Mindtouch

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Vasiht’h said.

  “It gave me something to occupy myself,” she answered. “Though there was no cake anywhere…”

  “I’ll cut you a slice,” Jahir said, and gently took the box from Vasiht’h’s hands, somehow without brushing against him. “Won’t you sit down by the fireplace? I’ll build a fire in it in a moment.”

  “It’s cozy,” Vasiht’h agreed. “Come on.” He led her to the great room and let her pick a seat, watching her. She was on the surface the same Lucrezia, but her fur was matted around her bloodshot eyes, and she was bent with hunched shoulders that somehow didn’t communicate exhaustion, but defeat. He fretted a little, brought her an afghan. She took it without comment and curled up on the couch’s far end, leaning on its arm. She didn’t say anything when Jahir returned and set a plate on the table beside her, and a teapot with three cups. He poured before going to the hearth to do whatever magical Eldritch thing he did to make the fire start and last for several hours. Vasiht’h waited for him to finish, and for the warmth and light of the fire to make the room feel friendlier and closer, and then he said, “What’s going on? We’ve all been worried.”

  “We have, have we?” she said, eyeing him. When he didn’t flinch, she sighed and took her cup, warming her palms against it as the steam coiled up to her face. “I guess Brett’s said something.”

  “He was not the only one to notice,” Jahir said, sitting in the chair across from her and taking his own cup.

  She rubbed her face again with her palm. “You don’t know much about me, tall and pretty. I don’t know much about you. But somehow I don’t mind talking in front of you. How does that work?”

  “He’s an Eldritch,” Vasiht’h said. “There’s something about them.”

  “Yeah,” she said, glancing at Jahir, tired. “I guess.” She drew in a long breath and said, “Well. You know I’m colony-world Harat-Shariin.”

  “I remember,” Vasiht’h said.

  “And… I’m really colony-world bred,” she said. “I wasn’t raised with Harat-Sharii’s culture. I know what we’re supposed to be like… we’re supposed to be enthusiastic and passionate, people whose love for life spills over into sex.” She caressed her cup with her fingertips. “I don’t have that. I mean, I have the passion, but I don’t want it to spread all over indiscriminately, like some kind of virus. I want one person. One man, preferably, so we can have kits the old-fashioned way.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Vasiht’h said when she stopped.

  “No,” she agreed. “I know there’s not. I mean, I went from a colony world with a mixed population to Seersana. I know there are other ways to do it, and what I want isn’t unreasonable. But I… fell in love with someone. Someone homeworld-bred. We’ve been together for six months now, and…” Her breath this time was ragged, too much for her to go on.

  Vasiht’h stared at her, heart aching for her, and yet he had not the slightest notion what to say.

  “And you love him desperately,” Jahir said quietly, “and yet you cannot make it work.”

  “Yes!” she said, and shuddered. “He loves other people too. He loves me, but other people too. And I don’t want other people. I want him. And I can’t share him. I’m going to have to give him up and I can’t bear it.” She straightened her shoulders and said, “He told me if only I was homeworld-bred, none of this would matter, and couldn’t I just… try to embrace what I was.”

  “That was cruel,” Vasiht’h said, finding the words. “You already are what you are, Luci, and what you are is fine.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know. But… I tried. I’ve been trying. It just doesn’t work.”

  “Have you considered asking him to do for you what he would have you do for him?” Jahir asked. At her sharp glance, he said, “To try and be a colony-world Harat-Shar.”

  “I… I haven’t, no,” she said, looking away. “I’m afraid he’ll say no.”

  Gently, Jahir said, “Lucrezia, you have nothing to lose. It is already not working now. If he says no, then how will things change?”

  “Things will change because I’ll have no excuse to keep him in my life,” she said, putting her tea cup on the table and sliding her arms around herself. “At least now, I can pretend there’s a future.”

  “Oh, Luci,” Vasiht’h said, gently, and rested a hand on her foot.

  “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” she said, sniffling. “I’m the girl who has it all together, and I’m falling apart over a man because I won’t sleep with his lovers.”

  “You can’t sleep with his lovers,” Jahir said. “There is a difference.”

  “And you aren’t ridiculous,” Vasiht’h said fiercely. “You’re wonderful, and you do have it together. This isn’t about you. It’s about a culture problem. You’re just…” He sighed. “You’re on the wrong sides of it. Both of you are.”

  She rubbed her nose. “You know what the worst part is? He really loves me. He wants me to be the first wife in his train, he wants my children, everything. It’s just that he wants his other lovers too. He says… he can’t choose between us, that it would be like asking a parent which of their children they love more. But I don’t want to be one of his lovers, loved equally but differently. I want to be his one love. And I feel selfish, even though I know that it can work that way. It worked that way for my parents. They had one another. They had me and my brother. And we were happy. That’s what I want for myself.”

  “There is nothing wrong in that,” Vasiht’h said firmly.

  She sighed and slumped. At last she seemed to see her tea and took a half-hearted sip of it before looking at the fire. “It is soothing, isn’t it. So many colors. Who would have thought a fire would look like that when you’re used to candles.”

  “I had no idea until Jahir introduced me to it,” Vasiht’h said.

  She lowered her face. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

  “For what?” Vasiht’h said. “We’ve hardly done anything—”

  “You’ve listened,” she said. “And you haven’t tried to make me do one thing or another. Everyone I go to wants me to do what they think is wisest, or what they think is best for me. I know they’re telling me those things because they care about me and don’t want to see me hurting, but… it just makes it worse. The two of you just… listened.” She shuddered. “I know it’ll be time to do something about it soon, whether I like it or not. I just… I just wanted to talk about it without having to defend myself.”

  “You can always do that here,” Vasiht’h said firmly. “In fact, if you want to stay, you can. We’ll make up the couch for you.”

  She glanced up at him, eyes widening.

  “So you don’t have to be alone, or with people who don’t know what’s going on,” Vasiht’h said. “If you want.”

  “I… I think I do,” she said, ears flipping back. She glanced at Jahir. “Is that all right with you too?”

  “If our hearth gives you comfort, alet,” Jahir said. “Then absolutely, you are welcome.”

  “Then… thanks,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’d like that.”

  Jahir brought the blankets, then, having recently done the laundry, and Vasiht’h donated some of his pillows. She curled up on their couch with her knees tucked against her chest, watched the fire, and made no conversation; they let her rest.

  Some half an hour later, Jahir stopped at the entrance to Vasiht’h’s room and said, “She sleeps.”

  “Already?” Vasiht’h said, looking up from his Health Perspectives reading.

  “Already,” Jahir said, “Would you like warm cider? I made some for myself.”

  “You did?” Vasiht’h said, confused. And then, “Actually, that sounds nice. Come in?”

  The Eldritch entered, bringing the tray with him. He set Vasiht’h’s mug on the desk and settled on one of the larger floor pillows.

  “I’m sorry,” Vasiht’h said, chagrined. “I don’t have any furniture in here for bi
pedals… you could bring something in from the other room?”

  “I’m fine,” Jahir said, and there was a silence then, one that would have been comfortable had not Vasiht’h felt uneasy in his own skin.

  “Thank you,” he said finally. “For knowing what to say to her.”

  Jahir shook his head, just a little. “Knowing what to say to her, alet, was the least of what she needed. And what she needed, you gave her.”

  “That being a place to sleep?” Vasiht’h asked.

  Jahir snorted. “You are not so oblivious, Vasiht’h. She herself told you. You listened. Without judgment, without advice, without pushing. That’s the substance of what we are studying, isn’t it?”

  “Part of therapy is doing something about a patient’s problems,” Vasiht’h said, uncomfortable.

  “Part of therapy is supporting a patient who is struggling to find an answer for their problems,” Jahir said. “And making suggestions when they seem at a loss.”

  “Like Luci is now?”

  “Lucrezia knows her path,” Jahir said. “Her grief is about walking it.”

  “And what do I have to offer someone like her?” Vasiht’h asked, rubbing his toes on the floor. “I’ve never been in love. I’ve never felt that strongly about anyone, to cry over losing them. How can I help someone with something I can’t imagine?”

  “Like you can’t imagine your desperate desire to make Meekie’s disease go away? And Amaranth’s? Like you can’t imagine your fear when you heard they’d taken Persy away?”

  Stunned, Vasiht’h looked at his roommate, who was sitting with one knee up and the other stretched before him, incongruously relaxed for the intensity of his eyes.

  “That… that’s…” And then he stopped and looked away.

  “That’s unfair?” Jahir offered.

  “No, that’s true, and I hadn’t thought about it, and… you’re right,” Vasiht’h said. “The fact that those girls are sick does hurt, and that I can’t fix it… it’s like something’s bleeding where I can’t reach to heal it.”

  “Then you have everything you need to understand someone like Lucrezia right now,” Jahir said. And held up a hand. “You are about to tell me it’s not the same. And the causes for your suffering are, indeed, different. But the feeling of helplessness and sorrow, the wish that things could be elsewise…” He tapped his chest. “That is the same for us all.”

  Vasiht’h frowned. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “You are too accustomed to thinking of yourself as passionless,” Jahir observed. “But being without storms of emotion does not make you unfeeling, alet. And you listen to people, and care for their welfare, and you can do that without losing yourself in them. I think you underestimate the value of what you offer those who seek you in their need.”

  “It was so obvious to you,” Vasiht’h said. “That I was troubled.”

  “You did say,” Jahir said. “When we were speaking of your doubt, the one that made you choose to go the research path.”

  “And you think it’s a bad idea.” Vasiht’h set his cup back on the desk. “You still think, because you’ve been telling me so in your understated way for a while now, haven’t you.”

  “I think you underestimate your talents,” Jahir said again. “And I wanted to tell you that what you did for Lucrezia was a kindness, and she needed it, and you knew exactly what to do when you saw her. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t flounder. You went to her and you listened, and you gave her a safe place to recover.” He stood, cup in hand. “You might ponder that instinct, perhaps.”

  Vasiht’h wanted to laugh it off, but found he couldn’t. Instead, he said, “Thank you.”

  Jahir smiled. “Good night, alet.” And left Vasiht’h to stare after him and wonder if he was flushed from the praise, from embarrassment, or from the uncomfortable feeling that he was making a mistake.

  Jahir had gone to bed that night with little thought other than his fatigue and a sense of regret over the grief of aliens. Despite the events of the evening, he did not dream, but slept so heavily that when he woke abruptly in the middle of the night he didn’t know why. And then he felt it, a wrongness so deep that he was off the bed and grabbing his nightrobe before he could guess at the cause. He ran for the great room and found Lucrezia whimpering in her sleep, and as Vasiht’h stumbled out of his own door, the Eldritch went to her… and so did the Glaseah.

  They arrived together, and they reached for her together, and Jahir felt the brush of a warm, solid side, as if he was touching Vasiht’h with his hands rather than sensing him pass in mind. He felt the ghostly hands of his roommate steadying Lucrezia’s sleeping thoughts, and Jahir blew the remembered breath of an alien goddess through her nightmare, and gently cleared it away. The weft of Vasiht’h’s presence, twining with his, felt far too easy; made soothing the Harat-Shar a simple matter. Beneath them, she sighed out and turned on her side, relaxing.

  Jahir leaned back, shaking. Between himself and his roommate he sensed for the briefest of moments a golden line, glimmering as if lit by the fire that had died to embers on the hearth. And then slowly it faded and took his sense of Vasiht’h with it, and the anchor of that steadying presence.

  Vasiht’h looked at him over Lucrezia’s head, eyes so wide they were rimmed in white. He whispered, “I’m sorry—”

  Jahir put a finger to his lips and shook his head. “She sleeps,” he answered, very low. “That is all that matters.” And then, because he had to know, he framed the words as a thought and offered it. Can you hear me thus?

  Of course, Vasiht’h said, and with that thought came fretfulness, something Jahir felt as the scratch of new wool against skin before it ebbed with the fading line. And then, covering his face, the Glaseah said, “Goddess, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  Jahir held his hand out, just close enough to draw the Glaseah’s eye. He whispered, “An accident. There was no harm.” And then, Hush.

  Vasiht’h quieted and glanced at Lucrezia, who was sleeping. He drew in a breath and whispered, “Think she’s fine for the night. You want to keep watch?”

  “We’ll know if she needs us,” Jahir said. And gently, “Good night, alet.”

  Vasiht’h bit his lip, then nodded and padded back to his room, pausing to look over his shoulder once. Jahir met his gaze and tried to imbue it with all his goodwill, and the Glaseah sighed and vanished into the dark.

  Jahir went also, sat on his bed and found his hands shaking. Had he just willingly touched minds with an alien? Two aliens? Several times? He had rearranged Lucrezia’s nightmare with the help of his roommate, had felt Vasiht’h at his side, in the shared space of her mind. And there had been no… no horror. No whelming of his own thoughts. Nothing but a comfortable presence, a welcome feeling of being in good company, doing good and gentle work. And the direct touch of the thoughts afterward… he had had such congress with Eldritch before, while training, and found it distasteful, but touches from his own kind had always come dense with disgust and heavy enough to scatter all his thoughts. No Eldritch had ever had the light touch his roommate had shown, nor the finesse to give such an intriguing sense of the feelings behind it.

  And yet he’d touched other aliens before, by accident, and they had been worse than any Eldritch, so loud he’d not only lost his own thoughts but briefly gained memories of theirs. He remembered the muscle memory the medical technicians had endowed him with, so powerfully he’d been confused as to his own identity. Was it because the Glaseah were an esper species, that they knew how to interact with others without harming them? Was Vasiht’h a special case? Was it somewhat of both?

  Jahir lay back down and pulled the sheets over his shoulder, and slept fitfully, trying not to look too closely at his own feelings on the matter, for fear he would find less of the discomfort that would have been respectable in an Eldritch… and more curiosity than he knew how to fight.

  CHAPTER 16

  Vasith’h woke an hour later than usual. A bleary L
uci was making coffee in his kitchen, and when he approached she handed him a note. In Jahir’s impeccable hand: “There is part of an omelet in stasis. —J”

  The omelet part was three times the size Vasiht’h expected, and he shared it with Luci over her coffee. As she hugged him on her way out, she said, “Thank you for everything, and especially for letting me stay. For the first time in months, I slept well.” She smiled, lopsided, and though she looked worn out, there was a calm in her that surprised Vasiht’h. “I even had dreams… about the wind in my hair, and a feeling that no matter how hopeless things seem, that… they change. They will change, even if you can’t imagine it now.”

  That stayed with him all day, distracting him from lectures he really should have been taking notes for. By the time he got home, his restlessness had graduated to full-fledged agitation, one that exploded when he accepted Sehvi’s call; without waiting for her greeting, he said, “I feel like I’m getting everything wrong!”

  She held up her hands, wide-eyed. “Slow down, ariihir. Start from the beginning? Sit!”

  “I can’t sit,” Vasiht’h said, pacing in front of her worried image. “I’m having feelings I don’t know what to do with. And I don’t know where any of it is coming from! There are children in trouble, and I keep pushing my roommate and Goddess knows when I’ll push too hard and then he’ll probably go away, and I have no research topic and I’m completely sure I’m not suited for practice now but if that’s true why can’t I think of anything to research?” He grabbed his head. “Goddess.”

  “If you say that a third time She might manifest just to see what all the fuss is about,” Sehvi said. “I knew about the children and the research problem. What’s going on with the roommate? Did something happen?”

  “Yes!” Vasiht’h said, and then dropped onto his haunches, sighing. “I touched his mind.”

  “Yes?” she said.