Dreamspinner Press Year Five Greatest Hits Page 29

  “He can’t,” Anderson muttered. “He can’t hurt himself. He can’t.”

  But if it will help you….

  It won’t, genius. It won’t help him.

  He looked so lost for a while. We can’t let C.J. do that, not when it won’t help.

  Why won’t it help again?

  “You’re not in there!” Anderson shouted, and C.J. was making noises on the other end of the computer screen.

  “I’m not in where, Anderson?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Anderson snapped, and he realized that he was agitated and that he wasn’t making sense and couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  “Then who are you talking to?”

  Don’t tell him.

  He’ll only think you’re crazy.

  Maybe he wants you to be crazy.

  Wait, why can’t he know we’re here?

  “No one,” Anderson muttered. “C.J., don’t recreate the holograms again. You can’t. You just can’t.”

  “But you’re not getting better. You just keep it all in. You just hold everything you’re thinking or feeling there in your head. Anderson, anything we can do to get it out of your head, man, it’s got to be better than this!”

  “What’s so wrong with this?” Anderson asked, hearing Risa whimper loudly in his head.

  “Man, don’t you want to touch me?” C.J. asked, his voice too bald to be embarrassed or broken. “Don’t you miss the feeling of my hand in yours? Or even my hands on your body?”

  “Yes.” Anderson nodded. “I miss the sound of your breathing. And your smell.”

  “But don’t you want more? You can get the sound of my damned breathing from a brother or from a fucking recording, and you bought the damned soap I smelled like!” C.J. shook his head, and now the break set in. “Anderson… I love talking to you every night, but… I’m getting the same thing from you that I got when I was there. Don’t you miss me at all?”

  Well, you really only knew him for two days….

  Three months, moron, where were you?

  Nearly four months. Am I the only one who can count?

  It seems like forever.

  “Yes,” Anderson whispered. “Yes.”

  “But you don’t show it. I miss you every day, do you know that? I walk into my quarters and think, ‘Oh, he’s out, I wonder what he bought? I wonder what he saw? I wonder what I can say to make him laugh?’ And then I remember that you’re not here, and even if you were here, you wouldn’t be here, and….” C.J. rubbed his throat absently like he was trying to make something stop aching. “Man, my chest hurts. Does it feel like that for you?”

  Eight and a half years, Anderson. We were your life for eight and a half years. Do you really want to dump us for him?

  He wouldn’t be dumping us. Anderson doesn’t have to tell C.J. we’re here just to let him know how he feels.

  You guys, even if we were real blood family, Anderson has the right to leave us when he’s found a compatible mate.

  You fucking dorkuses! Don’t you see?

  That’s not a word, Risa!

  Who gives a fuck! He’s dying without C.J.! Are you so busy trying to be the loudest voice in his head that you can’t see that the outside of him is dying?

  “Yes,” Anderson said through the confusion between his ears.

  Anderson, don’t lie to him!

  He’s not lying!

  He’s hurting.

  Come on, Bobby, don’t you want him to feel safe?

  “I don’t believe you,” C.J. muttered. It was hard to read his expression. He looked hurt and furious, probably at himself.

  You shouldn’t.

  Anderson, make him believe you.

  “I’m probably not even real to you, not even when I’m there,” C.J. said when Anderson didn’t answer.

  He’s not.

  You have to admit, you don’t dream about touching him nearly enough.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe you should live in your head some more.

  That’s not what he’s saying.

  “You’re real to me,” Anderson mumbled.

  Really? Oh, shit. Now I’m a total asshole. I’m sorry.

  Anderson, I don’t believe you, and I can see your brain. You need to make him believe you.

  Kate’s right, Anderson. If you want him to believe you, you have to be louder about that.

  Oh, C.J. Anderson, he’s heartbroken.

  “God,” C.J. muttered, tilting his head back and squeezing his eyes tight. It dimly occurred to Anderson that he was crying. “I want to believe you. It’s hard for me, you know? It would be hard to be apart anyway. That’s why I haven’t tried the long-term thing up here, right? But… you used to be so animated, you know? For two months I lived to watch you laugh. Now I’d settle to see you get pissed off. I just… I just need….”

  “What?”

  Why does it matter? It’s not like he’s any more real than Alpha.

  Yeah, that’s a possibility. You know, maybe he’s not real. Maybe that is the problem.

  Well, Alpha wasn’t real. Maybe C.J. is a hologram too.

  He’s real.

  “I just need to know you know I’m real!”

  “I do.”

  You do not.

  If he was real, wouldn’t he be beating the crap out of you?

  If he was real, would he have left?

  He’s real.

  “That doesn’t sound very convincing!”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  You don’t have to do anything. You lived without him before.

  Hey, he’s the one who left you.

  And wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about what he would do if he got angry?

  He’s angry now, and he’s hurt, and he’s real!

  “Be emotional! Show me something here! God help me, Anderson, throw a guy a fucking bone!”

  “I… I… I….”

  We what?

  “What are you trying to say, baby? I’m just… I don’t mean to sound like such a dick here, but… I’m hurting. Okay. I’m sorry. I should have dumped this on your lap when I was downplanet, but I don’t think I could even admit to myself that it was happening. That it hurt. It was easier to focus on being there for you. I’ll… hell. I’ll sign off. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “No!” Anderson was panicked. Suddenly, this imaginary conference, this tenuous connection of satellite signals and radio waves, seemed more real and more important than ten years of his own existence bouncing around like a tiny pebble in a big box.

  “No what?”

  No, he’s not real?

  No, you don’t want to keep doing this?

  No, you don’t believe he’ll be there for you since you left?

  NO, DON’T LET HIM GO!

  “No… don’t… don’t go! No… just… I mean… God. Don’t… I need you. I need you. Even if it’s just a picture at night, or a conversation, or… you’re not the voice in my head. You’re not Kate or Bobby or Henry or Risa. You’re not Alpha. You’re different. I don’t know what to expect from you. You’re the only person I want to talk to. You’re… please don’t go.”

  Anderson, do you mean that? You don’t mean that.

  Anderson, we like him, okay? But this is totally upsetting you.

  I’m still not convinced that he’s real. The likelihood that this transmission is just another hallucination is astronomical. Anderson, could you….

  “Shut up! All of you! He’s real and I need to be alone!”

  For a moment, Anderson thought it had been Risa who had spoken. Her tiny voice, the one that most often said the truths no one wanted to hear—she’d been the one advocating for C.J.—she’d been the one who didn’t want him to go.

  But then Anderson realized that he’d fallen to his knees, and that his throat was raw from shouting, and that for the first time since Alpha had ceased to exist, the voices in his own head were silent. All that remained was what he wanted, how he felt, and who he want
ed with him.

  “Anderson?” C.J.’s voice through the monitor was all suppressed panic. Anderson had no doubt that C.J. had probably contacted Dr. Cherry on another monitor, and that his time alone—so hard won—would be cut short. He also thought vaguely that maybe it would be a while before he could talk to C.J. again period.

  “C.J.,” Anderson muttered, looking up to the desk in his aesthetic little room at the mental care facility, and not, for the first time in two months, from the holodeck of the shuttle, where he felt like he’d never disembarked. “C.J., don’t give up on me. I’ve got… I’ve got a fucking chorus of idiots in my head, man. They won’t shut up, and I didn’t want to tell anyone they were there because then I’d really be crazy, and then you’d never want me. But I can’t lose you. You… you are the lover I never would have programmed. You are a person who’s so amazing, not even the things I imagined could have imagined you. I can’t lose you. I know you’re real. And I know that’s not a good enough reason for you to hang in there, but….” There was a banging at the door, and still, C.J.’s voice was the only one that Anderson could hear.

  “I won’t give up,” C.J. said softly. He had reached out and put his fingertips on his own vid screen, and Anderson pulled himself to his knees and leaned over the desk, doing the same.

  “You don’t give up, I won’t give up,” Anderson said, and rested his cheek against the cool veneer of the wooden desk. He felt strangely exhausted, like he hadn’t just gone round and round in his head but round and round in a mass melee in real life too.

  “You look….” C.J. swallowed—Anderson could even see it on the monitor, and he abruptly wanted to be there to touch C.J. so badly he couldn’t even stand to think about it or the idea would hurt his skin. “You look… you look sad, and angry, and tired,” he finished.

  “All of that?”

  “Yeah, it’s the best thing I’ve seen on your face in two months.”

  “Well, no offense, man, but I think it’s just as well you don’t get to see what I’m about to look like in therapy.”

  C.J.’s smile was crooked. “I think I just did. No worries. Have I mentioned I’m here for the long haul?”

  Anderson waited for the cacophony in his head to assure him that C.J. wasn’t the only one. It didn’t come.

  “I’m glad,” Anderson muttered. “You could be the only one.”

  Dr. Cherry came in then and looked through the monitor as he bent down to assist Anderson to a place where he could sit. “Hey, C.J.,” he said, his voice a study in forced cheerfulness.

  “Hey, Jensen. He going to be all right?”

  “Maybe,” Dr… Jensen said, his pleasant voice throaty. “Maybe. Anderson, can you say goodbye to C.J. for a bit? I think you and me, we got some actual truth-telling in our future, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Anderson mumbled, his face wet and sticky against the desk. “Yeah. C.J., I love you. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Guaran-damned-teed. Love you too.”

  Jensen very gently turned off the monitor and then wrapped his arms around Anderson’s shoulders and simply held him, very quietly, while Anderson went limp against him, as emotionally exhausted as he could remember without being sick or in denial or dizzy with his own creations dancing macabre in his brain space.

  Jensen’s arms were warm, and male, and neutral, but that was not what Anderson felt. He felt C.J., that last day, that final hug, his unspoken wish for the real Anderson in his arms, and not the blank, neutral, emotionless holo-dummy that he’d become.

  Maybe, just maybe, Anderson could be that person. It was that hope that let him close his eyes and sleep without sedation, and that hope that kept him from screaming when the dreams came.

  It was a start.

  Part 6: C.J.

  Chapter 19

  The Day I Met You

  “C.J., MAN, you look nervous.”

  C.J. swallowed and looked at Julio, feeling self-conscious. “I am nervous,” he admitted as they watched Hermes-Eight-Prime get nearer in the window of the planet-to-station shuttle.

  “It’s not like your first date.” Julio grinned, and C.J. looked at him seriously.

  “The hell it’s not,” he murmured, feeling it in his gut.

  Anderson’s breakthrough over the monitors had been the beginning, but only that. The rest had been long and hard, and a lot of C.J.’s free time on the station had been spent on the monitors with Anderson and with Jensen and even with Molly. It had been painful, but not as painful as the pale imitation of Anderson who had taken up residence in his body for the weeks after killing Alpha.

  C.J. hadn’t really seen it until after Cassie had come and ordered him to step away from the hologram repair and back into the real world, but she, and Jensen, and Molly, and their mother, who had more degrees than Cassie in psychology and neural function in space, all agreed that something was going on in Anderson’s head that he wasn’t talking about. They also agreed that the thing he wasn’t talking about was taking up most of his energy—energy that he should have been using confronting all of the other painful things he had to deal with but wasn’t.

  That night—that terrible night, when C.J. had felt like it was all for nothing, like the Anderson he’d known had just been the potential of the man he’d fallen in love with, a mirage, a promise that had been destroyed along with the mining colony nearly eleven years ago—that had been the catalyst of change.

  Anderson had been unavailable for about a week after that, and C.J. had worried every day, in spite of reassurance from Jensen that what was going on planetside was very encouraging.

  “’Kay, I’m not going to give too many details, because that’s his biz, C.J., but I’ve got to tell you, you know all those people we thought he’d killed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They were hanging out in his head the whole time.”

  C.J. had taken a moment to digest this and realized he couldn’t. “Sounds crowded,” he’d said through a dry throat, and Jensen had nodded emphatically.

  “Hard to respond to the real world when all your baggage is sounding off in your head.”

  C.J. had closed his eyes, not sure whether to be relieved or to give up hope altogether. “How can he function like that?” he had asked painfully, and Jensen had given him his first real, clear, sunshiney moment since Anderson had first disembarked and C.J. had thought, Yeah, he’s a pretty kid—too bad he’s hands off!

  “He wasn’t. He was nonresponsive and apathetic, and you saw that. But now that we know they’re there, we can figure out how to make them shut up.”

  C.J. had wrinkled his brow. “Okay, but… I don’t understand. If he’s got everybody in his head, why didn’t Alpha just shut them all down? Isn’t that what he did?”

  Jensen had grinned then, and C.J. had gotten his second sunshiney moment in a while. “See, that’s the good thing. Wait, no, that’s the great thing. He killed Alpha. That was an active choice. Everything in Alpha that helped Anderson survive, that’s still in him. The bad parts?” Jensen had shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Well, they’re in us all, right? This guy was just distilled asshole. The attractive and the violent and the charismatic parts of us that everyone has but most people put a fucking leash on so we don’t wipe each other out on sight. It was the part that made Anderson stop dithering and make the hard choices. But you can’t put all that in the same guy without any of the softer stuff or the happy stuff….”

  “The Risas or the Bobbys….”

  “Or the Kates or the Henrys.” Jensen had nodded, serious now. “Exactly right. Man, this is what I was talking about. Anderson made the holodeck, and it was brilliant. But really, all that thing boiled down to was an expensive, hi-tech way for a lost kid to talk to himself. He’s got other people to talk to now—he’s got to relearn how to do that.”

  C.J. had nodded, but something must have happened to his expression then, because his friend’s voice was tender when Jensen spoke next.

  “You’re first on the l
ist, C.J.—don’t ever doubt it.”

  C.J.’s smile back had been all joy.

  A couple of days later, Anderson had been on the monitor, and he had been grumpy. “Jesus, swimming. Really? They can’t think of anything better?”

  C.J. had grinned. “You strain yourself?”

  Anderson had shaken his head and looked embarrassed. “It’s practically a sensory deprivation tank. You should hear what goes on inside my head when I’m trying to work out.”

  He couldn’t help it. C.J. had burst into raucous, joyous laughter, and Anderson had glared at him through two hundred thousand miles of space. “What in the hell?”

  “Man—I’m just so damned happy to see you pissed off. You will never fucking know!”

  There had been a pause, a moment of shock on Anderson’s face, and then he’d grimaced. “Well, get used to it. I have the feeling I’m sort of a handful when I get my full personality back. I was not a good boy, and Alpha had to come from somewhere.”

  C.J.’s smile had been all wicked then. “I’m looking forward to seeing you when you’re really, really bad,” he had purred, and Anderson had blushed. “But how do you know you weren’t a good boy?” Because Anderson hadn’t spoken once—not once—about his family, his life before the shuttle, even when he’d first arrived at the station.

  Anderson’s face suddenly turned into a study in sadness and memory. “I read the letters, the ones in my tablet, the ones with my family. They were….” C.J. could see him swallow. “They were hard. But… you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I was really loved. My family was really wonderful, and I was really loved.”

  C.J.’s eyes had burned. “Yeah. Yeah, baby, you were.”

  “I think they’d really want me to be happy.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  They had talked some more before they signed off, but that right there had marked the beginning of hope—and the beginning of Anderson, in a way.

  C.J. had seen glimpses of him. He’d seen Bobby’s raucous humor, Kate’s brusque practicality, Henry’s analytical abilities, and Risa’s childlike introspection. He’d seen Alpha’s inability to accept defeat. But he hadn’t seen Anderson, not all of him, until that moment, when Anderson had started a morning grumpy and finished a conversation sad.