Linda Nagata - Memory

Temple Nathé produced few kobolds, but it was famous for its healing baths. Elek Madhu was the temple keeper, presiding over a staff of a dozen cessants. She had kept Temple Nathé for nearly a hundred years, and had established two more small temples in the surrounding hills—the first step toward creating an enclave—but she still came forward to welcome each one of her guests.

The great doors of the temple gate stood open in the security of the afternoon. Elek waited for us there, dressed in a gown as white as Nathé’s walls. Age had softened her flesh and brought a fullness to her curves, but she was a beauty still, endowed with a feminine grace that has always eluded me. I had met her once before, the time I’d gone with my father to Xahiclan, and I remembered her as a kindly and courteous woman. But that had been three years before and though she looked much the same, I had changed considerably. She didn’t recognize me until I offered my name, and then her eyes grew wide and a little fearful. She couldn’t help a quick glance at the ruined truck, sitting in front of her sanctuary like an accusation. “Come inside,” she said softly. “I think we’ll find much to say.”

We walked our bikes up the driveway, to the temple’s expansive courtyard. Two trucks were already parked there, and a battered bike, dusty from the road. “You have guests?” Liam asked.

Elek smiled, though I sensed it was only the role-playing of a practiced hostess. “Nine now, with the two of you. It’s a rare night when we’re without guests, but I can offer you a private bath…” She looked anxiously from me to Liam. “And then perhaps, we can talk?”

I nodded. “You do know how it happened? How he was caught so close to sanctuary?”

Her hands clenched in a knot against her belly. “I will tell you what I saw. Perhaps you can tell me what happened. But not here—” She glanced toward a flight of white stairs rising to a columned veranda. Then, in a soft undertone, “Some of my guests are strangers to me.”

She gave us no chance to reply to this, for in the next breath she was speaking again in a normal voice: “I’ll go now to prepare your bath. Please come up when you’ve gathered your things.”

My things? As Elek mounted the steps I realized I had nothing. When I’d raced out of Temple Huacho that morning, I hadn’t exactly prepared for an overnight expedition. Liam offered a grudging smile. “There might be a clean shirt in the saddle boxes,” he offered. “Oh, and I brought your savant.”

I turned to open the saddle boxes, but as I did I heard Elek’s voice from the top of the stairs, sounding querulous and mistrustful: “No, they don’t want to talk, I’m sure. Please . I thought you had come to stay the night and rest?”

I looked up, to find her on the veranda, speaking to someone inside who I could not see, though there was something familiar about the voice that answered: “I’ve come for many reasons, Elek, but rest is low on that list.”

“Not for them. They’re tired. They’ve requested a private bath. Perhaps tomorrow—”

“Has something happened to frighten you?”

Silence followed this question… though I felt more sure than ever that I knew this voice. But from where? The memory would not come.

I glanced at Liam, to find him listening too. I had told him all about Kaphiri, and the cessants who followed him. “Should we go?” he asked when he noticed my look. We could never get home before dark, but we had camped before, on hilltops in Kavasphir.

Elek answered her unseen guest before I could decide. “The truth, stranger, is that you frighten me.”

“Ah. A flaw in my nature, I suspect.”

At that, my memory finally gave up its obstinate game. “Udondi Halal,” I whispered. The cessant who had told me Kaphiri’s name.

She appeared on the veranda, a small, lean woman dressed in weathered clothing, with fingerless black gloves on her hands, and dark hair pulled in a loose knot behind her neck. She smiled when she saw me. “Jubilee Huacho,” she said as a flustered Elek hovered at her elbow. “So it is you.”

I did not respond in kind. I was wary as she descended the steps. She saw this, and stopped, saying, “It’s not me you need to fear.”

I wanted to believe that. “Why are you here?”

“To see you of course, though I hadn’t expected the pleasure until tomorrow. I was on my way to Temple Huacho.”

“He hasn’t come again.”

“You shouldn’t speak of that here.”

“I don’t think he will come.”

“I hope that’s so.” She stepped forward, tentatively extending her black-gloved hand. “Well met?”

I hesitated. Should I trust her just because she had told me Kaphiri’s name? She held her hand out still, though she was disappointed, I think, at my doubt. Under her breath she said, “Know this at least: I am not his friend.”

That I could believe. So I clasped her hand, and after that I introduced her to Liam, and then I reintroduced her to the perplexed Elek who, I discovered, knew her under a different name and perhaps a different purpose.

Liam and I returned then to our bikes and gathered our things, but within a few minutes we were stripped and immersed in one of the fine healing baths of Temple Nathé. At my invitation Udondi Halal shared our round pool, while the temple keeper sat beside us, hunched on a stool, her white dress held carefully above the damp floor.

Sunset light poured into our private room through a ceiling of polished glass and for a time no one seemed willing to speak. I sank into the hot water, letting it rise to my chin, and I watched Udondi past wisps of steam as the light faded and her face sank into shadow. I felt calm for the first time since that terrible night. Patient. It was the way I felt when I waited for the words of a new language to boil up to the surface of my mind.

In that prolonged silence I almost forgot about Elek. As darkness crept into the room the temple keeper became a shape without features, a frozen phantasm of the silver perched on her little stool. I was startled when she finally spoke aloud: “It was at just this time that I saw the headlights of your father’s truck.”

All the tension that had leeched out of me in the nurturing water returned now. I strained to see Elek through the gathering darkness, and I listened.

“I’d been expecting Kedato that afternoon, and when he didn’t arrive by sunset I grew concerned. I had no other guests that night, so I went to stand on the temple wall where I could watch for his lights.

“There was no sign of silver. There had been none for many days and I told myself that even if there had been a problem with the truck, he would likely be safe camped along the road.

“Then I saw his headlights at the valley’s northern end and my worries left me. The evening was so beautiful. Bats were hunting, their dark shapes flitting through the dusk, and I stayed on the wall to watch them.”

She bowed her head. “The world can change so quickly. Kedato was only a half mile out when the valley floor blushed silver. Never have I seen anything like it. There was still a pale light in the sky, so at first I thought the sheen was just some strange reflection, but it was silver, seeping up from the ground, seeping up everywhere at once. Kedato drove faster, but it was no use. His tires failed in seconds and the truck skidded off the road, sliding into the low ground where it lies now.

“He climbed out of the window and stood on the roof, looking toward me. By then the silver had filled the valley floor. It lay all around him, many inches deep. He called out to me—you see, the truck’s phone had already failed—he asked me to call his lover, but the silver was rising fast. I feared that if I went up to the temple, he would be gone when I returned.