Forest of Memory Read online

  I could have had footage of HIM.

  But I saw only the deer, crossing the road under a canopy of green leaves.

  Everything from here forward . . . All of this is what I experienced, but I have no recorded memories of it. I can’t play back this episode in my life and report on what I saw. I have to try to remember . . .

  Have you tried to do this? Have you turned off your Lens, turned off your i-Sys, stepped away from the cloud, and just tried to REMEMBER something? It’s hard, and the memories are mutable.

  The cloud is just there, all the time. You reach for it without thinking and assume it will be there.

  I might have heard a noise first, of a branch breaking, but seeing the way he moved through the woods later, I don’t think I did. Even if it was there, it had no meaning at the time.

  My first real awareness of him was the gunshot. It’s an intense memory. As fuzzy as everything else is, I very clearly remember the slap of sound, as if a firecracker had gone off next to my ear. One of the deer jerked and fell. The crack came again, and another fell, and—

  In fact, let me backtrack and try to really describe this, since that’s what you’re paying me for. The first deer to fall was the lead buck. He was standing about twenty-five feet away and watching as the other deer crossed. I saw him jerk first, and I didn’t hear the sound until after that.

  He staggered and took a step toward me. When he fell, he was staring straight at me, as if it were my fault. The sound of his antlers hitting the pavement filled the space between gunshots. The second one came before the other deer really had a chance to react to the leader falling. The next was a doe standing with her back to me. She had started to turn back in the direction they had come. There was that incredible blast that I felt more than heard as the sound cracked through the trees. Her hindquarters crumpled first, and she dropped to the pavement. Her head bounced. I jumped, trying to get free of the bike, absolutely sure I would be shot next. My feet tangled against the pedals, and I went down in a heap. The trailer I had hooked to the back of the bike tipped a little, but it kept the bike from going all the way over. The pedal scraped along my shin. I pushed back, away from the bike, set to run into the woods. I’d managed to get to my knees when I froze.

  A man was standing in the road.

  I didn’t see him walk out of the trees, but he must have been in motion after the first gunshot, while I was busy falling down. But there were two shots, so maybe he was just closer to the road than I thought. It seemed as if the gunshots should have come from far away, instead of being right there. The noise though. It’s actually hard to remember the sound exactly. I think what I have is a memory of remembering the gunshot, you know? It’s as though it were too loud and too painful to actually hold. The part of the memory that hasn’t gone is the intensity of the sound and the visceral way I felt it in my chest.

  But you want to know about the man.

  He was dressed in digitall camouflage and, standing in the road, looked like something out of an old video game. My first impression was of his solidity, however. He inhabited the road as if he had always been there. The deer were gone, except the two he had shot. Under one arm he carried a gun.

  I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I’ve looked at a lot of pictures since. I think it was a Colt R5670 assault rifle, but my memmory might have been faulty when I was looking at images afterward. He was around six feet tall, with broad shoulders that had a slight stoop to them, as if he spent a lot of time crouching. He wore a mask.

  Not like a comic book superhero’s mask. This was more like a balaclava that left only his eyes visible. Beneath the cloth, it was impossible to tell much except that his visible skin was a deep tan, and that his eyes were the same dark brown as the deer.

  Not It wasn’t visible to me right then, but I eventually learned that he also wore a blocker that corrupted the smart dust as he passsed through it, so he didn’t show up. A man-shaped void passing through the world.

  Again, at the time, I didn’t even know I wasn’t recording anything. I thought he was doing this entire thing in front of the world. At any moment, I fully expected Lizzie to speak in my ear and tell me the authorities were on the way. The fact that she hadn’t done so yet probablly cuased me as much panic as anything else.

  I twisted free of the bike and half fell back. I think I said soemthing stupid, like “Don’t hurt me.”

  He snorted, the air puffing the mask away from his face for a moment.

  “You know someone is coming, right? If you hurt me, they’ll know.”

  He turned his back, totally unconcerned with me, and strode to the buck. “Might want to check your connection, hon.”

  THAT was the moment when I realized I was offline. I subvocalized first, the way I’ve done my entire life. “Lizzie?”

  I had There was a slight ringing in my ears from the gunshots, but nothing else. Aloud, ignoring the way my voice carried, I said, “Lizzie. Lizzie, answer me.”

  “You’re offline.” The man knelt by the buck and slung a bag off his shoulder. The gun He laid the gun in front of him, so it would only take one motion to pick it up and point it at me.

  I pressed my hand to my earbud, as i f that would somehow, magically, make Lizzie audible. She had a ten-minute buffer that synced with my local system; this normally dealt with signal drop. The idea that I’d been out of range for that long was slowly dawning on me, but I was mostly in denial. I tried triggering a datacloud, but nothing appeared. Moving from eye gestures, I pulled out my h-stick, to see if I had maybe damaged it when I fell, but the green ready light glowed on top. I unrolled its screen, and it was 404 out of luck. “No signal,” it said.

  I had been scared before, but now I could barely catch my breath. If I had been standing, I think my knees would have given out.

  My throat closed, and I could hear the wheezing as I tried to draw in air. I was ALONE with this man. Have you experienced that? Even in the middle of the night, when I wake up, there’s always someone to talk to. There’s always a witness. Without someone watching, people could do anything, and I was standing ALONE in a forest with a man with a gun.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Nohting. You were just here.” He pulled out a small kit from his pack. It was blue, I think. It fit in the palm of his hand, so it was maybe abuot the size of a long-term UV storage battery or one of the mass-market paperbacks that I sell. He popped it open and pulled out an injector. “Just keep quiet while I’m working. Deal?”

  I nodded, but I still wanted to ask questions. I think it was because I couldn’t connect that the need to touch the web became s o desperate. I kept swiping the screen of the h-stick, trying to get it to connect. Everything else about it worked fine. I could open my gallery but not patch in from my Lens, so the problem was entirely external. The only time I use the h-stick to show images is if I’m sharing them with someone in a digitaly noisy environment. Otherwise, we’re all watching it in projected virteo.

  This felt disconnected and unreal.

  So I started talking, trying to fill in the missing information. “What are you doing?”

  By that point, he had slid the injector into the skin at the base of the buck’s neck. He squeezed the trigger, and I flinched, but it only made a muffled click. He pulled it out, ejected the needle, and loaded another one. His movements were smooth, as if he’d done this hundreds of times before. He popped a fresh needle on. I could see it from where I was standing. It was thicker than the cannula they use for blood draws.

  “You’ll have to pay a fine for killing them. There might be jail time.”

  “I didn’t kill them.”

  I could see now that they were only tranquilllized. Their breathing was slow and steady. The fur on the doe’s back was ruffled, but there was no blood staining her hide. At least none that I could see. “Still, interfering with a herd will have a fine atta ched.” I waited for my i-Sys to report what that was, but I only heard the wind hiss through the le
aves in reply.

  The injector clicked as he squeezed the trigger again. “Sweetheart, if I was worried about a fine, do you think I would be doing this?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re doing.”

  He pulled teh injector out and looked levelly at me. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  I stared at the gun lying in front of him and drew back. The sunlight seemed colder than it had before, and I pulled my sleeves down over my arms even though it meant covering my UV filter tattoos. Powering devices was not high on my list of concerns right then. But I did want to know what he was doing, that was the thing. I wanted to know, very badly, why he had shot two deer—

  “Would you have to kill me if you told me?” I meant it as a joke, but it sure as hell didn’t sound that way. It sounded like a business question at a meeting in the middle of a path under an archway of trees.

  He gathered up the discarded needles and put them back into the medkit. Quickly, he resealed it and tucked it once more into his bag. He didn’t even pretend to think about the answer. He didn’t feint toward his gun or bluster, he just packed up his supplies as if I weren’t even there. I was that little of a hassle for him.

  I think it ticked me off. I’m trying to remember why I thought this was a good idea, but I mostly just remember feeling deeply annoyed.

  I stood up.

  He eyed me through his mask, but that was about it. If he could ignore me, then I could do the same to him. I righted my bicycle and made sure the hitch to my trailer wa s solid. The canvas solar top was still secured, but I opened it anyway to look at the items I was taking into Portland to sell.

  This part I remember clearlly, and I understand EXACTLY why I remember it so well. I know what I had in the cart, because I cataloged it later as part of the ephemera associated with this experience. I’ll bet you’re wondering why I was able to keep all of these items and still vanish for a week into the woods.

  I was offfline for three days, but I was gone longer.

  I should get back to the deer.

  He said, “May as well make yourself comfortable.” He stood up and watched me fussing with my cart.

  “I thought you said I could leave.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “But you—”

  “I said I didn’t want you for anyhting. Didn’t say you could leave.”

  “But—but—” I sputtered like an idiot, starting and discarding all manner of pleas for mercy.

  He grinned. The mask hid it, but his eyes suddenly crinkled. “It’s fine. You can leave. After.”

  “After what?”

  “After I’m finished. I am NOT in the mood to have a visit from the authorities while I’m working.”

  I shook my head, the fear still crawling up my spine. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  “No?” He jerked his chin, hidden behind its mask, at my h-stick. “And you’re holding that because . . . ?”

  To be honest, I had not realized that I still had it out. I was running my finger over the surface, tabbing between screens as if I would find new information. I jerked my thumb off the surface and shoved the thing into my pocket. “I was just looking to see if I had a signal.”

  “You don’t.” He picked up the rifle, which was no less terrifying now that I knew it shot tranqs. They were designed to take down a deer. No telling what they would do to me. He wandered over to where I stood by my cart. “What’re you hauling?”

  “I deal in Authenticities. Antiques, mostly.” It was not, I thought, the moment to mention that I dealt in Captures as well. I very much wanted to get out of this alive, and despite his assurances about the deer, I was less than confident in my survival odds.

  “Let me see?” He walked over to me, and it’s hard to describe the way he seemed to get bigger as he came. This is one place where a Capture would not have shown you the emotional experience, even if you were tapping directly into my vitals. There was a power in his movement, as if he were holding the earth down as he walked, as if he were grounding the world instead of the other way around. Up close, he was older than I’d thought. Above the mask, his face was creased with wrinkles. His eyebrows had been dark once, but were bushy with wild gray hairs now. I could only see from the bridge of his nose to right above his eyes, but it was enough to tell that he was laughing at me.

  “What?” I moved to stand between him and my cart, though if he had chalenged me on it, I would have let him given him the whole thing in exchange for letting me walk away. The move was the unconscious part of my brain wanting to protect its possessions, regardless of the danger. The rest of my brain was busily engaged in screaming RUN!, and the two conflicting impulses led me to just stand in front of him. Not threatening, not retreating.

  “I’m curious, and we have some time before they wake up.” His eyes crinkled again. “Maybe I’ll buy something.”

  “These aren’t for sale.”

  “No?”

  For a brief moment, my brain was actually smart. “I’m making a delivery. To Portland. My client is expecting me.”

  He paused cocked his head then, and his eyes went vague, looking off to the side at a projected virteo that didn’t even show up in the daylight as a glimmer. He grunted and shook his head. “Or you’ve just purchased them yourself. Well . . . Katya Gould. We apparently have more to discuss than I thought we did.”

  In any other circumstance, the fact that he knew my name would have been no big deal. Facial recognition flags people all the time, so you know who you’re talking to and how they stand in rankings compared to you. When I meet with a new client, I know their purchase history and the name of their first pet. What made this terrifying was that *I* didn’t have a connection. He did.

  Something to discuss? That did NOT sound good. And what had he seen in that pause? Something about who I’d bought the typewriter from? My client list? I stalled, pretending that antiques were the only business he could possibly mean. I can’t tell you if I was doing that as a strategy—to try to seem as if I wasn’t a threat—or if it was just a panicked coping mechanism. I remember it both ways.

  “You’re a collector?”

  That smirk again, just peeking above the cloth. “Indirectly.”

  “You make a habit of being vague, don’t you?”

  “I make a habit of not answering questions I don’t need to.” He tilted his head at the deer. “Case in point. You, on the other hand, are very good at tracking down the provenance of the objects you sell and, more important, you have a client list that interests us.”

  “I note you said ‘us.’”

  “Yes.” He shrugged and gave me nothing past that. “So, you have a typewriter, I see.” They turned up in costume dramas often enough that I wasn’t surprised he could name it. Though I was surprised by his next sentence. “That’s the one war correspondents liked, isn’t it?”

  “Hemingway had one.” I almost swung straight into the sales pitch, I but managed to hold my tongue. “You were interested in my clients. I should point out that I maintain complete confidentiality. I never discuss price or purchased items with others.”

  That’s the thing about being an Authenticities dealer. People who seek my services want a unique experience, and that means they often don’t even want other people to know what they have. There are some people who won’t share their purchases with their spouses.

  “Where do you get ribbons for them?”

  That startled me, but not too much. “I print them.” Seeing the surprise on his face, above the mask, I felt like I had to justify it. “I include the original ribbon, but even with re-inking, most are close to two hundred years old, and too fragile to use. If someone actually wants to use the typewriter, and some people do, then I have to give them a reproduction ribbon. I label them.”

  He just grunted and picked up the dictionary, which made me think he might have been a collector. Someone else would have gone for the typewriter, mistaking it as the most valuable item. But the dictionar
y had a solid provenance and was dripping with wabi-sabi.

  He thumbed open the first few pages. “How much?”

  “You can’t afford it.”

  “Maybe my client can. How much?”

  So I told him and watched his brows rise to vanish under the bottom edge of his hood. He rolled his eyes, and for a moment I thought he was making a face at the amount, but the telltale shimmer of a virteo projection sprang into bein g in front of him. He made a few eye gestures and then blinked twice to shut the field down. “The vinos are in your account. Not that you can check, but they are there.”

  “Won’t that tell me who you are?” The words were out of my mouth before I could think them through. I mean, maybe he hadn’t killed me because he’d thought I couldn’t identify him with the mask and all. If I had just reminded him that he had made a mistake, it would be appallingly stupid.

  It didn’t seem to bother him at all though. If anything, he seemed to find the question amusing. His eyes crinkled in another grin. “No.”

  Which was a relief and deeply disturbing at the same time. I mean . . . being able to mask transaction identification was high-level stuff, from what I understood. I occasionally had clients try it, but . . . well. My i-Sys is very good.

  The dictionary vanished into his kit. The movement, and I’m sure this was calculated, showed a handgun under his coat, and another clip for the big firearm, which almost certainly did not have tranquilizers in it. “You’ll want to cover up the cart, now. In case of rain.”

  There hadn’t been any rain in the forecast when I’d left this morning, but I didn’t argue. The man had a gun, after all, even if he had just paid an ungodly sum for the dictionary. Or his clients had, whoever they were. I tugged the tarp back into place, zipping it down. When it was sealed, the cart could be submerged in water up to ten feet in depth and the seals would hold. There wasn’t any real need for that, but it had seemed like a good investment to be certain wind and rain couldn’t get in. Sometimes I dealt in paper ephemera like the dictionary. Clients wanted to see the graceful decay of age, not mishandling by their broker, which meant I had to be able to annnotate damage. Recent water damage? Didn’t sell.