Warren picked his way down to it, past brush festooned with leaves and grass, only food and water and a folding spade for a pack. He used a stick to support his weight on the injured leg, walked slowly and carefully. He set everything down to heave the raft up and dump the water. . . no more care of contamination, he reckoned: it had all had its chance at one time or another, the river, the forest. The second raft was in the crawler upslope, but all he had lost was the paddle, and he went back after that, slow progress, unhurried.
" Anne," he said via com, when he had settled everything in place, when the raft bobbed on the river and his gear was aboard. "I'm at the river. I won't call for a while. A few hours. My status is very good. I'm going to be busy here."
"Yes, Warren."
He cut it off, put it back at his belt, launched the raft.
The far bank had suffered similar damage. He drove for it with some difficulty with the river running high, wet his boots getting himself ashore, secured the raft by pulling it up with the rope, the back part of it still in the water.
The ground in the forest, too, was littered with small branches and larger ones, carpeted with new leaves. But flowers had come into bloom. Everywhere the mosses were starred with white flowers. Green ones opened at the bases of trees. The hanging vines bloomed in pollen-golden rods.
And the fungi proliferated everywhere, fantastical shapes, oranges and blues and whites. The ferns were heavy with water and shed drops like jewels. There were beauties to compensate for the ruin. Drops fell from the high branches when the wind blew, a periodic shower that soaked his hair and ran off his impermeable jacket. Everything seemed both greener and darker, all the growth lusher and thicker than ever.
The grove when he came upon it had suffered not at all, not a branch fallen, only a litter of leaves and small limbs on the grass; and he was glad—not to have lost one of the giants. The old tree's beard was flower-starred, his moss even thicker. Small cuplike flowers bloomed in the grass in the sunlight, a vine having grown into the light, into the way of the abandoned, rain-sodden blanket, the sensor box.
And Sax. . . Warren went to the base of the aged tree and looked inside, found him there, more bone than before, the clothing sodden with the storm, some of the bones of the fingers fallen away. The sight had no horror for him, nothing but sadness. "Sax," he said softly. "It's Warren. Warren here."
From the vacant eyes, no answer. He stood up, flexed the spade out, set to work, spadeful after spadeful, casting the dirt and the leaves inside, into what made a fair tomb, a strange one for a starfarer . . . poor lost Sax, curled up to sleep. The earthen blanket grew up to Sax's knees, to his waist, among the gnarled roots and the bones. He made spadefuls of the green flowers and set them there, at Sax's feet, set them in the earth that covered him, stirring up clouds of pollen. He sneezed and wiped his eyes and stood up again, taking another spadeful of earth and mold. A sound grew in his mind like the bubbling of water, and he looked to his left, where green radiance bobbed. The welcome flowed into him like the touch of warm wind. He ignored it, cast the earth, took another spadeful.
Welcome, it sang to him. The water-sound bubbled. A flower unfolded, tinted itself slowly violet.
"I've work to do."
Sorrow. The color faded.
"I don't want it like the last time. Keep your distance. Stop that." Its straying thoughts brushed him, numbing senses. He leaned on the spade, felt himself sinking, turning and drifting bodilessly—wrenched his mind back to his own control so abruptly he almost fell. Sorrow. A second time a flower, a pale shoot from among the leaves, a folded bud trying to open.
"Work," Warren said. He picked up the spadeful, cast it; and another. Perplexity. The flower folded again, drooped unwatered.
"I have this to do. It's important. And you won't understand that. Nothing of the sort could matter to you."
The radiance grew, pulsed. Suns flickered across a mental sky, blue and black, day and night, in a streaming course.
He leaned on the spade for stability in the blur of days passed. "What's time—to you?" Desire. The radiance took shape and settled on the grass, softly pulsing. It edged closer—stopped at once when he stepped back.
"Maybe you killed Sax. You know that? Maybe he just lay there and dreamed to death." Sorrow. An image formed in his mind, the small sickly creature, all curled up, all its inward motion suddenly stopped.
"I know. You wouldn't have meant it. But it happened." He dug another spadeful of earth. Intervening days unrolled in his mind, thoughts stolen from him, where he had been, what he had done.
It stole the thought of Anne, and it was a terrible image, a curled-up thing like a human, but hollow inside, dark inside, deadly hostile. Her tendrils were dark and icy.
"She's not like that. She's just a machine." He flung the spadeful. Earth showered over bare bone arid began to cover Sax's face. He flinched from the sight. "She can't do anything but take orders. I made her, if you like."
There was horror in the air, palpable.
"She's not alive. She never was."
The radiance became very pale and retreated up into the branches of one of the youngest trees, a mere touch of color in the sunlight. Cold, cold, the terror drifted down like winter rain.
" Don't leave." The spade fell. He stepped over it, held up his hands, threatened with solitude.
"Don't."
The radiance went out. Re-formed near him, drifted up to sit on the aged, fallen tree.
"It's my world. I know it's different. I never wanted to hurt you with it." The greenness spread about him, a darkness in its heart, where two small creatures entwined, their tendrils interweaving, one living, one dead.
"Stop it."
His own mind came back at him: loneliness, longing for companionship; fear of dying alone. Like Sax. Like that. He held deeply buried the thought that the luminance offered a means of dying, a little better than most; but it came out, and the radiance shivered. The Anne-imagetook shape in its heart, her icy tendrils invading the image that was himself, growing, insinuating ice into that small fluttering that was his life, winding through him and out again.
"What do you know?" he cried at it. "What do you know at all? You don't know me. You can't see me, with no eyes; you don't know."
The Anne-imagefaded, left him alone in the radiance, embryo, tucked and fluttering inside. A greenness crept in there, the least small tendril of green, and touched that quickness. Emotion exploded like sunrise, with a shiver of delight. A second burst. He tried to object, felt a touching of the hairs at the back of his neck. He shivered, and the light was gone. Every sense seemed stretched to the limit, heightened, but remote, and he wanted to get up and walk a little distance, knowing even while he did so that it was not his own suggestion. He moved, limping a little, and quite suddenly the presence fled, leaving a light sweat over his body. Pain, it sent. And Peace.
"Hurt, did it?" He massaged his knee and sat down. His own eyes watered. "Serves you right." Sorrow. The greenness unfolded again, filling all his mind but for one small corner where he stayed whole and alert.
"No," he cried in sudden panic, and when it drew back in its own: "I wouldn't mind—if you were content with touching. But you aren't. You can't keep your distance when you get excited. And sometimes you hurt."