“Not a good idea. In the first place we’ll both soon be Outbound. It might be years before we see each other again. In the second place, my modifications inhibit my ability to achieve human intimacy. I’m a lost cause, Nat.”
Natalie shook her head. “You don’t have to drag out your excuses. I know you. I’m just saying how I feel, not asking for anything. And by the way, your mods have nothing to do with intimacy. I’ve known plenty of Womb Hole pilots and I don’t buy the myth that you’re all emotional cripples.”
Michael smiled. He hadn’t been thinking about the mods he’d volunteered to undergo, the ones necessary for Ship State, the ones that at least allowed him a semblance of intimacy, even if it was with a machine consciousness. He had meant the more visceral mods of his psyche, where blackened timbers had risen like pickets in Hell to form the first rudimentary fence around his heart.
“You don’t really know me,” he said.
“Not at this rate, I don’t.
Then the biological crisis on Meropa IV occurred. Vital vaccines needed. Michael’s Ship Tender came up with Kobory Fever, and Natalie, loose on Mars, got the duty. Like some kind of Fate. Michael experienced a burst of pure joy—which he quickly stomped on.
“I don’t see why I had to die,” Natalie said. Was she the real Natalie?
He was back in the hotel, lying flat on the bed. Natalie, having fitted another breathing mask to his face, sat in a chair near the window. Except it appeared she wasn’t sitting in a chair at all, but on a tangle of thick roots growing out of the floor. He had just told her about the movie.
“You were saving me,” he said.
“I’m saving you now,” she said. “Or trying to. You’ve got to get off your ass and participate.”
Michael felt heavy.
“And in this version I don’t die,” Natalie said.
She led him out of the hotel room, which quickly became something other than an hotel room. As his head cleared the vine-tangle wallpaper popped out in three dimensions, the floor became soft, spongy. The light shifted to heavily screened pink/green. Flying insects buzzed his sweaty face. A locus of pain began rhythmically stabbing behind his right eye.
“The atmosphere is drugged with hallucinogenic vapors from the plants,” Natalie said. “They want you here, but they don’t want you to know where ‘here’ is.”
“Who wants me?”
“They. The jungle. The sentient life on this planet. It’s gynoecious, by the way, and it’s been sweeping open space, seeking first contact. They detected you and Mona and evidently became entranced by the possibilities of companion male energy. Frankly, they have a point.”
“Where the hell do you get all that?”
“I asked. Or Mona did, actually. She’s been frantically investigating language possibilities since you disappeared. They communicate telepathically.”
Natalie led him through a sort of tunnel made from over-arching branches. They had to duck their heads.
“Wait.” He grabbed her arm. She turned, a curl of dark red hair flipping over her eye. “Did you bring a weapon?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Well, where is it?”
“They sort of disarmed me.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry. We’re getting out of here. As long as you’re not breathing the air they can’t mess you up too much. I think they’ll let us leave. I have a theory. Now let’s keep moving. It isn’t far to the ship.”
They emerged from the tunnel. The ship was there, but they were cut off from it by a wall of the tree-things, the crooked things with hungry amber eyes. They encircled the ship, knobby limbs entwined to form a barrier.
“You were saying?” Michael said, straightening his back. “Anyway, have Mona fly the ship over.”
“I can’t. Mona was hinky about landing after your Drop Ship sank. Also, I think they got into her head and spooked her. I had to engage the emergency override, same as you did.”
“Wonderful.”
“At least the security repulsion field is keeping them away from the ship.”
“At least.”
Hands on her hips, Natalie appraised the situation. After a minute she touched the com button on her wrist and spoke into it.
“Mona, we need help. Send the Proxy to clear a path.”
The aft hatch swung up and the Proxy appeared. It climbed down and disappeared behind the tree-things. A moment later the circle tightened. There was a the flash and pop of a blaster discharge. One of the tree things erupted in flame. It stumped out of the ring and stood apart, burning. The others closed in. A violent disturbance occurred. There were no further blasts. The Proxy’s torso arced high over the line, dull metal skin shining. It clanked once when it hit the ground. The line resumed it’s stillness.
“It’s a female jungle, all right,” Michael said. “Care to reveal your famous theory?”
Natalie held his hand. “We’re walking through,” she said.
“Just like that.”
“Yes. If we’re together they’ll let us. I mean really together.”
“That’s your theory?”
“Basically. Mike, trust me.”
They started walking. When they came to the Proxy’s torso, Michael held her back.
“I’ll go through alone,” he said. “If I make it to the ship I’ll lift off and pick you up in the clear.”
He tried to pull his hand free but she wouldn’t let go.
“No,” she said.
“Nat—”
“No. Don’t you see? If you go alone they’ll take you again. If I go alone they’ll rip me apart like the Proxy.”
“And if we go together?”
“If we go together they… will see.”
“See what?”
“That you aren’t solo, that somebody else is already claiming your male companion energy, another of your own species. Unlike Mona, whom they felt justified in severing you from. They know I’m imprinted in your psyche. You said yourself they always used my name. You just have to stop fighting us.”
Michael scratched his cheek, which was whiskered after a few days in the sentient jungle. Natalie squeezed his hand.
“Mike?”
“No.”
“We have to move.”
“It’s too risky.”
“Come on. It’s now or never.”
He felt himself collapsing inside, and then the old detachment. The cold, necessary detachment. She saw it in his eyes and let go of his hand.
“I’ll go through myself, then,” she said, and started walking forward.
He grabbed her arm.
“You just said they’d tear you apart.”
“I’m already torn apart,” she said.
“Don’t, Nat. Let’s think about this.”
“Just let me go, okay? You don’t want me. I get it.”
He held on. “There has to be another way to the ship.”
She pulled loose.
“I might get through. Wish me luck.”
“Nat—”
A cringing, huddled piece of him behind the cold wall stood up, trembling.
Natalie again started for the picket line of tree-things, walking quickly, leaving Michael standing where he was.
The tree-things reacted, reaching for her.
Michael got to her first and pulled her back into his arms. “Damn it,” he said. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
They lifted out of the jungle, accelerating until they achieved orbit. He sat tandem behind Natalie in the narrow cockpit of the Drop Ship.
“You really like to force the issue,” he said.