Then, one night, he did go mad. He found himself squatting on the floor in his nightshirt, the room a ruin around him: mirrors smashed, furniture broken. Blood was running down his forearms.
The door leapt off its hinges with a heave of Old Davout’s shoulder. Davout realized, in a vague way, that his sib had been trying to get in for some time. He saw Red Katrin’s silhouette in the door, an aureate halo around her auburn hair in the instant before Old Davout snapped on the light.
Afterward Katrin pulled the bits of broken mirror out of Davout’s hands, washed and disinfected them, while his sib tried to reconstruct the green room and its antique furniture.
Davout watched his spatters of blood stain the water, threads of scarlet whirling in coreolis spirals. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I may be losing my mind.”
“I doubt that.” Frowning at a bit of glass in her tweezers.
“I want to know.”
Something in his voice made her look up. “Yes?”
He could see his staring reflection in her green eyes. “Read my downloads. Please. I want to know if . . . I’m reacting normally in all this. If I’m lucid or just . . .” He fell silent. Do it, he thought. Just do this one thing.
“I don’t upload other people. Davout can do that. Old Davout, I mean.”
No, Davout thought. His sib would understand all too well what he was up to.
“But he’s me!” he said. “He’d think I’m normal!”
“Silent Davout, then. Crazy people are his specialty.”
Davout wanted to make a mudra of scorn, but Red Katrin held his hands captive. Instead he gave a laugh. “He’d want me to take Lethe. Any advice he gave would be . . . in that direction.” He made a fist of one hand, saw drops of blood well up through the cuts. “I need to know if I can stand this,” he said. “If–something drastic is required.”
She nodded, looked again at the sharp little spear of glass, put it deliberately on the edge of the porcelain. Her eyes narrowed in thought–Davout felt his heart vault at that look, at the familiar lines forming at the corner of Red Katrin’s right eye, each one known and adored.
Please do it, he thought desperately.
“If it’s that important to you,” she said, “I will.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He bent his head over her and the basin, raised her hand, and pressed his lips to the flesh beaded with water and streaked with blood.
It was almost like conducting an affair, all clandestine meetings and whispered arrangements. Red Katrin did not want Old Davout to know she was uploading his sib’s memories–”I would just as soon not deal with his disapproval”–and so she and Davout had to wait until he was gone for a few hours, a trip to record a lecture for Cavor’s series on Ideas and Manners.
She settled onto the settee in the front room and covered herself with her fringed shawl. Closed her eyes. Let Davout’s memories roll through her.
He sat in a chair nearby, his mouth dry. Though nearly thirty years had passed since Dark Katrin’s death, he had experienced only a few weeks of that time; and Red Katrin was floating through these memories at speed, tasting here and there, skipping redundancies or moments that seemed inconsequential . . .
He tried to guess from her face where in his life she dwelt. The expression of shock and horror near the start was clear enough, the shuttle bursting into flames. After the shock faded, he recognized the discomfort that came with experiencing a strange mind, and flickering across her face came expressions of grief, anger, and here and there amusement; but gradually there was only a growing sadness, and lashes wet with tears. He crossed the room to kneel by her chair and take her hand. Her fingers pressed his in response . . . she took a breath, rolled her head away . . . he wanted to weep not for his grief, but for hers.
The eyes fluttered open. She shook her head. “I had to stop,” she said. “I couldn’t take it–” She looked at him, a kind of awe in her wide green eyes. “My God, the sadness! And the need. I had no idea. I’ve never felt such need. I wonder what it is to be needed that way.”