The first step, the scientists said, was to take an inventory of what memories of Scotty's they had managed to capture before his original brain cells degraded into uselessness. Khediva and Tirqwin had been working at this already, but there were large segments of Scotty's life they had insufficient knowledge of. Sabrina immediately volunteered to look at the memories they had identified as being from his childhood.
The setup was like ones she'd read about in advanced virtual reality experiments. Via a helmet that relayed the memories on specific, narrowly focused bioelectric impulses, she could experience the memory from Scotty's point of view, while also recording comments, a sort of narrative to help him place it in context and make sense of it. The goal was to have Scotty experience the memories in rough chronological order, but everyone involved recognized that there were too many memories and parts of his life which would not be easily categorized for that to be completely achieved.
The process gave Sabrina intense headaches, which she did not mention for fear of being forbidden to keep working. She sneaked analgesics from Khediva's infirmary and tried to take breaks between memory sequences. Most of what she did in the first few days was put Scotty's early childhood in order, though there were a few late teen segments she dealt with as best she could. She realized in horror that she had never realized how much he had hated school in London, particularly after she left to go to college back in the States.
She should have expected the bombshell. But somehow she didn't. When she thought about it later, she supposed she had assumed that Tirqwin and Khediva would have handled that memory themselves. Khediva told her afterward that they had not recognized it.
The memory started off innocently enough. Their parents had gone out to dinner, and they were doing homework in front of the television and arguing over what to watch, as usual. Sabrina wondered why Scotty remembered this normal evening so particularly, out of hundreds of similar ones, as she watched herself declare bedtime. Scotty argued, as he always did, but he'd been caught asleep over his homework by their parents just last week, so he saw the wisdom of going to bed before they got home.
The pounding on the door in the middle of the night made Sabrina's heart freeze as she realized in horror what this memory was about. Scotty was out of bed and moving as soon as he heard his sister head for the door, not about to let her open it in the middle of the night by herself. He stopped dead when he saw the badge on the man's chest and the expression on his face.
I can edit this out. I can spare him this, Sabrina thought wildly as she watched herself have that heart-stopping, world-shattering conversation with the highway patrolman. She had never realized before that Scotty hadn't said a word during it.
This is part of who he is, she argued with herself. Part of who you both are. One thing that bound you together closer than blood. You can't spare him this. Any of it.
She had forgotten, too, how they had argued about identifying the bodies. The patrolmen didn't want them to be the ones who did it. In the end, they'd woken up their neighbors, the Mulhearns. Mr. Mulhearn had gone down to the morgue and identified Robert and Anna Devon while Sabrina and Scotty stayed with Mrs. Mulhearn. The elderly couple had done their best to make it bearable; Sabrina was surprised to find that Scotty seemed to remember them better than she did.
Sabrina had insisted that Aunt Euphrasia be told at once. It was mid-morning in London by the time Mr. Mulhearn got back, so she'd called. She hadn't gotten any further than, "Aunt Euphrasia? It's me, Sabrina. I—there's been—" before she'd choked up and then burst into tears. Someone had taken the phone from her hand. She'd never realized it had been Scotty, not Mrs. Mulhearn.
"Sabrina? What is it? What's happened?" Aunt Euphrasia had demanded frantically. "Has something happened to your mother?"
"Yes," Scotty said hoarsely. "Car wreck. Dad too."
"Oh my God," Aunt Euphrasia moaned. There was an odd thump at the other end of the line, and a moment later a voice Scotty identified as Aunt Euphrasia's housekeeper said, "Hang up! We have to call the doctor!"
Scotty had done so, numbly, without even identifying himself. An hour later, after the Mulhearns had settled them into the guest room and gone back to bed, helpless to do anything more until morning, Scotty had sneaked out of the guest room and downstairs to the den. He'd spent an uncounted length of time staring at Mr. Mulhearn's gun cabinet. Ways of circumventing the lock had flitted across his mind. He had laid a hand on the cool glass and thought about the logistics of loading one of the hunting rifles. Maybe he'd do it outside; less chance of being caught there. Maybe he'd go back to his own house. He didn't want to wake Sabrina up.
The thought of his sister was like a cold bucket of water emptied over his head. He turned and went back upstairs without even thinking about it. Their parents were dead; Aunt Euphrasia might be dead too, for all he knew. He didn't know what was going to happen to them. But he did know he wasn't going to leave Sabrina to face it alone. He was all she had.
He sat beside her bed and held her hand as she slept, and then, finally, he was able to cry.
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Sabrina disengaged herself from the computer interface, after a few fumbled attempts, and carefully lifted the helmet off. Renkayta looked at her for a moment, then turned back to what she was doing. They were all used to Sabrina taking breaks, and it wasn't unprecedented for her to be a little upset by what she had experienced in Scotty's memories, so no one stopped her or asked her any questions.
Tirqwin was engrossed in the same activity she'd been involved in; so was Khediva. Ford was explaining The Adventure's schematics to a group of Wayship engineers imported especially for the purpose. Sabrina never even considered interrupting any of them. She just went straight to her room and laid down on the bed. It was only when her cheek hit the pillow that she realized it wasn't her room; it was Ford's, the one she'd slept in her first night here. The pillow smelled like him. She found it comforting. Hugging herself and trying to stop shivering, she tried to relax, to stave off the migraine forming behind her eyes, until merciful unconsciousness swallowed her.
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She was cold. She was lying on a plane of ice somewhere, freezing to death. Or perhaps in an abandoned section of Giandrah, buried and forgotten, all the heat leached from her body into the unforgiving stone.
I'm dying. I don't want to die, she thought vaguely.
There was movement nearby; someone was wrapping her in something. She couldn't feel it, not really. Someone was saying her name, urgently.
"Please don't let me die," she whispered.
Someone held her, tight enough for her to feel it. She sighed with relief as she lapsed back into unconsciousness.
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She was warmer now. The air smelled better, richer. She couldn't open her eyes, but she could hear sounds. They were familiar, comforting somehow. They belonged. This was a place she knew.
There were voices there, three of them. She knew them. She knew their names, even if she couldn't place them just now. They would come to her in time, if she lay still and listened.
"So evidently it's a cumulative effect, accelerated by the trauma of that last memory scan."
"Miah's breath! How could you miss that one?"
"I do not know. Khediva?"
"It starts out quite normally. We did not know. I wish we had. Niavar, no one is more horrified than I. Except, perhaps, your father."
"This has to stop."
"I agree." There was a pause, followed by a trace of wry humor. "Who will be the one to tell her?"
"I will."
"Father, maybe it had better be me."
"Why?"
"I'm on something of a roll with Sabrina and bad news. Besides, she won't automatically assume I'm being overprotective."
"There is no reason why she should assume that about me!"
"Are you serious?"
Another pause. "All right. But what are we going to do now? She was our only hope for sorting out his Earth memories."
"We'll have to think of something. Maybe what we've got is enough. Maybe he can work through the rest with her verbally, later."
Sabrina felt there was something wrong with this conversation. She made a huge effort and lifted her eyelids a fraction, moaning softly with the exertion. Immediately both her hands were clasped in warm, strong ones, and someone laid a hand on her forehead, gently brushing her hair back from her face.
"Sabrina?"
Tirqwin, she thought with a flash of triumph, blinking at him. Her gaze shifted to Ford, who was holding her left hand. She managed the ghost of a smile.
"How are you?" Ford asked her.
She opened her mouth, but her voice wasn't working. After some swallowing and a rather alarming coughing fit, she managed a hollow whisper. "You must be really tired of me," she told him. "If I'm not crying all over you, I'm passing out or falling asleep."
He chuckled. "You have been rather a surprise." He squeezed her hand and smiled. "You do know you can't be doing this anymore, don't you?"
She closed her eyes and sighed. When she opened them again, she was looking at Tirqwin. "I have to keep trying."
"No, you don't. Sabrina, this has had serious effects on your brain chemistry. Your body isn't designed for this kind of work, not with this equipment. You should have told us about the headaches."
"I knew you'd make me stop."
"Yes," Tirqwin said, "and we all could have avoided several very unpleasant moments."
"Did I scare you?" Sabrina asked curiously.
"Do you know what it takes to send a Wayfarer into coronary failure?" Tirqwin demanded with asperity.
"No," she said.
"Watching you go into coronary failure," he retorted. "I did not know this before today, and I would gladly have lived the rest of my life without the knowledge!"
"I'm sorry."
"I've learned something too," Ford grinned. "I didn't think I'd ever see a Tirqwin and Wayship capable of hysteria."
"As if you were any more composed," Khediva snapped. "Let her rest, you two. She needs it. Go back to work."
Sabrina was asleep again before they were even out the door.
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Two days later, Sabrina was feeling better, and Khediva allowed her to leave the infirmary and settle into her old room. Almost immediately afterward, Ford arrived and proudly showed her the method he'd devised for her to continue her work.
"It's not nearly as accurate," he said, "so it'll be harder for you, I'm afraid, but it won't have any damaging effects on your health—except maybe your eyesight if you do too much at once. So you have to promise me you won't, or I won't turn it on."
Sabrina stared eagerly at the screen on which Ford had told her she could view Scotty's memories, like a television show or videotape. "I promise. Oh, Ford, thank you!"
"Don't thank me for ending your vacation," he grinned.
She gave him a look, and he laughed, knowing exactly how she felt about her convalescence. "Now, Khediva's going to monitor how much time you spend at this, and if she thinks you're overdoing it, she's got the ability to cut off the feed from the station," Ford explained. "Don't make her do it, or I'm sure I'll never hear the end of it, all right?"
She returned his grin. "All right. Er, I assume this means Tirqwin knows about it?"
"Yes. It was his idea, actually."
"Really?"
"Really." Ford's eyes twinkled at her. "I think he was afraid if you got bored, you might decide to take Khediva for a joyride."
The Wayship snorted, and Sabrina shook her head. Then she frowned. "Ford, what about your ship? Have they decided anything?"
"Not yet. But...it doesn't look promising. They've been rather smug about how limited the time-travel capabilities are, but even with that, they aren't willing to leave it in my hands, I'm afraid."
"I'm sorry," she said softly.
"Well, all adventures come to an end, I suppose," he said, trying to smile.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"If this were Praxatillus, yes. But I don't think your word carries the same weight here," he said.
"Have you spoken to Lady Chavadanafra?"
"Head of House Yanklozhquar? Rather above my touch," Ford said wryly.
"Nonsense. She's your family."
"Not according to Homeworld."
"Has Tirqwin talked to her, then?"
"No. I think Father rather agrees that the ship should be destroyed. He's a Wayfarer, first and foremost."
"I'm sorry," she said again.
"Thanks." He took a breath, then smiled. "Now, let's get to work, shall we? I'll sit through the first one with you, to make sure you've got the hang of it."