The Android and the Thief

by Wendy Rathbone

  Trev saw little emotion in the man in this strange, surreal nightmare. He seemed more jaded than defeated. “If you’re being watched, then they know we’re here, me and Khim.”

  “I am digitally observed. Computer activity, mainly. Who comes and goes from my house is of no matter. And I believe the storm obscured your arrival so that no one knows you’re here. So far. But of course you can’t stay long.”

  “We need time to find the means to survive. That’s all.”

  “Of course. You are hidden well. Your flier is gone, with clues my man placed that will lead anyone searching for you to hunt in other directions, away from here. You were both astute. You left no tracks. And I will do my best to keep it that way. You probably have at least a couple of days, and you are welcome to stay longer. But harboring fugitives puts me and Renn on even more unstable ground. Which is why we have plans to visit a hotel owned by a friend on Gideon. We are leaving this afternoon. You two are welcome to stay as long as you like. But as I said, after two days at the outset, your danger increases. And of course, by next Friday, this island in the clouds will no longer belong to me.”

  Trev said, “I don’t know what to say.”

  Khim leaned forward. “I know what to say. We need a flier and cash. And then you will never see us again.”

  Trev glanced from Khim to Arch.

  “To the point, I see.” Arch smiled at Khim. “I can supply you with both if you can change the tracking code on the flier. When it is found missing, I will simply report it stolen. The cash will not be much, but I have some on hand, better than nothing.”

  Just then, Renn came in. “Sir, the hotel is expecting us at four.”

  “Thank you, Renn.” Arch stood. “Well, I’m off to finish packing. Renn can show you around. Or you can explore on your own. The garage is one level down. I have five fliers, all spaceworthy. Take your pick, except for the blue. That one we’ll be taking with us to the hotel. It will be sold too, but at a later date.”

  “Of course,” Trev said.

  Their luck might be hanging by a wisp of spider silk, but they still had it.

  THE BLUE flier they were not allowed to take would have been ideal. It was a Merosch, sleek and curvy and with every gadget one could imagine built in.

  Trev chose the silver Lyric, opening its gull-wing doors and leaning inside. He could feel Khim’s heat right behind him and immediately thought of Renn, how Arch had called him “my lover.” A brief image came to his mind of the two of them together, Renn and Arch, and something inside Trev ached.

  Slipping inside the vehicle, he began disabling the tracker using the holoscreen, gesturing through the air.

  Khim stood beside the door, waiting. His resolute counterpart. Quite the match in many ways. At that thought, Trev’s heart beat faster.

  He stuck his head out. “There’s a plate at the rear. We need to have any identifying exterior objects removed.”

  “On it,” Khim said.

  Trev felt both odd and happy that Khim moved so quickly at any request, immediately and without question.

  When they finished readying the flier, they both stood in front of it, arms crossed.

  Khim said, “I still don’t trust him.”

  “We have to trust a little bit, Khim. What other choice do we have?”

  “In our position? None, of course.”

  Trev took a deep breath. “We’re going to do this. We’re going to make this all work.”

  Khim turned to him as if he were about to say something, then tilted his head away, his eyes almost sad.

  Trev had the urge to touch him, the way his father did whenever Trev was troubled or needed encouragement. But Khim hated touch. Trev clamped down on the sadness that began to well inside him, turned and headed for the garage elevator. Khim followed.

  The elevator doors opened onto the foyer that led to the big living room with the hearth. The hearth glowed orange and brown with some kind of electric fire that looked real but never burned out. It even gave off the scent of woodsmoke.

  The curtains to the right were opened to the sloping field of the front yard, verdant and forested with maples and pine. In the great room, sunlight streamed into all the corners and made auroras out of motes of dust. Everything was tidy, serene.

  Trev said, “I said a man who has nothing left to lose might do anything to gain ground again. Anything. And then Renn was there. And he contradicted that statement.”

  “Did you believe him?” Khim asked.

  “I did at the time.” Trev hesitated, worrying he was overstepping, then asked, “What is your take on him?”

  “I’ve only worked closely with other soldiers of my kind. Not servants. Not—” He swallowed. “—toys,” he finished. “But he would say anything his owner told him to say, unless his conditioning is broken.”

  Like yours is. Trev did not say the thought aloud. He nodded. “Do you want to leave now?”

  “After dark would be the ideal time.”

  Trev felt his stomach begin to knot. On the run again so soon, not even a day’s reprieve. He knew it would be this way for a while. Perhaps forever. “Okay.” His palms felt damp, his whole body nerve-racked. If anything ever happened to Khim, he didn’t know what he’d do. “Nervous?” he asked.

  Khim’s mouth twitched. “Steady.”

  Trev looked at Khim’s hands, the metal one so perfectly sculpted it looked like a glove, as beautiful as the flesh hand but in a different way. They so often were clenched in fists at his sides, and now was no exception. Khim looked more nervous than Trev had ever seen him. But he loved that Khim had lied about not being so nervous. It made him feel strangely protected.

  KHIM FOLLOWED him everywhere.

  Trev went to the piano, and Khim was there. He showed him a few chords. Minor-keyed echoes filled the room.

  Khim said, “Music is like math.”

  “Yes, but it truly soars when you take it beyond that point.”

  Trev went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Khim was there too.

  Trev went to the bedroom to wash up for lunch. And Khim was there. They were so used to sharing a small space, it didn’t really bother either of them to wash up in the big bathroom sink together.

  In the hall they heard voices—distant, emotional. Trev opened the bedroom door and peered out. Khim came to his side.

  Arch stood tall against the window’s white light at the end of the hall, but Renn was taller. Trev could not make out the words, but Arch’s tone grew urgent. Then he took his hand and put it on Renn’s shoulder. Renn leaned in and kissed him.

  Just like that.

  It wasn’t startling to Trev, but so natural his entire body filled with warmth to see it. He looked at Khim, whose eyes were down, shadowed as if staring unhappily at the floor.

  Trev leaned against the doorframe. The man at his side was anything but “steady.” This was someone, Trev had realized over the past two days, he never wanted to let go. “It isn’t fair that Renn has to be sold, but he refuses to run with us.”

  Still looking down, Khim said, “No. It isn’t fair. But his conditioning is stronger than mine. He will not break the law.”

  Trev said, “I’m going to make sure you are never sold again.”

  Khim looked up, eyes big. Calm. But with an inner desolation. Again Trev had the most urgent wish to touch him. “I believe you,” Khim said, “but sometimes things happen that are not under our control.”

  THEY ATE an oddly tense but good lunch with Arch and Renn.

  After lunch, Arch took Trev off into his private study and shut the door. He presented him with an envelope of ten thousand credits cash. And an ID.

  “This is not the ID I had made up for you before our deal went south. Your father knows that one. This one is generic and will not hold up if anyone looks at it closely. I can do nothing for Khim. You will need to forge ownership papers if you want to keep him at your side. Otherwise, let him go.”

  A strange coldness at the word “owner
ship” wrapped Trev’s heart.

  Soon after, the android and the embezzler left. Forever.

  Trev watched their blue flier take off into the paleness of the midafternoon sky, its sound on the air like an echoing cry.

  Now they were alone again.

  Trev wandered the shadows of the house, the emptiness of it reflecting his heart more than he wanted to admit. Khim sat on the couch looking at a digital screen. Playing at being steady, for the moment.

  Trev remembered waking that morning, Khim sitting by the bed in a hard, straight chair. Khim had never left his side even then, and the thought increased the nervous feelings that twisted inside him. His blood kept feeling hot and cold at the same time. He needed—something. Reassurance? Or maybe a short walk?

  Trev came up behind the couch, looking down at Khim, and said, “You slept all night in a chair. You should get some rest before we leave.”

  “You have a hole in your shoulder,” Khim replied without looking up. “You should too.”

  “I have all this pent-up tension. I’m going for a walk. There’s a garden out back, well protected from prying eyes, just off the glass porch. I’ll be there.”

  Khim lifted his head back to the couch cushion with his throat revealed—a vulnerable position for anyone, let alone an android. But now they were alone. And something strange was happening between them.

  Their eyes met, upside down. Khim’s were searching, troubled.

  Trev said, “Even just a half-hour nap would do you some good.”

  Khim said softly, “You know I will not sleep.”

  “I know.” Something sparked between them, a fusion of light. A beam that touched the center of Trev’s heart.

  Neither one looked away.

  Khim looked momentarily lost. He was so beautiful sitting in his white shirt on the white leather, waiting for his fate. Khim’s eyes traveled over Trev’s face, and the gaze went slowly from confident apprehension to adoration. Or maybe it had been adoration all along?

  Trev gave a little gasp. His blood quickened. Khim’s golden aura seemed suffused with a different kind of tension now—a tremble of breath, a dampness on his lips, which looked darker than normal, full. His muscles seemed held in check only by force of will.

  The dusk in Khim’s eyes was backlit with a rising ivory light like that of the moon on a foggy night.

  “Khim.” Trev’s voice came in a whisper, as if he was afraid Khim would look away.

  But Khim’s gaze held.

  “How long have you been—” Trev stopped and swallowed.

  How long have you been in love with me? he wanted to ask.

  Head back, Khim did not move. He watched Trev like a careful animal just coming into the light, finally able to trust.

  And Trev realized he needed to turn that question around. How long have I been in love with him?

  Khim said, quite calm, eyes still aglow, “Make sure you’re not seen.”

  “What?” Trev asked.

  “On your walk.”

  “Yeah.” Finally he glanced up and away. Mind reeling, he went out the back french doors and onto the elaborate glass porch. There was a sliding glass door that led down stone steps and into a jungle of greens with sweet scents and buzzing bees.

  TREV HEARD the bees and saw dark yellow waves of poppies covering the undergrowth along the path. He smelled the elixirs of the flowers, fresh from the rainstorm like a spell of newness amid all the havoc and madness of the past few weeks of his life.

  He stretched his shoulders, the injured one complaining but so much better now that Khim had tended it, as if it had already almost healed. He lifted his hands, ran them through his hair, tugging.

  He heard himself make an oddly strangled sound. Now he forced himself to think about it, look at it from all angles—backward, forward, up, down.

  I’m in love with Khim.

  The thought crashed into his mind like the obvious, explosive revelation it was, hurtling through him with a million hot sparks. It was devastating. It was exhilarating.

  And thoroughly impractical right now.

  The earth was still damp under the grass in some places. His bare feet felt the coolness, the soft measure of calm, growing things, life clinging all around him in air and water and light.

  He took a deep breath of the freshness, feeling the energy of it hit the bottom of his lungs.

  He closed his eyes as the sun’s heat played on his face. He opened them again and walked faster, to the far end of the garden, fronds dipping over and around him.

  Finally he came to a cul-de-sac in the pathway and followed it around until he once again faced the magnificent house, its Victorian architecture a supreme work of art.

  The glass windows of the back porch gleamed in the sun, and he saw the dark silhouette of a figure there looking out. Serene and still, and as steadfast as the deepest gravity of his innermost thoughts.

  Khim was watching him.

  Trev’s body burned.

  He thought he saw a hand pressed to the glass, Khim’s hand, strong and reaching out.

  Trev moved toward the house faster now, holding himself back from a run. His bare feet pushed against dirt, seeds, weeds. He stopped when he reached the little stone stairs caked in dust.

  Impractical. Unbelievable. Incredible.

  He looked up. Khim’s eyes were on him. He couldn’t see their color or their expression from where he stood, only the man. Only the waiting man.

  He leaped up the steps, taking the whole of them in one stride, landing lightly on his bare feet on the warm porch floor just within the borders of the sliding glass door.

  Khim turned from the window in a shower of golden light.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  KHIM STOOD on the glass porch that overlooked the backyard and saw Trev’s dark head as he wandered among tall green plants that waved in a breeze. Some of the long fronds were topped with blue and red flowers. Stretching to the edge of Archimedes’s island in the clouds were carpets of brilliant yellow buds. They made curving, crazy paths all about the acreage.

  It was the first time in his short life he had a free hour to stare out a window and think. It was why he’d come out to the porch in the first place.

  That, and one even bigger reason. He had not wanted to let Trev out of his sight. Not for one fleeting second.

  Every day he found himself listening, straining for Trev’s voice. All the time now. The barrier inside him made of glass, or maybe of ice, was beginning to crack, beginning to melt all around him.

  He closed his eyes and saw two images—a hand flattened against a glass window, a person looking out.

  This was who he was deep inside. A man locked away. The one who had wept openly at his birth sat behind that glass looking out. Kept back. Held back. His breath a fog against the pane.

  Khim’s heart thundered. The light leaped upon the glass that kept everything out. And everyone.

  He saw himself now as if he had always been made of glass—vulnerable, transparent, easily broken, and day to day never allowing the cold or heat to penetrate. And never the longing. But he was awakened now, eyes wide open; he was looking out through his glass self all the time since meeting Trev.

  He opened his eyes. The back lawn stretched to the pink-edged cumulus wafting by.

  He saw misty air, fresh-cut grass, and a dark-haired, dark-eyed man in a blue shirt at the center of the garden, walking slowly, hands in his pockets. He heard the assured, commanding voice of Trev in his head. It said, Live. Survive. Heal. Do not blame yourself.

  He would trail that voice straight into the unknown if he could, realizing it was okay to be the gold cloud that followed the sun.

  His life was his, but other men had unfairly claimed it. Taken him. Invaded him. Enslaved him.

  Now he chose.

  The sun streamed into him through the porch window. Trev was at the end of the garden path, turning. Khim put his hand to the glass. Warm. Smooth. Air came into him. The glass expanded. He was
a tiny flame within the enclosure, the cage of himself, the porch room. He looked at his hands, the dark metal fist a black flower opening—not a weapon, but a man reaching out, one hand in the earth, one in the stars.

  Inside he was tight, coiled, ready to break through. Shatter the glass. Ready to hear the bells of its sharp shards hitting the foundations beneath him, the broken pieces like tears falling through the mist.

  A leftover tendril of fog caressed the man who now walked back toward the porch, his gait speeding, his mouth smiling. He walked to the bottom of the steps, hesitated for a moment, then leaped upward, bypassing them all and landing through the open plate-glass door, bare feet smacking the floor.

  Trev moved toward Khim.

  Trev. With the kindness, the acuity, the agility and beauty of angels.

  “Khim, I—”

  At the same moment, Khim was saying, “Trev—”

  “You seem different now.” Trev stepped up to him, eyes as bright as comets adrift on a night sky.

  Khim’s mouth opened but not for air. Heat worked itself into the backs of his eyes. He reached out, not quite ready for flesh to flesh yet, metal hand cupping the other man’s firm jaw, his cheek, fingers moving into the dark brown hair.

  Khim thought he could feel the texture of Trev’s skin through the metal—that was how close he felt to this man—that smooth edge and firmness of Trev surging up his arm. He was safe enough now to wonder at it, both feeling and not feeling, both metal and flesh.

  Trev’s eyebrows shifted up in a slight question, but he did not move.

  Fear stirred in Khim’s belly for one moment before it dissipated. Without waiting for Trev to take the lead, Khim tilted Trev’s head in his hand, leaned in, and kissed him softly on the lips.

  The glass of his old self shattered completely. He stood as if for the first time, fresh from the vats, liquid dripping all over him, hot and cold, hand cupping the face of a beautiful man.

  Their mouths pressed, moist and warm, Trev’s lips molding to his and opening slightly with such a sweet breath, like the air Khim needed so desperately.