by T. J. Land
Echo―the real one―appeared by his side. Captain, you do know this is an illusion?
“Yes, I’d worked that out,” he said as Rux, in cat form, slipped from Rick’s arms and scampered over to jump up into his lap.
“Captain, you seem to be sweating profusely,” said the alien. “Moreover, your breathing is abnormally fast. Are you experiencing more back pain? If so, would sex help?”
Wiping off the sweat on his fur, Khurshed said, “No, and no. Thank you.”
As he spoke, the bridge vanished, and they were all standing, once again, in the dark and silent courtyard.
“Where’ve the ghosts gone?” Rick whispered, gazing up at the damp cavern walls. Khurshed listened hard for papery laughter and heard nothing.
“Hey, assholes! What, that’s it? That the best you got?” Zachery shouted.
Sighing, Antoine said, “Mister Halberstam, please stop provoking the restless spirits of the dead.”
At speed, they collected up as much fungus as their containers could hold. Then, as they were finally making their way back up the stairs, the temperature plummeted again.
“Brace yourselves,” said Rux.
The papery laughter returned. This time, however, there was no sudden loss of hearing or vision. Instead, from all around them there came a deep rumble, and the whole cavern shook.
“Look,” said Thomas, pointing at a dozen large fractures that had appeared on the walls. Another quake made the floor shake violently beneath their feet, the bizarre patterns on the stairs breaking apart, and from above them, rocks, dirt, and other debris rained down.
“It is, I suppose, possible that this is only an illusion,” said Rux as the cracks in the walls grew wider.
“Let us err on the side of caution and assume that it isn’t,” said Antoine. “Captain, I realize the unfairness of this question, all things considered, but…do we have a plan?”
As he spoke, a third quake hit. The rocks groaned, and high overhead, their torches revealed an avalanche beginning to rumble down towards them. Khurshed opened his mouth to answer Antoine’s question when Rux shouted, “All of you, come towards me!”
* * *
When the dust settled, everything was pitch black, and Echo’s wrist throbbed with pain. Remarkably, no other part of his body seemed to be broken, and he sat up wincing. The gloom subsided slightly as someone turned on their torch.
“Right, who’s not dead?” came Rick’s voice from somewhere underneath him. Echo realized that he was, in fact, lying right on top of the ship’s gardener.
“I’m alive,” croaked Thomas. “Getting squashed, though.”
Unsurprisingly; he, in turn, was lying under Rick. In fact, as the others sounded off one by one it became apparent that they were all stacked in a heap, at the bottom of which lay Khurshed―all except for Rux, who remained silent.
“Rux? Rux, can you hear me? Are you injured?” Khurshed called.
From above them, there came a grunt of exertion. “I am not, Captain. Thank you for your concern. I am merely having to concentrate to sustain a form this large.”
When directed upwards, the torchlight revealed a thirty-foot tall dragon, great black leathery wings spread wide as it held up several dozen rocks, all of which were at least the size of a car.
Eyes wide, Rick said, “You’re getting the best blowjob ever when this is over.”
“Rux, how long can you hold up that much weight?” asked Khurshed.
“I don’t know, Captain. Might I suggest you contact the ship? Quickly?”
* * *
All of them sustained injuries. In addition to Echo’s fractured wrist, Thomas had a minor concussion and had to be carried out by Zachery, who’d chipped a tooth. Antoine broke an arm, two fingers, and twisted an ankle. Rick’s collarbone was fractured, and he’d inhaled huge amounts of dust. Khurshed sustained one broken rib―not from the avalanche, but from the combined weight of all the others who’d simultaneously tried to shield him from it.
As soon as he emerged from the med pod, Echo made his way to the lab where he found Antoine hard at work, surrounded by tubes and boxes full of fungus.
“Do you know where Rux is?” he asked, peering down a microscope.
Sleeping, I think. He overexerted himself.
“He saved all our lives. Again. I’ll have to thank him at some point. For now, I want to avoid him for as long as possible.”
You don’t want to apologise for being wrong about the ghosts.
“You know me too well. Hand me that scanner, would you?”
Echo obliged. How’s it going?
”Quite well. I’ll know in a few days whether this stuff can do all Rux promised.”
Taking off his glasses and sitting back, he said, “I’ve been thinking about the broader implications. If this works―a big if, I grant you―but if it does, then we all have the means to prolong our life spans for at least a few hundred years. Far more if Rux’s claim that there are other places on this planet where it grows proves to be true.”
I suppose that takes the pressure off in terms of your plans.
“I don’t follow?”
Your cloning idea. You told me one of the reasons for making new crewmates would be that otherwise we’d all eventually grow old and die on this planet one by one, and that whoever died last would be completely alone.
“Ah. Yes. To be honest, while I still believe that to be a perfectly sound reason for attempting the cloning project, it wasn’t ever my only motivation.”
Really? What was?
“I want children.”
He observed Echo’s expression and sighed. “Yes, it does sound stupid, doesn’t it.”
No. Just unexpected, said Echo as delicately as possible, thinking: Picturing you with a baby is like picturing an alligator in mittens, or Khurshed celibate.
“I always planned on being a parent. I loved the idea even when I was young. I was one of those unsettling boys who collected porcelain dolls and brushed their hair, the one everyone suspected would grow up to be a serial killer. When the desire to mate never emerged, I decided to adopt as many kids as I could. But the time was never quite right. I met Khurshed and he wasn’t ever keen on babies. And when we broke up, I wasn’t in any state to look after one. I did eventually visit an agency, and then Khurshed invited me to be his first officer. So it got put off again.”
I didn’t know.
“You thought I wanted an experiment, not a child.”
No.
“Yes, you did. I know you too. Echo, listen. I won’t do this without your consent. If you’re truly set against it, I’ll stop bringing it up. But I’m not a cackling evil scientist, you know? I’m not going to try to create the perfect human, and I’m not going to treat our child the way Rux’s creators treated him. They’ll simply be a new member of our family.”
Oh hell, Echo thought and said, I want to choose their name.
Antoine went down on one knee and kissed his hands.
Chapter 7
It took a week for the nightmares to abate. No one was spared. On two occasions Khurshed woke up to find Zachery sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into space with his whole body drenched in sweat. Rux took to sleeping outside the ship so he didn’t wake everyone up with his screams. Exhausted, all of them were less than functional. Even so, Antoine staggered down to the lab every morning to continue his work, generally speaking fewer than five words to any member of the crew from the moment he left his quarters to the moment he returned. Khurshed knew better than to try to dissuade him.
In the second week, things began to improve. Rux came back inside and returned to his preferred sleeping spot in their laundry. Echo, in an unprecedented show of benevolence, ignored him.
“Good to see you looking less like a dead person, sir,” Khali greeted him as she came into his office. “Got some great news. The showers are working.”
“My God. All of them? Is the apocalypse upon us?”
“Thomas has been at th
em all week. We now have fully functioning plumbing.”
Khurshed had observed Thomas’s prolonged disappearances and assumed he was resorting to his usual coping methods of target practice or taking long walks around the ship. “I know Zachery’s been mentoring him, but even our brilliant engineer himself hasn’t been able to get those things working in five years.”
“He had the know-how, just not the equipment. You remember we looted all those spare parts from the last town Rux showed us? Turns out they had what we needed.”
“You amaze me,” he said to Thomas when he next saw him.
Despite the grey bags under his eyes, Thomas’s smile was bright. “Now we won’t have to stick to the roster.”
“Ah…”
Touching his beard, Thomas whispered, “We can shower for as long as we like, sir.”
Extensive investigation proved this to be true.
This was where we had sex for the first time, Khurshed recalled as Thomas gasped and thrust into his mouth. I’ve never made a better decision in my entire ridiculous life.
When they were towelling off, Antoine kicked open the door. Fixing Khurshed with blood-shot eyes, he rasped, “I am the smartest man alive, and from this day forward you will all fucking pray to me.”
Then he passed out. Thomas, being closer, caught him before he could give himself a concussion on the floor.
“What’s more likely; he’s got your medicine ready, or he’s just spontaneously decided he’s God now?” he asked Khurshed after they’d taken Antoine back to his quarters.
“Those two are in no way mutually exclusive.”
When Antoine woke up fifteen hours later, somewhat more lucid but no less smug, he dragged Khurshed down to the lab to show him the results of his labours. Honestly, Khurshed understood very little of it. He nodded as Antoine explained the regimen he’d charted out, and took the shot.
“Oh, also we’re having a baby,” said Antoine, putting down the syringe.
Having already borne witness to the miracle of their newly functioning showers, Khurshed was proof against shock. “Echo agreed?”
“He did. With several conditions.” Antoine stretched. “I feel like having that party now.”
* * *
“Rick, you’ve outdone yourself,” sighed Zachery the following evening, taking another drag. “This stuff is amazing.”
Rick lifted his mug and toasted him. “Same to you, Zach.”
“Ditto,” mumbled Thomas.
Rick closed his eyes and let the last of his drink trickle slowly down his throat. It wasn’t all that great. None of them had ever made their own before, and Irene was the only one who even knew how. She’d shown Zachery how to build a fermenter and how to treat the barley. The rest had been them feeling their way.
Who cared? What was currently wetting Rick’s lips was beer. For the first time in five years, he was actually drunk.
By that point in the evening, so was pretty much everyone else, save for Zachery who’d decided to try Rick’s latest batch instead―easily the biggest compliment Rick had ever received. The three of them were sprawled underneath a tree, busy smoking and drinking their way into unconsciousness, their guts stuffed full of Echo’s bread and roasted bastard-murder-crab. Khali and Yanmei were sitting close to the bonfire, sloppily making out. Everyone else was watching Irene play some godawful country song on Zachery’s guitar.
“Hey, you hear Antoine wants us to have a baby?” said Thomas, his head resting on Zach’s shoulder.
“A baby?”
“That’s what Echo said.”
“He’s going to fit us out with ovaries now?”
“Our God works in mysterious ways,” said Rick, shuffling closer to them. He was kind of horny.
“He’s going to use those tubes we found. If they work.”
Zachery chuckled, idly stroking Rick’s scalp while Rick nuzzled his chest. “Crazy fucker. A baby.”
“I like the idea,” said Rick, thinking back to his mom. She’d always said he’d make a good father.
“Oh yeah? Who’s gonna wipe its ass? Who’s gonna teach it about math and spelling and all that shit? Ain’t gonna be me.”
“I wouldn’t mind. Well, my spelling isn’t so hot, so Thomas’ll have to do that. I can teach ’em about gardening and stuff.”
“Hey, if I have to teach spelling, I also get to be the one who teaches them how to shoot.”
“Fine,” Zachery yawned. “Then I’ll handle the sex talk. Oh, and blackjack, I wanna teach ’em that.”
“Christ, you two,” Rick sighed as Thomas draped his arms over Zachery’s shoulders and started mouthing his neck. “Poor kid’d be better off being raised by wolves.”
* * *
“I was wrong about the ghosts. I’m sorry. There, that’s all you’re getting.”
“That will suffice,” said Rux, not without some smugness. “Will you join me in some bread?”
Antoine surveyed the many crumbs littering the pants Rux had borrowed from Zachery in the hopes of placating Cecelia. “How much have you had?”
“Four…no, five loaves. I really do find the substance remarkably palatable.”
“Oh good. We’re going to be responsible for introducing obesity to this planet as well,” Antoine said, reaching for the one remaining untouched loaf.
“First Officer, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. As you are no doubt aware, my preferred method of bonding with those I like is sex. But you don’t like sex. If I had hopes of bonding with your good self, is there something else that you like that I might be good at?”
“Hmm…I’m partial to Monopoly. It’s an Earth game.”
“A game? How fortuitous. I’m quite good at games, as I might have mentioned. Does it have much in common with Catch the Rodent?”
It didn’t. Despite the absence of gunfire and his own bewilderment over human real estate economics, Rux found himself entertained, if only by Antoine’s sputtering outrage when he turned out to be better at it.
* * *
Naked, he locked the door, shutting out the distant noise of the party. He turned the lights off so the room was dark as deep space. Returning to the bed, he found Khurshed’s body with his hands, and began to map it out in his head. With a cartographer’s care, he measured the distance from navel to rib cage, sternum to clavicle, jaw to brow, fingertips recording the varying textures of his skin: the smooth plain of his stomach, the bumpy ridges of his old burn scars, the dense hair recently grown back on his arms and legs.
Khurshed, for his part, seemed curiously preoccupied with the small patch of loose skin at Echo’s left elbow. Licking it, he mumbled, “I tried Rick’s weed. I might not be much use tonight.”
Echo moved carefully as he straddled Khurshed’s waist, partly out of concern for his back and partly because it had been a while since he’d tried this. Penetration was one of those things that he tended to find too dirty and intimate to really enjoy. But like all his preferences, that varied.
“Echo, that… God…” Khurshed groaned when he was fully sheathed.
Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like not to vary; to be like Khurshed and ache for sex as often as possible with as many people as possible, or to be like Antoine and to never feel carnal desire for anyone. To always know what he wanted.
I know what I want right now. That’s enough. With no light and no sound apart from their laboured breathing, Echo’s mind fixed wholly on the connection between their bodies, recording Khurshed’s every shudder and twitch. I want you. I…
He gave an inarticulate shout when he came. It almost drowned out Khurshed’s, which annoyed him. He took solace in savouring all the small breathless noises Khurshed made in the minutes that followed, as Echo settled at his side to return to the task of mapping him.
“Mmm,” Khurshed murmured after several quiet minutes. “Can I ask you something?”
With a fingertip, Echo wrote the word Yes on his chest.
“What did you see in the cave?
What did the ghosts show you?”
After some thought, Echo wrote, The world before you.
He could never sleep after sex. When Khurshed was snoring, he kissed his brow and slipped away. To burn off the restless energy, he wandered around the ship, passing by the oxygen garden where Khali and Yanmei were peeling off each other’s clothes in the spinach patch. He went outside to find the bonfire extinguished and the festivities dying down, spending a few minutes circling Rick’s crops and staring up at the alien constellations they were in the process of naming. Finally, he went to his own quarters and made a list of chores for the following day. When even that didn’t work, he gave up and went back to Khurshed.
The light was still off, but the room was no longer quiet. Echo detected three distinct snores coming from the mound of bodies piled on the bed, one of which he could attribute to Thomas. Upon prodding each of them in turn, he found that they were all far too drunk to move. He set about rearranging them, pulling off boots and beer-stained clothing in the process so there’d be less laundry to do in the morning. When he’d made a small space between Thomas and Khurshed, he crawled into it and went to sleep.
He woke up in the morning when something soft batted gently against his cheek. Opening his eyes, he found a green cat sleeping inches from his face on Khurshed’s stomach, its tail twitching as it dreamt. Further inspection revealed that none of the others had moved during the night. Thomas was drooling into his hair, his legs entangled with Zachery’s, who was still snoring loudly with Rick sprawled across his chest.
Looking up, Echo admired Khurshed’s face for a moment before noticing Antoine. Fully clothed, he was sitting up in the only available corner of space at the top of the bed, his head resting against the wall. He was holding something Echo couldn’t see from where he was lying, so Echo slithered carefully upwards.
“It’s probably stupid,” Antoine murmured.
What? Echo asked.
“I found this old thing. Not sure what to do with it.”
Antoine passed the ring to him, and Echo rolled it between his fingers. Upon reflection, he reached down and extracted Khurshed’s hand from where it was resting in Thomas’s hair.
