Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

The handle stilled; there was a knock.

Sav shifted his weight and his cot creaked, but he didn’t answer.

“Sav?”

He was surprised to hear Liis’ voice. She was back already. How many days had it been? He’d lost track.

“I want to talk to you.”

Sav brushed his hair back with his fingers. It was getting long, down over his forehead and almost to his eyes. He hadn’t cut it since they’d returned. About a week ago he’d stopped shaving, and his face was covered with the beginnings of a thick, dark beard. “What do you want?” His voice was raspy, unused to speaking; his stomach complained. During the last two days he stayed locked in his room, leaving only momentarily to relieve himself in the hall outside.

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

Sav swung his legs over the edge of the cot; the floor was cold beneath his bare soles. He pulled on a pair of shorts and padded over to the door. Snapping open the lock, he opened the door a crack. Liis was framed in the gap. She wore plain grey coveralls; her face and arms were flushed, her hair damp, like she’d just stepped out of a shower. She stared at him through the narrow gap.

“Can I come in?”

Sav looked past her, saw the corridor behind was empty. He pulled the door marginally wider, then stepped behind it. As soon as she was through, he shut and locked it.

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” Sav pushed past her and sat on his bunk. Propping his elbows on his knees, he lowered his head, and began rubbing his scalp. His hair was greasy and damp with perspiration.

“Josua told me you’ve been in here for the last three days.”

Sav said nothing; he continued massaging his scalp.

His cot sagged as Liis settled next to him. “I guess he was right. About Nexus, I mean.”

Sav refrained from commenting; but his hands stilled.

“He said you wouldn’t talk to him.”

Several times Josua had been down to Sav’s room and tried to speak to him. But Sav had ignored him, refusing to listen to him or to answer his persistent knocks.

“I know you think there’s nothing we can do, Sav. But it’s not over.”

Sav looked at her at last. Even sitting she was half a head taller than he was; her blonde hair, cropped close to her skull when they had first set out, was now almost finger length. She looked paler than he remembered; her scars seemed to have faded into the whiteness of her skin.

“The other crew are here now. And Hebuiza and the other Facilitator, they know a lot about Nexus. It was part of their job. To gather intelligence.” She shifted her weight and the cot creaked; Sav could smell the odour of the disinfectant soap rise from her skin. He guessed she must have returned within the last few hours. “We’re meeting tomorrow in the boardroom to discuss the-” she hesitated, found a word, “- the situation.”

Sav blinked; he looked up wearily. “The situation? I think I already have a pretty good understanding of the situation.”

“It’s not hopeless. Josua told me. Come tomorrow, Sav. They’ll explain.” Liis’ thigh pressed against the length of his, her knee extending a good ten centimeters past his. He felt the insistent pressure of her leg, the tension in it. Unexpectedly, she touched him on the cheek, ran her finger along his jawline, following the twists of his officer’s scar until her finger was lost in his beard. Then, using her other hand, she pulled Sav’s hand up to her face, placed it on her cheek amidst the melange of swirling lines and shapes. Sav felt the rough ridge of her scars, felt his pulse in his fingertips. “We need you, Sav,” she said. “I need you.” She lowered her hand, let it rest on his thigh. “We don’t have anyone else left.”

Sav’s heart quickened; surprisingly, he had an erection. Only moments before he would have thought this impossible. He had believed himself completely numb, his nerve endings dead, his brain incapable of any sort of desire. But his body remembered. He watched his hand slip from her cheek to her neck, tracing past the hollow of her throat and down onto her breast. It moved like it was animated by an intelligence other than his own.

“Tomorrow morning, Sav,” she whispered, leaning closer, the warmth of her breath singing in his ear. “He wants to meet with us, to explain.”

Sav’s head nodded as if of its own accord; he shivered. She pulled away from him, pushed herself to her feet, and Sav looked up in panic, afraid she would leave. But she wasn’t leaving; she was undoing the fasteners on her coveralls. In a moment the baggy garment lay on the floor around her feet. Her body was hard, her breasts small with large nipples, her hips narrower than he had imagined. Stepping out of the circle of cloth, she moved between Sav’s knees, placing her hands on his shoulders; the scars on her face were vivid, writhing with a life of their own. She pressed her breasts lightly against the skin of his forehead, like a compress. Then she leaned back.

“Stand up,” she ordered him.

The scent of her rose from his sheets; the taste of her was still in his mouth. Lying next to Liis in the dark, backs barely touching in the small space of the cot, he wondered, Why? Why had she done this? Their lovemaking had been odd, his actions frenzied, desperate, a release he hadn’t known he needed; hers had been controlled and deliberate, though he hadn’t realised it at the time. Now, he could see that. She had been responsive, but in a flat, mechanical way. Like she was playing a role. Or following an order.

Had she decided to do this on her own, or had Josua sent her? Did it mean anything to her?

Sav tried to pretend it didn’t matter. But it did.

Careful not to wake her (or was she asleep, for she lay inert on her side, breathing slowly and regularly, but not deeply), he rolled over so he could see her pale form next to him. Reaching out, he held his hand over the hollow above her hip. Then he lowered it, gently touching the warm plain of her skin, savoring it, this his last, tenuous connection to the world.

The door was half open. Standing in the corridor outside the boardroom, Sav strained to hear the unfamiliar voice. But the man who spoke did so softly and with an annoying hitch to his speech. All Sav could make out was the occasional word. Whatever the thread of his discourse, Sav couldn’t follow it. He took a hesitant step towards the door, stopped. What am I doing here? he thought. It’s pointless. Liis is wrong. There’s nothing we can do to save ourselves. He began to turn away, back towards the elevator, when the door swung wide.

“You must be Sav.” In the doorway stood a man with dark brown skin. Thinning silver hair covered his head; a similar tuft spilled out from the collar of his blue undersuit.

“Yeah,” Sav said. “That’s me.” Inside the room, the soft, halting voice still spoke.

“I heard a noise out here.” The man stared at Sav unabashedly, appraising him; his brown eyes were large and penetrating. He was half a head taller than Sav and looked solid, like he worked hard to stay in shape. “Penirdth,” he said at last, extending his hand. “I’m the Captain of The Viracosa.”

Hesitantly, Sav gripped the other man’s hand. He noticed black crescents of dirt under his own nails and felt a flush of embarrassment, suddenly aware of how unkempt he must appear.

“We’ve just begun,” Penirdth said, stepping to the side.

Sav shuffled forward, passing through the doorway. Inside, he blinked in bright light. The voice he’d heard from the outside of the room had fallen silent. Several people sat around an oval table easily large enough for twice their number; all stared openly at him.

“Sav!” Josua rose from his seat at the head of the table. “I’m glad you decided to join us.” He indicated a chair to his left. Sav numbly walked the length of the room and dropped into the seat. Liis, who sat on Josua’s right, glanced at Sav, the scars on her face pale and lifeless like faded stains, then looked away, folding her hands in her lap. Ruen, who sat next to her, affected an air of disinterest; with his left hand he toyed with the head of his cane, turning it idly. The other people in the room were strangers, crew members of the returned ship, The Viracosa.

“You’ve met Penirdth already,” Josua said, nodding at the man who’d settled into the seat at the far end of the table, opposite Josua. “To his left is Binlosson, his second.” Slouched down in a chair was a short man with close-cropped hair. Thick knots of muscles showed clearly beneath the tee-shirt he wore and the tendons in his neck stood out rigidly, looking like they might pop at any moment. Narrowing his eyes, he nodded sullenly at Sav.

“Next to him is Mira, a mission specialist assigned to The Viracosa. She’s a geologist and a metallurgist, consulting in the negotiation for rare metals.” A plump woman stared at Sav from beneath a nest of wiry red hair; her eyes were melancholy and looked like they’d been reddened recently by tears. Other than the corners of her mouth tightening marginally, she offered no greeting.

“And this is Yilda, their Facilitator.” He gestured at a man in an iridescent blue undersuit sitting on the other side of Penirdth. Much to Sav’s surprise, this man looked nothing like Hebuiza-nor any of the other Facilitators he’d ever met. His pale face struck Sav as pampered, soft and round and unmarked, like nothing in life had managed to leave an impression there; his body was beginning to show the signs of middle-age, with a slight thickening around the waist. On each finger he wore an extravagant ring and round studs ran the length of his chin like a tiny, golden beard. The man conveyed the impression of effete corruption. Yet there was no doubt he was a Facilitator: atop his scalp a network of multicolored filaments lay flat like limp, greasy hair that had been combed crosswise over a bald spot. He levered his body forward in an abbreviated bow. When he opened his thick lips in a lop-sided smile, Sav could see his teeth had been carved into what appeared to be tiny human figures.

Josua resumed his seat without introducing the last man to Yilda’s right. Abruptly, Sav realized why. It was Hebuiza. This was the first time Sav had seen him down here, in the facility, without the protective fabric of his black suit wrapped around him. The Facilitator’s own work had shown the pointlessness of that precaution. Now that they all shared the same death sentence, he had traded in his suit for loose shorts and an oversize tee-shirt that accentuated his bony frame. The dark box, once attached to the outside of his suit, was now fixed to his chest with a harness. A clutch of cables wound from the crown of his head to disappear behind the box. A single wire diverged from the others, crossing the gap between the two Facilitators. It disappeared behind Yilda’s back. On the table, halfway between Yilda and Hebuiza,