Noksalika was learning more about Tarabonitz.

Tarabonitz had been healthy, shy, jealous, lovable, sexy, bitchy, childish, demure, outrageous, nostalgic, modern. She’d been reserved in many ways, but her hopes and dreams had been as strong as anyone else’s. She’d had worries, if not actual fears (with the Ethe and Committees, fear was redundant, unnecessary). She’d had talents, and a range of subtle jokes occasionally that even Noksalika found hysterically funny. People had respected and admired her.

And she wasn’t a patch on Noksalika in any of these things.

Noksalika had thought her difficulty would be learning Tarabonitz’s character and keeping her alive.

But her main problem was not trying to fake being someone else, but struggling to keep her own identity from this dead wannabe slut bitch.

She sat by the evening campfire, cycling through the photos and videos of the monster she’d taken. They were frantic shots, the colour and sound distorted. She stuck on the last one, a dark hazy image of the being’s head crawling away on legs. Hanaman saw the expression on her face, and saw her looking through the Ethe. He hadn’t taken any photos.

‘I’m still surprised you had enough time to take some nice pictures,’ he said. His voice was still bright and chirpy, even when laden with cynicism.

‘And I still can’t believe you didn’t take any. We’re not cavemen, it doesn’t take much effort.’

Photographs and videos were recorded through people’s eyes. You simply had to switch your mind on and off to record the real world as you saw it through your own eyes, and heard it through your own ears.

This meant the Ethe was virtually made of dirty videos.

Along with being a profound concert pianist and the most famous porn star from East to West, North to South and Tak to Zha, Noksalika had become something of a photography expert. She’d had enough snaps taken of her attending premieres with some new lover, leaving hotels drunk or outrageously sober, promoting some new film, even just chewing gum (there were bizarre fetish groups on the Ethe for anything…) for an interest to rub off, never mind all the photoshoots and videos. There was something curious, something secretive about creating footage of other people. It was dirty somehow, but also held a hidden power.

They’d travelled on, neither rushing nor slowing, and neither of them asking where they were heading. They’d just say things to the other like ‘We should go that way’ or ‘I think this way’s better’. Both were suspicious of the other. Neither wanted to give themselves up.

Noksalika was trying to cope with reverse amnesia.

Nobody really forgets anything, because there’s no need to remember it. The Ethe stores anything you’ve ever seen and wanted to keep; even the bad memories stay there, my Dad said, ‘cos the Committees don’t let you erase anything that easily. Everything’s recorded, so storing memories in your mind is a pointless exercise, a voluntary hobby for mental athletes. Ha, “mental” in both senses.

They travelled down a huge avenue, a highway really, under magnificent giant stone arches inscribed with ancient characters. Other walkers and the occasional horse-rider travelled in both directions, with the odd nasty-looking plastic café on either side cheapening what was clearly once a historic monument. Intrigued, she looked up on the Ethe what they were there to celebrate – disappointingly, it was some dull trade agreement between two cities.

And now all my memories have been taken away. Every time I want to look up something that happened to me, I see photos of people I never met, videos of me with a different face. People calling out a name I still don’t quite recognise.

Now, I have to remember things myself.

She eyed passers-by and occasionally glanced behind her, torn between keeping a low profile and still watching out for the monster Hanaman had decapitated back at the sports stadium, days before. At first she’d looked on the Ethe, scouring the cyberlandscape between her and the town behind them. But she kept having to remind herself that it wasn’t on the Ethe – she was looking for a gap, a space, a physical thing with no spiritual equivalent. All these people looking back at her strangely, they were nothing to worry about.

At least we’re heading towards South Maurisetza, she thought to herself. Whatever Hanaman was up to, she wanted to get to the coast. They had agreed – or rather, Piarowef had required her – to rendezvous at the city. She was actually quite looking forward to it – the great cities of North and South Maurisetza overlooked opposite sides of a great bay, and she hadn’t seen the sea in years. Maybe she would take a boat, down along the coast. Maybe even to a ship, maybe even out to the Channelsea itself. It had been a very long time since she’d seen the Channelsea.

Her brain wouldn’t work! She cursed the neurones in her head, entire biological subsystems that were too lazy to work, too lazy because they’d never been exercised in the first place. What had she done on her sixteenth birthday? How many sexual partners had she had? (Well, okay, to the nearest dozen?) The Ethe recorded everything, the damn Ethe could do it. But she’d actually been there! She’d seen these things, met these people … the memories hung in the lower reaches of her brain, isolated, groups of colour pixels and sound recordings hiding in different brain lobes.

‘Stop for lunch?’

She turned and looked down at Hanaman. He’d been suspiciously quiet recently. Just like he’d been suspiciously chatty before. Did she like mantrels generally? It was as if she’d lost part of herself. She nodded slowly.

‘Great, my feet have been dying for a rest. Look at the state of my hooves, they’ll need a good seeing to at the next town…’

They ate lunch in the lee of one of the great white stone arches. Forests surrounded the road on both sides, with trees that were normally dark showing bright young leaves across their branches. They’d packed food from the last town, and by silent agreement decided to eat a packed lunch rather than joining one of the cheap eateries by the roadside. Hanaman lay down instantly and stretched himself on the grass, making a satisfied groan very loudly.

‘It is so important to have a good stretch, isn’t it?’ he said, eyes shut, as if to justify his noise. His curved horns propped his head off the ground, just less than an inch.

‘Mmm,’ she agreed, leaning back on her hands.

‘Very important to look after one’s body properly.’ He turned his head away from her.

‘Agreed. The Ethe looks after us as best it can, but it cannot be a crutch for our laziness.’ Fucking profound statements. I’m hungry. I want my lunch.

Something moved under her hand. Horrified, she nearly gasped and looked down to see the soil writhing like it was crawling with worms. But they made shapes. Letter-like shapes.

Hello friend.

She gritted her teeth. Suddenly the grassy, earthy letters shifted and changed, pieces of soil rising and flattening like some cheap animation.

You OK? Write here.

A panel flattened itself out in the earth under the letters, the grass disappearing into the ground. She looked the other way to see Hanaman still turned away, subtly moving herself to hide the words, before pointing a finger and clenching her fist like a child. She traced letters gently on the soil.

P-I-A-R-O-

She’d only written a few letters before the words shifted again.

Yes its me. She noticed the apostrophe was missing from “it’s”.

I-A-M-O-K

She hesitated, then softly prodded the ground to add a full stop.

Going South Maurisetza?

Y-E-S. I-S-H.

Mantrel spy. Will kill at SM.

She looked at Hanaman’s calm body, eyes shut, shirt open, furry ribcage exposed.

O-K. M-O-N-S-T-E-R?

The old words remained for a few seconds, “kill” staring up at her. Then they became just one word.

Agent.

?

Scout.

F-O-R?

Aliens. Barbarians in South.

‘What have we got food-wise?’ said Hanaman suddenly, gently turning his head back to face upwards. His eyes stayed shut.

‘Errrrr,’ said Noksalika, eyes flitting from the mantrel to the grassy letters. She shoved her other hand inside her bag, rummaging around. ‘I think we made cheese and onion and crayfish sandwiches, right? You said you liked the crayfish at that last place.’ She looked back over her shoulder to the ground, which said:

Little time.

A-L-L-A-L-I-E-N-S-L-I-K-E-M-O-N-S-T-E-R? she painstakingly wrote out.

‘We saved some of that stuff? Great, throw one over.’

Probably. Many dead. Little time.

F-O-R-M-E?

For all. You OK. Get to SM.

She paused.

S-H-I-T.

Yes.

The letters faded and didn’t come back. A real worm, drawn by the vibrations, squeezed its pulsing body up through the surface. She drew herself forward and pulled out food for herself, as Hanaman sat up to eat his. They munched away on sandwiches that really were quite nice.

Then something else moved in the stone arch.

At least we’re heading towards South Maurisetza, reflected Hanaman. Whatever she was up to, they were going the right way.

He checked up on things with some of the clan elders. Elders were just other senior mantrels on the Committees – it was a cultural thing, a label more than anything else. Hanaman didn’t know if the class system was a genuinely historic custom going back to before the Committees, and maybe even before the Ethe, or if it had been invented as some sort of “retro” fashion. Then again, he supposed, all customs and traditions were artificial once; and most people, including himself, didn’t care either way.

‘Freegeneral, how goes it?’ greeted a familiar voice over the Ethe. It was female, calm and mature. ‘How is the quarry?’

A sandwich landed squarely on his bare chest and bounced off onto the grass; he reached out with a hand and took it. ‘Goes well, Elder Svokia, thank you.’ He lazed on the ground, dozily eyeing the travellers on the wide road. ‘The quarry is well. Very shapely, in fact.’

‘You mean in good shape?’

‘Well…’

He turned his head to see Noksalika eating a sandwich with one hand, and scraping dirt from between her toes with the other. He took some photos with his eyes, focusing in on her breasts, and showed them to Elder Svokia.

‘Good grief Freegeneral. I didn’t think you were the interracial type?’

‘I’m not usually, but she is such a magnetic creature. Even more so in real life than on the Ethe.’ He frowned as she pulled her foot up to smell it, still with a mouthful of food. ‘Well, most of the time.’

‘Well whatever happens please don’t let it delay you to South Maurisetza. Troops are ready and waiting. Please accept comms details for the combat unit.’

He sat up and started eating his sandwich. ‘How do things fare at home?’

‘Badly. The Cultural Harmonisation Committee has withdrawn funding, and there is talk of re-routing the Migration away from our lands.’

‘What? On whose authority?’ Hanaman visibly bristled, wispy eyebrows frowning and thick lips parting. ‘They would need to justify that with dozens of Committees. Not to mention the Infrastructure Projects and Tasks Commission.’

‘Wheels are in motion, Freegeneral,’ came the sad reply. ‘The Federated Mantrel Substate grows increasingly unpopular.’

‘Huh, you’d think they knew we wer-’

‘Fuck fuck fuck it’s back!’ shrieked Noksalika, jumping up and pointing at the stone arch behind him. He just had time to look over his shoulder and draw his knife out of his shirt to see the shape of a tall figure emerging from the stone, with a familiar tentacle snaking quickly towards him. He twisted and snapped his arm round in a slashing motion to catch it, and both their jaws dropped when the knife clanged out of his hand. He snatched it up in a ducking roll, while Noksalika put her shoes back on and the tall dark man emerged from the white stone. Hanaman stood, eyes flicking back and forth watching the tentacle, before lashing out with a slice – and again the knife bounced off, still held in his hand, as a couple of sparks flew off.

‘What the hell-’ began Noksalika, picking up her bag and backing away to the road. The man’s dark eyes opened, wider than they should have, loose pools of white with swirling black patches in the centre. Travellers on the highway were starting to watch, and flee.

‘It’s part of the stone!’ snarled Hanaman. ‘It’s still mixed up with the stone.’ He picked up his satchel with his free hand and backed away as well.

‘How did it find us?’ she shrieked. ‘It’s not on the Ethe!’

‘Smell? Fuck I don’t know!’ They stumbled onto the road as the mutated humanoid broke free of the stone, looking at them. Its left arm, the non-tentacle, was swollen with heavy claw-like fingers. Its jaw hung open, corners tight in some sort of horrorsome grin.

‘Look it’s away from the stone now.’ She looked at him, breathing hurriedly, calculating.

‘Yeah, well if you’re so confide-’

She made a poor grab at the knife in his hand and shoved him hard in the back, making him stumble to his knees and fall on his side mere feet from the monster. She turned and ran full tilt up the highway while Hanaman threw himself away from the beast, lashing out with the blunted knife left right and centre, lopping off chunks of the lumbering beast’s limbs.

‘You bitch! I will fucking kill you!’

     He gave chase up the highway shouting obscene threats, while the creature groaned and strode in the same direction slowly. Its amputated pieces sprouted tiny legs and mouths and chased each other like blind, chirping insects.

The knife pressed against her throat.

‘What do you want?’

‘Freedom,’ she gurgled. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m the one with the knife.’

‘Fine, be like that.’

Without the Ethe, Noksalika’s parents had become exaggerated in her mind. Her father was this direct force of mind, full of rights and wrongs and self-belief and respectable clothing; her mother had faded into what she’d always been, an insipid bundle of nerves always wittering on about the arts. Noksalika had shown her what the arts were.

Two days of nervous walking and frantic running had taken them to the suburbs of South Maurisetza. There’d been no further sign of the beast-thing since they’d left it on that highway, alone under those white arches. Panic and gossip had spread widely, and people knew who she was; people were constantly asking questions and chatting about her. She did her best to stay discrete and keep low. It almost defeated the point of swapping identities with Tarabonitz in the first place.

Hanaman was obviously far fitter than she was and had caught up after ten minutes or so, finding her lying in the road making throaty rasping noises; he’d virtually dragged her onwards for another twenty minutes or more before pinning her down with his tiny arms and threatening her with the knife. Clearly he hadn’t been that impressed with her half-hearted attempt to dispose of him, but he hadn’t actually killed her yet, which was a plus.

He was plainly following her, but why? Hopefully Piarowef would be able to get rid of him in South Maurisetza, down some tiny alley or deserted little corner.

They were sleeping rough again, under a tree in a park. Open spaces – harder to get trapped. It wasn’t pleasant. He lay nearby, asleep with one hand on the knife handle inside his shirt. Despite exhaustion she could barely sleep, head full of giddy thoughts. She tried remembering again, forcing the images of Tarabonitz away so her brain could breathe.

She gratefully remembered what she’d always classed as her first pornographic incident. Her parents had muttered things about her being a cheeky toddler, but it was her first week at school where she’d bullied some nervous boy to take pictures of her exposing her bum, and made him pay her for it. The mental images were hazy but that feeling of relish, of excitement, of innocent satisfaction was as sharp as ever – it was the same feeling that had driven her on through her sordid, glorious career.

She remembered her mother dragging her along to concert halls as an older, pre-pubescent child. There were sleepy recitals at first, booooooring … then one electrifying night, with pounding drums and sweeping strings and crazy musical diversions between big, mighty choruses. And all the time, at the centre of it all, a small white man with a wicked smile behind a mighty blue piano. Or was it green?

She sighed softly as the cool dusk air made her skin pimply.

The pornography and the music seemed to merge into one after that. Flashes of music video shoots made to look like orgies mixed with porn video shoots that really were orgies … the hot feeling of taking on three, four, even five men at once, often just forgetting she was being filmed and getting lost in the moment … she’d tried using both professions to slip into the world of the Committees, enticing men from military and trade backgrounds, and only ending up getting the unfortunate wretches demoted in the process. Her father had said they’d never let her in a position of authority with such a tarnished reputation. She’d argued the Committees should be damn grateful for some of her popular reputation. The sting of her mother’s ringing slap came slicing through the confused memories, and the dank, alien feeling of shame that came with it.

God, she’d been hot in those porn films. She’d been good at what she did. And now she had to pay to watch herself on video.

Then she tried to think back to when she was happy.

It was hard. At least with the Ethe, she could have browsed through her own photos, videos, notes, memories … now she had to look at other people’s pictures of her, at bits of magazine footage scattered across cyberspace. She found photos of her smiling and laughing, mostly at parties – was she happy in this one? What about this one? It was no good, it was just a guess. Every now and again some picture or video would spark a memory, but it was futile, just guesswork.

Then she saw a photo of her with a guy she remembered. A guy called Czioc. They were by a riverbank somewhere, under a tree; he had his arms around her, and they were both smiling quite honestly. Well, as honestly as she’d ever smiled. It must have been a long time ago – she was pouting blue lipstick with pride, as if it was something new, rather than yet another horrific stereotype she’d been lumbered with all her career.

All these memories were fuzzy but in the middle of it was this warm glow where she remembered this man called Czioc. They’d shared – how long? Weeks? Years? They’d shared time. Time is strange in memory, she thought, it shifts and stretches and changes. Details came flying back at her like pieces of grit in a wind, the smell of his neck, the Autumn days riding horses though carpets of dead leaves, the way he tickled her on the Ethe as they had sex.

The way he’d tried to know who she was, when no-one could ever truly know her. The way he’d been the one person she’d never fully understood. Mmmm.

She lay back into the ground and reached out across the Ethe, far, far, searching, and found he was still there. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but after so many years, she was amazed to see him still there, hundreds, thousands of miles away. He was a familiar tiny rock on the landscape of the Ethe – stubborn, hard, unchanging. She shook her head slightly and smiled. Men never change.

She came close and was about to make contact, when she caught herself. With an awful dull ache in her heart, she remembered he would not know her. Not as this girl, not as Tarabonitz.

She exhaled, and decided it didn’t matter.

‘Hello?’

His attention turned suddenly, unfamiliar. She remembered that defensive flinch, sizing her up immediately through the Ethe. ‘Hi, how’s it going? Who are you?’

She was astounded to feel herself blush, from her chest up across her neck to her face. ‘I’ve heard of you. You’re, umm,’ she fumbled for an excuse, ‘you’re that guy who dated Noksalika Chuunim, right?’

He shrugged. ‘One of many. It was a long time ago. What’s your name?’ She could feel him looking at her profile – at Tara’s profile, at Tara’s pictures, pawing at her through Tara’s details and past like a second skin.

‘Tarabonitz. You’re Czioc, aren’t you?’

‘Nice name. And yes that’s me. Ooo, I feel like some kind of second-hand celebrity.’

She gave a girly giggle, forced but not uncomfortable. ‘Well if it means anything, I followed you more. I always liked the way you looked. And still do,’ she said, laying the charm on thick and obvious.

Where was she going with this? This was some kind of theatre, surely. She felt like a character in an old-fashioned comedy farce.

‘Hmm. Thanks,’ he replied, warily. She secretly gave thanks that he was still stubborn and hard to sway. ‘You know, you’re not that bad yourself. Nice hair. Great arse.’

‘Ha! And they say romance is dead.’

‘Didn’t you hear? They sold it for bigger breasts. There was a vote one day, everyone just decided good breasts were better than romance.’

‘Oh really?’ She frowned at him through the Ethe, smiling broadly. She was in a strange place, with an itchy moistness growing between her legs, and warm, hazy, homely memories running through her mind. In the real world, she settled her lower back into the ground. She turned her head – Hanaman was fast asleep.

They talked more; he was on Migration of course, which she knew anyway. She lied, saying she was into crafts and fashion – the lie came out naturally, which disturbed her, but she could worry about that later. She flicked through recent photographs of him, tracing new lines on his older face. They suited him, although none of the smiles in these pictures seemed quite genuine.

They joked and laughed, and she sunk further into the ground, rubbing herself. She smiled as they fed each other dirty pictures, and as the wonderful warm feeling flooded through her body. They talked more and she drifted off, allowing herself to curl up on the floor, falling asleep somewhere else in a different time.