Si Vis Pacem Read online

  “Smooth work. Can I get the fuck to sleep now?”

  “No.” Dee’s voice is quiet, but determined. “You need to know. I should have told you ages ago. What you felt was me and Pax communicating.”

  “Communicating how?”

  “Telepathically.”

  “Holy shit. Pax is a telepath? No wonder she hates people so much.”

  I’ve had enough of this. “I’m not, and I don’t. I only hate assholes.”

  “That explains why you hate me, then.”

  “You said it.”

  Dee cuts in. “She’s not. I am. Well, sort of. I’m just mildly telepathic.”

  Rody snorts. “Mildly telepathic? That’s not a sentence you hear often.”

  “It’s true, though. I can do a little bit. It’s not really useful. Sometimes I can push thoughts in people’s heads, but it’s gross and unethical, so I don’t. And I can talk to Pax, but only if we are touching, otherwise she can hardly hear a thing.”

  “I could feel it from over here. So could Nate.”

  “I don’t know why. It’s never done that before.”

  “How do you know? People might not tell you that their teeth are buzzing or their ears are popping. They would probably not think that it’s anything to do with you. I only figured it out because it felt like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. If you were a chord, or a color… It felt like you, anyway.”

  “I make your teeth itch?”

  “No. You don’t. I can’t really explain it. It felt like your voice, humming in my bones. I couldn’t tell what you were saying, though. Can you try it with me?”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Why?”

  “I just told you that I could put thoughts in your head.”

  “You also told me that you wouldn’t, not that you needed to say that. I trust you. And I’m curious. But if you don’t want to give it a shitting hell, was that you?” Rody sits up so suddenly he nearly topples out of his bunk.

  “Wow. Sorry. I didn’t think it’d work.”

  “It did. Very much so. Shit. Alright. And only one person can hear you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t really experimented with this much. Mostly I just talk to Pax.” She sounds sniffly, as if she were trying not to cry.

  “Do Nate! Please! Then I’ll let you get to sleep.”

  “Sweetheart, that’s up to Nate.”

  “Right. Yo, Nate? You wanna give it a go?”

  “Sure thing. Hit me.”

  After a few moments he blows a raspberry. “Nope. Just popping bubbles. It’s pleasant enough, now that it doesn’t worry me, but if you were saying anything, I missed it.”

  “Huh. Nate, my boy, sounds like whatever Dee is doing interferes with your circuits.”

  “That makes me sound like a cyborg. But yeah, sounds like it. Hah.”

  “And Paxy can only hear it if you touch her, right? This is interesting. Very interesting.”

  Rody goes off on a sermon about future experiments we ought to run, people we could enlist, and so on and so forth. He only stops when Nate threatens to strangle him with a blanket if he doesn’t let him go to sleep. I half listen to his plans, which are annoyingly scientifically accurate, but all I can think is that he can hear Dee, and I can’t. I know that Nate can’t either, but that’s different: Dee isn’t his best friend.

  I fall asleep wondering about this new life we’re carving out for ourselves. I know that it’s good for us to have some allies, even some friends. It’s been the two of us against the world for a long time, and it’s been hard work. I can’t help worrying about diluting our friendship, though. If expanding our social circle comes at that cost, then it’s way too expensive.

  It takes me a few days to snap out of my funk. Rody’s experiments indicate that he is definitely way more sensitive than me to Dee’s telepathy. As long as she establishes a contact with him, they can ‘path at any distance. If I’m with her, I can tell that she’s doing it because something inside my head hums. If I’m with him, I can tell because his expression goes soppy. He’s a giant asshole, but he is very fond of Dee, and as long as he treats her right I’m happy with that. If he ever treats her badly I’ll disembowel him, and that’ll be the end of that problem.

  Nate is completely different. He can feel that Dee is ‘pathing if he’s nearby, but he can’t hear what she’s saying, even if she touches him. He doesn’t seem to care, though. I think that’s partly because he is used to having hearing issues, but mostly just because he’s just awesome.

  He’s a lot of fun to be around. We like a lot of the same kind of stuff, which is cool, and we tend to have the same reaction to stuff we like, which is even cooler. Dee is the best, obviously, but she is very mellow, and she likes things to be calm and orderly. That’s why we get on, I guess: we balance each other out. Nate and I don’t; we wind each other up instead. It’s great having someone to be hyperactive with. Dee and Rody threaten to have us sedated on a regular basis, but they don’t really mean it. We try and save our excesses for when they are not around, anyway.

  The main bone of contention in our room is music. Rody is about as musical as a brick, and Dee only likes stuff that is happy or relaxing. Nate gets it, though: he likes the good shit, shit that picks you up and slams you around a bit, shit that makes you feel alive. We can go positively ballistic listening to the same tunes, but we know that Dee and Rody don’t share our enthusiasm and our superior taste, so we keep our musical discoveries to ourselves.

  I always know when Nate has got a new tune in his head, though, because the dude can’t keep them in. It’s worse when he’s busy: as soon as he focuses on something, he starts tapping or humming along to whatever is playing in his head. It wouldn’t be a problem if he could do it quietly, or well, but he’s tone-deaf, rhythmless, and loud. It’s a real shame, because he is really into his music. He knows he sucks at it, though, so he saves his musical endeavors for those times when there’s nobody around.

  I still recognize his singing the first time I hear it, though. I walk into our room and, after a brief moment of panic, I realize the unlikelihood of someone torturing a cat in our shower. It takes a special kind of person to mangle a punk tune, and apparently Nate is that special. I’m on my bunk and changed before I manage to identify what he’s singing.

  After a credible if tuneless rendition of “California Über Alles” and a valiant but doomed attempt at “Moon over Marin”, Nate finally emerges, still dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. His hair looks really weird: it’s plastered against his head, so smooth that it makes him looks like he’s wearing a safety helmet. He runs a hand through it to push it out of his eyes, but it all just flops back down. When he shakes like a wet dog, dripping water everywhere and still ending up with his hair in his eyes, I finally crack and start giggling. He jumps two feet in the air and twists around, clutching his chest with one hand and the towel with the other.

  “Bloody hell! I didn’t know you were here.”

  “My superpower is insignificance. People don’t notice me.”

  He smiles up at me and his eyes twinkle. His eyelashes are still wet. They stick together in uneven clumps and look about half a mile long.

  “That’s a hell of a superpower. Much better than invisibility: you can still get served in bars.”

  “Were I invisible, I could just help myself to whatever I wanted.”

  “That would be stealing, young lady. An activity hardly suitable for a future member of our illustrious Patrol.”

  “Were I invisible, they wouldn’t let me in.”

  “Were you invisible, they’d struggle to keep you out, though you might have to ninja your way through the security checks. I’m sure you’d have no problems with that. How long have you been here for?”

  “Long enough.”

  He cringes. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I don’t like to inflict my voic
e on the innocents. No classes?”

  “I’ve already turned in the coursework for this section.”

  “You’re a bright little button, aren’t you?”

  “What are you, a dull large buckle?”

  He sniggers. “Something like that. Why were you laughing at me?”

  “Your hair.”

  He runs a hand through it, achieving exactly nothing. It’s as if his eyes exerted a magnetic pull that his wet hair just can’t resist. “What about it?”

  “It’s all wet and floppy.”

  “That would be because I’ve just had a wash. It tends to make one wet.”

  “I’ve never seen you without your hair all done up.”

  His eyes sparkle. “Done up? Hang on. I’ll show you my superpower.”

  He goes to stand just under the air vent. As the warm-ish air starts to dry his hair, it starts to swell up and arrange itself into waves. They’re not random waves either: they look perfectly designed to frame his face. The face itself lets them down, but they do a hell of a job.

  “Wow. How do you make it do that?”

  “I don’t make it do anything.” He walks back over to my bunk. “We have a deal, my hair and I: I leave it alone and it does all the work for me.”

  “That’s amazing.” I stick my hand out and run a finger through his hair. I pull it out of place, but as soon as I let go it just bounces back, looking pristine.

  “Not really. I can’t do anything with it. I get it cut so it doesn’t get in my way and so I can look all martial and shit, but other than that it does whatever it wants. Your hair is a lot better.” He lifts a hand up, grabs a strand of my hair, and wraps it around his finger. “It’s so silky.”

  “So is yours.”

  “Yeah, but yours is smooth and straight.”

  “Straight is boring.”

  The door opens. Rody takes half a step in and stops dead, as if traumatized at the sight of us. Nate shakes his head, dislodging my hand in the process, and starts giggling.

  “Talk about superpowers! Did we just summon you?”

  “What?” croaks Rody.

  “Paxy just said that straight is boring, and you appeared. I believe the next line is yours.”

  Rody finally walks in, closing the door behind him. “I’m all out of witty repartees at the moment. It’s been a day.”

  “Anything I can do to improve it?”

  “Be your usual marvelous self and buy me a beer or three. I need to get out of here. Can you stand to be ogled by hordes of men with nefarious intentions?”

  “If there are ogling hordes, what do you need me for? They’ll be doing the buying. Give me five minutes. I am a bit underdressed.”

  “Not for the Peacock, you’re not, but you might catch a chill on the way there. I won’t sit and watch your admirers feed you chicken soup. I couldn’t bear it.”

  Nate grins at him. “OK, then. Clothes it is.” He opens up one of his drawers, grabs a handful of stuff without looking at it, and walks back into the ‘fresher. He boops my nose on the way in. “I won’t sing this time, OK?”

  As soon as the ‘fresher door closes, Rody marches over to my bunk and hisses at me. “Pax, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to cut it out.”

  “What?”

  “Sssh! I don’t want him to hear this. Look, I know that he’s cute and he’s sweet and he’s fun. I know he feels safe, but he isn’t. I mean, he is safe for you, but you are not safe for him.”

  “What?” I whisper it this time.

  “Don’t make him think he can have something with you if he can’t.”

  “But he doesn’t even…”

  “There’s a difference between sex and love, for fuck’s sake. Maybe one day you’ll grow enough of a heart to realize that.”

  I’m trying to decide whether to scream at him or just lump him one in the mouth when I spot the fear in his eyes. It’s pretty evident when you get past the rage. He’s not being an asshole – well, he is, but he’s not just being an asshole. He’s genuinely worried about Nate and he’s fighting for him, same as I would for Dee. I don’t know Nate well enough yet to judge whether Rody’s concern is valid, but I know that I don’t want to hurt him, not even by mistake.

  As my anger dissipates, so does Rody’s. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  “Nah, you’re alright. I needed to know. I’d tell you to work on your delivery, but I hope we won’t need to go through this again.”

  Nate stomps out of the ‘fresher then and takes Rody and his reply, whatever it was going to be, out to town. I know that Rody is being perfectly ridiculous, that there isn’t anything between Nate and I and there never could be, but his words burrow in my brain and settle there, like parasites. I do my best to ignore them, but they keep itching at me.

  The first day of the second term Rody struts his way to our table, puts down his lunch with a flourish, clasps his hands together theatrically, and declaims to his public, i.e. Dee and I: “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the most amazing person who ever lived.

  Dee nods. “And a legend in your own lunchtime. What did you do?”

  He kisses her forehead and sits down. “My dear girl, prepare to be astonished. The first thing I did was getting the two of you in the medic assist program.”

  Dee whoops and hugs him before pulling back. “Wait. We didn’t apply.”

  “You can follow in our footsteps.”

  “But I don’t want to!”

  “You’ll get to spend extra time with us in the med bay.”

  “That’s tempting, but I still don’t want to.”

  “Tough luck. It’s a done deal. It will be formative, you’ll get extra qualifications, and you’ll get paid.”

  She squints at him. “Paid? As in actual credit?”

  “Not to start with, but if you pass your qualifications you’ll be able to take on shifts in the med bay, and that pays.”

  “Oh, I like the sound of that!”

  “You would, you materialistic wench. And it’s all thanks to me. So worship me and fear my wrath.”

  Nate collapses in his seat. “Actually it’s largely due to the fact that, unlike most other students here, the two of you don’t suck. Martyn likes people who can think and speak at the same time.”

  Rody glares at him. “Yeah, well, OK. So it wasn’t all sheer nepotism, just a healthy sprinkling of it. You hadn’t applied, so I applied for you.”

  He still looks too smug for my taste, so I decide to knock him down a peg. “Is that even legal?”

  “As your superior, I’m must do what it takes to maximize your success.”

  “Rody, you are not my superior.”

  He grins. “I am now. Dontcha love it?”

  “No. And I’ve not signed up for this.”

  “Stuff and nonsense. Look, the two of you are perfect candidates. Dee is gentle, empathetic, supportive, and a joy to be with. You are pathologically precise and utterly clinical. If we spliced the two of you together and divided you in half again, we’d get two perfect med assists. Well, two three-quarter-sized med assists. Because you are so small.”

  “Am I? Shit. I’d forgotten that.”

  “Which brings us to my real achievement of the day. Nate, hold on to your seat. This will come as a shock to you.”

  Nate puts down his cutlery. “This better be good.”

  “Prepare to be amazed! In the course of my endeavors, I had to view our fair ladies’ records. Well, our fair lady’s and Paxy’s. And what I discovered is that Paxy actually has a name. Like normal people. Well, mostly.”

  The hair comes up on my neck. “Rody, don’t even think about it.”

  “Think about what? Your name? I can hardly forget it, can I?”

  I stand up. “Don’t you dare.”

  He gets up and steps away from the table, just far enough to be out of reach. That makes everything worse: half our table turns to look at what we’re up to, and the Bens start to chant, “fight, fight,” under
their breath.

  “Paxy has a name, I tell you. Judging by our Deeqa’s mournful expression, this is not news to her.”

  I keep my voice as quiet and level as I can. “Rody, if you carry on we’re going to have a falling out.”

  The message finally gets across. His grin falls and his hands come up in a conciliatory gesture. “Gee, girl. You’re serious. OK. I’m cutting it out. Your secret will die with me. Sorry.”

  The Bens groan their disappointment as we take our seats. Nate growls at them to cut it out, then he turns to me.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I hate my name, is all. It sucks so much it’s embarrassing.”

  “Why don’t you change it, then?”

  “What?”

  He pulls my hair. “If you hate it, go to a Fed office and change it. Hating something you can change is silly, and really not your style.”

  “I can change my name?”

  “Of course you can. It’s yours. The Fed only care about your CIN.”

  “That’d be cool. I shouldn’t have to, though. I shouldn’t care about it.”

  “But you do. If you have a pebble in your shoe, take it out.”

  “What do I change it to?”

  “Anything you like. Something that feels right.” He picks up his reader and starts faffing with it.

  Dee nudges me. “Pick something easy to pronounce, or you’ll regret it.”

  Rody nods. “Yeah. And something short. Like you.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m being serious. Pick a long name and everyone will just truncate it. Pick something short or something that shortens to something you like.”

  “Any more wisdom from you?”

  “Something uncommon,” says Ben Two. Predictably, Ben One agrees.

  The guys come up with a sequence of increasingly ludicrous suggestions while I rack my brains. I stop when Nate sticks his reader in my face.

  “Alya?”

  “Yup,” he nods. “Ticks all the boxes. It’s short, it can’t be mutilated, it’s composed of phonemes most people can handle, and the Terran origins are ethnically relevant, if you care about that kind of thing.”

  “That’s why you like it?”