Jean has a broken left tentacle that the Gelet could not fix, even with all their advanced biohacking. She can still lift small objects with her other tentacle, and can make adjustments to the great machines underground with her cilia. She worked some stints in the farms, the foundries, and the water-treatment canals, but the physical labor wore her out, and meanwhile she has a good personality for teaching and counseling. That’s why they encourage Jean to spend time with me. She shows me the memory of traveling across an ice floe in the middle of a violent snowfall, when a nearby outcropping broke just as she passed, sending sharp rocks cascading down. From her viewpoint, the snow grew teeth. She was trapped under the rock for a painful age until her friends could get her out, and her whole left side is still racked with chronic pain. She also shows me the rockfall from the viewpoint of a few others who witnessed it from a distance: the mountain crag coming apart, the boulders in free fall. By now, she remembers the disaster as much from far away as up close, because she and others have shared the distant vantage point so many times. Maybe that’s good for her recovery.
The Gelet work hard, without getting rewarded with food dollars or marks, or threatened with conscription. Instead, they just talk about work all the time. Everyone shares their memories of all the work they’ve done, and thus everybody knows just how hard everybody else has worked since the last time they’ve gotten together. Nobody ever lies, and I don’t know if they’re exactly capable of lying.
Jean still moves different from the others, and everybody knows her story. After her accident, Jean fell into a deep depression that nobody could shake her out of, according to another Gelet, whom I’ve started calling River. River and I are sitting in a sort of canteen, eating stewed roots that look odd but taste like roast pheasant, and her pincer is wide open so I can extend my tendrils and entangle them with hers. I’m still getting used to doing that.
According to River, Jean wasn’t depressed just because of the chronic pain, but because everybody treated her different. Every time they shared memories, even of unrelated things, the Gelet couldn’t help letting their worry about Jean, even their pity, leak through, and this made her flesh crawl underneath her carapace. Everyone talked among themselves about how to make Jean feel better, and then they couldn’t hide this from her. Their concern for Jean became an infestation that left sticky strands of poison through every thought and desire they shared, however benign.
This had happened before. Long before humans arrived on January, another Gelet was caught in a tectonic experiment that went awry. This scientist was unhurt physically, but she kept reliving the fear and pain, the feeling as the plate shifted and everything came unstuck. The moment when she realized everything was not under control after all, and then the rest of her team died. All the others revisited her memory of that instant when power gave way to powerlessness, but it was not their memory, it was hers. They all observed her sullenness since the accident, and they talked endlessly about how to cheer her up. So they showed her comforting memories of when someone else had survived a bison attack, or they shared with her their recollections of happy occasions. But the more they tried to help her, the more they reminded her of how bad she was feeling, and the worse she felt. This turned into a self-reinforcing spiral, and eventually she killed herself.
So everybody tried to handle Jean differently. They knew Jean was a gentle soul, with more patience than most, so they gave her a job working with the newborn children, just split off from the mass. They all had noticed those moments when Jean showed her gentleness, and everyone shared them more and more. You’re the only one who can do this. Jean knew perfectly well that she was being handled, that they were all going out of their way to support her, but she decided to put up with it, and anyway she liked her new job.
But everybody still notices Jean’s injury, even when they try not to, and she hates the moments when they pause in her presence. The way their tentacles quiver as they try not to sense what’s right in front of them. That’s one thing Jean likes about spending time with me: her difference is nothing compared to mine. When the two of us walk around together, nobody even notices her.
* * *
I have no idea how long I’ve been in the midnight city, but my old life feels like a surreal dream. I’ve healed enough to start thinking about finding a job here. Like, I could help harvest roots or grubs from the deep crevices that a regular Gelet can’t get inside. Or I could help in one of the laboratories, because I’ve always loved science. Bianca used to say that Xiosphant’s only goal was to keep things the same and maintain our current level of technology, and that this forced Xiosphanti scientists into a contradiction—because the true goal of science is to make progress and discover new things. But Gelet science seems to be different, with experiments that have been in progress for generations, involving processes that move too slowly to observe in one lifetime. Plus, since the climate destabilized, their main goal has been to protect future generations. They can remember every disaster, the same way they remember every failed experiment from the past.
When I picture myself, I no longer imagine a shy girl with high cheekbones, a round face, and swept-back black hair. Instead, I’m a collection of tendrils and limbs: smaller than a regular Gelet and less mobile, but still the same in the ways that matter. I no longer notice when I’m in the dark for long periods, because my senses are all about the vibrations underground, the nonvisible wavelengths of radiation that swim around me, the movement of other people nearby.
I’m with River in one of those smaller salons, where the natural warmth from the springs comes up through a big spout in the middle of the room, and I’m cozy in a blanket of bioengineered fuzz. I’m drowsing, my tendrils braided with River’s without sharing any particular thought, and River sends me a memory that I must have shared sometime in the past.
I’m a human, in Argelo, and Bianca is saying, “—this amazing drink that you are about to try for the very first—” and then the taste of an Amanuensis, the sweet kick, still delicious after all this time.
I don’t know what makes me sicker: seeing Bianca, smelling the sugary sweat that fogged the air in Punch Face, or just being exposed to human speech again. Whatever it is, I have a panic reaction that feels like an old forgotten friend, along with the agony of reawakening parts of myself that I put to sleep, long ages ago. I excuse myself and pull away from River. I need to take care of myself, by myself.
I haven’t even wanted to think too much about the memories of my old life since I got used to living here. The few times lately that someone brought up a memory that I had shared about my family, or Bianca, or the Parlour, or going to the White Mansion in Argelo, I would just freeze up. People learned not to talk to me about that weird, messy human stuff.
Some time later, Jean and I are leaning against the wall after we’ve just watched one of those puppet shows, and I don’t even notice that my tendrils are fully extended and linked to Jean’s—until she shares a memory of the time I followed Bianca around Xiosphant and I saw her meeting with Mouth, in a roomful of guns. The memory is there, as fresh as a moment ago: Bianca’s neck poking out of her fashionable coat, her hair pinned back, the sneaky way she looked around, as if she didn’t realize how easy she was to follow, the weight of my longing as I hid from her. All at once, I’m young and foolish and unaltered, and pining for someone who thinks I’m dead.
I turn firm and brittle, choke on my own breath. I haven’t shared any memories of being human in a long time, but I must have shared a lot of them, early on, when I was learning to communicate.
I almost pull away from Jean, break the connection. But I don’t want her to go around sharing a memory of me being an oversensitive fool with everybody else. So I just try to relax and take it in. I chose to make this moment available, so I can’t blame Jean if she decides to give it back to me.
But then more human memories flood back, one by one. The first time I almost died on the Sea of Murder. My failed attempt to avoid joining Bianca’s invasion plan. The Curfew Patrol chasing Bianca and me, while alarms blare all around us. The Glacier Fools shouting in their delirium.