Linda Nagata - Memory

I would not sit, but I crouched nearby. Yaphet remained standing.

Kaphiri looked at me. “These are the last days. You sense it, don’t you? There is only a little time left before the world drowns… unless you choose to stop it again.”

“That should beyour choice! It’s what the goddess made you for.”

His smile was bitter. “And I obeyed her, that first time.” He looked down at the dusty ground. “I was naive. Do you know what follows the destruction of the silver?”

I nodded, for I had seen the city.

“You don’t know!” Kaphiri barked. “Not until you’ve seen a hundred thousand players starve to death.”

Nothing was the same. I faced a murderer, but I could see the horror of death in his eyes.

“Barely a thousand survivors left in the world,” he said, his voice so soft I had to strain to hear him.

“How can you remember it?” Yaphet asked.

“I have learned to remember.”

“Tell us how.” He could not disguise his eagerness. Yaphet loved knowledge best. He always had. I knew it, though I could not remember how I knew or why.

Kaphiri knew it too. “Would you learn how?”

Yaphet nodded.

Kaphiri’s expression turned to disdain. “Even if you remembered every word ever spoken, you would have no victory. The goddess is using you… using us . She always has.”

I knew it was true. “I am going to the Cenotaph.”

Shock overtook his features. He looked at me with haunted eyes. “Where have you learned of that place? Why would you go? My love, there is nothing in the Cenotaph. Nothing you can touch.”

“There is a god there. Or some fragment of a god.”

“He will not help you.”

“I am not sent there to seek help. He is the cause of the floods. The goddess has said that the world will not heal until he is removed.”

“The goddess? Has she visited you?”

I nodded. “She said that I am her hands, and this fragment of the god must be removed.”

“By you?”

I shrugged.

He started to laugh, but his humor turned suddenly to anger. “You cannot defeat a god! Even a fallen one. Think on it! If the goddess herself cannot eject him, what hope is there for you?”

“I don’t know. None, maybe, for me alone.”

“You won’t be alone,” Yaphet said.

Kaphiri threw him a dark look. “You are always so eager to play their game.”

“And what alternative should I take? Should I refuse to play? Should I be like you and wish for the night when we all drown? Let us all die! Why not? If it will spite the goddess.”

“You mock me, but I will answer you anyway. There is an alternative.” He nodded toward me. “She has never dared it, but it’s real all the same. The only way to bring our malice to bear against the gods who made this world is to become as gods ourselves.”

I caught my breath, for these were the same words he had whispered to me in my vision—and that I had rejected. I rejected them again. “If you knew how to do that, you would have done it already.”

“But I don’t know how… though I might still learn, with your help. Will you help me? This time?”

My heart was beating hard. What he asked repulsed me. To become a goddess, to hold the power of life and death, and to wield that power with none stronger to say if I am right, or if I am wrong. It horrified me. “We don’t need more gods and goddesses. They have done badly enough by this world already.”

Yaphet touched my arm. “Jubilee, think. Will you always make this same answer?”

“What do you want me to do? Do you want me to help him?”

“If you have never helped him before, then yes . Do it differently this time! Do anything! Because there may never be another chance.”

But this turn was already different. Yaphet had never spoken to me like this before. Never.

He turned to Kaphiri. “What is it you want from her anyway?”

“A small thing. The smallest thing. I want her to translate our past. My love—” He reached toward me. I thought he would touch me, and I shied away.

He laughed at my childishness, but his laughter could not hide his pain. “You did not always find me so repulsive! You loved me in other lives. But the bond between us has faded, for I have changed, and you have not. I have remade myself! But in doing so, I’ve left you behind. We can never be true lovers again.”

“We never were,” I whispered.

“You say that, because you don’t remember. But you haven’t forgotten everything, have you? You still remember the language spoken when the world was made. I know you do.”

“And what use is that?” Yaphet asked.

Kaphiri mocked him. “We are always so hungry, aren’t we? Insatiable!”

“And impatient!”

“I know it.” He turned again to me. “If you would dare to face our past, to understand it, then help me. For lifetimes I have gathered documents and written manuscripts, in languages left over from the ancient world. Thousands of pages, my love, and I cannot read more than a few words of any of them! But you can. These languages live now only in your ancient mind. Come back with me.Teach me.”

“No, Jubilee, don’t!” Jolly shouted.

I had let myself forget about Jolly. I saw him now, crouched beneath the folded wing of the flying machine.

“He’ll trick you, Jubilee. Don’t do what he wants. Please don’t.”

Kaphiri crossed his arms over his chest, mocking the posture of a weary parent. “I have said only the truth.”

Through every turn we had played, through every lifetime, I had always refused to help him… and the world had never healed. Always, we had been caught in the cycle of silver flood and silver drought. “Where is it you would have us go?”

“Jubilee, please .”

“South,” Kaphiri said. He turned to Yaphet. “You will come too. We need you. Or anyway we need your flying machine, for my temple is far to the south, among the peaks of the Sea Comb.”

Jolly crept out from under the wing. “Jubilee, say you won’t go. You can’t go with him.”

I wanted to refuse. I wanted to send Kaphiri away, and take Jolly home, and have my father back, and see my mother, but all those were impossible things.

Yaphet watched me, a hungry gleam in his eyes. “Think about it, Jubilee. We can’t let him go, and we can’t let him die, and you can’t watch him forever. This is the only answer.”

All was quiet. No wind blew, and no bird called. The world lay still beneath a heavy blanket of silver and still I felt as if I was hurtling forward. “We’ll go.”

Yaphet’s fist clenched in triumph, but Jolly cried out in fear.

“Jolly!” I knew how afraid he was of Kaphiri. “We will take you to our uncle first—”

“No,” Kaphiri said. “We leave tonight, and Jolly comes with us.”

Yaphet looked scornful. “We can’t fly at night.”

“With me, you can.”

I did not doubt it. Sprawled on the ground outside the Temple of the Sisters, I had looked up at an auditorium of silver arching over my head. It was no great stretch to think the architect of that magic could keep even a flying machine safe.

“We will go tonight,” I said. “But we will take Jolly to my uncle first. Hurry now, before I change my mind.”

We set about getting the flying machine ready, while the goats shied from us, frantic to avoid both our presence and the wall of silver that lay all around. Into the cargo baskets went our few possessions. Then Kaphiri drove back the silver, far enough that we could spread the wings.

Was it real? So I asked myself over and over again, for the night was weighted with the strangeness and inevitability of a dream.

Jolly came out of hiding, but he would not let Kaphiri come near him, nor answer him in any way.