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  For Delilah, Alden, and Imogen

  Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

  —HENRY VAN DYKE

  1

  Captain’s log, supplemental. Discovery is en route to Mantilles Colony upon report of their possible Symbalene blood-burn outbreak. This is the sixteenth such call we’ve answered in a handful of days, as we attempt to outrun the spread of the virulent disease. Mister Stamets has performed admirably, as use of the spore drive is the only way to quickly traverse between infected colonies, but I do have concerns about the demands this mission has placed solely on him.

  “Paul?”

  Had someone really said his name, or was it merely a chug from the cooling unit of his EV suit switching on? If it was a voice, it hadn’t come over the communicator. Besides, protocol would have suggested he be addressed as Lieutenant or Mister Stamets. Unless there was an emergency.

  It didn’t feel like an emergency.

  The forest stretched out around him, unending. This, he knew, was the mycelial plane, where spores sparkled in a dance of eddies created by his every move. Hyphae as thick as tree trunks; small, red florescent sprigs of fungi; broad splayed blue translucent biota; and countless interwoven masses of mycelium stalks like those he grew on the ship. But this was so much more varied and wide ranging than Discovery’s cultivation bay, which he thought of as his forest. But this is a real forest, he thought as his gloved hand touched the dark trunk of a fungal tree. What I have is a flower box.

  “Paul?” The same whisper.

  He glanced around, and saw no one.

  Alone.

  The forest floor was uneven and he nearly lost his balance, but seemed to steady himself without consciously trying, as if the wind had pushed him out of his stumble.

  Astonished by an entirely new ecosystem, Paul Stamets marveled at the diversity. He saw representations from the entire fungal kingdom. And three others that defied categorization in astromycology as he understood it. How many more might he find?

  I want to live here, he thought. I never want to leave.

  “Ahhhh.” More than a whisper. A wail?

  Stamets twisted around. “That sounded like a sob,” he told himself. As he turned, he thought he saw a form in the distance, but in that instant it disappeared.

  The brilliant forest collapsed in a whirlwind of sparkle.

  A flash of white followed … and it was over.

  * * *

  “Sequence complete.” The computer defined the end of a mycelial jump. To Stamets it felt less a leap than a dance, and he often lost himself to it. Sometimes, like this time, there was the dream.

  “You okay?” Ensign Sylvia Tilly glanced up from her console as the crewperson next to her slid the spore canister out of the injection console and back into the storage rack.

  He saw her, peripherally, but his mind’s eye was still focused more on the vibrant images from his vision than on her.

  “Lieutenant?” Clearly Tilly could tell something was amiss.

  “Yeah.” He forced himself to focus on her. “All good.” That probably didn’t persuade her. He wasn’t convinced himself.

  The biomechanical shunts that linked him with the spore drive’s navigation computer retracted, releasing him from its connection. There was always a little tug, and the skin under the implants itched in a place impossible to reach, so he scratched around them. No matter—the feeling was gone as quickly as it came.

  He gathered himself, rolled down his uniform sleeves, and waited for the reaction cube door to open.

  “You seem wrong, sir,” Tilly said as she offered him a bottle of water.

  “Wrong?” He waved away the bottle and stared at her, which he hoped would be unnerving.

  “I don’t mean you’re wrong about anything—except maybe that you’re good, but … you seem a little off?”

  He continued his hard stare.

  “Annoyed,” she said, quickly, offering the water again. “I’m definitely getting ‘annoyed’ more than ‘off’ now. I don’t mean I’m annoyed—”

  “I’m fine, Ensign. I promise.” He shook his head to the bottle a second time. “I’m not thirsty.” He actually was, but didn’t want to give in to Tilly’s hovering. He moved past her, studying the readout of the jump, and checking for anomalies he knew wouldn’t be there because he would have felt them … but one couldn’t put feelings into a report.

  “It just seems that these last few jumps are making you, well, jumpy. I’m calling it jumpy. Ha!”

  “Rest mode, Tilly. At ease.” He pursed his lips and put up a hand.

  “Oh, okay. Yeah.”

  Stamets liked Tilly. Almost no one appreciated his work more than she. Maybe Justin Straal, who had begun it with him, but they were older now. Tilly was young and full of verve and boundless energy. He still had some of that, but it was less boundless than it used to be.

  “I’ll take it down a level,” she promised.

  He took in a breath and tried to soften his tone. “Look, there’s just a lot of jumps recently with little downtime. I’m … I don’t know, I guess I’m daydreaming in there and sometimes it’s hard to snap out of it.”

  “I understand. Or I sympathize. Just … you know, I’m worried about you.”

  He turned on his most friendly I’m-fine grin. “Permission to worry: denied.”

  “It’s kind of my thing, though.” She smiled nervously.

  “Denied, Ensign,” he grumbled more harshly than he’d intended.

  “Yes, sir.” Tilly’s eyes sparkled. Her too-happy acquiescence didn’t help his mood as it should have.

  As Stamets turned toward the door, Crewwoman Enav approached with a report for him but he motioned her toward Tilly.

  “Something wrong?” Enav asked as Tilly reached out for the data card.

  “Nothing, Orna,” the ensign assured her. “Not a thing.”

  Tilly, Stamets thought, you’re a horrible liar.

  * * *

  Commander Saru approached Stamets just before he was able to escape through his cabin door. “Mister Stamets, are you unwell?”

  He’d seen the towering Kelpien first officer across the corridor when he’d exited the turbolift, but avoided making eye contact and hoped Saru would show pity and let him get some much needed rest. “No, sir. Just tired. All these jumps …” The astromycologist tried to make his expression as bright and positive as possible. “Why do you ask?”

  Saru hesitated, smoothed his uniform jacket, and angled his head down at the human. “Despite your protestations, Lieutenant, I sense something awry.” Kelpiens relied on
their intuition more than other species, and Saru was inclined to let his ganglia be his guide.

  “I’m fine, sir,” Stamets promised, glancing just a bit to see if, in fact, Saru’s threat ganglia were showing. They were not. “Just lost in thought.” He realized he might more accurately describe it as lost in a feeling, like he’d left a part of himself behind in his mycelial dream. It was a dream, wasn’t it?

  “Very well. The captain will want to know if these numerous short jumps are affecting you. It’s the first time we’ve clustered so many together.”

  “Yes, sir, being the jump-er, I’m aware,” he replied.

  “Yes, well …” Saru’s apprehension was reasonable, but his hesitation suggested he wasn’t willing to act on it. Yet.

  Stamets should’ve been concerned as well. And yet, he wasn’t. “I promise I’ll monitor the situation and keep checking in with Doctor Pollard.” Hoping the first officer would let it be, Stamets edged close enough to his quarters for the door to slide open.

  Nodding cautiously, Saru wasn’t convinced. “The captain may want to order an examination anyway. Our current mission—”

  “Is more important than my being a little preoccupied, isn’t it?” Stamets knew that if the doctor grounded him, the Discovery wouldn’t make it quickly enough between the Symbalene blood-burn outbreaks they were trying to suppress. There was no way a normal starship could arrive as quickly, given that even with a spore drive they needed to jump the instant an infection was reported.

  Saru spread his long fingers as if fanning playing cards between them. Stamets always felt it was the Kelpien’s version of a shrug. “I do not disagree, Mister Stamets, but I’m already on record that we may have stopped monitoring your physiology too soon after your DNA splicing. At the very least, we should be keeping a closer eye on your well-being, not just for your own safety but because so many lives are currently at stake.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I think …” He let his sentence trail off because he wasn’t sure what he thought. “You know what? I will check in with the doctor and let you know.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.”

  “No, sir. Thank you.” He stepped into his cabin, hoping Saru hadn’t picked up on the lilt of sarcasm.

  As the door closed behind him, Stamets could hear Saru say, “Uh, dismissed, then, Lieutenant.”

  * * *

  When Discovery used the mycelial network, it was as unnatural as warp speed or transporters or any piece of tech to which Stamets was accustomed. But when jumping, he’d never gotten used to the gulp in his throat and the bowling ball in his stomach as time and space seemed to melt and re-form around him. They shouldn’t be called jumps, but trips, he told Tilly once, and as soon as that word passed his lips, he’d wished it hadn’t.

  “Shroom trips,” Tilly suggested when they—mostly she—were discussing it at the next jump.

  “No.”

  “Displacement Activated Spore-Hubbings. DASHings?”

  Stamets groaned.

  With one eye closed, he made a fine point with his right hand, as if holding a stylus. “Can we work on you having unexpressed thoughts?” He honestly felt that was a legitimate request.

  “Oh, uh-huh, I promise to try,” she cheerfully replied.

  Glancing at the engineering console’s display, Stamets double-checked the next jump’s coordinates. He easily read the screen backward; that and reading upside down were two of his hidden talents. Sliding through the door to the reaction cube, he nodded at Tilly. “Ready.”

  “DASH lab to the bridge. Spore drive is online.”

  “Acknowledged,” Airiam replied over the comm. In the background, Tilly could hear Detmer say, “Course confirmed,” then the captain ordered, “Let’s go.”

  “Black alert,” intoned the computer a moment later. “Black alert.”

  The kinematic articulators of the computer bioconnection slid into Stamets’s forearm ports. As he closed his eyes … he opened his mind.

  * * *

  “Paul? It’s you again!”

  That voice—the same voice—but … from where and from whom?

  Everything around him was filled with spore sparkle. Usually translucent, the harmonic energy in Discovery’s reaction cube excited the spores, making them glow.

  But he wasn’t in engineering. He didn’t think he was aboard Discovery. And yet, he also wasn’t in an EV suit like the last dream; he was breathing normally and could move about easily. But where was he?

  Stamets looked at his hand. Was it really his hand, or some astral projection? There were aliens who could broadcast their thoughts across great distances. How did they picture themselves if not with a body? Perhaps that’s what astral projection was and he should believe in it. At least for aliens. Not so much for crazy Aunt Sarah, who also kept data cards filled with journals about how many strokes she brushed each of her dozen cats.

  I’m all over the place, Stamets thought. I don’t know where I am, and I’m thinking about Aunt Sarah? Well, she did make a great chicken curry.

  “It’s me, Paul! It’s you!”

  The voice again. The ever-familiar, unknown, barely audible voice that somehow was both warm and accusatory.

  “It is?” Stamets heard himself say … or think?

  “Yes, it’s you,” the formless voice replied, sounding simultaneously relieved and irritated. “Help me find my way!”

  “Where?” Stamets called out. “Where are you?”

  Before an answer could come, a bright flash enveloped everything and a discordant cacophony of either close whispers or too-distant bellows called out to him. “No! Paul, come back!”

  Stamets felt himself try to scream in response, but he had no voice.

  Reality returned and he was in the spore reaction cube, aboard Discovery, as if he’d been nowhere else. Of course, he hadn’t. Other than the brief moment he, and the ship, had traversed the mycelial network.

  * * *

  “Sequence complete,” the computer reported. Stamets had silenced that function months ago, but it had been reset during a starbase diagnostic and he’d not taken the time to mute it again.

  “Bridge acknowledges.” Tilly let Enav work up her reports as another engineer took the empty spore canister to refill it.

  “Lunch?” the young ensign asked Stamets as he exited the cube and rolled down his sleeves for the nineteenth time that week. “We have a few hours before the next one.”

  He was ready to decline, but knew he shouldn’t just return to his cabin without social interaction. If Saru had voiced his concerns to the captain, interacting with other members of the crew could be evidence Stamets was fine. Even if he wasn’t sure that was true. “Sure. Why not?”

  The look of happy surprise on Tilly’s face at his acceptance was amusing enough to boost his spirits—just a little.

  Once they’d ordered, and he’d gotten over the disappointment of the processors being out of what was supposed to pass for avocado, they moved, trays in hand, toward the tables.

  Tilly led him away from her usual cohorts of various bridge crew and toward a less crowded area. “Over there.”

  Stamets was a bit surprised, but assumed Tilly wanted to discuss work. His interactions with the bridge crew were fairly limited, and that was generally fine by him. Perhaps she didn’t want any awkward silences. Tilly always seemed to prefer awkward conversation instead.

  As they lowered themselves into their seats, Stamets nodded toward the table they’d avoided. “Are you compartmentalizing?”

  She looked up innocently, but kept her mouth on her straw, still drinking. “Hmm?”

  “Is there a bridge-crew table and a spore-drive table and you have to pick one?”

  Tilly laughed, and he wasn’t sure if she found it funny or it was yet one more nervous tic. Though with her it was usually both. “Oh, no. That would be silly. I just wanted to talk to you alone.”

  “Why?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  “Well, uh …” She
checked inside her sandwich as if she’d forgotten to order an ingredient, then back at the food synthesizers. She removed the bread and began to eat the contents with her fork.

  “Forget something?” He decided to encourage her to change the subject.

  “Rigellian mayo.”

  He pointed to her meal with the business end of his fork. “For the baked potato or the no-longer-a-sandwich?” He had mayonnaise on the side, and pushed it toward her. “This isn’t Rigellian, but you can have it.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want it. I mean, I do want it, but I don’t. So, you know, I didn’t forget it. I just wish I had forgotten to not forget it. Does that make sense?”

  Kinda sorta? “On a scale of zero to Vulcan, it’s a Tilly, so … draw your own conclusions.” He pointed to the small sauce cup. “I don’t think mayonnaise is bad for you. Unless you plan to eat it by the bucket.”

  “It’s not,” she agreed around bites of salmon, “but it was brought to my attention by a certain maternal figure that I don’t taste my food because I use too much mayonnaise and so … I am trying to taste my food.”

  He took a bite of his turkey wrap and lamented the lack of avocado. “When did mayonnaise lose its standing as food?” Around another bite he added, “Was there a vote?”

  “One vote,” Tilly said. “Taken after my mother realized I like mayonnaise?”

  “Ah.” Stamets never quite connected with his parents either; perhaps that’s why he didn’t have the urge to be one. Then again, they never understood him, so at least the miscommunications were equitable. He decided he wasn’t going to share that with Tilly, and said, “Please tell me we’re not sequestered away because you want to talk to me about your mother.”

  “Oh, no.” She laughed after a long pull from the straw in her orange juice. “Not at all. In fact, probably never.”

  “Then if this is a date, I want you to know we’re impossible, because you report directly to me. And you’re several years my junior—in so many ways—and I like men.”