Gaskill reared back with widened eyes, but thumbed open the wide front door. “Two guests,” she said, her voice a low rumble. Was that an amused tilt at the corners of her mouth? “You can sign for both of you, Miss Gentleman.”
“I’m not staying,” I said, and so I put down Peregrine’s name on the guest ledger, bid farewell to my nephew and his beloved, and walked through the brightening day to Flora Tilburn’s secret apartment.
It was clearly time for a more thorough investigation of the premises.
The lock was still wiped, the food still wilted, the frocks still somehow sad on their lonely hangers. Something about sequin fabric in shadow never failed to seem tragic. I shut the closet doors and went through the bedroom—and there, between the mattress and its retromatted frame,I found a slim hardback bound in blue cloth, almost filled with handwriting in blue ink.
Flora Tilburn had been keeping a diary.
I didn’t even have to pretend I wasn’t going to read it. This was an official investigation, a child’s safety was at stake, and nobody was around to chide me about privacy and discretion. For once, I didn’t have to feel guilty about indulging my curiosity.
So how perverse of me to feel that pang of guilt, regardless.
Flora had gone to such lengths to hide her secrets from everyone, and some part of me hated having to undo all that work and hurt her in a way she didn’t deserve.
But more of me wanted to learn what she’d been up to—so into the diary I went.
Dear Diary, she began, because of course she did.
This is how they always start in the flickers, so this is how I’ll begin. I need to remember everything, and now that I’m not updating my memory-book in the Library this is the only way.
Florian was born at six in the evening—the afternoon matinee would have ended, but the evening showtime wouldn’t have yet begun. The best thing I can say about it is it was quicker than I’d feared. If it were only about the labor I might have slipped out from the Palace, borne down a time or two, cleaned myself up, and been back in my seatbefore the next showing’s title cards went up—but it wasn’t just that, of course.
I couldn’t do that to Anne.
She’s told me so much about her life before Embarkation—about losing Norris’s father, and how she threw herself into being a mother for so long she forgot how to be anything else. She got started as a projectionist because she wanted to give her son a way to experience his father as more than just a name and a story, since Norris was only a boy when he died and the two of them came aboard theFairweather. They bonded over their first home skimmer—Anne projecting her memories of her lost love, Norris taking the skimmer apart to learn how the tech worked—but I still think he was a little put out when we started the Palace and Anne’s gifts became public knowledge. I think he liked having a secret between just the two of them.
But Anne has bloomed so much since I met her. She’s happier now that she’s more than a mother, I know she is. She deserves some time to be herself for a little while. And I know she’d happily help me care for Florian, and keep him safe and secret if I asked her to—but that would be like asking her to forget who she’s become. How could I do that to someone I love?
Norris agrees with me for once, so I know it’s the right thing to do. A mother is irreplaceable, he says, especially for a child with no father, either.
So I suppose I get to keep a secret of my own. At least for a few years, until he’s grown and can make his own choices.
If I can manage it, that is. My new son isloud. Norris assures me that the soundproofing is very good, that none of the neighbors are going to hear Florian no matter how shouty he gets. I don’t know what I’m going to do when he’s old enough to learn to work the doors. I’ve had nightmares about him escaping to wander the ship, among all those people out there who are bigger and older and stronger than him. With no memory-book waiting for him if something should go wrong.
I have to keep him entertained to keep him safe.
Norris is not who I’d have picked to help me, but he’s the one who figured out why I’d been feeling so ill, so there was no hiding it from him. He’s been awfully sweet about it, even bringing me a skimmer so I can project things for Florian. I haven’t Anne’s talents, it’s clear: I have to work to keep the figures consistent, to keep the pictures steady and the stories from rushing ahead too quickly. How does she manage it without going mad? Last month it was Busby Berkeley, three times a day! I feel queasy just thinking about it.
Norris suggested I stick to my own memories rather than movies—apparently the stronger the emotion, the clearer the projection—so I’m projecting paintings I remember, illustrations brought to life, children’s stories my mother used to read to me on Old Earth. Things I can singalong to, make up lyrics for. He coos at “Cinderella” for the pumpkin and the party, he cries at “Sleeping Beauty” for the dragon and the thorns—my son, through and through. It’s not what I’d have chosen, but it’s a duty I cannot put aside.
I’ve been trying to project memories of Anne. The summer they let fireflies loose in the Greenway, and we spent a whole night walking through a sea of living stars. But every time I try to focus on her face, it melts and morphs into someone I don’t recognize.
Or maybe it’s the tears doing that, because I can hardly think of Anne without weeping. I miss her terribly. I hope that one day I can make her understand. We have centuries, after all—this is just a brief interruption. The third-act twist, where I realize how foolish I’ve been and how different I wish things were.
I put down the book and stepped back out to the living room. And there it was, now that I knew to look for it: a broad wall free of paintings or knickknacks, and when I stepped close so the light caught it at an angle, I could see the faint square shape where the paint had faded away beneath the repeated touch of the projector beam. The wall opposite was covered with framed photographs and landscapes—and one single glass lens, mounted discreetly among the artworks like a demure debutante’s eye.
Another search failed to turn up anything like a skimmer,however. Someone must have taken it away. The fabled Norris, perhaps?
I returned to the diary.
I’ve been rereading my earlier entries, Flora wrote.That bit about the fireflies?
I don’t remember that.
Gooseflesh broke out on my arms and ran down the back of my neck.
I remember remembering it, remember exactly where I was and how I was sitting when I wrote those words—it was only two days ago—but the actual memory, that sea of stars? A blank. Nothing there at all.
