Page 39 of The Brightness Between Us

An hour later. Express elevator ride to the ground floor. Sharp steps through the Cusk lobby, landkeeper goons keeping pace with me as I stalk past the real koi and the projected frogs.

I bracelet-message Sri, and they’re waiting for me outside the Cusk academy hangar, a hastily packed duffel across their shoulder and my violin case in their hand.

“Thanks for the Devon Mujaba present,” I say as I embrace them.

“Thought you’d enjoy it,” Sri says.

Seeing the landkeepers flanking me, Sri doesn’t say anything more. They just look at the space elevator, eyebrows rising.

“Now let’s get the fuck out of here,” I say.

Chapter 6

I take Sri’s hand in mine as we head toward the space elevator terminal. Hand-holding isn’t something we generally do, Sri and I. Maybe I’m a little shaken. Maybe that night with Devon Mujaba has opened a new hunger inside me for physical contact. (Maybe my hands are a little sweaty, too, but Sri doesn’t seem much to mind.)

My violin case is bulky in Sri’s other hand, knocking against their thigh. I reach around and take it.

“Is this stupid?” I ask. “Sending a seven-hundred-year-old violin into outer space?”

Sri cocks their head. “If you sold that violin instead, you could house fifty refugees for a year, if that’s what you mean.”

I look at the case in my hand. “You’re really no fun sometimes, you know that?”

“Justice isn’t known for being fun, no,” Sri says with fake solemnity.

“No wonder you and Devon Mujaba are such good friends,” I say, giving one of their nipples a crank in revenge. They crank me right back, before I can covermyself. “Asshole,” I gasp.

We just manage to find our composure before the elevator doors open. Because I’m still a Cusk, we get an onyx car into orbit. Landkeepers escort us to the elevator door, and no doubt landkeepers will meet it to deliver us to theEndeavor, but in the meantime we get half an hour of privacy as we ride. Well, “privacy.” It’s a Cusk elevator, and there’s no way my mother doesn’t have someone somewhere monitoring our conversation. But we’re the only two organic bodies inside.

“Going to the ship will feel strange,” I say. “Seeing where other versions of me will be spending their lifetimes.”

Sri stays quiet. They’re a crouch-before-you-leap type, so I know I’m about to hear something I don’t want to know.

“You’re a scientist of the heart,” Sri says. “Even if you don’t feel it now, all the details about the ship will be important to you. Where you’ll eat breakfast and where you’ll lay your head. You’ll fixate on it if you don’t get some answers now.” A few weeks ago, during our latest breakup, Sri went on a tirade about my similarities to Minerva and my mother, that I never said I was sorry or that I’d messed anything up or that I didn’t know something, and that made it impossible to get truly close to me. That I was always conquesting and never just being. They’d called me a “scientist of the heart” meanly then, but this time they say the phrase neutrally, like we finally know each otherwell enough to be at peace with who we are to each other.

I certainly do know that Sri’s right that I’m still in shock, that I probably can’t trust my own instincts. I’m grateful that I can lean on them to know what’s best for me, since I can’t do that for myself. Ah. Now I know why I’m holding their hand! Why am I such a mystery to myself sometimes?

“So,” Sri says. I tense, worried that they’re going to launch into whatever next veiled critique they’re planning to drop on me, probably some version of how I’m not using my Cusk influence to save millions of people, etcetera. “Tell meeverythingabout hooking up with Devon Mujaba.”

“Ooh, gladly,” I say.

Unlucky for her, if Mother is listening in right now, she’s getting every detail of Devon Mujaba’s body. Down to the placement of each mole. I run my hand along the uniform fabric covering the back of my pelvis. “There’s a smattering there. Like a dash of pepper.”

“Sounds delightful,” Sri says.

“It really was,” I say. In the very beginning, we’d get jealous of each other’s trysts, but those days are past. Now we’re like a couple of intimacy gourmets, excited to hear about each other’s good meals.

I lie out flat, so my head is in Sri’s lap. They put one arm under my nape and the other around my shoulders. “You’re being all soft and tender, it’s totally confusing me,” they say.

“Yeah, don’t worry, it won’t last.” I move my cheek so I can feel Sri’s thigh through the thin fabric of their academy uniform. Bone and muscle and blood. Sex. One solution for the question of where to put an unwelcome feeling.

“I recorded my message to load onto the ship for spacefarer you,” Sri says. “You’d be proud. It’s polished and impersonal and not at all gooey.” Sri sucks in their breath. “Sorry to move us on in our conversation too early, but time is short and I have one last Devon Mujaba thought. But I can’t say it aloud.”

I move my head so I can watch Sri flip open their school satchel and pull out a piece of paper and a pencil. Real live vintage paper and pencil! “You’re so pretentious, I can’t take it,” I say into their lap.

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Sri proceeds to bring out a folder. The movement is awkward with my head in their lap, but there’s no way I’m moving.

When was the last time anyone used a folder, the 2200s? This one could very well be from then. Its corners are yellowed, and the cardboard cover bends in half even under Sri’s light touch.

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