The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Read online

  “While we’re discussing health,” I said, “how’s yours?”

  “I’m fine, Gregory,” she said. “But I’m flattered to know you were worried about me.”

  “Of course I was,” I said. “You’re the person who’s keeping me alive.”

  “That’s not why you were worried,” she said.

  “No,” I admitted, “it’s not.”

  There was a momentary silence.

  “Well, are you ready to hobble outside?” she asked. “I’ll help you to that tree. You can prop yourself up against it when you sit, and the branches and leaves will shade you from the sun. It can get very warm here at midday.”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  She took my right hand in both of hers and pulled. It hurt like hell for a minute, but then I was on my feet.

  “Lean on my shoulder,” she said as she helped me turn toward the bubble’s entrance.

  I half-hopped, half-hobbled through it. The tree was some forty feet away. I’d gone about half that distance when my good foot went into some kind of rodent hole, and I started falling. I reached out, grabbing for her blouse, and then the strangest thing happened—instead of grabbing cloth, my fingers slid down her naked skin. I could see the blouse, but it wasn’t there. She pivoted, trying to catch me, and my hand came into contact with her bare breast, slid over her nipple, down a naked hip and thigh, and then I hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud! The pain was excruciating.

  Rebecca was beside me in an instant, positioning my leg, putting her hands under my head, doing what she could to comfort me. It took a good five minutes for the burning in my leg and arm to subside, but eventually it did, at least enough for me to consider what had happened.

  I reached out to her shoulder, felt the cloth of her blouse, and ran my hand down the side of her body. The texture of the cloth changed when I got to her slacks, but there was no naked flesh—yet I knew I hadn’t hallucinated it. You hallucinate after you’re in agony, like now, not before.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

  “You fell.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me,” I said. “It’s unbecoming in someone as smart and lovely. Just tell me what’s happening.”

  “Try to rest,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

  “You said yesterday that you wouldn’t lie to me. Did you mean it?”

  “I will never lie to you, Gregory.”

  I stared at her perfect face for a long minute. “Are you human?” I asked at last.

  “For the moment.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I am what I need to be,” she said. “What you need me to be.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “I am telling you that right now I am human, that I am everything you need. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Are you a shape-changer?” I asked.

  “No, Gregory, I am not.”

  “Then how can you look like this?”

  “This is what you want to see,” she said.

  “What if I want to see you are you really are?” I persisted.

  “But you don’t,” she said. “This”—she indicated herself—“is what you want to see.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Gregory, Gregory,” she said with a sigh, “do you think I created this face and this body out of my imagination? I found it in your mind.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “I never met anyone who looked like you.”

  A smile. “But you wish you had.” And a pause. “And if you had, you were sure she would be called Rebecca. I am not only everything you need, but everything you want.”

  “Everything?” I asked dubiously.

  “Everything.”

  “Can we…uh…?”

  “When you slipped you caught me off-guard,” she answered. “Didn’t I feel like the woman you want me to be?”

  “Let me get this straight. Your clothes are as much of an illusion as you are?”

  “The clothes are an illusion,” she said, and suddenly they vanished and she was standing, naked and perfect, before me. “I am real.”

  “You’re a real something,” I said. “But you’re not a real woman.”

  “At this moment I am as real as any woman you have ever known.”

  “Let me think for a minute,” I said. I stared at her while I tried to think. Then I realized that I was thinking all the wrong things, and I lowered my gaze to the ground. “That thing that drove the Nightstalker away,” I said. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “It was what you needed at that instant,” she answered.

  “And whatever pulls the leaves down from the treetops—a snake, a bird, an animal, whatever—that’s you too?”

  “You need a mixture of the leaves and the herbs to combat your infection.”

  “Are you trying to say that you were put here solely to serve my needs?” I demanded. “I didn’t think God was that generous.”

  “No, Gregory,” said Rebecca. “I am saying that it is my nature, even my compulsion, to nurture those who are in need of nurturing.”

  “How did you know I needed it, or that I was even on the planet?”

  “There are many ways of sending a distress signal, some of them far more powerful than you can imagine.”

  “Are you saying that if someone is suffering, say, five miles away, you’d know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “More that five miles?” I continued. She simply stared at me. “Fifty miles? A hundred? The whole damned planet?”

  She looked into my eyes, her face suddenly so sad that I totally forgot about the rest of her. “It’s not limited to just the planet, Gregory.”

  “When you ran off for a few minutes, were you saving some other man?”

  “You are the only man on the planet,” she replied.

  “Well, then?”

  “A small marsupial had broken a leg. I alleviated its suffering.”

  “You weren’t gone that long,” I said. “Are you saying that an injured wild animal let a strange woman approach it while it was in pain, because I find that very difficult to believe.”

  “I did not approach it as a woman.”

  I stared at her for a long moment. I think I half-expected her to morph into some kind of alien monster, but she just looked as beautiful as ever. I visually searched her naked body for flaws—make that errors—some indication that she wasn’t human, but I couldn’t find any.

  “I’ve got to think about all this,” I said at last.

  “Would you like me to leave?”

  “No.”

  “Would it be less distracting if I recreated the illusion of clothing?”

  “Yes,” I said. Then “No.” Then “I don’t know.”

  “They always find out,” she said. “But usually not this quickly.”

  “Are you the only one of…of whatever it is that you are?”

  “No,” she replied. “But we were never a numerous race, and I am one of the very few who remains on Nikita.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  “They went where they were needed. Some came back; most went from one distress signal to another.”

  “We haven’t had a ship here in six years,” I said. “How did they leave the planet?”

  “There are many races in the galaxy, Gregory. Humans aren’t the only ones to land here.”

  “How many men have you saved?”

  “A few.”

  “And Patrukans?”

  “Patrukans too.”

  I shrugged. “Why the hell not? I suppose we’re all equally alien to you.”

  “You are not alien,” she said. “I assure you that at this moment I am every bit as human as the Rebecca of your dreams. In fact, I am the Rebecca of your dreams.” She flashed me a smile. “I even want to do what that Rebecca wants to do.”

  “Is it possible?” I asked curiously.

  “Not while you have a broken l
eg,” she answered, “but yes, it’s not only possible, but natural.” I must have looked doubtful, because she added, “It would feel exactly the way you hope it would feel.”

  “You’d better bring the clothes back before I do something really stupid that’ll mess up my arm and leg even worse,” I said.

  And instantly she was clothed again.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Safer, anyway,” I said.

  “While you’re thinking deep serious thoughts, I’ll start making your breakfast,” she said, helping me to the shade of the tree, then going back into the bubble to find some H-rations.

  I sat motionless for a few minutes, considering what I had learned. And I came to what seemed, at least at the time, a surprising conclusion. She was my dream girl. She was drop-dead gorgeous—to me, anyway. We shared dozens of interests, and she was as passionate about them as I was. I felt comfortable with her, and knowing that she was really something else didn’t disturb me half as much as I’d thought it would. If she was Rebecca only when I was around, that was better than never having a Rebecca at all. And she cared for me; she had no reason to say so if it wasn’t true.

  She walked over and handed me a plate filled with soya products that were designed to look and taste like anything except soya products. I put the plate on the ground and took her hand in mine.

  “You don’t shrink from my touch,” I noted, stroking her arm gently.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I am your Rebecca. I love your touch.”

  “I don’t shrink from yours either,” I said, “which is probably a little more surprising. I’m sitting here, touching you, looking at you, smelling the nearness of you, and I don’t give a damn who you are or what you look like when I’m not around. I just want you to stay.”

  She leaned down and kissed me. If it felt like anything other than being kissed by a human woman, I sure as hell couldn’t tell the difference.

  I ate my breakfast, and we spent the morning talking—about books, about art, about theater, about food, about a hundred things we had in common. And we talked in the afternoon, and we talked in the evening.

  I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night. I was laying on my side, and she was curled up against me. I felt something warm and flat on my leg, not a bandage. It seemed to be…sucking is a terrible word; extracting…some of the infection from my leg. I had a feeling that it was some part of her that I couldn’t see; I decided not to look, and when I woke up in the morning she was already gathering some firewood for warming my breakfast.

  We spent seven idyllic days together at that campsite. We talked, we ate, I began walking on a pair of crutches she made. Four times she excused herself and ran off, and I knew she’d picked another distress signal out of the air, but she was always back a few minutes later. Long before those seven days were up I realized that, despite a broken leg and a shredded arm, they were the happiest days I’d ever spent.

  I spent my eighth day with her—my ninth on Nikita—making my way slowly and painfully back to the spot where the ship would pick me up the next morning. I set up my bubble after dinner, and crawled into it a couple of hours later. As I was starting to drift off I felt her lie up against me, and this time there was no illusion of clothing.

  “I can’t,” I said unhappily. “My leg…”

  “Hush,” she whispered. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  And she did.

  * * * *

  She was making breakfast when I awoke.

  “Good morning,” I said as I emerged from the bubble.

  “Good morning.”

  I hobbled over and kissed her. “Thank you for last night.”

  “I hope we didn’t damage your wounds.”

  “If we did, it was worth it,” I said. “The ship is due in less than an hour. We have to talk.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “I don’t care what you are,” I said. “To me you’re Rebecca, and I love you. And before the ship arrives, I’ve got to know if you love me too.”

  “Yes, Gregory, I do.”

  “Then will you come with me?”

  “I’d like to, Gregory,” she said. “But…”

  “Have you ever left Nikita before?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Whenever I sense that someone with whom I’ve been linked is in physical or emotional pain.”

  “But you always come back?”

  “This is my home.”

  “Did you visit Myron Seymour after he left Nikita?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” I said. “Either you did or you didn’t.”

  “All right,” she said unhappily. “Either I did or I didn’t.”

  “I thought you were never going to lie to me,” I said.

  “I’m not lying, Gregory,” she said, reaching out and laying a hand on my good shoulder. “You don’t understand how the bond works.”

  “What bond?” I asked, confused.

  “You know that I look like this and I took this name because I was drawn irresistibly to your pain and your need, and found the name and the image in your mind,” she said. “We are linked, Gregory. You say that you love me, and probably you do. I share that emotion. But I share it for the same reason I can discuss your favorite books and plays—because I found them where I found Rebecca. When the link is broken, when I’m not in contact with you any more, they’ll be forgotten.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “And everything I feel for you this minute will be forgotten too.”

  I just stared at her, trying to comprehend what she’d said.

  “I’m sorry, Gregory,” she continued after a moment. “You can’t know how sorry. Right now all I want is to be with you, to love you and care for you—but when the link is broken, it will all be gone.” Another tear. “I won’t even feel a sense of loss.”

  “And that’s why you can’t remember if you made it to Earth and saved Seymour?”

  “I may have, I may not have,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know. Probably I never will.”

  I thought about it. “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t care about the others. Just stay with me and don’t break the link.”

  “It’s not something I can control, Gregory,” she replied. “It’s strongest when you need me most. As you heal, as you need me less, then I’ll be drawn to someone or something that needs me more. Perhaps it will be another man, perhaps a Patrukan, perhaps something else. But it will happen, again and again.”

  “Until I need you more than anyone else does,” I said.

  “Until you need me more than anyone else does,” she confirmed.

  And at that moment, I knew why Seymour and Daniels and the others had walked into what seemed near-certain death. And I realized what Captain Symmes and the Patrukan historian Myxophtyl didn’t know: that they hadn’t tried to get themselves killed, but rather to get themselves almost killed.

  Suddenly I saw the ship overhead, getting ready to touch down a few hundred yards away.

  “Does anyone or anything need you right now?” I asked. “More than I do, I mean?”

  “Right this moment? No.”

  “Then come with me for as long as you can,” I said.

  “It’s not a good idea,” she said. “I could begin the journey, but you’re getting healthier every day, and something always needs me. We’d land at a spaceport to change ships, and you’d turn around and I’d be gone. That’s the way it was six years ago, with the human and Patrukan survivors.” Her face reflected her sorrow. “There is so much pain and suffering in the galaxy.”

  “But I need you even if I’m healthy,” I said. “I love you, damn it!”

  “And I love you,” she said. “Today. But tomorrow?” She shrugged helplessly.

  The ship touched down.

  “You loved each of them, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I would give everything I have to rem
ember.”

  “You’ll forget me too, won’t you?”

  She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Don’t think about it.”

  Then she turned and began walking away. The pilot approached me and picked up my gear.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked, jerking a thumb in Rebecca’s direction—and I realized that he saw her as she truly was, that she was linked only to me.

  “What did it look like to you?” I replied.

  He shook his head. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  * * * *

  It took me five days to get back to Earth. The medics at the hospital were amazed that I’d healed so quickly, and that all signs of infection were gone. I let them think it was a miracle, and in a way it was. I didn’t care; all I cared about was getting her back.

  I quit my job at OceanPort and hired on with the police department. They stuck me behind a desk for a few months, until my limp disappeared, but yesterday I finally got transferred to the vice squad.

  There’s a major drug deal going down tonight: alphanella seeds from somewhere out in the Albion Cluster, ten times as powerful as heroin. We’ll be mounting a raid in about four hours. The buyers and sellers both figure to have plenty of muscle standing guard, and it’s likely to get pretty hairy.

  I hope so.

  I’ve already locked my weapons away.

  A BRIEF DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES, by Michael Kurland

  I have traveled this limitless universe for many tens of thousands of years, flitting where I wish at speeds that photons envy. I have moved backward through time and met myself coming and going, and explored the C 2 paradox as eagerly as others rummage through attic trunks full of old dreams. And I am not bored.

  My name is Deradan, and I am immortal, and I am omniscient, or as omniscient as practical in this uncausal universe, and I used to be a man.

  “Tell me how it was, Deradan. Tell me about the old days,” Thrayna said, perching on a silver crystal, her voice the tinkle of sapphire bells with ruby overtones. She was born after the transformation, and she loves the stories of the olden days, when we were mortal and the worlds were young.

  “We lived on Earth,” I told her, “billions of us. All crammed together on a single planet.”