The Remembering

by Steve Cash

  I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Well, hello right back at you,” someone said. The voice sounded scratchy and distant. The connection was not a good one.

  “Hello,” I repeated. “Who is this? I can barely hear you.”

  “Someday, Z, you’re gonna have to do somethin’ about that hearing problem,” the voice said, followed by a loud laugh I recognized instantly. My heart leaped. “Damn, Z, it’s good to hear you,” he said. “You’re a pearl among pebbles, a peach among persimmons, a—”

  I cut him off. “Enough! Enough! Where are you, Ray?”

  “Mexico City, but not for long. I’m on my way to St. Louis. Nova is with me.” Ray paused and the static in the background increased. “Listen, Z, I only got a minute. Somethin’ strange is goin’ on. I’ll tell you when we get there, but I think—”

  Suddenly the line filled with static and a few seconds later the connection was lost.

  On Tuesday Carolina sorted through her mail and among the bills and letters was a ragged picture postcard addressed to her and postmarked ten days earlier. On one side was a picture of the old stone harbor in Cartagena, Venezuela, and on the other side there was a handwritten note, which read:

  To he who it concerns—have found evidence of another sphere with MORE information—on our way with photographs

  —S and S

  On Wednesday there were no surprises, but on Thursday afternoon as I was helping Caine replace the hood on a bassinet, Carolina came upstairs to deliver a letter that Mercy had just given her. It was still sealed and had been sent inside another letter that Mercy received from Arrosa. Addressed to me, the letter was written in Basque and read:

  I am aware Sailor is on his way to St. Louis and I know his purpose. You must tell him when he arrives that the prize is in Sochi and may be difficult to obtain. Zeru-Meq is in Istanbul. Mowsel and I are to rendezvous with him next week. We shall need your help, young Zezen. One more item—I am certain you remember the “Voice” that joined us when we awoke Lindbergh on his way to Paris. I have been “hearing” it again, but with a difference. Now I hear two of them! Perhaps you should ask Sailor what he thinks of this—Mowsel has no explanation, nor do I.

  Geaxi

  Was this only coincidence? Why was this happening? Something was in rapid motion and I had no idea what it was or what it meant. After such a long period of silence, within four short days I had heard from all of us, or at least all were accounted for … all except one. I had to believe she was still alive. I had to believe she was safe and well. I had to believe.

  Friday passed without a word from anyone and I had trouble sleeping that night. I dreamed of the umpire. He was walking toward me and as he approached he removed his mask and let it drop to the ground. Underneath his mask there was another mask and he let it drop, then another, and another. He kept coming closer. Sweat filled my eyes and his image blurred. My eyes burned with sweat and I kept rubbing them to make it go away. Then I woke up. All day Saturday I paced the house, looking out the windows and never straying far from the telephone. No calls came. Finally, I gave up waiting and went to bed around midnight.

  Sunday was a different story entirely and events started early. During a hearty breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, fried eggs, and smoked bacon, a taxi pulled up under the stone archway and Ray Ytuarte and Nova Gastelu arrived unannounced at the kitchen door. Wearing a big smile and her usual black eyeliner, Nova came in first, along with a rush of cold air. Star cried out with surprise and pleasure, then rose from her seat to give Nova a warm embrace. They had always been close friends and hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. As Ray entered, he set down his tattered suitcase and took off Kepa’s old red beret. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and sniffed the warm, bacon-maple-scented air of Carolina’s kitchen. “Damn!” he said. “I do love pancakes.”

  Three hours later Caine, Willie, Ray, and I were still in the kitchen. Ray was sitting on the kitchen counter telling yet another bizarre story about Mexico City and some of the crazy American expatriates who were currently living there. Carolina, Star, Nova, and Antoinette had moved to the living room to talk about babies. Suddenly Ray stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence. I looked at him. We both felt it—the undeniable presence of Meq … old Meq. In a few moments, there was a knock on the door and Sailor and Susheela the Ninth entered the kitchen.

  Sailor nodded to Ray and me without a word, then glanced at Willie and Caine, who was staring at Sheela. Caine had neither seen nor heard of her before, and it was easy to see how startled he was by her bearing, her beauty, and especially her color. Sailor introduced Sheela to Willie and Caine, then spoke to me. “The traffic in your country has become problematic, Zianno.”

  I laughed and Ray said, “I agree with you completely, Sailor. This country is goin’ to the dogs.”

  Sailor looked at Ray with little expression, waiting for the punch line, but it never came. He shook his head back and forth once and said, “It is truly a joy to see you, Ray. Are you here alone?”

  “No. Nova is with me.”

  “That is good.” Sailor turned back to me with an expectant look on his face I’d seen before and I knew what it meant. He wanted to know when all of us could talk privately. He said one word. “When?”

  “Later,” I said. “After dinner.”

  Sailor nodded his approval. But we never got to dinner. Either from the excitement of everybody arriving or simply because it was time, Antoinette went into labor that afternoon. Willie, Star, Carolina, and Caine all left with her on the hectic drive to the hospital.

  Not five minutes after they’d gone, Sailor asked Sheela to bring out the photographs of the stone sphere and lay them on the table. Ray and Nova gathered around and I showed Sailor the letter I’d received from Geaxi, which he read carefully. The black-and-white pictures were old and grainy, but the object being photographed was unmistakable. It was a stone ball exactly like the one we’d seen in Cuba with one important difference—there was twice as much script carved at the five broken intervals spaced around the ball. However, details were impossible to make out due to the poor quality of the photographs.

  “Where did you get these?” I asked.

  “Brazil,” Sailor answered.

  Sheela added, “From an art dealer with a questionable reputation. We have no idea where he obtained them. He said he ‘found’ them twenty years ago while on a trip to Europe.”

  Ray leaned over and examined each photograph. “Has that ball got somethin’ to do with the Remembering?”

  Sailor frowned and looked down at the pictures. “We do not know. I think it must. These spheres are without question the oldest and rarest link to the Meq we have yet found. Perhaps Zianno will be able to decipher this one. It is imperative we locate it, if, indeed, it still exists.” Sailor held Geaxi’s letter in the air. “With this information we have a place to start.” He paused and glanced at Sheela. “However, Sochi may prove difficult.”

  “Where exactly is Sochi?” Ray asked.

  “Sochi is in the—”

  At that moment a horn honked outside and a car pulled to a stop under the archway. Ten seconds later the door opened and Jack came rushing into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks when he saw all of us staring back at him, then he smiled wide and said, “I don’t know whether this is fate or coincidence. I was only expecting Z, but the timing of this surprise could not be better. I needed to get word to all of you, anyway.”

  He took off his coat and I asked, “What word, Jack?”

  “We have recently discovered what Blaine Harrington is doing in California and it isn’t good, Z.”

  “What is he doing?” Sailor asked.

  Jack looked around the table at each of us. “He is looking for you … for all of you. He is looking for the Meq.” Jack paused a moment. “He has already found one of you.”

  My mind went instantly to one thought and fear—Opari!

  Jack went on. “And that’s not all. The S
oviets may be after you, too.”

  Sailor quickly gathered the photographs from the table and handed them to Sheela. He pulled a chair out from the table and said, “Sit down, Jack. Relax, have some coffee, and, please, you must tell us everything you know.”

  As Jack explained it, through an ally in Army Intelligence, Cardinal had discovered a top-secret file concerning a “black” operation code-named “SCAR,” which was being run by Blaine Harrington. Under the auspices of Army Intelligence he had converted a small ten-acre ranch outside San Diego into a kind of laboratory or prison where only one subject was being held and studied. The subject was a badly scarred female child who apparently had not aged, changed, spoken, or acknowledged anyone in nine years. They found her blood type did not make sense because it did not even exist in modern humans. They were studying the body chemistry of the girl to unlock the secret and potential power within such chemistry. Army Intelligence thought there might be strategic purposes for this knowledge, and they were going to make certain the United States had it first.

  Jack talked for half an hour. I listened to every word, but as he spoke I kept feeling a strange sensation throughout my body, as if my legs and arms were waking up or anticipating something that was about to happen.

  “Where did they capture this girl?” Sailor asked.

  In a matter of seconds the sensations I’d been feeling increased tenfold. I felt a presence, almost a glow. My skin flushed and tingled.

  Jack shook his head back and forth. “She wasn’t captured, Sailor. She was found.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  Jack said, “That’s the crazy part, Z.”

  “Where, Jack?”

  “Nagasaki. Three weeks after the bomb dropped, she was found wandering through the rubble like a ghost.”

  “Zuriaa!” Sailor and I said simultaneously. My heart was pounding, and I heard or felt someone behind me, silently slipping through the house from the front door to the dining room to the kitchen.

  “Zuriaa?” Ray almost shouted, rising out of his chair. “You mean to tell me my sister is alive?”

  I looked at Ray, but I could feel her behind me.

  “No,” she said from the shadows. Everyone turned at once toward the voice. “Zuriaa is dead, Ray, and I shall beg your forgiveness for as long as I live.” She took two steps into the light of the kitchen. Her beautiful black eyes were staring directly at Ray. It was Opari. “Five days ago,” she said, “I slit her throat from ear to ear.”

  The next day, March 1, 1954, on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the United States conducted its second hydrogen bomb test. The fifteen-megaton blast was much bigger than anyone expected, erasing the atoll forever and leaving in its place a deep radioactive scar. In St. Louis a brand-new American and flawless seven-pound, eight-ounce baby girl, Georgia Caitlin Croft, was only a day old.

  People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great insult to the beast, a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.

  —IVAN, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

  16,355 years BCE

  Northern Caucasus Mountains

  He used the late light of day to gather the sweetest scented wood and the only berries still available. He was now too weak to hunt for meat. It was the time of year when leaves fell from the trees and berries were rare. The task would take him far from the cave, but he would return in time to look out over the river and watch the sun setting in the west. He stood motionless at the entrance to the cave. He could feel the cold air coming down from the north. He knew it would be much colder in another two moons and snow would soon follow. Tonight, he thought, tonight will be a good night to die. He scanned the horizon once more, made the simple gesture for farewell, then turned and entered the cave. The others were waiting for him, huddled around the fire pit. They were too weak and sick to leave the cave. He didn’t know how long they each had been alive, but he knew it was a long, long time. None of them had ever been sick. Their kind did not know sickness. He exchanged looks with each one. All agreed with him. They knew what he knew. They didn’t have to speak. They used few words, yet their conversations were deep. As far as they knew, they were the last ones. The fire burned late into the night. In silence, they each positioned themselves into the special arrangement and closed their eyes. They found the Voice between them, and without a word, one by one, drifted away on the stream of the Long Dream.

  In the end, there is nothing left. It all goes back, it all returns to nothing. Piece by piece, stage by stage, we disintegrate and disappear. Our last breath is first to go, along with self, spirit, love, mind, all gone. Poof! Then the body begins its inexorable degradation. The soft parts fade quickly. Flesh, organs, muscle, sinew, all rot and decay. Only bone remains. Bone is our last trace, our last message … our last echo.

  When Opari appeared in Carolina’s kitchen, she spoke for nearly an hour. During her long story, she used several Meq words and phrases I had never heard before. They were words dating back to the Time of Ice and beyond. Opari and her sister, Deza, learned the words from their mother as children. The words describe certain actions, abilities, and states of mind common only to the Stone of Blood. Most have to do with practical healing techniques, but two are quite different. The first ability is called “Bihotzarin”—the Heartlight. Opari said the word matter-of-factly in an even voice. It is a unique ability somewhat like echolocation in bats, where Opari is able to find certain other Meq who are in profound distress, except that she uses her own heartbeat and the practice is more mystical than medicinal. The second is an act, an extreme act, and Opari said the word in a whisper with tears running down her cheeks. The ancient word is “Kanporurrike.” Loosely translated, it means “beyond compassion,” and it is the name for the act that killed Zuriaa.

  During World War II, Opari was living in Hong Kong with the current generation of an old and wealthy family named Liang. They are a family of dealers and traders she has known and trusted at various times for the last three hundred years. Most of their businesses were and are legal, but a few of their interests blur the line or erase it entirely. Zeru-Meq also knows this family well. After the war, he managed to contact Opari through a cousin living in Macao. Once together, and having no knowledge of what had occurred in Japan, Opari and Zeru-Meq continued their search for the Fleur-du-Mal. They spent the next eight years in a futile and frustrating effort, finding little or nothing and hearing less. Then, a brief encounter and a few overheard remarks by a member of the Liang family changed everything and suddenly made the search for the Fleur-du-Mal irrelevant.

  David Liang Wen liked to call himself a “broker of information,” but in truth he was a spy for hire. In January 1954 he was working in Hong Kong and Tokyo for the Soviets. In Tokyo, he went to a meeting with his contact, and the man was talking with another man as he approached. The men were speaking Russian and they must have assumed he didn’t know the language because they finished their conversation before switching to Chinese. But David Liang Wen did speak Russian. He overheard his contact ask the other man, who he called Valery, “Is this true, have the Americans captured one of these strange children who do not age?” “Yes,” Valery answered, “they are holding her now outside San Diego, California. I know the fool in charge. Do not worry.” Valery smiled and changed to Chinese, introducing himself and saying something innocuous about the good food in Hong Kong. Then he excused himself and left.

  Upon learning what David Liang Wen had overheard, Opari and Zeru-Meq made a rapid decision. Opari would travel to the United States to investigate and Zeru-Meq would leave for the Middle East, where he knew Geaxi and Mowsel were living. They would discuss the situation and try to reach the rest of us.

  The Liang family supplied Opari with the proper forged papers and a chaperone to avoid suspicion. Together, they boarded a ship for the United States. Another cousin met her in San Francisco, then drove her down the coast to San Diego. From there, with Opari using the Heartlight for direction, they combed
the hills and roads surrounding San Diego. After a frustrating week of searching, Opari finally picked up a heartbeat. It was weak but steady. They continued in a crisscross pattern along county roads until the exact location was pinpointed. The car slowed to a stop about nine miles northeast of the city. Across the road a locked, unmarked gate guarded a long, winding gravel driveway. At the end of the driveway was a Spanish hacienda and several outbuildings spread through a large grove of oak trees. The place looked idyllic. No cars or vehicles of any kind were visible; nor were there any dogs, at least not in the open. Opari decided to wait for darkness before entering the property.

  At this moment in her story, Opari paused and the first tear appeared in the corner of her eye.

  The night sky was clear and bright with stars. Opari told the Liang cousin, whose name was Sam, to wait for her with the motor running. She slipped over the fence and crept toward the grove of oak trees. Several lights shone from inside the hacienda and a few more from inside one of the outbuildings. She held the Stone of Blood in the palm of her hand and focused her mind on the heartbeat. It was coming from the outbuilding. Then she heard the sound of someone running through the trees and turned just in time to see three Doberman pinschers heading straight for her. Silent and deadly, they had their teeth bared, but they weren’t barking. “Lo geltitu, txakuri, lo geltitu,” Opari whispered, holding the Stone of Blood in front of the dogs. All three of them acted as if they had been shot and fell to the ground instantly, staring into space and breathing heavily with their tongues hanging out. Opari continued on toward the heartbeat.

  Two doors led into the outbuilding. Opari first tried the door on the southern end, but it was locked. The northern door was in full view of the hacienda and she made sure no one was watching before opening the door and stepping inside without a sound. She was standing in a long hallway. Light was coming from the open doors of two rooms at the far end. Opari didn’t know what to expect yet she didn’t hesitate. She walked in silence to the first door and stopped and listened. Inside, two men were in conversation. One of them called the other “Blaine.” The air smelled slightly antiseptic. Holding the Stone, she stepped into the light.