Glass (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

Gaya’s Archive was set in a yard of bronze. Turquoise verdigris covered many parts, especially the outer sections, but where people had over the centuries walked into the Archive from Lac Street, or from surrounding alleys, there were eroded paths glittering gold, twinkling, reflecting lights above; the lamps of the aeromorphs, of the occasional flying carpet, and of azure aericians with glow-bean nets strung from their wings. The Archive’s conical bulk lay central.

Subadwan stood in the yard. Through the noon gloom, even with her antique wooden lumod in one hand, she found it hard to make out the faces of people leaving the Archive. There had been a meeting, and hundreds of smiling citizens were departing. Some independents – for no Triader or pyuton paid attention to the memoirs of Gaya – had left their pedicians tied to rusty iron posts, and were now mounting these beasts of burden, sitting uncomfortably behind the knobbly stumps of their shoulders. One man sat upon a woven brass rug and rose into the heavens.

After waiting ten minutes, Subadwan entered her Archive. The outer public chamber – the only entrance for citizens – stood cavernous, its honeycombed aluminium skeleton entirely hidden by flesh, which here and there grew ginger hair, wrinkled up, or even produced deformed nails, tentacles, and unidentifiable orifices. But the deepest mystery was why this flesh was purple and not pink: purple, the skin colour of the invader gnostician creatures who lived outside the city, inhabited the land all around, and indeed flourished across the Earth to its furthest corners.

Subadwan hastened up the central staircase in the direction of those chambers at the tip of the cone, some three hundred feet above ground. There she hoped to find the Lord Archivist. As she ascended, the flesh of the Archive grew more leathery, became holed in places exposing aluminium, elsewhere shrivelling to dried wisps shining with fat. The upper chambers, where she, Rhannan, Aswaque and other important Archivists had their quarters, were created from plastic, metal, and in one case chewed paper hardened with gum.

Rhannan was in. Much relieved, Subadwan entered the gold illuminated chamber and touched her superior on both shoulders in the ancient mark of respect. Rhannan seemed flustered, her bobbed blonde hair dirty, her face grimed, the clingfilm robe that sheathed her rotund body street-stained. She had just returned from the city.

‘I’ll be as quick as may be,’ Subadwan began. They sat here at the apex of the cone, Subadwan conscious of a dull thump from Cray’s myriad buildings, for at this height much noise rose up from the heat exchangers on every roof. ‘Last night a pyuton asked me to meet–’

‘I thought this was about you being arrested?’ Rhannan said in her husky voice. She frowned.

Subadwan continued, ‘Oh, that was nothing. I wanted to ask you about a meeting with Tanglanah.’

Rhannan frowned again. ‘She asked you to meet her?’

Subadwan knew something was awry. The direct Rhannan would not, as she was now, saunter across to a table and pour two tankards of foaming caramel brew. ‘Are you well, Lord Archivist?’ Subadwan asked.

Rhannan smiled, offering one of the tankards. Subadwan took it, knowing that its nutritional content would last her the rest of the day. ‘I’ve heard bad news, I must admit. But it doesn’t concern you.’ Subadwan received a few seconds of Rhannan’s intense gaze. ‘No doubt you have cleverly spotted my flustered state and surmised... well, enough of that.’

‘This meeting?’ Subadwan prompted.

‘Both Aswaque and I have been entreated by
graceful
Tanglanah’s personal minion, but neither he nor I offered a reply. The memoirs of the Archive of Safekeeping need not bother us, I think, not when the Triad does nothing to save people expelled from their vitrescent homes, nor even lifts a finger to combat the luminophage plague.’

‘Is that true?’

Rhannan nodded. ‘The Triad is a bad regime. It is a cyberocracy – so I have taught since Gaya made me Lord Archivist. It is in fact a Monad, almost a dictatorship, with me the junior member. Reeve Umia and his two Noct cronies make up three of the five. Ridiculous! He controls
three
votes of five. Querhidwe and I might as well leave Triad politics now.’

Subadwan shrugged. Her superior was in poor mood. ‘You both being Lord Archivists means you cannot.’

Rhannan nodded. This fact she knew. ‘You had better go now,’ she told Subadwan, brushing fingers through her hair.

Subadwan stared. Could that be a wig Rhannan was wearing?

‘Are you leaving or not?’ Rhannan enquired.

Subadwan returned to her home on Dusk Street, but the short walk was marred when she triggered wall-clinging chromium blisters to burst and discharge their tapeworms. With light provided only by her lumod and mote storms passing below her feet, she bound her cut arm with a strip of cloth.

It was worse elsewhere. Citizens of the Blistered Quarter habitually wore an extra layer of clothes as defence against tiny airborne splinters, while some lanes in the Empty Quarter were so choked Triader gangs swept them daily, collecting shards in sacks and dumping them outside the city walls. Upon these glass hillocks moccasin-shod gnosticians, bent double, swayed and pounced as they collected fragments.

At home, Subadwan tried to recall the nuances of her conversation with the pyuton, until a call redirected by Archive networks made her pyuter chime. ‘Hello?’

It was the violet-eyed pyuton. ‘Subadwan, I await your reply.’

‘Am I speaking in strictest confidence?’

‘Of course.’

Subadwan was tempted. The fact that Tanglanah had made representations to Rhannan and Aswaque made her imagination fill with possibilities. The urge to know what was going on was too much. Surely one meeting could do no harm.

‘Where would we meet?’ she asked.

‘If not at our Archive, then any venue of your choice offering private chambers.’

‘How about the Damp Courtyard?’

Immediately the pyuton replied, ‘When?’

‘Half an hour?’

‘Lord Archivist Tanglanah will be there. Please arrange her entrance so that nobody is alerted.’

The link was cut. Dressing in thick breeches and a coat, pinning up her hair and pulling a floppy hat over it, Subadwan departed her house and ran down to the Damp Courtyard.

The Damp Courtyard, though not one of Cray’s more salubrious hostelries, was Subadwan’s favourite. After submitting at the door to a check for technological parasites, luminophage debris and other Crayan flotsam, she walked into its lush interior. In form it was a quadrangle based on the ancient design of the cloister. An outer ring of luxuriant blue vegetation rose ten, twenty feet high, touching meshes slung across the quadrangle that were laid to trap city dust and grime, and halt the descent of metal fragments. Some plants grew from the ground, others were potted in earthenware bowls shaped as trepanned human heads. It was a design also used in the Baths, and so known to be old. Scattered around this annulus were black iron tables set with silk cloths, and this was where the clientele sat. A pool of clear water lay central, home to aquatic spiders, monkeys augmented with fins and gills, and, inevitably, an array of nuisance life, such as purple pipe creatures, and a breeding pair of violet stalkers, which were related to the lumbering pedicians.

As Subadwan entered the courtyard and looked around, her eyes adjusting to the illumination provided by glass bowls of glow-beans, she was surprised to see a lone gnostician sitting cross-legged at a table. Gnosticians, though not aggressive, were considered a problem by many, and at best were tolerated. However it was Gaya’s policy to nurture the creatures, some of which showed intelligence.

The gnostician glanced at her. The tentacles under its chin twitched, and its low-set eyes, above which a moist mouth burbled, widened in some unfathomable gesture. Though dressed in chunky cotton shirts, these garments were not enough to disguise the hunchback, the double-jointed limbs and the deep violet tone of the creature’s skin.

Subadwan glanced at the windows bordering the courtyard. These windows faced rooms owned by yardkeeper Merquetaine, a friend and a follower of Gaya who enjoyed much business provided by Archive students. She spotted the yardkeeper, carrying a tray of biscuits to a couple sitting at the edge of the pool, and called her over.

Merquetaine approached. She was six feet tall and elegantly dressed in skin-tight breeches partly enclosed by a knee-length black jacket featuring diamante lapels. She enjoyed a reputation as the lover of many men, and some women, but those who came to know her more deeply discovered that her wisdom was only a little less than Rhannan’s.

‘Have you got a minute?’ Subadwan asked.

‘One minute only,’ Merquetaine replied.

Subadwan led Merquetaine under a cloister arch, where it was cool, and where lipreaders were defeated by sprays of leaves. ‘I need to borrow a private room for an hour. Do you mind?’

‘Use the red room at the top of the stairs.’

‘Gaya praise you. Now, my guest wants to remain anonymous. Can I borrow the key to the wicket gate?’

In reply Merquetaine handed over a fishtail, then hurried away. Subadwan left the courtyard by its main entrance and waited, bandanna covering her mouth, earpads in place, just off Red Lane. Ten minutes later Tanglanah appeared.

She was taller even than Merquetaine. Wrapped from head to toe in a grey robe edged with crimson, Subadwan could make out little of her features, even when a burst of light flashed through the alley perspex. She unlocked the wicket gate, led the way up a spiral staircase, then entered the red room. This was a small chamber furnished with chairs, a pyuter console, air conditioning fans, and a wine butt, all these items, as well as the wall plastic and floor vinyl, being some shade of red.

Tanglanah unwrapped herself and sat. With undisguised interest – for this was the closest she had ever been – Subadwan studied the Lord Archivist. Tanglanah was a dark-skinned pyuton with a large head and rainbow-irised eyes, each one seeming to change from second to second like the twinkle in a glass pane. Her clothes were of the richest twill. A silver brooch shaped as a lizard and as long as Subadwan’s hand clasped her undershirt.

When she spoke her voice was husky, lacking the metallic twang of cruder pyutons. ‘I’m glad you were able to come, Subadwan, so first let me thank you.’

‘I came out of curiosity.’

‘That is an excellent motive.’

Subadwan nodded. ‘I expect you wish that Rhannan and Aswaque also possessed my curiosity,’ she crisply replied.

‘When you said you came out of curiosity, you seemed to imply that this was a lesser motive. But curiosity is one of the greater motives of the conscious being. Didn’t you know? To answer your point, though, I expect to see those two at a later date.’

‘I talked to Rhannan about meeting you.’

Tanglanah did not reply.

Subadwan said, ‘What exactly did you have to say to me?’

‘Have you ever heard of abstract countries?’

‘No.’

Tanglanah smiled. ‘Good.’

‘Good, why?’

‘Because you therefore have no preconceptions. But allow me to continue. An abstract country does not exist as a physical place, yet it is possible to feel there, to feel trees and rocks, and water on the hand. One can feel the sun’s heat on the face. I want you to experience an abstract country.’

‘Why?’

‘How did I guess you would ask that question?’

Subadwan laughed, disconcerted by Tanglanah’s attitude. ‘Gaya love me, it’s reasonable enough.’

‘Have you ever loved a man, Subadwan?’

Stranger and stranger. ‘Um, yes, I have. More than one, actually.’

‘Then you’ll know that love is unquantifiable. It is a feeling that one can describe, experience and understand, but never quantify.’

Subadwan leaned forward. ‘You sound like you’ve never loved anybody.’

That seemed to take the Lord Archivist by surprise, but she replied, ‘What do
you
mean by love?’

Subadwan sat back. She had expected talk of plots, strategies, secret operations. ‘Aren’t we getting a little out of the light, here, you and me?’

Tanglanah considered. ‘No,’ she replied.

Subadwan nodded. ‘So you really want me to say what I mean by love?’

‘Your understanding has no small bearing on my proposal.’

Again Subadwan nodded. ‘Well, it’s... you said love was a feeling?’

‘I did.’

‘I don’t think it is. It’s not an emotion. Love is the source of emotions. When you’re in love you
feel
joy. When I loved my last man, Gaya praise him, I felt all sorts – joy, happiness, excitement. Lust. Bit of anger.’

‘Yes.’

‘Love,’ concluded Subadwan, getting the thoughts clear in her head, ‘love is wanting to get somebody inside you, almost. Or maybe get inside
them.
’

Tanglanah nodded in agreement. ‘When we love, we want to map a person into our conscious mind, map them as deeply as we can. True love and true understanding are one and the same thing.’

This sounded like a conclusion, but Subadwan did not want the pressure to let up on Tanglanah. ‘We?’ she asked. ‘Then you’ve loved somebody?’

Tanglanah paused once more for thought. ‘People and pyutons are both creations,’ she said. ‘The creation I love is abstract. I want to understand it as best I can. But I have one problem.’

Another pause. Subawan felt that here she was meant to ask what the problem was. She remained silent.

‘That problem,’ Tanglanah continued, ‘is familiarity. One feels a kind of ennui sometimes. Somebody who is free of familiarity needs to experience my abstract country, to understand its strange moods.’

‘You mean me?’

‘Possibly. I have not yet decided if anybody is to help me.’

‘Does this have anything to do with your Archive?’ Subadwan asked.

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘I would not expect you to.’ Tanglanah’s eyes took on a sinister, yet fervent expression. ‘But if ever you experience this place, Subadwan, then you will as sure as black is black believe that my offer has nothing to do with my Archive.’

Subadwan sat back. ‘That’s all?’