No Limits

by Peter David

  They’ll jerk awake, or maybe they’re making love, but I’ll kill them both because—my darling, treacherous Ellen—Morgan was right. Sometimes love isn’t enough, and I’m so tired of the pain, I’m sick to death of loving you.

  The door is an antique, with a brass latch. Pointer tugs the passkey crystal from his left jacket pocket, and the phaser from his right. Then he inserts the passkey; there’s a tiny scraping snick of crystal against metal. When the small red light winks green, he depresses the latch and pushes. The door swings in with a faint squeal of hinges.

  “Ellen,” he says, stepping into a darkness edged with the grief of a single short summer. His thumb flicks the phaser to kill. “Darling, it’s me.”

  Then: Memorial Day Weekend—Friday, May 24, 2363

  “And why a plasma pistol?” Pointer asked.

  “It was handy.”

  “And that’s why you chose to shoot yourself in the chest? Because the pistol was handy?”

  The woman on the gurney leveled a gaze at Pointer with eyes that were blacker than a crow’s wing and matched the color of her shoulder-length hair. She wore a jade green hospital gown that ended at her knees, hospital slippers, and no socks. “Well, that’s a different question. You asked about the pistol, I told you. But why my chest, and not my head…beats me. I guess I wanted to see what might happen. Couldn’t very well do that if I blew my head off.”

  She sounded as if she thought he was extremely stupid, and Pointer felt like throttling the woman until her eyeballs squirted out of their sockets like wet watermelon seeds. Just his luck to be stuck seeing some smart-ass patient on the Friday before Memorial Day when he’d planned to be as far away from Hartford Hospital as possible—with Ellen, at their Maine-shingle cottage on Isle au Haut.

  The getaway wasn’t romantic, but they’d made a commitment to work at the marriage. Their relationship had degenerated into sniping asides and barbed silences that pricked and bit until Pointer thought it miraculous his heart worked at all. But they would try, one last time. Except his communicator had gone off, and he’d read the keen disappointment in Ellen’s eyes, a silent message that screamed: You’re doing it again, Kevin, you’re never here and even when you are, you’re not, your mind is always with those crazy people and their problems. It did no good to tell her that he had little control over patients. The great paradox: Psychiatrists were the keepers of secrets, and patients kept secrets from psychiatrists—little things like planning a suicide.

  When he’d kissed Ellen good-bye, she’d given him a cheek colder than marble. What stunned and then saddened him was this didn’t hurt as much as it used to. Instead, he experienced a seismic tremor of rage so intense he wanted to beat Ellen’s head with a brick. But he didn’t, and Ellen’s face dissolved as the transporter beam whisked him from a tranquil Maine pinewood and dropped him into the middle of a noisy downtown emergency room in Hartford, Connecticut.

  Now Pointer suppressed a sigh. “You had doubts? Last time I checked, plasma pistols go boom, people’s guts go splat.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be sympathetic?”

  “Just stating facts.”

  The woman, Morgan—she wouldn’t give a last name—laughed. A shock of black hair had fallen into her eyes, and she flipped it aside with a surprisingly girlish gesture. “There are facts, Doctor, and then there are the ways one states the facts.”

  “Fair enough.” And I’ve had enough. Or, possibly, he was thinking of Ellen because he had this sudden, awful premonition: Ellen’s gone.

  Pivoting on his heel, he went to the door and began keying in his exit code. “Look, all I know is you tried to kill yourself, only you botched it. Or maybe you didn’t mean it, I don’t know. Anyway, you play with pistols and people get, well, a little upset. Then doctors like me get to talk to people like you about why you want to raise such a fuss. The downside is you don’t get to leave until I’m convinced you’re not going to hurt yourself. So you’ll sit here until you stop playing games. And if you don’t like it, try killing yourself more quietly, so no one calls the cops.”

  She spoke just as the door slid open. “Done that.”

  No, Pointer thought wearily, please, just let me go. But he took a step back, and the door hissed shut. “Done what?”

  “Trying where no one will hear. In space, on another planet. Different years, different times. Knives, jumping, hanging.” She gave him a bemused smile. “I’m still here.”

  Lying through her teeth. The emergency-room report indicated that Morgan had no scars of any kind, no evidence of past trauma. Plus, Morgan had used an antique plasma pistol with a spent charge, and this belied her intent. A person who really wanted to die succeeded. “And why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know.” She threw him a frank look. “You don’t like me very much.”

  “My emotions are none of your business.”

  “But mine are yours?”

  “You know they are. Whether or not I like myself is not your concern. All I ask, Morgan, is that you trust me enough to tell the truth.”

  “And how would you know if I did?”

  “A last name is a good start.”

  “Primus.”

  “Well, Morgan Primus,” said Pointer, not believing this was her last name for one second, because that had been way too easy, “why aren’t you in the Federation database?”

  “Because not everyone comes from a Federation planet. And as for trusting that I won’t try to kill myself again in the very near future,” she said, forestalling his next question, “you have my word.”

  “Oh, that’s worth a lot.”

  Morgan chuckled. “You’re all right. You don’t pull punches. That’s good. Now, you going to let me go?”

  In the end, they compromised. Morgan would come and see him. After he’d talked to the nurses and written his orders, Pointer returned with a data chip that held his office address and com identification.

  “My office,” he said. “Tuesday, one o’clock. I’m at the Institute of Living, on Washington. You can’t miss it: red brick walls, a lot of trees. Just come. Talk. It can’t hurt. And leave your com ID before you go, so I can reach you.”

  “Fine,” said Morgan, her response so automatic that Pointer suspected the com ID would be a fake. But there was nothing he could do about that either. Patients had to want help. He wasn’t God.

  He was at the door when Morgan said, “I didn’t say it, you know.”

  Pointer turned, his hand on the jamb. “What?”

  “That you didn’t like yourself. I didn’t say that.” Morgan aimed an index finger. “You did.”

  When Pointer beamed back to Maine, Ellen was gone. There was a message. Ellen thought a separation would be good, she’d be in touch, take care, blah, blah, blah. Pointer listened to her message a few times. Then he left the cottage and picked his way over rocks to the beach. He listened to black water slap stones. There was no moon, and the night was overcast, so there were no stars either. That was all right.

  Tuesday: One o’clock came and went. Morgan didn’t show up. Pointer wasn’t surprised. Her com ID was phony, and that didn’t surprise him, either.

  The next day melted into the day after, and then the next. Patients came and went, and Ellen didn’t call. Pointer forgot about Morgan Primus. He beamed to Maine every night, hoping against hope. And he dreamed green, awful nightmares of love and revenge.

  Two weeks later, Pointer’s companel buzzed. He hesitated, annoyed. It was six, and he wanted to go home. (Why was obscure. He never stayed indoors but roamed the beach half the night.)

  The com buzzed again. Sighing, he punched up the channel, his mind already riffling through excuses to keep the call short. So Pointer wasn’t prepared when he saw that the caller was Morgan.

  “Tomorrow at six,” she said, without preamble.

  Pointer recovered enough to say, “Sorry, I don’t work after six.”

  “That’s the time I have.”

  “Come at f
ive.”

  “Six. Take it, or leave it.”

  All his instincts screamed to leave it. Instead, he said, “Maybe. I don’t make any promises.”

  “That’s fine, Doctor.” Morgan smiled. “Neither do I.”

  He fully expected her to cancel, so he wasn’t surprised the next afternoon when he peeked into his waiting room at three minutes before six and saw only empty chairs. I knew it, he thought as he circled back to his desk and jammed his padd, filled with patient records, into his pocket. I just knew she wouldn’t show.

  His companel buzzed, and his eyes flicked to the time: two minutes to six. Morgan Primus. Had to be. Probably wanted another time. Ask away, sweetheart—he gave the com a vicious jab—ask until you’re bluer in the face than a Bolian.

  His companel winked, and Ellen’s face shimmered into focus.

  The sight of her took his breath away, and suddenly his knees were weak and he had to sit down. “Ellen,” he managed, “my God, where…?”

  “Hello, Kevin,” she said. Ellen’s oval face was white and pinched, and the hard edge to her jaw that he’d come to associate with her disappointment and anger were softer. There were purple smudges beneath her dark brown eyes.

  “I…I don’t know why I called, exactly, just,” her tongue flicked over her lips, “I just wanted you to know that…I’m all right. But I need time to think. Time to be away from you, us.”

  “Ellen.” Pointer’s voice was strangled. “Ellen, please, come home….”

  “No.” Ellen’s eyes shifted to somewhere offscreen, then back. “It’s better I stay away.”

  She’s not alone. “No, it’s not. Look, can we meet? You choose the spot, and I’ll be there….”

  Again, that hesitation, that brief jerk of her eyes up and away, and Pointer’s heart almost exploded with grief and fury. She’s with someone else; my God, I love her so much, I’m going to kill her….

  The soft chime of his outer door sounded, and Pointer glanced at his chronometer: six, on the dot. Christ. Morgan.

  Then Ellen surprised him. She nodded. “All right—if you come now. I have the beam-in coordinates.”

  Pointer’s heart sank. “I…Ellen, can we meet in an hour? Half an hour? I have—”

  “God,” she said, making the word sound ugly. The hard edges reappeared, and her eyes seemed to retreat and disappear into the sockets of her skull. “Nothing changes. What do I have to do, Kevin? Why aren’t I important enough?”

  “You are. Ellen, be fair. You disappear, and then you expect me to drop everything…” He stopped, sucked in a breath. “Please, Ellen, please, I’m begging you. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Yes, you do. You keep choosing them.”

  Pointer felt desperate. Trapped. “Ellen, I have to see this patient. She’s very disturbed, and this might be my only chance. But then I can…”

  Her hand reached for the disconnect. “Don’t bother. Patients always have come first.”

  “Ellen! Wait!” Pointer grabbed the companel with both hands as if to hold her in place. “Ellen!”

  But the screen went dead.

  Pointer wasted five minutes trying to get CommCent to trace the call. (They couldn’t.) Then Pointer went to get Morgan. She mentioned he was ten minutes late; he didn’t bother explaining.

  The next morning, Pointer called an investigator.

  Now…

  “Mom?” Robin’s voice is dreamy with sleep, and drug. “Mom, what are you doing?”

  Morgan’s heart flutters, and she swallows, hard. I watched her drink that lemonade, how can she be awake? Morgan plasters on a smile and turns to her daughter, who is curled in the copilot’s chair.

  “What are you doing up? Go back to sleep, Ches,” Morgan says, grateful she’s had the foresight to reroute helm and navigational controls so that Robin’s systems remain black.

  Robin’s eyelids shutter in a slow, heavy blink, and Morgan can see that the girl’s eyes are a little crossed—a side effect of the amnestic agent in Robin’s lemonade cocktail that included a sedative-hypnotic. The amnestic’s overkill; after all, when they burn up, there won’t be anything to remember, will there? But, in a past identity, Morgan worked as a surgical nurse, and she knows a lot about anesthesia. Amnestics send patients into a twilight state, teetering between sleep and wakefulness, from which they emerge with no memory of events that occurred during the surgery, or for an hour or two before and after.

  “Whersh…?” Robin’s voice is slurry, and then she giggles, a bubbly sound. “I feel drunk. So where’re we going?” Showhershswegoan?

  “Saturn. Don’t you remember?” (Morgan knows Robin doesn’t.) “You wanted to see the Academy training facility, only you conked out….”

  “No,” Robin says, trying to push out of her slump, but the drugs have made her awkward, and her hands slip on slick trivinyl. She falls back against her chair.

  “Oh,” Robin says, cupping her forehead in her right hand. Now her voice sounds young, like a child’s. “Mom, I don’t feel very well.”

  “All that sun,” says Morgan, keeping her tone light and cheery. “All that running around. Fresh air does that. Go back to sleep, Ches. I’ll wake you when there’s something to see.”

  Robin licks her lips. “Thirsty.” Shershty.

  Got to put her out. Morgan unbuckles. “There’s more of that lemonade. That’ll hit the spot, Ches.”

  Morgan hurries aft, trying to remember where she’s stowed the thermos. The drink was supposed to knock Robin out, and if Morgan can’t get her back to sleep soon, she’ll have to turn around.

  Because I don’t want her to know. Morgan riffles through the medical kit where she’s stowed the hypospray vials of the various drugs she’s pilfered. She hesitates, then jams a vial of amnestic mixed with a sedative-hypnotic into an empty hypo. If she won’t drink, then I’ll pump her full of drugs. I want her out, dreaming good dreams.

  Shoving the hypo into a back pocket, she spies the thermos wedged behind a tension spanner. Tugging it free, she turns, already talking. “Here we go, here…”

  Her voice trails away.

  Somehow, Robin is in the pilot’s chair, and Morgan can tell by the set of her shoulders and back that, even through a drug-induced fog, Robin knows.

  “Ches,” Morgan says. Her blood hammers in her temples. “I…”

  “Oh, my God,” Robin says. Slowly, she swivels around. Her red-rimmed eyes are wide. “Mother, my God, what are you doing?”

  The hotel room is small and dim but not dark. Enough light fans from a bedside lamp for Pointer to make out a lounge chair and an ottoman, a small desk with a companel, a straight-back wooden chair with green striped fabric—and the bed. King-sized. Unmade; three pillows humped along a wooden headboard; a floral quilt puddled on the floor; the apricot sheets mussed and a cord of brown blanket twined like a string of chocolate licorice. A lump, with the vague contours of a body, on the far side.

  Pointer’s phaser hand trembles. “Ellen,” he whispers, and then clears his throat. He steadies his aim and calls again. “Ellen!”

  Two feet from the bed he realizes that the lump is Ellen’s clothing. The bed is empty. Pointer brings his face close to the tousled sheets and smells Ellen: an intoxicating mix of sweaty musk and jasmine.

  It’s then that Pointer becomes aware of a low sizzle, like grease on a hot griddle, and his eyes rake the darkness until he makes out a thin stripe of orange light seeping beneath a door. Bathroom. They’re taking a shower. The image of Ellen’s wet body under another man’s hands sends a shock wave of rage surging through Pointer. Before this instant, he wasn’t sure, but now he knows, without question. He’ll kill them, and then himself. But before he does, he needs Ellen to understand, to know why she’s driven him to this moment where reality’s fractured, and his life’s snapped in two. And maybe, just maybe, Pointer wants Ellen to beg for her life because, dammit, she owes him for all love’s pain.

  Pointer crosses to the other side of the bed, the one nea
rest the lamp and night table. Angling the chair so he faces the closed bathroom door, Pointer arranges himself in the chair, his hand with the phaser resting on his lap. He’ll be the first and last thing Ellen will see.

  An array of items on the night table catches his attention, and for an instant the items are so incongruous he can’t place them. Then his brain ticks off the items, one by one. A slim, butter-colored ivory case, with a stylized sea done in scrimshaw. Three—no, four squat hypospray cartridges arrayed, like an assortment of antique saltcellars, beside an empty hypospray jet.

  Pointer’s brow furrows. What is Ellen doing with drugs? Pointer plucks up a vial and angles it into the light. He recognizes it immediately: phenyl-promazine, a potent antipsychotic. And besides the antipsychotic, there’s a vial of duraxalamine, a sedative; another contains a neuromuscular paralytic; and the fourth is filled with a strong barbiturate. All the vials have his office stamp.

  My God, she stole them. There’s enough here to kill a herd of Cartagan elephants.

  Replacing the vials, Pointer picks up the slim ivory case. The case is heavier than he expects. There’s a stamp on one side: a four-leaf clover and the word EDGEWELL beneath, done in red-brown scrimshaw. Odd. He thinks, at first, it must be some antique pencil case—until he sees a metallic prong jutting from one end, a hinge, and a thin strip of bright, square-backed metal nestled between ivory spacers. Pointer uses the side of his right thumb to depress the tang. He feels the metal catch, hesitate, then glide free. Pointer’s breath hisses through his teeth as the sweeping blade of a straight razor pops up.

  The square-backed, untarnished blade flashes in the light. The blade’s tip is scalloped, and Pointer puts his left thumb to the beveled edge. The blade is so sharp he doesn’t realize he’s cut himself until red blood bubbles, staining the blade. Pointer gasps, as much from pain as sudden realization.