Asimov's SF, July 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “No, no, nothing like that. It's . . . Well, to be honest, I could do with a little advice.”

  Jennifer and Lucia studied their lodger's glowing face. They rather liked him, even if he was from the Agency. They appreciated the fact that he had learned to speak Luto, the settlers’ language. They liked the way he showed respect to Jennifer's age and did not call her by her first name, as most Agency people did without even asking. They even quite liked the way he looked. Pink and spiky though he was, he was also big and broad-shouldered, and he stood nearly a head taller than the average Lutanian man. “I'd give him one, no trouble at all,” had in fact once been the verdict of Lucia, during one of their periodic sexual audits of their male lodgers. (It did not seem that way to Stephen, but Lucia was actually younger than him, though already a mother with three children.)

  “Is it a girl, maybe?” asked Lucia, “a girl that you'll have to leave behind when you leave us?”

  The two of them had often speculated about Stephen's personal relationships, worrying that he nearly always seemed to come straight back from work and spend all evening at his screen.

  “Or a boy, even?” asked Jennifer, attempting to accommodate to the strange cultural mores of Agency people.

  Stephen laughed uncomfortably.

  “Oh no, nothing like that. It's just a few little worries—silly worries, really.”

  “Well, I'll gladly help if I can.” Jennifer was actually rather flattered that an Agency person should think her advice worth seeking. “Just let me and Lucia get dinner sorted, and then I'll make us some coffee and we can go over to the bench where it's quiet.”

  * * * *

  Beyond the yard, on the far side of a low whitewashed wall, was Jennifer's vegetable plot, part of the rich green patchwork of the Lisoba clearing. She and Lucia grew beans here, and peppers and corn and sweet potatoes. A wooden wind-wheel creaked and groaned in the middle of the plot, pulling up water from the huge natural reservoir that lay beneath the forest and dishing it out in spurts into a network of irrigation channels lined with clay that the locals scraped up out of ponds. Beyond the plot was a strip of cleared and slightly raised ground on which stood one of the village's many wooden statues of the god Yava. (He was small and wiry, with a narrow and rather cunning face and a somewhat prominent phallus.) After that came the uncleared forest, into the edges of which the odd stray tomato or bean plant had crept. The Agency had put in a chain-link fence to mark the boundary, and prevent indigenes from wandering in and annoying the people of Lisoba.

  Jennifer's bench was up there next to the carved god. Stephen had often seen her and Lucia sitting over there in the dark when the dishes had been put away, dim shapes, with the silent forest behind them, their voices rising and falling with the characteristic Luto lilt, and the faintly glowing tips of their cigarettes periodically flaring up and illuminating their faces. (The fact that the Lutanians had rediscovered smoking during the three centuries of their isolation was a cause of great distress to the Agency, and was a subject of frequent lectures in the Community Center.)

  “So what is it that's troubling you, Mr. Kohl?” Jennifer asked as they settled on the bench. “I'd have thought you'd be looking forward to going home after three whole years away. Yava knows, I would be.”

  She began to pour the coffee that Stephen had politely carried up on a tray. It was dusk. The big Lutanian sun had already sunk into the dark trees behind them, like a fat dollop of sweet red syrup.

  “Well, yes, I suppose I am.” Stephen said, without enthusiasm, as he took a cup from her. “To be honest, though, my worries are more to do with the transmission itself.”

  “Ha!” Jennifer exclaimed triumphantly, as if winning a long-standing argument. “Well, I can't say I blame you for that! Not in a million years would I let anyone put me in that dreadful machine. Not in a million years. They say it takes you to pieces, beams you out like a radio signal, then puts you together again at the other end.”

  Stephen smiled, amused by her vehemence.

  “No way would I subject myself to that, Mr. Kohl,” Jennifer insisted. “No way at all. My ancestors came here the long way, meaning to stay here for good, Yava rest their souls, and I'm going to stick to that plan.”

  Jennifer touched her forehead, supposedly Yava's doorway into the human soul. Then she tipped three wooden spoonfuls of brown sugar into her coffee, and stirred them in with the handle.

  “But you've done it before, Mr. Kohl, haven't you? You came here by transmission in the first place. I'd have thought that would help.”

  She took tobacco and papers out of the pocket on her apron and began to roll one of her large cigarettes.

  “And I've heard it's quite safe, really,” she said, without much conviction, “however dangerous it seems. As safe as crossing the strait, one of your Agency friends told me.”

  She was referring to the five-mile strait between the flat forested continent in which they were sitting, and the rocky island of Balos, where the Agency had built Lutania's new capital, with its National University, its House of Assembly, and its fine Academy of Science.

  “Not that I've ever done that either,” observed Stephen's landlady, who had never traveled more than twenty miles from Lisoba. “I've got more than enough here to keep me busy, and Balos is a nasty wicked place by all accounts.”

  “It's not the transmission itself,” Stephen said. “It is scary, of course it's scary, knowing that for a while you're gong to be nothing but a signal traveling through the ether, but that's not what's really bothering me. It's . . . it's to do with the memory thing.”

  “Oh yes, I heard about that. People lose some of their memories when they cross over, yes? That other Agency fellow said something about it. “

  Jennifer lit her cigarette and drew on it, lighting up their faces with that same orange glow that Stephen had often seen from the window of his room, looking up for a moment from the numbers on his screen.

  “Yes,” she conceded, “that must feel strange. But then again, people forget things all the time, don't they? And it's not as if you forget your whole life or anything, or forget who you are. Not from what that other man said.”

  “No, that's true.”

  Stephen wondered if he was worrying unnecessarily. It was so pleasant sitting there in the fading light with Mrs. Notuna, and the wooden statue, and the coffee, and the sounds from the village, and the tobacco smoke mingling with the caramel smell of the forest, rotten and sweet all at once.

  “You're right,” he said, “you don't forget your past at all, only the time immediately before the transmission itself. Four weeks before it, at minimum. Five and a half weeks at most.”

  He snatched up a bit of leaf from the ground and twisted it in his hands.

  “To be honest, Mrs. Notuna, it's not the loss of memory as such. It's . . .”

  He tossed aside the leaf and turned to face her.

  “You see, there's a point, forty days before transmission—Day 40 as the Agency calls it—when you know you may not remember anything from then on. And then there's another point, Day 29, when you know for sure that you won't remember anything after that day. Everything you do and think and say, from last thing on Day 29 at the very latest, will be completely erased from your mind.”

  Jennifer grimaced and shook her head.

  “That must feel strange.”

  “Yes. It feels very weird afterward, I can tell you, to know that you were walking and talking and doing stuff, only a short while ago, which you'll never recall, no matter how hard you try.”

  She pulled on her cigarette.

  “You could write things down, perhaps?”

  “Yes, and that's exactly what I did last time. I kept a diary. But when you look at your diary later, it doesn't work like a diary normally does, because it doesn't prompt your memory, not after the cut-off point. It's like you are reading the diary of another person.”

  He was no longer looking at Jennifer. He'd grabbed up that bit of leaf again
and was twisting it fiercely back and forth.

  “And of course . . . Well . . . You don't know if the diary is a complete record, do you? Or whether you left something out.”

  He pulled the leaf in two.

  “So,” began Jennifer tentatively, “are you worried that . . . “

  Stephen interrupted her.

  “What I did last time—and in fact it's what the Agency recommends—was to say goodbye to everyone on Day 40. That way you know for sure that you'll remember the occasion. You wouldn't want a goodbye that everyone can remember but you. And then you go off somewhere where no one knows you until the time for the transmission comes. You take a vacation.”

  Stephen sighed.

  “You actually have to stop work, you see, for legal reasons,” he said with great bitterness, “whether you want to or not.”

  Over at the house they saw the kitchen door open, spilling out a pool of yellow electric light into which stepped Lucia with a pail of scraps. She glanced toward them, curiously and a little enviously, then emptied the scraps into the pigpen and went back inside, closing off the light again as she shut the door behind her.

  “So you did that, did you?” Jennifer prompted. “You said goodbye to everyone on Day 40 and then . . . ?”

  “After that I went off to . . . Well, you wouldn't know the place, of course, but it's a resort by the sea, a good way away from everyone I knew. And, during the part of the time I can still remember, I stayed in a hotel and I swam in the pool, and I watched movies and played screen games, and just, you know, filled up the time.”

  He looked at her. She exhaled a cloud of smoke and picked off a strand of loose tobacco from her lower lip, but she didn't speak.

  “I can remember all the way up to Day 29,” said Stephen. “Up to that point I remember everything just as well as you'd expect to remember a vacation that happened three years ago.”

  Jennifer nodded, although vacations as such were outside her experience.

  “And I remember,” Stephen said, “I remember the first few hours of the morning of Day 29. The first few hours but nothing after that. My diary says that I carried on doing the same kind of things for the rest of that day and for all the days afterward, right up to Day 1—swims in the pool, beers, movies, screen games—but I don't remember. I don't remember a thing.”

  Jennifer watched him.

  “Well, what else would you have done?” she asked.

  “I don't know. I really don't.”

  He rubbed his hands over his big raw face.

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Notuna. Us Agency folk must seem a funny lot to you Lutanians. We fret about things that you don't worry about at all. You're right. People forget things all the time. There's really nothing so unusual about it.”

  “No,” said Jennifer, “we all forget. But perhaps you are . . .”

  Stephen stood up.

  “I appreciate the chat,” he told her. “I'll let you get on now. There's a report I need to get finished while there's still time.”

  “Well, if you're sure you've had all the talk you needed.”

  Jennifer watched him as he made his way back to the house. Then she shrugged and began to roll another cigarette.

  * * * *

  Five days before Day 40, Stephen met another indigene on his way home from work. It was a small one, all by itself, squatting right next to the road and playing with two short pieces of stick. Its skin was piebald, pink and light grey. It didn't even glance at him until he was only ten or fifteen yards away, then it looked up suddenly, though seemingly without the slightest surprise or alarm. The Agency biologists said that indigenes could sense the electrical activity in a person's brain from fifty yards at least.

  “Go away!” growled Stephen.

  He took a run at the creature, not really meaning to chase it, but hoping to give it a fright.

  It snatched up its sticks and scampered off a few yards, holding them protectively against its chest.

  “Fence head,” said his own voice inside his brain. “Ha ha. Fence head.”

  This angered him. He went after it, and the indigene set off ahead of him, sometimes running, sometimes skipping, sometimes leaping like a springbok with both legs together.

  “Yeah, go on! Clear off into the bloody forest!” gasped Stephen as he pounded after it.

  It was way too fast for him and it knew it, for it stopped near a pond and stood there watching his heavy-footed, panting pursuit.

  “Ha ha. Fence head. Scared,” said the voice inside his head.

  Then the indigene dived into the pond.

  There was no sign of it when Stephen came gasping up to the water's edge. The pond was clear and empty. The creature must have swum through one of the hidden channels that linked the ponds together.

  (In truth the so-called continent formed by the forest was not really solid land at all, but a kind of vast mangrove that covered several million square miles of Lutania's shallow freshwater ocean. This fact was not immediately apparent because most of the water was roofed over, so to speak, by a dense network of roots, alive and long-dead, overlaid in turn by compost which had built up over many thousands of years to create a dry floor thick enough to cultivate, and to build houses on, and to lay metalled roads.)

  Stephen sank down into a clump of soft white moss. Slowly his agitation subsided and his heart rate settled. And he was surprised to find that he didn't sink into despondency, but rather into a rather delightful sense of well-being. He was struck by what a beautiful and peaceful spot it was out here by the pond. The water was crystalline, the moss soft and bright, the air silent and still, the sun still high enough in the sky to pour down light into this opening in the forest and set it apart from the somber aisles of tree trunks all around it, so that it seemed a kind of sanctuary. Stephen felt he could happily stay here forever, if only the sun wouldn't set and his belly wouldn't ask to be fed. He wondered why he had never explored these ponds in all these past three years, only observed them from the road.

  There was another pond not far off, and he made his way to it. Farther from the road, this new pond seemed even more beautiful than the first one, but another still lovelier-looking one beckoned from deeper in. This pond was bigger than the other two, a small lake almost. On impulse he stripped and plunged in. The cool mineral-rich water was wonderfully refreshing. He dived down and thought he made out the tunnels leading away under the trees, linking this pond up to all the rest. (So what if there were indigenes swimming around down there? What harm would they do him after all? What evidence was there to suggest they would do him harm?) He swam up and down. He did some somersaults and rolls. He lay and floated on his back, looking up at the rose pink Lutanian sky. Then he hauled himself out to lie naked on the moss.

  * * * *

  He was wakened by a slight chill on his skin. Some time must have passed, for the sun was too low to shine down into the opening in the trees, and the pond, like the rest of the forest, was in shadow His first thought was that somehow this made it still more beautiful and he sat for a while daydreaming in the dim light with his legs in the water, until finally coldness made him dry himself down and get his clothes back on.

  Then he started to wonder if he knew the direction back to the road. The other ponds were no longer visible to use as landmarks, and he realized he couldn't remember where he'd been standing in relation to the road when he'd laid his clothes on the ground.

  He had a moment of pure dread. Which way was the road? He had no idea. He'd be lost in the forest during the Lutanian night, when the indigenes and other creatures woke and began their hunt for food. He began to curse. And an old voice inside him captured his thought-stream, almost as the goblins did. You're a fool. You can't look after yourself. You can't get anything right.

  “Get a grip on yourself, you idiot,” he said out loud to himself. “All you've got to do is look for the sun.”

  Ten minutes later, he was safely back on the road. He felt rather ashamed of his moment of panic, co
mparing himself unfavorably with more competent people who he imagined would never be so foolish: Leader Wilson, Jennifer Notuna, and even Helen Fu, who remembered details about other people that he would forget at once, and had worked so hard these last three years to help him join the life of the Station.

  He strode forward briskly, anxious to get back to Lisoba as quickly as possible, and to the desk in his room.

  * * * *

  But when he turned on his screen, he found it impossible to concentrate on his current task, which was analysis of the effectiveness of the Agency's literacy program.

  He began instead to go through the diary that he'd kept before his last transmission.

  * * * *

  May 30th. Day 39: Got up. Had boiled egg for breakfast. Played chess for one hour then swam in pool. Watched movie King Kong (4th remake): quite enjoyed it, crap but fun. Went for walk down to beach. Had omelet and fries for lunch, and overheard couple at the next table talking about a young bar girl who was murdered here a few weeks back. Head beaten in with a spanner, apparently. There's quite a lot of crime here, the guy was saying, but most of it is never solved. Thirty thousand tourists pass through here every week, and a lot of the people who work here are illegal migrants, so it's hard to keep tabs on who is actually here, never mind who is doing what. And anyway the locals prefer to hush crime up, if possible, so as not to put visitors off. Apparently that dead girl never even made the local news.

  Stayed in restaurant for a bit reading a boring book, then gave up, tossed the book, and came back. Quick dip, then reread briefing documents on Lutania and worked on Luto for a couple of hours. Not much point of course if I turn out to forget all this, but I probably won't, not this early. Very tired for some reason. Chicken for dinner. Two beers. Played Solo Agent for three hours. Watched most of a porn movie on TV—girl with green hair and huge boobs who liked threesomes—don't know why. Too tired and bored to think of something better to do, I guess.

  I wish they'd have let me do some work.

  Just about awake enough to write this. It's only 10.30 but can't keep eyes open any more.