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  “Yes, Dr. Cherry, you can leave if you like,” he said, wanting this to be as private as he could manage at the moment.

  There was a reassuring squeeze on Anderson’s arm, and then the handsome auburn-haired doctor walked out quietly, and Anderson was left looking at C.J.

  His light green eyes were bloodshot, and he was pale underneath the coffee and cream complexion of his skin. His cheekbones seemed… prominent, somehow, and so did the edge of his jaw and his collarbones.

  “You’ve lost weight,” Anderson murmured, surprised when there wasn’t an entire chorus to chime in on the simple observation.

  “So have you.”

  Anderson reached out and grabbed C.J.’s hand. “It’s going to take me a long time to get better,” he said, treading very carefully.

  “I’ll be here.”

  Anderson squeezed his hand, feeling the bones underneath the skin, fragile and bare without the muscle and fat to protect them. “You shouldn’t have to be,” he graveled, not sure how he spoke at all.

  C.J. shrugged. “It’s worth it, right? I mean, I know you don’t remember right now, but it was really worth it!” C.J. waggled his eyebrows and cracked a joke, and Anderson was suddenly assaulted by the thinness of his voice. There was not much of C.J. left to crack the joke, to make the smile, to bear Anderson’s weight, as scant as it had become.

  “It will be,” Anderson promised. “It will be. I’ll get better.”

  It was worth it. Whether the statement was true or not, making the effort was worth it. C.J. seemed to grow more substantial with every word.

  “I’m sayin’!” he crowed, and Anderson smiled, feeling finally that what he was doing was right. There was no chorus to back him up in this, no internal warble of friendly voices, and that alone was encouraging.

  “But I need you to do me a favor first,” Anderson said, and fought those helpless tears again. Well, fuck. He would have liked to do this with dignity.

  Not possible for goofy kids like us. Bobby’s voice was unmistakable—and unmistakably familiar. For a moment, Anderson felt like he was chasing a sunbeam through a blackened window, and then he focused on C.J. and what he needed to do.

  “What’s that, baby?” C.J. said, and he was so fervent, so sincere. Anderson realized that he’d claw his way to the space station in a fishbowl helmet with a piece of string if Anderson asked. For that kind of devotion, there was really only one reward Anderson could offer.

  “I need you to leave me here for a little while—”

  “No!”

  “Hear me out!” Anderson sounded stern, even to himself, and he both hated the sound and was glad for it, because C.J. was paying attention to him like that voice mattered.

  “I’m not going to leave.”

  “You’re hurting yourself here,” Anderson said. “I can’t… I… I need you to go so I can be better for you. I’m worried for you. I… I’m not strong enough to worry.”

  “Well don’t worry about me—”

  “I can’t help it! And I want to worry about you. I want to do what’s right for someone else for a change. I want to make sure you take care of yourself. You can’t do that here. You need… you need to give me some room. Give me some dignity, C.J.!” Anderson inwardly glared at Bobby, but he felt this in his bones.

  “Dignity?” C.J. sounded skeptical.

  “Do you think this is how I want you to see me? Helpless and… and lost?”

  “I can find you.”

  “Don’t you see, baby?” The endearment came so easily—Anderson wondered if he’d ever used it before, and he didn’t think so. But C.J. was crying, and Anderson was stroking his hand and the inside of his wrist, and he wanted to say something… soft. Something that would make the rest of it less fucking hard. “Don’t you see? I don’t want you to have to find me. I want to find myself and then show you who I am.”

  C.J. took a deep breath and then wiped his eyes on the inside of his shirt—something bright today, with gold-tinted rainbows across the front. “I’ve already seen who you are.”

  “Yeah, but that was the scary stuff. I’ve got….” Anderson had to pause, to search his mind to see if it was true. He said it anyway. “I’ve got some amazing parts I’ve saved just for you. You just have to let me figure out where they’re hidden.”

  C.J. laughed, and it was maybe the most cynical sound Anderson had ever heard. “You sound like a romance story. How can you sound like a romance story when you’re breaking my fucking heart?”

  Anderson wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and wondered where Dr. Silverberg had gone with her inexhaustible supply of tissues.

  “I have no idea. Just give me some space, just a little, and maybe I’ll be able to tell you then.” Anderson didn’t want space. He just wanted to lean against C.J. and bawl like a lost child.

  C.J. took a deep breath, sobbing on the exhale. “Oh crap, Anderson. Is that what you really fucking want?”

  “Yes,” Anderson lied. “Yes… oh hell… no, C.J., I don’t want you to go. But you’ve got to, you see? Don’t you see? I couldn’t live if I killed one more goddamned lover….”

  He broke then, and cried for real. Not the passive way, where the tears just fell, but the broken way, the way that ended up with his head on C.J.’s shoulder and the sobs shaking them both and nothing happening in his head at all because it was all happening in his body, in his eyes and gorge and the sting of the salt against his skin, and in the blessed, heavenly way C.J.’s arms went around his shoulders and C.J.’s big hands cupped the back of his head and C.J. cried with him as they prepared to say goodbye.

  Chapter 18

  Of Silk Cocoons and Wings

  C.J.’S PARENTS came to meet Anderson the day they came to take C.J. to the shuttle that bore him away.

  Anderson had prepared himself all day, and it still was not enough preparation to see C.J. as a beloved, worried-over son and brother as Catherine and Christopher Poulson came to Anderson’s favorite spot in the shade to introduce themselves.

  Like Anderson wouldn’t have known who they were.

  Catherine was a slightly older, much more serene version of her feisty daughter—dark skin, stunning cheekbones, full lips, and exotic, tilted oval eyes. Christopher was distinguished, with skin as pale as Anderson’s and merry blue eyes that seemed to laugh cheekily at the world as he looked around the facility.

  They were not laughing at Anderson, though.

  “How are you doing, baby?” Catherine had a smoky voice, and she asked the question while she was coming to sit on the cushioned bench next to Anderson. C.J. made introductions sitting across from them, and then his mother asked the question again.

  Anderson looked at those gentle brown eyes and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It seemed wrong to lie to her, but he did anyway. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Catherine raised her eyes. “Honey, please don’t bullshit me.”

  Unexpectedly, C.J. and Cassidy started to laugh, and their mother looked at them sharply. “What?”

  C.J. shook his head. “Nothing, Mom, just leave Anderson alone. He’s as fine as he’s going to be for the moment.”

  Anderson looked at him sharply and saw that C.J.’s head was turned. With a wrench, both from the babble in his head and the lethargy that had beset him since his arrival, he reached out and grabbed C.J.’s chin, just to confirm that C.J. was not fine either.

  “We will be better,” he promised, and C.J.’s father surprised him by wrapping a protective arm around C.J.’s shoulders and squeezing Anderson’s shoulder with his other hand.

  “You must be so proud,” he said with a faint smile. “Look at all you’ve accomplished, Anderson. You’ll be fine. Anyone who did what you did… do you realize what you saved on your ship? C.J. and Cass have only just now sent down some of the archives to the library. You’ve preserved the memory of your entire world. Of course you’ll be fine. You’re a hero. Heroes have the strength to carry on.”

  Anderson blinked at h
im, feeling a little stunned, and C.J. looked up at his father with a shining face.

  “Did I tell you,” he said conversationally, “that Dad’s the head librarian of the Northern Hemisphere?”

  “No,” said Anderson, with enough dryness in his voice to make everyone laugh. He was still holding C.J.’s hand, and he brought it to his lips and kissed the back. “But I’m sure you would have,” he added quietly.

  C.J. nodded and smiled back, and for the span of a held breath, Anderson was absolutely positive that no one else in the world was real, because for a moment out of time, theirs were the only two heartbeats on the planet.

  But it ended. C.J. stood up, and his family, including Dr. Cherry and Dr. Silverberg, all moved off to the edge of the yard. C.J. was about to bend down, and Anderson shook his head. “I can stand up,” he said, trying to sound vital and active. “My brain is broken. My body works fine. You know I still swim every morning.”

  C.J. smiled and looked mildly surprised. “Yeah? You didn’t tell me that.”

  Anderson furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure it’s true,” he confessed, squinting a little. He was going to try to explain that some mornings he got confused about the actual lap pool, instead of the small workout pool they’d had on the station, and the sense of space around his body made him flounder, lost in the echoes inside his head, but he left the edge of the sentence hanging too long, and C.J. burst into laughter.

  It felt better to laugh with him for a moment, to forget that truth and reality were sometimes, at best, cold and distant cousins, than it would have to tell C.J. how far he really had to travel in order for them to walk side by side.

  Anderson studied C.J. while he laughed—his head tilted back, his teeth gleaming whitely against his cocoa and milk colored skin. Anderson picked up his hand and studied the contrast—Anderson’s paleness against C.J.’s darker, almost golden tones.

  “It’s sort of pretty,” he said, and mentally shooed Bobby away, because Bobby was cracking up at what a moron he sounded like.

  C.J. smiled, though, but didn’t laugh. “You’re beautiful,” he said softly, and Anderson shook his head and added the important part.

  “I’m broken.”

  C.J. shrugged. “You’ll heal,” he said with such utter certainty that Anderson actually found himself tearing up. He shook the tears away before he could make the goodbye any harder and gave C.J. a hug. Standing up, he was aware, as he hadn’t been, of how good that body felt pressed up against his own, how protected and warm he’d felt in C.J.’s bed, in his life. Anderson tightened his arms and shuddered.

  “Every night,” C.J. promised in his ear. “I’ll buzz you on the monitor every night. If it gets bad, just promise yourself you’ll make it through, okay? Every night.”

  “Every night,” Anderson echoed. Then, because he had to, he said, “I love you, C.J.”

  There was a gasp, and C.J.’s arms got so tight it was hard to breathe. “I love you too, baby. Get better, hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  And then C.J. swung around and was surrounded by his family, and Anderson was left with Dr. Cherry and Dr. Silverberg to make sure he didn’t simply fall, like a sculpture made of water.

  WAKE UP, eat breakfast, go swimming (if Kate and Bobby would let him), talk to Dr. Cherry—a.k.a. Jensen, whom Anderson was starting to suspect had known C.J. very well—eat lunch, meditate or read in the garden, talk to Dr. Silverberg—a.k.a. Molly, whom Anderson was starting to suspect knew Dr. Cherry very well—and then dinner.

  And then talk to C.J.

  “Hey, Anderson, how was your day?”

  “Boring and monotonous. How was yours?”

  You don’t ask us how our day went!

  We were here the whole time, moron. He knows how our day went. Pretty much the same as his.

  I think we entertained each other more.

  How come we never have sex anymore, Henry?

  C.J.’s days were never boring and monotonous. There was always a non-humanoid interface or a ship that had started anthropomorphizing or a scuffle with his sister, who, apparently, was much easier to deal with now that she was back on the station with Marshall and getting laid on a regular basis. C.J. told Anderson about “Magic Marshall and his octo-peter” one night, and Anderson and company had pretty much giggled themselves to sleep. C.J. always had a story to tell, even if it was about how the coffee at his favorite kiosk had added a new spice and it made the whole world feel yummy.

  Anderson watched him hungrily, his senses feeling oddly truncated and numb. He often found himself reaching for the computer, remembering those nights when the world came down to the feeling of C.J.’s flesh on his and the sound of his breathing in the dark.

  Didn’t you clowns write an algorithm that did that?

  Yeah, but it was probably different in real life.

  Which begs the question. If a simulated life is so real you can’t tell the difference, is it simulated anymore?

  Henry, please don’t discuss post-modernist theory right now. It makes my head hurt.

  Sorry, sweetheart. I forget.

  Shh… listen. C.J. is talking some more.

  “So, Anderson—you still with me?”

  Anderson jerked his head away from the usual chaos in his brain and nodded. “Uhm, yeah.”

  “So I’ve been gone for about two weeks, and Jensen said you’re not even trying to get better while I’m gone. He says it’s like you’re going through the motions.” C.J.’s animated face had gotten a little rounder in the last two weeks, but now he started pinching around the eyes again. “That’s not true, is it?” he asked quietly. “Because… I mean, Anderson, Jensen’s about ready to tell me we can’t talk at all.”

  The chorus in Anderson’s head shut up in shock. “What do you mean, at all?”

  C.J. shook his head. “Baby, he says it’s like I’m not even gone. It’s like… it’s like I’m holding you back. I’m your safety blanket, and you’re not letting go of me to feel if the rest of the world is real.” C.J.’s lower lip actually started to quiver. “He said… he said I’m like your new Alpha in your head.”

  Oh hell no!

  That’s not true!

  Anderson, tell him he’s mistaken!

  Oh, poor C.J.!

  “You’re nothing like Alpha,” Anderson said numbly. Alpha was cruel and deceitful and used pain and intimidation to make Anderson comply. C.J. was… was kind and funny and… and human and….

  “He’s saying that you think I’m… I’m a hologram, like Alpha. You’re letting me hold you together. Baby, you’ve got to start holding together for yourself.”

  I thought I was the one holding us all together!

  Anderson, ignore them all. Order is totally fucking overrated.

  Interesting. I would have thought Dr. Cherry would have ascertained that Alpha was obviously a manifestation of Anderson’s will.

  Anderson, you’re not holding us together?

  Anderson squinted hard at C.J. on the screen and willed the voices to shut up. They ignored him. “You’re not Alpha,” he said numbly.

  “Yeah, but… Anderson, don’t you miss touching me? You know that you’re not touching me anymore, right?”

  Well yeah! The only sex going on is the sex between me and Kate.

  Yeah, sorry about that, Anderson.

  Since Anderson’s not heterosexual, that’s not even going to get him hard.

  Henry, has he seen all the sex we’ve been having?

  “I remember touching you, yes,” Anderson said, and he wasn’t trying to be funny, and he was thankful when C.J. saw his confusion for what it was.

  “We did touch,” C.J. whispered. “We touched, and it was amazing. But it wasn’t perfect. You weren’t all there with me in my arms.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry!” C.J. snapped. “Be hurt or angry or… or insane or foaming at the mouth or something, but don’t be fucking sorry!”

  Anderson gasped. It was the fi
rst time—the only time—he’d ever seen C.J. truly angry. “I’m… I’m… I’m….”

  Well, he’s got a lot of nerve!

  Apologize to him, Anderson!

  Why do you think he’s angry?

  Don’t make him yell at us!

  “You’re what?” C.J. yelled. “You’re… you’re indifferent? You’re tired? You wish you’d never met me? You’re thinking about your family? You’re guilty? What? Because in two months, you haven’t given us a status report, dammit! You sit there and look at us serenely and say that yes, you know you’re crazy, and no, you don’t remember anything, but you don’t tell anyone what’s going on inside your head!”

  “It’s… all white noise in here,” Anderson lied.

  “Shut. Up!” C.J. snarled. Anderson recoiled, even though C.J. was two hundred thousand miles away.

  Don’t be afraid. He’s not here.

  Don’t you want him here?

  Why would you be afraid of C.J.?

  C.J. loves us.

  “What did I—”

  “You’re lying to me! You’ve been lying to Jensen this whole time, and to Molly and to… oh hell, maybe even to yourself. I was going to recreate your holodeck, do you know that?”

  “Yes,” Anderson said numbly. “Your sister told me.”

  “You didn’t want me to do that?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “It wouldn’t help,” Anderson said. Every word was weighted with the opinion of the other voices in his head. It felt like the voices of everyone else he’d killed had added their sounds to the babble—the school, his teachers, the people he’d programmed for the amusement parks—all of them were weighing in on what he should tell C.J., how he should fix this.

  “How do you know that, Anderson? Because Jensen’s so fucking desperate he actually asked me if I wanted to try it again, and it almost killed me the last time I obsessed over it.”

  “You can’t hurt yourself!” Anderson was not aware that he was standing up until he realized he couldn’t see C.J.’s face from this position. He had no mirror to know if the things he was feeling or saying were actually in sync.