Ruskin's living room looked as though it had been ransacked. The deep scarlet glow of the lights he kept for Max's visits did nothing to dispel the feeling of frightening disorder, of strangeness. Items from his personal wardrobe lay draped across chairs. Books and albums were jumbled open on the floor. A thin streamer of smoke curled from a stick of incense. Plates and glasses littered the room. A jug of wine was barely touched, but two cartons of take-out Sanyooko were nearly empty. On top of the music console was a pile of music cubes; a folk-jazz cantata, which Ruskin did not recognize, was playing.
Ruskin sat on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, gazing silently at the ceiling. Blood-red, the light. Shadow-spirits seemed to swim across the ceiling in the glow: wispy shadows cast by the tracers of incense smoke. Ever so cautiously, he had sipped at the wine—a little afraid of what intoxication might do to him, but desperately wanting the comfort, the relaxation of sipping good wine with friends. He hadn't felt a thing.
Tamika had drunk a small glass, to steady her nerves. She was sitting cross-legged on the overstuffed chair; she was crying now, and had been for some time. It had not been easy for her, watching him try to recapture lost memories, sorting in vain through piles of mementos in hopes of triggering a recollection, seeing him look at secrets they had shared and seeing him shrug blankly. She could have told him much of what he couldn't remember, perhaps—and did so, when he asked—but really what he wanted was to summon the recollections himself.
Max had finally advised them to stop; it was only bringing on frustration and emotional exhaustion.
How right he'd been about that. . . .
* * *
"What's the matter, Tamika?"
"What the hell do you think?"
"Well, I know. But I'm the one who has the problem. You look like you're taking it harder than I am."
Nod. Downturned eyes.
"So—why?"
Her gaze came up to meet his, her voice unflinching. "Because it's my fault—at least partly."
His mouth opened in astonishment. He began to laugh. In fear. "Your fault?" He looked up at Max, whose expression was inscrutable—and back at Tamika, whose gaze had not left his. "Why your fault?"
She answered with obvious difficulty. "Do you remember . . . what happened just before you went on your trip?" Even as he shook his head, she continued. "Do you remember our discussions? About the Auricle Alliance, and its expansionism in the galaxy?"
He could only gape in bewilderment.
"And you agreed with me eventually—that Kantano's World was just one more example of a world that could have gone another way, if it had been allowed to. And eventually you even said that your own work was contributing to the problem, not to its solution?"
She didn't even pause to notice his bewilderment. What could interstellar politics have to do with what happened in a forest in the wilderness? And how could he have agreed with any of that? He was as loyal an Auricle citizen as there was. . . .
He missed the next thing she said, but now she was talking about an organization she was involved in. "And you told me you were interested in Omega's plan to get people involved at the places where they worked, to try to change things from within. So I—" her voice was quavering now—"so I put you in touch with these people, and they invited you to a week-long retreat. A Mr. Broder talked to you?"
Broder!
"So you took time off." She laughed, half crying. "I wanted to go along, but they said, no, it was better if new people came alone to this kind of thing. And so instead of our taking a trip together, you see, you went off alone. And what could I say, because after all, it was my idea?" She took a rasping breath. "And the next time I saw you was in my apartment, and you were trying to kill me. . . ."
Yes. But why?
Why?
Why?
* * *
Ruskin gazed at the tendrils of incense smoke, writhing and wrestling with one another, and thought of how tired he was and wondered if any of them would dare to sleep. Even his fevered alter ego must have to sleep. Surely. How long could they keep going?
At the cogitative console, Ali'Maksam sat joined to the neural interface. He'd been working there for over an hour, first trying to adjust the thinktank security system so that it would recognize its owner. Max had designed the system in the first place and had left himself coded for entry. Now he was trying to make some other arrangements about which he was being tight-lipped, something about contacting a researcher he knew.
Ruskin's gaze drifted down from the ceiling to study Max's profile, moving ever so slowly in the blood-red light, the constant motion Max displayed when he was working. To Ruskin, it was a reassuring sight: the tall, slim form of his friend, shadowy against the gloom of night . . .
. . . shadowy as it leaned toward him, figure of darkness against light . . .
* * *
The blurring of his consciousness ended in agony. The room wavered around him, swam in a mist-fine sea of blood. He gasped, blinking. He was crouched beside Ali'Maksam at the console. Ali'Maksam's eyes glinted as he stared at Ruskin. His scaly forehead was glistening.
"Are you two all right?" Tamika asked, looking from one to the other in puzzlement.
Ruskin took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. The pain was gone, but he felt as though a huge bell had just rung inside his skull. "Yeah," he murmured finally. He shook his head, returning to sit on the floor. "Not all right, no." He squinted at Tamika, in a concerted effort to look—to feel—as though he were in control. "What's wrong with me?" he whispered. "Max, when are you going to tell me? Are you all right, Max?"
The Logothian's head bobbed, and his voice was raspy with pain. "He is safe—for the moment—Tamika. But it was again a near thing." His breath whistled in and out as his eyes slowly blinked. "Yes, I am all right. But I am an academic—not trained for this," he sighed. "Let us be grateful that it works."
Tamika frowned at the Logothian. "That really hurts, doesn't it?" And she shook her head as though to say, Of course it hurts, and it must be done.
Three times now Max had caught Ruskin at the brink of a blackout, and each time he had borne at least as much pain as Ruskin. When he spoke again, it was in a carefully controlled whisper. "Willard, I am assuming that the agency responsible for your physical changes is also interfering with your memory-recall—though some memory loss may have resulted from your head wound."
"I suppose losing half my head could account for some of it, yes," Ruskin grunted.
Max fingered his ridged eyebrow and spoke more energetically. "Perhaps less than you think. Your memory is hologramic, to a degree. That is, it is distributed throughout the brain, not point for point, memory for memory. The loss of some neural structure would likely cause the loss of faculties and a general degradation of memory—but not necessarily the loss of specific memories. This seems consistent with your slow, intermittent recall."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Difficult to say. Something seems to be interfering with the recall process itself. It could be psychological trauma, or something else. Whatever, it is particularly noticeable in your processing of emotion-laden memories." The Logothian smiled oddly. "That, of course, is the most interesting area to study anyway. But we must discover the agency involved."
Ruskin turned his palms up. "Maybe I should just check into a psychalign clinic."
"I suggest not. Unless I fail in my efforts here."
"Which are—?"
Max shook his head with a twitch. "I do not wish to create false hopes. I am awaiting guidance from one of my colleagues."
"And meanwhile we just sit here and wonder?"
Max chuckled, hissing. "Your console should now recognize you. Perhaps you could spend some time on your personal files. Your work files, I expect, are classified—" the Logothian glanced at Tamika "—meaning, we shouldn't see them."
Ruskin raised his eyebrows. But of course: he would not necessarily have shared all of his work knowledge with his friends.
"Personal files, then," Tamika said softly. "Rus'lem—are you ready for it?"
"Am I ready to discover who I am? I think so. Since you guys have been keeping it secret from me for so long."
Tamika tried to smile at his attempted joke. At least she'd stopped crying, for which he was thankful. He felt guilty when she cried. He rose to approach the console. Ali'Maksam bowed, making room. "I must take partial leave of you while you do this," the Logothian said. "I must try to contact another of my colleagues." He settled onto the floor. "If you please," he added softly, "keep the lights low."
Ruskin nodded and turned the hood of the holodisplay away from him. "Join me, Tamika?"
* * *
The photo files were the most tantalizing, and frustrating. It was like looking at someone else's family album—faces of people he didn't know. Often enough, the person he didn't know was himself. Willard Ruskin at home, posing by the bookcase. (Who had taken that? Tamika? From her little intake of breath, he guessed so.) A group of strangers, at a lakeside picnic. There was Willard Ruskin, among them; and there was Tamika. "Office party?" he guessed. He didn't recognize anyone else there. Maybe it was Tamika's office party. (He panicked suddenly: he couldn't remember what she did for a living. Would he have to ask, or would it come to him?) "Your office, right?" he murmured, changing the image.
She gazed at him unhappily. "Yours," she said. "Last summer. You don't remember John, or Judith? Come on, you used to have a crush on Judith."
He flipped back and studied it again. Yes, way at the back—Judith, the woman he'd talked to yesterday . . . or the day before. Had he had a crush on her once? He didn't remember. A tall, skinny man looked vaguely familiar. "John?" he asked, pointing.
"That's Todd. He was with Judith, I think." Tamika pointed to a heavyset man. "That's John."
"And what's he do?"
"He's your boss."
Ruskin stared at the image for a few seconds longer, then shook his head and flipped forward.
The next scene was a sunset, Willard Ruskin and Tamika Jones arm in arm beneath the outstretched branch of a tree, watching the sun blaze in its final glory over a mountain valley. "You and me," he said, a lump growing in his throat—not because of the memory, but because there was no memory.
He could sense Tamika's tension. She could tell that he didn't remember. She was getting ready to cry again. He could stand to cry himself, maybe, but he didn't think he knew how. Maybe that was something else he had forgotten.
The next sequence was of some astronomical images: several gorgeous star clusters, nebulas, brightly glowing filamentary structures. They almost looked alive. There was no information accompanying them; he must have filed them here because he liked them. He still liked them.
Next: a moving image of several children playing in someone's living room. He stared at them for a time, until a woman walked into the field of view. The woman looked like Tamika, but a little older, a little stockier. She mugged self-consciously at the camera. Ruskin turned to query Tamika.
"My sister Sharon and her kids," Tamika whispered. "Don't you remember them, even? They left for Graemonholde last year, and we gave them a big send-off."
He winced at the pleading in her voice, and had no answer. He started to flip.
Her hand stopped him. "Please—she begged, her whisper becoming a cry. She shook her head and turned away, blowing her nose. When she looked back, her eyes were glistening. "Could we stop for a while?"
He stared at the image for a moment longer, before murmuring, "Screen dark." He rose, his eyes not quite focusing in the dim red illumination. Tamika returned to her chair, rubbing her eyes. Max was gazing in Ruskin's direction, but his inner eyes were directed elsewhere. Ruskin turned and walked through the kitchen into the bathroom.
Closing the door, he turned the light up slowly, to about half-normal. He gazed impassively into the mirror. His face was familiar enough to him now. Fair skin, brown hair, green eyes with a shade of gray—now, at least. It was familiar enough to despise, to fear.
Damn you—you were beginning to remember things before. It was coming back. You remembered Max . . . Tamika . . . so why not now? Finally you've got pictures here to see—and your brain's nothing but a lump.
First you try to kill the woman you love. Now you're killing her slowly, breaking her heart. What next?
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He had bought a weapon, unaware; he had tried to kill a woman, unaware. Had he tried to kill anyone else? Had he killed anyone else?
He examined his fingertip, the tiny bump there. He remembered fire blazing from that fingertip—from what was apparently an implanted, or biologically grown, weapon.
Slowly he raised his finger to eye level and placed its tip directly between his eyes. What if he fired it right now? It would be a terrible, perhaps a cowardly, thing to do—but if he didn't stop himself, who would? He remembered, dimly, the blast that had taken half his head off—years ago, it seemed. He remembered himself rising, like the phoenix, from the dead.
But suppose you hit the one point in the brain that contains the vital structure that enables everything else to work. The central processor of the soul. The one point that, if you vaporize it, cannot be restored. Surely there is such a point.
He closed his eyes, willing the finger to fire.
He opened his eyes and looked cross-eyed down his finger. With a bitter laugh, he dropped his hand to his side. How could he kill himself if he didn't know how to fire his finger?
Probably it wouldn't have worked anyway.
He snapped off the light and returned to the hearth-red sanctum of the living room. Tamika looked up at him. "You okay?"
"Okay is a relative word." He let his gaze drift around the room without seeing. "Yeah. I guess I'm okay."
With a sigh, he returned to the console. Maybe what he hadn't learned from his photo files, he would find in his financial records, bills, receipts, and appointments past and future. Somewhere there had to be a key that would release his past.
As he adjusted the display-screen hood, Max stirred where he sat on the floor. His voice whispered, echoing in the stillness and the gloom: "I have arranged an appointment, Willard."
Ruskin looked up. "Should I hope?"
Max's head tilted, his eyes glinted. "Hope, yes. But do not expect."