Machinations (13 page)

“I'm not dead,” I remind him.

“I know.” They're the first words I've managed to get out of him. “I swear, you're going to turn me prematurely gray, Rhona. Don't smile.”

“Sorry. Just imagining you as a young silver fox. Sexy.”

He shakes his head, but his lips pucker in the makings of a smile. We always make one another smile. It's one of the qualities I appreciate most about our friendship. And yet, in the next second his amusement evaporates; he isn't done working through his fears. “Aren't you the least bit troubled by what happened?” he asks me.

“Are you kidding? I was terrified.” My arm aches from the recent memory, but mainly from the dark bruises purpling the surface. “What
did
happen, Samuel? Where the hell did that machine even come from? How did it get in the base?”

“Training accident is the popular theory going around,” he says, though his tone tells me he doesn't buy the official line. “We have a few machines onsite for military exercises.”

“That's insane.”

“Not really. They're disconnected from the main network; they don't function without a programmer's instruction. Normally, they're completely safe. We've even got extra fail-safes put into them so this sort of thing doesn't happen. To me, the fact it
did
implies some kind of tampering.”

“So what you're telling me is someone was trying to kill me. Someone flesh and blood.”

Samuel frowns. “That's what it looks like.” I nod, growing quiet. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“Not really. But I don't see how talking about it will make it any better.”

“Rhona, you can't keep everything bottled up all the time—”

“Oh, you'd be surprised,” I say, cutting him off sharply. “Look, Samuel. It's not that I necessarily want to, but I have to. I know who I am, or who I was—whichever. The point is, I know what the world expects from me now, so you can stop coddling me. Camus told me all about the broadcasts…”

“Camus,” he murmurs. “It always comes back to Camus, doesn't it?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

He comes and sits beside me, but before he has a chance to answer, Doctor Gabardine reenters the room, with Camus in tow. Or rather, it'd be more accurate to say
he
has
her
in tow, rickety on his crutches, grimacing, and leading a pack of three others I don't recognize. Two of the men are dressed in suits reminiscent of U.S. Army regulation uniforms, only black instead of green and beige. They carry an assortment of handguns holstered at their waists, as though expecting violence to break out at any moment. The third is a woman—and clearly the most important, judging by the way the other two defer to her stride.

Samuel is back on his feet, wordlessly moving out of the way before anyone tells him to, and then Camus seizes me.

“Rhona,” he says, naming me his lost love. I smile as he kisses my forehead, thinking maybe he's come around at last—until he pulls away with an empty look. The others can't see his expression from this angle, I realize. No need for him to pretend on my account, only theirs. My smile falters. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I lie. “That's what the doctor tells me, anyway. Who are your friends?”

“Evelyn Meir,” the woman says, introducing herself, stepping up and holding out her hand. Camus graciously stands aside, partly leaning against the wall to ease the pressure off his leg, but the way his tongue briefly distends his bottom lip hints at some private animosity. “Head of Churchill operations.”

I accept her hand using the arm not strapped in a sling. “I'm guessing we've met before?”

“Yes, as often as circumstances allowed. Your scientist”—she looks to Samuel who has drifted to the periphery of the group, hidden behind a white coat of professionalism—“has informed me you're suffering from some sort of low-grade amnesia. But, I'm curious. Six months in the Alaskan wilderness is no easy feat. How did you survive?” Her smile, while friendly, is now suspect. I don't trust it. I don't trust her.

“You know, I don't remember,” I say, measuring just shy of the proper amount of regret, and I think I see Camus smile.

“Well, we're just happy you're back with us,” Meir replies good-naturedly.

“I think we can all agree with that,” Camus says, reentering the conversation at a natural spot. “But for now perhaps it would be best if we postpone our meeting until a later date, once Rhona's rested some.”

Meir nods sympathetically. “Of course.”

“No,” I object. “I mean, that won't be necessary…”

“You have a concussion, Rhona,” Camus reminds me, the unkindness in his eyes rather than in his voice. “You're not at your best. Leave it for a day. It'll keep.”

I'm getting mixed signals here. Camus wanted me to convince Meir that I'm Rhona, but as I'm trying to step up, he's holding me down. Unless there's more to all this, more he's not told me yet. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and trust his strategy is coming from a place of leadership rather than spite, but I'm not feeling very charitable in my present condition.

“Commander Meir has come all this way,” I say. “I'd hate to disappoint her.”

Now I'm just being contrary, but I think I'm allowed a little juvenile behavior from time to time—especially since Camus continues to treat me like a child anyway.

“The matter is somewhat time sensitive,” Meir agrees, finding an avenue in.

I look at Camus, twitching my eyebrow, as if to say
See?

I can't tell whether he's impressed by my stiff upper lip, or frustrated by my stubbornness, but he settles the discussion by suggesting tomorrow morning at the earliest. Meir offers no further argument, and wishes me a speedy recovery before departing with her two-man squad. At a word from Camus, Samuel and Doctor Gabardine also leave.

“Would you mind telling me what that was all about?” Camus asks me as soon as they're gone. There's no heat to the words, but still they accuse me of some wrongdoing.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I respond defensively.

His brow furrows in the way it does when he's genuinely puzzled about something. It's one of a hundred details about him my memory's retained, and I'm beginning to wish it hadn't. In another moment, realization smooths the creases back out. “If you mean my behavior, it would look strange if I didn't appear to care for you.”

“
Appear
to care? God, Camus, you can be as sensitive as a rock sometimes, you know that?” I mean to leave then, but I'm a little too overzealous as I hop off the hospital bed. My weak ankle buckles, ruining my dramatic exit.

I grimace, pushing away Camus's hand when he tries to help. “No,” I tell him harshly. “Save it for our audience tomorrow.”

He lets me go, although I secretly wish he would make me stay.

Something wakes me from a dead sleep.

Initially, I'm lost in limbo, wandering through various degrees of consciousness. Upon rolling over to investigate the source of the disturbance, I meet only silence and the comforting blue glow of an underwater tableau—one of many screen settings I've discovered programmed into my “windows.” Since the dark still troubles me, the display acts as a glorified night-light, preventing me from experiencing feelings of suffocation. I also like the desert moon and canyon theme. It reminds me of New Mexico.

The sound resumes, focusing my disorganized thoughts. At first, I'm wary, thinking that maybe the muted thumps have followed me from my dreams of war. But they persist, and I'm forced to acknowledge someone's knocking on my door. At three o'clock in the morning.

“Coming,” I murmur, even before I start moving.

I throw back the thin sheet and coverlet, getting up with the languor of my half-asleep state. My body aches everywhere. The painkillers the doctor gave me must be wearing off.

Without a thought about who it might be, I palm the panel open.

Camus lifts his gaze from the floor and looks at me. His eyes are anxious. “May I come in?” he asks without preamble.

I become keenly aware of my state of dress. I'm wearing the loosest, most unflattering pajamas I could find in my drawer. They're about two or three sizes too big, decorated with the logo of some high school, and I suspect they might have been gym clothes once upon a terrible pubescent time, but they're surprisingly comfy. It's not like I'd planned on entertaining company this late—or early. But I know Camus. He wouldn't be here unless there was a reason.

“Sure,” I say, stepping aside.

He wobbles inside on only one crutch instead of two, and mumbles “Thank you,” little more than a polite afterthought. I let the door slide shut behind him, but stay near it out of instinct, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I watch him as he looks around the room, but it doesn't seem as though he's actually seeing anything. He looks strangely, heartbreakingly lost.

“I couldn't sleep,” he tells me.

“I'm sure Doctor Gabardine could give you something.”

He smiles bitterly. “She has been. I haven't been able to sleep properly since Anchorage. And now…I hardly manage it at all without the assistance of narcotics.”

I didn't notice until this moment how absolutely worn down Camus is. He's done such a good job of playing up his strengths, hiding behind a display of control, that the glimpses of vulnerability seemed like flukes more than anything. But this tiredness is something else, doggedly dragging at his soul.

“Anyway, that's not what I've come to discuss. I feel guilty about how I treated you tonight.”

“Only tonight?” I reply ungenerously, crossing my arms.

“No,” he agrees. “But tonight, when you looked at me, I saw my own cruelty reflected back. I saw a man I no longer recognized, nor care to.” I can tell this is difficult for him as he pauses, clears his throat, gathers his thoughts. “I wish I could say none of it was intentional, but that would be a lie.”

I am not nearly awake enough for this conversation.

I slowly uncross my arms. “Then, why do it? Why shut me out?”

He goes tight-lipped on me, then reaches for something around his neck, withdrawing a small chain previously hidden beneath the collar of his shirt.
Has he been wearing it all this time?
At the end of the chain, a small ring dangles lifelessly in the air.

I come closer, magnetized by the symbolic accessory. And then stop cold.

This is what Rankin was talking about, I realize, when he spoke of Camus's regret. He wanted to marry me.

No,
answers the small, persistent voice of self-loathing in the back of my head that sounds a lot like envy.
He wanted to marry
her
.

I plumb my mind, dredging for any feelings, any memories whatsoever on the matter. Did we talk about getting married? Did I know he was going to propose? We'd been together for so long—why hadn't it happened sooner? Besides, you know, an apocalypse to deal with…Try as I might, I can't excavate those memories, but I do recall some frustration. Impatience. I wanted him forever, and I wanted to know he wanted me forever, too. Or until we were both killed gruesomely by machines. The latter being more likely—as proven by my case.

“All I ever desired in this life was her,” Camus says, struggling to explain, staring down at me through red, tormented eyes. “You think you can be her, and maybe you can. Maybe you can be exactly what the world needs. I don't know. But I realize…now…why Rhona didn't let me in on her plans before. On some level, she must have known you can't re-create love in a lab.

“And yet, I keep thinking, why not? Why not pretend for a while? What's the harm?” His fingers tremble at the side of my face. This face that has caused both of us so much trouble. He leans in, our foreheads almost touching. “I think: maybe I can forget.”

I can feel his breath on my lips as he speaks in his warm, tortured voice. His eyes are closed. He's somewhere else, imagining us. I wish he were here instead, easing this atmosphere of regret.

“But I can't. I
can't
forget.” He stresses this point as he reopens his eyes and delivers the final blow. “I can't love you like I loved her.”

I don't realize I'm crying until I attempt to speak, whispering, “Try?” I taste the tears streaming down my face.

“I'm sorry, but you deserve more than a last year's love. It would be unfair of me to keep your hopes up.”

I can't tell whether he believes the things he's telling me, or if he's trying to convince himself in an effort to quash feelings he's unable to confront. I don't know whether this is him trying to be noble or being a coward, and quite frankly, I don't care.

“How do you know?” I say. “Even if I'm not the same woman, that doesn't mean—”

“Because when I look at you, it all comes rushing back. Every memory. Every feeling. All of it. And I want to—” He cuts himself off midsentence, stopping the momentum of his passion by taking a physical step back, or trying to. With only one crutch, it's awkward, and painful.

“
What
are you so afraid of, Camus? Just tell me! Please.”

He stares at me, mouth slack. Right when I think he's finally going to open up to me, he answers instead, “It can't be helped. I shouldn't have brought this to you.”

Camus starts to leave, having said his piece.

I move into his path, even though it causes me pain, my own injuries objecting to the movement. “No,” I say firmly. “You're here for a reason. You came to me, Camus. And I came back to you. That means something. That
means
something,
Camus.” I say it twice because I want him to believe it as much as I do.

“You just don't give up, do you?”

“Nope.” I swipe at my cheeks, trying on a smile. It feels funny.

He shakes his head. “Well, perhaps this once you should.”

As he steps around me, something inside me snaps, loosing a creature of rage and grief.

“So that's it?” I say angrily to his back. “You woke me up in the middle of the night for that? Whatever
that
was? It sure as hell wasn't an apology.”

He doesn't turn around, but I hear him exhale. “Please. Don't make this difficult.”

“Me?
I'm
making this difficult?”

I'm deliberately baiting him, looking for a fight. I can handle a battle. I can take war and destruction and the end of the world. What I can't stomach is oblivion, this emotional dead zone where neither of us can seem to say what we mean, or love each other the way we should.

“I know you're here for a reason other than insomnia. So what is it, Camus? To see if you still feel something?” If he'd been facing me, I would've poked him in the chest.

He's stiff and silent, letting me rail against him. It infuriates me even more.

I step closer. “Well, congratulations! You're emotionally dead inside. I guess you win.”

“Is that what you think?” He whirls around to face me, barely using the crutch at all, eyes dark and primal and full of pain. I'm actually afraid I might've gone a step too far, but I'm too proud to back down at this point. “That I've made this all about me?”

“Isn't it?” I shout. “Isn't everything?”

“Of course not.”

“Poor,
poor
Camus!”

“That's not fair.”

“Then
what
? Why the white flag?” My voice breaks, and I hate it. “Why now?”

“Think about what you're asking me. Think about what you want.”

“I want you!”

But that's not all.

Not by a long shot.

I want things to go back to the way they were. I want to give everyone their lives back: Ulrich, quite literally; Samuel, the years he wasted on a broken science project; Zelda, the man she lost for my vanity and puffed-up pride, for the insane belief that one life is worth more than another; and Camus, his heart, his ability to love.

I want to be able to say to him, “I'm sorry,” and tell him it's going to be okay, and have him believe me. I don't want this tragic figure, this resigned version of the man I knew. I want
Camus.
I want his smiles, and his laughter, and his relentless, ridiculous determination to make me love poetry and classic literature as much as he does. I want us to be okay. Or if not
us
, then just him and just me, separate but equally happy again, orbiting one another's lives as friends if we can't be lovers.

I want all of my memories, or none of them
.

“And,” I add more sedately, exhausted by emotion, “I want you to stop hating me for something I can't fix.”

“I don't hate you,” he says, so quietly that at first I'm not sure I've heard him right.

“What?”

“I don't hate you. I never did.”

“Great. I don't hate you, either. So where does that leave us?”

His brows are heavy, weighted with thought. He doesn't know. Well, neither do I. But someone needs to say something soon or we'll be here all night. Not that I expect to sleep well after this, if at all. My insides are twisted, my stomach full of acid and old, unprocessed feelings.
Maybe that's it
, I think. Maybe I just have to say it. Get it out in the open. Then I'll be able to breathe again.

“I'm still in love with you, Camus.”

“Why?” he asks in a small voice, almost as if he's fearful of the answer I'll give him. “When I've been so abominable to you? That you would say that…” He shakes his head, visibly perplexed. “Why not Samuel? Or anyone else for that matter?”

“Oh, you know, I decided I'd put everyone's name in a hat and yours was just the name I pulled out.”

He sighs. “Rhona, can't you be serious for one minute?”

We stare at each other, both aware of his slip.

I seize him by the folds of his coat, drawing him close, or at least preventing his retreat. He lets the crutch fall, clattering to the floor. His hands fold over mine, initially resistant. Then our fingers interlace, fitting together perfectly, and we're not just holding each other, we're holding on to each other.

I think about kissing him, smashing my mouth against his and taking what I want, getting back what we've lost, and I see the same desire reflected in his eyes.

But then he begins to disentangle himself from my arms.

“This is wrong,” he says. It feels like he takes some of me with him. I don't understand it, how we can be two terribly different people and also one entity. “I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I let myself love you—if I love you, then I've lost her. Well and truly lost her.”

“I don't understand.”

He grabs me by the shoulders, not gently. There is urgency in his eyes, need. “If you're Rhona, tell me about how it was before. Tell me about riding the London Eye at Christmas and wandering the empty streets at midnight afterward, bundled against falling snow. Or the summer we spent in Cannes where you were burned as red as your hair and wouldn't let me touch you for a week. Tell me about the first time I kissed you. Our first fight—
any
fight, for that matter. Tell me how you felt the first time we made love. Or the last time.”

The passion in his voice robs me of the ability to speak without bursting into tears. If I could open my mouth, though, this is what I would tell him:

That night in London was the first time I ever saw snow—it doesn't snow in New Mexico, at least not where I was from, and a healthy diet of romantic comedies had me convinced it was a sign. We were meant to be. I know, I know, but I was young and freshly loved by an attractive man with an English accent. How could I not fall prey to a few girlish fantasies?

And I would tell him:

In Cannes, I only got burned because I wanted to show off my new bikini for you at every available opportunity, because I loved the way your eyes drank in the sight of me, and the way your fingers answered the call of my skin.

And maybe I would confess that I didn't remember our first kiss, or the first time we made love, but I remember the last time, with his hands skimming my hips, and my legs locked around his waist, and his mouth panting against my neck, repeating my name like small bursts of gunfire. I remember smiles. Camus smiling afterward, and me smiling, the both of us smiling like fools, and forgetting—like fools. Forgetting for a moment that we were supposed to be dead, that we would be dead somewhere, along with ninety percent of the world if not for luck and my mother's connections and my impulsiveness, and forgetting how one day we would end up dead anyway, whether gripped by machines or old age. But when I was with him, the thought of death couldn't touch me.