Heinlein's Finches

by Robin Banks

  “Sure. It’s heartwarming to see it still works out when sickness predominates so starkly, is all. It’s a great show of dedication.”

  “Absolutely. Loving me requires a huge degree of dedication. The woman’s practically a martyr, yet she bears it so well.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never known you healthy. Once your legs are healed, however many more months that may take, then she won't have to look after you anymore, will she?”

  Damn the bastard. Asher manages to control his expression, but that barb hits home and leaves him with nothing to say. Thankfully, Gwen’s ready. “Love is weird, isn’t it? It’s inexplicable how it makes people actually want to care for those they love. Maybe one day you’ll find out. Miracles do happen.”

  A couple of days later, the three of us – Gwen, Marcus and me – just got to the refectory after class. We’ve been finding Asher hanging out there before lunch since he got his short casts. He’s got nowhere else to go, and staying all cooped up in his office all morning with nothing to do can’t be much fun for him, really. Today, however, he’s not here. By the time we’ve collected our lunches he’s still not showed up. I don’t want to be alarmist, but this isn’t normal. Marcus can keep an eye on Gwen, so I abandon my tray on the table and go looking for Asher.

  As I hurry down the hallway, something hits me. I haven’t been paying any attention to my usual psi-link with the guys. We’re… Well, we’re pretty damn close. As close as I’ve been to anyone, ever. Before I started the new focusing exercises, if I didn’t shield carefully the guys had started to be constantly somewhat connected with me. I always half knew how they were feeling, regardless of how near or far they were. They were always with me, in a corner of my mind, or of my heart. Ever since I started trying to learn to re-focus, though, that’s gone. My psi-bility has become a lot more targeted; more accurate, precise, and deliberate. However, it doesn’t connect me with people the way it used to.

  I’ve lost the sense of comfort my gift used to give me. I’ve lost a feeling of connection I never really noticed was there. I have lost the actual connection; I really have. I’m trying to find Asher now and my panic is mounting because something must be wrong, because he never lets us down, but I don’t know where or how he is, and it’s hard for me to find him without knowing what I’m looking for. I’m rushing blindly trying to find him in a crowd of other people whose presence is clawing at my consciousness, and the harder I look for him the more I feel overwhelmed by the weight and noise of the humanity around me. Then I finally find him, I feel the spark of him, that spark that is uniquely him, and I’d be flooded with relief if he wasn’t hurting, and hurting bad.

  I race down the last length of the hallway, people scattering in front of me. I get out of the building proper and round the corner past the Tank and I’ve reached his office and opened the door and he’s there, on the floor, radiating physical pain and mental anguish. I rush over and pick him up, which I know I can’t do on my own but I can right now, because he’s hurting so much and needs me, and I put him on his bed, and hold him, and I know the physical pain is ebbing but the anguish is still there and it’s so intense it’s constricting my throat. He must see that in my eyes, or must see something anyway, because he pulls away from me and tries to calm me down.

  Calm me down. He’s trying to make me feel better.

  “I’m ok. Just had a fall. I was trying to…” he sighs. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I fell down, couldn’t get up. Haven’t been there long. Bashed myself a bit, but nothing major. I’m all good.”

  “You’re not. I felt that.” I’m trying to stay calm, not to add my emotions to this already charged situation, but I can’t hide the panic in my voice. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. Just a fall. I just have to learn what I can and can’t do, you know? Have to get used to this. Have to get used to how it is. Have to accept it. Maybe the Colonel was right; maybe my legs won’t come back to me. Maybe it’d be easier to accept that. Make plans for that.”

  “But your medics say everything is going well!”

  “They say a lot of stuff. They’re trying to be good to me, I know that, but they don’t know; not really. This is already taking way longer than normal. They don’t know if I’ll ever get back to how I used to be.” He’s staring into space. “Every day teaches me that I’m a different person now. I need to make peace with that, maybe. But I’m too scared to. I’m so fucking weak and useless that I’m too scared to even think about how weak and useless I am. And how this could be forever. This is forever, in a way. There’s no going back. There’s nowhere to get back to. Everything is different.”

  “What are you on about? You had an accident. Now you’re mending. Soon you’ll be mended. That’s all there is to it. You’re talking as if some kind of life shift had happened, but you just broke your legs. I know it sucks, but it happens, it happened. Now we just have to get you better.”

  “You don’t get it. This has been enlightening. Horrifying, yes, but enlightening. When I fell off that overhang, everything changed. I changed. Within a split second I went from being reasonably fit and strong and capable to being totally useless. That fall didn’t just change my life; it took my life away and replaced it with something much smaller, much shittier. And it replaced me, too. My sense of myself, of the person I used to be, that’s gone.”

  “What the hell are you on about?”

  “I’ve always been someone who gets shit done. It’s not just what I do; it’s who I am. I’m not the smartest or the most educated or the most capable but I get shit done. And I have to admit, I used to get huge ego strokes out of doing stuff that other people couldn’t or wouldn’t. I could fly and I can float and I can climb stuff nobody else can. That makes me feel better. Not better than anyone else, I don’t mean that; just better about myself.

  “I have my own niche; I have something I can achieve, something nobody can take away from me. And I know that it isn’t much; it’s not like Gwen‘s way of thinking through problems, or your psi-bility. I’m nothing special. Most of the stuff I’m good at doesn’t change the world around me. I could fly twice as well as anyone else but that wouldn’t make the world better. The teaching, that does something; that leaves a trail. I like the feeling of that. I like for the good I do to spread in the world. I know that overall I’m not making much of an impact, but the little I do makes me feel good about myself. And I know that it’s not much, and I’m ashamed of needing it, but it’s all I got.

  “And now it’s gone. I went and broke myself, and now it’s gone. And it may come back, or it may not, and for now I have no value. No value in my own eyes. Not much value in other people’s eyes, either.

  “I’ve never looked for support. It’s just not the way I’m wired, or the way I was brought up. You have to be independent in case you need to be, so I never tried to look for people willing to support me. It wasn’t a question I asked myself about people. I found some, like Gwen and you, but it was by accident. Now I need so much, and I can do so little. I look at how people look at me, people I used to think were my friends, and a lot of them don’t seem concerned. They seem disappointed. As if the fact that I can no longer do for them what I normally do meant that I am letting them down.

  “They look at me as if I’ve gotten smaller. As if the fact that I can do less also meant that I am less. And maybe they’re right. I can’t do my job. I can’t do anything else; there’s nothing else I was ever good at, and finding it now, while I’m like this… I don’t see it. And my wife needs me to… No, she doesn’t. My wife doesn’t need me. She never actually has, and that’s one of the reasons I love her so much. We’ve always been better together, but we’re fine on our own. But right now, with the threat hanging over her, she genuinely needs all the help she can get. And I’m no help at all.

  “I’ve never been happy about her situation. Never. Right from the start. How could I? I’ve never been happy knowing that she was at risk. But I’ve always felt able to do
something about it, if it came to it. I’m not that big and I’m not that strong but I’m big and strong enough to do what needs to be done, and what I lack in size and strength I make up in being determined that nobody, ever, will hurt that woman on my watch. I will destroy them or die trying. Even if they get me, I will make damn sure that it will cost them. And I might have been deluding myself, but I could hope that that would be enough, that it would give her enough of an edge.

  “Now that’s gone, too. I’m completely vulnerable. I can’t fight, I can’t run, I can’t even walk away. Anyone could hurt me. Gods, if you were to kick my casts right now you could probably make me cry. And that’s bad, but the really bad thing is that they could hurt Gwen in front of me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop them. I’d just have to sit by and watch it happen. And it’s obvious. Anyone can just take a look at me and realize how useless I am right now. And this could be the new me, this could be how it’s going to be forever. I may never go back to being the person I used to be. Even if I get better, it might not be soon enough. Things are happening now. Things need to be dealt with now.

  “And right now, as things stand, I could disappear from Gwen’s life and that would make it better. She could find someone who can do what needs to be done. She wouldn’t have to worry about me, or care for me, or hurt herself trying to do things for me that I should be able to do for myself. I’m dead weight. And right now, she really doesn’t need that. She needs me gone more than she needs me here.”

  I can’t listen to him anymore. “Man, you’ve lost it. She doesn’t think like that. She doesn’t feel like that! You need to talk to Gwen, straighten your head out.”

  He looks at me with abject fear in his eyes. “She’d make it ok. I know. She’d tell me that she loves me, and she’d love me just as much if it was just my head stuffed in a jar, though she could think of some more useful parts of my anatomy. And then she’d start joking about sex or something, and call me an old man, and she’d hold me, and it would all feel ok. But it wouldn’t be ok. What I’m doing is not ok. What I can’t do is not ok. And the fact that she loves me doesn’t change our situation. I can’t allow it to change how I look at our situation. Someone has to be practical about this, and right now it’s got to be me.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “For now, nothing. Nothing is all I’m good for, anyway.” He grimaces. “I can wait and do my best to get better. If I don’t get better, though, or gods forbid if something happens while I’m like this… I don’t know. I love her, you know? And that means wanting the best for her, even when she doesn’t see it for herself.” He closes his eyes. “If it comes to it that being with me is worse for her than being without me, I will have to make that call. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to, but I have to be. Gods help me, I have to be.”

  I don’t have anything to say to that. I disagree with everything he’s saying, but at the same time I know it’s true. Partly true, at least. And he’s scared and hurting now, so he definitely doesn’t need me to say that. What would Gwen do?

  “For someone so damn skinny, you’re a fat lot of good, aren’t you?” He turns to look at me in shock. “You’ve been out of the long casts for what, two days? You go pratting around when you were specifically told not to. You land on your ass, which serves you right. And then instead of calling for help like a normal person, or waiting for one of us to come in and laugh at you for being such a giant jackass, you go off spinning an imaginary dystopia that somehow involves you abandoning the only woman you’ve ever loved, who loves you, throwing away everything you have, everything you love, and wrecking everything she loves because you’re too godsdamn impatient to wait until your godsdamn legs are fixed and too godsdamn stubborn to ask for help in the meanwhile.

  “Dumping Gwen over broken legs?” I scoff. “We had a schoolchild break his leg at the lab. Eight year old boy, just off a colony, missing his mom and dad, with a broken leg, hurting and scared and frustrated. And I tell you, he just got on with it, twice as well as you are right now. He had a little cry when he needed to, and he did his rehab and took his meds and eight months later you’d have to remind him that he’d even had an accident. Though his scars were impressive. And you tell me that you wanna drop Gwen and crawl into a hole over the same. Call yourself a grown man?”

  He’s staring at me, slack-jawed and transfixed.

  “I know you’re hurting. I know you’re scared. But that doesn’t give you permission to stick your head so far up your own ass that you half-kill yourself with the fumes. You’re getting better. You’ll get through this. You’re also a jackass, but I still love you. So does Gwen. Now can we go and get our lunches? Mine’s probably congealed on my tray, so you can eat that. Serves you right. You scared the crap out of me. Now get the fuck up and let’s get the fuck on. Ok?”

  He straightens himself. “Yes. Sure. Sorry?”

  “It’s alright. The day you stop pulling reckless stunts is the day they call in to recycle your biomass. Come on.”

  I help him get up, then, when he’s standing next to me, I say “do you see this? Do you see what you’re doing? Could you do it three days ago?”

  “No…”

  “There you go. You’re getting better. I know it sucks, but you’re getting better. And if you ever let yourself get to feeling like that and you don’t talk to somebody about it, me or Gwen or a medic or whoever, I don’t give a fuck whom, I will personally make sure that the rest of your pathetic life is not worth living.”

  He looks at me with way too much fear in his eyes. I wish I could just magic him right back to normal.

  “I’ll tell Gwen about this. All of this. You clearly disobeying the medics, falling over, planning to dump her for her own good, as if she wasn’t capable of making her own decisions… If you think two broken legs are bad, wait till that happens to you.”

  He makes a vague semblance of a smile. “I guess I maybe shouldn’t have let this get this far without talking to somebody.”

  “You think?” Good thing you’re pretty, ‘cause you sure ain’t smart. Seriously, if you don’t wanna talk to Gwen, talk to me. Or Aiden; he’s good at listening. Or anyone else. Just don’t let yourself fester like this. Ok?”

  He nods.

  “Let’s get you on that damn ATR. You’re the heaviest skinniest bastard I’ve ever had to put up with.”

  Teething troubles notwithstanding, the shorter casts give Asher a lot more freedom, though they’re still very limiting. There’s a lot he can’t do, but at least now he can work out. I never thought he’d turn into a gym rat, but these days he’s in there every afternoon. I’m glad of that; he seems a lot happier after he’s trained. He’s doing way more than his rehab requires, but I can’t see any harm in it. He doesn’t have anything else to do, he’s not injured himself yet, and he’s getting a real kick out of it.

  I’ve also got a very selfish reason to approve of this new regime. I always thought the guy was good looking. He’s lean and not in the least mean and beautiful in every way. When I first met him it took me about two minutes of conversation to determine that he was Grade A fuckable, and he’s given me no reason to change my mind. As far as I’m concerned, he’s perfect as he is. There’s not a single thing about him I’d like to change, aside from his health. Under the new fitness regime, though, he’s starting to get buff. Gwen managed to put some weight on him while he was laid up, and the training is turning it all to muscle.

  It’s been happening so slowly that I had only half noticed it. It hits me all of a sudden one afternoon when we swing by the gym to pick him up on our way to dinner. He’s just finished his workout, by the looks of it. He’s still flushed and extremely sweaty. He’s missed a couple of haircuts, and his damp hair is all copper curls. When the whips his top off to change, my jaw hits the floor. Dude’s still lean as hell, but he’s getting some serious pecs and shoulders and arms and abs and all kinds of muscles all over the place, as far as I can see. There are places I can’t
see, and I really wish I could, because I bet they’re spectacular.

  I watch him maneuver himself back on the ATR and my mind goes completely blank. When he puts his top back on, that doesn’t help in the least. I just don’t seem to be able to think anymore. He catches me gawping at him and looks highly amused. I’m momentarily ashamed of myself, then I realize that Gwen is doing precisely the same. We’d make a fine synchronized drooling team. I couldn’t care less; if Marcus wasn’t here, I’d drag Asher straight home and make him miss his dinner.

  Marcus is here, however, so that’s not really an option. I try to get my brain to reactivate and follow them down the hallway.

  We’re about halfway down to the refectory, when Marcus pats Asher on the back. That makes Asher go rigid, but Marcus, as usual, doesn’t seem to register that and start to chat jovially. “It’s really great that you’re not self-conscious about your scars. That you feel able to display them so publicly.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Well, some people would be uncomfortable about exposing their scars in public. But you don’t, obviously. You seem perfectly comfortable letting everyone see them.”

  Asher lifts his hands off the ATR controls. “Fat lot of good it would do me to be uncomfortable. I’d have to wear godsdamn gloves all the time.”

  Marcus sighs. “Yes. I guess some people would go for that. You know, to stop other people having to see them.”

  Gwen guffaws. “Having to see them? They’re hardly visible.”

  “I think it’s great that you are so supportive.”

  “Supportive? You’re being ridiculous. They are hardly fucking visible. And even if they weren’t, what the hell should he be ashamed of? That he nearly gave his life for the Patrol?”

  “You’re right. Of course. It’s a shame that it didn’t achieve much.”