Linda Nagata - Memory

I thought about the ocean, trying to imagine all those clouds as water. The fantasy delighted me. Maybe I should have been afraid, standing on that cliff edge, looking out on a vista that reached to the edge of the world, but I was part of that world, I felt my connection to it keenly. I wanted to throw my arms around it, and gather it all up and know it, for it was beautiful, and full of life and mystery, and these were things that called to my soul.

We continued east, and in the late afternoon we finally reached the edge of Kalang’s forest. There was nothing gradual or natural about the transition. The trees simply ended in a last line of carefully tended giants, without a single sapling to mar the strict boundary between the forest and the wide grassland that stretched before us.

As we rode through that grassland we saw many herds of wild cattle, each shepherded by a bull that would snort and offer false charges if we passed too near. The land was badly overgrazed, and cut through with the colorful scars of exposed mineral deposits. I could not imagine how so many cattle survived there, but they looked in good condition. “So,” Liam said when I mentioned it, “maybe they’re tended by mechanics too.”

We laughed, for even mechanics could not easily produce feed out of the air. Still, I looked around a little more warily after that, for if these herds were descendants of animals kept by the mysterious Kalang then perhaps theyhad inherited some ancient protection of their own.

The sun was behind us, low in the west and just on the verge of disappearing behind the gloomy line of the forest when we came unexpectedly to the eastern tip of the Kalang. Udondi, who had ridden ahead, stopped and gave a somber call back to us, her voice like a bird’s cry on the wind. Liam and I hurried to join her, only to find that the sheer southern cliff had circled around in front of us. We were standing on a peninsula in the clouds, no more than a quarter mile wide, its apex marked by a rounded bluff that dropped straight down into the fog.

“The maps don’t show anything like this,” Udondi said, and her voice was soft with a restrained anger. If the map makers had been there, I fear they might have learned very quickly the exact height of that cliff. But they were long lost to history, and we could go no farther east.

So we rode around the bluff, and in that way came immediately to the northern wall. At first the cliff was as sheer as on the southern side, but after a mile the vertical wall gave way to great piers of eroded stone that stepped out into the cloud sea. Their slopes—the little we could see before they vanished in mist—were frighteningly steep and heavily eroded, covered with loose flakes and chips of stone so that the danger of landslide was very real. And still they seemed friendly after the stern impossibility of the southern escarpment. We could have tried to descend in a dozen different places, but all of them presented a considerable risk, so we kept going, hoping for something better.

At twilight we found it. The clouds pulled back, revealing a well-used cattle trail winding along the side of a great ridge. We watched a herd appear from out of the mist, lowing gently as they climbed the last half mile to the plateau.

“And if the native cattle choose to pass the night in the highlands,” Liam said, “then I think we should too.”

Udondi and I quickly agreed. In all that land we had seen no sign of silver: no follies, and no recent veins of beautiful ore. We felt safe camping there. Or we would have felt safe, if we didn’t have to contend with the lurking threat of the worm.

We made our camp well back from the trailhead in case the cattle chose to use it in the night. I floated my savant, but there was still no signal. “That’s the Iraliad,” Udondi said. “Antenna towers go down all the time.”

I couldn’t help but worry—about my mother, about Jolly, and even about Yaphet. I was restless, so as evening loomed I set out for the cliffs, Moki at my heels.

To my surprise the clouds were breaking up, the greater mass rolling back toward the Sea Comb, while the stragglers evaporated in the descending night. There was little light left. Still, I was able to glimpse the land below. It looked to be a dry, jagged country, with little more vegetation than the southern desert I had seen that morning. Ridge after ridge ran east into darkness, each one cut by steep ravines that emptied into broad washes so smooth I guessed they were lined with sand.

Far, far away, where night had already fallen, a tiny light winked to life. Whose light? Few players dared the Iraliad and it was easy to think I looked out on the encampment of our enemies… but if so, why did they wait for us so far from the Kalang?

Within seconds a new glow appeared—silvery, nebulous—it sparkled in the washes, at first only a half-seen, illusory light but it brightened rapidly as twilight gave way to full darkness, and soon the plain was flooded with luminous silver. It rose as quickly as any silver flood I have seen, filling the gullies and climbing the steep slopes of the ravines until only the highest ridges and a few lonely pinnacles stood above it. Cattle, made tiny by distance, gathered on these islands, lowing forlornly to the twilight. Somewhere a coyote howled, and others answered it, and soon a symphony was rising from the lowlands and it was as if the silver itself had found a voice.

That sound got inside me. Or maybe it only wakened my coyote heart, but I found myselfhoping the worm’s owner was out there. Kaphiri might not be troubled by such an evening, but surely the same could not be said for Mica Indevar and the other players who followed him. The Iraliad was a dangerous place and not just for us. Perhaps the silver would swallow our enemies before ever they could find us. Perhaps it already had.

When I looked again for the distant light, I could not find it, though whether it had been taken by the silver or only eclipsed, I could not say.

Liam had the last watch that night. He woke me with a gentle shake of my shoulder. “Jubilee.”

“Is it morning?”

“Soon.”

It was still dark, but I could hear a constant lowing of cattle all around me, and now and then the sound of a hoof striking rock. Udondi stirred sleepily. “Has something frightened the cattle?” she asked. “Why are they moving?”

“They make their way to the trailhead,” Liam said. “Most of them probably go down to graze in the day.” He was crouched beside me. I could just make out his rifle, cradled in his lap. “Are you both awake now?”

He spoke softly, but something in his voice gave me warning. I sat up, and Udondi did the same. “What’s happened?” I asked.

“I’ve seen him.”

“Seen who?” I searched my mind for possibilities. “Mica Indevar?”

“No. It was Kaphiri.”

Liam told us then how he’d taken his rifle and walked out to the cliffs to look about. “The land below was flooded with silver, and I could see the tiny shapes of cattle, crowded onto the high ground. After a time one of the trapped herds began to churn in a sudden panic that drove some of the smaller calves into the silver. I thought a coyote might have been on their hilltop island, but no. The shape that came around from the back of the hill was no coyote. It stood tall, and it walked on two feet. A player.”

“He was alone?” Udondi asked.

“Yes. Dressed in dark clothing. No more than a silhouette, despite the glow of silver. He walked around the side of the hill, and the silver lapped at his feet. He walked into it, as if it were only fog.”

Shock was still fresh in his voice; it echoed my own. “Kaphiri,” I whispered, while fear shivered across my scalp. To think he had been here… “How long ago?” I asked.