Kudzu, Chapter 28

Tags

book 4, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 28

Sir Reginald assessed the raccoon as he tapped his pipe against his boot, spilling soft, white ash on the ground. A tendril of kudzu grew toward the ashes, twisting across dirt, investigating. It lay across the pile and extended roots into it.

“I presume we’ve met, then,” Sir Reginald said.

“Very funny.” The raccoon tucked its glasses back into its pouch and clambered down the wall.

Kevyn glowered at Sir Reginald. “You seem to have everything figured out, don’t you?” She stepped out of a loop of kudzu that had begun to encircle her foot.

The raccoon limped across the clearing. A long stripe of missing fur ran from under its rib cage across its left haunch, almost to the base of its tail. It sat upright when it reached Sir Reginald and raised a paw to slap against his palm. As it stretched, the fur on its torso parted, revealing a vicious scar. It looked like the poor creature had been disemboweled, and then stitched back together inexpertly; the scar was a deep furrow that gouged through muscle and, very possibly, bone.

Kevyn gasped. Looking away quickly, she covered her mouth and blushed.

The raccoon glanced at her. Its lips pulled back in an opened-mouthed smile, tongue protruding goofily: the raccoon expression of amusement. “The stories I could tell,” it said, retrieving its spectacles. “Good times, good times.”

“Good times? It looks like you almost died!”

“The world writes her history on our flesh. Some of us are blessed with the interesting bits.” It wiped its glasses on a soft cloth and settled them on its snout.

It looked like it was about to launch into lecture when it caught sight of the abducted guard, who had been examining the kudzu-choked tunnel that led back to the prison.

“Niamh? Niamh Murphy?”

Murphy looked up at the raccoon. “How do…?”

The raccoon launched itself at her, covering the space between them before anyone could react. Murphy had just enough time to straighten up before it leapt at her. It struck her chest, and they both tumbled to the ground.

Sir Reginald was reaching for the scruff of its neck when he realized it wasn’t an attack. The raccoon was licking Murphy’s face, like she was a long lost kit, and Murphy’s terror dissolved into splutters.

“Ahem,” Sir Reginald said.

The raccoon glanced at him, and abruptly sat up on Murphy’s chest.

“Fuck me,” it said. “This is…” It realized where it was sitting, and leapt off her immediately. Pulled at her arm to help her get up. “This is so embarrassing. It’s just… It’s been so long, and we’ve missed you so much, and… And what are you doing in those awful clothes?”

Murphy sat up, wiping raccoon saliva from her face.

The raccoon took a step back, and a deep breath, and then bowed.

“Welcome home,” it said.

~

Susan was a rumpled, silvery robot, stomping mechanically toward the airlock. Jaworsky hurried after her as fast as he dared. They didn’t speak, and Amelia was keeping a respectful silence. Presumably Tharp’s mic was still on mute.

Susan’s breath came in short bursts through her nose; Jaworsky knew the sound of it, and he worried she’d hyperventilate. In the suit, in a vacuum, it could be a dangerous thing.

He wondered if she could hear his teeth grinding.

He half expected Tharp to be waiting for them on the other side of the air-lock, but he was blessedly absent. They changed out of their suits in silence. It wasn’t until they were getting in the elevator that Jarworsky spoke.

“‘Melia, we’re in. Where’s Tharp?”

“He’s here.”

“‘Kay. We’re on our way.”

“Fuck that,” Susan said. “I don’t want to be anywhere near you fucks. I’m going to bed.” She crossed her arms and kicked the wall, almost sending herself across the elevator in the low gravity.

Jaworsky clicked off his mic. He grabbed Susan’s shirt and pressed her against the wall, just long enough to turn off her mic.

“Listen,” he said, “I get that you’re sad. I get that you want to crawl in a hole and pretend the world don’t suck. We’re all sad, and I gotta tell you, I liked Slim a whole fuck’a lot better’n you liked Ash. We’re fighting against… Don’t fucking roll your eyes at me. We’re fighting the fucking clock here, and we have a lot of work to do if we’re going to survive.”

Susan shook her head. “I don’t care.”

“Jesus. I don’t care if you don’t care. We don’t have time for this shit. You can play the privileged brat all you want when we’re done. Hell, if you still want to die, I’ll shove you out the fucking airlock myself. But you don’t get to take Amelia with your selfish, self-centered ass.”

“I am not…”

The elevator door whispered open. Susan looked both ways down the hall, before she spoke again.

“I’m not—”

“Selfish. Or self-centered. Yeah, yeah. Heard it all before.”

“You’re not being—”

“Fair? Never said I was. C’mon.”

~

Amelia paced the control panel, up and down each of the planks that had been jury rigged to it, hopping down into the pilot’s chair and then back onto the board.

“Try them again,” Tharp said.

She wanted to claw his eyes out.

She tried the comms again. Nothing from either Earl or Susan, like they’d dropped off the ship.

“Nothing, sir,” she said.

“What about the elevator? What’s it doing? Where is it?”

“That data isn’t available.”

“Why the hell not? Why does nothing on this heap work?”

Because someone couldn’t remember his administrator password. Amelia held her tongue. Mostly.

“Is that a rhetorical question? Sir?”

Tharp’s lips tightened in anger.

The door beeped, announcing that it was opening. Jaworsky and Susan stood framed in the hallway’s florescence.

Tharp turned to face them.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

Jaworsky’s fist crashed into Tharp’s face. Tharp stumbled backwards against the captain’s chair and tumbled to the ground. Blood poured from his mouth and nose. He spat out a tooth.

Jaworsky examined his hand.

“Probably hurts like a motherfucker to talk right now, so I’ll save you the effort. Slim is dead. So’s Ash. And they’re dead because of you. Because instead of trying to save your crew, you wanted to save yourself.”

He looked at the screens.

“How much time do we have before we’re too far away to get back?”

“Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour.”

“That’s not enough time. If we stop our drift now, where does that put us?”

“Just stopping us from getting farther will use most of our fuel.” Amelia chewed on a foreclaw.

“Do it. Get us moving back into the kudzu, but as slowly as you can. We’ll need as much time as we can get.”

“Aye, aye, Captain, sir.”

“Don’t put this shit on me,” Jaworsky snapped. “I’m just the guy that knows how the ship works. Soon as we’re clear of this mess, someone with brains gets to take over.”

He poked Amelia’s shoulder. She blinked in confusion.

“What? Oh, no. I’d be a terrible captain.”

“We don’t fucking have time for this converstation right now,” Jaworsky said.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll say no later.”

Susan cleared her throat. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you get me the ship’s schematics?”

“Yeah. Give me five. I’ll put them up in the conference room, ‘kay?”

Jaworsky nodded, and Susan took off at a run.

The hull trembled as the engines kicked in.

Tharp got to his feet. He spat a mouthful of blood, clenched and unclenched his fists. For a second, Amelia thought he might actually try to fight Jaworsky, but then he sighed, and his shoulders relaxed. He looked almost relieved.

“What about me? What can I do?”

Jaworsky looked at his knuckles. “You wanna be useful? Go get some bandages. I cut my hand.”

Sadly, no raccoons today

Well, it’s been a long 3 weeks, during which time I’ve managed to write nothing. Not entirely true – I have about a quarter of the next chapter written. But between travel for work, two weeks of a miserable head cold, repeated attempts (and failures) to actually get xmas shopping done, and all the other joy that comes with the season, well, there hasn’t been a lot of brain left string words together in any coherent way.

Today may actually be the real turning point – I’ve hardly had more than a dozen coughing fits. Chapter 28 has to wait until next Sunday. I’ll try to make it worth the wait.

Bernie

Kudzu, Chapter 27

Tags

book 4, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 27

Phosphorescent kudzu leaves flashed by as Michael fell. Like falling elevators, he thought. Like cars rushing past each other on a foggy night. Water fell with him, the drops coalescing into streams, and breaking apart into spray.

When he’d signed on to the Triton mission, he’d had to read twenty-three pages of disclaimers and warnings, all the possible ways he could be killed or maimed spelled out in gruesome detail in fine print. He’d had to read each and every bulleted point, and then initial it.

He was pretty sure falling to his death in a pit made entirely of kudzu was not on that list.

Either he was drifting, his course shifting as he fell, bringing him closer to the wall of the tunnel, or the tunnel curved — ever so slightly — toward him. The difference was academic. Michael tried to emulate videos he’d seen of skydivers in freefall, controlling how fast they were falling and what direction they were going with their limbs. He spread his arms and legs, hoping to get himself away from the wall.

Too close.

His right hand caught on a vine, sending him spinning. The tethering vine wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides.

He realized he was screaming.

Then he hit—.

~

Water filled the air around Colleen.

Where did it go?

Same place she and Michael were going: down. Which meant there had to be some sort of pool at the bottom, didn’t it?

The vine connecting her to Michael was taut; Colleen used it to maneuver her body, getting her feet below her. She pointed her toes, just in time to cut through the water.

The water tore at her skin, her clothes. Rushed up her nose. She rose to the roiling, swirling surface, spluttering. Water crashed down on her head, but already a current pulled her, out from under the cataract and downstream.

It would be pulling Michael, too, assuming he was still attached to the other end of the rope vine. The water rushed through a wide tunnel, a twisting rapids full of unexpected turns and precipitous drops, cascading over thick intersecting vines and roots, and once — Colleen was pretty sure — the rusting hull of an old spaceship.

Colleen tugged herself along the rope, hand over hand, trying to get closer to Michael.

He had to be alive. He had to.

But when she reached him, she couldn’t tell. He was all tangled up in the rope, and unresponsive. His head lolled in the water. She struggled to keep his mouth and nose above the surface. The crashing, swirling current forced them both under as she fought to hold on.

Finally, the rapids spilled them out into a wide, placid lake. Colleen wasn’t sure how deep the water was, but the ceiling was low, almost close enough for her to reach. Bunches of purple berries hung down to the surface, or brushed the top of her head as they drifted by. The light-leaves looked like ghostly lanterns, reflected in soft ripples on the surface.

Michael was breathing.

But not conscious. She tread water, holding Michael’s inert body against hers, and tried to untangle him from the vine. All she managed to do was dunk herself a few times. Eventually, she settled on just pulling up the slack in the vine so it wouldn’t get caught on anything.

As she gathered the vine to her, she felt a sudden tug, almost pulling it from her grasp. She froze, but it didn’t repeat, not until she started gathering again. This time, the vine yanked out of her hand, and she had visions of her and Michael getting dragged under the surface. But again, nothing happened once she held still.

Something splashed, somewhere behind her.

She spun in the water to look, but whatever it was had vanished, leaving only ripples.

Fruit falling from the vine?

Something brushed the back of her legs.

Colleen bit back a scream.

In the dim light, the water was black under the reflecting surface. Colleen took a deep, shuddering breath and ducked her head under. She looked around, but as clear and clean as the water was, it was too dark to see far. She lifted her head for a breath of air, and looked again.

Something flickered through the water, a flash of silver and gold at the edge of her vision. Something big.

Colleen fought panic. She couldn’t control her trembling, or the shallow, rapid breaths, but she managed to make her legs do what she wanted, to keep them from thrashing like a wounded thing.

Holding Michael’s limp body to her, she kicked slow and steady, calmly following the current, wherever it might lead.

~

Niamh Murphy’s lips pressed tight as she watched the kudzu fill the tunnel that lead back to the prison.

“Well, fuck,” she said. “We really can’t go back now.”

“There’s got to be some other way out,” Kevyn said.

The foliage was dense, impenetrable; Kevyn surveyed the perimeter, trying to find any gap in the tightly woven vines, spreading the leaves apart every few feet, and checking all the way down to the ground.

“‘Course, the opening could be anywhere,” she grumbled. “Sir Reginald, you’re taller than I am, maybe you could– What the hell are you doing?”

Sir Reginald glanced up, briefly, then resumed his labors, packing, tapping, and repacking his pipe.

“Having a smoke,” he grumbled.

“Do you really think this is the time for—”

“It has been…” Grump’s brow wrinkled. “Roughly two hundred years since last I tasted tobacco, and I have pulled off no less than three daring and mysterious escapes since then. I should very much like a moment to savor my victories, such as they are.”

“Is it really too late to go back?” Kevyn asked.

Murphy glanced at the weed-choked pit. “Yup.”

Sir Reginald struck a match against his boot-heel and pulled on his pipe, drawing the flame down into the dense-packed weed until it glowed. He filled his cheeks and puffed out a series of misshapen smoke rings.

Kevyn completed her circuit.

“I can’t find a damned thing,” she said.

“Not surprising,” Sir Reginald said. He drew on his pipe one last time, exhaling a large cloud of cherry-sweet smoke. It hung suspended before him, then rose and swirled, following the smoke rings as it thinned and dissipated.

He pointed with his pipe, following the path of the smoke, toward a spot about five meters up the side of the kudzu chamber wall. There was a hint of an indentation, a hint of darkness behind the verdant green.

“That’ll be our way out,” he said.

The leaves where Sir Reginald pointed rustled and parted. Something emerged, snout-first, from the darkness. It looked around, blinking bandit eyes. One clever paw reached into a pouch and produced a pair of spectacles. It bent the frames into shape and set them on its nose.

“Ah, Sir Reginald,” the raccoon said. “You’re back.”

Kudzu, Chapter 26

Tags

book 4, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, A Novel

Chapter 26

The vines were slippery, damp with condensation. Each handhold sprayed a mist of miniscule droplets into the air. The moisture glistened on their suits, their skin, soaked into Michael’s dreadlocks.

When they started down the deep shaft, they had gone head-first, pulling themselves along in the near-weightlessness of the center of the kudzu ball. But as they progressed, forward became more like down, and down meant turning themselves around to keep from inadvertently pitching into the pit.

“Spot me for a minute,” Colleen said.

Michael curled an arm around a thick vine and held firm to the coil of vegetation that connected him to Colleen.

Colleen tugged off her gloves and clipped them to her belt.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Michael asked.

“Space suits aren’t designed for rock climbing. Or kudzu climbing. I want to be able to feel where I’m sticking my fingers. And my toes.” She bent to unbuckle her boots, putting some of her weight on the tethering vine.

Michael was going to object, but it wasn’t a bad idea. The boots were made to protect the wearer from a vacuum, and from extremes of heat and cold. They were also made to magnetically adhere to metal surfaces, for easier negotiation of landscapes that consisted of metal structures with no gravity. As gravity increased in this humid environment, it was more and more evident the boots were an encumbrance, and potentially dangerous: bulky and slippery.

Once Colleen had both her boots clipped to her belt, she climbed back up to where Michael waited. She lifted one foot and wiggled her toes in front of his face.

“Freedom,” she said, grinning. She gathered up the slack in the tethering vine and braced herself. “Your turn.”

~

A few hours later, they were sitting on a natural ledge, a massive structural vine that punched through one viney wall and out the other, bridging the widening shaft. In their descent, they had passed a number of other, smaller tunnels that intersected this one, and water trickled or gushed from each of them, adding to the cascade. By now, the rush of water had surpassed a burbling stream and become a bonafide, if gentle, waterfall, under the strength of about a quarter-earth gravity.

They had collected bunches of kudzu berries as they climbed, storing them in their helmets. Now they sat on the thick trunk of kudzu and ate. Colleen kicked her feet in the water, luxuriating in the feel of it running between her toes.

“You know,” she said, “it never occurred to me when I signed up for this mission just how much I’d miss water. Just plain, clean water coursing over my body. Whoever marketed ‘antiseptic misting showers’ as ‘better than water’ should burn in hell. I don’t think I’ve been really clean for years now.”

“Decades,” Michael said.

Colleen shook her head. “Cryo doesn’t count. There’s no bathing in cryo, or dirt. Just weird-ass dreams.” She shuddered, then ran her fingers under the cascade. She looked down at her suit, now stained green and berry-purple. “I want to strip all this off and just stand under this, let it course over my skin. Or maybe dance.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

Colleen rolled her eyes. “Not here. When we get to the bottom.”

“You don’t know what else might be in here. You’d risk exposing yourself to that?”

Colleen plucked a berry from her helmet, reached out and pressed it against Michael’s lips, until he accepted the half-crushed fruit.

Colleen licked the purple juice off her fingers.

“Yes,” she said.

~

Michael had no idea how long they’d been climbing. The intermittent luminescent leaves were populous enough–and regular enough — to keep the entire chamber lit with its softly pulsating glow. On a spaceship, any sense of day and night was purely artificial, but time was kept, and there were regular enough cues that, once you got used to it, the body adapted. Here, cut off from all contact with the ship, none of that worked. It could have been hours, or it could have been days.

Whatever it was, he was starting to tire, and with gravity having increased as they descended to nearly half an Earth-standard gravity, the climbing was correspondingly more difficult. The water wasn’t helping, either. What had started as a trickle was now closer to a torrent, and with the winding of the tunnel and the vines that comprised its walls, it was more and more difficult to avoid climbing into the spray.

He reached the end of the length of their improvised rope and found a good, solid vine to wrap an arm around. Colleen started her climb.

She climbed down to where Michael had positioned himself. Not the best place, it turned out, as there were no close-by hand or footholds on either side. He’d have to shift over, and then she could squeeze by. Or maybe he could climb down a little further…

And then… and then she was no longer above him. She’d leapt. Across… it had to be a good two meters!

Colleen caught a vine with the crook of her elbow, but her feet slipped. They scrabbled in the air for a few endless seconds, and then she found purchase. She glanced over at Michael, and grinned.

Michael stared, gape-jawed.

“Are you insane?” he shouted, when he could finally get the words to come. “What were you thinking, pulling a stunt like that? What if you’d fallen?”

“You’d save me,” she said. She shrugged, and continued her descent.

“What if the rope broke? What if I lost my grip? Gah!”

Colleen paused and looked up at Michael. “Then we’d find out what’s at the bottom quicker.”

She turned her concentration back to climbing. When she reached the end of the rope and had gotten herself settled, she whistled; her signal that she was ready.

Michael picked his way down. Since Colleen had leapt to a different cluster of vines, they were now on different tracks; he couldn’t simply follow her path without making the same insane leap she had. Michael fumed. What if, further down, the vines split further apart instead of closer together? What would they do then? Climb back up?

Colleen had been suicidal since the accident. Everyone knew it. It was just a matter of time before she’d attempt it, which was why Michael took pains to keep an eye on her. To keep her safe, when she decided it was time to end it all.

Who knew when she crossed that line, she’d take to it with such joy? With such reckless abandon? She was taking crazy risks, and not paying attention to details, and—

And Michael’s hand closed on something. It was fuzzy, and textured, and not kudzu-like at all. And it moved.

Michael shrieked and pulled his hand away from… he wasn’t sure what, but it had moved, and now…

…And now his other hand was slipping, and he was tipping backward, away from the wall, feet slipping from their purchase. And then, he was falling. He saw Colleen — just the briefest glimpse, but he could read the horror in her face. And then he was past her, falling, until the rope snapped taut, and for a second, just a second, he wasn’t falling.

But there were sounds. Colleen cried out, in pain, and then in terror. There was the snap of breaking foliage.

Then he was falling again.

Above him, he saw Colleen.

And she was falling, too.

Kudzu, Chapter 25

Tags

book 4, chapter 25, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 25

Slowly, nearly imperceptibly so, the broken spindle that was the OPEV Beagle drifted away from the massive, twisted ball of impossible foliage. Further away from the thin creeper that had caught Slim and Ash.

A hundred meters out from the ship, Susan floated, helpless at the end of the line tethering her to the Beagle’s hull, as the voracious plant consumed first Slim and then Ash. The vine distended obscenely to accommodate their bodies.

“‘I love you’?” she echoed, staring at the lumps in the vine that had once been her crewmates. She could see the round bumps of their helmets, the curve of shoulders and hips. She could see Ash’s fucking feet, for Christ’s sake. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that, you stupid fucker?”

“Susan?” Amelia’s voice was soft, and ignored.

“No,” Susan said. “You don’t get to do that to me. Bastard. You don’t get to say something that, that asinine and that fucked up and get away with it. You hear me? Get your ass back here right now!”

She shook Ash’s tether, extending out another hundred meters toward the carnivorous vine. The wave traveled the length of the nylon line. The end twitched like the tail of an agitated cat.

“Susan,” Amelia said again. “Listen to me. You need to come inside now.”

“We have to help him, ‘Melia. Them. Please. You can bring the ship closer. He can’t die like this.”

Tharp’s voice cut in. “Amelia, don’t you dare. Susan, get back in here now. That’s an order.”

“Tharp, you say another fucking word, I’m going to break your fucking teeth.” Jaworsky growled more than spoke. “Susan, sweetie, I’m coming to you.”

~

Some folks loved the space-walk, loved being out in the void, with as little as humanly possible between them and endless stars. Jaworsky was not one of them. The suit was clunky and uncomfortable, and the idea of a simple mishap turning into explosive decompression made his balls clench.

He’d never let that on, though. Good thing we don’t have scrotum inspectors, he thought. Give Tharp enough time and resources, though…

Jaworsky kept his eyes on the hull. One step at a time. The click-slap of one boot coming down, the magnets engaging as pressure was applied. Another click as the other boot’s magnet shut off to promote — how the fuck did those marketing assholes put it? — a natural walking experience.

Click-slap. Click.

Like a stroll in the fucking park.

Somewhere above his head, Susan was losing her shit. He asked Amelia to cut Susan’s channel out of his feed. It was taking everything he had not to lose his shit, too.

Amelia fed him directions, so he wouldn’t have to look up. He didn’t want to look up, not until he had to.

As he moved around the curve of the hull, Susan’s line came into view. He hurried toward where it anchored to the hull.

“I’m there, ‘Melia. Can you patch Susan back in?”

“Yeah, one second. Okay… done.”

Susan’s voice filled his helmet. No longer words, just incoherent sobs.

Jaworsky drew a deep breath. “Susan? Time to come home.”

There was no discernible response.

“Hey! Hot stuff!” Jaworsky barked the words. “Enough of that shit. I’m bringing you in now.”

He wrapped a gloved hand around Susan’s tether and pulled gently. A sudden image of him and Susan floating past each other — her toward the ship and him away from it — made him jam his toes under anchor.

“What?” Susan’s voice was panicked. “No. No, we can’t leave them.”

“Susan?” Amelia asked. “What are you…” And then, “Oh, no! She’s untethering!”

For a second, the words made no sense to Jaworsky. Then he pulled with everything he had. Amelia screaming in his ear: “Ohgodohgodohgod.” There was inertia, the resistance of a body at rest to sudden motion, and a sickening moment when Jaworsky’s feet came off the surface of the hull. His toe caught under the bar of the anchor, slid…

And then the tether came loose, and Jaworsky’s boots slapped down onto the metal plating.

The line pooled around Jaworsky’s feet, spooled over him. He struggled to keep free of it. Susan’s cries had turned to anger, and a steady stream of curses barraged him.

He steeled his nerve, and looked up.

It had worked. Susan was hurtling toward the ship — toward him, in fact. And beyond her…

“Jesus,” he breathed. “It’s like one of those egg snakes.”

And then Susan slammed into him.

Jaworsky fell back on his ass. Susan’s faceplate smacked against his; Jaworsky held his breath, waiting for an explosion of Plexiglas and air, but fortunately neither cracked. Momentarily detached from the hull, the two started to bounce away the ship. Scrabbling wildly, he managed to get hold of the anchor, and then caught Susan’s leg before she floated away.

Jaworsky’s hand — his artificial one — spasmed, letting go of the anchor for a single, vertiginous moment. Just for a second, and then it was working again, and Jaworsky wrapped his errant fingers around the metal bar and prayed they would hold.

He pulled her back to the hull’s surface until her boots clicked in recognition and glued her feet down. He struggled to right himself as Ash’s tether spooled down around them.

He tried to think of something smartass to say to goad Susan into willingly heading back to the air-lock, but all he could think about was Slim, swallowed up by that plant, all alone.

Fuck.

When he finally managed to tear his eyes away from the distended vine, he realized Susan had left. Trailing behind her was Ash’s tether, like seaweed on a half-drowned sailor, as she trudged toward the airlock.

Jaworsky coiled Susan’s abandoned tether over his mutinous limb, and followed her home.