once I found myself truly, utterly alone, with no one to hate or envy or love, I realized what had driven Huoy to drill those holes in her skull, or what had compelled Elizabeth to dive into the scummy depths, never to surface alive. To be a sudden captive in one’s own mind, without the succor of one’s fellow espers, had to have been as profound a shock as my reluctant monopoly of the planet was later on. But yet...they’d had me, at least. And to know that my presence wasn’t enough to cut it against the loss of their precious, elitist esper capabilities, even though I could at least try and share their anguish, their aloneness...well, once I got over the initial shock and hurt over their deaths, I got to thinking, You selfish, childish boors...for people who supposedly shared so much, you couldn’t share the fact that I needed you too.
Around that time, I stopped visiting their graves each day, quit laying symbolic bunches of dried-out limp-vines on Reba’s mound next to the fruit-bearing tuber trees whose fruit she’d sampled first. Damn you all, my mind pouted, between throbs of limb-twitching pain. They didn’t need me, I didn’t need them. Tit for tat, all that childish nonsense we repeat when the hurt runs too deep for adult rationalization.
I scoured the lab and the storage compartments, looking for the gene-splicing equipment Reba had once told me was secreted somewhere on the ship, the equipment no one had had reason to use after the crash. For when I wasn’t gripped by migraines, in those times between the pain when my body dared to relax, to hope, before being assaulted once again, I’d hatched a plan. Reba said there was simple cloning equipment, suitable for small-scale flora and fauna projects. But if I cobbled here and jury-rigged there, there was a chance I could make it work with my own tissue, to grow my own company. I didn’t even care if they grew up mutated, or deformed. I needed company, beings like myself, to talk to, rant at, rule and hurt like I’d been hurt...and what better whipping boy than one’s own self?—
Once I found the equipment, plus the odds and ends I’d need to adapt the splicer and other things to fill my needs, I decided to lay in a store of food, so I could work non-stop until the equipment had been modified. The husk-fruit in particular didn’t spoil once picked, not for days....
A light rain had washed off most of the odd symbols the ’lopes had painted on the ship; symbols that matched the ones that scarred Jimmie’s arm. As I gathered fruit into an empty storage container, I cursed myself for not encouraging the ’lopes to write again. Should’ve written something of my own, tried to establish a rapport. Something. Anything. Encourage the fuzzy buggers. Jimmie had been too sick to notice what they’d done to him, as he lay comatose outdoors, and I’d been too wrapped up in self-pity to bother with them....
Setting my nearly full container of husk-fruit on the almost bare ground, I decided to gather a handful of pond mud, try my hand at communication. Not that they’d understand, but they’d see that I, too, could manipulate symbols, that we were at least trying to move in the same direction. I made it down to the pond all right, minimal dizziness, only mild haloes of wavering multi-hued light danced around the sun-dappled limp-vines, so when I awoke covered in cold mud, I wasn’t just shocked—I was furious; at the prions, at myself for trying to do something as silly as communicating with long-tailed creatures, at the planet itself—
Turning my head gingerly, slightly, against the stabbing pain, I saw a pair of wet-furred feet next to my head. Looking up, I saw Penti-Lope-Lope staring down at me, her oval black pupils narrowed and small against slanted amber-orange backgrounds. She was scrutinizing me, her softly furred face unreadable. I’d never been this close to a breathing ’lope before. I now saw that what we’d all called fur was actually a thick, even covering of body hair, not too unlike my own. Downy hair, less than a quarter of an inch in length, with variations in color much like the differences in human hair color—
As I struggled to rise, my hand brushed Penti’s leg. She started, but held her ground. Instead of running, she hunkered down—her spine curved in a huge “C” as she bent her head my way—and patted my face with one hairy hand. Or at least the upper surface of her hand was hairy; the palm was smooth and slippery, the flesh dry and warm. I froze, not wanting to frighten her away. I felt her breath, warm and puffing evenly, as she got down on her knees and peered into my nose, my eyes, as if seeking something. I thought of the old, old films about the great apes preening each other, looking for tasty lice. But Penti’s actions were more specific, methodical....
First my nose, looking into the nostrils, then each eye was scrutinized. After that, she shifted my head, looking in each ear. Examining me, as if she was worried that I’d been injured. At that point, I realized that I’d been dragged to a place of higher ground, away from the lapping water that tugged on the limp-vines like a shower spray streaming through wet hair. I’d been standing knee-deep in the water, searching for mud—
And Penti had been watching me, hidden somewhere close enough to yank me out of the water when I keeled over, before I drowned. That realization made me too bold; I reached up and grasped her downy wrist, and she let out a grunt before getting to her feet and leaping away. I was splattered with a muddy mist as her powerful feet left the soggy ground. Weakly, I propped myself up on one elbow, my fingers still tingling from the surface of her skin.
And something else connected in my mind just then. Penti’s arm. It was scarred. Tiny pairs of oddly-canted short lines, like Jimmie, like our worthless ship....
Day 173:
This clear spell can’t go on much longer, I just know it. One day soon, I’ll black out and only come back, the next day or the next week or the next year. The time will be gone, I’ll be older, and be no closer to a solution to the puzzle that keeps me going now. The puzzle of the ’lopers. What drives them? Do they think? Do they write? Do they dream?
I went down to the electronics lab today, looking for something that could help. I need a way of recording the events through which I drift unknowingly in blackout. It’s the only way I’ll ever know.
The place was a shambles. Neil had ransacked it in his last days, trying to fill his days with a purpose that could hold him through the spasms of pain. That purpose was building a hyperspace radio. No matter that the best physicists on earth hadn’t made that discovery, Neil tried....He left instruments all over the floor, radio parts on the benches and crushed underfoot. I dug through the heaps he left for an intact lab recorder. Nearly passed out twice...my head hurts more and more as the day goes on. But I found one, a little coin-sized button meant for remote observation in confined areas. They were good for 500 hours of vid and sound recording before their superconducting squid memories had to be downloaded. I taped it carefully to my forehead like a third eye and turned it on. I was set. The question I avoided asking myself was whether I really wanted to solve the puzzle of the ’lopes. My plans for cloning my own company were revealed as Fairy dust. Did I want to lose the question which took their place?
Day 174:
I’m almost it for this log. The chronometer says this is the 174th day on this planet. My head hurts more today. I think this might be the last before I black out again
I left off after the time Penti came up to me, passed out in the mud, to see who or what I was. Sometime between the sixtieth and hundredth day, I’m not sure right now. How should I be? After I woke up in the mud while I was trying to collect enough food, I was in a daze. In the days after passing out, I came lucid from time to time, wandering aimlessly. The fevered idea of the splicer was barred for the moment, or any kind of thinking for that matter. I found my head hurt much less if I didn’t think. So I wandered, caring neither where I went nor where I came from.
Still, those human habits of observation, the old, old ones we get from the monkeys, aren’t so easily banished. Now that I’d spotted the ten hash-marks on Penti’s arm, I began seeing them everywhere. Maybe I was blind to them before, or if the ’lopes had played dumb when we arrived, hiding their light
