Linda Nagata - Memory

“But I saw how fast it moved. We can’t outrun it.”

As a mechanic, the worm would be powered by the same tiny battery chips that powered our bikes, which could run for months. If they were smarter, I’m sure it wouldn’t be long before mechanics owned the world, but fortunately they have no passion for their own existences. Their only interest is the task they are given—and this worm had apparently been charged with stopping our flight, and holding us, until its master could catch up. If we left now it would certainly follow us, and give away our position once again.

Udondi shrugged. “Of course you’re right, the worm will find us again, but…” She pulled a vial from her chest pocket. “The next time it shows itself we’ll have it… and we’ll still be far ahead of whoever sent it.”

A half-dozen dormant kobolds filled the little vial. They were silver, and no bigger than the smallest housefly. “Metallophores?” I asked.

Udondi nodded. “Can you ride?”

I didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure I could stay on my bike, but if someone was following the worm’s track up the escarpment, I did not want to be caught sitting here when they came over the top. So I forced myself up. Liam had already packed my sleeping bag and my savant, so there was nothing left to do but get on the bike, and lift Moki into his bin. That was when I remembered the second mechanic I’d seen in the night.

The memory was remarkably clear, but Liam gave me a funny look when I described what I had seen. “I was not hallucinating!” I insisted. He shrugged.

Udondi was more willing to believe me. She eyed the forest thoughtfully. “Kalang’s trees, huh? They do look rather nicely tended.”

So they did. I had been too tired yesterday to notice, and too sick to see it in the morning, but the trees were all straight-backed giants without dead limbs or wounds or gnarls. They looked as if they’d been carefully pruned and tended for what must be the hundreds of years they had been alive.

Udondi said, “Personally, I think I’ll leave the trees unharmed and forgo any fires until we leave the Crescent. What do you say, Liam?”

What could Liam say? He nodded, and took the lead.

The moss that carpeted the forest floor was so thick and moist our bike tires hardly disturbed it; our tracks disappeared almost before we could turn around. Yesterday on the escarpment I’d expected to spend many grim days hunting a path through the forest. The reality proved suspiciously easy. The trees were planted in great lanes, with no saplings, no underbrush, and no low-hanging branches. There were no follies either; no sign at all that silver had ever been there.

Following the lanes of trees took us in a northeasterly direction: deeper into the forest and ever farther from the western escarpment. By late afternoon we had put over eighty miles behind us. We might have gone farther, but I was still very weak, and for my sake Liam called a break every half hour or so. During these times I would let Moki run free, hoping he would alert us if the worm drew near. Then I would fling myself onto the wet moss, sleeping for five minutes, sometimes ten, while Liam and Udondi kept watch.

It was during one of these rest stops that Moki discovered a mantislike mechanic, identical to the one I had seen the night before. It clung to a tree trunk, at a height of fifteen feet or so above the ground. From its perch on the rough bark it examined us, making no comment while Moki danced and barked at the base of the tree. Udondi shooed him away. Then she looked up at the mechanic, her hands on her hips. “You see?” she called. “We are not harming the trees.”

The mechanic made no response. When we continued on our way a few minutes later, it was still clinging to the tree.

Soon after we saw another, this time on the forest floor where it was busy using its clawlike appendage to snip away at tiny weeds sprouting in the moss. Moki growled at it, but I held on to his scruff so he could not give chase. These were not the mechanics we wanted him to hunt.

Late in the day the rain returned. Fat drops fell down from the distant canopy, pattering dully on the moss, while the aisles of trees were filled with drifting mists. I was overwhelmed with the certainty that this had been the pattern of life here, every day, for hundreds of years. The rain would come and the trees would grow, with no difference from one day to the next, no way to measure time passing.

Then into that stillness there burst a terrible animal scream.

I skidded my bike to a stop to listen better.

Every player is born with instinctive memories. Though I had never before heard such a horrible bellowing, I knew immediately it was the death rage of some great beast, set upon by a predator even more fierce. The hair rose on the back of my neck, while Moki cowered in his bin.

The noise came from somewhere ahead. Not far, I guessed, though nothing could be seen through the mist. The sound became higher in pitch and more frantic, waves of pain echoing through the aisles. I bowed my head and covered my ears but I could still hear it. It seemed to go on forever, though I suppose it couldn’t have been more than two minutes, maybe three before silence returned to the forest.

But nothing was the same. The aisles of trees had become sinister lines leading to a dark and unknown heart. I looked back, thinking to turn and flee perhaps, I don’t know, but Udondi was there and though she looked shaken she managed an encouraging smile. “At least that hunter found game before it could notice us.”

Liam rolled his bike back, so that we made a small circle there under the trees. “I’d like to know what it was.”

“You want to look for it?” I asked, wide-eyed.

He nodded. “It could take us two days to reach the eastern end of the Crescent. I’d rather know the hazards than not.”

I glanced back once more, but there was no sanctuary that way. Mica Indevar had overheard me speak of Jolly. He would surely have gotten word to Kaphiri by now. I stroked Moki’s back and whispered a few words to soothe him. Then I slipped my rifle out of its sheath and slung it over my shoulder.

Udondi did the same, but Liam eyed me doubtfully. “I’ll be in front,” he reminded, “so don’t shoot if your hands are shaking.”

They were shaking quite visibly. “Come. Let’s get this done.”

We came on the kill in just a few minutes. It appeared first as a mound of gleaming, scurrying metal looming in the mist. Only as we drew near did I see the great horns and hooves of a wild bull—eight feet at the shoulder in life—protruding from the mass of forest mechanics that swarmed the carcass, using their claws and blades to cut away tiny slices of meat.

Scarlet blood pooled on the moss.

The bull must have rampaged, for in places the moss was torn out down to the mud, and many trees were slashed as if by horns. A crowd of forest mechanics crouched at each of these wounds, using their feet to pat in a paste just the color of the bark. I kept my hand on Moki.

Liam said, “I think we see the reason the Kalang Crescent has not been settled. I will take your advice, Udondi, and not harm any trees.”

Beyond the dead bull (at least, I hoped it was finally dead… a death of small cuts and slashes and slow bleeding) new movement caught my eye: a fluid cable of silver metal sliding out of the mist. “It’s there!” I whispered. “The worm.”

The worm. It must have been drawn by the activity of the forest mechanics. I watched it slip toward the bull’s boiling carcass. It moved slowly, its tiny head raised an inch above the moss, and it did not look to either side. It seemed entranced, hypnotized by this mechanical frenzy, utterly unaware of us on our bikes, only a few dozen feet away.