Chapter 19 : Boris

The following day, Jack woke in Crystal’s cabin, and watched her for a while as she slept. She breathed slowly, quietly, and looked contented, he thought. Once Jack had woken he could never get back to sleep, so he got out of bed. The cabin looked different on closer examination. Now Jack noticed its rough edges and odd angles, the elemental nature of it, its exposure to the rain that blew in from the sea every day or two. He stepped outside to take in the morning air and rested on a stump, gazing into the oranges and pinks and swirling mists of the Greenshoot sunrise. The sun rose in the west, every 32 hours; nonetheless it reminded him of home. For a moment he started wondering about Tom, Cyrus, Monty, Hugo, the virus, and the mess they were all in. The Beluga was effectively grounded, and he was stuck on this planet, until the SSS were finished with Hugo, or else supplied a replacement. These thoughts were not pleasant, they intruded; and he focused again on the glorious sunrise. He decided the cabin would be better a place to stay than the creaky and crowded habitat. With his adventures in space on hold for a while, he could have an adventure right here, as a pioneer of natural living, with the company of the dark beauty he had just slept with.

A faint buzz alerted him to a swirl of tiny insects above his head. They looked like gnats, and it seemed a fair bet that parallel evolution would have produced something similar. This life form, he decided, was not worthy of study and he hurried back inside and closed the door. He stood motionless for a moment, holding his breath, to listen for any invaders that might have found their way in. There was silence for a few seconds but then a distinct scratching sound came from the roof timbers. Using his torch he scanned the dark corners of the structure above; nothing stirred. The creatures, whatever they were, had gone into hiding.

Looking for something to eat in a cupboard, he spotted a paper journal. These were popular with subversives, since one assumed every electronic device would be hacked somehow by the SSS. He sat at a table and rocked the chair around for a while on its uneven legs, and thumbed through her files. There was nothing personal here, just nature notes with a few pictures of plants. They looked like some sort of fungus, growing out of tree trunks, fleshy and patterned with blue. In the notes he found something troubling though : edibility : good, has become staple. It seemed Crystal had been consuming mushrooms, leaves, and apparently just about anything that grew out in the woods. The chemical formulae suggested she might have done some lab analysis first, but Jack wondered why she would have conducted such a risky experiment. She seemed to have an interest in beetles, too, though happily there was no mention of edibility. One species she referred to as house beetle, with the note swarms around humans. He sat perfectly still and listened for a while, looking suspiciously up at the roof. All was quiet.

Jack went out again, strapped on his excursion pack and strode briskly uphill through the woods in search of the fruits of this new world. As he climbed out of the warm haze, the sky darkened to a deep blue and the sun shone brilliantly through the trees. It reminded him of walks with his wife, of her struggling to keep up and calling him back. He started to sweat and slowed, scouring the needle-covered ground for mushrooms. They were there, hidden among fallen trees, in the darkest places, with their bright colors and shiny surfaces. Nothing though that looked like the edible fruit Crystal wrote about. He knelt down and poked at an odd-looking fungus. Then, behind him, came the sound of a broken branch, and he spun around to see a short, bearded man staring at him intently just a few paces distant. There was an awkward moment of silence.

“Best not to touch those”, the man said.

Jack offered him a friendly smile. “I’m Jack Buffalo, I’m staying in the cabin at the bottom of the hill. The one Crystal built.”

Jack moved forward and extended a hand to the stranger. The man stood motionless.

“Where’s Crystal then ?”

“She’s still sleeping.”

“I don’t believe everything I‘m told.“

Jack reflected on the warning that all cabin dwellers were barking mad. He was preparing for a polite exit from the situation when the man at last introduced himself.

“My name is Boris. I live over there on the far slope”. In an unusual contortion, Boris pointed back behind himself but still kept his gaze firmly upon Jack. He stepped forwards quickly and Jack warily shook his hand. Boris’s face, on close inspection, seemed pockmarked but his eyes were young, blue and bright. It was hard to judge his age.

“I was looking a for a mushroom, cream colored with blue flecks. Have you seen any ?”

“At the bottom of the hill”, Boris replied, pointing down towards Crystal’s cabin.

“Oh I see. Thanks”. Now with an adequate excuse, Jack set off down the hill. But Boris called after him.

“I’m sorry, Jack. About Truce”.

Jack stopped and turned to Boris with a look of puzzlement. Was there any way he could have found out about Truce ? No, Boris somehow must have gained level three telepathy out here. Jack struggled to find an adequate reply to the man who had him at such a disadvantage.

He wished he could meet Boris on equal terms. Could he really bear an invasion of his innermost thoughts, revealing as it would his weakness and his bitterness. He could talk all day about interstellar travel and Boris would see underneath a man who blamed himself, hated himself, for the loss of the only women he had really cared for. He reasoned that the lonely outcast Boris must be more mixed up and pathetic than he was, even if there was no way physically to prove it.

The walk with Boris to the next valley was long, and Jack was thirsty and tired by the time he caught sight of the isolated cabin and the plume of smoke rising from its chimney. Below flowed a fast gushing river; Boris had found a beautiful place here, somewhere that might support a whole community if enough people gave up the comforts of the habitat to build it.

Boris peered through the single small window of the cabin suspiciously. There was no sign of anyone else here. Then he walked to a nearby tree.

“I have to check something first”, Boris said.

He climbed up to a lower branch and was clinging to it like a bear, insects buzzing around him, one side of his head pressed against the trunk.

“What‘s going on Boris ?”

“Go in Jack, there’s some soup in the pot.”

Boris remained fixed against the tree. Jack decided not to question him further in such a precarious position and went inside the cabin and looked round its single, shabby room. Something was cooking in the pot hanging in the fireplace and it smelled good. But the grubby-looking bed discouraged him from sampling Boris’s food. The rest of the space was strewn with cables, battery packs, monitors, computers and bits of furniture improvised from packing crates. Jack sat on a crate and waited for Boris to complete his checks, whatever they were.

“Your soup smells good. What’s in it ?”

“You don’t want the soup do you ?”, Boris replied.

“Are you constantly mind reading, Boris?”

“I’m not reading you Jack. I simply observed no sign of you having taken any soup despite my earlier invitation.”

“Well I’m used to eating ship's rations, and I’m wary of local food … so what were you doing up there ?”

“I was listening to nature.”

“Fair enough”, Jack replied.

Boris sat down on the dusty floor. “No it's not an adequate answer to an outsider like you. You must be wondering what the hell is going on, and I will try to explain it to you. Jack, the beetles in that tree over there have something to say to us, and I‘m trying to work out what it is. I can feel … I can sense … when I‘m close … I can see, I can actually see the image they make. I can see the habitat and the railroad from a perspective that no one here usually sees, that I haven’t seen myself. I see it from above. It‘s the perspective of a flying beetle, I’m sure of it !”

Boris rummaged among some boxes and pulled out a few drawings.

“I made these maps, there are features here which, at the time, I didn’t know about”.

Boris poked a finger at a corner of the map, which looked like the dock area by the habitat.

“Are you sure you couldn’t have picked that up in some other way ? You seem to know a lot of things you shouldn’t. Like my ex-wife’s name.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“You just wanted some attention ?”, Jack asked. “I was curious, that all. I wondered if I was reading you correctly. But I know it‘s offensive to people and I shouldn‘t do it.”

“You said these beetles have something to say to us ? Is that something besides providing us with aerial perspectives ?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet and it’s going to be difficult to prove. But I … I have a feeling that there is some meaning here.”

Boris poured himself some soup and the conversation turned to the collection of gadgets in the cabin.

“I got this stuff, signal processing gear, from the SSS. I still work for them part time, doing some telecoms intercept work. I’m a RIP, but don’t tell anyone I told you that. They are all creeps but it allows me to work on my biosensor project. I‘m trying to make sense of the animal communications here using some adaptive programming I borrowed from robotics software.”

“I think you should get more involved with the other colonists, Boris. They are struggling. Your ideas might help … you’ve shut yourself off here.”

“The colony is finished, Jack. We don’t have the understanding and we don’t have the tools, to make it work here. Do you know how many people are dying every day ? Ten every day. Work it out Jack, how long have they got ?”

“I didn’t hear that, where did you get that figure from?”, Jack asked.

“My signals intelligence work. I listen in to the colonists but I pick up SSS messages as well. Don’t tell anyone or they’ll fire me - or worse.”

Jack wondered if Boris was living in a fantasy world, but he liked his drive and independent spirit, and if Boris had some inside information from the SSS he could be useful.

“You won’t have any soup ?”, Boris asked.

“You didn’t tell me what was in it.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“You’re right, I don’t.”

The two men chatted for a while about their misfortunes on earth, their lost loves, and Jack came to feel they were both outcasts of a sort. Boris was the type of man Jack would normally never meet, or take much interest in, and yet he felt he had found a friend here.

Back in the cabin, the scratching noise was there again coming from the roof, but Crystal seemed not to notice it. There was definitely something up there. Now though there was a rustling under the floorboards too. Jack reasoned the food in the cabin might be attracting pests. Feeling a little panicky, he starting looking under furniture and into cupboards and into the gaps between floorboards. Then when he looked up, he was confronted by a wave of small black beetles running across the floor towards him from the opposite side of the cabin. They were pouring in from beneath, thousands of them. Holy shit ! Jack ran to get a broom, crunching the bastards underfoot. He tried sweeping them back where the were coming from, but they ran up the broom handle with alarming speed and he tossed it away.

“Abandon ship !”, he shouted to Crystal.

Jack took his excursion kit, which he always kept packed for just such an emergency, and ran out the door. In a few seconds the cabin was crawling with the pests and totally uninhabitable.

Crystal seemed unfazed by this. She calmly suggested fetching Boris, her nearest neighbor. He had been out here for years and would surely know how to handle the situation. But he was not answering calls. So Jack walked all the way back again, and by the time he reached the cabin he was feeling shattered, with aching shoulders and wobbly legs. Calling for Boris, Jack stumbled towards the door and banged on it.

“Jack is that you ? Come in.”

Jack pushed the open the door and felt a rush of hot air from inside and a musty smell. He did not see Boris at first. But near the stove was a horrible, crawling pile of beetles. It moved. From it a figure emerged and stood erect, a living mass of bugs. Eyes and mouth opened, and Jack could now see Boris, smiling. He was completely covered, under a deep shifting layer of black, shiny beetles.

“Jack, I think I know now”, Boris said.

Jack stared at Boris for a few seconds. An overwhelming sense of horror came over him. He staggered backwards to the door, ran out of the cabin, tripped and fell head first into the mud. He got up and saw a figure hurrying towards the cabin, a man with helmet in heavy clothing. It was Tom Axelrod. Thank god for the SSS, Jack thought.

Tom looked through the cabin door at Boris. He seemed unworried by what was happening inside. Moving away from the cabin he pulled a communicator from his coat.

“We have an insect event on RIP240. I’m evacuating one civilian.”

He put the communicator away again.

“Jack, I have a vehicle about half and hour‘s walk from here. Come with me and I’ll get you and Crystal back to the habitat.”

Then Tom pulled a canister from his overcoat, ripped off a seal, and threw it into the cabin. Yellow smoked billowed from the door, window and chimney. When the vapors reached Jack he noticed a pleasant minty smell, and reckoned that Boris would survive the fumigation, even if the bugs would not.

“Don’t worry about Boris”, Tom said. “It’s not the first time this has happened, and he gets over it. The insects here don’t bite. That’s something to be grateful for.”