Kudzu, Chapter 15

Tags

book 2, chapter 15, kudzu, novel

In space, there are no cliffs from which to hang.

Kudzu, A Novel

Chapter 15

Jaworsky repeated himself, more slowly, more deliberately, in case they hadn’t understood.

“How much time do we have?”

“Um. Fifteen minutes? Twenty?” Amelia’s voice was tentative. “It’s non-linear.”

“‘Kay,” Jaworsky said. “Did any of you geniuses bother to get some specimens of this thing?”

Ash spoke up. “I got some cuttings from Colleen before they went in. She asked me take them to her lab.”

“All right. Good. Go see what happens when you zap them with a strong electrical current. Report back as soon as you know anything. I’m going to get working on tying the reactor output to the outer hull, but we’ll need to know as soon as possible if that’s not going to work.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ash said.

“I’ll work on boosting the radio signals so we can get ahold of Michael and Colleen,” Susan said.

“Yeah, good. And Slim, too, right?” Jaworsky said. “Amelia, I need you on deck to fly the ship if this works. If it doesn’t, well, we’re not going to have time for a plan B. In that case, everybody get your ass to the docking bay and abandon ship. Tharp, I need you to get down there and start prepping the suits.”

“Just wait a min…” Tharp trailed off, catching a glimpse of Amelia’s face. “Okay, I’m on my way.”

~

Michael wasn’t stopping to sight-see. He propelled himself as fast as he dared down the tunnel, Slim trailing behind him. In gravity, the raccoons could outrun and out-maneuver a human with ease; weightless and not needing to make any sudden changes in direction, Michael’s human-long arms gave him the upper hand over Slim’s shorter limbs.

“Slow down,” Slim panted. “You don’t know what’s ahead. There could be anything out there. Bears, mountain lions. Even politicians.”

Michael ignored him. Just called Colleen’s name over and over.

And almost didn’t notice as the tunnel walls dropped away from him.

He kicked out with one foot, catching a vine with his toes. His momentum swung him against the chamber wall. He held on tight to keep from bouncing off and away from the wall.

When he recovered, he saw Colleen’s suited form lying against the wall halfway around the cavernous space. He called her name, but she didn’t respond.

Oh God.

Then she moved. She sat up and pulled her arm out of the depths of the kudzu wall. She was holding a specimen bag. Michael heaved a sigh.

Colleen sealed the specimen bag in her pack and looked around. She waved at Michael, pointed to her ear and shrugged.

“Colleen’s safe,” Michael said. “Her radio went out, is all.”

“So you almost got us both killed for nothing?”

A blast of static nearly deafened Michael. Susan’s voice rode the noise. “Away team, can you hear me? Emergency. I repeat, emergency. Return to the ship immediately.”

“What the hell? Susan, what kind of emergency?”

“Away team, can you hear me?” she asked again. “God I hope you can hear me now. Emergency. I repeat, emergency. Return to the ship immediately.”

Oblivious, Colleen pulled a fresh specimen bag from her pack.

“Shit,” Michael said. “Slim, get back to the ship. You don’t move as fast as we do here. I’ll get Colleen and join you.”

He shouted her name again, and then launched himself across the cavern toward her.

~

“I’ve got the signal boosted as high as I can, but I have no idea if we’re getting through,” Susan said. “We’re receiving nothing.”

“Okay. Amelia, how are we doing for time?”

“If we have to abandon ship, we need to leave our posts in maybe five minutes, to be safe. Sort of. That’s estimating five more minutes to get–”

“Yes!” Ash’s voice cut through. “Okay. Electricity damages it. It actually recoils from a strong enough charge. But it has to be serious power. When I used the output of a standard wall outlet, it sort of just ignored it.”

“Sort of?” Amelia asked.

“It grew a sort of rubbery insulating layer, real quick. So I doubled the charge, and that fried it.”

“Good to know. I’ve got the power spliced to the hull. I just need to get down to the reactor to get it all connected up. Susan, keep broadcasting. Give them more information so they know what we’re up against. Amelia, just stay ready.”

“Yeah, I’m on it.”

“What should I do?” Ash asked.

“You and Tharp suit up and get ready to pull people back into the ship. Bring a med kit. And oxygen.”

It took Jaworsky eight minutes to get the right connectors spliced onto the cable.

“Running out of time, Jaworsky,” Amelia said. “I hope you’re almost done.”

“Almost. Any sign of our away team?”

“Not yet,” Tharp said.

“Fuck. Okay, I’ve got everything hooked up. Just have to flip the breaker. In theory the outer hull is insulated from the inner hull and the rest of the ship, and the rings are even further isolated, but it hasn’t been tested with the amount of power I’m about to sink into it, not since the accident. As much as possible, I recommend that you stay away from metal surfaces. Got it?”

One by one, the remaining crew attested to their safety. Tharp and Ash floated in the middle of the docking bay, tethered to the interior wall but far from anything solid. Susan had crawled into her bunk. All but Amelia.

“The control panel is metal,” Amelia said. “I hope you wired this thing up right.”

“You and me both, kid. All right, here goes.”

Jaworsky pulled the breaker closed. There was a flash, and Jaworsky grunted, like someone had punched him in the gut. Then he was silent.

The ship thrummed with power.

“Someone’s coming through!” Tharp said.

“It’s Slim,” Ash added. “I’m on my way. I’ve almost got him!”

Greenery flashed, blackened, and separated from the ship. The Beagle lurched and twisted.

Amelia struggled to stabilize the ship.

The kudzu ripped away.

Ash reached, caught nothing.

Atmosphere spilled out into space through the docking bay door, and spraying through the hole cut in the kudzu, ejecting the hapless raccoon like a champagne cork.

The kudzu grew quickly, sealing the hole in a matter of seconds. Stemming the jet of gas, and trapping Colleen and Michael within.

“No,” Ash said, his voice soft, as the ship drifted away from the grasping plant, and Slim’s body tumbled in the widening gap. “Oh, no.”

End of Book II

Kudzu, Chapter 14

Tags

book 2, chapter 14, kudzu, novel

I have spots of green on my stomach. Is it possible that the kudzu within is finally breaking through this fleshy sack? More likely it is paint that failed to find its proper home on the woodwork. (Does this mean that the bathroom remodeling is finally finished, and I can spend more time writing? Why yes, yes it does.)

Kudzu, A Novel

Chapter 14

“I can’t decide if this is utterly creepy, or weirdly comforting.” Michael inspected one of the luminescent leaves. Each of the three leaflets that comprised it was as big as a plate, and gave off enough light to read by; the veins glowed brightest of all. They were warm to the touch.

Slim moved slowly across the surface, giving wide berth to anything that looked remotely like a hole something could hide in. “I keep thinking that my species memory should kick in any time now, or instincts, or something. But I vote for creepy. This ain’t natural. Give me steel and plastic over this any day of the week.”

Michael chuckled. “You’ve got to learn to relax. Experience the world for what it is.”

“I don’t need a lesson on experiencing the world,” Slim said. “I sprained my damn tail keeping you from getting cut in half. Do you see me whining? I’m just saying, maybe the world can give us a fucking break. We’ve had enough weird, bad shit already. Can we go back to normal?”

Colleen was characteristically silent. She just moved on, her explorations taking her further ahead of the others.

“Oh, damn!” Michael pulled back abruptly as one of the glowing leaflets snapped off its stem with a bright, electric spark. The spark was short-lived, though; the plant healed over quickly enough that very little of the luminescent sap spilled. The leaflet floated in front of him, still glowing, and he reached out a tentative hand.

Nothing bad happened when he touched it, even when he poked the fresh film that covered the broken stem. He tucked it under his air hose, wearing it like a corsage.

“You look like you’re ready to go spelunking,” Slim said.

“Yeah, works pretty good. I wonder how long it lasts.” Michael looked around. “Where’d Colleen go?”

As far as they could see before the tunnel twisted away, there was no sign of her. Michael bit back panic.

“Colleen? Can you hear us? Colleen?”

But all he heard in response was Slim’s rapid breathing, and his own heart beating in his ears.

~

Even with her radio off, Colleen could still hear Michael and Slim talking; their voices were muffled by their helmets, but still carried through whatever atmosphere filled this this strange place. She kept moving, even as they stopped to investigate things. Kept moving until they were out of sight, and out of earshot.

The tunnel twisted in a slow loop and then widened dramatically. The chamber was huge, big enough to fit the Beagle’s shuttle, if they hadn’t lost it in the accident, with a half-dozen other tunnels radiating from it. Colleen imagined that it looked somewhat like a knot viewed from the outside. From the inside, it was more like a cathedral.

It was also warmer, and more humid. A moist breeze cut across the open space, passing between the two largest tunnels, but also eddying around the chamber. Colleen’s helmet fogged as the moisture condensed. She wiped it away as best she could with the non-porous fabric of her glove.

It was almost too late when she realized that the currents had caught her up, and that she was drifting toward one of the big tunnels, the chamber’s exhaust pipe. She reached for the closest of the vines, but her fingers caught only leaves, which, after a second’s resistance, broke away from the plant. It was enough, though, to change her trajectory.

She came back within reach of the wall about fifty meters from where she’d started. The vines here were more loosely entwined, and the first few handfuls came away in her hands, but she managed to grab a strong, thick vine that stopped her momentum with a good two meters to spare. No problem.

The leaves she’d broken off in her scrabbling were swept into the tunnel. Colleen wrapped her arms around the vines and took a deep shuddering breath. No, she wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. Maybe, if how her body reacted in the face of nearly being swept away was any indication, not for a long time. Something to think about, when she was back on the ship.

Oh. This is interesting. With the leaves under her stripped away in her mad scramble, she could see beyond the first, the innermost, layer of the plant, and into the next. Moisture condensed on the leaves below her, gathering and dripping slowly in thin rivulets toward the tunnel.

Very interesting, indeed.

~

Earl Jaworsky whistled, off-key and aimless, as he muscled the massive cable into place. The thing ran three quarters of the length of the ship, all the way from the second ring to the reactor. Once he got the reactor side end measured out, he worked his way back up the ship, securing it to the hull at one meter intervals. Jaworsky knew better than to let anything with this kind of amperage flap around. If he’d had the time–and the materials–he’d have run it through a heavy, insulated duct. But he didn’t. The best he could do is come back later and paint DO NOT CROSS lines around it, and hope the others weren’t as stubbornly idiotic as they seemed.

He’d gotten the cable tied down as far as the third ring when Amelia’s voice crackled from the speakers.

“Folks, I think we may have a problem. From what I can see, the plant has started to grow around the ship. It’s already wrapped around the docking bay.”

Ash’s voice: “Oh, shit. I knew–” Ash stopped talking.

“Can we break free?” Tharp asked.

“I can’t reach Slim,” Amelia said. “Or Michael or Colleen. It’s like there’s some sort of interference. There was a lot of noise in the signal as soon as they got inside the thing, and now all I get is static.”

“But can we break free?”

“We can’t leave them behind!”

“We’ll go back and rescue them,” Tharp said. “I promise. But if we get trapped by this thing, that’s it for us. Get us free of it.”

“Shit shit shit.” Amelia muttered as she worked.

Jaworsky felt the engines fire, heard the vibration rumble through the hull. Metal protested. The Beagle lurched and strained. The engines cut out.

“No,” said Amelia. “Not without tearing the docking bay off the ship. And then we all die.”

“So that’s it? We’re stuck on this thing?” Tharp sounded close to despair.

“Castaways in space,” Ash said. “Brilliant. I get to waste away stuck on a giant space weed. With you people.”

Fuck. Jaworsky ignored the inevitable bickering that exploded between Ash and Tharp and Susan. He closed his eyes and pictured the ship with its rotating forward ring, and the massive plant, also rotating, but with a much slower rate of rotation.

“All right, shut up.” he said. “Everyone just shut the fuck up. It’s physics lesson time. When I was a kid we had these things called bicycles–they were before your time, but you might have heard of them: handle bar, seat, two big, spoked wheels. We used to ride them all over. And if there was some kid you didn’t like, you waited till the little bastard was riding by and you’d jam a stick between the spokes of one of the wheels. The results were, well, pretty much immediate.”

“What are you saying?” Tharp asked.

I’m saying you’re a moron. Jaworsky let that go unsaid. Instead: “How fast is that thing growing? How long before it reaches the first ring? ‘Cause that’s how long we have to live.”

Kudzu, Chapter 13

Tags

book 2, chapter 13, kudzu, novel

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 13

It wasn’t completely rash and stupid, Colleen figured, as she squeezed through the gap Slim had cut in the plant. She’d been watching the kudzu carefully as she’d floated around the docking bay–it’s not like there had been anything else she could do–and while it visibly moved as it grew elsewhere, it seemed to make no attempt to repair the smoldering hole.

Of course, it could just be that the heat had effectively cauterized the vines around the hole, that the charred ends inhibited growth. That seemed a more likely scenario than the plant making a conscious decision, and one less subject to sudden change.

And if the thing ate her? Well, it’d be a valuable learning experience, and at least the crew wouldn’t have lost anyone important.

The wall of kudzu was thick, almost as thick as she was tall, which was good, she supposed. If the hull of your space station is made of twigs and leaves, instead of metal and polycarbon alloys, you want it as thick and dense as possible.

And the wolf huffed, and puffed, and…

Colleen pulled herself the rest of the way into the tunnel and freed her legs from coiled vines.

It was one thing to know what to expect, and another to experience it. The walls were lush and thick, and moving ever so slightly, like an infinite sea of green and brown snakes basking in their own light. The luminescent leaves glowed a soft blue-green, pulsing gently with waves of varying intensity. Almost as if the plant was breathing light. It felt, Colleen thought, like she was underwater, floating in crystal clear waters.

Peaceful, that’s what it was.

Dangerous, too. The tunnel within the plant was wide enough that she couldn’t reach from one side to the other. She could, potentially, have gotten stuck floating, out of reach of anything to grab a hold of. She could imagine herself suspended here, hypnotized by the softly oscillating light, slowly drifting down the twisting kudzu pathways until her oxygen ran out. Longer, even, as her body decomposed until all that remained was a skeleton in a space suit, floating around the place forever.

There’d be poems about her. Songs, even. The ghost of Colleen Byrne, doomed to haunt the giant space kudzu in search for her one true love, lost at space, long ago. Stories told around antique incandescent lamps to scare baby astronauts. She hummed a few tentative lines under her breath.

“Hey, your ass is blocking my view.” The snout of Slim’s helmet prodded her in the lower back, as his voice crackled in her ear.

“Sorry,” Colleen said. She moved away from the hole that led back to the Beagle, and then poked at the control panel on her left arm until her intercom turned off. Then she kicked off against the wall, launching herself down the long, twisting tunnel, deep into the depths of the mysterious plant, where–if only for a few precious moments longer–she could be alone.

~

Inertia was a bitch.

“You’d think it would be easier dragging a ton of cable in zero-G,” Jaworsky grumbled.

Amelia’s voice laughed from a dozen speakers built into the hull. “Ten minutes ago it was only half a ton. You must be moving at relativistic speeds.”

Jaworsky bit off his response. She probably wouldn’t have taken it in the right spirit anyway. Instead, he uncoiled another loop of the heavy copper cable from the spool and stretched the end out until the slack was gone.

Lather, rinse, repeat. This is why he shaved his head. He hated repetitive jobs, especially jobs like this: mind-numbingly simple, but exacting. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up with too much of the cable moving at once, with no way to stop it. Nothing like getting crushed between a ton of slowly unspooling cable and the outer wall of a nuclear reactor to ruin your whole day.

There were conveyors built into the sides of the hull to move things safely from one end of the ship to the other. Unfortunately, they needed power to work, and until he got this damned cable spliced in, power was in short supply.

Jaworsky ground his teeth, uncoiled another loop from the spool, and painstakingly hand-walked it down the hull, until the slack was gone.

Lather, rinse, and repeat.

~

“That won’t work,” Ash said, watching characters flicker across the screen of Susan’s computer.

“Fuck off,” Susan suggested. She tapped at the terminal keyboard, studying the flow of data from the ship’s computer. Or rather, the lack of data. “And stop hovering over my shoulder.”

“No, I mean, I already tried breaking the encryption with Garfield-Han decoding, and I ran gank and rootit against the password files.”

“You did it wrong.”

“No, I didn’t. I got results. It’s just the results didn’t work.”

Susan paused, fingertips playing on the surface of the keys as she considered. “Interesting,” she said, and then began typing again. A quick combination of keys opened a new screen; a few more keystrokes and Ash’s login prompt glowed at the top of the screen.

“Password?” Susan asked.

“What? I don’t think so.”

“I promise I’m utterly uninterested in your porn collection.”

“No. I’m not giving you my password.”

“I’m serious. Jaworsky’s porn is way better than yours.” Susan shrugged. “Yeah, so I get bored easily. But seriously, how many cheerleader fantasies can you watch before the fetish is worn thin? I can hack your account again in less than an hour, or you can just tell me your password, already.”

Ash flushed. “I can’t believe you hacked my account! That is a violation of, of privacy, of trust, of–”

“Fucking hell. I only hacked your account after I started logging your failed attempts to hack mine. Now stop being such a self-righteous prick and tell me your damned password.”

Ash chewed on his lip. “Fine. Whatever.”

Susan spent the next few minutes silently reviewing hidden files in Ash’s account, scanning and processing the data faster than Ash could read. Then she chuckled.

“You got trojaned. The password file you hacked was a decoy, and when you tried to access those accounts, all you managed to do was install software that makes sure you never get near any real system files. Everything you’ve been trying to hack has been an illusion. You really are just a waste of time.”

“Fuck you. I’ve been trying to help, and all you do is tear people down. Well fuck off, and don’t come asking for favors.”

Ash stormed out of room, and almost made it all the way to his cabin before bursting into tears.

Kudzu, Chapter 12

Tags

book 2, chapter 12, kudzu, novel

Hey look! It’s Sunday. And I’m posting the next chapter! Who knew I could actually pull it off? Anyway, enough about me – let’s get back to the slowly unfurling disaster.

Kudzu, A Novel

Chapter 12

Michael curled himself into a ball. Braced for impact. Prayed the flailing torch would miss him. Slim still screaming through the helmet speaker in his ear, drowning out Amelia’s voice. Amelia shouting, “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

The jet of gas slammed Michael against the wall. He bounced a few times at the end of his tether before the force of the escaping gas pressed him flat.

Colleen pulled herself tight against the gentle curve of the outer wall, legs bunched beneath her, and launched herself into the middle of the room. She was too late to catch Slim, but she wasn’t aiming for him. That was suicide, and there was always time for that later. Instead, she aimed roughly for the midpoint of the docking bay.

The jet of gas hit her at the same time that her hand wrapped around Slim’s tether, diverting her course and sending her tumbling. The rope jerked taut, shifting her again, but her mass exceeded Slim’s, even with the cutting torch and the acetylene tanks he was wearing. Inertia was on her side; she kept tumbling toward the far wall.

Slim struck the back wall hip first, a good three meters from Michael. He spun, rolling against the wall, and felt something in his tail pop. He ignored it, scrabbling to get control of the cutting torch. His fingers wrapped around the hose, and he tugged it to keep the flaming end pointed away from him. It buried itself in the wall.

“Ow,” he said.

The hiss of the gas softened as the pressure equalized. Tharp’s voice cut across the noise.

“Michael! Status report. Now!”

“Damn trigger is jammed,” Slim said. He found the shutoff valve on the fuel tank, twisted it until the flame died. “It should have shut off as soon as I let go.”

“Michael?” Colleen said. She had let go of Slim’s rope and was floating slowly around the perimeter of the room.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m here. I’m okay. Just a little….” He took a deep breath. “I’m fine.”

“Slim?” Amelia’s voice shook.

“What is it with shit on this ship?” Slim asked. “I mean, really, what the fuck? Can’t we have even one thing just work properly?”

“I don’t care about the stuff. What about you? Are you–”

“I’m fine. I’m gonna have a giant bruise on my ass, but I’m fine.”

“Full body bruise,” Jaworsky said. “Now that’ll be a sight. How ’bout you, Lady C?”

“What the hell happened down there?” Tharp demanded.

“What I said earlier?” Amelia said. “This is the sort of thing I was talking about.”

“Thank you, Amelia,” Susan said. “Tharp, you need to learn how to not be an asshole. Colleen could be hurt or dying down there, and you’re safe on the bridge getting pissy because people aren’t updating their reports at your whim.”

“You tell him, sister.”

“Shut the fuck up, Jaworsky.”

Amelia snarled into the microphone, ears back, lips curled back to reveal long canines. Tharp took a step backward. Amelia suppressed a smile, imagining everyone else doing the same.

“Colleen?” she said, into the sudden silence.

“I’m unhurt, thanks. But I could use a little assistance. I’m caught in some sort of air current, I guess coming from the plant. It’s just moving me around in a big circle in the middle of the room. I could use a hand getting to something solid.”

“I’ll be right there, Colleen,” Michael said. “Just let me swap out to a longer tether.”

“Thanks.”

Amelia examined the readings on one of her monitors. “Pressure in there is starting to stabilize, which is good. Too much and we’d just pop off the surface of the plant. Michael, you ever figure out what kind of gas it is?”

“No, sorry. I’ve been a little distracted.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll want to figure out what’s in it. Make sure it isn’t corrosive or explosive or anything.”

“I think if it was explosive, we’d have known by now. Or at least, you’d know. Anyway, I lost the sensor. It came off its strap, and it’s probably floating out there like Colleen.” Michael uncoiled his long tether and clipped it to the wall. “Okay, Colleen, I’m on my way.”

#

Catching Colleen as she spun around the vastness of the loading dock was easier said than done. The kudzu plant quite literally grew before their eyes, even as it continued to spew a jet of gas into the room; the perpetually changing surface of the plant redirected the current, altering Colleen’s trajectory in unpredictable ways. In the end, they had to wait until pressure in the loading bay equalized with the inside of the plant.

As Michael set out to catch Colleen on her next pass, Slim approached the plant’s surface. He lit the cutting torch and began widening the existing hole.

The outer surface of the plant was thicker than expected. Slim widened the hole enough to crawl into, so he could cut through the deeper layers.

“What if it’s all like this?” he said. “All the way through.”

“It doesn’t have enough mass, according to our scanners.” Amelia’s voice sounded distant, hollow and staticky, like Slim was tuning in to a far-off radio. “At least part of it has to be hollow.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” Michael said. More static. “It could just be a less dense jungle. Hold on.” A moment of silence, and then: “Got her.”

“Thanks,” Colleen said.

“I’m through,” Slim announced. He turned off the torch and peeked through the opening.

Beyond the dense tangle of vines and leaves that formed the outer surface of the kudzu, the plant opened into what seemed to be a tunnel, lush and thick with leaves and berries. The outer surface was dotted with silver-black leaves amongst the verdant green; the interior walls were similarly punctuated with not-quite-natural foliage. These broad leaves glowed softly, filling the tunnel with a gentle, but adequate, light.

“This,” Slim said, “is weird.”

“No shit.” Ash Hendricksson’s voice, sarcastic.

Susan cursed. “Jesus, here we go again.”

“All I’m saying is, maybe he should tell us what he sees.”

“No, what you were saying…”

Amelia rumbled a warning.

“Yeah, sorry,” Susan said.

“You tell her, sister,” Jaworsky said.

Amelia bit her tail, not to snicker out loud.

“Okay,” Slim said. “I’m pretty sure this thing is not natural.”

“A fucking genius,” Ash muttered to himself, not bothering to mute his microphone.

“I’m getting so much interference,” Slim said, “it almost sounds like you’re all getting along. I’m going to widen this hole up enough that someone smart and human can take a look.”

The cutting torch began to sputter as he worked, and died completely with only centimeters left to cut away.

“Damn it,” Slim said. “This thing is fucking cursed. There’s plenty of fuel left. It just won’t work. I’m getting a pry bar.”

Michael and Colleen peered through the hole as Slim launched himself across the docking bay to a storage locker on the far wall.

“I bet I could fit through that,” Colleen said.

“Not without me, you’re not,” Michael said.

“The inside is hollow,” Colleen reported. “Big enough around for three or four people to get around comfortably. And it’s lit.”

“Some kind of bioluminescence,” Michael said, “but only from select leaves. It’s bright enough in there to get around. I’m going to hazard a guess that the silver leaves we saw on the outside of the plant function as a sort of biological solar cell, generating power for use elsewhere in the plant.”

“It’s a power plant,” Slim said. He pulled a crow bar from the locker, and a hack saw. With sharp and pointy objects that might puncture a suit, he was more circumspect: a long, slow leap across the room.

“Heh, yeah.” Michael assessed Slim’s trajectory and moved to be close enough to help, if it was needed. “Anyway, it looks like some serious genetic engineering here. Not only is this plant able to withstand a complete vacuum, it seems to be generating power and atmosphere, and creating human-navigable passages.”

“All right,” said Tharp, “I think that’s enough. Let’s all meet up in the conference room at, uh, twenty-one hundred… no, shit.” Amelia rolled her eyes watching Tharp counting off on his fingers. “In, uh, about forty-five minutes. And we’ll figure out where to go from here.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Michael said.

“What?”

“There’s only one place to go from here, at least for me. And that’s following Colleen.”

“No. No, that won’t do. We need a plan. Get back here, both of you. All three of you.” Tharp shot a nervous glance at Amelia.

“Don’t worry, Cap,” Slim said. “I’ll keep ’em out of trouble.”

 

Kudzu, Chapter 11

Tags

book 2, chapter 11, kudzu, novel

I’m not sure how I managed to make it through the whole day yesterday without remembering to post this week’s chapter. fdsa (That was me, slapping my own hand.) I’ll do better, I promise. We leave Kevyn stranded in the dark observatory and return to the survivors on the Outer Planet Exploratory Vehicle Beagle.

Kudzu, A Novel

Chapter 11

The docking bay door opened slowly onto a field of green. The leaves, pressed against the metal door, bushed out into the widening gap.

“Fuck me,” Slim said, wide-eyed behind the plexiglass of his helmet.

Amelia’s laugh barked across the intercom. “In your dreams, kit.”

Jaworsky’s rough chuckle projected from whatever blasted part of the ship he’d gotten himself to.

“It’s just…” Slim trailed off, frowning at the cutting torch he’d brought for the task. “I think I’m going to need a bigger flamethrower.” He shrugged into the harness that strapped the twin tanks to the back of his suit, and tossed the nozzle from paw to paw a couple times before testing it. The torch sparked blue and white hot for a brief moment. In the evacuated docking bay, it made no sound, but Slim could feel the hiss of the flame through the nozzle, and through the fabric of the suit, as real as any sound. He clipped a cable to his belt, and to the wall, and then pushed off toward the massive plant.

“Be careful,” Colleen said.

Slim capped the superheated tip of the torch’s nozzle before he clipped it to his belt. He gave Colleen a thumb’s up. He clipped his long tether cable to his belt, and tossed the other end to Michael.

“Will you spot me?”

Michael unclipped himself from the wall and pushed himself off in a long flight across the docking bay, coming to rest on the far wall. “I got you,” he said, attaching both his and Slim’s tether to the wall. He wrapped Slim’s tether around his hand. “Any trouble and I’m yanking you out of harm’s way.”

“Thanks,” Slim said. He hand-walked across the wall, until he was situated in front of the thick green and silver foliage. He raised the cutting torch.

It may not have been a big torch, but it was made to cut through reinforced metal alloys. The plant flamed briefly as it carbonized and crumbled. Gray smoke floated around the raccoon. Bits of charcoal engulfed him like a cloud of gnats.

“How deep does this shit go?” he asked. “Anyone know what the fuck I’m looking for?”

Tharp’s voice crackled across the intercom. “Well, obviously we’re hoping that it’s not all this dense. It’s a gamble, of course, but it’s not like we have much choice. As you may have discerned, we’re in dire need of any number of resources, from basic sustenance, like food and water, for example, to mechanical parts. You see, without any means of communicating with the world, we’re unable to request…”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Ms. Kernighan, your outbursts in the meeting were… understandable. This situation is somewhat of a shock to us all. But there’s been plenty of time to calm down and get ahold of ourselves. We need to work together, and your tone–”

“My tone? As opposed to your I’ll-speak-slowly-so-even-the-coon-can-understand tone?”

“My what? Amelia will tell you, I have no problem with raccoons. I authorized Amelia to pilot this thing, against some people’s protests, if you remember.

“Oh, well then, Mister-Not-As-Bad-As-Ash, maybe it’s your I’ll-speak-slowly-so-the-hired-help-understands tone. Sorry, Doctor Tharp. Anyway, it’s fucking bullshit.”

“You tell him, sister,” Jaworsky said.

“I’m not your fucking sister.”

“Damn good thing, too, ’cause those dreams we were having when we were in cryo, they’d be all sorts of–”

“Shut up,” Colleen suggested. “Please.” Though her voice was soft, it stopped Jaworsky short.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Thanks. We’re doing two things,” Colleen said, “surviving, and trying to get rescued.”

“Even if this stuff isn’t edible,” Amelia said, “we can process it into something that is, and extract water and oxygen out of it, at the same time.”

“And if you ever get back to cutting this shit open,” Susan said, “we’ll look for a way through it to some of the old communications satellites, so we can call for help.”

“Got it,” Slim said. And turned the cutting torch back on.

#

Tharp hit the mute button on the intercom.

“I’m not like that,” he said.

Amelia tapped at the keyboard in her console. It was made for human hands, not raccoon paws. It wasn’t illegal for a raccoon to be a pilot; why bother passing a law against something so patently absurd? Raccoons didn’t have the capacity for the sort of higher level abstract thought needed to pilot a space ship. Everyone knew that.

“I’m not like that,” Tharp said again. “I know how valuable your contribution is. If it wasn’t for you, we’d never have made it this far. You’re amazing. You’re exceptional.”

“So I’m an exception, huh?” Amelia didn’t let her teeth show.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know–”

“I think you should stop talking now.” Amelia finally turned her head to look him in the eye. He took a deep breath, looked away.

“The process of enculturation affects us all on many levels, and sometimes–”

“Susan is right, and you’ve got a lot of soul-searching to do, but this is not the time.” Amelia tapped on the keyboard some more, double-checking some readings. “Weird,” she said. “We evacuated the docking bay before opening the air lock. Other than the carbon from burning the plant, it should be a vacuum in there.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“Un-mute us.”

Tharp took his finger off the mute button on the intercom.

“Hey, folks,” Amelia said, “we’ve got rising atmospheric pressure in the docking bay. There’s some sort of gas filtering in at a very low level. Not sure what it is, or whether it’s dangerous or not. Do you have any way of testing?”

“How much gas?” Michael asked.

“Negligible, but rising.”

“Let me check. Slim, I’m going to have to let go of your tether for a minute, so don’t do anything…dramatic.”

“To be or not to be,” Slim intoned, with a sweep of his arm. “Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the fucking slings of outrageous errors…”

“Very funny.”

“Yeah, I laughed through the whole movie. Best comedy ever.”

“Movie?” Ash said, incredulous. “It’s a damn play, and it’s a tragedy. Don’t you know anything?”

“Bunch of humans die of their own stupidity. That’s comedic gold. Could have used a chase scene, though. And a monkey.”

Michael fumbled with the clips on his tool belt, fingers clumsy in the thick gloves of his suit. Eventually, he managed to detach the device. He thumbed the power button. The small screen glowed amber.

“It’s too low a density to read. All right, give me a minute to figure out how to adjust the settings.”

Slim rolled his eyes and started up the cutting torch. The plant blackened and burned away, and then, without warning, burst outward.

Slim screamed as a jet of gas flung him across the docking bay. Stationed at the far wall, Michael dropped his scanner and scrabbled at the tether that held him in place, unable to evade the raccoon hurtling toward him, or the torch that swung in flaming arcs around Slim’s body.

His fingers found the catch, fumbled, slipped off, and Michael knew he would not get away in time.

Kudzu, Chapter 10

Tags

book 2, chapter 10, kudzu, novel

There’s an illustration for this chapter, but alas, between needy creatures (anyone want to adopt a special-needs kitten?), plumbers, electricians, tile contractors bearing figs, and a couple days of out-of-town datacenter work, it’s not quite ready for prime time. I’ll add it when it’s ready. [updated 11:53 am Aug 6th: We can haz art.]

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 10

For some reason, Sir Reginald had turned off the flashlight, leaving them in darkness. The only light came from some of the LED displays on the telescope controls, dim even in the blackness, and from the night sky.

“Can I zoom in closer?” Kevyn asked.

Sir Reginald didn’t answer. Testing her.

Fine. She’d figure it out herself. There were a lot of buttons and knobs, but she at least remembered which of them she’d touched previously.

Her first attempt shifted the telescope to the right, to a view of empty space. She reversed that until the strange ship was more-or-less centered once again in the telescope’s view.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it. I don’t need your help.”

She closed her eyes, took a breath, and tried to remember the feeling of her arm and hand moving to change the magnification, the way Sir Reginald had shown her. She let her hand follow her memory. Her fingers touched a hard, plastic knob. She opened her eyes.

Turning the knob toward her (turning it counter-clockwise; she wasn’t sure why her brain had decided that to-the-left was closer than to-the-right) zoomed away from the strange spacecraft, reducing it to a dot against the Greenmoon; turning it away from her brought it closer.

“See? Told you I’d figure it out.”

Sir Reginald remained obstinately silent.

If he thought playing stupid mind games was the key to getting in her pants, he was sorely mistaken. Of course, he proclaimed himself both a celibate and a virgin, but Kevyn didn’t believe that for a second. The man wrote pornography for a living, for crying out loud. He probably had a filing cabinet somewhere full of non-disclosure agreements with former lovers.

It was probably part of the franchise agreement, Kevyn reflected. A Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII had been offending the reading public for hundreds of years. Kevyn herself had a first edition copy of Bugrotica, a collection of Grump’s 19th Century writings, published in the early 21st Century. Some Grump or another had been publishing sporadically for over three hundred years.

The myth of the perpetual pornographer, celibate and eternal, was certainly good for sales. The Sir Reginald that Kevyn knew perpetuated the myth by simply not addressing it. Admitting, in fact, that it was both absurd and impossible, with the tiniest smile that hinted that maybe there was more to the story.

Actually, it was kind of hot, she thought, when he did that — that hint of mystery glimmering in his eye. And then, remembering that he was probably barely a foot away in the darkness, playing creepy mind games, she put that thought where it belonged. They would not be needing a non-disclosure agreement. Especially if he kept this up.

Kevyn looked back at the strange vessel. It was moving, slowly. She hadn’t noticed its movement within a wider field, but closer, it seemed to be gradually approaching the Greenmoon.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Martians? Or someone else?”

The colonies on Mars had written off the mother planet. Quarantined the whole sector. Not that the conspiracy nuts believed a word of it. It was all a big hoax, perpetrated by the government and the media and the scientists, for alleged reasons that Kevyn still couldn’t make sense of. The Martians sent support shipments to the lunar colonies, unmanned drones full of precious water. That was how the lunar colonies survived (not that the conspiracy nuts believed that, either.) But those were one-way deliveries only. The Martians took no chances; any ship that came into Earthspace would never leave, and the drones were designed to fuse into an unsalvageable lump after their delivery was made.

Maybe this meant they’d changed their policies. Maybe they had finally decided to try to help solve the problem, rather than just avoiding it.

She increased the magnification yet again, close enough to see the details.

“Oh,” she said. It didn’t look like a Martian ship, with its trademarked red planet logo. This was something much older, and much bigger, than any Martian vessel she’d heard of.

And in much worse shape.

The entire back end of the ship looked like it had exploded, and what wasn’t just ribbons of torn metal was missing entirely. It looked like there had at one time been at least six rotating rings, and massive solar reflectors, mounted on a slender tube of a ship. Now, only the front two rings appeared at all intact, and only the foremost of them rotated.

Written on the hull of the ship’s central hub was its insignia: OPEV BEAGLE. Kevyn knew what a beagle was — it was a kind of predatory bird, one that had been extinct for decades. Large and graceful, and worthy of having a spaceship named after it. But she didn’t know what OPEV stood for.

“Sir Reginald? Come look at this.”

Sir Reginald remained silent, and the room remained dark.

“Sir Reginald? Hey! Grump!” Kevyn shouted. “Stop fucking around! You need to see this. These people are in trouble, and they’re heading straight toward the Greenmoon. Someone needs to warn them away, before it’s too late.”

Her voice echoed in the large, empty room.

“Sir Reginald?”

Kudzu, Chapter 9

Tags

book 2, chapter 9, kudzu, novel

This chapter gives the first clues as to what happened to reduce the world to its sorry state. Worry not! All will be revealed. Or implied. Or something. If you’re impatient, check out Kudzu: A Prologue in the Sparkito Press anthology Galactic Creatures.

Kudzu, a Novel

Chapter 9

“Are you sure this is kosher?” Kevyn looked around them as Sir Reginald fiddled with the lock.

“Of course,” Grump said. “You think they’d have given me a key if it wasn’t? Do you even know what the word ‘kosher’ means?”

“Of course!” With enough offense in her voice to mean ‘not really.’

Of course, there was nothing kosher about their expedition: the key he held was the key to his old apartment, which presumably still existed somewhere under a sea of kudzu. Grump shifted to block Kevyn’s view as he palmed the key and replaced it with a lock pick he’d been given by an intrepid young lady he’d met in Edinburgh, back in… it had to be centuries ago now. Or had it been the girl in Weimar Berlin? The lock released. Edinburgh. Yes.

“Sylvie,” he muttered. He remembered her smile when he’d picked her locks, or rather, the locks with which she’d tested him.

“What?” Kevyn asked.

“Hm? Oh, she was a French lass I met in Scotland, long time ago. She’d married a sailor and followed him home, and then he died of the pox.” Grump could read the confusion on her face. She’d probably never heard the word ‘pox’ in her life; as unimaginable in the 19th century as not knowing what kudzu was in the 22nd. “Come on, then. You wanted to see, and this is the best place to see from.”

The observatory had been orphaned when the funds ran out and the college closed its doors, but it had a special place in Grump’s heart, and he had expended quite a bit of what little capital he had at his disposal to protect the facility from the encroaching foliage. With bankruptcy laws as they were, that meant acquiring the surrounding properties and setting up the anti-kudzu fencing there. As a result, the observatory was both one of the few good places left from which to view the night sky, and absurdly underutilized.

There was a point, Grump thought, where any good idea becomes so fetishized and absolutist that it begins to lose utility and can become distinctly disadvantageous. Private property freed the people from oppressive governments, and then became the means by which people were manipulated and controlled. That was why he’d never bought anything that required taking a mortgage. He’d rather give his money to a bartender than to a banker.

So here was a facility that could be a great boon to what was left of humanity, and it was abandoned because multiple no-longer-existent lenders held liens against a similarly no-longer-existent, bankrupt organization.

Grump held the door open and, after they entered, he shut it securely behind them. Kevyn flicked on her flashlight.

“No lights?”

“No, the place is pretty much abandoned.”

“Doesn’t the telescope need power to work?”

Grump smiled in the darkness. “Yes. Just don’t ask where it comes from, as it’s distinctly unkosher. Come on, this way.”

The hallway he led her through ended at the foot of a flight of steps, next to a long-dead elevator. It was the first flight of many, and before they reached the top, Sir Reginald noted the sheen of sweat on the curve of Kevyn’s neck in the flashlight’s dancing glow. Noted it, and filed it away for use in a future story.

~

“So who d’you think is up there?” Kevyn’s hoarse whisper echoed in the empty hallway. “My bet is it’s the Martians.”

“Why are you whispering? There aren’t any guards.” Grump opened the door at the end of the hallway. Inside lay the great dome of the observatory; the darkness within seemed infinite.

“I… is that it? The telescope, I mean?” Kevyn panned the beam of the flashlight across the room. The telescope was a great, hulking mass in the darkness, stabbing down from the heavens. At its base was a chair, perched atop a low platform. It reminded her of her dentist. “I don’t know. It just seemed appropriate, somehow. You should always whisper in abandoned places. Out of respect.”

“If there are any ghosts here, I think they’d welcome the company.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Grump closed the observatory door behind them and made his way toward the telescope. “What did you mean, then?”

“I don’t know. I guess… I guess that’s what I meant.” Kevyn hesitated. “Not that I believe in ghosts or any of that.”

“Of course not. You have that screwdriver I gave you?”

“Yeah, here.”

Grump removed some screws from a panel built into the floor of the telescope platform. Inside there was a breaker switch. He flicked it, and the almost sub-audible sound of electricity hummed around them. There was a large switch on the control panel. Grump flipped it, and with a low rumble, the dome above them parted. Stars flickered. The Greenmoon was low in the sky, yet, but was, like the moon that glowed pallid behind it, nearly full tonight, a glittering emerald face whose beard trailed down into the horizon.

“No lights?” Kevyn asked.

“We don’t want to attract attention, do we? The power is routed only to the telescope and the dome. Lights would just attract attention.” Grump settled into the leather chair at the telescope’s eye-piece. He manipulated the controls with expert hands. “This is where I was when I first saw it. The so-called Greenmoon. Astrid — Dr. Kilgore — brought me here to show me, back when it was barely more than a seedling.”

“Dr. Kilgore? The Dr. Kilgore? You knew her?” Kevyn was wide-eyed. “You mean, when you were a kid, right? Why would she bring a kid here? I read that she hated kids, called them larvae.”

“A kid? I assure you, I was no more a child then than I am now.” Grump chuckled as he fiddled with the telescope controls. “Larvae. The mythology grows. Huh. That’s interesting. There really is something up there. You want to see?”

“Of course!”

Sir Reginald could feel the nervous excitement very nearly vibrating from her body. He slid out of the seat and took the flashlight. After she was settled, he pointed out the basic controls, the buttons and levers, and showed her how they worked. There were dials and digital displays as well, of course, but he didn’t mention them. In his brief time here with Astrid, she had never told him what any of them meant, and he had decided, at the end of the world, that if he didn’t already have that particular bit of knowledge, it would be in disrespectful to learn it.

Besides, you see so much more when you have to search the skies than when you just go to some preset location.

As they worked, Kevyn quizzed him on his relationship with the notorious Dr. Kilgore. How well did he know her? It was complicated. How did they meet? The usual way. Wasn’t he too young to have gone on a date with the woman who destroyed the world? Time’s a funny thing, sometimes.

And then she straightened up, mouth open in wonder.

“Oh!” she said. “I see it! But it’s blurry.”

Grump moved her hand to the focusing controls so that she wouldn’t have to look away from the lens. He saw a smile curve her lips in the flashlight’s dim light.

“It’s… is it…” Kevyn frowned. “It looks like it’s been damaged.”

And then she was gone.

Or rather, he was. The air smelled of horse shit and coal smoke, and the cobblestone streets were lit by gas lamps. The sickly yellow light of them contained none of the ubiquitous green cast that tinted everything since Astrid had loosed her creation on the world.

Grump quickly switched off the flashlight and hid it from view, and wondered where — and when — he was.

Kudzu – Chapter 8

Tags

book 2, chapter 8, kudzu, novel

Book 2 of Kudzu brings us somewhat down to Earth, so to speak, where for the last decade or so, genetically engineered Kudzu has spread rapidly across the globe. This chapter (re)introduces Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII, a gentleman of letters. Sir Reginald first appeared as an unused pseudonym that I had created to be the author of A Perfect Creature (in Like a Vorpal Blade from Circlet Press (it appears, incidentally, that there will be a reading of this story at Confluence next weekend, read by Elektra Hammond). He has since gone on to found an ezine, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, and is proud to say he’s got more than a bit part in the story Kudzu: A Prologue (in Galactic Creatures from Sparkito Press), a story which is, as the title implies, a prologue to this current endeavor.

Kudzu, a Novel

Book II: A Green and Verdant World

Chapter 8

The end of the world started with a love letter.

Sir Reginald F. Grump XXIII stared at the page, which obstinately refused to fill with words. His fountain pen pressed against the rough-fibered paper. Ink pooled under the nib, absorbing only slowly into the irregular, fibrous sheet. Pulped kudzu made for a terrible writing surface – barely a step above papyrus–but it was plentiful, and cheap, which was always a plus.

A shadow fell over him, and a hand pulled the empty glass from his peripheral vision. He heard the splash of liquid. Amber, he knew, and harsh to the tongue. Cheap whiskey, because fuck if he could afford anything better on a writer’s income.

Calin, bartender and proprietor of the eponymously titled Calin’s Pub, cleared his throat.

“S’not the way I remember it.”

“What would you know of love?” Sir Reginald said. He stroked the burnished silver of the fountain pen, which had been a gift from Lady Chatsworthy, perhaps the first who had won his heart, if not his hand. She had used this very pen to transcribe a story he had dictated – improvised, really – and he had subsequently learned to use the thing, messy ink and all, in order to write the story which he had dedicated to her.

Calin’s laugh harrumphed from his burgeoning gut. “I’m a bartender, which is sort of like being a country song. I can’t tell you shit about love, but I know heartbreak inside and out.”

“Then you should understand metaphors, and artistic license.”

“It was a vid-phone call, not a letter. I got the whole thing recorded off the security cam.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve told me a thousand times.” Grump drained his glass in a long swallow, pushed it across the bar toward Calin. “I’m writing a damned story, not the history of the world. Or would be without your incessant interruptions.”

This time Calin laughed out loud, the sound echoing against the dark-stained pine siding of the walls. An infectious sound, overpowering the jukebox which warbled an old David Bowie song from well-worn vinyl, and bringing smiles to the lips of the other patrons.

The front door swung open with a bang and a gust of hot, humid air. The verdurous light of the setting sun cast sheets of brilliance across the perpetual twilight that was Calin’s Pub. It was Kevyn Vaughan, a gentleperson of the finest calibre, which is to say, entirely self-created and very nearly as fictional as some of Sir Reginald’s characters. Kevyn was sometimes kind enough to act as a second reader for Sir Reginald’s sordid tales (her mastery of grammar was negligible, but her enthusiasm for a well-turned phrase was intense enough that he could plan his revisions just by watching her face as she read). She was an easy-going person who, to the best of Grump’s knowledge, was utterly unflappable.

And yet, here she was: flapped. And out of breath.

“Turn on the news!” she said, between gasps. “There’s something up there!”

“Up where?”

Grump wasn’t sure which of the patrons had asked, and as is the universal nature of pubs, the hubbub of inebriation quickly resumed, drowning the poor girl’s response. Woman, Grump reminded himself; she’d been five when the world ended, and now she could drink legally even by the absurdly repressive standards of even twentieth century puritanism.

Calin, however, was less easily distracted than the crowd.

“Kill the jukebox, Reg,” he said, as he fetched the step-stool from under the bar.

Sir Reginald capped his pen and tucked it safely into the pocket of his waistcoat before he made his way through the other patrons. He carefully tugged the jukebox’s oft-repaired electrical cord from the wall, and David Bowie’s voice crawled into silence, to mingled cheers and jeers. Calin fumbled at the old flatscreen hanging over the bar. Without batteries, the remote control no longer worked, and these electronics hadn’t been designed for manual intervention. An entirely predictable design flaw, from Sir Reginald’s perspective. Still, the thing flickered to life.

“It’s all talking heads,” Kevyn said, following Sir Reginald to the bar, “on all the stations, making shit up to fill the time. The Reuters news feed is still pretty uncontaminated.” She reached over the bar for a glass and filled it, holding it under the cracked and yellowed tap advertising a brewery that had not survived the apocalypse.

“Got ya,” Calin said, pushing buttons until the screen showed the Reuters logo. Below it, words in stark white against the dark blue background:

Breaking News: UFO Enters Earthspace

Calin turned up the volume, and the cool, detached voice of the newscaster cut across the pub.

“It’s the Martians,” someone said, hope hiding in his voice.

“Martians?” said another. “Are you really stupid enough to believe the government propaganda? The Martians are long dead.”

The argument that resulted was as stupid as it was unexpected, but it drowned out the television with drunken efficiency.

Sir Reginald put his notebook in his bag, and tapped Kevyn on the shoulder to get her attention.

“If you want to see what’s really going on, come with me.”