Amy Griswold: The Lost

He woke in darkness, in the comforting dark. His throat was raw, and when he tried to speak only a strange croak came out, like some primal bird strangely shaped and grotesque.

“Here,” a voice said, and he felt the metal pipette at his lips, cool and slick. A few droplets of water slid onto his tongue, and he swallowed greedily. “Not too much at first,” the voice said. “Slowly.”

He had dreamed that he opened his eyes to see nothing but blackness behind them, but this time his eyes did open, and for a moment he recoiled. It was just shock — how not? The face that bent over his was concerned, eyes searching his own worriedly. And what a face. Pale gray and seamed with the dark whorls of spiral tattoos, silver hair rising from a widow’s peak above slitted yellow eyes, the other stared down at him, the pipette in his hand.

“There, now,” the other said. “Can you speak?”

He might. He might force something from his raw throat. It came out weak and thready. “Who are you?”

The other’s eyes were compassionate. “I am your brother, Dust. You have been sick these many days, and I have worried about you.”

Dust. His brother. Pictures should come with that, pictures and stories. Words. And yet where they should be was nothing.

“Would you like another sip of water?”

Dust put the pipette to his lips. A few more drops of cold water, soothing his aching mouth.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Dust shifted, and he saw the lines of arm and sleeve, black cloth embroidered in rich purple, the shades so close that to any eyes other than their own it might have seemed black on black. “Better?”

“Yes,” he said. He. A frisson of terror ran through him for all the things that ran away when he tried to think them, ran like water from a pipette. “Who am I?”

Dust’s voice was patient. “You are my brother, Quicksilver. You have been very sick, and we have all been greatly concerned about you.”

Quicksilver. His own name. And yet it meant nothing. “Quicksilver?”

“Quicksilver,” Dust said with a smile, and he saw the picture in his mind, liquid mercury running in a thousand directions, scattering in a hundred rolling balls on the table, glittering and cool. Quicksilver, like his mind. A thousand projects, a thousand ideas, too many gleaming thoughts to pursue before they escaped.

And now he had no thoughts. He was empty. He could not summon a single idea, a single memory. Fear chorused through him. “I can’t remember,” he said.

“You will,” Dust said soothingly. “You will. You have been very sick. I have tended you twelve days. It is not to be expected that you recover in an hour.”

“Where…” There was something missing, some place. Some other thing. Some other person. Some other hands. “She…”

“She will be very glad to hear that you have awakened,” Dust said quietly. “She has worried too.” Dust lifted a soft cover around him, tucking him in as though he were small. “Rest, my brother. Sleep, and let yourself heal.”

He knew he should protest, but the cushions beneath him were warm and the covers soft. And he was so tired. He meant to speak, but instead he slept.

The second time Quicksilver awakened he felt stronger. He lay for a long moment, looking up at the curves of the room in the soft shiplight, rose shadows near the ceiling shading soothingly to gray. He lay in an oval nook, soft cushions beneath him to ease every part of his body. Three coverings lay about him, two to warm him against any chill, while a third was folded across his feet where even to an invalid it would be close to hand. A small table beside the bed held a deactivated light pod, and the steel pipette in its stand, the bottom chilled and sweating in the humid air. Water.

Quicksilver turned, trying to reach it. His eyes focused, and he shook.

His hand was grayish green, dark nails lacquered in midnight blue, carefully tended with no chips, as though someone had carefully groomed him while he lay ill. Such tenderness ought to please him, and yet he shook. His feeding hand extended, raw slit gaping. Where it touched the pipette the cold shocked him to the bone, ice on tender tissues biting with cold. The pipette overturned with a crash, falling to the floor.

The door irised open and Dust rushed in.

Quicksilver could do nothing but clutch his hand in horror, rocking, while some sound came out of him that might have been keening.

“It is all right, my brother,” Dust said, kneeling and picking up the pipette. “It is nothing. Just some water spilled. Do not be distressed.” He lifted it up and put it again on the table.

Quicksilver could not speak. He could not speak for the waves of horror flooding through him. And yet…

Dust put his hand in his, back to back, leaning close. “Quicksilver, it is nothing. Just water spilled. Be content, brother.”

“Water,” he whispered.

“I will get you more,” Dust said. “You are clumsy from being ill. Your strength and your coordination will come in time. You will heal.”

“What happened?” he asked. “I remember nothing…”

“You have been very sick,” Dust said, but he thought his eyes evaded him. “In a few weeks you will be yourself again. Come. Lie down. Let me make you comfortable and bring you more water.”

His legs were better to look at, loose black pants that showed nothing. His limbs were shaking as he let Dust settle him back on the cushions again, Dust’s head bent and his long, fair hair falling forward. He lifted a hand to his own head. No fall of silver, no braids. “My hair…” he whispered. It was shorn close to his head.

Dust did not look up. “It will grow in time,” he said.

“I don’t remember,” Quicksilver whispered. As Dust straightened he caught at him, hand to wrist. “Tell me the truth. What happened?”

Dust let out a long breath, but his eyes did not evade. “You were captured,” he said. “You were captured by the Lanteans. We do not know what they did to you. You were found wandering disoriented on an uninhabited planet, wounded and near starvation. We think…” His voice trailed off, then began again. “We think you somehow managed to escape and dialed a random gate address. We don’t know, and until your memory returns we may never know.”

Quicksilver swallowed. “I don’t remember anything.”

“You have been very sick, but it looks as though you are mending. I am glad that it is so.”

He flexed his hands on the covers, taking warmth from the smooth threads, from the slight spirals of stitching beneath his fingers. “Captured. And I escaped.”

“We do not know how,” Dust said. “But you did.” There was a spark of amusement in his eyes. “But you are the cleverest of clevermen.”

“Who am I?”

Dust plumped one of the cushions behind him for him to lean on. “You are my brother, Quicksilver of the lineage of Cloud, ship’s officer and lord among the Queen’s Clevermen. The Queen herself has been to see you while you slept, and offered her own blood if it might avail you. We have all worried about you and are relieved to see you becoming yourself again.”

“The Queen’s Clevermen…” He ought to know what that was, but didn’t.

“You are a master of sciences physical,” Dust said. “You have your own laboratory, and many men follow you.”