Near + Far

by Cat Rambo

  As the session wore on, he was increasingly puzzled by the intimate knowledge of galactic customs that the Solin displayed. At one point he made a slight witticism that he thought only a human would have caught. The Solin buzzed.

  "What is the significance of that sound?" he asked.

  "Your joke pleased me."

  After a few hours, his throat dry and rasping from reciting the lists of what RecoveryCo was prepared to offer for the long, exhaustive list of the Solin system's resources, he signaled the end.

  "We can resume tomorrow," the Solin said. Traditionally, a trade agreement took three sessions. Even when both parties knew exactly what they wanted—usually not the case—the Negotiation must be acted out.

  The pilot was waiting outside the door.

  "I didn't want to wait to talk to you. Hungry?" she said.

  "Starving."

  "There's a place near Jewel that makes a mean bowl of noodles."

  He followed her to the restaurant. She walked with the swagger that he'd learned to expect from pilots, an insouciance sprung from their inviolability; harming a pilot could lead to a planet or system being put into Exile, trade withering away.

  As they slid into the plastic booth, she signaled the server, a gray-skinned, four-armed Doolah, who brought them menu cards. Rutter fingered the sticky edges with distaste, but the pilot cast a practiced eye down the card. She said "Number 3 if you like spicy, number 5 if you like sweet, number 12 if you like bland. The beer's crap but does the trick. My name's Angry Rose."

  "Sounds like a Harmonistic name."

  She shook her head. "Self picked, I liked the sound of it. Harmonistics start with the noun, anyhow."

  He studied her. Scarlet threads worked their way through her dark hair, and her right arm wore a sleeve of faded floral tattoos. Her outfit had the slapdash look of someone who preferred no clothes when on ship.

  She studied him back, her look curious but non-sexual. "What did you think of the Solin?"

  He used his napkin to wipe at the table in front of him, polishing away a smear of grease as he thought about it.

  "I haven't dealt with that many alien races," he admitted. "Just in training, mainly. I didn't expect them to seem so human in their thinking."

  Her lips twitched. "Wanna know why that is?"

  "Huh?"

  She leaned across the table towards him, lowering her voice. "They're brain eaters."

  He snorted but she pressed on, her voice edged with urgency. "No, it's true. That Solin you're dealing with has at least one human mind in its own. I should know, he was a friend of mine. Luke Parse."

  The Doolah slid a plate of Number 12 noodles in front of him, along with his water. Angry Rose took up her chopsticks, starting on her own plate as she watched him.

  "Explain."

  She claimed her friend had been the first explorer to make contact with the Solins. "Then they got to him, I dunno how. They left his body there, sitting, drooling ... smiling. Smiling like he was at his momma's tit. I was on the ship that recovered him. The Solin talked to me, said he had Luke inside him now, and that Luke didn't want me to worry about him. We took the body off planet to a medfactory, but he died a month or so afterwards. Still smiling."

  "How did the Solin absorb him? Did you test to see if it was really him?"

  She shook her head. "I dunno much. Went a little crazy when I heard his voice coming out of it." She gave him a lopsided, halfhearted grin. "They just put me off the world, said don't come back. Not supposed to go near any of the Solins now."

  He chased a noodle around his plate before his chopsticks seized it. "Why are you telling me all this?"

  Her face took on a hostile gleam. "Seemed like the decent thing to do, warn folks before they met the same fate."

  "I appreciate it," he said, his voice sincere. She untensed.

  "Look," she said. "If you decide to ... do anything, lemme know."

  "Do anything?"

  "There's at least one human mind in there," she said. "Trapped in a body they never wanted to be in."

  She slid enough chits onto the table to pay for both meals. "You got my contact info. Call me."

  After she left, he chewed each noodle and washed it down with sips of water. He'd learned over the years that his body would falter if he didn't fuel it, although the drift had affected his taste buds to the point where any number on the menu would have been the same to him. Angry Rose had some agenda, but he wouldn't let it compromise RecoveryCo's dealing. Too many of his fellows were depending on the company's success; let this deal fail and half of them—if not all—would let it be an excuse to go back to their old ways. Even he'd be tempted.

  The thought ached at him, reaching every corner of his being. The main thing stardrift did was make you feel connected. A warm, golden glow in which all the minds around you were tied together. No loneliness, no isolation. Knowing that you were just where you needed to be, as though the universe held you in her arms, held you close and warm and loved.

  He pulled his jacket around himself, added a few chits for the tip, and left.

  Back at the Home, he succeeded in reaching Morgan. Pages of information spilled from the wall printer.

  "Thanks," he said gratefully to the screen where his partner's face hovered, looking much the same as always. "Hey, do me a favor ... look up a name and tell me if it's got any connection with the Solins?"

  "What's the name?" Morgan said.

  "Luke Parse."

  Morgan grinned. "Ask and ye shall receive. That's already in the docco I just gave you. Three explorers made first contact: Conchetta Alo, Tresy Cooke, and Luke Parse. Parse had some sort of accident, and died a month or two later."

  "Are his med records in there?"

  "You're crazy, man. You know how much it costs, getting something like that? No, they're not."

  "All right," he said. "Thanks, Morgan."

  They finished as they always did, saying the Litany together. "I am only responsible for the here and now."

  Parse's fate nagged at him all through the negotiations. Kizel clung to its wall, head downwards, supplying details to match his own. As the dialogue grew towards that day's end, he found himself asking, against every stricture of his training, "Are you Luke Parse?"

  Kizel's wings stilled before it answered. "Luke Parse is part of us, yes."

  "How big a part?"

  "We currently hold four minds. An elder, by Solin standards."

  He frowned, trying to pick meaning out of the words. "Hold the minds?"

  The greens and blues of its eyes swirled. "Like all Solins, I am made up of the minds I have absorbed. Three Solin and one human. Luke Parse."

  "Can you start from the beginning?"

  This time he did detect amusement in the synthetic voice.

  "The beginning of time, or of my life?"

  He didn't find the joke as funny as it apparently did. "Your life," he said flatly.

  "When we are born, we are mindless grubs. Or consciousness-less, to be more exact. The grubs are tended with care until they metamorphose into something closer to my current form, and the best physical specimens chosen. When an elder is ready to die, they go to the nursery. The infant Solin gives them the Kiss for the Dying." Its stinger twitched. "Their consciousness fades and is absorbed by the new host, who then holds their memories. Throughout an individual's life, they may be given the opportunity to absorb more minds."

  "Of the dying?"

  "Not usually. Older Solins like to choose their mind partner. Someone they feel compatible with."

  "If they hold more than one mind in turn, don't you end up with hundreds of minds in one individual?"

  "The minds are consolidated into a single personality in the process of transfer."

  "I don't understand why you hold Luke Parse," he said.

  "We needed to understand how to deal with the creatures that had appeared on our world."

  Panic gripped his throat. "So you just killed him?"

  Ki
zel uttered a shrill buzz of negation. "No. He requested the Kiss."

  "Why?"

  "It was immortality," Kizel said. "I had been diagnosed with Pax two weeks earlier. I hadn't told my co-workers—was still figuring out how to deal with it. So when the process was explained to me, I asked for it."

  "To become an enormous wasp?" He caught himself. "My apologies ... I didn't mean to imply ... "

  "Understandable," Kizel said. "But life is life. And I knew I'd be here forever, with a mind that I found ... compatible. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but you don't understand the lure."

  Oh, I understand lures, he thought. "What about Angry Rose?"

  The noise Kizel made was close to a human sigh. "Rose ... I tried to explain after the transformation, but she wouldn't listen. She thought I didn't exist any more."

  Silence hung in the room between them like a web, torn only by the shrill whine of Kizel's wings.

  At length, it said, "Perhaps we should end this negotiation here for the day."

  He felt absurdly grateful.

  Back at the hotel, he studied his lists. No outrageous demands had been made yet, but usually the third day was the time for tacking on the true bargaining chips. He had hoped that by being straightforward with the Solins, he might persuade them not to engage in this last minute dance, which sometimes became absurd and killed the whole deal.

  He called Morgan.

  "Sah went back," Morgan said without preamble.

  "Shit." He rubbed at his face, feeling accumulated grime and stubble on his face. Sah was not the man he had expected. Morgan looked drawn and weary. "Well. Not like we can control anyone but ourselves."

  "I'm starting to have some doubts," Morgan admitted. "I keep thinking how easy it would be to go around the corner and just keep walking till I find someone with drift."

  Rutter laid his palm flat against the screen. "Don't do it, man."

  Morgan's hand mirrored his. "Thanks." But the words were uneven and strained.

  "Hey, once we get a good deal with the Solins, we'll be sitting pretty," he said.

  Morgan ignored him. "It's just that I feel so alone," he said. "Remember being in the Drift? I never felt that way there."

  "I know," he said. Like his fellow ex-addicts, the absence of the artificial connections provided by the drug ate at him with a constant ache. "But we're doing well, Morgan. RecoveryCo will succeed."

  "Yeah," Morgan said dully.

  After he got off the screen, he slammed his fist into the wall in frustration. Every time one of them went back, they knew it dragged the rest of them a little closer. In the fresher, he stood under the cycling water for an hour, soaping and rinsing every inch of skin until he no longer felt Linko Port clinging to him like a garment.

  He'd never felt that way with drift, either. It was as though the drug removed all his anxieties, and what he would have considered filth in any other state seemed like just part of the chain of life. He thought it was the connectedness that did it—it was hard to object to something when you felt yourself so thoroughly a part of it. As though you belonged.

  At the same noodle shop he had gone to the night before, he ordered the same tasteless meal. Angry Rose slid into the seat across from him, her eyes expectant. "Didn't hear from you today," she said.

  He sucked in a long strand, greasy with fat. "It said he's still your friend," he said without preamble.

  "Shit. That's a thing. It knows what to say because it ate his mind."

  "Why are you so sure of that?"

  "Luke would have never agreed to something like that."

  "He had Pax, he said. Two weeks diagnosed. That would have meant he had at most half a year to live."

  She shook her head, dark hair falling to obscure her face. "He didn't."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because it's not possible. He kept clean. Look, it's just not."

  "I know it's sad to lose a friend, but it's sadder still to do it when you don't have to."

  "Fuck you," she said, loud enough to rouse several other people in the shop. The Doolah glanced over, but did not stir as he took another chopstickful of the noodles.

  "Fuck you," she said again. "That thing isn't Luke." Sliding from the seat, she moved out of the shop with furious grace.

  He felt tired to his bones. He didn't need this crap disrupting his first big Negotiation. He didn't need this crap driving him back towards the drift. So much depended on this deal. If it failed, all the money the company had spent on training him would be wasted and the company would go down the tubes. Taking all of them with it.

  Day three of the Negotiation. List after list of trades, the result of long research on his part, and consultation with his partners regarding what Recovery could and couldn't afford. The Solin hung motionless on the wall, speaking its assent when necessary. He'd been warned that his voice would go; the previous night he'd spent sucking on restorative lozenges and started the day wintergreen strong, but wavered as the hours progressed. Finally he was ready to hear the additional items that Kizel would demand.

  "Your turn," he said.

  "Ah," the Solin said. Again, Rutter wondered at the humanity implicit in that slight hesitation. How could Angry Rose doubt this was her friend?

  "We require one thing only," Kizel said.

  He shuddered inwardly. Single items were usually big ticket items. A spaceship? A station? Bleeding edge technology?

  Again, the hesitation before the Solin spoke.

  "We require a human mind to join with us. One trained in intergalactic trade negotiations."

  Cold coiled heavy in his bowels as his mouth went dry.

  "Mine, in other words," he said.

  "If no substitute can be found. We are willing to give up other items in return for the fulfillment of this request."

  "What other items?"

  "Any ten from your list."

  It was a magnificent concession. The sort corporations spent their existences pursuing, hoping for the odd superstitious race that would give up more than they should due to vagaries of numbers, moon cycles, or the whimsy of their gods.

  "We realize you may see this as a sacrifice," Kizel said. "But be aware of what you are being offered. Immortality within a group consciousness that will always be with you. Knowing yourself safe and secure. All your anxieties gone."

  They've read my files, he thought. They know how to appeal to me.

  The Solin's voice took on the intonation he associated with Luke. "It's unbelievable," he said. "You feel connected to things. Like you're suspended in light, and can reach the stars. You have access to the memories of literally thousands of entities."

  "Ever do Drift, Luke?" he said, his voice harsh. "Or are you taking that out of some junkie's description of what it's like?"

  "I hoped to put it in terms that you would understand—so you can know what a marvelous chance this is."

  The first word that came to his lips was an unconditional no, but thoughts of the others in the company caught him in the gut long enough to catch the word back.

  "I'll have to think about this," he said.

  The Solin seemed pleased. "We are prepared to meet again tomorrow, if you wish?"

  "Very well," he said. Honesty forced him to say more. "I'm going to say no, you know."

  "We are prepared for that," the Solin said. "Be aware that you would not just be benefiting your company but our race. We are unprepared for complex trade deals."

  It was true that they had not challenged many of the items. He wondered again that none of the Big Three had approached them before suspicion seized him.

  "You've proposed this deal to others?"

  It buzzed briefly. "We have engaged in these negotiations forty-three previous times."

  No wonder it had come down to RecoveryCo.

  At first he sat in his room pretending that none of it had been said, but finally he acknowledged reality and called his partners.

  "Shit on that deal," Morgan said immedi
ately when consulted. The hopelessness in his voice gave way to anger. "Just stringing us along."

  "They'd make good on it," Rutter said. "Just that ... well, it's a high price."

  "It's out of the question," Morgan said.

  Outside the window, the greasy smoke of the port roiled like a spreading contagion.

  "Look," he said. "I'm going to try to talk them into the regular deal tomorrow. Maybe they'll take it."

  "I'm sure the other forty-three guys felt the same." Morgan's shoulders slumped. "Dammit, Paul, I thought ... I really thought we had a chance at things. And here we are, all the work gone straight down the tube. Out more than we started with. My mother mortgaged her holdings to fund my share. She was that excited about me going off the Drift for good."

  Others had made similar sacrifices. Rutter had been lucky; he'd stopped before the drift sucked everything away he'd owned. All I lost were family and friends, he thought wryly. He'd also been the one best suited to the training. The training that the Solins valued so highly.

  "I'm going to grab a bite to eat," he said. "I'll call you tomorrow after the Negotiation and tell you how it went."

  He paused, waiting for Morgan to begin the Litany, but the other man simply nodded and signed off.

  Hunger had been gnawing at his gut like a parasite, but once outside he found his appetite had vanished. Instead he walked along the street, keeping to the more solid walkways and avoiding the dirty puddles that lay splattered across the roadway.

  I should have expected this, he thought as he turned a corner and saw Angry Rose coming at him. Perfect end to a crap day.

  "Well?" she said. She fell into pace alongside him. Her uniform was crumpled and worn, ringed with dirt around the neck.

  "Well, what?"

  "Found out what they want yet?"

  "Is it common knowledge?"

  "They've asked a whole lot of other reps the same thing."

  "You could have warned me," he said.

  "I tried to," she said. "Then you told me that I was wrong and Luke was still alive."