High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) (19 page)

“She was already condemned,” Tacita said. “Better this way than electrification. A private death is preferable to a public one.”

So a life that had hardly been worth living ended. No one would mourn for her. No one would miss her. She presumably had a name. Certainly an Ovidian name, but did she ever have a familiar name, I wondered. We did not know it. How many others knew it? Probably few. Possibly none. An invisible, meaningless life that ended in an equally invisible, meaningless way. Denied the ways of nature, unable to bear her own child, she had nurtured the rejected child of some unknown woman. For this she was condemned. No more than a child herself, she had taken the baby like a doll, knowing what would happen if she were discovered. Now both were gone.

When I turned away from the river, Tacita was now dressed in the woman’s garment. Thin and torn, it immediately made her look frailer than she was in her Guard uniform.

“We should discolour you,” Eluned said, leading her down to the river bank. Despite Tacita’s protests, there she rubbed handfuls of mud into her face and hair, and down her arms and legs. It did make a difference. The skin on her face was darker and she looked older.

“What do we do now?” I asked, eager to move on, away from this spot. It smelled of death.

“Tacita enters the caster through the door. We follow a little way behind.”

“What if we are seen?” I was not convinced this idea was as simple as Eluned made it sound.

“No one will see us,” Tacita said. “This door must be in either the child-bearers’ sector, or the childless sector. No one else would have need of it. They would use the gate on the other side. If it is the child-bearers’ sector, which I doubt, there will be no one about. Child-bearers are not allowed outside their buildings. If, as I think it must be, the door leads into the childless sector, again there will be no one about as the childless will all be working. They do not return to their building until much later.”

What she was saying seemed to be reasonable, but I was still not sure. “Say we get in without being seen. What are we going to do then?”

“We will make our way to the Aula, the hall of the Leaders. It is next to the main gathering place where the Concilium is held.”

“And what are we supposed to do there? Just walk in and ask if they know anything about my grandfather?”

“Don’t be so foolish. As a childless I can enter the Aula freely. No one will notice me. You two will have to hide somewhere near the gathering place.”

“That still doesn’t tell me how you are going to get the information. They are not going to hand it over to a childless, are they?”

“If I ask for it, they will. Who do you think takes information from one sector to another? The childless, of course. I will say that someone in Sector whatever requires this information. That will be enough.”

“Won’t you need some way of identifying yourself?”

“A childless does not need to identify herself. As far as the rest of the caster is concerned we are all the same. Childless are nameless. Take one look at me. This garment is identification enough. I will invent a name for the person who supposedly wants the information and give a random sector number. The childless who work in the Aula would not know names anyway.”

I remembered that she had once told me that it was her hope that she would become one of the clerks in the offices. Her plan seemed to be more and more reasonable.

“What was your grandfather’s name?”

“His Ovidian name? I don’t know. As far as I know, he didn’t know it himself. To me he was ‘Taid’. Nothing else. The Professors called him Richard. And something else. Eluned, can you remember the other name Taid had?”

“Beynon-James, my lady. Mererid used it when she was angry at something he had said or done.”

“That’s it. His name was Richard Beynon-James. That’s all I know.”

“That may not be enough. Any records of him should be indexed under his Ovidian name. Everyone knows that.”

“But he didn’t know what his Ovidian name was. I told you that. You’ll just have to try using the name I just gave you.”

“Come,” Eluned said. “It is dark enough. Let us go.”

We scrambled back over the bridge and made our way across to the door. Fortunately, it was still slightly ajar, which meant no one had come through it since the woman who was now drowned. Tacita led the way, pulling the door open and quickly disappearing inside. Eluned followed and I went through last.

When I pulled the door closed behind me, what little light had come through it was turned off. I found myself in pitch darkness, unsure which way to go. I put out both hands and found what I presumed was a wall to my left. With my hand on the wall I slowly edged forward. Before too long I bumped into Eluned’s back.

“She has gone ahead,” she whispered. “We must wait.”

“Where are we?” I said.

“Tacita thinks we are behind the childless building. The path turns a corner here. She has gone to check.”

A moment or two later I heard Tacita’s voice. I still could not see her. “Come,” she whispered. Eluned put out her hand until she grasped mine then pulled me forward. We rounded the corner and carried on walking as best as we could, like three blind people in a chain. Before too long Eluned squeezed my hand, which I took to be a signal for me to stop. There was a pause. Something creaked and a dim light appeared in front of us.

“This must be the street beside the childless building,” Tacita whispered. “Wait here. I will see where it leads.”

She went through and Eluned pushed the door closed behind her, sending us back into darkness.

Some time passed. Then we heard what sounded like a stifled scream.

“What was that?” I said.

“Shh,” Eluned said. She opened the door a little. I could hear a male voice, not too far away. Eluned opened the door fully and stepped out into the street. Although the light was dim, when I followed her out I could see the shadowy outline of two people pressed up against the wall of the building. As my eyes became accustomed to the light I began to make out more details. The figure with its back to the wall turned its face in our direction. It was Tacita.

Seconds later, Eluned was behind the other figure, one arm around its neck, the other clasping the figure’s uplifted arm, the hand of which clasped a crude knife. Without thinking, I ran up and wrenched the knife from the hand. It clattered to the ground. Eluned now twisted the arm down and behind the figure’s back. It squealed. As it turned its head, trying to release itself from Eluned’s hold, I could see that it was a boy.

Tacita had slid down the wall into a sitting position, breathing heavily. I picked up the knife and knelt beside her. “Let him go,” she whispered. “Let him go. Please.”

I turned to Eluned, still holding the struggling boy. “Let him go, Eluned,” I said. The minute she relaxed her grip the boy squirmed his way out and ran off up the street.

“Why let him go?” Eluned said to Tacita.

“He’s a street boy. They’re not really dangerous.”

“What if he reports us?” I said, looking up the street, half-expecting someone to appear.

“He won’t. He’s in enough trouble as it is. Street boys are outlaws. I should report him. But I won’t bother, because no one will do anything.”

“Because you’re a childless?” I said.

“He could have killed me and no one would have been any the wiser. You saw what happened to that other one. You think anyone cares about her? She’s gone. One less childless. Soon to be replaced by another. Help me up. We must move on.”

Eluned and I helped her to her feet. The garment she was wearing was torn even more than it had been. One shoulder hung down over her chest. A thin line of blood trickled through the mud on her cheek.

“You’re hurt,” I said. “What did he want?”

“Street boys use the childless to find food for them. Especially the childless who look as I do. Old and weak. Out on the streets for no obvious reason.”

“I do not like this place, my lady,” Eluned said. “We should leave.”

“No,” I said. “Now we’re here, we must at least try to find out about Taid. Tacita, which way do we go to reach that place you talked of?”

“The Aula. It will be somewhere in that direction.” She pointed along the street in the opposite direction to the way the boy had run.

“Show us,” I said.

“You have the knife?” she said. “Then keep it. You may need to use it. Come on.”

She led off along the street. We kept to the shadows near the walls, scuttling along like rats. The street curved round to the left before abruptly turning. Tacita paused as we reached the turn. She leaned round to look, then set off again. The street went up at a steep angle. Rather than high blank walls we were now passing low buildings painted black and white. Each one had a door, all of which were closed, and some had windows which revealed empty interiors.

Half way up the hill we came upon a narrow side alleyway. Tacita made her way into this and stopped. We were all out of breath because of the steep climb. I was, as always, intrigued by what I had seen.

“What are all these buildings?” I said.

“I’m not sure,” Tacita said. “I have heard it said that they had some function in the time before the Change. This is a very old caster. After the Change it was made smaller and later turned into a work caster as I said, but some parts they simply left. Like this one.” She shrugged. Such things were not important as far as she was concerned.

She returned to the street, saying, “At the top of this hill we will come to the meeting place. Around that is the Aula, the Gynecologia, the living quarters of the Leaders and their wives, and the Palladium.”

We quickly followed after her. It was interesting to me that Tacita now felt it necessary to explain the layout of the caster. The words she used meant nothing to me. Life in my caster before I left was completely different. We lived in a house, my sister and I went to Schola, those who had finished Schola worked in a variety of offices or factories. We did not have ClassLat names for places, as she was obviously used to.

As we reached the top of the street, she stopped again. “Wait here,” she whispered, then stepped into the wide space that opened out beyond it. I crept up to the corner of the last building to peer out. What I saw left me quite speechless. Unlike the wood, glass and brick of the low old buildings we had just passed, the ‘meeting place’ as Tacita called it was surrounded by huge glass structures on the three sides facing us. Directly opposite, a wide flight of stone stairs led up to a glass cube, on the front of which was the word ‘Palladium’. The interior, visible through the walls, consisted simply of a staircase, suspended from the roof on steel columns, which disappeared underground into a brightly-lit space.

To our left there was a pyramid composed of four huge triangular sheets of glass. Again the interior was empty, although I could just make out an opening that descended from the entrance. The letters A,U,L, and A were engraved in the centre of each pane, spelling out the word ‘Aula’. Somewhere within this strange building must lie the object of my present quest – information about Taid. If it existed.

To the right there were two more glass structures. The furthest one was a simple tall rectangular construction, entirely covered in black glass so that the interior was not visible. The only other building, adjacent to this one, was of a single storey covered in frosted glass that looked distinctly out of place beside the others. Its name, ‘Gynecologia’, appeared on a small brass plate near the entrance, only visible since we were so close to it. From this I presumed that the black building must be the living quarters that Tacita had mentioned.

Once the shock of seeing these buildings began to wear off, the next thing I noticed was the total lack of people. There was no one visible. Anywhere. The buildings we could see into were empty. The meeting space itself was empty, with no indication that anyone had been there recently. Most worrying of all was the fact that there was no sign of Tacita, nor of where she could have gone.

Eluned stood beside me, saying nothing.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

She looked bewildered. “Fragile,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Too much glass. Glass breaks easily. Why surround yourself with so much glass?”

I could see her point. Although the buildings were impressive at first sight, they did have an air of fragility about them. A few well aimed bricks, I thought, and this whole edifice would crumble to nothing. It somehow conveyed a sense of false security. Whoever had built these places had no fear that time or malign spirits could so easily destroy them. The ‘old Romans’, on the other hand, had built for eternity, as witnessed by what remained of their constructions even after two thousand or more years. Left without inhabitants, Uricon had slowly crumbled away. This place, without inhabitants, I was sure, would not last more than a few years.

“Stone is best. Bricks are adequate. Glass is mere foolishness,” Eluned said, gazing around.

“You may be right,” I said. “But that does not matter for now. We need to find Tacita.”

“Do you think she will return to us, my lady?”

“Of course she will. Why shouldn’t she?”

“She is accustomed to living in this sort of place. She will feel more comfortable here.”

“She said she didn’t like this caster. It’s a work caster as she called it. She’s used to living in a bigger city.”

“She has become aware, as have you, of the time difference, my lady. She does not understand how there can be this difference of over two hundred years. She will return to her own caster, believing that we were merely a dream that she endured.”

As I was about to answer her, still convinced that Tacita was more trustworthy than Eluned thought, she did in fact appear. She walked quickly across the open space, her head down, the rags of her clothing clinging to her. When she reached us she pushed us back into the street.

“It is Festa,” she said, breathlessly. She turned and pointed towards the glass cube. “Everyone is in there.”

“Everyone?” I repeated.