Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  Lindy stared at him. “Toby Carmichael,” she declared.

  He eyed her. “Yes?”

  “And he is—” She paused leadingly.

  “Our very own tight-assed prig stationmaster?”

  Lindy smiled. “Just checking.”

  Jake stretched his arms, and instantly, deeply, profanely regretted it.

  “Try to keep still,” she chided.

  “Next time warn me.”

  Lindy snorted. “I would, if I thought it would do any good.”

  “The station?”

  “The station…” Her face creased. “But you knew your name this time—that is, you know you’re Jake. And you remember Toby.”

  “Yes,” Jake said. “Of course I know my name. I know—” For a terrifying moment, his mind was a wide, tranquil dune, and the brief pleasure he’d felt in seeing, naming, knowing Lindy fled. He closed his eyes and gripped the sheet, willing himself to stay calm. Jake, Jake, Jake. My name is Jake, I know my name. Jake. Jake.

  Jacopo Jeong. She’s Lindy. I know Carmichael.

  Faces swam before him, and he didn’t recognize any of them. And then—

  It came back. The wild rush. Hoisting Con with strength he didn’t know he had, dragging them both to the surface through a rattling underground maze that he followed with his hand against the alien walls, letting them guide him through the alien woven into his DNA. Then back to the pod, and the harrowing, bizarre flight into space with Con at the helm: sickening weightlessness, pale stars blooming behind his eyelids, an eruption of hazy, bluish-grey light enveloping them, thundering over them in violent, nauseating, unmooring pulses, Con laughing. Further back: he remembered the thing in the cave, feeding on him and on Con. His last memory of Rebecca. Her hand on his. The descent, the glowing trails of light, the anger, the serum. The pitch and roll of the station floor under his feet.

  Yes, he remembered. He could see everything, and it was so damn joyful, so liberating, that he gagged into the basin Lindy had so thoughtfully placed in his lap.

  She held it under his chin while he shuddered through dry heaves. Then she wiped his face, sterilized the basin under an acoustic station, and resumed her place beside his bed.

  “Thank you,” he managed to croak. “Con?”

  “He’s all right. Just ease, now.”

  Ease. He was in the Harmon’s sickbay. Lindy’s fingers were in constant motion: filling vials, tapping on a scanner tablet, piling and dividing up individually wrapped packages of KO. If he hadn’t been so unsteady, he’d have thought she was packing up for a mission.

  He gripped the stiff sheet tightly and let himself sink inward. “Could I have—” He was thirsty. He licked his lips. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. “I’d like—I need—”

  Lindy produced a container and brought the straw to his lips. Bless her. He drank.

  “I may as well tell you again now. It goes against my better judgment, but…” She sighed, and she looked older and more worn than ever. “The station hit Selas at four thirty-five. Griffin managed somehow to get the two of you into space before the impact devastated the surface.”

  “The station.” The station was gone. He could remember that. His prison and his island. For a moment he was divided between memory and present: he could sense fury and grief, could almost still feel them welling inside him, but it faded. Perhaps the station’s destruction had also destroyed the part of him that loved it and needed it. Although that love and need could have been cultivated by the Leech. Why not? Contented food was tasty food. What other memories were Leech-created, Leech-cultivated, he wouldn’t know. He didn’t want to think about that.

  In any case, the memory of the station was nearly painless, his emotional connection neatly excised. Goddamn it anyway. “Devastated, huh?”

  “You’re not well enough yet to snark,” she warned. “But yes. It was unexpected.”

  Jake tried another experimental stretch and hissed as a bolt of pain engulfed his side. “Okay, I can be serious. What’s the next move? The Gov Board will want reparation. Do we have to go down there again?”

  He saw himself climbing into a hatch. His feet dangled over the edge of an abyss, and the darkness silvered into a memory of filthy mist, of grasping, elusive hands of myriad things that tore into him, all shifting faces and vague teeth. They grew fat as he waned. He became nothing, a skin of flesh on the floor of a bright anonymous room. No, he couldn’t go down there again, he couldn’t. In case you wondered, Doctor. That thing might still be there, and I can’t. He pressed his hand into his side. What’s to stop it from coming up here to get me?

  Lindy clicked her tongue. “You’re going to make a mess of yourself.”

  “Is that thing still down there? It was Leech, did I tell you it was Leech?”

  “Yes.” Lindy’s forehead settled into an ominous new network of wrinkles. “You may have mentioned that once or twice. And Griffin, too.”

  “Do we have to go down there again?”

  She didn’t answer him immediately. She looked down and ran a straightening hand over her medical tray. Then she picked up a med satchel. Warning chimes began to clang in Jake’s head. “Lindy? What aren’t you saying?”

  She packed the piles and rows of patches and powders and glass vials into the satchel, snapped it closed.

  “What are you doing?” Jake watched as she carried the satchel to the far side of the room, and returned with fresh vials, fresh measuring kit, fresh sacks of medicine. A long mission, clearly. “Lindy?”

  “No,” she said at last. “We won’t go down there again, the things, as you call them, are dead or gone, and that’s the least of it.”

  “Tell me the most of it, then.”

  “You just woke up. This is the most lucid you’ve been and I’m not going to jog that just because you’ve got a wild hair to know everything instantly, as usual. And Santos wants to do your briefing.”

  “When you said ‘devastated,’ you meant—?”

  “Devastated,” she muttered. “Razed. Destroyed. Gone.”

  “Gone?”

  Lindy sighed. “Selas is gone. Selas and the station with it.”

  The warning bells were really jangling now. “Show me.”

  “No. You need to rest—”

  “This isn’t the station,” Jake snapped. “I can see the damn observation portholes from here. Wheel me over, or shove me over, I don’t care. Just let me see.”

  “You are still addled,” she shot back, slapping something cold and prickling into his arm port. “Else you’d remember I’m not your lapgirl. In any case, there’s nothing much to see.”

  Something dark flickered from her hand to his arm.

  —Pretty damn apt if I do say so myself—

  The unbidden, fully formed thought dropped into his mind. His brain reacted by whiting out, and for a moment he was contemplating stars, a dark room with wide windows, Santos, a hot fusing point of electricity first at his temple, then his throat. Then he was jerked back, and Lindy snatched her hand away as if he’d burned her.

  Jake swallowed, and the memory of electric heat, no, of the frygun hitched with his throat. He had been there: the Astrometrics lab, with Santos and Con in their little standoff. Lindy’s thoughts sinking into his skin with a touch, he knew, too. A new species. All of you. Was it true? “You’ve had the serum.”

  She didn’t quite startle. A twitch in her cheek was all he got. “Don’t see how you could know that.”

  “You keep touching me, and I’ll know everything you’re thinking.” The ease with which her thoughts had clicked into him was disturbing, his automatic reaction more so. It felt defensive. Could he build it up, use it to keep her out? Keep anyone out? If she could perform such a transfer with him, it was likely anyone could. He drew away from her.

  “From what I can tell so far, it doesn’t work that way,” Lindy said. For one unpleasant moment, he was sure she’d seen his immediate thoughts, that they were seeping into the air for anyone to
take. But no, obviously, she was answering him. Idiot. “It’s dependent on physical contact. How fine a point that is, I’m not yet sure. Skin to skin is a certainty, though. Ten times out of ten. And there’s a metabolic consequence.”

  “How so?”

  “Prolonged connections send the endorphins skyrocketing, but sap the hell out of our energy and nourishment levels. Too much exercise. An odd price to pay for healthy, standalone immune systems.” She shook a fluid patch. “There’s no effective treatment or universal blocking method yet, so we’re avoiding excessive contact and keeping nourished. Reasonable pre-serum behavior, really.”

  “What about…” Jake drummed his fingers against his belly. “What I just did? Just now?”

  “I did see—feel something just now. Briefly. Until you slammed the door, so to speak. You seem to be particularly adept at that.”

  Like a child, bratty and crude. But Jake felt comforted. It was nice to have some sort of block. “It feels reflexive. But does it have any effect on the energy loss?”

  “Lessens it some, judging by your levels.” She tapped lightly at his neck, and he flinched before he realized she was touching a monitoring sensor patch. “Mayhap you can teach the rest of us. I’d like to keep some stock in fluid patches. And I’m having a hard time trying to keep my, ahem, broadcasts to a minimum. As you see. Even gloves aren’t entirely effective.”

  The rest of us… “When did you take it?”

  “After you went down to the surface.” Lindy stuck the patch against his neck. “You can ease. I won’t lay a finger on you again without your say-so.”

  She seemed to be telling the truth. But if she could enter his mind, change things, couldn’t she change his perception of the truth, too?

  Lindy looked down at him with an irritable expression, so familiar, so annoying, and he made the choice. Trust. “But you are going to let me out of here. Eventually.” Jake rolled toward her on his side and let his back grumble for a while. His legs felt odd, heavy.

  “Sooner than I’d like,” Lindy allowed. “Will you stop that? You’ll heal faster if you’d stay still.”

  “You should probably strap me down, then,” Jake said. It was comfortable, barking back and forth with her. At this rate, he’d regain his composure in hours. He tried to ignore the cold irrational lump in his throat, and injected more lightness into his tone. “Give me some variety—what’s the rest of my damage? The stuff I can do something about, I mean.”

  “Your implant fritzed, but it’s operating in the green again. For now.”

  “My chip.” Your technology is fallible, whispered the thing in the cave, and Jake bit down and willed it away.

  “Yes, it’s fine. For now.” He didn’t like the way she repeated that. But before he could ask, she continued, “Your leg, on the other hand…” She fixed him with a beady stare. “Why, why, why in the hellish circles did you take off the brace?”

  “I—” He hadn’t needed it. And his pain wasn’t debilitating, not by a long sight. “It felt fine. Fixed, or healed or whatever. From the serum.”

  Lindy banged something on the table. “When you are head of medical, then you can make decisions about what is fine, fixed, or healed.”

  Jake looked down at himself, but he saw nothing but tangled sheets. He reached around tentatively for sensation in his body, of the bright hot burning in his knee and belly and back and hands, and it was a memory, an isolated hell compared to the achiness that covered him now. In fact, his leg, completely unresponsive, lay limp like a log. How had he not noticed this? He rolled onto his back again.

  Sighing, Lindy drew back the sheet for him.

  His left leg seemed shrunken and hairy in the dim light. But at least it looked recognizable. In contrast, his right leg was lost in a mess of metal and polymerine; Jake couldn’t see exactly where flesh ended and the new brace began. “Another immobilizer boot?”

  “No,” Lindy said. “Those are temporary. This one is permanent. It should fit just dandy—”

  “What!”

  “The damage was too extensive. Were you running a marathon down there?”

  “It wasn’t a stroll.” He caught another memory blip of dragging Con up through the cold veins of tunnels, a wrong turn, the frosty walls that responded to his mind and touch. Up and out, he’d thought. It had worked. Unless they were still there, deep underground Selas while Leech lapped up their minds with its languorous mouth. Jake stared hard at the confusion of his leg. “You were the one who said I should go, if I recall correctly.”

  “You don’t. Shockingly. I said you had to go to Astrometrics, to help. Santos sent you down to the planet. With your agreement, she says.”

  Down we go, then. There’s no place I’d rather be. “I’m not denying that. What about surgery?”

  “I did do surgery. Why else do you think you still have pieces of your leg instead of a stump? Damned difficult, considering.” She swept a hand over the sickbay. “Not exactly a first-class facility. If you want to walk, sonny, you need the implant brace.”

  “Implant? A permanent implant brace?”

  “It’s controlled by a remote connection to your chip.”

  Jake covered his leg. Then he threw the sheet back again. It didn’t feel like much. But when he extended a finger and prodded the silver casing, no buzz of containment met him. The polymerine capping joined his skin in an uneven line, and when he flexed slightly, it gave and fell smoothly as the flesh beneath it. His knee—gone—was invisible beneath a burnished metal joint which extended in a metal and polymerine cuff partway over his calf. His foot was still there, an awkward knobbled popsicle at the end of all the machinery. He tried to wiggle his toes. After a moment, they wagged back at him.

  “Minor delay,” Lindy murmured. “We can smooth that out, I bet. And I didn’t have to disconnect any nerves to brace it.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “It’s different. It’s a lot to deal with.”

  “Right.” His laugh came out squirrely. “Right. Variety.”

  “If you say so.”

  If he didn’t say so, he was going to crack his seams. Ease, Jake. All right. “This is quality tech.”

  “Extra stuff. Aboard the ship. A bit of decent tech here, surprisingly.” Lindy pursed her lips. “They apparently like variety, too.”

  He didn’t want to look at it anymore—not it, his leg. So he covered his leg again with the sheet. He carefully rolled over to his other side, and froze.

  There were three cots crammed into the meager space between his bed and the ship’s wall. Three still figures, three refilling bags of fluid, three sets of monitors blinking silent green lights. In the farthest bed lay Kai Murakami, his face pale and unshaven. In the next, Toby Carmichael. His big chest rose and fell, inexorable and reassuring, while his slack, weary face slept through thundering symphonies, planetary war, supernovae.

  Nat lay motionless on the cot nearest Jake.

  Her eyes were closed. Her hands lay limp against the white hospital sheets, slim and starkly delicate in contrast to the heavy leather straps that bound her wrists to the cot frame.

  Back rushed the dull digging blow of the wrench, and the feel of vacuum on his flesh, and Mick and Mei drawn into space, sad frozen drops in the bucket. Mick and Mei, his friends gone, no last words for either of them. He swallowed, and stared at Nat’s still face as it blurred, cleared, blurred through his tears. But he didn’t want to roll back over. Staying where he could see her, that sounded like a good plan.

  “Too much variety can be exhausting,” he amended, after he’d managed to stop weeping, as Lindy made a fixated rearrangement of his blanket. “Put me back under.”

  “Oh, Jake, do gather your britches.”

  “That’s no good—you’ve stolen them again.” For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of greyish sparkling mist cloaking Kai’s recumbent body, but he blinked, and it wavered away. “I’ve got a better idea, you just kill me now.”

  “Sad sack.”

/>   “What happened to Kai?”

  “I’m not sure. Something with Leech. Santos seems to think she’ll find some evidence in the lab bins.” Lindy walked over and stood between their beds. She brushed a hand over the underside of Nat’s wrist, absently readjusted the IV in her arm port. “Physically they’re recovering. Nat, too, since you asked.”

  Mick’s dull eyes. Mei’s limp form. If I cared about her, I would have. “Is there a reason you keep leaving me alongside the violently unhinged?”

  Lindy skewed her mouth in frustration, but she made no comment. Instead she activated the scanner and read aloud the resulting scroll of data. “Ulnar fracture, stabilized. Contusions along the right side of the face, on the fingers and wrists, all throughout her body, really. Specific bruising on her left shoulder. Looks to be a small handprint. The bruise is older than the others.”

  He didn’t have to listen. Jake closed his eyes and tried to stuff his ears with the ambient noise around them, the clicking of sickbay machinery, the soft whuff of heating and atmo filtering through the walls.

  Lindy’s toneless recitation carved through it as neatly as a scalpel. “Simple skull fracture.”

  Con’s fingers threaded through Nat’s hair. The ripe thump of her head against the cargo bay floor. Hot pressure blisters spotting Jake’s arms. He would still remember the sounds and the wrench after the blisters and bruises had faded. He gritted his teeth. “I don’t care. She tried to kill me.”

  “Yes,” Lindy said, shifting back to her customary cantankerousness. “And Mei Chen did her damnedest to kill Toby after she smacked Nat around. Was that Mei? Was she capable of that? From what Santos says, hells no. She was under the influence of those things.”

  “How can you know for sure?”

  “I can’t. But I knew her.” She paused to watch the infinitesimally slow rise and fall of Nat’s chest. When she spoke again, her voice was unrecognizable in its thickness. “I mourn the loss of Mei and Mick. As I would Nat, and you.”

  She cleared her throat, and looked down at the scanner. “As observed, subject shows signs of improvement from earlier state of severe dehydration and general exhaustion, similar to those exhibited by A. Silverman, deceased, Mei Chen, deceased, T. Carmichael, K. Murakami, K. Lindy, R. Santos, and J. Jeong, recovered. Pending definitive lab on blood tests, postulate that cause is same.”