Memory Seed (8 page)

CHAPTER 8

A week passed by. The two seeds in Zinina’s adopted home were no longer proper plants. They were squat globes, purple and shiny, their cases hard as steel and pierced here and there with tiny screens and arrays of digital ports, their surfaces stippled and, because they twitched occasionally, slightly menacing. There seemed no physical difference between them.

Arrahaquen still worked in the Citadel, but she seemed very tense. Zinina, meanwhile, decided it was time to investigate Arvendyn.

‘Investigate? How?’ Graaff-lin asked.

Zinina nodded. ‘You remember we tracked Arvendyn entering the Andromeda Quarter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where Rien Zir’s old temple stood?’

‘What business would Arvendyn have there?’

‘I’ve no idea. That’s why I think we should go on a little picnic.’

‘But the
Andromeda
Quarter? Do you think it would be safe?’

‘Safe? Is the Portreeve an educated, ethical woman?’

A pause. ‘No.’

‘Right. Oh, stop worrying, we’ll be back before you’re needed at your temple.’

Zinina went to the kitchen to pack the food, raiding stocks to make up a package of potato salad, okra, seaweed cakes and a tube of sugar-coated nuts that she happened to find under a couch cushion. She packed four bottles of official water, but covered their crimson tops to minimise attention from revellers.

It was another dim day and rain poured from low cloud, though it smelled fresh enough. The six parties of defenders that they saw west of the river all carried torches. Zinina carried an anjiq with a handle while Graaff-lin, suffering still from a cold, took a sea-fat lantern with fresnel lens shutters. Through the sodden streets they walked, following the curve of the river until they crossed Peppermint Street and found themselves in the Andromeda Quarter. Behind them, blue and green tubes inside houses flickered and died as another power-cut took hold.

The Andromeda Quarter occupied that portion of Kray to the south-east of the Gardens. It sprawled. Most of it consisted of ancient ruins. No main streets passed through it, but to the south it was bounded by Peppermint and Arrowmint Streets, and to the east by Jessamine Street. At its eastern tip stood the sinister twin spires of the Felis temple.

Zinina surveyed the jungle of damp foliage and shattered masonry ahead. ‘Do we just forge through or follow a map?’

‘Follow the map,’ said the sensible Graaff-lin.

Zinina unrolled a plan printed on a plastic sheet. ‘Let’s follow that way a while,’ she said, pointing down an alley fringed with palms and giant ferns. ‘Get out yer cat-pranger.’ Zinina shouldered her pack and tightened her kit on its belt. She felt excited; not at all afraid. ‘I’ve wanted to come here for years,’ she said. ‘At last I’m free enough to do it.’

As they walked they pointed things out to one another. ‘Look at the frost damage on those leaves,’ Graaff-lin said, indicating a grove of slim papyrus. ‘Winter hit hard here.’

Zinina could see orange trees and even a few banana trees, and these were the variety that produced fruit rather than pyuter hardware; the extraordinary fecundity of Kray’s botanic foundation had beaten even the fiercest grip of ice. She whistled in appreciation. Everywhere, even growing from the tops of ruins, she saw mare’s tail clumps all heavy with sodden teardrop-shaped data peripherals, which she collected to aid future bartering sessions.

They moved on. Through parks overgrown with ivy and along passages choked with cushions of fungus they walked, stopping to peer down wells that seemed to lead to the centre of the globe – a pyuter rangefinder said ‘unreadable’ – and pausing to listen to ghostly echoes, which sometimes they realised were of sounds they had made. Cats prowled, and these they shot. They saw a few snakes, but ignored them. The atmosphere was sultry. Occasionally the ground would shiver and once there was even a tremor that made bricks fall off a crumbling wall. Zinina and Graaff-lin stopped at this, and looked around, perplexed. Tremors here were thought to be caused by underground machine remnants left by previous occupants of the quarter. It was a place haunted by the spirits of life and of artificial life.

Zinina paused every so often to put her bare hand to the sopping soil. It possessed a distinct warmth. The tall trees all around seemed to chide her for making this observation.

Whistles and distant whoops, as of dangerous animals massing for attack, echoed through the sodden vegetation. The constant patter of rain, a sound Zinina found relaxing in its own way, became here the carrier wave of danger, and she found that she was gripping the butt of her rifle.

Graaff-lin stopped. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a pile of ruins fifty feet high.

Zinina peered at her map, wiping the rain off with a sleeve. ‘I think that’s the remains of the old Phallists’ ziggurat. We must be here – look on the map. Just south of the Galactic Port.’

‘How distant are the Gedeese Veert ruins?’

‘Oh... half an hour.’

Graaff-lin walked towards the vine-slung ruins to investigate their outer walls. Zinina followed. The bricks here were tightly packed, without mortar, and showed the vitreous signs of laser cutting. They were covered with engraved murals, some still containing the original copper inlays.

‘Look,’ said Graaff-lin, with an intake of breath. ‘Look, the women have beards. Ugh.’

Zinina peered at the ranks of figures that, although viewed from the side, had heads, feet and hands depicted from the front. With a broken gourd she drew water from a puddle to clean an area of algae and lichen. ‘Those aren’t women, they’re men.’

‘But they’ve got breasts.’

Zinina looked again. ‘So they have. They must be men with breasts, then. Them beards must be falsies.’

Graaff-lin threw Zinina a haughty glance. ‘Or
women
with beards.’

Zinina shook her head. ‘I think, given the history of this planet, that it’s far more likely to be men with breasts.’

‘Oh, indeed?’

‘Sure. Feminisation. The change in the land, going bad and that? Don’t you know anything? It was living off bad land that made the pestilence viruses that attack immune systems.’

Graaff-lin shuddered at the mention of that disease. ‘It all sounds a trifle imaginative, Zinina.’

Zinina frowned. ‘You want proof? Look, the men ain’t got no bulges between their legs, have they?’ Zinina decided that Graaff-lin was confused, and a question that she had often wanted to ask the aamlon priestess came to mind. ‘Are you still a virgin, incidentally?’

Graaff-lin took on the haughty air once more. ‘All dedicated priestesses of the Dodspaat are celibate. I was born into the faith. What do you think?’

Zinina nodded. ‘I just wondered. Didn’t mean to annoy you.’

‘Well you have, Zinina. I could ask a similar question. I’ve heard that in some reveller societies, by which I mean the society you come from, in case you had not realised, sexual relations outside of wedlock are punished by execution. Is that so?’

Zinina was used to the pliable, melancholy, almost downtrodden Graaff-lin. This fiery retort made her uncomfortable. ‘Well,’ she muttered, ‘yes.’

‘I am
quite
certain you are not a virgin.’

Zinina laughed. ‘I’ve been to the Fish Chambers like everyone else. But I ain’t a reveller any more, remember?’

A further thought struck Zinina.

‘Were your parents born into the Hu Junuq faith, then?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Well, you popped out of a woman, didn’t you?
Someone
must have got pregnant, unless you’re a partheno like Arrahaquen.’

Graaff-lin turned away from the murals and returned to the road down which they had been walking. ‘Let us speak no more of this sordid topic.’

Zinina chuckled, and followed. They forged on through thickets of date and fern, and along alleys lined with coconut palms.

At noon they arrived at the ruins. Zinina looked at the green spot on her map, then studied the scene ahead. ‘This is it. This is Rien Zir’s original temple.’

In a square walled on two sides, open on the others, stood a complex of stone and greenery, an overgrown ruin that in some places was well preserved but in others consisted of dust and moss. The highest point was sixty feet high, the lowest was a slimy pond. The place lay shrouded in an aura of majesty, partly because of the sheer scale of the surviving constructions, but it also seemed mysterious because of the bizarre architecture. Gargoyles and statues rivalled walls in size, and there were many outcrops of ruined technology, ancient stuff that even Kray’s rain could not rust or erode, and which endured, often hanging loose like nerves remaining from a lost limb.

Graaff-lin, it seemed to Zinina, had begun to regret coming on this expedition. ‘Don’t worry,’ Zinina said soothingly, ‘there’s nothing active here now. It’s dead. Rien Zir’s moved up the Carmines.’

‘I know, but I don’t like it. Still, the Dodspaat will protect me from malign influences. Shall we look around?’ Graaff-lin paused, her gaze fixed upon Zinina’s face. ‘You don’t worship the Gedeese Veert, do you?’

‘I said before, no. I don’t worship anything.’

With trepidation they walked under an arch and into the nearest section of the ruin. Here whole rooms survived, although they were choked with a tumble of roots and etiolated shoots, and Zinina, once again cleaning walls with water from last year’s gourds, was able to make out scenes of worship engraved in bas-relief, amongst the wasp holes and cracks. She felt a sense of wonder not felt since she explored the Cemetery’s mausoleums as a child. Here, as then, were sigils and images from ancient times. Women carried staves; women bathed one another with water and braided their hair; women gave birth. There were also interesting scenes of women initiating youths into the ways of sex, interesting because it seemed to Zinina that the smallest penis on show was longer than any she had seen in the Fish Chambers. And they all had balls. In the Fish Chambers, most men had one or even two undescended testicles.

Zinina considered all this. It was common knowledge, at least to revellers, that the Earth was trying to remove all traces of humanity from its crust. Now it had breached the walls of the final city. Once, it was rumoured, people and land were one. When the land altered in such a way as to change the life upon it, that life became unbalanced. Zinina had been taught that the original problem was people existing in the first place, and for some time she had believed that. But later, thinking about it for herself, she realised that it should be possible for people and land to relate harmoniously, if only the right attitude could be cultivated. Now it was too late. They moved on.

‘How about lunch?’ Graaff-lin said. ‘I’m hungry.’

Zinina looked around the chamber in which they stood. It was dry in the centre, and there was a large purple root on which they could sit. ‘Here do?’

They ate their food, drank a bottle of water each, then carried on exploring. Now they were finding less complete rooms, although many of these contained superior friezes, some retaining original colours. Graaff-lin paused at a group of landscapes and, when she did not move for some minutes, Zinina joined her. Graaff-lin pointed, saying, ‘What’s that white disk?’

Zinina approached until her nose was inches away from the picture. ‘That’s the moon. Didn’t you know there used to be a moon?’

Graaff-lin nodded, but seemed uncertain.

‘Hoy, you have led a sheltered life,’ Zinina remarked. ‘Long ago there used to be a moon as well as a sun. Don’t you know the legend of the Goddess and the Fungus?’

‘Such stuff is not learnt by priestesses of the Dodspaat.’

‘According to the legend, Rien Zir was strolling across the firmament, just out for a walk or something, and she happened to notice a fungus spore shooting away from her towards her sister Seylene.’

‘That is the moon?’

‘That’s the moon. Anyhow, this spore came from her own belly-button–’

‘Omphalos,’ Graaff-lin interrupted.

Zinina smiled a frigid smile. ‘Navel. Whatever. So, Rien Zir tried to stop this spore from flying away with her hand, but she couldn’t, and it hit her sister. Then the spore began to grow, and nothing Rien Zir did could stop it from eating away at her sister, like a sort of silicon leprosy. So eventually Seylene, from all the agony I suppose, was completely transformed, and became a flower shape. The Spaceflower, in fact. So that’s the origin of the Spaceflower.’

Graaff-lin nodded. ‘You have to look at these legends with a metaphorical eye, Zinina, an eye you do not possess, I think. Obviously Seylene is this ancient moon and Rien Zir personifies the Earth. No doubt this lone spore symbolises some event.’ She paused. ‘I suppose it’s not impossible that the spore was the Silver Seed itself.’

Zinina was stunned by this simple statement, so casually uttered.

‘It is possible,’ Graaff-lin went on. ‘Remember, Arrahaquen said that Arvendyn was implicated by Citadel spies in the search for the Silver Seed. Your legend concerns a real object, the Spaceflower. Reality and fantasy intertwine.’

Zinina had never thought to read any deeper meaning into the old stories. ‘How could we find out? We ain’t found no trace of Arvendyn here.’

‘Look at these friezes with open eye and mind.’

‘But could you do that? I mean, with all your Hu Junuq training and that?’

‘Zinina, I shall do my best, if you are trying to imply that my faith leaves me with a closed mind. As for the Silver Seed, I think it is a legend, nothing more. Probably the priestesses of the Gedeese Veert have been convinced by Arvendyn that it still exists, so they are looking for it. They will fail, since the Dodspaat alone promulgate truth.’

They departed the room and entered an open area. The rain pattered down upon the grass and the date leaves, and left sparkling traces as rivulets ran down the bark, for every surface around them was imbued with a fungal luminescence, giving them the feeling that they were inside a faery grotto. A gusty wind had picked up, and Zinina knew that heavy rain would follow. As they walked on, through a statue-lined boulevard and towards a series of free-standing metal walls, Zinina asked, ‘How would you interpret these statues, then?’