Mindtouch

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  The picture KindlesFlame drew intrigued. Jahir knew very little about the Alliance’s starbases, but he thought he would go back to the apartment and do some research. “That bears investigation, I think. I thank you for the idea.”

  “My job,” the Tam-illee said, patting his chest once before leaning over to take one of the cheese puffs. “Giving you ideas. Now you just have to get through school to make something of them.”

  It was a fine afternoon for a card game, so Jahir taught the children how to play Queen’s Gambit, which they took to with startling aptitude. Persy and Kuriel soon proved themselves the most skilled at it, winning with a cheerful bloodthirstiness that would have unmanned most of the people he’d played against at court. Even Vasiht’h gave up after a few games, saying with a laugh, “I know when I’m out of my league!”

  “Then you can help us set up for a puppet show,” Persy said, pleased to be out of bed for once. “Come on, manylegs.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Vasiht’h said, and went to set up the cardboard theater while the girls debated which of their handmade characters to use.

  Nieve was still in Jahir’s lap, her cards forgotten on the carpet and her mind a gentle thing breezed through with sunny dreams of unicorns and trees: Berquist had taken them out the previous day and the sensory impressions had lingered. He rested his arms around her and closed his eyes, letting her lead him through the veil of sunlight. From a distance he could hear his roommate’s discussion with the girls: about this puppet needing repair before use, and that one needing a more colorful hat to indicate her role in the upcoming drama as empress-elect of the universe. He thought it would be a good play, indeed, couldn’t conceive how it could be anything else with such authors, and such a fine, peaceful day to receive it.

  “We’re just about ready, I think,” Vasiht’h was saying, when gray corruption ate through his world so abruptly Jahir felt as if he was falling through it, but he wasn’t—he wasn’t. It was Nieve, Nieve gone stiff in his arms, her mind collapsing in on itself beneath the sudden, catastrophic failure of her body. Vasiht’h saw the look on his face and started to lunge toward him, but the door burst open first and Berquist was there, and several more people, prying Nieve from his lap and swamping him with their panic—his mind impressed abruptly with readings plummeting on distant screens, alarms screaming—and through it all, Nieve… Nieve just gone, the sweet rambling of her mind quenched and nothing left to replace it.

  Her body was parted from his and rushed away, and he staggered and fell—to one knee? He couldn’t remember. But there was a pressure at his wrist, pulling, not a hand, but a touch free of any personality at all, and a voice near him, “Come on, out, someone’s coming to see to the girls and we need to get you out of here—”

  Yes, he said, or at least he thought he said, and stumbled, trembling, in Vasiht’h’s wake… for it was Vasiht’h, wasn’t it?

  When his eyes cleared, they were in the stairwell with its high, distant windows. He was sitting on a step, though he didn’t remember getting there. His clothes and hair were soaked through with sweat and clung to him, and his heart was beating hard enough to disorder his breathing.

  Vasiht’h was perched on the landing behind him, one paw on the step. He had a length of leather in his hand—the strap from his bag, Jahir saw, and the end of it was looped around his own wrist, no doubt how he’d been guided.

  “With us?” Vasiht’h asked, voice rough.

  “Yes,” Jahir said, and cleared his throat. “Vasiht’h… Nieve…”

  “I don’t know,” Vasiht’h said. “They took her away. The evening duty healer-assist is with the girls now. They were frightened. All of them, adults too.”

  “We should—”

  “We won’t,” Vasiht’h said, his voice steady, though Jahir could see the grief in him and didn’t know how. “We’re volunteers here, Jahir. We don’t have the training. We’d be in the way. And you… you’ve had a really bad moment. You look like you’re going to collapse.”

  Jahir glanced down at the strap around his wrist.

  “Yes,” Vasiht’h said. “That’s why I haven’t undone it yet. I’m afraid if I do you’ll pitch forward down the stairs.”

  It seemed mean of spirit to argue with what was in fact the truth. He could feel the crumbling of Nieve’s mind beneath his still, and the horror of it was nauseating. He swallowed and put his head down against his knees, willing the memory away, but it wouldn’t go. He thought his fingers were shaking.

  The door to the stairwell opened. He began to shift to allow the person room to pass, but it was Berquist’s voice that spoke, and she was not moving. “She’s in surgery now. It’s bad, but we don’t know when we’ll have more news. You both should go get some rest.”

  “Will you call us?” Vasiht’h asked for them both, because the news had paralyzed Jahir.

  “Either way, yes,” she said. As Vasiht’h rose, she added, “Thank you both. For everything you do.”

  “We’re glad to do it,” Vasiht’h said, and then she left. Jahir felt his roommate’s gaze even though his eyes were closed. “Arii? Can you get up?”

  “Yes,” Jahir said, though the world was vague and distant. Somehow they made it downstairs, and out through the lobby, into the world, and that was worse somehow. The sunlight, the normalcy of it, the birdsong and the soughing of the breeze through new leaves. He staggered, felt the loop on his wrist catch, managed to straighten.

  “Just keep walking,” Vasiht’h murmured. “We’ll be home soon.”

  “Yes,” he said again, even though the nausea was redoubling. The ash-crumbled reality inside him kept trying to find a reflection in the world outside and failing. All he could remember was the vertiginous feel of everything dissolving from around him.

  That he got partway home before he fell was, he thought in some distant place, astonishing.

  That Vasiht’h caught him, even more so.

  Vasiht’h hadn’t thought he could breathe through so much fear: for Nieve, for the girls and their families, for the staff and the doctors battling a disease they hadn’t even catalogued, and overwhelmingly, for his roommate… who, if he was not mistaken, had just felt a child die in his arms. Walking down the sidewalk, Vasiht’h held his breath every time Jahir’s foot came down, wondering if that would be the step that failed to hold him up, and once or twice it almost wasn’t… enough so that when the moment came, he wasn’t ready.

  But he remembered watching Jahir fall that first day in the apartment, and the horror of being frozen. Remembered, and refused. When the Eldritch crumpled, he dove up and grabbed him before he could hit the pavement. The mindline flared open with a sizzle of sparks and gave Vasiht’h a momentary glimpse into the hole his roommate had fallen into. He threw a strand of himself down like a lifeline and made an anchor—built walls between the Eldritch and Nieve’s powerful sending—and finally clarified the boundaries between them both so Jahir wouldn’t get lost in him, too, with all this bodily contact. Because he was really holding him: he could feel Jahir’s head heavy over his shoulder, the spill of hair tickling the bottom of Vasiht’h’s second back, between the wings. For someone from a lighter world, he had a surprisingly heavy torso.

  “All here?” he whispered when he felt tension begin to reanimate his roommate’s body.

  There was a long pause. Then: “I believe so.” A shivering through the gleaming link, like water disturbed by a falling rock.

  “Enough here to get back to the apartment?” Vasiht’h said.

  “We must,” Jahir said. And forced himself to stand, so slowly that Vasiht’h’s joints ached to watch—or were those his roommate’s impressions? As they parted, the mindline dissolved in glittering pieces, leaving an afterimage in Vasiht’h’s mind that shone like the sun on ocean waves.

  Despite the Eldritch’s determination, there were several moments on the way back that made Vasiht’h’s heart seize… but somehow, Jahir didn’t fall again, and they passed over the threshold in
to the apartment.

  “Sit,” Vasiht’h said, and got no argument: his roommate settled on the couch and took the blanket brought to him, said nothing while Vasiht’h went to make them both tea. He found, while shaking out the leaves, that his hands were trembling. Vasiht’h stared at them. His own reaction to Nieve’s abrupt decline? His fear over Jahir? Reaction to having managed a crisis to a point of stability? All of the above, probably. He set his mouth in a firm line and got the leaves into the strainer, put the water on to boil.

  When he came back to the couch, Jahir had his feet up under himself and the blanket close, head bowed. It made his face shocking when he lifted it. Vasiht’h was used to thinking of Eldritch skin as colorless, but he saw he was wrong: healthy Eldritch skin was a white that glowed, like a polished pearl. To see it wan and gray… it made all the sharp angles in Jahir’s face seem knife-like, unfinished.

  “Tell me,” Jahir said. “Tell me they’ll save her.”

  Vasiht’h paused. And wished, very much wished he could lie. But he couldn’t, not when faced with the intensity of his roommate’s gaze. “They’ll do everything they can. And everything in the Alliance Core is a lot. There’s every reason for hope.”

  Jahir looked away, and Vasiht’h heard the thought that followed, tasting like bitter medicine. Every reason, save that she was dying.

  Vasiht’h chose not to refute that. What he’d sensed through their touch made him think that Jahir was right.

  There was no cooking that night; Vasiht’h knew better than to try with the memory of Jahir’s nausea still strong in his throat. But his roommate did drink the tea, and so did he, and that settled them both, a little. Not much, but a little. Vasiht’h kept waiting for the message alert to chime, and knew Jahir must be anxious for it, too.

  But the chime didn’t come. At last Vasiht’h suggested that Jahir might shower and get ready for bed, and thankfully that suggestion met no resistance. While his roommate was busy, Vasiht’h rinsed the cups and the pot and went to his own room. He should have been working on compiling more of his research results, but when he looked at his desk he couldn’t find the energy. He rubbed his arms and wondered at himself, at why he hadn’t fallen apart, and why he felt so calm. Sad and anxious, yes, but… strangely steady. He remembered his mother saying once that it was easier to be strong for other people than to get through something on your own. Was this an example of that? He didn’t feel strong. Just deeply present, and willing to be patient with his own fears.

  When he stepped back into the great room, it was to find his roommate already there, lying on the couch this time. Vasiht’h stared at him, then went into the Eldritch’s room and fetched out his pillow and blankets. He brought them and said, “Lift your head.”

  Jahir opened his eyes, then said, “You didn’t have to—” And then subsided at Vasiht’h’s look. He lifted his head so Vasiht’h could get the pillow under it, then submitted to the blankets being tucked around him. “Thank you,” he said, voice raw.

  Vasiht’h shook his head and went into his own room, returning with his blanket and some extra pillows. He arranged his own bed on the floor next to the couch. When he finished, he found Jahir watching him.

  “Do you want to sleep alone tonight?” he asked the Eldritch.

  “No,” Jahir said.

  “Me neither,” Vasiht’h said, and curled up on his cushions, exhausted. He pulled the blanket up over his second back and onto his torso, rested his head down. He could hear Jahir’s breathing, his shifting on the couch. Could sense him, just a little, through the mindtouches that kept wanting to recreate the mindline: a shocky gray pallor, a throbbing like a wound with a freshly ripped scab. He wanted very much to soothe away Jahir’s cruel dreams, but he knew better than to try with his own mental state so low.

  The following morning brought them no news, and classes could not be ignored. Neither of them had the appetite for breakfast, but Vasiht’h made one anyway and forced them both to eat at least some of it before they left. His morning lecture didn’t hold his attention; he was relieved that his afternoon period was his directed study but not one of the hospital sessions. Too soon, he thought, to go back with equanimity, and certainly he couldn’t imagine performing the sleep-soothing on anyone in the hospital without his thoughts being contaminated by the memory of what he’d seen there the day before. He spent the afternoon working through the study results to date instead, and returned home glad to put down his tablet and give up for the day.

  Jahir was just walking through the door when the message alert chimed. They both froze.

  “I’ll take it,” Vasiht’h said, and went into his room to do so. He waved it open and found a very short message in text, and he stared at it for several minutes while his heart raced. So few words, to be so devastating.

  When he left his room, Jahir was sitting on the couch with his face in his hands. He looked up when Vasiht’h padded close, and then his shoulders tensed.

  “They tried,” Vasiht’h said. “But they lost her.”

  Jahir put a hand to his face, covering his eyes. Vasiht’h could see the wrist quivering. He didn’t say anything; wasn’t sure if it was his place to try, if his roommate would welcome it or find it an intrusion.

  “That child,” Jahir whispered. “So young.”

  “It happens,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s horrible and senseless, but it happens.”

  Jahir said nothing to that for so long that Vasiht’h thought he’d offended. But then the Eldritch held out a hand without looking up, without uncovering his face. Swallowing, Vasiht’h slipped his own fingers under his roommate’s, trying to project his steadiness, his calm. He had the sense of being a rock off the coast of a beach, with the waves slapping its sides, washing over it, rushing past. He held fast.

  Jahir threaded his fingers through Vasiht’h’s and said nothing more. A little while later, he learned that his roommate was weeping by the smell of salt in the air… the smell, and nothing more.

  How he was to stumble through his classes, Jahir had not the slightest notion…but that he had to, he felt in his bones with an urgency that had neither name nor explanation. He bowed to it and bent to his studies, and tried to breathe through the grief in his heart. Little Nieve, so bright and new, with her love of poetry and her eyes like young hyacinths. He had thought himself resigned to the reality of the Alliance’s many peoples dying so quickly. But to be confronted with the evidence, in a way he could not deny—

  It was too much pain, and unexpected. He gave himself to his books and drowned himself in chains of drug reactions, long lists of traumatic disorders. But even so he felt parted from it, from himself, from the world and the sunlight of the advancing spring. He was so distant from it all, in fact, that he found powers in himself he hadn’t thought possible, of both stamina and observation. It was the latter that occupied him in Patient Assessment, now drawing near its final sessions and the professor still ignoring him. The week following Nieve’s death, Sheldan dismissed the class and Jahir found himself still in his seat. When the last of the students had departed, the Seersa glanced at him skeptically, one ear canted, and said, “Yes?”

  “Your issues with humanity are not my concern, professor,” Jahir said, “though by now your behavior toward the two humans in class makes it plain that you have them. I would remind you, however, that no matter how I look I am not human, and had even less cause than those students to have earned the public humiliation you put me to. That your conclusions were faulty is only an indicator of the depth of your personal trouble. I may be reserved, but I have made friends here, and not one of them thinks of my reserve as an indication of rejection. Unlike you, they have internalized the Alliance’s multiculturalism, enough to both delight in what is different, and understand that it is different.”

  Sheldan’s ears had flipped back during this speech, and his eyes had grown wider, and by the end of it his tail had stopped its slow swish. He said nothing for so long that Jahir felt compelled to speak. �
�If you wish to reprimand me now for insolence, that is your prerogative. But I will not retract any of it.”

  “Reprimand you!” the Seersa exclaimed. “I should!” And then with an exasperated growl. “I should, except you’re right.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Jahir said, feeling a faint surprise.

  “You’re right,” Sheldan said, frowning, but his expression was distracted, as if he talked to himself. “Right in front of my nose, and I never looked at it. I suppose that’s how things go when you want to deny them.” He was silent for several minutes, then shook himself and looked at Jahir, folding his arms. “I suppose you feel I owe you an apology?”

  Jahir gathered his tablet and books and put them in his bag. “I will settle for your not treating my grade prejudicially.”

  “Even in your favor?”

  He looked up.

  “Because that was a fine piece of patient assessment if I ever saw one,” Sheldan said, wry.

  “I suggest,” Jahir said, “you seek counseling. And give me the grade I earn, whatever that might be.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, and narrowed his eyes. “And you, young not-a-human? Something’s eating you.”

  “You need not concern yourself with me,” Jahir said. “And I am three times your age, professor. By no definition am I your young anything.”

  That silenced the Seersa, and Jahir left him behind, relieved that there were only a few weeks left in the semester.