The Color of Distance (13 page)

Three days later, the forest ended abruptly at a set of rocky cliffs overlooking the sea. In some places the jungle actually hung out over the cliffs in a tangle of branches and long streamers of dangling roots and vines. Juna smiled, remembering how they had winched her down a cliff in a sling seat so that she could collect samples of canopy biota. She had been terrified the whole time. If she had known then what she’d have to face… She shook her head, an ironic smile on her face.

They followed the wide arc of the coastline north. On the second day, she began recognizing landmarks she had seen from the flyer. Anticipation alternated with fear. Would the Survey team even recognize her? What if they didn’t?

The sun was low on the horizon when Juna spotted the gleaming silver radio beacon. She climbed down to the ground and ran toward it, stumbling heedlessly over sharp rocks and rotting branches, calling out as she ran. She burst out of the jungle and stopped. Where the camp had stood there was now only a wide plain of baked soil and black ash. It was all that was left after decontamination procedures. Only the gleaming radio tower remained, marking the spot for future expeditions. Base camp was gone. The Survey had left.

Juna knelt to examine the soil of the burnt-over area. The rains had washed the ash into gullies and depressions. She shook her head: That ash contained most of the nutrients needed to sustain a rain forest, and it was washing away. Near the edge of the forest, where the soil wasn’t baked hard, plants were sprouting to cover the area, some of them well established. She estimated that the ship had been gone for at least three weeks. Was the mother ship gone as well? Had the
Kotani
Mara made the jump to hyperspace? Could they still come back for her? Juna walked across the burnt-over clearing, mind carefully held blank. She didn’t know yet. She wouldn’t know until the
Kotani
Mara failed to return her distress call.

Juna’s hands shook as she plugged the computer into the radio beacon and transmitted her identification code and a distress call.

There was no reply. She checked the connections, made sure there was enough charge in the radio’s massive solar-powered batteries to punch her message out into space. Everything was working, her transmission was going out. She told the computer to repeat the transmission over and over until it received a reply, and settled back to wait. If the ship had left orbit, it might take hours for her message to reach them, and then more hours for her to hear the ship’s reply.

She looked around. Except for the radio tower, there was no sign that humans had lived here. Ukatonen and Anito wandered over the burnt ground, their legs covered with blackened soot, their skins grey with un-happiness. Had the
Kotani
Mara vanished into hyperspace? Was she condemned to wait twenty or thirty years before the nearest human outpost heard her distant pleas for help?

Juna set her jaw. She looked out over the surging ocean toward the horizon. The setting sun turned the sea pale gold. She would not despair until dawn, she decided. If she didn’t hear from the
Kotani
by the time the sun came up tomorrow, then the ship was gone.

Her left foot throbbed. She had cut it on something in her hurry to reach base camp. She should have been more careful. Even a minor injury could be serious if she was marooned here. Tears welled up in her eyes. She mustn’t give up hope. She had until tomorrow.

Juna leaned against the base of the tower, thinking of as little as possible. Anito came up and examined her injured foot. Yellow streaks of irritation exploded on the alien’s chest like miniature lightning bolts.

“You bad foot,” it said. “Not good. Get sick.” It squirted a clear, sticky substance from its spurs, and rubbed it into the cut on Juna’s foot. The throbbing faded.

“Where your people?” the alien asked her.

Juna shook her head, fighting back her fear.

“Gone?” it asked next.

Juna shrugged. She didn’t know how to explain what she was waiting for. Radio and starships were beyond the scope of these aliens’ lives. Juna pointed at the setting sun, and then moved her arm in an arc until she pointed at the eastern horizon; then she pointed at herself and patted the ground. She would stay here until dawn. Anito thrust its head forward as it tried to figure out what Juna was trying to say, then nodded to show that it understood.

“You stay here. I get food.”

Juna nodded and sat back against the base of the tower, waiting. She called up her report and” reviewed it, trying to keep her mind busy with details so she wouldn’t think past dawn. She barely noticed Anito’s return. She was too anxious to eat more than a couple of bites of fruit.

It was several hours past sunset when the speaker on the radio tower crackled to life.

“This is the Survey exploration vessel
Kotani Manx
calling Dr. Juna Saari. We are currently 13.5 A.U. from your planet. Our estimated transmission lag time is one hour, fifty-two minutes. Our time remaining before hyperspace transition is two and a half days. We are unable to return to pick you up, but we will report you as marooned to the Survey.” There was a brief pause. “I-I’m sorry Juna. We’ll push them as hard as we can for you. This message will repeat.”

The sound of another human voice jolted Juna out of the light doze she had fallen into. She listened, her heart soaring. She wasn’t lost after all. She had gotten here in time. Then the meaning of the message sank in, and her heart dove. She was trapped here, in this alien skin, alone with these slimy aliens. The message began repeating, driving the realization home with mechanical relentlessness.

“Damn!” she shouted, striking the tower with her fist. It gave out a dull metallic gong. “Damn,” she said again more quietly, rubbing her bruised hand. She reached over and cut off another repetition of the message, fighting back tears as she spoke the command.

She sat for a moment, getting herself under control. Then when she was ready, she reactivated the computer, this time to record a message.

“Kotani
Maru, this is Dr. Juna Saari. I am in good health, although somewhat changed.” That, she thought, was an understatement. “My prospects for survival are excellent, even without my suit. Tell Kinsey that I’ve got some intelligent aliens for him. A full report follows. Computer, transmit message and append report.”

She sat back while the computer transmitted the verbal and visual report she had prepared for the Survey, and contemplated her situation. She was stuck here for several years at least. But her discovery of the aliens would give top priority to a return mission.

Still, it would take the
Kotani
eight months to get back to Earth. Then, once the news got out, there would be an incredible academic turf battle as every A-C specialist on the planet vied for a spot on the return expedition. A ship would have to be yanked from its schedule, prompting another squabble. Add in the time necessary to outfit the expedition and brief the crew, and then the months it would take for the ship to actually get here. It would be years.

Juna shook her head. Years without simple human contact and the sound of human voices. Years alone. She finally let her stinging tears flow.

The next transmission woke Juna. It was Kinsey, the ship’s Alien Contact specialist, full of questions, most of which she couldn’t answer, and useless orders on how to deal with the aliens, most of which she had already violated. Juna sighed, wishing Kinsey weren’t such a by-the-book idiot. But then, anyone with a lick of sense stayed out of a discipline with so little future. Perhaps when he read her report, he would understand how helpless she was down here.

After Kinsey was through, Takayuki Tatsumi, the head of the life sciences team, began questioning her.

“What does it feel like down there? What does it smell like?” Tatsumi wanted to know.

She could feel Tatsumi’s longing to be on the planet, able to wander around without a suit, able to touch, smell, and taste things. She was living the dream of every Survey tech.

Juna wanted to shout at the radio, to tell them it wasn’t worth the isolation, the loneliness, the discomfort. Their envy made her angry, and worse, it made her feel ashamed. Hadn’t she wanted this too? To shed her bulky, uncomfortable suit and be able to touch and smell an alien world? Dreaming about such things while sitting comfortably around a table in the lounge was cruelly different from the reality of her situation.

“It smells like a jungle,” Juna told him, “hot and wet and full of things rotting.” She paused, trying to control her bitterness. They were hungry, as she had been, to experience another world. It was why they were all here, in the Survey, instead of at home, surrounded by friends and family. She described the smells and tastes of the food she had eaten, both good and bad. She was longing for a hot meal, as much as the Survey team was longing to taste alien food.

Juna cued the computer to continue. There were more questions, all variants of “What does this smell/taste/feel like?” She answered them as well as she could. She clung to their human voices. Soon she would be the only human for hundreds of light-years. She wanted to savor every moment of human contact left to her, even when their questions were stupid or impossible to answer.

At last the questions came to a close. Personal messages would follow. She paused the computer, and drank deeply from her water gourd. All of this talking was a strain on her voice. She had become used to the aliens’ silence, and spoke only rarely.

She corked the water gourd, and told the computer to continue.

“Juna, this is Ali.” The sound of Ali’s deep voice, with its lilting accent, brought fresh tears prickling at the back of her eyelids. She paused the message, suddenly overwhelmed by memories of Ali’s ebony skin, the feel of the tribal cicatrices on his chest, the sharp, warm smell of him. She wanted to curl up in his arms and cry for a week. Glancing down, she discovered to her surprise that her skin had turned a rich, metallic shade of gold. She cued the message to continue. “… I saw the pictures of what’s happened to you, and I’m sorry. You were so beautiful. I’ll miss you.”

Ali continued on, telling her how much he would miss her lovely body, and filling her in on what he had been doing after she disappeared. Juna sat, the words flowing over her in a meaningless murmur of sound. He was saying goodbye. His words burned deeper than her tears. Even though this relationship was only a shipboard convenience, she had expected a little more from him than this self-centered farewell. It hurt more than she would have expected. She looked down at her transformed body. No wonder he was pulling away. No one would want her, not when she looked like this.

Ali’s words left her too drained to listen to the other messages. She dictated a brief request for hypertexts on tropical rain forest biomes, jungle survival, and a variety of anthropological and linguistic works, as well as a complete Survey inventory of the rain forest biome. Then she curled up at the base of the tower and fell asleep.

Dawn brought more messages, from friends and co-workers, and a steady transmission stream of hypertext books on the data line.

There was a note from Alison, her closest friend on the ship. Alison was in her seventies, and was retiring after this trip. Juna would miss her.

“You seem so changed that I fear for you,” Alison told her. “I know that the next few years are going to be very hard for you, all alone amongst aliens. Be strong, and remember that there are people who love you back home.

“I’ll drop in on your father as soon as I can and make sure that he’s all right. When you get back to Earth, come and visit. Tell me stories of the forest and the aliens.”

Juna felt a surge of gratitude well up in her. Juna had brought Alison home on leave a few years back. Alison and her father had had an affair, and still remained close. Juna suspected that Alison was keeping an eye on her for her father. She was glad that Alison would be there for him while she was away.

Padraig, who carried on a continual flirtation with all of the women, and most of the men, regardless of age, looks, or marital status, said:

“You should never have let that handsome alien kiss you. I’m downloading a file of things to make you smile. I hope it helps. When you get back, come kiss me, and I’ll turn you into a handsome prince. Be well,
m’acushla,
be well.”

Juna laughed in spite of herself. They had been lovers, briefly, before she settled in with Ali. They were still close friends. Perhaps it would have been better to be one of Padraig’s dozen lovers than to have paired off with Ali.

Anger at Ali flooded Juna. She hoped that the waste evac tube on his e-suit would get stuck shut on a hot day.

There were several other messages from good friends. Then there was an official communication from Chang, the Morale Officer. Juna grimaced. Chang had been on the
Next Great Leap Forward People’s Generation Ship.
A Jump ship retrieved the crew about ten years ago. Almost all of the crew had joined the Space Service; it was the only place where they didn’t feel completely lost. Rumor had it that Chang landed her present berth because they wanted to get rid of her groundside. Juna could believe it. Chang was a stolid, humorless, by-the-book sort, and shipboard morale was high more or less despite her.

“Juna,” Chang said in her message, “on behalf of myself and the entire crew, I want to extend our most sincere regrets about the misfortune that has befallen you. I assure you that Captain Rodrigues and myself will make every possible effort to expedite a return expedition. I urge you to abide by the Survey nonintervention guidelines, and to be a credit to the Survey’s century-long tradition of cautious, nondestructive exploration. I will be downloading all of the Survey regulations pertaining to alien contact and environmental quarantining. I trust that you will do your best to obey them. Sincerely, Mei-Mei Chang.”

Juna rolled her eyes, and switched off the sound, leaving the computer to record the rest of her messages. She got up and went into the forest. Finding refuge high in the branches of a tree, she listened to the clamor of the forest, and the distant, barely audible hush of the surf.