Sklom hooted with laughter. Cossont reflected that males seemed to find the same things funny even across utterly different species.

“Room for expansion!” Sklom wheezed, though QiRia looked unimpressed at this and shared a rolling-eyes look with Cossont.

He pinched the top of his nose. “At first, my memories were placed randomly throughout my body, with many copies,” he said. “Now, as the available space has been taken up, there is generally only one copy of each memory, and I have, over the centuries, as part of one of my long-term internal projects, sorted and moved and … re-stored all my memories, so that they reside in what seem to me apposite locations.” He looked at Cossont. “I lied; my genitals contain all my memories of previous sexual encounters. It seemed only appropriate.”

“Ha!” Sklom said, sounding happy.

“Like you say,” Cossont agreed. “Appropriate. What’s left in your actual brain?”

“Recent memories, recently recalled old memories, a highly intricate map of where all my memories are stored throughout my body, and a sort of random, sifted debris of all the thoughts and memories that have ever passed through my head. That I can’t – daren’t – interfere with too much, aside from one or two very specific episodes. To do so further would risk becoming not myself. We are largely the sum of all we’ve done, and to dispose of that knowledge would be to stop being one’s self.”

“What are the one or two specific episodes—?” Cossont began.

“None of your business,” QiRia said smoothly.

Cossont lowered her voice a little. “Has anyone ever broken your heart?” she asked quietly.

“Phht!” Sklom spluttered.

“In the sense I’m sure you mean, not for over nine and a half thousand years,” QiRia told her briskly. “Taking another, more pertinent definition, my heart is broken with each new exposure to the idiocies and cruelties of every manner of being that dares to call or think of itself as ‘intelligent’.”

“In other words,” Sklom chipped in, “about every century, half-century, or so.”

QiRia glared at the creature, but let the point stand.

“So,” Cossont said, “sexual memories in your genitals …”

“Yes,” QiRia said.

“Where do you keep your memories of love, past lovers?”