“Yes, of course,” Marcus said. “The guards will be telling me to end the call soon anyway.” A pleading look filled his eyes. “Maybe… maybe we could…?”
They stared at one another. There was more distance between them than just pixels and space. “I don’t know,” Corbin said. “Maybe.”
Marcus nodded. “Take care of yourself, son.” He waved his hand. The image faded. The pixels withdrew.
Corbin sat listening to the humming pulse of the algae vats. After a while, he picked up his scrib from the desk. He opened his log program and made a quick entry.
October 25. Still my birthday.
“You’re pensive tonight,” Lovey said.
“Am I?” Jenks said.
“Yes,” Lovey said. “You’ve got that little crease between your eyes that you get when something’s on your mind.”
Jenks rubbed the skin between his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize I was so easy to read.”
“Not to everyone.”
Jenks leaned back against the wall with a sigh and pulled his redreed tin from his pocket. “It’s this whole thing with Corbin.”
“Ah,” said Lovey. “I think everyone’s still shaken up. Corbin hasn’t been sleeping well. He stays up late accessing his personal files. Mostly pictures of himself as a child.”
“Please don’t tell me that stuff,” Jenks said, stuffing his pipe. “You know I don’t like snooping.”
Lovey laughed. “You’re not snooping. That’s what I’m doing. You’re just gossiping.”
“Oh, well, if that’s all.” He lit the pipe, sucking air through the burning leaves. The smoke in his lungs made his shoulders go slack. “Poor Corbin. I can’t imagine being thrown for a loop like that.” He turned his head, pressing his ear against the wall. “Is that your tertiary synapse router making that click?”
“Let me check. It’s functioning normally.”
“Hmm. I don’t like that sound.” He moved to face the wall and removed the access panel. His eyes darted over the lace of blinking circuits that lay within. “Yeah, see, right here. The shunt’s worn out.”
“Save it ’til morning, Jenks. That’ll take hours, and you’ve been working all day.”
Jenks frowned. “Okay, but you wake me up if you experience any gaps in memory.”
“I’ll be fine,” Lovey said with fondness. “I can’t even tell that anything’s wrong.” Jenks replaced the panel. Lovey spoke again. “I don’t think Corbin is what’s bothering you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what is?”
“I don’t know, but I wish you’d say.”
Jenks sighed, exhaling. The tiny worklamps overhead cast beams of light down through the smoky swirls. “I’ve been thinking about your body kit.”
Lovey paused. “There’s a catch and you didn’t tell me.”
“No,” said Jenks, taking the pipe from his mouth. “No catch. This whole deal is as respectable as you can be in black market business. Even the price was fair, all things considered.”
“Then what’s troubling you?”
“Corbin’s dad. That guy must’ve spent a fortune on getting himself cloned. Somehow, he was careful enough to not only make sure that Corbin never found out about it, but that the law never found out, either. And he got away with it for decades. Corbin’s more than passable. He’s the real deal. No tweaks, no enhancements. Hell, even Dr. Chef didn’t notice until he made a point to go looking for it. And yet…”
“And yet he still got caught.”
“Yeah. After all that money and all that planning, that poor bastard’s locked up in prison, and Corbin’s lost his citizenship. And that’s after he got the shit kicked out of him by those fucking Quelin.” He sat up. “Look, we always knew getting a kit would be risky. But I’m not sure I really thought about what that meant. I mean, okay, I knew prison would suck, but I’d always figured that if the law was on my ass, I could just take you and go to Cricket, or maybe a fringe planet somewhere. Wouldn’t be perfect, but it’d be safe. But all this mess with Corbin got me thinking about what would actually happen if we got caught. Let’s say I got caught with the kit before I uploaded you into it. Okay, I’d go to jail, Mr. Crisp would go to jail, but you’d be fine. You’d still be here, on the Wayfarer, with all our friends. Kizzy could look after you until Ashby got a new comp tech, and you’d still be here when I got out. But what if we didn’t get caught until much later on, not until after you were in the kit? What if it was, like, ten years down the road and we’d stopped being careful? What if one of us said the wrong thing to the wrong person, or what if bio scanners got good enough to see what you really were? What if we got stopped by the Quelin again and they wanted to do a blood scan? I’d still go to jail, but they’d dismantle you, Lovey. When my sentence was up, you’d be gone. Not away, not somewhere where I knew you were safe. Gone.”
Lovey was quiet. “The kit’s on its way, Jenks.”
“I know.”
“And you can’t get your money back.”
He sighed. “I know. But it won’t break me. And besides, maybe we can still use it. Maybe the laws will change down the road. We could just wait until it’s safer. Or until I leave the ship, or something.”
“This was my decision too, you know. You didn’t push me into it.”
“I know. And I won’t tell you no, not if it’s what you want. But I’m scared. I’m starting to think maybe I wanted this so bad that I didn’t let myself acknowledge just how fucking dangerous it is.” He looked down at his hands. “As bad as I want to hold you, I don’t know if it’s worth the risk of losing you forever. Maybe it’s better to just go on like this and know that there’s no chance of somebody taking you away.”
The room was silent, or as silent as it could be. The air filters hissed. The cooling system surrounding Lovey’s core hummed. “Jenks, do you remember when we first talked about this? When I told you all the reasons why I wanted to have a body?”
“Yeah.”
“I lied when I said it wasn’t for you. Of course it’s for you. I do think it’d present some wonderful opportunities for me, and I imagine it to be a very good life. But it was always, always for you. I wouldn’t have thought to do it otherwise, not in a serious way.”
“But… you said. Your pros and cons—”
“Were things I came up with after I’d decided that this was something you deserved. I wouldn’t have ever mentioned it if I thought it would make me unhappy. I do have some self-respect, after all. But yes, it was for you. And if it scares you more than it excites you, then there’s no point to it. I’m happy here. I’m happy with you. Would I like a body? Yes. Am I willing to face the risks? Yes. But I’m content as is, and if you are too, then maybe that’s enough for now. Not forever, maybe, but we don’t need to rush. I can wait for the galaxy outside to get a little kinder.”
He swallowed. “Lovey, it’s not that I… I mean, I want this so much, I just—”
“Shh. Come in further,” she said. Jenks snuffed out his pipe, put it back in the tin, and moved toward the pit. He reached for the sweater lying on the floor.
“Leave it,” she said.
He could hear her cooling system shut down. “Not for too long,” he said.
“Not for too long.”
He took off his clothes and climbed into the pit, as he had done many times. He sat down and leaned back against her core, his bare skin bathed in her glow. Without the chilled air, she felt like sunlight, only softer.