The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  His shoulders began to ache with the long effort. He kept going long after the ache became painful, anxious not to give ground. . . decided finally to put ashore for a space, when he had seen an area not so brushy and overgrown. He drove for it, rammed the bow up and started pulling it about with strokes of the paddle.

  The paddle tip sank in, worse and worse with his efforts, tipped the raft with the suction as he pulled it out again and the raft slapped down with a smack. He frowned, jabbed at the sand underneath with his paddle, reducing it to jelly and thinking ruefully where he might have been if he had not mistrusted the water purity and if he had bounded out to drag the raft ashore. It took some little maneuvering to skim the raft off the quicksands and out again, back into the main channel, and he forgot his aching shoulders to keep it going awhile.

  "Warren?"

  On the hour, as instructed. He stilled his heart and punched on his com unit, never stopping his paddling. "Hello, Annie. Status is good, love, but I need three hands just now."

  "Assistance? Estimate of time required to reach your position—"

  "Cancel. Don't you try it. I'm managing with two hands quite nicely. How are you?"

  "All my systems are functioning normally, but my sensors are impaired by obstructions. Please clear my pickups, Warren."

  "No need. My sensors aren't impaired and there's nothing anomalous."

  "I detect a repeated sound."

  "That's the raft's propulsion. There's no hazard. All systems are normal. My status is good. Call in another hour."

  "Yes, Warren."

  "Shut down."

  "Yes, Warren."

  Contact went out; the box lights went off.

  He closed off contact from his side, pushed off the bank where he had drifted while he was arguing with Anne, and hand-over-handed himself past a low-hanging branch. He snubbed a loop of the mooring rope around it, snugged it down, resting for a moment while the raft swayed sleepily back and forth.

  It's beautiful, he thought, Sax. Min and Harley, it's worth seeing. He squinted up at the sunlight dancing through the branches. Hang the captain, Harley. They'll come here sometime. They'll want the place. In someone's lifetime.

  No answer. The sunlight touched the water and sparkled there, in one of the world's paralyzing silences. An armada of petals floated by. A flotilla of bubbles. He watched others rise, near the roots of the tree.

  Life, Harley?

  He rummaged after one of the sample bags, after the seine from the collection kit. He flung the seine out inexpertly, maneuvered it in the current, pulled it up. The net was fouled with the brownish weed, and caught in it were some strands of gelatinous matter, each a finger's length, grayish to clear with an opaque kernel in the center. He wrinkled his lip, not liking the look of it, reached and threw the sensor unit on again, holding its pickup wand almost touching the strands.

  "Warren, I perceive an indeterminate life form, low order."

  "How—indeterminate?"

  "It may be plant but that identification is not firm."

  "I thought so. Now I don't particularly know what to do with it. It's stuck to the net and I don't like to go poking at it bare-handed. Curious stuff."

  "Assistance?"

  "Wait." He put the scanner wand down and used both hands to even the net, cleared it by shaking it in the water. He put the net into plastic before letting it back in the raft and sprayed his hands and the side of the raft with disinfectant before picking up the wand and putting it back. "I'm rid of it now, Annie, no trouble. I'm closing everything down now. Observe your one-hour schedule."

  He slipped the rope, took up the paddle and extricated the raft from the reeds, where it had swung its right side. Headed for the center of the clear channel.

  It might have been eggs, he thought. Might have been. He considered the depth of the channel, the murkiness of the water, and experienced a slight disquiet. Something big could travel that, lurk round the lily roots. He did not particularly want to knock into something.

  Nonsense, Harley. No more devils. No more things in the dark. / won't make them anymore, will I, Sax? No more cold sweats.

  The river seemed to bend constantly left, deeper into the forest, though he could not see any more or any less on either hand as it went. The growth on the banks was the same. There was an abundance of the fleshy-leaved trees that poured sap so freely when bruised, and the branches hung down into the water so thickly in places that they formed a curtain before whatever lay on shore. The spidertrees shed their white blooms, and the prickly ones thrust out twisted and arching limbs, gnarled and humped roots poking out into the channel. Moss was everywhere, and reeds and waterweed. He realized finally that the river had long since ceased to have any recognizable shore. On the left stretched a carpet of dark green moss that bloomed enticingly. Trees grew scattered there, incredibly neat, as if it were tended by some gardener, and the earth looked so soft and inviting to the touch, so green, the flowers like stars scattered across it.

  Then he realized why the place looked so soft and flat, and why the trees grew straight up like columns, without the usual ugliness of twisting roots. That was not earth but floating moss, and when he put his paddle down, he found quicksand on the bottom.

  An ugly death, that—sinking alive into a bog, to live for a few moments among the sands and the corruption that oozed round the roots of the trees. To drown in it.

  He gave a twist of his mouth and shoved at the paddle, sent the raft up the winding course in haste to be out of it, then halted, drifting back a "little as he did so.

  The river divided here, coming from left and from right about a finger of land that grew thicker as it went—no islet, this, but the connection of a tributary with the river.

  He paddled closer and looked up both overgrown ways. The one on the right was shallower, more choked with reeds, moss growing in patches across its surface, brush fallen into it which the weak current had not removed. He chose the left.

  At least, he reasoned with himself, there was no chance of getting lost, even without the elaborate directional equipment he carried: no matter how many times the river subdivided, the current would take him back to the crossing. He had no fear in that regard; for all that the way grew still more tangled.

  No light here, but what came darkly diffused. The channel was like a tunnel among the trees. From time to time now he could see larger trees beyond the shoreline vegetation, the tall bulk of one of the sky-reaching giants like those of the grove. He wondered now if he had not been much closer to the river than he had realized when he passed the grove and ran hysterically through the trees, feeling devils at his heels. That would have been a surprise, to have run out onto clear and mossy ground and to find himself in quicksand up to his ears. So there were deadly dangers in the forest—not the creeping kind, but dangers enough to make recklessness, either fleeing or advancing, fatal.

  "Warren."

  Anne made her hourly call and he answered it shortly, without breath for conversation and lacking any substance to report. He rested finally, made fast the raft to the projecting roots of a gnarly tree, laid his paddle across the plastic-wrapped seine and settled down into the raft, his head resting on the inflated rim. He ate, had a cup of coffee from the thermos. Even this overgrown branch of the river was beautiful, considered item at a time. The star Harley was a warm spot dancing above the branches, and the water was black and rich. No wonder the plants flourished so. They grew in every available place. If the river were not moving, they would choke up the channel with their mass and make of it one vast spongy bog such as that other arm of the river had seemed to be.

  "Warren."

  He came awake and reached for the com. "Emergency?"

  "No, Warren. The time is 1300 hours."

  "Already?" He levered himself upright against the rim and looked about him at the shadows. "Well, how are you?"

  "I'm functioning well, thank you."

  "So am I, love. No troubles. In fact. . ." he added cauti
ously, "in fact I'm beginning to think of extending this operation another day. There's no danger. I don't see any reason to come back and give up all the ground I've traveled, and I'd have to start now to get back to the launching point before dark."

  "You'll exit my sensor range if you continue this direction for another day. Please reconsider this program."

  "I won't go outside your sensor range. I'll stop and come back then."

  A pause. "Yes, Warren."

  "I'll call if I need you."

  "Yes, Warren."

  He broke the contact and pulled the raft upcurrent by the mooring line to reach the knot, untied it and took up the paddle again and started moving. He was content in his freedom, content in the maze, which promised endless secrets. The river could become a highway to its mountain source. He could devise relays that would keep Anne with him. He need not be held to one place. He believed in that again.

  At 1400 he had a lunch of lukewarm soup and a sun-warmed sandwich, of which he ate every crumb, and wished he had brought larger portions. His appetite increased prodigiously with the exercise and the relaxation. He felt a profound sense of well-being. . . even found patience for a prolonged bout with Anna's chatter. He called her up a little before 1500 and let her sample the river with her sensors, balancing the box on the gear so that she could have a look about.

  "Vegetation," she pronounced. "Water. Warren, please reconsider this program."

  He laughed at her and shut her down.

  Then the river divided again, and again he bore to the left, into the forest heart, where it was always twilight, arid less than that now. He paddled steadily, ignoring the persistent ache in his back and shoulders, until he could no longer see where he was going, until the roots and limbs came up at him too quickly out of the dark and he felt the wet drag of moss across his face and arms more than once. 1837, when he checked the time.

  "Anne."

  "Warren?"

  "I'm activating your sensors again. There's no trouble, but I want you to give me your reports."

  "You're in motion," she said as the box came on. "Low light. Vegetation and water. Temperature 19°C. A sound: the propulsion system. Stability in poor function."

  "That's floating, Anne. Stability is poor, yes, but not hazardous."

  "Thank you. You're behind my base point. I perceive you."

  "No other life."

  "Vegetation, Warren."

  He kept moving, into worse and worse tangle, hoping for an end to the tunnel of trees, where he could at least have the starlight. Anne's occasional voice comforted him. The ghostly giants slid past, only slightly blacker than the night about him.

  The raft bumped something underwater and slued about.

  "You've stopped."

  "I think I hit a submerged log or something." Adrenalin had shot through him at the jolt. He drew a deep breath. "It's getting too dark to see."

  "Please reconsider this program."

  "I think you have the right idea. Just a second." He prodded underwater with his paddle and hit a thing.

  It came up, broke surface by the raft in the sensor light, mossy and jagged.

  Log. He was free, his pulse jolting in his veins. He let the current take the raft then, let it turn the bow.

  "Warren?"

  "I'm loose. I'm all right." He caught a branch at a clearer spot and stopped, letting the fear ebb from him.

  "Warren, you've stopped again."

  "I stopped us." He wanted to keep running, but that was precisely the kind of action that could run him into trouble, pushing himself beyond the fatigue point. A log. It had been a log after all. He tied up to the branch, put on his jacket against the gathering chill and settled against the yielding rim of the raft, facing the low, reedy bank and the wall of aged trees. "Anne, I'm going to sleep now. I'm leaving the sensor box on. Keep alert and wake me if you perceive anything you have to ask about."

  "Recorded. Good night, Warren."

  "Good night, Annie."

  He closed his eyes finally, confident at least of Anne's watchfulness, rocked on the gently moving surface of the river. Tiniest sounds seemed loud, the slap of the water against its boundaries, the susurration of the leaves, the ceaseless rhythms of the world, of growth, of things that twined and fed on rain and death.

  He dreamed of home as he had not done in a very long time, of a hard-rock mining colony, his boy hood, a fascination with the stars; dreamed of Earth of things he had only heard of, pictures he had seen rivers and forests and fields. Pictured rivers came to life and flowed, hurling his raft on past shores of devastating silence, past the horror in the corridors, figures walking in steam—

  Sax—Sax leaping at him, knife in hand—

  He came up with a gasp too loud in the silence.

  "Warren? Emergency?"

  "No." He wiped his face, glad of her presence. "It's just a dream. It's all right."

  "Malfunction?"

  "Thoughts. Dream. A recycling of past experience. A clearing of files. It's all right. It's a natural process. Humans do it when they sleep."

  "I perceived pain."

  "It's gone now. It stopped. I'm going back to sleep."

  "Are you happy, Warren?"

  "Just tired, Anne. Just very tired and very sleepy. Good night."

  "Good night, Warren."

  He settled again and closed his eyes. The breeze sighed and the water lapped gently, rocking him. He curled up again and sank into deeper sleep.

  He awoke in dim light, in a decided chill that made him glad of the jacket. The side of him that he had lain on was cold through and he rubbed his arm and leg, wishing for a hot breakfast instead of cold sandwiches and lukewarm coffee.

  A mist overlay the river a few inches deep. It looked like a river of cloud flowing between the green banks. He reached and turned off Anne's sensors. "Shutting you down. It's morning. I'll be starting back in a moment. My status is good."

  "Thank you, Warren."

  He settled back again, enjoyed the beauty about him without Anne's time and temperature analyses. He had no intention of letting his eyes close again, but it would be easy in this quiet, this peace.

  The sense of well-being soured abruptly. He seemed heavier than the raft could bear, his head pounded, the pulse beat at his temples.

  Something was radically wrong. He reached for the sensor box but he could no longer move. He blinked, aware of the water swelling and falling under him, of the branch of the aged tree above him.

  Breath stopped. Sweat drenched him. Then the breathing reflex started again and the perspiration chilled. A curious sickly feeling went from shoulders to fingertips, unbearable pressure, as if his laboring heart would burst the veins. Pressure spread, to his chest, his head, to groin, to legs and toes. Then it eased, leaving him limp and gasping for air.

  The hairs at his nape stirred, a Fingering touch at his senses. Darts of sensation ran over his skin; muscles twitched, and he struggled to sit up; he was blind, with softness wrapping him in cotton and bringing him unbearable sorrow.

  It passed.

  "You're there," he said, blinking to clear his eyes. "You're there."

  Not madness. Not insanity. Something had touched him in the clearing that day as it just had done here. "Who are you?" he asked it. "What do you want?"

  But it had gone—no malevolence, no. It ached, it was so different. It was real. His heart was still racing from its touch. He slipped the knot, tugged the rope free, let the raft take its course.

  "Find you," he told it. "I'll find you." He began to laugh, giddy at the spinning course the raft took, the branches whirling in wide circles above him.

  "Warren," the box said, self-activated. "Warren? Warren?"

  7

  "Hello. Warren."

  He gave a haggard grin climbing down from the land crawler, staggered a bit from weariness, edged past the pseudosome with a pat on the shoulder. "Hello yourself, Annie. Unload the gear out of the crawler."

  "Yes, Warren. What is your
status, please?"

  "Fine, thanks. Happy. Dirty, tired and hungry, but happy overall."

  "Bath and supper?"

  "In that order."

  "Sleep?"

  "Possibly." He walked into the lock, stripped off his clothing as the cargo lift rose into netherdeck, already anticipating the luxury of a warm bath. He took the next lift up. "I'll want my robe. How are you?"

  "I'm functioning well, thank you." Her voice came to him all over the ship. The lift stopped and let him out. She turned on the lights for him section by section and extinguished them after.

  "What's for supper?"

  "Steak and potatoes, Warren. Would you like tea or coffee?"

  "Beautiful. Coffee."

  "Yes, Warren."

  He took a lingering bath, dried and dressed in his robe, went up to the living quarters where Anne had set the table for him, all the appointments, all the best. He sat down and looked up at Anne, who hovered there to pour him coffee.

  "Pull up the other chair and sit down, will you, Anne?"

  "Yes, Warren."

  She released the facing chair from its transit braces, settled it in place, turned it and sat down correctly, metal arms on the table in exact imitation of him. Her lights dimmed once more as she settled into a state of waiting.

  Warren ate in contented silence, not disturbing her. Anne had her limitations in small talk. When he had finished he pushed the dishes aside and Anne's sensors brightened at once, a new program clicking into place. She rose and put everything onto the waiting tray, tidying up with a brisk rattle of aluminum and her own metal fingers.

  "Anne, love."

  "Yes, Warren."

  "Activate games function."

  Tray forgotten, she turned toward him. The screen on the wall lighted, blank. "Specify."

  "You choose. You make a choice. Which game?"

  Black and white squares flashed onto the screen.