Linda Nagata - Memory

Kaphiri came round the flying machine. He saw where I looked. “That is Jolly’s monument,” he said. “Seven players were taken when he called that flood over the wall. And every night since the silver follows that path into the temple grounds.”

I turned away, for I could not bear to think of Jolly, so far away, and lost to me again.

Within the walls, the courtyard lay like a dark skirt around the central temple building. That building stood three stories high, each story smaller than the one below so that it had the look of a stacked cake. Its dark windows cast a brooding gaze toward the vistas beyond the walls.

Memory stirred in me. I felt the tremor of an old fear rising in my consciousness, a terrible dread, and suddenly I knew with absolute certainty I had been in that place before. “Yaphet—” My mouth had gone dry, so that I could hardly speak. I turned to look for him—but what I saw made my voice leave me entirely.

He had called Kaphiri to him, and they worked together to furl the wings, while Yaphet explained the mechanism of the flying machine and its steering system, speaking gently, as if the two of them were brothers.But they were not! I could feel the difference between them… though it did not seem as profound as last night.

The night’s cold had settled in my bones and I shuddered, but to the east the sky above the mountains blazed with the light of a hidden sun. As Yaphet finished furling the wings, the sun finally showed itself, rising over the eastern slopes to spill its warmth across the temple walls and the flowing silver in the canyon—which sank away into the shadows—and against my jacket, and like the silver, my fear receded, though it did not go away.

The sound of our footsteps made a forlorn tapping as we crossed the empty courtyard to the tall temple building. The wide grounds were tiled in a herringbone pattern of gray and blue brick, and nowhere did I see a stray leaf or any gathering of dirt or dust, or sprouting weed between the tiles, so that it seemed we walked inside an electronic market, and not in the true world. An explanation of this perfection was not long in coming.

The temple was made of the same gray stone as the walls. Wide, arched windows looked out into the courtyard, and between them were tall doors of shining platinum. They opened at our approach, and their motion stirred to life a creature that had been crouching on the step: a mechanic, mantislike and the height of my hand. It scuttled aside on four legs, while holding two front limbs close to its body—one pincered, one armed with scissored blades. Its machine eyes looked at us from a triangular head mounted on the end of a snakelike neck.

I stared back at it, mouth agape, for it was exactly like the mechanics on the Kalang Crescent, whose endless task it was to protect the forest. The traveler had visited that forest often, and Nuanez Li had seen his little daughter killed by these things.

“You’re Kalang, aren’t you?” I asked Kaphiri. “You are the player who left the mechanics in the forest.”

He glanced at the mechanic, a look of melancholy in his eyes. “That was another life. My name was Zha Leng, but it changed with time, as all things do.”

“You left the mechanics to guard the wells, didn’t you? Not the trees!”

He shrugged. “If the trees cannot be cut, then no one should have reason to settle near the wells.”

“Nuanez Li lived there. He lives there still!” But I bit my lip, regretting the words as soon as they were spoken. Perhaps Kaphiri didn’t know Nuanez was still alive, or that he had found his own unending youth in the wells of the Kalang.

But Kaphiri’s interest proved to be only philosophical. “If he still lives on the Kalang Crescent, then he’ll likely be the last player alive in the world, for the silver may never conquer that plateau. Not that Nuanez would ever notice the difference!”

He laughed, but it was a laugh full of bitterness, delighting in the harsh ironies of the world.

We mounted the front steps, and passed through the open doors into a great room, neatly furnished with couches and tables and chairs, all meticulously clean. Across the room, a grand stairway led up to the next floor, while on either side gloomy passages gave access to other ground-level rooms.

A woman appeared from one of these hallways. She was white-haired and stooped, and she clung to the shadows, as if reluctant to show herself. I guessed her to be Mari, the woman who had cared for my brother when he was a prisoner in this temple. Mari, the lost wife of Nuanez Li.

Jolly had described her as a kindly player, but she did not extend us any welcome. When she spoke, it was in a soft, furtive whisper, as if she feared drawing the attention of a wicked fate. “How long will these last?” she asked Kaphiri, gesturing at me and Yaphet with her chin.

“No longer than the rest of us,” he answered. “For all things must end, Mari. All things. Even you.”

We were in the household of my father’s murderer.

I had come to help him learn more about our shared past, and about the lost science of becoming a god. I brooded over these ironies as we sat down to a formal breakfast, in a room hung with paintings and projections of ages long past.

Mari served us. She would allow neither myself nor Yaphet to help, and while we were at the table she refused all attempts at conversation. But when I was returning from a visit to the scupper I encountered her in the hall. In her whispering voice she asked about Jolly, and I assured her my brother was well, but this news did not bring her any particular pleasure.

“Seven players died when Jolly left this temple.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if to assure herself Kaphiri was still at table. “Did you see the folly that has broken the courtyard wall? Jolly left that to us, to remember him by. A knife thrust, that’s what it is. A wound that draws the silver into the yard night after night, like bacteria seeking flesh. This temple won’t stand much longer.”

This last was pronounced with vindictive satisfaction.

“Do you want to see it fall?”

She bent closer to me, and her voice grew even softer. “I came here long ago, because he told me I would not die—not if I stayed within these walls—and he did not lie. I have lived and lived and lived! I have been old longer than anyone else has been alive. Even him!”

“You are older than him?” I asked incredulously, thinking of Nuanez, living alone on the plateau of the Kalang.

“So you know about him?”

I nodded.

“He kept himself youthful, but I have always been old.”

“Not always, surely.”

She looked away, and there was a tremor in her lip. “Whatever existed before… that is lost to time. I wonder how many lives he has lived, since I lived with him? I wonder how many lives he has spent searching for me? But there will be no more lives after this one.”

I did not tell her that Nuanez too was still living the same life. I didn’t think she would believe me. How could she let herself believe? If she had stayed with Nuanez she might have regained her youth… or Kaphiri might have murdered them both for nosing into his secrets.

Yaphet and Kaphiri had been deeply involved in a discussion of flight when I left the table. That discussion was still ongoing when I returned. I listened at the door, but their conversation was hard for me to follow. They spoke as if they knew, or guessed, what was in the other’s mind and perhaps they did, for Kaphiri had been made as a copy of Yaphet, and it came to me that they likely shared a vast measure of memory kept within the silver.

Their similarity frightened me, but their growing sympathy troubled me even more. As I listened, I could not say with any certainty which was Yaphet’s voice, and which belonged to Kaphiri. I told myself this confusion was only a result of my exhaustion, for I had not slept well since leaving the Temple of the Sisters, but I decided against rejoining them. Instead I resolved to explore the temple on my own.