Mindline

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Jahir hesitated, then sighed. "No," he agreed, and sat on the couch. "No, you're right." He studied the omelet in front of him. "I suppose we should do something with the day?"

  "We should," Vasiht'h agreed. "And I know just the thing."

  One of the bad things about a mindline, Vasiht'h discovered, was how hard it made keeping secrets. He suspected as time passed they would find it more and more difficult to hide things from one another; lying was already impossible, and pushing each other out of the mindline felt incredibly wrong, even by accident. That he managed to keep their destination a mystery was mostly due to their lingering disorientation; in the future, Vasiht'h thought he'd have to resign himself to managing very few surprises, save perhaps by determinedly not thinking about them.

  He was grateful to have succeeded this time, though, because it made Jahir's startlement when they exited the Pad station onto the marina all the more satisfying. Heliocentrus was a large enough city that most of it lay inland... but the site for the Alliance's winter capital had been chosen because of its climate, its beauty, and its proximity to some of the most gorgeous beaches in the southern hemisphere of the planet. Heliocentrus's citizens promptly capitalized on those assets, setting some of the coastline aside for swimmers and using part of it for small pleasure craft. The horizon before them glittered an unbelievable aquamarine blue, darkening toward the sky, and the native avians fluted their cries as they dipped close to the bright-crested waves.

  "Oh, the sea," Jahir said softly.

  "You haven't seen one?" Vasiht'h asked, standing beside him on the boardwalk.

  "From space, briefly." Jahir turned his face into the breeze, eyes half-closed. Vasiht'h didn't think he realized he was tilting his head up to the sun... or that here and there, passersby stopped to stare at him. "But not at the shore, no. This is marvelous, arii."

  "Good," Vasiht'h said firmly. "Because we're not done yet."

  "Ah?"

  "Come on," he said, and couldn't help a touch of mischief. "We're going to miss our ride."

  Their ride was a sailboat, and after being issued their life-vests—two for Vasiht'h, since his much denser body wouldn't float without a second one around his lower half—they were given seats at the rail. Jahir's fascination broadened the mindline, filled it with a sizzling that made Vasiht'h stretch his paws and roll both sets of shoulders, and grin: grin, like everything was new. And then he started laughing.

  "What?" Jahir asked, glancing at him with bright eyes.

  "I was so busy setting up this adventure for you, to give you something to do you've never done before," Vasiht'h said as the ship slipped its moorage and began to glide into the turquoise waters. "And it didn't occur to me that I've never been on a sailboat!"

  Jahir turned his laugh into his shoulder, muffling it, but it sparkled in the mindline like champagne bubbles.

  The trip was amazing. They spent it with the sea breeze in their faces, shading their eyes in search of the acrobatic fliers that dove for fish, and pointing out the distant fins of the double-wings, some of whom drifted closer to investigate the ship: ray-shaped mammals with four wings set at right angles to one another. The creatures twirled them as they dove beneath the keel, vanishing with a slap of their forked tails on the water.

  "I had no idea," Jahir said as the ship curved into the wind, making its long turn back toward the marina.

  Vasiht'h sampled the mindline's ease, found it filled with brine and a clean, humid wind he could taste in his mouth. He licked his teeth and smiled up at the Eldritch. "About what?"

  "The worlds that could exist inside already alien worlds," Jahir said, looking back past the sails at the horizon. "What must it be like, do you wonder? To belong beneath the surface of the water?"

  "I don't know," Vasiht'h said. Then added, a trifle wistfully, "A little bit like belonging to the sky, I guess."

  Jahir glanced at him. "That feels like a child's pillow?"

  "Like a happy dream, is what you mean," Vasiht'h said. He reached over and patted his stunted wings. "Even if these were big enough to work, we're not designed to fly. I don’t think you can get less aerodynamic than a squat centaur. But I sometimes wonder what it must be like."

  "I think it must be amazing," Jahir said, staring out over the water. The wind pulled some of his loose hair against his cheek. Vasiht'h thought it was good to see it down; he associated the braid with the hospital, and preferred this evidence that his friend was not working for a change. And he was so busy in that contemplation that the tickle of his friend's idea surfacing in the mindline caught him by surprise. "Perhaps we should visit someplace light enough for you to fly. Like the world of the Phoenix."

  "What?" Vasiht'h shook himself, then chuckled. "I'm too heavy to fly, even on Phoenix-Nest. Though it would be a fascinating trip."

  Jahir nodded, a small drop of his chin. Then added, "Does it distress you?"

  "Not to be able to fly?" Vasiht'h frowned and looked up, following the trail of a soaring sharp-winged Selnoran kite. "Not in the way I think you think. Not like someone who feels they should be able to, and can't. More like… someone who has no reason to believe they could, and would love to know what it's like anyway. Does that make sense?"

  "It does, yes," Jahir said. Was that peach color in the mindline shyness? It smelled ambrosial. "I like to swim. I have been learning as part of the physical therapy. Perhaps swimming is a little like flying."

  Vasiht'h grinned, wiping his damp forelock out of his eyes. "I tell you a secret, arii." He felt the Eldritch's attention and said, "I like to swim too. And I tell you, if there's anything as awkward as a Glaseah in a pool, I haven't seen it yet."

  Jahir pursed his lips. "Perhaps an Akubi in a pool."

  That accompanied by an image of one of the giant dinosaur-like avians, floating with spread wings while caricatures of other swimmers dashed away in alarm. Vasiht'h laughed. "Okay, I'll grant that one."

  There was a silence then, filled by the creak of the ropes and the sough of the wind, and the shimmer of the sun on the waves was reflected in the mindline and sent gooseflesh racing down Vasiht'h's sides. He sighed and smiled, found the Eldritch smiling back.

  "This was wonderful. A revelation. Thank you."

  "We're not done yet!"

  "What could possibly be better than this!"

  Vasiht'h grinned. "You'll see."

  After their trip, Vasiht'h brought him back across the Pad to their part of town, and up to the coffee shop. Jahir stopped at the patio. "This is not the place Paige buys her concoctions—"

  "It is," Vasiht'h said. "I have to pay for a cup I broke, so I figured I'd take care of a couple of things at once. Sit, I'll bring you a drink. What would you like?"

  "Not hot buttered coffee!" Jahir exclaimed. "Otherwise…" He trailed off. "Surprise me."

  Vasiht'h didn't bother to hide his grin or the glee that suffused the mindline between them. "I'm planning to."

  He left the Eldritch sitting outside in the late afternoon sun, basking in the sense of repletion he could feel in the mindline as he ordered for them both: kerinne for himself, with that espresso again, and a clear coffee, a specialty varietal grown not far from Heliocentrus in the rain forests that thickened the nearby slopes. If he timed it right…

  He was just opening the door with the tray when Kayla's mother appeared, and both girls shot from her side and into Jahir's open arms, squealing their greetings. The rush from the tour on the sea was nothing to the incandescent joy that set fire to the mindline, so intense he flexed his fingers on the tray to keep from dropping it. Then he drew in a deep breath and went out to keep them company, and the look Jahir shot him over their heads could not have been paid for in all the treasure in the worlds.

  "I'll go get some hot chocolate," Kayla's mother said, smiling.

  The girls chorused their assents and then cuddled into their very favorite Eldritch prince. "We're not too heavy?" Meekie said.

  "No. No, not at all."

  "And we
don't hurt you when we squeeze?" Kayla added.

  "You can squeeze as hard as you like," Jahir said, and when they did, added, "And now, ariisen… tell me everything, everything."

  For once, Jahir sat on his bed and exhaustion felt good and right and proper—the result of a full and fulfilling day, and not of simple battle against something as mindless as a world's gravitational pull.

  "That," Vasiht'h said, padding in from the bathroom, "was worth every fin."

  "Was it very expensive?"

  The mindline tightened, like a mouth puckering with disapproval. "You are not allowed to pay for it. I'm already staying with you. That's saving me a lot in rent." Vasiht'h plopped down amid his cushions, scattering several. He flexed his forelegs, claws winking at their tips and then sliding back into their sheaths. He added, "You can pay for the drinks, if you want."

  Jahir laughed. "Leaving the expensive part of the day to me, I see."

  Vasiht'h grinned and fluffed up his body pillow. "I've missed doing this with you."

  "Which part of it?" Jahir asked. "The sight-seeing or—"

  "The kids," Vasiht'h said. "We did good there. And we were good at it."

  "We were, weren't we?" Jahir murmured.

  Some of his thoughtfulness leaked, for the Glaseah asked, "And why do I taste tea now? Black tea?"

  "Because that is what I was drinking with Healer KindlesFlame when we were discussing job possibilities after the conferring of the degree," Jahir said. "I had mentioned you, in fact. He'd said he hoped you went clinical."

  "Did he?" Vasiht'h sounded amused. Curious, also, which felt like the smell of lemons? No, pepper. No, both. Jahir paused, frowned. But his friend had continued, "What did he say?"

  "That to find Glaseah outside research and education was rare, and that those who broke the rules typically went the farthest."

  "Mm." Vasiht'h pleated the edge of his pillow. "It's funny. My sister also told me I should go clinical. She also said…" He looked up at Jahir from beneath his forelock, one brow lifted. "…that we'd do well together in practice."

  Jahir hesitated, and could not find fault with the notion. "I think she'd be right." He settled on the bed, careful of his limbs. "What do you suppose we'll do when we are done with the schooling?"

  "I don't know," Vasiht'h admitted. "I'm waiting to see what you're going to do, to be honest. I can set up a practice anywhere, or join an existing one. But it'll depend on where you end up working. Medical xenotherapists usually end up in big hospitals or clinics. They don't start their own businesses. You'd have to go where you could find a position."

  "Not quite as pleasing a prospect as choosing someplace because one wants to live there, and then finding work," Jahir said.

  "No, but where would you want to go?"

  A good question. Where would he want to go, if he could go anywhere? He had ties in the Alliance, but they were tenuous. So long as Vasiht'h went with him….

  "It seems an imposition," he said, tentative. "Forcing you to follow me."

  "Maybe," Vasiht'h said. "But if that's how it's got to work, that's fine with me." His smile was a pale reflection of the calm that rippled through the mindline, like water trickling endlessly down the wall of a fountain. "I never in my life thought I'd come into a mindline, arii. I'm not going to give it up just because I'd have to let you choose where we lived." He wrinkled his nose. "I think the time to be concerned about you having that much impact on my life was long before I walked in this apartment door and said 'yes' to a permanent psychic bond."

  Wryness was like cinnamon up the nose. Jahir wasn't sure whether to laugh or sneeze. He settled for smiling, resting his head on the pillow. "Well, there is time yet."

  "So there is," Vasiht'h said, unconcerned. He curled up in his nest and yawned.

  "Two months," Jahir added quietly, after they'd turned off the lights.

  After a long pause: "Two months."

  Chapter 15

  Jahir walked out of the halcyon day into a crisis care center crazed with activity and poisoned by dread and hovering tension. As he halted at the break room door, a weary Jiron looked up and said, "Oh, you're back? Already?" He glanced at his data tablet and said, "Hell, when did it get to be evening shift?"

  "Alet?" Jahir asked. "Why are you here?"

  "Because everyone who can be pulled into this has been." The human pushed himself from the desk. "And you're just in time to get dragged back into it, I'm afraid. Go on, get ready. I can talk to your back."

  Jahir walked past him and began washing. Behind him, Jiron continued. "So yesterday, Radclifte Clinic shipped us all their unresponsive cases, figuring our neuro team could fix it. That gives us nine of them—gave us nine of them—and today four of them are dead." Jahir jerked his head up and looked over his shoulder as the human finished, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And three of them died in surgery."

  "How..."

  "Is that possible? Damned if we know. They're not telling us anything down here except that the failures were catastrophic and no one understands the etiology of it, so how can they fix it? The lab's been on every kind of screening, tissue sample and draw they can physically pull out of a body or read off a halo scan and they're coming up empty. If we didn't have your word for it being a drug—if we didn't have what looked like injection sites—then we'd be guessing it's something else because this doesn't match the profile of any street drug we know. Which means..."

  "It's something new," Radimir said from the door, his voice sharp with fear. "Has Griffin told you about the police yet?"

  "No," Jahir said.

  "Try not to step on them," the Harat-Shar said. "Because they're getting underfoot with all the speed of roaches."

  Jiron made a face. "Radimir..."

  "They might want to ask you questions. Just answer them as best you can."

  "Understood," Jahir said, subdued. "What are my duties for the shift?"

  "You'll love this, I'm sure." Radimir's tail lashed. "But Levine's left you standing orders to keep hovering over the bodies. She's had someone doing that since the day that one died on you, so this isn't special treatment. Except it is special treatment, because unless they conferred my psychology degree on me yesterday, I'd say she's hoping that you're going to find some magical fix for this that everyone else is missing because they don't read minds."

  "It's hard to blame her when reading minds is the only thing we've got left," Jiron muttered. At Radimir's hiss, he held up his hands. "Sorry. I'm just...."

  "Exhausted," Radimir said. "Like the rest of us." He sighed.

  "But surely the police," Jahir said. "Know the names of these victims, and can now speak to their families, their friends. That is how it's done, isn't it?"

  "Sure. But that's assuming they're turning anything up, which they're not, yet. So until then..."

  God and Lady only knew what Vasiht'h would say when he discovered Jahir had been put on death watch again. The thought made him say, "Jiron-alet?"

  "Yes?"

  "When I applied, I believe I did not give any—" Next of kin sounded dire, and a little too formal for the Alliance. What was the proper term? Ah. "Emergency contact names."

  "That's right." The human eyed him and then his expression relaxed. "Oh, let me guess. That fierce bodyguard of yours that showed up, right?"

  "Ah?"

  Radimir was chuckling. "Oh yes. The one who dented the doors on the way in. Torqued all the ER intake people the hells off."

  "Gave hospital security a few strokes too." Jiron smirked, then tried to rub the expression off his face. "God, only good part of the day. So, is that your emergency contact?"

  Somewhat bemused, Jahir replied, "Yes, please. Vasiht'h. He is staying with me."

  "He sure is, because I can't imagine him suffering anything else," Jiron said. "Is he always that ferocious?"

  Jahir thought of claws inching from dark toes and how brown eyes could simmer with rage. Somehow he thought the incidents that had inspired Vasiht'h's wrath on Se
ersana would be kindling in compare to the events that might do so here. "When need arises."

  "Hopefully need won't arise again anytime soon, then," Jiron said.

  "I don't know..." Radimir groped for a mug and refilled it from the coffee bottle. "The distraction would be nice."

  Jiron said, a joke obviously old enough to be carrying the humor despite his lack of energy. "Harat-Shar."

  Radimir answered, in much the same fashion, "Bones to skin."

  "Yeah, yeah. Form observed." Jiron nodded to Jahir. "You ready?"

  "As much as I am able."

  "Then go. If triage gets busy, Paige and Rad and I will cover it."

  Which left him again to his silent, ugly vigils, in five rooms now, rather than the nine that should have held them. Jahir had witnessed at close hand the failures of Alliance medicine, knew at heart that even science had its limits. It was easier to accept for these slack-faced adults than it had been in bright young Nieve, too young to have gone to ash in a Seersana wind. But there was a surreality to his residency narrowing to a stool in a room, listening to the low beeps and clicks of the machinery monitoring a body that could not respond to all the therapy he'd spent two years learning to employ. This was not how he'd imagined his xenotherapy residency playing out, and he found the way it reduced all the Alliance's diversity to this one state unnerving. He needed little evidence to know that death unified everyone, from the most alien to the most similar. What he wanted—what he needed—was the living brightness of this world outside his stagnant own. Being here, in these rooms, was a little too much like a reflection of the stasis he'd fled his homeworld to escape.

  He kept the vigils anyway, because that was where duty had brought him.

  "He what?"

  Calling Sehvi hadn't been the best idea, given her tendency to overreaction. But Vasiht'h had desperately wanted to talk to someone about the week, and damn the Well-pushed call charges and the possible drama. He also hadn't felt like going out, and it seemed ridiculous to put his head back down when he had no reason to be so tired. Still, staring at her horrified face, he wasn't sure this was the alternative he should have embraced. A nap was sounding better and better. "Why are you looking at me like that?"