Ghost Planet (32 page)

I reached for his hand, hoping to soften the blow of what was coming. “At the same time, it’s so
us
.”

He gave me a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I broke up with you—broke our engagement.” I remembered Murphy’s phrase. “I crossed a universe to stop myself from running back to you.”

Peter stared at me, his frown deepening. “That message you sent—”

“Was a mistake. I wrote it, but then I smashed the display. It was sent by accident. I’m sorry.”

He dismissed this with a shake of his head. “Something made you write it. You were hurt, and you were scared, and you thought of me. That’s the way it
should
be, Rose.”

“That’s the way it’s always
been
. It’s a continuation of our age-old dysfunction.”

He pulled his hand from mine, and I could see he wanted me to stop. But I didn’t.

“Peter, I can’t help but wonder if what you really came here looking for was a Rose who’d had everything stripped away from her. A Rose who would depend on you, and be grateful you could still want her. A Rose who wouldn’t leave you.”

He stood up abruptly. “I don’t deserve this from you.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to blame you. I blame myself. I should have ended it long before I did. But it
is
over. I’m not going to run from you, and I’m not going to send you away. I hope you and Emily will stay here with us, because you’re like family to me. But if you don’t think you can live with my decision, you have to go.”

*   *   *

Peter left me without another word, and I sat there in the grass, chilled, letting the darkness settle around me. I listened to the rustling of the willow branches. The chuckle of water under the bridge.

The moon was a brittle, silvery crescent in a field of a million bright stars.

I felt a tickling at my ankle and jumped up, imagining what kinds of things might be on the move at this time of night. In my earlier agitation I had plucked away at the grass, and there was a bare patch where my legs had just been resting. In the center of the patch, something was taking shape—a widening, irregular dark spot. A breeze parted the branches of the willow tree, allowing starlight to wash over the ground.

Clover was growing, fast enough to see, right where I’d been sitting. I knelt and stirred it with my fingers. The long stem of a thimble-sized clover flower wrapped around my pinky. Strangely, I didn’t find it creepy at all. But it made me think of Murphy sitting alone in our apartment. I watched as the clover filled the bare spot and came to rest.

I recalled Ian’s idea about subconscious interaction with the planet. Could it work on a conscious level too?

“How about some daisies?” I said, trembling a little.

I laughed at myself when nothing happened, and I passed my hand once more over the top of the clover.

I stood up and walked back to the overhang.

A delicious smell assaulted me as I walked in the door. “What is
that
?”

Murphy, sitting on the sofa with the flat-reader, glanced up at me. “Leftover chicken.”

“Hmm, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

A single plate rested on the stove, covered with a pot lid. I lifted the lid to reveal some kind of chicken/mushroom concoction—one generous serving. “Did you eat already?”

“I did, yeah. I hope you don’t mind.” He didn’t even look up. No foreplay for me tonight.

“Of course not.” I carried the plate to the table. “What are you working on?”

“Just reviewing some recent journal articles on symbiogenesis. I’m almost finished.”

“Okay.” I ate a few bites in silence. “This is really good, Murphy.”

He gave me a fleeting smile.

I set down my fork. “Are you angry with me?”

“Not at all.”

Not at all
. I scowled at my plate.

I finished my dinner and washed my dishes.

After spending a few minutes in the bathroom washing up, I parted the waves of lavender and stretched out on the bed. I assessed the day’s growth and decided there really wasn’t much more than there had been this morning. I hoped it would slow down, because I really hated to cut it. They were almost like our children.

My hand drifted down to my belly.
Hi, you.

I turned my head toward Murphy in time to catch him glancing back to the flat-reader. With a shiver I flashed back to New Seattle—the early days, when we weren’t talking.

Sighing, I settled back and stared up at the ceiling.

*   *   *

I woke alone in the dark. But the night was bright, and even under the ledge some indirect starlight made its way through the kitchen window.

I rolled over and saw Murphy sleeping on the pallet, chest bare and gleaming in the low light. Back to New Seattle again, remembering how I’d longed to touch that beautiful body—to wake him with my lips against his skin. I’d been afraid and uncertain.

How much had changed since then. Yet how much had not.

I slipped out of bed. Crouching over him, knees on the hard floor, I did now what I had so wanted to do then. I planted a single kiss on his warm stomach.

Air rushed into him as he took a surprised breath.

I moved up to the well beneath his breastbone and kissed him again. His whole body shivered, his hands coming to my shoulders.

Easing higher, I kissed him between the sloping muscles of his chest.

He folded his arms around me, raising me so he could look into my face. He gave me a sleepy smile, and my own chest filled with a breath of relief.

“What are
you
doing down here?” he murmured.

“That’s just what I came to ask you. Is this some kind of test, to see if I can take it? Because I can’t. I’ve cracked completely. I’ll beg. I’ll seduce you. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“
Jesus
, Elizabeth,” he breathed, clasping me again to his chest. Trembling as he held me. “I’m sorry. I’m not playing with you, love. I just—I want you to wait until you’re sure. I don’t want you to feel any obligation to me. You have a long history with him, and I respect that. I respect
him
for having the courage to see you’re the same woman he loved on Earth.” He kissed my forehead. “I don’t want to lose you, Elizabeth, God knows. But I’m not going to be satisfied with half of your heart.”

“Oh, Murphy.” It came out a cross between a laugh and a sob. “Do you remember what I said last night about why I kept leaving him? About the thing that seemed missing that I never could define?”

“Very clearly.”

“For years I thought I was using it as an excuse not to commit to him. I thought maybe what we had was as good as I could expect. I mean, it was pretty good. I kept going back to it. But I knew it would be wrong to marry him if I wasn’t sure. I came here thinking that if I didn’t get over him, and if he was still waiting when I went back, then I
would
marry him. It never occurred to me he might follow me.”

“But he has,” Murphy said.

“Yes, but everything’s changed now.”

“How so?”

“I found the thing I couldn’t define. I found it the first time you kissed me.”

His hand caressed my cheek. “Then why did you push me away after that?”

“Because it scared me, Murphy. What if it wasn’t real? What if it was just another aspect of my dependence on you?”

Murphy laughed quietly. “Your dependence on me was a technicality. You defied me at every turn.”

I gaped at him. “Not true!”

“
True
. But I’m not going to argue with you. Ever again, if I can help it.” He raised his hand and tucked a stray curl behind my ear.

“Part of me is always going to love Peter. We shared so much of our lives, and I thought I’d never see him again. I was astonished by him appearing like he did, and I was overwhelmed by the sacrifice he’d made to be with me.” Murphy was nodding, and I stopped his head with my hand. “But it
never
—for even a second—changed the fact that I want to be with you, Murphy, with
all
of my heart.”

“Is that
so
,” he said, so softly it brought tears to my eyes.

“That’s so, love.” I leaned forward and kissed him, holding his face in my hands. He rolled with me onto his side, parting his lips, his tongue meeting mine. He touched my face and hair. Rubbed the back of my neck. Stroked his hand down between my shoulder blades to my hip, then lower.

“What was it you were saying earlier about begging and seducing?”

Smiling, I untangled myself from him and stood up, peeling off my clothes and letting them fall to the floor. I reached for his hand and pulled him to his feet. He gathered me against him, my breasts pressing into his chest.

I brought his ear down to my mouth. “Come back to our bed. I need to feel you inside me.”

“Ah,” he replied, lifting me in his arms, “that’s a happy coincidence.”

News

“Okay, Rose, we’re recording,” said Peter, glancing down at the window of his camera.

Peter had not run away. He had taken a deep interest in our plan to use the camp as an experiment in detachment and ghost/host symbiosis. Within three weeks he had established himself so firmly it was hard to imagine life without him.

We agreed he would document our efforts with the intention of eventually going public with our story, and somehow I had been nominated as the camp’s spokesperson. Peter had insisted news audiences most easily connected with cheerful young women—doubly important considering the grim notions people on Earth had about ghosts.

I cleared my throat and looked into the camera. “It’s day twenty-two since we began soil assessment in preparation for our new plantings. You can see over here we have mature carrots and potatoes.” Peter panned right, following my hand. “And we’ve been harvesting sugar peas and lettuce for more than two weeks now.”

“How much of this have you actually planted?” asked Peter.

“Nothing. Not a seed. This is all spontaneous.”

“Can you explain what you mean by ‘spontaneous’?”

“This garden is a result of what we’ve been calling ‘pair bond phenomena.’ One of our biology experts and his wife—who share a strong symbiont/host bond—prepared the soil. They drew up the plans for the planting, and before our seeds had even arrived, the plants began to grow.”

“How is that possible?”

I smiled at the camera. “That’s a good question. We’re still trying to understand it ourselves. The planet’s systems appear to be responsive to our needs.”

“Can you give us other examples of pair bond phenomena?”

I glanced back at the plants, which had sprouted up in precisely the haphazard formation planned by Ian and Julia to ensure the garden wouldn’t be noticed by anyone passing overhead.

“This is definitely the most extreme. If you watch closely you can actually
see
them growing. But we’ve observed accelerated growth everywhere. We have a crop of new saplings filling in the boneyard—that’s the ring of forest that burned to the ground a few months ago. There are more fish moving through this river than we can eat.” I pushed a wisp of hair back from my face as I turned again to the camera. “We’ve observed a significant increase in fertility in our chicken population. Half of our hens only lay eggs with double yolks.”

“And how are you progressing with detachment?”

“Very well. We hit sixty percent today. That’s more than thirty symbionts released from the host proximity requirement in the last three weeks.”

“Okay,” said Peter, lowering the camera and smiling at me. “Beautiful, Rose.”

I felt arms coiling around my waist. Lips against my earlobe. “Yes
, very
.”

“Christ,” Peter muttered. “As if we didn’t have enough footage of
that
.” He turned and stalked off.

“Murphy!” I scolded, turning in his arms. “That wasn’t very gracious.”

He pulled my lips to his, kissing me until I came up gasping for air.

“Gracious doesn’t pay with this guy. Do you know what he said the other day, when I told him I was glad he and Emily had decided to stay on with us? He said he intended to hang around as long as it takes for me to fuck up with you.”

“Why do you listen to him?” I said with a laugh. “Peter’s hanging around because this is a
huge
story. He just said that to get at you.”

Murphy arched an eyebrow. “It worked.”

We caught the sound of an approaching transport and froze.

“Come on,” said Murphy, grabbing my hand and pulling me through a curtain of willow branches.

We were always worrying about planet security taking an interest in the beehive of activity buzzing away so far from an official colony. We’d done our best to keep the more obvious signs of our presence under cover of rocks or trees, and everyone in camp knew to hide at the first sound of a transport. But anyone who took a closer look would realize something other than flora and fauna was alive down here.

The transport dropped in and landed, which either meant Garvey was here or we were in serious trouble. Murphy apparently felt confident of the former, because he lifted and pinned me against the tree trunk before the engines had even shut down.

“Ouch!” I protested, shoving at him. “We don’t have time for that.” But my legs betrayed me by wrapping around his waist. I slipped my hands into the sleeves of his T-shirt, where his muscles had bunched from holding me up.

“I don’t need much,” he murmured, settling me on his hips. “Have I told you I adore you in a skirt?” He slid the soft fabric up my thighs. “Ah, and what’s this? Nothing
but
a skirt … that’s my girl.”

“You’re becoming a master of the five-minute fuck, my love,” I whispered in his ear, unbuttoning his pants.

“Shall I be wounded or flattered?”

“Considering we’re hardly ever alone together, I view it as evidence of your resourcefulness.”

“Darwinian, you might even say.” He eased into me and I gave a contented sigh. Burying his face in my hair, he muttered, “If you can work the words ‘fuck’ and ‘my love’ into another sentence, I’m pretty sure I can break my record…”