My sister's body was standing before me, a smile on its face. Something looked out from those familiar eyes, those eyes that had always seemed able to see wonder and beauty where I'd only seen pain and threat. Something… Was Theresa in there anymore? Was there any of my sister left in that shell of a body? Or was she gone forever?
It was almost as if Theresa-or the thing that now wore her body-could read my thoughts. "I'm here, Derek," she said softly. "I'm here. I am Theresa, but I'm more as well."
"Why?" My voice was a husky whisper, the sound of a torture victim.
She smiled. It was my sister's smile, Theresa's smile. It hurt so much I wished I could the right then and there. "Why?" she echoed. She glanced away, her brow wrinkling in the way it always did when she was thinking hard. "It would take me a million words to explain," she said slowly, "or just one."
"One?"
"Love," my sister said firmly. "That's the only answer, the core answer. The heart of everything."
I shook my head. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run. I wanted to grab her and shake her. But all I did was say softly, "I don't understand, Theresa."
"It's simple, Derek, really," she said, her voice kindly and gentle. The tone of voice made me think she really wanted me to understand, but could I trust something like tone and body language?
"Do you know what it's like to be loved?" she went on.
"Of course."
She raised a brow ironically. "Do you? Really? Loved unreservedly and unconditionally? For yourself-for what you are, not for what you do? Knowing that nothing-nothing!- can ever change that, can ever lose you that love?"
I couldn't bring myself to answer.
"I didn't think so," she went on sadly. "Mom loved us… but only if we behaved. Dad loved us… but only if we excelled. Isn't that the way it was, Derek?" She took my hand. I wanted to shake free of her touch, but I couldn't bring myself to move. "If we were 'good' children-if we lived our lives the way they thought we should live them-we were loved. If we weren't, they withheld their love."
"They always loved us, Theresa." I had to say it even though I wasn't totally convinced it was true.
"Maybe," she said with a slight inclination of her head. "Maybe they did. But they withheld the expression of that love, didn't they? And for a child, that's all that matters. Maybe for an adult, too."
"I always loved you, Theresa…"
My sister squeezed my hand. "I know you did, Derek. In your own way-to the extent of your abilities-you loved me. And I'll always thank you for that, and love you in turn.
"But… it's not enough, not when you've experienced something more."
She fixed me with her unblinking gaze. "I know you love me, Derek," she went on urgently, "but I could never feel your love. Not directly. You can't feel love. No matter what all the romance stories and trideos and songs say-you can't feel it. When people say they 'feel' love, what they're talking about is something inside themselves, isn't it? They infer the love of another, or of others. They take in what people say to them, how they act and what they do, and from that they infer that those other people love them. And from that inference comes the feeling that people call 'bejng loved.'
"Do you understand what I'm saying, Derek? It's important that you understand. The feeling we label 'being loved' is totally independent of whether you are loved or not. Don't you see? If someone actually does love you but you don't know it-you don't make the correct inference-then you don't feel that love. If someone doesn't love you, but you infer incorrectly that they do, then you do feel it. See? You're not feeling love at all, you're only responding to some state internal to yourself, to some conclusion you're making about the outside world.
"That's all I ever felt," she went on softly, "that's all anyone ever feels. I never knew anything else could exist."
"Until…" I whispered.
My sister nodded. "Until I felt the love of the Hive Queen," she said simply.
I couldn't hold her gaze. Frag, I couldn't stand any of this-to face someone who looked and sounded and felt… and Christ, even smelted like my sister, and listen to her spouting this… I wanted to pull my hand away, but I didn't have the fragging guts.
She squeezed my hand again, almost hard enough to hurt. "Listen to me, Derek," she said, "please."
"Why?" I demanded. "Why the frag should I? So you can convince me, too? So your… your Hive Queen can suck out my soul, too?"
She didn't flinch at the venom in my voice, didn't look angry. Instead she looked sad. "That's not what we do," she said.
I cringed at that terrible word. We.
She saw it, but pressed on. "We don't convert by force-by fire or by the sword. That's the way human religions are traditionally spread, but this isn't a religion, Derek. People come to this way of life because it's what they choose, it's what they want, deep down in their core."
"Bulldrek," I snarled, suddenly angry. "I found you in a fragging coma, with a fragging umbilical cord stuck into you, Theresa. That doesn't sound like a fragging choice to me."
My anger left her untouched, and when I saw that, the rage just seemed to bleed away, leaving me cold and empty. She shrugged slightly. "I really don't remember much about what led up to it, Derek," she admitted. "But I do remember what I felt when I belonged."
"Remember how? You were in a coma."
She shrugged again. "I don't know how I remember, I only know I do."
"You never talked about it. With me, with the doctors, with the therapists…"
"I know. Maybe part of me didn't want to talk about it-to remember it, or maybe to admit it. But the memories were there, Derek, they still are. I couldn't access them all the time. Mainly they came out in dreams-dreams where I'd wake up crying my eyes out because I was so lonely and empty.
"I'd travel," she went on gently. "I'd go to a new place, a new city. I'd look at the people, and they'd all be lonely and empty, too. Some of them knew it; most of them couldn't let themselves think about it. They were all alone, all of them alone. And the memories came back more often, and they kept getting stronger. And the sadness wouldn't go away."
"So you went back to them." In my own ears, my voice sounded like a cold wind blowing through a graveyard.
"Not at first," she corrected.
"Why not, if living your own life was so terrible?"
"Because of you, Derek," she told me. "Because I was afraid you wouldn't understand, you wouldn't approve."
I don't understand or approve, is what I didn't say to her. I just nodded wordlessly.
"And then I remembered something you told me," she went on, "and I made my decision."
That shocked me. "Something I told you?"
"Of course. You told me once that I should live my life with the end always in mind. Remember, Derek? You suggested it as a kind of decision-making tool. That I should imagine I was at the end of my life and looking back. Would there be regrets? Would I lie on my deathbed, praying for one chance to go back and do something-experience something, have something-I'd decided against at the time? Do you remember that. Dirk?"
Well, of course I remembered that, now she parroted it back to me. Another one of those facile oversimplifications that I seem able to dredge up on the spur of the moment. Okay, maybe it wasn't totally facile oversimplification. Maybe I believed it sometimes. When I was sitting at my 'puter, trying to bash out a few more lines of code and I knew there was a gorgeous sunset outside over the skyline of Cheyenne, for example. Which would I remember when I was on my deathbed, I'd ask myself: a soul-touching sunset or an¬other dozen lines of code? If nothing else, it was a convenient excuse to slack off, couched in me trappings of "wisdom."