Linda Nagata - Memory

Yaphet rose to his feet without hesitation, without doubt. “Where?”

I nodded toward the bank of silver that hid the precipice. “From the canyon.”

He jumped from his perch on the flying machine. I scrambled to my feet, to find my knee much stronger for the rest. We waited, poised, watching the waist-high fog where it lapped over the rim of the canyon. Moki growled, and a moment later the shape of a man rose up from within the silver, exactly in the place I expected him.

At first he was only a silhouette of silver. Then his glistening shell dissolved, and Kaphiri stood before us, motes of silver glittering against his hands, and in his carefully styled hair.

His gaze moved from me, to Yaphet, then back again. He was careful not to move. “I have just discovered something,” he said softly. “It seems that when the ha of your lover awakens, it becomes an unmistakable signal within the silver, one that requires no effort at all to follow.”

“I am not your lover.”

“Never again, it’s true.” He raised his hand, in the gesture I had seen before. The ha brightened between his fingers, and a tongue of silver swept over the rim of the well. It raced past his feet, rushing downhill toward Yaphet.

“No!”If there had been time to think I would have failed, but instinct moved me. I raised my hand to stop it. The lines of my awareness squeezed together—and the tongue of silver curled back as if it had hit a wall.

I looked up, to see my own astonishment mirrored in Kaphiri’s gaze. “But that is not your talent!” He said it as if I had committed some social affront, as if I should take back the gesture, and apologize.

Yaphet was the only one of us not made dull by surprise. He sprang on Kaphiri, cuffing him behind the neck, unbalancing him. “Keep the silver away!” he commanded as he followed Kaphiri to the ground.

Centuries must have passed since anyone had dared such a close assault against Kaphiri. He was completely unprepared. Dust puffed up around him to sully his fine clothes and he grunted as Yaphet pinned him with a knee in the back. Another tongue of silver darted toward him over the rim of the well. I shouted and pushed back against the intrusion that tried to bend the lines of my awareness—and this time the tendril of silver dissolved.

But another followed immediately after it. And another, and then two at once, and then an explosion of tendrils, like a nightmare of worm mechanics darting toward Yaphet with their venomous mouths, but they could not break past my will. That’s how it felt. The ha was my will, and while Kaphiri could command the silver that lay all around us, he could not force it past the defensive lines I had made.

Not that this was a measure of our relative power. I had no illusions about that. My connection to the silver had given me an insight into its behavior, and I understood, as if it had been explained to me in words, that a player’s defensive gesture would always be stronger than an assault. That was one part of the silver’s essential nature, for it had been made first as a gift, and only later corrupted into a weapon.

“You won’t murder him!” I shouted at Kaphiri’s prostrate form. “Not this night. I would let you die first—” Another flurry of silver tendrils reached for Yaphet. I blocked them. “Listen to me!I would let you die .”

He heard me. Perhaps he believed me, for the silver tendrils retreated, dissolving into the stillness of the ocean of silver that surrounded us.

Yaphet had Kaphiri pinned against the ground, but his head was turned toward me and there was such a coldness in his eyes, it frightened me more than the assault of silver. “Death is your role, my love .” There was dust on his lips, and when he spoke, I tasted it in my own mouth. “You have ended my life seven times already. Seven times that I can remember.”

“How can you remember it?”

“Let me up.”

I looked at Yaphet, and nodded, but Yaphet’s anger was still hot. He brought his knee harder against Kaphiri’s back, making him wince and grunt. “Swear that you will not bring the silver against us!”

Kaphiri’s eyes were narrowed in pain, but he smiled even so. “I will not bring the silver against you,” he said in a mocking voice. “Anyway, not this night.”

Yaphet understood he would get no better answer, so he relented. Kaphiri sat up, slapping at the dust on his clothes. “You must forgive me,” he said to Yaphet. “It’s only out of habit that I hate you.”

They looked alike. Yaphet stepped back a pace, studying Kaphiri with a wild look in his eyes that seemed part wonder, that such a thing could be, and also part fear, and fury, that such a thing could be. They looked so very much alike, but it was a surface effect… the similarity of a man and his reflection, and I was not fooled.

“Why me?” Yaphet asked.

Kaphiri shrugged. “It’s hard to know. But then, you may have fallen far since the war.” He glanced past me, and I knew he was looking for Jolly. I turned, to find the sleeping bag where I had left it, but my brother had slipped away. The goats snorted and skipped, shying away from the flying machine. They might as well have pointed to Jolly’s hiding place.

“What will we do?” Kaphiri asked. “I cannot call the silver, and you are not ready yet to spill my blood.” His mocking gaze returned to me. “Is it a stalemate?”

He was confident—and why not? I could not keep watch forever—I must sleep sometime—and then it would be easy for him to bring the silver.

“Jolly,” he called in a mocking, singsong voice, “come home with me—”

“Leave him alone!” I cried, but he ignored me.

“Come home, Jolly… and maybe I’ll let your sister live… at least until the final flood. The game finishes then for everyone.”

“It won’t finish,” I told him. “It’ll just start over again, when your death triggers the destruction of the silver!”

A sudden fey mood rose in him when I said these words. There was a sheen on his skin, and his eyes were wild. “Is that what you want? Shall I call the end of the silver now? Do you wish it yet again?”

“No,”I breathed, and I backed a step away.

“Did you think the end of the silver was tied only to my death? It’s not. I could summon it anytime. Cold murder isn’t necessary, love, and I am not as stubborn as I used to be. Ask me, and I will destroy all the silver this night.”

I could not doubt his claim, for at his words some connection closed in my mind and the world felt different. Harder, clearer. The uncertainty that had dogged me since leaving the Temple of the Sisters was gone, dissolved like the silver in my vision, leaving all the hard edges of the world exposed. “The goddess made you, didn’t she?” I asked him. “She made you for this purpose, to call down the destruction of the silver at need. She must have trusted you so deeply.”

I saw through his chilly smile. It was a false front, a painted animosity to disguise the fragile architecture that lay beneath. “She made me only when she could not find him.” He thrust his chin at Yaphet. “It seems that in that age he had been swallowed by the silver, so she devised me instead, adding in some skills he lacked.” There was such a gleam of hatred in his eyes as he said this, that I thought he would not be able to contain it. I felt the pressure of it in my own head. Then Kaphiri sucked in a sharp breath, like a swimmer returning from a deep dive, and his shoulders relaxed. “Sometimes I wonder if I remember it rightly,” he added. “Was she the one who made me? Or was it the other?”

“The dark god?” I asked.

“No matter. I serve neither of them now.” And he sat on the ground, arranging the folds of his garments around him. “Come. Sit with me.”