The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  It was afternoon when he came into the vicinity of the river, and he reached it the better part of an hour afterward. He slid down to the sandy bank and staggered across to the raft, freed its rope and managed, crawling and tugging, to get it into the river and himself into it before it drifted away. He savored the beautiful feel of it under his torn hands, the speed of its moving, which was a painless, delirious joy after the meter-by-meter torment of the hours since dawn.

  He got it to shore, started to leave it loose and then, half crazed and determined in his habits, crawled his way to the appointed limb and moored it fast. Then there was the bank, sandy in the first part, and then the brushy path he had broken bringing loads of equipment down.

  And in his hearing a blessedly familiar sound of machinery.

  Anne stood atop the crest, in front of the crawler, bright in the afternoon sun, her faceplate throwing back the daylight.

  "Warren? Assistance?"

  9

  He worked the muddy remnant of his clothing off, fouling the sheets of the lab cot and the floor of the lab itself, while Anne hovered and watched. She brought him bandages. Fruit juice. He drank prodigiously of it, and that settled his stomach. Water. He washed where he sat, making puddles on the floor and setting Anne to clicking distressedly.

  "Anne," he said, "I'm going to have to take a real bath. I can't stand this filth. You'll have to help me down there."

  "Yes, Warren." She offered her arm, helping him up, and walked with him to the bath, compensating for his uneven stride. Walked with him all the way to the mist cabinet, and stood outside while he turned on the control.

  He soaked for a time, leaned on the wall and shut his eyes a time, looked down finally at a body gone thinner than he would have believed. Scratches. Bruises. The bandage was soaked and he had no disposition to change it. He had had enough of pain, and drugs were working in him now, home, in safety. So the sheets would get wet. Anne could wash everything.

  No more nightmares. No more presences in the depths of the ship. No more Sax. He stared bleakly at the far wall of the cabinet, trying to recall the presence in the forest, trying to make sense of things, but the drugs muddled him and he could hardly recall the feeling or the look of the light that had shone out of the dark.

  Sax. Sax was real. He had talked to Anne. She knew. She had heard. Heard all of it. He turned on the drier until he was tired of waiting on it, left the cabinet still damp and let Anne help him up to his own room, his own safe bed.

  She waited there, clicking softly as he settled himself in, dimmed the lights for him, even pulled the covers up for him when he had trouble.

  "That's good," he sighed. The drugs were pulling him under.

  "Instructions."

  Her request hit his muddled thought train oddly, brought him struggling back toward consciousness. "Instruction in what?"

  "In repair of human structure."

  He laughed muzzily. "We're essentially self-repairing. Let me sleep it out. Good night, Anne."

  "Your time is in error."

  "My body isn't. Go clean up the lab. Clean up the bath. Let me sleep."

  "Yes, Warren."

  Have you, he thought to ask her, understood what you read? Do you know what happened out there, to Sax? Did you pick it up? But she left. He got his eyes open and she was gone, and he thought he had not managed to ask, because she had not answered.

  He slept, and dreamed green lights, and slept again.

  Anne clattered about outside his room. Breakfast, he decided, looking at the time. He tried to get out of bed and winced, managed to move only with extreme pain. . . the knee, the hands, the shoulders and the belly—every muscle in his body hurt. He rolled onto his belly, levered himself out of bed, held on to the counter and the wall to reach the door. He had bruises. . . massive bruises, the worst about his hip and his elbow. His face hurt on that side. He reached for the switch, opened the door.

  "Assistance?" Anne asked, straightening from her table setting.

  "I want a bit of pipe. A meter long. Three centimeters wide. Get it."

  "Yes, Warren."

  No questions. She left. He limped over painfully and sat down, ate his breakfast. His hand was so stiff he could scarcely close his fingers on the fork or keep the coffee cup in his swollen fingers. He sat staring at the far wall, seeing the clearing again. Numb. There were limits to feeling, inside and out. He thought that he might feel something—some manner of elation in his discovery when he had recovered; but there was Sax to temper it.

  Anne came back. He took the pipe and used it to get up when he had done; his hand hurt abominably, even after he had hobbled down to the lab and padded the raw pipe with bandages. He kept walking, trying to loosen up.

  Anne followed him, stood about, walked, every motion that he made.

  "Finished your assimilation?" he asked her, recalling that. "Does it work?"

  "Processing is proceeding."

  "A creature of many talents. You can walk about and rescue me and assimilate the library all at once, can you?"

  "The programs are not impaired. An AI uses a pseudobiological matrix for storage. Storage is not a problem. Processing does not impair other functions."

  "No headaches, either, I'll bet."

  "Headache is a biological item."

  "Your definitions are better than they were."

  "Thank you, Warren."

  She matched strides with him, exaggeratedly slow. He stopped. She stopped. He went on, and she kept with him. "Anne. Why don't you just let me alone and let me walk? I'm not going to fall over. I don't need you."

  "I perceive malfunction."

  "A structural malfunction under internal repair. I have all kinds of internal mechanisms working on the problem. I'll get along. It's all right, Anne."

  "Assistance?"

  "None needed, I tell you. It's all right. Go away."

  She stayed. Malfunctioning humans, he thought. No programming accepted. He frowned, beyond clear reasoning. The bio and botany labs were ahead. He kept walking, into them and through to Botany One.

  "Have you been maintaining here?" he asked. The earth in the trays looked a little dry.

  "I've been following program."

  He limped over and adjusted the water flow. "Keep it there."

  "Yes, Warren."

  He walked to the trays, felt of them.

  "Soil," Anne said gratuitously. "Dirt. Earth."

  "Yes. It has to be moist. There'll be plants coming up soon. They need the water."

  "Coming up. Source."

  "Seed. They're under there, under the soil. Plants, Anne. From seed."

  She walked closer, adjusted her stabilizers, looked, a turning of her sensor-equipped head. She put out a hand and raked a line in the soil. "I perceive no life. Size?"

  "It's there, under the soil. Leave it alone. You'll kill it."

  She straightened. Her sensor lights glowed, all of them. "Please check your computations, Warren."

  "About what?"

  "This life."

  "There are some things your sensors can't pick up, Annie."

  "I detect no life."

  "They're there. I put them in the ground. I know they're there; I don't need to detect them. Seeds, Annie. That's the nature of them."

  "I am making cross-references on this word, Warren."

  He laughed painfully, patiently opened a drawer and took out a large one that he had not planted. "This is one. It'd be a plant if I put it into the ground and watered it. That's what makes it grow. That's what makes all the plants outside."

  "Plants come from seed."

  "That's right."

  "This is growth process. This is birth process."

  "Yes."

  "This is predictable."

  "Yes, it is."

  In the dark faceplate the tiny stars glowed to intense life. She took the seed from the counter, with one powerful thrust rammed it into the soil and then pressed the earth down over it, leaving the imprint of her fingers.
Warren looked at her in shock.

  "Why, Anne? Why did you do that?"

  "I'm investigating."

  "Are you, now?"

  "I still perceive no life."

  "You'll have to wait."

  "Specify period."

  "It takes several weeks for the seed to come up."

  "Come up."

  "Idiom. The plant will grow out of it. Then the life will be in your sensor range."

  "Specify date."

  "Variable. Maybe twenty days."

  "Recorded." She swung about, facing him. "Life forms come from seeds. Where are human seeds?"

  "Anne—I don't think your programming is adequate to the situation. And my knee hurts. I think I'm going to go topside again."

  "Assistance?"

  "None needed." He leaned his sore hand on the makeshift cane and limped past her, and she stalked faithfully after, to the lift, and rode topside to the common room, stood by while he lowered himself into a reclining chair and let the cane fall, massaging his throbbing hand.

  "Instruction?"

  "Coffee," he said.

  "Yes, Warren."

  She brought it. He sat and stared at the wall, thinking of things he might read, but the texts that mattered were all beyond him and all useless on this world, on Rule's world. He thought of reading for pleasure, and kept seeing the grove at night, and the radiance, and Sax's body left there. He owed it burial. And he had not had the strength.

  Had to go back there. Could not live here and not go back there. It was life there as well as a dead friend. Sax had known, had gone to it, through what agony he shrank from imagining, had gone to it to die there. . . to be in that place at the last. He tried to doubt it, here, in Anne's sterile interior, but he had experienced it, and it would not go away. He even thought of talking to Anne about it, but there was that refusal to listen to him when he was malfunctioning—and he had no wish to stir that up. Seeds. . . were hard enough. Immaterial life—

  "Warren," Anne said. "Activity? I play chess."

  She won, as usual.

  The swelling went down on the second day. He walked, cautiously, without the cane. . . still used it for going any considerable distance, and the knee still ached, but the rest of the aches diminished and he acquired a certain cheerfulness, assured at least that the knee was not broken, that it was healing, and he went about his usual routines with a sense of pleasure in them, glad not to be lamed for life.

  But by the fourth and fifth day the novelty was gone again, and he wandered the halls of the ship without the cane, miserable, limping in pain but too restless to stay still. He drank himself to sleep nights— still awoke in the middle of them, the result, he reckoned, of too much sleep, of dreaming the days away in idleness, of lying with his mind vacant for hours during the day, watching the clouds or the grass moving in the wind. Like Anne. Waiting for stimulus that never came.

  He played chess, longer and longer games with Anne, absorbed her lessons. . . lost.

  He cried, the last time—for no reason, but that the game had become important, and when he saw one thing coming, she sprang another on him.

  "Warren," she said implacably, "is this pain?"

  "The knee hurts," he said. It did. "It disrupted my calculations." It had not. He had lost. He lied, and Anne sat there with her lights winking on and off in the darkness of her face and absorbing it.

  "Assistance? Pain: drugs interfere with pain reception." She had gotten encyclopedic in her processing. "Some of these drugs are in storage—"

  "Cancel. I know what they are." He got up, limped over to the counter and opened the liquor cabinet. "Alcohol also kills the pain."

  "Yes, Warren."

  He poured his drink, leaned against the counter and sipped at it, wiped his eyes. "Prolonged inactivity, Anne. That's causing the pain. The leg's healing."

  A small delay of processing. "Chess is activity."

  "I need to sleep." He took the drink and the bottle with him, limped into his own quarters, shut the door. He drank, stripped, crawled between the sheets and sat there drinking, staring at the screen and thinking that he might try to read. . . but he had to call Anne to get a book on the screen, and he wanted no debates. His hands shook. He poured another glass and drank it down, fluffed the pillow. "Anne," he said. "Lights out."

  "Good night, Warren." The lights went.

  The chessboard came back, behind his eyelids, the move he should have made. He rehearsed it to the point of anger, deep and bitter rage. He knew that it was ridiculous. All pointless. Without consequence. Everything was.

  He slid into sleep, and dreamed, and the dreams were of green things, and the river, and finally of human beings, of home and parents long lost, of old friends. . . of women inventively erotic and imaginary, with names he knew at the time—he awoke in the midst of that and lay frustrated, staring at the dark ceiling and then at the dark behind his eyelids, trying to rebuild them in all their detail, but sleep eluded him. He thought of Anne in that context, of bizarre programs, of his own misery, and what she was not—his thoughts ran in circles and grew unbearable.

  He reached for the bottle, poured what little there was and drank it, and that was not enough. He rolled out of bed, stumbled in the dark. "Lights," he cried out, and they came on. He limped to the door and opened it, and the pseudosome came to life where it had been standing in the dark, limned in silver from the doorway, her lights coming to life inside her faceplate. The lights in the living quarters brightened. "Assistance?"

  "No." He went to the cabinet, opened it, took out another bottle and opened it. The bottles were diminishing. He could foresee the day when there would be no more bottles at all. That panicked him. Set him to thinking of the forest, of green berries that might ferment, of the grasses—of fruits that might come at particular seasons. If he failed to poison himself.

  He went back to his bed with the bottle, filled his glass and got in bed. "Lights out," he said. They went. He sat drinking in the dark until he felt his hand shaking, and set the glass aside and burrowed again into the tangled sheets.

  This time there were nightmares, the lab, the deaths, and he was walking through the ship again, empty-handed, looking for Sax and his knife. Into dark corridors. He kept walking and the way got darker and darker, and something waited there. Something hovered over him. He heard sound—

  The dream brought him up with a jerk, eyes wide and a yell in his ears that was his own, confronted with red lights in the dark, the touch of a hand on him.

  The second shock was more than the first, and he lashed out at hard metal, struggled wildly with covers and the impediment of Anne's unyielding arm. Her stabilizers hummed. She put the hand on his chest and held and he recovered his sense, staring up at her with his heart pounding in fright.

  "Assistance? Assistance? Is this malfunction?"

  "A dream—a dream, Anne."

  A delay while the lights blinked in the dark. "Dreams may have random motor movements. Dreams are random neural firings. Neural cells are brain structure. This process affects the brain. Please confirm your status."

  "I'm fine, Anne."

  "I detect internal disturbance."

  "That's my heart, Anne. It's all right. I'm normal now. The dream's over."

  She took back the hand. He lay still for a moment, watching her lights.

  "Time," he asked.

  "0434."

  He winced, moved, ran a hand through his hair. "Make breakfast. Call me when it's ready."

  "Yes, Warren."

  She left, a clicking in the dark that carried her own light with her. The door closed. He pulled the covers about himself and burrowed down and tried to sleep, but he was only conscious of a headache, and he had no real desire for the breakfast.

  He kept very busy that day, despite the headache—cleaned up, limped about, carrying things to their proper places, throwing used clothing into the laundry. Everything in shape, everything in order. No more self pity. No more excuses of his lameness or the pa
in. No more liquor. He thought even of putting Anne in charge of that cabinet. . . but he did not. He was. He could say no if he wanted to.

  Outside, a rain blew up. Anne reported the anomaly. Clouds hung darkly over the grasslands and the forest. He went down to the lock to see it, the first change he had seen in the world. . . stood there in the hatchway with the rain spattering his face and the thunder shaking his bones, watched the lightning tear holes in the sky.

  The clouds shed their burden in a downpour, but they stayed. After the pounding rain, which left the grass battered and collapsed the canopy outside into a miniature lake, the clouds stayed, sending down a light drizzle that chilled to the bone, intermittent with harder rain—one day, and two, and three, four at last, in which the sun hardly shone.

  He thought of the raft, of the things he had left behind—of the clearing finally, and Sax lying snugged there in the hollow of the old tree's roots.

  And a living creature—one with it, with the scents of rain and earth and the elements.

  The sensor box. That, too, he had had to abandon. . . sitting on the ground on a now sodden blanket, perhaps half underwater like the ground outside.

  "Anne," he said then, thinking about it. "Activate the sensor unit. Is it still functioning?"

  "Yes."

  He sat where he was, in the living quarters, studying the chessboard. Thought a moment. "Scan the area around the unit. Do you perceive anything?"

  "Vegetation, Warren. It's raining."

  "Have you—activated it since I left it there?"

  "When the storm broke I activated it. I investigated with all sensors."

  "Did you—perceive anything?"

  "Vegetation, Warren."

  He looked into her faceplate and made the next move, disquieted.