第五章 秤Chapter Five · The Scale
回收塔的入口有一座秤。
夷光每天踩上去過上千次，從來沒有想過它在量什麼。踩上去，數字跳出來，調度員看一眼，放行。她一直以為那是例行公事，像紙一樣，是城裡留下來的舊規矩。
今天數字跳出來，調度員看了兩眼。
「妳重了。」他說。
這是夷光第一次聽見「重」這個字，從調度員嘴裡出來，帶著一點她聽不懂的東西 —— 不是責備，比較像害怕。
「秤壞了吧。」夷光說。
「秤不會壞。」調度員把那個數字記在紙上，「人只會越來越輕。交得越多越輕，這是規矩。妳做這行最久，妳應該是這裡最輕的人。」
他抬起頭。抬頭要耗神，可是他抬了。
「妳是這裡最重的人。」
夷光沒有說話。她想起自己做回收員這麼多年，從來沒有像別人那樣，一個月一個月地輕下去，輕到有一天調度排她「上去」，然後就再也沒有人提起她。她一直以為，是自己交得不夠。
原來不是。
那天下班，她沒有直接走。她繞到回收塔的背面，那裡有一道牆，所有被回收的記憶，據說都順著牆裡的線，往上、往上，送到天上那顆快要熄掉的恆星，讓它再亮久一點。
她把手貼上去。
牆是冷的。
裡面沒有任何東西在流動。沒有光，沒有熱，沒有那種「有東西正在往上送」的震動。什麼都沒有。
夷光在那道冷牆前面站了很久。
她想，那些被交出去的記憶，如果不是上去了，那是去了哪裡。
There was a scale at the entrance to the Reclamation Tower.
Yiguang had stepped onto it a thousand times a day, and never once wondered what it measured. You stepped on, a number leapt up, the dispatcher glanced at it, and you were waved through. She had always taken it for routine — like the slips of paper, just an old rule the city had left behind.
Today the number leapt up, and the dispatcher looked at it twice.
"You've gotten heavier," he said.
It was the first time Yiguang had heard the word heavy — and out of the dispatcher's mouth it carried something she couldn't quite name. Not reproach. Closer to fear.
"The scale must be broken," Yiguang said.
"The scale doesn't break." He wrote the number down on his paper. "People only get lighter. The more you surrender, the lighter you grow — that's the rule. You've done this work longer than anyone. You ought to be the lightest person here."
He lifted his head. Lifting one's head cost effort, but he lifted it.
"You're the heaviest person here."
Yiguang said nothing. She thought of all her years as a reclaimer, how she had never grown lighter the way the others did, month after month, until one day the dispatcher sent them "up" and no one spoke of them again. She had always assumed it was because she hadn't surrendered enough.
It wasn't that, after all.
When her shift ended that day, she didn't leave straight away. She circled around to the back of the Reclamation Tower, where there was a wall. Every memory ever reclaimed, they said, ran along the lines inside that wall, up and up, carried to the dying star in the sky, to keep it burning a little longer.
She pressed her hand against it.
The wall was cold.
Nothing was moving inside. No light, no heat, none of that tremor of something being carried upward. Nothing at all.
Yiguang stood a long while before that cold wall.
She thought: if those surrendered memories hadn't gone up, then where had they gone.