Close Enough to Touch Read online

  "Interesting." Byron rubbed the middle knuckle of his first finger across his lips. "I've never encountered telekinesis that was higher than a four. I think the last person of your abilities on record lived in the last century, in Western Russia. The current highest-level registered telekinetic is a six-level in Nihon. No wonder you've always lived so far off the radar." He smiled softly, eyes full of sympathy and understanding.

  Leland's heart lurched. Understanding wasn't something he'd ever really had until he'd met Ariadne, though at first, he hadn't understood how she understood so well when she didn't have powers.

  When he had learned her secret, he hadn't known what to say or do. Some days, he still couldn't quite believe it—or that Byron was just like her. Aliens. Beings from another planet.

  Ariadne had always been like a big sister to him. Byron…was so very much not like a brother. No, Leland's feelings for Byron were stupid at best, deadly at worst. He couldn't afford to let anyone get that close to him, not with all the people who would kill to have him. Not when his powers could explode due to an excess of emotion.

  "Do you have telepathy as well?" Byron asked.

  The two abilities went together not infrequently, for reasons science still didn't completely understand. "No, thank god. What I have is already more than enough."

  Byron chuckled. "I would imagine so. Would you like an official ranking? Well, unofficial official." He smiled crookedly. "I can do all the same stuff. It just won't ever go on the register."

  "Guess it can't hurt."

  "One moment." Byron pushed away and rose, puttering around the room gathering materials to take a blood sample.

  Usually children were tested around the age of ten, sometimes sooner, rarely later. It was important to know before puberty hit if someone was going to have powers, what those powers were likely to be, and how strong—especially if their family had a history of high levels. But too many people didn't know their family histories, between the witch hunts of the late sixteen hundreds and the subsequent years of hiding, followed by years of turmoil and further hiding as the world worked to create a place, and a system, for something they had previously tried to eradicate.

  Even today, for all the G.O.D. was largely supported, there were plenty of people who simply didn't like the idea of being registered and more or less conscripted into certain jobs simply because of powers they'd been born with and had no choice over.

  As a child, before everything had gone so horribly wrong, Leland had been looking forward to being tested in a couple more years. His parents were both 5-levels, which was impressively high, since only supers generally went higher. Their powers had been 'mundane,' but that hadn't stopped him from dreaming of manifesting a great power, becoming a world-famous super hero who saved millions of lives.

  If only reality was anything like a child's imagination.

  Leland dozed while Byron worked, stirring only when he finally did the actual blood draw. When he was done, Byron thrust a bottle of juice at him, even though he'd barely drawn any blood. Knowing better than to argue, after watching Byron fuss over Greg and Dixie, Leland drank.

  Only a few minutes later, the machine that processed and tested his blood chimed, and Byron read off the results as they appeared on the computer screen. "12-level, with the gene markers for telekinesis. Congratulations, Mr. Deveraux, you're a top-tier power—supreme level."

  "Thanks," Leland said with a grimace. "Can I give it back?"

  "I'm afraid not," Byron said with another of those understanding smiles. "I would love to know the secret to taking away a power, though I feel ultimately such an ability is best left to your gods."

  "What do your people believe in?" Leland blurted, then at Byron's shocked look flinched. "I'm sorry."

  Byron shook his head slightly. "I don't mind questions, save when I'm only answering them because otherwise I'll be subjected to pain or some other torment. Do you know, in all the centuries I've been here—more than four hundred years now—no one has ever asked that? What we eat, sleeping habits, music, and all the other usual questions. No one has ever asked about my faith."

  "I never thought to ask until now. Ariadne is…well, your complete opposite."

  "Yes, she is, in some ways quite literally," Byron replied with a soft chuckle. "Did she tell you anything about us?"

  "Not really. She didn't like to talk about it. Said it was like poking at an open wound. Which was—is—fair. I certainly don't like talking about my past."

  "After four hundred years, I have learned to let go. Earth is my home now, and there are things here that I can do and be that I never would have been back home, or even on a ship that can travel the stars. It was only the second ship from my former home planet to ever do so. This would have been our first time encountering another planet with sentient life."

  "That's incredible. I always thought that would be an easy thing to find—well, relatively speaking. Isn't that one of those laws or rules or something? That other life must be out there?"

  Byron nodded. "Yes, it is, though I don't recall the name of it. I'm not a scientist, though I've picked up a lot over the decades. I've become a… what is that phrase… Jack of All Trades, that's it. Hard not to be when you're four centuries old." His brief smile then was bittersweet, and he stared unseeing at the machinery as he continued talking. "All life came from the sea, that is something your scientists have gotten right—not that anyone needs me to tell them that. It holds true on my planet and many others. That one commonality still leaves a lot of room for variety. On my planet, there are 137 countries, at least the last I knew. All but 12 of them fall under one of three organizations that parallel your United Europe and American Union. We also have a World Board similar to Earth's, which oversaw the interstellar project I was part of. We had 112 people aboard, about a third of them scientists, the rest crew."

  "You were chief caretaker, right? That's what you said before."

  "Correct. Sorry, I'm probably rambling."

  "Tell it how you want to tell it," Leland said. "I don't mind listening."

  Byron glanced at him briefly—shyly, in that oddly sweet, fragile way he had after they'd met and Byron managed to look at him for more than a second without panicking and leaving the room. Leland's heart thud-thudded in his chest and gave an unwelcome lurch.

  "As I said, there is endless variety in life. Your particular species has an entire spectrum of genders, though most humans seem to operate on a binary. My species has three genders and three only. The females, the primary males, and the secondary males." His mouth quirked. "We had the power to travel the stars, but sexism was still rampant the world over. Here, until the meteor fall changed entire cultures and sped the elimination of things like slavery, women were broadly seen as far less than men, with a few exceptions."

  Leland nodded. "Yeah, I remember that from school. Hard to keep people subjugated, though, when some of the first supers were women and slaves. People love to debate about how the world would look if that meteor hadn't fallen. Some say the world is better off that it did; others say we're worse off. I think it depends wholly on where you're standing."

  "Yes, I agree," Byron said softly, and his fingertips brushed whisper-soft across the back of Leland's hand and then were gone again. "But back to my rambling. I was a secondary male. There were other terms, in different languages; they might translate to words like beta, lesser, minor, even half. Most of us preferred the term 'neutral' or perhaps nonbinary would be a closer translation. We were looked down on in much the same way women were once looked down on here: as the gentle ones, the sensitive, emotional ones, the nurturers to be protected and kept in the home."

  Leland opened his mouth, closed it, then tentatively said, "That wasn't considered stupid and old-fashioned by the time you developed starships? Only the Old Catholic Church still holds to nonsense like that, out in their weird little no-meteor enclaves across the border where they're allowed to live on rented land in the Sioux and Pawnee nations, and the
ir numbers get smaller every year."

  Byron shook his head. "It was better in my day than it had been, but still holding firm. I was often considered a traitor to the cause because I liked the things we were stereotyped for, especially the caretaking."

  "Yeah, you're good at making a house a home," Leland said. "Even I want to stick around, and I prefer to be on my own."

  Those too-wise eyes finally met his. "Do you?"

  Leland looked away.

  "Thank you for saying that. It's good to hear. I want people to think of this as a home, insomuch as any of us can have one."

  "Home is in the heart," Leland said, eyes stinging. They were his mother's words, and until now he hadn't spoken them since her death. "Home is in the heart and with those close enough to touch it."

  "Yes." That fragile touch to his hand again. "Anyway, all of this blathering to say: the answer to your question is that my world had four primary religions and roughly 2300 smaller ones. My country mostly followed the most common, which roughly translates as the Holy Trinity. I was a bit startled to learn this planet also had a holy trinity, though it turned out to be quite different.

  "According to the Temple of the Holy Trinity, life began when a light emerged from eternal darkness, and that light came to be called the Creator. She cast out her light and molded the darkness into a sprawling paradise. Eventually she grew tired, the work of creating too much for one being to do alone. So she deposited an egg in the darkness. From it was born a beautiful red light, fierce and strong, able to carry the greatest of burdens, and so he did for her. All things she created, she gave to him to carry until they were ready to walk on their own. He was called the Carrier.

  "As time passed, they became too busy creating and carrying to pay attention to those beings which walked, and over and over again they died before they were truly ready to be left alone. So the Creator deposited another egg, this time within the Carrier, and soon after was born the Caretaker, smaller and softer than the other two, that he might be comforting and approachable to the shy new creations. Thus the world was made—with the Creator shaping life, the Carrier growing life, and the Caretaker nurturing life." Byron smiled sourly. "You can see how deeply entrenched it is that 'my kind' stay in the home."

  Leland winced. "That's as bad as being considered a monster because I have strong powers."

  Bryon nodded. "Honestly, I am something of an atheist. It's hard to find comfort in a religion that goes out of its way to remind you that your place is less. The scientific reason for our biology is simply that creating a child is extremely taxing; it leaves the female and primary male exhausted, and the primary male largely incapacitated as the pregnancy progresses. By the end, they cannot move much, and the female does all the hunting and protecting. So a third is required for childcare. In modern times, it's not quite so rigid, obviously, but old attitudes persist."

  "Yeah, they do," Leland said.

  "It was quite the reversal of roles for Ariadne and me, after we managed to make ourselves look human. We didn't know anything about this strange place we landed, and it took ages to learn the local language. But as we slowly learned, we realized just how drastically different everything was here, that the things we'd always taken as universal were nothing of the sort. It was…humbling. At that time and place, women were still very much less than men in our part of the world. Ariadne did not take well to that; I think it's part of the reason she had a much harder time adjusting than me, and why it still feels like an open wound to her. I found myself with the sort of authority and respect I'd never had before, so adjusting was easier for me."

  "I can't even begin to imagine. It's incredible you both not just survived but flourished and haven't gone mad from it all."

  "I wouldn't go that far, but you would be surprised what you're willing and able to do in order to live," Byron replied. "Now get some rest. Take this, it'll work much better than those pills you were taking before. You're lucky they haven't killed you already."

  Leland grimaced as he downed the pills Byron gave him. "There were days I didn't much care if they did, to be honest."

  Byron touched his hand more firmly then, and his eyes were full of so much understanding that Leland had to look away to keep himself from crying. Why did this man cut him open in a way nobody else in the world had ever been able to? Ariadne was his only real friend, and even she had never been able to get to him like this.

  "Thank you," he finally managed.

  "Get some rest," Byron said, and turned off the lights as he left.

  Leland lingered in the dark for a few minutes, thinking of sad eyes, understanding smiles, and a life he could never have. Eventually, though, the drugs brought the mercy and relief of sleep.

  *~*~*

  When he woke, it was to the glow of moonlight and the low, monotonous beep of machinery. There was a spike in beeps, probably signaling his change in heartbeat, and Leland sat up, feeling better than he had in ages.

  The door opened a couple of minutes later, just as he was removing wires and drips, and he looked up with a hesitant smile. "I hope—you're not Byron."

  "Or Greg or Dixie. Alas, I'm just me," the man replied in a voice that sounded the way silk felt, with an underlying purr that added a charged, teasing note to every word he said, and the barest hint of what Leland would swear was a French accent. He was ridiculously beautiful, tall and thin, moving with the grace of a model or performer. His hair fell all the way down to his ass, black as a raven's wing, and if Leland was forced to guess his heritage, he'd wager the man was biracial white and Chinese.

  He wore some sort of shimmery pink-purple lipstick, and eyeshadow that started out pink and shifted to purple at the edges. As he reached to turn off the machines, Leland saw his nails had the same gradient. The flashy makeup seemed at odds with the smart black three-piece suit the man wore, though the tie was a purple and pink paisley that somehow brought it all together.

  Leland licked his dry lips and reached for the water on the bedside table. "Who are you?"

  The man stepped back slightly so he was clear of the bed and gave a slight bow, hair tumbling over one shoulder, that smooth, silky voice rolling over Leland like cool air on a hot day. "I am Zhang Xiu Ying."

  "So…Xiu Ying, right?" Leland asked tentatively. He'd known more Nihon folk than Chinese on the streets, and the neighborhoods he'd frequented were mostly Latino and Black.

  A smile curved that shimmery mouth. "Correct. But the G.O.D. has given me the designation Oberon. That's what everyone here calls me. Beyond these walls," his voice shifted, slipping into a much more apparent, unmistakably French accent, "my current alias is Lan Bellamy."

  "Oberon," Leland repeated. "The 7-level shapeshifter."

  "C'est moi," Oberon replied. "I used to be the most impressive anti-hero in the club, even if the twins are a power level above me, but I hear that I have been knocked to second place by a 12-level telekinetic." He winked and offered a hand that glittered with jeweled rings. "An honor to meet the mysterious Minder."

  "The honor is mine," Leland replied. Oberon was practically a legend amongst—well, everybody. He was one of the few the G.O.D. didn't post a picture of because he literally could change his form whenever he wanted.

  The incident that had put him in a G.O.D. bullseye was the day Oberon—she at the time, rather than he—had managed to kill Hellscape, a member of the G.O.D. who'd gone rogue or crazy or something and started destroying Kalel City in France.

  "You'll probably change your mind," Oberon replied and winked again. Against the flashy makeup, his gray eyes almost seemed silver. "I'm told I can be quite vexing. If you're feeling strong enough, come downstairs and join the latest club meeting. Not only have you displaced me, you're apparently responsible for our latest harebrained scheme."

  Leland slid out of bed and pulled on the hoody lying nearby. He wasn't thrilled that he'd been changed while he slept, but then again, he was grateful he hadn't been stuck in jeans for the past several hours. Sleepi
ng in jeans sucked.

  He followed Oberon out of the room, shoving his hands into the pocket of the hoody to warm them up faster. Normally he'd never tolerate having his hands trapped, but Oberon was in front of him, they walked relatively narrow passages. His powers would stop anything before it could hurt him.

  Still, the tension in his shoulders didn't entirely abate until they were in the kitchen and he could prop up a corner.

  Where he promptly tried not to stare at the people speaking with Dixie—people Leland couldn't believe were right there, in the same room as him. Really, he should be used to it by now, notorious figures just showing up at Byron's place, but it was still disconcerting.

  Especially since the latest arrivals were Trick of the Light and the new guy, the one who'd managed to go head-to-head with the G.O.D., with the Magnificent Sunrise, and live to tell the tale. Countdown.

  Leland might technically be the most powerful person in the room, but all he felt was outclassed and unfit. He dealt with muggers, gangbangers, and would-be rapists. Street trash, the kind of people who'd made life miserable for him and all the others sleeping rough.

  Of the three times he'd tangled with the G.O.D., once had been a trap, the second time had been by mistake, and the last he'd been all but useless. He had nothing on any of these players. Anti-heroes, that was what Oberon had called them, though he clearly meant it teasingly, even mockingly. But that was what they were: Anti-heroes. They weren't villains, whatever the G.O.D. tried to convince the world otherwise, but they stood against the so-called heroes of the world.

  And Leland was a whole lot of nothing, except a power that made him a danger to himself and everyone dumb enough to stand too close.

  Greg came over to him, carrying a cherry soda, and pushed it into his hands. "Feeling better?"

  "Much."