Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls - Jane Lindskold [70]
“The Institute came when I was down. They said essentially: ‘Hey, you can get in people’s minds. We don’t care about how or anything. We just want in.’”
“Wait, Jersey, you told me that the Institute had lost funding. How did they pay you? This couldn’t be cheap.”
“Sarey, the ‘Institute’ you’re talking about is just one part of a much larger organization. I was working for them—research—and eventually they linked me up with Dr. Aldrich after Dylan’s accident…”
He stops, aware that he’s said too much.
“Accident?” I ask.
“No, Sarey, don’t distract me. Now, what working with Aldrich was a chance at was legit research, y’know, with a big ‘L.’ I only learned too late all the crap that was going down and by then I would have had to give it all up and I couldn’t. Can’t.”
He finishes and takes a long suck on his milkshake until the straw rattles against the bottom of the glass.
“Rested?” he says. “Let’s try another.”
We work for a while more. Some of the items are easy—others more difficult. One says nothing at all.
When we come back from the interface, I am praised by doctors Aldrich and Haas. My score is perfect—even the no-reading had been right—a brand-new item with minimal associations.
Despite my pride, I feel very drained and let them take me back to my room in a wheelchair. There I fall asleep almost at once and dream cryptic dreams.
Upon awakening, I do not immediately get up, but instead roll onto my back, reviewing the past day’s events. My concern about what happened to Dylan had been muted by the excitement of learning to interface, discovering speech, making friends with Jersey. Now it comes back in full.
What had Jersey said? I struggle to remember his exact word, “Don’t ask me about him—ask anything else.”
I whisper the words, too softly for the monitors to catch.
Between hears and yawns. “What did you say, Sarah?”
I repeat myself, “Don’t ask me about him—ask anything else.”
“Jersey said that, didn’t he,” Between says. “Funny way to put it.”
“It’s a puzzle,” Betwixt cuts in excitedly. “Must be or he wouldn’t have told her to remember it exactly.”
“Don’t ask me,” Between repeats slowly, stressing every syllable, “ask any-thing else.”
I sit up suddenly and the motion detectors turn on the room lights. Blinking at the light, I run a hand through my nonexistent hair and wish for speech. Unable to explain myself, I hug Betwixt and Between and head for the shower.
My guards, I have learned, are not precisely the Institute’s. Instead, they belong to the anonymous employer. Now that I have proven myself a cooperative patient, I am permitted to go around the building—although always with a guard in tow.
Now, I ignore the blue uniform stalking discontentedly behind me and pace the corridors, linger in the common rooms. Finally, in the dripping heat of the roof garden, I find what I have been seeking. In an ornamental pool by a stone fountain shaped like a leaping carp, I find Dylan.
Not Dylan, really, but a place where he went and where something of him still lingers just as my nurse remains in a favorite book or an artist in a painting.
The guard draws back to the shelter of a doorway within the climate control zone. Instantly, I understand why Dylan liked this place. He effectively could be alone.
Sitting on the edge of the fountain basin, I relax and let the random impressions form. The sweat beads under my wrap and rolls under my breasts, but I do not move. Slowly, less substantial than my reflection in the rippling waters, something is taking form. I reach out to it, confused by its silence.
There are no words, but I do find something: pain. The man who sat here was fighting pain of body and spirit that intertwined like the vines in the jungle around us. Fearing what I will find, I reach deeper.
My throat burns and I cup water from the fountain to cool it. The basin remembers another who did this, sputtering and choking each time with force enough to still the insects in the shrubs from their strident clamor.
Pain. A throat burned speechless? Yes.
The thing has told me all it