Linda Nagata - Memory

He stood on the rock beside me, staring down the escarpment, at the track we had come up that afternoon. I leaned forward, striving to see past the darkness beneath the trees, fully expecting Kaphiri to appear on the trail we had made, a shadow walking out of the shadows, but I could see nothing. I heard nothing, but Moki growled again and when I laid a comforting hand on his back I felt his red fur raised high.

It might be a lion stalking us. And my rifle was still on my bike. “Liam!” I shouted, and my voice echoed across the escarpment.

I listened for the sound of some great creature charging through the forest below, but I heard only Liam and Udondi calling me. “Jubilee! Where are you?”

“By the escarpment. Pull the rifles. Moki thinks something’s down there.”

Then several things happened at once. Behind me I heard Liam bounding across the bog. Beside me Moki danced back, barking furiously—his high-pitched warning bark exactly like that night the silver came for Jolly. My heart turned over. I rose to my feet.

I saw it then: a silver-colored worm sliding uphill along the track we had followed in the afternoon. It did not gleam like a savant, but its surface caught the starlight so it looked like a faintly glittering cord of light. I guessed it to be six feet long, but very thin, probably no more than an inch in diameter. It moved with stunning speed, not slowing for rocks or the rough terrain as any organic creature would, but gliding over them as if it truly was made of light. By this unnatural locomotion I knew at once it was a mechanic, and with equal certainty I guessed it had been sent to hunt us.

Moki’s barking grew more frantic and he scampered back, showing more sense than me. I should have retreated. But I’d seen the worm move and I knew I couldn’t outrun it. So I scrambled higher onto the rock outcropping where I had been sitting.

I didn’t see the worm reach the edge of the escarpment. It was just there, sliding out of the grass and onto the moss-slick rocks where I stood. A bullet whined, smacking the stone just ahead of the worm, throwing mud and moss and sharp rock flecks into my face.

I slipped. I went down on my side and the worm was on me. It slid over my legs, then across my chest. I grabbed at it, just as its tiny mouth flared open, exposing the glittering point of a single tiny fang. In my hands I felt cold metal scales; on my neck, a piercing pinpoint of pain. I flung the worm away over the precipice. Two rifle shots followed as I regained my feet and jumped down to the bog. I was halfway back to the forest when my legs gave out beneath me.

All that night I was in a strange state, drifting in and out of consciousness. Somehow, I was back in my sleeping bag. I thought I was warm, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t move. I wasn’t even certain I was breathing. Somewhere in the distance I heard Moki bark in his high, frantic voice. I heard Liam shout and Udondi answer and the rifle sounded again.

I remembered the feel of the worm’s cold metal scales and thought, This is Mica Indevar’s revenge . The worm was his. It had to be his. He’d sent it to follow our trail.

Then maybe the poison wouldn’t kill me. Maybe it was no worse than the sleeping drug Udondi had used on him. Except I wasn’t asleep. I was dreadfully aware.

I could not turn my head. I could not even tell if my eyes were blinking, but I could see and hear. Moki was barking again, far away, while down the wide trunk of the tree beside me something crawled. Something silvery white just like the worm.

A savant must have been gleaming behind me, because a circle of faint light fell against the tree trunk. As this thing crawled into that radiance I saw it was not the worm. Instead, it was a thing like a mantis, but larger than any insect I had ever seen, as tall as my hand is long.

It crawled headfirst down the rough bark of the tree trunk, stepping carefully on four legs while holding two front limbs close to its body. Its long neck was capped by a triangular head just large enough to hold its two wide, pale eyes. They were not animal eyes. There was no white, no iris, no pupil. Just a dry disk, striated by a circular fan of white rays, marking it as a mechanic, but one very different from the worm.

I screamed for Liam, but the sound was trapped inside my mind.

The mechanic reached the base of the tree’s trunk. It stepped gingerly out onto the thick moss.

Liam!

I could hear him and Udondi in the distance, calling to one another in the sharp, staccato voices of hunters close on the prey.

The mechanic raised its forelimbs before my staring eyes. One was a large pincer, more slender than a river crab’s. One was like the blades of a pair of serrated knives. From a mouth in its chest it spoke in a strange, unpracticed voice like a rusty hinge swinging: “These trees are Kalang’s. To harm them is not allowed.”

It waited as if for an answer. When it did not get one it turned and disappeared back up the same tree it had descended.

I still could not move. I could not speak. But I could feel my heartbeat racing in helpless fear.

Some long time passed. Then finally Liam came by and made me close my eyes.

By dawn I had recovered enough volition to throw up when Liam tried to get some water down my throat. My thoughts fixed on Mica Indevar and they were wicked thoughts indeed.

But soon after that I got my fingers to twitch and my eyes to blink on command. Then, instead of the pleasure of feeling nothing, I endured a horrible prickly return of sensation as when the leg has fallen asleep, but it was everywhere and lasted a solid hour at least. I’m ashamed to say the first sound I uttered (and the only sound for some long time) was an agonized moan.

At last though, the torment faded. I gained some control of my muscles, especially of my tongue and throat—though I had no control at all of what I said. I began to babble, to confess. Anything and everything I had never told to Liam before poured forth: the story of how I had taken my father’s rifle when I was eleven and still forbidden to use it, and how I had killed a deer then left the carcass in the forest because I was too frightened to admit what I had done; and the time I had convinced Rizal it would be a good idea to sneak a ride on the rear bumper of a truck leaving Temple Huacho, except Rizal was afraid to jump off so we went too far and it was long past dark by the time we managed to walk home and lucky for us there was no silver that night; and the time Jolly and I had climbed down the kobold well; and how I would fantasize that Liam was my lover after all.

After that confession he left me to recover on my own, and Udondi was too wise to come anywhere near me, so I had only Moki to babble my secrets to, but he already knew them all.

I have no doubt that if Mica Indevar had managed to climb the Kalang escarpment that morning, I would have happily confessed everything I knew about where to find my brother Jolly.

By noon I had mostly returned to myself. I could stand, though my legs trembled. And I could hold my tongue, which is a skill we should not take for granted. I was working my way through a sweetened oat bar when Liam ruefully informed me that the worm had escaped.

I was incredulous. “You let it get away?” Liam was an excellent shot; it had not occurred to me the worm might have escaped him.

“Not by choice. It was fast. Cunning.”

“But you had Moki. You had the rifle.”

“We hit it twice,” Udondi said. “It broke into segments, and then re-formed.”

I looked wide-eyed at the lanes of moss-covered ground between the giant trees. “So it’s still out there.”

“And whoever sent it could be on their way here as we speak,” Udondi said. “We need to move on.”