8

“You’ve been looking at that screen a long time,” Tilly said. “Are you blinking? I don’t think you’re even blinking.” She turned to Lieutenant Nilsson, who was running a bypass ODN cable to bring normal power to the engineering consoles. “Have you seen him blink?”

“Not recently,” Nilsson said.

Stamets spun toward Tilly and blinked hard. Twice. “Better?”

Taken aback, Tilly laughed and covered a snort with her hand. “Yes.” Stamets usually found a way to calm her when panic scratched at the door.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I just don’t know how we do any of this without our spores.” Stamets dropped his head as if studying his boots, and said, “Tilly, I think we’re going to die here.”

Enav poked her head up from behind the opposite console where she’d been connecting the other part of Nilsson’s cable. She cast a sideways glance at him. “Begging your pardon, sir, but your pep talks suck.”

“This is my fault,” he said, looking up. “And unless I find a solution to all of this”—he circled an index finger in the air—“eventually the hull is going to deteriorate and we’ll be trapped here, like …”

“Like the man in sickbay,” Tilly said.

“Yeah.” Stamets jabbed at his console. “And even if we find a way to replenish our spores, this is where it ends.”

“Where what ends?” She watched Stamets pull up a sensor report that was far too limited to be useful. Was he doing busywork to clear his mind, or was he too distracted to notice?

“The spore drive,” he said. “Mycelial transportation. All of it.”

“Why would you say that? Don’t even think it.” Tilly realized that since becoming his protégé, astromycology had grown as important as her desire to someday be a starship captain. “This work is too critical—”

“Do the math, Tilly. Maybe we find a way to replenish our spores. Maybe I get us out of here. But just the fact that we ended up here in the first place is the death knell of this project.” Defeated, Stamets’s shoulders slumped. “I’m … a random factor in displacement-activated spore-hub-drive travel. That’s not good. If I’m unpredictable, and I take us who knows where, for who knows what reason … Normal warp drive may be slower, but there’s nothing random about dilithium crystals.”

Tilly bounced on the balls of her feet, excited to rebut at least one of his dour points. “Well, damaged dilithium crystals can cause unexpected problems. I mean, I wouldn’t call them random, but—”

“A bad crystal’s not going to send you somewhere you didn’t expect. Nor will you run aground in subspace.” Stamets pointed to a graphic on his screen that showed the Discovery trapped in a section of the mycelial forest.

“Actually, a crystal with a surface you didn’t adjust for could cause an engine imbalance that would create an artificial wormh—”

“Tilly, you know what I’m talking about.” Stamets pushed a button and the screen went blank.

“I do,” she said.

He turned his head to one side and gazed past her. “Do you see that?”

Tilly followed his line of sight, but saw nothing.

Having finished the cable bypass, Nilsson looked up as well. “I don’t see anything.”

Enav switched on the extra power to the console before she moved away. “This is set,” she told them, seemingly uninterested in whatever they were all trying to see. “You’ll help me in main engineering?” she asked Nilsson.

“Happy to,” she said, and both women headed toward the corridor.

“That!” Stamets seemed to ignore their exit. He pointed to the reaction cube as he spun back to Tilly. “You didn’t see … ?”

She checked again, noting no difference in the chamber from when they entered. “I just see the empty spore chamber.”

As he edged around one side of the cube and then the other, looking for whatever it was he’d seen, the door from the adjacent engineering section opened and Airiam entered.

“Commander!” Tilly called out, hoping that Stamets would be distracted enough to say hello, and maybe stop acting so strange.

“Ensign. Lieutenant.” Airiam greeted them both with a cordial head tilt. “The captain asked that I deliver this, since intraship comms are still subject to disruption.” Airiam held a data card out to Tilly, who took it from her.

Finally looking up from his close examination of the empty cube, Stamets asked, “What is it?”

“A data card,” Tilly said.

“No—” Stamets began, his face creased with annoyance.

Airiam cut him off. “Yes, it is a data card,” she said, clearly playing along. From their frequent lunches, Tilly knew this was her sarcastic “robotic” mode. “A duotronic-circuit-compatible storage device that encodes information into a long string of molecules that—”

“Uh-huh.” He grabbed the card from her hand. “What’s on it?”

“She’s pulling your leg.” Tilly snickered.

“It’s irritating.” Stamets slid the card into the slot on his console. “And not in the delightful way I annoy people.”

“My apology.” Airiam bowed her head a bit. “I was just trying to lighten your mood.”

Turning toward her, thumb and forefinger together to form a fine point, Stamets sneered. “My mood is at the center of the gravity well of a black star.”

“Heavy.” Airiam’s facial prosthetics didn’t allow for much overt expression, but Tilly could tell she was amused. “The data is a navigational scan of the mycelial area we’re in. I didn’t find Prototaxites stellaviatori spores, but I did discern several energy signatures with which you may be more familiar.”

Stamets called up the data from the card and his screen filled with information from her scan. “If it’s not what we’re looking for—” He stopped, and stared at the cube. “Okay, now tell me you didn’t see that!”

Airiam shook her head ever so lightly. “I didn’t.”

“Is she being funny again?” Stamets asked Tilly.

“Airiam, are you being funny again?”

“No. And according to Lieutenant Stamets, I wasn’t funny before.”

Frustrated, Stamets spun toward them and Tilly braced for the brunt of the coming storm. Instead, he suddenly gasped, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the deck.


Underneath him: a slightly uncomfortable but supportive biobed. Visible even through his closed eyelids: sickbay’s bright lights. As his eyes fluttered open: the glare of the exam room’s shimmering white walls.

Stamets sat upright, expecting a buzz of activity, but there was none. He was not met with an assemblage of doctors or nurses, but instead saw the mycelial mystery man, also sitting up in the biobed across from him.

Standing next to the man’s bed was the creature Stamets knew to be Tardigradum galaktos: a giant, grayish-brown space tardigrade.

“It’s Paul,” the man told the creature.

“Yes,” the tardigrade agreed. “I know.”

Palms down, slowly pushing himself forward, Stamets slid off the bed. His feet met the deck with more stability than he would have thought. “You know me? My name?” He took a few, uneasy steps. He should have been afraid, but wasn’t. “You remember me? And can understand me?” His contact with the tardigrade had been brief, and he surely didn’t remember speaking to it. Him? Her?

“You’ve met Ephraim?” the stranger asked, surprised.

Ephraim?

The tardigrade creature shuddered and let out what sounded like an almost joyful chitter. “You remembered, Hugh!”

Entirely perplexed, Stamets twisted toward the other man, this “Hugh.” “Ephraim? The tardigrade’s name is Ephraim?”

“I was surprised too,” Hugh admitted. “Didn’t we call him Ripper?”

“Ripper?” Stamets studied the creature, slowly circling it. Him? “I never called him anything. Why Ripper?” Slowly it dawned on him that this conversation was telepathic, that their connections were “more” than just speaking to one another, and in fact there didn’t seem to be a physical element other than their respective forms, which appeared more ideal than he knew them to be in reality. Hugh’s eyes were bright, his skin undamaged, his hair well trimmed and neat … and very familiar.

“Names are confusing,” the tardigrade said. “But I’m not sure this is the clearing where I was called ‘Ripper,’ though even I have trouble keeping track. I much prefer Ephraim.”

“Ephraim.” Stamets couldn’t help but wonder how a giant interstellar water bear got an ancient Earth name. “You don’t look like an Ephraim.”

The tardigrade rolled his head about, seeming to indicate both men in the inclusive gesture. “A name given to me by one of you, which I rather liked and kept.”

“One of us? A human? Then what’s your actual name?” Stamets took another step closer to them, his eyes sliding over Hugh for a long moment. His face felt flushed, but he wasn’t sure why.

“If you call me this name, and I answer to it, is it not mine?” Ephraim asked, and his mouth puckered in what Stamets thought might be a smile.

“I guess I’ve never thought about it that way,” Stamets said, his mind whirling.

“You have,” Ephraim said, then added, “And you haven’t. And you will again. And you won’t.”

Taking in a long breath, Stamets tried to steady himself. “I see.”

“You do?” Hugh scoffed. “For me, he says a lot of confusing things.”

“Does he?” His mouth very dry, Stamets wondered, Does this Hugh person have some symbiotic relationship with the tardigrade? Is that how he survived the mycelial plane? More importantly, how did he get there in the first place?

Unless none of them were actually there, and it was yet another spore dream. Looking around the room, Stamets considered how long he’d have to live in that dream before he’d wake up. Was all of it a hallucination? Discovery being stuck, the missing spores, and the empty cultivation bay?

He closed his eyes. Several long moments passed. When he opened them again, he was still in sickbay, and both Hugh and Ephraim were staring at him. He couldn’t discern the tardigrade’s expression, but Hugh viewed him with some level of amazement and … perhaps oddly placed awe? “It’s not a dream, is it?” Stamets asked. “I think you’re both real. All this is.”

His upper body rolling side to side, almost wave-like, Ephraim seemed to be trying to mimic a human shrug. “I understand this is against your natures, but I assure you we are communicating and this is existence.”

“Okay,” Stamets said, and so tried to attack his current circumstance as a scientist. “Are you the reason we’re here?” he asked Ephraim. “Well, of course you’re the reason—your DNA—but did you do something to bring Discovery into mycelial space?”

“I don’t think so,” Ephraim answered. “But there is such a thing as serendipity, I suppose.”

Stamets chuckled with astonishment. “You’re sentient. Fully sentient.”

His form so alien, his body language so smooth and yet unfamiliar, Ephraim didn’t seem to take offense at all. “Wasn’t that obvious?”

“Yes, I suppose it was.” Somewhat ashamed that he hadn’t made more of an effort to learn about Ephraim, and had perhaps ignored the very real possibility that the tardigrade creature wasn’t a creature at all, Stamets cast his eyes first toward Hugh and then the deck. “Did we hurt you?”

“We must have.” Hugh also sounded embarrassed, but Stamets wasn’t sure why. Had he been on the Glenn at the time? If so, why didn’t Stamets remember him?

“This one didn’t,” Ephraim said, two of his right arms gesturing toward Stamets. “And also did, and will, and also won’t.”

Stamets looked at Hugh quizzically, hoping at least he understood Ephraim, but the other man just responded, “See?”

Something moved in his periphery and Stamets’s whole body tensed. “What was that?” When he turned, however, whatever it had been was gone.

“The others,” Hugh said. “You see them?”

Stamets pivoted back to him. “Your crewmates? They’re here, too?”

“You’re kidding, right?” A nervous, almost incredulous laugh lined his voice.

The outer sickbay door opened and Airiam and Tilly carried in a slack, unconscious man.

“We need help over here!” Tilly called out. “Doctor?”

Stamets saw Hugh tense and edge forward on the bed as Pollard came rushing to help Tilly and Airiam lift the man onto the biobed Stamets had been lying on when he awoke.

When they retreated, Stamets could see that the unconscious man was … himself.

Frightened, Stamets backed away and almost fell over, but Hugh was suddenly by his side, an arm across the man’s back to steady him.

“What … is … happening?”

“I don’t know.” Hugh looked to Ephraim, so Stamets did as well.

“That’s you,” Ephraim said casually.

“I know it’s me, but how the hell is it me?” Watching Pollard run a scan of his body, Stamets felt his face numb as he inched closer to his own unconscious form. He couldn’t wrap his head around the concept. “How?” he whispered.

“Is he dead?” Hugh demanded of Ephraim, but kept his arm across the astromycologist’s shoulder.

Stamets felt the man’s warm touch and it was surprisingly comforting and supportive, both mentally and physically.

“I don’t think so,” Ephraim said, looking at the biobed’s informational display, then motioning toward it. “Is that dead?”


Doctor Pollard rushed the hypospray into Stamets’s neck. “How long has he been like this?”

“Minutes. We came right here.” Tilly tried not to let the concern waver her voice too much, and she balled her fists tensely at her sides.

Pulling open one eye at a time, Pollard told her nurse, “Nonreactive to light and … whited-out?” As if the blue irises and dark pupils had been coated in a translucent film, Stamets’s gaze appeared blank and unseeing.

Tilly gasped and covered her mouth. She’d never seen anything like it.

“What happened to his eyes?” Airiam asked.

Pollard indicated his readings on the screen above and attached a sensor directly to his forehead. “I’m more concerned with his brain activity.”


“Tilly, I’m here. I’m fine.” Stamets left Hugh’s side and moved to her. When she didn’t turn toward him, he waved a hand in front of her face. “They can’t see me?”

“They can’t see you, but they can see you,” Ephraim said, his upper half rolling in the direction of the Stamets on the biobed. “You can see you. I can see you.”

Inhaling sharply, Stamets suddenly speculated if it meant he wasn’t really viewing Ephraim and Hugh at all. “Can they see us standing here?”

“No,” Ephraim said. “They do not have the perceptive range.”

“Because,” he said, “we share a genetic bond now?” Stamets then moved toward Hugh, contemplating how he fit into the equation.

The tardigrade wiggled his head, the spines on top waving as if moved by wind. “I suppose we do, don’t we.”

“Is that a nod?” Stamets asked.

“Perhaps.” Ephraim did it again. “Please show me a nod,” he asked Hugh.

Stiffly, Hugh did so. He’d remained where Stamets had left him standing and seemed a bit lost, so Stamets gravitated back toward him.

“Yes. I believe this is a nod, if it means a visual affirmation.” Ephraim repeated the motion but added the mouth pucker that suggested a smile. “Your bodies are very interesting. Very nimble.”

“Yours is very impenetrable.” Stamets chuckled to himself, realizing he was literally talking to the creature he and Straal studied for weeks without actually being able to ask him anything about his nature. “How did it get that way?”

“I don’t know. This is how I am.”

A thousand questions filled Stamets’s head. At random, he picked two. “Are you from a civilization? Do you have a family?”

“I don’t think so,” Ephraim said. “Not if I understand these terms as you do.”

“You’re just yourself ? Alone?” The notion saddened Stamets, and when he met Hugh’s intense brown eyes, a flicker of that melancholy seemed to transfer to him.

“I’m not alone,” Ephraim said. “I’m with you.” His arms opened wide to include both humans.

“I am so sorry,” Stamets told him.

“Why?”

“Because it should have occurred to us that you were more than a test subject to be used.” He bowed his head regretfully. “At best, it was thoughtless. At worst, it was immoral.”

Rolling his wave-like shrug, Ephraim made a gurgling sound, which sounded more contented than annoyed. “Aren’t we all at times unthoughtful?”

So fascinated by the interaction was Stamets that the din of Doctor Pollard working on his corporeal form as Tilly and Airiam hovered by began to recede into the background. He realized he didn’t know if what he was hearing was Ephraim’s voice or if he was listening to the tardigrade’s thoughts. Was his mouth moving? Sometimes, but it wasn’t as if it coincided with what Stamets thought he heard. And if people couldn’t see him, and he didn’t currently inhabit a body, then auditory sound waves needn’t be involved.

And yet, Ephraim sounded almost cheerful to him. Did their shared DNA open him to the creature’s telepathically broadcasted thoughts and emotions?

“This is just your nature?” Stamets asked. “Your natural state of being is to exist in … our minds?”

“I suppose. At least a part of me,” Ephraim replied. “What qualifies as natural?”

“Nature is, uh …” He turned to Hugh for help, because a clear definition other than “what exists in nature” didn’t quickly come to him.

“Anything that exists, I suppose.” Hugh seemed pleased to be included in the conversation again and he gave Stamets a supportive look.

“Then everything you see is natural,” Ephraim said, raising his top arms and strumming his fingers in the air. “From this vessel to my claws.”

Hugh gave Stamets a wink but spoke to the tardigrade, and it was quite clear they had a previous rapport. “Ephraim, I think he means naturally occurring versus something made by someone.”

“A very curious distinction,” Ephraim said. “So your ship is formed by beings and not what you deem natural, but my claw is of nature?”

“Yes.” Stamets glanced back at his crewmates and realized they were distracting him less and less. Their voices had become low, distorted, and barely audible.

“But if a being or creature is natural, why are their constructs considered unnatural? Is it always true?”

Ephraim had asked a valid question and Stamets caught a wave of almost palpable curiosity from the tardigrade, but wasn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know. Maybe a beaver’s dam would be considered natural.”

“What is that?” Ephraim asked Hugh.

“Beavers are animals,” he replied. “A dam is a wall they build that slows flowing water so their home isn’t washed away.”

“Truly, very interesting,” the tardigrade said. “But you had a question, I think. What was it?”

“I don’t even remember.” Stamets bit his lower lip a moment. “No, I do. Sorry: This is your nature? To be here? To show yourself to others?”

“I have. I do. I will. I won’t.” Ephraim gurgled at them happily. “I find the clearings interesting, to see them and live them.”

“You do and will and won’t?” Stamets tensed at his own confusion. “Are you saying you see the future, or possible futures, and then choose what you want to live out?”

“You make many distinctions of the same thing,” Ephraim replied, laughing.

“Did I mention he talks in riddles?” Hugh asked.

“No, I think I get it.” Stamets pulled in a breath. “Einstein said that past, present, and future were an illusion.” He took a step toward the tardigrade, fascinated by his complex existence. “To you, there’s no such illusion, is there?”

“This Einstein being sounds very clever,” Ephraim said. “Can I meet him?”

Stamets chuckled as he slowly began to understand. “You know, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“Neither would I,” Hugh said. “Ephraim is a unique being in a biologic network that connects an infinite number of universes.”

Ephraim demurred, shy. “You’re certainly feeling more yourself,” he told Hugh.

“Yes. Being here, with Paul … I see it all more clearly now.”

“As it always is,” Ephraim said.

Twisting to Hugh, Paul couldn’t shake the déjà vu or strange familiarity he seemed to have with this complete stranger. “Ephraim … have Hugh and I met? Or, from your point of view, are we going to meet?”

“Yes, I think you finally grasp it.”

“No, no.” Stamets frowned. “That was an either-or question.”

“Why?” Ephraim asked sincerely.

Lost in the tardigrade’s charm, Stamets’s mind filled with other questions that came flooding out, unfiltered. “Where do you come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are there others like you?”

“Possibly, though not that I’ve experienced.”

“Why are you here now, with us?”

“Where else should I be?”

Not one to give up, Stamets hoped to press further but suddenly saw an unclear form by his body on the biobed—an alien form, he thought. The wispy, fuzzy outline wavered as if stuck in a soundless transporter beam. “That!” Stamets called out and pointed. “What is that?”

“The others,” Hugh said. The form twisted toward them, seeming to stare for a moment, before turning back to Stamets’s inert body, which abruptly began writhing in pain.