Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  He snugged the deck into a tight pile and pushed it to Con.

  Con turned the first card and laid it face-up. A Blue Diamond Jack stared at them sideways. “Go on,” he said flippantly. But he seemed to be holding his breath.

  Jake hesitated, then fumbled a card from the middle of the deck and snapped it onto the console. Chartreuse, spadelings, two of them: the lowest of the low. That’s that. He felt numb, but forced a grin. “So close.”

  Con nodded.

  “Best two out of three? For the lab codes this time, not—”

  Con reached across the console, and took Jake’s hand in his, and his mind was open and clear as a pool of water. Floundering, Jake pulled back. But wait, I thought—?

  —One—

  One? Jake asked. The link felt scared, tenuous, and he was wasting valuable time, trying to hold it steady and keep his own mind from slamming down the portcullis once again, and how could he choose? He had to choose. One thing, one chance to show Con—to show Con a piece of everything he’d forgotten. Only one, are you sure?

  —One. That was the deal. If you can’t follow the deal—

  All right. Before he could consciously call to them, the memories came in a dizzying flurry. A stuffy room, a tray of vials. Lips on his. A glass of alcohol burning blue in dim light. Con in the labs, Con in a pressure suit, crowned with a glass fishbowl. His voice ringing over the comm, his hand extended in the dark as he drifted backwards down a tunnel under Saint Paul Dome, the look on his face as Jake left him behind on the surface of Selas.

  —Choose. I can’t—

  The barrage of small things flew out of him, but the cobweb connection had disappeared. He could no longer sense a difference between himself and Con, and the memories were sinking into them—into Con like arrows, and simultaneously puncturing Jake, leaking from him. In the back of his mind, he heard Lindy say with acidic clarity, “Metabolic. Consequence. Don’t you listen?”

  He let go of Con’s hand, and, shaking, dropped back into himself.

  Con’s eyelids flickered. He had sunk deeply into his seat. Jake reached for him, and reconsidered as his arms sang with aches and pains, as worn out as if he’d fought an octopus in heavy grav.

  “Con. Are you all right?” Had he hurt him?

  Con opened one eye. “I guess when it comes to one, our concepts differ.”

  “Sorry.” Jake stared at him. “I’m not quite sure how to control the—” Sharing, his mind supplied and he repulsed it, because it was how the Leech had described their invasion, as if it were symbiotic “—the communing. I was hoping you could help with that, given your experience.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  It was difficult to tell, but Con now seemed more at ease, more natural in his skin. There was something present that hadn’t been there. It wasn’t full-fledged acceptance or solidarity. Nothing that simple, no matter how much Jake, in both his upfront and internal self, had offered it and wanted it in return. But there was openness now. A tentative, faint receptivity that Con hadn’t displayed before this second. A tiny flicker of hope sparked in him.

  “I wanted—I only wanted to do what you did for me.” Jake tried to temper his eagerness. However long, Con had said. “I understand if you need more time.”

  “It might be a long wait,” Con said, more to the console than to Jake. But he looked at Jake, really looked at him for the first time since he’d entered the cockpit. “Trust is funny like that.”

  “Right.” Jake looked out into the crimson-stained space, to the tracks of stars and light and dark. It plucked at his blithe and blood-spattered past. It pulled Rebecca from where she lurked, a ghostly rider in his mind. It forced him to look ahead to Marathon, to Restore, to years coming with their attendant successes and failures and struggles and, gods, how he hoped, delights, too. For how long? he’d asked Con. Still pushing. Still greedy, too much, too fast. Had he learned nothing?

  He looked out and ahead. “Then I’ll wait,” he said.

  THE END