Fluency

27

The Squid said Jane was in the captain’s quarters—the Qua’dux’s quarters. Whatever. She’d taken up residence there, called it home, apparently, and that’s where she was. Bergen was pacing the corridor just outside her door, attempting to minimize his limp, and rehearsing what he hoped to say to her…if he could just get it to come out right.

Where are we?

Where do we stand, Jane?

Or….

Where do I stand, in your life?

Do we have a future?

Do you want one?

What do you want?

Is it…my leg?

Ugh. No. He looked down at the leg, disguised inside a fresh flight suit. Don’t say anything about the goddamn leg. Just relax. Smile. Be charming as all fuck and it should be fine.

Everything was going great until the damn Squid messed everything up. Alan wasn’t aware of all the details, since he’d been on an extended stay in Jello-land, but the squid got what he wanted from Jane, it seemed, and she hadn’t been the same since.

He shook his head. They’d survived. He guessed that’s all that really mattered. All six of them would make it back alive, if not completely intact. A normal life was within their grasp, for most of them, anyway. He still wasn’t sure about Walsh.

Bergen wondered if Varma had included in her mission report the incident that happened a few days prior when they’d attempted to take Walsh out of the tank prematurely in preparation for the upcoming meeting today. Walsh had been disoriented, narcoleptic, then suffered a grand mal seizure, so they’d hurriedly plopped him back in to marinate a while longer.

It hadn’t been pretty. The reprobate nanites clearly inflicted some pretty extensive damage to Walsh’s central nervous system. However, Compton had been infected the longest and he was fine now, so theoretically Walsh should be the same eventually. While things hadn’t turned out as Walsh predicted, the irony of him possibly being the only one left with a serious deficiency wasn’t lost on Berg.

They were so close to home, now. Jane could have them home in a matter of hours. He could almost taste the french fries. They were going to be heroes when they got back. Not only that, they’d be bringing home the most exciting piece of technology man had ever known. He was going to savor every moment of dismantling this ship and learning its every nook and cranny. He was already picking out teams of engineers in his head, along with their initial assignments.

He turned on his heel and decided he’d gimped back and forth long enough. If he didn’t get on with it, the Squid might tell her he was out there, assuming he hadn’t already.

Alan had decided to exclude the Squid from his thoughts as much as possible, as soon as he got out of the tank. It was too disorienting to have all that extra shit going on all the time. It was advantageous for problem solving in a crisis, but a nuisance otherwise. It was simply another form of communication and vocal speech worked just fine, thank you very much.

He knew he could get used to it eventually, but he just didn’t feel like it. It was a bit of false advertising. It hadn’t brought him any closer to Jane at all. Quite the opposite, it seemed.

Maybe he was being petty or childish or stupid. He probably was. He didn’t fucking care.

It was actually fun, there for a while—studying the alien tech, solving the puzzle, proposing a solution—being right. That was the kind of stuff he lived for. Then, while he healed and the cybernetic leg was being installed, there’d been the long conversations with Ei’Brai about technology, theoretical physics, astronomy—all the stuff that just geeked him the fuck out. That probably kept him from going nuts in there.

The concept of anipraxia, alone, blew his mind. It wasn’t some paranormal mumbo jumbo. It wasn’t magic. It was fucking quantum entanglement!

On a quantum scale, particles inside organelles located in Ei’Brai’s brain reached a singlet state with particles of comparable organelles within the mind of whomever he was anipraxing with—allowing communication far more instantaneous and comprehensive than speech. It shouldn’t be possible, but the Squid said the human grasp on quantum mechanics was in its infancy. And there were realms beyond that humans hadn’t even glimpsed yet.

But the guy’s arrogance…his possessive attitude about Jane…his smug surety about everything was too much to take. Bergen knew damn well they had a lot in common. Maybe that’s what it was all about. Jane didn’t need him anymore because she had the Squid. He felt useless. Completely emasculated.

Fuck.

Alan opened the hand that was about to knock on her door and splayed it out across the door’s surface. His forehead joined it there and he closed his eyes.

Jane. He hardly knew her. All the softness had gone out of her. There was a stern set to her mouth now that never went away and she rarely smiled these days.

But they were going home. They could have their happily ever after. As long as he didn’t screw it up.

Jane was playing close to the vest. He’d tried over the last few weeks to get closer to her, to rekindle something between them, but she was cool and preoccupied, so he’d reluctantly left her alone.

She was busy. She methodically went through all the decks swarming with critters and blasted all that shit to oblivion. Then she began repairs—not how you might expect, though. She collected freshly made nanites and distributed them by hand to critical places all over the ship—the engine room, life support, and all the last known locations that were critically damaged by the slimy monsters. It was time-consuming and she worked around the clock. He tried to help, once he got out of the damn Jello-bath, but he just felt like he was in the way.

She didn’t need him wielding a wrench. That stung. He tried not to dwell on it. He wasn’t a damn whiner.

It was a lot. He knew that. He wasn’t stupid. He just didn’t think she needed to go through it all alone. It wouldn’t be weak to lean on him, just a little, when no one was looking. He hated that the only person she was leaning on was a goddamn telepathic space-squid.

If he could just break through whatever barrier was between them. If he could just get things back to the way they were—the playful banter, the warm looks, the smiles that made her eyes glow and his loins throb.

He banged his forehead against the door then panicked when he realized he’d just knocked and covered it by pounding on the door loudly and taking a few steps back.

She came to the door looking confused. “Alan? It’s almost time for the teleconference. Are you ready?”

He glanced at his watch and blanched internally. He’d just procrastinated away all his time. He’d meant to come sooner, have a long heart-to-heart with her.

He’d fucked up. Again.

He faked a smile and a relaxed posture. “Yeah. Yeah. I was just hoping to have a word with you before it begins.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “A new batch of squillae was just manufactured. I was about to walk down there and dump them into the electrical system before heading to the bridge. Walk with me?”

He smiled genuinely this time. It was cool to watch those shimmering, swarming masses of nanites spread out and disappear before their eyes, off to do their invisible work. But a knot had formed in his belly. This was not going how he’d imagined. “Sure. Of course.”

He gave her an appreciative, sidelong appraisal. She’d scrounged up some exotic-looking, alien uniform made of thick, creamy fabric. The asymmetrical, tunic-length jacket had a high, stiff collar that wound around her throat and seemed to force her chin up and out into an almost defensive position. One of the overlapping fronts of the jacket was heavily embroidered with a non-contrasting thread. It was cut into three uneven sections that each split off to wrap around her torso in a different way.

One section went over her chest and up around her neck. Another wound under her breasts. The third swathed her hips. The embroidery continued down long, narrow ties that wrapped around her body, culminating in ornate knots on the opposite-front side. Rather than being loose like a robe, it hugged her body, accentuating her feminine curves. It was an impressive and commanding outfit—if he didn’t think too much about its resemblance to a straight jacket.

They walked in silence for a bit, the soft whirring and clacking of his leg the only sound audible in the empty hallway. As usual, she was tight-lipped. He longed to reach for her hand, but was afraid to. Suddenly he blurted out, “Did I do something that pissed you off?”

Shit. That’s not what I meant to ask.

She stopped walking, a quizzical expression on her face.

Bergen could almost feel the Squid’s tentacles insinuating themselves inside his brain. He concentrated on keeping him locked out, but it might have been too late.

Her face had gone pale. Was she feeling guilty? “Alan? I haven’t meant to hurt you—”

His teeth clenched. He made his lips form words. They sounded angry to his ears and he didn’t know why. “You haven’t hurt me! Goddamn it!”

“It’s not that I don’t want…there’s a lot on my plate. This transition has been difficult. I thought you understood that. I’m trying to adjust. I’m trying to make important decisions. This isn’t just about us.”

He stared at her, trying to process her words, her tone, but he was seething with feelings.

“You’re shutting me out.” He flinched. Why did that just sound like an accusation?

She shook her head. Her tone turned plaintive. “No. Never. You shut me out and you know it.”

He took a step back from her, his heart hammering painfully against his ribcage. “I shut the Squid out. Isn’t there a difference, Jane?”

She looked hurt and he regretted the words instantly.

Her expression hardened. “I don’t have the energy for this, right now. Your timing couldn’t be worse—”

Was it his imagination? Had she just swallowed down the words, “as usual?” Or had the squid jumped in and subtly fed the suggestion of them to him to start shit? Did it matter?

His heart screamed, Grab her! Kiss her! Tell her—we can have it all!

He nodded and worked his jaw. “Right. Never mind.”

“Alan, please try to understand. Now…just might not be…our time.”

He stared at her pained expression a moment longer, then turned and walked away, alone.