Page 74 of Katabasis
“Far from it,” said Elspeth. “This is their repository. The Lethe is all the memories that ever were. The Lethe is infinite. The Lethe is all the colors on the palette mixed into black. The Lethe doesn’t erase, it only absorbs.”
“Eternal recurrence,” Peter murmured. “Everything that has happened will happen again.”
“Don’t quote Nietzsche on my boat,” said Elspeth.
“Mea culpa.”
Elspeth settled back, arms crossed. “It’s fun to watch, anyhow. Like the television channel of the underworld. It’s always the freshest memories that are clearest. Gives you a picture of what life is like above. Can’t believe how much things have changed. Did they really kill John Lennon?”
“Yes,” said Peter. “Sorry.”
“Oh, what a pity.”
Alice leaned over the deck, entranced.
A girl hopped on one foot over a wet sidewalk wriggling with worms. A man wobbled on a bike behind a bus turning into traffic. A woman juggled boiling pots on a stove. A boy walked alone by the river Cam, glancing up every now and then to watch the rowers training in the early morning. Those were not her memories; those faces were not of her loved ones. They struck a deep nostalgia in her just the same, the nostalgia you got looking inside brightly lit windows along the street at night; peeking into lives you might just have had. Someone else’s comfort. A warm couch, an old movie humming along on the television. And then your wife or mother or friend joining you from the kitchen, steaming mugs of hot toddies in both hands. She found its sight oddly calming. The insides of her head, tossed out onto water—except these images had no associations with her own, they did not spark the deluge, she could just watch them go by; instantiated, then vanishing.
“Careful,” said Elspeth.
Alice realized she was leaning quite far over the railing. She shrank back.
“The Lethe will do that to you,” said Elspeth. “You’ve got to be on guard. Otherwise you dissolve quick, before you know it.”
Would she? Alice wondered. How much protection did Grimes’s tattoo afford?
“I thought the Lethe couldn’t hurt Shades,” said Peter.
“The draft doesn’t, only cleans your memory for rebirth. But unfiltered water, straight from the river—that can destroy you. I’m very careful. Stuck my pinkie in once. Just the tip. I wanted to see if it would hurt, you see.”
“And did you sense it?” asked Peter. “What you were forgetting?”
“Not at all,” said Elspeth. “That’s the most frightening part. You’d never know what you lost. You don’t get to choose.”
“You said that the Kripkes don’t fear the Lethe,” said Alice. “What did you mean by that?”
“They don’t,” said Elspeth. “No, they court it. I’ve even seen them drinking its waters. Just once. They stood at the bank in a line, taking tiny sips from a bowl. It seemed like a ritual for them. Like they’d done it before.”
Peter looked aghast. “Why?”
“Because it hurts to be human, I’m sure,” said Elspeth. “Hurts to be reminded what you don’t have anymore. Better to erase yourself bit by bit, until you are only what you need in the present moment.” She shrugged. “We all do it. Even the living. Only difference is the Kripkes care less about what they’re leaving behind.”
Peter shuddered. “But that’s not a life anymore.”
“They aren’t living lives,” said Elspeth. “They’re just rote functions. Dedicated to a single end.”
Alice didn’t find this so awful. Why wouldn’t everyone strip away the parts of their selves that caused them pain? She’d like to learn that trick, she thought. If she could sift through that mess in her head, pull out the files that kept torturing her, and burn them. Every small humiliation, every shred of guilt—if only she could unclutter her mind so that all that was left was the elements she wanted to keep: the burning core, the hunger for knowledge, the skills to gain it. You could achieve so much without the burdens of personhood. Who wouldn’t wash away the rest?
As the sun climbed ponderously ontoits ever-low perch, Elspeth steered them toward the coast. “Better to be out deep at nighttime,” she explained. “The Kripkes like to move under the cover of the dark. It gets choppy, though. Days, I prefer to be close to shore.”
“Where are we headed?” asked Peter.
“Wrath,” said Elspeth. “I need a lantern.”
A strip of land came into focus now. No buildings marked the horizon. No—as they sailed closer, Alice saw that on the other side of the abyss that the Shades had labored so furiously to cross was nothing but sand and driftwood. It seemed a barren and hostile beach, the kind you got shipwrecked on; the kind where survivors went mad and devoured one another. Indeed the more she observed, the more the beach presented evidence of some ongoing struggle. Everywhere she saw confused prints in the sand; haphazard fortlike structures; broken spears made of driftwood and rocks; discarded firewood; proof of camps broken up in a hurry.
“The Third Court,” said Elspeth. “The deserts of Greed.”
“Where’s the campus?” Alice asked.
