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 areyou?" 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 Anneback 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 was 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?"