Linda Nagata - Memory

Jolly ate mechanically, wrapped up in his own thoughts, so it was left to Ficer to carry the conversation. In a quiet way he told me about himself, how he roamed the Iraliad, repairing the antennas that grew here and there on the mesa tops. “The silver is less an enemy than the wind. Fierce storms out of the southern ocean blow down the antennas more often than the silver takes them away.”

When we were done eating I asked if there was a passage to the mesa top, for I wanted to call Liam, but Ficer shook his head. “This is not the night to be opening any door. But come with me awhile. There’s something here you should see.”

I started to my feet, surprised at the relief I felt at the prospect of leaving that room and my brother’s silence. Only a latent guilt made me hesitate. “Jolly,” I asked, without really meaning it, “will you come…?”

He looked at me with some faint amusement. It was a look that made me shiver, for it seemed mature beyond his years. “I think Ficer wants to speak with you alone.”

“There is no point in trying to be subtle around Jolly,” Ficer announced as he clambered to his feet. “He’ll see through it every time.”

That was true. Jolly had always had an eerie knack for guessing the thoughts and intentions of other players, while I was hardly aware of my own heart. Still, I worried about leaving him alone. “Will you be all right?” I asked.

“Fine,” Jolly insisted, his hand resting on Moki’s back.

“There’s nothing here to harm a player but his own conscience,” Ficer said, “and no other can be a shield against that.”

Jolly met my doubtful gaze. “That doesn’t reassure you, does it?”

My cheeks warmed, for he had seen through me again. “So. We’ll be back in a few minutes then.” And before I could diminish myself further, I followed Ficer into the hall.

The passage ran level for several hundred feet, lit by optical cables growing on the smooth walls. Beneath the strings of lights, dust and dead kobold shells were heaped in shallow banks, pushed there by passing feet. I glimpsed a few living kobolds among the debris. In such a strange place I expected to find strange kobolds, but there was no evidence of any variety beyond the familiar temple strains.

We passed many closed doors. Some were locked. Those few rooms that were open held only dust. It felt as if no one had ever lived there, or as if the abandoned kobolds had consumed everything except the rock itself.

Twice we passed other hallways, both running at odd angles to our own. Neither was lit, and I felt no urge to explore them when I saw the great cobwebs that hung like skeins of mist from their ceilings.

We’d been walking several minutes when the passage came to an end, widening into a round chamber with a single, massive door set in one wall. “That’s a stairway to the surface,” Ficer said. “If tomorrow the silver subsides, you can take your savant up and try your luck.”

I didn’t understand why I should wait. “We must be five hundred feet above the desert floor. The silver cannot have climbed this high.”

Ficer nodded at a pillar of black metal set to one side of the door. “It’s true the top of the mesa is only ten feet or so above us.” He laid his palm against the metal, which was damp with condensation. “This pole reaches up to it, through the rock and into the open air. Lay your hand on it.”

I did, and felt a faint but frantic vibration.

“That’s the teeth of the silver you’re feeling,” Ficer said, “chewing on the metal.”

My eyes grew wide. “Do you mean the whole mesa has drowned?” Never had I heard of silver so deep.

“The same as last night,” Ficer said. “Where did you stay?”

“At a wild well…” And hadn’t it been like standing at the bottom of a luminous ocean?

Then doubt set in. “This pole…” I frowned at it. “It must have been here for many years. How has it gone untouched so long, only to be consumed tonight?”

Ficer ran his fingers through the condensation. “It’s not so much that things go untouched by the silver. It’s more that sometimes they’re put back exactly as they were, and sometimes not. This pipe, it’s been touched by the silver many times, and always it’s been returned more or less as it began. Someday though, it’ll be given back changed… or not at all.”

I too ran my fingers down the column of metal and the cold of it seemed to reach all the way to my spine. “How is it the silver gave Jolly back?”

“That I don’t know.”

“I didn’t want to tell him of my father’s death.”

“You had no choice.”

“Still, he’s been very quiet.”

“He doesn’t say much,” Ficer agreed.

“You wanted to tell me something, didn’t you? It’s why we’re here.”

Ficer’s gaze took my measure. Then: “It’s the way you look at him, as if you’re looking at a ghost or a phantom.”

“I…?” I was shocked. “That’s not how I feel!”

“No?”

I had to look away. “But he is a ghost, isn’t he? In a way.”

“So I thought when I first saw him.”

“How did it happen? How did you find him?”

He smiled at the memory. “If you were lost in a silver fog, looking out for players to be with, what sort of players would you be most likely to see?”

I shook my head, not at all sure what he meant.

“What is the one and only reason most players ever approach a bank of silver?”

“Oh… you were at a funeral, or a memorial ceremony?”

He nodded. “I was attending a funeral at Sentinel Mesa. They have a fair-sized enclave there, almost at the center of the northern desert. The body of the deceased was hardly committed to the silver when this boy stumbled out, all silver himself at first, as if the soul of the deceased had returned. It scared everyone. It’s amusing now, to think on it, but it scared me too. Players don’t like being startled. Makes ’em feel foolish later. I could see how the talk was going, so I took Jolly away from Sentinel before anyone could notice.”

“I want to thank you for that.”

Ficer accepted this with a slow nod. “I wasn’t sure at first, but I think now it was the right thing to do. Jolly’s a good boy… and if the silver has given him back, it’s for a reason.”

“‘Mostly the silver seems to act without purpose,’” I recited, “‘but sometimes it is otherwise.’”

Ficer laughed. “And where did you here that?”

“From Emil.”

“The old man of the Pinnacles? That one is worth listening to.”

I didn’t disagree. “So what is Jolly’s purpose?”

Ficer’s eyes challenged me from their deep setting among sun-wrinkled skin. “Maybe that’s for Jolly to discover?”

I nodded, for it was true that each of us must find our own way. “I would still like to take him home.”

“And maybe you will. But come. He’s waiting, and he’ll be worried if we’re gone too long.”

When we returned, Jolly was huddled in a corner, with Moki in his lap. That sight affected me strangely, for it seemed as if I looked back in time at myself, alone in the corner of my room, holding on to a scream of despair until the silver was fully gone.

I moved my sleeping bag next to his and sat down. He watched me with wary eyes as if I were the silver itself. I leaned against the wall, looking out across the room so that he did not have to feel my gaze. I was not, after all, the Jubilee he remembered. I said, “I’m sorry for this strangeness between us. You were my older brother. That’s how I remember you. My best friend. Now seven years have passed—”

“It has not been that long.”

“It has, for me. Seven years.” I tried to smile. “Ficer says I look on you as if you were a ghost. You must forgive me, Jolly, if it seems that way, but the dead do not come back to life every day, looking as bright as when they left. I think it will take some time to get my mind around it… though it doesn’t mean I love you less.”