The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  And it came.

  The first touch was a prickling and a gentle whisper in his mind, a sound of wind. The air shone with an aching green luminance. He could not hold it. The light went. Numbness came over him; his pulse jumped wildly. Pain lanced through his chest and belly. Then nothing. He gasped for air and felt a fingering at his consciousness, a deep sense of perplexity. Hesitation. He felt it hovering, the touches less and less substantial, and he reached out with his thoughts, wanting it, pleading with it to wait.

  A gentle tug at his sense. Not unpleasant.

  Listen to me, he thought, and felt it settle over him like a blanket, entity without definition. Words were meaningless to the being which had reached into his mind. Only the images transcended the barrier.

  He hunted for something to give it, a vision of sunlight, of living things, his memories of the river lilies. There came back a feeling of peace, of satisfaction. He wanted to drift to sleep and fought the impulse. His body grew as heavy as it had on the river and he felt himself falling, drifting slowly. Images flowed past like the unrolling of a tape with an incalculable span of years encoded on it. He saw the clearing thick with young trees, and saw it again when there were vacant spaces among those, and he knew that others had grown before the present ones, that the seedlings he saw among the last were the giants about him.

  His consciousness embraced all the forest, and knew the seasonal ebb and flood of the river, knew the islets and the branches that had grown and ceased to be. He knew the ages of mountains, the weight of innumerable years.

  What are you? he wondered in his dream.

  Age, great age, and eternal youth, the breaking of life from the earth, the bittersweet rush of earth-bound life sunward. And this, this was the thing it called itself—too large for a single word or a single thought. It rippled sound through his mind, like wind through harpstrings, and it was that too. /, it said. /.

  It had unrolled his question from his mind with the fleeting swiftness of a dream, absorbed it all and knew it. Like Anne. Faster. More complete. He tried to comprehend such a mind, but the mind underwent a constriction of panic. Sight and sensation returned on his own terms and he was aware of the radiance again, like the sunbeam, drifting near him.

  You, Warren thought. Do you understand me?

  Something riffled through his thoughts, incomprehensible and alien. Again the rippling touch of light and chill.

  Did you touch them? My friends died. They died of a disease. All but me.

  Warmth and regret flowed over him. Friend, it seemed. Sorrow. Welcome. It thrilled through him like the touch of rain after drought. He caught his breath, wordless for the moment, beyond thinking. He tried to understand the impressions that followed, but they flowed like madness through his nerves. He resisted, panicked, and a feeling of sorrow came back.

  "What are you?" he cried.

  It broke contact abruptly, crept back again more slowly and stayed at a distance, cool, anxious.

  "Don't leave." The thought frightened him. "Don't go. I don't want that, either."

  The radiance expanded, flickering with gold inside. It filled his mind, and somewhere in it a small thing crouched, finite, fluttering inside with busy life, while the trees grew. Himself. He was measured, against such a scale as the giants, and felt cold.

  "How old are you?"

  The life spans of three very ancient trees flashed through his mind in the blink of an eye.

  "I'm twenty-seven years."

  It took years from his mind; he felt it, the seasonal course of the world and star, the turning of the world, a plummeting to earth with the sun flickering overhead again and again and again. A flower came to mind, withered and died.

  "Stop it," Warren cried, rejecting the image and the comparison.

  It fled. He tried to hold the creature. A sunset burst on his eyes, flared and dimmed. . . a time, an appointment for meeting, a statement—he did not know. The green light faded away.

  Cold. He shivered convulsively, caught the blanket up about him in the dimness. He stared bleakly into the shadow. . . felt as if his emotions had been taken roughly and shaken into chaos, wanted to scream and cry and could not. Death seemed to have touched him, reduced everything to minute scale. Everything. Small and meaningless.

  "Warren."

  Anne's voice. He had not the will or the strength to answer her. It was beyond belief that he could have suffered such cataclysmic damage in an instant of contact; that his life was not the same, the universe not in the same proportion.

  "Warren."

  The insistent voice finally sent his hand groping after the com unit. Danger. Anne. Threat. She might come here. Might do something rash. "I'm all right." He kept his voice normal and casual, surprised by its clear tone as he got it out. "I'm fine. How are you?"

  "Better now, Warren. You didn't respond. I've called twelve times. Is there trouble?"

  "I was asleep, that's all. I'm going to sleep again. It's getting dark here."

  "You didn't call in an hour."

  "I forgot. Humans forget. Look that up in your files. Let me be, Anne. I'm tired. I want to sleep. Make your next call at 0500."

  "This interval is long. Please reconsider this instruction."

  "I mean it, Anne. 0500. Not before then. Keep the sensor box off and let me rest."

  There was a long pause. The sensor unit activated itself, Anne's presence actively with him for the moment. She looked about, shut herself off. "Good night, Warren."

  She was gone. She was not programmed to detect a lie, only an error in logic. Now he had cut himself off indeed. Perhaps, he thought, he had just killed himself.

  But the entity was not hostile. He knew. He had been inside its being, known without explanation all the realities that stood behind its thought, like in a dream where in a second all the past of an act was there, never lived, but there, and remembered, and therefore real. The creature must have walked airless moons with him, seen lifeless deserts and human cities and the space between the stars. It must have been terrifying to the being whose name meant the return of spring. And what might it have felt thrust away from its world and drifting in dark, seeing its planet as a green and blue mote in infinity? Perhaps it had suffered more than he had.

  He shut his eyes, relaxed a time. . . called Anne back when he had rested somewhat, and reassured her. "I'm still well," he told her. "I'm happy."

  "Thank you, Warren," she said in return, and let herself be cut off again.

  The sun began to dim to dark. He put on his coat, tucked up again in the blanket. Human appetites returned to him—hunger and thirst. He ate some of the food he had brought, drank a cup of coffee, lay back and closed his eyes on the dark, thinking that in all reason he ought to be afraid in the night in this place.

  He felt a change in the air, a warmth tingling down the back of his neck and the insides of his arms. The greenish light grew and hovered in the dark.

  It was there as if nothing had ever gone amiss.

  "Hello," Warren said, sitting up. He wrapped himself in the blanket, looked at the light, looked around him. "Where did you go?"

  A ripple of cool waters went through his mind. Lilies and bubbles drifting.

  "The river?"

  Leaves fluttering in a wind, stronger and stronger. The sun going down.

  "What were you doing there?"

  His heart fluttered, his pulse sped, not of his own doing. Too strong—far too strongly. , "Stop—stop it."

  The pressure eased, and Warren pressed his hands to his eyes and gasped for air. His heart still labored, his sense of balance deserted him. He tumbled backward into space, blind, realized he was lying down on firm earth with his legs bent painfully. The tendril of thought crept back into his mind, controlled and subdued. Sorrow. He perceived a thing very tightly furled, with darkness about it, shielding it from the green. It was himself. Sorrow poured about him.

  "I know you can't help it." He tried to move, disoriented. His hands were numb. His vision wa
s tunneled. "Don't touch me like that. Stop it."

  Confusion: he felt it; an ebbing retreat.

  "Don't go, either. Just stop. Please."

  It lingered about him, green luminance pulsing slowly into a sparkle or two of gold, dimming down again by turns. All the air seemed cairn.

  Spring, Warren gave it back. He built an image of flowers, colored flowers, of gardens. Of pale green shoots coming up through moist earth.

  It answered him, flowers blooming in his mind, white, green and gold-throated jade. They took on tints in his vision, mingled colors and pale at first, as if the mind had not known the colors were distinct to separate flowers, and then settling each on each, blues and violets and yellows, reds and roses and lavenders. Joy flooded through. Over and over again the flowers bloomed.

  "Friend. You understand that?"

  The flowers kept blooming, twining stems, more and more of them.

  "Is it always you—is it always you I've dealt with? Are there others like you?"

  A single glow, replacing the other image; greenness through all his vision, but things circled outside it. . . not hostile—other. And it enfolded one tiny darkness, a solitary thing, tightly bound up, clenched in on the flutterings inside itself.

  "That's me, you mean. I'm human."

  The small creature sank strange tendrils deep into the moist earth, spread extensions like branches, flickers of growth in all directions through the forest and out, across the grassland.

  "Isn't there anything else—aren't there other creatures on this world. . . anywhere?"

  The image went out. Water bubbled, and in the cold murk tiny things moved. Grass stirred in the sunlight, and a knot of small creatures gathered, fluttering at the heart, three, fourteen of them. Joy and sorrow. The flutters died. One by one the minds went out. Sorrow. There were thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten—

  "Were you there? Were you on the ship?"

  He saw images of the corridors—his own memory snatched forth; the destruct chamber; the lab and the blood—the river then, cold, murky waters, the raft drifting on the river in the cold dawning. He lay there, complex, fluttering thing in the heart of green, in the mind—pain then, and retreat.

  "I know. I came to find you. I wanted to find out if you were real. To talk to you."

  The green radiance crept back again, surrounding the dark egg with the furled creature in its heart. The creature stirred, unfolded branches and thrust them out of its shell, into the radiance.

  "No—no. Keep back from me. You can do me damage. You know that."

  The beating of his heart quickened and slowed again before it hurt. The greenness dimmed and retreated. A tree stood in the shell of darkness that was his own space, a tree fixed and straight and solitary, with barren earth and shadow around it.

  The judgment depressed him. "I wanted to find you. I came here to find you. Then, on the river. And now. I haven't changed my mind. But the touching hurts."

  Warmth bubbled through. Images of suns flashed across the sky into a blinding blur. Trees grew and died and decayed. Time: Ages passed. The radiance fairly danced, sparkling and warm. Welcome. Welcome. Desire tingled through him.

  "You make me nervous when you get excited like that. You might forget. And you can hurt me. You know that by now."

  Desire, a fluttering along his veins. The radiance hovered, back and forth, dancing slow flickerings of gold in its heart.

  "So you're patient. But what for? What are you waiting for?"

  The small-creature image returned. From embryo, it grew, unfolded, reached out into the radiance—let it into that fluttering that was its center.

  "No." Death came into his mind, mental extinction, accepting an alien parasite.

  The radiance swirled green and gold about him. Waters murmured and bubbled. Growth exploded in thrills of force that ran over Warren's nerves and threatened for a moment to be more than his senses could take. The echoes and the images ebbed and he caught his breath, warmed, close to losing himself.

  "Stop," he protested, finding that much strength. The contact loosened, leaving a memory of absolute intoxication with existence, freedom, joy, such as he had never felt in his life—frightening, unsettling, undermining disciplines and rules by which life was ordered and orderly. "We could both be damaged that way. Stop. Stop it."

  The greenness began to pulse slowly, dimming and brightening. It backed away. Another tightly furled embryo appeared in his mind, different from the first, sickly and strange. It lay beside his image in the dark shell, both of them, together, reached out tendrils, interwove, and the radiance grew pale.

  "What other human? Where?"

  A desperate fluttering inside the sickly one, a hammering of his own pulse: a distant and miserable rage; and grief; and need.

  "Where is it now? What happened to it? Where is he?"

  The fluttering inside the image stopped, the tendrils withered, and all of it decayed.

  He gathered himself to rise, pushed back. The creature's thoughts washed back on him, a seething confusion, the miasma of loneliness and empty ages pouring about him, and he sprang to his feet and fled, slipping and stumbling, blind in the verdant light, in symbols his mind could not grasp, in distortion of what he could. Sound and light and sensation warped through his senses. Daylight. Somehow it was daylight. He reached the aged tree, the grandfather of trees, recoiled from the feel of the moss in his almost blindness, stumbled around its roots.

  The place was here. He knew.

  The greenness hovered there in the dawning, danced over corruption, over what had been a man. It lay twisted and curled up there, in that cavern of the old tree's naked roots, in that dark, with the grinning white of bone thrusting through rags of skin.

  "Sax," he cried. He groped his way back from it, finding empty air about his fingertips, dreading something tangible. He turned and ran, blind in the shadow, among the clinging branches that tore at his arms and his face. The light came about him again, green and gold. His feet slipped among the tangled roots and earth bruised his hands. Pain lanced up his ankle, through his knees. The mustiness of old leaves was in his mouth. He spat and spat again, clawed his way up by the brush and the tree roots, hauled himself farther and ran again and fell, his leg twisted by the clinging roots.

  Sorrow, the radiance mourned. Sorrow. Sorrow.

  He moved, feverishly turned one way and the other to drag his foot free of the roots that had wedged it in. The greenish luminance grew at the edges of his mind, moving in, bubbling mournfully of life and death. "You killed him," he shouted at it. "You killed him."

  The image came to him of Sax curled up there as if in sleep—alone and lost. Withering, decaying.

  He freed his foot. The pain shot up to his inner knee and he sobbed with it, rocked to and fro.

  Sorrow. It pulled at him, wanting him. It ached with needing him.

  Not broken, not broken, he hoped: to be left lame lifelong as well as desolate—he could not bear that.

  Pain stopped. A cooling breeze fanned over him. He stopped hating. Stopped blaming. The forest swayed and moved all about him. A tug drew at his mind, to go, to follow—other presences. Over river, over hills, far away, to drift with the winds and stop being alone, forever, and there was no terror in it. Sax perished. The forest took him, and he was part of it, feeding it, remembered.

  Come, the presence said. He tried—but the first halting movement away from the support of the tree sent a shooting pain up his knee and brought him down rocking to and fro in misery.

  "Warren," a voice was saying. "Warren. Assistance?"

  The vision passed. The ache throbbed in his knee, and the green radiance grew distant, rippling with the sound of waters. Then the creature was gone, the forest silent again.

  "Warren?"

  He fumbled at his belt, got the com unit to his mouth. "Anne. I'm all right."

  "Assistance? Assistance?"

  "I'm coming home, Anne."

  "Clarify: you killed him. Clarify."
/>   He wiped his face, his hand trembling. "I found Sax, Anne. He's not functioning."

  A silence. "Assistance?"

  "None possible. It's permanent nonfunction. He's— deteriorated. I'm coming home. It's going to be longer than usual."

  "Are you in pain, Warren?"

  He thought about it, thought about her conflict override. "No. Stress. Finding Sax was stressful. I'm going to shut off now. I've got some things to take care of. I'll come as quickly as I can."

  "Yes, Warren."

  The contact went out. He hooked the com unit back to his belt, felt of the knee, looked about him in the dawning, distressed by the loss of time. Sickness moiled in him, shock. Thirst. He broke small branches from the thicket, and a larger one, tried to lever himself out of his predicament and finally gave up and crawled, tears streaming down his face, back to the pallet and the kit he had left. He drank, forced a little food into his mouth and washed it down, splinted the knee and wrapped it in bandage from the med kit.

  He got up then, using his stick, tried to carry both the water and the med kit, but he could not manage them both and chose to keep the water. He skipped forward using the stick, eyes watering from the pain, and there was a painkiller in the kit, but he left it, too: no drugs, nothing to muddle his direction; he had no leeway for errors. He moved slowly, steadily, into the forest on the homeward track, his hand aching already from the stick; and the tangle grew thicker, making him stagger and catch his balance violently from the good leg to the injured one and back again.

  After he had fallen for the third time he wiped the tears from his eyes and gave up the stick entirely, leaning on the trees while he could, and when he came to places where he had to hitch his way along with his weight partially on the leg, he did it, and when the intervals grew too long and he had to crawl, he did that too. He tried not to think of the distance he had to go to the river. It did not matter. The distance had to be covered, no matter how long it took. Anne called, back on her hourly schedule, and that was all he had.