by Anna Gaffey
“You blithering jackasses, all right! This is your final warning. I had hoped alcohol would help make you more suggestible.”
After a renewed burst of hilarity at that, Carmichael and Con calmed down enough to sit still.
The candles flickered in unison once, twice, the flames fluttering on their wicks. The music swelled and shifted into a humming airiness, like wind rushing through trees.
It put Jake in mind of Selas. He closed his eyes and called forth the details of their first expedition to the surface: the clammy, chill frost, the stark clear green of the trees, the way they smelled like new young wood and yet somehow burnt, like ash. He breathed the thin air, tasted the life and lifelessness of the place. Gods, he missed it. He couldn’t wait to go back. A tiny voice deep in his mind protested that sentiment. Did he honestly miss it more than Earth? And how in all hells could he miss a place he’d only visited a handful of times? He’d observed from the station, studied the chemical and biological profiles, even walked the ground; all things he’d done on Earth. But the desire was strong and clear in his mind, like a bite of sour apple. Why?
He opened his eyes and watched the golden candlelight flit like moths over the gathered faces. Nat began to speak again. Her voice was soft and coaxing and uncanny.
“We are here tonight to ask if anyone is present—with us here. Will you speak to us? Will you? We are here. We will speak to you. We will hear you. Hear us.”
The sudden eerie atmosphere affected them all, evidently; no one snorted this time. Con’s hand tightened on Jake’s, and Jake tried to invoke stillness, stone.
“We welcome you. Please speak to us on this Hallows Eve. We welcome you. We remember your last message, and we call you with it.”
No one moved a muscle.
“Thus have I heard: come here, I want to see you, what hath god wrought? For I have entered into the fire and have come forth from the water, in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.”
The words sent shivers through Jake. Chubaryan’s final broadcast. That was a mood-maker, or a mood-killer. He mentally congratulated Nat on her stones and hoped she didn’t plan to read the entire transcript. No matter how creepy Chubaryan’s gobbledygook was in a dark room, half an hour of recitation would definitely slaughter the ambience. And such a mood… shadows twisted the faces around him, wavering the familiar eyes and noses and mouths into strangers and back again.
“With your words, come back to us, Denys Chubaryan. Come back all.”
No one stirred. No one breathed.
“Speak. Come back all. Tell us what happened to you. Speak to us. Speak.”
Selas engulfed Jake’s senses.
“Speak.”
The smell of the trees, the lower gravity and the way it made him feel light and loose, the far-off wink of light through the clouds Jake knew to be the orbiting station.
He stepped down from the landing pad and was surprised to feel the cool soil under his bare feet. He still wore the rest of his clothes, and the comforting weight of a satchel tugged on his shoulder. Santos stood alongside him, laden down with her pack and scanning equipment, and Nat was there, her hair tucked up under a violet cap. Beyond them the station’s largest shuttlepod sat atop the pad, ovular and squat like a giant black toad. He didn’t remember who had flown them down. He did know without looking that the habitat was behind them, fifty paces or so from the landing.
“Seriously?”
Jake turned to see Con leaning against a tree, his arms crossed, a smirk covering his face. He wore the grey station uniform instead of his ubiquitous pilot’s blues. “Your name is Jacopo? Jacopo Jeong. That sounds like a clown or something.”
“My mom’s Italian,” Jake said. His mother was the only one who had ever called him that. Even his birth certificate read Jacob Padula Jeong.
“Jacob. That’s more familiar. Angel wrestler.” Con roughed up his shock of dark hair with one hand. “You don’t look Italian. The Korean’s obvious, but not the Italian.”
“Well, you don’t look like a big goddamn mythical bird, Griffin.”
“What can I say?” Con shrugged. “I’m from all over.”
Jake adjusted his satchel. It was heavier than normal, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him what he’d packed. “What are you doing here? If I’m dreaming, and I have to be dreaming, or hallucinating, I think. I would have thought that—Rebecca—” He stopped and cut the name out of his thoughts with a swift, practiced block. He didn’t want to think about that now. What if the nightmare started and he thought about everything?
“Who?” Con frowned. “I’m always here.”
Very funny. “What do you mean, who? Rebecca. And no. No, you’re really not. I don’t think you’ve ever been down to the surface before.”
“I’m always here. Around the edges. But I needed a welcome to come in…”
“You’re not making a lot of sense, buddy.” Jake stepped toward him, and the soil pushed cool and crumbling between his toes. “Screwing up your tenses. See, I knew you were coming down with something…”
There was a crack like a branch snapping behind him. Jake turned. The trees stood silent and verdant. He hadn’t noticed them before, but the spaces between the branches were profoundly dense and dark. Something could be crouched there behind one of the nearer trees, and he wouldn’t see it. He shivered.
He turned back, and saw that he and Con were alone. Santos and Nat had disappeared without a whisper of sound. Where had they gone? To the habitat? They wouldn’t start collecting samples without waiting for him. Jake did a full circle and felt a fresh chill under his skin. The shuttlepod had vanished. He turned again, and where the habitat had been now stood only trees and soft, waving stalks of grass.
The branches rustled again, louder this time.
“Jake.”
“Yeah.” The ground was encroaching on his feet in a big way. Jake shook his legs in an attempt to get the mud off, but it curled around his toes and feet like a live thing.
“Jake.”
“Uh huh, busy now.” Jake kicked violently. “Get off.”
The mud clung to him. On his back the satchel pressed heavy as a pile of stellarcore. The frozen trees vibrated with their concealed activity, and he rubbed his eyes in frustration.
“Jake.”
“What?” Jake opened his eyes, and there was a warm hand against his face, and someone saying his name, and—
He was still in the dim, candlelit cooler on the fucking station at the fucking stupid séance, and he was still holding hands with Mei, and Con was saying his name, and everyone else at the table was laughing their collective ass off.
He yanked Con’s hand away from his face. “What the hell was that?”
“I haven’t the faintest!” Nat gasped through laughs. “But you seemed as though—pardon—you were having a good time.” She went off in another gale and clutched at the tablecloth. “And Con, too.”
“What?” Con demanded, stiffening.
“You got all glassy-eyed.” Santos giggled. “But you didn’t say anything. Not until you woke up and started slapping Jake. Really, Jake, the only thing you said was that your name was Jacopo. Jacopo! Is that real?”
“What’s so damn funny about that?” His hands were sweaty. It was just another Selas mind trip, like the headaches. So why did he feel so exposed?
“I thought your given name was Jacob.” Nat had calmed herself sufficiently enough to summon her stuffiest, most pompous demeanor, even in her gauzy medium outfit. “I see all expedition members’ full names on their psych profiles. From a psychiatric standpoint, it’s interesting to consider motives for the shortening of names, or what could be considered the Anglicizing of them, especially in our present diversified culture—”
“Interesting to whom, exactly?” Jake’s face felt hot, but he was grateful for the distraction, not to mention the weak light. “What about all that weird shit you were saying?”
Nat waved a hand. “It’s a medium thing.
One must go with the psyche flow, so to speak. And quoting Denys was too atmospheric an idea to waste.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “I really wasn’t sure if I’d even remember it properly, although certainly I’ve read the transcript loads of times—”
Jake pushed up from the table. “Where were those bottles you mentioned?”
“I could use one, too,” Con said.
“Me too.” Carmichael grimaced. He was flexing his fingers.
“Come on, Jake, don’t let’s get defensive.” Nat pushed her chair back. “They’re still behind the beans. No, the other ones, to the left. It’s just silly Halloween fun.”
“I didn’t sign up for hypnosis or mesmerism or whatever weird pre-intellectual shit you unearthed from the Victorian era.” Jake dug around and came up with a small dusty box of brown bottles. He twisted the cap off one, and plunked the box on the table. “And you can stuff the public psych eval. I thought we were going to talk to the original Selas crew. Or Santos’ grandma. What the hell?”
With dignified effervescence, Nat shrugged and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I did my best.”
“What did you see, Jake?” Santos asked.
“Bacteria. Tiny pink drunken germs.” Jake couldn’t look at Con, not without hearing his laconic drawl of who? Con knew exactly who Rebecca was. But then, Con didn’t say that, not really. Jake’s own brain had, and what did that say about Jake? Who?
“Right.” Santos laughed. “You’re a shitty liar, you know. What about you, Con?”
Con reached into the box. “Nothing much. A big cave. Lots of blue mist and light. A spelunker’s paradise, I guess?”
“Spelunking.” Mei drawled the word out. “What is that?”
Jake gave her a grateful look. He didn’t hear Con’s reply; he could still feel the cold slime of alien mud between his toes, the actual sentient crawling intent of it to envelop him. He got up again and flicked on the overhead light, and everyone groaned and flapped their hands at him. “Let’s play cards. Anyone up for Eights? Devil’s Bridge?”
Nat made a disappointed hmmph, but Santos overrode her quickly. “Sure.”
Too quickly, Jake thought. Embarrassed about her failed grandma communiqué, maybe? That was fine, he was A-okay with someone else being embarrassed, too.
“We can bet with these to start.” Santos leaned down and picked up one of the gold shipping tags off the floor. “And whatever else anyone has, to make it interesting.”
Carmichael frowned. It made his craggy face look like someone had dynamited it. “I thought those were on the table.”
He was sweating again, Jake noticed. Santos patted his hand. “Oh, honey, don’t think.”
Carmichael chuckled, and trapped her hand with his. “Watch it, or I’ll bet my guns.”
“Not unless you want them to be my guns.”
Their handholding was beginning to look like a silent sexy arm-wrestling competition to Jake. “Why don’t you just keep your guns out of it?”
“No, wait just a moment, Toby’s right.” Nat plucked the tag out of Santos’ hand. “I put them on the table myself. For atmosphere.” She frowned.
There were a few beats of silence, and then everyone spoke at once.
“When did they—”
“—I don’t remember—”
“Come on, Nat, how do shipping tags create atmosphere?”
“—d’you think something did happen, other than Jake getting funny—”
“—but we’d remember!”
“Seriously, though, what kind of atmosphere? Hey, ghosts, tag your souls visibly for prompt delivery?”
The tag gleamed in Nat’s palm. Still frowning, she slapped it back on the table.
“Who’s got a deck?” Jake said, and Carmichael went out to find cards while they picked up the rest of the tags.
Mei begged off somewhere into the fifteenth hand of the tenth round, just after Nat had flitted in again from one of her hostess rounds and sat back in on the game. Things were getting silly: they all had their final cards stuck to their foreheads with spit, and they were maxed out at ten cards again. Mei tossed back the rest of her beer, stood up and belched.
Santos poked her. “Better keep it in, Chen. I heard about you this morning.”
“Lies,” Mei clanked her bottle down on the table and gave Jake a smooch on the top of the head. “Don’t listen to this guy.”
“I’m completely trustworthy.” Jake leaned back in his chair. “Say hi to Boxhill for me.”
She gave him an odd look, but before he could say anything more she went out. Jake turned to Santos, who shrugged. “Maybe she’s still feeling sick. You’re up.”
Con, the bastard, was in possession of nearly the entire pot, and he had put it back in blind to the card sticking to his brow: mess hall duty (not much of a boon for a visitor), a pile of Earth chocolate in varying degrees of freshness, a baggie of Tau Cetian hybrid weed, a couple of Jake’s pulp novels (their appearance in the pot caused a minor clamor of derisive outrage. “Are you trying to lower the stakes?” Santos asked in disbelief), and the absolute kicker, from Santos, a plastic container of plump black cherries, the last of the hydroponics crop. It was a nice score, easy to get overconfident about, especially when you could see everyone else’s card. Jake took the final trick and grinned at Con. Overconfidence could be a killer.
“Wait,” Con said. He frowned at Jake’s card. “Wait just a damn minute.”
The table erupted with scandalized reactions. Nat threw a shipping tag at him. Jake ducked and gathered up the pot. Yes, it was a nice score.
“You two…there’s something conspiratorial going on here!” Nat was tipsy and flushed, her black gauze slipping off one shoulder. “Gluttony is discouraging to general station morale. And I am the third most—fourth most—I am a very senior crewmember aboard this station—”
“Hey, I’m just a fish among the sharks,” Con protested. “He smoked me, too.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“And I heard you were supposedly good at cards.” Carmichael squinted at him. “Or is that just part of the—pardon the pun—con?”
“Hey, hey, everyone just calm down,” Jake said, raking the goods off the table and stuffing them into his shirt. “We can keep playing. You all go get more loot, and I’ll be right back after I drop this off in my quarters…”
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, honey.”
Santos leapt at him, Con tackled his legs, and they knocked Jake to the floor along with most of the chairs, their hands scrabbling for the goods and hitting his every ticklish spot in the vicinity until he was crying with laughter. “Stop, stop—”
From somewhere nearby, there came a high, hoarse shriek.
In a blink, Carmichael was up and at the cooler door before Santos’ hands had stilled on Jake’s chest. “That wasn’t a vid.” He darted out.
Santos reared up. “I almost forgot it was still going on out there.”
Jake tried to shake the beery muzziness from his head. He couldn’t hear any noise coming from the general mess, and he was useless sitting here, clutching the stash of booty to his chest like an infant. He pushed it under the table and sat up. Because Con was still holding his legs, Jake found himself nose deep in thick black hair.
“Sorry, sorry.” His face hot, Jake yanked himself back and got up.
Then a second scream ripped through the air, high and thin like a knife scraping metal.
Santos started for the door. “That was Mei.”
“It was?” Jake was baffled. She had just left, and she’d seemed a little quieter than usual this evening, but what could have happened in a crowd of newly vetted recruits? His head felt several sizes too big, and he could sense that this was going to be one of those things, those bad things where being sober mattered. He had to get the cure from Lindy and straighten out fast. This was supposed to be a professional station, a job. He pushed up and after Santos with Con and Nat jostling close behind him.
They burst int
o the mess, and into shocked silence. The place was still packed, and yet no one moved, no one spoke. It was as though someone had frozen them all in place, food on plates, bottles halfway to lips, laughs arrested and faces twisted as they saw—what did they see?
Jake pushed through the immobile people to the center of the room, where Carmichael crouched over the huddled form of Mei Chen. She lay on her side, her thick legs curled up to her chest, and she was shaking her head over and over and over, the thunk thunk thunking of it soft and continuous against the floor. Her short dark hair flowered out around her head. Her mouth opened and closed in soundless gulps.
“Mei?” Jake knelt beside Carmichael. Sober up now, damn it. It didn’t work, obviously; he needed a fluid pack. They all needed one. He laid his hands underneath her head to cushion it, to stop the awful thumps. “Mei, can you hear me? Toby, what’s going on? Why is she—what’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know.” Carmichael patted her shoulders, ran searching fingers over her scalp and neck. “No external injuries. I can’t even feel a bump. She was just sort of hunched here by herself. No one messing with her. I think she’s saying—”
“No no no,” whispered Mei. She pawed at the floor with absent hands. Blood streaked down her chin from her bottom lip; she’d bitten through it. Jake fought the urge to wipe it clean. A dark puddle collected under her thighs, spreading outwards, and he thought it too was blood until he caught the familiar sour stench of urine. Carmichael covered his nose and mouth with a palm.
Jake shook his head. “We shouldn’t need masks. Everyone’s been deconned and vaccinated and checked and rechecked for any possible spacebug.” Just the thought of the firm plastic edge pressing a tight line into his face, the medicinal smell of clean filtered air panicked him. He tried to disconnect. Mei needed help, not freakouts. Calm down and listen to yourself. We don’t need masks. Not yet. Get it together, Jake.
“Okay,” he said. He was aware he was still mindlessly shaking his head, and he forced himself to stop. She didn’t seem to be aware of his hands, or his voice, or anything beyond the weird half-focus of her eyes. He couldn’t stand it. Any minute now she would clear, she would focus on him and say something flip, she had to. “All right. Mei. Come on, Mei.”
