Fluency

13

“Tom?”

Bergen watched as Jane approached Compton slowly and touched his arm. Tom didn’t respond to her.

She turned, stricken. “What happened?”

“It sounds like you know more about it than we do,” Walsh uttered with slow, menacing calm.

She opened her mouth to speak, and shut it again, pivoting back to Compton. “Tom?” she said, shaking him gently. She touched his sagging face. Nothing happened. He didn’t make eye contact with her. “Oh my God. What do we do now?”

Ajaya said urgently, “Jane—how is this disease transmitted? Are we all exposed?”

Jane turned, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I don’t know any of the specifics. I’m just a linguist. I’m so sorry.”

“Holloway,” Walsh boomed. “This is why we have to get out of here. Before something worse happens. Can you get us back to the capsule?”

Jane was slowly shaking her head. “Yes, but….”

Ajaya cut in, “Commander, if this is contagious, we can’t risk returning to Earth and exposing the population there.”

“They’ll put us in quarantine,” Walsh countered, irritably.

Ajaya scowled and snapped, “We don’t know what the vector is. Just getting through the atmosphere may be enough to transmit it to Earth. We don’t have the right to risk that. It sounds like we’ll be dead long before we get there, anyway..”

“Ei’Brai said they found the agent just before they…. It wasn’t enough to save them, but it could save us. We—he—he’ll help us. We’ll figure this out.” Her voice trembled as she spoke.

“No!” Walsh grated at her. “Don’t you see? That’s what he wants. He’s pulling the puppet strings, through you. I can’t stop you from going back there. I’m asking you—no, I’m ordering you—do not go back there, Holloway. I don’t believe any of this is real. This is a mind game. He’s amused by us. We’re like zoo animals to him. We’re going back to the capsule and then we’re going home, goddamn it.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know….” she murmured.

Walsh grabbed her arm roughly. “Pull yourself together, Holloway! You’re the only one who can read the symbols. We need you to get us back.”

Jane looked shattered.

Bergen couldn’t hold back anymore. He shoved Walsh away from Jane. “That’s enough! She heard you. Lay off her.” Walsh took a swing at him that almost made contact, but Bergen’s reflexes were faster. He ducked and barreled into Walsh, shoulder down, knocking Walsh stumbling back into the wall. Bergen took a step back and waited. Walsh was staggering to his feet and coming back for more when Gibbs and Ajaya pulled them apart.

“Come on, man, this isn’t helping anything,” Gibbs chided.

Ajaya shot him a censorious glare. Walsh was shrugging her off, pushing away any attempts at checking him over.

“Where’s Holloway?” Walsh snarled.

Bergen’s heart stopped. She wasn’t in the immediate area anymore.

Gibbs shone his light up and down the corridor. Jane was curled up some distance away, back against the wall, knees drawn up to her chin, head on folded arms.

“By God, if she’s gone there again,” Walsh spat.

Ajaya turned him away, murmuring in placating tones.

“Jesus, Berg. I think you better go talk to her,” Gibbs said, tilting his head toward Jane.

Bergen nodded agreement and sauntered over to her. She didn’t react. He settled down next to her, mimicking her pose. She didn’t stir.

Was she there?

Her hair was spilling over her face. Normally smooth and neat, it had dried in long, lanky waves. He reached out a hand to pull it back so he could see her expression. Her grey eyes gazed back at him with a bleak expression.

“It’s a symptom,” she said softly. Her eyes shut tight, wrinkling with strong emotion. She sat up. “I…didn’t realize at first, because you two bicker so much,”

“What?”

“Some of the Sectilius became aggressive before they succumbed to the illness. They were peaceful people, yet in those moments, some of them came to blows over nothing. They knew they were fighting something, they just didn’t know what. It manifested like this. Ei’Brai showed me.”

He shook his head. He’d been hoping for an opportunity to throttle Walsh for months. “Jane—”

She shook her head and looked anguished. “I don’t believe that he’s bad or evil. Am I crazy? Am I a fool?”

“No,” he said firmly.

She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “Ajaya’s right. We can’t go home like this.”

He stretched his legs out and tried to relax. He’d been carrying Jane for over an hour. This was a welcome break. “I know.”

Gibbs withdrew the light as they spoke, leaving him and Jane in near darkness. The others were breaking for a meal. Ajaya must have convinced Walsh to give Jane some space. She was occupied with trying to feed Compton. They were huddling around the glow emanating from the open doorway.

Bergen huffed. Why didn’t the idiots just go inside and leave him alone with Jane?

Jane said, “We do have to go back to the capsule—but not to leave. We have send a transmission to Mission Control, as soon as possible. I have to tell them everything Ei’Brai told me, everything we know, in case we don’t make it back. The future of Earth may depend on this information. They’ll be ready, then, when they send the Bravo mission. They’ll be able to protect themselves. We have to give them a fighting chance.”

He nodded slowly, agreeing with her. “Ok. How do you want to handle that?”

“I think…oh, God, this is awful.” She had her hands clasped together and she ran the knuckles of her thumbs up and down her forehead from the bridge of her nose to her hairline, rhythmically. “I thought Walsh understood, that he could see the value, the potential. But everything’s changed. Now I can see that won’t work. Walsh—I suspect, from the moment I first lost consciousness—has decided I’m unfit.”

She met his eyes, seeking confirmation. He gave it. She was right.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll pretend to go along with Walsh’s wishes. It’ll be easier that way. Ajaya will be with us. She knows what’s at stake. We just have to figure out where Ron’s loyalties lie, without tipping Walsh off. We have to know if he’ll fight us, or help us with Walsh. If we have to, we’ll use a weapon.” She swallowed and looked panicked for a moment, but quickly concealed that. “Then we’ll find a laboratory. We have to try to solve this. I want to go home.”

“Me too.”

He was painfully aware that this moment might be the only chance they would ever have to be together in any sense whatsoever, now. He snuck his arm behind her and she leaned against him, the top of her head against his cheek. He swallowed thickly. He still didn’t have any idea if she felt the same way. It seemed like maybe she did. Or was this just friendship to her?

“Are you…do you feel normal?” she murmured.

“I feel fine.” He did. He couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary happening. If the disease was doing anything to him, he was blissfully unaware of it.

“I do too. Walsh and Ajaya seem a little different to me, though. Ajaya doesn’t lose her temper. Ever. She just yelled at Walsh. And Walsh….”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“I’m sorry, Alan. You seem different too.” Her voice broke.

He squeezed her tighter. She thought he was doing this because of some germ? “No. I’m fine. I’m telling you, I’m thinking clearly. I’m ok.”

She moved slightly, glancing at him then back down. “Ok. I just…Alan, it’s not like you, it doesn’t seem like it’s in your personality to believe the kind of things I’ve been saying. I just, I would expect you to be more skeptical. It’s scaring me a little bit.”

“You’ve presented plenty of evidence, Jane. It’s fucked up. It’s weird. But, I believe you’re communicating with him.”

“I know, but it seems to me that you would be more likely to side with Walsh in this.”

“No. I trust you. I trust your instincts.”

“But why? Walsh has more experience—he’s done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s been in tight spots before. He’s a good leader. He’s a hero. I’m not anything like him.”

“He was following orders. He had military training to rely on. But you didn’t have any kind of backup when you were tromping through the jungle, trying to survive. You didn’t have anything or anyone to depend on except your wits and your gut. That’s what got NASA’s attention, Jane. It’s why they wanted you to lead this mission. It’s why I’ll follow you to hell if I have to.”

He was thinking specifically about an essay Jane had written about her experience in the Amazon, in which she’d described how she’d been searching for water, in a febrile state, unaware, that after uncounted days of wandering, encountering one bizarre, dangerous situation after another, she and her companions had wandered fairly near a paved road. She encountered a woman washing clothes beside a stream.

The woman was mistrustful, had never seen a person with blonde hair before. Bergen was pretty sure most people in such a dire situation would have just prostrated themselves, begging, when they finally found another human being that wasn’t immediately hostile. Somehow Jane knew that would just scare her away. Instead she’d calmly sat down some distance from her, quietly asking questions to determine if they shared a language in common. When they settled on some kind of pidgin version of Portuguese, she didn’t ask for help or food; she complimented the woman’s infant and offered to help her with her chore.

When the woman left, Jane laid down next to the stream to gather strength before returning to her companions with the hopeful news that they were near a village that might be sympathetic to their plight. She awoke surrounded by native men, who, after a few confusing hours of propositions, bitter cups of local tea, and the first food she’d eaten in days, led her to the road and salvation.

Jane sat up, searching his face in the dim light. He reached out to stroke his thumb slowly over her cheek, and leaned in to kiss her. She stiffened. Her lips were lifeless under his.

He was taken aback, suddenly insecure about his instincts. He’d felt certain, in that moment, that he’d felt something from her, some kind of encouragement.

He pulled back, mumbling an awkward apology, when he felt her fingertips on his face, in his hair, and suddenly she was kissing him back, fervently. His stomach tightened in response and his pulse raced. He turned her, slightly, so that he was hunched over her, shielding her. If the others glanced at them, they might wonder, but it wouldn’t be obvious, he didn’t think.

He touched his tongue to her lips, a question. She opened to him, deepening the kiss, their tongues smoothly flowing around each other. He wanted it to escalate. He ached for more of her. He wanted to pretend they were alone, safe, that they had all the time they could want. He imagined his hand moving to her zipper, slipping inside her flight suit….

But she ended it far before he was ready. She pressed her forehead to his, exhaling raggedly.

“Distracting ourselves like this could be dangerous,” she whispered.

“I don’t care. I want you, Jane.” His voice sounded hoarse. His hand was tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck, keeping pressure on her, keeping her close.

A choked laugh escaped from her. “I’m beginning to comprehend that.”

“Do you—”

She laid a hand over his pounding heart. Her voice was resolute. “We can’t do this now.”

He was surprised by how much that hurt. He’d never done this before—confessed, tried to make something real happen. But this wasn’t a rejection, exactly. It was more like a deferral.

So, that’s how it would be. Survival would be a prerequisite. Well, then they were damn well going to survive this.

“The old carrot, huh?” he said ruefully.

“Did you mean it when you said you would follow me to hell?” She was pulling on his arm, forcing him to release his grip on her. He lowered his hand reluctantly and she put some distance between them.

She gave him a small concession. She wrapped her fingers gently around his and squeezed. His hand still hurt, but he didn’t care.

“Yes.”

“Good. This isn’t going to be easy, especially with Compton the way he is and Walsh….” She trailed off and her expression glazed over.

He panicked and clutched at her arm, but she snapped out of it. “Jane? What just happened?”

“I don’t know if I can explain it, adequately. There’s a place, inside my mind, that’s plugged into him. Each hour that goes by, I’m closer to him, and, by extension, the ship. The download he gave me was part of that. It fits like puzzle pieces in my mind. It’s a kind of awareness—like knowing that someone you care about is there next to you, without having to look or speak. It’s getting easier and easier to hear him. I’m vaguely aware of his thoughts, some of them, anyway, in real time. It’s scary. But….” Her breath hitched. She stopped looking at him, staring instead at her hand, twined with his, in her lap.

“What?” he prompted her.

“I like it.”

He didn’t know what to say to her. This thing was changing her and he was powerless to stop it.

“I wish I could share it with you. You will, won’t you? You’ll learn the language and come here, with me?”

“Yes,” he answered, huskily.

“The Sectilius formed a mental community revolving around him, each member of the network abstractly aware of the others, building a dynamic experience. The synergy, the creative possibilities—artists and engineers, community leaders and philosophers, scientists and entertainers—the entire city feeding off this mental energy, generating novel associations and ideas. The Sectilius initially created these connections with the Kubodera to keep them happy, to keep them challenged, because they take them from everything they’ve ever known to fly these ships. They’re starved for experience. They thrive under this kind of mental stimulation. It’s necessary to keep them from going mad. But the Sectilius quickly learned that Anipraxia was a richly rewarding symbiotic relationship for everyone involved. It’s incredible.”

Her eyes were shining in the dark. He reached out and brushed back a stand of her hair that had fallen forward over her face.

“He knows about Tom. He’s very upset about it and he wants to help us. He’s letting me decide for myself how to handle it. He’s not telling me what to do—I want you to know that. He’s not influencing me, ok?”

“Ok. What’s he doing now?”

“Right now he’s very busy managing the, um…I think you would call them nanites. That’s taking most of his attention at the moment.”

He mentally shifted gears. Nanotechnology on Earth was in its infancy—little more than research and development—an engineer’s dream. “Nanites?”

“Yes. The whole ship is swarming with them. They repair things at a microscopic level. They were never meant to be the only defense against the slug population, but without a crew, there’s no other way to maintain the ship. Ei’Brai kept life support levels at absolute minimum all those years to keep the slug growth rate as low as possible, but when he turned the life support back on for us, the population exploded and the nanites are barely keeping the damage under control. Do you see? This isn’t his fault. He’s doing his best to protect us. There are things that are beyond his ability to control.”

He stared at her, trying to understand. This alien guy was using nanites as damage control? It was plausible, he supposed, to a certain degree. He’d kill to know how that was done. Yet, with the number of slugs he’d seen in that one room alone…that seemed like it was verging on impossible. He started to feel skeptical, but tried not to let it show. “But why didn’t he warn us from the start, Jane?”

“He’s very proud. He feels like the ship’s an extension of himself. These mishaps feel like failures. It’s mortifying to him. He wanted so badly for this to go well. He knows we’re his only hope to survive. He knows about the asteroid, Alan.”

Didn’t that give her pause? Bergen frowned. Jane got to her feet and extended a hand to him. He knew he should say something, but everything he thought of sounded like something Walsh might say and he didn’t want to risk putting distance between them.