Authors: Stephen Palmer
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Cyberpunk
‘The woman you are seeking is one Oquayan, who lives at number eleven, Blank Street. Are you familiar with the address?’
Zinina nodded. That meant rich homes at the northern reach of the Mercantile Quarter.
‘Good. The code word is “xenos.” As long as you use it, Oquayan will know I sent you. Will you remember that?’
Zinina railed at what she felt to be a patronising tone. ‘I may look like an independent, but I have full use of my mind, Erequen.’
‘Then I will depart. Wait here for one full hour and enjoy the music.’ And with that Erequen hobbled away.
Zinina sprayed the air once more for safety.
‘You deep in thought?’ came Dhow-lin’s voice from behind her.
Zinina turned. ‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Where you living now?’
She could not say, of course. Gossip was the breath of life in these close, northern communities so near to the reveller realm of the Cemetery. ‘I’m still down the Mercantiles.’
Dhow-lin looked her up and down. ‘Doesn’t do to leave yer home, Zinina. And we still ain’t sure what you do.’
‘I’ll tell you all, one day.’
When the agreed hour had passed, Zinina left the inn and entered the drizzle, making south along her earlier route until she reached the crossroads of Lac and Sphagnum Streets, opposite the Temple of Rien Zir, at which point she made left along Lac Street, following the Garden Wall around until she found an alley that led south to Blank Street. Black winter seeds on six-foot fluffy umbrellas floated across from nearby trees, and these Zinina avoided, since many were home to glass weevils, parasites which had been known to jump off and kill people.
Up ahead, Zinina heard singing. Revellers. She slapped a muslin mask across her mouth and nose, readied the needle rifle and crept into a dark doorway. There were three of them, and Zinina noticed that cotton wads were tied to their noses, almost certainly impregnated with drugs or hormones. All three were armed with dental syringes. They were the worst revellers – green revellers – dreaded for their destructive, and self-destructive, mania. You did not cross a green reveller.
The trio passed, and the whiff of their lice-ridden rags reached Zinina. She retched, far from unfamiliar with the smell.
Creeping along Blank Street she arrived at last opposite a lone house that, though not numbered, had to be the correct one. She had been counting down from thirty-one, the last house defended well enough to risk such a sign of wealth. The building had no windows and the wall was home to lumps of orange fungi, some formed into the shapes of ears and hands, while the door was remarkable for patches of luminous lichen. To either side stood wrought-iron gates leading to what seemed a large rear garden.
Zinina, not by nature nervous or faint-hearted, found herself afraid of what might be inside. The knocker was a brass affair in the shape of a dolphin with the ring in its mouth, a symbol that Zinina was not familiar with. She knocked.
A minute’s silence. Then, ‘Who is it?’
‘My name is unimportant, but I am to say “xenos” to you.’
The door opened slightly and the face of a woman appeared. Judging by the unkempt brown and white hair and the earrings, she was an adept of Rien Zir.
‘Xenos,’ Zinina repeated.
‘Eh?’
‘Xenos?’
'Oh,’ the woman said, relieved. ‘Come in, then, come in.’
'Are you Oquayan?’
‘Yes.’
Oquayan’s face, Zinina noticed when it was illuminated by a cracked anjiq, showed signs of green spot, although her eyes were large, clear and blue. She must have been a beauty in her youth. She wore leggings, a green coat, and gold rings on every finger.
‘I see you’re in with Rien… with the Goddess.’
‘I am,’ Oquayan replied. Her manner was slightly ramshackle, as if she was wont to become lost in her own house, and Zinina wondered if loneliness had affected her mind – common in Kray. ‘Now, this way, please. I’ll take you into my gardens.’
The house was damp. Soggy, ancient newspapers lined the floor. There was almost no furniture. A few holograms hung crooked amid the peeling wallpaper. The smell of mould permeated the air.
Zinina was led into the garden, which was huge. ‘It’s not dangerous,’ Oquayan said. ‘I know that sounds strange, but really it’s not like a normal overgrown Kray garden. I know every corner of it.’
A realisation came to Zinina. ‘You live out here?’
‘Yes, in the summer house. Come along.’
Along a path lined with smouldering camphor on poles they strolled. Zinina gazed at the fantastic shrubs and trees to either side: bushes covered with pulsating red nets, plants with pyramid-shaped flowers, fronds with pyuter memories growing from their undersides.
‘The seed you require is rare,’ Oquayan was saying. ‘
Ficus xenos illuminatus
to give it its true name. I’ve never been asked for one. I have a single tree growing at the rear, you know.’
‘Good.’
They passed a pond of green slime that seemed to contain glowing spheres rolling just under its surface. ‘A low power pyuter,’ Oquayan explained, waving a hand at it. ‘I use it to calculate germination times. Are you interested in sex?’
‘Eh?’ Zinina stopped. The grass squelched under her boots.
‘Do you like sex? I find it fascinating. The variety of organs plants produce is amazing, and the varieties of pollen. I could write an encyclopedia about it, I’m sure.’
Zinina nodded and walked on. From somewhere to her right, through copper beech, she could hear the calls of night birds, insects and spiders. Above a flower like a white hand she saw a vertical line of scent-drowsed hoverflies, and she felt for an instant what a peaceful, yet decadent place this must be to sleep in. Zinina found her fear departing, as if she was being seduced by the smell and the warmth of the garden.
They passed a turf hollow, a bowl in the ground. ‘There are copper roots underneath, power lines from the Infirmary across the way. I seem to be cuddled by the earth when I'm in there.’
Interested, Zinina paused to examine the turf. The grass was as fine as the fur on a mouse. ‘Do you go there a lot?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes. Now, there’s the fig tree.’
Oquayan indicated a grove ahead. Zinina saw immediately that it was a research area. From every tree and every bush objects hung, ranging from carbon fibres to complicated meshes of pyuter memory. Oquayan plucked a fruit from a nearby mare’s tail. ‘Here, eat it. Enough vitamins and minerals to last you a week.’
Zinina hesitated, the rules of the city drummed into her during childhood taking over.
‘It’s quite safe,’ Oquayan said. She tossed it: Zinina missed, and bent to pick it up from the damp grass. ‘But now you’ll have to wash the mud off.’
Zinina took a water bottle from her kit, made sure that the red seal was intact, then opened it and washed the fruit. A scent of caramel emanated from it. She pulled aside a triangle of peel and plucked out a segment. It tasted of peaches and honey and it seemed to melt in her mouth. She devoured the rest.
At this, Oquayan paused, frowning slightly. ‘When did you last eat?’
Zinina knew she had let her defences slip too far. She had not eaten a proper meal for some days. In her circumstances, it had been impossible. ‘I’ve been working underground,’ she said. ‘Up the Carmines.’
Oquayan seemed satisfied with this. She beckoned Zinina towards a graceful tree and pointed at a spray of seed pods. ‘These will grow into the pyuter system you want. They grow true. You’re lucky. These are rare. I’ll miss even one.’
‘Erequen arranged everything?’ Zinina aaked, hoping her prize was not slipping away. In reply Oquayan pulled down a pod and handed it over. Zinina secreted it inside her kit. ‘I’d better go,’ she said.
Oquayan nodded. ‘There’s a back gate just behind that pyuton.’
‘Is it defending anything?’ Zinina asked, glancing through the drizzle at the metal and plastic woman.
‘The gate. But she’s seen us together, so she won’t harm you, will she?’
They walked to the gate and Zinina slipped through, finding herself in a narrow passage. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, smiling.
‘For now.’
Zinina turned and walked away. The alley was badly overgrown, moss pillows in places, and pools swarming with worms. She trod carefully. But mere seconds after leaving the gate she felt the ground give way under her left boot, and her body shifted. She reached out to halt the fall, looking down to see a green pool opening, but the alley wall that her hand hit gave way, and she fell.
Struggling in the deepening puddle, green slime all around, something tugging at her boots, she screamed, realising that she had little chance of staggering out alone. Remembering the drill for alley holes she tried to kick out with her boots, hoping to damage whatever was sucking her down, but the pull just increased.
‘Noonar, noonar! Help! Hilf, hilf!’
‘I’ll take that,’ came a voice.
She twisted her torso to see Oquayan hooking her kit with a metal arm. With a swipe the aluminium cord was cut and the kit gone. Thigh-deep in the slime pool, Zinina stared over her shoulder.
‘I just couldn’t let this kit go to waste,’ Oquayan said.
‘Pull me out!’ Zinina screamed, panicking, slapping at the pool’s contents, trying to push it away from her waist. ‘Get me out!’ she screamed again. The force pulling her was stronger than ever. Now chest deep. Now neck deep. Oquayan stood, watching, a smile on her face.
Zinina went under. She screamed – swallowed. Gurgling sounds became heavy and immediate as her ears filled. Then she felt a hand grasp hers. Oquayan was pulling. Lungs bursting, Zinina let out her breath in a great bellow, and forced herself upward into the air.
Still she was pulled. In seconds she was out. Slime caught in her throat forced her to breathe in coughing gasps.
Unable to see, she felt herself being dragged along the alley. Lack of air made her head spin.
When they stopped, Zinina fell to one side. Then she felt a thump on her back, and she coughed up green slime, and breathed. There was a hiss, and a pinprick in her right arm.
Zinina, half-conscious, tried to look into Oquayan’s face. She saw a flash of glass and recognised a syringe, but it was not Oquayan crouching at her side. As her conscious mind failed her, she caught the odour of menthol on the breath of her rescuer.
CHAPTER 2
And then Zinina awoke.
She lay on a bed inside a house. Above her, the ceiling was mottled green, plaster hanging in flaps.
Able to move, to sit up, though she was dizzy and her limbs were weak, she studied the room further. The faint smell of water and rotting flesh meant that she was near the river – she thought she could hear it – while the style of oil paintings on the walls and the heavy, knitted blankets meant that the woman owning this house was an aamlon. Zinina sniffed the air and thought she smelled charnel-tree blossom, which only grew in Eastcity. Could she be in some hovel off Hog Street? Off Pine Street? There was only one way to find out. Zinina tried to get out of bed, but sprawled in a heap on the floor, her legs still shaky.
The door opened. From her position crouched beside the bed Zinina clutched for a weapon, finding nothing. She wore only an aamlon shift. No poinard. She shrank back.
In walked a woman. She was perhaps forty, with wrinkled skin though few discernible blemishes, and wore the traditional gohlen smock and the cultural neck-string, made of tiny ebony breasts with ruby nipples, of an aamlon. The woman had the most intense pair of blue eyes that Zinina had ever seen. But she was not armed. Her movements were slow, almost melancholy.
Zinina stared upward. ‘Hello?’
‘Tamina.’
Zinina knew but a score of aamlon words. ‘Um,’ she began, ‘hilf, hilf. Don’t say auveeders.’
The aamlon woman sat beside her. ‘Who are you?’
‘Zinina. Who’re you?’
‘Graaff-lin. I found you in a faint on my doorstep. Were you attacked by revellers?’
‘Revellers wouldn’t attack me,’ Zinina said. ‘Where am I?’
‘In my bedroom. This is my house. It’s near Onion Street.’
Zinina’s guess had been correct. She was in the Westerly reaches of the Old Quarter. ‘How did I get here?’
Graaff-lin sat back, as if surprised. ‘I assumed you could tell me that,’ she replied.
‘I was shoved in a hole up the Mercantiles,’ Zinina said. ‘So you didn’t rescue me? Hoy, somebody did.’
‘Then it is a mystery. Still, once you’re fit, you can go home.’
Zinina shrugged, glanced away.
‘Oh,’ Graaff-lin said. ‘I see.’
Silence fell between the pair. Graaff-lin stood up and went to close the internal shutters. Outside, evening had brought gloom. Zinina sensed unease in Graaff-lin’s body language. ‘I wonder who brought me here?’ she asked.
Graaff-lin turned to reply. ‘Nobody I know, that is sure.’
Zinina frowned. ‘You can’t be certain of that.’
‘Good point,’ Graaff-lin admitted, with a frosty smile.
She sat on the bed, indicating that Zinina should also. ‘I suppose some acquaintance of mine could have carried you here. A clerical friend, perhaps.’
‘You a cleric?’
‘I am a priestess of the Dodspaat.’
So, an aamlon priestess. This could presage a stroke of luck, for now that she had the
xenos
–
‘My kit! Where’s my clothes?’
Graaff-lin moved to calm her, grasping her wrists. ‘Your clothes are quite safe, stewing in my antiseptic bin.’
‘Gotta have me kit, Graaff-lin. Where is it?’
Then she remembered. Oquayan had snatched it from her as she fought for her life. But then, from under the bed, Graaff-lin pulled out a row of leather pouches on two belts. Her kit. Her rescuer must have somehow reclaimed it from Oquayan and restored it intact to its rightful owner. Such deeds were unusual. Zinina fumbled inside one of the pouches to find the precious seed, safe, cloaked in fluff and dust. Quickly she zipped the pouch shut.
‘ls all well?’ Graaff-lin asked.
‘Valuables,’ Zinina said, shrugging, pushing the kit back under the bed. She did not want the aamlon rummaging through her belongings.
‘You really have no home?’
Zinina was too exhausted to lie. ‘I deserted from the Citadel Guard.’
Graaff-lin had a way of nodding in a soothing manner and, noticing this, Zinina wondered if she had been manipulated into saying too much. Those limpid eyes... Graaff-lin seemed sad, but behind her eyes lay intelligence. ‘What happened?’ Graaff-lin asked.
‘I escaped during the dusk shift at the Citadel. We were patrolling the perimeter. I ran north. A detachment followed me. I hid in a house, but it started to collapse. Some poison ferns went for me and I had to escape. That was when somebody shoved me down the hole.’
‘Well, you can stay here awhile. I am devoted to the Dodspaat and live alone. Later… we shall see.’
Sincerely grateful, Zinina grinned and replied, ‘Thanks. Thanniy, I should say! You possibly saved my life.’
Graaff-lin stood up. ‘Somebody did. Now, if you are steady on your feet I’ll show you around the house.’
It was not much of a house – four large rooms on one floor. There was an air of haphazard carelessness about the place, excepting the bedroom. One work room was filled with benches, tools and test instruments, and everywhere, even in the kitchen and study, pyuter junk and softly glowing rigs lay. Of course, aamlon were famed for their pyuter skills. Zinina, while not enamoured of the place, saw that life here would at least be tolerable.
Midnight passed and Graaff-lin retired to her bed, leaving Zinina to the study couch. But Zinina had one task to perform before sleep. From her kit she took the seed.
On the sill outside the west-facing window stood ten pots, some growing herbs, others empty. Zinina opened the window, took one of the empty pots, shook out the mud and grit, then made for the kitchen. With water from a red-top bottle (guaranteed pure by Eastcity Water Station) she washed the pot, then filled it with sterile earth and planted the seed, returning her treasure to the sill. With window closed and shutters clamped, she slept.
~
She dozed in fits. The couch was lumpy and her blankets itched. The aamlon shift she wore was draughty. Evanescent nightmares – chased by hang-gliders, pursued by Citadel Guard; her escape from the collapsed house – troubled the stormy night’s small hours. When rain tinkled across the window panes she imagined flights of flower barbs, like tiny wasps attacking her face.
Groggy and dry-eyed, she greeted Graaff-lin in the morning with little zest. Graaff-lin, for her part, seemed unconcerned by her new lodger, unless the air of calm masked inner uncertainty. She offered Zinina a breakfast of apple chunks and nut biscuits, and only spoke when she had finished eating. ‘We will have to change your status. You cannot remain a lapsed defender and survive. I think it would be best if you were re-registered as an independent.’
Zinina did not care for the tone of this. ‘I ain’t sure that’s possible. I’d get far less food and water if I was an indep.’
‘You were a member of the Citadel Guard,’ Graaff-lin said sharply. ‘That’s quite a high post. They noticed your disappearance, and will have recorded it.’
‘Couldn’t say.’
‘As you will. But it is my guess that you will be listed as a deserter, in which case both water stations and both food stations will refuse to serve you. Your food card will be invalid, Zinina.’
Reluctantly, Zinina agreed. ‘Watcha think I should do?’
Graaff-lin took her into the pyuter workshop, where a large polythene screen was set up, attached to a customised rig shaped by growth into a knobbly gourd. ‘This screen will show us the information,’ she explained, her low, keening voice almost lost as a wind flurry made the roof shudder. ‘What’s your kit number?’
‘211,121.’ It was emblazoned on the leather.
Graaff-lin tapped a pad. The pyuter had listened to Zinina and was already navigating the rickety data structures of the Citadel’s networks. ‘Found,’ it said.
‘Now,’ Graaff-lin continued, ‘I have to make one small alteration. It is a delicate matter.’ She tried to smile, but it was almost as if she was out of practice. Zinina noticed, however, that her teeth were pitted.
Because the networks were convoluted and inept – rumour had it that one pyuter wilted somewhere inside the Citadel every time an electronic decision was made – it was half an hour before Zinina became an independent, complete with shiny crimson food card stamped with her name, class and kit number. She thanked Graaff-lin.
‘Not at all,’ came the reply.
Graaff-lin had been right. A deserter stood out, even by the myopic standards of the Citadel. Becoming an independent granted her a certain amount of freedom, which she could exploit in the coming days and weeks. She eyed Graaff-lin, trying to decide whether her host was a fundamentalist or more enlightened. The fact that she had changed Zinina’s status made one thing clear: Graaff-lin was prepared to break the law.
~
‘Graaff-lin?’
‘Yes?’
They were sitting in the study. Gazing at the faded prints hanging on the walls, Zinina thought how best to phrase her question. ‘Graaff-lin, you must be really wondering what’s going to happen to us all?’
‘I am a priestess of the Dodspaat – the Dead Spirits in common talk. We’re working on a translation of their plan.’
‘This is Kray’s last year.’
Unruffled, Graaff-lin replied, ‘Thousands of Krayans would disagree. It is after all a matter of belief. I believe the Dodspaat communicate the ancient world’s wisdom to the faithful, from their homes in the afterlife, and we spread their message in order to save humanity. I work in the serpent department.’
‘The what?’
‘The serpents of Eastcity. Well, of our southerly quarters.’
Zinina nodded. Everybody knew of the serpents, and that they were merely antiquated oddities. Only the priestesses of the Dodspaat believed that they divulged glimpses of the future in coded rhyme. As a child Zinina had gone east to listen to them, but that was all. ‘You’re seriously studying them?’ she asked.
‘It is part of my calling. Wisdom arrives from many sources, Zinina. It arrives from beyond the grave and from the future. The Dodspaat are wise. It is a matter of deep regret to me and my sisters that their tongue is so difficult to translate, for otherwise their thoughts would more clearly show how we can escape our predicament.’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t be having with all that. This is the last year. Everyone knows it, though not everyone admits it.’
Graaff-lin hesitated. ‘As an aamlon I have gifts as a manipulator of pyuters and pyuter networks. Why should I not use that skill to help save humanity?’
Zinina sighed.
‘But you asked me if I wondered what might happen to Kray. Well, at the moment I don’t know the fate of the city.’
‘You’d like to though,’ said Zinina, knowingly. ‘Maybe... I can help.’
‘Only the serpents can foresee the future. Only they can help.’
‘Can we keep off serpents, eh?’
Graaff-lin stood up. ‘I will take you to one. It will make a prophecy, and you can stay with me until that prophecy comes about. Then we shall see who is correct.’
Zinina also stood, seeing the opportunity for a bit of fun. ‘It’s a deal.’
The alleys between Onion Street and Pine Street were flooded, a daily hazard this close to the river. Zinina hesitated before leaving the safety of the porch and entering the rain – this was her first trip into the city since her rescue – but in moments her hood was up, her boots were squelching in mud, and she was wading with Graaff-lin down the alley. In some places the water was up to her waist. They noticed blue mats of algae, that Zinina knew to be infected, and these they avoided. Coming to a barrier of sandbags, they climbed over and splashed into a street suffering only from puddles, and this they followed, making south. ‘Mind the lavatory grubs,’ Zinina warned. ‘They can bite through leather. If you smell ammonia, jump away.’
In Min Street, Graaff-lin stopped at an alcove in a stone wall. Zinina saw the chainmail serpent inside – a cobra – rise to a listening position, chinking like a purse of coins.
‘Good morning,’ Graaff-lin said. ‘I am Graaff-lin of the temple of the Dodspaat.’
‘Tamina, Graaff-lin,’ the serpent hissed.
‘Please speak in Krayan for the benefit of us all. Now, tell me, not what the future holds for me, but for the city.’
Zinina nodded. The crafty aamlon was trying for the most general reply possible, the vaguest answer, in order to win the point. A minute passed. Rain droplets splashed into puddles. They heard the choking putter of a hang-glider engine. Then, ‘This is not easy, for people are small, Kray is big. On the other hand, people free will, Kray moves on.’ Interested despite her scepticism, Zinina listened as the serpent continued. ‘Free will for individuals, trends for societies.’
Graaff-lin’s face grew excited. ‘What trends do you see, serpent?’
‘The solution is in the petals, just as the bee is in the hive.’
‘And?’
But the cobra had seen its fill of the future, and remained silent.
‘Try another,’ Zinina suggested.
At the lower end of the street, in a flooded portion, they saw a coral snake, no more than a foot above the waters, its alcove smothered in algae. Graaff-lin said, ‘Hello, I am Graaff-lin. Tell me what you see of the Portreeve’s plan for Kray.’
Zinina gasped, taken aback by this audacity. Minutes passed. She thought she heard a faint ticking coming from the mouth of the snake, as of a clock heard at the end of a long tunnel. Then it said, ‘This is your prophecy. I see for you a green cushion falling upon a waif.’ No further words came and they turned away, but the snake had not finished. ‘The plan is a dwan,’ it said.
Graaff-lin spun around. The snake did not move, or speak. ‘I want to go home,’ Graaff-lin told Zinina. ‘I’m feeling confused.’
Zinina agreed. The trip had not gone as she had expected. ‘What does dwan mean?’ she asked.
‘I do not know. It is not an aamlon word.’
‘Sure ain’t a jannitta word. And it ain’t Krayan.’
They trudged back. Entering the garden of Graaff-lin’s house, Zinina, walking just behind the aamlon, caught a movement through the rain. A shadow receding. Her senses, attuned better than most to the vicissitudes of street life, felt danger. She grabbed Graaff-lin’s wrist; pulled her back against the garden wall.
‘Someone there,’ she whispered.
Graaff-lin had not understood. Zinina thrust her aside and with a yell ran at the side of the house, needle gun raised. She saw a figure dart off. By the time she was around the side the figure was gone, leaving a smashed pane of glass.