by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Prodigy of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
When the rabbit had managed to dry his tears, and Mike had put on a freshly synthesized Tri-Galactic Union uniform, the two of them made their way up to the Wanderlust’s bridge where Captain Carroway was holding down the fort while everyone else prepared the funeral on Sojourner’s back.
The Norwegian Forest cat blinked when she saw the subject of the funeral walk onto her bridge, fully alive and sporting an extra pair of arms.
“Ensign Mike,” the cat captain meowed, not missing a beat, “I can’t tell if you’re late or you’re early, but you seem to be keeping a very different sort of time than the rest of the crew.”
The toadstool smiled and dipped their mushroom cap head in a nod of acknowledgment and amusement.
The Norwegian Forest cat’s tone turned to one of great warmth and gruff sincerity as she said, “Welcome back.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Ensign Mike replied, their voice like the bright plinging of heavy spring raindrops falling on a lake surrounded by daffodils.
“I expect I’ll be getting some very interesting reports from each of you,” Captain Carroway continued archly, “after today’s… uh… festivities?” Her ears skewed backward, unsure of how to refer to the funeral about to be held on Sojourner’s back. “Well, whatever ends up happening today, I’ll be expecting full reports about how this–” She gestured with an extended claw at Vossie, then Mike, then back to Vossie again. “–came to pass and what each of you have been up to that brought us all here on the bridge together again.”
“It’s good to be back,” Mike said, “and yes, I promise to provide you with some very interesting reading material as soon as I have time to sit down and compose my thoughts. But first, I have a request.”
“A request?” Captain Carroway asked, sounding gob-smacked that an officer who had been lost for months and presumed dead only minutes ago was already asking for favors. “Do tell.”
“I’d like my sleeping arrangement to be changed,” Mike said. “I’d like to be assigned to the other barracks room — with Melbourne, Lee, Diaz, and Lys instead of Vossie, Werik, and Korvax.”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie looked startled, but after only a moment, his expression settled into one of understanding. The rabbit had put the pieces together — Mike needed more space for themself, away from Vossie, in order to fully be themself.
Mike wondered if the fact that Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s neural implant contained a year’s worth of the toadstool’s memories was affecting him. The implant had made Mike care more — too much — about Vossie’s feelings than they did without it. Might the implant have a symmetrical — but lighter — pull on Vossie, making him more sensitive to Mike’s feelings?
Mike hoped so.
“Well, that sounds a little crowded and unbalanced–” Captain Carroway began, but before she could finish, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie cut her off.
“Actually,” the rabbit said, “Lys expressed an interest in moving to Sojourner’s back with Solace once the tardigrade’s eggs begin hatching. And I think it might be best for everyone if Melbourne, Lee, and Diaz weren’t left alone together. The three of them have been getting a little too tight for comfort lately.”
“Well, then,” Captain Carroway rumbled, “I guess you’ll be doing everyone a favor. Consider it done. Now, get yourselves over to Sojourner’s, and promise me–” The Norwegian Forest cat looked as serious as Mike had ever seen her look. “–that when Cmdr. Chestnut trades shifts with me that you’ll use that photographic memory of yours, Ensign Mike, to tell me about every detail of how they all react to your arriving just in time for your own funeral.”
The toadstool promised.
Then Ensign Mike and Lt. Cmdr. Vossie returned to the teleporter bay and were whisked away in a shimmer of quantum energy.
When the rabbit and toadstool appeared on the gently curving back of the baby world turtle following the Wanderlust, everyone stopped and stared.
Ensign Melbourne and Lt. Lee had been arranging cups of crayons and sheets of blank paper on a table, set out on the grassy hillside. Lt. Diaz and Ensign Werik were setting out delicately blue and white patterned tea cups on another table, loaded with fancy-looking appetizers. Lys and Korvax were each arranging displays of flowers beside a small podium that had been erected next to the tardigrade’s rustic house. And Cmdr. Chestnut was setting up what seemed to be a game involving wire wickets, wooden mallets, and brightly colored balls the size of grapefruits on the grassy lawn.
But as soon as each of them spotted the toadstool standing in their midst, they froze as still as statues.
“Let me guess,” Ensign Melbourne meowed, being the first one to collect himself enough to break the silence even though the ghost-white cat looked like he was seeing a ghost. “The news of your demise has been greatly exaggerated?”
“But we saw your body!” Lt. Diaz blurted out in a baffled woof. The troubled expression on the Xolo-Lupinian’s muzzle suggested that Ensign Mike’s decaying body had not been a pretty sight.
Cmdr. Chestnut put down the rack of wooden mallets and made his way over to Mike. The golden-mantled squirrel put out his paws, forestalling any further outbursts, and said, “Whatever Mike’s been through to arrive here, I’m sure it’s been a lot, and they’ll tell us about it in their own time. For now…” The squirrel commander’s brush of a tail whipped wildly behind him, and his diminutive muzzle broke into a radiant smile. “Let’s just enjoy the fortuitous timing and declare this funeral converted into a welcome home celebration!”
“Not just a celebration,” Ensign Melbourne objected, his own feline muzzle breaking into a beaming smile as well. “A childhood!” The white cat gestured around himself at the tables of treats and art supplies.
“Look, Mike,” Lt. Lee seconded with an eager woof. The pretty little Papillon dog looked terribly excited, like he simply couldn’t believe how wonderful it was that Mike had showed up for this event. “It’s the childhood you were wishing for!”
“That’s right,” Lt. Diaz barked, more stolidly. After her earlier surprise, the Xolo-Lupinian seemed to be aspiring to the kind of unflappability that Captain Carroway had displayed when first seeing Mike returned from the dead. The hybrid wolf-alien had hated the Norwegian Forest cat for a long time, but once she’d finally come around, Lt. Diaz had come to see Captain Carroway as a sort of role-model, acting as much like the cat as possible while still saddled with her fierce canine temper. “We couldn’t think of a better way to honor your life than to throw you the childhood that Melbourne and Korvax had been planning for you.”
The Xolo-Lupinian managed to make it entirely unclear from her dry tone whether she was saying that she thought this had been a good idea or a terrible idea.
Mike knew what they thought of the idea though: the toadstool was deeply touched. Too touched to speak. The mushroom kept trying to summon words of thanks, but they were all too big and too little at the same time — too big to say without choking on their immensity, and too little to truly convey the overflowing gratefulness that Mike felt at being back with this crew and seeing how much their friends had valued them. For the first time in their strange life, Mike felt loved.
Cmdr. Chestnut fiercely defended the mushroom from having to say anything before they were ready. Instead the golden-mantled squirrel ushered the mushroom around from one station of delights to the next, making sure that Ensign Melbourne and Korvax explained all the activities.
Mike didn’t prove to be very good at croquet, but they enjoyed coloring with the crayons and tried to draw pictures of the places they’d visited in the Hyphaic as their other fruiting bodies. By the time Mike had left subspace to be themself again, there were dozens of Mike-like fruiting bodies living all kinds of different lives as parts of the Hyphaic.
It was all kind of hard to explain to their mammalian friends. Though, everyone enjoyed looking at Mike’s drawings, and Lys didn’t seem confused by the life Mike described living in the Hyphaic at all. Whether that was because of her telepathy or the strangeness of her own brush with early-metamorphosis into her future butterfly form, well, Mike had no way of knowing without asking. And the toadstool chose not to ask, not wanting to draw attention to differences that the caterpillar had been trying to downplay.
Mike listened quietly as Vossie explained proudly to the others how he’d rescued their toadstool friend from being lost in subspace and provided a new body for them from the Hyphaic tendrils that had been twisting throughout his own body ever since his infection. The rabbit concluded, “So, this childhood celebration is actually doubly appropriate, since Mike was essentially re-born today.”
“That kind of makes Mike your kid, doesn’t it?” meowed Melbourne wryly.
“This all makes me think,” Lt. Lee woofed, “of the Ancient Earth story from Greek mythology about Athena being born fully grown from her father Zeus’s head.”
The white cat grinned, wrapped a paw around the rabbit’s shoulders with far too much familiarity, and meowed, “So, should we call you Pops now?”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie frowned at Ensign Melbourne’s levity. The rabbit’s face was capable of looking impressively disapproving when his whiskers turned downward like that. “You certainly shouldn’t,” the rabbit said to the cat, shoving his paw away.
“Don’t worry,” Mike said, still scribbling away with the crayons, “familial ties don’t exist in the same way among the Hyphaic, so I feel no need to call you by a special honorific, Father.” Quiet amusement filled the toadstool’s voice like the springiness of daffodil blossoms bobbing under the weight of a light rainfall. “Well, not most of the time anyway.”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s severe expression held, but it looked like the rabbit was working extra hard to keep an amused smile underneath from breaking through.
Apparently, Mike was allowed to joke with Vossie more than the others. That made the mushroom feel good.
Before Cmdr. Chestnut had to go back to the Wanderlust to relieve Captain Carroway, the golden-mantled squirrel got up on the podium, between the floral displays, and gave a moving speech about how glad they all were to have Ensign Mike back… even if it did mean that he’d had to repurpose most of his planned funeral speech on the fly.
After that, others took turns getting up and telling stories about the good times they’d all had with Mike. Even Captain Carroway — once she’d been relieved and joined the merriment — delivered some surprisingly convincing words about how much she valued having Mike in the crew.
As the party began to dwindle, Mike found themself half listening to Korvax and Werik discussing where to add a garden on Sojourner’s back for an orange carrot-like vegetable the rabbit-like alien was rather fond of and half listening to the whispering pull of the Hyphaic across the veil in subspace.
Mike was such a small piece of the Hyphaic, and out where the Wanderlust and Sojourner were traveling, the Hyphaic’s mycelial strands were thinner and more spaced out than back closer to the center of Sidiian civilization.
The Hyphaic’s voice would get quieter and quieter in the back of Mike’s mind the farther they traveled. So, if Mike wanted to ask the Hyphaic for a favor, the time was now.
But doing so was a big decision.
Because Mike had only just now come back home to the Wanderlust, and if the Hyphaic granted their favor, then their voyage might be almost at an end.
Mike wasn’t ready for that much change, but also, the toadstool knew it was their duty as a Tri-Galactic Union officer to present any helpful information they might have to their superior officers.
And more than that, these animals were Mike’s friends.
If there was a way that Mike could help their friends, then the toadstool had to try.
Continue on to Chapter 24…