Poor Constance. She cares so much. I
wonder what the connection was between her and Robert. Maybe someone
will tell me eventually. I'll have to check on her tomorrow to see
how she's doing. I'm not sure if anyone else will be thinking about
it in all the fuss unless they want to question her again.
I don't know who I really care that much about.
I mean, I'm trying to learn. I'm not used to being in a position
to afford to care. The whole thing seems so terrible even in the
abstract which is all it really is to me. I barely knew Robert although
he was kind to me. I think I was hoping that death didn't happen
here, at least not this way. Merlin did try to tell me the history,
but it all seemed so distant. Hundreds of years... I've got
more immediate things going on in my own head that I'm working hard to
get a handle on.
I definitely have to do something about these memories.
I'm not sure I can reach an accommodation with them on my own. I've
isolated two other distinct sets of memories, personalities really, besides
me and Linette. I know there's at least one more in there, but it's
hard to be sure with all the fragmentation. There are bits and pieces,
images and impressions, that could fit anywhere.
I've named the two that I've distinguished.
We're all B932 except for Linette, and I need some way to tell us apart.
We've always thought of ourselves as B932, but we're not the same person.
It's linguistically confusing to say the least. I'm calling them
Eurydice and Philomena. I don't know that they'd have picked names
like that. They're not quite clear enough yet for me to know, but...
They're enough there to cause me trouble.
I think Eurydice comes first chronologically.
It's hard to be sure though. I think that memories of seeing the
men who bought Linette fit into Eurydice's time, but I can't be sure.
There are also a couple of events in Evaran history that were big enough
for her to hear about that I think relate to things Linette had heard about.
Eurydice's the biggest problem right now.
She seems to have been heavily programmed for loyalty to one man and his
family. She keeps insisting that we ought to go "home" to the "master."
She's not really very bright, so she's distractible, but I can't get it
through to her that the man's probably dead or that we're better off in
Amber. I don't think she was a very good artist either, probably
relates to the intellectual limitations. She lived with the family
and did whatever they ordered. I get the impression that they lent
her out a bit. The Trumps she drew did work after all.
I don't think that Eurydice lasted very long though.
Long-- It's kind of a relative term. Given how long it's been
since Linette was born (and I don't even know that for sure), a decade
or two is a short time.
I'm not sure, but I think that the loyalty modifications
and decreased intelligence made Eurydice less than ideal as a Trump artist.
I don't have anything of the sort, and Philomena doesn't either.
We're both considerably better artists than Eurydice could ever hope to
be. I think they must have been experimenting. Of course, it's
possible that they were trying to put controls on in reaction to something
else. The controls on me are a lot more subtle.
Philomena makes me nervous. She's a nasty
piece of work. A snitch at best, at worst... Well, I'm not
really sure what to say. She lasted though. She had a series
of patrons, kept trading one in for the next. She doesn't have friends
or even allies, and she thinks I'm wasting my time with Russell and Rebecca
since they can't give me anything where we are now. She wants to
use me as a front for her activities since I seem to be Amber acceptable.
I've met her kind before and always steered clear.
How can I avoid someone who's in my own head?
At least she's not complete yet or very strong. I think it's her
sneakiness that scares me. If I'm not careful, she'll have me doing
things I don't even realize. She's good at what she does; she lasted
a long time.
I suspect that Philomena explains some other things
about my own experiences. She's probably why I never got to stay
in one place for very long, why all my early sexual experiences were so
bad. They wanted something that wasn't Eurydice or Philomena.
I can't connect any reprogramming memories to either
Eurydice or Philomena. That doesn't mean they don't belong, but...
I think Linette has appropriated them all, assuming that they're part of
her own particular nightmare.
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