“I feel that my memory is returning,” Nala says to me. This is some hours after my first meeting of conspiracy, deep in the night. The meeting of conspiracy has gone well; the male who came (number two hundred and thirty-four) swore allegiance to the plan and whispered that he had been, in private, developing his musculature for a year for just such a possibility. Now I am with her again and almost utterly relaxed, ready to listen to her with an intentness I have previously only suggested. “In small parts, now and then, I think that I remember how it was before the ship. The blocks must be breaking down; I have small bursts of utter recollection. Is this happening to you?”

“A little,” I say. “Every now and then. I too think that the blocks are breaking down. They were not meant to be permanent or to stand up for this long.”

“But I think,” she says, running a hand over my groin, “I think that it would be better if the blocks had remained. Because I do not like what I am seeing. I do not like the memories. It is painful to me and I cannot bear it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to talk about it. I do not yet trust you enough. What do I know of you? You may be a traitor.”

“But this excites you.”

“Yes,” she says, grasping me and squeezing, “yes, that excites me very much. I have discovered a great deal about myself since we first met.” Her voice modulates, then slackens and I think that she has stopped talking for the moment but then, after some wavering, it picks up again and I understand that she is in a different mood; that she is indeed now telling me of her recollections. “I see myself lying on a table,” she says. “I am in a laboratory of some sort although it may merely be an official room in a bureaucracy. There is a helmet on my head. My clothing is white and thin; I am draped up to the neck but my face is covered with jelly for the helmet. They are talking to me. They are telling me that I am to know certain things, to be able to reveal certain things. Every now and then something within the helmet jolts me and I gasp. ‘Learn botany,’ they are saying to me, ‘learn plant culture. It is important to know plant culture; it is a basic science. Recite again the various categories of flora on their planet.’ I begin to recite for them but am interrupted by laughter in the background. Someone in the room is laughing at me. I try to turn my head to see who this is and why but as I do so pain goes through me and I find that my head is rigid. They are laughing at me as they teach me flora. The strangeness of this overtakes me and I realize something which makes it all comprehensible.”

“What?” I say when she pauses. “What do you see?”

“Nothing else. That’s all. That’s as far as I can go. The helmet and the laughter and the voice about botany. As much as I try I can take it no further. But it’s part of my past. I know that it’s part of my past!” Her voice is suddenly pleading. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it coming back to you that way?”

“Not so complete,” I say. “Not scenes, not whole pieces of action like you describe. Just little impressions.”

“You must be behind me, then. It will happen to you, too. See; you will begin to see it in your sleep and think that you are dreaming but when you wake up it will still be going on. That’s what will happen. My speciality is botany, Quir. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“No. I never asked you.”

“You don’t have to ask. It’s botany. They taught me everything I knew, right on that table with the helmet. I see that now. I’m not a botanist, Quir.”

“What’s that?”

“I said, I’m not a botanist. I know that now. I’m just someone who has learned a good deal about botany. They burned it into my brain.”

“Yes,” I say, trying to push away what Nala has helped me discover. “Yes, all right. I see.”

“And you’re not a geologist but merely a sponge who was filled with water called geology.”

“All right,” I say. “All right. We will make our escape. Let’s not talk anymore of this.”

“Don’t you understand, Quir? Are you that dull? Don’t you see what’s going on here? What I’m trying to remember?”

“I think I do,” I say. “But I don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to either but it’s got to be faced. You have to face the truth, Quir. At one end, they put it into us—ourownpeople—and at the other end the aliens are taking it out. We have nothing to do with the process. We’re just the receptacle. At one end they filled us up and here we’re being emptied out. We could be anything at all.”

“Even felons,” I say, admitting an old terror. “Criminals who are serving their penalties in this way. But our people did not mean for us to be entrapped by these aliens. They did not envision the enclosure, surely. We were merely to deliver the information and be gone.”

“Can you be sure of that? Can you really be sure of that? Perhaps the enclosure is part of our penalty.”

“All right,” I say, turning toward her, holding her shoulders, pinning her back against the bed. “All right, I concede that. It is possible. It makes sense. But it has nothing to do with the plan. We will escape and go back to them and surely they will feel that we have paid the penalty in full; we have done what we were selected to do. Only that matters.”

“Quir,” she says with a moan, working herself against me, her head deep in my chest, “Quir, we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to make good and escape before all my memory comes back. I think that the others are finding their memories too. If it’s both of us, it has to be all. We have got to get out of here before we remember everything.”

“Why?” I say, although I know the answer. The answer fits and is expected. Even my therapist would be able to make common use of it.

“Because,” she says, “because if I learn it all, why we are here and where we came from and what they have done to us, Quir, I don’t think that I’m going to be able to stand it.”

“Yes,” I say, “all right, I see, I understand, we’ll escape; we’ll escape, we’ll retrieve,” and seemingly sensible phrases, all of them ordered, all of them well thought out but suddenly the sound of my own voice becomes unbearable to me and I became quiet, and lie against her. She says nothing else. So much time passes that I think she is sleeping but when I open my eyes to look down at her she is lying poised against my shoulder, her eyes round and open, looking into the thin, reflecting light of the room with an expression in her eyes as if she has seen the unspeakable. I want to comfort her but cannot; I think that I have seen it too. I think that I am seeing it at this moment.