Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

now refer to this Direk, and angered herself that she had thought of him as a mere copy. Zakiya could almost imagine Aylis felt good about the surviving Direk being a copy, if only because he was no longer the strictly Essiin son his original had always been. Did she worry that Direk was only pretending to be less than a good Essiin? Aylis would still not speak casually with Zakiya, almost as though their friendship had ended after her rape. Zakiya had questioned Mai and had only learned enough to share Mai's grave concern for Aylis's downward emotional slide. Only Direk's soothing attentions to his mother kept her from being committed by Mai to psychiatric medical treatment.

  Zakiya chose to respond to Aylis's whispered question in a way that might further improve Aylis's understanding of this new version of her son. She also could not resist speaking of Direk in Jamie's presence and disobeying Jon's order concerning Jamie and Direk, so it was also for her daughter's benefit that she would respond to Aylis.

  "Harry and Ruby only had him for a few years, Aylis," Zakiya began. "And Ruby wasn't in the best era of her life. She remembers him as a wickedly funny guy, willing to try anything and always eager to help."

  "Who is Harry?" Jamie asked. "You were Ruby Reed, the singer. Who are you talking about?"

  Zakiya ignored her daughter's questions, but her smile probably told her something. "Alcoholism was easily curable," Zakiya said, "but Ruby was an alcoholic. She was confused and depressed. She was having a bad night. Too much liquor and one too many leaks in her auxiliary memory unit. It was all Harry could do to get her dressed and out to the stage. There was Dick, standing by his bass, plunking a little tune to accompany himself as he entertained the audience until Harry and Ruby could show up. In those days Twenglish was always the preferred language of entertainers. He was telling jokes and little stories, 'deadpan' as they said in Twenglish, and the audience loved him. Harry and Ruby had to let him finish, and then had to perform their best to follow his act. I remember Ruby being astonished that Dick could do that kind of thing. I don't know why; she never knew who he really was. Maybe that was who he really was."

  "If my duplicate ever knew about him, she didn't remember it for me," Aylis said sadly.

  "Who are you talking about?" Jamie demanded.

  "I think we're talking about Dick," Zakiya said.

  "Dick who?"

  "His performing name was Dick Jones," Zakiya answered, then returned her attention to Aylis. "What is your real reason for sneaking by to see us, Aylis?"

  Aylis did not respond but just stared up at Jamie with concern and interest.

  /

  Dick Jones? Jamie wondered. They were talking about Direk, trying to make her change her mind about him. It was true, then: Direk was a completely different person from what Jamie thought he was! How did that affect her feelings for him? It didn't! She was born to love him, as though the bond between Aylis and Zakiya was somehow genetically involved with Jamie and Direk. It did not, however, make her feelings about herself any better. It didn't make it any easier to approach defining a new relationship between her and Direk. He was so perfect for so long a time, hiding himself from her. How could she ever trust him? Did she even care that she couldn't know who he was? Wasn't that part of his - charm - that he was unpredictable, not fully knowable?

  They searched the cottage. It was a brief search.

  "No," he said. "No other bed. No other reasonable substitute. Did you find anything?"

  "No," she replied, feeling a little thrill at what this might cause. "Do you want to go back?"

  Stop the movie! Let me examine his reaction closely. Damn, he's good! Not a flicker of guilt, not a hint of desire.

  "Do you want to go back?" he asked, not answering her question.

  Was that a logical response? Wouldn't he have denied her that choice, if for no other reason than to save himself the strain of surviving the biological comedy to come?

  She could feel herself wanting him and making herself believe that he might actually want to stay in the cottage and share the bed with her.

  "It's a long walk back," she said. "And it's snowing. And it's getting dark."

  "There is transmat service in the Five Worlds," he pointed out.

  "Do you want to tell Phuti and Nori that we aren't lovers?"

  "Would it disappoint them that much?"

  He could have said almost anything else to end the discussion and end their use of the cottage. Was he able to sense her desire to be alone with him, perhaps even to be intimate with him? How possible was that?

  "I don't mind sharing the bed with you, Direk. It's a big bed. It has a goose-down mattress. When will I ever again get a chance to sleep on such a bed? Does sharing the bed bother you too much?"

  "If that is what you want, I believe I can behave myself."

  Did he say that? No! He said: "I believe I can sleep without disturbing you."

  A couple of hours later she would make it clear to him that she wouldn't mind being disturbed.

  "What are you remembering?" Zakiya asked, looking up at her tall daughter. Jamie didn't respond. "Hello, Daughter!"

  She clawed her way out of the pungent reverie. The way her mother was looking at her, she imagined she knew what memory she was accessing. Jamie blushed almost painfully, before realizing Zakiya couldn't possibly know the embarrassing details.

  "Hello, Mother!" Jamie responded. "Well, someday I'll tell you what I remembered but you know who I remembered."

  She turned to look at Aylis Mnro still lying on the grass and hardly responding to them. She looked wrong. Jamie was concerned. "Isn't she getting any better?"

  "Worse. I hope it isn't something I did to her that I can't remember. Let's get her back to the hospital."

  = = =

  She wore the peasant wedding costume from ancient times. She wore it humbly, with little decoration and almost no jewelry. Yet it only emphasized how precious she was, what a gift she was, and she was giving herself to him!

  He wore his Deep Space uniform. He wore his medals. He wore his smile of joy so large it made his cheeks ache. Alex put a big hand on his shoulder and shook him, as if trying to wake him from this beautiful dream. They both waited at the altar for Ana.

  He saw all his shipmates in the pews, even Patrick who showed him his fist, as though upset with Iggy for taking Ana from him. But in the next instant Patrick gave him a thumbs-up and a genuine smile of congratulations.

  Someone was shaking his shoulder and it wasn't Alexandros Gerakis.

  "Remember me now?" Phuti asked.

  Yes! Yes! Yes! He tried to stifle the memory seizure but was lost for a few more moments in a random but sharp recollection of Phuti and himself exploring an anomalous gray asteroid and seeing the first signs of possible precursor artifacts.

  "I do remember you!" Iggy declared, and lapsed into yet another memory of Phuti.

  "What did you see?" Phuti asked, his question barely audible to Iggy through the sounds of clarinet and balalaika in the memory.

  "I saw you at my wedding, Phuti!" Iggy was overwhelmed by a memory he had already recalled several times. Iggy put his head in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He sat on a step of the access platform that overlooked farmland. In the distance, a gray cloud rained on a rectangle of green.

  Phuti sat down next to him and put an arm across his shoulders. "Sometimes I can't believe any of this is happening to me," Phuti said. "I never really believed I would be revived. But I remember your wedding as if it were yesterday. I almost wish I didn't."

  "I remember you and Alex," Iggy said, sadly happy, "dancing a Greek dance, the tall Alex and the short Phuti. You two started it. Then Zakiya joined you. You put her next to Alex, so that she would be holding his hand. I remember them looking at each other, and I knew right then they loved each other. I always suspected it and wanted it. It made me even happier, and I was already impossibly happy. Do I remember it correctly, Phuti?"

  "Yes, you do!" Phuti patted his shoulder, dropped his arm from Iggy. "It was a wonderful interlu
de in a terrible time."

  "I'm fortunate I don't remember the evil," Iggy said, "as well as I do the good. I'm fortunate the auxiliary memory isn't so easy to open, or else I'm afraid I would dwell on those moments that hurt me the most. It's such a powerful experience, far clearer than what I would have stored in my own brain cells."

  "Don't let me pull you too much into the past, Iggy. You seem well to me but I know you can be hurt by some of your memories." Phuti paused at a change in his friend's expression. "Is something wrong?"

  "You brought it," Iggy said. "I can feel it. It's already active. Did you know you could activate it?"

  "What do you mean?" Phuti wondered.

  "I didn't activate it. You must have. You have a cryptikon. We share the job of using the cryptikons! That's why Zakiya needed to fetch you from the Five Worlds. Besides knowing you simply belonged with us."

  Phuti removed the cryptikon from his pocket and looked at it with shock on his round face. "I borrowed it from Zakiya," he said. "I wanted to bring it to you, to urge you to make it work. I wondered what was bothering me!"

  "You and I, we found them, Phuti. I have the other one with me. Aylis made me keep it. Because we found them, the Old Ones found us. You don't remember, do you?"

  "No, not clearly. Did something happen to us, Iggy?"

  "I don't remember, either. We must have been assigned to the cryptikons in some way. Can you feel what you should do?"

  Phuti frowned and stared at the glowing thing in his hand.

  "Did the others warn you about