***
Hi, said Shep. His tone was a little tentative, a little shy, not like himself.
I sat up slowly and looked over at him. He was sitting on the edge of his gurney, his legs dangling. He was over there, but I'd heard him over here. I'd heard him—inside.
I looked at him with my eyes, and at the same time I looked in, or down, or some nondimensional direction, and there he was. Shy. Smiling, but at the same time very vulnerable and—frightened? Shep frightened? Shep shy? I was looking at him, and he was looking back at me, and nobody moved, nobody spoke, but he said Yes and I said Why? Then I looked farther, or deeper, or beyond, or something, and I could see myself, through Shep's eyes.
When he looked at me, what he saw was, I was tall. That was the first thing. To him I was desirably tall, admirably tall. To him I was also good-looking and knew it and was at ease with it and not conceited about it. To him I was somehow balanced, the same all the way through, full of quiet confidence, serene, happy. To him I was enviable.
I was amazed.
And he was amazed too, because he had just seen Shep the way I saw him, smart, quick-thinking, always one step ahead, always in motion, on the go. To me, he was really attractive, girls thought he was adorable, and he knew just how to talk to them, how to flirt with them. To me, he was never at a loss for words. He was always the life of the party, the one everybody wanted to be around. To me, he was the guy who always got the girl.
We just sat there staring at each other, looking at ourselves through the eyes of the other, showing each other how we saw ourselves. Showing the other how he looked to us, watching the other see himself through our eyes. It was like those receding mirrors, an infinity of reflections.
I completely understood Shep's confusion about what had happened on the raft, and guess what. It wasn't so different from my confusion. The embarrassment was the same too, and basically the whole episode wasn't really that important.
I saw Shep discover my admiration for the way he dealt with his life, his mom. I saw him find out how glad I was that I wasn't him, but it didn't matter, because I was discovering his respect for the way I coped with being the second child, with all that that implied—or implied to him, I don't think I'd ever thought of it that way. And he was amused at that, and glad he wasn't me.
I saw his strategy of hiding from his demons with a little beer, the odd joint, and lots of parties, and he shrugged when I saw it. He saw me analyzing and agonizing and, okay, praying about my demons, and I shrugged when he saw it.
He understood me, and now, in a new way, himself. I understood him, and now myself.
They were right, Nicholas and Andrew, about the linkage. Seeing, knowing all that personal stuff didn't really matter, and at the same time it felt completely normal and comfortable. Basically, in some very profound way, Shep was Shep, pretty much the way I knew or could have guessed he was, no real surprises except for some minor differences of detail and emphasis. And I was me, and it didn't hurt to have him know that, because it didn't surprise him much.
I'm not sure how long we sat there, just being with each other, but at a certain point something made me reach out and take his hand. I could feel the skin and the muscles underneath, and he could feel how that felt to me, and I could also feel how my hand felt to him. An infinity of reflections.
"Guys." Nick's voice seemed to come from somewhere far away, and at the same time I heard it twice, through my ears and through Shep's.
"Please, guys. Shep, Mitch," said Nick. "I want you both to stop for a moment and pay attention to me." It took me a moment to sort myself out from the reflections and figure out how to let go and get back into just me, but I did.
"Thank you," Nick said. "I know—believe me, I really do know how you're feeling now, what a fascinating discovery tour I've interrupted. As soon as I've finished, you can continue your explorations, but I must give you some extremely important information before you go on." He looked very serious.
"Let me say, first of all, that I'm not implying anything about either of you, or about your relationship. This is simply a general warning, but it's very important.
"One of the early couples to undergo linkage did so with the express purpose of, of—well, of having sex while linked, in order to see what that would be like. Luckily they were right here in the laboratory, so, ah, the team were able to intervene in time.
"Don't ask me who they were. What you need to know is that it's not safe for two people who are linked to engage in sex. The sensations are bounced back and forth between the linked minds, being reinforced each time, into an incredibly powerful feedback loop that very quickly becomes impossible for the participants to break. We think that without outside intervention this would result in unconsciousness, cerebral hemorrhage, psychosis, possible coma, heart failure, possibly even death."
"Whoa!" Shep reacted almost before I knew he was going to.
"We weren't planning—" I began.
"I know you weren't," said Nicholas. "But this mutual exploration can quickly become so fascinating, and the linkage makes any kind of embarrassment or hesitation seem so totally superfluous, even ridiculous, that it's easy to slip into it without even thinking about it. But don't."
"Okay." We were both nodding, and I'm not even sure which one of us said it out loud.
"I'm serious. Don't do it. Is that absolutely clear?" He looked very sternly at us.
"Absolutely," I said, and Shep nodded. "Totally."
"Good," said Nick. "I'll see you back here tomorrow morning after breakfast, unless you have questions in the meantime."