Authors: Anna Sheehan
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I want to, I do, I just … I can’t. Something inside won’t let me.’
I stared down at her. I had felt it too – the desperate panic as the wrong person gave her what she needed. But that was the other thing I had felt; she needed it. She missed having someone to hold her and touch her and love her
the way Xavier used to do. Missed it desperately.
I knew what I could do. I’d never done it before – it breached my personal code of ethics and Tristan would have said it was a betrayal of myself and my family. It wasn’t something I would ever have done otherwise. For a long moment I wrestled with myself. But then I heard 42, so quietly in the back of my mind there was no way Rose could have
known she was there.
(You know what you want. Is there anyone to tell you no?)
I shouldn’t have listened to her. I should have held true to myself. But in the end the knowledge that I might have no other chance forced my hand. 42 and my own fear of an unlived life pushed me towards a decision I might not have made under any other circumstance.
‘Close your eyes,’ I whispered to Rose.
‘Otto,
I—’
‘Close your eyes,’ I whispered again.
With a shudder, Rose did as I asked her.
I took a deep breath, looking down at her. Did I really want to do this?
Yes. It didn’t matter anymore. My life was squitch and I didn’t care what was right or what wasn’t any longer. I wanted this. I wanted her. And just then, I didn’t care what I had to do to get it.
Gently, I took hold of Rose’s face, cupping
her jaw in my hand, my fingers curled behind her ear. Gently caressing her cheek with my thumb I entered her tormented, briar-filled mind. I headed straight for the most twisted and tangled corner, the deepest wounded tangle of briars, and plunged into it without any kind of mental shield.
Xavier was inside there, all her memories of him, all the pain of what she considered her own betrayal,
all the horror. I skirted the fresh tangles of pain and loss that had formed when she’d come out of stasis, and went deep, deep into her ancient memories, down under that subconscious growth of more than half a century. I found her when she was still young, when she wasn’t so lopsided, when even her subconscious mind wasn’t much more than thirty. That was where I found Xavier and pulled him out, reading
the memories, pulling them to the forefront of her mind.
Then I kissed her. I kissed her as he had kissed her, his movement, his hesitations, every nuance of his kiss. And I let her keep him; I let her mind believe it was him. Her conscious mind, her sixteen-year-old self, knew full well that it was me. But her subconscious, that huge swelling mountain of her self that had slept through most
of a century believed, with every facet, that I was Xavier.
There was a groan as her body responded, a beautiful moment as every part of her cried out with relief. Finally, finally! Everything was right again. Oh, this was what I wanted. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t really me, I was there, and I was in her mind, and it was everything I wanted. I could feel what she felt inside her skin. She
felt like lightning, ripping through her body, and it was everything she needed.
But she fought it off. With a gasp she pulled away, her eyes snapped open. Her subconscious faded beneath the awareness of her senses. ‘What are you doing?’
‘
What does it look like?’
I kissed her throat, dredging up another memory as I did it, ripping it from her. It was hard, fighting against her consciousness. ‘
What does it
feel
like?’
‘That’s not you!’ she breathed.
I looked down at her. We were so close, our noses touched, and we were sharing our breath. I couldn’t let this end. ‘If you let me, I can be whatever you want me to be,’ I whispered to her. ‘Even him.’
The full implication of this took a moment to sink in. Rose stared at me, her brown eyes wide with wonder and … hunger. Then she shook
her head, banishing whatever was goading her inside. ‘No, Otto. That’s not right. It’s not fair …’
‘
To who? To you?
’
That wasn’t what she was thinking. This wasn’t fair to me. I deserved someone who loved me, just me, and Rose wasn’t that. ‘It’s not right.’
‘Right.’
I was so sick of my patience and my morals and my thrice-blasted ethics! My breath came hard as I stared down at her.
‘What is
“right”? I don’t care about right anymore, do you understand me? I want you.
Right
here,
right
now,
right
at this moment, this is as
right
as anything else. It isn’t right that I was created. It isn’t right that I am dying. It isn’t right that I’ve fallen impossibly in love with the most remarkable woman in a century. It isn’t right that you can’t let yourself love anyone properly right now. I
have the ability to make it right. Right now this is what I want. This is
right
.’
I closed my eyes, and I tried not to say what I was thinking. But she heard it, the constant drone of every cell in my body. ‘
Let me. Please, just let me. Please. Please let me. Let me.’
Again and again and again.
She couldn’t speak, but her mind was wavering.
‘I’m not sure …’
‘I’m sure!’ I hissed down at her.
‘I don’t have the luxury of being unsure. There isn’t time
.
’
Thoughts tangled in her brain – stasis and age and time and loss. ‘The time is never right,’ she whispered.
I tried to smile, but I don’t think it came out very clearly. I’m sure my eyes were tragic. ‘Not for any of us.’
Rose took a deep breath. She wanted to be moral and insist on everything being fair. But life wasn’t fair … and
she wanted this too. ‘
Otto … Xavier …’
she thought.
And she let me.
We didn’t go that far, really. There wasn’t time, for one. The stass tube wasn’t really all that private for another, what with the glass door. And we had no equipment and had made no preparations, and I would like to think myself a gentleman. Physically, anyway. Psychically, I was being an absolute cad, but I didn’t care about that at the time.
I actually didn’t care about anything.
Part of my mind focused on keeping her subconscious active and directed around Xavier. It was a little like reading a script, acting out a play when the words were right in front of me. But like reading a script, I was still me inside the action, and I was in heaven. My body, exhausted and aching as it had been for days, tingled under the heat of her fingertips. The constant dissatisfied ache that
had been niggling at me since I first knew Rose was eased. It felt like my body had been pierced by the thorns that tangled in her mind, and the act of holding her in my arms pulled the pain away.
‘Rose
.’ I let her hear the name in Xavier’s voice, and she clutched me tightly.
‘I love you,’ she breathed in my ear. ‘Know it, always.’
I didn’t care that she wasn’t speaking to me.
I
heard the words,
and
I
felt her body, and
I
was the one she held in her arms. He was only a cloak I was wearing, but I was there. I was so there. I stopped her mouth with a kiss, and she moaned softly with contentment. Or was it relief?
Rose barely heard it when a pleasant computer voice announced the incipient stages of stass – but I did. With a gasp I tensed, and Rose’s eyes shot open, her dream state gone
in an instant. I was still touching her. She knew what I was feeling.
‘It’ll be okay,’ she told me quickly, catching hold of my head. ‘Otto, look at me. It’ll all be okay.’ She stared into my eyes as I trembled. Her words meant nothing to me. This was it. These could be my last moments …
‘Otto,’ she said. She touched my face gently. ‘Thank you so much for this.’
That distracted me. Suddenly
I could feel her again. Her body felt warm and tingling, and her heart beat in her chest loud enough that she knew she was alive. Her mind was a riot of colour. For the first time since I’d started this, I felt guilty.
‘You’re actually thanking me?’
‘I didn’t realize how much I needed it.’ She kissed me lightly on the lips, just a butterfly wing of a touch. ‘Just breathe it in,’ she whispered
in my ear.
As the scent around us grew stronger I realized what she had done. I would have spent those final thirty seconds in a panic if Rose hadn’t dragged my attention back to her. I closed my eyes as I breathed in the scent of the first wave of stass chemicals.
Rose moaned gently as the scent took her, but she shook her head, fighting it off. ‘Lay back. Unh …’
I realized as I shifted that
Rose was having a very hard time keeping conscious. My fear had faded, but I wasn’t near a dream state yet.
‘Rose?’
I asked, and my worry carried to her.
‘I’m okay,’ Rose whispered sleepily. ‘I’m just very used to going with it. Let it take you.’ Her last words I could barely hear. ‘I’ll be here when you wake.’
And she was gone, her mind faded into a brightly coloured landscape almost instantly.
I had a choice, but it was a decision I had to make quickly. I could feel the stass taking hold of my limbs. I could hold her as we travelled, sharing her dreams, or I could leave her to have her own.
I hadn’t shared anyone’s dreams since 42 died. As my own theta state began to take over, 42 crouched in the corner of the stass tube. She was probably a dream. She studied my sleeping beauty with
a critical air. (
So now are you satisfied?
) She looked over at me, annoyed. (
Somehow, I don’t think you are.
)
‘Don’t ruin this. Please.’
(Do you intend to drag her down with you when you die?)
The thought horrified me, and I pushed Rose away. To have Rose go through what I went through – no! Even if I didn’t want to die alone. That wouldn’t be fair to her.
(You won’t die alone,)
42 whispered.
(I’m with you.)
I could almost feel her hand in mine.
(I’m always with you.)
‘I love you,’
I thought. It was my last thought, and I held it firm as the stass overtook me.
‘I love you.’
I just wasn’t sure which one of them I was talking to: Rose, or my sister.
My stass dreams were strange. Dark and twisted, but I didn’t find them frightening. The lack of light and the strange sense of weight
seemed right to me, and when I opened my eyes it was to a light prelude by Mozart. Apparently the music turned on automatically as the stass was lifted.
It took me a few moments to come back to myself. I took a deep breath, reanimating my lungs, finding all my muscles. Then I realized something. My head did not hurt.
At all.
I blinked a few times in wonder at the relief of it. My pain was gone,
and my exhaustion seemed to have faded. And I wasn’t dead. Stass had not short-circuited my fragile corporeal form, and I was still me. I felt strangely light – the stewards had explained to us that the rotation of the ship during this hiatus combined with an artificial grav field maintained a subtle gravity, but it wasn’t as strong as what we were used to on Earth. They were trying to acclimate
us to the conditions we would be exposed to on the Jovian colonies. I rubbed my face, relishing the feel of my limbs. Then I looked over, expecting to see Rose waking up as well.
Rose lay still as death. She was not breathing. I touched her, but her subconscious was so deeply buried in blackness that at first there appeared to be nothing. Finally, I saw a glimmer, but so far down I feared digging
into the blackness. Digging too deep into her mind could damage her. Letting go of her mind I touched her arm instead, shaking her slightly. I wished I could speak. This was so exactly like what Rose had envisioned – her waking up from stass and finding me dead beside her. Only it was Rose who it seemed would never wake, and I was the one horrified to find her so still and pale.
I shook her more
firmly, trying to drag her back to her body. There was nothing. Not a flicker of her eyelids, not a twitch of her pulse.
I batted at the handle on the glass doors, my own heart sounding loud in my ears. The doors slid open to reveal the corridor tinkling with the faint sounds of awakening passengers.
I jumped down onto the carpeted corridor, and was surprised when I bounced right back up. Pushing
myself back down against the padded ceiling, I finally found my weight on my feet and moved forward, trying to find a steward.
Who I found, instead, was Xavier, who was heading down the corridor looking much more at home with the reduced gravity than I was.
In my panic I did something I’d never done before. I grabbed hold of his hand.
‘It’s Rose!’
I thought at him.
‘Something’s wrong with her,
something’s gone wrong! She can’t wake up! I think she’s dying.
’
Xavier was startled, and all his defences went up. He hurt me; unintentionally, of course, but his psyche was hard as a rock, and jagged. As always with older but healthy individuals, his mind was strong – experienced and rigid and difficult to see through. Much less flexible. It was hard to get my message across. Once he’d realized
what I’d done, he smiled. I felt very strange suddenly. In the smile I could finally see the boy I had been emulating in the stass chamber. I’d never before been able to reconcile Rose’s image of her teenage lover with the stolid and powerful presence of this corporate king. I was embarrassed. Particularly as Xavier’s mind had gone all amused and patient. There was something else, there, beneath
his indulgence. Something … sharp and violent. It disturbed me. I let go of him quickly.
‘Rose told me that was odd,’ he said. ‘Your, ah … communication. Bren seems to take it in his stride.’ Bren was so clear of mind he barely noticed. I wished Bren were there. His was the kind of mind you liked having around when you were confused. ‘You’re in here?’ he asked. He strode up to our stass chamber
and peered inside at Rose’s still form. She still hadn’t moved.
‘
She won’t wake up
,’ I signed at him. I don’t know if he understood sign, but he seemed to gather what I was saying. ‘Wake up’ is a pretty universal sign, anyway, miming the opening of eyes.
‘I know,’ he said with a small smile. ‘She does that. It isn’t dangerous unless it goes on too long.’ He climbed into the tube and sat quietly
beside her. He took hold of her hand and then gently kissed her forehead.
I winced. The love I saw in the chaste movements of that old man was painful. His eyes held decades of memory for a cherished lover, as well as the responsibility of a father for his child. If Rose was right, there was also the hero-worship devotion of a small boy for his big sister. There were at least three layers of
love in everything he did for her. I felt very small and selfish in comparison.
‘Just hold her hand,’ he said to me, his eyes distant. ‘She comes to find it. She only fights off anyone who tries to shake her out of it; goes deeper, holds on longer.’ His thumb caressed the back of her hand. ‘She’ll be back in a minute.’
I stood in the door of the chamber, clutching on to the edge, my fingers
white with my grip. Finally, after what seemed an eternity to me, Rose took a breath. Her hand closed around his, and her eyes flickered. ‘Xavier,’ she whispered.
‘I’m here,’ he said, his voice soft and low.
I realized I was witnessing something deeply personal to the two of them. This exchange echoed a hundred tiny deaths in her youth, tiny deaths that her Xavier had to witness again and again,
and pull her back from. I wanted to turn away and give them their privacy.
And then I remembered – I had already done something far more intrusive than spy upon their awakening ritual. I had stolen Rose’s memories and insinuated myself inside of them. When my death had been slowly ticking down inside that stass chamber I had felt justified. Now, standing whole and without pain in the corridor,
I felt ashamed of myself.
Rose blinked and looked up at the old man, and then caught her breath. ‘Otto?’ she asked. Her voice sounded very weak to me.
‘He’s here,’ Xavier said patiently. ‘He was worried about you.’
Rose lifted her head and gazed at me, her eyes dark with stass chemicals. I wanted to kiss her, and I wanted to run. I felt sick. Guilt weighed on me as I looked at the two of them.
My mind cast about for something, anything that would get me out of this situation.
‘Quin!’
I signed, with a sudden surge of relief.
‘I have to see if Quin’s okay.’
I didn’t wait to hear what Rose would say to this. Instead I turned and pelted down the corridor as fast as the low gravity would let me.
By the time I made it down the next row of stass chambers the blood was roaring in my ears,
but it felt good. It had been too long since I’d been able to run. My head didn’t ache, and my muscles seemed to be behaving themselves. I thought stasis might actually have been good for me. I ran into Quin as he studied a map of passenger corridors. ‘Otto! Told you you’d make it,’ he said. ‘We’re both to report immediately to the medical bay, have all of our vitals checked, and then Mr Zellwegger
is to erase all of the records.’ He gave me a grin that seemed about as sane as a rabbit hunting for eagles. Then his eyes shadowed. ‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘You look about to cry.’
I put my hand to my face, and clutched at my temples, trying to put myself back together. Quin jumped at me and grabbed my arm. ‘Hey, bro. Settle down. How’s your head?’
I pulled away, unwilling to touch him. Unwilling
to touch anyone.
‘I’m fine,’
I signed.
‘I’m better.’
Quin rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me after all this trouble you’ve decided to go and get better on us! How dare you!’ He pointed down the corridor. ‘Medical bay’s this way.’
The ship’s doctor ran through tests on both of us, a thorough going over, confirmed us both as perfectly healthy, and then sealed the records. Quin answered her questions
for me. Then she suggested that we both go to the dining lounge. I was ravenous. I followed Quin gladly down to the same opulent dining lounge we saw before we took off.
Rose was already there, trying very hard to nibble at a puff-pastry, but she looked pale. ‘How’s it goin’, princess?’ Quin said cheerfully. His loud voice caused the other passengers to glare at him, but he was oblivious. He
snatched up a plate from the buffet and started shovelling spinach pasta onto it. I stopped short when I saw Rose. She smiled at me, suddenly very shy.
I lost my appetite. Rose saw me oscillating back and forth, and finally signed at me,
‘Come, sit.
’
I took a deep breath and went up to her. I had no idea what I was going to say.
Rose didn’t give me a chance. As soon as I came up to the table
she stood up and hugged me.
‘You okay?’
she asked me silently.
‘I think so,’
I told her. But I couldn’t hide my feelings of guilt.
Rose pulled away before I could figure out what she thought of them. What I did pick up from her, however, was much more physical.
‘You’re feeling sick?’
I signed.
‘Low G doesn’t agree with me,’ Rose said. ‘I couldn’t keep down my first plate.’ She sighed. ‘Six
weeks in stass probably didn’t help my stomach any.’
‘You should pop down to the medi bay,’ Quin said, plonking down his plate of delectables. ‘Your century of insanity should provide them with another welcome conundrum. Right now they’re busily trying to figure out whether or not
our
medical records make any sense.’
‘Do they?’ Rose asked.
Quin shrugged. ‘How should I know? Are you going to
eat that mushroom?’
Rose looked down at her plate where a mushroom stuffed with caviar twinkled up at her. ‘No,’ she said with a slight twitch. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘Oh, good,’ Quin said, snatching it off her plate. He slipped it into his mouth and said with his mouth full, ‘This place is lots less crowded then it was when we arrived.’