Linda Nagata - Memory

“Your words are not polluted by this slave’s dialect.”

Quickly I asked, “How would you say that in your own tongue?”

I didn’t expect the bogy to respond. She obviously thought me beneath her notice, so I was surprised when she spoke her language again, though she addressed her words to Liam, not to me. I repeated her strange words, speaking them softly to myself and immediately I felt a resonance deep in my mind. Liam watched me expectantly. “I think I have it in memory,” I told him, “but I need more words.”

Liam got them for me. He questioned the bogy, commanding her to respond first in the slave’s language, and then to repeat the same thing in the master’s dialect, and to my surprise she obeyed, though when I remarked on this, Liam only shrugged. “Calling bogies is a talent of mine. This is the fifth one I’ve seen.”

“You never mentioned it before.”

“It’s not a talent I would have chosen. They’re mostly wicked things, left behind to guard a place or perform a task too distasteful for true players.”

That was certainly true of this one. We learned she was a persona based on the ancient queen of this city, though I think she was only a shallow reflection of that evil, without much wisdom or cunning. Despite what I had told her, she believed that only a few days had passed since the silver had drifted over her city. She thought she knew Liam as one of her warlords. This angered him. None of us can be held responsible for our past lives, but it’s never pleasant to think of the evil we might have done. She told us that the aristocracy of this city had been supplemented with children who fell within a certain genetic range. They were taken from their slave mothers and made into warriors. Liam was of this class.

But what did it mean that I was quickly learning to speak the language of such a people?

The bogy believed it was Fiaccomo himself who had brought the silver into this city.

All that last week before the silver came there had been public executions of his followers. On the final evening, as the executions progressed, a report arrived from a scout in the hills north of the city. Fiaccomo had been seen. Warriors were sent after him in flying machines—

(Flying machines! I could hardly contain my surprise. Flying machines were like tinder made to ignite a silver storm. Any mechanical device rising into the atmosphere could not go long without attracting an outburst of silver, even in the bright light of noon. But the bogy spoke of flying machines as if they were common devices, and safe.)

The warriors searched until full dark, when all communication with them abruptly failed. Minutes later the silver was sighted, flowing out of the northern hills and down onto the plain. The queen’s anger reverberated in the bogy’s fierce voice: “It was Fiaccomo who stirred up this legendary weapon against us, dredging it up from the dead past. We had no defense. Those who mattered escaped in flying machines, but the slaves—Fiaccomo’s own people—they all succumbed. I heard them screaming in the streets below and then a silence.

“But it was not over. Trespassers had gotten into the tower. They crept up the stairs, to this very room, but their insolence did not save them. The silver rose, flooding my windows, floor by floor, until it rolled into this chamber. How they screamed! And well deserved it was, for trespassing in my private rooms.

“The fog lingered for an hour or so past dawn. No one remained when it finally went away. That was nine days ago. Fiaccomo thought he could destroy us with this ancient curse, but now you have come back. Have you found Fiaccomo? Is it time for our counterattack?”

Liam’s face was more grim than I had ever seen it. “There will be no counterattack, little one. Not ever. This city is dead and you are a powerless ghost, and I hope you vanish into the silver again, and for all time. Now begone.”

Her face contorted in fury at his words, but somehow she could not disobey him. She stumbled sideways, toward the central wall, thrusting a hand out to keep from falling. “You will hang too,” she growled. “Traitor.”

“Go!” Liam shouted. “Vanish!”

And she did. Her substance flowed back into the wall until not even a shadow of her remained… except the shadow she had left on our minds. I could hear her voice speaking in its master’s tongue the death sentences of hundreds and it made me dizzy. My head buzzed and I sat down before I could fall.

“Jubilee, are you all right?”

Next thing I knew Liam was crouched beside me with his arm around my shoulders. My skin felt clammy and I didn’t know how to answer. “Is it dawn?” I whispered.

“It’s close enough.”

“Then let’s go home.”

We packed our things as quickly as we could and we left that city when the sun’s light was only a glimmer in the east.

“Wake up, Yaphet. Yaphet?”

I could see him asleep on his bed beneath the dim glow of a hanging lamp, its globe worked in tiles of colored glass to make flowers purple and yellow in color. The variegated light fell over him, illuminating the high points of his face, accenting the shadows. Sleep gives to some people a look of peace so profound it is almost inhuman. Yaphet had that look. In the shadows he seemed more a memory of an idealized past than a young man of this world.

“Yaphet.”

A week had passed since my adventure in the city and in that time I had been able to talk to Yaphet only twice. The market connection to Vesarevi was intermittent and rationed, and tonight the channels were especially bad. My father had called that morning to say he was leaving Xahiclan at last. He was to have called again from Temple Nathé where he would stay the night, but an antenna must have gone down along the highway because we’d had no word from him. So it was a wonder I’d reached Yaphet at all.

“Yaphet!”

He sat up abruptly, the peace on his face replaced by fear as he stared wide-eyed at the door of his room.

“Yaphet, it’s me. Jubilee.”

He turned to the sound of my voice. His gaze found the mimic screen of his savant, and as he focused on me, the tension went out of him. “Jubilee. I was dreaming. What time is it?”

“Late. It’s past midnight here.”

“Are you outside?”

I nodded. I’d come to sit on the lettered-stone wall that surrounds Temple Huacho. Silver filled all the vales that night, making islands of each hill. The gleaming surface of that nocturnal sea lay a hundred feet below me, disturbed by currents and restless waves that moved in no concerted direction, but it wasn’t rising. I breathed its fresh, invigorating scent (like newly made air, I thought). Its cool, clear light lit the night, spilling over the wall to touch the shapes of the trees in the orchard. Through their whispering leaves I could just see the pink glow of a lantern in the temple courtyard. Moki had come out with me. He lay now with his chin in my lap, breathing softly in a dreamless sleep. Overhead, the Bow of Heaven arched in faint luminescence across the stars.

Yaphet glanced again at his bedroom door. Then he spoke in a low voice. “I wish I were with you. Now.”

“Don’t come,” I warned him. “Not yet.” I was frightened at how quickly his feelings were changing. He’d been wary at our first meeting, but he’d been hungry at our second. After that there had been a row with his father, and by the anxious way he watched his door I guessed there had been another, but I didn’t ask.

“Don’t you want to be with me, Jubilee?”

In truth, I wasn’t sure. I liked Yaphet. I liked talking to him, and I would stay up hours for the chance of a few minutes of conversation. He was a puzzle to me, a fascination: How could it be that of all the players in the world, he was for me? Why should it be so? I wanted to understand this strange rule almost as much as I wanted to understand the silver.