Linda Nagata - Memory

He nodded, his eyes charged with excitement. “I’m on my way to meet you.”

“It’s dangerous.”

This won another rare smile from him. As if he cared! “I talked to your mother.”

“You did? When? Is she all right?”

“The night I left home. That was the night after we talked. Two nights ago, now. I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. She told me more about your brother Jolly—”

“Was she all right?”

“She was worried for you—”

“Did she say if anyone had come to the temple?”

He shook his head. “No. We didn’t talk about anything like that… why? Something’s happened to you, hasn’t it?”

“Yaphet, there’s no time to explain—”

“Yes there is. Look—” He gestured at his screen. “There’s no limit on this call. Probably because there aren’t any links beyond the Iraliad, so no one bothers to call. We’re probably the only players on this channel. We can talk all night if we want to.”

“I should call Jolly.” I opened a second link, to the address Jolly had given me at Rose Island Station. A savant answered, and I asked for my brother, but the savant said he’d gone out. I left a message for him to call me.

It was getting really cold on the pinnacle now, so I sealed my field jacket and huddled close to the stone, cradling the savant in my lap, and we talked, Yaphet and I, while night descended on the desert. Night still reached him first, but it hurried on to me much faster than it had that first time we’d spoken. I learned how it had been for him, when he left home. At first he’d thought to just slip quietly away, but his conscience wouldn’t allow it. So he did the proper thing and went to his father to speak his intentions and say good-bye.

It is an unnatural thing for a parent to have only one child, and perhaps that is some explanation for the row that followed. It was the worst that had ever fallen out between them. In his rage Yaphet’s father beat him, but afterward he was so shocked by what he’d done that he relented and Yaphet was given his freedom. He seemed bitter over it, and sad, and angry, but also proud and pleased too. So many feelings, all at once, but then, that was Yaphet.

In turn I told him all that had happened to me, and it was both pleasing and disturbing to see him fret over the dangers I had visited. To be the object of his concern—that was a heady feeling, though at the same time I sensed in him the same strong protectiveness he despised in his own father. Not that I mentioned it. He was still too far away to bring his will to bear and I wanted only to bask in his affection.

So we talked.

At one point I heard footsteps on the stair, and I guessed Udondi had come to check on me, but after listening a moment she must have assured herself I was in good company because she retreated. I smiled, feeling content in that moment despite the cold and all the questions we still faced. I asked Yaphet if he would go back with me to Temple Huacho after we found Jolly and he said he would do that. It was a pleasant dream for us to share.

Darkness came, the clouds rolled back, and silver bloomed across the desert floor just as it had the night before. I stood beside the wall to watch the spectacle, while Yaphet watched it through my savant.

That’s when I saw Kaphiri for the second time.

The silver had risen almost to the foot of the pinnacle when a slender, dark figure slipped out of it, glowing tendrils trailing from his body as if the silver was reluctant to give him up, this living folly. My eyes widened, and I stifled the cry that tried to rise from my throat.

Yaphet saw him too. “Jubilee—!” but I slapped the link off so Kaphiri would not hear and know that we were aware of him, for our best hope was to take him in ambush.

I darted for the stairway. My muscles had grown stiff in the cold, and the first downward jolt reawakened the angry bruises in my back. Each step was an agony. Still I hurried as I could, turn and turn, until the world itself coiled about me in a dizzy spiral.

At last I reached the wider stairway between the floors, and there I slowed, to keep my footsteps quiet. Udondi was in the kitchen. She had the rifles there. This was my thought as I stumbled onto the lowest floor. Liam must have heard me gasp, for he appeared at once from the kitchen.

“He is outside,”I whispered.

And immediately there came the sound of a fierce pounding on the door.

The pounding at the door was echoed in my panicked heartbeat. “Liam! He will bring the silver through that door. Quickly. The rifles. There are windows on the upper floors.”

“What talk is this of rifles in my house?” Maya Anyapah demanded as she followed Liam from the kitchen. “You claimed to be innocent victims on the plain, but now you would murder a player who comes openly to my door?”

“It is the one we spoke of, Keeper,” Udondi said. “And he is not a player like any other.”

“Because he knows more of the silver than any other?” Maya asked.

“Do not let him in,” Udondi warned. “The cost of your curiosity will prove too much.”

I guessed this debate had gone on for most of the time I had been at the top of the pinnacle. Keeper Maya was tempted by what she’d been told of Kaphiri… but I had no patience for the argument. “Where are the rifles?”

Maya tried to keep me from the kitchen, but Udondi stepped between us, and I was able to slip past. The rifles were lying clean and reassembled on the table. I took all three, handing one to Liam and one to Udondi as I left the kitchen again. Maya looked on us in cold fury. “You are brigands,” she said. “Practitioners of cold murder.” Then she turned away, striding resolutely down the hall, toward the great room, and the front door, though by this time the pounding had subsided into silence.

“Stop her,” I whispered to Udondi.

“No. Our only chance now is to beat her.” And she darted for the stair with Liam right beside her.

I hesitated, but I could not bring my rifle to bear on Maya’s stiff back. I would not. “If you open the door to him, you’ll kill us all,” I shouted after her.

Maya stopped, turning to look back at me. “You forget this is a temple. It has survived for six hundred seventeen years because the silver cannot enter here.”

“It can. I have seen it happen.”

“My house is my own,” she said, and went on toward the front door.

So I left her, and galloped for the stair.

On the next floor the sitting room was empty. I glanced out both windows, but saw no sign of Kaphiri. Then I noticed a door at the end of the hall was open, where it had been closed before. I went to look, and found a bedroom, neatly decorated and brought to a comforting warmth by an electrical heater set into the wall.

In a reclining chair beside a tall window there sat an old man—older than anyone I had ever seen or imagined, his white hair reduced to wisps and his body shrunken, as if life had taken all he could give it, and more. A white afghan lay across his lap and his hands rested on this. They were marvelous hands, almost translucent white. His pale eyes glittered in amusement as he looked from me to Udondi, who stood with her back flat against the wall, craning her neck to look out the window.

The silver loomed only a stone’s throw away, already as high as the floor on which we stood. Udondi had unlatched the pane and pushed it open an inch, admitting a current of cold air. It brought the scent of silver, to mix with the scent of temple kobolds. Udondi had the barrel of her rifle aimed outside, but when I looked her a question she shook her head. Under her breath she said, “The phantom has disappeared.”

“And Liam?”