She, who has been sending worried looks his way once in a while, replies, “Still stingy with a compliment, I see.”
Then her spoon falls into her nearly empty porridge bowl with a clang. She stares at him, her eyes enormous. “You—youremember?”
A great fear pulsates in him, outmatched only by an even greater hope. “I’m almost afraid to say yes, but I do.”
“So you remember me?”
“And the scallops. But as far as I can tell, I did nothing special with them. So I’ll never be able to duplic?—”
She bolts out of her stool, nearly knocks over the folding table, and drags him to his feet. “Write everything down. Right now. I forgot to tell you, when your mother and sister came, they also brought?—”
“I remember. Four years of my journals.” A very incomplete account of his life in those years, what with the ever-present fear of prying eyes. Still… “I wish I’d thought to do the same for the last six years.”
Her hand comes over her mouth. Tears stream down her face. “I can’t believe it, it worked. Itworked. But I don’t know if the recovery will be permanent or…”
Her voice trails away. He gathers her to him and holds her tight. “It doesn’t matter. This moment is enough grace from the universe—it will always be enough.”
He pulls back a little so he can see her face, still full of tears and more beautiful than ever. “Now please tell mewhatworked.”
She trails her fingertips across his cheek—belatedly he realizes that she’s wiping awayhistears. “A few months after she finished her reclamation service, Nin told me that you might have remembered me while you were trying to take away her pain. She said she was nearly unconscious when you brought her and your mom up to the surface for air, but she heard you whisper, ‘Lanzhou, her friends call her Lanzhou.’
“Apparently by the time you were allowed to see your mother, after the business with Prince Eleven and the Risshvai seaplane, you could only recall my official name. So Nin didn’t understand what you were saying—she thought you must have been hallucinating under extreme duress. Until the day I asked her to call me Lanzhou, because we’d become friends.”
Perhaps he remembered her official name longer because she gave it to him only after he’d taken away her neural pain, and not before. And thank goodness the Potentate hadn’t kept him isolated for too long, once he found out that it was true Eleven was up to no good. By the time Ren saw his mother, he still retained enough of the events to entrust the memories to her.
But of course when she and Nin left, the effort of taking on their combined pain was such that it wiped out everything, including any and all secondhand memories.
Lanzhou slides her palm across his other cheek. “I became obsessed with the idea that your memories might be recoverable. Our historical museum was planning to destroy some old torture devices they had in storage. I jumped through hoops to have them keep the nerve fryer a bit longer.”
He holds her face between his hands. “Please never go anywhere near that infernal device again. I’ll smash it myself if I see it in the future.”
She giggles. “My mentor wondered if I was having a breakdown when I confessed I planned to use it on myself. But once I convinced you I had a good reason for being in pain—Old Friend was very patient about the model nerve gun being temporarily glued to her fin—I had tobein pain. The scary part was that I didn’t know if I’d be lucid enough to turn off the machine in time, so I had two backup timers installed.
“Turns out I did manage to turn off the machine, but I couldn’t get you to let go of me. In hindsight, since my pain went away, it probably didn’t matter too much whether you kept holding on. But I was afraid we’d miss the best window to recover your memories, so when you wouldn’t budge I kicked you.”
The hilarity of what must have transpired tickles him so much he bursts out laughing. The next moment he’s again close to tears. “Thank you. Thank you for remembering me all these years when I couldn’t remember you.”
She gazes at him. “But you never forgot me. I know that.”
To his surprise, she goes to the folding table and starts cleaning up. He can’t stand by while she works so he joins her. When all the dishes have been washed and all the leftover food put away, she takes away one of the folding chairs and brings out a sleeping mat from the understructure.
“Go ahead, write things down.” She unrolls the mat. “I’ll take a nap.”
His first thought is that she did stay up all night. But then he catches her peering at him. He takes hold of her. “When didyoubecome so indirect, Lady You-are-now-mine-to-do-with-as-I-wish?”
She prods a playful finger into his chest, but her tone is only half-joking. “You were unconscious for an hour. You shouldn’t exert yourself more than necessary.”
He catches her hand. “Thenyouexertyourself. Wait, no, you were in neural pain. You shouldn’t do anything until you first see a doctor.”
Now she looks indignant. “I’ve been taking supplements and boosters for a month, in anticipation of a few minutes of pain. And I already have a neurologist standing by who’ll examine me as soon as I’ve been officially debriefed. Not to mention, last time I suffered neural pain, on that atoll, it was to a far greater extent—and in its aftermath I exerted myself greatly. And emerged with no deleterious effects.”
“You were a lot younger then.”
If she threw something at him in response, he would understand. But she doesn’t. She only bats her eyelashes, the way she did when she didn’t know what to do about her scallion flatbread. “Youare still very young, and abstinence didn’t make your memories come back, so presumably a little sex will not make them go away either. Right?”
Thisis the Lanzhou he remembers. “A little sex, and then we’ll rest and write shit down and be very good.”
Her eyes burn so bright, he can’t help but recall how she looked at him ten years ago. It’s as if both a century has passed since then and no time at all—his newly recovered memories are so fresh and sharp.
