by Robin Banks
“Eh? What?”
“You look like Reggie on a bad day. Seriously.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Actually, carry on. It might come in handy.”
“Humph”.
We arrive at a house that looks just like every other house on that road. Seriously, I don’t know how these people find their own front door without counting. I’m guessing that sticking out is not a useful strategy around here.
Gwen winks at me. “Secret knock time.” And she taps two bars of ‘shave and a haircut’. “We’re proper outlaws now.” I roll my eyes at her.
A spyhole opens high up on the door. It swiftly closes, and the door opens. “In. Quickly.”
The room is small, cold, and bare. The face of the man looking us over is just as uninviting. “I was not expecting you. Problem?”
Gwen doesn’t look the least bit intimidated. “They reset our schedule for us. It was now or never. Sorry. If you can’t facilitate this at such short notice, we’ll understand.”
The man shakes his head. “Let me speak to a few people. Make yourselves at home.” And he leaves us in this empty box of a room. The windows are shuttered tight. I feel claustrophobic and have an urge to bolt, but the guys make themselves comfortable, Gwen on the pig crate and Aiden on the floor, so I follow suit.
A few minutes later a lady emerges from the inner door. “Come along, then. We’ve got it all sorted out. Bit of a rush job, though.”
“Sorry. We didn’t really get given an option.”
“Some people are just damn inconsiderate.”
The room next door actually looks home-like, although it’s way too small, has no windows, and is already crowded with a mixed bunch of people. Based on the amount of iron work inside the door we just went through, the front room must be some kind of containment or inspection area. Now we’re stuck in here. Everyone gives us a good once-over without bothering to be subtle about it. Even the kids check us out, seemingly more guarded than curious. There’s an air of faint menace, of danger narrowly avoided, as if we were travelling a thin bridge over a deep chasm.
I feel utterly out of my depth, which makes me feel scared, which makes me feel resentful, which makes me look sullen. I catch myself in a mirror and I do look like the Chancellor on a bad day. Inside I feel like a schoolchild trying to pass a test without having done any homework. I vow to myself that, when and if we get out of this, I will take a more proactive approach to my life. I will look at what I want to do and who I want to be and work to get there, instead of bumbling about buffeted by circumstances. I want to be prepared and competent and confident like Gwen, who’s now smoothly negotiating small talk with a bunch of people who could probably get rid of us without suffering either practical consequences or moral pangs.
I feel so disillusioned. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. I wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
I stand against the wall with my arms crossed, silent and scowling, until the lady who walked us in turns around and smiles at me. She comes over bearing a small glass full of some clear liquid. When I take a sip, I nearly cremate my tonsils.
“First time off-world for you?”
“Eh? No. But first time in a while.”
“You’ll do fine, big strong guy like you.” She pats my arm and goes back to join the rest of the throng. I guess my tough-guy front is not all that convincing.
I shake myself from my funk and my fear, look around again, and remind myself that I’m surrounded by people. Not by members of an alien species, or by dangerous animals; by people just like me, whose lives may be very different from mine but who still have more in common with me than we have differences. I need to remember that. Or maybe I just need to chill the fuck out. Five minutes into a life of crime, and I’m already bricking it.
Eventually food and drinks appear. We sit at a makeshift table that is way too large for the room but way too small for the crowd. The evening proceeds smoothly enough. Gwen carries on the bulk of the interactions, as per usual. Aiden makes a couple of technical comments, and eventually gets pulled aside by a guy who wants him to look at some diagrams on a decrepit reader. I sit and try to follow the conversations going on around me, but find myself with nothing to contribute. So I just sit there in silence, pretending as hard as I can that my behavior is normal. Everyone leaves me alone. This fails to make me feel more comfortable.
When people start to turn in, we’re given some blankets and pillows to make ourselves beds of sort in that same room. Gwen checks on the pigs and cleans them out. Once we turn our light off, the windowless room is pitch black. I can’t see my hand in front of my face. I know because I try. I find myself searching for Gwen’s hand in the dark, and although I’m ashamed of myself I feel better when I find it.
“Are you ok, loveling? You’ve been unusually quiet.”
“I don’t really have a lot to say. I feel very out of place.”
“That’s because you are, maybe.” She rolls over closer to me. “Or maybe you just have this idea of what your place is, and you’re telling yourself a story that’s limiting you. You’re doing ok, you know? I mean, for your character, if that’s who you want to be on this trip. Silent, brooding henchman is always a good sell. But you could be someone else too, and find a way to make it work. That’s the beauty of short cons; you get to pick who you want to be. And if you like that person, you can decide to be more like them.”
“I don’t like me right now. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Mostly scowling and being butch, love. Which you’re doing perfectly. But it’d be good if you could relax into it and enjoy it. Not for the mission; that makes no odds, because you’re doing fine as you are. But for yourself. And for me, because I love you.”
Aiden's voice sounds odd in the dark. “Also if it all goes to shit, at least you enjoyed it. Pointless to take unnecessary, unenjoyable risks.”
“Huh. He’s right, you know,” muses Gwen. “Never thought of that.”
“You enjoy risks. Adrenaline junkie.”
Gwen squeezes me. “It’s kind of an issue, really. I tend to be happiest when I’m doing something I shouldn’t. It’s not a good thing. I worked that out a while ago, but I haven’t done anything to fix it. Not sure if I can.”
Aiden rolls over in the dark. “Maybe you’ll grow out of it. Find something even better.”
“Did you?” Gwen asks.
“Nah. I never got to choose my adrenaline spikes. Total lack of control. I learnt to enjoy their absence. That’s not good either.”
I’m confused. “What’s wrong with avoiding danger?”
“Nothing. But avoiding the fear of danger is bad. Restrictive. Giving up on choice, or hope… Bad long-term. Helps short-term. Like now. I don’t like this, but I don’t care. Don’t think about it. One foot in front of the other. I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen better. It is what it is.”
“Hang on a moment. Gwen is saying that seeking adrenaline is bad. You’re saying that avoiding adrenaline is bad. You can’t both be right.”
Gwen sighs. “I think the ideal would be doing what you truly want to do, having evaluated the costs and risks and benefits. Not to do stuff just because it’s risky or to avoid it just in case it turns out to be scary. Maybe. If I understood it, maybe I could live it. Or maybe if I lived it I could understand it. Either way, I don’t think what I do is ideal, but for now I go where my joy is to be found, wherever I can.”
“Ditto.”
“What about Asher?”
Aiden’s voice is solemn. “Asher does the next right thing. Always. Regardless. He’s a hero.”
That surprises me. I expect this kind of comment from Gwen, not from him. And I don’t get it. “I don’t want to piss on Asher. You know I love the guy. But on a day-to-day, he doesn’t do anything different from what you guys do.”
Gwen squeezes me. “Asher wakes up every day knowing he’s gonna be fighting the same demons that left him exhausted the nig
ht before. And he still gets out of bed. There’s heroism in that. But even without that… You look at the day-to-day, and he might make the same choices we make. But the underlying reasons are completely different. He actually believes in doing the right thing, always. He believes that’s more important than doing what he wants, or what makes him happy. He believes that there is a… I don’t know what to call it. An overarching rightness that should be fought for. And it’s more important to him than he himself is. He truly doesn’t put himself at the center of his own universe. I don’t know anyone else like him.”
“That doesn’t sound altogether healthy.”
“Oh, love, it isn’t. You’ve seen how he can get. Everything comes from somewhere. But it makes my love for him easy and selfish. He’s a better person than I ever could be, than I ever want to be, really, and he has my back. Always. The only way something bad could ever come to me on his watch is over his dead body. I have to watch for that, because I have no use for a dead hero, but it makes him so easy to love. And he doesn’t understand that there is anything special about him. He thinks it’s the only way to be, even though he knows most people aren’t like that at all. God, I miss him. I can’t wait to go home.”
“Where’s home gonna be? I feel so lost.”
“Wherever we’re together.” And she squeezes me tight.
“Home is where you don’t fight, and you don’t have to watch your back.” Aiden voice sounds so small in the dark.
I turn towards him. “See, that makes me wanna hug you right now. But I don’t know if you’d like that.”
“I don’t know either.”
“Scooch over? Madam’s got me trapped.”
We lie side by side, and I don’t hug him, but I do put my arm under him, over his shoulders. It’s a strange contrast to have Gwen so soft and relaxed on one side of me, and Aiden rigid and perfectly self-contained on the other. I’m still not shielding, and Aiden next to me feels… When I realize how he feels, I’m so shocked I blurt it out.
“You’re shielding. You’re shielding inside.”
“Eh? What?”
“You’re shielding inside yourself. From yourself.” And without moving, he goes even more rigid. I don’t want to spook him worse and I’m not really thinking, so I project what I used project back home when a baby was upset or hurt; a mixture of presence and reassurance. I shouldn’t do it, but I do, and it must be the right instinct because he goes even more rigid for a moment, then breathes out and cautiously relaxes a tiny bit.
“Dude, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“Nah, it’s ok.” He breathes out again and relaxes some more.
Gwen lifts herself over my chest. “You guys ok?”
“Yeah.” “Yes.”
“You gonna tell me what happened?”
I don’t have a chance to answer before Aiden speaks up. “No. Not now, ok? When we get home. Not here.”
Home. I want to go home so bad it hurts.
“Oh, fuck it all. I had this all wrong. I thought it was going to be totally different. You come back from one of your capers and you’re all bouncy and happy and horny and more alive than ever. I look at those people and at where I am and it all feels way too real and no fun at all, and I just want to go home. Even though I don’t know where home is anymore. But I know how it feels, and this ain’t it.”
Gwen lifts herself of the floor and leans on my chest. “Well, you’re more sensitive than most people. These people may not mean us any harm, but they don’t mean us any good, either. They would have no qualms harming us if it became necessary. They’re neutral to us, and violence is an option on the table.”
Aiden chuckles. “Ain’t that the whole of the universe? Neutral, with a chance of violence.”
“Sure is, but this is more immediate. And you,” she pokes my chest, “have not lived in a place where violence was an accepted currency. But you’re smart, and you get people, so you realize the situation we’ve got ourselves in, and it makes you uncomfortable. Nothing wrong with any of this.”
“And the fact that I just want to go home?”
“Nothing wrong with that, either. Just, I dunno, remind yourself that this is the way home. It’s the only way we can get home – well, no, not the only one, but the best we could think of. We are going home. Though the road kinda sucks. But it is what it is, so you might as well try to enjoy it. Does that help?”
“Honestly? No. Maybe it’ll help tomorrow.” I sigh. “Do we need to keep watch?”
“Would it make you feel better?”
I think about it. “Yes. Does that matter?”
She slides over to hug me. “Yes. It does.”
“I’ll take first watch,” Aiden mumbles. “I got shit I need to think about.”
“If you’re sure. Wake me when you’ve had enough?”
“Will do.”
I thought I was too worked up to fall asleep, but clearly I was wrong. At some point in the middle of the night Aiden shakes me awake. I was sleeping so deeply that he nearly gives me a heart attack. Finding myself in pitch darkness gives me another jolt, and remembering where I am gives me a third. I’ve never been more awake in my life.
“You alright? Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” Aiden whispers.
“No. It’s ok. My fault. I’m way too jumpy.”
In my sleep I rolled over, so I’m back-to-back with Gwen, facing Aiden. We lie in the darkness next to each other for a bit. He doesn’t feel anywhere near falling asleep.
“That thing you did before. Could you do it again?”
I don’t have to ask him what he meant. “You sure?”
“Yeah. If it’s ok.”
“Well, it is and it isn’t.” I try to project the same, but I don’t quite manage it. I’m concerned about him now, and about us, and that feeling gets into the mix.
“Huh. Thank you.”
“Are you ok?”
“It’s like… I can feel that. It’s nice. What is it for?”
“It’s not for anything, really. Projecting is not something I should be doing. But when I was home, before I got taken to the lab, I’d use that to reassure people. Particularly babies who couldn’t talk yet. Like a hug, I guess. I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t know any better.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody had told me not to. Nobody knew I was doing it.”
“No. I mean, why shouldn’t you do it?”
“It’s invasive, I guess.”
“So’s a hug.”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know. Everyone can hug? I don’t know. There are rules.”
“Who made them?”
“I don’t know that either. The Fed, I guess. Or people.”
“Doesn’t scan. No rule against hugging.”
“No, but there are rules about not hugging people if they don’t want you to.”
“Oh. Right. Well. I liked that. Hugs, not so sure. But that feels nice. Reminds me of Martha.”
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I say nothing. After a while, I hear the pattern of his breathing change, and I know he’s fallen asleep.
I have no means of measuring time, so I don’t know when to wake Gwen up. It doesn’t seem fair, anyway. The whole idea of keeping watch was mine. At about the time when I start wondering whether we’ve been walled into this darkened tomb forever, a sliver of light appears from under the door. I shake the guys awake. I can’t look forward to the day ahead, but I can look forward to it being over.
The sullen man who let us in yesterday emerges from the bowels of the house. After a welfare check on the piggies and a hurried, subdued breakfast of some indeterminate vat gloop, we get on our way. It’s not daybreak yet, but the streets are already filling with people hurrying to work.
When we get to the space port the man walks us towards a mid-sized ship. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the vessel disappoints me in how unremarkable it is. It doesn’t look anything like a smuggling ship. I guess that’s the whole i
dea.
The man buzzes the com. When the door opens, I look up the ramp and see a very tall young woman with a very friendly smile.
“This is your pilot, Aleksandra Nikolayevna. I leave you in her capable hands. Good luck.”
The woman smiles even more broadly at our confusion. “You can call me Sasha. Easier on the jaw. Come on up!”
Gwen starts to go up the ramp. I’d go too, but I’m still attached to the crate, which is attached to Aiden, who is apparently rooted to the spot. “Psst. Dude. Move!”
It takes him a few seconds and me yanking the crate to get going. When we get inside the ship, my initial opinion is confirmed: this lady must be an Amazon, like in the Terran legends. She’s nearly as tall as Aiden, and almost as broad in the shoulders. Well, she’s broad in various places, rather pleasantly so. Gwen looks minuscule by comparison. They’re standing in front of each other, chatting amiably, both smiling broadly and freely, clearly just as comfortable and confident and secure in their competence, and not in the least competitive. I have a sudden feeling that this is going to be a good trip. I have to attend to business, though.
“If I may, where would you like us to put the pigs?”
“Pigs. Pigs?” Sasha’s blinking at me.
“Well, piglets. Two of. In the crate.”
“I had no idea! I was just told I was going to be taking a shipful of the usual assorted crap and some extra passengers, and I’d need a lift back. Nobody said anything about pigs.” Her smile gets even broader. “Oh, this is perfect. To shaft the Fed is always fun, but to shaft them this comprehensively is just glorious. Ha!”
“So, where should I park them?”
“Strap the crate into a seat, I guess. You’ll want to keep an eye on them, no?”
“Yes, please. That’s very kind.”
“We will have to stash them when we get to the tube, in case they search us. Mind you, that’s unlikely if my people have done their job, but better safe than sorry.”
I have to tug at the crate again to get Aiden to move. Once I finish securing the crate, I turn around. Aiden is still standing there, an unusually gormless expression on his face, desperately trying not to look at our pilot. Oh. Oh. This is going to be an interesting trip, for sure. I elbow Aiden into motion towards the lasses.