No Life But This (10 page)

‘How’s that working?’

She chuckled. ‘Not great. But I’m okay with it. It won’t be too long, after all. It’s not like it’ll be decades.’ She shrugged. ‘Age … stopped meaning so much
to me a little while ago.’

I wanted to ask her
what if something went wrong
? But I kept still.

‘The stass itself isn’t a problem, though. That’s kind of fun. It’s not scary. It’s like … I can’t describe it.’

‘Please try
,’ I signed.

She looked me over. ‘You’re really scared,’ she realized.

I nodded.

‘Don’t be. It’s like a spa treatment or a meditation loop. It’s not anything like as scary
as going under anaesthesia.’

‘Anaesthesia I can handle
,’ I signed, and I could. All of the Europa Project children had needed surgery a couple of times to correct genetic flaws in our systems.
‘This is an unknown.
’

‘Presuming that first sign was anaesthesia, I think I understood that. An unknown?’

I nodded. She really was getting better at sign.

‘Well, that’s why you have me here. Not at all
an unknown to me.’

‘Tell me about it?’

Rose looked up at the ceiling of the stass tube. The ceiling was a soft creamy plastic with vinework moulded into it, highlighted in gilt. The tube really was very comfortable – satin-of-silk cushions and this dizzying scent. I knew there were straps that would activate to hold us down once we were fully under, but right now it was just a gentle relaxation
couch. There was even a panel on the wall where we could turn on music or a holovid while we waited for the stass to be activated. But I was far too nervous to focus on such a transparent distraction.

‘Well, this is just the waiting,’ she said. ‘My tube at home was a little different – the music was automatic and the chemical scent was stronger. It has been nearly a century of development. Shame,
though. If the residual chemicals were stronger you probably wouldn’t be feeling scared right now at all.’

She’d told me about this.
‘No fear,’
I signed.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘The first few minutes are the best. It’s like all your pain and fear and sadness go away. I remember you once said I used it like a drug, but there’s no euphoria or high. It’s just a peace of mind. A clarity. Physically,
it’s just relaxing. Your body will relax, your tensions melt away. You can still move, until you’re completely under, so you can get comfortable. Everything seems possible.’ She looked a little wistful, as if she was remembering something.

‘Then come the dreams,’ she said. ‘They’re not like ordinary dreams. At least mine aren’t – I haven’t done any comparative research.’

‘Tell me
.’

‘More colourful,’
she said. ‘Deeper. You find corners of your own psyche you never expected to see. For me it all takes the form of landscapes and scenery. Clouds. Seas. Gardens.’

‘Briar Rose
.’

She smiled. She knew that sign well. ‘The truth is, when you’re in stasis you can heal all the hurt places. They smooth out, and you can fix them and patch them over.’ She looked up at the ceiling of the tube. ‘Of course,
that might mean you’ll let yourself be hurt more later. ’Cause after stasis it doesn’t seem to hurt anymore.’ Her voice became distant as she said, ‘I think … I think that may be why I let them do it. My parents. They used to tell me I knew what was best, and every time it was what
they
thought was best. So even though I knew it was wrong … I didn’t believe it. They thought it was best, so I thought
it was best. Because the hurt didn’t last. Every time they stassed me it hurt – but the very act of the stasis made me able to heal it so it didn’t hurt anymore. It was like it had never happened.’

I only watched her. The sadness on her face was etched as deeply as on her Xavier’s; just as ancient and just as profound. This was the old woman whose subconscious made her mind so beautiful. Just
for a moment, I saw her lurking in Rose’s young face. And something terrible moved in me.

I wanted her. Someone, something bigger and more real than all the superficial trivia that pervaded the minds of my peers. Even Nabiki, with all her layers of thought, was shallow compared to Rose. I wanted it. It was a sudden pang, like being struck with an arrow, and I cringed.

The movement drew her attention.
‘You okay?’ she asked, and she was young again, innocent again.

I nodded. For once I was glad I couldn’t talk. I had the perfect excuse for being speechless.

‘Okay,’ Rose said. She frowned, thinking of what else to tell me. I could see the blood pulsing in the artery in her milk-pale throat. Pulse, pulse, ticking away her life. In a few minutes that pulse would cease. Good thing I’d be asleep,
too, or I wouldn’t be able to endure it. ‘Afterwards,’ she continued, ‘it’s a bit like getting out of a bath. I know that sounds strange, but it’s as if you move from one medium into another, as if you were crawling out of water, and things – change. I’m not talking about what it’s like if you’ve been in too long. Actual stass fatigue hurts, and you’re all weak and exhausted and nothing works right.’

I almost laughed. I felt that way
now
.

‘But if you haven’t been in long enough to suffer fatigue it’s actually really nice. You feel kind of rested and relaxed, as if you’ve just had a massage or something. And your mind is really clear. Oh, here’s a trick I learned.’ She looked excited. ‘Try and remember something really sky.’ She grinned at me. ‘If you’re thinking about something just before
you go into stass, you remember it forever. It seeps into every part of your mind and you can never forget any details.’ She looked over at me. Her brown eyes were very deep in the shadows of the tube. ‘So, if there’s anything you want to remember perfectly for the rest of your life,’ Rose told me, ‘now’s the time.’

It was the way she put it. It was the way she put it and the threat of my demise
and I think the stass chemicals were getting to me. Rose may not have thought the residue very strong, but she was desensitized to it. I could already feel it working through my brain, lessening my fears, retarding my intelligence, lowering my inhibitions.

All of these are excuses, of course. In truth, I just really wanted to.

With an urgency that surprised both of us I reached over and pulled
her to me. I shifted, pressing her body down, pushing my lips down against hers in a kiss so desperate I was afraid I might shatter.

Rose was shocked. She did not try to push me off. Her mind was a torrent of emotion – surprise, horror, pity, love, even suppressed desire. I kissed her more deeply, drawing out the sensation, kissing her as she wanted to be kissed. It was marvellous, the taste
of her, the feel of her smooth skin beneath my hands. Her heat seemed to pour through me to my very bones. Oh, I hadn’t expected this. The sheer violence of her fire would have seared me if it hadn’t felt so burned
good
.

It felt wonderful to her, too, a release, as if a dam had burst. But that very fact brought her out of it. One thought superseded her mind, and that thought was,
Xavier!
She
pushed me away, gently but firmly. I lost contact with her skin, though I was still hovering half over her, her breath like a furnace against my face. Her eyes were wide with something akin to panic. I was so heated I wanted to bite her. She’d turned bright red, a Rose by any other name, and her brown eyes looked almost black with shock. ‘I’m sorry,’ she breathed. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t … I just can’t.’
She panted, her breath shaking in her throat. ‘I love you, I do, but it’s not … oh, god!’ She tried to push me off her. She was trembling.

Under any other circumstances, I would have pulled back and apologized for frightening her. These weren’t any other circumstances. I reached up and touched her cheek. ‘
Rose
.
Don’t panic. Please, hear me out.
’

There were a thousand briar walls in her mind.
Some of them tore at me, but I was getting used to Rose’s thorns. The pain she could cause me didn’t hurt any longer. Maybe it was the stass residue.

‘I can’t,’ she breathed.

‘I know,’
I said into her mind.
‘I know you still love Xavier. I know it means so much to you that he’s still alive and still loves you. You think you don’t want anyone right now, and I understand that. Under ordinary circumstances,
I’d respect it. I’d bide my time and stay at exactly the distance you need me to be – two metres or ten kilometres. It was what I planned to do. Oh, Rose, I was so willing to wait. I’d have waited years for you – decades. But the bell is tolling, and I don’t have that kind of time.
’

She slammed down on that thought, refusing to entertain it for a moment. ‘Don’t say that!’

‘Rose, listen to me.
When you open your eyes I could be dead. Within the next half hour, everything might be over.’
As I told her this I realized she’d been in denial. The words were so harsh and so shocking to her I knew she had ignored every warning Dr Svarog had given. It was one of those things she didn’t want to think about, and so had pushed away. It was as if I’d taken out a gun and held it to my head in front
of her.

‘Don’t,’ she whispered to me. ‘Don’t say that, don’t. It’s not true.’

‘You know I can’t coiting lie!’
I threw at her. This was true. In my own mind, I really couldn’t. She winced at how much despair was in that thought. I closed my eyes, holding in an emotion I didn’t want to be feeling. But she could feel it already, even though I wasn’t trying to send it to her. Fear and hunger and
desperation and just a burning, wrenching
need
for everything I knew she could do for me.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to do this to you.’

‘
You’re the most wonderful, amazing, enveloping thing I’ve ever experienced,’
I told her.
‘The most accepting, the most loving. God, you have no idea how I envy that man. How I envy Bren. To even know that I’d even been in your thoughts for
one instant …!’

‘I don’t think that way,’ she told me, desperately. ‘Not anymore.’

‘
Oh, please, Rose, listen to me. I might never have another chance. The moment this machine turns on and strange chemicals try to make sense of my biologically tortured body, I could short out entirely. My brain is cracking. Parts of me are dying by the day. I can
feel
it. I’m scared.’

God, was I scared. And
she felt it, even though I was trying not to inundate her with it. She had a sudden image of waking up from stasis with my corpse beside her, and the pain she felt raked at me with its thorns. I was being brutal, and I knew it. Had I been planning this? Yes. I had. Every night as I lay in bed dreaming of her, every day as I watched her awkward movements attain stability and grace, every half-awake
moment when I filled my overloaded mind with the visage of her, I’d been dreaming of what it would be like to feel her beneath me, feel her skin, be swallowed by her mind. Planning how I would do it. In the pool. After school. In her studio. I’d had a thousand different visions of her. And here she was, and I was so ready.
‘You know how I feel,’
I told her.
‘You’ve known it since the beginning.’

There was an angry, unbalanced thought lurking through her head, set off by her sympathy and her genuine concern. She didn’t want to have it, but it came from the part of her mind that she’d been working on cultivating since she came out of stass – the part of her that had the ability to stand up for herself. It was angry at me. Even though she didn’t want to attack me, she thought,
‘This isn’t
fair to me.’

‘
No,’
I admitted, acknowledging the thought even though she hadn’t tried to give it voice.
‘This isn’t fair to you. I wish things were different. But it’s not fair to me either. None of this is fair! But life isn’t fair – and god do I know that better than anyone.’
I gazed down upon her.
‘You know it, too.
’

‘Don’t do this,’ she whispered.

‘What are my choices, Rose?
What other
chances will I have?’

Rose’s love for me bit at her, and she started to cry.

I couldn’t stand that I’d made her cry. I was the one who brushed away her tears, I wasn’t supposed to be the one who caused them. ‘Oh, Briar Rose,’ I whispered.

She gasped in surprise. She’d never heard me whisper before. ‘You … I forgot.’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper itself. ‘You told me you could do
that. I just didn’t realize …’

To my own surprise, I was suddenly more human to her. It was as if her dog had suddenly started speaking to her, confessing he was a disguised prince. ‘I can do … anything,’ I whispered. It was true. Nabiki was destroyed because of it.
‘Just let me love you, that’s all I’m asking.
I don’t expect anything inside you to change for me. And if I survive this, I don’t
expect anything permanent. This isn’t a betrayal of anyone. Xavier won’t have to see us together, you won’t have to admit that you let me do more than touch your hand. I’ll take a moment of you, even if I never have anything again. It would be worth it. My whole stupid, inhuman, socially and biologically tortured life would be worth it if I could just have you for one moment.
’ I took a deep breath,
trying to clear my thoughts.
‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want you.’
I took my hand away and let her have her thoughts to herself. I moved my lips silently as she stared up at me through her tears. ‘I just want you.’

Rose only gazed at me for a long time. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered.

‘I can’t help it.’

‘I’m not worth it. I’m broken.’

I almost laughed. I buried my face
in her neck, breathing in the distinct, human scent of her – more delicate than Nabiki’s, enough in itself to make my bones melt.
‘I was never properly whole to start with
.’

She didn’t push me away. Hesitantly, almost experimentally, I ran my lips along her skin. I gently tasted her throat, feeling the warmth, the sweet salt taste of her pale, white flesh. It felt so good to her – too good. She
started and pushed me away, the thought,
‘Xavier!’
flashing through her again.