Ultraviolet

by R. J. Anderson

  But there were worse things than disappointment, and I’d lived through several of them already. I had to try.

  I closed my eyes, reaching back into memory for the number I’d seen on the business card. It had started with purple and black, then shaded into brown . . . I pressed the keys one by one, translating the colors back into numbers. Then I raised the phone to my ear and forced myself to keep it there.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end sounded preoccupied. I heard the hum of some machine working in the background, a wobbly green noise that tasted vaguely familiar—but then it died away, leaving only the electric silence.

  “Faraday, it’s me,” I said.

  A sharp intake of breath. A long pause. And then, in a tone so warm I thought my spine would melt, “Alison. Where are you?”

  You better not do anything stupid, said Micheline’s warning voice in my mind, but I ignored it. “I’m at home. We need to talk.”

  “Yes, of course. As soon as I’ve finished here—”

  “I mean now.”

  He hesitated. “Well, we could, but wouldn’t you rather have this conversation in person?”

  I backed up to the edge of the mattress and sat down, clutching the phone with both hands. “What?”

  “I was going to say, give me a few minutes to finish what I’m doing, and then I’ll come over. Will you still be awake in half an hour?”

  He wanted to come. To my house. Tonight. Hysteria surged inside me, and I choked off a laugh.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ll be here.”

  . . .

  As I squirmed out my bedroom window onto the roof, it struck me that this was the most deliberately crazy thing I’d ever done in my life. Yes, I wanted answers, and I was afraid this might be my only chance to get them. But I also wanted to get out of Pine Hills, and if my mother found me missing from my bedroom and called the police, it might be weeks before Dr. Minta would even consider releasing me again.

  Yet there stood Faraday in the yard below me, his upturned face pale with worry and moonlight, and I couldn’t sit on the windowsill forever. “I have one question,” I whispered down to him. “If I told you I hate you and don’t want to talk to you or see you ever again, would you go away and leave me alone?”

  He barely even paused. “Yes.”

  He wasn’t lying. He’d allowed me to believe any number of things about him that weren’t true, but he’d never directly lied to me.

  I crab-walked down the shingles to the edge of the roof, rolled over on my belly and swung my legs out into space. The drop from the porch overhang to the picnic table was only a few feet, but if I didn’t land just right . . .

  “I’ve got you.” Strong hands gripped my thighs, pulling me downward. My fingers scrabbled wildly at the shingles, and I nearly ripped out the eavestrough before I let go and fell backward into Faraday’s arms.

  He caught me so easily I might have been made of cotton. “All right?” he whispered, breath warming my cheek as he set me down. He smelled like sweat and chemicals, neither one pleasant, and yet for one treacherous second my knees buckled. Part of me wanted to turn around and slap him, to shout my fury and my betrayal, to demand the answers only he could give . . . and the rest of me wanted to slide my fingers up into his hair and pull his mouth down to mine and not ask any questions at all.

  And that really was crazy. How could I let myself forget, even for an instant, what he’d done to me? “You could have warned me,” I snapped, as I twisted away.

  “But I did,” he murmured, sounding perplexed. “Or are we not talking about the roof anymore?”

  Ignoring the question, I climbed off the picnic table and jumped down onto the patio. He followed, and we soft-footed it out to the street, where a rust-speckled Volkswagen was waiting. “This is your car?” I asked.

  Faraday jingled his keys at me, a shower of tiny gold stars. “For what it’s worth. Where do you want to go?”

  I glanced back at my house, with its darkened windows and curtains closed against the night. This was my last chance to change my mind. If I left with Faraday now, anything might happen.

  “Just start driving,” I said. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  . . .

  The parking lot of the mall wasn’t the most interesting place in the city, especially at one in the morning. But it was quiet, and close to home, and lit well enough for us to see each other without anyone else seeing us. Faraday’s car smelled even soapier than he did, so I rolled down the window to let in the mellow night air.

  “Sorry about the smell,” said Faraday. “I came straight from work.”

  I looked at him—really looked at him, for the first time that night. He was wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and gray uniform trousers that made him look vaguely like . . .

  No, it couldn’t be, the idea was ridiculous. And yet as soon as it had crossed my mind, all the clues I’d been missing slotted into place: the scent of industrial-strength cleanser on his hands, the muffled whirring I’d heard when he picked up the phone. . . .

  “You’re a janitor?”

  “A night custodian, yes. I don’t need much sleep, and it gives me time to work on other things during the day.”

  “Like your magazine, I suppose,” I said.

  “There is no magazine,” he replied. “But if you’re planning to poke around in odd places and ask questions, it helps to pretend you’re a journalist.”

  My jaw tightened. “Or a scientist.”

  “No,” he said. “I really am a scientist.”

  He was telling the truth, but it wasn’t helping. Irritably I scraped my long hair back from my face and tied it into a knot. “All right, then. How about you start by telling me exactly what kind of scientist you are and where you really came from and why you fabricated a whole research project just so you could talk to me, and I’ll interrupt whenever you lie or stop making sense?”

  “I’ve never lied to you,” he said.

  “I know. I would have tasted it if you did.”

  “Not just that.” He unbuckled his seat belt and turned to face me. “I didn’t want to. You’d been honest with me, told me things you’d never told anyone else. It seemed wrong not to be honest with you in return.”

  “But not completely honest,” I said with a touch of bitterness. “When Dr. Minta told me what you’d done—”

  “I was going to tell you. I was just waiting for the right moment, when I could be sure you were ready to listen. Because . . .” He blew out a sigh. “It’s not the kind of story that most people would find easy to believe.”

  “Faraday. . . .” I began, then was struck by a disquieting thought. “Is that even your real name?”

  “Legally yes, otherwise no. Michael Faraday was a famous physicist, as you probably know, so it seemed like a good choice for an alias. Sebastian is closer to the name I was raised with.”

  But I’d liked Faraday. And I wasn’t ready to start calling him Sebastian, especially if that wasn’t his real name either. I felt like I’d been cheated somehow, robbed all over again of the man I’d thought I knew. “Go on, then,” I said flatly. “Tell me your story.”

  Faraday was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Once there was a young man—just a boy, really—who was part of a team of scientists, an apprentice to one of their leaders. They lived on a base that was very remote and isolated, a place you wouldn’t know even if I told you the name. And they were there to study an extraordinary and very powerful natural phenomenon, which they’d discovered by accident some years ago and were only just beginning to understand.

  “So far their experiments were going well, but the boy was impatient. The scientists had some very sophisticated instruments, but they were still making all their observations from a distance. The boy believed that they could learn even more if one of them went and investigated the phenomenon firsthand, and he even volunteered to do it.

  “The other scientists said no, it was t
oo dangerous. There were too many things that could go wrong. But the boy was determined to prove himself, and with the help of another apprentice, a boy about four years older than he was, he went ahead with his plan anyway. They borrowed a machine that the scientists used to transport cargo, and the older apprentice set it up to take the boy right into the middle of the phenomenon they’d been studying.

  “At first, the plan worked perfectly. The boy arrived safely at his destination, and spent a couple of days exploring and making discoveries without suffering any obvious harm. But when he tried to contact his friend to tell him he was ready to come home, there was no answer. And when he looked for the machine he’d used to get there, he could no longer find it. He was stranded.”

  A group of scientists in a secret base, studying some weird phenomenon—this was almost as bizarre as one of Sanjay’s delusions. If Faraday hadn’t sounded so serious about it, I’d have thought he was mocking me. “The boy was you?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I was barely a teenager when I arrived here. I had no home, no friends, no money, and I didn’t know a word of English—or French, for that matter. I’d only planned to be here for a couple of days, not the rest of my life.”

  “Here?” I said. “You mean Sudbury? But what kind of—”

  “Let me finish,” said Faraday. “Please.” I fell silent and he went on, “For the first year or so, it took all my wits and determination just to survive. But once I’d discovered the library and taught myself to read English, I was able to start learning the things I needed to know.”

  I could sense a hundred stories between every sentence: tales of homeless shelters and foster care, of frustrated police and bewildered teachers. But I swallowed my curiosity, and let him keep talking.

  “It didn’t take me long to realize that computers were the key to everything I needed—or at least, they were fast becoming so. I read every book on the subject I could find and took every course I could afford, until I’d learned how to hack into just about anywhere. Once I’d created a legal identity for myself, life became easier. But I needed to do more than just live. I needed to find the machine that had brought me here and get it working properly again, so I could go home.”

  He paused, waiting for my reaction. At last I said, “So where’s home? Not South Africa, I take it.”

  A sad smile touched one corner of his mouth. “No.”

  “Russia?” They were just the other side of the pole, after all.

  “No.”

  I made a frustrated noise. “Faraday, I don’t want to play guessing games with you. Just tell me.”

  “I can’t. Not like that. I need you to figure it out for yourself.” He reached across and took my hand between his warm, calloused ones. “Think about it, Alison. I told you I was a real scientist, and I am. Yet I’ve spent nearly my whole time in this city investigating every bizarre newspaper story, urban legend, and coffee-shop rumor that crossed my path. Strange lights, odd noises, people disappearing without a trace—”

  Shock jolted through me, and I snatched my hand away. “Tori,” I breathed. “That’s what all this is about. You chased me down, studied me like a lab animal, manipulated me into trusting you—just so you could find out what happened to her.”

  “I already know what happened to her,” he said patiently. “She disintegrated. You told me that a long time ago. If that was all I cared about, I would have ended our sessions right then, and left you on your own.”

  “Then what do you want from me?” My voice cracked with frustration. “I don’t see what I have to do with you being stuck here, or with this ‘machine’ you’ve been looking for, or—”

  “You have everything to do with it,” said Faraday. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who could actually help me. Because you were there when Tori disintegrated, and you saw it all. I found that out from talking to one of your neighbors— she’d heard you shouting about it as the police took you away.”

  Mel. He’d been talking to Mel. My head began to throb, and I pushed the heels of my hands against my eyes. Was that why she’d come to visit me, that one time? Because he needed more information?

  “I had to find a way to talk to you,” Faraday went on. “So I hacked into your patient files at St. Luke’s. And when I read about some of the things you’d said and done after Tori died, it dawned on me that you might have synesthesia.”

  “So that’s when you . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. It hurt too much. To think that all along Faraday had been using me, that all his seeming generosity and kindness had been tainted with self-interest, made me want to smash the window and cut my wrists with it. To think that I had trusted the wrong person yet again—

  “I came up with the study as a way of getting close to you, yes,” he said. “And to see if I could persuade you to help me. But once I’d met you, and realized what you’d been going through, my priorities began to change.”

  “You felt sorry for me.” My voice was flat.

  “More than that. I felt a connection to you. A sense of . . . kinship.” He shifted closer, the musk-and-soap of his skin filling the space between us. “Yes, I was hoping you could help me find my way home. But I wanted you to be able to go home, too. And I believed—I still believe—that the solution to my problem and the solution to yours is the same.”

  “Is that so,” I said. I was hardly even paying attention now. All I could think was that I wanted this conversation to be over, so I could go home.

  “Let me put it this way. When you told me you’d disintegrated Tori, I told you there was no way you could have done such a thing. But didn’t you ever stop to wonder what could?”

  Of course I had. But the only explanation I’d been able to think of was that I’d killed her some other way, and then deluded myself into thinking she’d disintegrated. How was that any better?

  “The truth is,” said Faraday, “that if anyone’s to blame for Tori’s death, I am. Because the machine that brought me here, the one I’ve been looking for all these years . . . is the same one that tore her apart.”

  “What?”

  Faraday pushed a hand through his hair, making it more rumpled than ever. “Alison, before I tell you anything more, I need you to know that the last thing I want is to hurt you or frighten you or make your life any harder than it already is. What I’m about to say is going to sound bizarre, maybe even impossible—and yet, I swear to you, it is the truth. If you . . .” His beautiful voice roughened. “If you can’t trust me, can you at least trust your senses? Shouldn’t you be able to taste it, if I’m lying?”

  I’d thought so when I came out here, but after hearing Faraday’s story, I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe the sheer pleasure of listening to him talk had messed up my synesthesia. Maybe he’d been lying to me all along, and I’d missed the bitter aftertaste because his words had been so sweet in other ways, because I’d wanted to believe.

  There was only one way I could think of to be sure.

  “Lie to me, then,” I demanded. “Tell me something that you know isn’t true.”

  Faraday reached out and cupped a hand under my chin, his fathomless violet eyes holding mine. “I don’t care about you,” he said quietly. “And I’m not from another world.”

  FIFTEEN (IS AMBIVALENT)

  The taste of Faraday’s words was like cocoa powder, dry and bitter. There was nothing wrong with my ability to tell when he was lying. Which meant—

  My chest felt heavy, as though my lungs had turned to lead. A mosquito whined around my ear, a distant cousin of Tori’s Noise, as I fumbled off my seat belt and shoved the door open.

  “Where are you going?” Faraday’s voice was a zigzag of alarm. “Alison—”

  But by then I’d already stepped out onto the asphalt and was walking away as fast as my shaky legs would carry me. I understood now, with nauseating clarity, how cruelly I’d been deceived. What difference did it make that Faraday thought he was telling the truth when the truth was nothing more than a delu
sion? Why should it matter if Faraday believed in my sanity now that I knew Faraday himself was insane?

  “Alison.” Faraday sprinted up to me and caught my arm. “Don’t. Let me explain.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” I said. If I wanted stories about aliens spying on the people of Earth and using them for their secret experiments, I could get better ones from Sanjay. I wrenched free of his grasp and kept walking.

  “You saw Tori disintegrate,” Faraday called after me. “You knew nothing on this world could do that to a person, and yet you convinced yourself you’d made it happen. If you could believe that, why not this?”

  I stopped.

  “Don’t think of me as an alien,” said Faraday. “Think of me as a long-lost relative, who just happens to live on the other side of the universe.” He caught up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not asking you to believe in little green men, Alison. More like . . . accidental colonists.”

  I shook him off. “I can’t do this. Don’t you understand? I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I shouted at him, “the whole idea is crazy!”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Faraday said, “Well. You’ve spent enough time doubting your own sanity. I suppose it was about time you started questioning mine.”

  I looked away, unable to bear his level, faintly reproachful gaze. The worst of it was, Faraday didn’t seem crazy. There was nothing excitable about his manner, no hint of paranoia. He hadn’t assumed I’d buy his story, in fact just the opposite; he’d tried to ease me into it, because he knew it would be hard for me to believe. That was a lot more self-awareness than I’d ever seen from Sanjay—or any of the other patients at Pine Hills who suffered from delusions.

  And yet if I accepted what Faraday was telling me, it would cast doubt on everything I’d believed was—and even more importantly, wasn’t—real.

  “The phenomenon that my team was studying,” said Faraday, “is a dimensional rift, a spacial and temporal anomaly that links our part of the universe to yours. One of my colleagues measured the rate at which the rift was moving through space, and calculated that a few thousand years ago, it would have passed directly through our planet. So for a while, it might have been possible to step out of our world and end up in yours, or vice versa . . . and that means your people and mine might have come from the same ancestors.”