Mindtouch

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “I can’t!” she said, laughing. “I can see your withers. They’re twitching.”

  Vasiht’h folded his arms. “I thought I was supposed to be the body language expert.”

  “You are! But I’ve lived with you all my life, remember?” She leaned toward the screen. “So. Talk.”

  “Sehvi…”

  “No, I mean it,” she said. “You’re dying to talk about this, I can tell. It’s almost midterm there, isn’t it? So you’ve only got two months left of his company. He hasn’t failed, has he.”

  “No,” Vasiht’h admitted, and dropped back onto his haunches. “No, Sehvi, he hasn’t. He’s doing amazingly.”

  “He told you so?” she asked, lifting her brows.

  “Nooooo.” Vasiht’h drew out the word. At her inquisitive look, he said, “I might have done some snooping. They post class lists for half the courses he’s taking, so I looked up his student number, so I could see how he’s doing.”

  “Isn’t that—”

  “He leaves it on his data tablet!” Vasiht’h said, ears flush to his head. “And I wanted some warning if I was going to lose him at the end of spring, or if we’d have summer together.”

  “And you’re not,” she said, quieter.

  “No,” Vasiht’h said. “No. He’s going to leave. But Sehvi… he needs people.”

  “This is new,” his sister said, and sat up. “I would have thought he was the opposite of someone who needed people, what with the Eldritch being so xenophobic.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Vasiht’h said, frustrated. “Or at least, being xenophobic doesn’t mean you hate all people, you just hate unlike people. And he doesn’t hate unlike people. He seems to thrive on them.” He shook himself. “No, what I mean is… he’s seeing patients now, as part of his shadow rounds. And he comes back from that completely drained—”

  “—I can’t imagine why,” Sehvi interrupted. “Hospital rounds of people in serious enough trouble to need specific psychiatric assistance?”

  “Exactly,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s non-stop pain and it uses him up. But he comes home and he waits for me, ariishir. And we talk and… he revives. And he knows it. He knows that he needs it.”

  “That he needs you,” Sehvi corrected.

  “He’s back to coming to the quadmate gatherings,” Vasiht’h began.

  “But it’s you he waits for, isn’t it,” she said.

  He rubbed his arm, feeling the fur chafe against the grain. “We talk,” he said, low. “And… there’s the mindtouch.”

  Something in his tone made her eyes widen, then narrow. “You do it on purpose.”

  “We do it on purpose, yes,” Vasiht’h said, struggling not to sound as unhappy as he was.

  “And it’s amazing?” she said, her voice soft.

  “Oh Sehvi,” Vasiht’h said, head drooping. “Sehvi, I can’t tell you. I want it forever. All the time.”

  She was silent, and in that silence Vasiht’h found himself thinking of Luci and her failed affair. And he had told the Harat-Shar that she had to withdraw and find someone else, that there were plenty of potential mates in her future! Why hadn’t she thrown that advice back in his face? Now that he knew how ridiculous it was, he couldn’t fathom how she hadn’t. You never stopped wanting a relationship that made you happy, even if there was no way to make it work.

  “Does he realize that this is going to hurt when the two of you rip it apart?” Sehvi said. “No, wait, back up. Is the mindline permanent yet?”

  “Not yet,” Vasiht’h said. “And… I think he knows, but he can’t help it. He wants it too.”

  “Don’t you think that’s something you should discuss?” his sister asked. “This is serious.”

  “It’s only two more months,” Vasiht’h said, shoulders slumped. “Two more months and it won’t matter anymore. We’ll all go our separate ways.”

  “I really think you should talk to him,” Sehvi said.

  “And make it harder on him?”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with making it harder on him!” Sehvi exclaimed, irritated. “I think it has everything to do with you being unwilling to take the chance! What have you got left to lose, ariihir? If he’s leaving in two months, and you tell him you don’t want him to go…”

  “It’s not just that I don’t want him to go,” Vasiht’h said. “I really think… he’s going to burn himself out on this. He’s leaning on me to get through it. And—” He stopped abruptly, feeling as if he’d been struck.

  “Ohhhh,” Sehvi said, quieter. “And you’re afraid he might figure out how to lean on other people.”

  “The quadmates—”

  “Aren’t you, and don’t have a mindline building to him,” she said. “You’re afraid that he can replace you. And you don’t want to know if that’s true. Better not to know that you mean something to him, if it means he can move on from you. Right?”

  “He’d have to anyway,” Vasiht’h said, shaking. “He’ll outlive me by several orders of magnitude.”

  “He’s not a main sequence star, ariihir—”

  “He might as well be,” Vasiht’h said, curt. “Ten centuries or ten million, it’ll all be the same to me, Sehvi. I’ll be dead. And he’ll have to keep moving, keep finding people to make living worthwhile. In the end I have to be replaceable, or he’ll go crazy from grief. And he knows it. We both know it. He even said it, that distance makes things livable. So no, I’m going to say anything. I’m not going to make this harder for us both.”

  She leaned back. “Vasiht’h….”

  “No, Sehvi,” he said. “I can’t see it ending well. So why get invested?”

  “Because you already are?” she said, soft.

  “I’m—”

  “Love, you’re crying.”

  He touched his cheeks, found the fur damp. So this was what it was like, to cry for something other than physical pain. And he’d wondered that he was capable? He rubbed his fingers together, curled them into fists.

  “I can’t spare myself,” he said, when he was sure he could talk. “The least I can do is spare him.” His eye was still leaking. He wiped at it with a rough gesture and said, “So tell me how school’s treating you. Did you get through the deadly dull class on pre-natal nutrition?”

  She looked at him for a long time, but to his relief she answered, and let him direct the conversation away from things that hurt. That they hurt so much was a surprise to him, but undeniable. When they’d said their goodbyes he curled up on his nest of pillows and fought the tension in his chest that wanted to become another crying fit. Jahir did need him—he knew that, knew it in the way only the mindtouches could make clear. When the Eldritch left for his residency he’d come apart at the seams without someone to ground him in the familiar and the gentle and the normal. And what’s worse, they both saw it. And if they both saw it, then why was Jahir still so determined to pursue that course? It had to be that he felt confident he could manage without Vasiht’h.

  Or was his roommate not thinking that far ahead? It seemed ridiculous that someone as long-lived as an Eldritch wouldn’t, but Jahir was so good at living in the moment. Maybe that was his defense against the inevitability of loss?

  He could ask… but that would involve talking about all the rest of it, and Sehvi was right. He wasn’t prepared to hear that he was replaceable to someone who was—he understood with painful clarity—not at all replaceable to him. He could consult the mindtouches; they would probably reveal something. But increasingly the mindtouches were reciprocal, and he didn’t want to chance his roommate sensing what he was hiding.

  He would have to keep going, and hope that he recovered from his first real love. Because that’s what he was forced to admit it had become.

  “I trust I acquitted myself well,” Jahir said to Kandara after class. Hers had been his last midterm examination, and he was feeling the strain of it—the strain, and the pleasure. He didn’t need her nod to know he’d done wel
l.

  “You were a bit wobbly at the beginning of the semester,” she said, tail swishing, still with that boundless energy he’d noted at their first meeting. “But you straightened out and you’ve been sailing smooth since. You figured out some coping mechanisms, I assume?”

  “I believe so,” he said, even as he started. He hadn’t thought of his conversations with Vasiht’h that way, but… she was right. “Yes, I think I have. Though it’s debatable whether I can maintain it.”

  “Don’t let it panic you,” she said. “You can’t rely on any one single thing. Spread your needs around, that’s the best way to keep yourself healthy. How’s the touching going? Farrell told me you’ve been letting the patients grip your hands.”

  “It was disconcerting at first,” Jahir said, “but it has become… less so.”

  “Less so,” she repeated, lifting a brow.

  “Less so,” he said. “I can handle it.”

  “Mmm. Well. Half the semester down, half to go. Go enjoy your off-day, alet, and then it’s back to work next up-week.”

  “Hea,” Jahir said, inclining his head to her.

  Heading home, he thought back to those first few disconcerting touches. He had not shared with the Seersa that they had been unsettling because they hadn’t deranged him as completely as he’d expected. He remembered the fall he’d taken in his first Clinical Management class, and the disorientation of having so many minds forced on his. What had changed, he wondered? Had he desensitized himself to the contact by being with the children?

  Or was it the mindtouches that had given him some form of armor? Because there were times he thought that he was carrying Vasiht’h with him when they were apart.

  Jahir glanced up at the sky, a creamy blue pierced with the trail of rising birds. Spring was half-sped. It seemed incredible to him that he was almost done with his time as a student. He found himself wishing otherwise, and there was a heartache in him that he did not like to contemplate. If distance made things bearable, why did the coming end of his tenure here make things feel so much harder?

  Seeing Meekie and Kayla for the last time was painful, but Jahir thought of Berquist’s comment and could feel the truth in it as he hugged each girl. To know they were leaving to go to a possible cure was much, much better than to lose them for some other reason; there were gradations of loss, he saw now. Surely that would make things easier. He found them gifts to suit their interests: art kits, one designed for a calligrapher and one for a painter, and unlike his previous offerings, these were meant for adults. It was his way of expressing the hope that they would live to use them; perhaps Vasiht’h’s goddess would notice his attempt to shape the future, and grant the two those years.

  He applied himself to his remaining coursework, and also to maintaining the social connections he now understood to be vital to his ability to work with the severely affected: his weekly talks with KindlesFlame and visits to Kandara’s office, the gatherings with the quadmates, the time spent with the remaining children.

  He relied on them all… but knew that his first anchor, and surest, was Vasiht’h.

  “Congratulations are in order, I see,” KindlesFlame said as he joined the Tam-illee at their usual haunt.

  “Pardon?” Jahir said, stopping with a hand on the back of a chair.

  “Ah, so you haven’t heard.” KindlesFlame grinned. “You got into the Heliocentrus residency. And you were one of only two people they accepted this year.”

  “I did?” Jahir said, stunned.

  “Not only that, but you were the only student from this university. This planet, at that. The other’s from some school on Asanao.” KindlesFlame chuckled. “Sit, alet. You know you stop moving when you’re overwhelmed? Relax. You’re going to pull a muscle freezing like some wild animal.”

  Jahir sat across from him, fighting his bewilderment. “The semester’s still two weeks from its completion. I haven’t taken my finals—”

  “And if they waited, you wouldn’t have time to get there before they needed you to fill the roster,” KindlesFlame said. “No, they make their decision based on your academics up to that point, and from recommendations. Which Lasa and I sent a while back. You should be hearing from General here on campus soon, too; they do their paperwork the week before finals.” He cocked his head. “Did you really think you wouldn’t get in?”

  “I didn’t, no,” Jahir said. “They seemed too exclusive.”

  “And they are,” KindlesFlame said. “I’ve been friends with the program director over there since… ah. Time out of mind. And even so, he doesn’t take every person I recommend.” He grinned. “You got in on your own merits, alet. Beat out some fairly impressive competitors at that.”

  “I don’t even know if I’ll go,” Jahir said, and the words surprised him.

  They surprised KindlesFlame also. Not in a disapproving way, he noted; his mentor seemed more interested than upset. “What’s this now?”

  “It has been my observation this semester, now that I have been working outside simulations, that it is important to have friends,” Jahir said. “I don’t relish the thought of leaving the ones I’ve made behind.”

  “You’d set aside a promising residency for your friendships?” KindlesFlame asked, his voice neutral.

  Jahir studied him, wondering what the other man was thinking, but the Tam-illee’s control over his ears, his expression, his shoulders… flawless. So he gave the candid answer. “I did not come to the Alliance in search of a career, alet. I came to immerse myself in the Alliance culture. It has taught me to value diversity, and interdependence. That culture is carried by people. So yes. I consider it a difficult choice. I don’t know that I will privilege it above the opportunity on Selnor but…” He drew in a breath slowly, through his nose. Then inclined his head and said again, “But it is a difficult choice.”

  “Good,” KindlesFlame said. When Jahir looked up at him, surprised, the Tam-illee continued, “When you first arrived, you fainted in your apartment and fought very hard against anyone helping you. I don’t think you’d make that choice again, would you.”

  Thinking of Vasiht’h catching him on the sidewalk, Jahir said, “No.”

  “Then I’d say you’re doing very well.” KindlesFlame beckoned to a server. “Lunch is on me, and be extravagant, eh? The Heliocentrus residency is worth celebrating.”

  “Even if I turn it down?” Jahir asked.

  “Especially if you do,” the Tam-illee said with a laugh. “How many people can say they’ve done that? Not many!”

  CHAPTER 35

  The week before finals, Palland canceled their regular meeting with apologies—something had come up—and hoped that Vasiht’h would send him mail if there was anything urgent he needed.

  But Vasiht’h read the cancellation note with gratitude. He’d been due to report his conclusions on the semester’s study at the hospital, and while he had the numbers he hadn’t been looking forward to divulging just how little useful research he’d done. Deniel had not been the only person to seek him out for a quiet talk… and though Vasiht’h had known he was prejudicing his own results, he couldn’t turn them away; more than that, he hadn’t wanted to. He’d derived a fierce happiness from helping them, and he hadn’t been able to give that up. Even knowing that he’d probably have to toss the entire semester’s work, he would still have done it again.

  That was why he’d used the free hour to visit the campus siv’t. The shrine to the Goddess was empty, strangely; he would have thought that the week before finals would have been a perfect time to beg divine aid. But it was just him, and he padded to the altar and sat in front of it, haunches neat and paws facing forward where, he hoped, the Goddess would not notice the bare patches he’d chafed on the insides of his lower wrists. The shrine was made of black stone, polished smooth: the altar too, and the panel behind it, which had been carved with the Goddess’s face in profile, blowing the breath of life from Her lips. There was slow-burning incense lit on the altar, and fro
m time to time the draft from the overhead windows blew it into arabesques that mimicked the forms of that divine breath.

  He traced the lines with his eyes until his heart slowed, and his breathing with it.

  “I’m not where I’m supposed to be, am I,” he said at last to Her. She was listening, he knew it, in the same way his mother had been listening to him while measuring chemicals into a machine, or flour into a bowl. “I’ve been so proud of myself for coming here, daring to do something different from my family. But I’ve been living in fear ever since.” He inhaled, disrupting the plumes of smoke. They tasted like something out of Jahir’s mindtouches, and dried the back of his throat, the inside of his nose. “Well, I’m going to stop. You tell us we have to be responsible for shaping our lives, or they will be formless, and subject to the whims of circumstance. So I’m going to take responsibility.”

  He lifted his eyes to Hers. “I was never meant for a classroom. I’m going to do what I obviously love doing. Helping people.”

  The silence in the siv’t seemed to ring. His fur lifted and he bowed his head. The sense of relief that flooded him… ah, Goddess! To be free of the tedium of years of something he had never wanted to do. He was glad, glad that he’d made the decision before he wasted that time.

  Standing, he bowed to the altar and then padded away. But at the door, he hesitated and looked over his shoulder. “He’s not where he’s supposed to be either, is he?” he whispered.

  She did not answer.

  Perhaps the rarified air of the shrine had made him more sensitive; when he reached the apartment and found Jahir there, he stopped abruptly at the door. That tension… was it real? Some artifact of the mindline, now dormant? But his roommate lifted his head and smiled, just a touch of a curve, one Vasiht’h had long since learned to read as self-deprecation. “Arii. You find me at perhaps the most pivotal of crossroads, and in grave uncertainty.”

  Cautious, Vasiht’h padded into the great room and sat across from his roommate. “About…?”