Linda Nagata - Memory

But the room was as it had been. The only sound was Liam’s soft breathing.

I slipped out of my sleeping bag and I searched the chamber. I examined the walls and the ceiling on the chance that there might be a lens or a hidden doorway. In this way I circled the entire chamber before I finally saw it: a shape on the inside wall, a white shadow, barely brighter than the wall itself. It was almost human in outline, though the legs were too long and slim, the waist too narrow. It looked like a lithe woman in caricature, though she was only four feet tall. The gleam of her disappeared if I looked at her directly. I could see her only when I turned my head and looked from the corner of my eye, but when I did that I could clearly see she was gazing down at Liam.

I shivered, and nudged him gently with my toe. “Liam.” Then I called his name louder, “Liam!”

He woke suddenly, raising himself on an elbow. “Jubilee? What…?”

“Look at that wall before you. Do you see anything there?”

For a moment I feared the shape was only in my imagination, or at most a stain that marked the place where a picture had once hung. But then Liam’s gaze fixed on it. He shoved off his sleeping bag and got to his feet, padding past me to the wall. He touched the shape, his fingers following the line of its petite shoulder. It shifted away from his hand, and vanished.

“Liam!”

“It’s all right, Jubilee.”

Of course it was. I let go a slow breath. “Deep silver, that scared me.” I tried to laugh. “These must be mimic walls, partly recharging in the day’s heat, and playing some old program—”

“No, that’s not it.” He gestured to his savant, and it drew near. “Give us some light,” he ordered. It lit slowly, casting a warm glow through the room. Liam ran his fingers through his chestnut hair. “What woke you?” he asked.

“I thought I heard a… whisper. A question.” I had felt a warm breath.

“It was a bogy.” He brushed the wall where the shape had been, stroking it with his fingertips as if seeking out some secret message encoded in its texture. “Come out, little one,” he crooned. “You have something to say. So show yourself.”

“Liam, what’s a bogy?”

“A mechanic.”

An artificial creature. “Like a savant?” I asked.

“No. Nothing like that. More like a watcher. A place spirit. Some are horrible. Many are very beautiful. But they’re not alive, so sometimes they get returned by the silver… and it’s said some players made them for just that purpose—to hold the memory of a favorite place, when it seemed sure the silver would take it.

“But from all I’ve heard most have a darker nature, guardians created to keep intruders away or to complete some unwholesome task their owners left unfinished.”

I caught a flash of motion to the left and turned. Liam followed my gaze.

There she was—and no faint shadow this time. She had gained definition in the light, and as her tiny hand moved, her fingers—so strangely long and slender—emerged from the wall like fingers breaking the surface of water. Liam stepped in front of me. “Stand away,” he warned. “It’s coming out.”

The hand reached from the suddenly fluid wall as if it were pushing a curtain aside. Then the creature leaned forward, and a delicate woman’s face peered into the room. Her gaze settled on us as she stepped forth onto the floor.

She was as white as the walls, with eyes that were saved by a small film of iridescence from being as white and blind as a statue’s. Her hair was sculpted and fixed in an upswept coiffure. Her body was sculpted too, appearing white and unshadowed and terribly slender as she slipped free of the wall. But she was no starveling: no bones showed through her skin, though nothing else was hidden. She was nude, with long, long legs in no human proportion and small breasts and a sculpted patch of white pubic hair. She smiled coquettishly at Liam. Then she whispered a syllable, the same syllable I had heard before, and again I felt the warmth of her breath.

“Do you know that word?” Liam asked.

I shook my head. The wall behind her looked intact, as if it had given up nothing of its structure. I wanted to knock against it to see if it was still solid, but Liam raised his arm protectively in front of me as if this little mechanic might be a threat. So I went instead to fetch my savant.

There are people who claim to remember the details of their past lives: who they were, what they did, where they lived, and who they loved and hated. Perhaps their claims are true, but I had no such specific memories. The best evidence of my past was a knack for ancient languages. There were nine I could speak and understand in full, and several more in pieces. All of them had come to me easily the first time I heard them spoken, so I can only think they were languages I had used in other lives. I was sure many others still lay undiscovered in my mind, and I hoped to find one that night.

I retrieved my savant from its post at the door. Then I turned to the bogy, and in our own language I asked her, “Can you understand any of the words we say?”

She fixed me with her iridescent eyes, answering in a strange, harsh tongue. I didn’t recognize any of her words, and neither did my savant. So I switched to another language, and repeated my question, and when that didn’t work I switched to another. That was the charm. The bogy drew back in startled surprise. Then she spoke: not in the language I had just used, but in one somewhat similar.

It was as if a channel had come into focus. Her words suddenly made sense within my mind. She had asked: “Do you know this one?”

I did. It was an archaic language, one I had learned from my savant, so old that its origin had been forgotten even in the time of that ancient sage. “Yes,” I said. “I know this tongue.”

The bogy drew herself up. Though she was scarcely four feet tall, she somehow contrived to look down on me with a haughty gaze. “It is a slave’s language.”

I turned a puzzled frown on my savant. “What is this word?”

In its cultured voice the savant explained the meaning of “slave.”

Liam’s expression became grim. “Translate for me,” he said.

I nodded at my savant to convey the order. Then I turned back to the bogy, and speaking her “slave language” in a tone that was none-too-friendly, I said, “You are from a time very long ago. Much has changed in the world.”

She paid no attention to my words. Instead she listened as my savant whispered its translation to Liam. I had no doubt she understood the implication, for she turned to Liam with a crafty smile. “Your slave has been plotting against you.” With a nod of her head she indicated me, while the savant dutifully provided Liam with a translation. “ She has been in contact with another slave. Punish her now, and perhaps she can be made to serve properly. If you do not take a strong hand, you will surely have to kill her in the end.”

I knew at once that she was referring to my conversation with Yaphet, and I felt a surge of guilt for it was true that I hadn’t mentioned it to Liam.

He glared at the bogy. His face had taken on a dark, rosy flush. His hands were clenched in tight fists and I couldn’t tell if he was about to erupt in fury or in laughter.

“I was talking to Yaphet,” I said quickly, feeling an irrational need to make this confession. “While you were asleep.”

His gaze shifted to me. “Were you?” His voice sounded strained. A smile flitted around his mouth, then disappeared. “Best you behave, Jubilee. Your daddy might not like it if I had to do you harm.” He winked at me. Then he turned to the bogy and spoke to it, while my savant translated his words into the “slave’s tongue.” “You came here to tell me something, didn’t you, little one?”