by T. L Smith
When I finally curled up at his side, my head on his shoulder, we didn’t speak. We needed quiet. We needed to just be close and not let anything break the calm we’d discovered. Eventually, his fingers stroking the back of my leg tickled and I flinched. He laughed. “You’ve got your feeling back.”
“I got it back earlier, you just wore me out again.” I snuggled into his side.
“Sorry I tried to hurt you. I guess I got lost too.” His voice was a low whisper. “I thought, if I left, then maybe you’d think fate would be changed, but we’re too far down this path for either of us to leave.”
I caught at his hand around my knee, stretching back to look at him. “You believe me!”
“I’m not sure what I believe anymore.” Carl laced his fingers around mine, pulling my hand to his lips, before he sighed heavily. “You said you never felt like you fit in, that things always felt wrong. After my… accident, I had the same lost feeling. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be anymore. Then I met you and I knew. I knew I was supposed to be with you. So I can’t do this again, any more than you can.”
“You mean my getting crazy about all this stuff, Huracid, Cassandra, the book…You can’t leave. You said no going back.”
“I’m not leaving, but you need to know my secrets.”
“No I don’t.” I managed to pull my hand free and caressed his face. “I trust you. I don’t need to know anything else.”
“Yes, you do.” Carl caught at my hand and pulled it to his side, to the deepest of his scars. “You don’t know how this changed everything.”
His hand pressed my fingers to the old rough scars. “It happened in a strike against pirates out in sector seven. We’d been on them for months, tracking their leader, wanting to hit them when they were all together and dirtside.” His grip eased a bit, then dug in again. “I was part of the ground team. They had artillery bunkers we had to take out before the rest of the squadron could come in.”
Carl’s voice cracked as he spoke. “There was a hot flash. It knocked me out for a moment or two, but I came to again. Enough that when my vision cleared I could see most our team was down. A direct hit on us. I reached out to help, but couldn’t move my body. Only then I saw what was left of me.”
A stab hit in my chest as he recalled that moment, as I felt some of the pain he remembered from that day. I held it in.
“I watched my blood draining away, but soon couldn’t really feel anything. It was an odd painlessness that took over. That’s when I knew my life was done. I accepted it, but the medics somehow reached us. They shoved me into stasis. At the hospital the doctors ignored my medical directive. If I’d never again walk or enjoy a meaningful life, I didn’t want to live.”
“Well, I’m glad they changed your—" His seriousness silenced me.
“I didn’t change my mind.” He closed his eyes and covered them with his arm. “It wasn’t just my spine, but blood loss, burns, internal organ damage, crushed bones. I was a dead man. They only made it a slow agonizing death, while they experimented on me.”
Subconsciously, he found the blanket and pulled it over his legs. “The person I was before wouldn’t have let them cut this body up. He couldn’t. Not as they replaced all the shattered bones, damaged organs, or scoped all these wires up and down his legs. He couldn’t stop them. He was gone.”
Carl’s arm around me tightened, maybe in a reflex to his memories. “This body rejected implants, suffered infections, shock, you name it. It wanted to die, and did, more than once, for a brief moment of painless peace. But every time they brought it back.”
I could feel his memories and ached deep in my chest with each word he let out. The way he remembered it was so distant, but maybe that was the only way he could speak of it.
“Waking up in this body was as excruciating as what they did to it. Therapy was worse than anything the enemy could have ever done to me. But with therapy I walked again. When I could do it, without a tech following me everywhere, I left.”
“You just walked out of the hospital?”
“I had to. The more aware I became of myself, whoever that was, the more obsessed I was to be somewhere else. So I ran away from everything that I was supposed to be, jumping from port to port, searching for what was missing. Then I ran into you.”
“I remember that too, so clearly. You showed up with perfect timing.”
“That’s just it.” I felt Carl’s frustration rise and he turned his head to look at me. Frustration and guilt. I felt them both. “That night wasn’t chance or luck. I’d already found you. I’d followed you for months trying to figure out why I was supposed to be with you.”
This was an odd confession, but it filled in the mysterious coincidence of our meeting. “Okay, so you stalked me, but I should thank fate you weren’t allowed to die, so you could be my knight--” The words barely slipped out of my mouth before Carl dragged his arm out from under my head and sat up. I pushed up on my elbow, confused. So was he, but I couldn’t reach the deeper part of his thoughts. “What? What am I saying so wrong?”
“I’m not your knight in shining armor.” Carl buried his face in his hands. “I’m not who you think I am. You need to know what I am… why we’re—” His palms squeezed his temples hard. His whole body tensed as he tried to speak.
I tried to read past the wall of emotions, but ran into a block. His brain clamped down harder as he tried to remember something, as he tried to tell it to me. It manifested physically against him. “Stop! Whatever you need to tell me, it can wait.” I pressed my cheek between his shoulders and could hear him breathe. I heard, a roughness deep in his lungs, labored as he exhaled. Maybe it was gravity, maybe his old injuries. I stroked his back. “Come back to bed. We can talk about this later.”
Carl sighed and lie down again. It took a few minutes, but his body relaxed and the dark thoughts, the memories and pain eased away. His breathing returned to normal. I stroked his chest, listening to his heart beating. Silently I was grateful for all the intervention. The thought of not having him in my life was scarier than Huracid and that damned book.
He was nearly asleep. “I’ll take the next shift. You’ve been at it for days without me, and under all this gravity. Just brief me on the animals.”
“No, I’ll feed the beasts.” Carl let out a short laugh. “Want to get paid for this job.”
* * * * *
As the days passed, and we ricocheted from one port to the next, Carl tried to talk about the deeper secrets of his past, but every attempt left him with headaches. Silently I wondered if the military installed mental blocks to prevent him talking. But he painfully clung to breaking the secret inside him, while I clung to figuring out the bios plastered on the dayroom wall.
Making ports were welcome distractions for both of us. We traded the animals for lab supplies, then a shipment of gourmet foods and luxurious silks, for a load of raw ore. Carl joked how even rough-and-tough miners had demanding spouses. Unfortunately, the mining planet’s gravity was too heavy for Carl. I was forced dirtside for several days to watch the ritual alpha-dog fights between miners and IGF reps.
As always, a contract was signed. Returning to orbit was a relief. The steel bands of heavy gravity uncoiled from around my chest as I left their atmosphere. Stepping onto my ship, the weight was immediately replaced by Carl’s arms as he pulled me out of the airlock.
I’d been gone for days, but we only managed one brief passionate embrace before I hurried to the cockpit. It took an hour to secure the shipment, get clearance and out of their airspace. When the computer confirmed my settings, I engaged Sync.
Only then did I make my way to the dayroom, but my eagerness for Carl’s attention shifted to patient affection. He’d fallen asleep. Very gently I stretched out next to him, easing my head down on his arm.
As tired as I felt, I glanced at the faces pasted across the walls, dozens of eyes staring out across the years. Strong, dependable eyes. Those women stood up for their beliefs. And their l
oves always stood beside them. Even to their deaths. “If I am all of them. Maybe they are you and we really do belong together.” Maybe hearing my thoughts, Carl’s arms wrapped around me. Almost protectively. I felt safe. “They were always there, just like you’re here.”
“Always…” In his sleep Carl murmured in agreement. “Sworn to her ...”
Sworn to her… me? For an instant my heart pattered, but his whisper sounded… sad… regretful. “Sworn to me?” I wanted to turn and look into his face, but moving would wake him up. Instead I stroked his arm lightly. “Always sworn to me? Why?”
“Must keep… on…path.” He stirred uncomfortably, maybe waking up, his arm pulled me tighter and I could feel him agitated in his sleep. Did this have something to do with his secrets? Secrets too deep to consciously reveal? Maybe… I cringed at the thought, at such an invasion of his privacy. I never used my gifts that way. Not against someone I cared about.
But he tortured himself to tell me something. Was it really wrong to get to it this way? No, it’s not. I’d just keep the secret to myself if it was too dark.
Having convinced myself that this was the right thing to do, I relaxed into my own head, letting my buried talent take the forefront of my thoughts. I focused completely on Carl, letting my presence ease into his subconscious. Reaching deeper than the surface thoughts everyone projected so easily.
His barriers were surprisingly easy to reach through and it felt welcoming as I settled into his dreams. He dreamed of me. This made it so much easier. “Carl, where does the path go?” I whispered the question, but his body and thoughts stiffened. There was a surge of fear, but not for himself. It was for me. “Shhh… Kali is safe. Kali’s safe.”
I had to control my urge to pry too deep, too soon. I softened my touch. “What are you afraid of?” His agitation deepened as my question twisted into his dreams. “Carl?”
“Not Carl. I’m not Carl.” Something deep down tried to push me out of his dream. I eased my presence, but held on.
The resistance eased again. “What do you mean, you’re not Carl?”
“Not Carl…” He whispered through clenched teeth, twisting away. His arms around me sought shelter from whatever terrorized him.
I had to move quickly, trying not to disturb him physically or mentally. Easing away just far enough to avoid his thrashing arms. “Who are you? What are you afraid of?”
“Trapped… in his body… Can’t go back…” As if stabbed, Carl twisted violently.
I felt the agony too and caught my breath, then let it out slowly. “Shhh… it was a long time ago.” I touched his shoulder and he was soothed. “I don’t want you to go back. You searched for me and I want you here, with me.”
He really believed his old self was dead. Was it an out-of-body experience so intense that he really believed he didn’t belong here anymore? Were his sub-conscious memories so terrifying that he was afraid to talk about them? Thinking of him in such deep pain, I wanted to help. As his mind settled again, my hand rested gently on his leg, keeping the connection between us. “You are Carl. You came back to this life. You belong here, Carl. With me.”
“Not Carl!” Again his body convulsed. “Carl’s dead! They… forced me here!”
My mind still touched his, but I felt more than the words he shouted. Something… someone else, surged to the surface. I knew human, I knew my own, and this was neither. But I knew it from before, for a brief flicker of a second. I’d felt it after the library, right before my fight with Carl. I’d written it off to the drugs, to the emotions. I no longer had a physical connection, but didn’t need it against this… thing.
“Who are you?”
The entity felt me too and that alien surge turned on me, mentally and physically. It knocked me away as it contorted Carl’s body off the lounger. I crawled away as it took a step towards me. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The entity staggered, struggling, as if not remembering how to walk, then fell to the floor.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was gone and what I knew as Carl was back. He gasped for air, kneeling on the floor. “What the hell… what happened?”
“You tell me!”
He focused on me as I slid further away. “I’m… I’m sorry. That was…a nightmare, I guess.” He got to his feet and took another step towards me. “Did I hurt you?”
I rolled to my feet and put the chair between us. “Tell me why you say you’re not Carl. That he’s dead.”
“What?” His face contorted into a maze of emotions, landing on guarded confusion. “You know who I am.”
The other entity was hiding from me, but I’d touched it. Now it couldn’t fully bury itself again and was struggling against Carl’s conscious mind. I shook my head at him. “I know who you’ve been, who you want to be, but I believe you now. Carl died. You’re not the real Carl. Who…or what are you? What path is it you need to keep me on?”
“Kali.” Carl reached for me, but I easily side-stepped him. “Kali, what did I…” He stopped mid-question. “…it was words from a nightmare.”
“I talked to it.” I shouted at him, then pulled back, taking a breath. “The old Carl really is dead and you’re trapped in his body. Whatever you are. What happened to the real him, his soul? Is that part of him really dead?”
Carl sank down on the lounger. He closed his eyes and from him resonated that same struggle I felt every time he tried to talk to me before. “It’s not how you think. I… I don’t know how it happened. I can see so many things, but…” He rubbed between his eyes, hard. “…it’s like you said at the library. There’s things we’re not supposed to know. There’s rules.”
“Rules? Fuck rules! I want to know what’s going on. Now!”
“It’s not… that… simple.” He talked into his hands, pushing words out past the resistance building in his head. Carl twisted his head and shoulders, then threw out his arms. “I don’t know what I am, just not…this!”
I didn’t dare take a step towards the man, but I couldn’t completely cut off my feelings either. His pain was real, caused by the thing inside him, torturing him into silence. “I know what you are. That thing inside you, not so much. So let me talk to it.”
Carl dropped his arms, slouching back onto himself. Pain was replaced with exhaustion. “I don’t know how to… to call it out.”
“So you admit it exists.”
“I know I’m not… not the Carl who went into battle. Not the man who woke up in the hospital being tortured to death. When I try to remember exactly when this ‘me’ came out, I run into this… this agonizing wall of… resistance. It’s in there, inside me, like a ghost shadow in my head. There’s no words between us, just… impulses.”
“And I was an impulse. Find me. Get close to me. Guide me down this ‘path’. But you don’t know what the path is.” My skin crawled at my own thoughts. “Getting close to me was all just part of this thing’s game. What we were, that was all fake?”
Carl jerked his head up from his hands, his jaw dropping open. “NO!” The emotion rushing out from him made me take a step back. He followed, lunging off the lounger. I was faster and circled away from him. He stopped, holding his arms out. “We’re real. What I feel is real. I love you.” He hesitated with those words, his head turning slowly towards the wall of bios. “As if… As if I’ve loved you forever.”
He was silent, his eyes fixed on the bios and somehow it felt as if he was trying to tell me something deeper than those few words. I cautiously went to the wall, looking at the images he’d laid out so carefully. At the bios. At the men.
Before this started I’d asked myself about him. If I was ‘her’, then could he be ‘them’.
“You really mean ‘forever’.” I jabbed at one of the men. “I’ve had a companion in every single life. You’re these men. Their reincarnations, simply here to guide me?”
Carl’s eyes focused on mine. “I just feel…” A stab of pain silenced his words. He fought to not drop from the
intensity.
I struggled not to rush to his aid. Instead I screamed at him, or rather at the thing inside him. “Stop it! I know you’re there. Stop torturing him!”
It seemed to hear me, Carl sucked in air as the pressure let go, but pain remained. He turned away from me and went to the galley, where he pulled out a bottle of my scotch. He poured a double shot, grimacing as he downed it all. A second glass didn’t help either.
“Yes. I was driven by impulses to find you, to protect you, but the thought of losing you is like someone slicing me in two, again. I’m not pretending how I feel for you.”
Carl’s emotions were as raw as new wounds. He was afraid to lose me with these revelations and it tore at him as harshly as he described.
“Okay.” I let out a sigh. “I believe you.”
I went to the counter and nodded to the bottle. Carl took down a glass and poured me a double. I took a sip, seeing a touch of relief wash over him. “I can feel it inside you. It’s not fighting anymore, but it’s not wanting to reveal itself again. Not yet anyway.”
“That’s how it feels. There’s been times I thought I was… crazy. I almost checked myself into mental hospitals, but it wouldn’t let me. It just kept pushing me to search for you. Punishing me when I resisted.”
“So you just wandered from port to port.” That was the part I found unbelievable. “It’s a huge galaxy. The chances of us just crossing paths…” There was that thought again. A path. “…it knew where to look for me. When I wanted to quit, it guided you to the meeting. To keep me on the path. This path. This route. The one we’re on now.”
Carl stared into his drink, swirling it slowly. Thinking, worried. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, then took a sip. “It’s all just impulses. When I saw you, something went off in my head, a huge sense of… relief. The need to search disappeared. As for the meeting, when you didn’t show up, I did what I thought was right. More business than impulse. When they suggested going with another freighter, I couldn’t let you lose them as a client, so I signed the contract for you. It wasn’t a trick.”