Pandora: Liminal Space Book 2

Chapter Forty

"You'll just feel a little pinch..."

"That is not a little pinch," Garrett said through gritted teeth. "That's a big fucking pinch inside of my skull."

"I offered to put you out," Dr. Reynaud reminded him as she attached the optic nerve to his new left eye. "We could stop with this one for today, you know. You could do the other one tomorrow, Garrett."

"Once is enough," he groaned, "just finish it fast."

"One more minute," Dr. Reynaud promised. Garrett felt the forceps move to his right socket, heard the scrape of metal on metal and then felt the cool dampness of his new eye being inserted into his head. There was another sharp pinch, the slithering sensation of tubes withdrawing and then a damp cloth was wiping at his cheeks.

"A little seepage," Dr. Reynaud murmured, "but overall I think it went really well." Once she was done she put a mask over Garrett's eyes. "No using these until I'm sure the transfer has settled. You have to stay here in recovery for six hours. Once the mask comes off you should expect light sensitivity to be a problem for a few days, and remember that the color of the irises will change a bit."

"Six hours?"

"Six hours," Dr. Reynaud affirmed before walking away.

"Lovely." Garrett kept his face neutral until Rickie was gone, then sighed. Six hours. It wasn't that he hadn't expected that, but Jonah was still at work and Cody was playing at a friend's new house "outside," so Garrett was alone. Which meant he'd be bored. Yeah, he had holos and books he could listen to, but nothing was so entertaining these days as his guys.

Ah, well. Time for some preemptive personal psychotherapy. Garrett opened up his journal, which he'd grabbed off of the bedside table before being brought to the infirmary.

"Ready to record?" the cartoon voice boomed.

"Ready."

"Journal record number forty-four, recording."

"So, I now have the attention span of a six year old," Garrett told his journal. "I blame Jonah completely. Two weeks of living with him and Cody and anyone would be ready for the next great thing after fifteen minutes. Cody is exhausting and don't ever let anyone tell you differently. He's also great, don't get me wrong, but I have no idea how Jonah is raising him on his own. Then again, when the village rejects you, what can you do but go on?"

He stopped for a second, considering how he wanted to record the next part. Pissy and annoyed was definitely an option, but that wasn't how Garrett wanted to immortalize himself. "It's finally their turn to get a house Outside. Cody's really excited about it; they went looking at their options on Jonah's last day off. I didn't go with them. It's not like I could offer an opinion on wherever they're going to be living, I was blind at the time. They both wanted me to go anyway, though...

"They want me, and I love them, but I can't stay here," Garrett murmured, feeling the bone-deep ache of melancholy settle into him. "I just can't. This place isn't me. The entertainment is minimal and insipid, the luxuries are practically nonexistent and there aren't very many options for enlightening personal discourse outside of holo films. There's no university here, there are very few options for continuing education, there's no real way to travel except by leaving the fucking planet, and that's not advised more than twice a year due to 'potential health risks' for naturals. And it's not like Jonah and I could go anywhere without Cody.

"Actually, you know what I really want? I just want to freeze things right now. With all of us living together on the ship, no pressure to integrate into Pandoran society, all of us healthy—you know, mostly—and my family safe. Now is great. Now is...it's almost perfect." It's so close to perfect.

Garrett rubbed his shoulder absently. He had a vague suspicion that if Wyl was here he would be punching Garrett's arm right now and giving him advice that he didn't want to hear but that still had value. Fuck, but Garrett missed him. Wyl and Robbie and his dad and Claudia. Everyone.

"Hey, doll."

Garrett immediately shut off the recorder, turning towards the source of the voice. "Who's that?"

"Who do you think, doll?"

Garrett smiled despite himself. Nothing lifted you out of the blues like a snarky teenager. "Tamara Carson, I presume."

"Yeah." Her tone was swollen with the sullenness of someone who had no desire to be doing what she was doing, but did it nonetheless.

"And you're here to...what, insult me into feeling better?"

The girl blew out an exasperated sigh. "No. I have to do mandatory community service and I could either do it on ship in the infirmary or at the kindergarten out in the Box. And I hate it out there."

"In the city?"

"It's not a city," Tamara scoffed, "it's a fucking block. And Pandora City is a stupid name for a capitol anyway."

"Yeah, I hear you," Garrett said noncommittally. "Why do you have mandatory community service? Did you break into another ship?" The silence provided its own answer. "What, again? Really?"

"It's only the second time I've ever been caught!" Tamara replied hotly, coming a little closer. Garrett heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. "I've broken into dozens of ships without anyone knowing. You just got lucky that one time."

"Lucky?" Garrett arched a pale, barely-there eyebrow. "You were breaking into my ship in the middle of a room filled with thousands of people. And I don't care how good your friends are at spotting, which by the way they weren't, nobody is going to ignore a large group of loitering teenagers who are trying to look innocent."

"Yeah, well...maybe. I was in a bad mood that night."

"I could tell," Garrett said, "but being in a mood is no excuse for doing sloppy work. I take it that you got caught this last time?"

"Yeah." The words seemed to pour out of her suddenly. Garrett wondered if it was easier to speak to him because he was still technically blind and couldn't meet her eyes, or if it was just because he was taking the time to listen. "I would never mess with one of the regular runners because I know the pilots need those to be solid all the time, but I'm so fucking bored in school here and my dad is always busy anyway and I already knew I could break into your ship, so the only other private vessel I could find was Senator Dowd's.

"I got past her first couple layers of security and made it all the way into the ship but then her thermal sensor ratted me out. She and my dad had been having dinner over some kind of planning meeting and the security officers brought me right to them and I thought my dad was going to lose it. They're thinking about expanding into a new area," Tamara added casually. "I bet my dad wants to name it Carsonville, because then he'd have left something behind that would last. He wants Pandora to be his legacy."

Garrett couldn't help snorting a little.

"I know, some legacy, right? I told him he should have another kid if he wants someone to carry his name for a couple centuries, and then he told me that I was enough and why would I think that and blah blah blah, but it's true! He always wanted his kid to go into the military. Know what a natural can't do? Go into the military." Garrett heard a low thump, like something being kicked. "We also can't become exploratory scientists, medical doctors, government pilots or even colonists for any place other than this rock. We can't become professional athletes because our bodies can't take the training and competition. We can't learn deepwater diving or mining or spend too much time in a weightless atmosphere. We can't do anything cool. Everything about us sucks."

Well, that was a low pronouncement if ever he'd heard one. "When I was a kid I was put into a mental hospital for a while," Garrett said casually. "One of the other kids there was a natural. He hadn't done anything stupid to himself like I had, he was just depressed, and we got to know each other while I was there. He was incredibly smart, a lot smarter than me, which I say with all due modesty makes him a genius.

"I kept up with him afterwards. He ended up getting hired by the government to be a covert operative in the central system, searching out slavers who were selling and transporting people to the Fringe. Slavers like targeting naturals, even though they don't live as long under rough working conditions, because naturals kind of slip through the cracks, you know? A lot of them are ashamed of their condition so they tend to be reclusive, or work out of their homes. A lot of them don't have families. It makes them much easier targets than the average Federation citizen. They're much less likely to be missed, and less likely to be searched for once they are missed. The last time Rory and I spoke he was retiring after a very long and satisfying career helping thousands of people."

"So he was like a Federation spy?" There was a note of interest in Tamara's voice.

"Yep. He was totally innocuous looking, you know? Usually he played up the "poor little me" natural thing so he could lure people in, and then once they fell for it, they never got away. Rory was an amazing guy. He could break into almost anywhere, he was a master of disguise, he was a trained pilot and a sniper and he could make explosives out of anything—"

"They taught him how to do all that?" Tamara broke in.

"Most of it. Some of it he picked up living on the Fringe for over a decade. Pandora," Garrett waved one hand around as though to encompass their current situation, "is on the Fringe but not really in the Fringe, if you take my meaning. Only one small colony with a highly specialized population? Not a good place to set up a smuggler's den, not when the weather is so damn bad all the time. But there are other places out here that are crawling with pirates and smugglers and body snatchers and slavers and a whole host of perversions that I'm sure you'd rather not hear about."

"No, you can tell me!"

"No, seriously, you don't want to know, you won't sleep for a week," Garrett promised her. "How about I tell you how to beat a thermal sensor instead?"

"I already know about reflective blankets," Tamara sighed. "It was a tight fit getting into her ship as it was, I would just have torn a blanket up."

"Next time use thermal paint."

"Isn't that toxic?"

"It isn't when applied over a bodysuit," Garrett replied. "You won't be able to make a proper reflective suit out here, but I know for a fact that the science lab has gallons of that paint stored away. Spray it on over some tight-fitting gear and add a facemask once you get on board. As long as you're in and out in less than five minutes, most thermal systems won't pick up the heat of your breath."

"Cool." The chair scootched forward a little more. "What else?"

They kept talking until Jonah showed up hours later. He was apparently just in time to hear Garrett detailing to Tamara how to jury-rig a personal antigrav unit out of an old ship's compressor and a plastic sheet.