Beacon 23: The Complete Novel (13 page)

• 24 •

By the end of my first tour of duty, I was already an asshole. I told myself I’d never get like that. I remember when I joined my first company, after losing my wings and being put in the trenches, how I’d introduce myself to someone with too many days of service, and they wouldn’t take my hand, wouldn’t give me a name, would simply tell me to “Fuck off.”

I called them the assholes. It’s what I muttered to myself as they walked away. I later learned that this exchange wasn’t what it seemed. You shake enough hands and meet enough people and lose them all to the war, and you get to where you don’t want to meet anyone else. Looking back, I can see how the assholes were quick to give me any advice that might keep me alive, but they didn’t say shit about who they were. Names were simply home states or cities or favorite ball teams or embarrassing nicks. The assholes didn’t hate you; they just didn’t want to get attached. I got like that. I didn’t want to ever meet another Hank. I think that’s why he remained my best friend throughout my two and a half tours. I never let anyone else get so close. Those two weeks were painful enough. Hell, after Scarlett, I never confused sex and love again. Used to think the two had something to do with one another. But then the sex and dying came so close together that it almost felt like you were doing it with a corpse. Takes the joy out of it. You die a little inside every time you have joyless sex. Neurons prune back. The good in there withers. And some things never grow back.

This is why I spend the next two days staring at the HF, too self-protecting to pick it up, too enamored to just walk away. I don’t want to know another thing about her. I can already feel the agony of her leaving, off to another brand-new beacon, asking someone to pass her a bolt, the smell of soap and grease on her skin, bonding with some other soldier, leaving behind a dotted line of finely tuned machines and shattered hearts. Makes me feel sorry not just for myself, but for every other lonely and hapless vet who—

“Hello . . . ?”

Cricket lifts her head from her blanket and stares at the ladder well. What the hell? What the hell?

Looking over at the airlock indicators, I can see that collar Bravo is energized. Who the hell stops over unannounced like this? I step toward the ladder, step back, step toward it again, my arms out and akimbo, while Cricket gets up from her blanket.

Before I can think to stop her, the warthen bounds for the ladder.

“Fuck,” I say. I run after her. “Stop! Wait! No!” All the useless commands come out together in a jumble. I practically jump down the ladder, landing in a roll and grabbing at Cricket, but she’s already leaping down another level. I don’t stop to put on pants or a shirt, just have my boxers on, and I’m down the next ladder to the life support module when I hear a scream just below me. A shriek. I land to find Claire on her back, Cricket standing with her paws on the tuner’s chest, holding her against the grating.

“Off!” I shout, pushing Cricket to the side and ending up on my knees. Cricket tries to get at Claire again—I can’t tell if it’s to greet her or dominate her—and I fight to hold the alien back. Claire scoots until she’s against the air scrubber and pulls her knees up against her chest, is staring at the animal wide-eyed, her jaw hanging open.

“Sorry,” I say, sitting down and reaching out toward Claire. “I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything. I tell Cricket to back off, to go lie down, to take it easy, and finally the tension goes out of her muscles. She paces back and forth on the other side of me, her head tracking Claire. I keep pointing to the grate, telling her to lie down,
thinking
for her to lie down, and she finally does. But with a grunt. Like she’d rather be doing anything else.

“God, I’m so sorry,” I say. I reach over and touch Claire’s shin, remembering the time I touched her ankle. She startles, but not as bad as the last time.

“What the hell
is
that?” she asks.

“A warthen,” I say, breathing hard from the dash down. I rub the ankle I sprained a while back. “I— She sorta adopted me.”

“That’s—” Claire can’t take her eyes off Cricket. She aims a finger at the animal. “That’s against regs. That’s . . . You can’t have that.”

“I know,” I say. “I know. I suck at this job. You’re gonna can me. I know. We can go QT Houston if you like.”

I almost feel relief at this. Lately, I’ve gone from thinking I’ll serve in this bucket for the rest of my life to being pretty sure I could be fired at any moment. This is the route I took when I sided with Scarlett against the bounty hunters. But the only person who knows that is the hunter who dragged Scarlett’s body away. And she hasn’t said a thing, apparently. But with Cricket around, it’s just a matter of time. When they do the food resupply, they’ll figure it out. NASA counts every hundred-dollar bolt. They won’t miss this. And now they know. The jig is up.

“What the hell is it?” Claire asks. While I’m considering which remote planet I’ll retire on, she seems to be coming out of shock. “Canine? Feline?”

“Neither,” I say. And I see that the fear is out of her, replaced by curiosity. Here’s a soldier who’s seen a shelling. Knows when to duck for cover and when to come out, look around, see who needs help.

I snap for Cricket, who bounds up like a coiled spring, has only been lying there because I yelled at her to. She nearly knocks me over on her way to Claire, gets both paws around her neck, and starts licking her hair.

“Down!” I say.

“Easy,” Claire tells the animal.

And I see that Claire can hold her own. She twists to the side and rolls the warthen on her back. Pins her there, which I know from experience isn’t easy. Cricket’s body is tense, but her legs settle as Claire finds that spot on her belly.

“She likes that,” I say.

“Who wouldn’t?” Claire asks.

We stare at each other.

This is the last goddamn thing I wanted. The last goddamn thing.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I ask, unable to censor myself, angry at her for being a good person and shoving it in my face like this, waving it around like a flag, making me notice.

“Fuck you,” she says, but she keeps rubbing Cricket’s stomach. It’s just trench talk. Soldier anger, which lasts as long as soldier love does. “You said this bucket was falling apart, I thought I’d come see if I could help. But I think maybe the bucket isn’t what’s broken.”

“The hell does that mean?” I ask.

She looks down at Cricket, whose eyes are closed. She’s doing that deep growling thing that I’d call a purr if it wasn’t so goddamn unsettling.

“You’re right,” she says. She pats Cricket, then unfolds her legs and stands to go. “Good luck with everything, soldier.”

“Wait,” I say. I reach for her hand, even though I don’t know her, even though I’ve spent all of four hours with her, even though I haven’t thought of anything else for the last three days. “I’m sorry.” Two words that I used to choke on when I was younger, that I only now know the value of, the true worth, and how good they feel to say. “It’s just—”

“What?” she asks. She’s standing there, my hand around her wrist, looking down at me. Cricket is watching us both.

“It’s just that—”

I shake my head.

“You don’t want to have feelings for me because you’re scared I’m gonna leave?” she asks.

I turn away, because the tears leap up in me so fast that my throat closes and I can’t swallow or see. I wipe at my eyes, full of shame.

“Well fuck you, soldier. We all leave. Every one of us. You’ve been in the shit. You choose to keep yourself from people who might leave, you choose to keep yourself alone. We all go. Fucking open up to someone. For your own sake.”

Cricket’s head is in my lap. She’s looking up at me. Claire is peering down at me. I’m the rock between two soft spots.

“You think I don’t hurt?” Claire asks. She squeezes my hand. Somehow, her hand is now holding mine. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, with tears rolling down my cheeks, I gaze up at her. She’s holding up her shirt. A web of scars peeks out above the waistband of her sweatpants—a tangle of lace-like flesh that wraps clear around her hip. I glance from this up to her face and see that she’s looking at my own exposed stomach. I look back at her wound. I’m the asshole. I’m the guy who thinks he’s uniquely miserable, who thinks all the world’s woes are his, who sees the pure in everyone else and the dilapidated within. Only I have suffered. Only I know pain. How do you share what you think no one else can hold? Why do we all do this to ourselves and each other? Why can’t we just fucking cry like men?

I do in that moment. Gone is the allure of having sex with this woman. Gone is the allure of loving her and spending the rest of my life with her. Gone are all the good things I dream about. All that’s left is the awful, the horrendous, the brutal, and the hurt.

The last bit of egoism I have left in me is to think to myself—as I convulse with sobs and bawl like a child—that no one has ever cried like this. It’s the last time I’ll ever think I’m unique. The last time. Because as soon as I think that no one has ever cried like this, a woman is wrapping herself around me, a stranger, a sister, a fellow wounded, a lonely lover. And she shows me that I’m not alone. And we cry like the universe is about to end.

• 25 •

There’s something oddly familiar about the way she strokes my hair after, the way she looks at me, the way her hair is mussed and her cheeks are flushed. She must be thinking the same thing, because the first thing either of us says in what feels like forever is her asking:

“Was it good for you?”

We both laugh. It’s the best kind of laughter. “What the hell
was
that?” I ask. Because nothing happened other than the holding and crying.

“That’s called feeling something, soldier. Good to see you can still do it.”

There’s something scarily clinical about the way she says this. She tucks my hair behind my ear. Definitely not reg length. And I can’t stop myself from thinking that maybe she was sent here to tune more than that other beacon. That’s paranoia, though. That’s remnants of my ego. A billion stars staring at me from across the unfathomable distance, and it’s not the cosmos that teaches me how small I am. It’s this perfect person lifting her shirt and reminding me that no one’s perfect. We all have stories. And regrets. And weaknesses. She pulled off what astronomy couldn’t. Or maybe it was just about damn time for me.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I say.

She nods. “I know.”

Cricket growls in her sleep. The warthen passed out as soon as we were done bawling, like it had exhausted her as well. I reckon that, if she’s really an empath, it did.

“Are you glad you met me?” Claire asks.

“Of course.” There’s no hesitation.

“There you go,” she says.

I rub her arm. I memorize how she feels for later. I take her free hand and pull it to my lips, kiss the back of her hand, feel her squeeze my hand in assent, then take a deep sniff, trying to memorize how she smells.

“Have you ever done this before?” I ask.

Claire laughs. “Would it matter?”

I shrug.

A moment passes.

“No,” she says. “I probably needed this more than you did.”

The old me would’ve privately doubted. The new me isn’t so sure. Maybe her path has been harder than mine. Maybe I can let go of the specialness of my suffering. Maybe the handholds I’ve been clinging to have been digging into my palm and cutting me rather than keeping me from falling.

“If you ever want to share,” I say. “I’m here.” Because I can be the shoulder too. I can listen instead of not-talking. I can prop someone else up. Me. The broken one. No:
a
broken one.

I think of Tex, a grizzled vet who served in my last squad, who died the day I won my medal. I always thought Tex was crazy. He was the happiest motherfucker you ever met. And not happy with the zeal of killing, which a few of the really off-kilter vets got, but happy with the joy of being alive that day and wanting to remain that way for one more day. Tex would introduce himself to every goo-green kid who joined the squad, every piece of farm-fresh. He’d put his arm around their shoulder, tell them his life story, his real name, ask them all about their hometowns, so that even those nearby had to learn shit we’d rather not. We’d get hit by these frag grenades of nicety. He took people in, Tex. Got close to them. Cried like a baby when the smoke cleared and the tags were tallied. And I thought he was fucking crazy, going about war like that. Not learning what the rest of us learned.

But he may have been the only sane one. The human out there with all us aliens. Still living. Refusing to give up. Preferring to yo-yo up and down like grav panels on the fritz. Preferring that to the weightlessness. To the lack of gravity.

I want to feel a little numb again. I smile at Claire. “You want to go sit up at the gwib with me? Just for a little bit?”

A frown shatters her beautiful face. She looks sad again, but not the raw sadness of all those wounds in her life—this is sadness mixed with pity. This is her not wanting to tell me some awful truth.

“You know it doesn’t do anything, right?” she says.

No. I don’t know. I have no idea what she means.

“The gwib. There’s no way it interacts with your brain.”

“Fuck that,” I tell her. “Yes it does. It mellows me out. It’s the only thing that does—”

She brushes her hand across my cheek, and I feel something else that mellows me. I was getting worked up just then, but her touch calms me down. I know I’m right, and she’s wrong, but I don’t need to get upset about it. Just accept.

“You feel calm up there because it’s the only place you sit still,” she says. “It’s where you breathe. Where you let yourself relax. You can do that anywhere. You just have to choose. Just
be
.”

I shake my head. I’m about to argue with her, when she runs her hand down my cheek, down my neck, and touches the rock hanging from its lanyard.

“What’s this?”

I place my hand on the back of hers. I think of Scarlett for a moment, how sex and love used to mean the same thing. But this is love, what I’m feeling right now. The surest I’ve ever felt it. Romantic or not. Just human to human. Real love.

“A memento,” I say.

“What does it remind you of?”

I think about this. So many answers. I want to make sure I choose the honest one.

“That I’m not always right,” I finally say. “It reminds me to question myself. Question everything. And never stop.”

Claire smiles. She touches my lips with her finger, then leans in and kisses me. When she pulls back, much too soon, she says, “Well, you got that part right. Never question that. Hold on to it.”

I pull her against me, not to make love to her, but just to love her. To hold something good and imperfect and fucked up, and to feel someone holding all of that in return.