Asimov's SF, June 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  In just a few minutes they're past being located by anyone brave enough or stupid enough to follow. They squeeze through this small opening instead of that one a dozen times; each opening swishes softly closed behind them. In some places Caitlin crawls over real grass, but the grass seems dead. Noise ceases the deeper they go, except for their own breathing. Dim green light suffuses everything from above, no brighter than Josh's flashlight but uniform. The smell is neither good nor bad but very strong, the musky odor of something like mushrooms, underlaid with a sharp, not unpleasant spice that tingles in her upper nose.

  “Okay, stop,” Seena pants. “They can't ... get us ... here.”

  Caitlin puts her head between her knees. They crouch in a sort of small clearing, except it isn't “clear.” Vines blot out the sky, twine across the jungle floor, sway all around them. It's like being inside a writhing ball of yarn.

  “What is this?” Josh says, and, at the question, Caitlin feels her mind steady. She clings desperately to logic as the only thing she recognizes about herself, or the situation. What have they done? The Institute was at least safe, at least known. While this...

  “It's supposed to be February,” she says rapidly. “This isn't February in Manhattan. So either this isn't Manhattan or it is and ... and something happened. When we were taken.”

  The word surprises her: taken. Yet that seems right, and all at once Caitlin has an image of herself in a deep cellar, a room with no windows and shelves lined with jars and a fruity smell like jam ... the image vanishes.

  Josh and Seena stare at her, but not with complete incomprehension.

  Seena says slowly, “I remember being ... taken. Some of it, anyway.” Her voice speeds up, vomiting out the words as if it were breakfast. “I was gaining weight at the Institute and I hate that so I stopped eating and they made me, so I puked it up and that's when my memories started to return. It's like they put something in the food to make us forget!”

  “As part of the treatment for Cathcart Syndrome?” Josh says.

  “There is no Cathcart! There never was! Ask Caitlin! She's the smart one!”

  Josh turns to her. “You never see any projections?”

  Caitlin is suddenly aware of danger: She might get Josh angry at her. She might damage the improbable bond between her and Seena, based solely on their agreement about the so-called “Cathcart Syndrome.” Worst, she might have to be honest, which always made you too vulnerable, almost as vulnerable as love. She can't take that chance.

  But ... Josh's green eyes reflect all the green around them. The vine-jungle is so soft, so thornless, that nothing ripped his tee, but in places soft green pulp smears it, looking like guacamole. His blond hair falls over his forehead, which glistens with sweat from the incredible heat. His clothes cling to his gorgeous body. He gazes directly into her eyes.

  “I see projections,” she says slowly. “I just told the doctors I didn't.”

  “Why?” He sounds genuinely puzzled, and the wave of reluctance in Caitlin's mind crests into a tsunami. If they are all runaways, why should Josh trust the authorities at the Institute so much? Why would he be so puzzled that Caitlin doesn't?

  She says, “I didn't tell Dr. Jensen because I wasn't really sure. I only ever saw my ... my projections just after I woke up, and I thought they might just be dreams. I'm still not sure.”

  He gazes at her steadily. They both know she is lying.

  Seena says peevishly, “Isn't anybody interested in what I just remembered?”

  “Of course we are.” Caitlin turns to her in relief.

  “Okay. I was living in this little city in Virginia, Suwaquahua, and sleeping in a, like, abandoned tunnel or something near the highway. It was a good squat. Then I was woke up by this flash of light and I thought—fuck me, I really did—that somebody dropped a bomb. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is me, dying in a nuclear blast, big deal,’ and then I started to cry—”

  Caitlin tries to picture Seena in tears, and fails. Seena—tough, bony Seena, with that edge that Caitlin envies and covets, the edge that lets you take risks and damn the consequences—Seena, crying in a tunnel either because she was going to die or because she wasn't. And Seena now, sitting cross-legged in this impossible jungle, her red tee a spot of color among the green and her bikini panties negligently exposing as much as they covered, bringing out the memory as if it were just another day of Group, of one-on-one, of in-facility school and bells for bedtime.

  “I crawled out of the tunnel an hour after the big light. Maybe longer, I dunno. And everybody was gone. Almost everybody. I saw somebody a block away in front of the bakery, but he saw me and just ran. So I run around going, ‘What the fuck! What the fuck!’ and then the buildings, they ... they...”

  “What?” Josh says. His eyes are now fastened on Seena, and Caitlin feels jealousy uncoil in her stomach.

  “The buildings start to crumble. Yeah, crumble into some sort of powder but not all at once, just getting softer at first and flaking off like dandruff. So I run into this open area full of weeds and broken glass and shit, and I stay there where nothing can fall on me and watch Suwaquahua just ... just...”

  Josh puts his hand on Seena's arm. She shakes it off and glares at him. He says, “Sorry. Go on.”

  She shrugs, once more the Seena that Caitlin knows. “Ain't any more ‘on.’ I stayed there until the city was gone and the sky was full of planes and helicopters and fuck-all, and goons in hazmat suits picked me up. And then the assholes at the Institute made me forget all of it.”

  Caitlin considers Seena's story. A whole city that just crumbled away ... some sort of advanced terrorist weapon? Is that even possible?

  None of this is possible.

  Josh says to Seena, “And your projections? You always made up stuff, nothing real.”

  Seena's glare deepens. “Why the fuck do you care about my projections?”

  Josh smacks one fist into his other hand, a gesture so violent that Caitlin jumps, backing into a thick, looping vine. Josh shouts, “We have to survive out here or go back—don't you get that? Any information at all might help! How the fuck do I know what information we need to understand this mess?”

  “Okay, okay, don't come in your shorts! Jeez! I see the same four people, that's all. An old lady in a rocking chair, two kids dressed real old-timey, and a man carrying a shovel. He's dressed like some dumb history play, too. Now tell me how that's going to help us!”

  “I don't know,” Josh says. “Like I said, I don't know what will help. But we need to figure this thing out. I told in Group what my projections are. Caitlin?”

  His green eyes gaze at her, but not angry as they were with Seena. Josh is gentle again, his face beseeching. Something turns over in Caitlin's chest.

  He takes her hand.

  Danger.

  She says, “I only saw my projections once, just as I woke up, and I think they were just dreams.”

  “What dreams?”

  “How can dreams help us?”

  “We don't know that yet.” Still gentle but still just out of reach, tantalizing her. Suddenly Caitlin is angry. He is just one more of the million things in the universe that she can never have.

  She says, “Only two people, a boy in jeans and sweatshirt and a woman with a baby. Maybe the woman was my mother.”

  Josh drops her hand.

  He says, “We're either still in Manhattan or we're not, so—”

  Seena interrupts him with “No way this is Manhattan!”

  Josh doesn't answer and Caitlin sees the moment that Seena gets it. Seena says, “You mean this is what Manhattan turned into, that it got nuked just like Suwaquahua.”

  “We don't know,” Josh says.

  Caitlin doesn't think there had been any nuke, but she keeps quiet, having nothing better to offer. Despite the heat, her hand that Josh dropped feels cold. He says, “I think our best bet is just to crawl in a straight line until we get out of whatever this jungle is. To someplace that isn't jungle.”


  Seena says, “How are we gonna keep to a straight line?”

  Josh shows them the tiny compass set into the head of his flashlight.

  Seena shrugs. “Okay. I guess it's a chance.”

  For what? Caitlin thinks but doesn't say. She wants to be back inside the Institute. She wants Josh to hold her hand again. She wants this day to begin over. “Call back yesterday, bid time return....”

  She follows Seena into the jungle.

  * * * *

  Hours later, hours of crawling under vines, climbing over vines, pushing aside vines, exhausts all of them. They escaped from the Institute after dawn but before breakfast, and by now it must be late afternoon. Caitlin's stomach rumbles with hunger.

  “Too bad that gizmo of yours doesn't have a machete, too,” Seena mutters. “We're resting now, macho man.” In two minutes she's asleep.

  Eventually Josh sleeps, too. Caitlin hears him snore, surprisingly deep and loud. She can't sleep. Every muscle aches. She lies on her back, looking up at the layers and layers of vines and branches and soft pulpy leaves, and all at once she wonders why they haven't just climbed as high as they can to see how far the jungle extends. Why hadn't Josh suggested that?

  Why didn't she?

  Seena moans in her sleep. Josh snores louder, flat on his back. Then rain starts, pattering softly on vegetation, and Caitlin sits up. She rolls a leaf into a cup, waits for it to collect several dozen drops, and drinks. The leaf unrolls. On its wet, glistening surface, Caitlin sees the man.

  Only it's not a man. It's ... something else.

  She bites her tongue to keep from crying out. The image, wavery and green from the leaf behind, is the head and bust of a pale creature with two eyes, no nose, and a siphon where a mouth should be. The head rises to a single horn like a rhinoceros, but the eyes are not those of a beast. Large, pink, with dark pupils flecked with green.

  Fingers trembling, Caitlin shreds the leaf. The rain keeps falling. She closes her eyes, picks another, and holds it so it will coat with water.

  This time the image is more blurry, a smear of green-tinged color, but by turning the leaf this way and that she can make it out: the man in eighteenth-century knee breeches and silver brocade waistcoat. He's partly turned away from Caitlin and she can't see his expression. She blinks to focus her vision, and when she opens her eyes again, Josh is staring at her.

  “This leaf,” she says, holding it out to him, “do you think it's edible? I'm so hungry.”

  “Don't risk it,” he says softly. “We don't know if it's poison. Caitlin, come with me ... please?”

  He's up and worming his way through the vines. Caitlin follows; she can't help herself. No more than ten steps and the thick curtain of vines hides Seena. Josh stops in another clearing, much smaller than the first, and sits. There's barely room to fit both of them. He says, “I've been thinking about what Seena told us.”

  “Yeah?” She can smell his sweat, his hair. She feels dizzy.

  “What if we aren't in Manhattan but they brought us to Suwaquahua ... to what Suwaquahua became after the people mostly vanished and the buildings crumbled and this bloom started.”

  Bloom. The word makes Caitlin think of roses in a June garden. But Josh means something else, more like deadly algae on the ocean. She says, “Why would the government put a mental institution for kids right in the middle of the bloom?”

  “I don't know.”

  “That doesn't make sense.”

  “I guess not. Nothing makes sense. Caitlin ... I don't want to die.”

  She doesn't want to die either, but says nothing.

  “I especially don't want to die a virgin.”

  She goes still. More still—she thought she was motionless before but this is something much different, a halt in time itself, a caesura in the universe. Rain, filtered through leaves and vines and spiced air, patters on her bowed head.

  Josh reaches for her.

  Gently he pushes her onto her back, undoes the buttons on her soggy pajama top. Caitlin closes her eyes. If she looks at him, she will shatter. If she stays quiet, she will shatter. So she whispers, “Seena ... she's so beautiful....”

  “It's you I want. Oh, Caitlin...”

  He slides down her pajama bottoms, wads them beneath her ass. His fingers touch and probe her but very gently, and for a long time, until she feels warmth and wetness where they have never been before. When he slides into her, there is only a brief second of pain and then pleasure again. Later, after he's finished, he doesn't stop touching her until the pleasure crests and Caitlin cries out, clinging to him, tears flowing from her still closed eyes.

  She can't believe this is happening. Not to her.

  He cradles her as they lie together. She wishes he would tell her ... what? About himself, how someone who looks like him could still be a virgin, how he knew to ... but Josh's mind is still on the bloom. He says drowsily, “If this is Suwaquahua ... if Cathcart Syndrome ... God, I wish I had more information. For instance, why you don't see any projections at all, sweet Caitlin?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You really really don't?”

  “No.” She doesn't want to talk about this. She wants him to say he's in love with her, or at least that he liked sex with her. Instead, he falls asleep again.

  Well, she's read that men do that after making love. Making love—the phrase seems so adult, so much something she never thought would be connected with her. She wants him to want her again. She wants to please him and is terrified that she won't, that he won't continue to want her. She will do anything to keep his arms around her, anything.

  “Josh,” she whispers, ‘I think I took AP science courses. I remember a lot of physics.”

  He doesn't stir. When he wakes, she will tell him. About her projections, about spacetime, about the theory that has been growing in her mind. She and Josh and Seena might die here, and this is all she has to give. In the rainy green light, even his profile is beautiful, sharp and strong as a Roman statue, an Egyptian god.

  Caitlin knows she's being sentimental but she doesn't care.

  Ten steps away, Seena screams.

  By the time they reach her, Seena has gone rigid on the jungle floor. Her eyes are wide open, staring upward. Her body looks like concrete. Josh, who got there first because Caitlin took seconds to put her pajamas back on and all he had to do was pull up his shorts, kneels between Seena and Caitlin. He is shining his miniature flashlight inside her mouth. “Got to keep her from swallowing her tongue!”

  It doesn't look to Caitlin as if Seena could ever swallow anything again. But after a few moments Seena's body relaxes. Josh withdraws the flashlight. Seena moans, twitches, opens her eyes.

  “You're okay now,” Josh says. He stands.

  Seena scowls. “'Now?’ What happened?”

  Caitlin says, “You had a fit.”

  “I don't have fucking fits!” Seena is furious at the mere suggestion. She gets to her feet, glaring at them both. Darkness starts to gather.

  “It's okay,” Josh says soothingly. “Maybe you just cried out in your sleep.”

  “I don't do that either, asshole!”

  “Yeah, I know. You're one tough chick.” He says it so comically, in such mock terror, that reluctantly Seena laughs.

  “I am. And don't you forget it.”

  “No chance. So what do we do now, tough chick? Your call.”

  Seena considers. The greenish light is almost gone. “Can't do anything until tomorrow, except sleep some more. Shit, I'm so hungry. Caitie, you okay?”

  “Yes,” Caitlin says. She wants to sleep beside Josh, their hands touching, their thighs pressed together. But he says “Bathroom break,” and vanishes into the bloom.

  Seena grumbles, “How can he piss when he hasn't drunk anything? God, I am tired. Still.”

  She lies down. So does Caitlin. When Josh returns, he curls up as far from both of them as he can get in the little clearing, and Caitlin lies in the total, impenetrable dark feel
ing her heart split along its seam.

  It is hours, years, eons before she can sleep.

  * * * *

  Josh and Seena are gone.

  The jungle is still dark and silent. No insects, no birds. Time stretches like taffy. But eventually Caitlin sees the thin beam of light, hears them creep back into the clearing. Josh whispers something, unintelligible. Seena gives a muffled laugh. Her voice is louder than his: “...terrific in the sack, Josh.”

  Caitlin says, “I'm awake.”

  They both pause.

  Caitlin says clearly, “Seena, what happened when you were first taken to the Institute?”

  Seena says, “What?”

  “You heard me. When you were first taken to the Institute, where were you and what did you see?”

  “Caitie, what's wrong with you, girl? You know none of us remember that shit!”

  Caitlin looks at Josh. “It was in the flashlight, wasn't it? The flashlight you just happened to have when there just happened to be a black-out. The flashlight with a compass and enough of that drug to keep the patients from recalling too much, because they go catatonic when they do, right? Like Seena did, like all those ones you doctors lost when you first started messing with our so-called ‘projections'—”

  “He's no doctor, he's a patient like us!” Seena says. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “He's no patient,” Caitlin says. “But you're right, he's no doctor either.” She feels almost like two people, one watching the other with astonishment, eyeing this Caitlin who can talk in such a dead-quiet voice even as her guts collapse in her belly. “What are you, Josh? An actor, a pro? Playing the role of a patient, and willing to do anything for a certain kind of information. Including sex with both of us.” Caitlin might have been a virgin, but she read books. Josh's control, his intimate knowledge of how to make a girl ready....

  Seena makes a strangled noise.

  “Why is it so important that Seena and I tell you our projections? What do you suspect we see that you haven't been able to get out of Roth, or poor stupid Pam, or Seth, or any of the others rotting away someplace before you found a drug that blocked memory?”