Tandem Unit Read online

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  “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