Linda Nagata - Memory

“In this flood the world will either be lost forever, or remade as new,” Emil explained. “The traveler did not seem at all sure which it would be and he did not seem to especially care, so long as the cycle that had trapped him here was finally stopped.”

After he finished recounting this story, we were silent for a while. I considered what I’d heard, but I was confused. “I like it here, in the world. Don’t you, Emil? Why would anyone want it to end?”

“Ah, I like it here too,” Emil said softly. “But it is hard sometimes. Very hard.”

“Do you believe the world is broken?”

“Ah, well. Perhaps it was intended to work differently.”

“Intended? Then do you think the stories of the goddess are true? That she was wounded in her war with the dark god?”

“It’s hard to know. Still, the world was made somehow.”

“I wonder why the dark god would wish to destroy it?”

“I cannot say.”

“But if it’s true, if the world is broken and the goddess cannot heal it, then it’s up to us to try, isn’t it? Isn’t that better than hoping for its end?”

Emil accepted my words with a formal nod. “That is my belief. It’s a good belief, and if it’s any comfort, I don’t feel we are entirely on our own.”

“Do you mean… the goddess?”

He raised his eyebrows, but I was not at all amused.

“What good is a dreaming goddess, when her dreams are so wicked?” I demanded. “She should be dreaming of life! But in just these past days my father has been murdered. I have abandoned my mother to a dangerous position. I have caused the deaths of many men, and I have survived the blood poisoning of a monster. If we are not on our own, Emil, we might as well be.”

Many players would have been offended at such an outburst, but Emil nodded, as if my words were worthy of careful consideration. “When you put it like that, it does seem a wonder you’re alive at all.”

“I’m a lucky player, or so others like to say.”

“I’ve heard. And what is luck? Why do things happen as they do?”

I did not like the flavor of this question. “Things must happen one way or another.”

Emil smiled, amused I think, at my resistance. “The scar on your hand,” he said. “It saved you, didn’t it?”

I raised my hand, to look at the scar I’d received in the kobold well. Emil was right. In another few seconds Kaphiri would have killed me… but he’d seen the scar, and hesitated.

“He recognized it,” Emil said. “These scars are so very distinctive. So many fine lines and ridges, like the compressed writing in lettered stone.”

Like writing? I examined the etches and loops of my scar. “I cannot see it as writing.”

“Did the traveler ask how you got it?”

“No. He seemed to know.”

Emil nodded; his eyes were sad. “I also know, for such things have happened many times before. Players are impetuous, and still it’s a cause for wonder. History tells us not one in ten thousand will survive the kobold poison.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Perhaps the traveler once knew a player with a similar scar.”

“Emil—”

“Itis a wonder you are still alive.”

“So what are you saying? That I climbed down the kobold well seven years ago, so that Kaphiri would not kill me here, this year, at the Temple of the Sisters? That’s ridiculous! Our roles cannot be that closely written.”

He smiled. “Perhaps not. But the scar would be lucky no matter where, or when you met him, don’t you think?”

“It was only chance that I met him at all. He did not come looking for me.”

“And still he found you. Twice.”

“He wants my brother.”

Emil nodded slowly, and his thoughts seemed far away. “Mostly the silver seems to act without purpose, but sometimes it is otherwise.”

“Nuanez Li believed that too.” I told him of Nuanez, and the book he had given me, Known Kobold Circles . “It came out of the silver, and he and his wife believed it came to them for some purpose, though in the end the only purpose was to give it to me.”

“That seems cruel to you?”

I nodded. It was eerie too, given the book’s subject, and the language in which it was written—the same language used by the bogy in the ancient city. More than chance, as Emil might say. “The author hints his ‘kobold circles’ might be used to recall memories from the silver itself.”

Emil’s pale old eyes widened in a flicker of surprise. “I have heard of such things, but only in fantastic stories. This book claims it for the truth?”

“I have not had time to study it, but yes, I think so. It has lists and lists of code. Almost all of it is code. I’ll show it to you if you like. Where is my field jacket? It should be in one of the pockets.”

Emil took a great interest in my book. He could not read it. Neither could anyone else in that house of scholars, but they were eager to hear my translation. Once again, I puzzled over the words of the introduction:

…Herein are summarized the findings of seventy-three temple keepers, all of whom dedicated many years to the puzzle of kobold circles…

“But what are kobold circles?” I wondered, looking around at the half-dozen scholars Emil had allowed to gather in my room. “That’s what the author, Ki-Faun, never bothers to say.”

“I can tell you what they are.”

It was Maya who spoke. She stood on the edge of our little group, lurking near the door. Everyone turned to her in surprise.

“I saw a kobold circle once, in a road show, when I was a girl. At least, that’s what the hucksters called it. They asked for very specific kobolds from the audience. When these were presented, they adjusted the configuration codes, claiming they must be set to the correct sequence of zeroes. When this was done, the kobolds linked together in a ball.”

Maya cupped her hands, the fingers interlaced, leaving a hollow space between her palms. “Like this. No one had ever seen anything like it. At the end of the show—an hour or so, I’d guess, though I don’t really remember anymore—the kobolds separated, but as they did they released a new kobold, one they had made together. This new kobold inflated into a balloon and blew away.”

She shrugged. “Well, it was a comedy show. Probably there was some trick to it, some way of secretly introducing the ‘new’ kobold, though I never figured out what it was.” A self-conscious smile flitted over her lips. “I tried for years to get kobolds to form circles, but I never succeeded.”

How odd to think of this stern keeper trying to reenact a road show she’d seen as a little girl. “The coding sounds very specific,” I mused, frowning at the next sentences in the introduction. “So really it’s no wonder you had no luck with it. Here it says something like, ‘All the listed circles are based on the—’ There’s a word here I don’t know… Pythagorean? Has anyone heard of it? I meant to ask my savant.”

“That is a very old word,” Emil said. “It describes a sequence of numbers obtained by adding the next greatest number to an accumulating sum… zero plus one to give one, one plus two to give three, three plus three to give six, et cetera.”

I laughed in amazement. “Why would you know such a thing?”

“Well, to impress wild young wayfarers, of course.”

“Oh. Well… is there any meaning to these… Pythagorean numbers?”

He shrugged. “They’re interesting.”

Someone asked, “What does the text say of them?”

I frowned at the page. “Just that all the listed circles are based on these numbers, then,‘No doubt other combinations of zero exist, but at the time of this writing they are unknown.’”