by Kelly Jensen
“There are too many people in the city. You need to come home for a while. Rest and recover. Let me look after you.”
Tears cornered Lang’s eyes. “That’s so kind of you, Hana. But I think we’re over the worst of it. We have been staying indoors. Away from all the people.”
“What kind of air filters do you use in your building? Some are made with a material worse than all the dust they’re supposed to collect. And if you let them get dusty—”
“I’ll have Upero check them out.”
“Who?”
“I mean maintenance. His, ah, the company name is Upero.” Lang could almost hear the AI snickering around him. “Is there a brand you would recommend?” He’d discovered early in his relationship with Dillon’s mother and grandmother that if he asked the right questions, they quite happily carried most conversations.
Hana prattled on for a while, listing various filter brands with a breakdown of the pros and cons. Then she coasted into humidifiers and ionizing. Lang’s eyes began to drift shut. It’d been a while since he’d managed more than a nap.
“Lang? Steilang?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you get the email I just sent you? It’s a list of specialists in the city.”
What had they been talking about? “For the HVAC?”
“No! Weren’t you listening? For your cough. Is Dillon coughing? I recommend Dr. Hirschman. She’s the best ear, nose, and throat doc in the city. If I call her, I could probably get you in this afternoon—”
“We’re fine, Hana. Really.”
A rustling sound answered, then Hana returned, picking up where she’d left off. “—Bora can come to the city to drive you there. I wouldn’t get in one of those Ubers, sick as you are. You’re both probably past contagious, but are highly susceptible to secondary infections—”
“Hana.”
“What?”
“We’re fine. We don’t need to see a specialist.”
Silence. Then: “Dillon must be beside himself. His school and students.”
No doubt. “He’s devastated that he cannot be there,” Lang said. “I, ah, we spoke with Josh this morning. He and their new teacher Penny have it all under control.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes?”
“I mean about the specialist. You sound… Well, you don’t seem to be coughing as much, but you don’t sound good, Lang. I wish I wasn’t working today”—another rustle—“and my break is over in less than a minute. Listen, don’t make plans for the weekend. I’m going to come up and take care of you both. Don’t say anything! I know you’re a private person, but you are also Dillon’s person, so that makes you mine, too. I need to see my son. Talk to him. I want to see you as well.”
Lang couldn’t answer right away. He had a large object lodged in his throat. Clearing it away with a sound that supported his reported illness, he finally managed, “Okay.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow. Give Dillon a kiss for me, hmm? Bye now.”
Hana disconnected before Lang could start weeping over the phone. Or, tell the truth. That he had only a handful of days to figure out what the truth was—or was going to be—nestled into his mind like a barb. Oh, he was tired. So, so… tired.
Checking the laptop, Lang noted a return email message from June. She had submitted the paperwork required to kill the acquisition of the pharmaceutical plant and wanted to know if this action was singular or a change of direction for the company. Lang rubbed his eyes. His mission on Earth felt as distant as his heart, his purpose currently somewhere among the stars. And yet, he had managed to surround himself with good people. Friends, coworkers, and even family. People who knew him. Understood him. Who were there for him.
But without Dillon, none of it mattered. What he had built—what he had, alone, was no longer enough.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Dillon massaged his nape. The ache usually started behind his eyes before radiating toward the back of his head. Some nights—and night was a totally relative term in a place where time seemed to have no meaning—his skull took on a brittle feeling, as though one hard knock would shatter the bone. Lately, the pain had been creeping down his neck.
Pressing at the corded tendon on either side of his spine, Dillon wondered if the ache would become ever present, and if this was a stage he’d move past.
“When you are ready.”
The phrase scraped against raw nerves. Vagnan wasn’t asking if Dillon was ready. He was implying that everyone else waited on that fact, on Dillon being able to continue.
Dillon opened his eyes and squinted against the diffuse light. “Is the back of my head always going to feel like eggshells?”
Vagnan’s expression blanked further as he obviously sought his mental dictionary for “eggshells.” There’d been a time—before his occasional headaches became a constant—when Dillon delighted in throwing out odd words just to confuse the elder. Now it was habit.
“I would offer you something for the pain, but it serves as a learning tool. Sharp pain means—”
“I know. It means I’m hurting someone. Spread pain means I’m not trying hard enough. A pulling means I’m fighting another talent. The feeling my hair has been set on fire is super bad because it probably means I’m going to die.”
Vagnan’s lips twitched toward one of his non-smiles. Extending his hand across the table, he said, “Let’s try again.”
Dillon sighed out one breath, drew in another, and touched Vagnan’s hand. The lurch he was used to and had mostly learned to control. Whenever he touched someone with a stronger or more developed talent than his, he experienced a moment of seasickness. If he pushed, the nausea increased, along with the ache in his skull. Swallowing, Dillon pushed. Vagnan blocked, and the push became a pull as the elder attempted to reverse the read. The exercise was about mental shielding—erecting and maintaining one while breaching another. Expressing the sentiment that maybe he shouldn’t try to read anyone’s mind, shield or no, hadn’t excused Dillon from trying, and it was all they’d been working on for the past two sessions.
When his brain started to stretch like taffy, Dillon prepared to let go. He eased back the throttle. Strains of purple already hazed the edges of his vision, and he imagined he could feel Vagnan’s duty through the mental block. This had happened before, and he never knew if he was remembering the last time he’d touched the elder, or if he was actually breaking through. Then, just as he got ready to admit defeat, he caught a brighter glimpse of purple in the far corner of his mental vista. A flash of swirling and faint streamers of violet parted before him. Then he was through, the familiar pathways of Vagnan’s emotions arrayed before him.
The first time Dillon had connected with Vagnan on Earth, he’d been all but crushed by the sense of duty. Now he understood that that tunnel of emotion was the main pipeline. Nearly all Wren had the same central pathway, the same core of devotion to their cause. Once he ventured off that conduit, though, they differed greatly. Outwardly, the Wren exhibited little personality. Inwardly, they were people. Sort of.
Vagnan’s central emotion, his sense of duty, was the strongest Dillon had encountered among the Wren made available to him for testing and training. His shield was also the toughest to pierce. Dillon suspected the two were related. Now, with free access to Vagnan’s mind, he barreled toward the rear of the central corridor, hoping for areas as yet unexplored.
Duty began to give way to a new emotion: something spiky and dark. Dillon scrawled a hole in the bubble forming around it and pushed inside. He couldn’t have explained exactly how he’d done it, except to say it was like doodling. He imagined his thoughts as a pen line—wider and thinner as the drawing required, with him using the nib of his pen to dot and poke and create new spaces. The analogy worked to ground him, too, as he always imagined an umbilical line behind him, the path he’d drawn in on. He always kept his lines clean and black so as not to confuse his self with the emotions he encountered in other people.
Vagnan�
��s spikes quivered. A cloud of rich, dark molasses pushed outward, and Dillon caught his first taste of Wren fear. Images rushed at him—screaming faces, someone slapping at a boy’s ears, eyes of blazing purple, and… was that a frozen waterfall? Then he was thrust out of the spiky mess and back into the central corridor, the sense of duty pulsating wildly around him. Dillon withdrew entirely, rolling back past Vagnan’s barrier and out of his head.
Right before he left, Dillon caught one last feeling—or maybe it was another mixture of recollection and intuition. The pulse of duty had a very defensive quality to it, more so than usual. As though the elder strove to convince himself it was there.
Dillon opened his eyes. He never remembered closing them during a session. Vagnan sat in his usual place across the corner of the table, but, otherwise, he looked very different. His eyes glittered with strain, and his plumes of purple hair had drooped to form a damp curtain across his forehead. Tendons stuck out at the sides of his neck, and a sheen of sweat clung to his skin. With visible effort, he pulled his hand from beneath Dillon’s. Only then did he seem to breathe, his shoulders lifting and falling with the effort.
For his part, Dillon felt about as bad as Vagnan looked. As though it had been his head invaded. The pain at the back of his skull had become a steady throb that pulsed up and down his spine.
“Can we be done for today?” he asked, voice rough. He knew not to ask if he’d done something well or poorly. The Wren weren’t big on performance evaluations. They simply pushed for more. Vagnan looked pretty wrecked, though, so it seemed as good a time as any. Also, if they were done for the day, he could claim his reward—a report on Lang. They hadn’t told Dillon where he was, or how long he’d been away, but at the end of every session, he got a note from Lang.
The missives were short and obviously edited, but now and then something else came through. Lang was always reported as healthy, but, once, there’d be a line about broken appliances, which clued Dillon in to Lang’s mental state better than: Lang is upset. Duh. Yesterday’s report had been pretty obscure:
Lang is healthy. Dehydrating ice cream is proving more difficult than anticipated.
The ice cream comment made Dillon smile. As a reward, the notes weren’t much, but isolated as he was, Dillon had nothing else to work for, except the ever-fainter possibility he might be able to go home.
Maybe today he’d ask about his mom again. Vagnan had been less forthcoming about the welfare of the Lee family, and Dillon wasn’t sure if it was an access issue, or an attempt to keep him unaware of how long he’d been gone.
Dillon pushed up to stand. “If we’re done—”
“I have another test for you.” Vagnan swiped and poked at the holographic array on his side of the table. “I am calling for another subject. If you would like to refresh yourself, please do so.”
“What I want is to go for a walk.” He’d been told the convergence room wasn’t a prison, but sometimes it felt that way. The room wasn’t large enough to pace, not really, and after he’d been left alone for a couple of hours, the walls seemed to close in. Shortly after his arrival, Dillon had wrangled the right to pace the corridor outside his room and had since formed the habit of using a communal washroom at the end. He’d told Vagnan it made him feel more civilized than crapping in bucket extruded from the wall of his cell.
The expression on the elder’s face after that comment had been good enough to frame. But Vagnan had acceded to his request.
Now, a lighted square opened beneath the credenza, offering up a glass of liquid. The long, low shelf was the only feature of the room that never changed, and the service bays could deliver almost anything except a weapon or an escape pod. Yeah, he’d asked. But all his meals came out of there, as well as the sheets for the bed that molded itself out of the table and chairs every sleep cycle.
Dillon grabbed the glass of cloudy liquid and drank it thirstily. Stuff still tasted like nothing good, but it did refresh. He’d just returned the glass to the cubby when the door slid open to admit a woman. All clan were tall and slender, but his visitor seemed a little less imposing than usual. Not quite as tall, not quite as purple.
Vagnan did not rise, meaning she was of much lower status than he was. All of Dillon’s visitors had been of much lower status than he was. The elder did gesture toward the newcomer, though. “Dillon, this is Beclan Jord’Nay.”
“Elders.” Beclan immediately dropped to her knees, making the same gesture of supplication Lang made whenever clan visited the apartment. After a frozen second, Dillon realized she had addressed him as well.
“You don’t need to bow to me.” Dillon dropped back into his chair to sprawl as untidily as he could—legs spread wide, arms dangling.
“You may rise, Beclan,” Vagnan said. Beclan rose to her feet. “Please take a seat next to Dillon.”
She bobbed her head and moved around the table to sit on Dillon’s other side. He swiveled to face her and tried for a friendly smile. Tired as he was, it might have come out as a grimace. Either way, she didn’t respond. Were all Nay… Wait.
Dillon spun his chair back around. “She’s Nay? As in the Clan at war with Lang’s people?”
“That is correct.”
“What is she doing here?”
“She is your next test.”
“What sort of talents do the Nay have?” A weird prickle began to spread across Dillon’s shoulders, and he couldn’t decide if it was because he was being rude to their guest, or if the fucked-up-ness of this whole enterprise was getting more fucked up.
“In the sense you are asking, none.” Vagnan’s immovable expression somehow shifted into a glare that said, As I have explained before. Many times.
How did he do that?
A beat later, Dillon realized he and Vagnan were communicating telepathically, with the glare being a mental admonishment and a request that he stop asking leading questions. Dillon had been the one to provide the words based on the emotion projected toward him by Vagnan. Stomach cramping, Dillon swiveled his chair back toward Beclan and tried for another smile. It was about as successful as the first. What was he supposed to say? How’s the war from your end? Obviously, she wouldn’t know. Not all the Nay were rocking around the galaxy shooting down Skov starships. Right? Well, this one wasn’t, and beneath her clan composure, she was terrified. Of him.
Don’t pat her hand. Just stop smiling.
Dillon wrestled his tired features into a neutral expression. Properly clan-like.
“You may begin.”
“Huh?” Dillon glanced over his shoulder at Vagnan.
The elder gestured toward the Nay. “First impression, please.”
“She’s terrified. I don’t need to touch her to tell you that.”
“What is she afraid of?”
“Um, I think that’s pretty fucking obvious, don’t you? Big scary elder at the head of the table and me not looking like a typical Wren.”
Irritation rolled through the space between Dillon and Vagnan. “Why is she afraid?” the big scary elder asked.
Biting back another smart response, Dillon turned toward his “subject” and studied her face. The most basic answer was: She’s afraid because your society is rotten. She was probably taught to fear the Wren from birth. All the better to bolster your clan’s domination. But the Nay did provide him with a unique opportunity to see if what he supposed was true. Dillon leaned forward and touched Beclan’s hand.
No swirl, no push-pull, no central tunnel. The purple haze of duty Dillon encountered in every clan mind parted immediately to reveal a pattern of concentric rings, each layer vibrating with a feeling of long practice and order, as though the mind had been trained in successive stages of behavior. Closer inspection opened each ring, and they were all sad. Beclan worked as a communications tech, and the outer rings were comprised of her duty, commitment, and training. Inside them, were several tight rings of schooling, and inside those, slimmer rings of childhood. The only emotion he got from her was f
ear and compliance—no, acceptance—and it was all wrapped up in duty, duty, duty. Wait, there was something in the middle… something larger and softer that spread beneath the rings like a supporting layer of sap. Her glue. Dillon drew a line under the rings and let himself into Beclan’s glue.
She hated her life. Not consciously. But she didn’t enjoy being Nay. Being “warlike.” She wasn’t. Beclan dreamed of green fields and blue skies. Of peace and prosperity. That was why she was content to be a communications officer aboard Skrael Station. Ice and snow surrounded the place, but the sky was blue—and an ocean spread somewhere far to the north, and that was blue as well. Beyond that, green.
Green?
What was she thinking of? Where had she seen green cliffs and foamy shoals? For that matter, where had she seen an ocean? Was Beclan thinking of where they were currently stationed, or some sort of holodrama?
Show me a map, he thought, and Beclan’s thoughts scurried to comply. A picture began to form, one that seemed both strange and familiar. A large, white blob surrounded by blue. The Nay’s mind wanted to zoom in, and did so by quick degrees, enlarging the white mass until it became an irregular continent of ice. Labeled points dotted the coasts. Dillon couldn’t read the glyphs at a glance, but hoped he might remember them for later.
His scalp started to itch fiercely, and Dillon knew he was pushing too far, too fast. If he could get her to reverse the map, zoom out. Show him what planet they were on. Which star. But every time he pushed, his head hurt more, the itch intensifying into a burn.
It was time to let go.
When he withdrew, it was to a swirling mess of orange pain, similar to what he’d experienced the last time he touched Lang. Dillon clamped his hands to the sides of his head and rocked backward, swallowing against the bile rising up his throat. His hair hurt, and he had the idea someone was yelling at him. When he forced his eyes open, he was on his knees, on the floor, and Beclan was sprawled in front of him, pale as a corpse. A trickle of blood inched across her cheek, dark against her alabaster skin.