"Oh." It takes me a while to absorb this, but Hanta is remarkably patient with me and waits while I think about things. If I didn't know better, I'd swear she actually liked me. "A problem," I echo, uncertain how much I can let slip, before a cold chill runs its icy fingers up my spine, and I shudder uncontrollably.
"Speaking of problems..." Hanta raises her caduceus: "This will hurt, but only momentarily and a lot less than being eaten alive by a mechaplague." She smiles faintly as she points it at my shoulder, and I wince as the asps strike at me. There's a toothy little prickling as they begin pumping adjuvant patches into my circulation, upgrading my prosthetic immune system so that it can deal with the pestis . I try not to wince.
"The infection will take some time to die off, and there's a risk that it's adaptable enough to out-evolve the robophages, so I'm going to keep you here overnightjust for observation. Hopefully you'll be well enough to go home tomorrow, and I'm going to write you up for a week off work while you recover. In the meantime, have a think about whatI said concerning your memory problem, and we can talk about it in the morning when I check on your progress."
The snake-heads let go of me and wrap themselves back around the staff as Hanta stands up. "Sleep well!"
NATURALLY, I don't sleep well at all.
At first, I spend an indeterminate time shuddering with cold chills and occasionally forgetting to inhale until some primitive reflex kicks me into sucking in great rasping gasps of air. Sleep is out of the question when you're afraid you'll stop breathing, so I amuse myself to the point of abject terror by rolling the events of the day over in my mind. Great arterial gouts of blood project like ghosts upon the wall, shadows of my guilt over killing Fiore... Fiore? But he doesn't know I killed him! Did I hallucinate the whole thing? Obviously not the mad scramble up the shaft, arms burning with overstressed muscles. The priest and the doctor both knew about it. Assuming I didn't imagine their visits, I remind myself. I'm fighting off a mecha infection and an obscure neurological crisis at the same time. Wouldn't it be reasonable to suspect I might just be out of my skull?
The lights on the ward have dimmed, and the glimpse of sky I can see through the windows is deepening toward purple, fly-specked with burning pinpricks of luminescence that glitter oddly, as if refracted through a deep pool of water. Maybe they don't know I know about Curious Yellow and the assembler in the library basement, I tell myself. They just think I'm having a mental breakdown, and I went for a little climb. Dissociative fugue, isn't that what the ancients called it? I got myself infected with compost nano and Fiore called Hanta in to patch me up, and he won't mention it in Church because it would undermine the integrity of the experiment. Maybe they're right, and I just imagined killing Fiore. I'm not simply remembering fragments of badly suppressed memories, I'm confabulating out of fragments, synthesizing false memories from the wreckage of a failed erasure job. The memories of my time in the Cats, could they simply be recollections from a game I used to play? Multiplayer immersive worlds with a plot and an identity modelI don't remember being a gamer, but if I wanted to get rid of an addiction, mightn't I have tried to flush it out with a lightweight round of memory surgery?
I can't ask anyone, I realize. If I ask Sam, and he hasn't heard of the Linebarger Cats, it doesn't mean they weren't realeveryone here's been through memory excision! I'd giggle if my throat wasn't so dry. I am Reeve! Watch me fake up a bunch of memories to haunt myself with! Was the guy who stalked me through the hallways of the Invisible Republic real? What about the mad bitch with the sword who called me out? I've been running from enemies I never actually sawonly glimpsed out of the sides of my eyes. It's like I'm suffering from blindsight, the strange neurological trauma that leaves its victims unable to see but able to sense events in their visual field by guessing. Maybe I'm an intelligence agent trying to track down a dangerous nest of enemies... and maybe I'm just a sad, sick woman who used to substitute game play for living a real life and who's now paying the price.
I lie awake in the twilight and eventually I realize that the shivering has gone. I ache, and I'm feeble, but that's to be expected after the long climb. And as I lie there I become aware of the subtle noises on the ward, the soft white noise of the air-conditioning, the tick of a clock, the quiet sobbing of
Sobbing?
I sit bolt upright, the sheet and blanket falling away from me. My thoughts churn in parallel with a sense of dread and a numinous awareness of relief. Rescuing Cass and If Cass is here, then that memory was real with Still doesn't mean everything else was real and finally If it was real, Cass must be ...
"Shit," I hear myself mutter. I pull the bedding up and clutch it like a frightened child. "I can't deal with this." I feel like sucking my thumb. "I am not ready for this." I'm subvocalizing, so low I make no sound. I have to talk softly when I'm telling myself the truth, because the truth is embarrassing and hurtful. I flash back to what Hanta said: When she's better, I'll ask her who she wants to be, and that's a comfort because I certainly don't have anything better to offer her. Is Hanta up to doing memory surgery properly? I ponder. It would surprise me if they didn't have a full surgeon-confessor along for the rideit's the ultimate prophylactic for those little ethical embarrassments that an experimental polity might suffer. (Or for those little infiltration-level embarrassments that a secret military installation might encounter, a lying, cynical part of me that I'm no longer entirely sure I believe in adds.)
I lie down again. The sobbing continues for a while, then I hear the clacking heels of a nursing zombie converge on the bed. Quiet voices and a sigh, followed by snores. The white ghost of a nurse pauses at the foot of my bed, its face a dim oval. "Do you need anything?" It asks me.
I shake my head. It's a lie, but what I need they can't provide.
Eventually I doze off.
15. Recovery
THE next morning starts badly, shattered into fragments like a dropped vase:
"More fugues. Reeve, you're getting worse."
His large hand enfolding my small one. Weak and pale. He strokes the back of my wrist with his thumb. I look into his eyes and see sadness there and wonder why
Two liquid-metal snake-heads bite at my wrist, and I cry out, pulling away as they inject soothing numbness. The woman who carries them is a goddess, golden-skinned with burning eyes.
I'm a tank again, a regiment of tanks, dropping through the freezing night toward an enemy habitator did this come later? I disconnect from the virtch interface and shake my head, look around at the other players in the game arcade, and hear myself whisper, "But it wasn't like that"
Scratch of a carved goose feather on rough paper, body of a pen made from a human bone. You will remember nothing at first. If you did, they could parse your experience vector and identify you as a threat.
"She's really bad this morning. The adjuvants have workedthat infection is definitely on the mendbut she's no use to us like this."
"What do you expect me to do? She's in danger of sliding into full-blown anterograde"
A suffocating stench of bowels as I slide my rapier back out of his guts. He lies among the rosebushes in a dueling zone, beneath the shadow of a marble statue of an extinct species of flying mammal. A sudden stab of horror, because this is a man I could have loved.
"Fix her."
"I can't! Not without her consent."
Hand tightening around someone's wrist until it's almost painful. "She's in no condition to give itlook at that, what are you going to do if she starts to convulse?"