the carcass to the entry door. I fetched a garbage bag from my closet and returned to gather up the mingled fragments of stand and tea mug. Having no idea what the procedure for disposal of maimed durable goods might be on Ardagh 1, I left the whole mess beside the door.

  I glanced over at Murphy in time to catch him dropping his gaze. He stared at his flat-reader with a troubled expression.

  “I won’t do it again,” I said in a firm tone, without apology. It was a sort of gentlemen’s agreement: You replace it; I won’t break it.

  Murphy didn’t acknowledge me. But I knew he was listening.

  Not Alone

  “Hey,” said Murphy, answering his portable. He got up from the kitchen table, where he’d continued to work on the flat-reader while I washed my clothes and made a fruitless search for another device with Net connection.

  “You got my message?” He crossed the room to stand in front of the windows. “Yes, everything’s fine. It’s just … well … a tragedy, of course. I can’t get over it.”

  He couldn’t get over it?

  “No, no sign of her. I’m still checking into it, but I’m fairly certain it’s the first time anything like this has happened.”

  Aunt Maeve. I was as eager as Murphy to understand what had happened to her. I had enough on my mind without the additional worry I might just disappear one day.

  His voice was low and I stepped closer to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything.

  But when he spoke again the subject had changed. “That’s up to you, really. Things have been pretty quiet today.” The thing he was referring to being me, of course. “But I don’t think I would want to go out just yet.”

  I studied his back as he listened to the other party’s reply. Up until this point I’d assumed he was talking to his colleague, Lex. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  “We can do that. I’ll make dinner.”

  So the young and eligible Dr. Murphy had a girlfriend. No surprise there.

  “Grand, see you then.” He set his portable on the desk and headed back to the kitchen.

  Before I’d even thought about what I was doing, I moved to sit down in the chair he’d vacated. He bent and reached for the flat-reader without a glance my direction.

  I grabbed the other end. “I have something to say to you, Murphy.”

  He gave the flat-reader a tug and I lost my grip.

  I watched him walk over to the sofa and settle back to work, my burst of determination waning. Suddenly I felt tired. Was inertia setting in already? I had a feeling that if I didn’t want to end up like the others, it was going to require a constant, conscious effort.

  I rose from the table and joined Murphy. His body stiffened as I sat down next to him, but he didn’t get up.

  I picked up a pillow, hugging it to my chest while I worked through what I wanted to say to him. The pillow had the smell of new dye, and something else—a clean, lightly spicy smell reminiscent of its owner, or at least of his grooming products. My gaze settled on a neat stack of antique books on the coffee table—Phineas Finn, Paingod, Solaris, and even a favorite of mine, Watership Down.

  Quit stalling.

  Clearing my throat quietly, I began. “Murphy, I’m not interested in making your life difficult. What happened to me is not your fault, and I know that you’re doing what you feel you have to do. However … I think you’re aware I could make your life very difficult, at least for a while.”

  Angling toward him, I continued, “I have a proposal for you. You believe that eventually I’m going to fade into the woodwork. Your protocol has been effective, so most likely you’re right. But in the meantime, I’ll agree to keep quiet and stay out of your way, while your guest is here and in general, if you’ll let me use your flat-reader.”

  I stared hard at his profile, pretty sure he could hear my heart pounding—pretty sure they could hear it in the next apartment.

  “I won’t speak to you again. I won’t try to force interaction. I won’t damage any more of your things. I just want to do some research.”

  Murphy’s expression was unreadable, but his fingers hung frozen in the air above the graphica
l keypad at the bottom of the flat-reader.

  After what felt like an hour, he rose and placed the flat-reader on the coffee table. He crossed to the bathroom, and a moment later I heard the shower running. Hard to be sure whether we’d come to an understanding or he’d simply fled, but I wasn’t about to ignore the opportunity.

  Pulling the flat-reader onto my lap, I sank back against the couch and began the same course of research I’d intended to pursue for my doctoral thesis.

  Symbiosis. The collaborative existence of two separate organisms. Symbiotic relationships could benefit both organisms, benefit one without affecting the other, or benefit one while harming the other. Ardagh 1 seemed a clear case of the latter. The ghosts required a bond with the colonists—a bond that appeared to include physical proximity as well as interpersonal exchange. But the colonists suffered psychologically from the presence of the ghosts. All evidence up till now suggested either ghost or colonist could thrive, but not both.

  As I probed deeper into symbiosis, the term symbiogenesis began popping up—the merging of two separate organisms to form a new organism. I considered the possibility that ghosts were meant to merge with or even be absorbed by their hosts. Setting aside my own aversion to this idea, it would also mean any kind of reconciliation or peaceful coexistence with the colonists was unlikely.

  Additional research on symbiogenesis turned up a twentieth-century biologist who had championed the now widely accepted idea that this merging of organisms had been a driving force behind evolution. That it had in fact enabled giant leaps in the development of many species.

  The discovery of a connection between symbiogenesis and accelerated development—another component of the mystery of Ardagh 1—made me feel slightly ill.

  But it was too early to fix on any one idea or explanation. I dumped my research into a file and moved on to the next item on my list—Gaia theory. I was about to try logging on to the Worldwide Academic Library (more affectionately referred to as “the WAC”) when Murphy exited the bathroom, dressed and clean-shaven, with damp hair. He disappeared into the bedroom and came back out wearing a dark pea coat that suited him so well I found myself staring.