Чарли Андерс - The City in the Middle of the Night

When I picture myself, I no longer imagine a shy girl with high cheekbones, a round face, and swept-back black hair. Instead, I’m a collection of tendrils and limbs: smaller than a regular Gelet and less mobile, but still the same in the ways that matter. I no longer notice when I’m in the dark for long periods, because my senses are all about the vibrations underground, the nonvisible wavelengths of radiation that swim around me, the movement of other people nearby.

I’m with River in one of those smaller salons, where the natural warmth from the springs comes up through a big spout in the middle of the room, and I’m cozy in a blanket of bioengineered fuzz. I’m drowsing, my tendrils braided with River’s without sharing any particular thought, and River sends me a memory that I must have shared sometime in the past.

I’m a human, in Argelo, and Bianca is saying, “—this amazing drink that you are about to try for the very first—” and then the taste of an Amanuensis, the sweet kick, still delicious after all this time.

I don’t know what makes me sicker: seeing Bianca, smelling the sugary sweat that fogged the air in Punch Face, or just being exposed to human speech again. Whatever it is, I have a panic reaction that feels like an old forgotten friend, along with the agony of reawakening parts of myself that I put to sleep, long ages ago. I excuse myself and pull away from River. I need to take care of myself, by myself.

I haven’t even wanted to think too much about the memories of my old life since I got used to living here. The few times lately that someone brought up a memory that I had shared about my family, or Bianca, or the Parlour, or going to the White Mansion in Argelo, I would just freeze up. People learned not to talk to me about that weird, messy human stuff.

Some time later, Jean and I are leaning against the wall after we’ve just watched one of those puppet shows, and I don’t even notice that my tendrils are fully extended and linked to Jean’s—until she shares a memory of the time I followed Bianca around Xiosphant and I saw her meeting with Mouth, in a roomful of guns. The memory is there, as fresh as a moment ago: Bianca’s neck poking out of her fashionable coat, her hair pinned back, the sneaky way she looked around, as if she didn’t realize how easy she was to follow, the weight of my longing as I hid from her. All at once, I’m young and foolish and unaltered, and pining for someone who thinks I’m dead.

I turn firm and brittle, choke on my own breath. I haven’t shared any memories of being human in a long time, but I must have shared a lot of them, early on, when I was learning to communicate.

I almost pull away from Jean, break the connection. But I don’t want her to go around sharing a memory of me being an oversensitive fool with everybody else. So I just try to relax and take it in. I chose to make this moment available, so I can’t blame Jean if she decides to give it back to me.

But then more human memories flood back, one by one. The first time I almost died on the Sea of Murder. My failed attempt to avoid joining Bianca’s invasion plan. The Curfew Patrol chasing Bianca and me, while alarms blare all around us. The Glacier Fools shouting in their delirium.

Now, I lose control of my breathing altogether. I pant faster, without drawing any oxygen. I feel light-headed, my limbs gone dead, and all my old memory-panic is back. I can’t stand to think of myself as having a human body, or a voice that could expel sounds that human ears could catch and ingest. I thought I’d made peace with these memories.

I’m not handling this as well as Jean hoped—and that’s when I realize: this is something the Gelet have decided to do. They’re going to keep reminding me of what it felt like to be among humans, until I can take it without breathing too fast, going numb, or throwing angry, misshapen thoughts back at them. Jean shows me a happy memory of a glacier until I stop twitching and fighting. Still, all of these memories, one after the other, crush me with so much anger, love, and fear, I still feel my skin crawl, my heart pound, a pain like lightsickness, only worse.

For the first time since they put these tendrils and all these other new organs inside me, I want to tear it all out with my bare hands.

Jean wants to understand why I can’t handle the memories that I chose to share in the first place. How can I explain, in a way that a Gelet will understand?

I share a memory with Jean of my lowest moment ever—not the part when the cops pulled me out of the Zone House and forced me up a mountainside and I knew my life was over, but later, afterward, when I soaked in a hot bath at the Illyrian Parlour. When I was safe but knew I’d never be safe again, warm but chilled inside, scrubbed but forever dirty. And the one thing that consoled me in that moment was tucking myself back inside the memory that Rose had shared, of running in the night with all the other Gelet, on our way to build something with our powerful limbs.

I keep showing Jean, over and over, how that borrowed memory saved me at my lowest point. I capture the exact moment when my despair gave way to wonder.

Jean still doesn’t get why even my happiest experiences of living with humans bring me nothing but pain. Even after everything Jean went through, she still thinks happy memories ought to cheer you up.

A while later, I’m not even surprised when another Gelet, whom I call Felice, wants to give me back another memory I shared long ago.

I’m back in the dorm, and Bianca and I are sitting and studying after she’s returned from some party or formal ball, and this one kept her away from me forever. I’m staring at my book, trying to concentrate, but then I look up at Bianca, who’s already looking at me with this tiny smile. I make some face at her, and she breaks into cackles, and then we’re both laughing.

That’s it, the whole memory. Felice teases out all of the little details, like the way Bianca’s smile starts sad and then the indentations around her mouth and eyes change shape. The surprise in Bianca’s face when I make whatever face I’m making, and then the giggle.

I tense up, but Felice is already showing me a comforting memory of snow washing across an ice field, kilometers away from anything.

I don’t know why the Gelet are trying to hurt me like this. Except, of course I know.

I find myself going to all my favorite places in the midnight city, greedy to stockpile memories for what I already realize is coming. The area where they put new organs inside me, removing part of a lung, feels sore and fatigued. Some strain, deep under the skin and bone.

I clamber down, out of my favorite hammock in the plaza, and Jean and River are both standing nearby, come to visit me. They both open their pincers, extending their tendrils to touch my chest. I brace myself for another old memory of when I was human.

Instead, though, Jean and River show me a plan. Me, as I am now—with sensitive, vulnerable tendrils on my sternum, two tentacles climbing out of my back, and indistinct shapes on my abdomen—walking the streets of Xiosphant. Using the gifts the Gelet have given me to help other humans understand. In time, recruiting other humans who can become like me, so we can create whole families of hybrids, who can also recruit.

They’re going to send me away. Send me home . Looking like this, hideous to human eyes, with no protection. I saw this coming, but I wasn’t prepared, and trying to see myself through the eyes of Xiosphanti makes me feel sick to my core. I let out a tiny gasp, which sounds monstrously loud to me after so long keeping silent.

Mouth almost went into a coma after the Gelet showed her how they had destroyed the Citizens. She wanted to. She even tried to. She made every effort to let the darkness around her suffuse her. She could not recall the walking mountain of ice, weeping its astringent blood, without hand tremors. She could never accept the Gelet visions, or whatever they were, in any case, but her mind could do almost nothing with that toxic ice, destroying a crèche full of infants, except rebel against itself.