Work Text:
Da’an had coalesced back in his physical form and now none of them knew what to do. Boone held on to his hand. The alien did not seem to want to let go, even if there was no definite pressure on his fingers. Gradually, as he became aware of Lili and Sandoval closing in on him, he realized he had lost touch with reality. His CVI neatly processed the images that unloaded in his head – lands with dark, shaded plants that looked like flesh and that smelled like something unknown entirely, a planet coming apart slowly, gently, as someone watched, rows and infinities of lazuli spots going off in the distance and the darkness that came always closer – but Boone himself was overwhelmed. It was something like elevation, but all the whispering voices around him, and so much images, and were those thoughts…?
And Boone understood that this was Da’an.
Eventually, his hand and Da’an’s were taken apart. Boone focused on standing up while the alien blinked numbly at the ceiling above him. Then Lili handed the implant a blanket and he tightened it around Da’an, lifting him up in his arms as he did so.
The Companion weighed less than a human being, probably half less. Da’an took his head down and placed it down on Boone’s shoulder. His human facade flickered on and off. The first thing Boone noticed was Sandoval, looking at them with something like horror or fear, or simple petrification. Boone knew it was only the implant he saw then, and not the human underneath.
“Is he-…” Sandoval started.
“It’s fine,” Boone said. “Clear the way. We’ll get him out of here.”
Sandoval stared ahead wordlessly. Lili motioned for him to follow. “Come on. He’ll be okay. Let’s get to the shuttle.
The Marines that had come with Lili and Sandoval stood back when Boone walked with Da’an in his arms. It was the same mix of awe and strange Boone had grown used to when he had started working for the Companions.
They reached the shuttle. “Can you stand now?” Boone asked Da’an.
Da’an spoke in the crook of his neck. Afterwards, Boone would think he had not really heard him, like the words had been said in his mind, rather than in air. “I believe so.”
Boone unwrapped his arms from around the alien and set him on the ground, letting Sandoval to hold him close. Da’an leaned against the other implant and Sandoval’s eyes fluttered close. Boone climbed in the shuttle, then held out his arms and lifted Da’an in effortlessly, leaving Sandoval to stand open-mouthed, entirely overcome by the conflicting messages crowding his brain, before he jumped in.
The Marines gathered around them when Lili fired up the ID engine. Its wheezing sound rang in their ears and suddenly they were gone.
Da’an had sunk to the ground between the two passenger seats. Boone held him, while the Taelon clutched the blanket tighter around him. The implant wondered if Taelons felt weakness, or timidity. They were feelings through which the individual related to the whole, so probably not, since, for them, the commonality was more important than the persons. Then why, Boone wondered, feel the need to obey their deathwish at all? Why feel compelled to come back from death, as Da’an had?
They returned to the US Embassy in a matter of minutes. When the shuttle landed, Boone flipped his global open to message Quo’on and the Synod, but it was not needed. Three Taelons were waiting on the shuttle landing pad, all of them without human facade, two of them wearing sashes around their torsos, something Boone had never seen. And, from the look on their faces, neither had Lili or Sandoval.
Lili jumped down from the shuttle and extended her hands in the taelon greeting, but one of them had already walked past her.
“I am Mit’gai. Give me Da’an.”
Boone stood up, wondering where the protective instinct came from. “Are you a doctor?”
“It is an approximation. Considering the present circumstances, I assume it suffices,” the Taelon said. “Give me your Companion,” he repeated.
“Boone,” Da’an said. “Take me to them.”
Boone helped him up and brought him down from the shuttle. His hand brushed Da’an again and there were no images this time, only a sentiment of fatigue so intense that Boone staggered.
He reached Mit’gai and the other Taelons. They took Da’an from him. “I can carry him. It’s fine,” he started.
“Let go,” Mit’gai insisted, looking down at where Boone’s fingers still grasped Da’an’s arm. Boone had noticed before that Taelons did not often physically touch. He supposed it was special, intimate, if there was such a thing for them.
Da’an pulled his arm out of Boone’s hand, then Mit’gai took the blanket off him and Da’an moved carefully with them toward the ID portal near the Embassy’s upper-level doorway. “Where are you bringing him?” None of them answered him. “Hey,” he called out. “Hey.” One of them turned around. “Where is he going?”
“If he stays here, Earth atmosphere will prevent recovery,” was the only thing the Taelon said.
The ID portal lit up and Da’an was gone in a swallowing flash of light. The blanket was crumpled on the floor and Lili, Sandoval and Boone stared mutely as the portal’s poles’ whirring shut down.
The news showed images of the US Embassy, lit from the outside by the spotlights, shining its off-blue and off-purple against the nightsky. “So far, there has been little communication with the American Taelon Embassy. It remain to be seen, whether the American Companion, Da’an, has been harmed during-…” the journalist said.
Sandoval shut the TV off and slammed the command down on the desk. Behind him, the virtual glass shimmered. They were well in the evening, the sun had set down under the building lines of Washington.
“Is this normal?” Boone asked. “We haven’t even heard from any of them.”
The other implant chewed on his lips, fingers playing with the cuff of his white shirt. “I don’t know.”
“Not even a word. How do they expect us to-…”
“I don’t know, Boone!” Sandoval snapped.
Lili Marquette had stiffened a bit, where she stood near the door. They had stayed at the Embassy for a while, waiting for a call from the Synod, but the walls had darkened around them, the bioslurry shutting down to a quiet hum while the Companion was not present within its rooms. Then they had come to Boone’s Washington office. Sandoval was growing slightly agitated, much like Lili had seen him earlier.
“Sandoval,” Boone said, causing the other man to turn to him, furious, or possessed by the strange mixture of feelings CVIs created in their implants, Lili could not tell. “I feel bad too. They should have let us go with him.”
The other implant sighed. “Go where, Boone?”
“Do you know?”
Sandoval sat back in the chair, eyes closed. “No,” he admitted. “Da’an never mentionned anything health-related. No doctors, nothing.”
“We don’t even know if they eat anything. If they breath,” Lili stepped in. Sandoval glared at her.
Boone played with his global, slipping it open and closed, open and closed. “How did you find us?”
The Asian implant sighed. It was a while before words came to his mouth. “I went over the tasks performed on your computer. Found the thermometer, found your search results,” he recited tersely. “Good job.”
He had closed his eyes and did not see the look that Lili and Boone exchanged over his shoulder.
Boone frowned when Sandoval’s eyes went to his temple, massaging slowly. “We should worry about containing media opinion for now. We need to release a statement. Even if the Synod won’t give us one,” he told the other implant.
Sandoval nodded slowly. Boone had never seen him so absorbed, so unrestrained, but it was not the human in Sandoval that stirred. On his wrist, Raven’s blue head light burned brightly, witness to the loud turmoil inside. “You’re right,” Sandoval said.
The club was filling up slowly. The music was loungy and business seemed to be slow for the time being. The waitress perred at the new customers coming in. Her eyebrows were painted a shimmering jade. She placed a glass of beer in front of Boone and a Blue Lagoon in front of Lili Marquette. They had not talked much on the way here, but she had offered.
“How worried are you, about Da’an?” Lili asked him, after a while, playing idly with the pink floyd-shaped straw in her drink.
He scoffed, found her dark brown eyes, always colder than he expected. “What? You aren’t?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s with his kind. It’s their stuff.”
Boone sipped from his beer. The music had gone a bit louder. Three young women walked in, platform shoes and metallic clothes. “You’ll report this to Doors?”
Lili sighed. “Is there a this?”
“No,” Boone said. “There’s nothing. Sandoval was there. What did you want me to do?”
The young Marine pilot shook her head. “You weren’t faking.”
“Of course, I wasn’t,” Boone emphasized. “This is what’s crucial for us. Knowing how their society works, how the Synod exerts power, how their communal psychic bond functions.”
“How to wound them,” Lili said.
“Don’t go there,” he said. “Please.”
Her eyes were hard, distant. She had worked for the Companions longer than he had. On some days, he figured she knew the Taelons more than he did. On others, he wondered how she could not. “I’ll call Dr Belman. Tell her you’re coming in for a visit.”
“To test my CVI?”
Lili got up, placed money on the bar. “You’re caring, Boone.”
He leaned toward her. “Look at me in the eye, and, after what we’ve seen today, tell me you aren’t.”
She had not drunk a third of her glass. “I’m gathering information,” she said. “As should you.”
Boone knew why Doors trusted her now. She was much firmer than him, more disciplined. “If this is my CVI acting up, what are you going to do?”
“Warn Doors.”
Leaning back in his seat, Boone wrapped his hand around his beer glass, the cold bringing memories of all other ice and snow he had ever touched – ice-fishing on a trip, a pack of ice on his shoulder when he trained for the police, frozen food from the freezer. “But then, I guess, it’s worse if this isn’t my CVI’s motivational imperative activating, isn’t it?” he asked her, as the images snapped away from his mind.
Lili took her eyes down and frowned. “Just go and talk to Belman, Boone.”
Julianne Belman’s lab was adjunct to the Washington Embassy. Lili was not available that morning and the shuttle stayed on the roof of the Companion’s office. Boone took his car. He had not done so in months. Tucked in one of the doors was the map of the Appalachians he and Kate had used on their trip. Years ago. He still felt the paper under his fingers. But he drove.
When he got to the lab, Belman waited for him in the lobby, not worried, but particularly attentive. “Boone,” she greeted. “Weird memories, trouble sleeping, skrill talking to you?”
“No,” he smiled. “No, nothing like that.”
The older woman nodded. “Then why are you here?”
“Captain Marquette thinks there may be a problem with my motivational imperative,” he said.
“Oh.” She extended her hand, motioned to the corridor behind them. Boone followed until they reached the lab when he had his CVI implanted. The needle nestling in his jaw, the blinding pain, then the numbness that came from his forehead and extended everywhere else, the images, so many and so resouding, until he realized they were from his own life. He had not expected that and, for a long moment, he had thought he would really die, until Sandoval had tilted his head up, to bring him back from inside his head, where all his brain was alive.
The lab doors closed behind them. Julianne gestured at their surroundings with her pen. “I control the funding here,” she said. “We can talk. What happened?”
Boone sighed while Belman connected a monitor to his forehead. “When we rescued Da’an from his abductors…” Boone said. “He was taken away by Taelon medical staff. Lili thinks I care too much about him.”
“Care how?”
“I was worried.”
“How much?”
Boone gave a small smile. “If it was too much, I probably wouldn’t even know it.”
She smiled too. It was meant to be reassuring, he supposed. “Right,” she said connecting the second monitor to his temple. “Lie down.” Boone did so. He heard her fingers tapping the keys on the computer. If he concentrated as far as his CVI allowed him to, he could feel the heat from the electricity of the monitor build up against his skin. A few long minutes went by, during which he tried to keep from thinking. They still had no idea about Da’an. The Synod had messaged Sandoval, last night, to tell him not to worry, that all was in order, that he should not care.
He came back to his senses with Belman’s fingers squeezing his shoulder. “Everything seems fine,” she said. “Your motivational imperative’s still set at zero.”
“If it stops,” Boone asked. “Being at zero. How would I know that?”
Belman smiled and picked up the monitors. “It’d feel like love,” she answered. “It’s love that the Taelons asked us to wire in human brains.”
Boone frowned. “Love? Like…”
“All kind. They told us they wanted the strongest psychological stimulator of devotion. We gave them unbidden love.”
Rolling his dress shirt sleeves back down on his forearms, Boone brushed his fingers along Condor’s back. The skrill hissed kindly, too low for Belman to notice. “How do you do that? Chemically?”
“The CVI uses the brain’s own ressources,” Belman explained. “It takes your most profound memories and feelings that the cerebral cortex has labelled as love. Not actions, just mental content. And it fuses them together and…”
“Directs them at an alien.”
Julianne looked up from her pad. She had taken notes on him. “Basically. Yes. Are you okay?”
“Sure, I’m fine.”
The doctor placed the pad down and turned to eye him warmly, like she was his own grandmother. “So, no love?”
The thing was, the CVI felt so alien, he did not know what he was feeling anymore. So Boone shook his head and put his jacket back on. “Curiosity, attention. Nothing else.”
“Then you’re good to go. Captain Marquette must have been under a lot of stress.”
“She must have,” he agreed, certain Belman had reported to Doors about his visit already.
He was almost through the door when Belman asked, “You said Taelon medical staff. You met Mit’gai?”
“Yeah,” Boone scoffed. “Looks like a jerk.”
“He does more than just look like it, trust me.”
With the media announcements, the update on security, the handful of interviews, Boone could not go back home before midnight. The house was the same kind of dark it was every night, spacious, too big for one person. Kate and him had bought it for them both. And the children.
He knew he could not sleep. Not that he needed to anymore. He did not even want to go to bed. Since he was not there often enough, there were only a few dishes in the kitchen. But Boone filled the sink with hot water. Kate always dried while he washed. God, her hands. The shape of her hands, he remembered it so perfectly, he could have drawn their lines with his eyes closed.
He was piling the second plate beside the sink, when his global rang. At this hour. Probably Sandoval. Not Lili. Normal people slept. “Screen,” he called out, eyes fixed on the glass he was towelling.
“Commander Boone.” Da’an’s fine, alien voice, a bit off, lighter as if exhausted.
He turned to the screen. The Taelon’s facade was paler than usual, the energy pathways showing underneath, travelling purples and whites. He seemed bluer, farther. “Da’an. How are you? Are you fine?” he asked.
Da’an bowed carefully. “I will be shortly.”
Boone placed the glass down. His heart was beating faster than he had expected. “Agent Sandoval and I… We were very worried. The Synod has barely contacted us. Is this standard procedure?”
“The Synod has been meeting about the recent events surrounding my capture. They may not have found time to communicate.”
Frowning, Boone noticed the Taelon’s hands, drawing their usual patterns into the air, but moving with tiny jerks. “Are you sure you’re fine? You sound… a little out of breath.”
The alien paused a moment to look out of the screen. Then he brought his eyes back to the implant, with this look that made Boone think he could not be lying, not right now. “My physiology has been changed to adapt to Earth when I was appointed a Companion.”
“You’re… no longer on Earth,” Boone understood.
“I am not,” Da’an confirmed. “I am sorry I cannot tell you more.”
“I understand. Do you do that often?”
A fine smile on Da’an’s lips. “Leave Earth soil?”
“Yes.”
Da’an’s features switched slightly to display a more honest pondering. Boone dried another glass absentmindedly, keeping his hands occupied. His heart was not beating as rapidly, but in its place, warm relief expanded in his chest. “My main task is to serve as the US Companion, is the only thing I can answer,” Da’an said finally.
Boone nodded. “Okay.”
“My apologies,” Da’an said. “I may have lost track of time passing in Washington DC. Is it evening?”
“It’s a little over midnight.”
The alien tilted his head on the side in a near apology. “Normally, you sleep at this hour.”
“Not today, no.”
“You should find rest.”
“You too,” Boone said.
Da’an held his eyes for a moment, then his facade dissolved in a blush. “Boone,” he asked. “What did you see?”
“When I was holding your hand?” Forests, planets, infinities, and the knowledge that he had something like an alien soul glued to his mind.
“Yes.”
Boone drained the sink and turned back to face the monitor. “I wasn’t aware of a lot. A dark, green forest. Some containers with blue shapes inside. A planet, coming apart.”
Da’an was blushing blue again. “Is that all?”
“I think so, yeah. Why?”
“You have shared my dreams, thoughts and recollections,” Da’an said, between surprise and wonder.
“Was it all real?” Boone asked. “Which planet was it?”
Da’an’s eyes did not leave his own for a time, then looked down briefly. And Boone knew that Da’an could not even tell him that he could not tell him. Not where he was now. “Do not feel concern about me. I will return shortly. Do rest.”
“Da’an?”
“Yes?”
Flattening his hand on the counter, Boone tried to choose his words as well as he could. “Do you know how much we care about you?”
The Taelon’s gaze was steady, never leaving him. “I am aware of the effect of a CVI on a human brain,” he said.
“There’s more to it than that.”
“I have a certain conscience of that,” Da’an said. “But I must say it remains distant and fragile. As of now, I would request that we discuss it at a later time.”
“Of course.”
Da’an tilted his head forward slightly, human skin almost gone, his eyes two burning lights. “Good night, Boone.”
The implant did the Taelon salute and nodded. “Good night, Da’an,” he said.
The screen went dark as the line cut.
There had been nothing visible behind Da’an. No audible noises either. He wondered what Doors would say. Hint that the Companion was lying. Wonder why he had called Boone in the first place. Then try and learn what Boone had seen when holding Da’an’s hand.
Boone resolved not to tell him anything.