Memory Seed (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

There was nobody else in the crimson-carpeted hallway. Arrahaquen paused at a gilt mirror to look at herself.

She saw a woman, thirty years old, almost six feet tall with a figure best described as voluptuous, bald head shining, brown eyes round and sad and accentuated with kohl, lips full. All Kray blots covered by cosmetics. She twirled once or twice, to look from the other angles. Hmmm... The black shorts and blue woollen jacket that she wore seemed a little loose.

Someone coming. She hurried back to the operations room, opening the door with her optical key.

Pyuters chattered and sprays of bio-memory hanging from the ceiling throbbed with blue light. Underneath all this eight people worked, among them Ammyvryn, who today wore a simple blue jumpsuit. ‘I’m back,’ Arrahaquen said, smiling.

‘You’ve been a long time.’

‘Mother, this is Defender House. I’m not likely to be ambushed in the lavatories.’

Her mother scratched a spot on her chin. She looked old, wrinkles beginning to acquire those lines of green that meant her one claim to Krayan beauty, the clear complexion, was gone. She had not depilated her scalp for some time, and a fuzz of brown hair made her look even more dishevelled. Only adepts of the Goddess could keep their hair in Kray.

Eventually Ammyvryn said, ‘Never mind all that. Are we ready with the new defender schedules?’

Arrahaquen glanced over at the wall-screen. ‘No.’

Her mother thumped the oaken desk in front of her. ‘They get slower every day. It’s the pyuter hearts. Deese-lin and Spyne know how to steal all the pyuter power!’ And she thumped the desk again, as if that would solve her problem.

Arrahaquen stroked her mother’s shoulders. ‘Just wait. I’ll slip into the gazebo if you like, to check progress.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Ammyvryn grumbled. ‘And me with a full meeting in half an hour.’

‘I saw Uqeq as I went out,’ Arrahaquen said.

Her mother seemed flustered. ‘How did she look? Did she say anything?’

‘She looked pensive.’

Ammyvryn got up and paced around her daughter. ‘There’s been an accident outside, in the city. A hang-glider crash. I think it’s serious, and the agent hasn’t reported back. Uqeq will harangue us about it.’

‘I haven’t heard any rumours.’

Ammyvryn stopped, and Arrahaquen found herself staring into those watery green eyes.

‘Give your mother a call, Arrahaquen. Yes, call her on the networks, secure line, and ask her if she saw anything a couple of nights ago. Any gas flares, that sort of thing. Do it now.’

‘All right.’

Ammyvryn tightened her creaky leather belt. ‘I’d better prepare for the Portreeve.’

Arrahaquen departed for the communications cellar, but her mother was not answering calls and the Observatory pyuters refused to say what she was doing. So Arrahaquen left a message, then departed Defender House for her own rooms. A clock chimed the hour.

She walked across the top of the Citadel, rain pounding the perspex streets, making the packets of light within them seem like angelic mercury rolling hither and thither on their speed-of-light errands. Here in Om Street, where the buildings were only a few storeys high, walls on both sides flickered, but as she walked downhill to the north, and entered Rosinante Street, the great towers to either side rose up into blackness and even seemed to curl over and threaten her. She reached the block of flats that held her own home, and walked to the top floor.

She crept into the hall: silence. She made an electronic survey: nothing present. In the lounge burned an incense stick, inserted into the urethra of a gold phallus. The blue carpet was bald in places, but these patches were covered by jannitta rugs made circular in the shape of daisies. The place was full of furniture, but the effect was of opulence, not overcrowding. A window looked out over Rosinante Street.

Arrahaquen washed her hands, knocking the hot tap to ensure its inner valve did not stick, then dressed for the city in plastic protectives, thigh boots with top-elastics to ensure nothing fell inside, a heated hat and, of course, her kit. As she walked towards the door she looked inside a cardboard box – one empty flowerpot and a bag of earth sealed with a crimson twist. So… now for her own plans. She departed, left the block, and hurried down the steep steps of Rosinante Street to the northern gate.

At the gate she was stopped. It was a sturdy construction, all steel, flickering screens and automated laser rifles, occupied by five of the Citadel Guard; and even though she was Arrahaquen, known throughout the Citadel – and beyond for that matter – she felt a thrill of fear as she gazed at the jet-black visors, metallic one-pieces and huge cowhide boots shod with titanium. Who were they? It was not permitted even for her to know their identities, so that bribery and blackmail be impossible. Only her mother, Defender-in-Chief, knew.

‘Pass?’ came the pyuter-synthesised voice. She heard a whirr of electronic breathing above the din of rain.

Arrahaquen handed over a scarlet card. The woman flashed it under a laser beam. Another pyuter voice: ‘Clear. Hurry along.’

It was handed back and Arrahaquen was let through the Citadel Wall. She paused, glancing back. The Wall, the great black ring surrounding the Citadel, pierced only at the four cardinal points, was slick with rain. Lidded eyes and grasping arms transplanted from the bodies of wrecked pyutons studded its matte exterior. Two or three bodies held in a vice grip lay slumped against it, one gnawed by dogs. Arrahaquen hurried on up Malmsey Street then turned into Onion Street, passing the Dead Spirits temple then crossing the river and making north towards the Gardens. She tied on a mouth mask to conceal her face.

Up Culverkeys Street she walked, past the Infirmary with its thousand photobacteria tubes and its incinerators smoking, through the maze of alleys between the Gardens and the Mercantile Quarter, until she spied the street that was her goal. A collapsed wall blocked her way, but she climbed over and splashed into the foot-deep flood waters behind. Leeches swarmed over the area. She counted down the Blank Street houses to number eleven, and knocked on its door’s chromium plates.

‘Who is it?’ came a phlegmy voice.

‘I’ve come to buy something off you. Is that Oquayan?’ The door opened and a rifle emerged. ‘I’m a defender,’ Arrahaquen said, showing the pale face behind the door her Citadel pass.

‘Hmmph. Come in. What do you want?’

‘Something from your remarkable garden,’ Arrahaquen replied, soothingly.

Oquayan led Arrahaquen through her musty house into a conservatory hot as a furnace, and then out into the garden.

‘So, what do you want?’ Oquayan asked.

‘A seed off a fig tree.’

Oquayan gestured her to follow. ‘Which species exactly?’

‘Ficus veritas illuminatus.’

‘Hmmph. That tree there, with the sprays of bean-shaped pods. Pick one off the lowest branch. One only, mind.’

Arrahaquen did as she was bid, then showed Oquayan a roll of units to choose from as payment. A processor was chosen.

‘Rush of interest in
ficus,
then,’ Oquayan remarked.

Arrahaquen frowned. ‘Pardon?’

‘Some other gal after a
ficus
– the
xenos illuminatus.
Know her?’

Arrahaquen felt her throat tighten with apprehension. ‘Um, who was this?’ she asked.

‘Gal who visited me not two days back.’

‘And her name?’

‘Didn’t get it, unfortunately,’ Oquayan replied; and her face assumed a dark expression. ‘Not a defender though, ’cos she was starving, with the look of some green marketeer.’

‘She wasn’t a defender? Surely only a citadel woman could have–’

‘She caused me lots of trouble,’ Oquayan said, face flushing pink. She began to walk back to her house. ‘I don’t know her name. I wish I did, and the name of the filthy scoundrel who attacked me.’

‘Couldn’t you even describe her?’

Oquayan seemed to glower with rage. ‘If I give you an image will you never darken my life again?’

‘Never, I promise, by the mind of the Goddess.’

Oquayan led Arrahaquen through the house and out into Blank Street, where she slammed the door. Two minutes passed by, Arrahaquen uncertain of what to do. Then a slip of damp paper was pushed under the door. Arrahaquen picked it up.

She saw a tall, slender jannitta woman of striking beauty, complexion perfect, if a little tanned, with a haughty expression and mysterious eyes. She wore a nondescript jumpsuit splashed green. Most probably an independent, although she was possibly a priestess. The face, most peculiarly, seemed familiar – or was it the attitude of her body? If only the image could move...

Suddenly Arrahaquen had a vivid mental image of Oquayan leading the woman through her garden. It persisted for some seconds, then left her mind. She blinked, stunned. The picture had seemed like a memory. But now she was certain she knew the woman.

~

Back at her apartment, Arrahaquen went straight to her main rig. As it flickered with lights a movement in the corner of her eye made her glance away.

Scorpion.

A scorpion two feet long.

It skittered at her, fast as a rat, and she screamed and kicked out. Luckily its claws did not cling to the leather of her boots. She rushed into the kitchen. The thing was so fast it was alongside her in seconds. Arrahaquen jumped on to the table, which skreeked across the tiled floor in response and almost made her lose her balance.

It could not follow her. With futile stabs it tried to pierce her boots with its sting. Appalled, Arrahaquen stared.

Wildly, she looked around the kitchen for weapons. She would not stand a chance if it got close.

Knives – hopeless. Forks. Bottles of perry. A bucket. A bucket could be useful. She grabbed it from its hook.

The scorpion was still jumping at her. She watched it, judged the moment, then dropped the bucket. With a clatter it fell over the scorpion.

Terrific whacks made the bucket clang, and it jerked across the floor, but the scorpion was trapped. Arrahaquen ran into her bedroom, grabbed her laser pistol, and returned. She threw a book at the bucket then fired as the scorpion sprang out. Hit.

Then pitch blackness. There was a rustle and the chirrup of a lock-breaker. So she had an enemy, and her enemy was no amateur. Arrahaquen readied a stun pistol and crouched behind the bedroom door. She saw a black shadow twist in the gloom. Had she been heard? It was difficult to see what was going on because now the outer door acted as a mirror, reflecting the image of the sea into her eyes. She pushed open her door and fired at random.

There was a groan, then a thump. More rustling, then bootsteps on the stairs. Arrahaquen followed, firing down the stairwell at her quarry. People were now emerging from their own front doors. Arrahaquen caught a glimpse of a black-cloaked figure, a short woman it seemed, and she yelled for the escaping invader to be halted. But a gas bomb detonated, and then only coughs and sneezes were her answers.

Arrahaquen thought fast. Rushing into her apartment she shook a rack of bacteria tubes to give light.

Arrahaquen could not follow on foot, but she could use the Citadel network. Quickly she opened a link to the bank of camera images that the Citadel Guard used, and accessed a routine to control them. She focused on her block. Just as its front doors appeared on the sputtering screen she saw the short woman running out. It was not an unfamiliar woman: someone she knew, then. Fear and desperation began to well up as she realised that her enemy was a real person. Somebody really was trying to kill her.

‘I must follow her. Rosinante camera, you’re pointing the wrong way... lost her. Lost her.’

Arrahaquen sat back. She heard heavy boots clomping up the stairs: Citadel Guard.

At her door she waited, a damp mask over her face to avoid the effects of the now rising fog of gas. Two suited figures emerged from the white, billowing clouds, spectral and weird with their black visors and creaking suits.

‘What’s going on?’ came a pyuter voice.

Arrahaquen showed them her card. ‘Intruder. She got away down Rosinante Street. I don’t know who it was.’

‘All right, we’ll clear up. Close your door. We’ll have the maintenance crowd up here to replace that smashed exit.’

Arrahaquen did as she was bid. Inside, she noticed the dead body of the scorpion. It had discharged its venom like a bee, dying with fangs loose on twists of skin hanging out from its jaws. She threw it away.

So far she had been attacked by a snake, a scorpion, endured two attempted poisonings and a deliberate water infection. Who was it?

She knew of no enemies. Her mother had enemies – all members of the Red Brigade did – but why kill Ammyvryn’s daughter? She knew too few secrets to be valuable. And this had to be an inside attack. Nobody from outside the Citadel could make five such attempts. One, maybe, but not five.

Her pyuter screen was still flickering, pulling her thoughts back to the woman who had bought a
ficus
seed. She sat at the rig and requested lists and portraits of known jannitta defenders. Hundreds passed by, none the woman portrayed in her picture. She called up lists of jannitta priestesses, these rather meagre because only defenders were accurately logged, but again did not locate the woman. She sat back, flummoxed.

She lay back and tried to relax. It was impossible. She locked the door and every window, then checked each room again for assailants. Nothing. She took a green glass bottle of dooch and drank. Now she relaxed.

Her mind wandered. She wondered what her mother was doing up at the Observatory. She wondered about the end of Kray. She navigated the streets of the Citadel with her mind’s eye, forcing nothing. The Westerly gate. Zinina.

Zinina was the name. How it came to her, she did not know. Hadn’t there been a defender Zinina in the Citadel Guard? The pyuters said no. But Arrahaquen was certain there had been, though the insistent denials dented her belief.

One last deed she performed before making for her bed. Emptying the bag of earth into the flowerpot, she planted the
ficus
seed, watering the soil well, then placing the pot on the south-facing window sill.