Linda Nagata - Memory

“No. I didn’t think about it. Not then. It was a horrible thing.”

“But before? Is it possible you looked at it before? Is it possible you knew it? You lived through that night, didn’t you? Is it possible you wrote it down?”

Was it? Might a record of my experience exist in a library somewhere? I shook my head. “I don’t think I would have wanted such knowledge to survive.”

“You have Ki-Faun’s book.”

“It does not speak of erasing memories.”

“You might have another vision.”

“Jolly, don’t frighten me more!”

He crouched beside me, and it no longer seemed to me that I was older. “He is full of hate, Jubilee, and this can have no good end. If he lives, he will drown every enclave in the world in silver. If he dies, the silver will die with him, and that would be almost as bad. It was the same in your vision. He could not be allowed to live, and he could not be allowed to die.”

“And still I killed him.”

“To stop the flood! This time we must act while there’s still a choice.”

“And do what? I don’t know what kind of kobold it was, Jolly, and even if I did, I would not use it. Don’t you see? Ki-Faun was wrong. No matter how terrible Kaphiri is, only he can turn the silver back. Without him, we will all drown.”

“Ki-Faun believed we could learn to control the silver.”

A weak little laugh escaped me. “We can. Anyway,I can, though I don’t think it will help us much. I can push the silver away, Jolly. It’s something I’ve learned since Kaphiri poisoned me.”

My brother accepted this without surprise. “It has to do with your configuration codes. They must have been reset by the contact with Kaphiri’s blood. He had reset his own codes already, so he wasn’t the same. Not an exact match for you anymore. I guess that’s why his blood sickened you, but not so much that you would die.”

So. Kaphiri had poisoned me, and I was not human anymore.

Moki returned from the dark, nuzzling in between us. I buried my fingers in his fur, realizing for the first time how cold the night was.

Jolly said, “I want to know what Ki-Faun knew.”

“I don’t.”

“We need to read your book, Jubilee. I don’t think we have a choice.”

We stayed on the plateau until the eastern sky grew light enough to show the weather. It was not an encouraging sight. Heavy clouds were moving up again from the south, and though the silver faded as the dawn grew brighter, it seemed reluctant to be gone altogether. I wondered if we should risk leaving Azure Mesa, or if we should wait… for a better day, or to give Liam a chance to catch up with us. I wanted to try again to call him but I did not have my savant, so we returned to the cavern to fetch it.

Ficer was awake, busily packing his gear onto his bike. He greeted me with a weary nod. “It was no pleasant night, was it?” he asked.

“I dreamed,” I admitted.

“Everyone does, and it’s never pleasant dreams either. It’s the kobolds—that’s what I think. They smell differently from your common temple kobolds, don’t they? A perfume to trouble the mind. It’s why no one lives here;why so few come to stay even one night—which made it the safest place for us to meet.”

I hesitated, for it was rude to ask, but I could not help myself. “What did you dream?”

My question confused him. “Nothing I can remember. The memory is gone when you awake—at least that’s how it is for most who visit here. Was it different for you?”

I looked away, knowing I had said too much. “I seem to… remember a little.”

“And not a comforting little by the look of you.”

I was groping for some polite way to deny the truth when he raised a hand. “Don’t speak of it. I have heard that some few come here on purpose to dream. They claim it’s the past that visits them.” He shook his head. “If that’s so, we all have wicked things to account for, I say, for I have never met one who slept peacefully here… that is, until now.” His gaze settled pointedly on Jolly—a look my brother answered with a sheepish smile.

“What’s this?” I asked curiously. “What do you speak of? Not just that Jolly slept well?”

“That underestimates it,” Ficer said. “I awoke several times in the night, and while you were troubled, Jolly’s sleep was always quiet. Like the sleep of an innocent? One who has never lived before would have no past lives to haunt him.”

“You think this is Jolly’s first life?” But how could that be? No one new had been born into the world since its making—or so I’d been taught.

“It’s what I think,” Jolly said. “It makes sense. I don’t have talents like you, like everyone else. I don’t know anything but what I’ve learned—”

“It hasn’t wakened in you yet,” I said. “That’s all—”

“And I don’t think I could be reborn into another life. How could I, if the silver always returns me as myself?”

“Jolly!”He was so young. How could he believe that he would live only this one life? That such thoughts could even enter his mind… it horrified me. That he could believe such things and still hold on to the sweetness that had always been in his character… it astonished me, so that tears started in my eyes.

“He is closer to Heaven than you or I could ever be,” Ficer said gently, and though Jolly tried to protest, Ficer would not hear it. “He plays a different game, that’s what I believe. He’s on his way to a different end, same as the traveler that hunts him. What end that is I don’t know, but I’ve heard enough stories of this traveler to know whose side I’d rather play.”

“Is that why you’ve protected Jolly? To hinder Kaphiri?”

“Ficer helped me because that’s who he is,” Jolly said.

But it was more than that. Jolly could live within the silver, the realm of souls that other players visited only in death. Did that make him a god? Kaphiri believed it, while I… I pretended I did not.

“I must try to reach Liam,” I said brusquely. And taking my savant I fled to the mesa top where birds had begun to sing to the new day. Liam’s savant was destroyed, so I directed my calls to Udondi. But neither she nor Liam answered and my fears did not leave me, while the weather grew worse. Clouds gathered overhead, and patches of silver could be seen gleaming among the sheltering vegetation that surrounded Azure Mesa. I studied the horizon all around, but nowhere could I see a sign of dust that might indicate someone traveling in the desert. I wished desperately that Liam would come. I wished desperately for guidance. I did not know what to do. If only I knew where Liam was, and what had delayed him, then my own path might be clearer, but I was at a loss.

Should I wait for him to reach Azure Mesa? Should I try to find him? Or should I take Jolly and flee deeper into the Iraliad?

Yaphet was out there—likely only a day or two away, by now. I wanted to run to him, to meet him, to know without doubt that he was the one… but the clouds were growing heavier, and I could smell silver gathering on the plain below. I had told Jolly I could control the silver, but I had no confidence in my talent. It seemed foolhardy to do anything—and in the end that was my decision. I convinced myself that no one would risk travel on such a day.

I left my savant on the mesa top with a prerecorded message for Liam, and another for Yaphet, if either should chance to call. Then I went back down into the cavern, to find that Ficer had reached a different conclusion.

“What do you mean you’re going?” I demanded when I found him astride his bike, on the verge of descending to the gate. “Where are you going? And have you looked at the weather? There is silver on the plain, and no sign of the sun—”