Memory Seed (32 page)

CHAPTER 26

DeKray did not believe that the ancient noophyte Silverseed was responsible for Arrahaquen’s vision, suspecting instead that Arrahaquen alone had created it from her future memory. Following no deity, deKray preferred to believe in the ability of the mind and the effort of individuals. Her vision of him exploring the Clocktower was a description of a real event, not an imaginary concoction or metaphor. A future awaited him and he must meet it.

With Zinina asleep he crept out of Clodhoddle Cottage and slunk up the shattered remains of Buttercup Street.

It seemed rather futile to ward away evil creatures with a grass blade reed. DeKray clambered through the bushes, thorns and vines of Buttercup Street, protected by greatcoat, suit and helmet, climbing over the remains of collapsed houses in those places where there was no other passage. Warm rain fell and, ahead, the Clocktower was a black smudge in the night.

Soon Zinina would read his note. He hoped she would not be too angry.

The dribbles and raindrops on his visor interfered with his vision, but this close to the Clocktower much of Nul Street was arrayed with grass and flowers rather than bushes and saplings, so he removed his helmet and allowed the rain to bathe his shaved scalp.

Now he stood out of the rain in the lee of the tower, gazing at its greened bricks and white mortar. Nervous, he wiped his mouth free of moisture. The door, a rectangle of black oak set with bronze, stood a few yards away. Would it be locked?

It was not. The knob had turned. He pushed the door ajar.

He paused, aware of the enormity of his act, trying to forget the many rumours and stories that surrounded this place. It was only the intensity of Arrahaquen’s expression as she described what she had seen in the temple of the Goddess that enabled him to lay his Krayan ghosts – ghosts that inhabited everybody’s mind – or at least drug them sufficiently for him to explore the tower.

Inside, there was light – a bluish light which did not seem to emanate from any source. He stood in a circular foyer, a space the same diameter as the tower. Nothing yet seemed sinister. He popped a menthol sweet into his mouth.

The foyer ceiling was high, arched and groined, fluted pillars reminiscent of stems holding up the various parts. To the rear, spiral steps led upward. There were no windows. The stone here was blue-green, black or grey in places, carved with faces and mathematical symbols, none of which he recognised. DeKray had the sensation of being underwater. He noticed that the floor was bumpy, pale with a carpet of dust, and it reminded him of the fossilised urchins that he had collected as a boy. He imagined that if he swept aside the dust he would see beautiful patterns, but he dared not try such an experiment.

It was much cooler than outside. He looked upwards again and saw stalactites hanging.

Much relieved that nothing unpleasant had happened, he walked across to the steps. His boots with their stiff soles jerked as he walked over the knobs and holes, once unbalancing him. He fell rather than risk twisting his ankle.

At the steps, he stopped. ‘Hello? I am deKray.’

No answer. He waited, however, in case somebody was thinking of one. After a few minutes he began to climb, hands in the pockets of his greatcoat to ameliorate the chill. He paused to turn up the collar.

The second floor was again one circular room, steps at the back, walls indeterminate blue or grey, carved here and there with lines of equations, like grafitti. But unlike the expanse below it was full of machinery and cylindrical tanks, with little of the wall actually visible.

DeKray appraised the machines. They were chunky, oily, and apparently operational, cables running to and from upper floors. Screens indicated the presence of pyuters, and when he made an examination of the displays he realised that before him lay a luminary power unit. He studied the machine tanks; all held water, supplied by ducts descending from the roof.

He considered this. It struck him that a place as isolated as the Clocktower should be self-sufficient – independent of the city. But that assumed it was
meant
to be isolated.

Slowly, he climbed the steps.

A bigger change would have been hard to imagine. He stood now in a warm, sumptuous, tube-lit room, steps at the rear, furniture spread Kray-style around the place. There was a lavatory located in a closet to one side and cupboards to the other. From electronic units he could, if he so desired, obtain sterile water, food (all non-perishable, he noticed), even medicines.

‘Hello? Is anybody here? I am deKray and I am not armed.’

There was no reply.

‘I am a Krayan.’

Nothing. He cast his gaze again over the room. Decor was a clever mixture of Krayan, jannitta and aamlon, the style of each culture limited to its most appropriate objects; so there were jannitta fabrics looking like miniaturised stained glass, made with real gold and silver thread, aamlon musician paintings, Krayan couches with curly sides and carved human feet. DeKray saw that one of these had real toenails, indicating antiquity.

He opened one of the cupboards and found fresh linen. Others contained pillows, writing implements and balls of soap. Clearly the place was meant to be occupied.

He ascended the third set of steps. The fourth chamber, like the others, was one space as wide as the tower with steps on the opposite side. It was filled with pyuters.

Ribbons fell from the roof. Of various sizes, they were strung from spherical memory units, their lower ends connected to a hundred interlinked units arranged in a broken annulus at floor level, the space allowing access to the steps. All except one were switched off, the one exception showing a screen of rainbow static.

Warily, deKray examined the pyuters. There were all sorts; old and new, optical and biological, some even solid state. But it did not feel like a museum. It was a centre in which everything was placed to perform some task.

DeKray went to the active unit and played the dot of a laser scribe over its eyeball. The pyuter activated itself. He looked around, suspicious. There was no dust here, he noticed; but then he caught sight of extractor fans and a thermostat.

The pyuter displayed an opening screen. He ran the scribe over it, accessed some routines, but a sense of distrust held him back, and after some meanderings he decided to explore the rest of the tower before beginning any data search.

He mentally divided the Clocktower, deciding that there were two floors left.

He ascended the stairs to the fifth floor and found himself amidst another machine that filled the room, a machine which looked to him like a cross between scaffolding and a jellyfish. The device seemed to have been constructed by melting something else. The dominant impression obtained was one of buoyancy. But he received no clues as to what it was: no screens, no plans, no keys. As he ventured through its excrescences he noticed connections between it and the next floor up. He made for the steps.

He called ‘Hello?’ again, and again there came no answer.

The sixth floor was the top floor. Immediately he noticed the clock, an illuminated disc as large as him, but reversed. Screens of muslin stretched on wood sectioned off various parts of the floor. He noticed pyuter screens flickering with information. The light was white, emanating from hexagonal panels in the wall.

From behind a length of screen a noise sounded. DeKray stood rigid, listening. He heard tinkles and scratchings.

He inched around the wall. A dais came into view, devices on angle-arms hanging over it like the limbs of a technological mantis. All around stood pyuter screens.

Then he saw a woman working at a pyuter. She was tall and young, and dressed in a white surgeon’s smock. Upon her ears lay headphones, over one eye was screwed a magnifying lens. She turned and, seeing deKray, took off her headphones with a smile. ‘I say, there you are.’

DeKray said nothing in response. There did not seem to be anything he could say to this greeting. The woman’s face seemed familiar, but he could not place it. A surgeon...

‘Are you compos mentis, dear?’ she asked him.

DeKray approached. ‘Indeed I am,’ he said. Then he saw, as more of the room came into view, another dais attached to the main one, upon which lay a sleeping infant. It was naked and he noticed that it was a boy. He stared for some time.

‘He’s all right,’ said the woman, glancing at the infant. ‘He look wrong?’

‘No,’ deKray answered. He was experiencing every moment as it came, not evaluating.

‘Do you have the device?’ the woman asked.

‘Which device would that be?’

‘I say, snap to it, the copper one,’ said the woman, forming her hands into a ovoid shape. ‘From the grave.’ She popped out the eyepiece and pulled the infant’s dais towards the main one. They snapped together, as though aware of what they were supposed to do.

DeKray remembered the object he had found in the Cemetery, and pulled it out of his pocket. He proffered it, aware that it could now fall out of his control.

‘Let’s try,’ said the woman. She clipped the copper pear into a receptor. The various machines and arms swung into new positions, into a spherical halo surrounding the infant. Now deKray noticed a plastic cap covering the infant’s scalp, almost the same colour as his skin, and under that what seemed to be wriggling worms.

‘What intentions do you have for the boy?’ he asked.

‘Testosterone sacs, as planned. They’ll last until puberty. We want a huge swing to the right.’ The woman paused. ‘Goddess, if the Portreeve could see me now she’d have me interrogated beneath Gugul Street.’

She carried on setting up the machines. DeKray watched, then said, ‘What will the sacs do, precisely?’

‘Say, you really need to be sure, don’t you? We want neuron development to the right, don’t we, so there grows a synthesising holistic brain? You can’t have holism and reductionism. No, dear, the two aren’t compatible.’

‘Most assuredly true,’ deKray replied. ‘Molecules make a green thing but there are no green molecules.’

‘Indeed, there are not.’

Machines closed on the infant, shuffled around the scalp for five minutes, then drew back.

‘It’s done,’ said the woman. She took the copper pear and put it in her pocket.

DeKray, disturbed, moved away from the operating table. ‘I do believe that I am looking at myself,’ he said.

‘You are. By offering yourself the gift of holistic vision you are allowing yourself the insight required to do what you have to do. Though you may not be aware of what it is you have done.’

‘What is it that
you
have done?’ deKray asked.

‘I do not know everything. Nobody does. But I have granted you the ability to understand, on some level at least, the nature of humanity’s fate. You are a lynchpin of humanity. You already know you have a connection with the Cowhorn Tower – you are the same age. The Cowhorn Tower, being self-learning, will create itself, just as I – we – this night have created you.’ The woman turned to look at the infant. ‘Go now and live your life.’

‘Why is it that I feel we have met before?’ deKray asked.

‘What is the past for you may be the future for me. I suspect this may be the nature of the Clocktower.’ The woman looked around at the tower walls. ‘This place will ever be a mystery.’

‘But why are you here?’

‘Well, you see, I was once the surgeon to the Red Brigade. A rather young surgeon, in fact. The problem was that I had some strange ideas, and the Red Brigade do not like strange ideas. I believed that humanity could save itself. The Red Brigade believed they could be saved by
others.
Exposed as a freethinker – worse, as a freethinker who dared to explore the mystery of the Clocktower – I was exiled. My dear, the origins of the Clocktower are too ancient for any of us to fathom. But its workings... its workings...’

Her story ended. Taking the infant in her arms and dressing him in a woolly coat, she walked to the stairs. ‘I’ve done my bit. Here, anyway. And don’t try to stop me. I must say, having to walk now all the way up to the Carmine Quarter really is a
bit
of an inconvenience.’

DeKray wanted to stop the woman, but he could not. He dared not interfere with what he had seen, in this place of all places. Instead he watched as she bent to pick up something from the floor – a copper needle, it looked like – then listened to her clattering down flights of steps, until the sound was too faint to hear. He stood for fifteen minutes, gazing at the machinery, turning over the events that he had observed in his mind. They did not yet make sense.

And he was tired. Hours of exploration, during which he had repressed signals from his body, had taken their toll. With a smile he remembered the suite on the third floor. He walked down, withdrew food and water, and lay on a couch to eat.

He returned to the pyuter room and explored for a while the data spaces and organisational routines. One routine in particular struck him – a screen filled only with a picture of the Cowhorn Tower, its cursor a flashing copper pear. Every measurement and every detail was included, even down to the colour of the smooth carpets. The potential for making the tower lay before him. This program would learn from its environment as it built. Too tempted, deKray activated the initiation procedure. The screen flickered off, but he knew he had set the routines in motion. He laughed; it was the most sophisticated toy he had ever seen.

He decided it was time to leave. He knew Zinina would be angry. Descending the tower, he buttoned himself up and took the helmet from his waistband, wiping off the smeared green with a tissue. He opened the door, saw night outside, and departed.

He took caution following the back alleys and passages of the Old Quarter. Here, at the bottom of what once were gardens, care was required, for the smallest vibration could detonate the sensitive compost heaps that had accumulated to massive proportions.

Back at Clodhoddle Cottage he took off his protectives and boots in the green zone, then went to pour a glass of water in the kitchen.

To his surprise, Arrahaquen awaited. ‘I knew you’d be home just now,’ she said.