“I did the best I could,” Anne said sadly. “I showed you everything I remembered.”
“You did,” Norris said. “And then you stopped. You had better things to do. You forgot that without you, I could never see my father’s face at all.”
“It’s been three hundred years!”
“Oh, is that all?” he scoffed. “Three centuries and you stop being a mother. How long, I wonder, could youmanage to stay a friend?” He glared down at where Flora’s hand entwined with Anne’s.
His mother only tightened her grip. Her face was sad but stoic. “How did you manage to hide this resentment from me for so long?”
“It’s easy to hide things from someone who isn’t looking,” he said cuttingly.
“So when Flora moved out,” I slid in, picking up the thread, “you saw an opportunity. You couldn’t steal your mother’s memories like you wanted—”
“It is not theft to want what’s mine by right!”
“—so you decided instead to take away the woman she loved.”
Norris looked at Flora, not unkindly. “You couldn’t put her first, now that you had a child to care for—he deserved to be your first priority. You weren’t meant to die. You were only meant to forget.”
“But she did die,” I said. “The way you altered the skimmer is very hard on the human mind, I’m told. Just because you meant no harm doesn’t mean no harm was done.”
Norris waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t know anything about it. You said yourself you barely even go to the flickers.”
“I’ve learned a great deal since then,” I said. “And besides, we have the skimmer right here.”
I signaled Baxenden, who stepped forward. The casehe carried was opened, and within it was the now-familiar shape: a flat-brimmed hat, a lens, and a light.
Norris was staring at it like it was a viper. “That’s not possible,” he said. “I destroyed it, I know I did.”
“You sent it to the reclamation center, yes,” I replied. “But did you know: Everything that the reclamation center destroys, theFairweatherfirst makes a record of? A perfect scan, down to the last molecule. Civilians can’t access these plans—but detectives can. And we can replicate them.” I put a hand on the flat metal edge. “Members of the Board, Mr. Godfrey’s altered skimmer is as much a blunt instrument as a hammer, or a brick, or a stone. Used repeatedly, it breaks down entire chains of recollection, until what’s left is fragile as a cobweb. Flora was using this for at least three months—until she collapsed. She was reembodied and her memories restored from the Library, which dated to before the birth of her son. To her, it was as if he never existed.”
“So the baby was left alone?” a Board member asked.
“Of course not,” I replied. “Flora was a careful, caring mother, as her diary from those months proves. She would never leave her child alone, not even for a simple errand. She left him with Mr. Godfrey.” I smiled. “And I can prove it. Or rather—Mr. Godfrey can.”
Everyone stared at the witness, who could only stare back. I stepped away and wheeled out a small screen as Baxenden stepped forward, along with Gaskill, who’d come tobe a show of strength at my request. Gaskill clamped one hand on each of Norris’s shoulders, and Baxenden lifted the skimmer toward Norris’s head.
His eyes shot wide when he realized what we meant to do. “No!” he cried. “Please!”
But Baxenden was ruthless. I’d insisted on it. Gaskill held tight as Baxenden fixed the brim in place and pressed the switch to begin projecting. A jumble of light and color flashed onto the screen, a kaleidoscope of ghosts and images and rooms.
“Show us the last time Flora saw her son,” I said.
Norris clamped his mouth and eyes mulishly shut, but the skimmer did its job against his will: The images coalesced into a view of the apartment in Forward Port Six. Flora, pale and shaky, handing her son over to Norris and then walking out the door. Norris began playing with the child, the baby silently laughing in delight, until the real Norris began to get control back and the image started to fray.
“Now show us two days ago, when you tried to kidnap him,” I said.
Norris shook his head sharply in refusal—but it was like those word games where someone tells you not to think of green elephants. The memory obeys, even as the will objects. We watched—all of us, witnesses and detectives and Board members—as Norris expertly wiped the lock on an apartment door and crept in the dark toward Ruthie andPeregrine, blissfully asleep. My nephew’s whisper of “Crimes Committed!” mercifully went unmarked by anyone except John and myself.
Norris’s memories faded again, and I continued my explanation. “When Flora was brought to Medical, she stopped responding to Anne Godfrey’s notes. Anne grew concerned, and after a full day had passed she went in search of Flora’s new apartment, despite all Flora’s warnings to keep away. She found the apartment and found the baby, on his own.” I turned to our witness, sagging on the stand. “I assume you had been called away on official business of some kind?”
Norris was now a beaten man, visibly nauseous and yearning for the end. “I was planning on coming back,” he said. “It’s not like the child was going to walk away on his own.”
“Not as such, no,” I said. “But Anne found him, and believed Flora had been turned back into a baby—she had been projecting a film calledThe Follies of Youth, and—”
“Yes, we’ve all seen it,” the Chair interrupted.
“We had a private screening for the Board last week,” the member on the end confirmed, with a little nod to Anne. “Most entertaining.”
