by J. K. Norry
“I can’t...uhhn, mharrg,” he said, clearly.
She bent, and reached out to him. Link thought she was going to cup his head with her hand for a moment, and kiss him. Instead she retrieved the device from his ear, and lifted him easily and bodily from his seat. Link sagged in her arms, his motor functions dwindling rapidly. His head lolled onto her shoulder, and he could feel her breath against his ear.
“Hold on,” she whispered. “Don’t let him back in until I’m gone.”
The response he tried to give her sounded a lot more like words in his head than it did coming through his lips. It was enough, at least to tell her it was still him and that he heard her. She placed him on the bunk, and lowered him gently into the position he had woke up in.
Link saw her lean in, one last time.
Again, he thought she was going to kiss him. He could neither lean into it nor turn away, had he wanted to do either of those things.
Once more, he was wrong. She got close enough that he could feel her breath on his face, and she spoke.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are The Link, and I thank you.”
She stood abruptly, turned and walked briskly through the opening that appeared in the wall. Link watched her, since his eyes were pointed that way and he couldn’t seem to move at all. When the wall took shape behind her exit, Link let his eyes drift closed.
The spinning confusion was a welcome loss of his sense of self, and Link swirled in the nothingness with the hope of never returning to either of the two worlds that battled for his soul and his consciousness. A hard heaviness hit him when he was just getting used to oblivion, and his eyes flew open to stare at his own ceiling.
Link launched himself out of bed, his hand over his mouth. He made it to the toilet, but just barely. The mixture of bile and goo in the bowl captured his eyes and nose at the same time, and he vomited more thoroughly on top of it. Link flushed, and threw up again while the water took the whole mess on a slow spiral to wherever such things go.
Closing the lid, Link collapsed on the floor and inched his way from the bath mat to the cold tile. He lay there for some time, face pressed into the hard coolness, thinking in a detached kind of way how disgusting it was to lay on even your own bathroom floor. After awhile, he realized that he needed to go to work. It took all he had to drag himself through his morning routine, and to the job. Link wondered, not for the first time, how many things he could do that took all he had to do them before he just couldn’t do any more.
FOURTEEN
Steve began laughing as soon as he saw him.
“Link, good morning,” he said, “I thought I told you to get some rest. You look like you didn’t sleep at all last night. Oh, hey; and you smell like a distillery. Why don’t you sit down, and let me get you some coffee.”
Link waved his hand, collapsed into his chair.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I haven’t had a drink in days.”
Link pulled his chair up to the keyboard, started typing. He cast a sideways glance at Steve, when the other man didn’t move.
“Coffee does sound good,” he said.
Steve nodded.
“I’ll get some for both of us,” he said. “And you might want to change your shampoo. It smells more like spring break than spring fresh.”
Link waved his hand again, and turned back to the screen. He finished logging himself in and slid away from the computer, removing his phone from his pocket before the seat had stopped rolling. A sound came from behind him, and he spoke without pivoting toward it.
“You’re in the system,” he said. “You can set my coffee over here.”
Steve didn’t follow the direction of his voice, and no mug was placed on the desk beside him. Putting down his phone, Link spun halfway round in his chair to see what the holdup was.
Sherry was standing there, half in and half out of his cubicle. She looked as well put together as ever in a form-fitting skirt suit. The jacket was tailored both to fit her and to accentuate the slimness of her waist and the rounded curvature of her breasts. Instead of a tie or a scarf, her buttoned blouse was open to hint at the presence of cleavage without really giving away any of its secrets. Only one of her legs was visible, tentatively stepping into the space, and dark stockings began where her skirt and heels ended.
Link’s gaze wanted to go everywhere but her face, so that’s what he looked at. He tried to smile, and not notice the dark half-circles under her eyes that were not quite covered by what little makeup she wore.
“Good morning, Sherry,” he said.
She smiled, and straightened where she stood. As she began to move more completely into the cubicle, she spoke softly.
“Good morning, Link,” she said. “I was wondering-”
“Hey, Sherry,” Steve said, poking his head in behind her.
Sherry started, and glanced at him as he sidled past her with two steaming cups of coffee.
“Oh,” she said. “Good morning, Steve.”
Steve was setting down the coffee cups, his eyes on the task at hand. Sherry moved back, so more of her was out of the shared space than in, and watched Link carefully until Steve looked up. Her gaze drifted then, to the flyer he had pinned up on the textured wall.
“I was just checking in,” she said. “Making sure you guys are both still coming to the Christmas party.”
Opening his mouth to reply, Link shut it when Steve leapt in.
“It’s awful nice of management,” he said, “to invite me to the party my first month on the job. It seems like a great opportunity to get to know everyone, and I really appreciate you guys thinking of me. I’ll be there, you can bet on it. Thanks again, it really means a lot.”
Her eyes found Link’s briefly while Steve was talking, and she looked back at the flyer immediately. When he was finished, she nodded and gave him a friendly smile without making eye contact.
“Sure, Steve,” she said. “Great, I’ll see you there.”
Now her eyes found his, openly and deliberately. Link thought he saw something in them that hadn’t been there before, some sadness or happiness or tiredness that gave them a soft satisfied glow.
Link nodded.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
The delightful pressure building in him while Link held her eyes was too much, and he turned to Steve.
“Ready to get after it?” he said.
Steve nodded. After a final glance in Sherry’s direction, he pulled his chair closer to the computer screen.
“Alright, then,” Sherry said. “I’ll let you guys get to work.”
Link could feel her for several moments after she spoke, still lingering half in and half out of the work space. The feeling that made him want to spin his chair about and say more was the same feeling that would turn his words into an awkward mishmash if he did, so he kept his back to her and pretended he wasn’t breathing in the sweet subtle scent of her.
When she had finally gone, Steve nudged him.
“See?” he said. “I told you.”
His daily internet surfing had already begun, and Link only felt the nudge and heard the comment from the corner of his mind.
“Hmm?” Link muttered. “Told me what?”
Steve’s rolling chuckle was punctuated by the clicking of his fingers on the keys. Link couldn’t even tell him to get to work, since he knew better than anyone how little attention it took to do his own job.
Another nudge got him to look up, and catch Steve grinning.
“She’s got a thing for you, man,” Steve said. “How are you not seeing that? Did you see how she brushed me off, and was all intense when you were talking? Come on, man. You think she’s going around, checking personally to see if everyone is making it to the party?”
Steve’s fingers were hovering over the keyboard now, and they were looking directly at each
other with very little space between them. Although they hadn’t become besties in the last couple days or anything, they had often ventured into conversational territory that was not appropriate to shout across the shared office space that lie beyond their partial walls. Their exchanges had taken a habitually quiet tone, and the last one had been no different.
Link opened his mouth to speak, and shut it when he heard another voice over the wall. He was grateful for their customary low volume, even as he tried not to burst out laughing with all his voice.
“Hey, Jenny,” Sherry said, loud enough for them to hear over the common wall. “I’m just checking in, to see if you’re still planning on making it to the party.”
The other woman’s answer was drowned out, on their side of the divider, by the almost pained sounds of the two men trying to keep from exploding with laughter. When they finally got over the fit, and its aftershocks, Link went back to peering at his phone with the utmost intensity. A minute later, he nudged Steve and spoke without glancing up.
“Yeah, Steve,” he said. “I do think she’s checking in on everyone.”
For the rest of the day, very few words passed between them. Link was cooking up a new plan, and making it a point to check the unnecessary timepiece he wore on his wrist. Steve took the hint, and didn’t ask about a drink after work or what his plans might otherwise be.
Besides, sharing would be ridiculous. How could he explain to Steve that he needed to get home as soon as possible, to take the regularly prescribed dose of a pill that was transporting him to a fleet of star stragglers so he could ride along unnoticed with the fleet’s admiral? If Steve believed him, it would take too long to tell it all; the value of his friendship would be thrown into question by him believing such an unlikely story, and the telling itself would be rendered pointless. If he didn’t believe him, word might get around the office or Steve might think he was blowing him off. Doing anything sincere was sure to get him into a situation he didn’t want to be in, so Link put his whole self into his disingenuous act and got himself home and in bed by the time the sun went down.
FIFTEEN
The solitary pill had the same effect as before, and Link found himself staring out through eyes that he couldn’t move or shift. He noticed right away that The Admiral held his body differently than Link did, and walked with a markedly longer gait. Watching the internal workings of the man’s mind was as fascinating as watching their subtle outer manifestations. Link found himself studying The Admiral’s speech patterns, and trying to get the hang of his cadence, before he realized what the man was saying.
“We’ve got to get some handle on this,” The Admiral said. “The electromagnetic field generator is Cervice’s chokehold on all of us, and there’s no telling how much further he’ll endanger everyone to take me down and seize control.”
Link was reeling from his good fortune, and the stark statement. It took him a few long disoriented moments to register what The Admiral’s eyes had been showing him for some time. The person he was talking to was a striking young woman, her blonde hair tied back in a severely feminine style he had never seen before. She wore stripes of makeup, blended with her skin tone everywhere but around her eyes. They were ringed tightly in black, with long slim tails trailing to each of her temples. The deep set of her eyes and the dark shadowing of her makeup triggered a remembrance in him, and Link realized he was looking at the woman that had been strapped to a chair and tortured last time he saw her.
He couldn’t express his shock at her transformation, or bumble through some awkward set of words meant to compliment her that actually put her off considerably. The single pill made him a passive observer, a silent witness in another man’s mind. All he could do was watch, and take note of exactly how The Admiral could be expected to act around a beautiful woman.
“Sir,” she said, “even the artificials are beginning to worry, due to the lapses in memory. Many of them are entertaining the notion that Cervice is causing them, and using them to gain more control of the fleet. Where they were once publicly behind him, they are now pointing out his possibly quite human motivations. You were right, people are beginning to realize that he is not one of them anymore; at the same time, artificials are hesitating to call him one of their own as often as they were just a short time ago. We have more allies today than yesterday, and some of them could play an important role in putting you in control of the EMF generator.”
The woman was standing up straight, simultaneously rigid and relaxed. Her body’s posture spoke of a military mind, but her eyes were steadfast on his for some other reason. Link felt The Admiral smile within, while making it a point to keep his features expressionless. The mind he was inhabiting was surprisingly quiet, and clear; the only real sense he was getting of the other man was the way he felt inside, and how carefully he kept any outward indication of it locked down tight.
Finally, he spoke; only Link and The Admiral knew that he had something else he wanted to say.
“Limit everyone’s interactions,” he said. “Remember that we are always at risk of being under observation, and make it a habit to assume that Cervice has more information on us than we have on him.”
She laughed, surprising all of them.
“Sir,” she said, “I doubt that.”
Her smile lasted a split second longer than it should have, and The Admiral spoke as it faded.
“Make it a habit,” he said, “nonetheless.”
The woman nodded, the picture of seriousness once more.
“Of course, sir.”
It was The Admiral’s turn to smile slightly, and say what he had been thinking quietly all along.
“I will be in my chambers in an hour,” he said. “You are most welcome to join me there.”
She flushed slightly, and smiled. Without waiting for a response, The Admiral spun on his heel and strode away. Link rode along, wondering if an hour was really the same as an hour to them; and if meeting someone in their chambers had similar connotations in both worlds. If this guy could go from torturing a woman to romancing her in a few short days, Link really had no hope of acting the way he did around anyone.
As preoccupied as he was with another man’s thoughts, Link once again failed to notice what the eyes he was looking out through were approaching until they arrived. It was that same wall screen he had seen on his first visit to this reality, showing the expanse of space stretching out into infinity before them. The sight would have taken his breath away, if it had been his to take; The Admiral was calm and quiet approaching the view, and his breath continued to cycle with the same measured rhythm that it always did.
The Admiral moved as close to the transparent or projection wall as he could, until the slowly approaching stars in the distance filled his entire field of vision. Riding along, Link felt both his own awe and the other man’s; it felt as though it must be true, that no matter how many times a person saw this kind of thing it would never fail to strike them as truly and breathtakingly awesome. For once, Link could relax and let the other man’s thoughts be his own.
A sound behind them surprised Link, but The Admiral simply sighed. The sigh was internal, where he kept most of his reactions, and only he and Link felt it. They turned together, slowly, toward the noise.
It was a life-sized collection of metal, cast to be humanoid but unmistakably inorganic. The dull grayish luster of its outer layer moved and flexed like skin, covering every part of it other than its eyes. The eyes were blue sparks of electricity that went white when it spoke. Its mouth opened, and moved; the insides it revealed were the same dull metallic hue as its outer layer.
“Admiral,” it said. “I would have words.”
The Admiral laughed, but only inside the head that Link was occupying. Rather than retort sarcastically, he nodded.
“Cervice,” he said. “Have them, then.”
The robot shifted, and stood up straighter
.
“We have worked together, in the past,” it said. “One could argue that it was only by working together that we built this fleet, and launched it.”
The Admiral nodded.
“One could say that we worked well together,” he said. “For a time. Until you betrayed me, and attempted to gain control of the fleet. If one were to consider the big picture, rather than conveniently selected parts of it, one would surely have to concede that we didn’t work so well together overall.”
It put its hands on its hips, in the most inanely human gesture it seemed it could muster. The robot spoke again, and Link noticed there seemed to be more emotion in its voice than there had been in The Admiral’s.
“Surely you see,” it said, “how you clearly betrayed me, and not the other way around. I mean...you killed me!”
This time the laugh was audible, and genuine; The Admiral let it come to a natural rolling stop before he replied.
“And yet,” he said, still smiling, “here you stand!”
The Admiral crossed his arms, and pushed the smile down with a fierce frown.
“It’s hard to take you seriously,” he said, “when you come to me as actual service components. Why not inhabit a regular body, like the other artificials? You must have access to several.”
Its head moved in negation, and the metal opening that could be called its mouth seemed to frown.
“So you could kill them?” it retorted hotly. “Or identify them, and torture them for information?”
Link felt one of The Admiral’s eyebrows go up, and he leaned slightly forward along with him.
“Who said anything about torture?” he said.