'It is.'
The sam's extensors moved with cryptic, malign intent, and
its words implied an uncertain threat as it said, 'Do you require
assistance?'
What did it mean by that? How did it know something was
wrong with him? 'No,' Gonzales said. Then he jumped up and
shouted, 'No!'
Gonzales walked quickly away from the Plaza, now certain that
it was unsafe for him, though he couldn't have said why. As he
walked, the darkness grew deeper, and he tried with all the
courage he had to put aside the constant sense of him and the
city, falling, falling
The Ring Highway shrank in width as he passed into an
agricultural section. He knew that terraced gardens climbed away
to both sides, fields of corn and wheat, but he couldn't see them,
because the fog was even thicker here than in the suburban
district he had passed through. Dim lights shined from a cottage
block just off the highway. A voice called and was answered, both
call and response unintelligible.
Near Spoke 4, whose lifts made ghostly trails of light as
they moved up and down the face of the shaft, trees grew just off
the highway. The road gave off intermittent flashes beneath his
feet, as though iron shoes struck a metaled surface. The fog
acquired faces: somber, eyeless masks turning in slow motion so
that their blank gazes followed him along.
'Oh, Christ,' Gonzales said. He stopped and wrapped his arms
around his chest. A fog-borne shape inched closer to him; red
flame burned behind its empty eye sockets. He ran into the woods.
This was not dense forest, and in sunshine he would have been
able to run through here without difficulty. Now, among the inky
pools of almost total darkness and the gray and silver shadows, he
came up against a small, wiry sapling that caught him and hurled
him back.
The ground began to grow soggy beneath his feet, and soon he
pushed through reeds and rushes, and his feet slipped on muddy
patches and into small, wet holes; then he was up to his ankles in
water, aware for the first time of a rich smell of decomposition,
decay
He turned back, trying to find dry ground, and soon his feet
thumped against the hard-packed soil of a path. Looking down, he
could see the path as a glowing gray, outlined in red. He ran
along it until he heard the sound of rushing water.
He came to a series of steps alongside a falls, where the
River cascaded onto rocks, then quickly spread out into pond and
marsh. The waters were alive with light, and he ran up and down
the steps, following streams of energy that burst forth in red and
yellow and purple and green and whitecolors that shifted in hue
and intensity, grew lighter and darker, intertwined with one
another
'This grows!' he shouted, feeling the waters' energy rise and
fall, seeing it spread to where plants could feed on it, animals
could drink it. The fog glowed with an opalescence from high
above.
He followed the steps down to where the river's noise
quieted, and its waters flooded the plain. He turned onto a path
that led into the woods, and he came to a small clearing where the
faint ambient light gleamed on fallen logs. Mushrooms seemed to
be everywhere in this small space, covering dead wood and
spreading in profusion over the ground.
He got on his knees to look at the mushrooms. They were
alive with veinlike arabesques in red, ghosts of electricity
across the spongy flesh. He picked them up, kind by kind,
inhaling deeply, and the odor he had smelled earlier came to him
again, a composty mix rich with the odors of transformation.
Gonzales shivered with something like discovery: he stood
and looked up into the impenetrable sky and the fog. This place
stood a quarter of a million miles from Earth, yet life had begun
to extend its web here, and though the web was fragile and small
by comparison to Earth's dense lacework of billions of living
things, its very existence amazed Gonzales, and he felt the surge
of an emotion he had no name for, a knot in his throat made of joy
and sorrow and wonder.
And he seemed on the brink of some illumination regarding
this world of spirit and matter mixed
Thoughts emerged and dispersed too quickly to catch among the
videogame buzz and clatter in his brain as he stood in the
clearing, paralyzed with a kind of ecstasy and watching life-
electricity play among the trees.
#
The room said, 'You have a call.'
'Who is it?' Lizzie asked.
'She says her name is Trish. The mushroom woman, she says.'
'Oh yes. I'll take the call.'
On the wallscreen came Trish's familiar face, and Lizzie
said, 'Hello.'
Trish woman waved and said, 'The twins brought me a friend of
yours, named Gonzales, and I gave him mushrooms.'
'Really?' Lizzie said.
'Yes, and I sent him out about seven hours ago.'
'Thanks for letting me know. I'll find him.' The screen
cleared, and Lizzie thought, you silly bastards, what did you get
him into? To the room she said, 'Put out a call for information.
Ask any sams who are out and about if they've seen Gonzales.'
#
A sam waited at her front door. 'Are you the one who found
him?' Lizzie asked. The sam said, 'No, that one waits with him,
to provide assistance if needed. Please come with me.'
'I'll be right there.'
Lizzie and the sam started out on the Ring Highway, and then
