by Chloe Garner
Since he’d come back, he’d been a much more domesticated creature, and he’d moved back into the apartment, re-finishing and re-furnishing it with the same mystery that he had used to burn it down. Troy had thought it best not to ask, but it didn’t stop him from sniffing for smoke every time he went through the door.
He just couldn’t help himself.
“Isn’t it still early for you?” Jesse asked when he opened the door.
“I need you to tell me what this says,” Troy answered, handing Jesse the heavy stack of pages that Donovan had given him as he’d left the office.
“Says you got a raise, for one,” Jesse said, looking at the top page. Troy sighed, and Jesse raised an eyebrow at him.
“Is this one of those days when it’s never too early for a drink?”
Troy only considered for a moment.
“Yes.”
Jesse laughed to himself and turned away as he continued to flip pages. Halfway to the kitchen he stopped.
Troy flopped onto a chair in the living room and just waited.
Pages turned faster. Troy wanted to assert that Jesse couldn’t possibly be reading that fast, but he wasn’t confident enough to say it with certainty, and at any rate, he didn’t want to interrupt the Palta.
Not when he was cooperating.
Jesse said something under his breath that became a longer, louder string of words that danced from language to language so fast that Troy’s implant never stood a chance of getting a single word. Jesse came to sit across from Troy on the couch, leaning out over the coffee table with his elbows on his knees and flipping pages like he was counting them rather than reading them.
More words.
Troy was beginning to lose his sense of calm resignation.
He tried to wait, but Jesse still had a hundred pages to go.
“Talk to me, man,” he said finally. Jesse looked up at him with wide eyes, fingers spread with a frantic energy as he froze mid-page flip.
“She’s an artist,” Jesse said. “An angry one.”
“Why is she angry?” Troy asked. Jesse shook his head.
“If I knew that, I’d understand the secrets of the universe, my friend,” he said, resuming his reading. Troy found himself edging out further and further over empty space, only hard-fought discipline keeping him from bouncing his knee up and down.
“I signed it,” Troy said finally. “Should I have signed it?”
Jesse looked up again and whispered another string of words.
“It’s for you,” he finally said in English. “And it’s about you. And it’s not about you. And it’s law and it’s contract and it’s…” He pulled at his hair and stood. “It’s everything, Troy. Damn. She is amazing. How did she get this amazing?”
“She’s always been amazing,” Troy said, pushing himself back against the chair back again. “What is it?”
“It’s my contract,” Jesse said. “The one where I set up the arrangement where Cassie would be my handler.”
Troy shook his head at him and Jesse walked a lap around the couch.
“Only she’s evolved it. She knows everything about you people, and she used it. Better than I ever could have. To have a Palta’s intellect and a human’s inside information… and your malice.” He stopped and turned to face Troy. “We have no idea what we’re dealing with, here.”
“No,” Troy said, feeling his brows bend in toward each other. “It’s Cassie. We’ve never had any idea what we’re dealing with.”
Jesse laughed.
“You’d better get a handle on it pretty quick. The whole world is going to be watching to make sure you can manage her.”
“I can’t,” Troy said. Jesse grinned at him.
“No. She knows exactly what she’s doing. Hell if I know, but she does. You’re just along for the ride.”
“I had to give up my lab,” Troy said. It still smarted, and he wanted to say it out loud. The look Jesse gave him was pure pity.
“You need to go find her,” Jesse said. “You mind if I keep this?” He motioned to the stack of documents. Troy shrugged.
“Just don’t burn them all the next time you get in a jam. Those are my copies.”
Jesse shrugged.
“I’ll try.”
Troy shook his head.
“I’m warning you, Palta.”
Jesse grinned at him again.
“Go find her.”
*********
She was sitting on the island in his kitchen again.
It was her. His Cassie. Head to toe. The girl he’d known more of his life than anyone he didn’t share genes with. Slimmer, maybe, with hair that behaved a bit better and skin that didn’t show the wear of dozens of jumps, but it was still her.
She was sucking on a sucker and looking around his apartment like she’d never seen it before.
“I signed it,” he opened.
“I knew you would,” she answered.
“You’re Palta,” he said. She nodded, pulling the sucker out of her mouth and looking at it.
“All of the things you know you like,” she said. “I don’t know what I like and what I don’t like anymore, here. It’s like I’m six again. I want hot dogs and popcorn and bright-colored candy. I tried wine last night and I couldn’t stand it.”
“I think I’ve got green jello somewhere in the fridge,” Troy said.
“Liar,” she answered. He laughed.
“They made me give up my lab,” he said after a moment. She stuck the candy back in her mouth and hopped lightly to her feet.
“You think you could still run it?”
“While doing what, exactly?” he asked. She grinned at him, pure temptation.
“Anything, Troy. Everything you always wanted to do, no red tape, no guidelines, no mission boundaries. I made a list of everything I hated about being here, and I made sure they couldn’t touch you with any of it.”
He shook his head at her.
“What does that mean?”
She took a step forward.
“Tell me where you want to go,” she said, her voice soft. “Anywhere in the universe. No one will stop us.”
She took another step.
“I don’t know anywhere in the universe,” he answered, finding his voice unreliable. She put her hand up to his face.
“Let me show you.”
He had a flash of memory, Olivia in his arms, the night in Chicago, close and sweet and warm. The shape of the curve of her neck as she slept.
“What about Olivia?” he asked. Cassie’s hand snapped away and her face brightened, her hand with the lollipop twirling above her head.
“Bring her,” she said. “I can do anything I want. They can’t stop me.”
He frowned, trying to get a grip. Jumpers had hard lives. Their relationships were unreliable, just the small group that went through the portal for six months or a year at a time, and then a new small group on the next mission. They understood each other. They had this bond, one that often looked more like loathing, but one that he’d never been on the other side of. They didn’t have romantic relationships because they just didn’t work. Too many secrets, too much time away.
He’d signed… something… that gave him responsibility over what happened with Cassie. He’d tied himself to her, and he didn’t want to bob along like a balloon behind her. He wanted to be a part of the adventure, the way she’d been with Jesse.
He wanted to go.
More than anything, he wanted to go.
More than anything.
The idea of it excited him so much that he was refusing to think about it until he’d considered everything else.
What he had with Olivia was special. More than that, it was unique, in his life. He’d never had someone who was important like that, and it scared him how much he was willing to give up to be with her. To put the silliness and the uncertainty that Cassie was offering behind him and out of his mind, to go tell Donovan that he’d made a mistake, get his lab back, and go back to
how things were when he thought Cassie was dead.
But she wasn’t dead.
She was sitting on the kitchen island again, sucker in her mouth, watching him like a teenage girl swapping gossip. She grinned at him, holding the sucker in her teeth.
“I love you, Troy, but watching you is like watching a caveman paint. Let’s go get her. I have so many things I want to show you.”
“You’re serious,” he said. She rolled her eyes.
“Now. Today. Not another day on this planet. Not another hour. Go get your keys.”
“You’re serious,” he said again. She laughed and hopped to the floor, heading for the door. A random thought popped into his head.
“Where’s your car?” he asked.
“Jesse stole it,” she said, watching him lock the door behind them. “You’d never recognize it, it’s been keyed so bad.”
*********
Olivia was looking through a microscope when they got to her lab. Troy’s badge still worked to get in, which surprised him a little.
“Olivia,” he said, turning his head to find Cassie gone. He frowned, but pulled himself back into paying attention to Olivia.
She looked up at him quickly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What happened?”
He opened his mouth, but found he didn’t know where to start. Her concern deepened.
“Troy?”
“It’s fine,” he said, shaking his head. She took a step around the table.
“Troy, what happened? What’s going on?”
He wondered what she was reading on his face. He mentally shook himself, straightening his features and taking a breath.
“A lot happened,” he said. He swallowed. “But it’s okay. It’s good, I think. I’m just still processing.”
The rest of the lab was watching. It was unavoidable. Olivia didn’t seem any less alarmed.
“Cassie,” he said. “She’s Jalnian.”
He waited. Olivia waited for the punchline and he shrugged.
“Stuff that we think is impossible just doesn’t seem to be,” he said. “We’re all unprepared for the scope of that. But it’s true. I don’t have another way to say it.”
Her head jerked back.
“How?”
He shrugged again.
“A virus. Beyond that, I never figured it out.”
The rest of the lab was beginning to gather and Troy stood a bit taller, forcing confidence.
“It couldn’t be anything else?” Olivia asked. “I mean… That’s not possible.”
He blinked at her once. Her mouth fell open.
“You’re serious.”
And that was the easy part.
“That’s not all,” he said. She shook her head.
“What?”
He recognized that sense of reeling, but he had to keep going.
“I gave up my position in my lab,” he said. Her face fell open in shock. He nodded, heading off questions with his hand.
“I had to,” he said. “I’m Cassie’s handler, now, the way she was with Jesse.”
Her eyes moved, and he felt more than saw the calculation going on. She looked back up at him.
“What are you telling me?” Her voice was steady, now. He felt himself go hoarse.
“Anywhere,” he said. “Anywhere in the universe.”
“You’re leaving,” she said with a resigned nod. Her hand went to her forehead and the other one fidgeted at her side. “Of course.”
He started to speak and she held up a hand, waving him off fiercely.
“No,” she said. “No, of course you are. It’s an amazing opportunity.”
He was suddenly self-conscious, seeing the individual faces of the people Olivia worked with for the first time since he’d walked into the room. He tried not to look at them.
“I’m here to get you,” he said. “Come with us.”
Olivia froze.
“You’re what?”
The idea of it, foreign, forbidden, incomprehensible, began to tickle at his mind. Him. Olivia. Cassie. Traveling the universe. No rules. No schedule. Nothing to report, nothing to accomplish. To just see. Anything he wanted to see.
Olivia’s face was a sheet of disbelief. He found he was grinning.
He nodded.
“Come with us.”
“I can’t just leave,” she said. The lab around them was whispering, but Troy was well beyond thinking about that now.
“Why not?” he asked. She spread her arms, the very first time he’d ever seen her demonstrate an aggressive emotion.
“My job,” she said, her head shaking as she spoke. “I have a job to do.”
“Which will be here waiting for you when you decide you want it,” Cassie said, behind Troy. He looked over his shoulder at her, wondering why he wasn’t more surprised.
“Right,” Olivia said. “I can just waltz off and when I get back, they’re going to welcome me back.”
“Because I say so,” Cassie said. Olivia froze, taking a step to the side to be able to see Cassie better.
“Why would they listen to you?” she asked. Troy took a step to the side so he could see Cassie and Olivia at the same time.
“They need me,” Cassie said gently. “Most of them don’t know why, but they need me. I have a contract with them, and they’re going to do anything I say. I’ve been to see General Donovan to tell him that we have identified you as relevant to the jump, which puts this as a higher priority for the base than your current position. Even as a civilian, you gain authorization to access the portal as a jumper.”
Olivia stared. Troy waited, not wanting to be the next one to speak.
“You’re serious,” Olivia said flatly. Cassie grinned.
“What do you say, O? Wanna do a jump?”
*********
Troy could hardly contain himself. He was on the portal floor, headed for a jump, and no one was going to stop him. Olivia had asked three or four times if Cassie was sure they didn’t need to bring anything, and he knew she was anxious to be traveling without anything personal, but Cassie laughingly shrugged her off each time.
“Where we’re going, it would be like packing a bag of rocks,” she said once. “I promise.”
“Where are we going?” Troy asked. Cassie had turned backwards to look at both him and Cassie.
“Rule one of this game,” she said, “is that you can’t ever tell anyone anything you see or hear, smell or taste, where we’re going. Ever.”
“Why?” Olivia asked.
“Glad you asked, O,” Cassie had answered, turning on her heel and continuing down the hall with a gait that Troy couldn’t help but notice wasn’t hers. “All the risks we think we’re taking, exposing other civilizations to our technologies and our philosophies, and all of that? Yeah, they’re all mostly trying not to get our fleas.”
“What?” Olivia asked. “What fleas?” Olivia looked at Troy, hoping for an explanation, but he could only shrug in bemusement.
“We’re the barbarians,” Cassie said, looking over her shoulder once.
And then they were on the floor.
Jesse was standing against a wall, watching, but he didn’t approach and Cassie didn’t acknowledge him.
They walked in between palettes of merchandise and supplies, Cassie leading them on a path that, for a moment, made Troy nervous. They didn’t have an escort, they didn’t have a schedule, they didn’t have a written approval from the operators to be there.
Being on the portal room floor was incredibly dangerous. Getting a body part across the threshold into the space that was about to jump meant losing that part of your body, and there was no warning, no visible boundary. There was a period of downtime each evening that would occasionally stretch into the late evening during which his people were allowed on the floor to go through the artifacts that had jumped across earlier during the day. The rest of the time, they were supposed to be escorted by one of the non-technical staff who had written communication with the ope
rators in order to get very specific directions on how to get across the portal floor.
Cassie just walked, her arms swinging at her sides. It was stark, the contrast between her easy, unencumbered gait and the heavy, material-driven, precision of the rest of the portal room.
“Are we safe here?” Olivia asked him.
“I think so,” Troy answered. “Jesse’s been doing this for a long time.”
She nodded, but he didn’t blame her for not looking more comforted.
“Keep up,” Cassie called over her shoulder as the subtle pop nearby of something jumping made Troy turn his head. He and Olivia sped up.
She stopped, out of sight of the operator’s window - another big red flag - and turned to face them, fidgeting with her arm. Troy frowned, trying to see what it was she was doing. She looked up at them and smiled brightly.
“Ready?” she asked. He opened his mouth to answer, but the lurch, the jolt that he’d only ever heard of as they jumped between worlds, interrupted him.
*********
He wanted to compare it to Jerusalem. Or Babylon.
It wasn’t right, but he had to compare it to something.
The jumpers never brought back pictures, just a terse verbal description that bordered on clinical, and actually seeing it was staggering.
Cassie put her arm through his and snagged Olivia with the other arm, leading them down the tan-colored street in between modest, tall buildings with un-glassed windows.
“It smells good,” Olivia said. Troy hadn’t noticed, but it did.
“They’re quite blessed here with a favorable climate and a long time to get rid of the things they didn’t want,” Cassie said, looking up at the sky. “This was my first sanctioned jump with Jesse.”
“Where are we?” Olivia asked.
“This is the planet Gana,” Cassie said. “A shining civilization and a power structure that aligns much of the universe.”
Troy was trying to take everything in, and feeling like he wasn’t getting any of it. He didn’t know how to look. How to see what was important and what was benign. He knew Cassie was better at this than he was, but she’d trained on identifying key species characteristics, key environmental characteristics, finding risk and history all in one. His focus was all too small.