Earth Thirst (26 page)

He takes her hand—gracefully, elegantly—and raises it slowly to his lips. “Escobar,” he says. “Escobar Montoya.”

“You were born in 1896,” she says, not letting go of his hand. “Which means you've got to be an Arcadian, like Silas. Alberto is twenty-seven. So my first question is: great-grandson or grandson?”

“Neither,” Escobar says. “Both.” He laughs, glancing past her at me. “She knows.” It isn't a question.

“Probably more than I do,” I say dryly.

Escobar laughs again. “Oh, that I know.”

I look at him fully, examining his face. Trying to recognize it. All I can see is a resemblance from the sculpture downstairs. “I don't know you,” I tell him.

His nostrils flare for a second and his face clouds. “You're a liar, Silas Dardanidi,” he says.

“So I've been told,” I reply, and as if on cue, the elevator sounds.

I expect it contains Talus, but when I hear the echo of more than one pair of feet, I glance over my shoulder. Talus is there, but so is a younger version of Escobar. He wears his suit like he knows how to. Unlike Talus, who is putting on a good show, but looks like the half-thawed French peasant he is next to Alberto Montoya.

“Well,” I hear Mere say, “look here. It's the prodigal grandson and your old pal. This is turning into quite the party.”

Grandson.

Pieces click together. “He's not your grandson,” I say to Escobar. “He's you.”

Escobar chuckles. “I was never that young,” he says.

One of the side effects of Mother's care: we may live forever, but we're never less aged than the day we first enter her embrace.

“How long has it been since you were truly
young
, Silas?” he asks.

My head is spinning. “Thirty-three centuries,” I say, “give or take a few.”

Mere stares at me, her mouth open.

“One of the first,” he concedes. “But then, you always were one of her favorites.”

I shrug. “I wasn't aware that she has favorites. And even if she does, I'm certainly not on the list anymore.”

Mere is still staring at me, and Escobar carefully picks up his glass and takes a tiny sip. “Yes, being
aware
is sometimes difficult when you return to her so frequently, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“How much do you remember of all those years?” he asks.

“Most of it,” I counter, somewhat defensively, not meeting Mere's gaze.

He laughs. “Most? Silas, do you know how complex the pathways in your brain would have to be to sustain all that history? Haven't you ever wondered why, of all the things that are perfect about us, it is our memories that are the most fragile?”

“The world is fragile,” I counter. “It's not like it used to be. It's become so toxic. Brain tissue degrades easily.”

“Toxicity has nothing to do with it,” he snorts. “Memory is just as easily
not restored
.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come now, Silas. You know she takes memories from you. But do you know how? When you go into Mother's embrace and she heals you, how do you think that works?”

“I—she—she restores us.”

“
Restores you?
How? You've been part of her for thirty-three hundred years, and you've never wondered how she heals you? Is it just a matter of growing you new tissue? If you come back to her without legs, she grows you new ones. No arm? No problem. Missing a kidney, or a lung, or an eye? Just as easy. Is that how you think it is done? She buries you beneath her roots and you lie there like a blind worm, letting her knit you whole again.”

“Wait a minute,” Mere interjects. “This is all true? This is what happens?”

“More or less,” I say, somewhat stung by Escobar's words.

“More or less?” Mere echoes.

“He knows so little about how it truly works, dear,” Escobar says. “He's not just a passive recipient of her affection. Ask him what happens when he buries himself? Ask him if he can grow a new arm? You hide in the ground, Silas, don't you? You hide so that you can make new marrow from the humus. You can eat flesh to replace your own. You drink blood to flush toxins out of your own bloodstream. If you can do all this without her, then why do you need her at all?”

“I—” I suspect
“that's just the way it is done”
isn't the answer he's looking for.

“Mother says you need her, and you believe her. Like any good child does when its mother tells it the way the world works. But it's more insidious than that, Silas, because Mother has built you in a such a way that you
crave
her soil above all others, and the longer you are gone from her embrace, the more that craving builds. Don't you feel it?”

“No,” I resist. “It's the air. It's this world. It's this… this poison that is in my blood. She would heal me. She would protect me.”

“She would lie to you,” Escobar says sadly. “It's what she's been doing for more than thirty-three centuries.”

“No,” I protest. “You're the one who is doing the lying.” I look at Mere for help, but she's just standing there, listening. Taking it all in. Trying to grasp what she's hearing.

“He's trying to confuse me. Confuse us,” I tell her. “We know that Hyacinth owns land on Rapa Nui. We know they built the lab. We know what they're doing. This has nothing to do with how Arcadia works. He knows that I'm rootless. He knows I can't call Arcadia.”

“Why not?” she says softly.

“No, Mere. He's lying to us. You saw what he did to Nigel. He did that to one of his own.”

“And you haven't?” Escobar snaps.

He wants me to deny it; he wants me to say the words that will seal my fate. He wants me to admit my ignorance of my own history. Because that will prove his point. He knows what I have done, what actions I have taken because Mother told me to.

Amnesiacs know.

“You don't know anything,” he says coldly as if he can read my thoughts. “You know nothing about who we are. What we have done to become who we are. What we gave up.” His voice rises in volume. “You don't
remember
anything.”

I look at Mere again, and the expression on her face is too much to bear. It reminds me of…

I can't look at her all of a sudden, and I turn my gaze to the view, looking out at the darkening skyline of Santiago. A tiny sliver of light gets caught on the roofline of the building near us, a tiny flash of reflected sunlight that hasn't quite gone out yet.

I remember the sun setting in the west, letting the night loose across the sky; I remember how the torches colored all their faces, turning them red with blood. I remember the feathers, the white feathers stuck to my arms and shoulders and chest. The heavy headdress, covered with more feathers. I remember the one who was there before me. The steward.

I remember her face.

“This is a waste of time,” Talus says, walking up behind me. “It's all buried too deep. He'll never remember. He prefers it this way. It makes him more efficient. Memory only clouds the mind. Silas doesn't want to know. He just wants to serve.” He's standing right behind me. “He just wants to do what he's told.”

Mere's eyes are bright, imploring me to say something.

Pieces, coming together. Grafting lemon trees. Tending gardens. Growing a sapling in pure soil.

“Mother sent me to the island to stop you,” I say. “You were growing your own tree. You were trying to create a new Arcadia. Mother didn't want that, and so she sent me.”

Behind Mere, Alberto is silent, but his mouth is twisted into a leer. I can see the old man in him now. I can see where he came from.

I look at Talus next, searching his face for any sense that he wasn't the bastard I thought he was. I see nothing that convinces me otherwise and so I turn away from him, letting my gaze swing across the view once more.

The sliver of sunlight has gone.

I gauge the distance between the two buildings, and wonder how much wind there is at this height.

Putting my hand on Mere's arm, I turn toward Escobar. “Jacinta Huaca Copihue.” I say the name attached to the face I now remember. “Mother sent me to kill your wife. Mother sent me to kill
Hyacinth
.”

Mere was right. I needed a trigger. I needed something to force my subconscious to remember what was buried.

And now, I remember too much.

Escobar starts to come out of his chair. Talus is reaching for me, and all I care about is Mere's reactions to my words. Her eyes are widening, and I can't tell if it is in shock or horror.

I hear the tiny plink of glass breaking, and then Talus's head explodes.

THIRTY

T
alus is right about one thing, though. I know about efficiency. Escobar has been trying to confuse me, and I've been party to it enough times over the centuries that I should know better, but I let him get under my skin. Inside my head. This is the trouble with fractured memories—with all memory—you seek order. You seek structure. One of the most dangerous things an Arcadian can do is let himself be convinced something is true, because that's what will happen. We'll make it true. Our brains will fix these words—these images—into an unassailable truth.

Their mistake is to think that this confusion will be enough, but I've been a soldier too long. I don't
think
about fighting any more. It just happens.

Even before the jacketed rifle round makes a mess of Talus's head, I'm in motion. I kick at Escobar's chair, knocking it spinning. He's still half in it, and the sudden weight of the chair against his legs knocks him sprawling. I still have a hand on Mere, and I drag her with me as I back-pedal away from the mess that Talus's headless body is making on the hardwood floor.

Another tiny circle of glass falls out of the windows and Alberto spins around, roaring in pain.

I run parallel to the windows, toward the shelter afforded by the book-filled partitions. It's not Alberto I'm trying to hide from; if it were just him and me, I would stay and slug it out. No, I'm getting away from what I know is coming up in the elevator behind him.

He and Talus weren't going to kill me. They weren't going to risk getting hurt themselves. They were going to use Mere to hold me off until the strike team could arrive. And, as she and I reach the safety of the partitions, I hear the elevator ding and the sound of many boots on the floors. Alberto starts screaming at them to go after me.

The partitions are double-sided bookcases about three meters long with thick steel casters. Heavy, but mobile. Not a bad solution for breaking up large warehouse spaces. Useful if I was trying to build a fort.

The billiards table is equally impressive. Walnut frame with marble legs. The green wool cloth like a pristine glade of new grass. The balls are solid ivory, and I take several, stuffing extras into my pockets. The cues are nice too—solid pieces of lathed ash—but impractical against guns.

Mere, to her credit, is right behind me. I spot a hallway leading away from the billiards room and I jerk my chin toward it, telling her to lead the way.

The men are talking to each other as they approach the partitions, and I hear Alberto's voice in the background, maligning their inability to move quickly enough.

The trouble with rent-a-troops: it doesn't matter how well trained they are, Arcadians will always think they move too slowly. The strike teams come at us through two of the gaps in the partitions, and the first pair open fire as they spot me on the far side of the billiards table. Their bullets wreck a number of the television screens arranged along one of the few fixed walls in the penthouse as I run for the hallway.

The book-filled partitions form an L-shape, running from the windows for ten meters or so before making a right-angle and connecting with the wall. The narrow gap between the last partition and the wall allows access to an actual hallway, and I know it is a dead end, but it's a better space for Mere and me to be in than hiding under the billiards table, hoping no one will notice us.

Immediately on my left as I enter the hallway is a walk-in closet nearly the same size as the rec room, and a capacious master bath. The hallway turns to my right several meters ahead, and at the turn is the master bedroom. Around the corner are several other bedrooms, and Mere is standing in the middle of this hallway, looking at me as if I know which door will lead us to safety.

I wave at Mere to stay close to the wall while I peek in on the master bedroom. It's impressive, and worth a more measured look, but behind me is the long and straight hallway back to the rec room. Standing here, gawking, is going to be bad for my health. I sense motion behind me, and I throw one of the billiard balls as I dart out of the doorway. The ball hits one of the strike team members and he goes down heavily, and the way he sprawls on the floor suggests he's not getting back up.

We're behind the elevator shaft now, on the opposite side of the floor, and there are four doors off this hallway. Two that will undoubtedly lead to guest rooms with good views, the one on the opposite side will mostly be a windowless—joyless—utility room of some kind. The last one is at the somewhat abrupt end of the hallway.

“They're behind us,” I hiss at Mere. “We can't go back. These rooms”—I gesture around me—“they're not going anywhere either. We have to go forward.”

She nods, still in shock. But she's still thinking. “It goes around, doesn't it? There's got to be a way through—a way back to the kitchen. He wouldn't build a place like this without a way to walk around, would he?”

“Let's hope not,” I say.

The doors are all closed, which doesn't surprise me terribly if they aren't in use, but the door at the end of the hall shouldn't be there. According to my mental map, I'm not even halfway across the floor. There should be another space—the same size as the master bedroom, these other rooms, and the rest—on the other side of that door.
So why is there a door at all?

I step back to the turn in the hallway and risk a peek. The gunmen are alert, and all I get is a quick glimpse before someone starts shooting. A fusillade of bullets pepper the wall around the frame of the master bedroom door.

But I get a head count. Four. And I only have two billiard balls left. I'm going to run out of ammo before I run out of targets.