Kinesis

by Irene Wendy Wode

"Waverly?" Toto ventured.

  But Waverly just curled in on himself tighter and yelled, "Go away."

  *~*~*

  Waverly clung to his pillow and wished for the Earth to crack open and swallow him up.

  He'd been here before. He knew this road. Knew he could survive even when he felt like he didn't want to.

  But that didn't stop it from being truly awful.

  After a few hours, Toto poked his head/hand into the room again, warily.

  With some time to get himself calm, Waverly mostly felt hollow, but at the sight of Toto's hesitant motion, he also felt a twinge of regret. He'd shouted at the one being he could trust implicitly. Toto. His good pup.

  Encountering no opposition this time, Toto ambled into the room, a tray on his back. Steam rose from the cup that was on it, and a smell that took Waverly back to his Grammy's kitchen. So many occasions, but the one he remembered now had been after his mother's funeral.

  Rooibos with honey.

  Waverly sighed. "Come here, Toto," he said. "I'm sorry for yelling."

  "It's all right," Toto replied. "You were hurt. I knew it wasn't about me."

  "You're a good friend," Waverly said, taking the hot cup of tea from the tray on Toto's back. "Better than I deserve."

  "Never that," Toto said, a sentiment he wouldn't usually allow himself. "You're good enough for everything you have."

  Waverly's lips tightened, and, ever so slightly, he shook his head.

  "Are you going to be done moping soon?" Toto asked him.

  Waverly gave a quiet, humorless laugh. "Oh, not nearly."

  "Waverly…"

  There was something both distressed and warning in the robot's tone, and Waverly felt like he should be snapping to attention, but at the moment, he could barely manage a blink and a nudge in the direction of awareness.

  "What is it?" he asked tiredly. "What now?"

  "Something weird is happening."

  It wasn't like Toto not to elaborate. Either he didn't have any concrete information, or he really didn't know where to begin.

  Well, there was everyday weird, and there was shapeshifting aliens on the run from vague but menacing enemies. Waverly didn't know if he'd know where to start in explaining where he was at right now.

  "Weird like you might know where Okka went? Or some other kind of weird? Listen, if the world's ending, I'm not sure if I care right now."

  "I might have some idea where Okka is," Toto answered. There was still that odd hesitation to say more.

  "What?" Waverly asked.

  "Whatever's happening with xem, I don't think it's good."

  "For us, or for xem?"

  "Waverly, I don't think it's good for anybody."

  Waverly just felt… unfathomably done.

  "All right, lay it on me," he said.

  "The first thing I noticed was a string of thefts. I'm putting the rest together as more facts become available. The thefts, the police and news have gotten a hold of, but for the rest of the puzzle, I've had to access more specific resources. I think I know where the stolen materials are being taken, and I have some idea what they're being used for."

  "Why are you telling me this?" Waverly asked. "Isn't this something for the authorities?"

  Toto brought up an article on the thefts on Waverly's tablet. A photo from one of the thefts clearly showed Okka's face.

  Oh, Lord. Toto was right. This was good for exactly no one.

  There xe was. Right in the thick of something awful, if the article was right about the stolen materials being ingredients for a bomb. That confounding, beloved, mysterious face. Only the distance, and the unreality of the whole ridiculous situation, made it bearable to see xem.

  "Shit," said Waverly, rubbing a hand down over his own face. "What are you doing, Okka?"

  The article speculated about the list of materials that the suspects had stolen. The news naturally revolved around terrorism, since the materials had the capacity to be components for a truly hefty bomb.

  Waverly had no idea what these guys wanted, but they wanted it badly.

  Another theory presented itself to Waverly. One that lined up with so much of Waverly's past experiences. Okka had wanted him for his knowledge of tech, of politics, of defense, of the workings of Earth, and threw him away when xe got what xe wanted.

  It certainly wasn't pleasant, but it was more comfort than thinking that Okka had wanted him, and then had been repulsed by what xe found. Waverly was accustomed to being used. That was familiar territory, and he knew it wasn't personal.

  It certainly stung, but it wasn't as deep a wound as he'd first felt.

  Now that he'd thought of it, it did make more sense. That Okka had sought him out on purpose, picked Waverly out of everyone on this planet because of the knowledge and resources he had that could potentially be taken advantage of.

  People had tried it before. Many people. But if that was what Okka had been doing, xe had been the best at it. Okka had made him believe that xe loved him, by playing a part that Waverly found fascinating, sympathetic, irresistible.

  Maybe xe was being blackmailed or cornered into it, maybe xir motivation had been more mercenary. Two theories among many. Better than some. But still.

  Waverly wanted another theory. One that could lead to Okka back in his life and truly, freely in love with him. But Waverly couldn't seem to formulate one.

  Well. Whatever was going on, Waverly needed more data if he was going to do anything about the mess he'd contributed to.

  Maybe with more facts, he could form a more palatable theory.

  Maybe not. But he had to try.

  Chapter Nine

  "You think you know where all this dangerous mess has fucked off to?" Waverly asked Toto. "What do you think of this list of supplies they're collecting?" He strode to the elevator, brain already working on a possible plan.

  "I think if they were trying to make a bomb they could have picked materials that are a lot easier to get. I also think they would have chosen a location with more cover than the abandoned dry dock I've tracked them to. No, these are for a much more specific purpose."

  "So they're not trying to blow up the city?"

  "I don't think they're trying very hard not to. But no, I don't think that's their intended plan. There are a few other things that require an enormous amount of concussive force."

  "Huh," said Waverly, thinking over the list. "Rocketry? You think they can make orbit with what they've got?"

  "They're missing a few key components," Toto said, "but the quantities say that's what they plan to try."

  "Lift to orbit is one of the toughest parts of space travel," Waverly mused. "Either some of the thieves got here in a single-use drop-pod like the ones we use, leaving their ship proper somewhere out there, or they destroyed whatever alternative means of liftoff they had once they got here, to avoid detection, either by us or someone else, like the Avlans." He frowned. "And I still have no idea how Okka got here, xemself. I'm sick of not knowing things. Let's go find some things out."

  "You're going there?"

  "Yeah. You think we can fit the whole VR booth in the back of one of the vans?" Waverly asked absently as he folded down the tall black camera rods of the sensor bots.

  "Why? What are you planning?" Toto asked warily.

  "We gotta get the bots to the site somehow," Waverly told him, "and after that I don't want there to be any delay in getting them up and poking around. Because I'm not going in there myself, but we need to stop this, whatever it is. They could blow themselves up intentionally or otherwise."

  "I don't like it," Toto said.

  "Yeah, well, I don't like any of this," Waverly replied, "but it's gotta be me. If anyone on this planet knows anything about Okka, it's me. Same goes for the Cewri." He smiled, crooked and painful. "If this is them, I'm hoping I can find a way into their computer systems and shut 'em down the same way Okka did."

  *~*~*

  Waverly drove his van into the shadow of one of the huge
old rusting pumps that had emptied and filled the dry-dock and sent his robot minions on their way. Four little rolling platforms, nimble little fuckers armed with an impressive array of cameras and other sensors, wended their way into the secret alien hideout. Through the pump maintenance areas, down winding metal staircases that threatened to clank and shriek. The bots had been designed to go wherever people could walk, and Waverly thanked God for his engineering team, because the combination of gyro-stabilized wheels and support feet had never been tested under conditions like this, but they performed perfectly (or nearly so). He tried not to let his design notes take up his attention. The closer they got to the construction site without being seen or heard, the better. Even as silent and slim as they were, they were unlikely to go unnoticed for long.

  Waverly was not a fighter; he was a dancer. But how close they sometimes were, in the clubs of NYC. Especially if you were black. Especially if you were famous, and openly queer.

  He knew how to spot a gun and get the fuck out of the way. And that was really the most important skill, here.

  He wanted to get close to whatever it was they were building, find out what it was, and how close they were to finishing it. Then, he planned on taking out their control systems.

  There were maybe ten figures within sight, most of them insectoid, but a few large and hairy quadrupeds with angular horns, being used as pack animals to carry or drag materials across the huge concrete floor of the drydock. Waverly soon found that the pack animals were not the ones with the sharp eyes. The best way to move without being seen was to stick close to them, but not too close. They would eventually notice.

  Waverly lost three of his five bots learning that and learning how deadly the insectoid ones could be.

  It was exhilarating, being in the middle of all this. Testing his reflexes against these creatures, quick, deadly and straight out of sci-fi. But it was a high that couldn't last.

  When the first of Waverly's bots got through and into the rough construction shack at the center of the mess, he spotted Okka. Just sitting there, looking vacant. Not cackling maniacally or anything. Not even paying attention to the construction.

  "Focus," Toto said in Waverly's ear. "Get a closer look at the thing they're building. All your cameras are pointed at that damn shapeshifter, why?"

  Waverly shook himself back to his task. The adrenaline of battle had almost let him forget his personal stake in this fight.

  He was here because of Okka.

  All the more reason to stay on task.

  "You're right," Waverly said after a moment. "Orbital launch vehicle, but still missing some crucial stuff."

  They needed to be stopped. Not just because they were obviously up to something, but because Waverly couldn't bear the thought of Okka leaving this planet, despite everything.

  Maybe because of everything. There were too many questions, too much that needed resolution.

  The bot had been in the heart of things too long, had been in one place too long, and when the other aliens caught sight of it again they quickly turned on the machine, taking it out easily in the enclosed space.

  Okka moved, then, picking up the fallen bot.

  "Where are you?" Okka's face said into the last camera to fail. "Who are you?" Xe cocked xir head, as if waiting for something, and then, lifting xir gaze to the level of the horizon, xe said, "Waverly Kemp?"

  Waverly had a bad feeling about that.

  He concentrated on his hacking, shutting down their hastily constructed control systems. It consumed his attention. The strangeness of alien tech, the urgency of the situation, drew him in.

  He was in the thick of it when the insectoid things started turning towards the van with clear purpose.

  "Waverly, get out," said Toto.

  "I can finish this," Waverly replied.

  "Shutting down their systems won't shut them down," the robot continued urgently. "The van won't protect you for long."

  "Ha!" Waverly said. "Got it!"

  He didn't stop to see if what he'd done had really affected their progress. He leapt into the driver's seat and hauled ass down the street, away from the insect-things chasing after him.

  Luckily, they didn't seem interested in following him past the boundaries of the abandoned dockyards. When he could no longer see them in the rearview mirror, Waverly heaved a sigh of relief.

  But then his thoughts turned contemplative, and from there quickly spiraled to discouraged. What had he really learned?

  That Okka and these other aliens were trying to get off-planet. That Okka was acting strangely, or at least differently than xe had before. Colder, more remote. Which state was the truth? Waverly still had no way of knowing for sure.

  But he had another possible source of information, as dubious and dangerous as he might be. He could try and get more out of Chairman Pandrach.

  Waverly contacted him again, using the device Pandrach had insisted he keep, just in case. It sort of felt like crawling back in defeat.

  "Chairman," Waverly greeted, offering the respect he'd withheld before, a concession.

  "Please, call me Atur," Pandrach offered in return, perhaps to soften the blow. "Do you have new information to aid me in my search?" he asked, but he said it as if he thought he knew the answer. Waverly hated him a little.

  "Yeah. I guess I do. So I think I found your broodmate." Waverly chewed on his lower lip. "That must have been him. Xem. Whatever. Xe said xe was Mimica?"Waverly watched Atur tense. But he still didn't speak, and right now Waverly felt the pressure of that silence, set to break him down and hollow him out, spilling his secrets as easily as scooping out a jack-o-lantern."Anyway, xe did the coding you noticed from out there wherever you're from. Seemed concerned that a lot of people would be after xem because xe was a shapeshifter."

  Atur held up a hand. "Wait. Say that again. Slower. I want to be sure I'm getting the translation right." He raised his device, adjusting its settings.

  "Pretty simple, okay?" Waverly was getting annoyed that his confession was turning into something altogether more complicated and stressful than he'd expected, and that was saying something. "You said you were looking for the person who did the programming, because it must have been your broodmate. So. That person is Mimica. Your broodmate is Mimica."

  Waverly recognized the way Atur forced his face to stay relaxed, but it didn't quite manage to cover up the terror, for someone who was really looking.

  "No," he said. "That's not possible. You don't know what you're saying."

  Waverly pressed his lips together. "I think I do."

  "Then you're mad."

  "Look," Waverly said, shaking his head, "I'm just telling you what I saw. The person who did the coding said they were Mimica. They did the coding, but they didn't look like the picture you showed me. How else would you explain that? You said only Myrdu could have done that coding, right?"

  Atur's face closed off abruptly. "Only Myrdu or the Mimica who may have stolen everything he is, or was."

  No. That couldn't be what was happening here. Okka had been real. Not some shell, or copy, or whatever Atur was implying.

  "Okay, I'm sure there's a lot I don't know here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but if they can steal that much knowledge, if they can pretend that deeply, if they can be anyone, why couldn't your broodmate have been one of them? A long con kind of thing."

  "My broodmate was loyal to the Avlan crown and its protectorates," Atur said stiffly. "He would die for Avla."

  Waverly scoffed. "And that's incompatible with being Mimica?"

  "Yes."

  Waverly was getting very tired of Atur's monosyllabic answers. This one in particular was not nearly enough.

  "Why?" Waverly challenged. "What are they like?"

  Atur drew himself up. "They are on the side of the Cewri now. That says enough."

  "No, it doesn't!" Waverly snapped, then shut his mouth, fierce and out of breath and fighting himself not to punch this piece of very powerful alien garbage nobility.
>
  "In that case," Atur said, "know this: They have been a corrupting influence on our culture from the beginning. They delight in turning our own against us. They bring conflict, disorder, and pain wherever they go. This is just one last confirmation of their evil ways."

  Sincerity and conviction was in every line of Atur's body as he spoke. Waverly was finding it hard to keep breathing.

  "Well," said Waverly, looking into the distance and trying to be okay, "if they are really all evil, that is one Mimica who is very good at pretending not to be evil. I knew xe was good people. I knew xe cared about me. Even when I knew xe was hiding something."

  Okka had given him a taste of something too good to be true. Something that was everything he'd been searching for. And damn, it'd been distracting.

  He sighed and turned to Atur. "Tell me I haven't been as complete an idiot as I'm beginning to suspect I was."

  "You let the Mimica touch you beyond the skin," Atur surmised. "Blend with you. And now your mind is clouded."

  "Does that happen a lot, with Mimica?" Internally, Waverly was close to losing it. The wrong theory was getting evidence here! But Waverly still had hope, looked for more answers.

  "We are always wary of it," Atur told him. "There are stories. First contact. They were like the sirens of your myths. People would simply touch them and fall madly in love. All loyalty to their worlds thrown into question, ready to leap after the Mimica, go wherever they asked. That is why, for hundreds of your years, it has been illegal for any Avlan or any of our allies to have contact with Mimica. Before, it was a precaution." He breathed a deep sigh. "Now they've joined forces with the Cewri."

  "And let me guess, the Cewri are major bad guys?"

  "They are conquerors only. They devastate worlds. The Avlan protectorate has stood against them for thousands of years, keeping the humanoid worlds of the galaxy safe to the best of our ability. We have not always succeeded. Millions of innocent people have died."

  Waverly's fingers tapped the table angrily. Something with a heavy drum beat started over the speakers in the next room, bass enough to satisfy the expression of Waverly's feelings, but not enough to get in the way of conversation. This was too important.