Catch the Lightning (13 page)

“Althor?” I said.

He looked up. “Yes?”

“When you’re like this, will you still feel—you know. Making love?”

“Yes.” He opened the packet. '“There is no reason for my physical sensations to cease because my emotive-mechanical interface is degraded.”

I almost laughed. Of all the things I might have imagined about my first lover, I would never have come up with a machine that discussed emotive-mechanical interfaces while putting on a condom.

He rolled it on smooth and slow, latex on gold. I pushed up on my elbows, watching. Who could have guessed it could look so erotic? I cupped my hand' around his balls, wondering if he would feel the way he looked, like flexible gold. He didn’t. He felt human. Warm and alive.

This time when he lowered himself on me, it was suffocating, not so much because of his size, but because my mind created such strong metallic sensations out of this mode.

Althor pushed up on his elbows. “I am too heavy.” He said it as if it were a datum he added to memory storage.

I wondered how he knew. “Can you pick up my emotions in this mode?”

“Yes.” He kissed me, once, twice, again, and again, sampling a data set. “I cannot make myself weigh less, however.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

He let himself down again, holding my arms so hard it hurt. I stiffened, and he loosened his grip. Although I didn’t realize it then, the damage to his web had caused him to assign incorrect values to data that specified how tightly he could safely hold someone my size. When his systems detected my tension, they recalibrated the numbers.

He rubbed his thumbs over my breasts, moved his hands to my waist, then lower, to my legs. I expected him to do what he wanted, fast and efficient, like a machine. But when he entered, it hurt less than before. I hadn’t realized that with biochips controlling his actions, he could calibrate to whatever level of gentleness or urgency he wanted. I began to relax, hugging him tight. His muscles flexed as he moved, his body going back and forth with an exact, unvarying frequency.

Upload
, he thought. Metallic sensations flowed through my mind. He touched my cheek.
Download?

“I don’t know how,” I said. Before it had just happened. I put my lips against his ear. “Kiss me more. The way you do it, good and hard, like you can’t get enough.”

And kiss me he did, sampling again, his tongue taking data to fill a new array. I felt how this mode interpreted pleasure, with a hard edge that gripped like a vise. Knowing a man wants you that intensely may be the greatest aphrodisiac ever to exist, far more effective than any chemically produced love potion.

Words flashed in my mind.
Link opened
.

That was when my sensory responses went into overdrive. My brain’s tendency to tangle empathic and sensory input strengthens with both the intensity and proximity of the people whose moods I experience. Althor flooded me with his metallic river. It closed around, blanketing my perceptions until I couldn’t sense anything else. Suffocating,
I was suffocating—

Wait! My fingers dug into his back. It’s too much.

Carrier attenuated, he thought.

The sensations receded to a bearable level and he slowed down, moving with rigid control. Closing my eyes, I tried to feel only him, the living man. But he didn’t move like a man. He moved like a well-coordinated machine.

Waiting
. The word entered my mind like a prompt.

Waiting? I thought.

Waiting
, the prompt came again. He continued with his slow, measured strokes.

Waiting for what? I thought.

Suspend release
. His tension built like pressure in an airlock, bowing out the doors.

What does suspend release mean?
I asked.

He exhaled in a small explosion of air. Overriding, he thought. His movements surged, fast and hard again. I hung on, letting his river sweep me with it this time. He pushed his arm under my waist and lifted me off the bed, pressing us tightly together as we moved. His sweat dripped down and moisture slicked back and forth between our bodies. When his climax broke over us, his muscles spasmed and we both went rigid with the blunt intensity of it.

Gradually the river receded. His grip loosened and we sank back into the bed, he lying with his cheek against the top of my head. Eventually, when our breathing quieted, he slid off me and lay against my side. His body felt warm. Human. As long as I didn’t see his face, I could believe a man lay next to me rather than a machine.

“Return,” he said.

I opened my eyes. “What?”

He didn’t answer. He was fast asleep.

I closed my eyes and my mind wandered. Fragments of his earlier words drifted in my mind, words from an ancient tongue of his ancestors:
Shibalank, Shibalan…

I opened my eyes. Sunlight still brightened the room, but it had lost its new-morning quality. Distant sounds of people talking came from outside. Glancing at the wall clock, I saw we had slept for several hours and still had a few more before Joshua was due back.

As I moved, Althor’s outer lids opened. I propped myself up on my elbow. “Are you all right now?”

“I am discontinuing.” He sounded more like a machine than before.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My functions are degrading.”

“You mean you can’t heal yourself anymore?”

“No.” His eyes closed. “Access denied.”

“What?”

He opened his eyes, this time both inner and outer lids. His face relaxed and his voice rumbled with a heavy accent, familiar and human. “Access denied. This means you ask a question I can’t answer.”

Relief swept over me. “You’re back.”

He smiled. “I never went away.”

“Does that bother you, that we made love while you were… him.”

“Him is me. So no, this doesn’t bother me.”

“Do you remember it all?

“Every second.” He grinned. “I can play it back as often as I want.”

I flushed. “You’re kidding.”

“Not at all.” More quietly he said, “My sorry if it unsettles. Usually my interface with humans isn’t so obvious.”

“Aren’t you human at all?”

He ran his hand along my side. “I feel what any man feels. The biomech web doesn’t take away my humanity. It adds to it.”

“Were you born this way? I mean with biomech.”

His emotions withdrew like a light switching off. “No.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

It was a moment before he answered. “I have—unpleasant memories associated with it.” In a more normal voice he said, “I wasn’t born with the web, but some of my modifications are at the germ level. The intent is that I pass them to my children.” He shrugged. “My doctors don’t know if it will work. I’m the first they’ve tried it on.”

I stared at him. “That’s horrible. How could they experiment on you?”

“Someone had to be first. I am a good test case.”

“No one has a right to make you a ‘test case.’”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that maybe I want this? That it fixes problems I don’t want passed to my children?”

Of course. His anemia. His hands. Other problems too, ones I didn’t know about then. “I didn’t realize.”

He exhaled. “I am maybe too sensitive about it. Or so Ragnar tells me.”

“You mean the admiral?”

“Yes. He was my doctor, a brilliant biomech surgeon, head of the team that built my web. When I was small, he helped me learn to use it.” Althor smiled. “He used to walk with me while I was learning to use my legs. We talked about so much.”

His description puzzled me. I touched the socket in his wrist. “I thought these linked you to your Jag.”

“They do.”

“Your military wires children to warships?”

Althor stiffened. “Of course not. Jagernauts get their biomech as adults, just before they receive their commission.”

It still didn’t make sense. But I could tell that if I pushed, it would alienate him. So instead I said, “What did you mean, that you were discontinuing?”

“My web—it’s part of the Jag’s computer. I am—how to say it? The Jag’s web, it comes apart. Because they tamper with it. If its web fails, mine might also. I keep flipping in and out of different modes, probably many more than you realize. The last was more obvious, but others have happened too. Both my web and the Jag did an automatic shutdown when we were cut off, but the tampering still affects me. It’s disorienting.”

It sounded much worse than disorienting. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I don’t know. I need my ship.”

“What did you mean earlier when you said we hadn’t ‘completed the call’?”

“The mod call,” he said. “You know what is a subroutine call in software?”

“We studied it some in school.”

“A mod call is more sophisticated, but the basic idea is the same.”

I gaped at him. “You mean, for you making love is a subroutine call?”

“Yes.”

“Althor, do you have any idea how kinky that sounds?”

“Kinky?” He smiled. “This means bent?”

“This means weird.”

“It is me, Tina. It will never change.” He spoke awkwardly. “But you never agreed to the link. My sorry for that. I think the Jag recognizes you as a node in its web now. It may even be augmenting your mind, expanding your knowledge base and vocabulary.”

An image of myself with a machine face jarred my thoughts. I stared at my hands. They looked human. They were human. If anything, being with Althor made me feel more human, not less.

He touched my breast, folding his hand around it. My body responded immediately, wanting him. But when he tried to pull me down, I resisted. I kept seeing him staring at the ceiling with half-open eyes, a computer having sex.

He spoke softly. “Am I really so repugnant to you?”

“Althor, no.” How could he be so empathic and yet also be a machine?

As we made love again, the memory of his machine eyes stayed in my mind. I wondered how long he would remain human.

The only sound in Joshua’s room was the television murmuring in the background with a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Althor sat on the edge of the bed, dressed again, bending and relaxing his arm, the one with the injured shoulder.

The grate of someone doing the combination lock sounded. As the door opened, I jumped up from my chair.

Joshua came in and smiled. “It’s just me.” He locked the door, then turned to watch Althor. I wasn’t surprised to see Joshua’s smile fade; it was one thing to have Althor passed out in his room, helpless; it was another to have him wide awake and restless.

“Where is your friend Daniel?” Althor asked.

“He’ll be here soon,” Joshua said. “He’s checking some things.”

“Checking what?” Althor asked.

“Yeager Test Cen—”

Althor stood up. “You contacted the base?”

Joshua stepped backward, against the door, his face paling.

Althor, I thought. I made an image in my mind of Nug and his men, dressed much the way Althor was dressed, tying Joshua up and playing firing squad with him. I made another picture, one of Joshua tending to Althor while he had been unconscious.

Althor glanced at me. Then he sat on the bed and spoke in a quieter voice. “Why did Daniel contact the base?”

Color came back into Joshua’s face. “He called his mother.”

“Won’t this make her suspicious?”

Joshua smiled. “You mean, that her son and his buddies have an alien stashed in their dorm?”

Althor’s forehead furrowed. After a moment, Joshua flushed. “I was kidding.” When Althor kept staring at him, Joshua said, “I meant she wouldn’t think anything of it. Daniel always talks the business with his parents. They’re systems engineers, and he’s majoring in computer science. If he bugs his mom about what’s going on at her work, she’ll just think he’s being his usual self.”

Althor spoke slowly. “His parents work with web systems?”

“Josh, don’t talk so fast,” I said. “And don’t use so much slang. He’s having trouble understanding you.”

“Is that what’s wrong?” Joshua looked relieved. “Sure.” Another drone came out of the television, rising above the mumbling talk we had been ignoring. Joshua went over and switched off the set. “If I hear ‘This is only a test’ one more time, I’m going to break something. You’d think we’re about to go to war.”

“Maybe we are,” I said. “With that coup ousting Gorbachev and the new Russian government making noises about FSA spy planes, it’s no wonder they’re scared.”

Joshua walked over me. “It doesn’t make sense, starting up the Cold War again.”

Althor spoke. “They may know your air force has more than a test plane at Yeager. If they don’t get the technology, it will obliterate any balance of power.” He shrugged. “Or maybe your governments are working together, setting up a cover. They have good reason to believe they have far worse to prepare for than planetary war.”

“Tina said you bled all over that police car,” Joshua said. Althor nodded. “They must know by now I’m not human.” A knock "sounded on the door. Joshua jumped, then raised his voice. “Who is it?”

“Daniel,” a voice said.

Joshua let him in and locked up again. “Did you talk to your mother?”

“She still says it’s a plane.”

“You found out nothing?” Althor asked.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “But I can’t help you. Maybe I do dream about the stars, like Tina said. But what’s happening in this country right now is nobody’s fairy tale.”

“I’m not here in any military capacity,” Althor said. “I just want to get my ship and leave with Tina.”

Someone outside started doing the combination lock. We all had one second to panic before the door opened.

A girl stood there. She was a few years older than Joshua, a gangly student with green eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and a glorious mane of tawny hair that fell in waves down her back.

She blinked at us. Then she turned to Joshua. “Do I have the wrong day?”

“Oh shit,” Joshua said. “I forgot.” He pulled her inside. “Some—uh—friends came to visit.” He motioned to the girl. “This is Heather, everyone. Heather Rose MacDane. She helps me with my calculus.”

In different circumstances, that would have made me smile. I had never known Joshua to need help with his homework. He was so shy he had never had a girlfriend.