Lange nodded, thank fuck, and then tilted his head toward the woods.
“Fine. I can get two of these carriers if you can get the third. We can hike back for the rest of the stuff, assuming your cabin’s not too far. I don’t think I can fix this pod today—not with the sun about to set—but I promise I’ll get out of your hair tomorrow.”
“It’s not necessary to haul the carriers. The cats will follow me.”
Jake didn’t believe that, but soon enough, the evidence was right in front of his eyes. The cats trotted at Lange’s heels, occasionally ranging farther, but always circling back. Jake asked Eliza to follow him, and Lange led their strange little party through the woods, setting a slow pace that left Jake far too much time to contemplate how close they’d come to dying.
“It was incredible, what you did up there,” Jake said.
“You’re overly impressed.”
“I’d’ve been so fucked without you. Dead for sure. And instead you saved us both with your telekinesis. I’m the exact right amount of impressed.”
Lange hummed, probably in disagreement.
“Let me be grateful,” Jake insisted one last time before changing the subject. “Is it far to your place? Why do you have a place in Alaska anyway? Did you grow up here?”
“I estimate a half-hour walk,” Lange said, and Jake thought he was going to quit there, whether from stubbornness or because his memory was unreliable. Though he’d remembered his family well enough. Then Lange added, “I grew up in Milwaukee.”
“You’re used to the cold, then.” Asking more questions was a risk, so Jake settled on the impersonal and inoffensive, “It’s beautiful here.”
Lange nodded. He didn’t smile. They continued up the path. While it alternated patches of mud and snow, it was also wide enough to drive a vehicle on. It zigzagged through the trees and up the mountainside and could only be the product of years of maintenance. No one else lived out here, not that Jake could see. Lange must have spent time clearing this. It was hard to imagine him out here, at least in this life, and yet here he was.
The air was cold and clean. Late-afternoon October sunlight wove through the weft of the trees.
“It would’ve been a shame to destroy it,” Lange said at length.
“The forest?”
“Existence.”
“Oh,” Jake said. He tried to work out if that was the first time he’d heard Lange express anything resembling remorse about the accident—or any halfway nice sentiment about existence, as he’d put it. Remarking on his change in attitude would make him clam up, so Jake said, “You think that’s what would’ve happened with the breach? It would’ve destroyed everything?”
“I wouldn’t want to make a formal prediction without the data in front of me,” Lange said. “And it depends what we mean by ‘destroy,’ of course. But I think our lives would have been rendered unrecognizable, if they’d lasted.”
“Well,” Jake said, disturbed even though he’d known those things already. “Good thing you averted that.”
Lange said nothing.
They emerged into a clearing. Lange had said “cabin,” so Jake ought to have expected the small, square, wooden house in the middle of the pines, with a porch stacked with firewood under a blue tarp and an old truck parked next to it. That was exactly what the word “cabin” indicated.
He glanced at Lange and then back at the house. Cabin. Lange. Cabin. Christ, this was weird.
“You live here?”
“I used to,” Lange said, pulling off a glove and half-unzipping his spacesuit to pull an old brass house key out of an inner pocket. “I suppose I still do.”
The woods had turned a tap in his mind, starting a trickle of memories, and the sight of the cabin opened the flow.
Lange had been braced for a rush of awful things, but what he remembered was surprisingly pleasant. He had always liked coming here. This place belonged to him. No one had ever stayed here other than him and the cats. He hadn’t built it with his own two hands, as Jake probably would have if he owned a cabin, but he’d designed it.
There was a layer of snow on the porch steps. Some half-dormant part of his mind told him October was early for snow, even at this altitude, but the weather was always unpredictable here. At the top of the stairs, he shook the snow off his boots, stomping on the doormat out of habit. His key fit the lock. The bolt slid back almost soundlessly, and the door swung open without a creak.
The cats preceded him, eager to get inside. The unheated cabin had little warmth to offer, but there was firewood stacked on the porch and a wood-burning stove in the living room. The cats seemed to remember that the warmth would originate there, since all three of them curled up expectantly on the red rug in front of the stove.
Habit took over for Lange, too. He sat on the bench to the left of the door and took off his dirty boots, which put him more or less in the kitchen. The bedroom and bathroom were behind closed doors, situated at the back of the house, and the main space of the cabin was undifferentiated. The kitchen counter and cabinets ran along one wall of the room, and opposite them was a wall of bookshelves, interrupted only by the cast-iron stove.
The smell of woodsmoke was layered into the whole place, a faint varnish over the walls and the floorboards. Lange was surprised to find he liked it. Smells had previously only irritated him, but perhaps there hadn’t been anything worth smelling in Facility 17.
The cabin was lightly furnished, but it felt nothing like the empty room at Facility 17. That rug in front of the stove, the telescope in the corner, the full bookshelves, the pair of binoculars—these were comforts, not necessities. Someone had chosen that color, that pattern, all those books.
Not someone. Him. Everything here was his choice.
Surrounded by these carefully organized paperbacks and the windows pouring clear sunlight into the room, he was at ease in a way he hadn’t realized was possible. Someone lived here, and he wasn’t afraid of them.
A single armchair was angled toward the stove, and there was a table with four chairs on the kitchen side of the room. Those chairs had never been occupied by anyone other than Lange and the cats, and the cats were just as happy to sit on the floor, so it had perhaps been optimistic on his part to buy the full set.
Everywhere, there were signs of a man who lived alone. The armchair wasn’t part of a pair and wasn’t accompanied by a couch.
Belatedly, it occurred to him that there was nowhere for McCreery to sleep.
“The fuel cell’s off,” Lange said, glancing back at McCreery who was still standing by the door. He’d closed it behind him, very politely, even though there was no warm air to keep inside. “It needs to be turned on. And we’ll have to put some wood in the stove.”
“Where’s the fuel cell? I’ll handle it.”
“Behind the house,” Lange said, and McCreery went out the door.
Lange went into his bedroom, undisturbed since he’d last used it six months ago. It felt like a museum dedicated to the person he’d been, the walls lined with books he had only a vague notion of having read. He liked the pattern of repeating red-and-gold diamonds in the kilim on the floor, but couldn’t remember where it had come from. He wished it had a caption next to it: purchased in Milwaukee in 2087, or a gift from a dear friend—except it definitely wouldn’t say that. He remembered at least that much.
He opened the dresser and found clothes that appealed to him equally well, as though a personal shopper had stocked it while keeping his size and taste in mind. That was, he supposed, the case.
Inspired, he pulled out some clothes, went into the bathroom, and rinsed off as best he could—the water wouldn’t be hot until the fuel cell was on. As bracing as the cold shower was, the almond scent of his body wash brought back more pleasant memories. There were more products in the medicine cabinet, including a trimmer and an electric razor. He touched his beard. Maybe tomorrow, when there was hot water.
It was good to be out of his spacesuit and marginally
less filthy. He put on a sweater and jeans. McCreery would probably be surprised that he’d voluntarily bathed and changed clothes, but Lange had resigned himself to living in this body. He might as well be comfortable. It was something he used to value.
Lange returned to the living room and sat in the armchair. It was a relief to have McCreery gone for a moment, not because he was irritating, but because he represented an anomaly: the only person in the universe, outside of Lange’s family, who wasn’t irritating. Inexplicable. Lange had spent years warding himself against new people, who only ever wanted him for what he could do for them, and McCreery had slipped right past him.
McCreery’s presence distorted everything, as though he had his own gravity, pulling everything in Lange’s mind askew. He was an obstacle to clear, objective perception—in an unfortunately literal sense, since he took up a lot of space and Lange couldn’t ever seem to stop looking at him.
Without McCreery around, Lange was able to float some wood from the porch toward the stove. He was fatigued from holding the heat shield together, but this task felt easy in comparison. It didn’t make his head throb in the same way. The front door presented only a minor delay, which was how Lange discovered he could manipulate more than one object at a time.
Fascinating.
“Did you open the door with your mind? While moving the logs? Jesus.”
The logs in question thudded to the floor and Lange had to take a deep breath before he could resume loading the stove. Surely it violated the laws of nature for McCreery to move so silently.
McCreery flipped on the overhead light—he’d been successful with the fuel cell, of course—and sat on the bench to remove his boots, still in his suit. “I assume the cabinets are empty. Want me to drive that truck to the nearest store?”
“It’s too far to go tonight,” Lange said. McCreery had not commented on the shower or the change of clothes, and there was no reason to be disappointed about that. “There are canned goods.”
“That’s good. We should get in touch with the team, I guess. Tell them we made it but I won’t be back until tomorrow. And do you think I should move the pod? Will it be okay out there?”
The questions struck him as bizarre and irrelevant until he realized that McCreery was nervous. McCreery had been calm and unaffected by entering Lange’s room when Lange was borderline hallucinatory and throwing furniture—hadn’t even been all that fazed when Lange had thrown him—and he’d piloted their spacecraft through that harrowing descent with success. Yet coming to the cabin had frayed his nerves.
Lange might have laughed if only he could figure out what the joke was.
It didn’t make sense. Lange had become less threatening, and therefore McCreery should feel less threatened by him. They had, in fact, solved an urgent and potentially fatal problem together less than two hours ago. Lange did not often feel camaraderie, but it was his understanding that collaboratively solving problems was a ready source of the feeling for other people. Lange himself could not deny a certain pleasure in their collective accomplishment, and McCreery was firmly in the category of other people, so it followed that he should no longer be anxious around Lange. There should be warmth between them.
It was so frustrating when an equation didn’t work out.
“Lange? Should I move the pod?”
“The pod might acquire a dusting of snow, but it will remain otherwise unmolested,” he told McCreery. “There is no one around for kilometers. It was why this place appealed to me.”
McCreery got up and began searching the kitchen cabinets. From his armchair, Lange opened the one whose contents were pertinent, careful not to slap McCreery in the face with the door.
“Right,” McCreery said, startled by the motion of the cabinet. He recovered and started sorting through the cans. “What kind of soup do you want?”
The can of minestrone that McCreery heated up wouldn’t ever earn anyone’s five-star rating, yet it was the first meal Lange could remember appreciating since his return. He ate it without protest.
“Could your aunt get here to be with you, if you needed her?” McCreery asked after a few minutes.
Lange had been enjoying the silence. Too bad.
“I don’t feel good about leaving you here alone,” McCreery continued. “Someone needs to be able to get to you.”
“She could get here. Or someone could,” Lange said. He wouldn’t ask her to, but she could get here. Anyone could get here. The world was a lot smaller since the discovery of the Nowhere. Of course, you had to be a runner or know a runner to travel instantaneously, and runners were a tiny fraction of the population, but it was all still technically possible.
McCreery eyed him, but said nothing.
Ridiculous to worry so much. Lange was fine. Would be fine.
After a moment, McCreery spoke again, taking care with his words. “I know this is none of my business, but… maybe talk to someone. A therapist, I mean. About getting trapped in the Nowhere.”
It was hard to conceive of a therapist—or anyone—who’d comprehend, but the path of least resistance was evident, so Lange took it. “I will.”
“You’re not just saying that to get me to leave you alone?”
Damn it. “How should I prove it to you? Do you want to come to the appointment? Hold my hand?”
McCreery’s frown felt like a victory—Lange had succeeded in putting him off—until it felt like a loss. Ridiculous. There was no reason to feel that way.
Lange conducted a thought experiment: an alternate reality in which McCreery had said yes, actually, I do want to hold your hand. When it came time to picture his own response, the hypothetical universe collapsed.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” McCreery said, changing the subject. “I know lately you have a thing about, uh, sensory input.”
“Also, I threw you into a wall,” Lange said for the sake of accuracy.
“Yeah, that too.”
They had already discussed the incident. There was no need to say more. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Still feel bad about it?” McCreery asked.
“Yes,” Lange said, the truth of his feelings surfacing quickly. “I do.”
“Good.”
McCreery didn’t offer him further absolution, so there was a beat of silence. Lange got up to wash the dishes—with his hands, because he suspected McCreery would approve.
Eventually, Lange said, “You can take one of the pillows from the bed. There is an extra blanket in the bottom drawer of the dresser in the bedroom.”
All that information had come to him with so little struggle. He found himself staring at McCreery, waiting for praise, and then remembered that knowing the contents of one’s own house wasn’t noteworthy or impressive. Neither was washing the dishes with one’s hands. Such achievements were unlikely to elicit anything like you were amazing or it was incredible, what you did up there. Lange shouldn’t have dismissed McCreery’s earlier compliments, but he hadn’t known he wanted more until none were forthcoming. He averted his eyes.
McCreery had treated him well, all things considered, and instead of returning the favor, he was wishing for more.
When McCreery emerged from the bedroom with a pillow and a blanket, Lange said, “You should take the bed.”
McCreery scoffed. “Sure. Your princess-and-the-pea ass’ll sleep great on the floor.”
“It’s only one night,” Lange said.
“Exactly. And I’ve slept in worse places, Lange, don’t worry about me.”
“What worse places?”
The question surprised both of them. After a moment, McCreery laid that gaze on him, heavy as a hand. “Your floor’s inside and free of rats. I’m good, I promise. Go to bed.”
6
Manual
It was strange to feel summarily dismissed inside his own home, and stranger still to feel… whatever this was.
Lange undressed and lay down in his bed thinking of the moment in the pod when McCreery had ask
ed him about his interest in music. He’d refused to answer.
And now McCreery had refused to answer one of his questions. It shouldn’t have mattered, because Lange did not care about McCreery and whatever sort of life he’d lived before they’d met. The question was an error, a string of words that had escaped his mouth by accident, and the answer was irrelevant. Still, it was disagreeable to receive no response.
He had made McCreery feel this way. Undoubtedly, with his other actions, Lange had made McCreery feel far worse.
And yet McCreery had not returned the unkindness. He remained tolerable. Likable, even. Frustratingly so, since Lange had now developed a desire for his attention.
A desire that was currently unsatisfied.
Lange hadn’t wanted anything earthly since his return. This new feeling was physical, almost like a stomach-clenching hunger pang, but he knew a trip to the kitchen wouldn’t solve this. Something hummed inside him. He lay perfectly still in resistance, and it did not go quiet. Sensation stole over his skin, hot and tight, heightening his awareness of his body. Between his legs, his member swelled.
With it came memories. Clothed only in the smooth sheets, it was easy to remember what he used to do here. How it used to make him feel.
He ran his hands down his chest, over the ridges of his hipbones, to the tops of his thighs, and shivered—but not with revulsion. It was novel, the idea that being embodied might carry its own rewards. Until now, all touch had been constrained to its function, and he’d completed the bare minimum of showers and changes of clothes. What had McCreery said? You have a thing about, uh, sensory input.
Lange had spent a lot of time angry and afraid of his body, but his nervous system was something of a miracle: the way he could feel his palms, but also the coarse hair of his thighs and the warmth coursing under his skin. A closed circuit.
Not all sensory input was bad.
One fingertip drawn slowly over his skin provided a wealth of data, effortlessly cataloguing the heat and texture of everything underneath. Was he ready for more than that? He wanted to be.
Nowhere Else Page 7