Tandem

Agent Bedford gestured for Callum to follow him up the grand staircase. He paused first and glanced over at me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Juliana,” Callum said. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”

“Likewise.” I nodded at him as he passed.

“I guess I’ll see you later,” Callum said, taking the stairs backward in order to keep looking at me. I gave him a little wave, and he returned it with a grin.

Well, at least one person was happy about the impending wedding. It surprised me. Shouldn’t Callum hate the idea as much as Juliana did? Wasn’t he infuriated at having to live his life the way other people wanted him to? I would’ve been. I guessed I would find out, because Callum clearly had a lot he wanted to say to Juliana— alone.

“What was that with the potato?” the queen hissed at me as soon as Callum was out of earshot. “You’ve never eaten a potato!”

“I’m sorry, I—I thought I had,” I stammered.

“Where? On some holiday to Farnham? You were just trying to show off. I won’t stand for it, Juliana, do you hear me? You promised me that you were going to behave yourself and I expect you to do that. This marriage is the key to peace, and if you endanger that …” She let the threat dangle in the air, but it seemed to me that it was the queen who was really frightened. “You should go back to your room. I’m going to sit with your father for a while.”

The queen shook her head at me and left with her bodyguard. I was alone in the foyer. I sank down on the bottom step of the grand staircase and buried my face in my hands. Waves of powerlessness washed over me. I couldn’t seem to do anything right, even when I tried.

Thomas took a seat beside me on the step and reached into the bag, pulling out the potato and cradling it in his palm. “Potatoes,” he said softly. “They don’t grow here.”

“In Aurora? Then how did Callum—”

“In the Commonwealth,” Thomas explained. “We can’t grow them. Something about the soil … but they’re a Farnham specialty. They import potatoes from their farms in the Mountain region all over the globe.”

“But not to the UCC?”

“No. Trade negotiations keep falling through. Another thing the peace treaty will fix, which is probably why he brought you one in the first place.” He stared at the spud in his hands. “This would fetch a high price on the black market. I wonder what it tastes like.”

“You can have it,” I said.

“Don’t be silly. It was a gift.” But he eyed it covetously all the same.

My chin quivered and a tear slipped down my cheek. I hated to cry, but seeing Thomas holding that potato so gently, like a baby bird, broke something inside of me. Meeting Callum had made me aware, in a way I hadn’t been up until then, of the incredible realness of my situation, and how out of my depth I was. My allergic reaction the night before had been dramatic and alarming to everyone involved, but Dr. Moss’s confident—if biologically suspect—explanation seemed to have done its job of banishing any suspicions it had caused. And perhaps my most recent mistake would be written off as confusion, or even bad behavior, but I couldn’t keep making mistakes and drawing attention to myself. Yet that seemed to be all I was doing. Sooner or later, I was going to be found out, and thinking about what might happen to me threatened to send me right over the edge.

“Hey,” Thomas said. “What’s wrong?” He reached out a hand as if to touch me, then took it back, obviously unsure how I would react to such a gesture. I would’ve been grateful for it, but I didn’t want him to know that.

“I have to tell you something,” I said, struggling to keep calm. “But if I do, you have to promise not to tell the General.”

Thomas shook his head. “Then you shouldn’t.”

“What? Why?” I demanded. “You said I could trust you!”

“You can trust me,” he said. “But if it’s a matter of national security, I have an obligation …”

“Screw your obligations,” I snapped. “If the General finds out, he’ll keep me here forever. I know he will. He’ll lock me up in some cell and never let me go. Is that what you want? Me trapped here forever?”

“No, of course not,” Thomas said, his voice low and hoarse. A stray hair fell across his forehead, and I had the sudden urge to smooth it back, but I didn’t. I couldn’t figure out what it was about him that made me so angry, and at the same time melted my insides like butter left out to soften. I wished things had gone differently between us; I wanted what had happened back on Earth to have been the real thing, and this whole experience in Aurora some sad, strange fiction. Because no matter how hard I tried to make myself see reason, all the feelings I’d started to have for Thomas when I thought he was Grant just wouldn’t go away.

Whether I liked it or not, my relationship with Thomas was important. It had been the difference between life and death for me in the Tattered City, and it was the difference between success and failure at the Castle. I depended on him. I needed him. And despite everything, I wanted him to need me, too, if only so that we were even. If only so I knew I wasn’t as helpless or desperate as I sometimes felt. I had to tell him what I was seeing. I had to know that I’d done something to rescue myself. For whatever reason, I’d been given this ability a long time ago, as if someone, somewhere, somehow knew that one day I would need it. I couldn’t just ignore it and pray the General kept his word, and I couldn’t abandon Juliana to her fate because it was easier to let the clock on my time in Aurora run out—if it ever would. But I couldn’t do it without Thomas.

“Please,” I whispered. I couldn’t fathom a scenario in which the General was aware that I could see Juliana’s life through her eyes and allowed me to return home. Best case, he’d keep me in Aurora and let the scientists who worked on the many-worlds project run test after test in the hopes of making more discoveries about the tandem; worst case … well, I couldn’t even say, and didn’t want to imagine. But I was certain that a man who had sunk so much money and so many resources into developing technology to travel from one universe to another wasn’t going to just let me waltz out of his clutches with a direct line to my analog’s mind.

I could see in his eyes that Thomas was struggling. It was against his training and his nature to keep vital information from his superiors. How could I have ever believed that he would be more loyal to me than he was to the KES, than he was to his own father? The worst part was, I understood it. The General had taken him in, had given him a family after his was stripped away from him. I knew what it felt like to owe someone like that. I’d go to the ends of the world for Granddad, do anything I could to protect him and make him proud, because when everything I’d come to count on had been lost, he’d gathered me in his arms and told me I wasn’t alone. How could I ask Thomas to betray the person who had done that for him?

He reached for me again, and this time he made contact; his hand was a soft weight on my shoulder. “Okay,” he said, a sigh carrying his words along. I jerked my head up, shocked both by his touch and his answer. He glanced around. “Not here, though.”

“The library,” I said. I grabbed his hand without thinking and stood, tugging him along in my wake. His eyes narrowed in surprise and his mouth hung open, as if he was about to say something, but apparently he thought better of it, because he followed me in stunned silence as I guided him by instinct to the one room in the Castle I’d always wanted to visit. 

TWENTY-ONE

The library was empty. The door creaked as it slid open, and the air in the room had a musty smell, as if the windows hadn’t been cracked in weeks. The surfaces were dust-free—the domestics at the Castle were nothing if not fastidious—but the library had all the hallmarks of a space that was mostly forgotten. I got the impression that the room missed Juliana. It was one of her favorite places in the Castle, after the gardens; it had featured in many of my dreams. There was an enormous vaulted ceiling covered in sky-hued frescoes and floor- to-ceiling shelves packed tight with multicolored leather spines in various states of wear. The floor was parquet with an elaborate inlaid herringbone pattern, and the whole place was illuminated with warm light emanating from hidden sources atop the bookshelves. On the opposite side of the room there was a globe tall enough to reach my waist. I went to it, eager to give it a spin. I let my fingers wander over its miniature topography as Thomas stared at me, waiting for an explanation, but the words stuck in my throat.