Linda Nagata - Memory

“Stay here,” Yaphet said. “Jolly will help.”

The flying machine was cleverly designed, so that Yaphet was able to collapse the wing. With Jolly’s help he dragged the folded frame into the circle of the kobold well. The nose and tail stuck out beyond the mound, but we gathered handfuls of freshly spawned kobolds from the mouth of the well and scattered them about, expanding the protected zone.

When all the gear was safely within the circle, Jolly crept up to the precipice and looked over. “The canyon floor is flooded,” he called back.

Yaphet went to look, and an expression of awe came over his face. “You can see it climbing. Does the whole Iraliad flood every night?”

Jolly answered, “Ficer said it’s worse now than when he was a boy.”

The goats snorted when they found us occupying their well, but they joined us anyway, and after a few minutes Moki gave up growling at them.

We were halfway through a cold dinner when the savant spoke in its cultured voice. “A call,” it said. “From Liam.”

“Answer it!” I had been sitting shoulder to shoulder with Yaphet, but when the savant settled in my lap, he moved back, positioning himself so that he could see the screen without being seen by those on the other side.

The image that formed was of stars, faint above a horizon limned with silver, “Liam?” I heard the scuff of a boot on gravel, then the tumbling bounce of a small stone. “Liam!” I called, louder this time.

“Jubilee?” His shadowed face filled the mimic screen, and in a moment the savant compensated for the lighting. He was dusty and haggard, his face thinner than I had ever seen it. The patch was gone from his eye, but there was a pink scar across his lid where the rock fragment had cut him. His eyes were red. From the dust, I told myself. The dust. “You’re alive.” His voice was a whisper of disbelief. “We found your bike. We thought—”

“I’m alive. And I’m free. Jolly is with me. Is Udondi—?”

“She’s here.” He looked away, calling to her. “Udondi! I’ve found Jubilee!”

A few seconds later her face appeared beside his. “Jubilee! Where are you? How did you—?”

I wasn’t ready to explain. “Did you set the explosives?” I asked. “Was that you?”

Liam nodded. “Ficer is with us. He brought them from the Temple of the Sisters. We found your bike after. We thought you must have been with them, when—” He shook his head and stepped away.

Udondi looked after him with a troubled gaze. “I think this has been the longest day of his life,” she said softly. Then she looked back at the screen and her gaze grew sharp, though it was not fixed on me. “Is that Jolly?”

I turned, expecting to see Yaphet, but it was Jolly who stood at my shoulder. He had come up silently while we spoke.

“This is my brother,” I said.

Then another face crowded in beside Udondi’s.

“Ficer!” Jolly shouted. “You came back!”

“Of course I came back. Didn’t I say I would?”

We demanded their story first. Ficer told of how he had reached the Temple of the Sisters at midmorning yesterday, minutes ahead of a convoy of three trucks. “The drivers did not speak the name of the traveler, but it was clear who they served.” He hid his bike and pretended to be one of the scholars and in that way the day passed. Dusk came, but Ficer would not risk suspicion by climbing the tower to send a message. “There is a cavern that opens on the white plain, that is used to garage the passing trucks. In the morning, when the drivers went down there, I tried to call you, but it was well past sunrise, and I think you were gone from the mesa top by then. Emil was very worried. He sent me back up the tower, saying that if I could not find you, I should try to find your uncle, and in that, at least, I had some success.”

Udondi nodded. “We had already encountered that convoy. There were five trucks altogether—too many for us to stop, but we delayed them a day when we released the last of our metallophores into their engines. We spent that day in hiding, while they spent it repairing their trucks. But they also used the time to put up an antenna, and in the morning it was clear why. They had decided to split up. Only three trucks went to the Sisters, while the other two went north.

“We used the antenna to call ahead to Emil, and he told us you were gone, and that we should look for you at Azure. We cut the power supply to the antenna, and then we left, but it was a dark day, and by noon a great bank of silver drifted in from the west and we were forced to take shelter in a refuge mesa.” She shook her head. “The next day was no better. We could not leave, and we could not contact you. It was maddening! To be trapped there, not knowing what harm you might be facing. But this morning the sun came out, and Ficer called, with word that you were still free. You did well, Jubilee.”

“It was my luck.” My usual harsh luck that I had lived, but only at the cost of Kaphiri’s drivers, crushed beneath tons of stone.

“We are sheltering at Azure this night,” Udondi said, “but on the mesa top, and not in the cavern, for the silver does not look like it will rise much tonight. I slept in the cavern once, years ago, and once is enough.”

“What shelter did you find?” Ficer asked us. “Or have your gifts protected you from the silver?”

I said the truth, as much as I dared: “We found a wild well.”

He gave me a strange look, and it occurred to me we had seen no wild wells in all those hills. But Ficer asked no more questions, and after, I pled fatigue, for Jolly and I had not slept the night before, and we said good night.

The viewscreen darkened, and Jolly and Yaphet became shadows in the starlight. On the other side of the folded flying machine, the milling goats were shadows too. “You left out a lot,” Yaphet said.

Jolly agreed. “You didn’t mention Yaphet. And you let them believe we were still in those hills.”

“You think that was wrong? Should I have told them about the flying machine, Jolly? Or that my lover is mad? Or that he is the twin of Kaphiri?”

“We’ll have to tell them tomorrow.”

“We’ll have to tell them when we see them. Not before.”

“Do you really think I’m mad?” Yaphet asked in a troubled voice, so I couldn’t help but smile.

“Well,” I conceded, “maybe just a little.”

It was cold that night, so high up among the rocks, and Yaphet had only one sleeping bag. When unfolded it would cover two. He said that Jolly and I should have it, and he would watch until at least midnight. I was exhausted, so I accepted gratefully. When I woke again, it was to the glow of silver. I sat up abruptly, my heart pounding with the certainty that someone was drawing near. But when I looked about, all was still.

Jolly was still sleeping beside me, breathing softly beneath the folds of the sleeping bag. Yaphet was sitting with Moki on the folded structure of the flying machine, his hands clasped around his knees. He studied me curiously. “Are you truly awake?”

“I don’t know.” I glanced over my shoulder. The silver stood in a waist-high ring around the well. I could smell the goats, but they were huddled on the other side of the flying machine, and I could not see them. The Bow of Heaven glimmered overhead. “Did you hear something?”

“No. It’s been quiet. Eerily quiet.”

“Was I dreaming?”

“Probably. What did you hear?”

I shook my head. I had not heard anything… “I felt something.”

I still felt it: a sense of someone drawing near, a presence, brushing past lines of awareness that had been laid down inside my mind, leaving them swaying with the evidence of passage, as a curtain will sway when it is lifted aside briefly, then allowed to fall back. I raised my hands, to find the ha sparkling brightly between my fingers. “He is coming.”