Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  A few shots here, a couple skin-sealings there, and two hours later Lindy at last pronounced him fit to leave the sickbay on limited recognizance. At that point, Jake felt more machine than man with all the struts and staples. And the brace, of course. It was impossible to forget the sleeve of metal and flesh, married too closely to his thigh for chafing. But he could put full weight on the leg. His leg.

  Lindy pressed several packets of gel patches into his hand. “Painkillers. 9000 millies.”

  “That’s too much.”

  “Only if you’re a jackass who doesn’t follow my dose schedule,” she said. “Plus some in reserve, for headaches.”

  Jake frowned. “But Selas is gone. The effect was due to our orbit of the planet, our proximity. And I don’t have a headache.”

  “You will. I’m not yet sure if it’s part of the metabolic consequence.” She shook her head. “But maybe you’re the one lucky star aboard who gets off scot-free.”

  “I am a special star, yeah.”

  He dressed himself carefully in the clothes she’d laid across the foot of his bed: undergarments, thermals, gloves, a familiar grey uniform with worn, well-used clasps. The trousers refused to fit over the leg brace. Over the put-upon clicking of Lindy’s tongue, he borrowed a surgical razor and stripped the seam, then rolled the loose cloth to just above his knee. The socks and boots were less malleable. He stretched out the sock and fit it over his toes and cupped-metal ankle, but the boot wouldn’t go.

  “Here.” From another storage locker, Lindy dragged out a pair of real gargantuans, and together they shoved and wheedled and swore until the right boot slid home. “Good luck getting that off again. Why’d you have to mangle the pants? I could’ve found you bigger.”

  “Aren’t these mine?”

  “No. Yours were shredded all to hell. I cut them off and blazed them.”

  “I figured,” Jake said. “I mean, is this a spare? Of mine?”

  Lindy shrugged. “They were part of the station’s emergency stores. What does it matter?”

  He’d owned three spares. They were the first things he’d bought with credit on the clock, his own credit again after eight years. He’d kept them in his quarters. Each one was identical, if in varying stages of deterioration: long sleeves, low waist, the green patch with DS 2075-5 and 24HM under a golden star worked into the shoulder. The right corner of the patch trailed a loose thread. He lifted it and nipped it with his teeth. The fabric smelled the same.

  Perhaps the metabolic consequence also manifested in maudlin wishful thinking.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  Lindy had laid a pile of small pocket things at the edge of the bed. A new commbud, a familiar, worn-smooth lab wrench. A golden memory gem. Silverman’s memory gem, slightly stained, but still whole. He pocketed all of it. Then he hobbled through the doors into the corridor, and his stomach dropped at the sight of the dark-haired man who leaned against the antechamber wall, waiting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Earth communication center. Incoming alerts station.

  ALERT

  CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM EVENT REGISTERED AT 149:22:13:90^Bx

  LOCATION CONFIRMED: DESIGNATION 1H-24HM (SELAS)

  CURRENT SPACECRAFT LOGGED: 2

  CURRENT OIS LOGGED: 10 (OBJECT CLASS: COMM BUOY)

  COMMUNICATION CEASED WITH FOLLOWING: SELAS STATION, LEAH HARMON, SATELLITES 1A-10Z (REGULAR ORBIT, 1H-24HM)

  PINGBACK SENT

  PINGBACK RETURNED NEGATIVE

  GO TO MANUAL CONTACT ATTEMPTS

  Excerpt: emergency broadcast

  02 November 2242

  Comm buoy relay A-D

  Fringe waystation 1, Eos System

  TC waystation 1, Tau Ceti System

  PE waystation 4, Petel System

  Earth waystation 1, Sol System

  [Archived: United Governance Board communication records, Earth]

  2 November 2242 AEC

  13:39

  Jake pasted a smile on his face. “Rachel change her mind about the escort? Or did I scare her away?”

  “Nah.” Con pushed off from the wall and matched his stride. “Too busy. Redbear didn’t need me after all, so I volunteered.”

  “Lucky me.” Jake bit his tongue to avoid saying anything more. He struggled to remember how wary he’d felt when he was unsure of the extent of his relationship with Con, but it was difficult now that his mind was at heel. Con had inveigled his way back in with Jake—mostly. Why couldn’t Jake do the same? Perhaps such a liaison required peerless paradoxical circumstances to work even once. In any case, he was having difficulty thinking of something to say, which was both unusual and damn unhelpful. “Where are we headed?”

  “Steerage first. Then Observation for briefing with Quartermaster Santos.”

  “But I don’t have anything to stow yet.”

  Con shrugged. “We’ll take care of that.”

  The ship’s corridor was unadorned metal, padded with only the most basic regulation insulators and consequently icy cold. They passed people pushing cartloads or carrying food ration crates, all bundled in sweaters and hats and mittens.

  “The cold’s worst in these outer corridors,” Con explained. “They get really frosty when we start leapfrogging and vaulting. The ship puts most of the heat and energy into the clustered areas in the middle, where the main decks are, where you’ll be. Good design. Helps conserve fuel for the important stuff, and the stellarcore’s tough enough to take the cold in the pauses.”

  “As long as we are, too,” Jake said, shivering. Inside his gloves, his fingers stung with the chill. He called on what he could remember of the Harmon’s layout from a schematic Con had sent him months ago. Inelegant, utilitarian design. Long and bulky, like an old slat of wood, two-bys, scavs called them. “Let’s see. Four decks total, right? And we’re on deck three right now.”

  “That’s right.” Con led the way down a claustrophobically tight inner corridor lit with dim red lighting, past a narrow stairwell labeled with green arrows, through a winding cluster of hatches. “Didn’t know how well you knew this old beast.”

  Jake’s leg was beginning to ache. He tried to put more weight on his left without openly limping, and wondered at himself. He wasn’t a stoic. “Not terribly well. But we’re going the wrong way for steerage, aren’t we?”

  Con gave him a sideways look. “You don’t trust the pilot?”

  “According to your floor plan, the steerage and req holds are right behind sickbay, and I didn’t remember a rabbit warren where the corridor structure should be.”

  “You’re kind of a wiseass, aren’t you?”

  Jake lifted his hands. “I try to fit in wherever I go.”

  Con barked a sharp, artless laugh, and Jake relaxed a fraction.

  “Not likely,” Con said finally. “Not likely.”

  He pulled up short in front of another hatch, this one marked with a green sign: D3-7. “Crew’s relocating to make room for the station supplies. So we’re taking the long way around to keep out of their way.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Con pressed the thumbplate. After a moment, the plate hummed.

  “Restricted access?” Jake asked.

  “Restricted for now.” The door slid open to display the requisitions hold, crammed full of boxes and crates from end to end.

  “That’s a little unwarranted, isn’t it? It’s not as if there’s anywhere for a thief to go.”

  “Like I said. For now.” Con passed him a duffel and then watched with unwavering intensity as Jake loaded it with clothing and boots and a couple of small stores and provisions kits. When he finished, Con cast a shrewd look over his choices. Then he plucked one of the provisions kits and returned it to the req locker.

  “But it’s SOP to have a backup kit,” Jake protested.

  “We don’t have enough stores for that.”

  “We’re what, a crew of forty?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “That’s t
iny. And we’ll restock the req, won’t we? You can take the difference out of my Commonwealth account.” Jake reached for the kit, and Con nearly shut the locker door on his hand. “Christly hells, what?”

  “No good,” Con snapped, his eyes flashing. Then he seemed to deflate, and he looked away. “Sorry. Shipwide orders.”

  “Duly noted, sir.” Jake zipped the bag and shouldered it. Con still wouldn’t look at him, his shoulders and spine now as rigid as those of a fresh Defense space ape. Pestilent fucks, this was awkward, Jake feeling his way through one interaction after another without being too familiar, too knowing and eager. How had Con done it? Eight years pretending to be penpals. Jake would’ve gone crazy. Hells, he was going near crackers now just attempting this. Although his patience levels had never been stellar.

  An understatement, Rebecca murmured in his ear. Forget forests and trees, you’d miss the atom for the nucleus.

  Rebecca? Jake shook his head to clear the sudden intrusion of her voice—a strange statement from her, a memory he didn’t remember—and, in a blink, he realized that, despite the cold, despite the cautions he himself had received from Lindy, Con wasn’t wearing gloves. Hands, wrists, nape of the neck, ears, face, he had all sorts of exposed bits of skin. If the mental connection worked between Jake and Lindy, why not with Con, too?

  He followed Con further aft to steerage, where they stuffed Jake’s duffel into a floor slot. Then back again into a different maze of corridors, silent apart from the soughs and clinks of the ship’s workings, and the quiet creak of Jake’s augmented leg.

  This time Jake made an effort to learn the route. But when he went over it in his head the walls and lights would not fix, not even when he compared it to the floor plan. It didn’t bode well for the supposed happy state of his memory, or the chip. Lindy’s “Fine. For now.” statement was clearer now. He’d go back and have her run another brain scan while he was awake and could verify that whole blithe “operating in the green” thing.

  But that could wait. Getting hold of Con couldn’t. Jake could pretend to be ignorant of the whole mental transference thing. Reach for a hatch handle and grab an arm instead. He could blame it on his leg, which had gone blessedly, ominously numb from the knee up. Another few trips like this around the Harmon, and Lindy would have to give him a cane to keep up.

  Lindy hadn’t mentioned food shortages. But then she hadn’t mentioned much of anything apart from the station, Selas, Marathon, and headaches. And she had been counting meds. Perhaps the Marathon venture had changed into something less fraught. Maybe it was going to be extended into one of those low-budget, “minimal interference” missions. Jake had picked up bits and pieces about them while listening on the comms. The crews returned, of course; averaging ten pounds lighter in weight and possessing shrewd senses of appreciation for luxuries. But they did return.

  They ducked up a narrow set of stairs marked with orange arrows instead of green, onto Deck 2. They zigged through a three-way junction, into a corridor lined with tightly packed passenger quarters and tangles of insulated conduits. The corridor junctions had steadily ascending number markings: D2-5, D2-6, D2-7. At the next turn, the conduit tangles sank into the wall and disappeared, while the passageway ended abruptly in a small flight of stairs, a platform, and a squat hatch at the top.

  The corridor lights flickered, and faded into dim auxiliary glows. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re trying out various ways to conserve energy,” Con said. He vaulted up the stairs.

  Conservation—like the reqs, and Lindy with the pills. They were eking out every last bit of power and supply. Why? Had the Gov Board refused to respond to hails?

  Con stopped in front of the hatch. As far as Jake could see, it was unsecured: no thumbpad, no sealing bolts, no indication of a crossbar, not even an electrified handle. A small, handwritten label had been pasted to the left of the handle.

  Observation.

  Con lifted a hand to the hatch handle, and then hesitated. He looked even thinner than Jake remembered. “Listen,” he muttered. “It’s obvious, I guess, but...” He took a deep breath, rubbed his hands through his hair, and looked past Jake, back down the corridor behind them. “I don’t know you.”

  Jake blinked. “I—yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, it’s obvious you don’t know me.”

  “Dr. Lindy may have told you I was having memory issues,” Con offered stiffly.

  Jake crossed his arms. “You’re having trouble remembering a lot of people, a lot of things? Because the impression I got is that you’re doing all right with the rest of this place. It’s just those of us from the station. And one of us in particular.”

  Con was unruffled. “It’s possible.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “All right.” He shrugged, and his gaze changed from hesitant to direct and challenging. “Yes.”

  “Right. So even though you’ve got no damn idea who I am, you’re still content to lead me around the ship—”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Con interrupted. “Santos has briefed me.”

  “Okay, so you read my dossier, whatever.”

  “I’m not used to taking my information at face value,” Con said. “Especially when I’m in the dark about all of it. And even though I don’t remember the station folks so well, I’m sure I’d remember you. If we were. You know.”

  “If we were, you know, what?”

  “Friends.”

  Ouch. “I guess I’d hope you would, too.”

  Con’s expression shuttered abruptly back into blankness, and Jake felt a surge of familiar annoyance. Thanks to the serum, his brain was open and exposed, a blaring newsreel for anyone who brushed by, a wake-up for Con if he’d just lean a little closer. Maybe Con didn’t want to remember. It was a good way to escape guilt. But then, Jake had never wanted to escape. He’d just wanted his mind back.

  “There’s a way you could know.” Jake stripped off the gloves, and held out his hand. The air in the corridor was colder against his cheeks than his fingers. A handshake. Old-time courtesy, out of style for years. Necessity and caution bred new modes of fashion, the implications of touch fetishized even as they were warned against. Did that make Jake an old-fashioned guy, or a futurist?

  Con didn’t turn a hair. “Look, forget it. We’re busy as hell, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I can’t forget it.”

  “Sorry,” Con said. He smiled slightly at Jake’s open hand, but his blank mask was slipping, Jake could see it. Underneath seethed something raw with tension. “But I don’t want to do that.”

  “I’m not particularly excited about it, either,” Jake admitted. “It felt awful when Lindy touched me in sickbay, and I’m not sure I can stand another invasion like that without—without slamming the door, so to speak.” Was it really an invasion if Jake initiated the mental connection? Perhaps he just had to coax his mind into the mood. He felt the beginnings of a headache branching out under his scalp. Damn Lindy, anyway. “But I’m willing to try. And getting all comradely with you doesn’t seem to have any effect.”

  Why was he doing this? Neither of them was in the mood for another mental trip. He was beginning to sense that, if he pressed any harder, Con would spook. Although that was a joke. Where was there to spook to? Nowhere but space, and the emptiness where Selas should’ve been.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You’re right.” As he pulled his hand back, Con reached out and grasped it tightly. It was like a cord snapping tight, and then

  Con, you idiot, you’re Con.

  —You Science guys don’t get out much, do you?—

  Come on, work with me a little

  —Jake—

  The mental door slammed.

  His stomach rolling unpleasantly, Jake stepped back. The headache he’d felt brewing roared up into reality, the dizzying sense of fundamental wrongness with himself, with Con, with everything stronger and darker than ever. But what was wrong? He was reason
ably whole, in spite of his leg. He was safe. Why did he feel so strange, so out of place?

  He ran his fingers across the crinkly paper of the label. Observation. Natalia Ticonti in her silly séance dress; Nat prancing around the Control floor, her grating, crystalline laugh. Her desperate eyes and ragged mouth. Nat, who would likely wake up on another planet, a handprint on her shoulder. Why was he thinking of her? And of Mei Chen, her dark head pressed into her knees. Sick. She had been ill only two days earlier.

  Small, shattered fragments crowded in on him in a rush: terror in Mei’s eyes, no no no no no, the sharp smell of urine, the fierce rustle in the dark of the infirmary; oh, he remembered. A bloodstained spray of orange hair, bodies drifting limp and ungainly into freezing blackness, stars. Someone standing beside him, someone whose features he couldn’t immediately place before they arranged themselves into familiarity, into Con’s face. Pain and grief and loss.

  Stop it, Jake thought against the loosening jar of the memories. The paper label felt dry and wasted, like old skin. The seasick sensation rushed back, and he clutched at the hatch until it went away. But his thoughts were clear and unbobbled. Go back now. Go back to the sickbay and lie down until you feel better. His head ached like a bruise. Go back now.

  Through the thump in his temples, he saw that Con had recoiled to the hatch door, his face stricken.

  Con wiped his hand down his shirtfront. “Tell me—”

  The hatch bumped gently against Con’s back as it opened. “Oh,” Santos said. “Thank you for bringing him, Con. Will you check in with Dr. Vanna on your way back to the flight deck?”

  “Sure,” Con said faintly. He patted his pockets until he found what he was looking for: a pair of gloves. Avoiding Jake’s gaze, he tugged them on. “I’m bringing her the germinators.” He turned back to Jake. “From the station. Dr. Lashti Vanna’s heading our lab.”

  “For now,” Santos interjected with a meaningful look at Jake. “Until you’re feeling more together. She’s path-bio.”

  A Kai-esque squawk echoed in his memory, and the ship’s floor seemed to shift under Jake’s feet. Fragments of Lashti and Quinn banged around his brain. It feels hungry. Warringers. Pie. Done. It stretched him in two, as if he was remembering someone else’s thoughts, not his own. He reached out to steady himself. The cold corridor wall burned his fingers, and he hurried back into his glove.