Robert Wilson - Memory Wire

Teresa invested in less obviously American clothes and a canvas bag in which to conceal the oneirolith. Keller had watched the way she carried the stone, the exaggerated care, her obvious desire clashing with her fear. What she wanted from it, he understood, was memory, and that struck him as dangerously naive—the idea that memory would dole out meaning into her life. Memory as buried treasure.

He knew all about memory. Memory, he thought, isn’t the treasure; the treasure is forgetting. But where was the stone, the drug or the pill or the powder, with that magic in it?

Teresa stepped into the room’s tiny shower stall and left Keller alone with Byron. Byron had been staring out the window, a view of the swollen Araguaia. Now, with the hiss of the shower filling the room, he turned suddenly to Keller and said, “I know what’s going on.”

Keller stared at him.

“It’s hardly a secret,” he said. “Christ, Ray. I’m not deaf. I’m not blind.” He straightened his shoulders, and the gesture had a pained and immense dignity in it. “It’s not hard to understand. And I don’t necessarily disapprove. If it’s good for her, all right. If you’re not using her. But the thing is, I don’t want her hurt.” Keller said, “Look, I—”

“You think this is easy for me?” He turned away convulsively. “I was like you. You remember? I know how it is. I had good Angel habits. I was dedicated. I did my job. And then I came back from the war, I had my wires stripped. You make these gestures. You think okay, well, that’s it, I’m back in the world now. But it’s not that easy. You carry a lot around with you. It’s not a physical thing. If you really want to be back in the world, you have to reach out for it, take hold of it. You have to care for something.” He drew in a deep breath. “I cared for her. It wasn’t an infatuation. More than that. More than that. Maybe it was love. Maybe it still is. She was my ticket back into the world, Ray. People find out you were an Angel, you know, they act strange. Like you’re some kind of zombie—the walking dead. Maybe I let people think that, or maybe I even encouraged it a little bit. It’s not so bad sometimes, being on the outside. But I did not want it to be true. You understand? I wouldn’t let it be true. And she was my way of proving it wasn’t true. I cared about her enough to save her life; I cared about her enough to come down here with her. I know how she feels about me. The sentiment is not mutual. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I cared and that I continued to care even when she slept with other men, and that I care now, when she is obviously falling in love with you. Because it’s the caring, the caring is what matters.” His fists were clenched; he faced the window. “Now,” he said, “maybe that’s hard for you to grasp. You’re still wired, you’re still deep in the Ice Palace, even though you probably think you’re not. You can look at her from that safe high place, you can allow yourself the luxury of falling a little bit in love. How fucking brave. But my wires are gone, Ray. It makes a difference. I’m not a machine anymore. I’m a human being or I’m nothing. A broken machine. So I care for her. And if she loves me, that’s good, that’s best of all, but even if she doesn’t, even if it hurts, as long as I care enough to let it hurt, then that’s good, too, because it means I’m really back from the war, that I’m here in the world, still breathing—” He rammed his fist against the arm of his chair. “Still flesh and blood.” Keller could only stare.

Byron shook his head. “It’s hard talking to you sometimes.”

They heard the shower switch off. Water dripped hollowly in the stall. Teresa was humming some tune in a minor key.

“Don’t hurt her,” Byron said softly. “That’s all I ask.”

2. And so they came to Belem, an international port at the broad mouth of the Amazon, where Byron knew an expatriate American who might be able to find them passage out of Brazil, and where Keller made love to Teresa for the first time.

They booked a room much like the rooms they had booked at Sinop or Campo Alegre, this one in a corniced brick building overlooking a fish market called the Ver-o-Peso. Byron spent a lot of time at the docks trying to contact his Army buddy, and for several afternoons Keller was alone with her in the room.

They made love with the curtains drawn. A rainfall began and the traffic along the Ver-o-Peso made soft rushing noises. He moved against her silently; she cried out once in the dimness of the room, as if the act had shaken loose some shard of memory inside her.

It was a long time since Keller had made love to a woman he cared about, and he was distantly aware of bonds loosening inside him, a sense of derelict synapses lighting up. He imagined the Angel wiring in his head as a road map, abandoned neural jungles shot through suddenly with ghostly glowing. It was a kind of sin, he thought, but he gave himself over to it helplessly, to loving her and making love to her. He knew that he would not download any of this from his AV memory, and because of that it seemed as if the act had only the most nebulous kind of existence: it existed between them, in his memory and in hers; flesh memory, he thought, volatile and untrustworthy. But he would cherish it. Adhyasa, Angel sin, but he would hold it tight inside him.

Afterward they were together in the silence.

The rain had raised the humidity, and her skin felt feverish against him. Her eyes were squeezed shut now. The pressure of the last few days, he thought, the trip from Pau Seco. But not just that. He said, “It’s not only the Agencies you’re afraid of.”

She shook her head.

“The stone?”

“It’s strange,” she said. “You want something so much for such a long time, and then… you’re holding it in your hands, and you-think, what is this? What does it have to do with me?” She sat up amidst the tangled sheets.

“Maybe,” he said, “you don’t need it.”

Her hair spilled over her shoulders and across Keller’s face. “I do, though. I have dreams…” The thought trailed away.

Rain rattled against the casements of the ancient windows. She stood and looked across the room at the bag where the oneirolith was concealed. Keller was suddenly frightened for her. No telling what the stone might contain. “Give it time,” he said. “If we get back to the Floats, if everything calms down—”

“No,” she said, resolute now in the darkness. “No, Ray. I don’t want to wait.”

1. The Brazilians held Ng in custody three days before Oberg was informed. He heard about it in an offhand remark from one of Major Andreazza’s junior peacekeepers and stormed off to confront Andreazza in his office. “You should have told me,” he said.

Andreazza allowed his gaze to wander about the room until it came to rest, laconically, on Oberg. He registered a mild surprise. “Told you about what?”

“About Ng.” My Christ, Oberg thought.

“The Vietnamese,” Andreazza said, “has been detained.”

“I know. I know he’s been detained. I want to interrogate him.”

“He’s being interrogated now, Mr. Oberg.”

“Being butchered, you mean? What’s the matter, have you beaten him to death already?”

There was a barely perceptible hardening about Andreazza’s features; he regarded Oberg icily. “I don’t think you’re in a position to criticize.”

“The thing is,” Oberg said, returning the look, “I am.”

“I’ve spoken to SUDAM. And I’ve spoken to my superiors. As far as any of us are concerned, your role here is strictly advisory. And I would advise you to keep that in mind when you address me… assuming you want any cooperation at all.”