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  When Stamets exited the reaction cube, Tilly was waiting for him. “Sorry I wasn’t here when the jump was initiated.”

  “I already told you,” he said. “You didn’t have to come in early.” He rolled down his sleeves, avoiding eye contact with her. Instead, he absentmindedly viewed the screen across from them. But he wasn’t really reading the data, and if she’d quizzed him on it, he’d have failed. What really troubled him was that there’d been no dream this time, and while that meant on the one hand this was a “normal” jump, somehow it also felt unresolved. What happened to the voices? Especially the one who called him by name and told him it’s you? Did the frustration he felt from the presence when Stamets didn’t respond properly mean their contact was at an end?

  “I know I didn’t have to come. I wanted to.” She handed him a water bottle.

  Once, after a relatively long jump, he had complained about his mouth being dry. Now Tilly had a fresh bottle of cool water ready for him, every damn time. Sure, he could always use a sip, and yesterday he could have had three full bottles, but she was always ready, just in case. He took a quick drink and handed it back, thanking her.

  “Any dreams?” she asked.

  “Nope. Nothing this time.”

  “Really? You think it’s because I wasn’t here?” The splash of a grin told him she was being playful, but for a moment he considered it. What if the tardigrade DNA gave him some sort of low-level, close-proximity psychic connection?

  No, that made no sense. The presence he felt was surely not Tilly. It seemed like someone he knew, however, but had somehow forgotten. “It doesn’t always happen,” he told her. “This time it just didn’t. It’s called a coincidence.”

  “Well, I have something, I think.” She held up a yellow, translucent data card. “This might work.”

  He took the card, slid it into the console next to them, and let the information scroll by. “That’s … actually pretty clever. And we can test it with what we have on board.”

  “Just needed to think on it,” Tilly replied as if her brilliance was nothing.

  “No, this …” He struggled to find the proper accolade. “It’s extraordinary. Why didn’t I think to open a link to the mycelial network first, and then form a quantum tunnel to protect the EM frequency from distortion?”

  She demurred but she shouldn’t, he thought. Why not show off her skills? He always did. “I just kept thinking how the network connection was like the barrier itself, and what can let you breach a barrier like this better than quantum tunneling?”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah.” But why did Tilly have to connect the dots for him? Had he been intellectually compromised?

  “Sometimes my brain’s ‘random mode’ kicks in,” Tilly explained. “Sometimes A leads me to C and I forget about B but look: Isn’t L pretty? And I think I left K over there. And by the way, sometimes L and K have nothing to do with A or C but B reminded me of them.”

  “ ‘Sometimes’?” He gave her a rueful smile but was on the edge of choking up. Rarely had Stamets met someone who was as positive a person as Tilly. Whether she knew it or not, he needed that right now. “Okay,” he said, and pointed toward the display. “Run with it. I’ll check in with you later.”

  “Later?” Her expression turned quizzical, but maybe there was also a bit of disappointment.

  “Got a thing I need to do.” He moved up the stairway toward the corridor.

  “A thing? Okay. Is it a long thing?” she asked as he sped away.

  “Won’t take long at all.”

  * * *

  “This is taking forever,” Stamets said, not attempting to hide his annoyance.

  “Mm.” Doctor Pollard ran the handheld scanner over the astromycologist’s body, but slowed over his shoulders and head as she glanced at the screen. “There are some minor anomalies from your last exam.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing to worry about. How have you been feeling?”

  “I assume people who say ‘with my fingers’ are immediately sedated.”

  “I generally order a vivisection when my patients decide to be smart-asses.” She put away the scanner and gestured for him to lie down. “Cuts down on the smart-assery.”

  “Is sarcasm terminal?”

  “Yours is chronic. Just don’t see me on a bad day.” Pollard did give a small grin to suggest she enjoyed their exchanges. That was how Stamets chose to read it, anyway.

  But he did sense an extra layer of tension between them, and he realized it was their current mission. “You’ve been leading some of the landing parties, I guess?”

  “Yes.”

  Offering no elaboration, he assumed the doctor had seen firsthand some of the infected the Discovery had been brought in to help. He’d probably not want to talk about it either. “I’m sorry.”

  Padd in hand, Pollard used a stylus to check off what he assumed were findings from her examination.

  “All good?”

  “You have a tension headache. Are you taking the vitamin D supplements I gave you?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. Which usually meant only when he remembered.

  “Shall I have it programmed into your meals? Because you’re still low.” Shifting through the screens, she landed on one and wrote a new note. “Your spore jumps drain your D levels.”

  That seemed a stretch. “Are you suggesting forgetting the supplement will jeopardize my project?”

  “You’re very light skinned …” she began.

  “Am I? Hadn’t noticed.”

  “The ship’s lighting replicates natural ultraviolet emissions, but not everyone needs the same amount. That means one of us”—she indicated his pale skin with her stylus—“is going to be producing too little vitamin D.”

  “Isn’t there a pill I can take to just fix it?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes. Your vitamin D supplements.”

  “I meant just one time.”

  As Pollard pulled a hypospray from her cart, she cast an annoyed glance. “You think a once-in-a-lifetime pill I could prescribe just slipped my mind?”

  “Like I said, I forget.” Why did talking to one’s doctor always feel like being scolded by the elementary school principal?

  She jabbed the hypo into his neck—more harshly than she needed to, Stamets thought.

  “Uh, ow?”

  “This will help in the short term.” Pollard returned the hypo to the tray. “We can alter the UV levels in your quarters to compensate, but unless you want me to treat you like a pediatric patient, do as you’re told.”

  “Berating me isn’t how you’d deal with a child?”

  “It’s when I’m not berating you that you should be worried,” she said coolly, and indicated that he could stand. “Anything else?”

  He sat up, but remained on the table, hesitating to broach the entire subject. Still, he knew he should. Especially after that morning.

  “Lieutenant?” she prodded. “There’s a lot I need to do if—”

  “I, uh … feel a little … mentally out of it.”

  She studied him, her gaze softening with concern. “Can you elaborate?”

  Stamets shifted uncomfortably on the exam table. “I can try, if allowed to sit in a real chair.”

  Pollard smirked and gestured toward her office. “Sure. Step into my parlor.”

  Like the sickbay, the office was austere, bordering on spartan. Because more than one doctor used it, personal touches were absent. A desk and a couple of cold chairs didn’t inspire intimate discussion.

  Stamets paused, standing to the side of the patient’s chair. Where do I even start, he thought, and how deep should I go?

  Doctor Pollard positioned herself in the seat behind the desk, placed her padd in front of her, and must have sensed his reticence. “Two real chairs,” she said gently. “No waiting.”

  “Thanks.” He gingerly lowered himself down, as if into a vat of too-hot water. “Is this off the record?”

  Pollard’s expression was one of empathy mixed with concern. “I am a doctor—it should go without saying that our discussions are confidential. If there’s something that affects the performance of your duty as a Starfleet officer, however, I have an obligation to report that, just like you would about someone under your care.”

  “Of course.” He rubbed his chin and then placed both hands on his lap. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” She waited.

  “So …” he began slowly. “I had an episode where I couldn’t think clearly.”

  Pollard nodded, encouraging him to continue. “When was this?”

  He hesitated. He didn’t want to be specific, to suggest it was linked to the jumps, so he left it vague. “In the morning? After waking up?”

  She scribbled on her padd with a stylus. “Are you’re asking me or telling me?”

  Stamets leaned away. “Trying to remember, I guess.” He gestured to the padd. “What did you write?”

  “A note.” She signaled with the stylus for him to continue. “How long did it last?”

  Time being what it was—or wasn’t—within the mycelial network traversal, he actually wasn’t sure. “A few moments?”

  “You’re asking me again.”

  “I thought for a few moments, but later when working on a new idea, I wasn’t able to make … certain mental connections.”

  “That you usually would make?”

  Why did doctors always ask questions that sounded so accusatory? “I’d like to think so, yes.”

  “I see.” Her comment was noncommittal but he felt she was arguing with him—and winning.

  “It took Ensign Tilly to point out to me what I missed,” Stamets muttered.

  Pollard pursed her lips.

  “What’s that supposed to me
an?” he asked.

  “Are you upset that a younger officer, of lower rank, and less experienced, came up with something you couldn’t?”

  Insulted, Stamets jumped to his feet. “No, that’s not—” But would storming out achieve what he came here for? “No, I don’t think so,” he said more calmly, but remained standing.

  “Okay,” Pollard said. “Would you like to talk to Doctor Yankey? He’s a licensed therapist.”

  “No. I …” He started toward the door. “You know what? Never mind.”

  “Are you sure?” Again, her rather innocuous question annoyed him.

  “Does he have a better bedside manner?”

  “Than me?” she scoffed as she rose. “Big ask.”

  As they moved toward the doorway back to sickbay, Pollard took his elbow and gave it a soft squeeze. “Paul. Your tests don’t indicate anything out of the ordinary. Some fatigue. And your tension headache? Doesn’t even merit a report. I’m sure a lot of people in your position would feel the same. I understand you’ve been breaking new ground. I still don’t approve of the genetic alterations you and Doctor Straal undertook—”

  “It was an emergency situation, and we did what we thought was right.”

  A slight frown creased Pollard’s lips. “And because of that, Starfleet may have given approval retroactively, but there’s a reason there are strict limits on human genome manipulation.”

  Unwilling to relive that gone-but-not-forgotten argument, Stamets slid into the main sickbay. “Well, I have to say, this has been fun.”

  “It was,” Pollard said. “I’m giving you a prescription for your headache, but it’s a short-term measure. You need to confront the source of your tension.”

  Yeah, he thought as he exited into the corridor. Easier said than done.

  4

  “Should we be hearing something?” Enav brushed a few strands of dark curly hair away from her left ear. “I feel we should be hearing something.”

  “You would be,” Stamets said, indicating a painfully blank status screen, “if it was working.”

  “Don’t you need someone to be broadcasting?”

  “With subspace radio, yes,” Stamets said. “Have you ever listened to the EM band?”

  “Not outside a classroom,” Enav said.

  “Normal radio has a sound. Static,” Tilly said. “You can scan the EM spectrum and hear something. We assumed that would be happening here.”

  “Hopeless.” Stamets shut down the program. He was disappointed but, had it worked, he wasn’t certain he’d have been elated, either. What if they’d heard that disembodied voice during his jumps? What if that presence wasn’t only his anymore? And why was the thought of that connection not being special to him so unsettling?

  “It worked in simulation.” Tilly was deflated, but still searching for an answer. “Maybe the tunneling isn’t the solution.”

  “No, I think it’s necessary, but something else is obviously still missing,” Stamets replied. “Listen, we’ll—”

  “Bridge to Stamets.” Airiam’s voice broke in over the comm.

  “Stamets here.”

  “We need an emergency jump to Vega IX, Lieutenant. FHO reports possible outbreak.”

  They all froze a moment. The entire quadrant had been on alert. Planetary and Federation health organizations had issued warnings through every government body and media outlet. The early symptoms of the disease mimicked half a dozen less deadly illnesses, but if they’d waited to see which cases were the blood burn and which were not, by the time they knew, even the Discovery would be too late. That’s why some outbreaks they’d investigated hadn’t been the disease at all, but meeting them head-on hadn’t been a waste of time.

  This case, however, was more chilling than the others they’d chased down. Vega was only ninety light-years from Earth. If this was an actual case of Symbalene blood burn, it was being carried into the more populated sectors of the Federation, despite all the travel precautions.

  “Understood. Stand by.” Stamets ordered Tilly to the console. “Pull up the coordinates.” He hurriedly rolled up his sleeves as Enav loaded the console with a full spore container.

  Rushing into the reaction cube, Stamets didn’t have time for his usual meditative moment. As he lined his arms up and leaned back into the support sled, he knew he had to concentrate solely on the task at hand. Part of him had been hoping for another spore dream, but now he dreaded the idea of being at all unfocused or unprepared for another emergency jump.

  He glanced to Tilly once the biomechanical connection was made to the ports in his forearms. “Ready.”

  “Bridge, we are go.”

  “Black alert.”

  When they jumped, sparkle was all Stamets saw. A wonderful, dreadful silence soaked into him. It was an eternity that lasted a moment, and a moment that lasted an eternity, but that was the network. As it flashed through him, though, he realized he finally understood at least one missing piece.

  “Sequence complete.”

  “Bridge acknowledges destination,” Enav called out.

  “Spores!” Stamets exclaimed breathlessly as he half exploded, half stumbled out of the cube. “We need spores!”

  Tilly wrinkled her nose as she moved toward him. “We have a lot of spores. I mean, more spores than you can shake … um, at spores. You were just covered in them.”

  “No,” Stamets gasped, pushing away the water she offered. “That’s what’s missing from the mycelial communications system!”

  “We already inject spores into it. Enough to conduct EM transmissions.”

  “It’s not enough though. Not even close.” He moved to her station to key in the changes for their simulation. “Because we added quantum tunneling to the process—still brilliant, by the way—we need to increase the spore ratio a million-fold.” Before them, her holographic screen displayed the explosion of mycelia he was calling for.

  “Ohhh! We shouldn’t be injecting spores in the receiver. We should be housing the receiver”—she gestured to the reaction cube—“in here.”

  “We gotta go bigger.” Stamets beamed at her. “We were thinking small. I was. But we don’t have to. We just pretend we’re building an enormous communications array. Because the mycelial network is, in fact, enormous. Ginormous, even.”

  “You used a made-up word!” Tilly gripped his arm. “He used a made-up word,” she told Enav. “That’s my influence.”

  “You must be very proud,” Enav said dryly.

  * * *

  “He was here,” Culber excitedly told Ephraim. “I felt him! Did you?”

  “My sensitivity is different from yours,” the tardigrade replied, “but yes, to your understanding, I did.”

  “I always forget what he feels like … until I get to feel him again.” He ran his hand along the nearest tree, not only to collect more of the bark dust, but to have some tactile experience that wasn’t just the burning air.

  “Understandable.”

  “Why do I forget everything? Why can’t I hold on to myself?” Culber pleaded with his companion.

  Ephraim nonchalantly rolled his upper body. “You are in this place and of this place, but your mind is incompatible. You are here, but cannot be.”

  Culber didn’t understand, but didn’t care what the tardigrade meant, other than if they were friends, Ephraim should want to help him be free. “If that’s true, then help me get home,” he said, rushing forward and thrusting his arms around Ephraim in a tight hug. “Can’t you?”

  “I can, and I will. And I can’t, and I won’t.”

  Angry again, Culber pushed himself away and lurched back toward the yeel trees that the painful JahSepp avoided. “You make no sense! You never make sense, but you know I forget and so you tease me with your riddles over and over!”

  “You forget because your mind cannot properly attune itself in this plane. My contact with you does not help this, but when I connect you with those of your kind, clarity can return for a time. Your beacon—your anchor to your plane—they are the only mind I can bond to yours.” Ephraim shuffled closer and raised his arms to the sky, indicating the network or perhaps existence itself. “Sadly, they flit about and are open to this only fleetingly. But there will come clearings. I am planting the seeds to help you. I have and I will bring them to you. I promise.”

  “I don’t want promises,” Culber cried. “I want Paul!”