Ultraviolet

by R. J. Anderson

  “Which explains why you look exactly like an ordinary human, except for the eyes,” I said dryly. “That’s convenient.”

  “Not exactly.” He leaned forward and parted his hair with his fingers. “Look. Feel.”

  Against my better judgment I reached up, sliding my fingers into the shaggy strands and lifting them away from his temples. Even in the dim light of the parking lot, the roots of his hair glittered—and it wasn’t just premature gray, no matter how much I tried to tell myself otherwise. It had a metallic sheen to it, like pewter.

  “It doesn’t take dye very well,” he said. “That’s why I keep it a bit messy, so the gray parts aren’t as obvious.” He straightened up again. “What about my eyes?”

  “They’re violet?”

  “Really? I thought they were just sort of bluish.”

  So even he couldn’t see it. Wonderful. I pinched the bridge of my nose, exhausted by my own uncertainty.

  “Come back to the car,” said Faraday. “Let me tell you more about how I got here and what I think happened to Tori. If you’re willing to come back to the school with me, we might even be able to prove it. And then you can decide what you want to believe.”

  He ran a hand gently down my arm as he spoke, and I struggled against the temptation to give in. Not because he’d convinced me, but because part of me wanted to pretend it didn’t matter. So what if Faraday thought he was an alien? There were worse ways to be crazy. Yes, he’d tricked me into believing he was a neuropsychologist, but only because he’d thought I wouldn’t listen to him otherwise. Apart from that he’d been nothing but kind and patient and charming, and when he’d told me he didn’t care for me, he’d been lying. . . .

  “This proof of yours,” I said. “You mean the machine, don’t you? The one that killed Tori. You think it’s still at the school somewhere.”

  He nodded.

  “So what is this thing, then? A killer spaceship?”

  Which sounded so incredibly dumb that as soon as I’d said it, I wanted to smack myself. Fortunately, Faraday was gracious enough not to call me on it. “No, just a relay,” he said. “A device that transmits and receives information. Roundish, about the size of my fist, with built-in camouflage and protective mechanisms. There’s a relay unit here and another back on the base, and they send signals to each other. Or at least they did, before the one on this end malfunctioned.”

  If it was camouflaged, that would explain why he hadn’t been able to find it. Not that I was buying in to his story yet. “So what was this relay thing doing outside Champlain Secondary? And why did it kill Tori?”

  “I don’t know,” said Faraday. “Until I’ve had a chance to inspect it, I won’t be able to tell what went wrong. That’s why I’m hoping you can help me find it, and get it working properly again.” He took my hand in both of his. “Just come with me, Alison. Just for a few minutes. That’s all I ask.”

  I’d always known I’d have to go back to the school one day, but I hadn’t expected it to be tonight. I wasn’t sure it was even a good idea, when I was under so much stress already. And yet, if there was even a chance that this relay actually existed, and that finding it could explain what had happened to Tori . . .

  “Please,” Faraday said, his voice so low I could feel it at the base of my spine.

  I closed my eyes. “All right,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  . . .

  A few minutes later Faraday and I stood facing the north-west door of Champlain Secondary, bathed in the exterior lights’ jaundiced glow. The moon was muffled with clouds, but I could hear the stars keening as I pointed to the spot on the concrete where Tori had fallen.

  “There,” I said.

  And that was all. No blazing epiphany or sea-green wave of sorrow. There was no trace of Tori here, only a patch of empty concrete, and the darkness made everything so remote it might have been a dream. The only thing I felt, standing there, was tired.

  Faraday glanced back at the shadowy line of trees behind us. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “I went over this area even more carefully than the police did. But if the relay’s still here, it’s too well hidden for me to find it.” He turned slowly, his gaze sweeping over the parking lot. “What I don’t understand is why it would have ended up here in the first place, or why it malfunctioned the way it did. Why disintegrate Tori, and not you as well? And why hasn’t it activated for anyone else, before or since?”

  The disturbing thing about Faraday spouting technobabble was that he sounded so matter-of-fact about it. “I thought this thing was for transmitting information,” I said. “Why would it be capable of disintegrating a person in the first place?”

  “Because,” Faraday replied, “matter is information, too. And when it’s working properly, the relay can record every detail of an object down to the subatomic level, and then transmit that information to the relay on the other side of the rift for reassembly.”

  “You mean . . . the relay isn’t supposed to kill people? It’s supposed to transport them?”

  “It does transport them,” said Faraday. “Mind you, anyone who’s tried it agrees that it’s an extremely painful experience, so it’s not often used for anything but moving cargo. But it works. That’s how I got here.”

  Extremely painful . . . I felt like the ground was sliding out from beneath me. “Why?” I asked in a strangled voice. “Why would it hurt, if it’s just . . .”

  “No one knows,” he replied. “The process is virtually instantaneous, even if it doesn’t seem like it, and scientifically there’s no reason that anyone should be conscious of feeling anything after their brain and nerves have disintegrated. It’s almost enough to make one believe in the soul.”

  I sat down hard on the curb, my eyes glazed with disbelief. In the back of my mind I could hear Tori screaming, fluorescent shrieks of agony that rang in my ears long after there was nothing left of her—

  “I didn’t want to say it until I was certain,” said Faraday. “But I think you’ve already guessed. If the relay wasn’t seriously damaged . . . then Tori might still be alive.”

  Alive. All at once, I wanted to believe. If Tori wasn’t dead, she could be rescued. By bringing her home, I could clear my name and lift my burden of guilt all at once. But my heart felt too small to hold so much hope. I covered my face with my hands.

  Faraday crouched beside me. I could hear the mosquitoes buzzing, but for once they didn’t bite. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. Just . . . a little overwhelmed.”

  “Do you want me to take you home?”

  I lifted my head, disbelieving. How hard must it be for him to ask me that, after he’d worked so long and risked so much just to bring me here? “I thought you needed me to help you find the relay,” I said.

  “I do. But I’ve waited years for this, Alison. I can wait a little longer.”

  I wanted to kiss him so badly just then, it was all I could do to hold back. But even though I knew he cared, I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of caring he’d been talking about. And I didn’t want to do to him what Kirk had done to me. “No, it’s all right,” I said unevenly. “What do you need me to do?”

  “The relay can’t be detected by ordinary vision or hearing,” said Faraday. “But you’re capable of sensing far more than the average person. If you felt anything when the relay activated, any unusual sound or taste that you’d recognize if you came across it again . . .”

  So that was why he’d been so interested in my synesthesia. I was his human metal detector.

  “I felt everything when it happened,” I said. “It was like all my senses got turned up to full blast at once. I can barely remember how I got back on my feet after that, let alone whether I noticed anything that could have been the relay.”

  “I understand,” said Faraday. “But you’re the only hope I’ve got. If you could just walk around a little bit, and . . .” He made a vague gesture. “Look. Listen. See what you feel.”

  I�
�d never really tried to use my synesthesia before. It had always just been there, as natural and inevitable as breathing. What would happen if I opened myself up to it, as Faraday was suggesting? Threw down all my defenses, and abandoned myself completely to sensation?

  The idea was tempting—and terrifying. I’d spent so much of my life trying not to show my feelings, or let myself be ruled by them. If I dropped my shields of self-restraint, would I be the same Alison anymore?

  I wasn’t ready to take that risk. But I didn’t want to say no to Faraday either, at least not yet. “I’ll try,” I said, and got up.

  Faraday didn’t follow. He just sat back on his heels and watched me as I headed for the edge of the woodlot—my best guess for where the relay had to be—and stopped, listening with all my senses.

  A feather-brush of maroon as the wind rustled the trees. A crow’s call plucked at my elbow like an impatient child. The sound of crickets tasted like Rice Krispies. Gasoline and exhaust fumes wafted from the parking lot behind me, while the wood smelled of mulch and discarded beer bottles. And loudest of all, the mosquitoes droned. . . .

  But that was all.

  When I looked back Faraday was on his feet, tensed like a sprinter waiting for the shot. He believed I could do this. He needed me to do it. If I gave up now, would he believe I’d done my best to help him?

  I had to try again, and harder. I walked a little way into the trees and turned my senses loose for a second time. Then I backed out and tried a little further down the drive. Each time I dared myself to stretch my perceptions further, until panic scrabbled around the edges of my mind and I had to stop— but even then I sensed nothing. Or at least, nothing out of the ordinary.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, when I came back to Faraday. “If it’s here, I can’t find it.”

  Faraday let out a long breath, and his shoulders bowed. “Well,” he said quietly. “That’s the end of it, then.”

  . . .

  By the time Faraday and I walked back to his car, the clouds had parted and the moon hung clear and luminous in the sky. The night was so beautiful it seemed almost cruel. “So what will you do now?” I asked.

  “I promised to help you get out of Pine Hills and clear your name,” said Faraday distractedly, turning over the keys in his hand as though he’d forgotten what they were for. “I intend to keep that promise. Unless you don’t want me to.”

  He’d performed one miracle for me already, by convincing my mother to let me come home. What other wonders did he have in mind? “I do,” I said, “but that wasn’t what I meant. You’re really giving up? After everything?”

  Faraday lifted his head, gazing out across the parking lot to the softly lit neighborhood beyond. “You know,” he said, “it doesn’t feel like giving up, not as much as I’d thought it would. Coming here alone as I did, knowing nothing of your language or your culture, forced me to notice other people in a way I’d never done before. I learned to watch them with all my attention, and listen closely to whatever they had to say—because I never knew when I might learn something important. And after a while I came to see that not just as a necessity, but as a privilege.”

  “It shows,” I said.

  “And yet there was a selfish aspect to it, too. Because the more I encouraged other people to talk about their lives, the less likely it was that they’d ask me about mine. I made plenty of useful contacts, a few good acquaintances, but no real friends.” He turned his head, violet eyes focusing on mine. “Until I met you.”

  I held my breath.

  “Talking to you day after day, getting to know you just a little more each time. . . .” One corner of his mouth turned up in a rueful smile. “You have no idea what a revelation that was for me. Partly because I was learning about your synesthesia, which gave me the chance to use my scientific background in a way I hadn’t done for years. The things you could do with your senses were so fascinating to me, there were times when I forgot the study we were working on wasn’t real.”

  I could spend the rest of my life studying you, he had told me, and there wouldn’t be a moment wasted. Part of me wouldn’t mind if that was what he wanted to do—but was that really how he saw me? Like a rare orchid or a new species of butterfly, something to be preserved for the advancement of science?

  “But what struck me even more, as time went on,” Faraday went on in the same thoughtful tone, “was how much the two of us had in common. We both had secrets we were afraid to share, in case people thought we were insane. Both of us were trapped in a place we never would have chosen, longing to go home. It was easy to talk to you, and the more time we spent together, the more I started to think about what was really important to me—and what made my life worth living.”

  He turned to face me, a lean shadow in the darkness, so near I could feel his warmth. He smelled like buttered toast and electricity, comforting and dangerous at once, and I didn’t know whether to reach out to him or back away.

  “When you played for me on your birthday,” he continued, “I realized what a precious gift you’d given me. Something so personal, and so beautiful—it made me wonder how many other good things I’d missed or ignored over the years, because I was so obsessed with getting back to my old life. And that night, I decided that one way or another, this attempt was going to be my last. If you couldn’t or wouldn’t help me, then I’d give up and try to move on.

  “So when Dr. Minta banned me from Pine Hills, I thought, well, there’s my answer. I went and talked to your parents—it seemed like the least I could do—but I knew I’d probably never see you again. And that was . . . hard.” His gaze turned distant. “But then you called me, and told me you wanted to talk. And suddenly I felt that things were going to work out after all. That it was somehow . . . meant.”

  “I’m sorry—” I started to say, but he shook his head.

  “No, Alison.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, let his hand drop to my shoulder. “You have nothing to apologize for. You’re the best thing that’s come into my life in a very long time.”

  I gazed up into his face with its slow eyes and long mouth and gently angled bones, and my heart felt like it was falling. “This . . . This can’t be right, can it? Dr. Minta warned me about patients and therapists—”

  Faraday breathed a laugh. “I wasn’t your therapist, Alison. If anything, you were mine. You don’t know how many days I woke up alone in my miserable little apartment, after a night of mopping floors and scrubbing toilets, and the prospect of seeing you again felt like the only thing keeping me sane.”

  Daring, I reached up and touched his face for the first time. His skin was warm, his jaw rough with stubble, and when he turned his head and kissed the palm of my hand, I felt as though I were dissolving. “Sebastian,” I whispered, not caring anymore whether he was crazy or not. I didn’t need proof of his story now, didn’t even want it. All I wanted was him.

  Faraday’s fingers laced into the knot of my hair, gently working it loose and stroking his fingers through it. Then he drew me into his arms.

  As our bodies pressed together, every inch of my skin came awake, every sense alight. I heard Faraday’s breath quicken, saw the color of his heartbeat pulse and fade behind my eyes. Music blossomed inside my head, a cascade of deep, shivering notes like the voice of a bassoon, and suddenly I wanted to feel everything. I slid my hands up the muscles of his back, over the broad line of his shoulders, down his arms—

  Something buzzed against my palm, like a cell phone set to vibrate. Startled, I jerked away.

  “What is it?” Faraday asked.

  My heart was pounding fast, but for all the wrong reasons. “I felt something.” Hesitantly I touched his arm just above the elbow. “There.”

  Faraday gave me a puzzled look. “You mean my transmitter?” he said, and pushed his sleeve up to reveal a faint, sun-shaped mark beneath his skin.

  For a moment I was too appalled to do anything but stare. Then I clapped my hands over my ears and spun away,
but it was too late. Rust speckled my vision, and my head filled with a piercing, hateful drone—the Noise I’d hoped never to hear again.

  No.

  No.

  How could this happen? Why this—why him?

  But the Noise kept shrilling, despite all my efforts to deny it. And now I could hear something else besides—sirens in the distance, coming closer. Police, on the hunt for someone . . . for me? Had my mother found my bed empty, my medication ignored, and called for help?

  “Alison?” Faraday reached for my hand, but I jerked away. The Noise he made was so loud now, it was worse than Tori’s had ever been—

  This was it. This was the end. Whatever Faraday and I might have had together, it was over now. Tear-blinded, I stumbled back toward the school, leaving him behind—but even then I couldn’t get away from the Noise. Worse, it was coming at me from all directions now, as though I were being swarmed by a cloud of—

  “Mosquitoes!” I spun around and shrieked at Faraday, not caring if I made any sense. “All night I thought I was hearing mosquitoes but it wasn’t, it was you, and that—thing!”

  The sirens were louder now, but I barely noticed them. My head was thrumming with another resonance entirely. In the churning darkness before my eyes, Faraday’s Noise and the fake-mosquito buzz from the edge of the woodlot connected in a blazing orange line. I rushed up to one of the pine trees, ripped the relay off the trunk where it had been clinging invisible all this time, and hurled it straight at Faraday.

  He leaped to meet it, and caught it just before it hit the ground. He gave me an incredulous look, but I shook my head wildly and backed away.

  “What is it?” he asked, cradling the metal sphere against his chest. “What’s wrong?”