A Trace of Memory by Keith Laumer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📗

his neck.

"I yield, Qulqlan," he said. "I crave the mercy of the Rthr."

Behind me I heard thundering feet. Dimly I was aware of Torbu raising my head, of Foster leaning over me. They were saying something but I couldn't hear. My feet were cold, and the coldness crept higher.

I felt hands touch me and the cool smoothness of metal against my temples. I wanted to say something, tell Foster that I had found the answer, the one that had always eluded me before. I wanted to tell him that all lives are the same length when viewed from the foreshortened perspective of death, and that life, like music, requires no meaning but only a certain symmetry.

But it was too hard. I tried to cling to the thought, to carry it with me into the cold void toward which I moved, but it slipped away and there was only my self-awareness, alone in emptiness, and the winds that swept through eternity blew away the last shred of ego and I was one with darkness....

EPILOGUE

I awoke to a light like that of a morning when the world was young. Gossamer curtains fluttered at tall windows, through which I saw a squadron of trim white clouds riding in a high blue sky.

I turned my head, and Foster stood beside me, dressed in a short white tunic.

"That's a crazy set of threads, Foster," I said, "but on your build it looks good. But you've aged; you look twenty-five if you look a day."

Foster smiled. "Welcome to Vallon, my friend," he said in English. I noticed that he faltered a bit over the words, as if he hadn't used them for a long time.

"Vallon," I said. "Then it wasn't all a dream?"

"Regard it as a dream, Legion. Your life begins today."

"There was something," I said, "something I had to do. But it doesn't seem to matter. I feel relaxed inside...."

Someone came forward from behind Foster.

"Gope," I said. Then I hesitated. "You are Gope, aren't you?" I said in Vallonian.

He laughed. "I was known by that name once," he said, "but my true name is Gwanne."

My eyes fell on my legs. I saw that I was wearing a tunic like Foster's except that mine was pale blue.

"Who put the dress on me?" I asked. "And where's my pants?"

"This garment suits you better," said Gope. "Come. Look in the glass."

I got to my feet, stepped to a long mirror, glanced at the reflection. "It's not the real me, boys," I started——Then I stared, open-mouthed. A Hercules, black-haired and clean-limbed, stared back. I shut my mouth ... and his mouth shut. I moved an arm and he did likewise. I whirled on Foster.

"What ... how ... who...?"

"The mortal body that was Legion died of its wounds," he said, "but the mind that was the man was recorded. We have waited many years to give that mind life again."

I turned back to the mirror, gaped. The young giant gaped back. "I remember," I said. "I remember ... a knife in my guts ... and a redheaded man ... and the Great Owner, and...."

"For his crimes," told Gope, "he went to a place of exile until the Change should come on him. Long have we waited."

I looked again and now I saw two faces in the mirror and both of them were young. One was low down, just above my ankles, and it belonged to a cat I had known as Itzenca. The other, higher up, was that of a man I had known as Ommodurad. But this was a clear-eyed Ommodurad, just under twenty-one.

"Onto the blank slate we traced your mind," said Gope.

"He owed you a life, Legion," Foster said. "His own was forfeit."

"I guess I ought to kick and scream and demand my original ugly puss back," I said slowly, studying my reflection, "but the fact is, I like looking like Mr. Universe."

"Your earthly body was infected with the germs of old age," said Foster. "Now you can look forward to a great span of life."

"But come," said Gope. "All Vallon waits to honor you." He led the way to the tall window.

"Your place is by my side at the great ring-board," said Foster. "And afterwards: all of the Two Worlds lie before you."

I looked past the open window and saw a carpet of velvet green that curved over foothills to the rim of a forest. Down the long sward I saw a procession of bright knights and ladies come riding on animals, some black, some golden palomino, that looked for all the world like unicorns.

My eyes traveled upward to where the light of a great white sun flashed on blue towers. And somewhere trumpets sounded.

"It looks like a pretty fair offer," I said. "I'll take it."

A TRACE OF MEMORY

Help wanted: Soldier of fortune seeks companion in arms to share unusual adventure. Foster, Box 19.

Legion was desperate—but not that desperate. Even petty larceny seemed preferable to that kind of proposal. But fate stepped in, and now he is on the run, pursued by cops, the CIA and a few not-so-friendly acquaintances of Foster. And Foster has lost his memory—not to mention about thirty years of his age!

The key to Legion's dilemma, and to Foster's forgotten past, is in a row of metal cylinders aboard a spaceship that has been orbiting Earth for thousands of years. And Legion's troubles have really only begun....

A Tom Doherty Associates Book

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Trace of Memory, by Keith Laumer