"One day perhaps we’ll have a definitive answer on that," Zee said, while Maze and Mara had a scan-the-area-for-enemies moment. "For now, my favourite definition of it is that they’re the sloughed-off memories of living worlds, crystallised and decaying fragments of the past tumbling and interconnecting."
I suppose if someone had taken a billion jigsaws and mixed all the pieces together and then had them connect up randomly so you could move from piece to piece you’d get the same effect, but Zee’s explanation was much more poetic.
"Ionoth memories inhabitants of worlds?" I asked, and saw I’d managed to surprise them.
"That’s one of the possibilities," Lohn said. "Maybe part of Muina’s histories survived on your world after all."
"We lots entertaining fantasy," I said. No-one seems to believe me when I say Earth wasn’t settled by Muinans.
"Looks clear," Maze said, coming back to us. "Let’s get started."
The testing was much the same as all the testing we’ve been doing, with me contributing a lot of standing about. I wish I could at least figure out how to make these illusions. Still, it was entertaining watching Maze throw the stone blocks at one another, creating fantastic explosions of rock and dust. Most of the skills First Squad hadn’t already tried seemed to work, and they were pleased about one which involved the gates, but I was more than glad when they decided it was time to head back.
And then, as we were walking back to the gate we’d entered by, there was a small gate, twice the size of my head. And through it, something so familiar my heart almost stopped. I certainly stopped, and my internal recording shows me how quickly Zee and Alay reacted, shifting around in my peripheral vision, flanking me. At the time, all I could see was It.
"That’s what your world looks like?" Maze asked, eventually.
I shrugged, feeling so betrayed I wanted to scream. "Some parts. Australia lots red dirt. Sky – that quality light – I forgotten how big sky is. That right sort tree." Then I scrubbed at my face and added in English: "Crying over a fricking gum tree. How pathetic can I get?"
I made myself stop. Made myself say something that would get them moving. Made myself hold it in, at least until we were back on Tare and I could say I was tired and wanted a shower. None of First Squad were under any illusion about how I was feeling, but they had sense enough to know they couldn’t fix it, and were kind enough to leave me with a short stop at medical and then to my room.
I thought it was real. Just for that second, before I saw the fraying edges, I thought that was Earth. I can still feel the way my stomach twisted, the way every part of me leapt through stillness into roaring joy, and then crashed.
All the feelings I’ve been trying to hold back, all my struggles to resign myself to being this stray, this person out of place and never really belonging, they’ve risen up to drown me. And tomorrow’s my birthday. For a brief second I thought I had a chance, that I could go home and be there for my birthday and I just don’t know if I can stand this awful pit that’s opened up in me after that moment of belief.
I want to go home.
Monday, February 11
Happy Birthday
I was sitting on my bed when I woke up. MY bed. My bed, my room, my world.
Just, not quite.
Somehow I’d ended up in Earth’s near-space. The cold tipped me off immediately, even before I saw the great big sections of wall lacking any substance. I was horribly chilled, cold with a deep ache in my bones, like I’d been sitting outside in Winter. Sydney’s Winters aren’t exactly sub-zero, but you don’t feel happy about life if you sit out in them wearing a pair of underpants and a thigh-length t-shirt.
But, oh gods, cold was the last thing I cared about right then. I had no idea how I’d managed it, but somehow I’d ended up THIS far away from exactly where I wanted to be. I jumped up, and staggered a bit since I was very stiff, like I’d been there a while, then pulled open the door. Touching and moving things in near-space was like being underwater. I could lift objects, but things which should be light needed more push, and things I expected to be heavy were buoyed up unexpectedly.
At first I was just looking. All those trivial domestic things which were familiar and right and how things should be done, instead of the way they’re done on Tare. Which were MINE. I started recording it, a thing which is becoming more automatic with me. Storing memories to re-examine later.
A lot was missing. The walls and furniture, the bigger and more permanent objects, were solid enough, but most smaller objects were a haze where I could almost make out the outline of what should be there, but it was more a smudge than any kind of substance. The bookshelves were full of the impression of books, blocky and colourful, but there were only one or two shelves – the shelves where Mum keeps her favourites – where I could make out titles or pick anything up.
The back garden was unexpectedly real. Mum likes having a garden, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time on it, and goes for a cottage garden look: masses of plants and no neat borders or parts which need to be constantly weeded. The plants, the leaves, flowers, were all there. It even had some of the scent, though everything was flattened by a tinny greyness. No blue sky, but a washed out watercolour slate.
I’d gone outside to look for gates. I’d been able to see the gate we’d used in Tare’s near-space, so I figured my best bet was to look through all the nearby gates until I found one which led to planet instead of Ena and then see whether I was able to get through it.
No gates. None visible, anyway. I went out to the street and walked down it, looking for any sign, the bitumen very gritty beneath my bare feet but oddly warmer than most everything else. I knew that Muina and Tare were in an area that is considered shattered, which is why they have so much trouble with Ionoth, but it seemed Earth’s near-space was signally lacking ways in and out of it.
I don’t know why I wasn’t more scared. I think the cold had blunted my common sense. I knew on a mental level that, rather than being right where I wanted, I was in serious shit. If ever a world memory would have monsters, it would be Earth’s. Monsters wearing the faces of people, monsters which did the most awful things to each other, and that didn’t even count current and past non-human predators, let alone the creatures we liked to make up. For all that Australia’s one of the safest places you could possibly live, plenty of bad things have happened there. And I was also cold and hungry and could die of that as readily as being eaten.
But I was numb to thoughts of danger, and just returned to the outline of my home and sat down on the back patio steps. I couldn’t work out how I’d gotten there, but was sure it wasn’t a dream. The most I could think of doing was to try and find something tangible enough to keep me warm, and then to wander around randomly hoping I could find a gate.
The spaces seem to be quiet places, and the only noise I’d heard had been something like wind or static, distant but ever-present. I don’t think I heard anything else at all, but I felt a sudden tingle all through me and a sense of something passing. I jerked upright, realising I’d nearly fallen asleep, and stared over my shoulder at the familiar boards of the patio and the sliding door into the kitchen.
Shadows. The patio table and chairs, sketchily half there, and shadows. Just the faintest hint of shapes, of people, which seemed to get fainter or darker as I moved my head. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that they might be Ionoth. Filled with hope, I stood and began casting about, walking back and forth until I found the best spot to see them, standing right in the frame of the sliding door, facing outwards. I knew Dad straight away – he’s tall and he tends to stoop. Mum was sitting down. The short shadow had to be Jules. Just there, right in front of me.