Dead Astronauts

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Perhaps you were right to pin me alive to this wall as trophy and warning both. Even if the magician who did it is just the dying fall, a living ruin. I escaped. But, of course, a human found me eventually. Some human. Didn’t care what I was up to. Didn’t remember what I’d done. Cut off my head. Stuck me up on this observatory wall. Could have been any human.

  I couldn’t protect my children. Couldn’t protect my mate. She couldn’t protect me. History didn’t allow for that. History had other plans. Don’t know if the need is part of me or part of them. The pool of water. The stream. The salamanders there. There tasty earthworms. The burrow. All of us together, in the burrow.

  They have been dead three hundred years now.

  I should be dead with them. A fox lives four years.

  I must not be a fox anymore.

  They killed me. They brought me back.

  One time I escaped. But it was too late.

  The ghosts come out at night, child. Except here they are not really ghosts but the eyes of this place. In the silent hall, under the broken dome, when all of you lie asleep, fallen where you will in your fatigue, waiting to be resurrected in the morning. Then the ghost images. In a spectrum of light you cannot see. The history of this place, recollected: Held by some for a time. Driven out. Another group replacing them. Such repetition for so long, the only difference in the details of the conquest, the defeat.

  But all along at dusk, in the shadows, my kind slinking through. My kind emerging from the tunnels below. The ones you never saw, making our own history, creating our own lives. Unrecorded.

  And me, nailed to the wall, neither alive nor quite yet dead. I look down Charlie X as the ghosts move through him, look down upon the human shadows as the past becomes brazen in that space. Violence here happened so long ago, the motion of the past come to life like some long dance no one realized they were part of. I wonder if killing you would have been better than slinking nocturnal, but, then, you killed yourselves anyway. We just needed to survive long enough, sacrifice more. Charlie X was never pragmatic like a fox, never aware like a fox.

  Sometimes this resurrection is peaceful in its way, because the violence in it happened so long ago. I feel this way when the need to rest comes over me. The motion of all the past come to life is like some long dance the dancers don’t realize is in motion. Even the killing. Even the strife. So silent in this place. So still. In the end.

  The irony that I am changed enough, child. Changed that much. That I must tell this to you. Must snare your mind in it, in the hope that, someday, you’ll see a fox or a track and you’ll write it all down. You’ll pass it down somehow. That somehow it will matter.

  But that will never happen. I won’t have to rely on that. You’ll grow old or you won’t. But one day or night, you’ll lay your head down to sleep and you won’t wake up and in time, through worm and fly, through scavenger and rot … your skull will be laid bare, and there, on the bone, they’ll find my story, not yours.

  This story. From the beginning.

  A blinding blue star over the desert, shining down on all. Shining down for just a moment. Shining down eternal.

  Now I see it all as I recede and become nothing but a pelt nailed to a wall. Now I see. I see, from so long ago, my mate, my children. I see them playful along the river’s edge. Watching them from a cool, flat stone. The play of water against rock. The dappled tree-tumbled sunlight of centuries ago. Worlds ago.

  Feel the edges of the rough-cool burrow. Where I’ll dig deep and go to ground. Rest in the cool earth, in the comfortable dark. A fox knows how to hide. A fox, through the generations, knows how to wait.

  And one day, finally, I will be free.

  v.7.0

  10. THE DEAD ASTRONAUT

  The compass that does not know its name. The map that does not know its borders. The journey in search of a destination.

  The dead astronaut at the coast. Her legs are weary and her feet sore. She can see out of only one eye. The other sees things that aren’t there. She has pain in her shoulder and a constant ache in her knees.

  It has taken years, not months. She has been waylaid by enemies she could not have known. From the sky, from beneath the earth. Thrown off course, although she has defeated everyone: killed or run or hid. Driven her blade deep or cowered in shadows as a great bulk prowled past. Her gun long since useless, discarded, a shadow on the sands behind her.

  The ocean breeze broken by the sandy ridge ahead, rippling so gentle against her face it feels like a kindness offered up as cruelty. The sharp, sudden brine of it, which makes her want to salivate, though her mouth is desolate.

  She is hollow, hollowed out, black skin tinged gray with ash, gray stubble of hair blackened by smoke. Her throat so dry, hands cracked and calloused. So close now that she weeps without tears from the relief of it. To come to an end. Some sort of ending. Her body trembles with emotion she can no longer identify.

  The woman who trudges up the ridge, the dune, has been reduced and sharpened by lack. Of water of food of companionship. Reduced to talking to the dark birdlike drones that circle high above but hasten down to rule her out as threat. Sharpened by the collapse that makes the landscape a reflection of how she feels on the inside.

  Sanded down to only what is required to move one foot and then the next ahead, toward the coast. Need narrowed to a point and want exiled to another country.

  Only now did she know who she was.

  Would her voice work? It would crackle, would seem like it issued forth from a mouth full of rust.

  The limitless, searing blue blinds her for a moment.

  At the top of the dune, the dead astronaut trembles, stands tender and useless. Her rags are loose, torn and tearing and flapping in the wind. Teeters, wants to fall. Doesn’t.

  Before her lies a thin strip of remembered beach, gold flecked with black, then a calm bay of still water, dark blue, strewn with kelp beds and deep rock pools.

  Presented ethereal. Presented as naïve, with green eyes that blazed. Before that gaze the horizon is limitless again.

  Yet: There is no sign of ruins. There is not, on this coast, the half-fallen arch of a marine park. No landmark she can recall.

  Hesitation. Lingering regard on what is still distant through a preamble of sand and stickery plants.

  Is that movement down on the rocks? She cannot spare the attention yet. She cannot afford the answer. Instead, she focuses on putting one foot after the other down the dune, bent at the knees.

  One foot and then the next. Looking down at her ragged torn shoes held together with bloody bandages she took off a dead man.

  Then she is on the beach, the rough gravel feel of this sand, so different from the smooth heat of the desert.

  Now the dead astronaut must look up from her feet. Now she must face what isn’t there. What is there.

  The tremor inside isn’t perceptible on the dead astronaut’s face. But it is seismic, and she is quivering in a way that she’s afraid she can’t stop.

  A figure out in the tidal pools, faced away from her. Bending over in observation of something in those depths. The sun hides the figure, gives sanctuary against the dead astronaut’s parched gaze. She shields her eyes with a shaking hand. She still cannot tell.

  It might be no one. No one she knew. It might not matter. Some trick, some final joke the blue fox was playing on her, all these years later. Something the fox wanted her to see through negation, through want, still wandering in the fox’s mind.

  Would there be recognition or the awful blankness of deep space reflected back? Never left the moon base. Never took the chance to plunge back down to Earth, to seek out a happiness she never imagined would be open to her.

  A trick of the light, and after she would wander down the coast, lost. She would wander until she fell and never rise again.

  * * *

  It takes her final courage to continue. To walk to the edge of the rocks, the figure still unaware. The dead astronaut staring at her reflect
ion in the tidal pools, as if it might hurt to stare direct.

  All the beautiful things in those tidal pools. That the Company might never know. Never touch. Not to infiltrate, the dead astronaut can tell. But to build something new, something that might last. How they would remain in the sea. How they might flourish, might multiply. But: How strange and delicate and wise. A loving God nurturing them. A God who would know enough to disappear in time.

  The figure straightens up, stiffens, must know someone watches. The figure is wrapped in robes, the hair short, not like the dead astronaut remembered. The figure turns, and even then the sun occludes the features.

  The dead astronaut is something inanimate, no better than the piles of driftwood, except they have come to rest. But she will not look away.

  The figure approaches, comes out of the sun into a different light.

  Can it be true?

  She doubts, she doubts so much because if it is not, then what was it for? Any of it? Suffers from how much she has forgotten of her love that she should doubt.

  “Do you know me?” she says to the woman who stands before her. She doesn’t even know if she’s said words. She is trembling at the brightness of everything around her, how it infiltrates and sees through her. How it knows her as nothing has known her for years.

  “Moss?”

  There is something unfamiliar in the face that makes the dead astronaut ask. A focus or intent that did not live in memory.

  “My name is Sarah,” the woman says. “Not Moss.”

  The dead astronaut’s face must betray her.

  “Sarah.” This time firmer. The blaze of those green eyes, the certainty that lives there.

  Awful. A void. An abyss. Stumbling, falling, hands cut open on the edge of coral and of rock. But welcoming the pain, the sight of blood, the cool, cold mouths of water.

  Then the woman is beside her, holding her up, the touch more familiar than the voice.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I must look … I didn’t mean to…” Babbling, gone. So far gone. Yet also, beneath it, the relief of simple human contact.

  “How far have you traveled? To be in such a state?”

  The dead astronaut lets out a sharp, thready laugh. “Not far. Not far.”

  “And your friend, Moss … she lived here?”

  “Once upon a time. Somewhen.”

  “She meant a lot to you.” It isn’t a question.

  The dead astronaut nods. She cannot see inside Sarah’s head. It’s a strange feeling, a numbness but also a relief.

  “And I look like her?” Sarah’s voice puzzled, like she’s working on a riddle.

  “You do.”

  A hesitation, Sarah weighing some risk.

  Then she embraces the dead astronaut, soft but tight. Doesn’t have to, the dead astronaut knows that. Knows all of that. Resists, tries to pull away, then relaxes, clings. No strength left for being strong.

  “Let me get you something to eat. And water,” Sarah says. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

  Disengages, and the dead astronaut tries not to hang on, to retain some sense of self. Not to cling to each footfall leading away from there. Must trust.

  Waits there as the water teases and gasps through the rocks. As some lonely bird drifts off the coast, joined by a second. As the wind against her face intensifies.

  Oh, my love, what will I do without you?

  Everything and nothing.

  Yet there is still so much of Moss here, in the tidal pools, so much of Moss in Sarah. All the strange life there. The ache of that, and yet, pushing it away, the thought that perhaps if put out of sight, out of mind, some new thing might grow.

  Somewhere there might be a Grayson who perished in the desert, without hope. Somewhere there might be a Grayson who never found even a Sarah. Somewhere there might be a Grayson who suffered less, who held on to more.

  But she was the dead astronaut and she lay merciful somewhere between those points on the compass and always would.

  Grayson come to rest, unable to move after so long in motion. Shuddering with the aftershock of Sarah’s embrace. Which, even unawares, could convey so much and withhold nothing. The joy of life. The joy of living without interference. Without persecution. Without unnatural threat. Without. If she was allowed to think of joy.

  History would go on without her, the Company and the foxes, and all the rest. And yet on it went. Their quest, in some form. Even without them. The future would still be the future, in some form. Until the dead astronaut grew old. Or until the end of the world. Whichever came first.

  Grayson lay back against the wet sand, staring up at the cloudless sky. There, by the edge of the sea.

  Chen stood in the surf, looking out at the waves. She could see him with her bad eye. Had always been able to see him. Her hand in her pocket, wrapped around the scrap of paper Chen had left behind. Should she give it back to him? Should she read it? Or just hold it, tight, in her grip? The words long since faded into nothing. The compacted feel of the paper. The dry rough feel across thousands and thousands of miles.

  We will always be there. Even before we know you.

  Even after we’ve known you. Even then.

  And, finally, she was free.

  v.0

  0. A SCRAP OF PAPER FOUND IN CHEN’S SUIT

  came unto the city

  under an evil star

  they needed no fire

  for the fire burned

  within all of them

  for you cannot give us

  what we already have

  the first glimpse

  was always the most fatal

  no one should feel responsible

  for the whole world

  by these signs

  they knew they were home

  the way his face yet reflected

  nothing of terrible experience

  like two trying

  to become one

  a shadow

  of a vastness

  such savage mockery

  of the sea

  to take the measure of its creator

  who no longer remembered the creation

  disposable and finite

  and vulnerable

  to be both receiver

  and received

  the sickness found

  in the midst of beauty

  for the price paid for the wonders

  within was too high

  the coded sky and the scaffolding

  the burning speed and the stillness

  neither the same again

  neither could ever be the same

  again

  when i am weak

  then i am strong

  reentry like death

  found in flame

  beneath the stars

  beneath the planets

  alone

  not alone

  never alone

  this failure

  no failure

  for love

  ALSO BY JEFF VANDERMEER

  FICTION

  The Strange Bird

  Borne

  Annihilation

  Authority

  Acceptance

  Area X

  The Book of Frog (stories)

  Dradin, in Love

  The Book of Lost Places (stories)

  Veniss Underground

  City of Saints and Madmen

  Secret Life (stories)

  Shriek: An Afterword

  The Situation

  Finch

  The Third Bear (stories)

  NONFICTION

  Why Should I Cut Your Throat?

  Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer

  Monstrous Creatures

  The Steampunk Bible (with S. J. Chambers)

  Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction

  The Steampunk User’s Manual (with Desirina Boskovich)

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeff VanderMeer is “the weird Tho
reau,” according to The New Yorker. He is the author of, most recently, Borne and The Southern Reach Trilogy, the first volume of which, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. He speaks and writes frequently about issues relating to climate change. VanderMeer lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, and their cats, plants, and bird feeders. You can sign up for email updates here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

    1. THE DREAM OF THE BLUE FOX

    2. THE THREE

    3. BOTCH BEHEMOTH

    4. CAN’T REMEMBER

    5. LEVIATHAN

    6. THE BODY

    7. CORPSE

    8. THE DARK BIRD

    9. CAN’T FORGET

  10. THE DEAD ASTRONAUT

    0. A SCRAP OF PAPER FOUND IN CHEN’S SUIT

  Also by Jeff Vandermeer

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  FOR ANN, ALWAYS, ACROSS ALL THE WORLDS

  MCD

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  120 Broadway, New York 10271

  Copyright © 2019 by VanderMeer Creative, Inc.

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 2019

  Lyrics from “Suicide Invoice” copyright © 2002 by Rick Froberg (lyricist) and the Hot Snakes.

  Frontispiece and ornament illustrations copyright © 2019 by Mario Tauchi. The salamander-language diagram was drawn and provided by Jeremy Zerfoss.

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-72070-4

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  www.mcdbooks.com • www.fsgbooks.com

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  Thanks to my first readers, who included, in no particular order, Julia Elliott, Gwynne Lim, Greg Bossert, Ann VanderMeer, Rita Bullwinkel, Amy Brady, Elvia Wilk, Alison Sperling, Timothy Morton, Jonathan Wood, and Jason Sanford. I am indebted to the biology and environmental sciences departments at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for conversations with faculty and students that influenced this novel. I am also indebted to the perspective of the environmentalist Erica Corinne Broderhausen. Thanks to the Bloom Festival 2019 for publishing an excerpt from “Can’t Forget” in their program book.