The Armies of Memory

by John Barnes

  Memory and poem and person flowed together into a puddle of dark and tired and drunk. I looked around. Still no followers or attackers.

  I was a pretty fair artist, skilled and inventive—why had I chosen to make this particular Giraut, the one I currently thought of as “me,” out of all the past Girauts—Azalais’s sweet boy-lover, Paxa’s bold and cool adventurer, Margaret’s adventurous young knight, my own jaded cynic/brave idealist? What about all the ones I had chosen not to make?

  I’m not sure how long I stood there, in the middle of the street, in front of my house, listening to the distant boom and swish of the waves in the harbor, eyes resting on the dim white shapes of the row of houses. I was perfect sniper bait, but that was not what had shaken me from my reverie.

  Some song was trying to be born of the tangle of my love life and violent intrigue, but it had died in the process of my imagining Marcus Aurelius talking to Tokugawa Ieyasu and both of them merging with Le Cid, Old Coyote, and the Easter Rising, melodies meeting actors and making paintings in one vast interfertile orgy. A single grand stormy noosphere of lives and works from lives … the mind reels back as it does when it gets close to a real, intuitive perception of a light-year, or a photon. That vision had crowded out the few snatches of words and connections of notes that might have come back together around the twin nuclei of innocence and experience.

  All I could think of now was my over-sung and worn-out old song “Never Again Till the Next Time.”

  As the house aintellect recognized me and opened the door in front of me, I wondered how an unsung song feels about being unsung, and whether, when stories mate, they enjoy it. I resolved to take it easier on the wine for the next few days.

  11

  The wrap party was so large that I had to rent a pavilion with overnight apartments—the sort of place that usually handles weddings—to hold it in. With more than twenty musicians, plus their friends, plus being in my home culture with so many of my old friends and relatives around, it was a vast, noisy crowd. “It must be at least ten stanyears since the last real wrap party,” I said to Margaret. “Longer, maybe.”

  Margaret, leaning up against the wall beside me, nodded. “You know, I think the last time we threw a big wrap party, while we were together, was probably for Songs from Underneath. That was a good party. Remember? We even got Shan to dance with me.”

  I laughed at the memory. Shan was a natural athlete who had been part of countless blood-and-thunder operations as a younger man, and still graceful as our solemn-faced, dignified older boss. On a whim, Margaret had asked him to dance. She had discovered that he was graceful and fun, and he’d ended up dancing with every woman (and all the men who would) at that party. Later that evening, he and I (aided by a bit of alcohol) had demonstrated that the Second Greater Kata of ki hara do made a very good line dance, each of us leading a line, and I was not sure that his was not the more graceful interpretation.

  “Something about Shan kept us from understanding how much fun he really was, or could be,” I agreed. “But his old cronies surely miss him. Qrala and Dji would love to have him back.”

  “They might yet get him back.” Margaret made a wobbly gesture with her hand. “We are still trying to confirm that his psypyx is out there somewhere. If it is, it’s very definitely linked to the Lost Legion, so the most likely agent to find out anything significant is apt to be you. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “Reminding you—”

  “That the real reason for getting that psypyx is that I like Shan. Plain old nepotism, my dear ex, which is infinitely better than a rational bureaucracy. Anymore, that is the thing I believe in most—governing based on impartial principle is the mark of a Napoleon or a Gomez. A bureaucrat who puts principles and values ahead of taking care of friends doesn’t have any principles or values worth holding.” She took an almost-gulp of her big glass of Hedon Gore; Margaret rarely drank to get drunk but when she tried she had positive talent. “So I want to rescue Shan’s psypyx, and restore him, for the same reason I moved heaven and earth to save Laprada, or struggled all those years to keep you on the road touring rather than behind a desk back on Earth, or just fought the battle I fought to get the Ix Cycle approved and promoted, or for the reason I’ve thrown as much business as I have to Garsenda and promoted Bieris’s paintings so hard. Put all that list in one place and the media would probably nail me up as the Council’s most corrupt public official, which would be grossly unfair because actually I’m only the Council’s seventh or eighth most corrupt official.”

  “Someone’s in a close tie with you?”

  She told me who; of course it was one of their fixers, the ones who come in as people of complete integrity to clean up whenever some major agency begins to stink in the public nostrils. “Anyway, my point was, the whole purpose of being corrupt is so I can do things like rescue Shan, if he’s on a psypyx out there somewhere. And you are the most likely person to run across it, there’s just a ton of things that point to its being in Noucatharia.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “And if I do find it?”

  “Your mission is to figure out what I would have ordered you to do if I had known anything about it, and then do that.” She took yet another swig from her big glass of Hedon Gore and looked very drunk, so I knew she wasn’t. “Not to drive you away, Giraut, but this is a party in your honor in your home culture. Shouldn’t you be mixing and mingling with your other guests?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t get to see enough of you at times when there’s no crisis. One way I can tell that it’s a real wrap party is that I don’t recognize very many of these people but the caterers are really working. Most of the guests don’t know me, and I’ve already circulated and shaken a lot of hands. As for the people I do know, I’m trying not to spoil the evening for the musicians—who wants to spend more than a few minutes with the boss?”

  She pointed at me, at herself, and flipped her hand palm up in question.

  “I’m widely known to be a pervert. And for the rest, I see Raimbaut and Laprada all the time, Dad and Mother are having an awkward-enough time without having a son my apparent age to complicate the introductions further, Azalais is doing the social-butterfly thing among the musicians (in that regard, she’s very like Paxa). So there’s no one I have to shepherd about, no hand I have to shake that I haven’t already shaken, and no place at the moment where my presence would make it a better party.”

  She took another gulp of the wine. She should have been falling-down-bombed by now but wasn’t. “All right,” I said, “we worked together too long on too many field assignments, Margaret. You’ve taken scrubbers and you’re playing at getting drunk. Which is something you’d only do if you were working tonight.”

  She leaned back against the wall, her eyes unfocused. “Isn’t it wonderful, sometimes, to have everyone think you’re drunk, horny, and spilling your guts? It makes you look so harmless.”

  “It used to be one of our favorite tricks,” I agreed. “If I can help, who’s your target tonight?”

  “He’s not here yet.” Margaret drained her glass and grabbed my arm as if she were steadying herself or making a pass. “Is this going to disturb Azalais, or cause her to act disturbed?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Hmm. That’s a shame. It would be helpful to cause a minor scene or otherwise end up the object of gossip.”

  “Laprada and Raimbaut do a very nice quarrel, if you need one of those. They can pitch it anywhere between a barely-detectable minor snippy tiff all the way up to her throwing plates at him.”

  Margaret grinned. “It’s so nice to know the next generation is keeping their skills sharp, isn’t it?”

  “Remember I wrote up a commendation for that great one we did, the case where we caught the financier/drug-runner chimera?”

  “That time when Raimbaut plunged her head into the punch bowl?”

  “Oc, ja, ver-tropa-vera, that one. Anc non vis bellazor, non be? Turned out that both the financier a
nd the drug-runner components in that brain liked’em young, petite, and pale and had real Galahad complexes going. Seeing big bully Raimbaut brutalize poor little Laprada got our boy’s attention. So he approached her the next day, offering to be her big strong protector and buy her the moon and the stars—very creepy, since she looked about fourteen at the time—and we arrested him stark naked in the room where he was waiting. Sprang him straight to destructive deconstruction; he was being torn apart five minutes after their ‘date.’”

  “Shan would have been proud of that op,” Margaret agreed. “Well, alas, I won’t need a performance at all like that one. Minor tiff will do everything I need. But I do need it from someone other than you, so I guess I’ll go talk to Laprada about it. Just another vital step in the grand project of unifying humanity.”

  “‘The grand project of unifying humanity.’ Now you’re really sounding like Shan—”

  “Giraut,” a voice said behind me.

  “Rufeu! You came! I didn’t think you would!”

  “Neither did I, but … well, you know how it is, companhon. After a while it’s so good to be around someone that remembers.” My old friend—he and Raimbaut, Marcabru, and I, had all been companho at school together—was now physically a muscular athlete somewhere in his mid-twenties; he had died in a climbing accident and started his long journey back through the psypyx about the time that Margaret and I had been recruited for the OSP. But I knew what he meant; the psypyx gives you periodic escapes from being old, but you still spend all your time getting old.

  “I should probably run over and talk to Raimbaut about some things,” Margaret said. “Nice to see you again, Rufeu.” She took off with the speed of an old friend avoiding Old Home Week with another old friend.

  I stood and chatted with Rufeu for a long time, watching over his shoulder while Margaret, Raimbaut, and Laprada staged their tiff. Whoever the mystery guest was, he—

  “Ebles Ribaterra!” Rufeu said.

  It was so obvious a suggestion that I said, “Oc, ja, of course,” before I realized that Rufeu had said that because Ebles was walking in through the courtyard gate.

  “I didn’t even know the two of you were friends,” Rufeu said. “In fact, considering his connection with Marcabru—”

  “Oh, no, the connection between us developed long after we were both jovents,” I said, doing my best to make it smooth. “He has a lot to do with cultural affairs and in fact he’s trying to arrange a tour for me with some of the new work.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen him since we were at court together,” Rufeu said, “and that was such a sad, strange time that I’m not sure I want to speak with him, much, now. I always felt like he was the worst possible influence on Marcabru, egging him on when he should have been holding him back, and disparaging all his better influences. Marcabru listened to Ebles and the other ex-Legion types so much more than to his old companho.”

  “That must have been a terrible time. But you know, Marcabru never really listened to his companho, anyway, mon companhon. The truth is none of us did much.”

  “We were a strange companho, anyway, weren’t we, Giraut? It’s odd to look back and realize how easily we split up and went our ways … and how much that has to do with all our accomplishments. It’s really only Marcabru who hasn’t made a name for himself at something—”

  “And he was Prince Consort and became the most spectacular failure of our class at St. Baudelaire’s. I think that should count too.”

  Rufeu shook his head, sadly. “Perhaps you’re right. Well, really, I just came by to see you—I have a ski race tomorrow down in Terraust.”

  “You’re still doing that, then?”

  He hesitated a moment, and then very shyly said, “Giraut, I’ve been in the planetary championships three stanyears in a row.”

  “Deu! How much touch can a toszet lose?” I said. “Rufeu, I am very sorry—”

  “No, no. Don’t be. The last time you and I communicated was four or five stanyears ago.”

  “But you’ve followed what I was doing—”

  “Because it was in the political news, and in the entertainment news, and convenient. They put a big headline on things when someone tries to kill a popular entertainer. You don’t read the sports news, companhon, and even if you did, you wouldn’t have been looking for me. And all those times someone tried to kill you, I didn’t com you to see if you were all right, or to say I was worried about you. Really, I’m no better. Now I am going to go home and get the sleep I need for my race. And it made my heart glad to see you again, and see you doing so well. Old times, companhon.”

  “Old times.”

  He stopped to chat with Raimbaut, and that seemed to turn into a real conversation. I didn’t see when he left. I spent about an hour circulating, hanging around with people I wanted to make feel valued. By the time I shook hands with Mother and Dad, who were going back to her apartment for the night (having refused the offer of a room in the pavilion), the party had wound down into just a few people sitting around, passing around a lute and guitar, exchanging bits of old songs, mostly just killing the last of the wine and the last of the stories and the last of each other’s company.

  About that time, Raimbaut and Laprada disappeared to one of the upstairs apartments. Margaret and Ebles, neither of them very musical, were sitting in the circle. I sat down next to Azalais, and joined the singing and playing for a while, but I was soon tired, and the heavy pressure of her head against my shoulder reminded me pleasantly of bed.

  For singing-and-playing gatherings like this, I had settled into the comfortable habit of making my last song “Never Again Till the Next Time.” The next time the lute came my way, I sang it, with Azalais supplying some soft harmony.

  Since a “party take” is often very marketable, before I played, I said, “Music Assistant, record.”

  “I have you on four mics, sir.”

  “Good! Well done, thank you!” That would give me some options for mixing a better-than-real performance. Ever since I had started praising it, Music Assistant had been thinking of nice touches like that.

  Later, when Tech Services re-analyzed that recording, under the high note in the third line, they found the sound of a lock being ultrasound-probed.

  My performance was good but not extraordinary. I passed the lute to someone, rose, helped Azalais to her feet, told everyone to drink and make noise as long as they wanted, and staggered off with her toward the master suite, which contained a two-person tub, alcohol scrubbers, a cold buffet, and satin sheets.

  Azalais was being silly, pretending to be a rag doll and unable to move without my support. So she was walking in front of me, leaning backward to press her body against mine, her arms reaching back to encircle my hips, squirming her buttocks against me delightfully.

  At the door, I said, “Open.”

  The bomb attached to the other side blew a big piece of the door most of the way through Azalais, killing her instantly. Her body took the worst of the force, but my neck was broken even before the back of my head slammed against the opposite wall, knocking me unconscious.

  Raimbaut and Laprada charged out into the hallway in most of some interesting underwear, weapons drawn and shouting an 888 call to the aintellects. I’m sorry I missed that part, but I’m glad I didn’t see what they saw.

  Part Two

  Scribblers and Madmen

  … the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

  —John Maynard Keynes,

  The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

  Then I would turn aside into some chapel, and even there, such w
as my disturbance, it seemed that the preacher gibbered Big Thinks even as the Ape Man had done; or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed but patient creatures waiting for prey.

  —H. G. Wells,

  The Island of Dr. Moreau

  1

  Dear Giraut,

  I’m so sorry that I got too busy and missed my weekly psypyx recording, so I am not only missing all memory of a great wrap party, but also of the weeks we finished; it appears we had great ideas but I’ll never remember having them.

  Your note arrived just after I woke. In answer to your question, of course I’m angry. All this stinks, and it is a direct result of my association with you, and with Ebles. I was wise enough to walk away from that world, and then sentimental enough to stay connected via Ebles, and ultimately fool enough (first for him and then for you) to be drawn back in. There is nothing like having been a fool to fuel a grudge!

  And yet I feel guilty too. Tamianne, who is wearing my psypyx (and is asleep right now) is working for the OSP, so soon everything I know of the underground—everything I promised to keep a secret—will be in their hands.

  But I’ll get over it, donz de mon cor. Long before I have my own little four-year-old clone body with which to kick your shins, I shall have forgiven you.

  Tamianne is twenty-eight, one of those rare Earth people who goes into the box and then decides to come back out. They have social programs, with counseling and workshops and groups and things, to help people who want to do that, did you know that? I do think it speaks well of her that she is trying—Tamianne went in as a teenager, but ten years of virtual adventures and living in cartoon colors among perfectly beautiful everythings seems to have been enough for her.