The Power of Forgetting

by A M Russell

  ‘Sandstorm.’ it was unmistakeably Davey’s voice.

  ‘More like a bloody log storm! Or Rock Rain?’ Hanson sounded surprized.

  ‘Let’s have a look at him.’ That was Davey again.

  I realised I was tensed with my head in my hands in an attempt to cut out the assault on the senses. It took several minutes for the deep-rooted instinct to preserve the precious seat of the senses before I could be persuaded to uncurl from that position.

  ‘Don’t open your eyes.’ said Davey, ‘I have some water here.’

  For some reason he touched my wrist with the cool cloth. I shivered.

  ‘Is everyone here?’ my lips felt burned too. Davey spent the next few minutes cleaning of the dust and fragments of broken wood, and a mixture of seeds and torn up green bits.

  No one spoke. I heard the cool drip, drip of a stream. When I finally opened my eyes I found myself in a low roofed cavern. There was a glow of dim illumination somewhere to my right. As my eyes adjusted it seemed less dark. Everyone was there. Joe, bending and sliding his med case across the soft floor came and looked at me. There was a sad kind of resignation in his eyes. I saw then what I didn’t want to see. Marcia…. They were all; we were all caught in her orbit one way or another. Janey lay down with her knees drawn up. Marcia sat cross legged. Hanson, having been cleaned up went to sit next to her. She stared at me then; I stared back. It was that beat between one moment and another… why? She should ask me. But she didn’t. There was nothing to be done with Jared. He would not comply, would not tell the whole story. There was the question in their eyes of my friends, which for the moment were too tired to form the words to the real enquiry. Where would they begin? Would it be at “What were you doing?” and end up at “Have you betrayed us?”

  With a few words Davey explained that there was a lowered dip behind a rock… a patch of soft ground into which we could relieve ourselves. Hanson had taken out another lantern and with Davey’s help was setting a small stove to boil some water.

  I crawled down to the little private space, and after a few minutes felt the tension ease. I re-joined the group and sat cross legged on the floor trying to give the appearance that I was not as tired as I really was.

  ‘It’s been nearly twenty-nine hours without rest or food.’ said Marcia, as if she answered the question that was forming at that very moment. She looked up at the assembled company. ‘We will all rest. The first to wake will tell me straight away.’ There was a sense of consent. I saw Oliver’s eyes gleam in the torch light. I saw he had some cuts on his right hand that had been treated.

  Hanson and Davey passed round mugs of tea. Everyone drank them down in a quiet still atmosphere of contemplative gratitude.

  I finished my tea and handed my mug back to Davey. He smiled at me then. It was strange…. But it was once of the things I remembered later, that smile at that moment. Just that…. Simple really. Marcia slid herself slowly towards me. She moved behind me and sat with her back against the cavern wall. Oliver turned the first lantern down. In a little pool of illumination Davey tidied the mugs away. Lorraine was curled up in a graceful position Oliver was sitting nearby.

  ‘Jay?’ softly she spoke; her lips brushed my neck. I saw the dark tendrils rising before me. What were they? She was staring at me, and I half turned towards her. I was watching her face. I must have sighed then, and I blinked away something that seemed to well up, there was so much dust.

  Marcia bent towards me and took my mouth and pressed it gently into hers. And as hollow and tired as I was I felt a tugging of desire like the tide tugs at a boat on its anchor. There were glimmers in her eyes like the gleams on the surface of a sea at night. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she could foresee all things. But for that one night she took a little time for herself, and let go of the role of Captain. The storm would continue for hours, and I could not think of anything but that awful darkness. Yet here breaking in on that, and smashing it apart into powerless fragments was Marcia. What is she? An angel? Or a fool? Does she love the man, or the magic? I didn’t know.

  She pointed to the left. We crawled away from the others round a little corner, down a hollow and up again. Here it was private and silent. A cosy space in which Marcia’s small lantern made a private room. For those few minutes following she made a nest of our garments. The clips on my jacket like those keys in my mind; falling apart one by one, but this time, to her expert touch.

  I shuddered as she touched my bare skin. So she bent to kiss that place in the hollow between the throat and the shoulder. I had to admit to myself; that although I had… well historically at least known a lot of women; in a physical sense that is…. she was the only one who made me feel totally helpless. She was an expert. She made love to a man the way she baked; with a master touch. I was dough in her expert hands. I had to push my fist in my mouth to stop myself from gasping. She was pushing me to despair; in the way a master musician plays music that makes you want to cry. She had me where I could not cry out, she kissed me until I went beyond the dizziness of desire. And then touched me gently with her fingertips. I was moving to her song. She commanded you, you obey her. She was strong, yet warm and sweet. Marcia always made me think of fruit, she tasted like peaches, yet had a musky undertone of exotic woods. I wished that she hadn’t done what she did….and yet I did not regret it. She was stronger than me, even physically, and she overwhelmed me, sinking into each pore a sense of her presence. An imprint that was like a watermark…. somehow it sank into some deep, very private corner of my soul that was lost in translation. But I don’t know…. For what happened on that same day…. I want to remember her differently. And yet I cannot. She was, as she always had been the strong friend, the trusted confidant. And now she was revealed as a commanding lover, who made your body respond to her. We never spoke of love that night. And I suppose that when she pressed down and I entered her, I wasn’t thinking of any promise that had passed between us; or even of any future that may exist. She whispered one thing to me as I shuddered and she took that essence, and drained me and made me weaker than a child. “Tomorrow, we will dance.”

  Later, as the evening rocked on a boat at night, and somewhere the storm raged without, I mumbled something about being sorry for not following orders. I folded myself into her; that honey warmth, and those yielding curves that an artist would love to paint.

  ‘Don’t….’ Marcia said, ‘please Jay…. don’t tell me why…. if you know…. or if you don’t. Let it be…. Please let it be, one of those things.’

  Sometime later, as she was sleeping, I watched her face…so profound in its stillness. There is a weariness that finds us all in the end. And this little group waiting for the storm to pass was weak with doubt, and confused and ragged, nerves raw from lack of sleep and too much stress. I touched those soft curls; dark and rich; then laid my head next to hers and heard her breathing. Why do we love? What is the point if it is always destined to be broken and lost? I did not reckon on the thing that would tear us apart. And fool that I was I never knew how much she loved me. I never saw it…. And as I dressed myself and let her sleep I slid out from my pocket the small tag we had found. I took out a black Russian and lit it, breathing smoothly out as I considered what we had seen. This ghost of the things that are created; these copies. But of whom? This did not indicate anything other than a name… and that set of figures that had so unnerved me back at the freezer lab. I thought that we wouldn’t get much rest, and that Rimmington, true to form would be looking for us all the minute the storm abated. I turned it over in my hand. “Adam J. Shepard” and then below “IV 010801”. It made no sense at all. There was that disquiet again. So where was Adam? It seemed reasonable that we should try to get to higher ground. And if this door way that Amber had told us about was operative, we could get all the team back to the transport by the morning. If Janey and I could find a place where there was no anti-shift field, we could take people in maybe ones or twos. But somehow I realised that Rimmington would have thought of
that. It was not likely even he would make such a fundamental mistake. We had to move, either way; up and then down the rising ground. And somewhere there would be the river’s course. It must rise from the mountains to the east. We should find a way to cross… but them there was the weather…. So not really an option; unless we could get beyond the rand of the freaky weather control that the people exerted. Dieter’s lot had been stopped from reaching us. So we were on our own.

  For some reason, now I was thinking more about the group, and how to get us out of this I felt a lot better. It was dreadful yes; but there was a rationale to the situation that the strange experiences inside the base had temporarily suspended from my mind.

  I felt my way round to the space where the others were resting. I made sure that the lamp was set still, so Marcia could see when she woke.

  Davey and Oliver were busy making a simple stew. I offered to help, but Oliver just shook his head, and Davey carried on solemnly adding measured amounts of the dried ingredients to the two pans. I saw Lorraine stirring. She sat and rubbed her eyes, then stretched. She saw me, and tilted her head in a gesture of questioning.

  ‘Stew for supper,’ I said, ‘In…what is it Davey?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’ He said rather shortly. I turned away and went to wake Marcia.

  She was sat on top of her clothes with her metal tag in her hands. She slid the two halves back together as I came near to her. She let it drop and reached out to me with both arms. She pulled me into her embrace and wrapped herself around me.

  ‘Jared…. please…please.’ she whispered urgently, pulling at the sweater I had only just put on a minute or two ago.

  ‘What do you need woman?’ I said softly, and she clung to me like a creeper round a tree, and mumbled something indistinct into my shoulder.

  ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Take your clothes off.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes Cutie; right now.’

  ‘Cutie?’ I asked, ‘Are you sure you mean me?’

  ‘Well, yes… or perhaps you prefer Gorgeous?’

  ‘Err….’ I slipped out of the shirt as well it seemed the easiest thing. Marcia was pulling my combats down and massaging a point deep in the crease of my hip as she worked herself round onto me. I was shocked the way that everything simply responded… she just touched me lightly here and there; and felt a rush and I forced her down onto me a few seconds after that. She was a special kind of insanity…. the sanest kind. I had, in a few short hours been fully converted to the idea that had always circulated about Marcia being the sort of woman who was full of a kind of energy that could short circuit a man’s brain in thirty seconds flat; a sexual frisson that left you wondering what the hell happened to your resolve to be in command of the encounter… not that I had ever thought that… Oh bloody hell! I had to clench my jaw to stop a scream of sheer brain blanking pleasure, which was breaking like a wave over a rock.

  I laid back. She was still astride me and smiled benignly.

  ‘Tell me I’m good.’ She said.

  ‘You’re good… you’re better than good… you’re brilliant…’

  She rolled over and lay next to me, and stretched like a cat does. She stared up wards for a moment then rolled up on one elbow. Some of her curls brushed my shoulder, and I shivered then.

  ‘you need to get your clothes back on.’ She said and sat up, still naked and took one of my cigarettes from my jacket. She flicked the lighter expertly and lit it. She offered it to me. I took a couple of drags and then she took it back. ‘I’m still too warm.’ She said cupping her right breast in one hand. I blinked and shook my head to clear it. I couldn’t quite jump back into Jared and Marcia, boyfriend and girlfriend; she was a Goddess, a glorious intoxication. We shared the smoke and then she slid back into her clothes.

  It was as if she put her normal self back in place at the same time.

  I found the lighter and returned it to my pocket. Marcia pulled her belt tight; ‘Do you think we need to ice suits on yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Not sure; what’s the time now?’

  ‘About ten… in the evening. It sounds like the storm had gone now. But we better eat and then get going.’

  ‘Stew should be ready by now.’ I looked sideways at her. She smiled that private smile just once more, then we slowly made our way back round to the group.

  *****

  Eighteen

  I could not see Hanson. I supposed that he might be behind the little boys’ rock.

  Davey was stirring the two small canteens of stew. He tasted one. ‘Not bad.’ He said appraisingly.

  ‘Where’s Janey?’ Oliver asked me.

  ‘Janey? I thought she was with you and Joe?’

  Oliver grinned at me, ‘She must be powering her nose then.’

  Joe looked up as Lorraine moved suddenly and groaned. She smoothed her plait and then went down to the designated ladies room space. Marcia, quite unconcerned sat down near to Davey and looked into the pot nearest.

  ‘Is it alright?’ He asked her.

  ‘It’s fine.’ She said, then, ‘someone call Janey; we need to eat and then get going in half an hour.’

  ‘The plan is?’ Oliver looked up as Janey was seen slowly picking her way into the circle of light.

  ‘Eat first.’ said Marcia.

  Everyone gathered and we passed bowls of the warm tasty concoction round silently. There was a ten-minute stillness, and everyone was sat near to each other, closer than we were often used to be. Even Joe, who tended to be somewhat separatist, permitted Lorraine and Janey in close proximity.

  ‘Seconds.’ said Davey. And everyone was handed a second lot of the stew from what Hanson called the “magic porridge pot”.

  Oliver nudged me a moment later. He passed me a small steel cup with amber liquid filling it almost to the top. He gave one to Hanson and Joe, and the fourth to Lorraine. She blinked in a surprized kind of way, and looked sort of upset. She sipped it slowly, unlike us lot who took it back in one. Oliver refilled the tots for Marcia and Davey and lastly Janey. Lorraine seemed to be having some trouble with something in her eye. Oliver went and sat next to her and she gave back the little metal cup. He took a measure himself, as Lorraine watched his every move, eyes round and glassy. She put her hands over her face again, and Oliver spoke softly. She seemed to calm down then.

  Janey and Marcia were both staring at me. Hanson was helping Davey clear up and Joe was rummaging in his pack.

  ‘Is everyone okay to listen for a moment?’ Marcia’s voice was quiet and undemanding. Joe looked up, ‘I want to say something,’ he said, ‘and perhaps I should have said it sooner.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Marcia after a pause, ‘Go ahead Joe.’

  ‘I…. I’m sorry. To Janey. Really. I thought that we were; well I thought we had been dropped in it there. Forgive me for doubting you. I really thought that was it; back there I mean.’

  Janey seemed moved by his confession in front of witnesses. Knowing her like I did, I knew that she had not expected this. Nor, in a way needed it. She knew how frightening the situation had become. She looked to me then and back at the group.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘and I will tell you all. I have always been with you. I would do everything I could to make sure that my friends were safe… if I could. I was following a line of enquiry. And I was the one who was a tempting enough treat to bait the hook for Rimmington.’

  ‘You knew that he was after Jared?’ Joe looked shocked.

  ‘Of course.’

  It seemed as if Joe’s sympathy had suddenly switched from Janey to me.

  ‘It seems,’ said Oliver in a clear firm voice, ‘that we all need to believe and trust in each other again. We have seen these doubles. And some of us know the difficulty of distinguishing them from the real person they are made from. I think that we all should lay to rest the idea that anyone is in some weird way not with us. Please…. This is hard. None of us are really certain what is real right now. I can see
that it’s affecting everyone’s mind. I would like to zip it back together folks… as it were.’

  ‘He’s right.’ said Hanson thickly, ‘I am with you. If you’ll have me. Help me… please. I let them take a piece of me and now it’s running around without my permission. I have no access. They must be destroyed. The copies that the experiment used. I don’t want to be part of that any more. I was wrong to get involved.’

  I saw Marcia look towards Hanson with an almost hungry look. A fraction of second. I’d didn’t miss it. I looked down thinking of the lab; that giant freezer and the tag in my pocket. Zip it together. Oliver knew about the little tag. But somehow it seemed like it wasn’t a thing to be concerned about right now. Someone else was talking, I might be missing something so I looked up. Oliver had the map spread out on the floor. We gathered round.

  ‘We are quite high up,’ he was saying, ‘and we need to get higher. There may be a chance to get a relay signal. And just beyond that ridge… if I reckon it right, we will have line of sight on the transport.’

  ‘There is still the river to cross.’ said Davey. He looked worried. I guess he was thinking rather too much about how high up we were.

  ‘The time it nearly 23 hundred hours,’ said Marcia, ‘let’s move. If Oliver is right, we can be down to the transport by dawn.’

  ‘Six am.’ said Oliver, in answer to Lorraine’s enquiring looking. She rubbed her eyes and wearily started to fasten her jacket back up.

  ‘I don’t recommend anything stimulating except strong tea.’ Aid Joe, ‘If I gave anyone a speed hit right now it might kill you by lunch time.’