Mindtouch

by M. C. A. Hogarth

He thought that won him a sharp look, but the ceremony was starting.

  The ceremony had a joy to it that Jahir would previously had ascribed only to weddings; but naming, it seemed, was an important milestone in the life of a Tam-illee, implying as it did a life purpose. Rededications in particular merited celebration for representing a challenge overcome. He could appreciate such sentiments, as well as the elegance of the ritual itself: Kievan sat with the rest of the audience until a priestess called for him, and he protested that he no longer answered to that name. She asked him by what name he would be known, then, and he stood and declared for himself: Kievan StrongHeart, after a poem his father had been fond of reciting about the virtues of staying one’s course.

  The priestess presented him to the congregation then, announcing him by name, and they were done.

  The only duty of the celebrants involved writing an aphorism or piece of advice for Kievan and leaving it in a wooden box for him to read later. Jahir wrote on the slip given to him, “Our choices shape our lives, and until we die we can make new ones.” Then he joined Vasiht’h on the lawn for a tremendous picnic, spread out on summer-lush grass beneath the green shadows of the trees. And it was a delicious meal: roasted birds on a bed of toasted grains with julienned vegetables he couldn’t identify but were perfect anyway, and baskets of rolls, both savory and sweet—filled with cream cheese, he thought, and honey and something else that he applied to Vasiht’h for enlightenment: “toasted walnuts, maybe.”

  He ate enough to satisfy even his roommate and then sat cross-legged on the grass, turning his face outward, toward the spread of the campus.

  “What are you looking at?” Vasiht’h asked, offering him a champagne flute.

  “Ah? Thank you,” he said, receiving it from a hand that was careful not to brush his. “The world. And the endlessness of it.”

  Vasiht’h canted his head and looked toward the horizon with him. “You’re looking in the wrong direction,” he said at last.

  “Am I?” Jahir glanced at him.

  Vasiht’h nodded toward the sky. “You want real endlessness, look up. Look up, and know that out there are a thousand thousand worlds and billions of people, and it’s all open to you.”

  Hearing it he felt it. The celebrating aliens at his back became part of a sweep all the way out to a crown of stars and he closed his eyes, humbled by the power of it, and by his own elation at the thought of embracing it all. For once, his lifespan did not seem a burden, but an opportunity… and while he knew that feeling would fade, he was grateful to have had it. Every joy he could use to balance the bittersweet, he would take.

  “Do you feel it too?” he asked, because he realized he couldn’t sense Vasiht’h’s answer, and that this had become something strange.

  His roommate lifted his chin and looked up, and in his eyes was something noble and true and good, something that made sense of his face. He smiled at that vista, and Jahir felt it then, the tranquility of spirit that was the Glaseah at his best, his most authentic.

  So much of the Alliance had come to him mediated by this male, Jahir thought. Music and food, ceremonies and gatherings, language and culture, wisdom and understanding. Would he have loved the outworld as easily without this self-appointed guide?

  “It’s a good life,” Vasiht’h said, quiet.

  “So it is,” Jahir murmured.

  “So let me see if I understand this,” Sehvi said, pursing her lips. “Your actual research study is useless, but your post-research survey indicates that everyone who participated is less stressed? To the point that they’re recommending you to their peers, who are now eager to sign up for your second study?”

  “That’s… about the shape of it, yes,” Vasiht’h said, rubbing the side of his muzzle. When his sister didn’t immediately reply, he looked up at her and found her eyes sparkling. “Oh, come on, Sehvi. It’s not funny!”

  “It is funny,” she said. “It’s comedy routine funny, ariihir. You’re obviously useless as a researcher and brilliant as a therapist.”

  “I am not useless as a researcher,” Vasiht’h said, flattening his ears. “I’m just new to it, and not very good at it yet. I need practice.”

  “Practice does help, sure,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s going to help enough. Seriously, big brother. Why not give it up already?”

  “Because…” Vasiht’h trailed off. He flexed his paws, realized he was kneading one of his floor pillows like a kit. He pushed it away. “Professor Palland was telling me that there are faculty members who are bad teachers.”

  “And this is news how?” Sehvi asked. “You’ve lived with our mother, same as me. You’ve heard her complaints about the teachers who are in it for the chance to do research, and who can’t stand the classroom.”

  “I know,” Vasiht’h said, frustrated. He looked away, tail lashing. “But I always thought it was a matter of them just being… thoughtless. Absent-minded. Maybe crotchety, the way Grandfather is when we drag his attention away from whatever he’s got on his mind. But Palland says sometimes it’s malice.”

  “Malice,” Sehvi repeated, brows up. “That’s a strong word.”

  “He as much said it,” Vasiht’h said. “That some psychology professors hate people. How can that be possible?”

  “Same way it is for anyone, I guess,” Sehvi said. “They have issues. Everyone has issues, ariihir.” She rolled her eyes. “Ninety percent of my professors have issues. They’re all hyper about reproductive engineering because they have issues.”

  “That’s different,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s one thing to be afraid of something and then develop a complex about it. It’s another to assume your position gives you the license to treat people cavalierly. Especially people who can’t fight you about it, or feel they can’t.” He rubbed his brow. “It’s horrible.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is,” Sehvi said, studying him. “But it’s not like it’s common, ariihir, or there would be the Goddess’s own scandals all the time. And I haven’t heard anything about scandals in one of the Alliance’s oldest universities. That would be big news no matter where you were.”

  “I know, I know. It just makes me think… maybe I really am onto something,” Vasiht’h said. It felt like a good reason. It was one, he thought: he felt strongly about it. “Students deserve teachers who care about their success. I’d be a good teacher, Sehvi. I’d care.”

  “Sure you would,” she said. “You care about everyone, ariihir. That’s why you keep trying to help them.”

  “So I’m going to be good about the research,” Vasiht’h said. “I’m going to practice doing it well. And when I get my terminal degree after all of this, I’m going to be one of those professors who helps people. Like Palland.”

  She studied him, then sighed. “It’s your life, Vasiht’h.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  “And what about your roommate?” she said. “How’s he doing? Still getting the mindtouches?”

  Vasiht’h made a face. “Yes.”

  “Oh, now that’s a look. What’s wrong now?” she asked. “Other than him also making dumb choices?”

  “I heard that,” Vasiht’h said, scowling.

  “I meant you to hear it,” she answered. “So? Mindtouches? What’s gone wrong?”

  “It’s not that things have gone wrong,” he said, reluctantly. “It’s that they keep going right. I think we’re getting past mindtouches and into a primitive mindline. When I feel his feelings, I can tell he senses it. There’s a circuit now.”

  “And he’s not offended?” she asked.

  “No,” Vasiht’h said, drawing the word out. And sighed. “No. I think… I think he enjoys it, Sehvi.”

  “And that bothers you.”

  From her expression she was mystified, and he didn’t blame her. He found his own feelings just as troublesome. “Yes. Yes! Of course it bothers me. He’s an Eldritch, and he’s not supposed to welcome these things—”

  “I thought he told you he was f
ine with it?”

  “—and even if he does welcome them,” Vasiht’h continued, “what good will it do? He’s pushing for his residency and planning to be doing it off-world by this time next year. I’m going to be here for the next six or seven or eight years, finishing my degree. What use is it to develop a mindline, just to have it ripped apart?”

  Sehvi flinched. “I can’t imagine that will feel good.”

  He thought of the growing connection and shuddered. “It won’t.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll come back?” she said, tentative. “His degree will put him to work in a hospital, and from what you’ve said he feels pretty strongly about All Children’s. Maybe he’ll end up there, and the two of you can see each other once in a while?”

  “Seeing each other once in a while isn’t enough,” Vasiht’h said, looking away with bared teeth. “It’s getting hard to imagine not having him around, Sehvi. A mindline—a real mindline!—I can’t even describe to you what it’s like, and we haven’t even solidified it yet. The mindtouches alone… it’s like…” He stopped. Swallowed. “It’s like finding a twin you never knew you had. It’s proof of a benevolent universe.”

  She looked at him for a long time. Then, quietly: “Have you told him that?”

  “What good would it do?” Vasiht’h said. “He’s set on this course, ariishir. He’s set on it and there’s something driving it, something he has to answer. He’s not going to turn from it. And I’ve got my own path to walk.”

  “It’s too bad you can’t walk a path together,” she said. “You don’t suppose—”

  “No,” Vasiht’h said, trying not to be brusque, but the idea that things could be different in some ideal universe hurt.

  She sighed and smiled wanly. “Well, maybe he’ll fail a few classes and have to slow down. You could keep him a few more years that way.”

  “Maybe,” Vasiht’h said. “Maybe.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Jahir was relieved when finals put paid to spring term. There was an agitation in him that made him yearn to have his back to the first year of his education. He had enjoyed his first two semesters, but having a clear path before him made him long to be running it. On the final day of the term, he attached the books for summer’s classes to his account and spent a quiet afternoon rifling through them. His one ‘light’ class was on ethics; he had three lecture classes, one on traumatic disorders, another on the psychology of at-risk populations, and a third on derangements and other psychiatric side effects of drugs. His last class was another Clinical Management practicum, and while he wasn’t looking forward to the accelerated version he consoled himself that he at least knew what to expect.

  It was frustrating not to be able to begin immediately. It must have shown, because his roommate had one look at him when he entered the apartment and said, “Let’s go out.”

  “Arii?”

  “You need to keep moving,” Vasiht’h said. “So let’s go out. Get ice cream, climb trees, listen to music. Something.”

  “All three?” Jahir asked, hopeful.

  Somehow they managed it—or more accurately, Vasiht’h did, for he knew where to go to make it possible, with it being a night without a concert. The Glaseah led him to the art campus and they walked through the gardens by the music college, where they found several groups practicing in the pleasant evening air. If the music had a rough and unfinished quality, there was talent and energy in it all the same, and he loved it nearly as much as the musicians seemed to love having the two of them there to appreciate it. After that they walked to the gelateria, where the Asanii talked him into the zabajone and it was wonderful. From there, Vasiht’h led him unerringly to the tree he’d climbed that one afternoon. Jahir sat under it, rather than in it, and the Glaseah settled beside him, did not break the silence.

  The mindtouches, Jahir thought, had grown more frequent. And he had become accustomed to them. It struck him as astonishing, that in less than a year he could have traveled from a place where such things were always painful and unwelcome to this place here, beneath a tree rustling in the summer evening’s breeze… where he could get a vague sense of his roommate’s steady aura, and find it reassuring. They sat together then, enjoying the easing of the heat, the chirping of insects in the grass.

  “It’s going to be a rough summer,” Vasiht’h said at last. “Will you do something for me?”

  “If I can?” Jahir glanced at him.

  “Don’t spend too much time pre-studying.” Vasiht’h met his eyes. “Let me take you to concerts, and out for walks. Let our quadmates feed you. Have some wine—yes, I know you don’t drink much, get it hidden in your ice cream if you prefer. Because when all this starts… you won’t have time for any of that.”

  The thought of losing so many of the pleasures of the Alliance was painful… but temporary, he reminded himself. Three terms, and he’d be on his way to whatever residency he could qualify for. Another two years there and he’d be graduated and in practice. Surely that was worth the sacrifice. “You wish for me to give you these two weeks.”

  Vasiht’h drew in a long breath, let it out. “Yes.”

  Jahir rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. He watched the wind bend the grasses, grown purple with the deepening eve. “A little like a bridegroom before his marriage, yes?”

  “If the Eldritch have wild nights of celebration before they settle down,” Vasiht’h said with a chuckle that sounded reluctant to Jahir’s ears. “Yes.”

  “I would like to think I will not lose myself entirely to the work,” Jahir murmured.

  Vasiht’h surprised him with a snort. “You have no idea what you’re getting into, arii. Not with school, and not with after it. This is a work that consumes you, now and forever.”

  Jahir glanced at him, surprised. “This from the person of no passions?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t completely right about that,” Vasiht’h said. “Because I feel very strongly about helping people. So,” he squared his shoulders. “Will you let me help you?”

  “Always,” Jahir said, and meant it.

  Vasiht’h breathed out, seeming to lose some tension in his shoulders and withers. Not all of it, but… some. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

  “So where shall we start?” Jahir asked, after the silence had grown ripe with his roommate’s unshared thoughts.

  “With the orchestra,” Vasiht’h said, firm.

  Jahir frowned. “Did not the student season end just now? With the conclusion of spring term?”

  “The student season did,” Vasiht’h said. “But the orchestra downtown plays all year round.”

  For the performance downtown, Vasiht’h shook out his sari, crimson silk edged in gold swirls intended to evoke the breath of the Goddess, and carefully pleated it over his second back and between the wings before arranging it over his upper shoulders. He had a strong premonition about the coming months: that he would lose his roommate to the work, and that his roommate would not fail as Sehvi had suggested. He wasn’t sure if what he was feeling now was mourning; maybe it was more preparation for it. But he wanted Jahir to take something into the school year with him, as much of the Alliance as Vasiht’h could roll into two weeks.

  He didn’t know why this was necessary. He just knew powerfully that it had to be done, that it was the groundwork for something important, and he trusted the instinct. When his roommate joined him at the door, he asked, “Ready?” and they both knew he was referring to more than one evening. It made Jahir’s steady, “Yes,” all the more satisfying.

  The capital’s downtown concert hall was a sweep of silver walls and vast black windows—on the top floor of one of the capital’s tallest buildings. The glass was so clear there seemed no interruption between the plush wine-colored carpet they were standing on and the night sky with its scattered stars and the shimmering spread of lights from the buildings below them. It was enough to give Vasiht’h vertigo, but his roommate stood near the edge, so intent the mindtouches came in
pulsing waves: awe and a fascination so powerful it felt like need.

  The Kavakell Symphony Orchestra was only slightly larger than the university’s, surely by no more than six or seven people. But even Vasiht’h, who was not well-schooled in music, could tell the difference between their skills. Usually he spent performances like this watching the musicians play, something he found easier to enjoy than straining for the aural nuances he was less equipped to hear. But the mindtouches raveled into a thin line, and through it Jahir’s enjoyment washed into him in gleaming waves, an undertow that made sense of the power of music. He closed his eyes, and the fur on his shoulders rose.

  Jahir didn’t speak after they left the hall. Vasiht’h let him keep his silence, sensing the distance his roommate was traveling to return from the world created by the performance. Truth be told, having shared some part of it with him, he needed some of that time himself, and marveled at it: how art could make the real world seem alien. When they were both present again, he said, “More?”

  Jahir breathed out, then laughed, quiet. “More,” he said.

  So they did more. Sometimes more was less, was easy: they cooked a celebratory dinner for their quadmates, during which they laughed at the vicissitudes of the student life, ate too much and drank too much, then cleaned up afterward in the quiet of their apartment with great contentment. But Vasiht’h also took him out to the city, to eat at tiny family restaurants maintained by generations of Seersa and ringing with the every-accent sound of their broad language; and to fancy restaurants with transparent floors set over fish ponds that allowed the discerning diner to choose their meal from beneath their feet. They walked through historic districts, took tours of museums and visited the Landing park, where the Seersa had first touched down: there were crete pawprints set on the lawn where the first few individuals had walked, and a reproduction of the shuttle they’d used to reach the surface from the great sleeper ships that had carried the Pelted away in the Exodus from Earth.