Ultraviolet

by R. J. Anderson

  “I don’t care,” said Tori. “At least we can try. You tell me what you need, and I’ll figure out how to make it happen.”

  Faraday smiled at her. “I know you will.”

  “What about me?” I asked. “How can I help?”

  The glance that Tori and Faraday shared was a conversation in itself, and it didn’t take me long to realize what it meant. “Never mind,” I told them, backing away. “I’ll just watch.”

  The two of them lost no time in getting to work, Faraday checking readings and making adjustments to the controls while Tori dashed around setting up equipment. From the determined way they both went about their tasks, they seemed to have rejected even the possibility of failure.

  I wished I could do the same. But as I sat there and watched them, all I could think about was what would happen if this didn’t work. As long as Faraday had at least pretended to be on the same side as Mathis, there’d been a chance that he’d be welcomed back by his fellow scientists, and that he could protect Tori and me with his influence. But now that he’d turned against his former ally and staked everything on getting the two of us back home, there was no telling what the future would hold for any of us.

  Faraday must have sensed my worried gaze on his back, because he turned and looked at me. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  I rubbed the tender spot on my shoulder where the injection had gone in. Faraday had said it would help my withdrawal symptoms, but I still felt tired and a little queasy. Maybe it was just the stress. “I’m all right.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “Go and lie down. I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

  I didn’t want to leave him. But I didn’t want to be a distraction, either—not when what he and Tori were doing was so important. Reluctantly I got up and headed for the door.

  . . .

  “Alison.”

  I stirred, blinking, as Faraday’s voice warmed my spine. When I lay down, I hadn’t expected to sleep at all, let alone so deeply. But now I sensed that I’d been out for at least—

  I sat up. “How long have I been asleep?” Faraday turned his wrist over to look at his watch, but I spoke first: “Three hours and forty-six minutes.”

  “How did you know that?” asked Faraday, and I tasted the ripe-tomato burst of his surprise.

  “I’ve started to see time as a spectrum,” I said. “When I went to sleep the time was sage green, and now it’s lavender.”

  “Your synesthesia’s changed again?”

  I nodded. “And it’s not just the time thing. I can smell emotions now. I can sense the shape of things, feel their texture, even tell you what color they are, without looking at them. And when you sent me out of the observatory, so you could talk to Mathis in your own language . . . I didn’t recognize any of the words, but I understood what you were saying.”

  Faraday exhaled slowly and sat down next to me. “I wondered,” he said. “The way you looked at me, when I told you I’d knocked him out . . . it was a little too knowing. And a little too relieved, as well.”

  “I was so afraid for you,” I whispered, leaning against his shoulder. “After what he said about Tori, how he didn’t even seem to care if she lived or died . . . I couldn’t believe you’d go off with him like that. Especially when he’d already tried to kill you once.”

  “He’s not a murderer, Alison. He’s just like I was before I came to your world, too full of his own ideas and ambitions to think about anything else. He didn’t want me dead, only out of the way.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Faraday didn’t answer. He just sat there, smelling of soap and sorrow—and that was when I knew what he’d come to tell me.

  “You couldn’t open the wormhole,” I said.

  “Actually, we did. We tested the impulse generator, and it worked perfectly. But . . .” He looked down at his lean, chemical-stained hands. “We have no way of detecting what’s on the other side, no way to tell whether we’ve found Earth’s solar system or some lifeless region of space. The most crucial component of the long-range scanner is missing, and even if we could rig up a replacement, it would take days to calibrate.” He slid an arm around my waist, dropping his cheek against my hair. “Days we don’t have. I’m sorry.”

  The fragrance around him was duskier than regret or melancholy. It was despair. Which meant that we couldn’t just transmit ourselves to some far-off hideaway or join the uprising against the Meritocracy. Faraday had already considered all the alternatives he could think of, and saw no way out of this situation for any of us.

  So Tori would be handed over to the scientists for testing. Faraday would have to answer for what he’d done to Mathis— assaulting a fellow scientist, attempting to sabotage his work. And I’d be trapped on an alien world, a prisoner for the rest of my life. I knew I should feel something—scared, upset, maybe even angry—but I couldn’t. There was just this empty space in the middle of my chest, like a black hole, swallowing everything.

  “I’m sorry,” Faraday said again, his arms tightening around me. I buried my face against his collarbone and clung to him, tears pricking behind my closed eyelids. We held each other for the space of several heartbeats, and then he slipped a finger under my chin and tilted my head up.

  A feverish warmth flooded my body as I realized what was about to happen. I’d dreamed of this moment, but I hadn’t wanted it to be like this, all tangled up in grief and the desperate need for comfort. Yet as Faraday’s lips whispered along my hairline, grazed the curve of my cheek, and brushed across my lashes, all my resistance melted. I couldn’t pull away.

  His mouth hovered over mine, an unspoken question. I breathed a silent yes, and as we kissed his hand spread warm across the small of my back, right where his voice touched me.

  Comet trails of indigo and violet streaked through my inner vision, and electricity sparked all over my skin. Our breaths mingled, quick and shallow, while my lips melted open and the blood pounded through me in a pleasure so intense it was only a shade away from pain. I had never been this close to another human being, yet I ached to pull him even closer, to merge into him like one drop of water into another and lose myself, even if only for a little while.

  It was so tempting to give in. To lie down and pull him over me like a blanket, to bury myself in the weight of his body and the touch of his lips and hands. To shut out the rest of the universe and abandon myself completely to sensation, for as long as I could make this moment last.

  But I couldn’t, because this wasn’t just about me. It was my fault Tori was trapped on this station right now, and it was my responsibility to do everything I could to help her. And the words Faraday had spoken just a few moments before he kissed me—we have no way to detect what’s on the other side—kept rewriting themselves more and more insistently in my mind.

  I caught Faraday’s face between my hands and broke off the kiss, breathless. “I’ve just thought of something,” I said. “Something we haven’t tried.”

  “There’s a lot of things we haven’t tried,” he said, “but I’m going to refrain from the obvious, and assume you’re talking about the wormhole. What is it?”

  “My synesthesia,” I said. “I know it’s probably impossible, but—when I was at Pine Hills, every time I looked at the night sky, I heard music. Always the same music, but totally different from the song that the stars sing out here. I’d know that song again. And there’s the relay, too—it’s still sending out a signal, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s incredibly unlikely that you’d be able to sense Earth at such a distance,” Faraday said. “Even with all the help I can give you. And yet—” His voice brightened with excitement. “You’ve never really tested the limits of your abilities, have you?”

  “No. I’ve always been afraid of opening myself up too far, in case . . .”

  In case I lose my mind. The thought scared me so much, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the sentence. And yet if I couldn’t do this now, with my sens
es fully at my command for the first time ever, and all our lives at stake . . .

  I took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I want to try.”

  . . .

  “Once I activate the screen inside this helmet,” said Faraday as he handed it to me, “you’ll be looking at a direct feed from the station’s long-range sensors, and nothing else. Try it on.”

  As I lowered it over my head I braced myself for discomfort, but it felt surprisingly light, more like a motorcycle helmet than the heavy fishbowl I’d expected.

  “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” asked Tori.

  I looked down at the crate I was sitting in—seven feet long, three feet wide, and lined with spongy foam. “No, but I do have a fear of being buried alive.”

  “We’re not going to bury you,” she assured me. “There’s plenty of oxygen in there, and you can take the lid off yourself if you want to. It’s just to keep you from getting distracted.”

  I lay down gingerly, lowering my arms to my sides. “Okay,” I said.

  “I can close it up now?”

  I licked my dry lips. “Yeah.”

  “Good luck,” said Tori, and she fitted the lid into place.

  It was dark. It was silent. The box cradled me gently as God’s own hand, its soft interior molding itself to the shape of my body.

  “Alison?” said Faraday’s voice in my helmet, warm and chocolaty as ever. “I’m going to switch on the feed now. Are you ready?”

  “Ready,” I said, and when I opened my eyes I was looking at a field of stars, bright and shallow as glitter on black paper. “This is it?” I asked.

  “It should be. Is there a problem?”

  “No, but it’s sort of . . .” I squinted. “Flat.”

  “Oh, of course, I forgot your tetrachromacy. My apologies.” My visor flickered and the star-field shifted into three dimensions, all its missing hues and subtle mid-tones sparking to life. “I just added in the ultraviolet range. Is that better?”

  I didn’t answer. I was speechless with awe. A tapestry of iridescent light unfurled before me, star-jeweled and shimmering with all the colors of the spectrum and beyond. I’d seen the aurora borealis once and been entranced by its otherworldly glow; but this was a billion times lovelier—and more dangerous.

  “Alison? Are you still with me?”

  “The rift,” I whispered. “I can see it.”

  “Excellent. I’m going to increase the magnification,” said Faraday. “Let me know if it gets too much.”

  And with that I found myself drifting closer to the rift, until my whole vision filled with its rippling magnificence. Dreamily I lifted my hand to touch it, and only when my fingers bumped the lid of the crate did I remember that I wasn’t actually floating in space.

  “Tori,” I heard Faraday say, “is the impulse generator ready?”

  “Ready,” she replied.

  “All right, Alison. Here we go.”

  Until he said that, I’d thought I was prepared. But now I felt as though someone was scooping out my insides with a melon baller. I grabbed at the helmet, about to yell at Faraday to stop—

  But it was already too late.

  A needle of purple light streaked across my vision and pierced the delicate fabric of the rift. Darkness bloomed before my eyes, licking through the rainbow veil to expose a glimpse of unknown space beyond. Then the shockwave hit, and a roaring flood of synesthesia swept over me.

  Ice-hot stabbing eighty-seven sour crimson slashes suffocating wet ochre thickness pounding dizzy hideous triangles fifty pulsating opaque acrid zigzags crushing white fire hurthurthurthurthurt—

  My self-control shredded like tissue paper, flaying my emotions bare. I screamed and bolted upright, throwing the lid open.

  “Whoa!” Tori grabbed the helmet out of my hands before I could hurl it to the floor. I collapsed back into the box, one forearm thrown over my burning eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

  “Alison.” Faraday knelt beside me, his face drawn with concern. “What happened?”

  “The wormhole—close it—please—”

  Faraday got up quickly and touched something on the console. Within seconds the terror receded, and I could breathe again.

  “So what’s going on?” Tori demanded. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “It seems to be something to do with the impulse generator,” Faraday replied. “As soon as we fired the beam to open the wormhole, her synesthesia became unbearably intense, and as soon as we shut it down she felt better again. But what about the generator could possibly be affecting . . .” He stopped, his violet eyes widening. “Exotic matter.”

  Tori frowned. “What?”

  “That’s what your scientists call it. The matter we use to keep the wormhole stable once it’s open has properties unlike any other kind of matter in the universe, and there’s a great deal about it that we don’t understand. I’m wondering if somehow, between her synesthesia and her tetrachromacy, Alison is sensitive to exotic matter—and the more of it she’s exposed to, the stronger her abilities become.”

  “I can’t do it,” I mumbled again, resting my head against the side of the box. “It’s too much.”

  “But you hardly even tried,” Tori said. “We’d only just started, and you . . .” She threw up her hands and stalked a few paces before whirling back to me. “You’re fine now, aren’t you? So take a break and get your strength back, and then try again.”

  “Tori,” said Faraday.

  She pushed her hands impatiently through her tangled hair. “You want me to say please? To beg? I’ll do all of that. But don’t ask me to apologize. You think I don’t know what’s going to happen to me—and to her—if Mathis and those other scientists get hold of us?” She crouched down and gripped my wrist. “Please, Alison. I’m begging you. Don’t give up.”

  Anger sparked inside me, white-hot and blinding. I wrenched my arm away. “I will go crazy!” I shouted at her. “My mind will snap, and I’ll fall apart, and never be the same person again! Is that what you want? You think I wouldn’t rather stay here and risk the chance of dying, than spend the rest of my life locked up in a place like Pine Hills—or worse?”

  Tori’s face turned white. She leaped to her feet and walked out, leaving Faraday and me alone.

  I slumped, exhausted by the force of my own emotion. “I’m sorry,” I said to Faraday.

  He drew his fingers lightly down my cheek, his expression tender. “Every time you show your feelings, you apologize. Have you ever had an emotion in your life that you weren’t ashamed of?”

  I couldn’t answer. All I could do was blink at him, as his features blurred and my lashes clumped together with tears.

  “I’ve seen your medical records,” he said. “Migraines. Stomach cramps. You’ve held back so much, Alison, for so long, that you’re making yourself sick. What would happen if you stopped fighting, and gave yourself permission to feel? Not just the good things, but everything?”

  “I’d lose my mind,” I whispered.

  “I don’t think so. Do you know something about antipsychotic drugs, Alison? If you aren’t psychotic when you start taking them, you soon will be. Hearing voices, hallucinating, experiencing all kinds of delusions and paranoid thoughts. When I first came to Pine Hills to meet you, that was the state I expected to find you in. But instead, I discovered a young woman who was confused and hurting, but also fully aware of who she was, where she was, and what was and wasn’t real. After all you’d been through, you had every reason to be insane—but you weren’t.” His voice lowered. “You’re not.”

  He’d never stopped believing in me, even when the evidence against my sanity seemed overwhelming. I only wished I had half as much faith in myself as he did. I leaned my cheek against his palm, and closed my eyes.

  “All I ask,” Faraday went on, his thumb stroking my face, “is that you try one more time. I will shut the wormhole down, I promise you, the inst
ant you tell me it’s too much. But you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, Alison.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. But I knew that if I gave up now, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I sat back, rubbing my eyes until patterns exploded behind the lids. “All right,” I said. “I’ll try again.”

  . . .

  I whirled through a sandstorm of cosmic dust, floundered in a sucking bog of dark matter. Neutrinos riddled my body, and the beams of a trillion stars lasered through my skin. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out—

  “Alison.” Faraday’s voice washed over me, soothing as aloe. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re seeing.”

  I wasn’t seeing anything, because my eyes were squeezed shut. I was lying face-first on the pavement outside Champlain Secondary, my hands sticky with Tori’s blood. I was strapped to a bed in an isolation room, writhing and sobbing. I was huddled in my lonely cell in Red Ward, staring into space.

  “I need you to look, Alison. I need you to tell me if you sense anything on the other side of that wormhole that’s familiar. Anything that feels like home.”

  I was struggling to get away as Kirk’s hands wandered over my body. I was listening to my mother weep as she told me my grandmother had been mentally ill. I was sitting in Dr. Minta’s office while he told me the man I had known as Dr. Sebastian Faraday was nothing more than a dream.

  “She can’t do it.” That was Tori, a flat line of despair. “Just forget it. Let her out.”

  “Is that what you want, Alison?”

  “Wait,” I said.

  And then I opened my eyes, and looked straight into the wormhole.

  It was black, but it wasn’t empty. It was full of wonders visible and invisible, a teeming pool of energy and cold heat. I tasted icy comets shooting through the void, cringed away from the blaze of a supernova—