Memory Seed (33 page)

CHAPTER 27

The machine, now mobile, had been making odd noises. Graaff-lin had been up in the attic, where she now spent much of her time, watching the occasional boat float out to sea, and staring at the Citadel remains, shaped like a gigantic black apple core on its end. But now she had come into the machine’s room to kneel and listen.

She wondered if her clothes were too dirty for the Dodspaat. She was dirty, too, and her house; but she did not have the energy to clean anything. Physically she was declining, but spiritually she was ascending. She had, for example, realised that there was a strict division between right things and wrong things, and her life was now bent towards continual right, the sort of right her mother had espoused, while anything wrong she punished by self-denial. Consequently she had lost a lot of weight, but this she saw as a symptom of her inner sanctity.

The machine sidled up to the door and stood there, six feet tall, glittering and warbling. There was a click. Graaff-lin awaited communication.

It moved towards her, pincer extended. Graaff-lin looked up, watching as the arm was raised, then–

She twisted out of the way. The arm struck her foot.

Razor-sharp sub-pincers whirred like drills. She crawled away, stood, then ran for the door. It followed on its rattling feet.

The door was locked. She turned around.

The pincer extended itself and swung in a horizontal arc. She jumped out of the way, horrified, knowing that the Dodspaat inside must have been misinformed, must have been told that she was an infidel who had been excommunicated, who considered herself the new prophet, blasphemous heretic who–

‘I’m good!’ she screamed as the machine closed. Two thin arms with knives attached extended themselves. ‘I’m one of you!’

Zzzhing,
the knives scythed and razors chopped. Graaff-lin walked backwards around the room, feeling her way around oddments of furniture, keeping her eyes on the machine, unable to think of a way of getting through to it. Perhaps if she threw herself on its mercy...

Back now at the door, she tugged the handle, shook it, then jumped as the pincer swung past. The wall sustained a gash.

‘Look, it’s me, Graaff-lin,’ she implored, ‘one of you, trying to reach the Dodspaat. You are ready for me, aren’t you? Please listen, I’m trying to reach you.’

But still the machine closed, its four short legs clicking as they manoeuvred for better positions. It struck Graaff-lin that this might be a banished Dodspaat. This might be some sort of test.

She looked around the room. Little stood out as a possible weapon; a window pole, perhaps the steel bucket. A pile of damp papers in one corner concealed a spoon.

She grasped the window pole. She felt dizzy and sick. The pole, which had a few weeks ago been of negligible weight, now seemed made of stone. Grunting with effort, she tried a few sweeps. It was heavy enough to do damage, but she did not feel confident.

A knife scythed by as the machine closed on her right side, and the wall to her left took more blows. Pincer rotating, the machine closed. She ran to the centre of the room, to a chair, and hit out as it closed. It dodged. For a thing of metal, without jointed limbs, it was agile, like a man bound in metal strips about to escape.

One of the knives flicked past her ear. She ducked, but it whipped down and cut her arm. Blood flowed freely. As she stared at the wound the pincer hit her across the head. The machine closed, a yard away. She jumped back, fell and scrambled away. A knife whipped past her knee.

The pole was lost. The test was difficult. Whimpering, Graaff-lin looked about for help, noticing a socket on the end of a cord. Something crashed into her stomach, something blunt. The machine was almost upon her.

She rolled away and something else cut her leg, making her scream in pain. She grabbed the cord and swung it over her head as she sat, then, with one final sweep, hit out at the machine’s top screens. The socket smashed into one. Sparks flew.

The machine tottered, then regained its balance and closed again, sending out the knives. Graaff-lin dodged and gathered the cord. Blood covered the floor and spattered the machine. White sparks darted through the air like spume.

She swung out again, but missed. The pincer extended and struck her across the cheek. She tasted blood. Her shoulder felt damp and warm.

Once again she swung the cord... and hit. The machine fell on its side. Graaff-lin crawled, gasping, wailing to herself, towards the bucket; she lifted it, crawled back and brought it down on the twitching and now almost vertical machine. It collapsed. The knives sprang out, one catching her on the wrist. The pincer swung, but hit the floor. Graaff-lin struck again and again.

With an electronic trill the machine disintegrated, hundreds of fragments spilling across the floor like droplets of mercury, smashing into walls, congregating in corners, whistling and tinkling, glass fragments everywhere. Graaff-lin screamed, dropping the bucket, sinking into the main swarm of chunks. She flailed around and clambered out into a clear patch. Her floor was alive.

Already pieces were recombining. But Graaff-lin was exhausted. She had a vision of herself – her
self
– trapped inside a numb, dead, useless body.

Traumatised into action, she crawled. Not in any direction, but just to move. She bumped into the pile of papers.

An idea: she could wrap the chunks. Grabbing one, she took a sheet and wrapped it... and then dropped it. It lay quiescent. Crying with relief she grabbed others, wrapping each, until a pile of thirty or so lay around her. But the other pieces were coalescing in the opposite corner. With a cry, she threw the bucket at them. Fragments spilled out.

The race continued. Her arms were lead-heavy, trembling, sometimes too tired to lift. Once, an assembly of fragments that had coalesced behind the chair raised itself, but she threw a book at it and it disintegrated. Exhausted...

She woke up. She must have lost consciousness.

In the corner a new machine stood, black, slim like a broom, perhaps three feet tall. Hundreds of wrapped fragments surrounded her. The floor was otherwise clear. Graaff-lin knew that one final effort was necessary. She took a wrapped chunk and advanced.

Darts flashed by. One caught her in the stomach. It wriggled of its own accord. She screamed, but pulling it out provided further agony. With little whirrs more darts were flying. Graaff-lin fell, then aimed her chunk of metal.

It hit and knocked the thing over. Darts struck her chest, clinging to her like leeches. She advanced on hands and knees, took the bucket, and smashed the machine. More darts exploded out, one catching her. She crawled away and removed them. Her clothes were thick with blood, both new and old. She crawled to the papers and began wrapping again, not so firmly this time due to sheer exhaustion, but well enough to disable each chunk.

The last one remained. She picked it up and wrapped it.

Consciousness seemed to leak away…

~

Something had woken Zinina. Thunder? Something was rumbling outside, above the thrum of rain against the roof and the musical tip-tap of drops falling into buckets arranged around her room.

The walls of the house creaked. That noise worried her.

Then she heard shouts, and people running up and down the stairs. Aware that something was amiss, she woke deKray and dressed in a gown before running downstairs.

‘Garden mine,’ Reyl said.

Eskhatos appeared. ‘It’s an attack. Revellers everywhere, I think about twenty. Defence positions, all of you! Zinina, is deKray awake?’

‘Yes,’ Zinina replied.

‘Get him. Find him a gun. Follow Arrahaquen to the defence of the rear. Quickly, child, or we’ll be over-run!’

One-handed, Zinina grabbed a heat rifle from the stand outside the rig room then called deKray as he clattered down to meet her. ‘Back to the kitchen,’ she shouted. ‘It’s an attack.’

Arrahaquen, from the corridor leading to the back rooms, waved her along. Zinina ran, charging up the weapon and shaking out its sights. Anger surged through her body; she almost relished the chance for aggression.

‘Take that side,’ said Arrahaquen, pointing to the right window of the kitchen. Reyl was with them, already poking the muzzle of her needle rifle through a port in the door. From her kennel outside, the sweathound Woof howled.

‘Shush,’ Reyl said. ‘I can hear voices.’

They quietened. Zinina hissed at deKray for silence as he ran into the kitchen, then listened. It sounded like a pyuter synthesised voice, but she could not make out the words. ‘Any memories to help us?’ she whispered to Arrahaquen.

‘I thought I had remembered this,’ Arrahaquen replied, ‘but I thought it was to do with a journey we must soon make. I got confused. This is earlier than I guessed.’

Zinina nodded, aware now that she should not chide Arrahaquen for her lack of precision. Gishaad-lin hurried into the room. ‘It’s you,’ she told Zinina, ‘it’s you they want.’

Zinina stood. ‘Me?’

‘Eskhatos says come to the front rig room.’

Zinina followed Gishaad-lin to the front of the house, a feeling of dread within her, for she knew that, if there were revellers outside requesting her by name, this was a matter of life or death; all or nothing. This was her Cemetery past catching up with her.

Eskhatos told her to listen to sound picked up by the spy statue in the garden. Zinina listened.

‘...want. It’s only Zinina. We know the shouster’s in there...’

‘They want you,’ Eskhatos said. ‘There’s seventeen of them. They detonated the forward land mine. Who are they?’

Zinina looked at the pyuter screen, seeing a few figures huddled in the shadows of the gardens, but recognising no faces. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Somebody from my past, I suspect.’

‘Why do they want`you?’

‘To drag me back to the Cemetery,’ she said.

‘Stay here. We can’t afford to admit your presence. I’ll talk to them, but I want you here to advise me.’

Eskhatos told the house pyuter to connect her to the sound system of the garden statue. ‘Revellers,’ she began, ‘leave this house at once. The whole garden is mined. You have lost friends, lost shousters, already – we saw it happen. We have you under surveillance. This Zinina to whom you refer is not here.’

There came jeers of laughter, and a gun fired one shot into the air. ‘We know she’s in there,’ said the megaphone voice. ‘One minute, no-bloom! One more minute and then we scrap-wood ya all.’

Eskhatos frowned at Zinina. ‘What do we do?’

Zinina just stood, her mind a blank.

Eskhatos called to Gishaad-lin, ‘Go get Arrahaquen, then stay with Reyl on the back doors. Get Qmoet and Ky upstairs, and the replica, in case they climb upon the roof. Bring deKray back here.’

Gishaad-lin ran off. ‘I can’t think of anything,’ Zinina said, hardly able to look Eskhatos in the eye.

Arrahaquen and deKray appeared. Eskhatos, the minute up, said through the address system, ‘Revellers, go home. We are twelve in number here, and none are named Zinina.’

‘Duck!’ Arrahaquen yelled.

They fell to the floor as an explosion tore plaster and masonry from the front wall. Arrahaquen, her face pale, said, ‘They’ve got a laser cannon. Goddess, they must have filched it from under the Citadel.’

‘We can’t stand up to that,’ hissed Eskhatos.

‘I’m not giving myself up,’ Zinina said, retreating from them.

‘Wait,’ Arrahaquen said, pulling her back and drawing her close. ‘I’d fight for your life, Zinina. Listen, have these revellers ever seen you since you left them?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Zinina replied. Another laser cannon burst shattered brickwork upstairs.

‘They must have followed you back from the Cemetery after releasing deKray,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘It’s the only connection.’

‘I am rather afraid that I did mention your name,’ deKray said, ‘not knowing the consequences of my deed.’

‘
Shush!
’ Arrahaquen demanded. ‘It was very dark,’ she told Zinina, gripping her by the shoulders, ‘and there were three of you – deKray, Qmoet and you. They wouldn’t have seen much of you.’

‘So? So?’ Zinina snapped.

‘We’ll dress the replica in your clothes and send her out. It’s our only chance.’

‘What? But she’s taller than me.’

‘We’ll do it,’ Arrahaquen insisted, letting Zinina go and turning to Eskhatos. ‘Eskhatos, they might not recognise her. Zinina was very young when she left the Cemetery.’

‘It’ll have to do,’ Eskhatos replied, flinching as the house took another hit. ‘Arrahaquen, run and get Zinina’s clothes. Zinina, call the replica then come straight back.’

DeKray coughed. ‘You are sending that valuable pyuton to certain death,’ he said. ‘Is that reasonable?’

‘Shut up,’ Zinina told him as she ran to the stairwell and shouted for the pyuton.

DeKray was not to be silenced. ‘What will happen when they kill the pyuton?’ he continued. ‘They will see no blood.’

‘Idiot,’ Zinina said. ‘Revellers only shoot and cut other people, street people. They’ve got strict codes on blood letting. They won’t slice the pyuton, they’ll tie her to the ancestor pole then bury her alive. Now shut
up.
’

Arrahaquen returned with Zinina’s leggings, boots, shirt and protectives. The replica donned them, then ran with Arrahaquen and Zinina to the outer door.

Zinina took hold of the pyuton and breathlessly instructed her, ‘You’re to be me, right? If they catch you, you stay silent – pretend you swore an oath to the green woman to shut up, right? Green woman. You don’t say anything else. Now get out and run, try to hide from them. You’ve got to escape, got to run...’ Zinina almost ran out of inspiration, ‘... to deKray’s old place. Now go!’

They pushed her out of the door, then bolted and barred it and returned to Eskhatos in the front rig room.

‘What are the revellers doing?’ Zinina asked.

‘They’ve all run away,’ Eskhatos said, ‘following the replica.’

‘They only wanted me,’ said Zinina, ‘they weren’t interested in you lot at all. See, they’ve got codes of honour.’

‘Quiet, young lady,’ Eskhatos said. ‘We are far from safe. I want you to go down to the cellar and fetch every last mine we have. Arrahaquen, you and Reyl and Ky will go out to re-mine the garden.’