Glass (9 page)

Finding Gwythey, she appointed the pale woman Third Archivist, ignoring formal rhetoric apart from the ubiquitous shoulder-salute. This laying on of hands she would have to get used to, since Gaya demanded it. Gwythey was too shocked to say very much, not even asking for details of the assassination. She accepted her appointment with a nod and a frightened expression. Subadwan wept again.

The rest of the day passed with speed. Subadwan tried to organise her tasks, but it was impossible with people arriving all the time – this to do, that to do – and the memory of what had happened hanging over everything. It was an hour after midnight before she realised the day had passed.

She hardly slept that night. Only as the first light of dawn appeared in the east did she doze off for a few hours.

Much had been accomplished. No bodies remained inside the temple. Every trace of blood had been cleaned away. Rhannan and Aswaque lay in their coffins, already sealed by glow-torch into their biodegradable final resting places, ready for Gaya to reabsorb them back into her body during decades to come. A crowd of some two hundred Crayans stood in the Archive yard, curious, voyeurs all of them, but they learned nothing from the well-muscled doorwardens who stood like doom-statues at the public entrance.

Thirty-six people had been crushed to death in the public chamber. All had been returned to their families except one unidentifiable woman. Her face was too disfigured to recognise, and she had been carrying no fishtail. Some said she was the assassin, a suicide, but Subadwan immediately silenced such talk and had Gwythey give the unfortunate a pauper’s burial.

The daily dissemination was due at noon. Subadwan, expecting a full house, was surprised when only a few hundred people turned up, though when she considered events from their point of view she realised that fear must have kept them away. In tremulous voice, aware of her tiny figure, of her inexperience, and her youth, she performed the speaking as best she could. The worst moment came when she dropped her goblet of water. Aquaitra jumped to her assistance, saving a few drops, which Subadwan, red-faced, drank.

Time seemed to slow. Still battered by tasks she had to perform, now and then weeping in silence, Subadwan nonetheless could look at the assassination from a distance – as an event that lay in the past and did not embrace her with arms of terror. The Archive she imagined as a hill of miniatures below her. So much to do. So much activity. She decided she would be a delegating Lord Archivist.

She dozed during the night. Still she had not been home to her own house. She had lived hour-to-hour.

In the morning Rhannan and Aswaque were due to be buried. Subadwan called Aquaitra to the apex chamber. Aquaitra, if her dark-encircled eyes were a symptom to be judged, had also slept little during the past two days. Seeing this, and the expression of lost hope on her face, Subadwan fell to crying, and for some minutes both Archivists were unable to speak. But Subadwan knew that grieving was unavoidable.

‘The burial,’ Subadwan began, pouring them both an iced drink.

Dubiously looking at the blue brew, Aquaitra said, ‘Should we be drinking alcohol on this particular day?’

‘One won’t harm,’ Subadwan said. ‘The burial will start at noon. I’ll have to lead it, with you and Gwythey–’

‘Is she coping?’

‘Gaya save me, I’ve hardly had time to see her. You noticed anything?

Aquaitra shook her head. ‘She’s always been quiet.’

‘She been crying?’

‘I don’t know, ’Dwan.’

Subadwan sat down in the seat behind Rhannan’s desk. Her desk. ‘I’m going to change all this,’ she said.

‘I will help you.’

‘Thanks. Do you want to stay in your own room?’

‘I think–’

‘You can if you want to,’ Subadwan said. ‘We could put Gwythey in my old room.’

Aquaitra nodded, saying, ‘That would be best.’

‘It’s bad, isn’t it, us talking logistics, room changes, when Rhannan and Aswaque are in their coffins?’

‘The work of administration has to be done, I suppose.’

‘Yes. But it’s bad.’

Silence fell upon the chamber. Both women sipped at their drinks.

‘Aquaitra?’ said Subadwan, cautiously.

‘Yes?’

Subadwan could not quite decide how to phrase the question. ‘Um, do you know anything, any snippets of gossip, about who did it? You heard anything–’

‘Not one word, ’Dwan, not one single word. Everybody is as shocked as we are. I saw nobody at the back of the hall, only the smoke trails.’

‘I saw them flash by.’

‘Did you? Oh, ’Dwan...’

Subadwan shrugged. ‘Done now. Gaya’s love, but headbreakers are expensive pyuters, aren’t they? Whoever fired them didn’t want mistakes. Those things don’t fail, do they?’

Aquaitra, face blanching, murmured, ‘I imagine not.’

They finished their drinks. ‘Come on,’ Subadwan said. ‘Time to bury them.’

Arm in arm they walked down the central staircase. Both had dressed in ceremonial blue gowns upon rising. Gwythey and all the other clerks, also in blue, joined them as they descended, followed by a train of scribes and recorders, forming by the time they stood at the lowest level a throng of a hundred and twenty people. There, each guarded by a doorwarden, lay the two white coffins.

Subadwan turned and indicated which clerks should lift the coffins. Subadwan leading, the coffins behind her, behind them the rest of the mourners, a single-line procession formed heading east along Lac Street, the short lane terminating at the Swamps. It took only ten minutes. Gloomy Crayans lined the street on both sides, their faces lit only by glittering motes in the perspex under their feet. Above, the sky was night dark, and the coffins seemed to glow in contrast, as though Gaya was already absorbing vital essences.

The Swamps were Cray’s natural system of corpse removal, but it had been noticed that bodies were not sinking as once they used to. Many said this was because there had been an overload.

At the Swamps there lay a low wall. On the other side black gel bubbled in a few liquid places, a layer of dust and grime on top criss-crossed with animal tracks. To Subadwan’s left two bodies lay half submerged, limbs and head visible, skin black as soot. The vermin of this place ate only each other, never touching human flesh. These corpses were pristine.

Subadwan looked at the faces of the chief mourners. There was Reeve Umia’s representative, Heraber pyuton of Noct, and there stood Querhidwe, just behind her two leaders of the lesser Archives, Arqu of the Archive of Vein Extraction and Drellalleyn of the Archive of Perfume; and just arriving Ffenquylla of the Archive of Wood.

Subadwan glanced at other faces. All wore linguistic decoders over their ears so that none of her words could be lost to city clamour. ‘Where is Tanglanah?’ she called.

No reply.

A few people looked around as Subadwan called again, ‘Where is Tanglanah of the Archive of Safekeeping?’

Nothing. Just noise.

Then Subadwan said, ‘We’ll give her five minutes.’

The minutes passed like hours. Everybody was embarrassed, studying their boots, checking their pockets, whispering to their friends, comrades and kin. Subadwan stared over the Swamps, not angry, but sad that Cray’s ancient code had been flouted. Far away, like a single glow-bean floating on a breeze, she saw a lamp emitting purple light. She wondered how that light forced a way through the sombre mists, how it navigated the gloom. Then, briefly, she saw the silhouette of a figure on a punt. It looked human, cloaked and hooded. Dark fog closed in. Had that been one of the druids?

A voice at her ear: Aquaitra. ‘Your five minutes have passed.’

Subadwan blinked, departed her reverie. She looked around. ‘Is she here?’

Aquaitra shook her head.

Subadwan turned to the coffin bearers and said, ‘Drop them in the Swamps.’ As the clerks did this, she intoned:

~

‘Gaya, We bring bodies

for you to eat.

Gaya, We bring sentience

for you to keep.’

~

The ritual was short, but had Rhannan and Aswaque been even a little less important they would not have been inside coffins, and then the ritual would have been still shorter.

The coffins lay slowly sinking upon the gel as the mourners dispersed. Gaya required Subadwan to leave last, and so, ten minutes later, she departed the Swamps and followed Aquaitra and Gwythey down Lac Street.

‘I wonder what could have made Tanglanah stay away from the burial?’ Aquaitra asked, not addressing her question to any particular listener.

Subadwan answered, ‘I don’t know. I doubt it’s significant.’

Gwythey seemed uncertain. ‘It’s a new cult, Safekeeping. She’s not important.’

Subadwan said, ‘I think she’s very important.’

Back at the Archive, Subadwan was able to relax for an hour in her chamber. Determined to remove Rhannan’s aura from the place, she changed the position of every item of furniture, except the vertical screen and the great stack of pyuters that stood immovable by the door. For a moment she stood before these pyuters, stroking the rough slabs of protein, the prickly interfaces, wondering what lay inside, wondering why they remained unconnected to the Archive systems and the city networks.

‘I’m Subadwan, the Lord Archivist,’ she said.

The husky pyuter voice replied, ‘I accept that.’

‘I must have access to all Rhannan’s secrets.’

‘You are Lord Archivist. You have access.’

Subadwan paused. ‘Are there pass-verses? Secret codes and colours?’

‘I recognise your voice,’ said the pyuter, ‘and your image. I see you now, standing puzzled before the stack.’

‘Are you the Archive pyuter?’

‘I am one of many.’

Subadwan had never before considered this pyuter. Did it have an identity? Did it run the Archive? ‘So there’s nothing secret for me to learn?’ she asked.

‘There is a secret colour. It is green.’

‘Green?’

‘Green is the colour.’

Subadwan frowned. This was autumn, the season of green to be destroyed, the season of achloricians. ‘But green isn’t a colour you can show. It’s banned.’

‘Green is the ancient colour of Gaya. Rhannan and those before her understood that green is suppressed for a reason. Green is an ancient horror too painful to experience, yet it epitomises what it is to be human. Have you not wondered why there are so many pyutons in Cray and why Gaya alone is the human home? Blue leaves and blue stems are like your blue, the blue you ritually wear, but in ages past they were green.’

All Subadwan could think of was the Baths. ‘Green is allowed in the Baths,’ she said.

‘That is true.’

‘Why?’

The pyuter answered, ‘I do not know. Subadwan, be aware that there are many secrets unknown to me, and some of them exist in this room.’

A little frightened, Subadwan glanced around the room, regretting now that she had so clumsily moved everything about. ‘In this room?’

‘On the pyuter stack.’

The top of the stack was six feet above the ground. Subadwan could not see the top. Standing on a chair she brushed her arm across it and almost knocked off what seemed to be a plastic sack. It was a greasy mask made of the thinnest neoprene, a full mask that looked as if it would envelop an entire head.

Initially repelled, for it felt slimy and looked macabre, Subadwan realised how easy it would be to put it on. She ought to try it. The pyuter would not allow her to come to any harm.

Wincing, she pulled the mask over her head. Something tickled her ears, her temple, the back of her neck, and then something passed over her eyes. When her sight returned she knew that she had put on a different world.

~

In the golden room at the Archive of Safekeeping, Tanglanah and Laspetosyne stood before the image of Greckoh. Tanglanah said to Greckoh, ‘The deed has been done. Subadwan is elevated to Lord Archivist of Gaya.’

‘Good,’ Greckoh replied. ‘How tractable do you think she will be?’

‘I wouldn’t like to guess,’ Tanglanah replied. ‘Her elevation will change her perception of Cray and everybody in it. For a while there will be shock.’

‘Shock,’ Greckoh scoffed. ‘The defence of weaklings.’

Tanglanah said nothing, as if considering some abstract point. After a considerable silence Laspetosyne said, ‘Our test showed Subadwan to be unusually imaginative. Humans are difficult to work with, Greckoh. Do not expect the plan to run without problems.’

‘The plan must succeed! For hundreds of years we have waited for a suitable moment to begin our rescue. We must save ourselves. I will not countenance failure.’

To this Tanglanah said, ‘We will succeed. But we will need time. I cannot go to Subadwan and continue where I left off after the test. She must settle into her new role and acquire all the accoutrements of her position. Only then will she be ready for the next phase.’

‘You sound in awe of her,’ Greckoh said. ‘I trust your embodiment as a pyuton has not dulled your intellect. Do not forget, these foolish humans believe they are on Earth. And our enemy
likes
humans…’

Again Tanglanah hesitated, and Laspetosyne looked at her, then back at Greckoh. As if to fill an embarrassing void, Laspetosyne told Greckoh, ‘Living as a body presents certain difficulties, but our intellectual capacities have not been reduced. We understand many of the ways of humans.’

‘Our enemy
must
be defeated,’ Greckoh insisted.

At last Tanglanah spoke, and with intensity. ‘Greckoh, listen to me. Our enemy is as brilliant as we two. Something exists in the Archive of Gaya that bears the mark of our enemy, and that thing I believe will lead Subadwan, now she has access to all of Gaya, in the direction we wish. But you must have patience. We are in a delicate situation. The gifts Subadwan possesses made her our choice, but they may also work in her favour. I will not have haste ruin everything. I will take my time. I will cajole Subadwan. And then, when she is where we want her, the mark of Gaya will lead her to our enemy. You need not doubt that it will happen. Subadwan will lead and we will follow. And triumph.’