Mindlink (24 page)

Holy cow, the silence in her head was deafening.

With a great effort, she sat up and took in the room. Dark,
dank and not a clock in sight. Great. She’d ended up in jail again. As her brain
woke up, she saw a small table with an urn-like thing on it and a single bulb
hanging from the ceiling. A woven pallet crackled under her legs, flat against
the floor. That explained the crick in her neck.

She worked her way off the floor, leaning heavily on the
packed-earth wall. She was naked. What had happened to her clothes? The horrible
uniform lay on the floor in a heap. Wrinkling her nose, she pulled it on,
refused to force her feet into the boots, and yanked on the door, fully
expecting it to be locked.

It wasn’t. Not jail. That was a place people slept on
purpose
?

Natalie waited for her in the dim hall. Ashley hugged her.
Someone familiar was a welcome sight, even if it wasn’t Sam. Not that she
wondered where he was or anything.

“Look at you.” Ashley held her out by the shoulders. Natalie’s
brown hair had been washed and brushed till it shone. Someone had given her a
long, dun-colored skirt and an off-white blousy top, neither the height of
fashion, but appealing on a willowy woman like Natalie. The circles under her
eyes were gone and she’d lost the haggard, starved look.

“I’m glad you’re awake. I’ll show you to the place where you
can get clothes and wash up, then we can eat.” Natalie hooked elbows and walked
slowly enough for Ashley’s sore legs to loosen.

“You haven’t eaten yet? You didn’t have to wait for me.”

Natalie smiled. “I didn’t. You’ve been out for a long time.
Almost a whole day. I think I’ve eaten four times already. Maybe five. I’m
eating again, with you.”

“Did you find out anything about the pilot? Or the ship?”

“No.” Natalie shook her head and twisted the fabric of her
skirt into a worried knot with one hand. “It’s difficult to communicate, but
there are a few people who speak English. We’ve asked as best we can and they
all say it’s just a rumor. Like Sam said, the ships are automated so there’s no
pilot training class or anything. We’re kind of hanging out, with no plan or
anything.”

Ashley’s heart sank. What would they do now?

“Speaking of Sam, any idea where he is?” Ashley asked
casually.

“I haven’t seen Sam since we got here.”

“And the others?” she threw in, though if she’d really wanted
Natalie to be fooled into thinking she didn’t care where Sam was, she should
have asked about the others first. “What about Neeko?”

“Oh, yeah, we found Neeko’s mother.” A sparkle lit Natalie’s
eyes as she told the story of the reunion. When she finished recounting details
of his mother’s gratitude, Natalie smiled and nodded toward the end of the hall.
“Marc’s already eating in the common area. I was hoping you’d wake up so I
waited for you.”

“Marc?” It was like she’d been asleep for a hundred years and
everything had changed. The hamsters in her brain weren’t turning the wheel fast
enough for her to keep up.

“Dr. Glasson. He’s not so bad once he’s got food in him. If I’d
have known that would do the trick, I might have offered up a leg or two.” She
rolled her eyes and led Ashley out of the building, into the thoroughfare.

A set for a medieval marketplace spread out before her. People
in homespun garments, similar to Natalie’s, milled through the street and in and
out of the board-on-board shacks lining both sides of the avenue. None of the
women wore jewelry or makeup or did much with their hair—as befitting the
medieval time period. The lighting was dim and scattered. And the acrid smell of
wet dirt and stale air almost choked her.

Not a set. This was real. Kir Dashamun.

“This is paradise?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yeah. It’s not what I was expecting,” Natalie said. “But the
people are nice and willing to give the shirt off their backs if you need it.
They stop and talk to you for no reason at all. You’re probably used to that,
but no one ever notices me at home.”

As they walked the short distance to the building where they
issued clothes, no less than four people said hello and two waved. Everyone
smiled and she started to wonder where they hid the Prozac. Nobody could be that
cheerful all the time without assistance, especially not in a place like
this.

At Natalie’s knock, a slim woman with a lined face and white
hair threw open the door. “At last, you’ve joined us.”

Both the woman and Natalie stared at Ashley. “You mean me?”

“Yes, poor dear. We were worried about you.” The garment lady
clucked and let the two women inside her hovel, chattering about this and that.
She talked fast but Ashley understood most of what she said, even without Sam’s
translations in her head.

Score another one for Ashley’s photographic memory.

“I’m not sure what I have for someone so tiny. Citizens are all
the same size. We’ve a few from Earth, but it’s been quite some time. Ah. Let’s
try this.”

The woman handed Ashley a skirt and shirt and motioned to a
curtain hanging in the corner. The dressing room, she supposed. A far cry from
the shops on Rodeo Drive where four sales clerks argued with Ashley’s stylist
about cut, fabric, color tones, length and accessories. Then argued some more
about who else might attend whatever event she was shopping for, what they might
wear, how she should do her hair. Meanwhile, Ashley’d stood on a two-foot block
like a dress-up doll—clothes strewn everywhere in an eruption of couture, fabric
and pins freezing her in place—and praying for a drink to magically fall out of
the chandelier.

It would be wonderful if the lack of a drink was her biggest
challenge at this moment.

The skirt was too long and the fabric rough but sturdy, almost
a chambray or unwashed denim. The shirt covered her to the neck, okay in a place
with no paparazzi to capture her cleavage. She undressed, never so happy in her
life to have clean clothes but unwilling to put her pungent body into them
without washing first.

“Everything is fabulous. Thank you,” she told the woman
sincerely.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thanked someone for
clothes, mostly because she was rarely thankful and didn’t see much point in
lying about it. But the kindness of these strangers had her so grateful, she
almost choked on it as she left the dark, little house on Natalie’s heels.

They helped her because they wanted to. Not because she was
Ashley V.

The shower-type thing left a lot to be desired but water was
water and clean was clean, so she spent a reasonable amount of time under the
tepid stream and thrust away curls of worry about Sam. Tried to, anyway. His
absence had been in the back of her mind since waking and she regretted telling
him to go away. But he would have hovered, watching over her and not sleeping or
eating. That would not have sat well on her conscious.

Or her nerves. Thank God he couldn’t see inside her anymore,
couldn’t ask the name of the color orange.

It felt weird to be without him. No, not just weird. Empty,
like her mind had stretched to include Sam’s consciousness and hadn’t shrunk
back to the right size yet. Maybe it took a while. She wished it would hurry up.
This sense of something missing made her jittery.

She dried off with a crude towel, dressed, then shoved swollen
and blistered feet into the stiff, flat shoes that had come with the outfit. Ah,
no—barefoot then. Crushed stone under her sore feet hurt less than the rub of
hard shoes. Natalie chatted at her on the way to the place where they gave out
food and Ashley let it go in one ear and out the other, still too tired to get
her brain in gear.

At least she’d scrubbed away most of the grit and her hair
smelled like something other than a dead sheep.

Laughing people of all ages packed the common eating area,
clearly enjoying the conversation amidst clacks of utensils against the
earthenware dishes. Some were eating square pellets—of the waxy, smushed bran
variety. Huh. The aliens must actually like the weird Kir Barsha food well
enough to recreate the recipe. Several residents called out to Natalie and she
waved or exchanged greetings in halting Hahlan as if she’d been living here for
years instead of a day.

Ashley followed, feeling like an unremarkable extra, and wished
she could sink into the floor. The longer she stayed, the more it seemed like
her life in Hollywood was a dream, invented to escape this harsh reality. She
couldn’t hide behind anything—not makeup, not designer outfits, not alcohol.
Nothing to make her more beautiful, more interesting or less concerned with
whether she’d said something stupid again.

She couldn’t be Ashley V here.

A pinwheel of panic fluttered in her stomach.

She wanted to eat too badly to flee so she slouched to a table
behind Natalie and nodded at Dr. Glasses, who actually smiled. She shoved food
in her mouth without tasting it and without identifying it. As long as the mush
contained nourishment, she’d eat it.

Fat
. She craved fat in the worst
way. An entire bag of potato chips fried in lard or eighteen chocolate chip
cookies stacked on a giant scoop of Chunky Monkey—stuff she never ate, but
somehow fantasizing about it made the mystery gruel taste worse.

A grizzled old man shuffled over to their table. His shoulders
were hunched and gnarled hands hung by his side, but a bright, expectant gleam
lit his eyes. “You’re the ones from Earth,” he said in English, a tinge of hope
lilting his statement.

“Yes, that’s us,” Natalie said.

Mouse had disappeared. Wisdom and experience flitted through
this confident woman’s face, just enough to make her intriguing. With a decent
wardrobe, she’d turn heads at home. Well, good. At least one of them would
emerge from this better than they’d started out.

“Finally!” The man sat at the table without invitation,
wiggling between Ashley and Natalie. “You have to tell me. Did the Cowboys win
the Super Bowl?”

“Uh, football season hasn’t started yet.” Natalie glanced at
Marc across the table and came back to their new friend. “You’re from Earth too?
Did you just get here?”

“Nah, been here a long time. No idea how long or least ways, no
idea compared to Earth time. It was ’78 when I got took. January. What year is
it now?” Ashley bit back a gasp. He’d been here since before she was born.

The same fate might be in store for her.

If she never got off this planet, she’d be Regular Ashley for
the rest of her life.

“It was 2013 when we left,” Marc said. “I have no idea how the
space-time continuum actually works, so it might be the exact same moment, or it
could be 2014 by now. Or later.”

“Really?” Ashley jumped in. “That’s actually possible? They
promised us six week—”

Duh. The Telhada had lied about that too. The director of
Vertigo
Society
had probably already forgotten she existed,
just like her fans. Her shoulders slumped and she wished Sam was here to hold
her hand. Or something.

“2013, huh?” The man mulled this over, his pasty cheeks
wrinkling as he puckered his lips. “A new century seemed so far away back then.
Like it would never get here. I guess a lot of things have changed. My family
must have given up on me by now.” His hand shook as he patted back a stray lock
of stringy hair. “Name’s Jennings, by the way. Myron Jennings.”

Natalie introduced everyone and then prompted, “You were
kidnapped by the aliens?”

“Yeah. I was taking a leak behind a tree somewhere’s about
hundred miles outside Dallas, trying to push through on a haul from Florida. One
minute I was there, next I was on this table, clamped down. Seemed like I’d been
asleep but I never did know. I always reckoned they’d find my abandoned rig and
think I got eat by animals.”

Marc had given up all pretense of eating. “How did you end up
in Kir Dashamun?”

“Me and this other dude, he’d been snatched from Boston right
’bout the same time I was, we got set free by this one alien. He told us to look
at each other real close and connect our brains, then we could get out of the
city to come here. That’s was creepy, man.” He shuddered. “But we got out and
been here ever since. ’Cept that dude died ’for too long.”

“From what?” Ashley almost didn’t want to know.

But she did.

Jennings shrugged. “Don’t know. He was sick, though. Bad
sick.”

“What were his symptoms?” Marc leaned forward, brow furrowed.
Serious-doctor face was back. He and Jennings talked, but Ashley only half
listened, too heartsick to focus on much of anything. The second she finished
eating, she sprang up and announced she was going to her room.

Without waiting for anyone to respond, she wheeled and hurried
out of the common room. She walked to the room alone, head down, praying for no
one to speak to her. Eager to collapse, she rushed into the room and
squealed.

It was already occupied.

Chapter Thirteen

“Sorry, wrong room,” she said to the shadowed figure
slumped in the corner on the flat pallet, and started to back out. The fatigue
must be affecting her worse than she’d realized to have gotten turned around
like that.

“Ashley,” the figure said.

Sam. Dressed in different clothes. And slouching. “What’s
wrong?”

He laughed. Bitterly. “What’s right?” he asked, perfectly
imitating her accent and speech patterns.

“Why are you talking like that? Has something happened? Did you
find the pilot?” She crossed the room in two steps and knelt, but stopped short
of touching his arm, which she had almost done without thinking.

“No. I found something much better. Myself.” His face tilted up
as he met her gaze and the shadows slid off his ravaged features. “Tell me. When
you look at me, what do you see?”

“Uh. Do I have the right to remain silent?” The not-so-funny
joke gave her a desperately needed second to figure out why he’d gone all
mysterious on her. And fragile, like he might break into a million pieces if she
blew on him wrong.

He sprang up on his knees and took both her shoulders in a
death grip, holding her steady to pierce her with his stormy eyes. “I need—” He
broke off and inched her back so they wouldn’t accidentally link. “What do you
see? You have been inside my head. You have touched my skin. My blood stained
your fingers. You are uniquely qualified to answer this question.
Please
.”

Qualified because of the stupid link. “Okay. Since you put it
that way. I see someone who is calm and in control regardless of the
circumstances. Someone who cares more about others than himself. You’re curious
but considerate.” His fingers dug into her shoulders painfully. She covered his
hands with hers to get him to loosen up, but doubted he noticed. “Is that what
you’re looking for? I’m kind of clueless here.”

He stared at their hands, hers cupping his. “Those qualities
are all related to personality. What about externally? I repulse you. Why?”

“What is this all about?” she asked with narrowed eyes. “You’re
not trying to get me to kiss you again, are you?”

The silence stretched to the point of snapping, loudly, in her
ears. And still he wouldn’t look at her. Something was really wrong and this
whole conversation prickled the back of her neck in a way she didn’t especially
like.

“So, okay, you don’t exactly repulse me. Is that what you want
to hear? You’re not bad-looking at all. You’re hair’s a little short for my
taste, but hair grows.” She shrugged and tried to evaluate him honestly—and
positively—as she searched for something else to say. “Your body is fine. Not
too big and not too small.” Was she channeling Goldilocks, for crying out
loud?

“At the river...” He trailed off. Then he went still, so still,
her heart leaped into overdrive. So this
was
about
kissing. He was going to ask her to do it again. She started to shake her head
but something in his expression stopped her.

“At the river,” he started again, this time stronger. “You were
afraid of me. You were afraid of kissing me, of germs and something else I could
not identify. It was painful and confusing.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It wasn’t a good idea.
Because we’re, you know, different.” She bit her tongue before something lame
like
it’s
not
you
,
it’s
me
came out. “But I like you. You’ve got a lot of
great qualities.”

“But all in all, still alien?”

“All right, enough.” She broke his grip and retreated to the
opposite side of the room, out of touching distance. “What’s with the twenty
questions?”

“It is true, Ashley,” he said softly. “I have been living a lie
for so long, I can barely process it.” He banged his forehead against the wall
in apparent misery.

Strangely, she almost wished they were linked so she could
figure out what he wasn’t saying. Almost. Being here behind closed doors with
him in this whacked-out mood was intimate enough without adding the link to the
mix. Plus, if they linked, she couldn’t keep pretending everything was fine,
like half of her wasn’t missing. Like the empty space in her head didn’t weep to
be filled by him. The longer she stayed in his presence, the emptier it
grew.

“What’s true? Tell me what you’re talking about. I can help,”
she pleaded, hoping she could somehow erase the pain fraying his accent.

“What the doctor said. It is true.” He swallowed twice and then
said, “I am human. Like you.”

“What?” Her back hit the wall. She slid to the ground and
thumped into a pile of legs and skirt. “How did you come to this conclusion,
exactly?” she croaked, pulse pounding in her throat.

As if she needed proof. As if his agony over it wasn’t
hemorrhaging through her soul.

“Apparently it is common knowledge,” he said. “I was too stupid
to see it. I—” He buried his face in his hand.

Of course it was true. Of course it was obvious. She’d known,
but put off really internalizing it until this second. He believed it now and
that meant she had to as well. His blood was red and full of human DNA. Her IUD
would work perfectly.

It changed everything. Ten seconds ago, she had defenses. An
out. Someplace to store all these sharp longings for someone so radically
unsuitable, someone so not her type—a box marked “Stuff I don’t want to feel for
or about Sam because he’s an alien.”

That box had been destroyed with a full-tilt hammer swing right
at the joints.

He scrubbed his cheeks with the heels of his hands and sighed.
Then turned to her with wet lashes. “Does it make a difference? To you?”

“No. Yes.” She blew out a breath and pushed on her fluttery
stomach. Why did her opinion matter so much? “It doesn’t make a difference.
You’re still you.”

“But who am I? How do I behave? What is a human supposed to be
like?”

“Sam, you’re behaving like a human right now. Because you are
one. So whatever you do, however you do it, it’s right.”

“No,” he bit out, forehead to the wall again. “I have committed
atrocities against my own kind. I am to blame for the deaths of many, many
people. You cannot convince me what I have done is right.”

She leaped to her feet before he finished talking. He was so
torn up. His voice wavered all over the place, and his rigid control had gone
out the window. She couldn’t keep the gap between them.

“Hey.” She molded to his back and wrapped her arms around him,
ear to his spine. His human spine. “There’s nothing more human than oppressing
other humans. Earth history is full of it. The important thing is you’ve
stopped. You’re trying to make up for it by helping us get home. A lot of people
never atone for their sins and keep doing the same bad things over and over
again. It doesn’t matter to me what you’ve done in the past.”

The words had come automatically, from the heart, but her
throat caught as she heard them. What would she be like today if someone had
said that to her?

Mouth muffled against his arm, he said, “I do not understand
everything happening inside me. I feel things and do not know what they are. I
have been highly trained to acquire humans, to organize and lead a division, to
worship the Ancestors and obey the Telhada. But I have no knowledge of how to be
in my own body. I am—” He choked against the words.

“Reasonably confused.” She spread fingers wide over his heart
and tightened her arms around his solid, mouthwatering chest.

Who was she trying to kid telling him his body was “fine”? He
had the perfect body and it was a flat-out lie to pretend otherwise. Ashley V
might date guys who could bench a Volkswagen, but Regular Ashley liked Sam’s
wiry build just fine, thankyouverymuch.

“I am,” he agreed. “Confused. But unreasonably. Beyond reason.
That is the problem. I thrive on reason, on what is rational and logical. None
of this is, and it is...frightening.”

A man who could confess to being scared. And he really was a
man, not an alien. Well, he was still foreign. Or something. She hardly knew
what to think either and empathized with his turmoil. She didn’t know who she
was without a camera rolling or a fan asking for an autograph.

“It’ll be okay. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll hold your hand as
long as you want. Turn around,” she said.

He half turned in her arms and sat stiffly in her embrace.

This script wasn’t getting the job done. She changed tactics.
“Relax. You have the rest of your life to figure this out. Trust me when I tell
you most humans spend that long doing the same.”

“Ashley.” He said it like he’d come to a decision. “I must ask
you to do something for me.”

“You saved my life. There’s very little I wouldn’t do for
you.”

“Link with me.”

“Except that.”

She dropped her arms and started to stand when he took her
hand. Not forcefully, like he meant to toss her back down on the pallet. Gently.
He had unbelievable strength and compact muscles which could crush her easily,
but he balanced it with remarkable tenderness.

“I miss you,” he said simply but with aching sincerity. “I have
no direction. I’ve been cast from my home and taken on the impossible task of
returning you to yours. Nothing is familiar and I need something to be. I need
you.”

“Why me? There’s nothing special about me.” She glanced around
the dark room. “Not here anyway.”

“You are human. You laugh and find humor where there is none.
You have a unique perspective and you say the most insane things which you
somehow create sense from.”

Sam liked the way she talked. It was a shock and a revelation.
He knew her inside and out in a way no one else could. He’d seen into her core
and wanted more.

“Please.” His plea came out on a whisper and broke over her.
The pieces skittered into her heart.

She stared at him, trying to quell the panic. Trying to
understand how such unremarkable parts of a person could merge into the potent
combination that was Sam. That energy between them pulsed and throbbed in the
heavy moment as selfishness clashed with the simplicity of his request.

Was linking with him really that big of a deal? Yes, yes it
was. A huge deal.

She couldn’t say no. She couldn’t say yes.

But she had to.

He needed her and she owed him.

And maybe she wanted to.

“Sam.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, refusing to
look at her straight on. He wouldn’t link with her unless she said okay. He
wouldn’t force her. That pretty much clinched it.

As gently as he’d taken her hand, she cupped his chin and
guided his face toward hers.

“Are you certain?” he asked at the halfway point, almost to the
point of no return.

“No. But I’ll do it for you anyway.” Their eyes locked.
Sparked. The air surrounding them charged and she drowned in him.

As they linked, as his fears, confusion and absolute relief
poured into her, he laid his lips upon hers in the barest whisper of a kiss.

* * *

The essence of Ashley flooded through him, filling all
the gaps and holes. He soaked it up and his axis righted itself. Her compassion
humbled him, especially as he sensed her fear and uncertainty, but her absolute
surrender humming through the link undid him.

“I apologize,” he murmured against her parted mouth and the
contact channeled straight to his gut. “I did not intend to kiss you. Now that I
am here, I find it difficult to leave.”

He would, if she indicated so, though it might be the most
difficult thing he’d done yet. Her breath mingled with his, becoming one, and
still she did not move away.

“Then don’t leave.” Her eyelashes lay frozen along her
cheekbone. A sigh and then she opened her eyes. “I missed you too. I tried not
to. I really did. I didn’t realize how much I missed you until just now.”

His heart tumbled, contorting as it fell.

She moved her palm from under his chin, skimming along his jaw
to settle into the space below his ear. “Sam,” she whispered and her lips
vibrated against his as she spoke the name.

Not just a name.
His
name. A human
name Ashley had gifted to him. How could he have ever been called anything
else?

“Yes, Sam,” he repeated, awed by the way his tongue slid along
the roof of his mouth. She’d given him a name and locked inside was the
self-definition he’d sought. He’d foolishly ignored her guidance thus far and
vowed not to repeat that mistake.

The smell of her hair wafted through the air. She’d used the
same soap as he had, but on her, it was fresh and slightly sweet. He wanted
nothing more than to close the distance between them, to transform this
almost-kiss. To wrap her up in his arms and kiss her as he had in the river,
with abandon. With her participation.

Heaviness settled in his groin and images flew from his
imagination, fast and vivid. With a groan, he started to explain, apologize,
something. “Ashley, I—”

“Shh.”

With that, the mere fraction of a centimeter between them
vanished and she devoured him from the inside out. It was more than a kiss. Her
lips molded to his, unmistakable with intent. Her desire cascaded into his head
along with flashes of them intertwined, torso to torso, slick with sweat, and he
had no idea if he’d conjured the images or if she had.

He shoved his fingers into her hair and communicated all the
pent-up longing via the kiss, angling his head, working his mouth, trying to
prolong the moment. Something indescribable began to build inside, a thrilling
anticipation. It filled him whole, almost to bursting, with rays of Ashley’s
sun.

He broke contact, panting. “This is not what I intended when I
came here. I only wished to still the chaos of my thoughts. Now, I am standing
on the edge of an abyss and as I look into the darkness, I realize it is not
representative of death.” The abyss had been looming before him since the moment
he met Ashley, and he’d mistaken it for a warning. Instead, she
was
the abyss, beckoning him toward the awakening on
the other side of the darkness. “I fear falling as much as I wish to fall. Am I
doing something wrong?”