Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  She scratched at her scalp with both hands, trying to wake up.

  “So what now?”

  “We give it the weekend to settle, then we go in on Monday and see what’s changed.”

  “Everyone’s panicking, aren’t they?” Cassie asked. He nodded, distracted. After a moment, he went back to check his computer again.

  “People putting in transfer requests… a couple of early retirements… Some people think they’re pulling in the cleanup crew to shut the whole program down.”

  “Why is this such a big deal?” Cassie asked.

  “You don’t read enough news,” Troy said, sipping at his coffee.

  “What?”

  “Crisp,” Troy said, sitting his mug down next to him and stretching his neck. “He’s determined to make something out of the installation that it was never meant to be.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, everything it was never meant to be,” he said. “A profit center, a tourist destination, a military research facility. Some of us, when we get a little bit too tippy, think that he wants to start military campaigns on other planets. Call it a humanitarian intervention, then go name a country after himself, halfway across the universe.”

  “You really think he’d do that?” Cassie asked. Troy shook his head as he rubbed his eyes.

  “No one knows. He’s just been all over us for a couple of years. Been worse since Jesse showed up. He wanted Jesse on television and writing a book. The alien with a government job. Thompson said no.”

  “What changed?”

  Troy read on his computer for a minute and Cassie waited.

  “Mmm?” he asked, then shook his head and closed his computer. “Sorry. No, have you ever wanted to be a general?”

  Cassie blew air between her lips, incredulous.

  “Figured,” he said. “And your promotions have all been pretty routine. No one had to go to bat for you because at your level, it’s really a simple merit calculation, and you’re a shoo-in.”

  “At my level?”

  “Yes, Cass, at your level. At a certain point, someone with some juice has to step in. The general got me my promotion so I could run the lab. I needed to out-rank a few of the people I would have been in competition with for the job.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” Cassie said.

  “The general’s senator lost his re-election. Manfield was on the security committee, so he had the power to step in when the general needed an ally making decisions about the base. The air force secretary and the chief of staff are great airmen, but the president sides with Crisp, mostly. What he’s talking about would be popular stuff. Manfield was the guy who recognized that the mission of the base was crafted and codified for good reasons, and he stood by them. With him gone…”

  Cassie waited as Troy tapped on the computer with arrhythmic fingers.

  “I don’t know what they’re going to do, and neither does anyone else.”

  “And I started it,” Cassie said. Troy shook his head.

  “It was like world war two. It was going to happen. They were just waiting for the excuse.”

  “Excuse or not, I started it,” she said. He gave his computer a final tap and stood.

  “So what do you want to do today?”

  “I should go check in with Jesse.”

  “Can’t you guys even take one day off?” he asked.

  “What?” Cassie asked. “I haven’t seen him in more than a week.”

  “That isn’t true. He went to see you every day in the hospital. It’s like he blames himself for what happened.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Cassie said.

  “Are you sure?” Troy asked. “I mean, you both say that, but you don’t say much else.”

  “You’re the one who told me not to tell you anything,” Cassie said. “He wasn’t even there when it happened.”

  “Where was he?”

  “Back,” Cassie said. “Doing important things. Jeez, you have no idea.”

  “No, you two come back all chummy and he won’t leave your side, and now he’s important. I have no idea.”

  “What’s this about, Troy?”

  “Why won’t you let me help you?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You mean with the goop? Because I’ve got it,” she said. His eyebrows shot up.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “You can’t touch your own shoulders, not to mention your back.”

  “This is because I can’t reach my back?”

  “Why won’t you let me help you?”

  “Because I don’t want you to.”

  “Because you don’t want me to touch you.”

  It stunned her. She processed too many things in too many parallel thought lines to get back to him quickly, and he waited, his eyebrows up, mouth shaped in an accusation.

  “Troy, are you jealous?”

  “Why is it okay for him to take care of you and not me?”

  “Troy, he’s another species. Get a grip.”

  “You come back and you talk about how good of care he took of you, and then when you get out, the first thing you want to do is go see him again.”

  “Troy, you haven’t got any right.”

  “You sleep in my bed.”

  He looked like he regretted it the instant he said it, but couldn’t find a way back. Cassie stretched her jaw.

  “Troy, how many women did you have sex with in the two weeks I was gone?”

  He turned his face away, partially to avoid looking at her and partially, it appeared, to count.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Maybe five or six.”

  “And how many since I’ve been back?”

  This elicited a stony stare.

  “Two.”

  She shook her head, jaw still working on its own.

  “And you have the balls to tell me that you have some kind of ownership of me. To be jealous of a guy, of another species, who is my friend. I told you. And I thought you understood. As long as that’s the life you’re choosing, we’re friends. And that’s it.”

  She struggled to get out of the tangle of covers without ripping up her arms too much, then packed the things back into her bag.

  “I’m going downstairs now. You can call me when something important happens, or when you figure out how you’re going to apologize.”

  She stormed out, indulging her anger with a violent door slam behind her, then forced herself to calm as she went down the stairs. She couldn’t remember ever fighting with Troy before, but the entire base was tense, and for him to know as much as he did meant he had to be somewhere near the center of whatever was going wrong. She forgave him his temper and for an instant was even flattered that he was jealous, but the hurt to their friendship was real. That was going to take work, if it were ever going to heal.

  Jesse took a few minutes to open the door at her knock.

  “Please tell me you haven’t got someone here,” she said. He frowned, confused and she took a step forward, giving him a head jerk to ask for entry. He stepped out of the way.

  “Troy said you guys didn’t get off base until almost five,” he said. “You should still be asleep.”

  “We got in a fight,” Cassie said. It was a stupid thing to say, but the words bubbled out unbidden.

  “About what?” Jesse said. His earnest concern made the wound sting worse than it had before, and she was astonished to find herself on the verge of tears.

  “You,” she said, again mentally punishing herself for her candidness.

  “Did you tell him what happened?” Jesse asked. “I would have thought he would understand.”

  “No, you don’t get it,” Cassie said, collapsing onto a couch and putting her feet up. “It was about you.”

  He blinked then sighed.

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  “No,” she said glumly. He sat down in a chair and put
his chin on his fists.

  “I am a member of one of the brighter species in the universe, and a quick study at idiom and cultural nuance, even for us. But you’re not making any sense. You’re going to have to be more direct.”

  “He was jealous that I let you take care of me.”

  The first expression across his face was amusement, then he frowned and sat back.

  “If you’ll forgive me saying it, sometimes I forget you’re a woman. I neglected the level of intimacy the care I provided to you implied. I’m sorry.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “It was field work. Stuff happens. Nothing you did crossed any lines.”

  “Boundaries or not, I should have considered it.”

  “Scientist,” she said. “Everything is just biology to you.”

  “Oh, you think so,” he said. She grinned.

  “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Well, your friend is an excellent scientist, and apparently everything to him is not just biology.”

  “Yes it is,” she said darkly.

  “Have you two ever…?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He was too smart for her own good. She watched him read it off her face.

  “No. You expect more commitment and… so does he.”

  “What? He’s the one who’s got a different girl every night of the week.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Look, it’s for the two of you to unravel. Just leave me out of it, okay?”

  The humor at that just made her angry again.

  “I didn’t drag you into it. He’s the one who…” she couldn’t even say it. She shook her head, snatching a pillow and cramming it between the couch and her side. “And you’re the one who asked.”

  “Point of fact, you brought it up, but I will leave it at that. Will you tell me what happened last night? Your friend upstairs told me what you told him, but I presume the details are still worth sharing.”

  She spent about half an hour describing the interrogation. Jesse was actually more interested in the questions than he was in the politics with the general and the senator.

  “They miss some of the obvious things, but it’s not a bad interview, in all.”

  “Just a petri dish to you, aren’t we?”

  “What are you hoping for?” he asked. “I can’t change your social dynamics. Don’t really want to. If things get bad enough, I’ll just go. I know that will leave you in an uncomfortable position, but you chose last night to play the part you did. I’m not going to apologize for trouble you chose.” He waited, letting his words hang, then nodded. “I won’t let them use me for anything destructive.” There was a chuckle and he shrugged. “I won’t let them use me for anything I don’t approve of, at all. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “No getting away from the politics, is there?” Cassie asked.

  “My dad used to say that if life were meant to be simple, it would come with instructions.”

  Cassie shifted on the couch, and the silence began to stretch to an uncomfortable length.

  “I feel like I should be writing reports,” she finally said. “I don’t really know what to do.”

  “I’m going to keep tabs on the gossip,” Jesse said, standing. He put a remote control firmly on her stomach. “You should do what every good American does when you’ve got a bunch of time to burn. Watch television.”

  “I resent that,” she said.

  “You’re supposed to,” he called from across the room. She glowered at the remote for a moment, then turned on the TV.

  Jesse was better connected to the rest of the base than Cassie would have guessed. Looking over his shoulder as he chatted with various officers and enlistees, it appeared he was more popular than she would have thought, as well. He knew more people than she did.

  “What do they say?” she asked.

  “You know that eavesdropping is rude,” he said, shouldering her away without pushing her any further away than she had been.

  “What do they say?”

  Jesse glanced at her.

  “They went through the offices and the labs. Left with boxes. No one was allowed in while they were there. No one’s been allowed in since. Everyone is instructed to report to work on Monday as normal. Everyone thinks the portal has been running pretty normally, but the people on shift haven’t come back yet.”

  “Has anyone seen the new general?”

  “He’s around. Giving orders. It’s mostly his people doing the work, though.” Jesse looked at her again, then sent off a flurry of text to someone. “No one likes strangers digging through everything.”

  “Why would they?” Cassie asked.

  Jesse nodded.

  “I had a lab. I know how I would have felt.” He answered someone else, then shifted in his chair to look at her. “So what are you going to do in the morning?”

  “Report to work,” she said, shrugging. “Do my job. I actually do have one. My life doesn’t revolve around you.”

  “Says the one who slept on my couch last night.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You should talk to him.”

  “Not a chance,” she said, reading more of the conversations. “I told him the two reasons to call, and he hasn’t found either one of them relevant, so we have nothing to talk about.”

  “Cassie.”

  She looked at him involuntarily. It surprised him how close he was. His eyes were that strange sapphire blue, but she saw for the first time that they had a subtle ring of color around them, not unlike on a human iris, only it was deep red. They stared at each other for a moment, she unwilling to jerk away and he making some kind of point.

  “He’s your best friend. You don’t a lot of those. You should talk to him.”

  She didn’t move.

  “No.”

  He shook his head, eyes locked on hers.

  “Don’t do something you’ll regret when the Consciousness comes.”

  Now she rolled her eyes and shifted away, sighing at the urgency of his opinion.

  “The Consciousness isn’t coming,” she said.

  “Yes, but something is. Something big, something little, you should never take a risk that you’d have to live with something you can’t undo, when you can undo it now.”

  “And what should I tell him?” she asked. “He was being stupid and angry. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “People who say ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’ are rarely right,” Jesse said, then held up a hand. “I didn’t say you had to apologize. I said you should talk to him.”

  She tested herself for an instant. If he were lying, dead, upstairs from an incredibly unlikely heart attack, would she regret her last words to Troy?

  “We had a fight,” she said. “I didn’t tell him I hated him. We’ll talk when he’s ready to say he was wrong.”

  “Stubborn woman,” Jesse said, shaking his head again and turning back to his screen.

  “Stubborn Palta,” she answered, going to the kitchen. “Do you want anything to eat?”

  “I was going to order something,” he said. “Anything sound good?”

  She heard him tap at the keyboard for a long time as she went through the menus on the refrigerator.

  Everyone was upset.

  General Thompson had been the first general assigned to the base, when it first opened. He’d been involved in training most of the lifers there, to some extent, at least. The ones that came from other bases said that he was a good officer, issues of personal style aside. There were some who preferred more direct orders from leadership, and those who preferred more autonomy, but the consensus was that he was clear and consistent, and if there was anything people who worked around the portal hated, it was surprises. Agents dealt with the unknown, and they brought back things for the analysts that resulted in discoveries. Even when unexpected, no one was ever really surprised. Surprises were bad.

  Donovan was a surprise.

  Jesse typed some
more.

  Surprises were bad.

  She got in early, hoping to actually get some work done and restore some idea of normal for the short term, but it only took fifteen minutes before someone stopped at her desk with a folded sheet of paper.

  It was a summons, handwritten by General Donovan’s personal undersecretary. She’d handwritten her title under her name.

  The messenger left without a word.

  “He could have just e-mailed,” Cassie muttered, secretly appreciating that it would have taken her a full day to get to the bottom of her e-mail list. She drove to the general’s compound and paused to look at his car - Thompson had driven a huge, American pickup truck that actually had bits of hay stuck in the tailgate. No one knew why, nor could they imagine he ever left the base to pursue a home life. General Donovan drove a sleek black European sedan, small by American standards, but pricey-looking. It was built squat, like something that was made for rolling at five miles an hour with the windows up. Cassie wrinkled her nose at it and went on.

  There were two secretaries.

  Two.

  She looked from one to the other, one a well-groomed woman in a bright blue suit and the other a young man with an out-of-place muff of hair that nearly obscured his eyes.

  “I assume you’re personal undersecretary Denise Page?” Cassie asked.

  “Please sit,” the woman said. There was one chair, against the wall next to the scruffy man. He watched her without speaking as she took it, putting her hat in her lap and sitting straight without using the back of the chair. She watched him back.

  Swallowed about six things she might have said to him.

  His eyes were expressionless, almost dead, but with a predatory cunning so deep in them that she was only just able to keep her mouth shut.

  He might have been a serial killer. The thought flashed through her brain that if she’d ever seen one, that’s what she expected they would look like.

  The sharp woman returned to a stack of papers, drawing a pen out of an inkwell - an inkwell - and beginning to write.

  Cassie and the ruffled serial killer stared each other down. Somewhere a clock ticked.

  She could take him.

  He was probably fast, and he had a lot of regular, office-y pointy things at hand, but she was a jumper, and trained to deal with people who did unexpected things.