‘I did warn you.
‘Yes, you did. But you know I’ll have to go on.’
‘That too is expected. I must monitor you carefully for psychosis.’
‘Naturally. Luce, I think this is really big. I get the feeling, well, this girl’s going to show us all we wanted to know coming here. We must make hard copy of this material as we go along.’
Even though I was wary of what Shade might do to me, scared she’d make some kind of possession attempt, albeit unwittingly, I couldn’t wait to get back at the recording and discover more. I knew that, before I progressed any further, I should tell Elenov about my research, but I was enjoying the privacy, and even after two meetings was becoming possessive enough about my ghost-girl not to want to share her. Elenov would probably decide that our resident psych, Bralle, should examine the chip. His training was more suitable for the task, and his personality profile adapted for it. I knew what I was doing was dangerous, but the danger had hooked me, and I could not surrender the thrill.
Also, Elenov had other problems to attend to. Lena had still not made contact with either the Organic or the retrieval bus. Much as no-one wanted to admit it, it was looking increasingly as if we’d been abandoned. I was aware of the mounting hysteria in my colleagues, but since I’d discovered Shade, the need to return home was not quite so desperate. I felt I had work to do here, and the retrieval bus’ arrival in two days’ time might curtail that. By now, no-one believed the bus would turn up at all. While everyone else began to panic, I remembered my talk with Truce. Someone would find us eventually.
The next time I accessed the chip, Lucrezia had to spin forward past a ravel of degraded data, more static, until we reached a section of pure thought and unblemished recording. I zapped on line and...
...fell into a rain storm of awareness. Energy sizzled through me, and cells of information whirled around me. I nearly disengaged. What had she done? What had she been doing while I wasn’t there? I blinked, and it was a bizarre aural-visual experience, a slick sound that matched the sensation, a flickering of sight, retinas retaining the image of an inverted silhouette.
I heard and felt a subsonic, rushing noise throughout my mind and body. I saw, with more than my eyes, wild, shivering patterns evolving in and out of chaos. Fractal growth.
My breathing was tidal, a soothing motion, with the backbeat of a rhythmic heart. I was no longer simply She/I, but She/he/I: a neurosomatic melding.
As my body shuddered into being in that world, I realised that she was making love with Firetongue. I could smell him, taste him, hear his grunting breath. His cheek was pressed to her cheek, and violating tendrils of her recording device had crept into his hair, his thoughts.
Now, cresting ecstasy, Shade travelled his mind and observed his memories. He did not know what she was doing. She had seduced him, clearly, and was now stealing his secrets.
This was not the kind of party I wanted to gatecrash unawares, but before I could disengage, I descended into pure experience.
Sparkling air; his nerve-endings, a blanket of sensual motion. She drew in breath, clenched her muscles, experienced the sensation in his loins. The ignition swirled and clustered into a viscous electric charge that, via her spinal column, rushed smooth and snaky into her mind. Real-time vision roared on a monochrome flight path through our brain.
And there was the image of the aqueduct, revolving like a gargantuan DNA spiral.
‘They were human!’ The words formed in her mind in time to an orgasmic tremor.
I felt my body spasm. My eyes rolled backwards into their sockets.
Then, the recording ran into a cascade of disjointed image segments; landscapes, sounds, scents - split seconds of random, sweet, semi-corrupted fragments, shattering like a waterfall in her mind. If this was information exchange, we did not have sex as good nowadays.
When the recording degraded into white noise, I was almost hysterical. I needed to know more, experience more.
Obligingly, Lucrezia fastforwarded and I got deep into the rush of noise and prickly touch. I knew I should disengage until we found a clean track again, but was too impatient. If the experience damaged me, I was beyond caring.
Then the world bloomed around my senses once more, and I exhaled deeply in relief. We were strolling along the beachwalk with Firetongue beside us. Foliage to either side of the creaking boards exuded a pungent, evening scent. The sky was scarlet and orange, fading to deepest purple up where the stars began.
Shade and I did not hold hands with our lover, although it seemed as if our bodies were touching. If he’d realised we’d eavesdropped on his thoughts, he held no grudge. We were easy with one another, walking through the fiery dusk.
We wandered out along the stubs of long-eroded sea cliffs, comfortable in silence. Firetongue lit a pipe and we shared a smoke as we walked. To the right, placid ocean reflected the lurid sky, while to the left, the land sloped gently downwards, jungled by city and biomass. We paused and looked down upon the silver arteries of the canals, the terraces of lock-gates.
‘Tell me about the water,’ we said.
Firetongue leaned down and kissed our hair. ‘Do I need to tell you anything now?’
We could tell he believed our invasion of his mindsoul was based on purely carnal urges. ‘Yes. Tell me what you know.’ We reached for one of his long hands, squeezed his fingers.
‘OK. Let’s talk.’ His voice was amused, but now, because feeling had ignited within him, he was also curious about us.
We sat down upon the damp evening grass and watched the glint of the water below. ‘Fire, the myths tell us that, in the past, there was no fresh water here, but that cannot be true. Without water, there could not have been people. So there was water, and there were people, but they must have been... primitive, disorganised. The gods, whoever they were, came and built the canals, and from there on, civilisation was born. But the strangers must have given far more than just the instructions on how to build an irrigation system. Even now, the waterways are regarded as mystical. Everybody knows there’s some kind of secret attached to them, but no-one questions it or speaks about it. It’s like historical amnesia. We’ve forgotten something important about our own past.’
Firetongue looked down at us indulgently, reached to stroke our hair. ‘Why is it so important to you, Shade? You’re obsessed. Can’t you just accept what is?’
We shook our head. ‘No. As a historian, I am fascinated by discrepancies. A long time ago, some great change happened here, a massive technological advance. Almost overnight, an extremely primitive culture acquired science and technology. The gods came. I have my theories about it. We have to know what really happened in order to know ourselves.’
Firetongue sighed. ‘Have you ever considered that the gods might just be a representation of our own evolution? We learned how to advance because we discovered the spirit of the earth. The gods are the spirits of nature. From them, we can learn all we need to know, and if we listen properly, with open ears, we can hear the whisper of their wisdom.’
We turned to look up at him. ‘No, Fire. People came here from... from somewhere else. People with more knowledge. From the sky. Isn’t that what the myths tell us?’ And in our mind, the furtive thought: Isn’t that what your memory tells us?
He laughed. ‘You’re crazy, romantic, a dreamer!’
We laughed too, to humour him. ‘Perhaps I am. But think about my idea. Isn’t there anything in your clan tradition that might back up my theory?’
He exhaled slowly. ‘The rust islands,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘That was where the gods built their city. They abandoned it after so many years. They vanished. But they left the legacy of their knowledge behind.’
We sighed, eyes closed. ‘Why did they leave?’
He touched our shoulder, the hollow of our spine, with his long fingers. ‘They told only the wisest of the ancient people. The knowledge was forbidden. I can’t tell you more, Shade. These are se
cret memories. The shamans know them and relive them through the earth. Go out to the rust islands with your clever little device. Maybe the gods will speak to you there.’
We leaned against him. ‘Thank you, Fire. Thank you.’
Like the closing scene of a romantic film, the image faded out, gently, with beautiful flares of colour. The chip died on me.
The retrieval bus had not arrived. Neither had Lena been able to make contact with the facility on the Organic. Elenov had kept her cool and quoted the usual platitudes about interference, sun-spots and transatmospheric storms. Only the most stupid were mollified by that. I wasn’t bothered about it. Something was taking form in my head, something so momentous, I dared not even believe it. Was Shade’s discovery somehow linked with us? Like Firetongue’s gods, we had come down from the sky and been stranded here. Were we re-living some ancient event? Perhaps that was why the authorities had been so touchy about granting us a licence for this expedition. There was a secret here.
When I looked around the shanty towns of the abos, I was filled with despair. There was nothing there to remind me of the green, the people, the inland waterways thronged with coloured barges. I was suffering withdrawal, because Luce had hit a problem with the recording, and was taking her time smoothing it out. I knew she thought I needed a rest and was probably dragging her circuits on purpose. I pined for my Shade and her lover, who seemed to be my lover too. I wondered what conversations they were having, what Shade was thinking and whether she had learned the things she wanted to know. Had she visited the rust islands yet? I felt strongly that it was all continuing without me, and that rather than containing a fragment of Shade’s world, the recording chip was a doorway, an interface, right into it.
Truce came up to me outside my cabin and complained I wasn’t spending much time with the team nowadays. ‘You mustn’t be depressed,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to live with this.’
‘With what?’
He shrugged. ‘Staying here. If we’re stuck, we’ve got to think about making this place habitable.’
I shook my head. ‘Someone will come. It’s too far-fetched to think we’re stranded here, attractive though the thought may be at times!’
‘I thought you were pining for the Organic.’
I glanced at him. ‘I don’t know what I’m pining for, actually.’
He laughed good-naturedly. ‘Come back to us, Serami. Stop wandering. Nobody knows where your head is nowadays.’
I smiled in what I hoped was a convincing manner.
‘You’re missing so much,’ he told me. ‘We need to think about how we can sustain ourselves, perhaps indefinitely. Lem thinks that some of our bio-analysis equipment could be converted to help with agriculture and...’
‘Woah! We’re not supposed to give primitive cultures knowledge of our technology!’
‘Neither are we supposed to get abandoned!’ Truce rolled his eyes. ‘Think about it. These people are the descendants of our ancestors. They had it all once, anyway.’
‘Not exactly. Anyone with a gram of sense, incentive and nous about them abandoned planet and ran for the colonies. What was left behind...’ I gestured around me. ‘...was rubbish. It might be dangerous to give these people any of our knowledge.’ I don’t know why I argued that way. Why should I care? I wanted warmth, comfort and good food, just like anyone else.
‘We could do with your help,’ Truce said hopefully.
I sighed. ‘OK.’
He brightened. ‘Good. Come along to the canteen with me and take a look at the plans Lem’s created. Interesting design. We need an efficient water system, and the existing wells are certainly not that. Lem thinks they should be excavated, cleaned up. The town would be built around a canal system...’
‘What?’ Presentiment furred my skin. ‘He’s made plans?’
‘Well, yes... What’s up?’
I grabbed his arm. ‘I want to see them. Now.’
There it was. A beautiful hologram created by Lem’s AI. He’d put a lot of imagination into the design, and a lot of wishful-thinking. The rubbish tips were blanketed with green, with foliage and with crops. A mandala of canals circled and bisected the greenery. And there was the aqueduct, a graceful serpent linking the mountain-tops, carrying water down into Samedi Lake. ‘I based it on my personal mandala,’ Lem said, waving at the image. ‘The one my analyst gave me back home.’ He laughed. ‘Now I’ll turn it into a town. Pretty spiritual, huh?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, great. How do you propose we build all this?’
‘We’ve found a form of bamboo growing a few clicks north of here,’ Truce said. ‘Should be able to cultivate it, use it for building materials.’
‘Bamboo?’
‘Yes. Are you OK, Serami?’
The bridges were strung from hill-top to hill top, daring aerial walkways. Lem’s hologram even had little people walking across their swaying expanses. If I looked close enough, would one of them be Shade? I felt dizzy; sick, but elated.
I fled back to Lucrezia. ‘Plug me in, Luce! I need to experience the last segments. Now!’
We must be on the brink of some great discovery that would blow our theories about the past into infinity. Lucrezia urged me to speak to Elenov about this, but I was still reluctant. One more time, I said, just one more time. I must communicate with her again. This time I intended to try and make her aware of my presence.
Shade had been in the rust islands for several days. Her skin was itching from the spores puffed from the lichens that grew on the rotting metal. She was surrounded by a surreal vista of what looked like skeletal scaffolding. There was little metal to be seen; everything was furred by the lichens - fire-red, luminous green, dull yellow.
She hadn’t found anything. Others had been there, hundreds of years before, and picked the place clean. Every day, she came across timid mud-larks scavenging for any last morsels, who fled like ragged birds from the sight of her.
She looked at the strange ruins and wondered what kind of beings the gods had been. It was hard to imagine any human body feeling comfortable in these surroundings. Her device had been unable to pick up any information of use. She was squatting down on a wide deck that was filigreed with rot holes, staring out over the ocean. Was this the end of her quest? I sensed her despondency.
Don’t give up, Shade.
It was then that she sensed me. Her spine stiffened. She became alert. Her hand fluttered to behind her ear. ‘I know you’re there,’ she whispered. ‘Speak to me!’
Keep looking!
Lucrezia’s voice intruded. ‘She can’t hear you, Serami. It’s something else she senses, perhaps something she wants to believe in.’
All the time I’d spent with Shade, she’d used her device for recording. Now, she was receiving. She closed her eyes and the world went black for me too. But even as she received, the device recorded the information. I felt her mind straining to translate the faint, gritty images that flickered like grey static across her inner eye. It was like watching a badly tuned transmission. Earth memories.
She got to her feet, with her eyes still closed. Carefully, using only a kind of sixth sense, she began to walk across the treacherous, fragile deck, letting the ancient messages guide her. For a moment, too brief, it all came back: images like old movie frames.
I could see now what the rust islands were: a hastily-constructed factory plant.
Then, through Shade, I saw the people. They were standing outside a facility of some kind, laughing together as if posing for a photograph. Their skins were brown, and their clothes, which looked vaguely like uniforms, were dusty and well-worn. Some wore necklaces and bangles fashioned from shells and driftwood. The gods.
One woman stood slightly apart from the rest, her hands deep in her trouser pockets. She had a strong face, with a wry, crooked smile. Her dark hair was cut square around her shoulders, although her thick fringe was pushed back with a bandanna. I recognised her, even though for a few moments I didn’t realise exactly who she was.
Then, a shock of adrenaline coursed through my muscles, made my legs twitch with a primitive urge to flee. I was looking at an image of myself, and there was Truce and Lena standing beside me, with other members of the team grouped behind; Elenov hunkered down in front of us, clearly in command. It seemed like a weird joke that had come back on me. I couldn’t grasp the implications. The image of myself seemed to stare right into me, as if I were the camera’s eye. Then, perspective shifted.
Now Shade looked back towards land, up the estuary. Her city did not exist yet. What lay there was a strange, colourless sprawl, but with localised areas of green. Building must have begun on the canals already.
‘What happened to you?’ Shade cried aloud. ‘What happened?’ Her voice seemed to scare the ghosts away, for the images broke up into grey muzziness once more. She opened her eyes, gasping, and saw a flapping curtain of sea-birds lift off the estuary.
‘Damn!’ she said. ‘Damn!’
Shade, it’s me! I’m here... She could not hear me.
She began to march back the way she’d come and in her anger was not quite so careful with her feet. Perhaps she really had invoked the gods. One moment, I was with her out in the sea air, the next there was a splintering, groaning sound and the visuals went hay-wire. I thought the chip had gone strange on me again, but then realised that Shade had fallen through the deck. My skin broke out in a cold sweat. Was she injured? Dead?
Shade! Get up!
I heard her groan, experienced her anxiety as she tested her limbs for breaks. Nothing more than a few scrapes. She had landed on something yielding. The walls of the place she’d dropped into were laced with corrosion; ragged holes let in the light. But in the dimness, she could see that something had been etched deeply into the disintegrating metal. It looked like some kind of ancient wall painting, a picture found in the recesses of a tomb. Shade stood up, went to examine it. She took out a small torch from her belt and ran its beam over the pocked lines. A message from the gods?
Here, where the aqueduct meanders from hill-top to hill-top, here where the cluttered shores of Samedi Lake hides in its valley. A cave. A tomb. Where treasures lie. The sky woman sits in the cave and holds before her a strange device; a weapon, a magic artefact, a talking mirror. Through Shade, I saw myself discover the cylinder at the dig. It was so clear now. Shade was the future, not the past.