Dreamspinner Press Year Five Greatest Hits Page 11

  “It’s no joke, C.J. Thing the first, they’re real. Treat them as real. Call them holos, let him know that they’re not flesh and blood, but listen to what they say, and when you watch the recordings of their development, take notes, then stream me the whole thing. I’m going to need it.”

  “What do you mean you’re going to need it?”

  “That’s thing the second. Thing the second is that your guy is coming to see me.”

  C.J. felt his face go cold. “You can’t. Jensen, he’s too attached to that ship. We can’t ship him downside to you, not right now! It’ll kill him!”

  Jensen shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You don’t get it, C.J.—those people are people because they’re all him.”

  “Didn’t I see that horror vid? It wasn’t very convincing.” C.J. frowned, because the idea really was pretty melodramatic.

  “What’s so hard to see? You’ve got the happy one, the forthright one, the quiet one, the one who likes to keep the peace. We’ve all got those parts. Anderson programmed those holos, and then he set them not to change. That made them follow through with whatever a real human with those traits would do. When you watch them interact, you’re watching Anderson talk to himself, because, quite frankly, there was no one else to talk to. They’re important. Listen to what they have to say, and tell your sister that I told her so, because I know she thinks she knows everything.”

  “You’re telling me!” C.J. said with a snort. “Okay, I got it. The holos are real. What about Alpha?”

  Jensen’s face hardened. “I’ve got an idea of why he’d program an abusive spouse. Let’s just say that just like in real life, I’m betting the relationship didn’t start that way. Abusers are very often triggered, and yeah, we’ve all got one in us. Stress makes everyone show their least pretty side, you know? You just need to figure out what triggered Anderson’s ‘alpha male’ to start whaling on him. And when you get that far….”

  Jensen shook his head, and C.J. shivered, hard, in the temperate air of the station.

  “That’s going to be hard,” C.J. said softly, thinking about the painful huddle of holo-graphic people gathering soulfully around the image of Anderson.

  Jensen shook his head adamantly. “It’s going to be fucking catastrophic, that’s what it’s going to be.”

  “He may surprise you,” C.J. said, feeling earnest and hopeful. “You haven’t met him. I mean… he’s smart, and he’s… he’s adventurous. He was trying new foods, and he can still laugh and—”

  “And he’s been through a catastrophe and seven hells since,” Jensen said implacably. “Look, C.J., I know you, man. You live your life on the sunny side of the planet. I know you’re looking for a happy ever after for this guy already, and you may get one. But I’m telling you, he’s going to have to take a long, hard visit down here on the dark side before that happens.”

  C.J. swallowed unhappily. “Well, maybe, you know, if we take good enough care of him here. I mean, we’re real people, right? And we’re all specialists. I mean, space madness is my bread and butter, and Cassie’s got some of the same degrees you do, and….”

  Jensen held out a hand, and the unhappy lines around his eyes carved bitter designs. “And that brings us to thing the third,” he said, his voice unaccountably thick. “You. Look at you, C.J. You’ve got that whole ‘protector’ thing going, and you’re talking about how he’s smart and adventurous and the sense of humor, damn!” Jensen scrubbed his face with his hands and stared dolefully into his interface screen. “God, C.J., I could have married you in school, you know that?”

  C.J. started to squirm on his seat. “Naw,” he said uncomfortably. “I was way not smart enough for you, Jen.”

  Jensen shook his head. “No, Cyril. I had a ring picked out, and the restaurant… I was going to do a full-on knee to the ground, present you with a ring and a wedding date and a honeymoon proposal, you know? That weekend we spent at the neural-holo interface seminar?”

  C.J. flinched. He remembered the seminar. The speaker had been talking about tough stuff, erudite shit, way above C.J.’s level, or at least what he was interested in paying attention to, and he’d been turning to Jensen to say something sarcastic and happy light when he saw the true light in Jensen’s eyes.

  It was like the holy light of the ultimate sun.

  Jensen had been illuminated, and motivated, and inspired, and all of the things that C.J. was not when it had come to school. He’d had a sudden flash of their life, ten years down the road, and C.J. would be doing something interesting, something fun, but something that allowed him to have a life and interests outside his profession, and something that didn’t swallow him and spit him back new and improved.

  And then he’d seen Jensen, doing much what Jensen was doing now—being brilliant, working side by side with Molly, who was equally brilliant—and the two of them sharing everything, even new lovers in their bed. But she could follow him, and she was completely enmeshed in his own thinking, and C.J. had seen, on that long-ago day, that he himself would have been left behind.

  “I remember,” C.J. said now, remembering how much that weekend had cost him.

  “It was the weekend you said we should see other people,” Jensen told him bitterly, and C.J. looked away.

  “You were way too brilliant for me, Jensen,” he said softly.

  “Bullshit, C.J.!” Jensen snapped. “And that’s what I’m trying to tell you now. You just didn’t want to make the effort, do the work. You could have followed me into any profession, and you chose one that you’re good at but that lets you slack. You were too afraid of being smacked down by your big sister’s reputation—”

  “And yours,” C.J. added quietly.

  “And mine,” Jensen conceded. “You were so afraid you wouldn’t show up first that you never fucking tried.”

  C.J. squinted at the monitor, feeling his eyelid start to throb with looking at a vid screen for too long. “That’s not true,” he said, feeling in his heart that he was right. “I just wanted to live a life that wasn’t consumed by what my intellect could do for me, as opposed to my heart.” He tried not to cringe when he said that—it sounded way too deep for C.J. Poulson.

  “Well,” Jensen said with a heavy sigh, “it needs to be consumed with something. But not this.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not this’?”

  “You’re serious about this kid, about this little holo-family. You’re invested. C.J., I’ve got no guarantees for you here. This kid may or may not have come through this whole thing with his noggin intact, and even if he has, he’s still going to need a visit to happy-happy land to deal with it. If you’re going to let him imprint on you now like a baby bird, you need to have the staying power to see this through, because the entire fucking universe has already dropped out of his life once. Having one more person do it may just be the end of him.”

  C.J. was not expecting the wave of fear that washed through him, the terrible, marrow-deep thrill that he was about to screw something up that he couldn’t repair. This wasn’t going to be like breaking a lamp or flunking out of a class or getting fired (like he had from his first two jobs out of school). This was breaking something real. This was breaking an entire person, and C.J. was almost frozen to his heart and his lungs and his innards that he was going to be the person who broke Anderson Rawn, the survival story of the decade.

  He swallowed. “I’ll keep things professional,” he said with cold dignity, and Jensen did everything but blow a raspberry at him.

  “You suck at that. It’s why you lost your first two jobs! And this kid isn’t going to make it easy for you. He’s going to want you. Man, he just came out of a relationship that had him locked on a small ship with his abuser. You’re going to be a bright and shining beacon of safety to him. He’s going to latch on to you, hell, he may even come on to you. If you can’t keep your distance, you’re both fucked.”

  C.J. scowled. “Unless, you know, maybe I can come through for him. I bailed
as a lover because I thought you could do better, but Jensen, you’ve got to admit, I’ve been one rock-solid friend!”

  Jensen’s scowl, his disappointment, all of it, disappeared. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s true. You are loyal as a gamma bird.”

  C.J. tried a smile, because he knew his were pretty, and he tried to get Jen to smile back. “I am. So you know, I’m not going to bail on this kid if he gets attached. I’m good for that, you know it.”

  Jen shook his head. “I know you think you are,” he said after a moment. “But this is going to take commitment I don’t know if you’ve got, Cyril. You sure didn’t have it with me, and this kid can’t afford to be dicked around.”

  C.J. fought off the chill, and the unexpected pain, of Jen’s words. “Hey, man, it’s me. I don’t make promises I can’t keep!”

  Jen muttered something that sounded like, “That’s because you don’t make them at all,” before speaking up and saying, “Yeah, whatever. Let me know when this kid melts down, and ship the puddle of goo to me. I know how to take care of people.”

  C.J. scowled at the screen after it went black. “So do I!” he said to the quiet apartment. God, even he knew it sounded defensive.

  At that moment, his wrist-monitor beeped. “C.J.! C.J., we need you here!” Marshall’s voice was commanding and a little bit panicked.

  “What in the hell?” C.J. had never been good at protocol. “Marshall, what’s the matter?”

  “Your sister’s been injured aboard the shuttle. Report to the infirmary, stat!”

  Marshall signed off, and C.J. jumped up so quickly he sent the wheeled chair he was sitting on spinning back into his bed. From the front room, Anderson sat up and mumbled, “What? C.J., are you there?”

  C.J. calmed his breathing. Marshall sounded a little panicked, but Cassie was his wife, so he was entitled. He’d just told Jensen he could be a stand-up guy, and Anderson couldn’t be left alone.

  “Anderson, would you mind putting on some sweats, man? My sister’s been hurt, and I’ve got to go check on her. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  Anderson nodded wisely and stood up, heading toward the bathroom. “I’ll be dressed in a moment,” he said quietly, and C.J. fought the urge to go sprinting through the station like a… a… a mental patient for the second time that day.

  Chapter 8

  Shadow Man

  C.J.’S SISTER was going to be all right. She was, in fact, giving her husband a mouthful of hell when they dashed into the infirmary.

  Cassie was sitting up on the exam table, wearing a paper shirt that tied in the back. Marshall was busy using a sonic wand to stitch a cut on the back of Cassie’s shoulder, and Cassie glared up at the two of them sourly.

  “Who authorized him to be here?” she asked, and Marshall said, “I did,” with such calm acceptance that her sourness had nowhere to go.

  “I’m fine,” she grimaced, and Marshall took one of those deep breaths that indicated that his royal calmness was about to lose his cool.

  “You’re not fine, you’re bleeding. Bleeding is not fine. You’re bleeding, and you can’t tell me what happened, and the holograms have disappeared into the house, which we don’t have the codes to access, and we don’t even know what hit you!”

  Cassie looked embarrassed. “It didn’t hit me. It hit the console chair, splintered, and the splinter hit me,” she said, rolling her eyes at C.J.

  “What hit the console chair?” he asked, and it was Marshall’s turn to look sour.

  “Of all the stupid things, it was a prop. Just a simple piece of poly-plastic that we were using to prop the vents open so the shuttle could get a little circulation. It’s about four feet long—”

  “Two inches wide, yeah, yeah, I’ve seen them, Marshall. I work here, remember?” C.J. said dryly. He could afford to be sarcastic now that Cassidy was going to be all right. “So how did one of the props end up splintering so hard it sliced you up like pie?”

  Cassie shook her head. “I don’t know. One minute, we were all watching the monitor, and we saw you burst in and calm Anderson down.” She sent an apologetic look toward Anderson. “And about the time Anderson fell asleep again, I heard the snap as the vent swung shut, and then that thing went splintering across the damned room.” She grimaced. “And then it was all about the pain.”

  “And the blood,” Marshall added glumly. He finished up with the sonic wand, put the instrument in the sterilizing tray, and removed his thin poly-gloves before going to the sink to sterilize his hands.

  Cassie shook her head. “If you want to worry about the blood, sweetheart, worry about replacing this shirt.” She fingered the remains of the electric-blue long-sleeved, tight-fitting non-regulation shirt that she’d been wearing as they’d started their shift. The station was privately owned—there was a dress code, but nobody was wearing standard company issue unless they wanted to. Cassie never wanted to.

  Marshall snatched the pretty fabric out of his wife’s hands and very deliberately ripped it in half. And then in half again. And then he ripped one of the pieces into pieces. Cassie watched him, grimacing, as though they were having an entire silent conversation while he did that, and when Marshall actually spoke, his voice still mild, as it always was, she nodded meekly in complete acceptance.

  “We. Can. Buy. Another. Shirt.”

  “Yes, baby, you are absolutely right, we can.”

  C.J. watched the exchange with wide eyes and a little bit of amusement. He’d seen this side of Marshall before, but every now and then it was good to be reminded of why the tall, pale, placid man was more than a match for his fiery sister.

  “Uhm, how about I take Anderson back to the shuttle? He can show me the codes for the house, and we can maybe ask the other holos what happened, okay?”

  “I think that’s a very good idea,” Marshall said, a faint twist to his lips, and Cassie nodded her head to agree. Of course, as they turned around and walked out, she had to shout, “Be careful, baby brother!” and ruin all of C.J.’s good feeling for her, but then, maybe that was her job.

  “What do you think they’re going to do?” Anderson asked as they were trotting down the white corridor toward the shuttle bay. C.J. looked at him sideways. Oh my God! Was he adorable? Big brown eyes, fly-away blond hair, that vulnerable “Oh-my!” little mouth. Jensen had to be wrong. He was a sweet kid, an angel. There was no way this kid had anything to do with the bloody shirt his sister’s husband had just destroyed.

  “I think they’re going to fuck like lemmings as soon as the door is sealed,” C.J. told him lightly, mostly to see the blush that blew over Anderson’s pale skin as he said it.

  Anderson didn’t disappoint. “I think you’re right,” he said as even his ears turned red. “But I think they probably do that a lot.”

  C.J. chortled and looped his arm around those thin shoulders. “I think you’re right, but, alas, we’ve got a job to do. There’s a little kiosk right when you enter the dock. You want to eat first?”

  There was a hesitation then—C.J. could feel it when Anderson tensed under his arm. Then, slowly, finding his way, Anderson said, “Yes. Yes, I think I would. Do they have that mammal-bird you fed me earlier? That was tasty.”

  C.J. grinned. “Oh, yeah. I can get you that.” He steered Anderson to the line and dropped the arm to make room for the little group of people gathered. He nodded hello to several of them, Julio included, and introduced Anderson, who looked at them all with wide, almost glassy eyes. Maybe he’d been too shocked when he arrived to understand how big the station was or how many people were really around him, but he was certainly getting a good idea now.

  “Here,” C.J. said, giving Anderson a little shove to a round table with little benches underneath it. “We’re going to have to eat as we work, but go sit there for a minute while I get our food. Not so noisy.”

  “Yeah,” Anderson said gravely, and he sat down without another word.

  “That our spaceman?” Julio asked him, and C
.J. nodded, watching anxiously as Anderson crept to the back of the table so that he could simply drop his chin to his fist and observe. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s… he’s coping.” C.J. thought of Jensen’s words and grimaced inwardly. “So far, he can function sanely, you know? But….” He trailed off and looked at the little crowd in the line for the kiosk. “I just think he’s going to be easily overwhelmed, that’s all.”

  “What about the holos?” Julio asked eagerly. “I understand there’s some nth level shit going on. I was going to go spell Marshall and Cassie for shift so I could actually work on them—”

  “With,” C.J. corrected adamantly. “You’ll have to work with them. I haven’t talked to Cassie yet, because I can’t do it with….” He gestured toward Anderson with his eyes, and Julio nodded. “But we need to interact with them like people, and we can’t change the parameters Anderson set—at all. They’re his life support right now, sort of the big anchor in the sanity pool, if you know what I mean. So you can talk to them, and see what makes them tick, but no messing around with them, okay? It would be like… like taking a chopstick and wiggling it around in Anderson’s brain.”

  “Eww!” Julio groaned, and C.J. grinned at him and shrugged.

  “Well, just keep chopsticks away from his nose, and you won’t have to think about it!”

  “I get it, I get it. No dicking around with the nice holograms!” Julio shuddered. “Jesus, C.J., you couldn’t have found a better metaphor?”

  C.J. kept chuckling and then suddenly sobered. If Julio was going into the shuttle—and into the living quarters, disguised in that little yellow-sided house—this was a good time to tell him about the suspicion that C.J. hadn’t had a chance to tell Marshall and Cassidy.

  “Look, man, be careful in there, okay? One of the holograms, Alpha, I think he may have been behind what happened to my sister earlier, but we don’t want to say it where Anderson can hear.”