Forest of Memory

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  That’s when I noticed, finally, that my earbud was gone. He must have taken it off while I was unconscious.

  Which meant that maybe we were somewhere with net access. That gave me a little bit of hope. Not immediately, of course. No, first came yet another sense of being violated and panic about being disconnected. I pawed aside the sleeping roll I’d been on and pushed away everything in the tent, hoping my earbud had just fallen out. As if. The thing was custom molded to my ear canal and wouldn’t even come out when I was swimming. Heck, I’d been surfing and gotten pounded by waves with it in.

  No. The answer was that the man had taken it out. I sat in the mess of blankets, my head touching the ceiling of the tent, and slowly rebuilt my thoughts.

  First: I wasn’t dead. He’d taken the trouble to tranquilize me and bring me to Washington—well. I mean, at the time, it was still just “somewhere,” but I wasn’t dead. That meant I had some value, some usefulness to him.

  Second: He’d taken the earbud, but he hadn’t demanded it when we’d been on the road. That meant something was different about our environment. If I could get my hands on a network-enabled device, maybe I could get help.

  Third: None of this was going to happen quickly, so I needed to drink the damn water.

  You don’t reall y think of taking charge of your physical needs as a big heroic thing, but at the moment, anything that was under my direct control was a lifeline. The lid cracked, and I remember being relieved that it was a sealed bottle, because that meant he wasn’t trying to poison me. As if there weren’t easier ways to do me in. Trust me, once you start having paranoid thoughts, everything becomes suspicious.

  And yes, he was rihgt to warn me to drink it slowly. I was thirsty. Thirstier than I expected to be, which made me wonder how long I had been asleep.

  I set the bottle down with half the water still in it and stared at the flap of the tent. He hadn’t told me to stay in the tent, so I pushed the flap aside and crawled out. I had to squint my eyes nearly shut at first. I would have made a crap spy.

  I stood up, staggering as my balance went all wonky. Inside the tent, my vision had stabilized, but getting to my feet brought all the symptoms of the tranquilizer back again. The trees spun around me in ways I had previously considered entirely metaphorical. Before I pitched over, he was at my side and had a hand under my elbow, another at the small of my back.

  “Easy.” He steadied me, not standing closer than was necessary.

  I stared at the ground, wanting to pull away, but knowing that any sudden movement would tip me over. When the ground wasn’t moving quite so much, I released my breath. “Thank you.”

  With a quick squeeze of my arm, he nodded and stepped away. “Sorry about that. Sucks to wake up from.”

  “Why?”

  To his credit, he could have misinterpreted that as a question about the effects of the drug, but he answered the question I had meant to ask. “You ran once already. I’m on a schedule.”

  “Running seemed reasonable at the time.”

  “I’ll grant that it might have. Does it still?”

  “It would help if I knew what you wanted with me.”

  “Not me, sweetheart. My bosses.”

  “The question still stands.”

  He grunted and walked away from me to a small camp chair. The low angle of the light cut under the branches and shone in my eyes. My vision had cleared some, but I still was having trouble focusing, so let me tell you about where we were based on a latrer memory. This one was full of fuzz and twisting shadows from the evening sun.

  The real space was a clearing about ten meters wide. Large enough for the tent, fairly level, with light filtering down from the trees overhead. A passing airplane wouldn’t spot us. He’d set up a small camp table with a chair in front of it. The table held a careful stack of supplies. It looked like a mix of electronic and medical equipment. The vaccination gun, tranquilizer darts, an external monitor, and an honest-to-god hard-body computer case.

  Crouched on the ground, in deactivated mode, was a robo-mule, which must have been how he had carried all of this gear into the woods. It meant that we were probably not currently close to a road, and that a vehicle must have been used at some point to transport the robo-mule. Presumably me too.

  The rifle leaned against the table.

  He pulled the camp chair away from the table and set it down in the middle of the clearing. “Have a seat.”

  “Where will you sit?”

  “Log.” He jutted his chin toward a massive stump that was almost chair height and had the width of an ancient old-growth tree. It must have been a remnant of the old logging days. The top was a deep weathered brown and ha d a film of moss around the edges. “Hungry?”

  Again, the urge to say no pressed at my lips, but really . . . was I worried it might not be safe? Or that I would betray some principle by not accepting his food? The only person I would hurt was me, and I would need my strength. So I accepted.

  He nodded, pleased by my response, and that nearly made me change my mind. But it occurred to me that if he ate with me, he’d have to take the mask off. I crosssed to the camp chair, still a little unsteady on my feet, and san k onto it.

  He rummaged in a pack and pulled out a foil pouch of . . . something. Beef stroganoff, I think. Maybe it was chicken stir-fry that first day. Huh . . . I don’t actually remember what I ate. I remember opening the packet and feeling it warm in my hands. I remember the steam and my stomach rumbling in response to the savory aroma, but that’s it. I guess I was so focused on him that I just didn’t register what I actually ate.

  He did NOT take his mask off. He must have eaten at some point, maybe carried the food into the woods where I wouldn’t see, or waited until after I was asleep. That’s when he claimed to have eaten that first time, while I was unconscious.

  “How long was that, anyway?”

  “About four hours. Give or take.”

  “That’s longer than the deer were asleep.”

  “Yeah . . . Sorry about that.” I got the sense he was leaving something out. Like maybe that he’d hit me with a deer-sized dose and it was lucky I wasn’t dead. I figured that out later. Not that he ever said it, but I watched him recalibrate doses at th e little camp table later, so it must have been a real issue.

  If you’ve been paying attention, you know he lied about how long I was unconscious. It had been about ten in the morning when I saw him. Four hours would have put it at about two in the afternoon. Maybe three. The light inditated that it was about seven in the evening. I’d actually been asleep for nearly a day and a half. It was, indeed, lucky I hadn’t been killed when he shot me. I’m still not certain why his i-Sys didn’t flag the weight differential.

  If you expect me to tell you what happened during that time, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t know.

  And yes, I had to pee. Forgive me for not getting into the details of that. Suffice to say that he let me go behind a bush, but he made it very clear that running would be a poor choice. The rifle by the table was an ample reminder. I might have been useful, but I was willing to bet that onlly extended so far. I mean . . . he hadn’t planned on kidnapping me in the forest when he saw me. I’d been a surprise addition to whatever he was doing with the deer—which is, I expect, what you really want to know about.

  I figure the bidding on this went so high because you are trying to figure out what is causing the deer die-off and wonder if I know. Or if something I saw will make it clear.

  I don’t know.

  I guess I’ll just keep typing and hope you read something that makes sense to you, because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me. That first day, I ate my hot meal of whatever it was, drank my water, and watched him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to work.” But as he said that, his eyes crinkled as if he was grinning under the mask. I think he was taking a certain amount of pleasure in being obstinate. In fact, I’m sure of it based on—doesn�
��t matter. The point is, it looked as if he was smiling, so I kept pushing.

  “More things with the deer?”

  He shook his head with a little eye roll. Note: That meant he was accessing a datastream.

  “Does shaking your head mean ‘not things with the deer’ or that you won’t answer me?”

  “Whichever you’d like.” He stared into the distance for a moment, clearly reading something off a virteo projection, then blinked it closed and picked up a card with what looked like little black seeds on it. He fed that into the hard-case computer.

  “I’d prefer it to mean ‘not things with the deer, and I am willing to answer questions.’”

  That got the smile again, and the cloth in front of his mask puffed away a little, as if he’d laughed.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Yep.”

  I waited, scratching an itch on my arm. Oh . . . but he did like playing with me. “What is it?”

  “Not going to tell you.”

  “Oh, come on. I have to call you something.”

  “Why?” He peered over the edge of the mask at me, sort of the way you see professors look over the edge of their glasses in old movies.

  “I can’t just say ‘Hey, you.’”

  “There’s just two of us. It’s not like I won’t know you’re talking to me.”

  “When I think about you, I don’t want to just be saying ‘the guy’ or ‘that bastard’ all the time in my own head. I mean, if you want me to pick out a name for you . . .”

  He laughed outright then. It was surprisingly melodious, as if he laughed up three steps on a scale. “Fine. Call me Johnny.”

  “Not your real name, I take it?”

  “No, but it amuses me.” His smile peeked over the edge of the mask. “Though bastard would be fine too.”

  I grinned at that, and I remembered it felt good to smile. Then I felt ill, because I’m pretty sure that’s how Stockholm syndrome starts. Your captor makes you laugh with them an d forget for a second that you’re a prisoner. My actual job was not to feel cozy, but to figure out why I was here. That meant asking questions.

  “Was the deer okay, Johnny? The one you were waiting on to wake up?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated and then, miracle of miracles, volunteered more. Maybe making him laugh had been useful after all. “Sometimes they try to stand too soon. I like to make sure they don’t fall and hurt themselves.”

  “They let you get close enough to do that?”

  “If they’re drugged and I’m there when they wake up, yes.”

  “But you were away because of me.”

  Johnny nodded, and his brows pinched together a little. So now I knew he’d done this thing with the deer, whatever it was, more than once. I mean, tha t was sort of clear from how practiced he was with the injector, but the fact that he talked about other times that he’d waited for the deer to awaken made it seem as if this was a regular thing. I picked ato ne of the scabs on my leg, where the bushes had scratched me.

  “Was it a problem? Getting back to it?”

  “Him. The buck didn’t fall, and he spooked as soon as I got close. The doe was fine. Business as usual there.”

  I want to really point that out. He said, “Business as usual . . .” So here’s the question: Why was he so concerned about the health of the deer if whatever he was doing was responsible for the decline in population?

  He kept working, and I started paying a little more attention to what he was actually doing.

  Again, this is a composite memory. I saw him do this a couple of different times while I was in the woods. The little card with seeds was a blister pack of nanodrives. He fed them into the hard-case machine and programmed them with . . . something. What’s significant here is that the machine was NOT connected to the net in any way. I learned that later. So, he had something totally freestanding, and he was programming these little nanodrives. After he got a group of twenty done, he loaded them into the injector gun. I think, in the time I saw him, he did maybe two hundred of these drives.I imagine you have the same questions I did. Why was he injecting the deer with nanodrives? I didn’t expect him to answer that, but I was hoping I could figure it out. That evening I let him work for a while, being quiet as if I were compliant. When he stretched at one point, leaning back on the stump to crack his spine, I took a small chance.

  I asked him if I could help.

  He lowered his hands from his stretch and turned to look at me. His gaze, full bore, is intense and more than a little disturbing. “No.”

  “I’m handy with tools . . .”

  “No. I can be clearer, if you need that, but the answer is no.”

  “That from your bosses?”

  “That’s from me.” He turned back to the table and resumed feeding the card back into the hard-case computer. “To anticipate your next ‘why,’ it’s because you are not as sly as you think you are. I’d be an idiot to let you handle any of this.”

  And THAT made it imperative for me to do just that. “Oh, come on . . . I’m an Authenticities dealer. I do restoration and repair of antiques. I don’t know squat about whatever it is you’re doing with the deer—or not with the deer—but I’m good with my hands. And if you’re planning on keeping me until you finish whatever it is you’re doing, it’s in my best interest to make sure you do it faster.”

  That sounded much better in my head when I said it than it does now. Here, it’s so clearly a pose—and a stupid one at that—I’m surprised I don’t have a memory of him laughing again.

  He just didn’t answer. Didn’t even acknowledge I’d said anything. Just kept doing stuff with the monitor and the cards as if I weren’t in the clearing. And that was the way we passed the rest of the evening. Eventually, it got dark. He told me to go to bed. I did.

  I planned on getting up to see if I could find anything useful, but I passed out as soon as my head touched the ground. I blame the lingering drugs in my system.

  Dawn woke me.

  If you haven’t spent the night in the woods, just know that little birdsa re damn noisy. I mean . . . holy shit. They are so loud. And deeply, hatefully,cheerful. Each Disney princess should have made it her mission in life to teach birds to be quiet in the morning. At no point during the three days I was in the woods did I get used to it.

  The tent confused me again, but no t as long this time. On the off chance that Johnny was asleep and I could sneak away, I rolled over and pulled the flap of the tent open.

  No luck. Johnny was stretched out on the ground in front of the tent. His eyes were open, and he was staring right at me. And yes, he still had that mask on. I didn’t get the sense that he’d hurriedly put it back in place either. I flinched a little, but not as badly as earlier.

  “I have to pee.” My voice was shockingly loud in the clearing, even with the birds in a full frenzy of happiness.

  “So do it.”

  He didn’t even lift his head from the rolled-up coat he was using as a pillow. He was in a sleeping bag, but the side was unzipped and one foot hung out. He’d taken his boots off, but otherwise he seemed to be fully dressed.

  “Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?”

  “Nope.”

  “I thought that was why you tranqed me.”

  “Oh, you might run, but I’m not worried about you ESCAPING.”

  The hell of it was that he didn’t have a reason to be worried about that. Shit. My earlier attempt had shown that, and, thank you, I did not want to get druggged again. I crawled out of the tent, half tempted to knee him as I did. Pretty sure I knew how that would play out, so I didn’t even try.

  When I got back from peeing he was up, boots on, and rolling up his sleeping bag.

  “So what’s the plan for today?”

  Crouching on his haunches, he glanced up at me, continuing to roll up the sleeping bag. “I’m going out to shoot some things. You’re going to stay here.”

  “That sounds like a long, boring day for me.” Though what I was
actually thinking was that it would be a chance to look at the stuff he was using.

  “So wander around the woods. I’ll find you when I get back.”

  “You’re awfully confident in your tracking skills.”

  He tossed the sleeping bag into the tent and stood. His gaze drifted over to my left, and he tilted his head, listening to something I couldn’t hear, and then he repeated someone else’s words. “Katya . . . You need to understand that we can find you anywhere now. Please do not cause difficulties. It would be unpleasant.”

  I have played that over in my head so many times. “We can find you anywhere.” And then that extra word. “Now.” We can find you anywhere NOW.

  They had tagged me.

  While I was asleep, he’d inserted a fucking transponder into my body somewhere. Which one of teh scrapes and scratches on my legs and arms wasn’t from the woods? Somewhere on my body was an insertion wound. Just a puncture mark large enough to insert a nanodrive like the ones he’d put into the deer. And there was no way for me to know where. If he was smart, it was somewhere on my back where I wouldn’t even be able to see it.

  It makes me feel sick, thinking about it. I mean, wouldn’t you, if someone had inserted something into you without your permission, without your knowledge?

  And here’s the real brainfuck.

  I never found it.

  When I got out of the woods, I was taken straight to a hospital. There was no sign of any undocumented foreign matter in my body. My UV tattoos, sure. Dermal implants, fillings, onboard battery storage, my i-Sys connections, all the other little things we modify ourselves with—those show up just fine, but no one found anything that wasn’t already in my records. So the question I keep asking is: Was he bluffing then, and I never had a transponder? Or did he mask it with one of the otehr artifacts already in my body?

  He could be watching me type this.

  Creepy as hell, huh?

  Try living with the idea. Yeah . . . I don’t enjoy it either.

  Or maybe he really was just bluffing, and I could have walked out of that forest at any time, which is its own brand of creepy. Because that means he was using my own mind and nothing else to hold me. Either way, it’s unpleasant, and I could spend a lifetime second-guessing myself like that.