Linda Nagata - Memory

I sat down on the floor next to the window, my elbow resting on the sill while the savant floated before me, awaiting instructions. “Are there messages?” I asked in a hushed voice, not wanting Liam to waken.

I was expecting only one message from my mother with Yaphet’s market address, but there was another, and that was from Yaphet himself. I immediately sent it to the savant’s mimic screen, intensely curious to know what he had written.

The message displayed in a formal script:

Dear Jubilee,

My father celebrates, but I need to know who you are. Will you meet me? If you will, come soon. There is only one channel open between us as I write, and night is coming.

I smiled. It was a terse note, but it was one I might have written myself and I liked him—or the idea of him—better after reading it. I tapped the market address that was attached to the note, signaling my savant to find a link. That took some time, and I began to worry that the last channel had indeed gone down. Yaphet lived beyond the Plain of the Iraliad and the Reflection Mountains, all of it dangerous land where only a few relay antennas were maintained. If one crucial tower fell to the silver there might not be another link to Vesarevi for weeks to come.

I had nearly given up hope of getting through when the mimic screen flashed with a yellow warning placard. At least it wasn’t red! I leaned forward to read it:

*Automatic Notice*

Inadequate system resources require market time to be rationed in five-minute segments.

Tap to begin.

I drew a deep breath. Five minutes. Maybe I wouldn’t want to talk to him longer than that anyway. I listened for Liam’s breathing, to be sure he was still asleep, then I tapped the placard. It minimized to a tiny clock in the mimic screen’s lower corner, counting down the time as a view opened onto a dimly lit room furnished in wood and dark colors. A young man was standing beside a night-black window, his figure half-hidden in shadow. Yaphet? I assumed it must be him. Stars blazed beyond him, bisected by the white shimmer of the Bow of Heaven rising up from the horizon. Yaphet turned. He approached me, and as he did a warm light from somewhere behind my point of view fell across him.

My mother had reported Yaphet to be pretty and I could not disagree. His build was lean, and that was attractive to me though he did not seem tall. I guessed he was no taller than me. He had thick black hair in a heavy braid down his back; unruly bangs; skin like toast. He wore a green shirt that was almost black, and a necklace of white beads that were probably pearls. All this I took in at a glance, before his eyes seized my attention. Deep blue they were, like the sky at sunset but hard, like a gem a kobold has made. Memory whispered through me, reechoing from the past lives we must have shared together, and I shivered, for I sensed an obsession in him, a dreadful vision that would own him.

I can safely say that Yaphet did not see anything so interesting in me. He studied me for several seconds, his so-serious eyes veneered darkly with distaste, until I remembered myself, my flushed and dirty face, my hair wound into dreads by wind and sweat. I had not washed, or even bothered to smooth my hair, and yet here I was, facing for the first time the boy who would likely be my life mate. It was an absurd introduction. Too absurd for me to do anything but tip my head back and laugh, gulping and gasping as softly as I could so as not to waken Liam.

“This is a wrong address, isn’t it?” Yaphet asked in a flat voice that did not hide his anger.

“No.” I ran my fingers over my tangled hair, suddenly afraid he would leave. I wiped at my sticky face with the back of my hand. “I’m Jubilee Huacho.” Maybe I should not have admitted it? “I’m not always this bad,” I added softly, listening for any sound of Liam stirring. Yaphet frowned and looked past me at the arched window and the sky beyond. “It’s still afternoon there.”

I nodded, remembering the night sky outside his window. The world is a ring that spins in the plane of the sun and Yaphet was far to the east, so night came sooner for him.

“You’re high up, aren’t you?” he asked. “Are you at home?”

“No.” In a furtive voice, I told him about Liam and the city, the strange square and the painting, and our plans to spend the night here above the reach of any common silver flood. As I spoke I turned the savant to the window so Yaphet could see the city—it was a nice view, and the less time he spent looking at me, the better. That was my opinion.

He spoke too, telling me that in the market at Vesarevi there were respected historians who thought Fiaccomo might have been a real player. When our eyes met again he looked at me with more respect.

“Are you thinking of coming here?” he asked suddenly.

His bluntness caught me by surprise, and I blurted out an honest answer: “I don’t know. I—I’ve thought about it… but it’s happened so fast…”

Yaphet nodded. “I understand. I didn’t plan on finding a lover this soon. I’m sure you didn’t either.”

True enough. “At least you’re not an idiot,” I said with real gratitude—and that was the first time I saw him smile. It was only a little smile, one that might have gone unnoticed on anyone else, but I had already gathered that for Yaphet, smiles were rare.

“Only twenty seconds left,” he said. “Will you call me later?”

A glance at the clock showed he was right. “I’ll call tomorrow night, after I get home, if the channel’s still—” His image vanished, replaced by a yellow placard announcing our time was over.

At twilight Liam and I went out again. We wandered the empty streets for over an hour, marveling at the heat still radiating from the walls. It felt strange to be wandering about so close to nightfall, but this was our last chance to escape the tower before dawn. We stayed out longer than we should have, but we returned safely, with the stars blazing in a sky of deepest blue. I sat by an eastern window, watching the Bow of Heaven brighten and remembering how it had looked outside Yaphet’s window. It was brilliant tonight: a narrow, gossamer bridge of white light rising from the horizon to the zenith, passing out of sight beyond the tower’s roof.

“I haven’t seen the Bow so bright in at least a year,” Liam said as he sat down beside me, with a couple of ration packs in hand for our dinner. He asked his savant to give us some light, and we talked together, about anything but Yaphet. Then I called my mother to let her know we were well and sometime after that I fell asleep.

I awoke in the night with the feeling of being watched.

We had left our savants on alert, one by the door, and one set to slowly circle around the room. Neither had called an alarm, and yet somehow I knew we were no longer alone in our tower room. I lay in my sleeping bag, staring wide-eyed at arched shadows cast by starlight against the chamber’s smooth inner wall. Why was every surface in this ancient city so clean, so perfect? Was it possible that some unseen curator had accompanied the ruins down through time?

Liam breathed beside me and from far overhead a passing night bird called an eerie song but nothing else stirred. Nothing I could directly sense, yet my feeling of unease did not go away. After a few minutes I sat up, and leaning on the windowsill, I looked out at the city. It gleamed faintly under the press of starlight like a diaphanous, half-imagined thing. A city of mist that might disintegrate on the least breeze. I searched the streets for silver, but I could see none.

A puff of warm air brushed my ear, like a breath. I whirled around to face the room, sure I had heard a whisper, a question that was a single word, though the language was not one I knew.