Linda Nagata - Memory

Then suddenly the pressure of the silver vanished. Some will far greater than mine seized the luminous curtain that hung so close around us and flung it back so that we could see for a quarter mile in any direction, even straight up, though silver still made a ceiling far above our heads.

We stood on the edge of an open space, like a white courtyard fronting a great temple… or anyway, I wanted to think of the structure that stood there as a temple, though it was like none I had ever seen. Imagine a great sphere that has been half-crushed and split in two, so that only a small remnant of its shell is still intact. That remnant rose in an arch a quarter mile above my head. Within the amphitheater-shell of the arch, layer upon layer of the mold-covered blocks were suspended on laminate shelves curved in the same arc as the shell. Clouds of silver steamed and billowed from the rim, rushing down the back of the shell in a great, glittering flood. We should have drowned in it, but the will that had made this bubble of open space somehow held it off.

A small, blackened figure huddled on the threshold of the temple, its head bowed as it wept over a moldering burden cradled in its lap.

It did not seem possible that such a creature could be alive, for it looked like a burnt corpse, its hair and clothes seared away and its flesh like charcoal, withered and cracked. But itwas alive, and as we approached, it looked up at us with eyes that were lenses of luminous silver. Its mouth opened, showing a blackened tongue, and the blackened stumps of teeth. “I cannot fix him,” it whispered. “I don’t remember how.”

I looked more closely at the burden it cradled in its lap and I realized that beneath the encrustations of colorful mold it was the body of a man. I fell to my knees as dread blossomed inside me. “Who is he?” I whispered, for the burnt creature held the corpse close and I could not see the dead man’s face.

“It is my lover.” As if to prove this, the tiny arms eased their desperate hold and the body shifted, rolling slightly, so I could see the face.

Colorful molds blossomed across his cheeks and eyes and within his mouth and nose, but I knew him anyway. I had always known him. “Yaphet.”

My chest heaved, and suddenly there did not seem to be enough air left in the world for me to breathe. I could not bear to look upon his face being consumed by the dreadful growths that thrived in that place, so I looked up at the burnt creature instead. “What have you done to him? And why ?”

“I have killed him. He is dead now, and the war is over.”

I knew her then. This burnt creature was the goddess, or some manifestation of her. When she had come to me at Azure Mesa she had seemed beautiful… until she reached through the mirror, and then her lovely arm had been transformed into the blackened arm of a burnt corpse.

“Where is the dark god?” I demanded.

“This is him,” she insisted, cradling Yaphet’s body. “The last fragment. I have murdered him at last—my own lover—and our war is over… but why is nothing changed?” She looked at me with her luminous silver eyes, and I felt as if I looked into empty windows.

“Explain it to me!” she demanded. “He is dead, but nothing is changed! I am still wounded. I tear out the flawed parts of myself and rebuild, and rebuild, but I cannot heal! Is there some fragment of him remaining still? Is there an avatar I have not found yet? Is there an avatar that you have not found? Why are you here? Why have you come? I sent you to find him! I sent you to remove him from the world!”

I felt Jolly’s hand squeeze gently against my shoulder. “She is wounded,” he said. “She does not understand.”

“Neither do I.”

“It is not the dark god who festers in the Cenotaph, Jubilee. It never was him. He is gone. Long gone. It is the goddess who is left here.”

I looked up, to the towering shell of her temple. Torrents of silver poured from its shattered rim, rushing forth to flood the world. “Is that her , then?” I whispered, nodding at the shell. “Is that the seat of her mind?” For she was a goddess, and I understood that the blackened corpse huddled before me could not contain the mind of a goddess, that it had to be only a manifestation, an avatar, a concentration of her dreams.

“I think she is some kind of a mechanic,” Jolly said. “And this great structure is the last fragment of her mind.”

She was listening to our words. Laying Yaphet gently on the ground, she stood, and looked with us at the great arch, and the vast layers of blocky mold that it sheltered. Her anger had passed, and when she spoke her voice was soft once again. “I am wounded. I know it. This war consumes me, and my memories slip away.”

She had murdered Yaphet because he was made to look like the dark god. Her mind was so far gone she could not tell the difference. She was broken… by the war, or by her fall to the world, I did not know, but clearly there was so little left of her that she could not repair herself, or even comprehend how far she had fallen—and still enough of her mind remained that she must try. The Cenotaph boiled with her efforts, churning out vast clouds of silver: the fever dreams of a goddess flooding the world.

“He is gone,” she whispered. “But it won’t end. Why won’t the war end?”

“Would you have it end?”

She had sent me to the Cenotaph for that purpose, after all. She had commanded me to be her hands, to find the wound in the world, and to remove the fragment of deity that would not let it heal.

I reached into the pocket of my field jacket and felt the hard shape of the kobold case Yaphet had given me, with the deletion kobold inside.

Did the goddess know, on some level, what I had come here to do? Had she planned it? Had some splinter of her crumbling self given me the book Known Kobold Circles ? Had she deliberately left the memory of this kobold on the surface of Yaphet’s mind? I hoped it was so.

“Jolly, I think you should go now.”

“No. Not until it’s over.”

“That could be too late.”

“I’ll chance it. I’m not running away again, Jubilee. Now go. Do it while you have the chance.”

So I turned my back on the burnt avatar, for it was only an interface to the goddess. Her mind was my target, and that existed within the maze of moldering blocks and towers that filled the broken sphere. I opened the kobold case and removed the solitary specimen. Its silver body gleamed, and its strong legs moved against my palm just as they had in my vision. If I were to crush it, its vapors would erase me forever. That was the promise Ki-Faun had made, but I had no intention of erasing myself. The goddess was the target, and only the goddess. I still hoped to be born again into a world that would never suffer the threat of silver flood.

My hand closed over the kobold. Would it be enough to hurl it into the depths of the sphere? Surely the impact would crush it, and then its vapors could do their work… but if its shell failed to break, how would I ever find it, to crush it myself?

In the midst of my hesitation, Kaphiri came.

Moki gave first warning with a sharp, frantic bark. Then Jolly shouted, “Jubilee! He is here. He is here. Hurry and release it!”

I turned, to see Kaphiri newly emerged from the silver. Jolly tried to stop him, but he threw my brother to the ground.

I should have hurled the kobold then, but hatred is stronger than reason. It is stronger than good intentions. In that moment I discovered that what I truly wanted was revenge against this man who had been made by a broken goddess, and who had brought so much misery on the world.

So I held on to the kobold and waited for him to come.

He stopped five feet from me. He smelled of smoke, and his fine clothes were stained and torn. His hair had fallen loose and it was gray with ash, but there was wonder in his eyes. “You have found the god.” His gaze wandered up, to the high rim of the shell and the torrents of silver that gushed down its sides. “You have walked right to his dark heart. My love, I never thought it was possible…”