Architects of Memory

by Karen Osborne

  “You have to figure out whose side you’re on, Ash, and by that I mean—do you want to live?” Natalie said. “I want to live. I want to be a citizen, and you want to be a citizen, too, even though you’re a dumbass who can’t even negotiate a contract or see her own fucking worth. I just saved your life. With that gone”—she pointed at the alien corpse—“they’ll still need you.”

  At some point, a thousand years ago it seemed, Ash had cared about citizenship. Now it was different; she reached for the crescent in her pocket, and the voices she heard weren’t real, but they were at least something more than alone. Keller’s ghost was something more than alone.

  “Get out,” she spat.

  Natalie’s face flickered with a moment’s uncertainty, before settling back in to a cold, chosen confidence. “I’m going to meet the executives. You’d best smash up the computer if you want that monster’s death to mean anything.” She turned on one heel and strode out.

  Ash found that she could not stand, that the world had gone blue and gold and her body numb. Her knees buckled. She fell to the ground, hitting the concrete floor with a painful shudder, her sickness rushing back in a great wave, her hands barely supporting her weight. When her head stopped spinning, Len was still there, right beside her, his hands helping her to sit, pressing a bottle of water into her lap, telling her that it was going to be okay.

  It was a useful lie on the best of days, but Ash did not imagine she would ever have a day like that again.

  She hauled herself to her knees and tried to push him away. “You should do what she says.”

  Len sat instead, moving close so his shoulder rested an inch from hers, so close Ash could hear the angry clatter of the small bones in his back as he settled in. He tilted the bottle toward her, the clean water sloshing around inside.

  Ash was suddenly all too aware of the blank twist of desert in her mouth, and she snatched it up, tossing him the cap, gulping down a few angry, lukewarm mouthfuls. Down the hall, near the lab, she could hear the clanging of boots, the clamor of excited Auroran voices. “Oh, Arbiter,” one of them breathed, “it’s—it’s—do you know what that is—”

  “Go with her,” she said. “She’ll need you.”

  “She needed me before she—” His eyes flickered toward the dead together, worried at the metal decking with his thumb. “Before. They’ll make her a citizen now, and I’ll never see her again. Ash, I’m sorry—”

  She closed her eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

  “No, listen. I knew she was broken, Ash. I didn’t help her. She said she was fine, and I believed her. I could have—I would have—”

  Ash handed him the bottle. Something small and horrible and angry rattled in her chest, growing louder by the moment. You can save us, it hollered, you can save us, but she couldn’t, could she? She couldn’t save any of them, not the together, not Kate, not herself. She couldn’t even walk out of here on her own power.

  “We’re all broken,” she said.

  He forced out a quiet, incredulous laugh. “A planetoid collapsed on you, Ash. You walked out, and you kept on walking. That would have destroyed anybody else. It would have destroyed me. But you—”

  “Len—”

  “Just listen to me. You don’t give up. You never give up on anything—or anyone. You try, and you try again, for me and for Natalie and for—” His voice went hoarse, and his eyes tipped back over to the dead together. “For them. You’re not broken. You’re not even close. Don’t you know how much I admire you?”

  Her head twisted with surprise. He was looking at her with such compassion, and tears in his eyes—brown eyes, the color of soil and salt and earth, of the deep darkness of a home she’d never known.

  “Maybe I did,” she whispered, “but now?”

  “Well, that’s bullshit,” he responded. He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. “No. Now we help you. What do you need?”

  What do I need?

  She almost didn’t answer. She looked from him to the pile of dead skin and bones that hid the reality of together. Need was a broken word, a fairy tale from a time in her life before she’d entered this room. She’d needed things, once, like love and air and food and light, but sitting here in the tomb of the silent together, in the lair of ashes and lost promises, even breathing was difficult. What was breathing, if she was to rattle about in her own head like a lost child for a blank eternity? She should have died underground years ago, on a death-bound planetoid soaked in corporate sin. She wanted to sit here and let the smothering earth above finish what it had begun.

  She forced air out, in, back out again. Dragged it in. Pushed it out. She did not want to move ever again.

  But the together deserved better.

  “You were right. I need to go there,” Ash said. “Beyond the White Line.”

  He blinked. “The Vai is dead. What’s the use?”

  “If I can talk with them, I can talk with the others,” she explained, her hand working around the fabric of her jacket. She held it tight, like it was real. Like anything on this dull, quiet world was real. “I can talk with their primary node. But there’s a problem. Once I walk out there and give myself back to Aurora, I’ll never see daylight again.”

  He blinked. A knowing quiet settled on his shoulders. “I still have friends in Rio engineering. We’ll get you out. We’ll get you there. You’re strong. You’ll make it.”

  She wiped a tear away. “I’m not,” she said. “That’s where you’re wrong. I didn’t walk away from Bittersweet. They carried me.”

  His arm tightened around her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. We carry each other.”

  She felt something sticky and hot on the palm of her hand, and when she lifted it to see, she found the alien’s milk-silver blood a film on her fingers. The memories of Christopher, of Keller, of the thousand voices, were already fading again, back into her faltering human mind and her shaking, sick body. She turned her head to rest against Len’s shoulder, and his hand rested light and secure against the back of her head, and he stayed there as she cried.

  She cried for the dead aliens, for all her kind and her kin, even after new voices shouted their names in the hallway, and Len slid his arm under her shoulders and took her down the hall toward her uncertain future.

  24

  The soldiers who met Len and Ash at the door to the admin wing wore the bright collar tags of new citizens and the dark blue tactical jackets of seasoned veterans of the Vai war. They were young, like Natalie was young, with strong bodies full of the shaking memory of trauma. Ash shoved her hand in her pocket to put her fingers around the weapon, and it assured her of its presence and attention with a comforting hum.

  They’re not enemies, she assured it. And you can’t help them upload. Shh.

  Glory, the weapon responded, and hummed hot and bright in response.

  Slipping her hand around the weapon felt like the together, felt like the thing she’d wanted all her life, the thing that Natalie had wrenched away from her with a single shot. Explaining what she was missing now—explaining how glory felt—was like trying to drink the ocean or explain the depth of the universe.

  She mourned as she walked.

  Rio’s ordnance staff moved from isolette to isolette with flimsy clipboards, cataloging the weapons and checking the isolettes for security flaws. A few days ago, the sight might have left her overjoyed; the entire Christmas list, packaged up and placed as payment against her desire to live. Now, it made her feel sick.

  A group of well-dressed executives idled on the landing, their polished high heels and diamond-cut jackets glistening bright and violent against the jagged stone walls. Natalie, whose dirt-streaked face, blood-filthy hands, and rumpled jumpsuit provided significant contrast to the executives’ stainless outfits, spoke in an animated fashion with a well-coiffed Joseph Solano and a thin-looking Dr. Julien, wearing a silver coat and slicked-back hair. At the sight, Len’s shoulders stayed compact, keeping small, low, and silent b
eside Ash. Julien saw her coming, and he went red, looking away. He was still afraid. His reaction did nothing to quell the nausea spinning up from her stomach and the memory of the together.

  Ash squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Executives. Shit. She looked like an uncitizen and smelled even worse. Ash took a stabbing breath and rubbed her bloody hands on her pant legs as they approached, but the silver substance had already dried, and came off in small flakes. Bodies. Death.

  Natalie squirmed in her shoes rather than look back at Ash.

  “… a spectacular find,” one of the executives was saying. “A record for any salvage outfit anywhere and done under such difficult circumstances.”

  Mr. Solano cleared his throat. “Indeed, Mr. Stephenson. I’d like to talk with our success stories, please. Get your departments ready to ship all of this to Rio; Dr. Julien, get prepped; you’ll be taking our heroes back to Rio.”

  The executives moved off to survey the carnage; Julien turned away and started making calls. Solano hopped down the stairs, approaching them rather than the other way around, the way it should have been. Natalie waited, her hands clasped behind her, her gun cold in her holster, silent. Solano extended his hand to Len, who shook it, and then to Ash; she refused it with a shake of her head.

  “I’m far too dirty to touch you, sir.”

  Solano gave her a cursory glance, up and down. Disapproval flashed for a moment in the form of pursed lips, before the executive’s face fell back into practiced calm. “Yes, I can see that. You’ve been through a lot, I’d imagine. Well, we’ll make sure all of you get a nice, hot shower on Rio before we put you back to work.”

  Ash straightened. “The weapon’s gone. Sir, after what I just saw, I think we need to set up an expedition to go behind the White Line. Immediately. We can’t wait.”

  Solano cut her off, opening his hand over the expansive cathedral. “We have to ensure and expand Aurora’s future. You need to fulfill your contract.”

  “Mr. Solano, I need to explain to you what I just saw—”

  He crossed the space between them in two quick steps and cut her off again with a cold, half-paternal hand placed on her shoulder. Ash felt a trickling unease building in the back of her throat. “You signed a contract, Ashlan, that says you will give every yes that is asked of you, to every task that is asked of you, no matter how daunting, immediately and without fail. Or are you holding back again?”

  Ash looked over at Natalie. The other woman shuffled her feet, still silent.

  In the cavern filled with the faint, sure promise of so much death—humming, singing, whispering at the edges of her sanity, sounds cartwheeling around exploding stars—the entire concept of citizenship shattered against Keller’s absence, the absence of the together, cold and quiet. Citizenship? The cure? Alone in her shattered mind? All she could see now were quiet days filled with the silence of a stalled world. Cold winters and ashes, the inexorable and malignant slide to a screaming death, and a thousand aching years in between. All of it spent alone—and alone.

  And yet.

  “This is important enough to sacrifice my citizenship, sir,” she said.

  Solano tightened his hand on Ash’s shoulder. “I know you think it is, but let citizens in the know make the decisions. You’ll be briefed on Rio as to your new responsibilities. We have a lot of work to do, and it will be wonderful work. I promise you, Ashlan. If you obey, without fail, we will find her.”

  Find Kate. Her vision blurred. Tears. Ash felt faint. “Of course, sir.”

  “We just need to find out what you can do first, for the sake of the Company.”

  In her memory, the together was singing hymns of glory in oranges and reds, shades of fire in her veins, a phoenix pyre for Keller and the hundred thousand colonists who had died in the shuttlebay. For the death of worlds, of battlefields, of civilizations, of grand starships traversing the darkness between stars, bringing control or death at the tips of her fingers. What I can do. Fly pods? Operate mining machines?

  Somehow, Solano was still talking. “Captain Keller would be proud of you. You’ll be helping us become a market leader. We’ll be able to expand our influence throughout the Outer Reaches and maybe into the halls of the Inner Worlds itself,” Solano said.

  His words finally made sense.

  “You want me to use the moleculars,” she said.

  “Your presence will be enough of a deterrent, for now, I believe,” Solano said.

  Ash’s stomach bottomed out, and the words started tumbling from her mouth before she could stop them. “I’m not a weapon,” she said. “I don’t care what I signed. You don’t know what happened in there, you don’t know what she did.” She stabbed her finger in Natalie’s direction. “And if you did, would you care? Oh, you’ll start with the aliens, and that’ll be justified because of the war, what they did in the war, and you won’t for one second think that wrong can run both ways. And then you’ll justify using it on humans, using me on humans, and my blood after I’m dead, because I’ve seen this bullshit before. It’s this whole project, it’s Wellspring sending me into the tunnels all over again, every single inch of it—and I can’t live like that. I can’t, Mr. Solano.”

  She was breathless at the end of it, breathless and shaking. Solano’s mouth twisted. “You’ll live any way we ask you to. You have Auroran lives to pay for, indenture.”

  “You were the one that sent me down here without doing enough research,” Ash said. “Those lives are on your conscience.”

  Solano cast a glance at the stairs, then beckoned Natalie closer. “You negotiated for that privilege.”

  Len moved to her left, a worried presence. “Ash, maybe we should talk about this.”

  Ash wrenched her shoulder away from Len’s touch, losing her balance. It was hard to keep stable when there were so many stars exploding in her peripheral vision, she thought, so many orchestras screaming angry, low bass crescendos underneath what everyone was saying. After a moment with her hands clutching her head, driving down the noise with angry whispers, she was able to speak again.

  Mr. Solano stared at her.

  “What happens to me when I get back on Rio?” she asked.

  “Ashlan, stop,” Natalie whispered.

  Ash pointed at Natalie. “Don’t you even talk to me.”

  “Dr. Julien, attend to your indenture,” Solano snapped, rubbing his temples. He waved Natalie to his side; as the younger woman stepped down, she fingered the brand-new citizens’ tags on her collar, but did not smile. Her eyes flickered over to Ash for the barest of seconds before she turned her back.

  “What if I said I could make peace?” Ash said. “That I could stop a second Vai war before it started?”

  Ash heard an uneasy silence and pressed, anger pushing spittle past her lips. “Is it because the war was good for you? Because despite all the people that died, Aurora still fucking won market share?”

  Solano was already halfway across the courtyard.

  Julien stepped forward and cleared his throat, his eyes looking nervous under a curtain of straight blond hair. “Come on, indenture, ah … let’s get you to the shuttle.”

  Ash stepped forward, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, forcing herself to follow Julien. They passed up the staircase and into the barn, where a group of ordnance engineers scanned the crates containing the Vai weapons with a resolute haste. They passed through the door into the town square, still bathed in midnight, where groups of indentures in dark blue coats set up floodlights and battled patches of burning brush. They murmured together, pointing toward the dark, enveloping forest in the direction Ash had stumbled just hours before, when everything had been so different. They knew, she thought. They were ready for this. How were they ready for this?

  Len coughed, then stepped up beside her. “Ash, what did he mean? What the hell did you sign?”

  She could say nothing to that, but she allowed herself to bend, leaning on her friend’s warm shoulder to steady her st
ride. She let the moment fill her heart; she and Len, walking together, the last real members of her salvage family. It wasn’t together, wasn’t even close, but her alone brain was desperate for it.

  Friendship, the weapon whispered from her pocket. A new concept.

  She wondered if there was silver inside, coursing through living veins, lonely, waiting—

  Together, it whispered.

  She removed her hand—somehow—and walked toward the shuttle.

  The shuttle was located near the tree line, and the hatch opened in a slow and familiar way, cutting off Ash’s response, revealing the interior: tight and beige-blue like the shuttle she’d piloted during her year in Aurora. Julien stopped at the door and Ash piled in, Len following behind, both going through the old, familiar motions of sliding into seats and drawing the safety web around their hips and shoulders.

  The shuttle was an upgrade from the kind of jaunter she’d piloted on Twenty-Five, as she’d expected from a Rio launch. The pilot was already hunched over his interface, fingers adorned with the corded haptic caps, running through his preflight check with businesslike aplomb. He wore a full helmet, obscuring his face.

  “Next stop, Rio de Janeiro,” Julien said, his voice bright, as if he were taking Ash to get ice cream. Too bright. His eyes were trained on her. “I hope you’re as excited by the research we’re going to do as I am.”

  Yeah, well, she thought, I hope I still scare you shitless.

  She tried to make herself less angry by studying the haptic interface: it functioned as it was supposed to, unlike the one she and Natalie had found on London. The pilot’s very thought process hovered over the front window for everyone to see in an easy, curving arc, jagged power readings coming through in soothing blues and greens. She surprised herself when she found she could still follow it.

  And why not? Pods and shuttles had been her entire life for the past year. She’d found a talent for it. Fuel injection percentage. Environmental interference. Vertical grav intake. Being in the cockpit felt like greeting a long-lost friend. How long had it been since she’d been behind the controls of a pod or a shuttle? The time she’d gone out with Natalie to retrieve the Vai weapon from the wreckage of London, she decided. It was what, a day? A fortnight? Thirty hours? Two days? She was starving.