Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  It was a cock-up, one with plenty of witnesses. Science and the UW Gov Board frowned on all drinking in space, despite Nat’s recommendations and the formally approved regulations. But this wouldn’t get passed off as too much booze. Mei’s episode was bad enough alone. If they added Dr. Silverman’s demise to the evening, they suddenly had a host of investigative technicalities to deal with: negligence, breach of security protocol, gawp-faced newts, foul play.

  How could she be dead? He’d been so close to talking with her, asking some questions about Icebreaker, about what she thought had happened. And then telling her what he thought had happened. And then, hopefully, much backslapping camaraderie.

  But it was no good thinking in circles. Jake rubbed at his chin and tried to reorganize his thoughts. The diamond-clear focus of the fluid patch was finally waning, but he was still cranked up. He was going to be dead on his feet tomorrow. Today, his brain reminded him, and Jake stifled a groan.

  His comm buzzed again, startling him. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sending you my final report for sign-off,” Carmichael said. “Santos already signed. I think you’ll find it very straightforward.”

  “Nothing, huh?”

  “Nothing. No anomalies, no intruders, no breaches in the system. And nobody’s coming forward to say they saw anything in the mess or anywhere else. There’s nothing.” Carmichael sighed. “So much for no sleep until we get an answer.”

  “So ultimately, this’ll be reported as Mei’s spontaneous breakdown?”

  “Yes.”

  Jake ground his teeth. “I don’t believe it, Toby.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “We know her. This is a complete turnaround—she was fine—we’ve got an all-new crew coming back on tomorrow and we don’t know whether one of them—”

  “No, we don’t know. Not yet. Just accept that she’s in good hands for now, and we’ll take care of the rest.” Carmichael sounded compassionate, even through his exhaustion. “But listen up. We do need to talk.”

  A prickle ran up Jake’s neck. “We’re talking now. Tell me what you have?”

  “I found out some stuff. About that thing we were talking about earlier. Up in the lab.”

  Jake closed his eyes. Maybe he could put it off. “It’s late. We’re nuts. You’ll have to be a little more specific.”

  “A certain Connor Griffin’s background in Defense. I don’t want to send it via tablet, though. I think we should discuss it in person.”

  Jake swallowed. “That bad, huh? I really didn’t think—I mean, he’s my friend, Toby.”

  “Did he go back to the Harmon with the rest of the crew? I sure didn’t see him.”

  “He was down in the infirmary for a while, but I think, yes, he did eventually.” Jake hadn’t seen Con since Kai had blustered in on them with the Warringer. It gave him an uneasy feeling, how immediately Jake had lost track of him. He was like a shadow.

  See it crawling. Look how it comes.

  The order came through just as I hit the halfway point, Con had said. Encrypted.

  “I mean, I don’t think—” He flashed back on Con in the mess, cracker crumbs tumbling carelessly down his front, the very picture of a crack covert operations officer. But the image faltered in his mind, and he lost some of its easy certainty. From their conversation, he’d inferred that Con was somehow working with Science. The encrypted message, the offer to go back home had come from Con’s lips. But what if he wasn’t a Science plant? What if he was still a Defense boy?

  But that was silly. It didn’t make any difference. The point was that someone on Earth wanted Restore, and they were using Con to get it, whether he’d been coerced into it with this trip to Selas or into his entire association with Jake since the trial. Think simply, Jake told himself. You’ve been told someone wants Restore, someone is convinced you have it on Selas, and they’re going to get it. Did he take it at face value, as a warning? Or was it an offer?

  He realized then exactly how completely whoever was on the other end of this had the jump on him. On some inner level, he had bought the Earth package deal hook, line, and sinker, simply because it came from Con, and he swallowed down swift hot anger. I don’t do Science’s dirty work, Jake. “I don’t know, Toby. I can’t vouch for him. Not completely. But would you want me to vouch for you, completely?”

  “Probably not. But you could. That’s the difference. None of us can for Con, and I can’t risk it.”

  Jake sighed. “No. Of course not. But…please.” The word tasted funny on his lips. “I mean. I don’t want to do anything rash, you know?” They were all alone out here. “Can we wait to do anything about it until I see what you’ve got? We could meet now, if you want. I might have some more info.”

  “No, let’s wait. I’m not sure yet precisely what I’ve got. And I’d like to do this by the—”

  “Book, yes. What a surprise.”

  Carmichael chuckled in his ear. “Let’s do tomorrow, uh, today at oh-seven hundred hours. I’ll bring the dossier, and you can remind me why I haven’t fired you yet.”

  “Oh-seven then. Signing off. And I kinda wish you’d fire me, too.”

  “Tempting. Get some rest, man.” Carmichael huffed a huge yawn over the comm. “Signing off.”

  Jake clicked off, popped out the commbud and shoved it into his pocket. 07:00. Why bother going up to bed? He could take a few stims instead…no, he’d maxed out his ration already. Maybe he could hit up Mick, owe him into next month.

  His hand was on the mess door. That was odd. Jake didn’t remember moving close enough to reach the handle. But then, he was barely awake. Sleep was tugging at him, chiding him toward the lifts and quarters and bed, and he should have gone, he really should have, but his body moved of its own volition. He turned his back on the lifts and carefully unlatched the mess doors.

  The place was deserted. Jake stepped in and around the cheerless remainder of party detritus: plates and cups, bottles stashed in corners, smashed food leavings. Someone had cleaned the area where Mei had collapsed. He stepped past the stark spotless oval in the floor, wiped sterile and clean of urine and blood and any possible communicable madness. The kitchen doors were tightly closed.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a dark shadow move liquid-quick over the wall and up into the high ceiling. But when he turned and looked directly, there was nothing but the ransacked food tables, a pile of blue refuse sacks, and sad, perpetually streamer-happy Mr. Boney. Nothing.

  No. There was something. It was stale and heavy in the air, a creeping feeling of presence, inexplicable in an empty room. There was something there, something Jake couldn’t put his finger on; perhaps it was in the way the skeleton’s head was tilted to the side, jaw gaping and teeth exposed in a dangling grin. Or maybe the oozing sprawl of the sacks, or the lingering pungent odor of cheese and olives…

  Olives. Very spooky, Jake, yes. He shook himself. There was nothing obvious, nothing visibly threatening, but his skin still crawled. It was as if a foul invisible breeze coiled throughout the room, closing tighter and tighter around him.

  Jake backed out of the mess and slapped the door latches back into place. His hands were shaking. He was wrong to want stims. A little drunkenness right now would make him feel much better, and much stupider. Go. To. Sleep. He went to the nearest lift and punched the call button.

  I needed a welcome to come in.

  The hells? Shut up, he told his brain, and got into Alpha Lift. There were so many snippets of random extraneous conversation ricocheting around in his head that he could barely remember who said what when at this point, and still the vision from the séance was uncomfortably clear. A stupid hallucination under the influence of booze and too much historical information would make anyone see creepers in the shadows.

  I’m always here.

  Why didn’t Carmichael just tell him what was in Con’s dossier? Or, at the very least, send it to Jake’s tablet? Knowing there was an undefined something would p
robably keep Jake awake until 06:59:59, replaying everything Con had said and thinking of every different way it could be interpreted as the truth, or as the opposite if he was a filthy Defense or Science or UW Governance-bankrolled liar who got his kicks chatting up felons. Or rerunning the tantalizingly brief respite he’d felt, the way his brain had gone peaceful and happy for a whole moment when Con hugged him close. Contradictory reflections were the most insomniac. No matter what, he was almost home; he was up on Level 4 and down the brightly lit corridor and outside the door to his quarters, in what felt like one long step.

  He swiped the thumbplate lock in the doorframe. The door stayed obstinately shut. Jake poked at the plate and pressed again. The lock sang a busy beedly-beedly sound, but the door didn’t open. A half-hour of rewiring and reprogramming work with his bed just a few meters out of reach: what a delightful end to the day.

  A faint whisper of air ghosted over his shoulder. Jake looked toward the lifts, but there was nothing there, only empty corridor.

  A hand clamped down on his shoulder. He bit back a shriek, turned, and bumped into Con. In his fright, Jake almost punched him.

  “Hey!” Con raised his hands in surrender. He looked more drawn and tired than ever in the glaring light.

  “You—ah—damn it—hey.”

  “Startle you? Sorry about that.” Con gave him a good-natured sneer, and oh, how Jake wished he had hauled off and hit him. It took him a moment to register what Con was holding out: the sack with the spoils from the card game. “Your winnings.”

  “Oh,” Jake said stupidly. “Right. Thanks.” He took the bag and shoved it under one arm, and shifted from one foot to the other. “I thought you were back on the Harmon.”

  Con shrugged. “Dr. Lindy wanted to run some tests on me. And then I went back to the mess for a look around, and found this. Santos told me where your quarters were.”

  “How kind of her.” Thanks a bunch, Santos. What a fucking matchmaker.

  The testing was apparent. Con’s sleeves were rolled up to his pale biceps, and he had a clear square imprint in the crook of one wiry forearm. His port stuck out of the other crook; it looked worn and dewed with use. His arms were dusted with dark hair.

  A covert operative would encourage transparency, make himself as accessible as possible, because it would make for better cover, wouldn’t it? If he was gunning for Science, Con could search the station from top to bottom, starting with Jake’s quarters. If it was in there, Jake hadn’t brought it; shockingly, Restore wasn’t on the approved substances lists for transports to and from Earth. If Con was a longtime plant, he’d have to know that Jake was in the dark. Unless he thought Jake was a badass covert, too. Which was, of course, entirely possible. Who else but a badass covert would live the life of the scientist from birth, voluntarily wipe his own mind and spend eight years imprisoned in the Bends for the good of the mission? Badass coverts unite. He could hear the theme music already.

  But—and it was hard for him to admit—what if it wasn’t all about Jake? Could it be something totally unrelated to the Restore yarn, something Defense-related? Some sort of recon to see if Selas was ripe and ready, like Furbad, for military appropriation? With the mystery ship Gunaji and the undisclosable Marathon unrelated distractions? Oh, he certainly wanted to believe Con was just being a good platonic buddy to an unfortunate felon.

  None of those options were very appealing.

  “Did you think any more about what I said?”

  Jake wanted to say no. He wanted to say he couldn’t remember, that there had been too many things said by too many different people and he couldn’t untangle them all, that he was having weird implant problems anyway and he’d have to wait for Lindy to check him out, wait until tomorrow after Con left. His suspicious subconscious brain wanted to say fuck you, you lying asshole and I know you’re working for somebody and do I look like I want a leash, too? His pathetic conscious brain wanted to say why are you really here? with too much feeling. His body wanted to reach out. Stupid, easy body. He wanted to lie down and stop thinking.

  Could the nightmare kick in if he refused to go to sleep? He’d never tried before. Jake was willing to bet it would. Though he wasn’t sure where he was in the cycle, now that it had screwed up. “You mean about Earth,” he said instead.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “No, you didn’t think about it?”

  “No, I don’t want to go back.”

  Con nodded. “Gotcha.” His expression belied the carelessness in his tone. He looked wearier than Jake had ever seen him, but his green eyes glittered in the harsh light. The air around them practically crackled with suppressed tension, and Jake was too tired to think about whether it was good so-that’s-settled tension or bad now-I-have-to-kill-you tension; he could only roll with the zing and pop of it under his skin. He felt like wrapping his hands around Con’s neck and squeezing. He felt like wrapping his arms around Con and—and—he felt, he wanted—he felt nothing. Jake jabbed again at the thumbplate to his door, missed, and dropped the sack of winnings.

  “Problems?”

  Jake grunted, half relieved Con was still there. “No. I was just weighing my options. Sleep in the corridor, or fix this low-grade piece of shit.” He dug into his trousers pocket for his worn-to-nubs lab wrench, knelt down and pried the thumbplate off the wall.

  “Bed always trumps floor,” Con said. “At least for those of us who enjoy sleep.”

  “Sleeping is a waste of valuable time.” Jake grinned at Con. “But that’s beside the point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Without stims the body trumps the mind, and I’m about ten seconds away from sweet, peaceful blackout.”

  The circuits were connected correctly, but they looked a little singed. Con squatted down next to him and leaned close to examine the thumbplate innards, his breath hot and uncertain against Jake’s neck.

  “I can help. I think.”

  Jake laughed. It sounded a little hysterical. But wasn’t that a slip? Defense guys always delegated shit like that to their Science techs. Almost always. Science. Defense. The line of Con’s jaw. He felt like he was tallying a dizzying amount of invisible hatch marks into blurring columns. His knees ached. “You often repair this kind of tech on your ships?”

  “Sure.” Con leaned across him and fiddled the primary coupling connectors around in their base. He smelled like sweat and antiseptic. “Standard these days. If you don’t want to wait.”

  “Yeah, sure, standard. Like I’d know otherwise, I suppose.” The crew had been a little shy about letting Jake roam around the Mita Koichi, the transport he’d shipped out on to Selas. Worried he’d hijack the boat and divert it to the nearest colonial settlement, he supposed. Or maybe they thought he’d steer the thing back to Earth on a kamikaze Dome run.

  Con was frowning at him. Jake shrugged, and Con resumed fiddling. “You know, these things tend to wear out faster when you have more people using them.”

  “Tell me about it.” Jake rubbed soot off one of the wires. “Normally I don’t get many people back to my quarters, but as head of Science—” Wait. Was Con screwing with him? Hinting at promiscuity? Not that it was totally without merit, what he said, but still. “Are you implying something?”

  “Not at all.” Con sounded about as innocent as a digi-whore. The wires sparked in his hand, and Con twitched back. The tips of his fingers reddened instantly, and he shook them. “Damn.”

  “Yeah, that’s good, electrocute yourself.” Jake put the plate back and thumbed it. The door slid open crankily, and he patted the plate. “What an absolute waste of time, wire, and tech. But you fixed it.”

  He stood up. Con reached down to pick up the sack of winnings, and Jake leaned against the wall. He was speeding toward something; he could feel the inexorable pull of whatever-it-was as strongly as if he were still drunk. Sleep? A breakdown? Hopefully sleep, if those were the choices. Unless…

  Con straightened up again. He was very close
now, so close that Jake could see the pores in his cheeks, the flicker of his eyelashes. He held out the bag to Jake as if he was carrying groceries or something equally archaic and unspecialized. Jake leaned in and kissed him.

  It was a clumsy kiss, fast and off-kilter against the corner of Con’s mouth. Con still tasted like beer. What was Jake doing? There was smooth, there was inept, and then there was this, and you could blame only so much on alcohol, drugs, and witnessing a mental collapse. Especially when you knew better, when you were supposed to be on your guard. Anyway, Con wasn’t responding. His lips were stone, surprised, not unwelcoming but not particularly enthusiastic.

  With a huge effort, Jake hauled himself back, and wow, if he’d thought the place was crackling with tension before, now it felt like there was an arc welder blazing through the walls. Con was breathing slowly and steadily through his nose. His eyes blazed out at Jake like dark pieces of char, his tired face transformed and sunny.

  But he still didn’t move. Well, at least Jake had a scrap of plausible deniability. Fatigue could make you do anything.

  “I, uh. Sorry. I’ll just—” He flourished a hand toward the doorway and stumbled away with the vague hope of escaping inside, locking the door, and hiding under his bed.

  Con sucked in a breath and reeled him back in so hard that Jake dropped the thrice-damned sack again. It was hard, though, to concentrate on holding sacks while you were gasping under someone’s fiercely intent mouth. He could only focus on the immediate: Con’s mouth. Con’s hands clutching at Jake’s arms, his shoulders, his throat. Con pressing against him like he wanted to climb him.

  So Jake went with it. He clutched Con back and ran his hands over his back and up into his hair, and it felt as familiar and comfortable and common as their letters, the vids, and Jake was lost, gone—