He had to get away.
He could fly. By pumping his legs he built something, compressions, something, underneath. He went up. Three trees stood apart from the forest. The younger one seized on. He tried to dislodge her before the cruel one came.
"Come. Come."
She was almost gentle, but there was the older one, clamping onto his bare thigh, making herself one huge mouth which sucked, buried itself leech-like in the thin pad of flesh over his hip joint. Pain. Not blood being sucked but something more vital. They were bearing him down, weighting him, ending the flying. Almost reluctantly the young one ceased being a woman and became that leech-mouth feeding on something vital, digging hurtingly into the flesh over the opposite hip joint, and he was going, hearing them more clearly, although there were no words.
"Come. Come."
Brownness. Brown sand and water somewhere, and they were sapping him, the sucking maws obscene, evil, limpets clinging as if to wet rock, impossible to displace although his fingers dug and dug into his own skin and got a nailhold under the soft one, the young one who exuded that feeling of near empathy.
He did not want to go. He had things to do. She, the younger one, was also reluctant, not liking what she was doing to him. She was the weaker of the two, weaker than the sucking, strong, cruel mother-thing which made the brown come near with her enervating bite. He screamed in pain. His fingers dug until, with a sucking sound, the younger one let go and was in his hand, a thing, unidentifiable but alive and sinister, pulsing, red maw underneath.
No. He would not go. Man conquers. Man, all men, materialized in him, reminding him of his mission. With a final, wrenching effort, he displaced the other thing which had existed, once, in the guise of woman. The two things in his hands fought. He knew his time was short, measured in seconds, although all was timeless as he forced the two sucking things maw to maw and felt them shudder as mutual force destroyed them. He had won.
He could fly again.
Lift under him, tired, not able to fly as he once could fly, he saw the water underneath. The things were melting, but still living. He could see their gory hearts hanging like melting ice. The water was the place for them, far out. But he could not make it. The calm water was close. The younger one was thinking, feeling. Her being alive terrified him.
"Come. Come."
He cast them, bound together by their own force, into the smooth water, and then he was sinking. He fell only feet from them. The shore was near. He swam. He could hear the younger one calling.
"Come. Come."
Mindless.
Ahead of him in the smooth, perfumed water, was the broad, flat back of a Bolun, familiar, ancient, kept alive, some eons past, by love and daily medication. Old, fine, loved pet. He put him to sleep, the finest Bolun in the system, and he cried. The Bolun knew what was happening. After dozens of trips to the veterinarian, the Bolun knew what was happening, for he’d never complained before, never wept that howling wail before. The Bolun had struggled against needles and rectum worm checks and parasite removal and all such indignities, but he knew that this was more than just one more needle. It wouldn’t hurt going into the tough, fight-scarred scruff of the neck, but the Bolun knew that this was the final needle, and the world’s finest Bolun howled because his friend didn’t have the guts to stay there and watch him die. Howl in his ears going out the door with tears forming in his eyes, and ahead of him in the perfumed water the broad, fat, black back, swimming. How could it be? And the young thing calling.
"Come. Come."
Far down the light-lined tunnel were the doors to the universe. He screamed and reached for them, his arm stretching, stretching, falling short. Inside those doors, warmth, love, safety.
"He got away."
"Who got away?"
"Him."
His hand went through the doors. All he ever wanted was inside, all of it there. Behind him the water. He turned his head and listened. A keening in his ears. Musical.
"Come. Come." The dark voice under the music.
He knew who he was not by name, not by identity, and there it all was behind him inside the doors, and he could open them, only his hand went through the doorknob, and out there were the things from which he’d escaped, and the water had not always been perfumed. The water was timeless until it began to boil and steam as a world died. The mad, grasping, deadly feel of it.
The brown coming back, misty, and he could no longer fly, and if the things were not to take him, then what? He had escaped to what?
Chapter Eight
To unbearable pain. To perfumed water being sprinkled on his lips. To fever and heat and a burning sun and drenching rains and endless pain and the taste of an alien sweetness as he opened his mouth, seeing his action from a distance, eyes closed, feeling it. A twittering, keening musical presence. Breeze fanned into his burning face and the festering of the terrible wound and the raw hurt of his hip joints and a weakness.
He screamed soundlessly, for he knew the room, the long, cold room with steel cabinets. The needles to draw fluid from lifeless bodies. The first expedition, racked by internal explosion, body parts strewn, the ship towed home and the parts gathered and boxed in steel cases and embalmed, since no one knew the force which destroyed them and autopsy was necessary.
His strong body fighting the wounds. Mind imprisoned. Fighting to be free, but weakened by the total war his cells fought against the infections. Boji, Boji, fat, black Bolun.
Perfumed water, pure, alien. And the alien sweetness. Mouth dry, swallowing. Body wastes accumulating. Unable to move. Stinking. Sun after sun.
"The goddamned sensors failed!" Terror. Feverish activity. The rumble of the engines.
Wham!
Soundless scream as walls buckled, compartments burst. The ring of impact at speed.
"Brake, Rei. Full brake."
Birds. No. Insects. Beautiful. Lovely eyes. Tiny. Twittering. Long, flexible lips on tiny faces. The sprinkle of sweetness.
And his body fighting, strong, healthy, fantastically versatile in healing itself. Endless suns and the cooling rain and the washing away of filth and the sound of children’s voices fading into that tuneless, musical keening and wings beating like giant moths and a part of his mind alive, now.
He tried to focus his eyes. His lips moved. A croaking sound which stopped the musical twittering.
They were dead.
All of them, dead, and with them had died hope and the excitement of discovery. The first men to find an alien civilization and all dead. Free electrons floating on the surface of a sun.
It was clear. He could not see, but it was clear. The impact had ripped the engineering section, taking three men with the shattered bits of rock and metal which burst into free space. The panel erupting in his face, a long, hot sliver piercing him. Juanna screaming, "Suits!" Suits mandatory on planetary approach, but Juanna holed by a rock which penetrated the hull as if it were so much soft flesh, her blood spewing as she was exposed to hard vacuum.
The engines, the remaining port-side pair, screaming, failing as servos went with the rain of space debris. And the sun ahead. His suit patch, automated, holding. Bleeding inside the suit, the warm fluid sinking to his feet and wetting them until, with concentration, he closed the veins and hit the engines, screaming, "Start, damn you. Start."
Screaming into the dead communications system. "Engines!" No answer. A dimming scanner showing the gutted compartment and a smear of red on the jagged edge of the gaping hole in the hull.