by Peter Heaton
One hadn’t done it. Gorging himself on her hadn’t either.
You still don’t know.
“No. I don’t. Look at the way Verzatz turned out.”
He was abandoned by his parents.
“I just don’t know if I’m supposed to. I thought when you got old enough, you’d know.”
I can’t help there. The biology’s a bit different.
“It’s not the biology that’s the issue.”
Humans are strange.
“I won’t argue that.”
It’s time, Izaac. Time to do what you came here to do. Time to go home.
He wished he could call her, talk to her. But that was impossible out here in darkspace. He’d called her on Tantalus, but they hadn’t been able to talk long and the connection was weak. He could tell she hadn’t been happy.
Izaac had thought she was going to tell him that she couldn’t do it any more. If she had, he might have told her he’d forget it all, just come home to be with her and damned the rest of it.
But she hadn’t. So he was still here. And it wasn’t just something simple like duty that had made him chase Ibor Nabaldian all the way to Memory Hold. Otherwise he might have gone back then, whether she had asked or not.
The memory itself was stale with the passage of time, but Verzatz’s laughter was still as fresh and ugly as the first day he had heard it.
Izaac pulled on his skintight blastsuit, a dull gray that would hopefully keep him alive if he got shot. Next, the patchwork outfit he’d collected—in his experience it was the best way he’d found to blend in—and finally his knife and pistol.
“Where is Nabaldian?”
Room F484.
“Verzatz?”
No. I cannot find him. Do you think it’s a trap?
“Does it matter?”
Yes. I want to go home.
“Well, I’ll be careful then.”
Izaac walked out the door, and the seeker floated down from the nook in the ceiling. Thankfully, the vivid colors only existed inside the Hall, sparing patrons of Memory Hold the barrage of lights and strange sounds in the surrounding areas.
“Find Verzatz. You remember what he smells like?”
My sense of smell is much keener than yours.
“A ‘yes’ would do.”
No, it wouldn’t. I won’t forget that smell until I die.
“A bit dramatic.”
The seeker sang out its frustration.
“I’m sorry. It’s just this godawful headache.”
Without responding to his apology the seeker drifted back up into the ceiling and began sneaking its way through the support beams above.
Izaac felt a pang of regret. At first he hadn’t taken to the thing—not the seeker itself but the neural experiment for which Hawk had recommended him. But when it had saved his life, he stopped questioning Hawk about the benefits. The regret wasn’t for any of that, it was for always targeting the seeker with his own frustrations. He thought of the seeker as something else, as a being. He tended to anthropomorphize it, seeing it more as an extension of himself than anything else. And for that reason it was infinitely easier to take out his frustrations on the creature.
He’d often forget they were directly linked. The seeker had become another limb to him. But they still had their separate wills, separate feelings, separate thoughts. At first, there were times when it had overwhelmed him. In those early days he had often wondered what would happen if the seeker died.
The living halls were crowded. Some comers and goers. Others lingering to examine the strange artwork that the Custodians had collected and used to decorate the parts of Memory Hold outside of the Halls. Groups of rememberers were also gathered, exchanging their favorite memories, catching up on the buzz from the most recent memories submitted to the public database.
Izaac turned away from the crowd. They made him uncomfortable. Besides, it would be too easy for Verzatz to slip up next to him and stab him without anyone knowing.
Eventually he found an open section of the ship, most of the residences having been vacated by those that had decided to return to reality. He navigated the passages, his nostrils poised for that sweet kiss of yazzat, which would indicate trouble.
What if he’s covered his scent? Izaac wondered. He eased up his focus on that one thing, making sure he didn’t ignore other warning signs.
Finally he reached the lounge where he had last seen Ibor Nabaldian. The lounge was mostly empty, its patrons either within the Halls or relaxing elsewhere. A woman, sitting in view of the entrance, noticed him and stood up. Izaac’s hand slipped down to his pistol, and his body turned slightly, so she wouldn’t see the movement.
“Are you Izaac?”
Izaac measured her briefly. He locked onto her green eyes, the most attractive part of her homely face. Her hair was thin, blonde, and graying. A faint scar traced down either side of her nose, down around her cheeks, disappearing under her chin: marks born from heavy use of a breathmask.
“Starkisser?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Izaac motioned to the scar. “You visit a lot of planets. Unprocessed ones.”
“Oh, sure. Starkisser. Heard that before. I prefer ‘explorer’ though.”
“That’s not very romantic. What’s your name?”
“Mine?”
“Yeah,” Izaac said with frustration. He relaxed his gun hand. The woman was not visibly armed. This close he’d be able to overpower her—that had always been his strong suit. His older brothers had trained him from a young age. I wonder if they beat on me so hard when I was young because they knew I’d be whooping their asses when I got older. It had been a long time since he had thought of them. Focus, he told himself.
“Annelle. Look, some guy gave me twenty credits worth to give you this.”
Izaac tensed as she reached inside her pocket, but she withdrew only a piece of paper:
What has a heart of black and blue?
TAKE A GUESS IZAAC. THEN FLIP.
“Is this a joke?”
“Hey, man, I didn’t write it, all right. Some guy gave it to me.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Izaac asked harshly. A few patrons looked up from their drinks. “I’m sorry. Just think. Please.”
“He was skinny. Oddly dressed. Honestly, I didn’t really check him out. He was kind of unsettling. When I saw his credit was good, I took the piece of paper, and he left.”
“Did he smell?”
“Smell?”
“Yeah, a real earthy, animal-like musk.”
“He did smell something funky.”
“Thanks.” Izaac felt the impulse of curiosity. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be looking for your next score? Next planet for sale?”
Annelle leaned in close. “That’s exactly what I am doing.” She pointed at the kaleidoscoped door. “You know how many memories are here? There’s secrets of the universe laid bare behind that door. You just need to know how to find them.”
“Good luck, I suppose.” Izaac hesitated, then offered up his advice. “If you see him again, I’d give him a wide berth.”
The woman thanked him and went back to her seat. Izaac ordered a drink to try to settle the pounding in his head. At his table he accessed the floor plan of the Hall, spotting room F484. He downed the drink with a groan, ordered another because one didn’t do it.
Finally he felt a slight buzzing in his head. It was gradually pushing away the storm, trying to tear itself out of his skull. After ordering another drink, he took out the piece of paper.
Izaac read the front again.
What has a heart of black and blue?
TAKE A GUESS IZAAC. THEN FLIP.
He turned the note over.
Dead Izaac. Hope the misses isn’t waiting up for you.
SYS
Izaac crumpled up the piece of paper violently, depositing it in one of the empty glasse
s.
Her words from the memory were fresh in his mind. How? Izaac asked himself. How would he know that?
He finished his drink, trying to comprehend. But there was no making sense of it. His memory was private; as in, for his eyes only.
It was then that he realized he’d lost control. That maybe he’d never had control in the first place . . . But, there was one thing he could control.
He paid his tab, wiped his sweating hands clean, and headed into the Hall of Memories.
***
The colored lights on the door matched the code for F484. Izaac placed the demagnifier on the door, depressed the button, and then pulled the door open. Although bigger in scope, the room was similar to the one before: all white with one large curved window taking up the opposite wall.
He removed the demagnifier and stepped into the room, the door sliding shut behind him. There were steps down to a central platform ringed by odd silver sculptures. From the metallic decorations thin strands reached out to where Ibor Nabaldian lay. The twisting, asymmetrical statues were of glass and filled with silver fluid, which was pumping into the man’s body.
“What the hell . . . ?”
Izaac overrode his curiosity, instead spending the next few minutes searching every spot big enough for someone to hide. The room had little to offer in terms of shadows: everything was illuminated by bright white light. He spent another few minutes searching for the hidden doors that the Custodians must use but could find no trace of them.
The way the slaver had been speaking before, it was as if he had removed himself entirely from the equation. But was it just a trick to get Izaac off guard?
Walking backwards, he descended the steps towards the motionless body of Ibor Nabaldian, spinning as he went to make sure that no one, no thing was emerging from the walls or some space he’d overlooked.
Satisfied, Izaac walked over to the cushioned table. The slaver lay there, his black eyes opened wide. Izaac waved his hands in front of them. They were as he’d thought: unseeing. Has he made some pact with the Custodians? Is that why he was so oddly calm when I found him?
Izaac bent forward, his fingers parting Nabaldian’s mouth. Green teeth poked out behind the lower lip.
The air before him—above the slaver’s face—sizzled. Izaac stepped backward in surprise, his hand moving to his gun. A strange, dark shape was filtering in and out of reality. It clung to Nabaldian’s face, its appendages disappearing into his ears, nose, and mouth. It was a hideous thing: a blob with black tendrils. There were no discernable features Izaac could see.
The creature disappeared.
If I can wake him up, then we can do this right. Izaac shook Nabaldian’s still body. Nabaldian gave no hint he felt it. Izaac grabbed him by the chest, shaking him harder. He reached out a hand to slap the man once, twice. As he did it the third time, the creature slipped back into reality. Izaac felt the wet, warm slimy thing, and everything went white.
***
He felt his heavy arms. His great frame. Within his grasp there was something smaller, but warm. In the air he could smell the earthy notes, a scent he had long associated with joy. The bed was comfortable, so comfortable he almost felt like he was floating.
The sheets were off of him, but his naked body did not feel cold. A heavy sun hung above, shining down through the glass roof. He could feel the satisfaction coursing through him. How perfect it had been! Better than he had ever imagined. And even better because he had always felt so guilty picturing this before.
But his patience had paid off; he had come to him. And that was the only way he could know it was what he really wanted. He hadn’t really believed that a thing like him could love. And it hadn’t been exactly as he had imagined. The man—young man—had been quiet. He’d done his part wordlessly, with only a brief gasp of pleasure here or there.
Not that that had bothered him. He actually liked the change, liked that this one was silent. He could focus on himself. On the moment. On his own pleasure.
He tried to remember a better moment than this: his conquest claimed; the young man’s love known to him. Together they could do anything.
He had never felt a love like this before. Not this strong. Not this fresh. Not this uncertain. That, possibly more than anything else, had been the best part of it all.
Why did it have to take this long to find him? Why couldn’t I have found him earlier, so we could be together for that much longer? But he knew why: because then it wouldn’t have been so perfect.
The weight of his satisfaction was connected to the length of the journey. Empowered by the primal urging of his soul to hunt and kill, or rather, to find and love. It had been so long ago when he’d found him covered in crimson.
He reached a hand across the bare back, up into the nest of raven black hair.
Craning his head forward, he took a smell of the young man’s bare nape, inhaling deeply, violently. The tender smells of musty earth, framed with cloves, brought a great smile to his face.
“Verzatz,” he whispered gently, “you are more perfect than you know.”
***
Izaac’s hand released from the flesh of the creature. He felt the floor rush up to meet him, and at the same time the room began to spin. Izaac’s feet stumbled as he tried to catch his balance. The ceiling began to descend, faster and faster. He was upside-down now, no sideways, no bent over, now on his hands and knees. The floor was falling, and he was falling with it.
Eventually his hands felt solid ground. His knees too. Then he was standing, and slowly control came back.
He knew he had touched something not meant for him: Ibor Nabaldian’s private memory. Then he felt a moment of uneasiness, a spiritual roiling of his soul as he tried to reconcile the feelings that he had felt that had not been his. Feelings that were so opposite of his own.
In that moment he hated Ibor Nabaldian for making him feel that way about a creature such as Verzatz. He looked at the man for a bit as his own thoughts struggled to sort themselves out. As the remembering began to distance itself in time, he recalled his own disgust at the smell of yazzat—where the slaver’s had been thoughts of joy and pleasure.
Anger—fear, too, of infecting his own mind with the slaver’s thoughts and feelings—drove the blade from its sheath and into the slaver’s slowly beating heart.
Chapter Four: Push the Button
Most of the men he’d seen die had died screaming. Ibor Nabaldian simply lay there, staring up with wide eyes—smiling eventually—while his pierced heart spilled blood. The cylinders continued to pump their strange contents into Nabaldian. Silver in, red out, Izaac thought. The longer it went on, the more metallic the blood became until the colors had nearly melded.
Again came thoughts of the scent of yazzat, and Izaac felt his stomach—not because of his disgust for the scent but due to the confusion of his own mind—upend onto the white floor. He had kissed the lystere in the rawest way possible.
What now? he asked himself. There was nothing to be done with the body. He only hoped that the lawlessness of darkspace prevailed in Memory Hold because he doubted that his own certified Imperial Bounty would.
And Verzatz: surely he would be close now.
Izaac stood in the doorway for a bit, viewing the empty hallway. He paused, hoping that he’d get lucky and one of the memory sessions would come to an end and provide him with some chance of blending in. But there was the possibility that a Custodian could emerge—unhappy at the mess he’d made—from some hidden entrance. Or there was the possibility that they already knew.
Izaac glanced at the body. It was convulsing on the table. Sensations washed over him: the feel of the knife breaking into the chest; the warm blood on his hands; the feel of the unseeing eyes, dying, but still smiling up at him.
A sudden churning of his stomach; he bent over and threw up again. You knew I could do it, Izaac thought. But not really. It had just been a thing she had said, a thing one person says to another to reassure them, ev
en when they don’t really know what the hell they are talking about.
Frantically Izaac wiped the blood from his hands, rubbing at the parts where it had already dried. Not able to stay in the room with the body any longer, Izaac ducked into the hallway and did not look back.
See you soon, the note had read. If not in the suite, then where? He reached out to the seeker, having to concentrate on nothing else to cross the distance.
“Anything?” Izaac asked.
You did it, didn’t you?
“Yes, I did. Don’t thank me. Did you find anything?” A faint chime, signaling the end of a shared session, reached Izaac’s ears. However, it was too weak for him to notice over the attention he was spending on his link with the seeker.
I found his den. It has his stink. But he’s not there.
“Where?”
Level 8. Room H2120. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, but they blended into the background—again not noticed by Izaac.
“Go check on the ship. Try to stay out of sight.”
Then an alarm sounded in his mind—some remnant of the discipline that had once been his nature—and Izaac put his back against the wall, hand onto his gun, losing his connection with the seeker in the commotion. He breathed in, smelling nothing but the odor of the crowd shuffling by him. A few gave him a strange glance. He returned the gaze, giving his best look that suggested they move on. Izaac focused back on the seeker.
“What did you say?” he asked.
I said, what else would I do?
“Something stupid probably.”
The seeker’s shrill reached him across the neural net, and the creature replied: Last time I did something “stupid” it saved both our lives.
“Seriously. Verzatz is more dangerous than the others. Somehow . . . somehow he got access to my memory.”
He likes to get personal.
“Yeah,” Izaac agreed, “I think he gets off on it. Double-check. Triple-check.”
Don’t worry. I’m the one that wants to go home.
Izaac cut the connection and melded into the crowd, glancing carefully at those around him as he slipped between the shuffling forms. Others were coming through the kaleidoscoped door, heading into the Hall of Memory. Among them, Izaac noticed the Starkisser, Annelle. Izaac hesitated, his brain trying to come up with a plan that seemed halfway sane, something other than walk around until Verzatz killed him.