Tandem Unit

  * * * *

  “Okay buddy, let's get you inside.” Blakely was suddenly aware of a familiar pair of arms pulling him upright. Had he gotten drunk on a night on the town again? Damn, he knew how much Holt hated that.

  “'M, sorry, Holt,” he tried to say but his tongue didn't seem to want to work.

  “I think he's trying to say something. Holt, I really don't like this.” That soft, feminine growl would be Sadie. Damn she had a sexy voice. Blakely felt it all the way down to his balls every time she talked. Or he usually did, when his balls weren't made of lead, that was. Blakely wanted to say something to her, something about how glad he was that she had finally come back to them but it was like someone had glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth—nothing was coming out.

  “I don't like it either,” he heard Holt say. “Come on, we'll get him to the med-chair and see what it says.”

  He tried to open his eyes and watch as they pulled him down the hall but every time he tried it was a huge effort for nothing; the world was just one big colorful blur so why bother? Blakely shut his eyes and let himself be dragged. He was vaguely aware when they got him into the familiar apartment he and Holt had shared for the past six years and he could still hear his partner and Sadie talking but all his other senses seemed to be fading in and out alarmingly.

  “Here, give me a hand, would you? Grab his right arm and on the count of three…”

  “Oh my Goddess, Holt. His hand … look at it!”

  “What the hell?” Blakely felt his arm grabbed and cried out weakly. The rest of his body felt dull and lethargic but suddenly the hand they were looking at was insisting that it hurt! That it was on fire!

  It reminded him vaguely of the time he'd gone to visit his cousins on the old Mexi-Tex border and had stumbled into a nest of mutie lava ants. The thumb-sized, bright red insects had swarmed up his ankles, gouging fiercely with their serrated pinchers as they went, injecting their horrible, burning venom that felt like fire in his veins. If Uncle Vernon hadn't been right there and had the hose in his hand to spray Blakely off with he would've been a goner for sure. But now the ants were back and this time they were in his arm.

  “Water … wash 'em off,” he tried to say but nothing but a strangled moan came out.

  “Quick, help me take off his shirt and put him in the chair. It's linked to emergency services.” He was pushed and pulled into position until he was reclining in the diagnostic med-chair that was a standard feature in every house and apartment since Old Earth had finally gotten standardized health care.

  “Well, what does it say?” Sadie's voice was anxious, eager.

  “It says … no, that can't be right.”

  “What? What?” Through a haze of pain he heard Sadie asking something but he couldn't understand what she wanted to know.

  “It says … Sadie, it says he's dying.” Holt's voice was low and ragged.

  Not dyin'. Just get the ants off. But by now he couldn't even moan. The pain in his arm began to creep into his shoulder and chest and then everything went black.

  Chapter 23

  “Dying? No, he can't be dying.” Sadie sounded as frantic as Holt had ever heard her but he couldn't spare much thought for her feelings just then. “Call a doctor, call an ambulance … reset the chair and check it again. That can't be right.”

  Numbly, Holt did as she asked, resetting the med-chair and asking it to run a full diagnostic again. Slumped in its electrode-studded depths, his partner and best friend lay breathing shallowly, seemingly unconscious. Blakely's curls were plastered to his forehead by a thin film of sweat looking very black against his suddenly pallid face. His right hand and arm were swollen to twice the diameter of the left arm and there were evil-looking red streaks running up his wrist like some weird tattoo.

  The machine beeped and Holt tugged the screen on its long, flexible arm around to read the results, already knowing what he would see. “It's true,” he said dully. “I don't know how or why but it's true.”

  “Let me see that,” Sadie snapped, yanking the screen away from him and scanning it rapidly. “Holt, this can't be right. According to the chair Blakely's in the last stages of Multiple Sclerosis. Has he been diagnosed with MS that you know of?”

  “No,” Holt said. “He's … he's always been healthy as a fucking ox.”

  “So then there must be something wrong with your med-chair. It says his nerves are deteriorating at an unbelievable rate. But there's no way … it must be the chair.”

  “There's nothing wrong with the chair,” Holt said. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut tightly. “Besides, I don't need the damn chair to tell me what's going on.”

  “How…?”

  “I can feel it here.” Holt pressed the back of his neck where the Tandem chip was implanted. “If you'd stop denying your bond with us you'd feel it too, Sadie. I don't know how or why but the chair is right—Blake's dying.”

  “But … but…” Tears spilled out of her honey-brown eyes in a sudden flood. “I can't … we can't lose him like this. There must be something we can do. We have to think, Holt. It's like an allergic reaction, the way he's swelling up. Is he allergic to any insect stings? Something he ate?”

  “No, no, nothing I know of.” Holt forced himself to think past the dull despair that wanted to take over his brain. He could literally feel Blakely slipping away from him, from them, he realized, because Sadie had to be feeling it through the bond as well. Think! he commanded himself. If it was him lying there in that chair dying, he knew Blakely wouldn't have rested until he found the reason, had found the solution. But nothing came to mind.

  Because he couldn't think of anything else to do, Holt pulled the screen out of Sadie's hands again and read the diagnostic results. MS … nerves deteriorating … a sudden memory was gnawing at the back of his brain, something about the latest in nerve-destruction … de-mylinization…

  “Van Heusen!” he snapped, turning to Sadie. “Do you remember what he was saying, about the new drug the needles in his needler were dipped in when we were on Iapetus?”

  Sadie's face got almost at pale as Blakely's and she brought a hand to her mouth, her amber eyes wide pools of shock. “Yes … he said it caused the nervous system to … to shred itself. Oh, Holt! The hand that's swelling up—it's the one he shook with when Van Heusen asked him to shake hands, isn't it? Isn't it?”

  “Yeah, Blake's a lefty but of course he shakes with his right,” Holt muttered. “Still, I don't see how…”

  “The ring! That huge vulgar ring,” Sadie exclaimed. “I thought I saw Blake wince when they shook and remember, he was saying how Van Heusen had a firm grip and his hand hurt? He must have pressed as hard as he could so Blake couldn't feel it when he was scratched.”

  It sounded too logical to deny. Carefully, Holt grasped his partner's wrist and turned it over to see the palm. On the underside of Blakely's thumb was what he had been looking for—a tiny smear of dried blood. He stared at it in disbelief and horror, remembering what Van Heusen had said about the drug being fatal and wondering how such a tiny thing, no bigger than a paper cut, could be robbing him of the best friend and partner any man could ever ask for.

  After a moment, he became aware that Sadie was tugging at his sleeve.

  “…reel. The com-reel that Van Heusen gave you. Play it. Quick, Holt! Maybe there's some kind of hint or clue or something,” she was saying urgently.

  Numbly, Holt dug inside his jacket pocket and produced the fingernail-sized reel. He flicked the tiny indicator carefully to view and they watched as a Van Heusen's face popped into view in a holo-projection about the size of Holt's palm.

  “If you're watching this, Detectives Holtstein or Blakely, then I have been successful,” Van Heusen's tinny, old man's voice said. “If you're watching this then one or both of you is dying.”

  “Oh no!” Sadie's gasp was more like an intake of breath but Holt shushed her anyway.

  “I will be brief since you won't be
able to give me your full and undivided attention for long; the process is much too painful for that.” The grin on that narrow, wrinkled face was pure evil. Holt had a terrible urge to wrap his fingers around that scrawny throat and squeeze until the cold gray eyes bugged out but Van Heusen was only with them in spirit and it wasn't possible. Instead, he had to go on listening to the message.

  “How I wish I could see you scrambling around, trying to save yourselves. I tried to arrange for a camera in your apartment but alas, it was beyond even my means. So I must content myself with imagining which isn't so bad—I have a wonderfully vivid imagination, that I can assure you. However, I digress.

  “As I was saying, one or both of you will be writhing in pain by now, no doubt trying to reach the vid-screen and call for help.” Van Heusen grinned, the cold, shark-like grin that made Holt feel like his heart had been dipped in ice. “Call all you like, gentlemen, there is no known cure. I repeat: no known cure. You won't believe me of course. You'll spend your last hours looking for answers that aren't there just as I will spend my last years rotting in prison. But at least mine will be a relatively slow death. I say relatively because by the time you finally breathe your last, you will be wishing I had used a much faster acting agent. But I wanted you to have time to reflect … time to suffer.” The grin widened even more and the room filled with the sound of Van Heusen's dry, sardonic chuckle.

  “As you have taken my life from me, gentlemen, so I have taken yours from you. An eye for an eye, you might say.” He looked thoughtful. “Actually, I rather hope only one of you is dying right now. You seem so close that I think the pain of losing your partner is a more fitting punishment than almost anything else, even death. As one of my favorite poets once said, 'Parting is all we know of Heaven and all we need of Hell.' I am quite sure that by the end of your little ordeal you will agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly.

  “Gentlemen,” the holo of Van Heusen's face nodded gravely. “I bid you a fond adieu. Someday I hope to see you both in Hell.” There was a crackling flash that caused Holt to throw up an arm to shield his eyes and Sadie to cry out and take an involuntary step back and the com-reel shriveled to ashes.

  Chapter 24

  Losing him, we're losing him. Holt's right, I can feel him slipping away … Sadie shook her head. No! There must be something they could do—some way to save Blakely. But Van Heusen's words kept ringing in her head, no known cure.

  “Blake … Oh, Goddess…” The broken voice belonged to Holt. The tall, lanky body was slumped beside the med chair now and he was holding his partner's left hand, the one that wasn't swollen and red in his own left hand. Holt's right hand was pressed to the back of his neck, rubbing methodically, and he looked like a man who was suffering from the worst tension headache in his life. He rubbed harder and winced at the same time that the still unconscious Blakely moaned.

  “Holt?” Sadie felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice cubes into her belly. A cold fear, one she tried with all her might to push away and ignore, had begun growing there. “Holt, are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, 'fraid not.” Blakely moaned again and the blond winced as if in pain.

  “What … how…?” She couldn't even make herself form a logical question but Holt seemed to understand her anyhow.

  “Blake and I have been tandemized a long time, Sadie. We're too … too close. He's going and I think … think he's gonna take me with him when he does.”

  “Take you with him?” Sadie felt what could easily be the start of hysteria begin to build in the lift of her voice. “What are you talking about? Do you feel sick too?”

  Holt shook his head, the fine, blond hair glinting like gold in the apartment's soft lighting. “Not yet but I will, I can tell it. Right now I just feel weak. Getting weaker all the time…”

  Losing them both … Dear Goddess in Heaven please, no. No! I can't be losing them both… Sadie shook her head, feeling the words of denial bubbling up in her mind like a hysterical chant. She couldn't lose them, couldn't lose the only two men in her life she had ever really loved, who had ever really loved her. She thought of all the ridiculous reasons she had given herself as to why she couldn't be with them, immorality, fear, pain, her career … and they all melted away like fog when the sun comes out. She thought of that mean little voice inside her head, the one that sounded like Aunt Minnie and Gerald and Goshen all rolled into one … she had listened to that voice and thrown away her happiness with both hands.

  For the last six months she had been wasting her life millions of miles away from Holt and Blakely, wasting precious time that she could have spent with them. They could have been loving each other, learning to live together, making memories that would last forever. Instead she had been stuck on Io working on a career that now seemed pointless and trying to get people who never would to accept and love her when all along Holt and Blakely were waiting for her, wanting to love her, protect her, cherish her. But she had pushed them away and now it was too late, her time was up and she had wasted the most precious gift that had ever been offered to her, their love.

  I guess this is what they call an epiphany, she thought dully. I was too stupid to see love even when it was right under my nose and now I'm losing them. Losing them both.

  So what are you going to do about it? Sadie shook her head and looked around. Blakely was still passed out in the med-chair and Holt, looking weaker by the minute, was slumped beside him, still holding his hand. Do about it? What could she do about it? You can stop feeling sorry for yourself for one thing. If you just stand here having a pity party you'll lose them for sure. Sadie shook herself. Right. Standing there and crying wasn't helping the situation at all. She felt an icy blanket of calm descend over her nerves, the one that came over her when she felt truly threatened. Only this time it was her men that were in danger—she could feel them slipping away through her bond with them, could feel them growing weaker by the minute. That's right—my men, she told herself. Now how am I going to save them, heal them? Wait a minute…

  Something nagged at the back of her brain. Images of herself pinned between the two of them being loved, supported, healed … but it was always Blakely and Holt that did the healing. Could the bond she had with them work the other way too? Only one way to find out!

  “Holt!” she said sharply. The blond man looked up at her, his sapphire eyes dull with pain and loss.

  “He's going, Sadie. Blake's leaving me; I can feel it.”

  “He's not going anywhere,” Sadie said grimly. “And neither are you. Come on—get on your feet and give me a hand.”

  Holt looked at her with glassy eyes but did as she commanded, stumbling to his feet clumsily. He looked, Sadie thought, like she had felt a few minutes ago—so full of grief and loss that it was clouding his mind—making it impossible to think straight. Sadie thought it was entirely possible that even if the T-link hadn't been pulling him down, Holt would have died of grief when Blakely did. They were that close.

  “Holt,” she said again, sharply. “Holt, I need you to snap out of it and listen to me. I think I know a way to bring him back—to save him.”

  “But Van Heusen said there's no known cure,” Holt protested. “What the hell do you think you're going to do, Sadie?”

  She was glad to see some of the spark come back into the sapphire blue eyes and hear a little of the old, contrary Holt in his voice. Blakely was in bad shape but his blond partner was more weak with grief than anything else, she was sure.

  “Don't ask questions. Just help me undress him and get him to the bed. Where's the bedroom around here?”

  “There's a king size bed through here,” Holt motioned numbly and they hoisted Blakely between them, being careful not to touch the pulsing arm. Sadie noticed with apprehension that the red streaks that had started at his wrist had now marched halfway up his arm to encircle his bicep. If it reaches his heart he's gone, she thought, knowing it was true. Haven't got much time.

  At last they
had Blakely lying on the bed completely nude. There was a troubled expression on his face and Sadie thought that, except for the mat of crisp, dark curls covering his powerful chest, he looked like a tired, ill used little boy having a bad dream.

  “Now what?” Holt was panting, having done most of the lifting and carrying although Sadie had helped as much as she could. He no longer looked shell-shocked, however, for which she was relieved. The cool, light-blue eyes were alert and he was standing up straight.

  “Now we heal him. Take off you clothes—all of them,” Sadie said, beginning to strip herself. The red marks on Blakely's arm had advanced again, this time to his shoulder and she didn't like the look of them at all. He was beginning to moan and the dark fans of his eyelashes were fluttering against the high, dark cheekbones. She remembered what Van Heusen had said about dying in terrible agony. They had to stop and reverse this process before the pain took over so completely that Blakely was unable to feel any pleasure. The pleasure was what would save Blakely and save them all.

  “Heal him? What are you talking about?” Holt was protesting but at least he was taking off his clothes, altho ugh considerably slower than Sadie would have liked.

  “You and Blakely healed me, Holt. Three times. Once you brought me back from the brink of death, brought me back from where Blake is now.” Sadie peeled out of her bra and panties with no shame whatsoever as she talked.

  “But that was us healing you. Using the T-link to generate energy. I don't think…”

  “You have a better idea?” Sadie snapped. She turned on Holt who was still fumbling with the snap on his suit pants while he talked. “Damn it, Holt, we have to try something. We have to fight for Blakely—we love him. I love him, love you both and I'm not letting either one of you go without a fight. Now hurry up and strip!”