by Steven Brust
I sat down on the couch since Oskar had my chair again. Matt sat across from me and said, “I’m looking forward to meeting Ren.”
“She’s working, but I’m sure she’ll be out soon.”
“Working?” said Jimmy. “On what?”
“I imagine her sugar spoon, or else she’s gathering switches for some meddlework I know nothing about, or grazing for Celeste.”
“Yes,” said Matt. “Celeste. That is a problem, isn’t it?”
“So is Irina,” I said. “Would you mind stubbing her for me, Matt?”
“I won’t do that, no.”
“Just asking.”
Ray said, “Celeste, Irina, and the alpha-lock. All related problems. How do we address them?”
Oskar said nothing; I suspect he was trying to control his annoyance at having to share the same air as Matt.
The door opened, and Ren emerged, and my heart did a thing. I guess it showed, because I looked over and caught Jimmy watching me. He said, “I don’t know, but permit me to suggest that stubbing Ren is not one of the options.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said, and sat down on the couch next to me.
Ren
It was a formidable group of men to greet in a bathrobe, but my hair was clean, and Phil introduced me to Matsu, sitting cross-legged in an office chair someone had rolled in from Phil’s office, while Jimmy refilled my coffee.
I sat on the sofa by Phil, where Irina had perched on the armrest last night, and tried not to feel some residual sinister pall over the cushions. Ramon was standing by the glass doors again, but their curtains were open to reveal the date palm and the scraggly yard. With Oskar in Phil’s chair and Jimmy in what I’d already started to think of as mine, we were a stranger, sleepier reprise of last night.
“It’s good to see you looking well,” Ramon said, and I remembered Phil’s litany of the people who’d saved my life, and how I’d gone to bed naked, and felt my face pink up.
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks, all of you.” I looked at Oskar and Jimmy. “That was scary.”
Phil squeezed my knee. Jimmy nodded.
Ramon said, “Indeed,” while his eyes searched my face and hair and fingers, then he said, “We can wait for you. Or work without you.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Very well. You suggested the hypothesis last night, that perhaps rather than suicide, Celeste’s death had been murder.”
No way I was going to say, “Who’s Celeste” again.
“Were you perhaps intuiting Irina’s attempt on your life and misinterpreting?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Having been on the receiving side of a murderous hatred, I felt sorry for Celeste suddenly, whoever she was.
“You believe she was killed, and the notion of her suicide suggested to you by someone with access to your memories?”
“It’s just that I don’t remember Celeste,” I said. “So before everyone else remembers her as a suicide, based on something I’ve said, I needed to say I didn’t remember.”
I had the uncomfortable feeling of having just made very little sense in front of a lot of very smart people.
“Oskar,” Ramon said, “this casts suspicion on you, of course. You had the most to gain from Celeste’s death. You should, perhaps, excuse yourself.”
If I’d held everyone’s eyes before, Oskar now had them eyes, ears, and curly hairs.
“Fine,” he said, disgusted.
“Hang on,” Phil said, almost on his feet. “If we’re going to start excusing people, we need to do better than casting suspicion around like fishing line.”
“It’s okay,” said Oskar, rising to his full height.
“It’s not,” Phil said.
“No, it is,” I said, “because Oskar knows he can get into your Garden.”
Oskar, very slowly, sat back down.
“No, not really,” Phil said. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“I’m sorry, Oskar,” I said. “You reached out to me last night, and it saved me, your voice telling me to stay awake when breathing seemed like more trouble than I felt like taking, but I already knew.”
“No,” Phil said again.
I said, “Have any of you seen him in your Garden?”
Ramon reached into the neck of Oskar’s shirt and studied the gold charm on the red cord. He dropped it and straightened. “I have seen him in mine.”
“I haven’t,” Matsu said.
“Nor I,” said Jimmy.
“I’ll just go then,” Oskar volunteered.
Matsu stood, and Oskar stayed in his chair.
Jimmy dropped his head into his hands. “The whole Garden is running amok or breaking down. It’s all going alpha. All the noise is signal. Everyone’s meddling with everyone else. It’s like the Dark Years, but now we’re all too agile to catch.”
“And it’s no longer just us,” Oskar said. “Don’t forget the nemones are meddling too.”
“We must find the alpha-lock,” Ramon said.
“There’s ritual,” Phil said.
“Or sex,” Oskar’s voice was almost a whisper.
“Irina is Salt,” Jimmy said. “And we need five.”
“Oskar and I will stay behind.” Matsu’s voice was a threat and a promise. “We are not.”
“Ren?”
“For this,” I said, “I should get dressed.”
“Phil?”
Phil
“No,” I said.
Ren looked at me, startled and worried.
Ray said, “But—” and I held a hand up.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean no to going. Or getting dressed. I meant no to Oskar and Matt staying behind.” I had everyone’s attention, except for Ren who ducked into the bedroom. “First of all, fuck tradition. Second, fuck ritual. There’s no law that says it has to be five, it’s custom and you all know it. Jesus, our only rule is that we have no rules.”
“But—” said Ray.
“I want us all to meet in my Garden to see where Celeste’s final memory should be. I want Matt there because I trust him and because I’m betting he fights as well in the virtual world as he does in the real world.”
Oskar said, “You think—”
“And,” I said, steamrolling him, but so caught up in the moment that I couldn’t enjoy it, “I want Oskar there because this is all directed at him.”
I stopped there, waiting to see who’d speak first. It was Ray. “You know this, how?”
“Oh, come on, Ray. You can see the pattern, can’t you? Who was Celeste afraid of? Where is all the suspicion pointing? Who did you just suggest couldn’t be here?”
“The argument that suspicion points to someone is not, in itself, proof that—”
“Oh, bullshit, Ray.”
He muttered something I didn’t understand, probably in Catalan, then he said, “It’s Ramon.”
Oskar was utterly still; what else could he be?
Jimmy said, “I think you’re right,” which caused some confusion because neither Ray nor I were looking at him. “You, Phil,” he added. “It looks more than anything else like Celeste trying to—”
“Celeste is dead,” said Ren coming back from my bedroom wearing clothes.
“Valid point,” said Ray.
“You remember?” I said.
She nodded.
“Then,” I said, “let’s go now, while you still do.”
We all looked at Ray. He hesitated, then nodded. I think his driving motive was curiosity, but I was fine with that.
Oskar said, “Someone needs to explain it to Ren. She still hasn’t had the memory rush yet.”
“Explaining it to me would be nice too,” I muttered.
“The Garden,” said Jimmy, “is whatever you want it to be. Your individual Garden is a product of your subconscious, but everything else is arbitrary. You can fly. You can walk through walls. You can create or destroy objects at will.
“When someone else brings you into his or her Ga
rden, it works a bit differently. It’s a shared, imagined world. You see it as that person imagines it is, but you can’t hurt someone else’s actual Garden, or make permanent changes. You can move or change a seed, but it’ll revert when you leave. And you experience the memories more viscerally when you take them in their native symbol. When I, in my Garden, drink as wine a memory Phil seeded as a flower, I know the information that memory contains. When he allows me to pluck his blue bud, I live the experience as he did.”
Oskar coughed, Ramon studied his boot toes, and Jimmy covered the awkward silence by plowing on.
“What we’re going to try to do now is all of us reach Phil’s Garden. We’ll all be in this room, and we can talk to each other, and we’ll simultaneously be there, individually, and can look over—”
“Wait,” she said. “Individually?”
He nodded.
“So, I won’t see any of you there?”
“No, but we’ll be right here—”
“Is it possible to be together there, too?”
Jimmy looked at me. Ray said, “It’s possible, but unnecessary.”
“If you’d be more comfortable,” said Oskar, “that’s fine.”
“I would,” she said.
I stood up. “All right.” I opened my arms for her. She stood up and walked into them, with no trace of self-consciousness. I felt everyone else’s fingers touch my temple.
“Is everyone ready?” said Jimmy. When no one spoke, he said, “Leaving now.”
Ren said, “What do I do?”
“I’ll show you my favorite way,” I said, and kissed her. I could feel the moment when, “I’m kissing someone in a crowd of strangers I don’t trust,” turned into, “To hell with them anyway.” She kissed me back.
Her skin smelled like cherry blossoms and her mouth tasted like chives.
ELEVEN
The Easy Way
Ren
Ocean air and root beer, sweet and salty, and wrapped up in Phil. Phil, and four other guys. Weird. Not bad, but weird.
I opened my eyes, and almost screamed. Phil’s villa must have been in Pompeii; it was hip-deep in black sludge and everything—the walls and trees, the courtyard and fountain—were coated in, or melting into, the ashy mud. Phil made a noise between a whimper and a moan, his mouth reaching for mine. I couldn’t talk, only try to kiss comfort onto his lips for the destruction of his Garden. He took it hungrily.
“It’s fine now, Phil.”
“No sign of Ren’s Garden bleeding over anymore, Phil.”
“Yup, nice and solid here.”
“Oh, for the love of God, Phil!”
I lost Phil’s mouth and opened my eyes. Jimmy had one beefy hand on my shoulder and one on Phil’s, his substantial bulk imposed between our bodies. “That should do nicely, thank you, you two,” he said.
Phil beamed blearily at him.
Oskar had stalked off to one end of the courtyard. Matsu wandered to the other. Ramon was still standing near us, studying his nail beds with unwarranted interest.
I looked around. “I’ve definitely been here,” I said. “Oskar too. I saw him eating dates.”
Phil tipped his head up, considering the fruit hanging from the branches over our heads. “They’re olives,” he said. “Dates are at the Las Vegas house.”
“Ever have a long argument with a Praetorian just before the war with Parthia, say 161 ACE, as they count the years now?” Oskar asked.
Phil looked up again, then at Oskar. “What about it?”
“That wine was awfully bitter.”
Phil exhaled slowly. “Damn,” he said.
“How did you get into his Garden?” Ramon asked Oskar, something almost like passion in the tart clip of his words. “And mine.”
“Celeste taught me.”
“Celeste?” It’s possible we all said it together.
“I caught her in mine.”
“And you threatened to tell the rest of us about her new ability unless she shared it with you?” Matsu guessed.
“There was no threat,” Oskar said, sounding annoyed. “I caught her, asked her, she told me.”
“You were lovers,” I said, remembering how he’d asked if Phil had told me what happened when Incrementalists made love. “Oh, shit,” I said. Oskar had been trying to see if Phil had made a similar deal with Celeste. Because Phil and Celeste had been. “You didn’t know. I’m sorry, Phil.”
Phil untied the knot holding back his hair and retied it, considering this new information about the man he’d just defended and the woman he had loved. He took my hand. “It’s okay,” he said, and somehow, I believed it was. “Let’s go find her last memory.”
Still holding my hand, he led us, strange parade that we were, past an orchard and out through a broken wooden gate to a little hill behind his house where a simple stone bench sat nestled in a modest grove of olive trees. “According to my Garden, this is where Celeste’s Garden begins.” He pointed at a hole in the ground. “That’s where her stub was,” he said. “And that pomegranate is her next-to-last memory. And that,” he said, pointing at the empty place between the hole and the fruit, “is where a kithara isn’t.”
We all gazed seriously at the thing that wasn’t there.
“Kithara?” Matsu said at last.
“Stringed contraption,” Jimmy explained. “Like a lyre.”
“Liar?”
“Never mind.”
“Well,” Ramon said after serious consideration. “It’s not there.”
“Right,” Phil said.
“The Y axis is gone.”
“Right,” Phil said again.
“All we know for certain is the X.”
“The X is Celeste,” I said. “She’s dead.”
Phil looked at me a long time. Then he looked through me. We stood around Celeste’s missing memory like mourners graveside until Phil’s eyes refocused. “Gone,” he said. “But not forgotten.”
“I’m listening,” said Ramon.
“We don’t have Celeste’s memories, but we have our memories of Celeste. Could that be enough? Could we create her out of our memories of her?”
“Jimmy?” Ramon said.
Jimmy shrugged. “That’s not a grazing thing. Matsu’s the pattern shaman.”
I said, “Can someone please explain that?”
Matsu opened his mouth, closed it, and shrugged. “All right.” He pulled a handful of olives from a tree. “If I have six black rocks,” he said, placing six olives on the bench seat where they obligingly darkened from green to black and turned to stone. “And six white rocks.” Six neatly placed olives bleached to white pebbles. “And I arrange them in four rows of three each, three black above three white rocks, above three black, above three white; the rocks, the design, the space between the rocks and the activity of arranging them are all pattern. As is the set of three columns of alternating black, white, black, white rocks, or the diagonal. The pattern can be perceived and described different ways, but the act of patterning, both being and creating, is where my art lies. Do you understand?”
He pulled six more olives from the tree and divided them between his hands. “Three more black, three more white.” He opened his hands and held the bleached and blackened pebbles out to Phil. “The knowledge you have that the white go together in a row beneath the black is the voice of pattern. If we collect and bring to this place, as Phil suggests, our memories of Celeste, it’s possible that I could hear her pattern speak.”
“Or I could show you how to break into her Garden,” Oskar said.
Phil
I clamped my jaws together to keep from laughing. “What?” I said. “The easy way? We never do that.”
Ren had her hand on my arm. If I could have, right then, I’d have kicked everyone out, I mean, forever, and given up on everything, and grabbed Ren and pulled her to the bed that I’d wished I’d had two thousand years ago.
“That’s a good idea, Oskar,” said Ray. “How do you do it?”
&
nbsp; “Be clear on what we’re doing,” he said. “You want to get inside an analogy that isn’t your own without being drawn into it by the creator. It’s like walking around in someone else’s dream.”
I nodded, as did everyone else. Ren’s brows were furrowed; she was listening and absorbing. “That’s what you did,” she said. “You were in my dream, when I dreamed Phil’s Garden. That’s why the olives were dates.”
Oskar nodded. “Right. You pick a memory seeded by the person whose Garden you want into. Any memory. Doesn’t matter. Then, just when the memory is starting to come clear, you superimpose your sense triggers over it, and try to force your metaphor onto his memory. It doesn’t work—the memory doesn’t change, and it’s not easy. But if you grit your teeth and hang on long enough, it’s like it pulls you back to the seeder, and you’ll start to get sense triggers that aren’t yours. You grip those, and follow them, and eventually there you are. Yours,” he said, looking at Jimmy, “are the taste of old shoe leather and the sound of a Mozart concerto played on a piano that’s just the least bit off from true.”
“You’ve been in my Garden?” said Jimmy.
“Have you eaten a lot of old shoe leather?” I asked Oskar.
Oskar ignored me and answered Jimmy. “Not far. Just to see if I could. Your images, Phil, are the taste of chives and the smell of cherry blossoms.”
“I knew that,” I said.
Jimmy said, “Will it be more like dropping into my own Garden, where I can do or create anything and nothing can hurt me, or more like being drawn into someone else’s analogy, where I can’t affect anything, but experience memories like they’re mine?”
We all looked at Oskar. “I have no idea,” he said. “But I know what dinner with a Roman guard tastes like.”
“Well,” said Jimmy. “Shall we try this then?”
To answer him, I nodded toward Ray, who was standing with his head bowed and his eyes closed. I looked at Ren, and she was looking at me. She nodded once. All right, then. I put my arm around her and led the way back into the villa, and down the stairway to the room that never ends. We all have one of those rooms, in one way or another, where the past lives, and where the dust of history fades gradually, almost imperceptibly, into what came before history, and where we can search for, and sometimes even find, the scattered consciousness of who we were, who our friends were, who we thought our friends were, and what they thought.