She saw his expression change, just before he closed his eyes. She couldn’t help wondering though. A girlfriend? Did they even date?
Looking away, he shifted his weight on the mattress.
She caressed his hair. “Are you sick?”
He raised a hand, pushing hers off. She watched in disbelief as he wiped his face, doubting what she’d seen. Then his breathing changed, and she couldn’t deny what she heard. He was crying. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“Hey,” she said, a little alarmed. “What’s going on?”
When he spoke, his voice made her jump. She’d forgotten the accent.
“I’m married,” he said.
A surprised laugh caught in her throat. She tried to keep it out of her voice.
“So am I,” she said. “I thought that was the point.”
He looked at her. His pale eyes reflected light shining from under the door, almost like a cat’s eyes. Again, she remembered he wasn’t human. He stared back as if she were just as alien to him. Then he sat up. She watched him feel around on the floor for his pants, pulling them up over his legs and looping then hooking his belt. Standing, he found his shirt and drew it over his head, and now she felt emotion waver off him, clear as a scent. It was self-loathing.
She pulled the damp sheet tighter around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”
“Do you want money?” She recoiled in spite of herself, afraid of him once she saw the look in his eyes.
“No,” he said flatly. He didn’t look at her again.
Before she could think what to say next, he had bent down, picking up the shoulder harness that had shocked her when she had first seen it.
He donned it like a vest, velcroing it tight, checking the gun in obvious rote before shouldering on his jacket over it. She was still staring when he turned his back to her, aiming his feet for the door.
The light blinded her as he opened it onto the corridor...but it wasn’t open long.
Following the click of the latch, she lay back on the bed with a sigh. All she could feel was relief that he was gone, that she’d likely never see him again.
WHEN ELIAH FINISHED speaking, Chandre remained silent.
Eliah shared the construct with her, so he knew she was thinking to herself how ridiculous this was. Further, that it went beyond her job description as infiltrator to babysit two full-grown seers who, in her mind, should be alone in a cabin somewhere, getting acquainted in the carnal sense for at least a month before they were allowed to talk about their relationship in anything but monosyllables. That was the traditional way it was done, and the old forms existed for a reason.
Eliah kept the smile out of his light with an effort.
These two-hundred-year-old seers always groused about the past.
Is she all right? Chandre sent finally.
Well enough, yeah. He let her feel his frown. Threw up when she came to, and she won’t talk about it. Physically she’s fine. She’s out on the balcony—
Get her back inside. Now.
Pardon my saying, sir, but no. She wants to look at the water, let her bloody well look at the water. It’s dark...no one’ll see her. He paused.
Has he checked in?
No. She exhaled a Barrier sigh. Vash said it’s up to us to determine what’s needed to keep the situation under control. You said she won’t press charges. Do we discipline him for breaking vow? She could be waiting for him to come back. To stab him, try to hurt him, whatever...
Eliah gave a humorless laugh.
I don’t think so, he sent. She still thinks too much like a human to let herself go on that kind of thing.
Feeling Chandre’s skepticism, he added,
...And if by disciplining him, you mean shooting him in the head, I’m all for it. His thoughts leaked anger. He didn’t shield it from her at all. If I had to guess, I’d say he pulled her into it deliberately.
Recommendation, Eliah? Chandre sent dryly. Beyond the firing squad for Dehgoies for the crime of wanting his wife?
Separate them, he returned promptly. Keep him away from her. When she’s up to it, I’ll ask her what she thinks.
Fine. I leave them to you. She clicked to herself in irritation, folding her light arms. Watch her, Eliah...and no taking advantage of the situation to talk her into your bed! We still don’t know why he did it. You get Dehgoies coming up here in a jealous rage and we’re going to have ourselves a real problem. That is one piece of bullshit I don’t intend to deal with tonight.
Understood, he sent.
You’d better. Or so help me I’ll let him shoot you.
Eliah was still laughing a little as he clicked out of the Barrier, feeling his legs against the hard padding of a stateroom chair.
He waited for his eyes to clear, then faced the window out to the balcony where he’d last seen her and startled, jumping to his feet.
The balcony, the entire cabin in fact...was empty.
THE ELEVATOR CAR came to rest on the higher of two main floors, dumping me and seven other passengers into a wide foyer filled with people on red and gold patterned carpet. From human minds milling around mine, I surmised I’d arrived during the later of the two dinner meals served for general passengers...a stroke of luck in that it provided visual cover at least.
I hadn’t had much time while Eliah had been in the Barrier, talking to Chan or whoever else about me. As soon as I saw him shift out of his body, I ran for the wardrobe.
In seconds, I’d yanked on jeans and a tight-fitting tee from a band I’d seen years ago in Oakland. I donned my boots and a sweatshirt to deal with the cold, throwing the hood up to cover my head and putting in the brown contacts I’d fished out of the trash and washed. I projected some of my consciousness out on the balcony while I dressed behind the wardrobe door, just in case Eliah looked for me at any point in his conversation with Chandre.
That was another trick Revik taught me.
Grabbing a pair of mirrored sunglasses I’d found in one of the drawers, I stuffed them in my pocket and headed out the door.
I’d come up with a whole story for the guards at the end of the row of staterooms, but hadn’t needed to use it, because, well...the guards weren’t there.
Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I walked to the elevators as fast as I could, donning the sunglasses clumsily as I hit the button.
That had been at least fifteen minutes ago.
I got off on a few random floors, ran into several different groups of humans before I decided to head for the lobby and look for a place where I might hide out in public. I figured my best chance of getting even an hour out from under the Guard would be to find a place where no one would be looking at me. Meaning, somewhere where I could disappear into the crowd.
Of course, the Guard might be looking for me by now.
It crossed my mind that I also might run into Revik. Particularly if he went out trolling again, maybe going for round two.
When my light reacted at my own bleak attempt at humor, I shoved it aside, but not before the image of me collapsing on the atrium floor flickered through my thoughts, along with a taste of what it had felt like the first time. I really doubted I would be able to control it any better if it happened again.
Keeping my mind carefully blank, I focused on my surroundings.
The decor hovered somewhere between Vegas, which I’d visited once with Jaden, and a suburban shopping mall. Except here, only about half of the signs and VR projections were speaking English. Most switched languages as they scanned room keys, following customers with higher credit limits and adjusting products until the person waved them off or stopped to listen to their pitch. Corridors twisted off in all directions, making it hard to track which side of the ship I was on until I stood still long enough to feel the whole thing moving.
Even then, it was easy to get turned around.
After the near-silence of the past few weeks, both he
re and in Seattle, the voices echoing up and down the five stories of glass and metal were both comforting and a kind of psychic attack. A feeling of almost paralyzing aloneness tried to creep back around me, as well. The groups of laughing, shopping and even bickering humans somehow reminded me just how completely isolated from everyone around me I really was.
That aloneness shed some light on something else, too.
It was no wonder, really, that the thing with Revik screwed me up so badly. In the past month or so, I’d let him become my whole world.
I needed to be around other people, even if I couldn’t talk to any of them. Even if it was reckless. Even if all I could do was watch them from a distance. I needed to know I wasn’t the only person on the planet, and that every human being in the world hadn’t been replaced by angry, one-hundred-year-old, mind-reading seers with sexual and emotional issues.
Anyone could potentially recognize me, I knew, at least in theory.
But it struck me as pretty damned unlikely that anyone actually would.
I had my doubts that most of the humans on board would be on the lookout for a renegade seer terrorist in their midst, even if they weren’t on vacation. I suspected they’d be a lot less likely to be looking for me while taking a scenic cruise up the Canadian coastline on a city-sized boat that boasted a midnight buffet table. Half the people around me were drunk, or focused solely on free food and gambling in the ship’s casino, anyway.
And anyway, I looked different from the photos plastered all over the feeds. My hair had changed color and length. My face had thinned. My eyes were a different color. Then there was the other thing: weird as it was, I could swear I had grown taller. Not much, maybe only a quarter or half-inch, but to call it strange was hardly an understatement. I didn’t know many humans who had a massive growth spurt as they approached their thirties.
The truth was, I didn’t completely look like the same person I had when I left San Francisco, except for maybe my eyes, thus the contacts and the shades. The rest of me, I figured wouldn’t stand out as specifically mine to anyone but my mother, and maybe Jon.
From wall maps I got the basic layout of the boat.
I located the main casino, two dining areas and five bars on the lobby floor alone, along with access to a theater and a swimming pool. Thinking about the last of these, I seriously contemplated going for a swim, although it meant going in wearing underwear, which might call a little too much attention to me, even here.
I didn’t have any credits to buy a suit, or even a room key. I wondered if I could push a clerk well enough to get one anyway. Thinking about this, though, I figured I should probably save the pushes for if I really needed them.
Photography stands flashed virtual backdrops of Alaskan coastlines next to people dressed in VR-paneled costumes that used computer-generated images to make the wearers look like everything from bald eagles to caribou to penguins to moose. I even saw a few polar bears standing on that virtual landscape, which as far as I knew had been extinct for years outside of zoos.
Next to the long lines of people waiting to be seated in the dining area for a five course, sit-down dinner, stood a piano bar flanked by two gilded waterfall balconies. Lining the guard rail above the sunken bar stood kiosks that sold everything from jewelry to shore excursions, pedicures and massages, dance classes and raffle tickets, tax-free wires, hiri and tobacco cigarettes, perfume, alcohol and handbags.
I saw a woman holding a brochure on seer services that could be purchased in Anchorage, too, including a trip to what Revik referred to as an “unwilling” bar, and what every human I knew called a whorehouse.
Another surge of sickness hit, that time bad enough to make me stop.
I took a breath, leaning a palm against the corridor wall in a shadowed observation area outside the piano bar. Only a few tables stood there, populated by couples sipping drinks and looking through large windows to the ocean.
Jesus. Whatever was wrong with me, I had to get it under control. I was sweating too much, and I could see in the reflective glass that I was deathly pale. That, combined with the hollow cheeks, made me look like a drug addict.
I couldn’t risk that someone here might care. Security maybe, or one of the cameras. I had to get out of here, away from these people, away from—
Allie?
I stopped in mid-exhale. Scanning faces to my left, I paused on the bay windows overlooking the ocean.
Allie? Will you answer me?
I swallowed, keeping my eyes on the rolling waves. The sky was dark, but a rim of reddish-purple remained by the water. My eyes returned to the dim lounge with its few tables. I didn’t recognize anyone, didn’t feel him nearby.
He wasn’t there, I realized.
I’d been thinking about him, and he’d heard me.
Allie. Please...I need to see you.
I stood motionless by a men’s bathroom. I didn’t move, even when a man smiled at me as he left the swinging doors.
Allie, I’m sorry. I’m really—
I don’t want to talk about this, my mind blurted.
At his silence, I forced my thoughts back to neutral. I breathed in and out, once, forcing myself to be logical about this.
Revik, I thought at him. I took another breath, and my mind leveled more. Revik...you really don’t need to explain anything.
Allie, I do...
No, I sent. You don’t. I’m sorry I pushed before. You can have a divorce or whatever you want—
Not like this, he broke in. I don’t want to talk to you like this. I want to actually sit down and talk to you. Please.
I felt him trying to think how to persuade me.
Please, Allie...
He reached for me with his light and I jerked back, pulling away from him without thought. When he came close to me again, I threw up a wall.
He ran into it...then withdrew all at once.
It happened so fast, I barely understood what I’d done.
The silence went longer. I could tell it shocked him, my forcing him away. I felt pain on him, cloying, hard to keep out of my light. He was still hiding something from me, but I was trying to hide how I felt, too. It never seemed to end with us.
Revik, I sent. Really, I’m not just saying it...you don’t need to do this. I’m cool with us being friends...
Allie...
Eliah told me. So I get it now. I get what happened in Seattle. And I mean what I said about pushing you. I shouldn’t have...
Eliah? His thoughts grew still. What did he tell you, Allie?
Revik. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Can’t we just—
No, he sent. Pain wafted off his light. Please...gods. Don’t make me talk to you like this...please, Allie...
I felt the vulnerability on his light again, and couldn’t answer.
His thoughts grew quiet, almost a murmur. Please, Allie. Please let me see you...please.
I stared out at the night sky, watching the horizon dip gently up and down.
Okay, I sent, reluctant. But God, Revik. We don’t have to do this—
You’re in the room? Is Eliah with you?
No. I hesitated long enough to find it odd he’d mentioned Eliah again. ...to both, actually. I’m on the other side of the ship. Near that big piano, with all the shops. We could meet out here, or—
What? His light changed. How did you get there?
I walked. The pain worsened again and I clutched my belly, trying my damnedest not to feel anything more from his light. Revik...I’m being careful. Eliah was all pissed off. I didn’t see anyone in the corridor, so—
Allie! Gods, baby, what are you doing...wait right where you are. I’ll be there. I’ll find you...
“Sister?”
I jumped, turning at the new voice.
I was distracted, half-sick from being so close to his light, distracted by what he’d just called me, unsure at first if I’d even heard him correctly, much less if someone really just spoke to me outside of the Barrier.
&
nbsp; In any case, I expected it to be one of the guards, Eliah or Chandre or someone they’d sent to find me.
Revik’s presence faded, but I didn’t feel him pull away. Instead it felt like I walked into a dense wall and the wall entangled me, pushing him out. Beacon-like eyes met mine, glowing in the VR projections by the nearest kiosk. The flickering images there distracted me; I saw a woman gyrating in a tall monitor, wearing a sequined evening gown. The real person whose image it projected watched the transformed version of herself as if mesmerized.
“Are you lost, Sister?”
I blinked. A different woman held my arm. I watched her long fingers tighten on my skin. They looked blue in the light of the VR images. I struggled to focus on her face, couldn’t.
I will help you, she sent softly. You look very fatigued, sister.
Relief washed over me. I was tired, more tired than I could express. The woman with the opaque eyes purred a lulling sound...
...and I fell into a complicated strand of light.
The world phased.
It reemerged altered before I could catch it, as if my lenses reflected light from a different angle than they had before. Objects and people grew complex, multidimensional...expanding around me and sharpening from blurry outlines into a series of mathematical equations.
Snatches of music and light harmonized the perfect structure underlying their interweaving strands. A blueprint emerged from the harsh outlines...walls, floors, fixtures, furniture, potted trees, even people. The overhead chandelier exploded in a glitter of lit strands. Physical light broke down into particles, matter and energy, an achievement of base mechanical beauty that literally stopped my mind dead in its tracks.
I and the other seer walked back through the crowded causeway, and all I could do was stare around me, lost in the complexity and beauty of every single thing I could see. Even those banal VR projections grew fascinating...I could see now, how they were made, the technology infused with nonphysical light, framing each message like the projection screen behind a movie’s shifting frames. The minds behind each concept, the way in which those concepts formed building blocks into more and more detailed messages...all of it grew visible to me.
Allie's War Season One Page 27
