The Best of All Possible Worlds (26 page)

Within twenty minutes, the shuttle had returned. It wasn’t the worried looks that
shook me, nor the raised brows; it was the speed with which Qeturah, Dllenahkh, Nasiha,
and Tarik got me onto a medtable with sensors stuck all over my skull. “Uh, guys,
would you like to tell me what’s wrong?”

“What is the last thing you remember?” asked Dllenahkh calmly as Qeturah circled the
medtable adjusting things, Nasiha compared the readings on the monitor with the data
displayed on her handheld, and Tarik scanned his handheld furiously, possibly looking
up reference texts.

“We had that really late meeting about the feasibility of including the Traveling
Clans in our schedule given their low genetic score but strong retention of Sadiri
traditions. Uh, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You
do
know Cygnians need more sleep than Sadiri, right? Because I think I’ve been running
a little short, and as flattering as it is to be included in everything you discuss,
perhaps I could just read the summaries afterward and add a note expressing my views.”

“Nothing after that?” asked Qeturah, gently waving some scanning device back and forth
across my field of vision.

“Well, apart from some very vivid dreams and not-very-restful sleep, the next thing
I recall is this morning’s breakfast. Which, incidentally, I didn’t get the chance
to finish.
May
I finish my breakfast, please?” I was beginning to feel irritated.

They removed the sensors and guided me solicitously to a seat, which only made me
angrier. Dllenahkh sat opposite me and said quietly, “The meeting to which you are
referring took place not last night but the night before.”

“I’ve lost a day?” I said, disbelieving.

“Amnesia is one of the possible effects of the drugs you were given,” said Nasiha.

“Given? By whom?” I asked sharply.

She glanced quickly at Qeturah, who in turn gave Dllenahkh a somber look. His mouth
tensed, then his expression became neutral once more as he spoke to me. “We would
prefer to avoid telling you what happened yesterday so that we can be certain any
memory that returns is of the event rather than of our account of it.”

“It’s possible the drugs are still interfering with your hippocampus,” said Qeturah
quickly by way of diversion.

“What?” I asked, taking the bait.

“That’s the part of the brain involved in the formation of long-term memory,” she
clarified.

“Oh, yeah. Been a while since first-year neuroanatomy,” I mused.

I sat still for a moment. I checked myself over, twiddling my toes, flexing my fingers,
running my tongue over my teeth. I didn’t feel any pain or soreness. Whatever had
happened to me, it hadn’t been damaging in any way that I could sense. I relaxed just
a little.

“Well, the fact that you haven’t medevacked me gives me some small comfort,” I began.

“Funny you should mention that,” said Qeturah ominously, “because I was thinking about
that option right this minute.”

“We’re on the edge of the desert. Where’s the nearest neurologist? Look, I’m walking
and talking, and I feel fine.”

“That’s what you said yesterday,” murmured Lian unhelpfully.

Qeturah looked at Nasiha and Dllenahkh. Nasiha seemed unusually quiet to me, and Dllenahkh
had a slight frown on his face. “One day,” Qeturah said to me, still looking at the
two
Sadiri as if asking for their permission. “One more day, just in case all that’s required
is for the last of the drug to cycle out of your system. By then we’ll be on our way
to Mordecai, and they have decent medical facilities.”

That was satisfactory. I went back to my food.

I spent the afternoon
brooding over what had happened. It felt funny and not particularly nice to have
this big gap in my life that everyone else seemed to know about but me. The concerned
looks were beginning to wear on me. I pulled out a small, old-fashioned paper journal
that Qeturah had given me back when she was still trying to have me “get in touch
with my feelings” about the Ioan business and wrote down what I could remember of
my strange dreams. Then I confronted Nasiha in the shelter she shared with Tarik.

“I think you were very much involved in what happened,” I told her frankly. “I’ve
never seen you so subdued. Can you tell me anything?”

She bowed her head slightly, just enough to avoid meeting my eyes. “Until your own
memory returns, I think I should not.”

I looked at her. She had been wearing civilian clothes more often than not after our
shopping trip, complaining that the Science Council maternity uniform was “neither
comfortable nor flattering.” “Where’s the cat clasp? You always wear it.”

“I no longer have it. Please, Delarua, do not ask any more questions. I am sorry.”

Tarik, who had been quietly working a few meters away, suddenly put his handheld down,
stood up with a face like thunder, and strode outside.

———

I attended the Piedra
debriefing, which is to say that I sat there and no one made me leave, but the conversation
often seemed to weave around me as if I were merely an observer. As usual, I took
notes for my own reports, but something made me take more thorough notes than usual:
audio and vid recordings, several file attachments, and also little personal notes
for anything I found strange or significant.

For the first time ever, I had a strong desire to stay up late with the Sadiri. “So,”
I asked Joral, “what do you guys get up to when the rest of us are asleep?”

“The Councillor and I are studying Cygnian culture,” he said. “Literature, art, film,
history; it is very interesting. Last night we began a series on preholo cinema.”

“Oooh, classics?”

“Remastered, for the most part,” Joral admitted.

“Remastered?” I clutched at my heart with an agony that was only half feigned. “Philistines.
Might as well turn in, then,” I said, and yawned for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Just in case, I gave Lian the dream journal and pointed out which folders on my handheld
contained my most recent notes. Then I went to bed, falling asleep far more quickly
than I expected to. Of course this meant I was able to wake up early enough to see
Dllenahkh off at the shuttleport, though why I should have gone out in all that damp,
unhealthy fog is beyond me. To make matters worse, he was dressed oddly and talking
nonsense.

“I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do,
you can’t be any part of. Grace, I’m no good at being noble, but …”

“But?” I prompted, genuinely curious. That wasn’t how it went, was it?

He blinked and said in a more normal tone, “Is there a purpose
to my ‘being noble’ in this situation? I am not convinced it is the best choice to
make.” The slight frown cleared from his face, he seemed to mentally shrug, and then
he tilted up my chin with his forefinger. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

He bent his head toward mine, and again, unsurprisingly, the scene immediately faded
to black.

“What’s with that?” I mumbled out loud.

“Delarua? Are you awake?”

I stretched, tangling my feet in the thin blanket over my cot. “Yeah, more or less.
Oh, shoot!” I sat upright suddenly. “Nasiha! I’m sorry I overslept, but you saw what
I was like last night at the meeting. No way was I going to make it to meditation
this morning.”

She regarded me silently from her seat in a chair not far from my cot. She was already
dressed for the day, of course, and there was a medical scanner in her hand, which
she held poised as if about to sweep it in my direction. “Which meeting would that
be, Delarua?”

“Don’t you remember? The Traveling Clans issue?” I replied, puzzled.

“I see,” she said, tapping her comm.

In a very short space of time, a small group had gathered around my cot: Nasiha, Dllenahkh,
Qeturah, and Lian. I selfconsciously wrapped up in my blanket and gaped at them.

“I’ve lost two days?” I said incredulously.

They did not argue. Nasiha showed me the date-stamped medical readouts. Lian accessed
my report notes on my own handheld and gave me the beginnings of a dream journal in
my own handwriting. I got up, trailing the blanket behind me like a badly wrapped
toga, and paced around in undershirt and shorts, staring at the items in my hands
and absorbing the information.

“I’ve lost two days,” I said faintly. I felt my way back to my
cot and sat down, dumping everything beside me and numbly passing a hand over my face.
“What’s going on? What’s happening to me?”

“We believe that something is disrupting your ability to form long-term memory,” said
Qeturah. “Each time you go to sleep, your consciousness resets to the last event stored
in long-term memory. This is probably caused by a malfunction of—”

“The hippocampus, yes, I know,” I mused. “But that doesn’t explain why I’m remembering
all my dreams.”

Qeturah and Nasiha spoke at the same time. “How do you know that?” “You remember your
dreams from last night?”

I looked up, surprised at their intensity. “Yes, I know about the hippocampus memory
thing. Didn’t you tell me about that sometime, Qeturah? And yes, I remember three
dreams from last night, but two of them are described in that journal. Three dreams
in one night is more than a little busy, so I think I must be remembering the night
before.”

“Subconscious memory formation. I thought so,” said Qeturah triumphantly. “I
did
tell you about the hippocampus yesterday, Grace. You said you did basic neuroanatomy,
but you’d forgotten about that.”

My mind was whirling. “Give me a moment. I’ll be able to think more clearly once I’m
properly dressed. I promise, I’ll come straight to the lab right afterward.”

I didn’t, though. As I collected my thoughts, a strange idea came to me. I had never
seen
Casablanca
. Heard of it, of course, read many a quote, even, but seen it—never. That old black-and-white
stuff was for the real movie buffs, and in spite of my teasing Joral, I wasn’t one.

I wandered to their shelter in search of information to test my hypothesis. “Joral,”
I said, “tell me, what movies did you watch last night and the night before?”

He raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Last night we saw the earliest Cygnian adaptation of
Casablanca
. The night before that, we watched the 3-D remake of
Superman
, which is famous for its interactive special effects. If you would like to join us
tonight, we are thinking of viewing the original
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
.”

This wasn’t a huge surprise. Cygnian cinema, both preholo and holo, is filled with
benign aliens and refugees from war and disaster.

“Thank you, Joral.” I smiled. “I’ll think about it. Dllenahkh, could I have a word
with you outside?”

We walked a short distance from the camp to the edge of a small plateau and gazed
down at a vast, barren landscape. I was reminded of the time we’d huddled together,
watching the savanna dogs in their den. Now we were looking at a rocky desert land,
with the low towers of Piedra faintly visible in the haze of fine sand and heat. I
was sorry I’d missed seeing that famous city up close.

“So, you’ve been watching a lot of old movies.” I glanced up at Dllenahkh. “Tell me … you
ever imagine me in them? Or rather … us?”

There was a profound silence. Dllenahkh turned to face me fully, the expression on
his face somewhere between alarm and embarrassment. “Why do you ask?”

“Don’t be coy. Superhero catches falling girl. Rick says good-bye to Ilsa. That’s
what I’ve been dreaming, and that’s what you and Joral have been watching!”

He actually paled. “That would suggest that I have been influencing your dreams.”

“Worse. I’m dreaming
your
thoughts! And while we’re on the subject, what
is
it with those strategic blackouts? You got something against kissing?”

Give the Sadiri credit; even in the midst of pure, unmitigated mortification, they
never stop thinking.

“I have it,” he said suddenly. “I understand what is happening to you and how to correct
it. Quick, let us go to the lab.”

I could try to tell you what the detailed explanation was, but why bother when you
can access for yourself the paper coauthored by Qeturah, Nasiha, and Tarik. Suffice
it to say that my brain chemistry had been altered by the drugs I had been given,
with the result that my hippocampus was no longer storing long-term memory throughout
the brain. It was all being stored exclusively in the hippocampal gyrus, which is
the region of the brain responsible for telepathy. Coincidentally, this is also the
region that I seem to be unable to access consciously, which is why I get a null result
on telepathic ability. However, with the addition of another chemical from the stimulant
patch, I had become a subconscious telepath. I was reading Dllenahkh’s mind
from a distance
in my sleep. How cool is that?

“And we’re going to do what?” I asked them after the detailed explanation had been
repeated to me two or three times.

“The Councillor is going to attempt repairs when you enter REM sleep tonight,” Nasiha
said, her voice regaining some of its usual confident vigor. “He will access the memories
in your hippocampal gyrus and adjust your neurotransmitters to recommence storing
memory in the usual way.”

I looked at Qeturah for confirmation, but she merely shook her head helplessly. “I’m
all at sea with this telepathy business, Grace. You’re going to have to trust Dllenahkh.”

“Well, that’s a given,” I said easily.

It was a small thing, but the moment I said it, Tarik flashed a brief glare at Nasiha,
then retreated once more behind a veneer of propriety.

———

Because there was only
one medtable and limited space, they put an extra cot in the shuttle and dotted us
all over with sensors to record the unusual event. Then they turned on the environment
controls, turned off the lights, and shut the door. For a short while, there was the
glow of Dllenahkh’s handheld as he sat on the cot and made some last-minute notes.
Finally he turned it off, and the darkness was absolute. I heard the cot creak slightly
as he lay down.