Linda Nagata - Memory

I nodded, but what could we do?

Jolly shone his light again upon the words. “There is day fifteen.” He walked several steps along the wall. “And there is day twenty-five. ‘A good day! The mesa top was clear of silver. The net worked! I have songbird for dinner! I am a mad man, to be so excited at such a thing. But who would not be mad, enduring night after night of these dreams?’ ”

But by day thirty songbird had grown dull, and by day forty-five the flocks had thinned. Day fifty-one was the last entry. “This night is full of stars. It feels like a lifetime since I have seen stars, but they have returned this night, and the Bow of Heaven with them, brighter than I have ever seen it. The sun will be bright tomorrow. I know it. May I never dream again.”

I touched the blank stone beside the writing. “He must have gotten away.” Perhaps by saying it, I could make it so?

Jolly nodded.

Neither of us mentioned the mystery of the broken bike.

We returned up the tunnel to our encampment and made a small dinner. The food tasted odd, as if it were permeated with the heavy, sweet scent of the temple kobolds. “You can’t eat temple kobolds,” Jolly said thoughtfully, picking up a stray to examine the white petals on its back. “At least I’ve never heard of it.” He tapped the hard shell. “It would be like eating stones.”

“I think the petals might be poisonous.”

Temple kobolds produced no food, no machinery, no hard goods, no medicines. All they did was to create a chemical shield against the silver. Until I came to Azure Mesa, that had always been enough.

My eyelids grew heavy, so I forced myself to my feet, determined to fend off sleep, for all night if I could. Fifty-one nights of Azure dreams. I could not imagine it.

“Jubilee, where is your book?” Jolly asked. “May I see it?”

It was still in the pocket of my coat, where it had been almost since Nuanez Li had given it to me. I’d had it out at the Temple of the Sisters, only so that Emil and the scholars could make a copy of it, though they could not read it. “It’s here,” I said, and I drew it out. But I hesitated in giving it to him, held back by a reluctance I could not explain.

“Jubilee?”

“I’m nervous tonight.” I made myself hand him the book.

He sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag, studying the green plastic cover. Then he examined the pages of fine lettered stone. “I guess you’ll have to read it to me,” he conceded.

I sat beside him, accepting the book back though I did not open it. “I have a dread of this book I did not have yesterday. I suppose it’s an effect of the dream.”

I started to slide it back into my pocket, but Jolly stopped me. “Jubilee.” He took the book again, but this time he laid it open in my lap. “If he dies, the silver dies with him. If he does not die the world will drown in silver flood. In your vision Ki-Faun believed he had found a third choice—to control the silver. I would learn that.”

I swear Jolly opened the book at random, but there on the page that faced me was a formula for a kobold circle made up entirely of temple kobolds.

The wells at Azure Mesa produced only temple kobolds.

“Jubilee?” he pressed, when I’d been silent too long.

I looked at his anxious face, wondering what powers a god might have. Then I tapped the book’s open page. “Here is a recipe. It’s supposed to create a kind of… mirror, I think.‘Reflect the other self’…? I’m not sure, but we can try it, just to see if a circle might work.”

It was late, but neither of us wanted sleep, so we went down to the well room and hunted for the required kobolds. All of them were common, and it didn’t take long to gather the necessary kinds, returning with them to our little stone room.

It was a harder task to reset the kobold’s configuration codes. We did not have the tools of a temple keeper—no magnification lens, no pick, and no decent light. But these were large kobolds, each the size of my thumbnail, so we were able to use a fine wire to tweak the digits.

There were six kobolds in all, and when their configuration codes were set as the book instructed, we put them together.

Kobolds generally seem aware of very little except an instinctive need to crawl, but this group was different. They did not clamber away in six different directions. Instead they crawled deliberately toward one another. It was eerie to watch them gather together. At first they made a tangle of twitching legs and glossy shells, but in less than a minute they had fitted together into a perfect sphere. Their petals were on the inside, locked away from sight, while their legs were folded flat against their exposed bellies Several minutes passed and nothing else happened, so I picked up the sphere and turned it over in my hands. It looked like one of those balls that is a puzzle of blocks, each piece a different color, but linking perfectly to the next.

The book did not say how long this kobold circle might take to mature, though from Maya’s description of the road show, I hoped it would not be much more than an hour.

It was already past midnight, and the very air of the cavern was working against me, its cloying scent like a potion drawing me down, down into sleep. I rubbed at my eyes and paced to keep awake while Jolly sat beside the sphere, watching it constantly, as if it were an explosive that might go off at any minute.

I swear I was asleep on my feet, ghost voices whispering again in my ears when Jolly gave a shout of triumph. I stumbled in fright and went down hard on my knees, producing a pain that brought me fully awake.

“Jubilee, look.” Jolly had risen to his feet. He backed a step away from the kobold circle.

A faint mist of silver seeped from its seams.

Moki barked at it, dancing frantically backward to the door. “Jolly, get back!” I shouted. “Get out of the room!”

The silver gathered about the kobold circle, hiding it inside a cloud that shimmered and boiled as it spread across the floor toward our gear—and the bike.

“Jolly, wait!” I jumped for our sleeping bags, gathering them up with our other things. “Get the bike outside!”

He remembered the savant too.

We tumbled together into the hall, while the silver filled the room. It did not behave like ordinary silver. Instead of flowing outward, it rose up, trembling and shimmering as it progressed higher and higher, as if the particles that made it up were linking into threads—too small to be seen, but strong enough to weave a wall of light.

I watched its growth from the corner of my eye as I worked to get our gear stowed aboard the bike. The savant went in last. Then I mounted. “Jolly, get on.”

“No wait.” He pointed into the room. “Look.”

The silver had reached the ceiling; its trembling had ceased. It had formed a luminous panel, with a texture that teased the eye, suggesting somehow a vast depth within that smooth surface.

“Jolly, let’s go. We’ll be safe by the wells.”

But Jolly did not heed me. He crept closer to the door. “The kobold circle was supposed to make a kind of mirror.” He glanced back at me. “I don’t see anything reflected.”

“Maybe ‘mirror’ was the wrong translation. Now come.”

“But it’s not growing anymore.” He took half a step into the room.

“Jolly!”

“But what’s that?” he asked. “Jubilee, do you see it? That shadow, near the center.”

I saw it. A dark shape, like the silhouette of a player obscured by rain or fog, far away, but striding steadily closer, with a gait all too familiar.

“It’s him,”Jolly whispered. He backed into the hallway. “How can it be him? How can he see us?”

“Maybe he can’t.”