Deliverance

by Samantha Schinder

  He had been attempting, unsuccessfully, to shoo Jack away when Deliverance made her entrance into the room, clicking the door softly shut behind her. When the stormwater blue eyes, with their enormous pupils fixed upon her face, though, they became impossibly larger. The man griped the sides of the tall table and swayed like he might swoon.

  “Impossible!” He gasped. “Cat?”

  Deliverance paused a beat. He thought she was her mother.

  Jack chimed in, sounding almost cheerful at the man’s discomfort. “Wrong again, old man. This is Deliverance…your daughter.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Deliverance

  Deliverance then understood the man’s propensity to stagger.

  “WHAT?” They both bellowed at the same moment.

  “Well, it’s not like you were going to be any more graceful at breaking the news to her.” Jack shrugged, hoisting himself up to perch on one of the tabletops that was not covered in debris.

  Deliverance felt drained all of a sudden, sparks flitting across her vision. Jack shifted like he might rush to her side, but she straightened and took a deep breath. Fainting would not do at a moment like this.

  “Is it true?” she asked quietly of the man before her. Studying his face, she could see how paternity might be possible.

  The man did not answer, but instead rounded the table and stared at her intensely, as if looking at a specimen through a microscope.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Jack said, reaching over and swiping the man’s spectacles off his nose.

  “Ah, yes that’s better,” the man said, his pupils now of regular proportion. “No…not Cat. But the resemblance is remarkable.”

  “Really? That is all you have to say?” Jack cried, throwing his hands up in the air. “Try…hi, my name is blah blah Asher—or, I am really sorry I was not a father to you?”

  “Oh. Uh—” Lord Asher stammered but Deliverance cut him off.

  “Jack, really, there is no need,” she said crisply. “I did not have a father for twenty-three years. I certainly do not require intricate explanations now. I’ve been perfectly fine without them.” Who cared who this man was? All she needed from him was to help her mother. She was seriously doubting his ability to do so, though.

  “That’s not entirely true,” Lord Asher replied quietly.

  “What, that I am twenty-three or that you were never there?” Deliverance challenged him.

  “I was there,” he answered softly. “In the beginning. Before… the scandal. You just do not remember.”

  “I think I would remember a man living in my house!” Deliverance cried. What on earth was this addlepated man getting at?

  “No, not necessarily,” Jack said, entering into the conversation again. “Lord Asher here is a memory stealer…meaning he can take memories from people. I assume that is what you did to your daughter so she would not remember you?” The last sentence was tinged in acid.

  “I…I did it so she would not feel the pain of separation! I did it out of love! It was really quite impossible to go back, after they discovered Cat had left the island. They shut down all my winter visits. They would have murdered Cat and the baby to cover their tracks!” Lord Asher protested.

  This drew Deliverance up short. “Who would have murdered us?”

  “The Arcanton government for one—those idiot village people for another. They are really quite devolved,” Lord Asher answered.

  Jack coughed. “You said the term ‘devolved’ was not academically correct or appropriate, as per one of our previous interactions that you would call conversations but I would call inane lectures.”

  Lord Asher regarded him coolly. “In this particular case, it is rather fitting. Those men are barbaric. The things we catch them doing on the drones…their style of so-called justice…” He shook his head in contempt.

  “And yet, you seem to have left my mother and I to their mercy,” Deliverance remarked with acid in her voice.

  “I…your family has been on the island for hundreds of years. Perseverance and Solitude Magne were the first narrative shapers commissioned by the Arcanton government on the island of Nar,” Lord Asher began.

  “Oh, she knows. She was treated to a lecture by that showboating Professor Phillips,” Jack cut in.

  Lord Asher looked at a loss for a minute, staring dejectedly as his hands, as if by the sheer weight of his gaze he could will them into effectualness. “Wait!” he piped up. “I can show you!”

  He leaped from the stool he had slumped into a minute before and trotted to the back of the room where the shelves of eerie, glowing jars were kept. He perused them, muttering to himself, fingers trailing in the fine dusty film coating most of them. “This one…and perhaps that one, to be fair.” He gingerly grasped one of the jars, tucking it carefully in the crook of his elbow as he reached up a bit further and plucked another down from a higher shelf. Then, cautiously, he brought them back over to one of the lab tables. Less cautiously, he swept everything clear off the table with his other arm, letting books, papers, inkpots and the like crash to the foreground.

  “Here. These will show you,” he said, gesturing at the two jars.

  “Ummm… what are they?” Deliverance asked uncertainly. Briefly, she wondered if madness ran in the family, and if so, was she at risk?

  “They’re memories, darling,” Jack answered for her.

  “What!?”

  “That’s right. Doctor Asher here uses his magical gift to pull memories from a mind. Then he stores them in these little pots, like a serial killer stores people’s fingers and toes in his freezer.” Judging by the wryness in Jack’s voice, Deliverance was gathering he rather loathed her father.

  “These…these are all people’s memories!? Surely you’ve no right!” Deliverance cried, eyes widening, taking in the row upon row of jars collecting dust in this hermit’s den.

  “Huh? Oh, those. Most of those the people wished gone,” Lord Asher replied meekly.

  “Most…” repeated Jack.

  “Really, must you be so sanctimonious?” Lord Asher bit back.

  “I am a politician after all,” Jack returned in kind.

  “A rotten one at that. When will you ever get a majority to back the Nar project? It’s politicians’ fault we are at a standstill on Nar and politicians’ fault I could not go back to see my daughter!”

  Jack snorted. “Sure, blame someone else for your lack of trying.”

  “Not everyone can steal an airship and get away with it.”

  “Wait, Jack, you stole an airship?” Deliverance cut in, trying to stop the back and forth.

  “It was just a small one…I gave it back!”

  Deliverance was developing an acute headache. “So, what do we do with these creepy little jars?” she asked.

  “Here, let me show you.” Lord Asher lifted the lid and coaxed the sprite-like light from the jar. Without warning, he touched Deliverance’s temple, and the light shot through his fingers like a conduit into her brain.

  ***

  It was frigid sailing navigating the North Sea in November. J
ohn tucked his chin down farther in his fisherman’s sweater and anorak. He was cutting it close—the ice would not be navigable in a few days. It had been unavoidable though, after the previous memory-stealer appointed to the Nar Restricted Zone had an unfortunate stroke. John Asher had been called to fill in for him, as he was the only other anthropologist and memory-gifted of the Oxdale staff at the time. It took him a few weeks to get up to speed on the project. It was particularly important to get to Nar before the winter stuck its deep, treacherous fingers of ice into the sea because the informant line was down to one. Catalyst’s mother Independence had succumbed to influenza not a few weeks ago. The girl had to be brought up to speed in order to keep the Narisi narrative alive and safe.

  He knew exactly where the hidden cove was from the briefings. He had not expected, however, for Catalyst to be waiting for him on the beachhead.

  As he drew nearer, he realized she was not waiting on him. No, she was dancing! There was a large pyre built in the hidden alcove, its flames licking at the craggy mountain ridgeline. The girl was swaying and twirling, circling the fire like a whirling dervish or a rain dancer. Her arms spun an intricate story.

  As his vessel drew nearer the shore, the girl’s eyes, a glowing green as if her magic had been activated, locked on his. But she continued to dance. Even as he pulled his boat ashore, boots mired in sand and surf, she did not cease her dance. The hypnotic gyrations and the wildly akimbo limbs continued on until finally she halted, her lithe body in the position of a giant X. As though she were Atlas and the weight of the world rested upon her, she pushed up and out, releasing a cloud of green into the atmosphere. Finally, when she was ready, she turned to greet him.

  “You are John Asher,” she stated, head up almost defiantly. A priestess in her own right.

  “I am.”

  “I am Catalyst, daughter of Independence, granddaughter of Reliance, great granddaughter of Quickening, heir to the burden of Solitude nee Perseverance Magne. Welcome to my island.”

  ***

  Deliverance gasped for air, hands clutching the sides of the lab table, encrusted with suspect unknown substances.

  “What did you just do to me!?” she cried, eyes wide.

  “I let you see a memory,” Lord Asher replied.

  “You invaded my brain!” Deliverance accused him, eyes flashing.

  “Not for the first time!” Jack added cheerfully, although he shut his mouth with a click when both Deliverance and Lord Asher eyed him.

  “I took the memory back. It’s mine, so you saw it from a third person perspective. Really quite interesting how it works,” Lord Asher explained academically.

  “But if you took it back, then how come I still remember it?” Deliverance asked uncertainly.

  “I didn’t wipe it from your mind. It will leave a trace, like an imprint. But it won’t affect your subconscious or your personal thoughts. I could erase it, but then we’d be right back where we started.”

  “Back before you leapt into my head!” She rubbed her temples as though she could smear away the invasion.

  “Yes…I am so accustomed to my own gift, I forget others find it…unsavory?” Lord Asher tried.

  “Creepy?” Jack suggested. “Violating? Psychotic even?”

  “Jack, you’re not helping,” Deliverance snapped.

  “All right…but to be fair, I’m actually the only person who has helped you since you found yourself afloat at sea,” he said. This was true, Deliverance thought, heart softening a bit.

  “You were afloat at sea!? What on earth were you doing? And where is Cat?” Lord Asher yelped, eyes bulging.

  “Shall we catch the old man up, since he has had his head stuck up his arse for the last twenty-some years?” Jack said to Deliverance.

  She rolled her eyes at Jack but turned to her…father…and recounted her tale from the beginning.

  It took several hours, and so Lord Asher sent one of his minions (his word, not Deliverance’s) for coffee and refreshments. They retired to the study downstairs, which was at least somewhat less chaotic than the lab, but Lord Asher brought along the second swirling jar and set it on the table. It seemed to stare at Deliverance like a bird of prey from its perch on the end table. Jack lit a fire in the fireplace and Lord Asher accused him of being good for party-tricks and little else. They were about to descend into another quid pro quo before Deliverance intercepted.

  “Gentlemen, please! Focus!” Deliverance clapped to get their attention. They both looked at her like naughty schoolchildren. This was going to be a long day.

  “So, if I am understanding this correctly…Cat is imprisoned and you are here. You would likely be arrested as well if you were returned to the island,” Lord Asher reasoned aloud.

  “Most definitely,” Jack replied grimly.

  “The informant line is compromised and so is the narrative that keeps the islanders…well, on the island. Parliament will have to act,” Lord Asher declared. “But I do not trust them to do the right thing! More than likely they will incinerate the whole island or put up a military line of demarcation and murder anyone who attempts to leave the island. The narrative was preventing such action before.”

  “You mean the lies you concocted and fed my people to keep us prisoner?” Deliverance retorted, crossing her arms.

  “It was only to keep the plague at bay, the contagion contained,” said Lord Asher. “It was still alive in your mother when she tried to make her escape to Arcanton. They…did experiments on her then after they captured her. It is the only solid scientific data we have about the disease. Then they sent her back and removed me from the project.”

  “Is every man so frightened of not having magic and of women whose gifts may change?” Deliverance sighed, exasperated.

  “If the plague were to spread on a mass scale—and likely it would given globalization—it could cause mass chaos,” Lord Asher explained gently. “There would be no checks on powers; people could change and discard gifts at will. There would be no way to track and record who has what gift. Criminals would wreak havoc with that. It is a magical illness, Deliverance. It is not the way things are meant to be.”

  “God’s teeth! You’re one of them!” Deliverance cried.

  “You look a lot like your mother when you’re angry,” Lord Asher commented, as Jack talked over him, saying, “No, he’s not one of the government technocrats who wants to either wipe Nar off the map or find a permanent imprisonment method. He’s just ineffectual and fell into a bottle when they took him off the Nar Project.”

  “Oh, unlike you who is so radical you can’t get a single senator to side with you on the issue?” Lord Asher shot back nastily. “If it were up to him,” he said, thumbing at Jack, “anyone with a magical illness could just walk around willy nilly infecting everyone else until the apocalypse happened! It seems to me you are just as ineffectual!”

  “Actually, he said he has almost a majority lined up to support us. Just one more, right?” Deliverance said in defense of Jack. Jack nodded gravely. That one would be difficult.

  “But what are you going to do with all those people once you have rescued them from the 17th century? Put them in a shoebox? Oh, I know! Let’s just unleash t
hem on the world having no concept of how it functions now and watch them go mad! And in the meantime, they can infect everyone else!” Lord Asher fumed.

  “I didn’t go mad,” Deliverance protested quietly. “And I haven’t infected anyone.”

  “No, not yet. Not until you have children. That’s what the damn ring on your finger is about, isn’t it? Good God, Jack! You’re going to make the same mistake I did!” Lord Asher replied savagely.

  “You would rather I act the broodmare, so you can continue your little farce on my island? Sorry, but I seem to have screwed up your plans!” Deliverance shouted back.

  “Now you listen here, you washed up old man,” Jack growled, heat beginning to radiate off him in waves. His teacup was tremoring in a boil before he set it aside. “We have a way to cure them. You hear me? Cure them all! I have a magical malady healer strong enough to heal anyone who wants to leave the island. And I intend to put that solution before Parliament. Where I need you to get off your useless duff and help is by recording the results of Deliverance’s healing. We need everything recorded and documented just so, so that when we go before Parliament, our case will be airtight. You have the knowledge and the facilities to do that…to do that for your daughter. And that is what you WILL do. And furthermore, if you ever refer to Deliverance as a mistake again, I will start charring your internal organs one at a time until your insides look like the pit of a volcano. Am I clear?”