'I am.'
'And Tamara called you this, too?'
'Since she was a novice – she was always the most polite of girls.'
'Does she still call you "Mother" then?' Danlo asked this question softly as he stared into his empty teacup.
'She still does,' the Mother said, and she smiled sweetly. 'She's not as ill as you might have feared.'
Danlo put down the cup and then touched the white feather dangling from his hair. He was very aware of the Mother studying him, listening to his uneven breathing, perhaps even counting the pulses of the great artery that throbbed along his throat. 'I have been ... very afraid for her,' he admitted.
'I'm sorry,' the Mother said. 'And I'm sorry to tell you that Tamara is not as well as you will have hoped.'
Danlo pressed the scar above his eye as he looked at the Mother and waited for her to say the terrible words, the words he had dreaded hearing since Tamara had disappeared.
And the Mother said, 'It seems that Tamara Ten Ashtoreth has lost part of her memory. Two days ago, one of our voluptuaries found her wandering about the Street of Musicians.'
'Two days ago! Why didn't you send for me sooner?'
'I'm sorry, but our first concern was for Tamara. She'd suffered dehydration and frostbite, and it's possible she'd been raped before– '
'Oh, no!' Danlo cried out as he leaped to his feet. 'Oh, no.'
The Mother leaned forward upon her couch and covered his fist with her soft, old hand. This was not an easy act for her to manage, and the strain of it made her gasp. 'Please sit down, Young Pilot. Would you like another cup of tea? It would be my pleasure to make your cup, but my days of pouring tea are past.'
Danlo sat down and filled his cup with steaming tea. He held it to his lips, but he did not drink it. The Mother was smiling at him, in a kindly way, as if to reassure him that everything would be well. He looked down to see his hand squeezing hers, then he closed his eyes because it hurt to keep them open.
'The tragedy,' she said, 'is that we may never know what happened to Tamara. She's forgotten certain incidences in her recent past.'
'Is it the Catava Fever, then?'
The Mother nodded her head. 'It would seem so.'
'A manufactured virus,' he said. 'A weapon made on Catava six hundred years ago.'
'Are you familiar with these weapons, Young Pilot?'
Danlo opened his eyes, looking at nothing in particular, remembering. 'Yes,' he said. 'Such a virus once killed people ... who were near to me.'
'You mustn't be afraid for Tamara's life – she won't die from what's happened to her, you know.'
'But if her brain is infected– '
The Mother clapped her hands together softly, once, and then looked at Danlo with a mixture of sternness and compassion. 'It might give you hope to know she's not presently infected. The virologist we summoned could find nothing in her body or brain. The blood bears antibodies to the virus. Only antibodies. It's possible the virus was destroyed immediately upon entering her. Such miracles are possible. There are a few people – a few billion people, most of them descendants of Architects who survived the War of the Faces. Their bodies are almost immune to bio-weapons. The Ashtoreths, for instance, there are so many Ashtoreths. Tamara is an Ashtoreth, after all, and I've never known her to be sick, not even a flu or a cold. The virus did no detectable damage to her brain. This is certain. I've had three akashics paint her brain, neuron by neuron – they've found nothing. She should be as well as you or I.'
'But she has forgotten ... things?'
'She really hasn't forgotten very much,' the Mother said. 'It would seem that the virus fracted only select parts of her memory.'
'But how is that possible?'
'That's the mystery – no one really knows. Too little is understood about memory. Not even the remembrancers can explain how this filthy virus did what it did to Tamara.'
Danlo was quiet for a moment as he looked down at the scars on his hands. Then he asked, 'And what did it do?'
'That's hard to say.'
'Please tell me.'
'There are so many memories,' the Mother said.
'Please tell me what has happened to Tamara.'
With a wave of her graceful hand, the Mother indicated various items about the room: the golden alaya shells set out above the fireplace; the Fravashi carpet; the ice sculptures kept clear-cut and cold inside refrigerated clary vaults. She sighed and said, 'If a wormrunner were to enter this house and ransack it before stealing things, it would be difficult to tell at first sight what was missing. But it would be obvious that many things were gone. Only after the rooms were put together again and an inventory made would it be possible to determine which things these were.'
'Has Tamara's memory been ransacked, then?'
'No, it has not. And that was the difficulty. It took us most of a day to discover that there was a problem with her memory. Talking with her was like entering a room from which one or two items of great value had been stolen, with quiet and great cunning. Little things that might appear as trifles or curios to outsiders – but to Tamara they would be the most priceless of memories.'
Danlo sat completely still, as an Alaloi man sits beneath the falling stars and awaits the coming of his ancestors. Although he heard no voices nor saw any visions, he sensed that the memories lost from Tamara's mind concerned him deeply. Despite this overpowering presentiment – the absolute coldness of knowing that locked open his eyes – he was unprepared for what the Mother said to him next.
'Young Pilot, I'm sorry to tell you, but Tamara has forgotten who you are.'
Danlo's eyes were wide open, but he could see nothing. Or rather, he could see nothing more than the objects of the room dissolving into a dazzling blackness that took his breath away. The sound in his ears was like the ringing of a great bell that drew out long and high until it hissed and burned inside him. After a while, he became aware that the Mother was looking at him, leaning nearer, reaching out her trembling hand to touch his face. She touched his lips with infinite gentleness, and he was aware of her old, quavering voice, this golden instrument of compassion that pulled him back into her presence.
'She's forgotten meeting you,' the Mother said. 'She's forgotten your time together, the words you spoke together when you were alone.'
He thought the Mother might break into weeping, then, because her eyes were shiny with tears. But she kept her composure. Some deep part of her seemed to be watching herself; it was as if she were playing at life's tragedies with all the power of her soul – despite the pain, always playing and ultimately finding the game to be sweet and good.
'She's forgotten even your name. Oh, not your last name – she knows about the Ringess, of course. But she doesn't remember he has a son.'
'Has she forgotten ... everything?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Unless she had died, I would not have thought that was possible.'
'I know,' the Mother said.
'I cannot see ... how it must be for her,' he said.
'It's not well, you know. She's not at all well.'
'It must be terrible ... to forget.'
'Yes, it is.' The Mother said this with the certainty of an old woman whose memory was not as keen as it once had been. And then she smiled and said, 'But it's the most marvellous thing to suddenly remember what only seemed to have been lost.'
Danlo nodded his head as he thought about this. He asked, 'Has she been told about me? About... us?'
'I talked with her myself this morning. Nirvelli was with me. Naturally, since I hadn't been aware of your liaison, I could only tell her what Nirvelli had told me about both of you – and that wasn't very much.'
'No,' he said, 'we tried to keep things secret.'
'Well, at least Nirvelli knew that Tamara was liaising with a journeyman – actually she said that Tamara had fallen into love.'
'Yes,' he said. 'She had fallen. We did ... fall together.'
The Mother smiled at Danlo as if she knew very well how such a thing could be possible. It was obvious she favoured Danlo, as a mother does a favourite child – and in other ways, too.
'When I told Tamara about this love, she was astonished. Oh, not because you're just a journeyman – she's accepted that she might have broken our rules. Just as, seeing you, I've forgiven her for breaking them. The astonishing thing is the depth of this love. Nirvelli said that she saw it in Tamara, once. I see it now. It's astonishing that Tamara could forget the "greatest love match the universe has ever known". No, please don't be angry, I'm not quoting your words sarcastically. I believe there's something great in this love. Isn't love what we all live for? A remarkable kind of love. This is what Tamara was trained for. This waking up of the whole organism, the deepest parts, out of love. The possibility of creating a new being. This was her calling, her dream. The dream of many of us. Astonishing that she might have come so close – and then nothing. How must it be for her to know that she might have lost the most priceless thing in the universe – and have no memory of what that thing felt like or meant to her? I believe there's a black hole of memory in the centre of her mind. It draws her inward. Looking at this hole, she grieves. We all grieve, Young Pilot. For her. And for ourselves, of course, for what might have been.'
Danlo bowed his head, trying to imagine what it would be like to forget what had passed between him and Tamara. He could not. After a while, he looked at the Mother and said, 'Surely you have reminded her that she had ... a calling.'
'You don't understand. Such things can't simply be reminded. They can't be told.'
'No,' he said, 'I suppose not.'
'Tamara has lost a good deal of our art, as well. Not just the dream – but knowledge of the body, there are techniques that she once knew, her flair for passion, all gone, now, completely gone. She can't practise our art as she is now.'
'But she can relearn these things, yes?'
The Mother's face fell mournful and her fingers played over the fine wrinkles around her eyes. She seemed to reminisce about the keenest of her memories, for her face was alive with old hurts and pleasures. Then, in a soft, musing voice, she said, 'Considered against all the things we learn in a lifetime, what is this knowledge of ours but a grain of sand? Against the tapestry of our whole selves, what is our sacred art but the smallest of threads? So very little has actually been taken from Tamara. And yet, everything.'
'It must wound her very deeply,' he said.
'It's killing her,' the Mother said. 'Killing her soul.'
Danlo shook his head. 'No, that is not possible.'
'Nevertheless– '
'Did you know that the remembrancers have a saying?' he asked. 'They say this: "Memory can never be destroyed".'
The Mother suddenly flashed him a lovely smile. 'This is our hope.'
'Then it must be my hope, too,' he said. And then he thought: Hope is the right hand of fear.
'You must be impatient to see her.'
'Yes,' he said. 'I am.'
'Very well, you must go to her now, if you're ready. Talk to her, Young Pilot. Help her remember.'
That was all the Mother said to him. They drank their tea in silence, and there was an understanding between them. Soon the two harridans came to take the Mother away. Danlo bowed to her, and she to him, and she took his ungloved hand in hers and squeezed it so hard that the flesh along her arm jiggled and shook. In her ancient eyes, there was contentment, even happiness. He sensed he would never see her again, so he said, 'I wish you well.'
Then he turned to study his teacup, the bits of greenish leaves floating through the last unfinished dram of tea. He wondered what it would be like not to remember, and he took a swallow of tea, and he was not surprised that the taste of it was astringent and very bitter.
Memory is the soul of reality.
– saying of the remembrancers
After what seemed a long while, the novice returned to lead him down a dimly lit hallway to the guest room. In the Mother's house, on the first floor, one room was always kept ready for honoured visitors, or for harridans returning to Neverness from missions across the Civilized Worlds – or for simple courtesans such as Tamara who required the Mother's attentions. The novice stopped before a plain wooden door and looked at Danlo. She used her little white knuckles to knock at the door, and she announced, 'My Lady, your visitor has arrived.'
The door opened, and Danlo heard the novice say, 'My Lady, may I present the pilot, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?'
He heard her say this, but the words made no impression upon his mind because suddenly Tamara stood before him in her red robes and long golden hair. He drank in, all in a moment, the darkness of her eyes, the quick embarrassment, the livid wounds on her face and hands. Out of joy and good manners, he rushed forward to embrace her in the Alaloi way, with his arms thrown wide as a thallow's wings. But she held up her hand and backed away. 'Please, no,' she said.
She bowed to the novice and told her, 'Thank you, Maya, I'd like to be alone with the pilot.'
The novice returned her bow, cast Danlo a nervous glance, and then retreated down the hallway. Danlo followed Tamara into the room and shut the door behind him. The sound of it closing was of metal clicking into metal. He looked around the room, which was full of plants native to Old Earth: araucaria and cactus and wandering jew, and other green plants whose names he did not know. They gave off a light, oxygen smell at odds with the heaviness of sweat clinging to Tamara's robes. It was really too warm for her to dress so formally, but clearly she was not comfortable receiving him in pyjamas or unclothed, as was her wont. Looking at her, at the patches of red skin regrown across her frostbitten face, he was uncomfortable, too.
'Tamara, Tamara,' he said. 'I looked for you ... everywhere.'
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'If only I'd known. Please, would you like some tea or ice wine? Would you sit with me, for a while?'