The Best of All Possible Worlds

by Karen Lord

  I raised my head to find Joral and Dllenahkh looking at me expectantly.

  “The visual representation, Delarua?” Dllenahkh inquired.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, coming alert at last. “But I can’t do it without accompaniment, you know.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” said an amused voice.

  I turned my head to see the minstrel bard of the Seelie Court tuning up his cithara, quirking an eyebrow at me in a way that managed to be both cheeky and quite sexy at the same time.

  “Excellent!” I said happily. “I was afraid you hadn’t gotten the memo.”

  “Pshhh,” he said dismissively as he slapped a miniamplifier onto the wooden frame of his instrument. “Miss a sweet gig like this? Not likely!”

  I sang the first few notes of the report so we could calibrate our output, then prepared to begin in earnest. Suddenly, I caught sight of Nasiha and Tarik walking a tightrope between a tree and our t’bren—walking away from us.

  “Hey, guys, aren’t you going to stay to hear the report?” I asked, feeling a bit hurt.

  Nasiha giggled. “Watch your feet, Grace!”

  I had been walking toward them as I spoke, but when she said that, I stopped short and looked down in a panic at my shoes. There was nothing underneath them but air, leaves, branches, and more air.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHH …!”

  Thud.

  I jolted awake, thrashing wildly with the bedsheets. My hand brushed my side, snagging on the patch. I removed it and was about to throw it away when I dimly saw some strange markings on it. The light on my wrist comm illuminated it enough for me to view the words SEE ME in Qeturah’s best medical scrawl. I groaned, tapped off my comm light, cast the spent patch aside, and walloped my pillow resentfully. A dream about a good-looking man should not end in sudden death and a sanctimonious note from your doctor. Add to that the embarrassment of having passed out cold in front of Dllenahkh … But I was too tired to dwell on any of it. I curled up to fall asleep instantly.

  “EEEEEEEE!”

  You know it’s bad when you’re falling to certain death and all you can think for your blessed last thought is Damn, have I got a girly scream.

  Thud.

  I collided not with the unforgiving ground but with a pair of strong arms and a broad chest, all connected to a form and face that I knew well.

  What the hell? Dllenahkh? I thought.

  “My hero!” I cooed as he swooped up into the open sky, carrying me safely.

  This is bad and wrong, I tried to say. Put me down, you idiot! I can fly for myself!

  No words came out to break the silence, but he did in fact slow down and land at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. There was an overpoweringly Technicolor sunset going on at the horizon line, and the air was heavy with the scent of sea spray. He gently set me down, gazing into my eyes with a savant-strength intensity that suggested that some heavy data analysis or problem solving was going on in that complicated brain. Gently again, he tilted up my chin with the knuckle of a curled forefinger, slowly closed his eyes, and brought his lips closer to mine.

  And the light went out.

  When I opened my eyes, it was to see the beautifully mundane poles of a camp shelter over my head and feel a government-issue cot under my back. I groaned. Fade to black? When did my erotic dreams ever fade to black? Come to think of it, when did my erotic dreams get so crappy and G-rated? One of the side effects of the stimulant patches was odd, trippy dreams, but that was plain weird. I didn’t want to dwell on what my subconscious was doing, so I swung myself upright and decided to start the day.

  I woke myself some more by washing in cold water, then dressed and dragged myself outside. Lian was nearby, sitting beside a field stove, and there were good smells in the air.

  “Qeturah said I should let you sleep in, so I kept breakfast warm for you.” With a flourish, Lian uncovered a plate of pancakes.

  I eyed the scene distrustfully for a moment, waiting for Lian to break into song or the pancakes to flap away, but when all remained sane, I muttered, “Bless you,” in heartfelt relief and sat down with a rumbling stomach.

  “How late is it, anyway? And where is everybody?” I mumbled through mouthfuls of pancake and syrup.

  “Wrapping up the visit to Piedra,” Lian replied, waving a hand vaguely southward. “It’s about lunchtime now; the shuttle should return soon.”

  “That was quick!” I said. “I know it was just a courtesy thing, since we have so much data on them already, but I thought we were going to do an overnight, not a day trip.”

  Lian gave me a puzzled look. “We did.”

  “Did what?”

  “We did do an overnight.”

  “How? When? Without me?”

  “Take it easy. No one expects you to bounce back immediately from yesterday’s ordeal.”

  I frowned. “What ordeal?”

  Lian hit the wrist comm, whispered furiously into it for a few seconds, then faced me again with a smile that leaked panic at the edges. “Would you like to go lie down again?”

  Within twenty minutes, the shuttle had returned. It wasn’t the worried looks that shook me, nor the raised brows; it was the speed with which Qeturah, Dllenahkh, Nasiha, and Tarik got me onto a medtable with sensors stuck all over my skull. “Uh, guys, would you like to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “What is the last thing you remember?” asked Dllenahkh calmly as Qeturah circled the medtable adjusting things, Nasiha compared the readings on the monitor with the data displayed on her handheld, and Tarik scanned his handheld furiously, possibly looking up reference texts.

  “We had that really late meeting about the feasibility of including the Traveling Clans in our schedule given their low genetic score but strong retention of Sadiri traditions. Uh, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You do know Cygnians need more sleep than Sadiri, right? Because I think I’ve been running a little short, and as flattering as it is to be included in everything you discuss, perhaps I could just read the summaries afterward and add a note expressing my views.”

  “Nothing after that?” asked Qeturah, gently waving some scanning device back and forth across my field of vision.

  “Well, apart from some very vivid dreams and not-very-restful sleep, the next thing I recall is this morning’s breakfast. Which, incidentally, I didn’t get the chance to finish. May I finish my breakfast, please?” I was beginning to feel irritated.

  They removed the sensors and guided me solicitously to a seat, which only made me angrier. Dllenahkh sat opposite me and said quietly, “The meeting to which you are referring took place not last night but the night before.”

  “I’ve lost a day?” I said, disbelieving.

  “Amnesia is one of the possible effects of the drugs you were given,” said Nasiha.

  “Given? By whom?” I asked sharply.

  She glanced quickly at Qeturah, who in turn gave Dllenahkh a somber look. His mouth tensed, then his expression became neutral once more as he spoke to me. “We would prefer to avoid telling you what happened yesterday so that we can be certain any memory that returns is of the event rather than of our account of it.”

  “It’s possible the drugs are still interfering with your hippocampus,” said Qeturah quickly by way of diversion.

  “What?” I asked, taking the bait.

  “That’s the part of the brain involved in the formation of long-term memory,” she clarified.

  “Oh, yeah. Been a while since first-year neuroanatomy,” I mused.

  I sat still for a moment. I checked myself over, twiddling my toes, flexing my fingers, running my tongue over my teeth. I didn’t feel any pain or soreness. Whatever had happened to me, it hadn’t been damaging in any way that I could sense. I relaxed just a little.

  “Well, the fact that you haven’t medevacked me gives me some small comfort,” I began.

  “Funny you should mention that,” said Qeturah ominously, “because I was thinking about that option right this
minute.”

  “We’re on the edge of the desert. Where’s the nearest neurologist? Look, I’m walking and talking, and I feel fine.”

  “That’s what you said yesterday,” murmured Lian unhelpfully.

  Qeturah looked at Nasiha and Dllenahkh. Nasiha seemed unusually quiet to me, and Dllenahkh had a slight frown on his face. “One day,” Qeturah said to me, still looking at the two Sadiri as if asking for their permission. “One more day, just in case all that’s required is for the last of the drug to cycle out of your system. By then we’ll be on our way to Mordecai, and they have decent medical facilities.”

  That was satisfactory. I went back to my food.

  I spent the afternoon brooding over what had happened. It felt funny and not particularly nice to have this big gap in my life that everyone else seemed to know about but me. The concerned looks were beginning to wear on me. I pulled out a small, old-fashioned paper journal that Qeturah had given me back when she was still trying to have me “get in touch with my feelings” about the Ioan business and wrote down what I could remember of my strange dreams. Then I confronted Nasiha in the shelter she shared with Tarik.

  “I think you were very much involved in what happened,” I told her frankly. “I’ve never seen you so subdued. Can you tell me anything?”

  She bowed her head slightly, just enough to avoid meeting my eyes. “Until your own memory returns, I think I should not.”

  I looked at her. She had been wearing civilian clothes more often than not after our shopping trip, complaining that the Science Council maternity uniform was “neither comfortable nor flattering.” “Where’s the cat clasp? You always wear it.”

  “I no longer have it. Please, Delarua, do not ask any more questions. I am sorry.”

  Tarik, who had been quietly working a few meters away, suddenly put his handheld down, stood up with a face like thunder, and strode outside.

  ———

  I attended the Piedra debriefing, which is to say that I sat there and no one made me leave, but the conversation often seemed to weave around me as if I were merely an observer. As usual, I took notes for my own reports, but something made me take more thorough notes than usual: audio and vid recordings, several file attachments, and also little personal notes for anything I found strange or significant.

  For the first time ever, I had a strong desire to stay up late with the Sadiri. “So,” I asked Joral, “what do you guys get up to when the rest of us are asleep?”

  “The Councillor and I are studying Cygnian culture,” he said. “Literature, art, film, history; it is very interesting. Last night we began a series on preholo cinema.”

  “Oooh, classics?”

  “Remastered, for the most part,” Joral admitted.

  “Remastered?” I clutched at my heart with an agony that was only half feigned. “Philistines. Might as well turn in, then,” I said, and yawned for the fifth time in as many minutes.

  Just in case, I gave Lian the dream journal and pointed out which folders on my handheld contained my most recent notes. Then I went to bed, falling asleep far more quickly than I expected to. Of course this meant I was able to wake up early enough to see Dllenahkh off at the shuttleport, though why I should have gone out in all that damp, unhealthy fog is beyond me. To make matters worse, he was dressed oddly and talking nonsense.

  “I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Grace, I’m no good at being noble, but …”

  “But?” I prompted, genuinely curious. That wasn’t how it went, was it?

  He blinked and said in a more normal tone, “Is there a purpose to my ‘being noble’ in this situation? I am not convinced it is the best choice to make.” The slight frown cleared from his face, he seemed to mentally shrug, and then he tilted up my chin with his forefinger. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  He bent his head toward mine, and again, unsurprisingly, the scene immediately faded to black.

  “What’s with that?” I mumbled out loud.

  “Delarua? Are you awake?”

  I stretched, tangling my feet in the thin blanket over my cot. “Yeah, more or less. Oh, shoot!” I sat upright suddenly. “Nasiha! I’m sorry I overslept, but you saw what I was like last night at the meeting. No way was I going to make it to meditation this morning.”

  She regarded me silently from her seat in a chair not far from my cot. She was already dressed for the day, of course, and there was a medical scanner in her hand, which she held poised as if about to sweep it in my direction. “Which meeting would that be, Delarua?”

  “Don’t you remember? The Traveling Clans issue?” I replied, puzzled.

  “I see,” she said, tapping her comm.

  In a very short space of time, a small group had gathered around my cot: Nasiha, Dllenahkh, Qeturah, and Lian. I selfconsciously wrapped up in my blanket and gaped at them.

  “I’ve lost two days?” I said incredulously.

  They did not argue. Nasiha showed me the date-stamped medical readouts. Lian accessed my report notes on my own handheld and gave me the beginnings of a dream journal in my own handwriting. I got up, trailing the blanket behind me like a badly wrapped toga, and paced around in undershirt and shorts, staring at the items in my hands and absorbing the information.

  “I’ve lost two days,” I said faintly. I felt my way back to my cot and sat down, dumping everything beside me and numbly passing a hand over my face. “What’s going on? What’s happening to me?”

  “We believe that something is disrupting your ability to form long-term memory,” said Qeturah. “Each time you go to sleep, your consciousness resets to the last event stored in long-term memory. This is probably caused by a malfunction of—”

  “The hippocampus, yes, I know,” I mused. “But that doesn’t explain why I’m remembering all my dreams.”

  Qeturah and Nasiha spoke at the same time. “How do you know that?” “You remember your dreams from last night?”

  I looked up, surprised at their intensity. “Yes, I know about the hippocampus memory thing. Didn’t you tell me about that sometime, Qeturah? And yes, I remember three dreams from last night, but two of them are described in that journal. Three dreams in one night is more than a little busy, so I think I must be remembering the night before.”

  “Subconscious memory formation. I thought so,” said Qeturah triumphantly. “I did tell you about the hippocampus yesterday, Grace. You said you did basic neuroanatomy, but you’d forgotten about that.”

  My mind was whirling. “Give me a moment. I’ll be able to think more clearly once I’m properly dressed. I promise, I’ll come straight to the lab right afterward.”

  I didn’t, though. As I collected my thoughts, a strange idea came to me. I had never seen Casablanca. Heard of it, of course, read many a quote, even, but seen it—never. That old black-and-white stuff was for the real movie buffs, and in spite of my teasing Joral, I wasn’t one.

  I wandered to their shelter in search of information to test my hypothesis. “Joral,” I said, “tell me, what movies did you watch last night and the night before?”

  He raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Last night we saw the earliest Cygnian adaptation of Casablanca. The night before that, we watched the 3-D remake of Superman, which is famous for its interactive special effects. If you would like to join us tonight, we are thinking of viewing the original E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.”

  This wasn’t a huge surprise. Cygnian cinema, both preholo and holo, is filled with benign aliens and refugees from war and disaster.

  “Thank you, Joral.” I smiled. “I’ll think about it. Dllenahkh, could I have a word with you outside?”

  We walked a short distance from the camp to the edge of a small plateau and gazed down at a vast, barren landscape. I was reminded of the time we’d huddled together, watching the savanna dogs in their den. Now we were looking at a rocky desert land, with the low towers of Piedra faintly visible in the haze of f
ine sand and heat. I was sorry I’d missed seeing that famous city up close.

  “So, you’ve been watching a lot of old movies.” I glanced up at Dllenahkh. “Tell me … you ever imagine me in them? Or rather … us?”

  There was a profound silence. Dllenahkh turned to face me fully, the expression on his face somewhere between alarm and embarrassment. “Why do you ask?”

  “Don’t be coy. Superhero catches falling girl. Rick says good-bye to Ilsa. That’s what I’ve been dreaming, and that’s what you and Joral have been watching!”

  He actually paled. “That would suggest that I have been influencing your dreams.”

  “Worse. I’m dreaming your thoughts! And while we’re on the subject, what is it with those strategic blackouts? You got something against kissing?”

  Give the Sadiri credit; even in the midst of pure, unmitigated mortification, they never stop thinking.

  “I have it,” he said suddenly. “I understand what is happening to you and how to correct it. Quick, let us go to the lab.”

  I could try to tell you what the detailed explanation was, but why bother when you can access for yourself the paper coauthored by Qeturah, Nasiha, and Tarik. Suffice it to say that my brain chemistry had been altered by the drugs I had been given, with the result that my hippocampus was no longer storing long-term memory throughout the brain. It was all being stored exclusively in the hippocampal gyrus, which is the region of the brain responsible for telepathy. Coincidentally, this is also the region that I seem to be unable to access consciously, which is why I get a null result on telepathic ability. However, with the addition of another chemical from the stimulant patch, I had become a subconscious telepath. I was reading Dllenahkh’s mind from a distance in my sleep. How cool is that?

  “And we’re going to do what?” I asked them after the detailed explanation had been repeated to me two or three times.

  “The Councillor is going to attempt repairs when you enter REM sleep tonight,” Nasiha said, her voice regaining some of its usual confident vigor. “He will access the memories in your hippocampal gyrus and adjust your neurotransmitters to recommence storing memory in the usual way.”