Linda Nagata - Memory

I realized then that it must have been close to us all day, staying just out of sight—for how else could it have found the carcass so quickly?—and yet it had not once attacked us. Why not? Perhaps because it would be easier to let us escape the Kalang Crescent under our own power…?

I dropped the kickstand on my bike. Udondi turned to stare at me. “They’re waiting for us on the other side of the Crescent!” I gestured at the worm. “It’s been called off. It’s been told to follow us only.”

Panic took me. What had I said this morning when the worm’s drug had set my tongue to talking? Had I said anything more about Jolly? About where I hoped to find him? I couldn’t remember, but what if I had? “They want to use me against him!” Already wet and sick and trembling in that grim forest, I could not bear this added injury. “They think they can find him first!”

I swung off my bike. Moki leaped down to follow.

“Jubilee!” Liam said, backing his bike around. “Be calm. There’s nothing we can do here.”

“Yes there is. Give me your vial of kobolds.” He would have a stock of the metallophores too. I had not seen them, but I knew Liam.

“No. It would be too—”

I wanted no excuses. I turned from him to Udondi. I swear my intention was only to demand the kobolds, but she had come up behind me and in my weakness I stumbled against her. She reached out to catch my arms and I felt the vial in her chest pocket. In an instant I had it out and I was away, running bent over for balance, straight for the feeding frenzy, with the smell of the bull’s blood in my nostrils.

The worm was still there, on the other side of the swarming mechanics. It looked like a channel of light in the blood-soaked moss, its tiny head reared up and swaying above the forest mechanics in the attitude of one entranced by an incomparable symphony. Of me, it was utterly unaware.

I drew my hand back to throw the vial—but the moss was soft. Would the vial shatter? I hesitated, and in that moment Liam caught up with me. He grabbed my hand. I cried out in wordless fury while he shouted at me, “Stop and think what you’re doing!”

Then we were both shouting at once, while Moki danced around our feet barking like a mad thing.

“I’m going to kill the worm, Liam!”

“You’re going to kill us all.”

“Let go of me! The worm will follow us if we don’t kill it now.”

“Think what you’re doing! If you release those kobolds here they won’t just attack the worm. The forest mechanics, Jubilee! They’re made just like the worm. What will happen ifthey begin to die?”

His words got under my rage at last. What would happen? Even more of the forest mechanics would come. Hundreds had swarmed together to attack the bull. How many more might come if some of their own were dying?

The fight left me. I let Liam take the vial.

The worm had been roused by our shouting. It stared at me, its tiny eyes like blind white circles. Somehow it knew I would not dare hurt it.

“Come away,” Liam said.

The smell of the carcass and the churning and snipping of the mechanics intruded on my senses as sickening things. Even Moki was lapping at a pool of blood. I let Liam guide me backward. “We will not harm any trees,” he murmured. “Or any mechanics.” I called to Moki, and he followed, his tongue licking at the blood on his nose and chin.

The worm watched us. Listened. When we were six feet away it lowered its little head to the moss and sped off tail first into the mist almost faster than my eye could follow.

Liam was quietly furious all that afternoon—because I had been foolish, yes, but also I’m sure because he wanted to destroy the worm as much as I did and yet he had been forced to let it go. We would not get a chance like that again, and as fast as the worm could move, how could we ever escape it? I had not seen it again, but I did not doubt that it still followed.

Liam was well ahead of me, his shape on the bike only a silhouette in the mist when I saw him stop. I slowed my own bike, wary of his anger. Udondi had been following, but now she rode up beside me.

She had been silent since my escapade, but with her, as with Liam, I sensed there were words to be spoken that had only been put off for a while. “Stay close,” she said. “We need each other.”

A blush touched my damp cheeks and I hurried forward, to learn that Liam had found a path.

It was a narrow track, running at right angles to our heading. The moss had been worn away, revealing a maze of tree roots cradling scattered patches of thick mud. Pressed into the mud in several places was the watery impression of a very large boot.

Udondi looked up from where she had been crouching, examining the tracks, “Do we follow the path?” she asked. “Or do we leave this mysterious resident to himself?”

“Let’s go on,” Liam said. “I don’t want to know the player who would choose to live here.”

I felt the opposite. I wanted to know who would adopt this forest for a home, and the thought of sleeping under a roof, behind a closed door, was pleasant to me. But I was not going to argue again with Liam. So we crossed the path and went on, but we did not escape.

After half an hour our northeasterly trek was interrupted by a wall that marched across our way. It stood perhaps nine feet high, with a crown of moss on the top. Its bricks had the chalky look of condensed stone that grows by harvesting molecules from the air.

The wall ran off to right and left, wending between the trees until it disappeared in the mist. At several points its stonework had been shattered by the expanding girth of some massive trunk. But despite the strange setting, and the wall’s poor condition, I thought I recognized its purpose, for I had climbed upon a similar fortification all my life. “This is a temple wall.”

“Maybe it was a temple wall,” Liam said. “It’s a ruin now.”

“But perhaps not uninhabited?” Udondi mused.

It was late. Darkness would be falling soon. I knew Liam wanted to push on into the night, but he looked at me and saw it was no use. I was exhausted, not at all recovered from the worm’s bite. I played on my weakness. “If it’s a temple,” I said, “the players here are sure to let us stay the night.” And perhaps there would be no forest mechanics within the temple building. I was developing a hearty loathing for all mechanics greater in size and intelligence than simple kobolds.

“Let’s follow the wall around,” Liam said, nodding to the north. “If we find the gate, maybe we’ll see what goes on inside.” He was hoping we would not find it, but it was my luck—my famous luck—that we did, and only a quarter mile away. The gate stood open, its panels stained with rain, and moss growing along its upper edge and piled around its hinges, so it was clear it hadn’t been shut for years upon endless years.

The path we had spurned in the forest found us again at the gate. It stepped boldly through, dividing the carpet of moss in half. Liam sat his bike, peering reluctantly within at a massive, dark shadow that was the temple building, looming in the mist. There were no lights, or any scent of dinner cooking. No voices, no gardens, nor any paths, except the one determined path leading directly to the front door.

It was Moki who decided us. He jumped from his bin before I could stop him, and trotted toward the temple, his ears pricked forward in a curious pose. “So,” Udondi said, “I’ve been in stranger places.” She followed after Moki, and I followed her, so in the end Liam had no choice.

We left our bikes alongside the path and walked up the moss-covered stairs that led to the temple’s open doors. I was surprised at the dull thump of our footsteps on the stair, as if it was made of hollow plastic. An angled roof covered the small stoop, sheltering it from the rain and shading the double doors so that instead of moss, their plain panels were covered with a slimy black algae that came away on my fingers when I made the mistake of touching it. The doors were pinned against the wall with blackened hooks.