Kinesis Read online

  Good boy, Toto.

  "I've been looking for that my whole life," Waverly said. "That kind of… instant connection, the way we just fit together. Okka was the answer to a question I've been asking the universe all my life. And it was all just, what, a trick? A lie? Some kind of intricate psychic con artistry?"

  Atur laid a hand on his shoulder in consolation. "It is what Mimica do."

  Waverly… didn't know whether he wanted to believe that, or not.

  Atur turned to go. "I must alert my other ships to the events here."

  Waverly blinked. "Why, what?" He was having trouble tracking events outside his own heart. But he knew he should be trying.

  "We must increase our focus on this section of the blockade. The Cewri are our enemy, and may now focus their attention here. But more than that, the Avlan crown has some stake in the safety of your world. We are protectors of all the worlds populated by those like us."

  "Humanoids."

  Atur gave a small smile. "As good a word for it as any." He examined Waverly's face for a moment. "Be at peace, Waverly Kemp. Many have fallen prey to Mimica. Many noble and intelligent minds. It seems my broodmate was among them. It is no reflection on your character that such a predator chose you as prey."

  Waverly saw that Atur believed what he was saying wholeheartedly. But there had to be something more going on here.

  "You think this Mimica put the whammy on me and now I'll do exactly what they want?"

  "If you've kept your own will," Atur said, "you are luckier than most. But I don't see the warning signs I've been taught to look for all my life."

  "We only—touched—for a moment."

  "Just long enough to confuse." Atur nodded. "It does happen."

  Waverly made a moue. "Can I ask something? Can you leave Okka to me?"

  "This is your world," Atur said, inclining his head. "You should choose how this threat is dealt with."

  Waverly blinked. "Did you somehow get the impression that I'm, like, the king of anything? Because I'm not the king of anything."

  "Are you certain?" Atur asked. When Waverly couldn't formulate a reply, Atur clapped him on the shoulder once more, and then he really did leave.

  *~*~*

  It is what Mimica do.

  Atur's words echoed in his head. There was no grey area in that, no chink for a light of hope to shine through.

  Waverly stubbornly maintained one. He would not let it be extinguished, even though the weight of the universe seemed pressed against it.

  Waverly had gone up to his apartment and made a couple of attempts to fall asleep, but mostly he paced, up and down in front of the windows that looked out over the glowing city, and tried, in turn, to think and not to think.

  Okka had warned Waverly that xe was dangerous, that Waverly should be afraid of xem. Was that just one more half-truth, one more hint of authenticity to add to the con? Or was there something else going on there?

  There was no way to know. Not now. Not without Okka here to answer his questions or render them moot.

  He sighed, flopping into a chair. "Toto, I need a drink."

  Toto rattled around in the kitchen for a minute before walking out with a tray balanced on his chassis, containing leftover peanut butter cookies and milk.

  "This is not what I ordered," Waverly said. "I'd like to lodge a complaint."

  Toto, not dignifying that with a response, brought his chassis level with the tabletop and transferred the tray, then nudged the cookies closer to Waverly.

  They'd been in the freezer for a while (the only way to make Grammy's peanut butter cookies was in ridiculously large batches), but Toto had nuked them and they smelled amazing.

  Waverly relented, reaching for one. "Well, as long as they're here," he said. "Rather be having them with Irish coffee, though."

  "Unfortunate," Toto said without sympathy.

  "Need to send you back to obedience school, ya mutt," Waverly said, but he gave Toto's head/hand an affectionate nookie. Toto leaned into the touch.

  "I did good with you, huh," Waverly mused.

  "I like to think so," said Toto with some pride.

  "Maybe I shouldn't have had to, just to find someone I could walk in step with. Have I been reaching too far? Am I a mad scientist? …the man asked the life he'd created in his lab. Don't answer that, Toto. I'm pretty sure I won't like the answer."

  Cookies, unlike alcohol, weren't going to shut down his brain. So he thought about what he really didn't want to think about, and tried not to fall into despair over what he'd lost—or what he thought he'd had, and maybe never did.

  "Have I been asking the wrong question?" he wondered aloud. "Looking for something that doesn't exist? Are people just—not meant to get that close to each other?"

  "Waverly," said Toto, "It's not an unanswerable question. We get close, don't we? We keep trying. We learn ways to listen to each other better, to anticipate each other, to be more in step."

  Waverly patted Toto's appendage again. "Yeah, buddy," he agreed. "Yeah, we do. We're great. But I had to build you special for that. What does that say about me? That I'm too weird to work with anyone human? Or that I'm looking for something that no one else needs?"

  "What that says about you is that you're a genius," Toto countered. "Humans spend so much of their energy looking for that kind of match. For people compatible enough that they can live in each other's skins without going nuts. You just have more options than other people for finding that."

  "So, you think, what? Okka was just showing me something that all humans would have fallen for, hook, line and sinker?"

  "I trust your perception, Waverly. What you felt… not just in that moment, but for Okka, over all the time you spent with xem… it was real."

  Waverly huffed. "I've been wrong before, Toto."

  Toto leaned in, tilting his head/hand pointedly to emphasize his words. "I had my doubts, at first. I knew something was missing from my picture of xem. Xe was always something of an oddity among humans. That came to a head with the incident with Okka's pet. It's all explained by Okka's background as Mimica. And in the time xe has been here, I've learned to trust xem. If I've become any judge of character at all… you're not wrong now."

  "Well," said Waverly, "I trust you."

  "And I trust you. On the rare occasion you like someone, you're usually right to."

  Waverly let out a breath of laughter. Then he looked at Toto's appendage. "It can't be that simple."

  "It's probably not," Toto said. "The more I learn about people, the more I realize I still have to learn. People are complicated. Okka is exceptionally so. Xe has motivations we may never understand. But I do believe xe cared about you." The bot paused, giving Waverly time to absorb that. "So let's go and figure out what's so complicated about it. Let's go and bring Okka back. One way or another."

  "Yeah," said Waverly. "Okay."

  Decision made, he settled in to appreciate the cookies. The milk really wasn't so bad.

  Waverly thought he might even be able to get some sleep.

  He was bundled up on the sofa with a fuzzy blanket, and just on the edge of sleep when his thoughts slid together in an odd way that made him startle.

  "Toto?" he said, sitting up.

  "What is it, Waverly?" Toto answered from behind the sofa.

  "Say Okka was an evil alien bent on destroying the world with xir insidious mind control." He took a breath, looking in Toto's direction. "If that was what was happening here, wouldn't I be, I dunno, more zombie-like right now?"

  "Not necessarily," Toto said tentatively.

  "But those other creatures, and Okka, they were acting kinda like death warmed over, right?"

  "Right now," said Toto, poking his head/hand over the back of the couch, "that's the pot calling the kettle black."

  Waverly shoved him back. "I'm serious. They didn't react like… like people."

  "That's not conclusive. We have to consider the possibility that you're simply coming up against an alien
body language," Toto warned him, "but yes. I did get that impression."

  Waverly sat up, trying to get his blood moving again so he could think this through properly. "Okay, so let's look at the info we have. There are aliens out there who can influence people's minds. Maybe it's true that Okka is one of them. But there are others. Other types, even, possibly. If we take Atur's claims at face value, that the Cewri are the galactic Big Bad, and his white alien ass stands for all that's good and right, which, ick, I know, but it's kinda the best info we have—Okka defended our satellites against them. Avlan scientists looked over that code with a fine-tooth comb, and they thought it was legit written by an Avlan." He reached for a tablet, bringing up the notes and records he had of the incident, trying to figure out what it could tell him now. "And what we learned from watching xem work—that's worked for us against this most recent wave of attacks. Or did it? We got any new info?"

  Toto wobbled his appendage from side to side. "From the little we can see on the satellite feeds, our interference does seem to have set them back."

  "So it couldn't have been just a setup. Right?" Waverly really wanted to believe that this meant something. That Okka had meant something.

  "Unless xir plot is impossibly complex," Toto allowed.

  "Right, point in Okka's favor there."

  "Agreed." Then Toto paused, and his tone changed. "Waverly, David is here."

  Waverly put his face in his hands. He took a breath. "Maybe that's for the best," he said. "But I don't really want him to see the mess I've gotten myself into here."

  "This is not a situation you could've foreseen and prepared for. David will understand that."

  "You sure?"

  "Yes."

  It wasn't Toto that had answered, so Waverly looked up. The look David had on his face as he stepped through the door wasn't one of his usuals, but the careful concern was almost worse. If David was looking at him like that, things must be bad.

  David took another step towards him. "Listen, Waverly, I don't know exactly what's going on or what went wrong, but I know how hard you try. I give you a hard time sometimes when it looks like you're making the same mistakes over and over again, but you're allowed to make new mistakes and learn from them. I know there's something odd going on, and I promise to listen without judging until I have a handle on what it is that's gone wrong. So please tell me."

  "You won't believe it."

  "I promise to reserve judgment on that, too. Waverly, you know it's been my policy for a long time now to always keep an open mind about the things people believe and the mysteries of the universe. Unless you ask me to believe in a vengeful heteronormative God, I will give whatever it is a fair chance."

  Waverly glanced at Toto. "Guess we should try not to make Atur sound like a vengeful heteronormative god, huh?"

  David shook his head. "So far, that sounds like a little-g god at most. Little-g gods are different."

  "No, yeah. He's just an alien with an aura of power and possibly a god complex. Heck, I don't even know how he feels about gender roles, he just seems like the type."

  "All right, that I can deal with. So, aliens?"

  "You're being uncharacteristically calm about this, David."

  "Well, you're being uncharacteristically panicked. One of us should be calm."

  "'Course I'm panicked. It's a reasonable response right now. Okka left to go on a crime spree. Xe's definitely an alien, possibly evil and manipulative, hopefully just mind-controlled or coerced in some other way."

  "Xe did strike me as a little jumpy. There were so many factors that could have been causing that, though. Xe never struck me as someone who would give in to coercion, not without a serious fight. Was the change sudden?"

  "Yes. And the more I think about it, the more sure I am that it was my misstep that put them in danger of whatever happened."

  David's gaze on him intensified. "So you really do think it was mind control?"

  "I want to."

  "Then let's go with that assumption for now."

  Waverly recognized the attitude that went with those words and that expression, coming from David. David would give anyone a chance. But he was always ready to turn and give them hell if they proved they couldn't be trusted. He was giving Okka another chance now, even if that meant considering the possibility that xe was under an influence xe couldn't shake. David's tone made that choice seem simple.

  "How do you make the people stuff sound so straightforward?" Waverly asked.

  "It was my gift, and I pursued it. You pursued your gifts. We work well together because they're different. That's how it's supposed to work."

  Waverly let out a breathy laugh. "Stop being so nice to me, David. It's freaking me out." He side-eyed David. "Also why are you even here? How did you know anything was wrong?"

  "For one thing, Caroline was concerned about why you invited someone who appeared to be an escapee from a renaissance faire up to talk to you in Legal. Twice."

  "I don't get that. Renaissance faires are bomb. Nothing disreputable about that."

  "Exactly. So why Legal?" David's mouth turned up at the corner just a little as he said that. "But there are other things. The mood of the building's been odd all day. Someone said you took your robot arrays out for a test run and didn't take any of the engineers with you. They were a little pissed, actually. And I also saw the news."

  Waverly widened his eyes. "You recognized Okka?"

  "I noticed the resemblance. I didn't recognize xem. It was like someone wearing a mask of xir face."

  "Someone wearing xir face like a mask, more like," Waverly said, turning back to the painful truths of the matter. "What do you know about mind control?"

  "I know something about cults, if that's what you mean," David answered gently. "But there's no sign of that here, and from what little you've told me, there's every sign of something beyond human understanding going on."

  Waverly sighed, dropping his face into his hands again. "I don't know whether you agreeing that that's a reasonable assumption at this point makes me feel better or worse," he said.

  "It doesn't matter," David told him. "Whatever kind of problem this is, we approach it the same way we'd approach anything else. One step at a time. Find out what we need to know, make a plan, then act."

  Toto nudged Waverly's shoulder encouragingly. "We'll figure it out as we go. We always do."

  Waverly heaved a deep sigh. "Thanks, Toto," he said. "Now. How do we get xem and bring xem back?"

  "There's a lot we still don't know about our quarry that others out there do," Toto said. "Atur could probably give us more information. Help us fight, if we decide to fight. We need to learn their weaknesses somehow."

  "Just go out there and kick over the anthill, huh? I can do that. For Okka."

  "I'm going with you," Toto said in a strangely insistent tone.

  Waverly snorted. "Of course you are. I'll have you in my ear the whole time. Wouldn't go out into something like that without you in my pocket."

  "No, Waverly. I'm going with you."

  Waverly squinted at his robot. "I'm not following," he said, although he was starting to have an ominous inkling.

  "This, what we're going to be doing, is dangerous. It's too important for us to leave room for communication to get cut off. If it did, I'd need to come after you. I'd need to know you're okay. I don't want to have to do that without preparing for it. We're enacting the Pegasus protocol, and I'm coming with you."

  Waverly's heart lurched. He did mean to follow Waverly in his robot body, with all his drives and processors, everything that was Toto. Out there in the world. In the middle of a battle. Nothing between him and the danger of hostile aliens.

  Well, there were too many logistical issues to make it practical, anyway. Another thing the world outside this building didn't have was convenient outlets to plug his umbilical into. "You're not gonna run on battery backup only outside this building," Waverly told him. "I need to know you're safe, too, good buddy. And that ba
ttery isn't infinite." He patted the robot's butt, where the battery pack rested.

  "No—that wouldn't be ideal," Toto agreed. "But Okka left behind xir computer. The weird one that never seems to need charging. What do you think we'd find if we took it apart?"

  Oh. Waverly thought about that. "Not necessarily something we can use. You get that, right? It might be too little power, or too unstable, or incompatible with your systems. I mean, it's an alien power source! You get how tricky that could be, right?"

  "About as tricky as dealing with an alien person, I'd guess," Toto said. "And that's still worth it."

  Toto sounded so sure.

  Waverly sighed, turning to David. "Why do I feel like this is the kind of issue that's more in your arena?"

  "Because Toto's a person," David replied. "He can make his own choices."

  "All right," said Waverly. "Let's give it a shot." He looked Toto's chassis over with assessing eyes. "But we are giving you so much shielding, buddy. So. Much. Shielding."

  Toto laughed. "I can get on board with that." He cocked his head/hand thoughtfully. "But you, too, Waverly, okay? You were a target last time, after they figured out who was controlling the drones. They'll find you faster this time."

  "Yeah, I don't even think there's a point in hiding," Waverly said, a dangerous thought coming over him. "And easier to make shielding for one target than two. What do you say? Do you want to be my mighty steed?"

  "And here I thought I already was," Toto replied.

  Chapter Ten

  "Have you reconsidered your decision to face the Mimica alone?" was the first thing out of Atur's mouth when he arrived. Waverly was starting to really resent that the guy was their best bet for help with this.

  "Hey, that isn't what I said I was doing. I just meant I want to take care of it in my own way. And yeah, maybe that means getting help from you. But information first. These guys… you think they're all Mimica? Or other aliens too?"

  "I believe they are Mimica. The Avlan perimeter of this sector is intact. Mimica have the best chance of getting through it undetected, posing as humanoids."

  "Yeah, and how do you fight Mimica?" Waverly asked.