I can't ask anyone, I realize. If I ask Sam, and he hasn't heard of the Linebarger Cats, it doesn't mean they weren't real—everyone here's been through memory excision! I'd giggle if my throat wasn't so dry. I am Reeve! Watch me fake up a bunch of memories to haunt myself with! Was the guy who stalked me through the hallways of the Invisible Republic real? What about the mad bitch with the sword who called me out? I've been running from enemies I never actually saw—only glimpsed out of the sides of my eyes. It's like I'm suffering from blindsight, the strange neurological trauma that leaves its victims unable to see but able to sense events in their visual field by guessing. Maybe I'm an intelligence agent trying to track down a dangerous nest of enemies . . . and maybe I'm just a sad, sick woman who used to substitute game play for living a real life and who's now paying the price.

I lie awake in the twilight and eventually I realize that the shivering has gone. I ache, and I'm feeble, but that's to be expected after the long climb. And as I lie there I become aware of the subtle noises on the ward, the soft white noise of the air-conditioning, the tick of a clock, the quiet sobbing of—

Sobbing?

I sit bolt upright, the sheet and blanket falling away from me. My thoughts churn in parallel with a sense of dread and a numinous awareness of relief. Rescuing Cass and If Cass is here, then that memory was real with Still doesn't mean everything else was real and finally If it was real, Cass must be  . . .

"Shit," I hear myself mutter. I pull the bedding up and clutch it like a frightened child. "I can't deal with this." I feel like sucking my thumb. "I am not ready for this." I'm subvocalizing, so low I make no sound. I have to talk softly when I'm telling myself the truth, because the truth is embarrassing and hurtful. I flash back to what Hanta said: When she's better, I'll ask her who she wants to be, and that's a comfort because I certainly don't have anything better to offer her. Is Hanta up to doing memory surgery properly? I ponder. It would surprise me if they didn't have a full surgeon-confessor along for the ride—it's the ultimate prophylactic for those little ethical embarrassments that an experimental polity might suffer. (Or for those little infiltration-level embarrassments that a secret military installation might encounter, a lying, cynical part of me that I'm no longer entirely sure I believe in adds.)

I lie down again. The sobbing continues for a while, then I hear the clacking heels of a nursing zombie converge on the bed. Quiet voices and a sigh, followed by snores. The white ghost of a nurse pauses at the foot of my bed, its face a dim oval. "Do you need anything?" It asks me.

I shake my head. It's a lie, but what I need they can't provide.

Eventually I doze off.

15. Recovery

THE next morning starts badly, shattered into fragments like a dropped vase:

"More fugues. Reeve, you're getting worse."

His large hand enfolding my small one. Weak and pale. He strokes the back of my wrist with his thumb. I look into his eyes and see sadness there and wonder why—

Two liquid-metal snake-heads bite at my wrist, and I cry out, pulling away as they inject soothing numbness. The woman who carries them is a goddess, golden-skinned with burning eyes.

I'm a tank again, a regiment of tanks, dropping through the freezing night toward an enemy habitat—or did this come later? I disconnect from the virtch interface and shake my head, look around at the other players in the game arcade, and hear myself whisper, "But it wasn't like that—"

Scratch of a carved goose feather on rough paper, body of a pen made from a human bone. You will remember nothing at first. If you did, they could parse your experience vector and identify you as a threat.

"She's really bad this morning. The adjuvants have worked—that infection is definitely on the mend—but she's no use to us like this."

"What do you expect me to do? She's in danger of sliding into full-blown anterograde—"

A suffocating stench of bowels as I slide my rapier back out of his guts. He lies among the rosebushes in a dueling zone, beneath the shadow of a marble statue of an extinct species of flying mammal. A sudden stab of horror, because this is a man I could have loved.

"Fix her."

"I can't! Not without her consent."

Hand tightening around someone's wrist until it's almost painful. "She's in no condition to give it—look at that, what are you going to do if she starts to convulse?"

I'm a tank again, looping in a pool of horrors, blood trickling beneath my gridded toes as I swing my sword through the neck of another screaming woman while two of my other instances hold her down.

I'm flying, tumbling arse over wing as my thumb sings a keening pain of broken bone, and I smell the fresh water of the roaring waterfall beneath me.

"Make it stop," I hear someone mumble, and there's blood on my lips where I've almost bitten through them. It's me who's being held down by the tanks, facing a woman with burning eyes, and behind her is a man who loves me, if I could only remember what his name was.

The snakes bite again and drink deep, and the sun goes dark.

RESTART:

I become aware that someone is holding my right hand.

Then, a timeless period later, I realize that he's still holding my hand. Which implies he's very patient, because I'm still lying in bed, and it's very bright. "What time is it?" I ask, mildly panicky because I need to get to work.

"Ssh. It's around lunchtime, and everything's all right."

"If it's all right"—Sam squeezes my hand—"how long have you been sitting there?"

"Not long."

I open my eyes and look at him. He's on the stool beside my bed. I pull a face, or smile, or something. "Liar."

He doesn't smile or nod but the tension drains out of him like water and he sags as it runs away. "Reeve? Can you remember?"

I blink rapidly, trying to get some dust out of a corner of my left eye. Can I remember —"I remember lots," I say. How much of what I remember is true is another matter. Just trying to sort it out makes my head hurt! I'm a tank: I'm a dissolute young bioaviator with a death wish: Maybe I'm a sad gamer case instead, or a deep-cover agent. But all of these possibilities are a whole lot sillier and less plausible than what everything around me is saying, which is that I'm a small-town librarian who's had a nervous breakdown. I decide I'll go with that version for the time being. I hold Sam's hand tight, like I'm drowning: "How bad was it?"

"Oh Reeve, it was bad." He leans across me, and hugs me and I hug him back as tight as I can. "It was bad as can be." He's shaking, I realize with a sense of growing awe. He feels for me that deeply? "I was afraid I was going to lose you."

I nuzzle into the base of his neck. "That would be bad." It's my turn to shudder with a frisson of existential dread at the thought that I could have lost him . Somewhere in the past week Sam has turned into my anchor, my refuge in the turbulent waters of identity. "I've got . . . well. Things are a bit jumbled today. What happened? When did you hear . . . ?"

"I came as soon as I could," he mumbles in my ear. "Last night they called but said I couldn't visit, it was too late." He tenses.

"And?" I prompt. I feel as if there should be something more.

"You were fitting." He's still tense. "Dr. Hanta said it's an acute crisis; you needed a fixative, but she couldn't do it without your permission. I told her to give it anyway, but she refused."

"A fixative? What for?"

"Your memories." He's even tenser. I let go of him, feeling cold.

"What does this fixative do?"