Jainan declined it with a slight gesture. “I am well aware this place can simulate sensation.”
Kiem recoiled, horror running down his spine at that on top of the last scenario. He dropped his hand, frantically trying to think of better arguments. “Really. I got Bel back from the shuttleport. She basically broke us in here—she says she used to be a raider? She doesn’t do that anymore. I mean, obviously. You were already in the Tau field when we found you. We’re probably going to get arrested when we get back out, but arrested is fine as long as we get you out of here. This is classified as an instrument of torture, did you know?”
“I know,” Jainan said. His expression was preternaturally calm. “You don’t need to make things up about Bel to add color. I am aware Kiem is not coming to get me. Nobody is. Please don’t insult us both with this tactic.”
Kiem took a deep breath. “I can prove this. Ask me a question only we’d know the answer to.”
“Everything I’ve seen so far has been from my own memories,” Jainan said. “The field clearly has access to them. You could let it play back the correct answer to anything I asked.”
“Then why do you think I’m here?” Kiem said. “Why do you think I was in your last three memories?”
“I don’t know,” Jainan said. “It could be to get me to trust you so I slip up later. Or you may not be the interrogator; maybe she’s on a break. You may be entirely a production of my own mind.” His mouth quirked into another non-smile. “That would be depressing. I would rather not be such a sad fantasist that I hallucinate you coming to find me.”
Kiem felt a hollow open up in his belly. “That isn’t a fantasy,” he said. “Listen to yourself! Why wouldn’t I be here?”
“Mm,” Jainan said. “Now I’m back to thinking you’re my interrogator. You should really have let the field handle that response.”
“What? Why?”
Jainan sighed. “You may have been briefed, but you’re missing a vital piece of information about how I last left Prince Kiem.”
“We … argued,” Kiem said.
Jainan’s smile was quick and mirthless. “Yes, my question gave that away, didn’t it?”
“What does that have to do with anything? I didn’t think about how to bring up that vid with you and I screwed up,” Kiem said slowly. He could feel the edges of what Jainan was putting together, and he wished he couldn’t see how it looked. “You thought I … would just abandon you because we argued? You don’t think very much of me.”
“It’s not you,” Jainan said, his controlled voice beginning to fray around the edges. “It’s me. I know it’s me. I am not worth you risking yourself to get out of trouble, and I wish my mind had not produced this delusion of you turning up anyway!”
“Jainan—” Kiem started, but Jainan deliberately turned away. He walked a little distance, fading into the gray, but seemed to realize at the same time as Kiem did that there was nowhere for him to go. He sat down with his legs crossed, neat and self-contained.
Kiem rubbed a hand across his face, then went and sat a few feet in front of him. Jainan ignored him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kiem said tentatively. “I think it was mine. I mean. I don’t know if it was even an argument, really.”
“You are not getting anything out of me with that,” Jainan said flatly.
“All right, have it your way,” Kiem said, exasperated. “Truce. I’m not real.”
“I know.” There was an expectant pause, as if Jainan was waiting for Kiem to disappear.
“No,” Kiem said. “It’s not going to work for you to dive back into your memories. I may not be the sharpest knife in the set, but—”
“Stop it,” Jainan said.
“What?”
Jainan looked up at the empty gray air above them. “That’s the one thing the real you does that very much annoys me,” he said to the space above. “You aren’t stupid. Stop saying you are.”
Kiem stopped, thrown. “You should know. You’ve tried to explain your work to me.”
“That’s not a difference in ability, that’s a specific skill set,” Jainan said. “You’re manifestly better at—at life than Taam was. Than I am.”
“Not true. You—”
“Don’t,” Jainan said. He gave something that was half a laugh, half a cough. “It just makes me think of where I am right now.”
There was a long silence, while Kiem drummed his fingers on the spongy, featureless ground, and Jainan stared straight ahead. After a while, Kiem said, “Was that … something that happened to you? The Taam thing?”
“Which one?” Jainan said colorlessly.
Four hours, Kiem remembered. “The ones I saw.”
“They’re my memories.” Jainan didn’t look at him.
All of the words Kiem had were wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said. It seemed pathetically inadequate.
“Why?”
“What?” Kiem said. “Because—because I didn’t help you? Nobody helped you! Someone should have figured out what was going on and dissolved the marriage! Taam should have been—prosecuted, disgraced, stripped of his rank, all of that. And not just him. Anyone who covered it up!” He realized he was starting to go off and cut himself short. “Sorry. I know you don’t want it raked over. But it just makes me so angry that Taam died before it came back to hurt him. You didn’t get any justice.”
Jainan was finally looking at him, his forehead creased and his lips slightly parted.
“I don’t know how you survived it,” Kiem said. “Being—alone like that, with all that shit happening. I wouldn’t have got through—”
“No,” Jainan interrupted. “No, you don’t understand. It was me.” He got to his feet in agitation, turning away from Kiem. “That wouldn’t have happened to anyone else. Taam had good intentions. He had a sense of honor. It was just unfortunate that he ended up with someone he didn’t like.”
“Screw Taam’s good intentions!” Kiem said. He got to his feet as well, moving around to face Jainan. “Nothing was good about what he did to you! Are you trying to tell me this was your fault?”
Jainan didn’t move away. “It would have worked,” he said. “It would have worked, if I’d been someone else.”
Kiem made a chopping motion with his hand. “No,” he said. “Rubbish. Bullshit. I may never be right about anything again, but I’m right about this.” Jainan hadn’t moved away. Kiem reached out and touched his shoulder. “If he couldn’t cope with you, then he couldn’t have coped with anything except curling up with one of his own rank medals. Nobody could want more than who you are.”
For a moment, the gray world seemed to hang in the balance. And then Jainan raised his hand to Kiem’s wrist, and Kiem stepped forward, and Jainan let him put his arms around him. Jainan took a ragged breath and dropped his head, resting his forehead on Kiem’s shoulder. “You’re a hallucination,” he said, though he no longer sounded certain of it. “You’re telling me what I want to hear.”