Grimspace Read Free

and—
    When I cracked, I wasn’t going to be sent to Whitefish. Instead, I’d wind up in the Corp asylum where they hide the broken ones. All of us snap, sooner or later—you can’t spend so much time jacked into grimspace without losing part of yourself. Jumpers know the risks and yet the drive toward exploration, the need to be the first to see a new rim world, make first planetfall with our pilots, these things fire us along an ultimately self-destructive course. We’re a little crazy, the J-gene carriers, or we wouldn’t be able to handle grimspace in the first place.
    With that, I make my decision and push to my feet. “Let’s go.”
    There’s nothing here I want. All my personal effects burned up on Matins IV, and so I’m ready to follow this guy into the unknown, trusting wherever he’s taking me is better than where I am. That’s a hell of a hope to pin on a stranger.
    I half expect him to want to talk some more or outline a plan, but he’s on his feet as well, expedience ruling the day. That’s a welcome change from the bureaucratic bullshit I’ve dealt with for the last ten days. I doubt the COs wipe their asses without forms in triplicate.
    â€œNeed you out of the uniform,” he tells me, so brisk that I don’t think even for a moment he’s angling to get a look at the body beneath. “They’ll probably guess you’re making for the docking bays, but it’ll help if they can’t get a vis-ID at a glance.”
    He intends me to strip, but I know it’s not prurient interest. Even before, I wasn’t anything special to look at: lean, strong, and energetic, a good partner in bed, but not because I was beautiful. I think that might be tied to the J-gene as well, the hunger for sensation. People don’t understand my loss; the Psychs poke at it with morbid curiosity. Intellectually they know it’s bad for a jumper when her pilot dies, but they don’t understand the relationship.
    Imagine for a moment—lover and brother and guardian and partner and—
    There are no words. Even if a jumper never sleeps with her pilot, there are still bonds that can’t be articulated to the layman. He’s the one who watches while you’re lost in grimspace, the hands on the ship controls that interpret your signals as you cue the jumps. Every time you jack in, he’s the reason you come out safe again. Perfect trust, perfect symbiosis; there comes a time when words aren’t necessary anymore.
    Well, I can’t waste any more time on hesitation. March hands me a plain brown coverall, and I change quickly under his watchful eyes. My whole body’s webbed with faint purple burn scars, souvenirs of the crash, so if he has any sense, he’ll look away. But he doesn’t. He just stares, eyes on mine. I don’t trust him, and he doesn’t seem to like me, so we make a perfect match. Dressed, I look like a san service worker.
    He finishes the makeshift disguise with a bottle of Spray-bond, aerosol colorant used by part-timer punkers who want to be able to wash out their weekend revels and return to the office looking respectable. In my case, dark hair goes grungy gray, and suddenly I’ve aged twenty-five years. It’s not hard to alter how I move because I feel physically stiff from my incarceration. At a nod from him, I stuff the Corp gear down the recycler, and then he manually keys the door open.
    â€œUnauthorized exit from crew quarters!” my AI sings out maybe thirty seconds later as alarms begin to sound. I feel faint satisfaction at having thwarted it, even as we move off. “Unauthorized access to artificial intelligence Q-15. Recommend initiation of lockdown. Unauthorized personnel detected in detention level C.”
    In the distance I hear booted feet coming to investigate. Shit. We hasten down into the corridor, and I can’t tell what time of day it is because the