Linda Nagata - Memory

We were not them. We were only players, made to look like them. But perhaps we had also been made to share some aspects of their personalities? The god had designed the mechanical structure of the world—which went far in explaining Yaphet’s passion to know, to analyze, to understand, and to defy… and also why he frightened me even when I loved him.

But where was the explanation for me ? The goddess had given life to the world, but death was my role. Maybe I was that part of the goddess that had made war against her mate.

The knock sounded again at the door, louder, and this time I answered it.

Kaphiri waited in the hall, his eyes shadowed by a sullen anger. I had not seen him when Yaphet retrieved me from the room of the savants, but he was back now, and wanting to know what I knew. I could see it in his eyes.

I told him, “Terrible things can be done in the heat of anger.”

“And also when it is cold.”

So true. Cold anger had eaten at him for thousands of years. It had led him to murder my father and countless others, and it had planted in him his ambition to become a god. I said, “I know why the bogies are trying to kill you. It’s because you were made to look like the dark god.”

“Do not toy with me.”

“It is what the ancient savant told me. I have already warned Yaphet.”

I told him everything then, for I saw no advantage in hoarding the information. He and Yaphet were both brilliant, and I desperately hoped one of them would find a better solution than the one that had come to me.

Evening had fallen by the time Kaphiri left me. I thought of going to the library, but I dreaded that place, so I wandered into the courtyard with Moki for company. I could smell the silver beyond the walls, though I could not see it yet.

In the corner of the courtyard, the glass folly glowed and flickered as if illuminated shapes moved within it. I thought of Jolly in this courtyard, calling the silver to him over these towering walls. “Come, Moki,” I said, and we wandered closer to the glass spillway. The shapes within it looked like ghosts. They turned to gaze at me, with faces that were not quite faces, their eyes like hollow sockets. Moki whined. I reached down to comfort him, but he was gone, fleeing back to the open temple door.

My own retreat was more dignified, but it was a retreat, just the same. When I reached the temple I turned back, to see a wraith of silver flowing down the glass spillway to settle on the courtyard floor.

A luscious scent of cooking had infiltrated the temple. I followed it to the kitchen, and found Kaphiri again, sitting at a table of rose-colored jade. Mari was at the stove, fussing over a pot of stew. “You’ll be hungry,” she announced. “Sit down.” And she set a bowl before me.

Kaphiri did not eat, or maybe he had eaten before I came in. As Mari put my bowl down, he gave her a hard look. No word passed between them, but she turned sullenly away, and after taking a moment to check the stove, she left us alone.

“Look at me,” he said.

I did, and saw a version of Yaphet, older in the ways of the world and bitter. Terribly bitter.

“You want me to believe that players were no more than toys in their eyes, but the god and the goddess must have been players once, on another world. Did the savant say nothing of this?”

“She did not. And I do not understand you. How can you still want to become a god, knowing what they did?”

“Tens of thousands of players in this world think I am a god now.”

“And you know they are wrong. You have learned to command the silver to destruction, but not to creation. You have never learned to command it to bring forth what you choose. If you want to be a god, learn that! It is said Fiaccomo created the kobolds. Your talent is similar to his, but what have you ever done except wipe away the world?”

For a long time he said nothing. He seemed to be looking inside himself, but if he found an answer there, I never learned what it was.

I had finished eating and was feeding the leftovers to Moki when he spoke again. “You are right. Destruction is always easier than creation. It’s what you’ve always chosen. Will you choose it this time too? To destroy the silver is an easy thing. Ask me, and I will do it. Now. This night. And in the next few years most of the world will starve to death or die in warfare. That, my love, is the choice you’ve made over and over again.”

“What else should I have done? I am not the goddess. I cannot create a world. I’ve never been confused on that point.”

“So will you choose it now?”

“I don’t know! Maybe it will come to that.”

“If you do, you will send us all around this same circle again, and this choice will face you in another life… and what reason is there to believe you will ever choose differently? So that again and again and again you make us relive this nightmare.”

“It is not my fault!”

“But you could end it so easily, by doing nothing at all. Stay here and wait for the last night. Let the silver drown the whole world, and there will be no survivors to give birth to us ever again. The gods will be defeated then, and their great project will be only an empty folly, lost among the stars.”

My eyes stung, and suddenly I wanted my mother desperately. Should I let the silver drown her world? Should I murder her ? I blinked back my tears, and asked him what I had not dared to ask before. “Have you already murdered my mother?”

He shrugged. “I went back to that place you lived, but it was gone. The hills were empty.”

A fierce ache filled my throat, so that all I could do was whisper. “There was only one temple in Kavasphir. Did you go to the right hill?”

“The road was there, and the raspberry bushes, but on the hilltop there was only a ring of golden standing stones.”

Kaphiri had murdered thousands, but never had he lied to me. I laid my head down on the table, but I did not weep. Once—it seemed so long ago—I had crawled to the edge of the Kalang, and peered over a sheer precipice, where waterfalls vanished into mist long before they reached the ground, and the world had seemed grand and wild. Now it had become a cold, hollow thing.

“I need you,” I whispered.

He leaned closer. “What did you say?”

There was a note of desperate hope in his voice, but it did not move me. I was done with compassion, and I was done with waiting. Why wait? I knew what to do.

Ki-Faun’s kobold had been made to erase the very memory of a player from the silver, removing him forever from the world. Might it do the same thing to a god?

Selma had believed that within the silver was a memory of the minds of the goddess and the god who made the world. If I could remove all remembrance of the dark god, would he be gone forever? And would his flood of silver cease?

I lifted my head, and turned to meet Kaphiri’s gaze. “I need you to go into the Cenotaph with me.”

The hope in his eyes died. Anger took over, announcing itself with a short and bitter laugh. “I have already gone there.”

“But you did not find the god.”

His fist slammed against the table. “You cannot fight a god!I cannot.You cannot. Not unless we are gods ourselves, but you won’t help me there. I know you won’t, no matter the promises you make.”

I felt no fear of him. I should have taken warning from that, but my mood was as fierce as his. “These are the last days! You said so yourself. There isn’t time left for all the studies you would have me make, but it doesn’t matter. I know what to do. I just need you to come with me. You have a power over the silver—”

“Enough!” Such an anger filled his eyes! A murderous rage. He stood, slamming back his chair so that it went tumbling across the room, while Moki darted into the darkest corner. “If you choose to go, then your decision is made. It will be the flood.”