Memory

Chapter 22

By the time I reached Azure Mesa the sun was directly behind me. Its rays shot through rips in the clouds to fall in mottled patterns against the mesa’s blue stone cliffs—a lovely, bright blue like polished turquoise. Changed stone. Perhaps all of Azure Mesa was a folly. I wondered how long it had been there, and how long it would last. Its walls were badly undercut by the silver, and in places the overhanging rock had collapsed into hills of turquoise stone. Still, it looked solid enough to offer me shelter through the night… if I could find a way to scale its smooth walls.

A skirt of brush surrounded the mesa. Perhaps it had rained recently, for the brush was covered in a haze of tiny yellow flowers. I breathed in their dry, honey-sweet fragrance: a pleasant scent, but not nearly strong enough to hide the lingering scent of silver. Darkness would not fall for the better part of an hour, but that smell had me nervous. Almost panicky. I did not want to be caught out in the open again. I wanted to get up among the rocks, while the sun’s light held the silver at bay.

But I also wanted to find Jolly.

I had seen no tracks as I approached the mesa, and the dust plumes that wandered the desert had all been tossed up by the fierce wind. Perhaps the morning’s silver storm had kept Jolly from traveling. If so I would have another night on my own. I did not look forward to it.

Grimly I set about exploring the mesa, circling east around the brush, and after a few minutes I found a path. It was a sandy track that cut straight toward the base of the mesa. Eagerly I looked for the marks of tires, but if there had been any, they were gone now, smoothed away by the wind. “Jolly!” I shouted his name, but the wind took my voice away, and there was not even an echo in answer.

I followed the path. It took me all the way to the mesa’s wall, ending beneath a vertical notch cut into the overhanging stone. There were handholds in the blue stone, making a sort of ladder that climbed to what looked like a narrow shelf some thirty feet overhead. Was this the way onto the mesa?

I could not believe it, for I could see no way to get my bike up that rock face. Giving up on the notch, I searched the brush on either side, and after a few minutes I found a second path, fainter than the first and nearly overgrown in places, but it circled around the base of the rock so I followed it—all the way around the mesa without finding any sign of another way up the smooth blue rock.

By the time I returned to the notch the sun was nearly on the horizon. The scent of silver was growing stronger, and Moki was starting to worry. I considered again the handholds that had been cut into the stone. I could certainly climb them and get myself above a silver flood, but if I could not also get my bike to safety, what would I do tomorrow? If I lost my bike, I would be afoot… and it might take me days to walk to the next refuge mesa. Could I do it? Fending off the silver every night? It seemed impossible. Even if I could manage that trick again, eventually I would have to sleep, and surely I could not fend off the silver in my sleep?

No. There had to be some true sanctuary here, or Maya would not have sent me. And Ficer Elmi—the stranger who had Jolly in his care—he would not have told me to come. So, leaving Moki to sniff out partridge trails, I started climbing.

Each handhold was deeply cupped and together they made an easy path. Soon I became all too conscious of my height above the ground. I hesitated at the last handhold, thinking that a snake might have come for the sun on this western-facing shelf, but when I peeked over the edge, I saw only one small lizard that fled at the sight of me.

Even if there had been a snake, I would have found the courage to fight it for possession of that shelf, for just to the right of the notch ladder, set back from the edge a few feet so it was invisible from the ground, was a steel post supporting a boom with pulleys and cable that looked in good condition. So there was a way for me to get my bike above the reach of the silver flood.

I heaved myself over the edge and spent a minute exploring. The ledge was nine or ten feet wide on its outer edge, but it narrowed toward the back. It reached fifteen feet into the rock, giving the impression of an alcove… an effect enhanced by the presence of a steel door set into the back wall. I leaned on the latch handle, and the door opened easily, swinging inward onto a cool darkness that bore the sweet scent of temple kobolds. My heartbeat quickened painfully. That perfume will always speak to me of home, and as I stood on that threshold I found myself torn between joy and loneliness.

Then optical tubes flickered to life along the walls, revealing the foot of a wide stairway littered with the beetlelike carapaces of thousands of dead kobolds. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling, swaying on air currents too slight for me to feel. A veil of brown dust overlay it all. I took a step inside and dust rose around my foot. Peering up the stairway, I called Jolly’s name, but without much hope. The only tracks in the dust were the tiny tracks of kobolds. Clearly, it had been a very long time since any player had entered Azure Mesa by this stair. I called again, but only an echo answered me, so I went back outside.

The ledge looked south and west across a desert plain studded with follies and standing stones, and here and there on the horizon, hazed by blowing dust and distance, the blocky silhouettes of other mesas. In all that land I saw no sign of movement, or of any purposeful plumes of dust of the kind that would mark the passage of a bike and I was glad, for the air had about it an opalesque quality, a shimmering density that I had never seen before, though some part of me knew it was an effect of silver, edging into existence. Night was not far off. Any player still on the road was in dire danger. My own position would not be secure until I brought my bike up from the desert floor.

So, working quickly, I swung the boom out over the edge of the shelf. Then I scrambled down the notch ladder to secure my bike to the dangling cable. Tucking Moki into my field jacket, I climbed up again while the sun blushed red, its disk melting as it neared the world. I set Moki down, then turned my attention to the cable. A hard pull and the bike rose from the ground. Gears locked behind the pulley so that the rope could not slide back. I hauled again, and in less than a minute I was able to swing the boom in and bring the bike to rest on the ledge. I unshackled it, and hurried with it into the refuge, but I did not close the door.

The sun was a thin arc of fire on the horizon. Its last rays penetrated the refuge, overwhelming the pale optical tubes. In that glare I unpacked my savant, determined to contact someone before I sealed myself away for the night.

I snapped the wings open and stepped outside—to find a new sound intruding on the stillness of the evening, a soft sound that I knew immediately: the hiss of tires moving at speed on a sandy trail.

I abandoned the savant and scrambled to the edge. East beyond the brush that skirted the mesa was a lone biker, riding fast so that a tail of dust spun up from the tires to glitter in the sun’s last light.

Then the sun was gone. Twilight rushed in, and the biker became a shadow—a singular shadow—for this player was certainly alone.

Panic touched me. Kaphiri was the only player I knew who traveled without companions. Kaphiri… and myself.

I went back for the rifle. By the time I returned to the cliff’s edge the biker had found the trail to the notch. I crouched in the shadows, huddling close to the rock, my hand on Moki’s back to let him know we were hunting, and that he must be quiet. The scent of silver was very strong.

The biker reached the base of the cliff and stopped there, a darker shadow among dark shadows. He straddled his bike and looked up. “Throw down the cable,” he said in a gruff voice that was not Kaphiri’s, but was familiar just the same.

Moki whined, trotting to the very edge to look over while I swallowed my fear and did as I was told, swinging the boom out and releasing the cable. “Who are you?” I asked. But my mouth was so dry my voice was a whisper. He didn’t hear me.

“Go on now,” he said. “Find the notches on the wall and climb up.” His words were not addressed to me, but instead to a smaller figure that slipped from behind him. I caught my breath, while Moki whined again. “Jolly…?”

At the sound of his name he froze, one hand on the first notch.

“Go on up,” the gruff voice commanded. “There’s little time.”

Ficer Elmi. I had heard him speak last night.

But Jolly did not climb up. “Is it her?” he asked, his voice glassed with fear. “You said it was only one player who came here.”

“It was only one.”

“Jolly,” I said softly. “It is me. Jubilee.”

He stared upward, but it was dark and I could not see his face.

“Come up,” I urged. “Hurry.”

The gruff voice backed me. “Be up, Jolly, now. Before the silver awakes.”

Jolly obeyed, though he climbed hesitantly.

“Haul the rope,” the old man reminded me.

I scrambled to do it. A fierce tug brought the bike swinging into the air. I shifted my grip and hauled again. “Hurry,” I pleaded. “The silver is close.”

“We’ve a minute,” Ficer Elmi said.

The bike cleared the ledge. I secured the rope, then swung the boom in just as Jolly reached the top. Moki was frantic, bouncing around on the edge of the cliff and barking so that I feared he would slip over or that he would knock Jolly off. “Moki!” I shouted. “Back up! Back up!”

Just then a faint gleam of silver ignited on the flat below. Jolly saw it and twisted around. “Ficer!”

“I’m here,” Ficer answered, his voice comfortingly close. “Just below. Now climb.”

Jolly scrambled onto the ledge, and Ficer followed behind him. Moki was beside himself, barking and dancing, and I was fighting with the cable, struggling to get it unclipped from the bike, a task made hard by the darkness and my shaking hands. Ficer knelt beside me. His callused hands helped with the hasp. “It’ll be heavy this night,” he murmured. “Can you not feel the weight of silver in every breath?”

I could. “Why were you out so late?”

“We were to meet three, not one.”

Jolly squatted among the shadows beside the door, cradling Moki in his arms. “We thought you might be him,” he said in a voice so low I suspected he still wasn’t sure.

“I’m not him. But things have happened. Come. We’ll talk inside.”