Memory Seed (6 page)

CHAPTER 6

Brought up by her cleric mother Veerj-lin, priestess of the Dodspaat, it was not surprising that Graaff-lin had come to believe that the key to her salvation lay with the Dodspaat, with their whispers and clues in the listening modules of the temple on Onion Street. Life in Kray was for her a great question that required a fabulous answer; and that answer she would find in the Dodspaat, as they revealed their secret knowledge from the other side of the grave and hence allowed the fittest of humanity to escape this doomed city. Of course, nobody except High Priestess Katoh-lin knew who the Dodspaat were, or had been, but to Graaff-lin, and to all the other priestesses and lay members of the temple, they represented the promulgators of historical knowledge.

So when Zinina appeared, and then Arrahaquen only a week or so later, both at this momentous time for Kray, she knew she must turn to the Dodspaat. And then there was the strange discovery of noophytes uncovered under the Citadel. The flurry of events had knocked her backwards.

The Dodspaat must explain everything. In particular they must explain what a serpent had told her when enquiring about the meaning of the word
dwan.
‘This is the language of the hearts, of which no human may speak.’ She had recorded this conversation – and if necessary she would ignore temple customs in order to hear what the Dodspaat, in their wisdom, might have to say to her…

It was early evening. Zinina was out, Arrahaquen working in the Citadel. Dressed for the city and standing in her hall’s green zone, Graaff-lin mentally checked her gear. From her kit she took a small mirror to check her mouth. There was a line of painful herpes sores on her lower lip, which made her look ill. Her skin was bad, cracked and pale, and her eyes seemed somewhat glazed over. The bags under them had bags under
them.

She opened the front door and stepped out, instructing the security pyuter as she did so. Alley floods had seeped into her garden, but these she overcame by means of wooden stepping blocks set out the previous evening during a lull in the rain. Once out she walked along two garden walls, then jumped down into the alley and set out eastwards for the temple. Living so close to the river was not easy.

During the morning blustery showers of chilly rain from off the sea had crossed the city, but now a brown drizzle had set in, smelling of salt and decaying vegetation. All the streets and alleys were under water around here, many with vegetable matter and human refuse floating about. Patches of yellow were not only caused by rain, Graaff-lin knew.

On more than one occasion as she walked along Onion Street she found herself dazzled by torches and reflections of light off the rippling ground, for, despite the time, the thickness and composition of the clouds today meant that it was dark as dusk. A thousand golden lines of rain fell illuminated by gyrating beams. People, as they went about their business, wore the usual plastic or treated cotton protectives, and long boots with elastics at the tops, but conditions today meant that some also wore face masks and one, Graaff-lin noticed, carried on her back a small respirator. Windows in houses showed the blue lights of bacteria tubes and vases with photoplankton in them, or the yellow of feeble gas lamps and burning wicks in sea-fat. Graaff-lin hurried on.

Arriving at the temple she walked up its alabaster steps, today muddied by streams of water pouring between the marble pillars, halting halfway to catch her breath. She entered through the great double steel doors. Two guards with silver halberds and peaked caps gave the religious finger-wave of recognition. She ignored them.

She stood for a few moments in the main concourse. Great white pillars – some, for this temple stood at the western edge of the Old Quarter, bearing Kray’s most ancient bas-relief leeks – rose up around her to the mural-covered groined ceilings. From all around came the breathy reverberations of a hundred voices, a morass of babbling sound with no single voice discernible. Balconies above seemed full of people. Down here though there were only a few, and the muddy tiled floor could be seen to its furthest extent.

Graaff-lin moved on to the clerical chambers at the rear, but a voice called out, and she stopped and turned.

‘Graaff-lin, Graaff-lin, a moment, mmm, if you please.’ It was aamlon, and spoken by the High Priestess herself.

Graaff-lin waited for her superior to approach. Katoh-lin was a small woman, bent by age, her head like a shrunken apple, her clothes so rich and ornate they seemed to hinder her movement. One eyelid flickered with a nervous twitch. Her right hand gripped a walking stick made from synthesised topaz and shod with gold; in her left she held the jewel-encrusted ear of her high office.

‘Haanjivree,’ Graaff-lin said, using Katoh-lin’s full title.

‘Come to my office,’ Katoh-lin said, her voice little more than a whisper.

‘Yes, haanjivree.’

They walked away from the central concourse and into a maze of marble passages, ending in a small square. Katoh-lin stopped at a door, made a motion with the ear, and walked into her office as the door opened. Graaff-lin followed.

Katoh-lin sat at her desk, a huge, leather-covered oak affair which dwarfed her like a toddler at table. With Katoh-lin’s permission, Graaff-lin sat too. The office was quite small, maybe three yards square, but it had a very high ceiling stained green with Kray-damp. By far the most unusual aspect was the wall-covering, which consisted of the carapaces of land turtles glued to the plaster, the interstices being filled by individually made pieces of enamelled copper.

‘I see you’ve noticed the, mmm, mmm, walls,’ Katoh-lin said. ‘They are symbolic of our presence – after all, the Dodspaat have taught us.’

‘Yes,’ Graaff-lin replied.

‘Now then, I called you here for a good reason. Mmm, I want you to take a parcel for me to an address at the Citadel. I trust your, mmm, moral character.’

‘Thank you, haanjivree.’

Katoh-lin opened a drawer at her side and fumbled inside. She withdrew a cotton pouch, but at the same time knocked out a bag of plastic phalluses. Graaff-lin looked at them with interest as Katoh-lin stuffed them back into the drawer.

‘Mmm, yes, here’s your pass.’

Graaff-lin took it. This must be important, for passes could only be made by the nine members of the Red Brigade. ‘You trust me,’ she said.

‘The box is that one by the door. It is, mmm, addressed.’

Graaff-lin picked up the parcel as she departed the office. It was very light. Outside, she paused and shook it, but there was no sound. It was almost as if it was empty.

Speaking to nobody, Graaff-lin departed the temple through a rear door. Her own business would have to wait. As she walked along Malmsey Street, she noticed the first signs of spring. Between cobbles, pale shoots emerged, while from ruined houses came the rampant growth of poison roses, vines and other dangerous plants. There had even been reports of moonflowers growing in the Archaic and Green Quarters of the city, way to the north, although Graaff-lin did not believe them because the reports were made by Gedeese Veert clergy. The winter just gone had been not only the worst in living memory but the worst in non-living memory, too. Old legends spoke of a final year after the world’s harshest winter. For five months, Kray had been gripped in ice and snow. The Citadel had been cut off for most of this time, and the city had tottered like a headless chicken.

As the Citadel neared, she stopped. The black mystery of the Wall was close. Graaff-lin feared the Wall, feared it almost as much as she feared the Clocktower.

She approached the gate. ‘Halt!’ came the synthesised voice.

She halted. From the dim interior of the post two figures emerged.

‘Parcel to deliver,’ she said nervously. ‘Here is my pass.’

One anonymous woman took the pass and indicated that she sit in a side booth. Graaff-lin sat. The booth was lit by beakers of luminescent gonyaulax algae, but their internal bio-clocks seemed to have been confused by the recent gloom, and they were still quite dim. Otherwise, the place was bare, except for the bench upon which Graaff-lin apprehensively waited.

After five minutes a guard appeared, her black suit rustling and her polished visor reflecting the algae light. ‘This’ll allow you access for one hour,’ she was told as a crimson biscuit was placed in her hand. ‘It’ll crumble after, and you’ll be stuck, won’t you?’

‘I understand,’ she replied, nodding.

The bright streets of the tumulus awaited. Not for a year had Graaff-lin walked here. Immediately she noticed the marks of frost damage to the plastic streets. Chattering brooks bubbled past as she ascended Om Street.

The address on the package was an unoccupied building with an open-plan lobby, its doors perspex and opened by ebony handle. Graaff-lin entered.

‘Please place the package on the desk-top provided,’ came a throaty voice. Graaff-lin peered to her right to see a great bank of pyuters growing like moss from a green wall. This was futuristic equipment. She had heard of such pyuters before. They possessed no input or output devices, and could be communicated with only by separate units, held and utilised only by the appropriate person.

A desk stood at the rear of the lobby. In the gloom it was difficult to see. She placed the package on the desk, then departed.

Leaving the Citadel posed no difficulties, and Graaff-lin headed back towards the temple. It was late evening, and the public would long ago have been turfed out. But she would be quite safe. If she met other clergy, she would simply ignore them; it was not unusual for priestesses to stay late to perform temple work.

Upon the upper balconies of the temple she located the door to the biggest listening chambers. The outer chamber was rather like a cave, with its dark walls – damp in places – its curved ceiling and its granite floor. There was no marble in here. Illumination was provided only by the light-halos of the Dodspaat themselves. Graaff-lin paused, then walked to the nearest halo.

A physical sensation, almost like the caress of a furry paw over her bare shoulder, made her shiver as she walked through the orb of light. She looked up. From the ceiling hung a Dodspaat tongue, a chaotic growth of biological pyuter memory, gallium arsenide hardware and genetically engineered headphones. Graaff-lin put the phones on and adjusted the earpiece volume.

‘Hello?’ she said in aamlon. Sometimes the Dodspaat could be roused by speech.

‘Yes,’ came a deep voice.

‘Dodspaat,’ Graaff-lin said, shivering with apprehension and awe, for not often did she hear the Dodspaat actually speak, despite there being twenty of them.

‘Dodspaat, I have come to seek knowledge,’ she said. ‘Listen to this voice, then tell me what thoughts are brought to the surface of your soul.’

She played the serpent recording. There was silence; then, ‘The voice of a pyuter heart is soft and revealing. I know that voice. The dwan is the garden we navigate. Yes, the plan is very much a dwan! And up out of the garden we shall jump, once we have built our bridge, so as to attain our goal. That is what we–’

A whistle of interference made Graaff-lin throw off the headphones. Throughout the temple a keening alarm, almost a voice, was sounding. Graaff-lin, overcome that she had been told so much, in tears from joy and fear, sped from the chamber and clattered down the steps to the rear of the temple. If caught, it could be Gugul Street for her. She gasped and panted as she ran.

Nobody stopped her. Elsewhere in the temple she heard shouting voices and stomping boots. She skidded up to the rear door and left the temple, running north first, then turning back along Hog Street and Onion Street to her house.

As soon as she opened the front door a stench of alcohol and urine filled her nostrils. Revellers had caked the place with their filth. Incoherent with anger, she clumped around her house, picking up ruined pyuters, glaring at the piles of mud and streaks of water. Curse
all
revellers. Where was Zinina?

But then, when she had calmed down, and cried for the loss of many personal belongings, she noticed something. There was still food in her house.

No reveller, however drunk, however drugged, would miss food. But if it was not revellers who had rampaged through the house, it was someone else. With this thought in mind, she noticed that certain parts of her rigs had been stolen – valuable processing parts. This had been a burglary with a point, and the perpetrators had tried to disguise their deed.

~

Arrahaquen sat on her comfortable divan, feet digging into a luxurious jannitta rug, a cup of lemon tea in one hand and a honey cake in the other. Music from the official channels played softly; an aamlon symphony from a few centuries back, when there were six walled cities in this last land of Earth, and not one.

‘It’s your mother,’ said the door pyuter.

Arrahaquen sat up straight, a twinge of guilt passing through her. Mother? At this time? It was almost midnight. ‘Let her in.’

Ammyvryn appeared, and sat on the sofa next to Arrahaquen. She seemed tense and smelled as if she had endured a long day’s work. ‘Arrahaquen, I had to ask you something.’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you been tinkering with Citadel pyuters that you shouldn’t have been?’

Arrahaquen felt as though she was staring down the proverbial green alley. ‘No, mother.’ That was nearly true.

‘Good.’ And with that, Ammyvryn left. No goodbye; no smile. Nothing.

Arrahaquen watched her go. The door shut with an electronic tinkle. The tea was still hot in her hand.

Was that a warning? Had her visit to Zinina and Graaff-lin been noted? Surely the Citadel had far more important suspects to watch. Perhaps those minutes spent leafing through lists of jannitta defenders had been spotted? Again, no: that had been on a secure line. Then what? It could not be the secret communication link, since that too was secured against network spies.

Mother almost never came here. The last occasion was over a year ago, when Arrahaquen had sustained a kidney infection and been ill for some time. She felt worried, drained. Her throat had been sore for a day, and she thought she might have another cold coming on.