Hammered (21 page)

Alberta ignored the question. “We visualize a tailored-human/AI team. We’ll use drugs and nano-and biothera-pies to improve the human pilot’s response times, although there are some medical barriers to that. The AI, of course, can respond at processor speeds, but we’d like to keep a human involved because of judgment calls. And also, well, there’s a trust issue.”

Elspeth nodded.
I’d rather know my ship was being flown by a person than by a computer. Does that make me a racist?
“You must be talking about a drive that will move a ship at near C. Given how uncluttered space is.”

“Actually, it’s capable of moving at an uncalculated rate we suspect to be exponentially higher than the speed of light.”

Elspeth blinked. “How?”

And Alberta grinned. “There’s one of the many problems. We don’t know.”

I sit on the beige-carpeted floor of Gabe’s apartment with a tweedy couch cushion under my butt, watching cartoons and drinking Irish coffee out of a speckled stoneware mug. I’m mulling over—again—what “the ghost of Richard Feynman” told me today when Gabe strolls into the living room.

“What’s on?”

“Hannah and Tucker.”

“Genie loves that one. Especially the flying horse.” He sits down one cushion to the left and behind me, leaning forward to put his own coffee cup on the floor.

“Girls in bed?”

“Yeah.”

I set my mug aside. He’s reaching out to lay a hand on my shoulder when I lean forward and push myself to my feet, pretending not to notice. Going into the kitchen, I call back over my shoulder, “Ice cream?” even though it’s cold and the windows are open. We bought some on the way back from the restaurant.

“No thanks.”

When I come back, he’s pulled the cushion so it rests
between his feet. I give him a dubious look. “I’m too old for high school seductions, Gabe.” It doesn’t come out with the wry tone I want it to have.

He shows me the upturned palm of his hand. “Sit, get neck rubbed, do not complain.”

“Ah.” I sit. Gabe can actually touch my back without my wanting to spin around and put my left hand through his face.
Well, except for this morning.
It’s a thought I don’t need. I push it back.

Very few other people can touch me like that. “I’ve got a T-shirt on.”

“Take off the sweater, then.”

I set the ice cream down and take a long sip of my coffee first, not sure if I wish I had put more alcohol in it or less.
Pathetic, Jenny. There are sixteen-year-old girls less pathetic than you.
He notices my gooseflesh in the chilly room, and hands me the afghan from the back of the sofa. It’s blue and white, a tapestry of cats.

Pathetic.

Well, nothing new there.
I ball the sweater up and throw it into the corner. Gabe swills coffee and sets the mug aside. He chafes his hands together until I can feel the friction heat and then lays them on my neck.

I gasp. His hands are warm as towels heated in the microwave, and they seem to know and find every knot and bit of pain. “Have you been doing your physical therapy?”

“Sort of.” He touches the outline of the nanoprocessor that links into my cervical vertebrae, reminding himself of where plastic ends and Jenny begins.

“You need to take the arm off at night, Maker.”

“I take it off when I sleep.” I hate taking it off. It’s like a reminder that it’s not really part of me, and I can’t stand that. It took me enough time to stop wanting to skin myself to get the metal and plastic out from under.

There’s low concern in his voice again when he continues. “How are you dealing with seeing Barb again? That was a shock, the two of you standing side by side …”

My breath comes harsher, and I can tell he feels the shifting tension in my back. His touch is light at first and then firmer as he leans into the knotted muscles. I have a pretty good pain threshold. He knows where it is, and he pushes it, but he never makes me squeal.

“I dunno, Gabe. I … hell. You know I still think it’s her fault Nell died, no matter what she says. No matter what she thinks she got away with.”

“Yes.” He strokes the back of my neck, fingers through my hair.

I keep thinking about everything Richard told me. Everything I wish I could be telling Gabe. “And she’s smart. She’s always been the smartest one.”

“Thing with people like that, is this: they’re smart, sure. But they get to thinking they’re smarter than anybody else. And somebody catches up to them eventually.”

It hasn’t happened yet.
But his touch is soothing, and I don’t say anything else, just then. Halfway through, he gets up and brings me a glass of water and more bourbon, and starts in again. The ice cream is a syrupy puddle in the bottom of a glass bowl. I didn’t want it anyway.

Finally, he sighs, leans back, and cracks his knuckles. “Any better?”

I’m floating. I don’t dare move, because I know that as soon as I do, the pain will start again. Pain is a funny thing. Once you live with it a little while, you forget it’s there. You just feel tired and out of sorts, but you don’t really notice anymore and you don’t really know why. Pain is boring. And then the cessation of it comes as an epiphany, almost stunning—like falling in love.

Gabriel Castaign saved my life. He saved my soul. He
knows the single worst thing I ever did in my life and he takes care of me anyway, even though he doesn’t know I did it for him.

“Mon Ange,” I say—mean old nickname, though not as bad as the pun he hanged on me—letting my head droop low, stretching my neck. “Thank you.”

He reaches out and runs his fingers through my hair, the same way he tousles his children’s. My heart squeezes tight in my chest. I’ve had too much to drink, and too many surprises, and it’s a long bittersweet unguarded moment. There are big threats for facing. Tomorrow. Richard saying, “I need you, Ms. Casey. My friend is in trouble, and you’re a woman of honor.”

And Valens.
Vegetative state.
Could be, rabbit. Could be.

Then words are out of my mouth before I have a chance to think about them. “I always wanted to tell you something.”

My throat closes up behind like the proverbial barn door. His hand falls still in my hair, and I know that everything—decades of everything—was in my voice. “Jen,” he says on a breath. “Shit. Jenny. I know.”

Slowly, carefully, I turn my head to look at him out of the corner of my good eye. Sweat prickles across my skin. He’s regarding me out of eyes like blue arctic water, two days’ growth of beard shading the lower half of his face. He never would have gotten that scruffy back in the old days. “What do you know, Gabe?”

A long sigh. “I know what you want to tell me. I’ve known for years.” His hand slides down the back of my neck to rest on my shoulder. My skin tingles under his touch.

“You said I was your best friend. Kiss of death.”

He breathes in and out: thoughtful. “I was twenty-eight. What does anybody know at twenty-eight? And you didn’t seem to want me to know.”

“I didn’t.”

“I figured you had your reasons. So why tell me now?”

I sigh and roll my shoulders forward and back, feeling the first twinge of returning discomfort. “Because I’m an idiot and I keep thinking life is like a drama and if I’m going to die beautifully—or pathetically, for that matter—I want …”
Dig a little deeper, Jenny.
I wish I’d stopped a few words sooner. I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth up at all.

“Are you going to hold the way we met against me forever?” There’s low humor in his voice, painful to hear, almost inaudible under the tinny music from the holopad.

“Did I ever tell you I almost got married once?” I turn farther, holding the eye contact even though it hurts my neck to twist that far.

His hands are gentle on my shoulders as he bends me away and coaxes me to settle back between his knees again. I have no idea why I’m doing as he’s urging me, but it feels good. He smoothes my hair again and I lean on his knee, hiding the scarred side of my face against his jeans. I’m starting to shiver, dammit, and I can’t stand it. Can’t stand his pity, and can’t make myself pull away from the careful pressure of his hands.

“You didn’t. Who to?”

I close my eyes. “I was nineteen. Carlos Conseca, his name was. I gave him his ring back when they shipped me out to South Africa. He’s still alive, as far as I know.”

“You ever think of looking him up?”

My spine crackles when I roll my shoulders back. “I’d rather let him keep his illusions.”

“Jenny,” he says. He disentangles himself and slides down onto the floor beside my sofa cushion, letting his right arm fall around my shoulders. Despite myself, I lean into the caress. “Look, I know why you never said anything when we were in the service, and I appreciate it. Or when I was married. What about afterward?”

The speechlessness stretches, elastic, images flickering over the holopad across the room. I watch the little winged red horse leap boldly off a cliff, rising into flight over our heads, the hologram filling the room. I reach for the remote and mute the sound of wingbeats.

“I couldn’t handle the rejection, Gabe.”

“And you were sure you’d be rejected?”

I shrug, an attempt at callousness wasted on Gabe’s warm, massive presence. “I know what I look like.”

“Idiot.” He kisses the top of my head. He smells of coffee and sugar; it catches in my throat like a hook. His hand is under my chin, and he lifts my mouth to his …

That’s something else about the enhancements I carry.
Feedback.

His lips brush mine, petal-soft, contrast to the roughness of his beard, and a wave of euphoria starts to rise. I suck on a long, rattling breath, flush-heat racing through me.
God, how long has it been since I kissed anybody?
My body tautens, one hand and then the other coming up to braid in his curls, and he leans into me as subtle fire quickens in my belly and tingles through the whole of my body, pooling here and there. Just a kiss, a little kiss, lips barely parted and his breath riding mine, and I’m shivering, weak with desire. The tension in him, the whisper of a purr tells me my response surprises and excites him. But as he moves to pull me closer, I turn into him, drawing my knees up, then bury my face in his shoulder.

“Mon ange,” I mumble, sick with old, clotted terror. “I can’t.”

“Oh?”

The words come out in little hitching phrases. It takes me a long while to get them organized. “Not right now. Not when—I could be dying.”
Not when I don’t know what I’m being manipulated into. Not when you could be used
against me. Again.
“I can’t do that to you.”
Or the girls. Not after Geniveve.
“Because I’m not going to be happy with just a roll in the hay, you know.”

“Je sais.” Dead serious around a smile.

“And what about—Elspeth?”

A smile that widens and warms. “Nous sommes tous adultes, Genevieve. Les antiquités fichues, en fait. Je pense qu’elle ne soignera pas.”

“Je ne sais pas. Tu sait que je t’aime.” The look in my eyes has to tell him everything.

“Oui. Je sais cela aussi.”

“Gabe.” So many things I could say, and I can’t bear to lie to him. Not again. Not tonight. “I’m too scared.”

And he scrubs my hair forward, into my eyes, before leaning forward to pick up the remote still lying by my hand and turn the sound on the animation back on. “Nous parlerons de ceci encore quelque temps, Jenny Casey.”
We’ll talk about this again sometime.
Wry tone, softening, and
mon Dieu
, I love this man. “Ball’s in your court now.”

If I live that long.
Sometimes, I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

Sometimes.

But there is joy in Mudville, as he sits up with me most of the night. We watch children’s programming, where the world is wholesome and bright and the good guys win in the end.

Valens’s gloved hands brush my hair forward, gentle and sure as a lover’s.
And I am not thinking about Gabe. Not. Thinking about Gabe.
“Will you put me in touch with the doc who’s been doing your follow-up, Casey?”

“If you insist. What are we doing today, Fred?” He’s much more fastidious than Simon. I lie near-naked under the sterile drape, facedown on a table, and the room is a cold, antiseptic operating theater. Observers range in the gallery above, but I try not to let it bother me. It’s not like it’s the first time. “Nice facilities you have here.”

“Thanks. Today we’re just introducing you to the VR setup with your current equipment. We’re going to run some tests, see what the functionality is, see how comfortable we can get you with operating in a VR environment. We’re not even going to use a real vehicle today, or the drugs. You’ll be flying the HMCSS
Indefatigable.”

Since when do aircraft have names? “What’s that?”

Amusement colors his voice. “A virtual spaceship. Supposed to be very challenging to fly. It’s got a tendency to smack into planets—or any sufficiently massive object nearby. As if attracted to them, actually.”

“Whose lame-ass idea was that?”

“I believe it’s intended to be a game.”

“Teenagers. Got to make everything harder than it needs to be.”

“I’ve got kids of my own, and yes, I think that probably covers it.” There’s a hesitance in his voice. I wonder what he isn’t telling me. “We’ll sedate you once you’re hooked in, paralyze the voluntary muscles. Like REM sleep.”

“I’ve done some work in VR, actually.”

“I know. That’s one of the ways we tracked you to Connecticut.”

“What?”
There’s a jolt, sharp and sudden, as the adrenaline of fury dumps into my body.