The Forever Drug (27 page)
In a blindingly fast motion, the nature spirit tore a branch out of one of his arms and held it over his head as if he were going to strike me with it. Then he grinned at me with teeth that were chips of milky white quartz.
"Hello, Romulus," he said. "I'm Muirico. Want to play fetch?"
The forest spirit was serious. He did want me to fetch something: Jane.
"We need your nose, shifter," it said. "You're the only one who can find Mareth'riel inside the Jewel of Memory."
I shook my head. Find Jane inside the
what
? I shifted into human form. I squatted, keeping myself at eye level with Muirico.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
The nature spirit jammed the stick back into his arm. Root and soil wrapped around it, enclosing it like flesh around bone. Muirico raised one evergreen-needle eyebrow and cocked his head. "Dunkelzahn's jewel." His voice was faintly irritated, as if I'd failed to recognize some famous cultural icon. "It stores memories."
"Whose memories?" I asked.
"Everyone's. From all time. Like a library. Pieces and pages. But they're all mixed together, like leaves in a windstorm. Even a dragon has trouble finding the right one."
I was having trouble following what Muirico was saying. Dunkelzahn had amassed a great magical treasure trove over his long life, and obviously this Jewel of Memory was one of those treasures. I was willing to believe it was somehow capable of storing memory, like some kind of magical database, but I found it impossible to believe it held the memories of everyone who'd ever lived. The forest spirit must have been exaggerating.
"Are you telling me that Jane's missing memories are inside a magical jewel?" I asked. "Did someone use this thing to steal those memories from her? Is that how her mind became damaged?"
"No, no, no, no, no!" Muirico pressed his hands together in a frustrated gesture, cracking his twig knuckles. "Everyone loses memories sometimes. Every time you forget where you put something—that's a memory gone from your head. But the jewel never forgets. Your memories are always there. All of them. Even the ones that are still in your head."
I shivered. I wasn't sure if I liked that idea. If the Jewel of Memory really did work as Muirico described, that meant that everything I'd ever thought, ever felt, was recorded on it. It was like suddenly learning that a thief had taken your diary—the one in which you'd confided your most intimate fantasies and fears—and that there was nothing you could do to prevent him from reading it.
"Can someone take his memories back from the jewel?" I asked.
"Take?" Muirico shook his head. "No. The jewel cannot be broken. The memories are always there. But a memory can be re-remembered. If it's your own, it will stick, like mud to a foot. That's what you must do for Mareth'riel. Take her for a walk through her memories. Use your nose to find them for her."
I still had no idea how I was supposed to do that. Maybe I was supposed to use my tracking abilities to locate the jewel, which Jane would then use like a drug to repair her mind.
"Where is this jewel?"
Muirico pointed one twig finger toward the west. I peered through an opening in the trees and saw the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean, there beyond the bluffs. Clouds were forming out on the horizon; it looked as though the strange hot weather was finally going to break.
"The jewel is in Germany," Muirico said.
"Germany!" I gasped. "That's thousands of kilometers away. How am I supposed to—"
"Dunkelzahn gave it to Lofwyr. In his will." Muirico continued, oblivious to my outburst. He ran a hand lovingly over the trunk of a tree. "I was given this grove, and Lofwyr was given the Jewel of Memory. He took it to Germany."
Lofwyr. The great dragon was the CEO of Saeder-Krupp, one of the largest and most powerful corporations on the planet. And now he was also the major shareholder of the New Dawn Corporation. He was the frigger whose scheming had gotten Jane into this mess.
"You want me to find this thing inside a dragon's lair?" It was impossible to keep the skepticism out of my voice. "You might as well ask me to shove my neck in a leg-hold trap—one made of silver. Saeder-Krupp has its own private army and billions of nuyen to spend on magical security. Wherever the jewel is, it will be protected by magical wards and barriers—not to mention the magically active people on Saeder-Krupp's payroll. The corporation has got mages, paranormal guard animals, elemental spirits..."
"None of them can stop you from visiting your own memories," Muirico said. "You have been to the jewel many times already—you just didn't realize it."
"Huh?"
The forest spirit flashed his quartz-white teeth.
"Have you ever forgotten something, then suddenly re-remembered it? That was the jewel."
"So how come I can't do that all the time?" I asked. "Why do some memories disappear forever?"
"Recent memories are right at the surface of the jewel. They're the easy ones. The older memories take you deeper inside, and take more work. Sometimes you don't try hard enough or you use the wrong senses. And some memories are better left forgotten."
He had that one right.
"So let me get this straight," I said. "I follow my memories into the jewel, then track down Jane's ... track down
Mareth'riel's
memories and lead her to them."
"That's right," Muirico nodded eagerly.
"But there's one part I don't get. How do I find Mareth'riel? Or how does she find me?"
"She's already there," Muirico said. "You'll see her astral form. And she'll see yours."
I shook my head. Frig. For a moment there, the spirit had me going. But there was one major flaw in his little scenario.
"Muirico," I said, "there's something you should know. I can see into the astral plane, but I can't project astrally."
"Yes, you can," he said. "I can grant you that power for a brief time. But you have to learn to let go of your fears."
I blinked. Was it possible? Projecting an astral form was something only mages and shamans did. I'd never had the Dumas test, but I didn't think I was magically active, over and above the usual shifter abilities of regeneration and astral sight. But what if I was? What if I could astrally project? That would put me right up in the same league as Lone Star's combat mages. If I could track on the astral plane, I'd really be able to impress Sergeant Raymond. Maybe Lone Star would give me a shot at...
I stopped myself. Who was I kidding? I'd never be anything more than an animal to cops like Sergeant Raymond and the Lone Star brass. Unless the UCAS suddenly started handing out SIN numbers to paranormals overnight, I'd always be an irregular asset, little better than a shadowrunner. Lone Star might give me tougher assignments, but I'd still be on paranormal animal containment, stuck tracking animals instead of arresting criminals.
I stopped myself. Animals. I'd used the word as if I were describing some sort of inferior being. I realized then that when I thought of criminals, I thought of humans or metas. They were the big prizes, and not because of the crimes they committed—a para could just as easily kill, wound, or steal—but because of what they were. Human. Meta. More important then mere animals.
Frig.
I
was an animal. I might look human, but that was just a mask I wore. The real me was pure wolf. And
that
was what made me special. Whether or not Lone Star ever accepted me as a police officer, I was the only one, according to Muirico, who could find Jane's memories for her. Not even a
human
cop could do that.
"All right," I said. "Show me what to do."
Muirico patted the ground. "Lie down. Relax. Then close your eyes and listen to my voice."
"Do I have to stay in human form?"
"Whatever makes you most comfortable."
"Right." I placed my palms on the ground and shifted into wolf form. Just as I did, I heard the sound of distant thunder. I looked up at the sky, and saw thunderheads in the distance and the faint crackle of lightning. Strange—the thunderclouds were forming not just in the east, out over the Atlantic, but also toward the north, south, and west. Tall pillars of white cloud ringed the horizon in every direction, almost as if they were converging on the island.
Muirico followed my gaze and nodded. "Storm coming," he said. "We haven't much time."
I shivered. That was the same thing the dwarf had said. I hoped the thunder wouldn't jolt me out of whatever trance was necessary to astrally project.
I turned around in a circle, then lay down. I lowered my chin onto my paws and tucked my tail in tight to my body. When Muirico asked if I was ready, I
har-ruffed
my yes.
I don't recall exactly what Muirico said to me. I just remember that his voice was low and deep, strong as an oak and gentle as the caress of a newly budded leaf. Then suddenly I was outside my body.
I nearly jumped back into it. I was staring down at myself, looking at my wolf body lying on the ground among the trees from a height of two or three meters. It was terrifying. I thought maybe I'd died and become a ghost. I heard a whine come from my own mouth—from the wolf on the ground below me— and saw a shiver pass through the wolf's body. But I didn't feel it.
But that wasn't the worst of it. I could see and hear and feel, but something else was missing. Something I'd taken for granted all of my life.
My sense of smell was gone.
The earth beneath my nose, the sap in the trees, the scents of the animals and birds and insects that inhabited the grove, the smell of the salt water, the faint scent in the air that meant it was going to rain—all of it was gone. The air was empty. Dead. It conveyed no messages and had no texture. It was a canvas that had been scrubbed so clean it wasn't even white anymore. Just blank.
Somehow, Muirico managed to calm me down. I saw the little forest spirit squat beside my wolf body and stroke the back of my neck with his twig hand. "Don't worry," he said. "Your nose still works. Some things in the astral plane don't translate as objects, textures, or sounds. They'll come to you as smells. Just give it a try."
I took a tentative sniff. My physical body continued to lie still, but in the astral my head jerked to the side as I caught a familiar smell. Jane's astral form had passed this way. I could smell her scent. No ... I could smell her
memory
.
"Good." Muirico was looking up at my astral form. "Now follow that scent. Find Mareth'riel. Lead her to what she has lost."
My nose swung around to the scent like a compass needle. Without consciously thinking about it, I found myself loping along, nostrils quivering as I drank in Jane's scent. I was completely focused on it, hyper alert. I could feel the legs of my astral body running below me, but I couldn't feel the ground under my paws. And then I realized I'd run right over the edge of the bluffs, and was loping across the ocean.
My body tensed. But then I realized I wasn't falling, and suddenly it seemed as natural a breathing to be running through the air. With a mere thought I sped up, running faster and faster and faster until the ocean below me became a blur and the wind whipping across my fur became a steady roar. Prince Edward Island diminished until it was no more than a low hump on the horizon behind me, and soon I couldn't see land at all. I ran over large ocean swells, past an oil tanker that was plowing a foaming white wake through the sea, past a surfacing whale whose enormous body glowed with a deep blue light and a spray of hot yellow breath. I let my tongue loll, my mouth widen in a grin and my eyes open with wonder. I was already approaching the other side of the Atlantic; it was night here, but I could see the dull brown glow of land looming on the horizon. I ran toward it, still following Jane's scent.
Somehow I had climbed to a height of a kilometer or more. I flashed over cities filled with tiny glowing specks—-the auras of the people who lived in them. Europe seemed to be one big city—a thick sprawl of people, with only scattered areas of wilderness. I passed over rivers so polluted they no longer glowed with life, over zones of heavy industry. I was glad then that I couldn't smell anything but Jane.
It may sound funny, but the smell of her memory exactly matched her physical scent. A touch of sweat, a hint of musk, and that warm smell that you drink in when you press your nose to the hair of someone you love.
It hadn't occurred to me until that moment to name the emotion I felt for Jane. It hadn't seemed right to call it that before. I knew I desired her physically— my human body had betrayed me every time I was close to her. But where had this emotion come from? I'd mated with human and meta women before, but I'd always managed to keep my emotions separate. I hadn't allowed myself to become vulnerable. But Jane had brought out something in me. Some strange sort of doglike loyalty that was causing me to lay myself at her feet as if I were her pet.
The thought frightened me.
Suddenly, the trail went cold. I'd lost Jane's scent.
I skidded to a halt in the air, and found myself over an enormous arcology. As tall as a mountain, it dominated the city that surrounded it, a gleaming monolith of black glass, massive ferrocrete pillars, and jutting terraces. On the uppermost level of the building— the peak of the mountain—stood a gigantic monitor screen. Three horizontal bars of color were projected on it: black, red, and orange. A symbol of some sort was superimposed on them in glowing blue. I couldn't make out the symbol in the astral plane, but I could read the emotions that it projected: pride, purpose, power.
