Aestival Tide (28 page)

The sea. What if the thing was bringing him Outside? Hobi put out one hand to steady himself against the wall. It sank into the luminous muck. When he drew it back in disgust his fingers glowed slightly, a rotten corpselike blue. He would die down here. Or, worse, he would live, become like this creature a mad thing living in the cracks between Araboth and Outside, like the ones who did not return from Æstival Tide; like all the half-human things that hung about the tattered edges of Araboth.

“Once-born.”

The
rasa's
voice rose urgently. Hobi turned to look behind him. In the near distance the tunnel's mouth gaped, black and cold—he could hear the wind hooting down after him. He turned back to where the
rasa
waited beside an opening. Dread seeped into him like the black water oozing up through his clothes. There was nothing to do but follow it. Perhaps Nasrani would worry about him; perhaps after a few days they would mount a search down here:

But tomorrow was Æstival Tide. Nothing would be done then, or for several weeks thereafter while Araboth's inhabitants recovered from the
timoria.
He could only follow the
rasa
and hope to escape, or hope somehow to make his way Outside by the time the Lahatiel Gate opened. He rubbed his arms against the chill and continued down the tunnel.

The
rasa
waited for him at the opening. It stared at Hobi with its sunken eyes, then splashed its face with some of the fetid water pooled at their feet. “Greet your Mother,” it said. Reluctantly Hobi bent and flicked a few drops onto his cheeks.

“Now,” the
rasa
announced, and faster than Hobi would have thought possible it slipped through the doorway and out of sight. He followed, stumbling over a few broken steps. This passage led up. It was damp and narrow and utterly dark, save for two endless smears of phosphorescence that ran along each wall. When Hobi extended his hand he found the streaks were just at arm level. He drew his hand back uneasily, wiping it on his torn shirt. He didn't want to think about what hands had been there before his.

From somewhere ahead of him echoed the soft splashing sound of the
rasa's
footsteps. Every now and then it paused and called back to him in low urgent tones. Hobi stumbled after it in silence. His knees ached from the cold and from bumping into the wall as the stairway twisted upward.

“Hurry now! Mother won't wait—”

It seemed they neared their destination. The
rasa
fell back to walk beside him, crowding Hobi so that he turned sideways to keep from breathing in its suffocating reek. Its long dank hair flapped in the boy's face as it slouched along, its sharp nails leaving vivid green tracks on the walls.

“Here,” it panted, and stopped beside a narrow doorway. The
rasa
drummed softly on it with its nails, and the door swung inward.

“We are here,” it announced, and went inside. Following it Hobi gasped.

It was the chamber where Nasrani had taken him before; but it rippled with a light so brilliant Hobi had to cover his eyes. When he peered through his fingers he saw no candles, no lumieres or electric lanterns. But blue and yellow and green light flashed from the cabinets that hid Moghrebi and the Anodyne Physician, Maximillian Ur, and all the rest. Slowly Hobi dropped his hands from his face, and stared.

Nefertity's case was open. Inside it the Beautiful One glowed, a thousand colors coruscating up and down her arms and along her cheeks, radiating out in bands of cobalt and viridian, yellow and gamboge and emerald.

“Mother,” the
rasa
whispered, and stepped forward. Hobi did not move.

The room wasn't empty. Even with their backs to him he knew what they were.
Rasas,
a dozen of them, their bodies nearly luminous in the spectral light. Some could have been no more than children when they were regenerated. One had the proud carriage of an Orsina, despite skin soft and gray as wet paper. Like the one that had brought him here they wore only rotted shreds of clothing. Their staring green-shot eyes were fixed upon the nemosyne.

“Mother,” the
rasa
murmured. A few feet from Nefertity's case it slowly lowered itself to a sitting position. “Mother, I have come, and brought you a once-born boy.”

Hobi stared at Nefertity, then slowly walked through the figures seated around her. None of them looked at him; it seemed they did not notice him at all, save perhaps as an unaccustomed warmth passing through the room. Their eyes stared unblinking at the light pulsating from the nemosyne, their soft fingers tapping upon the floor some arcane rhythm that he did not recognize. The rasa who had led him here called out to him, “She speaks. Sometimes she wakes like this, and tells us things. They are stories of the Last Days, they are Mother stories.” Then it too fell silent.

Hobi stopped in front of Nefertity. Her incandescent sarcophagus made a loud humming sound. Not the sound of a machine at rest, but more like the sound of someone, a woman in fact, singing softly to herself. Behind him in the clammy darkness he heard other things: voices whispering to themselves, fingers tapping their obscure tattoos. Hobi shaded his eyes as he stepped forward. The light streaming from the nemosyne made his head throb. It was she who was making the humming sound: and he realized now, now that he was near enough to touch her, that she spoke, chanted almost, and it was in time to this ancient litany that the corpses drummed their fingers—

“Yet sharper pain, more savage even, struck her heart: she withdrew from the company of the gods, she went to the cities of men and their grasslands, disguising her beauty for a long time. And no one who saw her recognized her, no man, no deep-girdled woman, no one…”

“Nefertity,” whispered Hobi. He stepped closer, stretched out his hand to touch her face. The light that had nearly blinded him grew less harsh. He could see once more the outlines of her cheekbones, the bright lines drawn under her closed eyes as though with kohl, her lips moving as they formed each word and the words spilled from her like grain.

“… They asked her, where are you from, old woman, you who are from another age? Why have you bypassed our city? There are women here who would befriend you. There are mothers and daughters who would share with you their ways.

And the goddess replied, ‘Hello, good children of the feminine sex, hello, mothers and daughters of the suffering earth. I greet you, whoever you are.' ”

“Mother,” whispered the first
rasa
where it knelt before her.

“Mother,” murmured the others.

“Nefertity,” breathed Hobi, all his fear devoured by anguished longing.

Mother stories,
he thought; and an image came to his mind: his own mother leaning over him in his bed, her hand cool and smelling of opium sugar as she stroked his cheek and murmured a story to him, a mother story, of course; and if Hobi had only known he might have realized it was one of the same stories that other lonely woman had told to her nemosyne daughter centuries before. Mother stories: a trick to wake the sleeping princess: and gently, tentatively, as Nefertity's lips moved and her voice crooned on, telling its sleepwalker's tale, Hobi leaned forward and kissed her golden mouth.

“Ah,” sang the replicant. With a sound soft as a spider's feet tickling across its web her eyes opened, and gazed out at Hobi: grass-green, emerald-green, green as the sea and the sirocco sky.

“Ah,” she repeated, a note like a door chiming open. From within its glowing sarcophagus her crystal hand moved, slowly, until it brushed his cheek.

“At last,” she murmured, blinking those emerald eyes.

“The Beautiful One Is Here.”

“Where is my Sister?”

The shock of seeing her move sent Hobi scuttering a few feet backward. Behind him the
rasas
had fallen silent.

“Where is my Sister?” the nemosyne said again. Now that she was fully awake her voice was surprisingly deep, and gentle—he had never heard a replicant with such a lovely voice. The door of her case clicked shut as she stepped forward, her legs moving smoothly and her head turning back and forth to survey the room. The light streaming from her faded until she shone pale white and yellow. The joints where her metal limbs met her torso gleamed blue, her eyes glowed that supernatural shade of green. She was like some beautiful toy, and in spite of his fear Hobi grinned to see her. A few feet from her cabinet she stopped and looked around, her gaze sweeping the room, taking in the darkened cabinets, the silent fearful
rasas.
She turned and pointed at Hobi.

“Where is my Sister?”

Hobi swallowed, unclenched his hands. His voice came out in a croak. “Who was your sister?”

Nefertity tipped her head. She was nearly a foot taller than Hobi. She stepped forward, reaching for him. At first he recoiled, then with shaking fingers reached to touch her hand. It felt as though mercury flowed inside it, something warm and heavy yet viscous. Her fingers closed around his and drew him toward her, until he could feel the air around her crackling.

She said gravely, “Sister Loretta Riding of the Order of Divine Compassion. I do not see her here.”

Hobi tried to pull his hand back but the nemosyne wouldn't let go.
This is it,
he thought.
Now my stupidity will be truly rewarded.

“I think she's dead,” he said. “I—I'm sorry. It's—it's probably been a long time since you were with her.”

Slowly Nefertity released his hand and looked away. “Twenty-one fourteen,” she murmured. “Has it been long?”

He whistled, shaking his head. “God, yes!—it's—it's been
very
long.” He pulled the hair back from his face, trying not to look rattled. “Your sister—what was she? A scientist?”

“Loretta? No.” The deep whispery voice sounded infinitely sad. It had been centuries since the Ascendants lost the artistry to create things such as this, capable of such eloquence and mimed emotions. Hobi listened entranced as she went on.

“My Sister is—
was
—a cultural archivist backed by the American Vatican State. I was her lifetime project—the NFRTI, the National Feminist Recorded Technical Index. The entire archives of the Library of Congress's Women's Wing and the AVS's feminist collective have been recorded in my files.” She hesitated. “But there were others like me—”

Her gaze swept the dim chamber and settled on the tall cabinet housing Maximillian Ur. She pointed, cocking her head toward Hobi. “They are here?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.”

Behind Hobi voices stirred, and he looked back. The first
rasa
had crept forward.

“Mother,” it whispered imploringly. “Mother, speak to us.”

Nefertity regarded it solemnly for a long moment. “I recognize that voice. This person activated the random memory chips,” she said at last. “At the sound of a human voice requesting me to speak, I am programmed to enter a random recitative mode. From my files—stories and poetry and plays.”

“But not interactive,” Hobi said slowly.

“No,” she replied. “But it is not difficult to access my interactive mode. Sister Loretta devised it that way, and all the women knew—”

Hobi nodded. “A kiss. Like in the story—she programmed you to respond to a kiss.”

Nefertity gazed at him and raised her hand. “That's correct.”

He went on, excited, “And no one knew— That's why Nasrani was so frustrated!” He stopped, suddenly embarrassed; wondering (as he was sure the nemosyne must be) how it was that someone as unworthy as himself had been so lucky when Nasrani after so many years had failed.

Nefertity touched Hobi's cheek, staring at him with her cool jade eyes. “You started the interactive program again. You woke me: the kiss.” It might have been a reward, the way she pronounced the words.

“I didn't know—I mean, I didn't
mean
to—”

“Sister Loretta programmed it. It was a joke with her. She called me the Sleeping Beauty. The others, the military modules and the biological and archaeological nodes, all responded to more conventional commands.”

“But why? I mean, why did they make
you?
”

“To save the records and stories; to make sure the stories and folktales would not be forgotten. Because of the Long Night; they feared a second Long Night. And so they made us.”

Nefertity crossed the room to Maximillian Ur, her long silver legs gleaming through the darkness. “Units for science, for agriculture, for the arts as well as the military. You have not found them?”

“No. Not that I've ever heard. You're the only one. Nasrani—Nasrani Orsina—”

She touched Maximillian Ur's case and glanced at the boy. “He is the new archivist?” Her tone was hopeful.

“No. Nasrani was the one who found you; at least he says he did.” Hobi glanced uneasily at the
rasas
crouching in the shadows. “I guess
they
found you, too.”

Nefertity shook her head, seeming not to have heard him. “But where are the others?”

She gazed down at the
rasa,
then back at Hobi. “Are
you
the new archivist? Sister Loretta said that help would eventually come. If it's been so terribly long my files must be updated.”

A wave of sorrow swept over Hobi. “I—I don't think there are any more archivists. Not in Araboth, at least.”

The nemosyne was silent. She stared at Maximillian Ur's blank grimace behind its swollen glass. For several minutes the room was still, the boy and the
rasas
alike waiting anxiously as the nemosyne stood, the soft
tchk
of her circuitry the only sound.

At last she said, “There was another Long Night, wasn't there? That is why Sister Loretta is gone. That is why there are no archivists left.”