The Memory Thief

by Sarina Dorie

  Everyone butchered my name when they repeated it. It had taken months for Taishi to grow accustomed enough to the sounds in our language to pronounce my name.

  Nipa bowed her head and said, “The tribes of Aynu-Mosir have gathered here to discuss a specific purpose today. We have gone thousands of years without contact with our home world of Earth. Do we wish to establish peaceful relations with these explorers or ask them to leave?”

  I translated. My father mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief.

  The breeze from the window brought with it a funny smoke smell unlike the campfires of meat cooking below. A metallic twinge mixed with ozone stung my nostrils and reminded me of laser cannon fumes. An old man nearest the window wrinkled up his nose. The smell was out of place in the forest, as was the sound that followed. The low rumble, a noise in between an engine and an animal, grew from a purr to a roar. Outside came a crack and loud popping. Something large crashed through the trees. Someone below the tree palace screamed.

  I thought I heard someone yell the word tatsu. Dragon. One of the Isepojin turned to the dragon clan and pointed, shouting. “You vowed not to bring your leviathans into this province. You have betrayed us!”

  The Tatsujin leader snarled something back.

  Nipa jumped to her feet, her headdress falling to the floor. I stared in horror, knowing something had to be wrong if she was more concerned about what was going on outside than her all-important symbol of leadership. She pointed to the door and yelled something. I couldn’t hear her over the screams. Blood pounded against my eardrums. The roof of the thatched hut above our heads exploded in fire.

  The meeting of the tribes came to a premature end.

  Chapter One

  Upon the acquisition of the planet of Louisiana, in the year 1803, the government of the United Worlds of America directed its attention toward exploring and improving the new space territory. Soon we will be surveying other planets we have acquired.

  —Meriwether Lewis, the Lewis and Klark Expedition, 1814 IS (Intergalactic Standard)

  My stomach fluttered with a mixture of excitement and trepidation at the idea of returning to the planet I had once considered home. After months of travel I was here, and I might at last be able to retrieve my memories from the man who had stolen them seven years before.

  When I set foot outside the spaceship, I expected to be greeted by the same jungle I had known as a little girl. Yet I hardly recognized the world before me. The mountains I recalled were flattened, and mounds of snow dotted a patchy forest. Icicles on trees glittered in the sunlight. The planet I had known had never been cool enough to freeze.

  Captain Ford said from behind me, “I thought this planet was supposed to be tropical.” His United Worlds of America accent was like my late mother’s, only more of a coarse drawl.

  I turned to the elderly man. “Are you certain this is the same region of the planet? This looks like the northern province.”

  He leaned against the doorframe of the ship. His weathered face looked haggard as he stared at the expanse of dead-looking land in disgust. The gothic-style arches around the door of the interplanetary steamship, solar sails and gleaming metal looked out of place on the alien world. The ticking of gears and hiss of air within jarred against the silence around us.

  The starship captain tipped his cap at me, his vexing smirk in place. “These are the coordinates in your father’s log.”

  My father. I slid a hand into the pocket of my skirt, reassured his pocket watch still ticked. Being on the planet where he had died was less of a cathartic goodbye than I had hoped. My chest felt tight and constricted. I wished more than ever to be free of my corset so I could, for once, breathe. The chilling wind sent goosebumps up my spine and loosened blonde curls from my bun.

  Meriwether placed a hand on my elbow. His eyes held the same concern they always did after I had slipped out of his sight. “There you are, Felicity dear. Where is your cloak? You’ll catch a chill.” His British accent was crisp and clear, more refined than my own with its hint of the Americas from my mother. He waved his hand at his father’s manservant. “Charbonneau, would you be so kind to fetch Miss Earnshaw’s cloak?”

  I tore my gaze away from the stretch of barren land. “Really, you needn’t fuss over me like this.”

  “It’s too much for you, isn’t it? Do you need a minute, Felicity dear?” His green eyes were filled with such love and concern, it was hard to not feel affection for him. The cool wind tousled the brown hair tied at the nape of his neck and stirred the ruffles of his cravat. His elegant features and noble bearing always attracted the attention of ladies at balls—and sometimes the men as well.

  I gave him a grateful smile. If there was one person who knew what I had been through it would be my fiancé, as he had been the first one to find me on the planet seven years before. Had it not been for the miracles of space-age medicine, I might not have survived at all.

  “Are you two going to stand here dilly-dallying and making goo-goo eyes at each other, or are we going to get a move on?” Captain Ford asked in his usual grumbly voice.

  Meriwether sighed in exasperation. He might have been appointed leader of the party, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if Lord Klark had secretly hired the captain to ensure his son didn’t get in a fix.

  The party, made up of surveyors, prospectors and crystal ore experts, stood behind the captain. It had been no picnic traveling for the last year with this rough group of men, though I suspected I was far more used to the coarse talk of the working class than was my fiancé. The only one whom I trusted not to stab us in the back, if it profited him, was old Charbonneau, Lord Klark’s personal servant.

  Charbonneau handed me my bonnet and cape.

  I shook my head at the laser muskets the men packed. “Should we encounter any first-world colonists, we would be seen as less of a threat if we brought gifts instead of arms.”

  “The only natives who still exist are in the minds of fanciful girls,” said the captain’s mate.

  I ignored the remark. At the age of twenty-four, I was far closer to being an old maid than a girl. Even so, it was no surprise that my words weren’t heeded.

  The captain’s mate remained behind with the ship to draw in the solar sails and rewind our launch mechanism should we need to take off again. The rest of us set out, intending to find the river where my sister and I had once found the stones Lord Klark coveted. Though my guardian assured me he could find no trace of indigenous people and they had died off, I wondered if we might cross paths with the Chiramantepjin tribe or any others. I loathed myself for hoping Taishi and his family were still alive. I hadn’t decided yet if I wanted to see him. Not if he was the one who had stolen my memories. Yet if I was to retrieve what I had lost, I would have to face him. That was the only reason I had returned.

  We traveled for several miles, well past the valley and into the area where homes had been camouflaged in the thick canopies of trees. The jungle was now sparse and charred. Miles away, the green of trees appeared out of the mist nearer the mountains.

  “You’ve gotten us lost, haven’t you?” one of the men grumbled.

  I lifted my chin. “No, not at all. It’s simply a matter of where the Chiramantepjin people now reside. You can’t expect them to live in the exact same place after seven years.” Especially if their climate had changed.

  “Fourteen years,” the captain corrected under his breath.

  Indeed, I kept forgetting about the difference in time. Hyperjumps took seconds, but traveling to those launch points took over a year to get to from this world.

  Meriwether lent me his hand as I stepped over a charred log. When he skidded on a slick patch of ice, I suspected he was more apt to need assistance over the rugged terrain than I. The men continued to grumble about my assertions.

  “If I might be so bold,” Charbonneau said. “Lord Klark reported that the savages left on this planet died long ago. All that remains is their ruins. What the first U.W.A.
, United Worlds of America, surveyors witnessed were modern colonists posing as natives in an attempt to assert a claim on the planet for their own. The British Empire of Planets has run these common criminals off the planet.”

  I frowned. The Jomon weren’t actually natives or aliens, but humans like us who had set out from ancient Japan in the first era of spaceflight millennia ago.

  Meriwether looked to me with a question in his green eyes. His perfectly shaped lips parted as if to dispute this, but I linked my arm through his, drawing his attention. I gave the slightest shake of my head. Even when cross, as he was now, he was unequivocally handsome. So much so that he was often accused of genetic modifications and surgeries. I knew I should have felt pleased to know he was my betrothed, yet I could only feel unsettled at our impending marriage. It was a feat in itself that I had delayed marrying for this long.

  Captain Ford scratched his straggly gray beard and nodded whence we came. “I say we go back to the ship and land elsewhere.”

  Meriwether bit his lip, the gesture making him look even more boyish and inexperienced. “Well, um, I suppose we could do that.”

  “We need to find a river or a body of water,” I said. “That’s where you’ll find red crystal ore.”

  “Indeed, splendid idea. Let’s do that from the ship,” Meriwether said, no doubt attempting to please us both.

  The air chilled as we headed back. One minute it was cool and balmy, nothing a cloak and bonnet couldn’t handle. If anything, the exercise along the steep valley trail made me insufferably hot. Storm clouds gathered in the sky and roiled above us, the air turning icy and wind picking up. Snow fell thick and dense so that within minutes we could scarcely see a few feet in front of us.

  Charbonneau lagged behind and I placed an arm around him to keep the feeble old man from falling over in the wind.

  “We have to hail the ship to retrieve us!” Meriwether shouted over the howl of wind.

  The falling snow scattered the signal to our ship and we couldn’t get word to the captain’s mate onboard. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong did.

  In a matter of minutes, we trudged through large drifts and my petticoats and skirt were soaked, weighing me down. We huddled together for warmth. The more we walked, the surer I felt we traveled in the wrong direction. I pulled my cloak more tightly around me and tucked my freezing fingers under my arms. One of the men lost his bowler hat in the wind.

  When I heard the distant half howl, half growl of the chiramantep, a giant bear-like beast, I knew we were not just in danger of the weather, but predators. Another howl came, this time closer, and another on the other side. They were surrounding us and closing in fast. A large shape thundered past us on the right. Through the haze of the thick snow, a bright blue creature rushed closer. Atop was a rider.

  A mixture of terror and hope alighted in my heart. Lord Klark assured me all indigenous people were dead, but I had known these people were survivors. His immense mining ships might not have had problems on the planet, but smaller, independent vessels were often mysteriously destroyed while planetside. I had suspected tribes still existed.

  I now had a job to do. My true job, not as guide, but as translator.

  One of the men fumbled for his gun. I could thank the cold for numbing our fingers, else he might have been quicker. Already the air smelled of ozone as they powered up the laser guns.

  “Don’t shoot!” I screamed and waved my hands frantically to get their attention. If anyone was going to help us in a snowstorm it would be one of the native people who knew the land.

  “Lower your laser muskets,” Meriwether shouted.

  The riders circled, eyeing us warily. These chiramantep were far larger than any I had ever seen. And was it my imagination, or did their protruding incisors and hefty tusks look more lethal? The riders were bundled in green and purple furs, obscuring their features. I spoke in the native tongue, or what I remembered of it. “We have come seeking the tribal leaders for trade and friendship.”

  The deep gravelly voice of an old man said in the Jomon tongue, “Friends do not start conversations with weapons.” He nodded to one of the other bundled figures in purple and green. “What say you, Yoshirou?”

  The whistle of the wind carried away the other man’s words, though the anger in his tone was not lost. The voice of a female warrior spoke out next. “What new diseases do these ‘friends’ bring us? Better to be rid of them now before they breathe their sicknesses on us.”

  My voice rose, high and frantic. “We’re vaccinated. We’ve cleansed ourselves. And we bring gifts of medicine in our ship.” Not that we had much in the way of vaccines with us at the moment.

  “What are you saying?” Meriwether whispered.

  I shook my head at him.

  The warriors bickered for a long moment before the old man leading the party silenced them. “Give us your weapons and we will keep our chiramantep from gorging on your entrails,” the warrior said.

  Dare I repeat his words and invoke the hot-headed wrath of our party? In the time it would take for the men to shoot, the beasts would go into a blood frenzy and eat everyone.

  I had learned long ago some words were better left untranslated. I bowed my head and spoke with the monotone used for polite, formal speech. “Pardon our rudeness. Please wait but a moment for me to explain and our party shall be happy to comply.”

  To the party, I said, “A gesture of friendship is needed. I advise you to lay down your arms.”

  The men shifted uneasily. A gust of wind blew against us. Snow found its way under my bonnet and collar. I shivered and ducked my head from the wind.

  Meriwether eyed the natives. “Is that truly wise?”

  “For crying out loud, I’m freezing my arse off,” the captain said. “Whatever you decide, lad, decide it before my balls go blue.”

  Meriwether laid down his laser musket. His men eyed the Jomon warily. Old Charbonneau followed suit. It was the captain, though, who would determine our fate. Lord Klark’s men were far more likely to follow the direction of a captain they had worked with than Meriwether’s. Slowly, Captain Ford crouched down. He kept his eyes on the bundled figures as he lowered his laser pistol. I thought the rest of them might heed my advice.

  One of the chiramantep jerked its head forward and sneezed, a ferocious sound the men were surely unaccustomed to. I opened my mouth to explain, but Mr. Murray leveled his laser musket at the beast and fired. A pulse of blue light shot from the weapon.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Meriwether slammed into me, knocking me into the frigid snow. He shielded my body with his. He shouted something, but what he said I couldn’t tell over the droning buzz of laser fire and the roars of beasts and men.

  The chiramantep snarled all around us, enraged. Bursts of light exploded above. Hearing the crunch of bones and the screams of men, I squeezed my eyes shut. Death by giant blue fuzz-beast was not the way I wanted to go.

  The chiramantep growled and snorted for a long while before they sounded under control. My heart thundered in my ears as the growls and grunts died down. The only sound left was Meriwether panting in my ear. His arms shielded my face, cocooning me in warmth.

  “Are you well? Did you get hit?” Meriwether asked.

  “Get up,” a rough voice said in Jomon tongue.

  A rider hauled Meriwether to his feet. Crimson puddles stained the snow. One of the chiramantep buried its face in a man’s entrails. A flap of human skin hung off the tusk of another. Old Charbonneau stood at spear point, hands raised. His face was as pale as the snow around us. The captain sat on the ground, holding his arm. From the charred sleeve, I took his injury to be a laser wound from one of his own men. I felt like I was outside of myself, watching a holo on a screen of someone else. All this death couldn’t be real. Only when I realized I sat in a puddle of someone’s blood did I move to scoot out of it.

  My stomach clenched but it was Meriwether who vomited. The Jomon swore and stepped back.
>
  One of the Jomon lay dead in the snow, another injured. The cerulean blue of chiramantep blood and the red of men’s blood marred the beasts’ pelts. I could now see they had numbered seven to our sixteen, though their beasts had been the faster and more ferocious.

  One of the chiramantep snapped its jaws and moaned in bloodlust.

  If only I had prepared the party for what could happen. If only I had told them more about the chiramantep and the Jomon on the voyage. Lord Klark had warned me what might happen if I shared what I remembered of my past. He’d been right. They scoffed and laughed at what I had told them. My pride had been too hurt to try again.

  The Jomon searched the men, confiscating laser pistols, blades and electronics. A female rider nudged one of the bodies with her leather boot. Satisfied he was dead, she appropriated his coat and bowler hat. They bound the hands and feet of Meriwether, Charbonneau and Captain Ford. No one paid me any mind. I sat, shivering in the blanket of white falling over me. I wanted to let the snow envelop me until I became invisible to them, but I knew the lives of the others depended on my skills.

  “What will you do with us now?” I asked. “Do you intend to punish us for the folly of the man who started the fight? It was not our will to create bad blood between our peoples. He didn’t understand—”

  “We do not kill unarmed elderly and children,” the female warrior said.

  I looked to the captain and Charbonneau. I supposed they were the old men.

  Meriwether’s eyebrows shot up, his face looking more boyish and naïve than ever. “What did she say?”

  I shook my head at him. I addressed the head of their party. “What will you do with us?”