Short Story: Azure Amber
[This story is a prequel to my previous two posts but is intended to be read after them rather than before. You can read the first part of the story here and the second part here.]
Azure Amber
"Wouldn't ya know it, Gus." Blake stared up at the stand of vibrantly blue, six-meter-tall growths. "It's like somethin' outta... That one story, with the girl and the rabbit."
Gus sighed. He knew he should never have tried to introduce his partner to any classic literature, especially not thousand-year-old surreal fantasy. Still, Blake was right – there was something almost magical in being able to look up into the ruffled underside of a mushroom cap which towered more than four meters over his head.
Sure, the specimen wasn't actually a mushroom. It was a tree – more or less. The planet's stellar primary was reddish in color, so most of the local photosynthetic life was blue or bluish-purple. The odd thing about the mushroom-trees was that their "caps" were a translucent grey, and the blue, energy-capturing tissues were housed on the upper sides of what would be, on Earth fungi, the gills. The thick, pale trunk of the plant was as hard as Terran wood, studded with gemstone-bright azure hemispheres, which were probably hardened chunks of leaking sap. Reflections of the two explorers danced crazily in each bright, glassy sap boil, and Gus thought they looked like a hundred mismatched eyes, watching him and his partner.
"See if you can pull off one of those sap globs." Gus suggested, kneeling down to prod at the exposed root structure of the specimen with his gloved hand. Unlike the trunk, the roots were soft and pliable, like rubber hoses. Flicking out a small knife, he carefully poked the root, and a bead of bright blue fluid immediately welled out.
"If they come off, I'm keepin' one, Gus." Blake observed. Gus didn't bother to respond; Blake loved souvenirs, and he tended to take things before it was obvious that they would survive being taken. A brilliant blue paperweight might become a pile of brown powder in a human-habitable atmosphere – or it might give off a toxic gas. It was better to let Blake discover these things for himself; no amount of forewarning would help. Venting his frustration on the root, Gus savagely jabbed his knife into the hose-like structure, then yanked it sideways, opening a ten-inch-long cut. Viscous blue fluid gushed out almost immediately, rolling over the dirt and stones. Gus, surprised by the volume of the flow, elected to move back and avoid getting any on his suit. Even if it was harmless, and he didn't know if it was, he preferred to let Blake do most of the messy work.
There was a grunt over the radio, and Gus turned to see that his partner had decided to step on one of the larger, lower sap boils in order to reach the smaller, upper ones. The glassy, hard-looking surface had given way, and now Blake was hopping back, his right boot trailing a blue tether back to the mushroom tree. "Ain't as dry as they look, Gus." He observed uselessly.
Gus shook his head inside his helmet and turned back to the stream of blue fluid. It was as thick as the sugar syrup used in shipboard food processor machines, and it curled quite attractively around the various detritus on the ground. The plant, he acknowledged, was quite pleasing to look at in almost every respect – if it was better known, he was certain that miniature versions would be grown in desktop terrariums throughout the Core Worlds. "Put some samples through the analyzer and let's move on, before you get more of a souvenir than you can handle." He suggested. The pair wasn't exploring for their own amusement – they needed to find something worth the effort. Something worth bringing back to pay off their debts, or at least something that might cover the interest for a while.
"That ain't funny Gus." Blake grumbled. Gus continued to stare at the gunk he'd released, not bothering to turn and see whether his suggestion was being followed. The fluid's leisurely, almost joyful crawl across the ground was oddly satisfying, even though he had apparently spilled some of the tree's life-blood. He wondered whether the stuff was worth anything – it certainly looked like it was, though he couldn't place his finger on exactly why. Given that having his boot covered in the stuff hadn't seemed to cause Blake any distress, Gus cautiously dipped his gloved finger into the edge of the flow, pulling up a sticky streamer to catch the faint, hazy light.
Gus didn't notice the strand connecting his gloved finger to the flow thickening from the bottom up until it was almost as big around as his wrist. Hurriedly yanking his hand back, Gus parted the tenuous connection, but the azure tendril remained there, lifted into the air.
Gus meant to cry out a warning to his partner, but as soon as he saw a pair of dark eyes open behind the outstretched appendage, and his voice died in a quiet exclamation that the radio didn't bother to transmit. The eyes staring up out of the flow of liquid were of a darker blue than their surroundings, and they seemed oddly human, growing more so with each passing second. Nothing else on the planet had eyes like that – Gus knew, without having any evidence to back it up, that the puddle was mimicking his own eyes, even though they were hidden behind his helmet's reflective face-plate.
Even as he watched, though, he knew the entity was not merely copying his own appearance. As if springing forth from his own mind, the oozing liquid produced a face, a neck, and shoulders, as if carving a beautiful woman from liquid amber to a set of specifications drawn from Gus's own preferences. The outstretched appendage became an elfin hand, smaller than Gus's own, with long, delicate fingers.
"Gus?" Blake asked, alarmed. At the sound of the other explorer's voice, the figure half-emerged from the stream of sap drew back. Though the expression on its face remained impassive, Gus realized it was surprised or alarmed.
Though he made what he hoped was a calming gesture, Gus already suspected that the creature was reading his mind, not his motions. There was no other explanation for the perfection of its assumed appearance. As he came to that conclusion, another, which was not quite his own, followed it - the viscous blue goo wasn't tree sap. It was something else, something that lived in the tree. A parasite - no, that wasn't quite right. The stand of trees was too healthy to be infested with a parasite on this scale. A symbiotic relationship was more likely. "Blake..." He said quietly, stretching out his gloved hand to take the transparent appendage which was still outstretched toward him. Through several layers of fabric, it felt just like a real human hand. "I think we just made first contact."
"Ya think?" Came the reply. "Sure as hell nicer to look at than the Prides. Now what?"
Originally posted on Cosmic Background on 2946-06-23. This story is part three of a three-part short story sequence. It is preceded by "Smugglers in Second Class" and "Iridescent Intercession"