Linda Nagata - Memory

In my mind I saw a night when there was no hill or tower high enough to escape a rising silver flood, and only a handful of enclaves strong enough to hold it back. But if the gates of these enclaves should be opened? If Kaphiri himself should visit each stronghold and call the silver in, even past the temple walls? Then all that is must drown.

Morning would still come to such a world. The ring of the world would turn, the sun would rise, and the silver recede, but there would be no one to see what follies had been brought forward in time, or to celebrate the renewal of the land.

“So you’ve set yourself to stop him,” Liam said.

Udondi nodded. “I have already seen enough drowning in this world.”

Much later that night I was awakened by my savant, whispering my name. I opened my eyes to find it floating beside me, its wing emitting a soft, golden illumination that did not reach to the edges of the little room. “A call,” it said in its old man’s voice. “From Jolly.”

A cold flush ran through me as I sat up on my pallet. I stared at the gleaming savant, afraid to speak, afraid that speech would shatter the dreamspell that surely held me.

“It is a time-limited channel,” the savant added.

“But how could it be Jolly?”

The savant hesitated a second. Then it answered confidently: “It can be Jolly because the biometrics are correct.”

“That can’t be.”

“Rechecking. Done. Identical results. Reminder: this is a time-limited channel.”

“Answer it!”

It was not Jolly calling me. That’s what I told myself. But I wanted to know who it was, and why.

A rectangular window appeared within the golden glow of the savant’s wing. At first the mimic screen was dark, but a second later light stirred, rising like silver in the night to coalesce in a face half lit, half in shadow—a boy, with beautiful, dark, fearful eyes.

It was as if the years between us had been erased. Here was my brother, hardly older than when I’d lost him. “Record,” I whispered to my savant. Then louder, “Jolly?”

“Mama?” He cocked his head; a look of confusion crossed his brow. “You’re not my mother! Where is she?”

“No, I’m not Mama. It’s me, Jolly. It’s Jubilee. Were you calling Mama? She’s home—”

“You’re not Jubilee! And this is my mother’s link. Why do you have her savant?”

I caught my breath. What Jolly was saying was true. When he was alive—

(When he was alive? What was he now? I could not doubt it was him, yet he looked only a little older, hardly touched by seven years of time.)

—yet it was true. When he was taken, this savant had belonged to my mother. It had not become mine until I was thirteen.

My astonishment was like a keening climbing higher in intensity and pitch until I could no longer hear it. I spoke calmly. “Mama gave me the savant, Jolly. A long time ago. And it is me. I am Jubilee, but time has gone by… for me. I’m seventeen. We thought you were gone. Lost.”

“I’ve been lost.” Tears started in his eyes. “Jubilee?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t be you. You’re littler than I am.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know how, Jolly. I don’t know what’s happened, but this is me. Look—” I patted my thigh, calling Moki to my side. “Here’s Moki. Your dog.He’s just the same.”

Jolly stared at the little red hound, looking like a boy sinking beneath clear water, dumbfounded, drowning in confusion. “Moki?” His voice cracked. Moki pricked his ears, sniffing furiously. “Moki!” Jolly shouted, and Moki jumped off the bed, searching behind the savant. “Moki!”

Time was counting down in the corner of the screen. “Jolly. We only have a minute left. Tell me where you are. Tell me where I can find you, and I’ll come.”

“You’ll tell Mama and Dad?”

I winced, but I nodded.

He licked his lips, looking uncertain. He glanced to the side, but apparently he got no counsel there. Moki returned to my lap, and Jolly’s gaze fixed again on his dog. “I’m at a small temple… in the Iraliad. It’s called Rose Island Station. Ficer is the temple keeper. He lives here, by himself. He keeps the antennas.”

Time was ticking down. We had only seconds left. “How did you get there, Jolly?”

“Out of the silver.”

It was the answer I’d expected, and still it rocked me. I struggled to keep my voice calm. “Send me your address, Jolly.”

“How—?” Again he turned as if to ask someone offscreen.

“Tell the savant,” an old, low voice advised in gruff syllables.

“Send the address,” Jolly said dully.

The connection closed.

I held on to Moki and cried for several minutes. Then I wiped my face and blew my nose and got up. I walked around my little room, pinching myself, jumping up and down, stroking the walls to feel the complexity of their texture, the pain of corners pressed against my fingertips, the detail of sensation as I rubbed my face and swallowed.

Details that were never mimicked in dreams.

Only when I was sure I was awake did I call the savant back to me. “Replay the last call.”

I watched Jolly and listened to my voice talking to him.Not a dream. I watched again.

Then I sat down on my pallet, my back braced against the wall and the savant balanced on my knees. I launched a search for Rose Island Station.

The library access took only a few seconds. It was a real place, in the Iraliad, just as Jolly had said. The station keeper was recorded as one Ficer Elmi.

Of course, someone who wanted to deceive me might easily use the name of a real place. But why try to deceive me about my brother?

My brother was not a deception.

I had talked to him and he’d been real. Impossibly real. Only a little older than the boy I remembered.

I had promised to tell his mother where he was.

I gripped the savant, not daring to even think what I would say to her.

I sent the call.

My mother’s confusion and grief, and her anger: they warred with a quiet joy as I told and retold every detail of my story, many times over, each repetition making it more real. At last she asked me this question: “Jubilee, do you believe it’s Jolly?”

“I do.”

She nodded, her face reflecting a stern resolve. “We have to bring him home.”

“I’ll go,” I said quickly, for I was afraid she would go herself. “Liam will go with me.”

My mother looked doubtful. “It’s the Iraliad.”

“I’m not afraid.”

Her hands met, palm to palm, beneath her chin. “What about Yaphet?”

Yaphet was even farther away than Jolly, though every step closer to the Iraliad would bring me closer to him. It was a thought that made me uneasy, as if I were contemplating a betrayal—but of who? I shook my head. “If that’s meant to be, then it will happen,” I said. “Someday. For now it’s Jolly who matters most.”

“I wish I could go with you.”

“You can’t. You have the babies to care for.”

“Yes… Jubilee? When you are deep in the Iraliad, there may come a time when you look back and realize that your home has become too far away. Too far to ever risk returning. If that happens, I’ll understand. If you want to take Jolly and push on to Vesarevi, to Yaphet… well… it might be best.”

“No.”I rejected the idea immediately. “No, Mama. I’ll bring Jolly back to you. I will.”

“If you can,” my mother said firmly, for she knew the ways of the world far better than I.

I checked the time. Still two hours before sunrise. From the window of my room I could look out over the gardens and the temple wall, to the north end of the valley. There was no sign of silver, and the odds of it rising so late in the night were very slim. So I went to wake Liam.