Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  Another minute, another few steps. He frowned down at his trudging feet and walked straight into another cool smooth wall.

  He could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there a moment ago. Jake ran his hands over it, absorbing the cold slickness of the surface. Abruptly, the light flared brighter, stinging his hands, and he yanked them away. Around him, the cavern walls trembled with a low, ponderous noise.

  Jake looked with distaste at the wall. It’d likely sting him again if he touched it. But then, a noise was something. He stroked a hand over the wall. Again it hummed, and Jake felt it throbbing deep into his veins, into his head, and then the note dimmed the pulling and his headache, and he could focus again.

  Then his hand caught fire. Swearing, Jake ripped it back and shook it. He stepped back—his flesh wasn’t burned, only a little reddened—and considered the wall. Somewhere far off in the cavern behind him, an ominous, crumbling roar sounded and quieted.

  He supposed he could dick around with various touches and strokes, courting the wall till he found its sweet spot. He could investigate and examine. He could take samples.

  Jake was so damn sick of samples.

  He backtracked until the misty light again concealed the wall, and opened the launcher case.

  It was easier to assemble the second time. Jake dropped all three green sausage grenades into the load opening. He propped the tube over his good shoulder and flipped on the sights. It occurred to him that firing a bazooka of questionable quality underground in a misty cavern wasn’t the most intelligent idea. Had he surpassed his daily quota for bad decisions? He aimed high. “Open sesame.”

  The intruder alert system haze surged back. Temples pounding, Jake pushed the firing button.

  A deafening boom. Backfire melted the ground behind, engulfing him in thick, choking clouds of smoke. The light dimmed alarmingly, and the rockets disappeared. An enormous weight crumpled over him, pressing him through an intensely cold barrier. In panic, Jake dumped the launcher, but he was still being squashed. He rolled, scrambled up, and stumbled in shock.

  The cavern had disappeared. He was in a low, round room with level ground and walls that shone stark and glassy-smooth. The light still surrounded him, but it had changed again to a dim cold azure, as if Jake had descended deep underwater with only a thin shaft of sunshine from the surface for illumination. The air tasted rank, boggy.

  Where was he?

  As if in response, the air thrummed around him. Heart. Heart.

  “Hardly helpful,” he said aloud. “I’d prefer a wall directory, thanks.” He was unnerved, though. Heart as in their Heart, the station’s computer Heart? Was this a United Worlds Gov Board facility? Or was this something unconnected? Something organic, something alive? Alien.

  At his thought, the floor gleamed into transparent life.

  Jake turned his head. The motion felt slow and steady and held firm by pressure. “Why are you—you’re—what’s happening?” But his words sounded far away, and the room pitched and fell, and his mouth said, “Home.”

  He held out his hands. They blurred in the gleaming light.

  What in distant hells was this?

  It is home. Yes, home.

  No, his mind replied crossly. Yes, but no. Something was talking to him, through him. Had the serum and his communing with Con opened him up to other psychic paths?

  I need a welcome to come in.

  Jake wanted a tablet. He wanted to be sick. He felt unmoored, drifting, pulled apart, anchored to the floor. He slid down until his hands encountered the floor. It was warm under his hands, and Jake couldn’t escape, never wanted to move.

  But he had to move. Santos had wanted him to do something, Santos and Con, and he had to get up and see about that. There was something about this room that could help him, or why else was he here? It was important. It was making his head come apart—he must stay there, always, curl up, wrap his arms—no.

  Jake opened his eyes. He’d flattened himself against the floor, and it was stealing his warmth. He pushed up, stayed down, yes, yes, no, he did not want to stay down—he pushed up and knelt. There was something under the floor, under his hand: a dark fogged shadow, difficult to make out even through the glass.

  The shadow was long, as long as his own body stretched out on the glassy surface. His own body…

  Jake pulled up close to the end of the shadow, to the oval at the top, and looked into the still, quiet face of a man.

  Dead or in repose, it was impossible to tell. The man’s nostrils and lips were frozen, his chest did not rise or fall, but something beat under his skin like blood, thudding and pulsing along in time with the gleam of the floor. And now that Jake was close enough, he recognized him: the tall, dark and humorless man from the Selas vidlogs.

  Jake laid his hand on the floor over the man’s forehead. Warmth rose into his palm. He yanked away fast, and pushed back and up from the floor, and for a moment, the man’s body flicked out of sight.

  He thought he imagined Con’s voice. “Jake—what’s wrong with you—” Then there were hands on his face, and Con was slapping him. “One second you’re here, the next—”

  Con’s hands went away. The slaps faded, but the hot sting remained deep in his jaw. The man glimmered back into being under the glass.

  Time, Jake thought. Something to do with time. Or dimension. The floor man was in one, Con was in the other, and Jake was in…both, somehow? Home. Some kind of distorted bubbling of dimensions? Home. It was impossible to tell without a tablet or some device that allowed you to scan from comfortable light-years away on a ship or a station. Home. HOME. HOME.

  “Shut up!”

  Jake looked back down to the floor, and he realized, his mind beginning to catch up, to creep with dread, that there were more shapes embedded beneath it. Long, dark, lumpish shadows peppered throughout like particles of grit in crystal. Wrapped tight. Encased. Safe. Home.

  If he counted them, would there be twenty-nine?

  But he didn’t need to count them. Why reiterate what he already knew?

  Between one flick of his eyes and the next, a body lay in the center of the room, a long dark splay atop of the dimming floor instead of underneath, so close he could see the weave of the fabric. Jake tried to stamp down on the panicked fluttering in his belly. He took a deep breath—

  Home.

  —but it didn’t help. The light was too low to see the body’s face, but there was something familiar about the way the limbs sprawled… Jake took a step forward, and another and another until his toes nudged the body.

  From the tips of the dark messy hair to the carefully brushed grey uniform sleeves to the spit-shined boots, it was Con. The dream-Con. His guide. A lure. Like Selas, a lure.

  Jake took a few steps back.

  “Wake up,” Con’s voice, disembodied, commanded behind him. “Can you hear me?” Jake whirled, but there was no one behind him, and the sound faded in Jake’s ears.

  The thing on the ground wasn’t Con. If anything, it was Jake, his own grotesque dream-Con, his own subconscious.

  “I don’t know what this is,” he said aloud. He’d acquiesced, let the gleaming light in, and it had seeped all through him against his wishes, but Jake didn’t remember what choice was, really. When he did push back against the gentle invasion, whispers of the skull ache came back. It was a mild remonstrative, but an effective one.

  The Con-thing on the ground sat up. It looked at Jake with glassy, pale eyes full of bluish light. “Wake up,” it said in Con’s voice, its tone light, almost testing. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Jake said thornily, swallowing against the tremble in his throat. “Obviously. But you can stop pretending. I know you’re not him.”

  The thing inclined its head. “And you are not Chubaryan.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUILD VALUABLE EXPERIENCE IN

  SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH,

  TRANSPORTATION COMMERCE AND CONTROL,

  OR CLOSED-SYS
TEM ORGANIZATIONAL ADMINISTRATION?

  INTERESTED IN A UNIQUE DESTINATION

  THAT WILL SET YOU FAR APART

  FROM YOUR PEERS?

  Come far through the stars to

  United Worlds DS 2075-5

  In orbit around United Worlds Commonwealth’s newest location, 1H-24HM,

  United Worlds DS 2075-5

  offers a secluded and autonomous setting

  for self-motivated, self-directed individuals.

  Start today!

  Help forge the path of preserving humanity for the greater good!

  Must possess multiple Course strengths.

  Programming and minor construction skills desired.

  An aptitude score of 2799B or higher is required.

  A psych PP score of XF or further temperament adjustment is required.

  A positive attitude is encouraged!

  Excerpt: contract listing

  [Undated, estimated 2230-2235]

  Creator unknown

  1H-24HM [updated: Selas]

  United Worlds DS 2075-5

  Satellite, 24HM System [updated: Eos]

  [Archived: United Governance Board tri-system promotional material, Earth]

  2 November 2242 AEC

  [Time unknown]

  For the moment, the world stopped shifting. Jake could breathe and think properly again, but he was alone in the cold round room. No Con. For a moment, he’d sworn that—no. The real Con was on the surface and there was no one here but Jake, and no help coming. What good would human help do? He couldn’t see any evidence that the bazooka had worked. Barely upright on shaking legs, he was dreadfully, pathetically scared, weaponless, and all alone. Alone, except for the thing sitting on the floor, still looking at him.

  Jake tried to unfreeze his limbs, but fear kept him immobile. His mouth, as always, continued to work. “I—no. I’m not. Were you expecting him?”

  “Yes.” The Con-thing stretched its arms with a heartfelt sigh of relief, shook its legs, and clambered into a sitting position. “Denys delivered a message. He was supposed to return. Be with us. You are all so similar, it is hard to discern. Dissemble. Distinguish.”

  “Who are you?” Jake asked. He longed for a scanner. He blinked, and for a moment the Con-thing was haloed in gleaming light, an aura of crackling electricity.

  “You know.” You watched. You saw. We can show you.

  Jake shook his head. “Stop that shit right now. If I’d wanted you or anyone in my head—ever—I would have asked. If you’d asked, I would’ve said no. Permission denied.”

  The thing cocked its head. It was identical to Con, right down to the bags under the eyes. The eyes, though, there was something different there, under the light: something old. Something old and hungry and impatient. And there was still something slightly wrong with the voice, too. Rusty. Maybe the real Con would sound similar, if he clammed up for a few years.

  “Ask. Permission. You invited us. You constantly welcome us. We wait, and then you brought us in.”

  I’m always here. But I needed a welcome to come in.

  Jake shook his head. “That was Nat. A séance. That was a game, for crying out loud. Whatever you are, you’ve been tapping us longer than that.”

  “We welcomed you first. Let you come in your ships. Let you build, let you stay in our home.” Here. Home.

  “What is home?”

  The thing smiled, and the overwhelming headache rippled back, except this time it felt like someone was driving a cargo pin through Jake’s temples, one hammer stroke at a time. He heard someone screaming and hoped that it was part of the pain, an illusion. The room faded into a silent maelstrom of the weird light, wheeling and tearing at him. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it did not stop or help. The pain ground into him until he could virtually feel the blood leaking down his face.

  “Here. We want you to stay.” Nat’s voice was a soft, seductive whisper in Jake’s ear. “So you must.”

  Jake opened his stinging eyes. He was on the floor. His face was free of blood, the blistering pain and eerie light gone. The Con-thing was also gone, and in its place stood Nat. A Nat-thing.

  “Wear whatever face you want,” he told her. It. “Though if you’re trying to scare me, I have to admit Nat probably is your best bet.”

  For a moment a hand grasped Jake’s: cold strong fingers, undeniably Con’s. Then it was gone again. A delusion?

  “No. He is here, too. But he can’t touch you. Not much,” the Nat-thing said happily. “The murderer can’t come in.”

  “That’s pretty inhospitable, don’t you think?” Jake asked. The murderer. It was playing on Jake’s thoughts, plucking the word from him. Was Con here after all? The thought cheered him, and the idea of being cheerful made Jake laugh up at the ceiling. A little mental pain, intimidation, and a scary light show tossed his anger and convictions to the breeze. Had he ever had any real principles, any lasting loyalties, anything this thing had not influenced? The thing wore faces he knew and loved. If it stayed with him long enough, would he be able to tell the difference between it and them?

  I couldn’t let you go into danger without some protection, this time—I couldn’t—not again.

  “You are laughing.”

  “I’m hysterical,” Jake said flatly.

  “You had a projectile weapon. Useless. We deflected. But you have makings of an instability.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  The thing wore Nat’s impatience well. “Device. Explosive. Open the bag.”

  It indicated. A slight ripple of the force in his head, and Jake’s hands moved involuntarily, groped underneath himself—when had he gotten so heavy?—to find the survival satchel twisted around his back. The cloth was stiff and unyielding in his puppeted hands. He flung the contents out and let them skitter over the glass floor. The pressure in his skull receded; his movement became his own again. Brown protein bars, patches, vials, the chemistry satchel, the bright orange square of the wave pack—he tore his gaze away from the scatter. “Why bother asking if you can make me do anything you want?”

  The thing ignored him. It leaned down and picked up the wave pack with a languid, shifting hand. Nat’s bangle bracelets clittered over the wrist as it tore out the detonator plug. “Yes, that is fine. Non-incendiary. You may not activate it without a directed signal. Your mechanical signaling devices will not function properly in here.”

  “Where is in here?”

  “Here.” The Nat-thing deposited the wave pack on the floor.

  “Helpful as always, aren’t you? Just like her. What is here? Where am I?”

  “Here is between. Amid. During.”

  “Is this a ship? Like the Harmon? Or something like the station?” A station floating in that nauseating light.

  “It is like the ship, but…” The Nat-thing closed her eyes. “Engine. That sounds nice. Correct. Accurate.”

  “An engine?” One the size of a planet’s core? Despite the frozen fly-in-the-web feeling, Jake was intrigued. “What powers it? And why?”

  “We pull energy from many sources. The star. Planets. Radiation. From the rift of between-amid-during. Between. From beings like you. And most of all from here, from this. As for why, we must continue.”

  Answers and non-answers and gibberish. Someone had clearly forgotten to update the vocab settings on the universal translator. But he could pick some of it out. If the maelstrom of light was a temporal rift, and this “engine” harnessed it, controlled it, and fed from it, shifting through time and space, then perhaps these beings were temporally and spatially shifting as well. Jake let his head fall back. “Why are there people under the floor? What did you do to them?”

  Nat-thing rolled her eyes. “They are us now. We are sharing them still.” She stepped onto the dark oval, the still man’s face, and shadows cloaked her from head to foot.

  The shapes under the glass began to quiver, gently, awakening as if from sleep. Then, one by one, figures clambered up through the glass, mercur
ial and wisp-transparent, leaving a shadow behind in repose. Creeping along the floor, they mobbed the Nat-thing, and her appearance melted into a slurried pile of greyish scum. Jake had a sudden sickening sense of hair rubbed against the grain, of muck and stale air.

  He blinked, and she was gone. He blinked again, and the dark man from the Selas Station vidlogs stood before him, the silvery shadows dripping off him as they slid down in long, lazy streaks, down to the floor and then, slowly, toward Jake.

  “You saw us,” said the man. He frowned, smiled, waved. His face faded and shrank into a woman’s face, and her head sprouted spikes of green, a pair of goggles. “We are here.” She smiled. Her face dissolved into Con, into Nat, into Carmichael, Mei, Lindy, Mick, flicking fast and shivery.

  “But—” The oily shadows slid like quicksilver over the tips of Jake’s boots, leaving wet tracks, tasting-marks from dozens of tongues. He kicked at them. “You’re dead. You’ve all been dead a hundred years, Denys too, and you should be grateful. You didn’t see Leech, or the deaths, or the riots, or any of it.” The shadows crept up his legs, warm, too warm, like the spacewalk, like the conduit room.

  “We are here. We are then.” The thing shrugged. “We are in between, continuing. It was so beautiful, all the energy we found, the lovely light of body, of essence living in all of you. Chubaryan saw, but he went back up to send us to your Earth. To feed and to share. We love to share most of all. And we have.”

  The dark man appeared again, his persistent frown a gash in his face. “Denys sent us. He sent us. We went through and over and then, all over your world. We can feel it. We can smell ourselves, sense us in you, Jacopo Jeong. Taste you. We have been tasting your dreams, feeding from so far.”