When You Were My World Read online

  I was beginning to remember the old patterns of conversation. How it felt to move my lips, to smile, to place one word in front of another like a column of marching soldiers instead of communicating an entire idea at once in a single burst of thought. But even as I spoke, I kept half my concentration on you, and the wordless flow of information between us. I sought out your vision and saw, in the far distance, the movement of human ships. I felt—through whatever it was you had that functioned something like my ears—the grating noise of human communications.

  I recognized this view. We were drifting close to the Caladari system, heavily populated and mainly known for—I strained to remember—being the sort of place where people went to lose themselves in a crowd when they didn’t want to be found. We were too close for my tastes. Especially after the close call we had just had.

  I sent you a soft burst of inquiry. In answer, you sent back a muted reassurance. We’re too far back for them to see us, or sense us with their instruments.

  I could sense the truth of that. So even though I didn’t understand why you hadn’t sought out a quieter place to regroup, I let it be.

  “Good advice,” said Davin. Already, I had almost forgotten that we were in the middle of a conversation. “Especially the last part. The truth is, I was doomed before the pirates ever saw me. There were a few fatal flaws in my design. I thought I was some kind of genius, limited only by my circumstances. Turns out, my opinion of myself was… highly exaggerated. Facing down your own death will clarify a lot for you. If you ever want to see everywhere you’ve gone wrong in your life, that’s the way to do it.”

  I didn’t remember anything like that from my almost-death. Mostly, I had just thought about how much I wanted to live.

  “The pirates would have been pretty disappointed, though,” Davin continued, “when they found out I didn’t have anything worth taking.”

  “They would have sold your parts,” I said. “Some of them would fetch a good price.”

  “I doubt it. I told you, most of that stuff was destined for scrap. And whatever I thought before my systems started failing left and right, I didn’t improve on any of it that much.”

  “Not the parts of your ship,” I said. “Yours.” And then, when he still didn’t seem to get it, “The components of your body.”

  His eyes went wide. Then he shuddered. “I take it you’ve seen a lot more of the universe than I have,” he said, sounding faintly green.

  “I used to be a soldier,” I answered. “Aktarian.”

  “You’re a long way from home, then.”

  Funny, hearing him talk about it that way. I tried to remember a time when I had thought of home as a planet, a hunk of lifeless rock. I spoke aloud before I realized I was doing it, still unused to the distinction between speech and thought. “I’m always home.”

  He nodded as he glanced around the small room, taking in my meaning right away. Even if he didn’t know the full truth of it. “Then this is your ship?”

  I opened my mouth, but hesitated, unsure of how to answer. It felt wrong, the thought of claiming you as my own. As if a living being could be claimed. You felt my hesitation, and sent a rush of warm affection up through my feet. Of course I’m yours.

  I felt my lips turn up in a small smile—Davin was probably curious as to why—and let your warmth wash over me as I said, “Yes.”

  He took another, slower glance around. His brow furrowed. “This ship. It’s… is this standard for the Aktarian military?”

  I laughed aloud at the thought. The sound made me jump. “No. She’s… something different.” I didn’t say more than that. I didn’t know how much I should reveal. Or how I would explain, even if you and I decided for some reason that it was a good idea.

  His gaze sharpened with curiosity. “She?”

  I had already slipped. “A lot of people call their ships ‘she.’”

  “Not the way you said it.”

  I sent you an inquiry, but you had withdrawn again, deeper this time. I could barely sense you at all. This time, sharp fear overlaid my hurt. Are you there? My question made no sense, because where else would you have been but here in your body, the tiny world that encircled me?

  You sent back a faint, brief affirmation, barely more than a psychic tap on the shoulder to say, I’m here.

  I sent my attention inward. Davin could wait. What’s wrong?

  A slight hesitation. The pain is bad again. It will fade.

  But there was something else behind the wall where those wide-open corridors should have been. I could feel it, even if I couldn’t read the thought. Let me in, I urged.

  You didn’t answer. Fear stabbed at me again.

  Davin’s voice forced my attention outward. “Your ship is… it’s alive, isn’t it? She, I mean. She’s alive.”

  I didn’t know how to answer without your guidance. I knew you wanted to stay hidden, although you had made an exception for me. And I admit, I wanted to keep you my secret, although I didn’t realize then that such a petty motivation was driving my silence.

  I answered without answering. “You noticed the way the walls reshape themselves.”

  “And the ship keeps giving me exactly what I need, when I need it. A place to sleep. This seat, when I woke up. A, um, a bathroom when it became necessary.” His cheeks pinked. “And the food… I could have sworn it appeared out of nowhere. I blinked, and there was a table in front of me, with a bowl of some kind of soup. It tasted like beans and mint, which sounds like a terrible combination, but it may have been the best thing I’ve ever eaten.” He gestured to a spot in front of him. “Now the bowl is gone, and the table too.”

  “Ship AIs are sophisticated these days.” Another non-answer.

  “Yes, but…” He bit his lip. “Those are just computer programs, aren’t they? They don’t have feelings. They can’t… care about you.”

  I tensed. I was sure you felt it, but you didn’t reach out. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been feeling…” He gave a nervous laugh. “You’re going to think I’m crazy. Or maybe not, since it sounds like you’ve been living on this ship for a while. Well, I’ll tell you, and you can chalk it up to the effects of oxygen deprivation if you like.”

  “What did you feel?” My voice sounded different. Colder. I had forgotten it could betray my feelings like that. I would have to be more careful.

  “I keep feeling something brushing against my mind. Something warm, and soft, and…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s impossible to describe. Like every soothing touch and comforting smell I’ve ever experienced, all flooding into my memory at once. Only it’s not overwhelming. It’s… gentle. Warm.”

  He shook his head again as words failed him. But he didn’t have to explain. I knew exactly what he was talking about. It was the way you had touched me, the day I had finally woken up after you rescued me. That day, and every day since. And every time, I sent it back, that gentle flood of memories he had described. I funneled them into you until my love thrummed through your walls.

  That was the word he was looking for. Love. At least that was what it had become. At first it had been more like cautious affection, both of us unsure why we felt anything toward this alien creature besides fear and maybe curiosity. Then, as we had learned to share our thoughts well enough to discover one another, it had become stronger and more certain. Now it was something the two of us shared as easily as a thought.

  Something only the two of us shared. Or so I had believed.

  I must have shown my reaction on my face. But he misunderstood. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone your secret. After all, you saved my life. Both of you.” He rested a hand on the wall behind him, and stroked it with an intimacy that made me bristle. The wall pressed out to meet his hand in the gesture I knew so well. “I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe us anything.” I was still out of practice at controlling my voice. It came out harsher and clipped. “We’ll take you back to your planet, and after you’re home, you’ll never have to think about us again.”

  At that, I felt a faint flicker of… something… from you. But when I searched for what that something was, you tucked it away, out of my reach.

  We are taking him home, I asked you, aren’t we?

  In response, I received only silence. As if I hadn’t asked the question at all. That never happened. Our lives together were a constant back-and-forth of ideas and feelings. No thought ever went unheard, no question unanswered.

  What were you keeping from me? Why wouldn’t we take him home, when he was clearly unequipped to be anywhere else?

  Unless you wanted him to stay with us.

  Knowing what I know now, I want to shake my past self until all the senseless, petty fears fall out. But that was what I felt at the time. Sharp, hot jealousy. His hand was still resting on your wall; I wanted to yank it away, and lift him off his feet so he could no longer touch your floor, and tell him to keep away from you. But how could he, when you were all around us?

  “Is something wrong?” His face creased with worry. Maybe I was out of practice at reading humans, but from the look of him, and the sound of his voice, something in my expression must have told him the world was ending.

  I tried to formulate a response. Tried, too, to figure out how to get it out without screaming. But before I could, the worry on his face eased, all at once. He let out a soft, “Oh.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  His eyes shone with quiet joy. “I think it… she… told me not to worry. She told me… everything will be all right.”

  I reached for you. But you were still holding back from me. From me, but not from him.

  “She says I should rest.” He looked at me like he was asking my permission to leave the conversation
.

  “You should do what she says.” My voice was rougher now, even though I wasn’t as out of practice with it as I had been at the beginning of our talk. “She’s never steered me wrong.”

  I hoped he would hear the love in my voice, and understand what it meant. But he only smiled as the chair reshaped itself into a bed, lowering him to the floor in the process. He curled loosely in the hollow you had created for him, and placed one hand flat on the floor, and let you sing him to sleep.

  * * *

  When we were alone—which was all the time, until Davin came along—we spent a lot of our time talking. If talking was the word for it, when there was no language involved. I would share memories from my past, and you from yours. We shared each other’s happiness, and sooth each other’s pain. My sharp, bright feelings were alien to you at the beginning, as yours were to me, those deep silent currents of emotion that stretched across centuries. But joy was universal, and so was sorrow.

  We could have spent lifetimes learning the intricacies of each other’s minds, but that alone would never have fully satisfied either of us. I was an explorer at heart. I had joined the military to scratch that itch, and then found that once the wonder of being off-planet faded, mostly what I got to see was the same walls of the same ship, even less of a view than I had gotten on the ground. Someone who didn’t know better might have said not much had changed between the time before I met you and after. After all, I hadn’t stepped outside your confines since the day you rescued me.

  But you were an explorer, too. I suspect it was one of the things that drew us to one another—we resonated with each other’s longings, and drank each other’s memories in hungrily, experiencing vicariously the things we couldn’t do ourselves. You thrilled at each mundane scene of planetary life you drew out of my mind, and the lifetime of memories I had to offer didn’t come close to quenching your thirst. I would have given you more if I could have, would have gone down to a planet and let you see through my eyes. But even if not for all the questions it would have raised for me to appear after so long presumed dead, I couldn’t carry you inside me the way you could carry me.

  But you could give me the stars.

  That was how we spent the bulk of our days. You sailed between the stars, never with a destination in mind except someplace you hadn’t yet seen, and I saw through your eyes. We experienced the universe together, our minds joined until there was no difference between your awe and mine. Even after a thousand years, the universe still held wonder for you. I think it would have even after a thousand more.

  That was what we did while Davin slept. I followed your winding corridors to my usual place in your center, and you folded yourself around me, and I shared your vision. But that day, it wasn’t the same. We were still too close to the Caladari system. There was nothing interesting to see here. You seemed to be slowly circling the system, afraid to move to close but also, for some reason I couldn’t understand, afraid to move away.

  Are you thinking of leaving him here? A rush of guilty happiness swept through me at the thought. Leaving him here meant being rid of him sooner. And if you were planning to leave him, it meant you weren’t planning to leave me.

  Unless I was the one you were planning on dropping here.

  I was almost right. And so, so wrong.

  Let me in, I urged. Please.

  The pain—

  We’ve shared pain before. It’s never made you close me out like this. This is about him, isn’t it?

  The only response you sent me was a simple, short negation. You were holding yourself at such a distance from me that I couldn’t even tell if you were lying. When my body tensed, you didn’t mold yourself around me to accommodate my slight shift in position, or send a pulse of warmth through your walls to ease my tension—both gestures that would have been automatic until we rescued Davin.

  I swallowed. My throat hurt. I wanted to believe it was from all the talking, but I knew it wasn’t. If you’re done with me… just tell me so. Please. Maybe my memories have gone stale for you. Maybe you want to see the universe through someone else’s eyes. So be it. I want you to be happy, and if that means not carrying me with you anymore, I’ll accept it. But have enough respect for me to let me see the truth.

  I knew you had to hear my mind howling negation at that. But I meant it, even as I screamed internally at the thought of stepping outside your walls again, permanently this time. My brief trip onto Davin’s ship had been bad enough. I remembered what he had said about home, and tried to imagine making do with a planet again, feeling its uncaring gravity pulling me down in place of whatever it was that pulled my feet tightly against you so I wouldn’t drift away.

  My thoughts only made you withdraw further, your mind curling into a tight ball. I tried to feel my way in, but your thoughts all had smooth edges, with no cracks or seams to be found. Something in my mind had hurt you. Something about that image of me leaving.

  You hadn’t rejected the image. You hadn’t told me I was wrong to imagine such a thing.

  I didn’t know how long we had spent in each other’s minds. Time only had meaning on a planet’s surface, or when trying to share points of reference with another human. I had no need for either anymore. But it had been years—I knew that much, even if I didn’t know whether it had been two or twenty. Long enough that no matter how much you tried to keep me at bay, I knew your mind as well as my own, and you could never shut me out completely.

  I found a crack in the mental wall you had built between us. I slipped through, quick as a beam of light. I had only one thought, one purpose. Show me the truth.

  And you did. You couldn’t stop yourself. You had shared too much with me for too long. By the time you tried to withdraw again, it was too late. I knew.

  If talking to Davin hadn’t gotten into the habit of using my voice again, I don’t know whether I would still have screamed aloud. I might have confined it to my mind and yours. But with the memory of speech so fresh in my mind, the scream ripped up out of my throat to echo off your walls, sharp and piercing and nowhere near as painful as the physical agony I now shared with you.

  You hadn’t been lying about that part. The pain was all-consuming. It was a fire that ate away at my nerves, burning half-formed thoughts to ash. A hot bright wound that dug through every layer of flesh to the parts too deep to heal. It was the cold weakness of my life slowly spilling away into the void while I was helpless to stop it. It was the pain of my body failing.

  But it wasn’t my body.

  You were dying. That was what you had tried to shield me from. Not the pain itself, unbearable though it was. Your secret was that your wound was fatal, and in the space of a day or two—the blink of an eye, in a life as long as yours—you would be dead. A cold and lifeless corpse drifting through the stars, all wonder gone from your sightless eyes.

  That’s why you brought us here, I said, when I could form thoughts again.

  You answered with a gentle, sad assent. I can split off a small part of myself. It will protect you long enough for the humans’ sensors to find you. I’ll make sure the trajectory is right to send you into range with plenty of time to spare.

  I was negating your thoughts almost before you could finish forming them. No. We stay together until the end.

  If you stay, you’ll die slowly and cruelly when I can no longer give your body what it needs to live. I’ll die with the echoes of your suffering in my mind, or else be forced to end your life before we reach that point. Do not ask that of me.

  My cheeks were wet. I won’t leave you to die alone.

  Warmth pulsed gently against my feet. I was alone long before I found you. Now I have the memory of you to carry with me. Your walls curved in to brushed the tears from my cheeks. You will have the same.

  “It’s my fault.” I didn’t realize I had said it out loud until I heard the words in my ears. It had taken so little to get me into the habit of speech again.