Linda Nagata - Memory

She did not hear me over the roar of the flames, or she would not.

“Mari, we will take you to Nuanez when this is done!”

She rounded the temple and disappeared. I wanted to go after her, but I had Kaphiri under the rope.

Jolly had no such hindrance. He darted back down the stairs, then sprinted across the courtyard, following Mari’s route around the building.

I saw her again on the other side of the temple, hurrying toward the gate. “She has lived too long,” Kaphiri said.

I knew he was right. “Jolly!” I screamed. “Come back! Come back now!”

Mari reached the gate. She was an old woman, but she still had her strength. When she pulled on the latch, the tall gate swung open and a tongue of silver reached through. For a moment, Mari stood silhouetted against its luminous glow. Then it swept over her, just as fire roared up through the temple roof.

“Call your brother back,” Kaphiri croaked. “The night is growing old.”

The flying machine was ready, but neither Jolly nor I could fly it. Only Kaphiri had learned the techniques from Yaphet. He claimed the pilot’s platform. I squeezed in beside him, so I could continue to hold his leash. “Aren’t you afraid…,” he rasped, “of what you might feel…?”

I did not think I would feel anything, but I was wrong. His warmth stirred in me a corrupt desire, but it was not so strong as my hate. “I will strive to bear your proximity,” I whispered.

He chuckled. “And I will do the same.”

Jolly took Moki with him in one basket. I had already balanced the other with food and water, so Kaphiri brought the engine humming to life.

It should have been Yaphet beside me.

Kaphiri touched the controls and the wings flexed; the engine’s hum climbed in pitch.

Yaphet was gone.

I did not look back. Neither did Kaphiri. The banks of tiny propellers whined, and we lurched forward, lifted hesitantly, and then swooped down into the canyon. I cried out, for I thought we were falling. The silver rushed up toward us, and I reached out to ward it away, but before I could form the thought it parted beneath us as if an invisible plow had carved a furrow in its luminous surface. The wing tips skimmed the silver, and gleamed a moment with its light, and then the light fell away, and the river of silver sank below us as it flowed down the canyon to the plain. We soared on at the same altitude, and the wind was loud in my ears, but even so I imagined Yaphet calling, crying my name into the night.

The mists over the Cenotaph had quieted in the night, and I could not tell with any certainty where it lay, for the silver had risen in a uniform fog, obscuring all the plain. I was studying its misty surface, searching for some sign of the pit, when we chanced to pass close to a small circle of open ground. I had only a glimpse before the clearing fell behind us, but that was enough to make out stones and sand, looming gray in the silver’s glow, and against them darker shapes that I could not identify with any certainty. I clutched Kaphiri’s shoulder and pointed back. “What was that? Was that a kobold well?”

He arched his neck to look, but we had already gone too far. So he put the flying machine into a steep bank, and we turned back, descending at the same time.

On this pass we flew directly over the open ground. It was a kobold well—the largest I had ever seen. The black circle of its mouth was twice the wingspan of our flying machine, and around it was a ring of soil at least twenty feet high. Three players stood on the inside slope of the soil ring, their faces turned up toward us. Their bikes waited a few steps away, and there were sleeping bags on the ground.

Kaphiri started to take the flying machine down. “No,” I said. “We will fly on.”

“Players do not come this far south! I will know who they are!”

“I know already.”

Those upturned faces had belonged to Liam and Udondi and Ficer, but I would not risk a reunion. I trusted neither Liam’s temper, nor Kaphiri’s tolerance. “Fly on,” I insisted. “Whatever they have come for, it cannot matter now.”

Kaphiri relented. He guided the flying machine up, and away to the north.

Liam’s voice called after us, carrying eerily in the still night. “Jubilee, we will follow when we can.”

Kaphiri glanced at me, a grim smile on his face. He knew now who these wayfarers were. “His chance will come only if we succeed.” This seemed to please him, though whether by the anticipation of our success, or our failure, I could not say.

The sameness of the silver confused my mind, but Kaphiri seemed to see through it. He pointed out the pit to me, and laughed when I could not see it. Then he turned the plane and began a tight spiral that took us quickly closer to the mist. When the silver lay just beneath the belly of the plane he warded it off. We continued to descend, turning round and round, while the silver rose above us, and then closed over our heads.

We still flew in a tight spiral. I knew this because the wind of our passage roared past my face, and the wings flexed and dipped. But with the sameness of the silver all around it felt as if we had been caught and suspended in a place of endless luminosity.

Then a wall of darkness emerged from out of the homogeneous glow: a steep, crumbled slope of transformed stone.

Kaphiri hissed. He leaned on the guidance stick and the plane rocked to one side. I looked down the length of the wing to see Jolly’s terrified face below me. Then the other wing clipped the wall. The canvas tore, and the struts collapsed.

The plane dropped. I closed my eyes. I could not help it, but at the same time I pushed at the silver beneath us. There was an impact. The air was knocked from my lungs, my teeth snapped together, and every part of my body felt as if it had been torn from its proper placement. There was a terrible scraping sound and a sense of motion. I heard Jolly cry out, but all I could do was hold on andpush as hard as I could against the silver that crowded my awareness.

I did not lose consciousness, for I was always conscious of the close press of the silver. I was aware too of Moki’s menacing growls, but only when his growling turned into a high-pitched yelping attack did I open my eyes.

Kaphiri stood over me. He had removed the leash from his own neck and was attempting to place it over mine, but little Moki had already savaged his hand.

I reared back, kicking out at him at the same time, but my reflexes were slow, and he dodged easily. I seized stone from the jumbled slope and flung it after him. It was a keen throw, but too late, for Kaphiri stepped into the silver, and was gone.

“Jolly?”

I turned to look for him, and was stunned to see the remnants of the plane. It lay all around me like a smashed skeleton. The pilot’s platform had broken in half, separating from the engine, which lay downslope, only inches from the wall of silver. The crumpled wings were draped across a chaotic slope of stones and dust and layered ground that reminded me of the eastern slope of the Kalang. “Jolly!” I called again. Moki had been with him, and Moki had survived the crash, so Jolly had to be somewhere close by. “Jolly!”

This time I heard a muffled answer. “I’m here! Over here! Help me get out.”

I followed his voice and found a narrow crevice splitting the slope. A slow-running flow of silver seeped through it, shimmering two meters down. Jolly straddled the flow, his feet and hands propped against the crumbling wall.

“Help me,” he said when he saw me peering down.

I gave him my hand. That was all the help he needed to scramble out and onto the slope beside me. We collapsed together, spending a minute just looking at each other. His face was bruised, but I saw no blood, and he would admit to no broken bones. Moki crawled between us.