'Do you ... remember this time?'

Tamara looked up the beach in the direction of the house that was an exact replica of the other house somewhere on this Earth. She said, 'I really remember too much, you know. Too much but not quite enough.'

'But do you know ... how you came to be, then?'

'I remember certain things,' she said. She turned her sad, but lively eyes to look at him across three feet of churning water. 'But there's too much I'm beginning to understand only now.'

'Please ... tell me.'

'But some things can't be told,' she reminded him. 'My life. My whole, beautiful, short, short life.'

'Please tell me about your blessed life,' he said.

In truth, her life was no more blessed or beautiful than any other life, although its entire span was much less than that of any other adult human being. It is a mystery of life that it always seems too short, for the mayflies of Old Earth as well as for the golden-winged Scutari seneschals who sometimes live a thousand years. Time, for all living things, is always strange, and Tamara could not quite understand how she had lived so deeply in so little time. In truth, there were three times in her life. The first time was the longest, though the least remembered. In this time of her quickening, she grew from a fertilized egg to a woman in only forty days. In the blue lagoon near her house on the tropical island in a nutrient pool that the engineers of Fostora would have called an amritsar tank the microscopic a.s.semblers of the Solid State Ent.i.ty accelerated the development of her body and mind. This was a time of floating in dense salt water and absorbing the sugars, lipids, and amino acids vital to her growth.

As with the womb-state of a naturally-born human being, this should have been a time of love and peace and oceanic bliss. But the cells of her body were dividing explosively and unnaturally, like a barely controlled cancer, and she was growing much too quickly to know a moment of peace. And as for love, where was such a blessed thing to be found in an amritsar tank of cellular-sized robots and organic chemicals which the Ent.i.ty had dumped into a few million litres of salt water? During this long and lonely time when the cells of her body knew no connection with any other living thing, it might have been best if she had remained unconscious. Much of the time, of course, she dwelt in this dark state of unknowing, but at other times she dreamed. And sometimes, when her eyes opened on the bright light streaming down through the lagoon's blue waters, she was almost aware of certain talents, sensibilities, knowledge, memories and purposes that the Ent.i.ty implanted in her explosively developing brain. Sometimes, in those rare moments of insight that fall upon people like shooting stars, she was almost aware of who she was and why the Ent.i.ty had called her into life. But she was not quite a human being, not yet, and any awareness of herself as Tamara Ten Ashtoreth of Neverness would have to wait until the Ent.i.ty imprinted her with the memories of the real Tamara.

This imprinting occurred during the third time in her life, when she had been brought up to the house near the lagoon. In some ways, this was the strangest and most wonderful time she had known. It was a time of love and miracles. In less than a full day, the Ent.i.ty had imprinted her with all of Tamara's memories, or rather, with the memories of Tamara that She had read from Danlo's mind. Because of the strangeness of this quickened consciousness because of the time dilations as immense as those of a black hole it was as if she had lived an entire lifetime in a day. It didn't matter to her that her memory of Danlo's deep blue eyes and his soulful flute-playing and all her other memories had never originated with her. It didn't matter to her then that she remembered a life that she had never really lived. For when she had awakened in the fireroom remembering this lost life of gla.s.s jars and salt water that the Ent.i.ty had fabricated, her love for Danlo had been reborn. This was the miracle of her life, of her real life, of all the time she had spent with Danlo since coming to this familiar house above the dunes on this cold and windy northern beach.

It was the miracle of love. She truly loved Danlo; in a way, she had been created only for him, to love only him, and she sensed this as one of her deepest purposes. The whole of her life almost seemed one long and secret plot to bring them together so that they might kiss and embrace and create something marvellous out of love. It didn't matter that this third time of her life was a merging of the unreal and the real.

To her, the time of her imprinting and the time of love were all as one time: continuous, glorious and golden. This time was time, all the time of her life, and she hoped it would go on and on forever. That is, she had hoped this until her dreams began and Danlo insisted that she try to relive her birth.

All living things, even the strangest and most alien, have a moment of birth. It is the moment of separation from the egg, from the brood-pod, from the silken coc.o.o.n, from the mother or from an amritsar tank full of a.s.semblers and salt water. It is a time of light and pain, and for Tamara this terrifying time was the second of the times into which her life could be divided. Lying on the floor of the meditation room, with the vase of pink rhododendrons, with thirty-three candles and Danlo's dark blue eyes burning above her deep in the att.i.tude of recurrence, she had remembered emerging from the amritsar tank many days earlier and walking up to the house near the lagoon.

She had remembered the salt water dripping from her new and naked body; she had remembered her sense of wonder that she had a body, that she was really she, whoever she really was. With perfect clarity she had remembered and relived the terrible pain of incarnation, and now, standing naked near Danlo in the deadly cold ocean, she was remembering it still.

'It was so strange,' she told him. Now the tide was rising higher, washing in waves against her thighs. The sun was a little higher, too, and the gulls were taking their morning flights, screaming above the rocks and the crashing surf. From far away came the barking of seals and the cold wind. The whole beach was alive with sound, and Tamara had to speak with much force so that Danlo could hear her voice clearly.

'Life is strange, isn't it? Simply being and being aware. And it's even stranger to be aware of being aware, and you can't imagine what it's like to have all this terribly beautiful awareness come into you all at once. There was a moment, Danlo. I was not, and then I was. Oh, I didn't know who I was, not then, but I knew that I was I. I suppose in most people, this sense of the self crystallizing out of pure consciousness takes years. But for me, it happened in a flash. It was like a star coming alive with fire. It was like light bursting inside me. In a way, I was this light, this clear and beautiful light that let me see myself as I am. I remember seeing myself as I stepped out of the tank. My bare skin, the drops of water the beautiful sun falling over my skin like burning drops of light. It was all so new. And I was so ignorant at first. I knew almost nothing. But in a way, everything. I had no concept that my skin was made up of cells, the cells of atoms. I had no words for these things. But I knew that I had cells, I could feel them living inside me, almost burning. And deeper inside, the atoms, vibrating like the strings of a gosharp there was this immense sound inside me that I somehow knew was uniquely my own. I knew that I was these cells, these atoms. I knew that the atoms of my body were somehow different to the atoms of the water or the sand or any other thing. Because I could control it all. This part of the world encapsulated by my skin, I could will to move or not move. I can't tell you what a sense of power I felt when I realized all this, it was like grasping a bolt of lightning in my hands. As soon as I left the water and stood on the beach and started walking up toward the house, I wanted to jump back in the tank, even though I knew I couldn't do that, I must never do that. It all hurt, you know. The sand was as hot as fire, and it burned my feet. The sunlight hurt my eyes. Just looking at myself hurt the sun was burning my skin red, and I could feel how fragile the cells of my body really were. Oh, Danlo, why does it all have to hurt so much? It's all so terribly beautiful, and it all hurts so much that I could die. But I can't die, I can never die, and that's the strangest thing of all.'

As the sun ripened the sky into a full and glorious blue, they stood in the ocean shallows holding this strange conversation. The waves were rising higher and higher against Danlo's sodden kamelaika. He shifted his weight from right to left, trying to keep his blood flowing to his cold, throbbing feet. He listened carefully to what Tamara was telling him. She seemed to have come to a similar understanding about herself as had he. She thought it was only natural that she had forgotten her quickening in the amritsar tank and her strange birth. The imprinting of her memories, she told him, must have driven these two periods from her conscious recall, much as in infant amnesia where a child's experiences and natural growth causes her to forget the early years of her life. She used this word 'natural' with sadness and great poignancy. It was as if in deducing that she was the child of the Ent.i.ty's hand, she regarded herself as something other than a natural human being. At the same time, she still couldn't help seeing herself as Tamara Ten Ashtoreth, and this confusion of ident.i.ties was clearly causing her much pain.

'Love hurts most of all, you know,' she said. The way love inevitably wakes everything up and causes us to burn for ever more love.'

'That is something that Tamara might have said.'

'I know.'

Danlo listened to the seagull chicks crying from their many nests out on Cathedral Rock. He said, 'This must be hard for you. To be ... and yet not to be. To not know who you really are.'

'But I know who I am,' she said. 'Do you?'

Danlo watched her as she splashed water over herself from her head to her thighs.

Her whole body sparkled with this icy salt water.

'You are not Tamara,' he said at last. He winced in pain at the inevitable speaking of this truth. 'You are not she.'

'Am I not?'

'You are not just Tamara. You have some of her memories but...''Yes?'

'You are something other,' he said. 'Something more.'

'I know but what?'

'It is hard to put a name to what you really are. You are the Ent.i.ty's child, yes? Her ... starchild.'

'I'm a woman, Danlo.' She rubbed her wet hands over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly, then down over her hips. 'A woman who loves you.'

'Yes,' he said. He could hardly hear himself speak above the thunder of the sea. 'A part of you is a woman I can see that you are. But another part is only my memory of another woman named Tamara. Which is the part that loves, then?'

'Does it really matter?'

'Yes, it matters,' he said softly. 'I do not want to be loved by the part of you that is only the ghost of my own memory.'

'Because you think it's unseemly to love yourself ?'

'No,' Danlo said with a sad smile. 'Because it is not real. Your memory of the first time we touched eyes ... this blessed moment of love never really happened to you. And therefore, for us, it never really was.'

Tamara was quiet for a moment, and then she said, 'If I could, I would cark the cells of my body so that I was really she. I'd cark myself I'd replace all the atoms that compose my heart and brain with new ones. But I don't think there's any power in the universe that could do such a thing.'

'No,' Danlo said. 'But even if that were possible, it would not matter. My memories are still ... my memories.'

'And yet when Tamara's memories of you were destroyed, you proposed to replace them with your own.'

The cold from the water worked its way up Danlo's legs, and he began to shiver as he nodded his head. 'Yes, this is true. And in my life, I have done only one other thing as wrong.'

'What did you do?'

'You do not remember?'

'No.'

'I ... wished a man dead. I saw him dying, in my hands.'

'You speak as if by such wishing you had actually murdered him.'

'I almost did. In a way, this man is dead because of me. Just as Tamara would have been dead inside if she had imprinted my memories.'

'Oh, Danlo.'

'Truly to cark one's own memories into another's mind is almost worse than murder.'

Tamara stepped through the foamy white waves closer to him. She took his hand and pressed it lightly over her heart. Surprisingly, even though she was dripping icy water, her skin was warmer than his.

'Am I so dead inside?' she asked.

'Most of what you remember about your life is unreal.'

'Do you think I can't distinguish the real from what is not?'

'Can you?'

'Oh, I really think I can. I think I've discovered something about the nature of memory.'

'Yes?'

'All the memories that were imprinted inside me,' she began. 'The time in my mother's kitchen when I first wanted her to die, and the first time I saw you in the sunroom of Bardo's house and wanted to love you until you died all these things I remember as clearly as I can remember the shape of Cathedral Rock when I shut my eyes. I can remember all these unreal things about my life, even though I suppose I know they never really happened to me at least to the cells of this body. I have all these beautiful memories, but I can't relive them. That is the difference, you know. I found that out in the house. During the ceremony, the second ceremony, when I had finally fallen into recurrence, when I felt myself being born again I knew that the real memories are those that can be relived, and the imprinted ones cannot.'

Danlo pressed his hand into the warmth between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and said, 'This is true.

The remembrancers have known this for a long time. This is why they forbid their students even the simplest of imprintings.'

'You know this and yet you still offered to imprint someone with your memories?'

'I ... had fallen into love. I cannot tell you how much I loved her.'

'Oh, I think I know.'

'Yes you have my memories,' he said.

'I have something,' she agreed. 'Memory is so strange, isn't it? I can see all these wonderful memories inside me, and yet there is a distance to them. I know they are memories. I'm not really seeing them, in the moment as I see you now.'

'The way most people remember is not really remembering,' Danlo said.

'Remembrancing is different, truly. Especially recurrence.'

'For one's life to recur in a flash how is this possible?'

'I do not know. But the remembrancers say that matter is really just memory frozen in time. In recurrence, time melts away and we go back to ourselves. And then there is a flowing of our lives again.'

She smiled at this and asked, 'And what else do your remembrancers say?'

'They say this: that difference between simple remembering and reliving one's life is the difference between seeing a foto of an electrical storm and feeling a bolt of lightning sear one's hand.'

Now Tamara was no longer smiling. She took Danlo's hand in her own, turned it palm upward to the sun and ran her finger over the lines and callouses. Finally she said, 'I've felt the lightning, too, you know. There was my birth, and before that, the days in the tank. And here in this house all these days we've had together. The flowers and the fire and the love. Do you think I can't remember how your hands burned over me the first time we lay together? Isn't this real?'

'Yes, it is real,' he admitted.

'Then at least I will have this part of my life to live and relive again.' She shut her eyes, and continued, 'As I am reliving it now. All these moments, all this life, all this pa.s.sion it's all so real isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'And it always will be?'

'Yes, only-'

'And then there is the other thing,' she said quickly, interrupting him. She opened her eyes and looked at him grimacing against the icy, wet touch of the sea. 'The strangest thing of all.'

Seeing that he was now shivering, she took his hand and led him out of the water.

They walked up the beach for a while in the direction of Danlo's lightship where it lay almost buried in the sand. Although the wind was up and Danlo remained quite cold, the modest exercise restored the life to his numb legs. When he paused to talk to Tamara on the dunes some fifty feet away from his ship, his legs ached and burned, but he no longer worried that they would freeze and he would have to cut them off.

'What is this strange thing?' he asked.

Tamara stood tall and perfect in the light streaming down from the sun. Her body was now completely dry, and her skin had taken on the lovely white l.u.s.tre of a pearl.

Her face was turned toward the ocean as if she was listening to the whales sing their high, haunting songs out along the blue horizon. Or perhaps she was listening to the wind. She seemed to take strength and meaning from the deep sounds of the world all around her, for her eyes grew brighter and she held her head almost preternaturally still. Perhaps, Danlo thought, she was attuned to whispers and vibrations that only she could hear. Her whole being seemed to be trembling as if she was waiting for some great thing to happen. As she stood utterly naked on the windswept dunes watching and waiting and listening to herself, there was something wild and utterly ruthless about her. And there was something vast and splendid, too. Beholding the dazzling beauty of this rare thing, for a moment Danlo felt himself falling as if he had stepped off the world out into the whirlpool of lights that spin through the universe.

'My dreams,' she said. 'Where do my strange dreams come from?'

'I have wondered about your dreams, too.'

'When I sleep and I relive this strange other life of b.l.o.o.d.y red moons and gleaming knives, where do these memories come from?'

'It is possible,' he said, 'that the Ent.i.ty has imprinted you with sleeping memories.'

She shook her head at this remembrancing terminology and said, 'Sleeping memories?'

'A mountain of memories, yes? Most of these memories would remain unconscious, but through your dreams a few of them would rise up into your mind. As the peak of an iceberg rises above the sea.'

'But if these are only imprinted memories, then how is it possible that I've relived them?'

'I ... do not know.'

'I think these are more than just imprinted memories, Danlo. I think my dreams are more than dreams.'

'What, then?'

She flashed him a deep, wild look and continued, 'The red moons, of course, are of Qallar. Before the Ent.i.ty grew into a G.o.ddess, when she was still human, she was born on Qallar. She was a warrior-poet, you know. The only female warrior-poet there has ever been.'

Danlo turned to stare at his ship gleaming in the sun. After a while he looked back at her and asked, 'Then you believe that the Ent.i.ty has imprinted you with her own memories?'

'It is more than that.'

He thought of her lone walks along the beach at night and he remembered how she had strapped the murderous spikhaxo glove onto her hand in the event she chanced upon a tiger.

'Her soul,' Danlo finally said. 'Do you believe that She ... has made you with a similar soul as She?'

'It is more than that.'

'Tell me, please.'

'I can hear Her thoughts, you know. I can see Her dreams.' She was quiet while the wind whispered over the ocean, and then she looked at him and said, 'I can feel Her pain.'

'Telepathy?'