Memory Seed (24 page)

The rocket was almost horizontal now, flying across the Citadel towards the sea, still spitting fountains of sparks and sending smoke everywhere.

But who could be inside it?

It could never hold the whole city.

Another detonation. The rocket fell from the sky, tail up, then crashed into the sea with a final roll of thunder and a plume of water hundreds of feet high, a great luminous fountain that seemed to spit sparks and let loose a thousand cartwheeling fragments. Staring at this demonic vision, Arrahaquen felt an almost unbearable awe as she realised that very likely the final hope of humanity, or a tiny portion of it at least, had just been destroyed without hope of salvage. The Citadel, which had ruled Earth’s final city for so long, was now just a burnt wreck fit only for thugs, looters and wretches.

With the rocket underwater, the noise began to subside. A wash of sound from the sea, the last rumbles of the rocket and huge waves crashing against the cliffs roared up to her. All around, gunfire began again.

There was a pyuter hall upon the summit. Inside she might find answers.

She shadowed Om Street, not daring to tread its brightly coloured way, arriving at a square. The gutters ran red, and the smell of blood made her choke.

She saw the tall building set apart from the houses and towers around. People were running through the square – one fired a gun, though it seemed at random – so she crept around the outside of the square, arriving at the building’s rear entrance, the glass of which had been smashed.

She entered. It was quiet. No lamps were lit or anjiqs activated, though a few tubes remained to radiate blue. Arrahaquen guessed that the place was deserted.

She began to explore rooms. Almost every pyuter bank and screen she found was both on and active. It was as if their operators had simply run off in terror. Arrahaquen knew that they must have been left to their fate by the fleeing Red Brigade.

There never had been a plan for Kray. If there had been any plan at all, it had been for the Portreeve and her eight cronies.

Still shaken by the profundity of the events she had witnessed, Arrahaquen wandered around. This, she felt, was the end of history. The coda had just begun. She wept, finding a pyuter chamber and locking herself in. The smell of loam and leaves calmed her.

With the wave of sobbing subsided, she decided to act. She sat at the largest screen, a circular device with a velvety surface, and activated the pyuter speech systems.

‘I’m going to open up this system if it takes all night,’ she told herself. ‘I must get to the noophytes. I must, I must.’

‘Speak more clearly,’ the pyuter requested.

Arrahaquen set to work. Using the ball-and-joint hand control she tried to immerse herself deep enough into the digital strata to access either the noophytes or Gwmru, speaking to the pyuter in synchrony to explain what she wanted. But the network patrols defied her, countering her routines with routines of their own that worked like scar tissue over pin-pricks. It was as if Gwmru lay below all these layers of information, like the motherlode in an ancient mountain. Bitterly, she recalled the two
ficus
devices left far below the surface of the tumulus.

Failure made her seek lesser goals. She noticed a records zone winking like a golden lamp in the bottom arc of the screen, and accessed it, noticing immediately that she had the possibility of unearthing the Portreeve’s own speech. By writing a chameleon routine she was able to hear actual conversations held in the Nonagon, and read synopses of other talks, including the tactics for an attack on the temple of the Goddess.

The plan had been for the Red Brigade to escape to the Spaceflower in a rocket, a choice of home mentioned by the noophytes to Deese-lin and Spyne, who had interpreted the idea as an actual prophecy. But Arrahaquen could find no definite strategy, and she began to wonder if the Red Brigade themselves had been fooled by, or had misunderstood, the noophytes. She also began to wonder if these remote electronic beings and ordinary people could ever understand one another.

With a net routine she collected everything worthwhile. She then created a link out to the city networks. Westcity was still dead – it would never fully recover, she realised, for it had been deliberately dissociated on the incorrect assumption that the temple of the Goddess was linked to the city like any ordinary building. Some sections were autonomous, however. The ignorance, the arrogant assumptions made by the Portreeve and her colleagues astounded her. Their every decision seemed founded on rumours and lazy research. But although Westcity was dead, there still existed a number of networks using the subterranean circuits of Eastcity, powered by fusion cells and residual energy from the Power Station. These would not last, however.

Arrahaquen spoke to the pyuter. ‘Get me Graaff-lin using the quickest route,’ she said. ‘No... use channel 61, it’s whole.’

‘Codeword requested.’

Arrahaquen nodded. Her system was functional, then, which meant that some pyuters in the temple of the Goddess were somehow connected to Eastcity, no doubt through private, self-powered lines. She replied, ‘Onion Street.’

Then a voice: Graaff-lin. ‘Arrahaquen, is that you?’

‘Yes. I’m in the Citadel! I may have only minutes before the whole city network crashes. I’m going to flush down some Red Brigade data into your system. Can you keep it?’

‘Yes.’

Arrahaquen performed the transfer, then closed every file.

‘What’s going on?’ Graaff-lin asked.

‘The Citadel’s been attacked. The Red Brigade are gone. It’s everyone for herself. I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you soon.’

‘All right. Auveeders, Arrahaquen, take care.’

She cut the link. But talking to Graaff-lin made her remember the noophyte work, and she wondered if she could access a lexicon of machine language. Creating an electronic rootlet, she burrowed down through the network strata, labelling files that offered machine language. One was named ‘Translation,’ and this she tried to grab.

But the networks were changing. It was as if every Citadel pyuter was being dipped in syrup, slowing down, becoming glutinous. Information was not being transferred. Hastily, Arrahaquen copied what seemed to be the translation file on to a laser leaf, which she pulled out of the screen’s mouth before running out of the room.

Outside in the square a gun battle was taking place. The buildings opposite were ablaze. Arrahaquen ran back through the pyuter hall to the opposite door, listening and looking first, then creeping out. Guns and spent ammunition littered the ground. Acrid smoke blew along the alley she found herself in. From her kit she pulled a sterile mask, which she wetted then tied across her nose and mouth.

She ran through a litter of smashed glass and wood to the end of the alley, to find herself in Om Street. She noticed that the rainbow sparkle inside the street plastic had become muted, as though seen in slow motion through a gauze. Score marks like half-healed scars showed where lasers had melted resin.

Om Street was quiet. Arrahaquen primed her needle rifle and decided to risk it. But she was only a few yards downhill when the entire street went black.

She looked uphill. Om Street was dark, like a normal street. She should be able to see the glittering upper reaches of Rosinante Street and Beria Street from here, but she could not.

Then she noticed the Spaceflower. The fine black lines that everyone had thought to be shadows, or some kind of folding in the vast structure, were illuminated, shining with blues, indigo and purples, here and there pulsing with white and gold. Astonished, Arrahaquen stared. It was as if it had come alive.

But then the sound of a motorbike engine being revved close by made Arrahaquen turn, and when she realised that it was racing down Om Street she ran. She hid in a doorway, behind a leaking water butt. A woman sped by on the bike. Some seconds later, from down the hill, Arrahaquen heard it come under gunfire.

She had to leave the Citadel. It was far too dangerous. Using shadows for cover she managed to follow empty alleys in a crooked race downhill, arriving eventually at the north gate. Somebody shot at her, but hit only the pavement to her side.

From the safety of a passage she looked up once more between black roofs at the Spaceflower. Cirrus clouds shimmered with patterns as they moved across its face. The whole structure was alive as if wrapped with rainbow cobwebs. The noophytes were there now, thinking inhuman thoughts.

She hastened north to Graaff-lin’s home. Her replica answered the door when she knocked. Inside, Graaff-lin too was looking at the night sky. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

Arrahaquen produced the laser leaf. ‘This might tell us,’ she replied. ‘Before the networks crashed I managed to copy what seemed to be translation files.’

‘Translation files for conscoositee speech?’

‘I think so.’ Arrahaquen tossed over the leaf. ‘Open it up. I had seconds to act. It may be nothing.’

Graaff-lin placed the leaf into a transparent receptacle, and the lamina sank into place with a hiss of escaping air. With musical tinkles interfaces connected, and the leaf began to glow with purple light.

Information flooded Graaff-lin’s main screen. ‘Praise the Dodspaat!’ she cried. ‘This is a lexicon. Nine hundred and ten words!’

Arrahaquen nodded. Her intuition said that this was too easy a path, but she had been wrong before.

‘Look,’ Graaff-lin said, ‘the words we know – ffordion, Gwmru, the land of the valleys, dwan. And many more.’

‘Start now,’ Arrahaquen advised.

Graaff-lin nodded, excitement in her face, her eyes shining. She told the replica, ‘With a transceiver, go to the nearest serpent and there await instructions.’

‘At once,’ the pyuton replied.

Graaff-lin used the lexicon to reshape her routines so that anything said by the noophytes through the medium of a serpent could be analysed, translated, and then perhaps responded to. By the time she had finished, the replica’s distorted voice sounded on the bare speaker at her side. ‘Hello Graaff-lin.’

‘Are you ready?’ Graaff-lin asked.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘The serpent in this alcove has expired, like a balloon that has lost its air,’ the replica replied. ‘It lies lifeless on the stone shelf, its forked tongue lolling out.’

‘What? Go to the next one.’

They waited. The replica reported the same.

Arrahaquen knew what must have happened. ‘It’s too late,’ she said, and her whole body felt chill with the realisation. ‘Every city network has crashed. There’s no power any more for the serpents or anything else.’

‘B-b-but...’ Graaff-lin said, sinking back into her chair.

‘Only self-powered pyuters will be able to use the remaining circuits. My temple. You, deKray. A few other groups maybe.’

‘But it can’t be,’ Graaff-lin said. She demanded that the replica search the surrounding alleys until a live serpent was located.

‘A waste of time,’ Arrahaquen said. She knew it was true. All public pyuters were dead. The networks were dissipated, though physically they remained. A few links would survive, like fungal mycelia desperate to retain life, but at length they too would be scattered into electronic disarray. Isolation would follow.