Authors: Stephen Palmer
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Cyberpunk
They crossed the Pyramid Bridge then made north, until Graaff-lin’s house came into view. It stood like an island surrounded by water. Around the back they found footprints, and guessing that these must have been made by Graaff-lin they located a safe route through the flood.
Graaff-lin seemed unhappy. She had a nosebleed. Stained tissues overflowed from the wastebins, a sight that made Zinina’s stomach turn. The replica sat in front of a rig, examining data.
‘Are you surviving here?’ deKray asked. He looked around her room, moving a flex there, checking food and water stores, examining her rig batteries. ‘You seem run down,’ he added.
Zinina, feeling a little sorry for Graaff-lin, said, ‘I’ll boil some water and we can have tea. DeKray, clear up the floor a bit, would you?’
‘Tea, yes, thank you,’ Graaff-lin said, nodding.
DeKray made to clear some of the tissues.
But Graaff-lin shouted, ‘No!’
Zinina jumped and turned. Graaff-lin had frozen, pointing at him. DeKray just stared. ‘No,’ she repeated in a solemn voice.
Realisation came to Zinina. ‘You’ve got the pestilence, haven’t you?’
Graaff-lin had turned pale. Her gaze darted between Zinina and deKray. At last she said, ‘Yes. Soon my condition will deteriorate – maybe in a year or so. I’m suffering from many infections. Some day one will be too much.’
There was nothing else to say. Horrified, and not a little sickened by the thought of the diseased Graaff-lin, Zinina went into the kitchen and brewed up a pot of rosemary tea.
DeKray mentioned nothing of Graaff-lin’s condition, instead launching into their questions. ‘We have some enquiries to make,’ he told the replica.
‘I will answer if I can,’ said the pyuton, looking up from her work.
‘Do you know where Gwmru is?’
‘No.’
‘
Gwmru,
’ Zinina insisted. ‘The country of the noophytes? You’ve been told the word by Graaff-lin.’
‘I don’t know where it is.’
Zinina looked at deKray. Already his expression of determination was fading to blank hopelessness.
He said, ‘Have you ever spoken with one of these noophytes?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know what a noophyte is?’
‘A noophyte is a pyuter heart, a being of the electronic networks. I have heard of them.’
‘I have asked similar questions,’ said Graaff-lin, in almost an apologetic tone of voice, ‘but without enlightenment.’
Zinina sat back while deKray paused for thought. She said to the replica, ‘Have you ever done it with a male pyuton?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘I am virginal.’
Zinina sighed. ‘We may as well forget this, deKray.’
He agreed. But then he said, ‘Have you ever seen a male pyuton?’
‘Yes,’ replied the replica.
‘But where are they?’
‘Everywhere. You can see them in the streets.’
Zinina walked over to deKray, whispered in his ear, then returned to her seat.
‘Is there a good reason for all this?’ Graaff-lin asked.
‘We’ll leave you two,’ Zinina said, standing. ‘We’ve got to see Arrahaquen at the temple. But we’ll come back.’
‘We will come often,’ deKray agreed, ‘to see that you are surviving, and to hear of your progress. Here is the secret code that Arrahaquen will use to set up a communication line.’
With that they departed and returned to the Pyramid Bridge, where they crossed the river and struck off north, crossing Onion Street then making for the complex of alleys and passages that constituted the Mercantile Quarter. The sun made everything unreal. Glittering water left after-images upon their vision, and a stinking steam arose from every puddle. Flies and mosquitoes flew everywhere, and only kit insect repellant sprayed over their exposed skin saved them from being bitten, and possibly infected. In every flood, great leeches bloated with blood swam like underwater dirigibles. Pulsating yellow insect eggs lined walls at flood-height.
They found themselves walking up the now entirely green length of Red Lane. Saplings and bushes had taken the place of pavements. They forged a way through knotted undergrowth. Only three houses remained standing along this twisting road, and one clearly displayed a green triangle. This house they avoided. At last they were in Lac Street, also a length of grass except for a mudtrack along its centre. At the entrance to the temple they asked for Arrahaquen.
Arrahaquen had not managed to persuade the temple clerks that her friends were safe. She tried to reassure them. ‘We’re separate now, but I see us together again.’
‘When?’ Zinina wanted to know.
‘Soon. Maybe the temple will allow you to live here – not you, deKray, of course. It’s all unclear. I think there will be great upheavals here, soon. I can sense some sort of chaos.’
‘There are a thousand people demonstrating around the Citadel,’ deKray said. ‘Soon, the Portreeve will have to do something. What have you seen?’
Arrahaquen shook her head, then looked down at her feet. ‘All I can see is a black hulk. I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
‘A black hulk?’ Zinina asked.
‘Maybe that is a memory from decades in the future, or even centuries,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘How can I tell? I have no inner maps to guide me, Zinina. There is no little number saying ten years hence, or one year five months, or anything.’
Zinina understood. While deKray spoke of their talk with the replica, she wondered what to do next.
They left Arrahaquen at the temple and began the walk back. Flashes to the south-east signified both the red flares of physical weapons and the momentary lines of lasers. Distant rumblings signalled continuing battles. Overhead, the Spaceflower shone and the stars wheeled.
By midnight they were safe in the maisonette. DeKray fell asleep as soon as they climbed into bed, but Zinina lay back, her hands behind her head, thinking. She had to get deKray and herself down to Clodhoddle Cottage. It was essential. There was only one way to do that.
Next morning, the defender bands were all dead. Worried, deKray suggested that they risk going to the Citadel to see what was happening. Zinina agreed; without the information services of the city networks she felt alone, as if she was floating about on a great pond with no hope of rescue.
As he collected packets of menthol sweets and restocked his kit, she located the various electronic cards that operated window and door locks, and secreted them in her kit. Leaving the house, she said, ‘I’ll lock it.’ He handed her a black card.
They followed alleys to the river, then crossed the Sud Bridge. The Citadel loomed above them as, checking for revellers and rioters around every corner, they followed Deciduo Street up to the west gate.
When deKray was not looking, Zinina dropped every card into an open drain.
The west gate was invisible behind a mass of people, well over a thousand strong. On the sparkling streets of the Citadel, just behind the gate, Zinina could see the dark shadows of hastily erected sentry posts and laser cannon tripods.
‘They’re not going to let us near, are they?’ she said.
~
That evening deKray realised that he had lost his copper hatpin. He sat in shock. Since he could remember it had been a personal talisman, given to him by his guardian, who had in turn received it from a mysterious young woman who called at their house one day. He had to retrieve it.
And he did know where it was. Beside Laspetosyne’s sarcophagus he had used it to scrape corrosion off the plaque. It must lie there still. He had no option but to return to the Cemetery at once.
Laspetosyne’s tomb was as he had left it. The pin was there, and he felt a wave of relief pass through him as he attached it to his greatcoat lapel.
Some eerie moments he spent crouched beside the tomb, allowing himself to take in the aura of the place, before he switched on his penlight and examined the body. Yesterday, foolishly, he had only considered the head.
Laspetosyne had been interred in canvas, now rotted to crumbs. Her bones were intact, shredded wisps of plastic stuck to them like souvenirs of the past, but much else was gone, eroded by the moist atmosphere. However, where her pelvis lay deKray noticed a metal flower.
It was the same species as the Spaceflower: a lily. The lily clearly had some significance for the pyutons – and probably for the noophytes – but he could not imagine what it might be. The clue he sought had turned out to be obscure. As deKray pondered this the words of a quatrain ran through his head.
~
Lily, lily, on the water
Ripples pass, you shake your head.
Lily, lily, on the water
You are far and I am dead.
~
He departed along the route marked by the yew-tree line. However, he had hardly begun walking the crunching path when his eye was distracted by a sparkling display of light inside an empty grave. Fungus, he thought, just Cemetery fungus. But this light was coppery, not white or pink, and it seemed bright. He stopped to investigate.
It had ceased raining. Without deKray noticing, the clouds had swept across half the sky, leaving just twinkling stars in an indigo and violet sky, and the light was weird. It was quiet. No guns; no explosions. Suddenly afraid, deKray scanned every tree and bush around him with the monocular, but he saw nobody. It must just be the unaccustomed lack of pattering rain. And dawn birds singing. Once more, afraid now that somebody was watching him, he studied every nook for sign of revellers.
There was nothing. He bent down to investigate the lights. With one gloved hand inside the grave he pushed aside the real fungus and the odd bits of metal and stone until his fingers felt a smooth surface. It was an ovoid of some sort. He pulled it out.
He held a weighty lump of metal. He could not see it well. He tried to make out the name of the grave’s erstwhile occupant, but the light was too poor, so he traced with one finger the letters at the top of the grave: M,Y,S,H,F,L,A,V. He could only think of Myshelau, Kray’s premier surgeon. But she was still alive.
Rain once more fell. He looked up. Clouds again covered the sky. Kray was back to normal. He stood. The eerie atmosphere of the Cemetery must have got to him. He was shaking, afraid, certain that some awful thing was about to happen. Such a strong premonition was unusual for him, so he ran, the oval object thrust in his pocket. He ran without thinking. He just had to run.
At the wall he calmed. A gate stood near. He hurried through it. Far off, mortars were again pounding.
The night seemed to extend as he made his way south. He wondered how he could have heard the singing birds of dawn.
Safe in his maisonette he examined his prize. It was as large as his fist, filthy with mud and smeared fungus, and not now twinkling with light – although he could see a translucent screen on one side from where the light must have come. It was made of copper. Not unlike a pear in shape, its more rounded end was distinguished by two small protruberances, as though a pair of fingers inside were pressing out.
He had no idea what it was.
He washed the object then placed it inside a pillowcase. On impulse he put it in his bed. That night, against the ghostly reflections of the luminous sea flickering across his window panes, he saw through the cloth a thousand mysterious twinkles of light, as if whatever lay inside had come once more to life.
CHAPTER 19
At the temple of the Goddess all was calm. Through disintegrating networks Arrahaquen spoke with Zinina about the riots, but after only two minutes the link died, and the temple system diagnosed a complete Westcity failure. The healthy state of the house system left Arrahaquen suspecting that the temple possessed not only its own water and food supplies, but also its own power. Around midnight, she fell asleep.
Noise woke her. She thought she was dreaming. But then she remembered that since her escape from Gugul Street all dreams had ceased, not even the evanescent memory of a dream crossing her mind.
In seconds she was fully awake and listening. Thumps from high above. And the sound of guns. Very close.
The chaos that she had so vaguely sensed was now central in her thoughts, a great fear that made her grind her teeth and leap out of bed. She ran to the door.
Now she heard continuous gunfire and explosions over her head. An attack.
With frantic haste Arrahaquen pulled on a vest, a jumpsuit and a pair of low boots. There were no weapons to hand. But, with sinking heart, as she heard the sounds of bombs and other heavy weaponry, she realised that nothing easily available would match such an arsenal. Besides, the temple prided itself on containing not one item designed deliberately as a weapon.
Arrahaquen ran from her room. The corridors were shadowy, lit irregularly by sea-fat candles in glass cylinders, blue photoplankton tubes, and an occasional anjiq. From everywhere there came the thumping sound of heavy footsteps and shouting, hoarse and incomprehensible.
She saw nobody. In an adjacent corridor she heard a rumble of boots and voices. Within this maze of half-lit passages she knew she could meet her death.
A crack behind her of splintering wood. She sped forward, through hot cordite air. Choking, she stumbled on.
Up ahead there was a junction: left or right? To the left she saw white flickering lights. Then an explosion, a red light, and a wave of dust. She smelled burning chemicals.
She turned back, but knew that people were coming that way too. She ran to her right. But soon she heard other voices.
She stopped. She was trapped – attackers behind her, and ahead.
A flash of knowledge came to her. As a blinding white light and a loud explosion made her recoil, she reached to the wood on her left and felt a handle. She pulled it and jumped into the alcove behind, slamming the door shut.
Seconds later the clatter of automatic fire was directly outside. She heard screams, more shouts, and more fire. Grenades exploded nearby. The wood around her shook.
She could not tell how much time passed. She buried her head under her arms and let the damp soil of the alcove – it must be a seed nursery – hold her.
Bullets thudded into the wood all around. Above her she thought she heard more boots, but with the din outside it was impossible to tell.
Then all became quiet.
She dared not leave, but she knew she had to.
She crawled to the door and listened. There were only groans outside; no voices, no gunfire. Tentatively, she pushed the door open a few inches. No response. But she could smell blood as well as the pungent odour of gunpowder and burnt wood.
She poked her head out. A mass of bodies lay all around, fifteen at least, some twitching. Every one wore a ruddy Citadel uniform. There were no acolyte or priestess corpses. The stench of blood made her retch.
Up ahead a twinkling image caught her eye. She ducked: it was a laser-wielding priestess. She fell to the floor and played dead.
But the priestess made no advance, and Arrahaquen, peering over the reeking bodies, saw that the motions she was making were cycling.
A hologram? It must be a hologram. As she moved her head from side to side in an effort to make it out she became convinced that nobody stood ahead.
She approached the figure. It looked real, but it was silent. In her mind’s eye Arrahaquen saw hundreds of these illusions, each individual, each waiting to fool the attackers. And then the image winked out of existence.
Picking her way through the carnage she ran on, but she soon realised that she had gone the wrong way. She took a left turn at a three-way junction, thinking it led to the outer lobby, but misled herself. She was not where she thought she was. She was lost.
Nearby – and from above – a new gunbattle started. Further off there were thuds, and the reverberating sounds of explosions.
More attackers approaching. Arrahaquen ran back, and then, when she heard attackers ahead, she darted into a room to her left where she hid behind a table and some chairs. Stun grenades made her ears pop; machine guns roared. The battle lasted only a minute, maybe two. Again she waited, again she crept from her hideaway to find bodies in blood-spattered red uniforms. Those who were not yet dead wailed at her. She began to see what sort of defence Taziqi had arranged.
In the corridor she decided to run right, dashing along a low-roofed passage, slowing when she heard boots above going the opposite sway, then hastening again. Sudden rounds of automatic fire – they seemed to come from directly behind the wood of the passage – made her flinch, but she ran on. At a crossroads, becoming desperate as her sense of intuition seemed harder and harder to grasp, she decided to go left, but she heard boots ahead, and then sudden shouts and a terrific burst of gunfire. On hot waves of dust she smelled burning ammunition.
She crawled into another seed-bed, just in time once more. Boots clattered by. Voices yelled. Then there was more gunfire, and then silence.
Some minutes later she peered out. More uniformed corpses. She ran on down the corridor. Glass fragments from smashed candle-lanterns crunched under her boots. There were blood smears everywhere, interspersed with smoking cartridges, powder burns, and metal shrapnel. A mist of ammunition fumes began to make her choke.
A body at her feet. Somebody running ahead. She grabbed the corpse’s rifle and tried to find a hiding place. There was nowhere to go.
A woman darted out, dark in the gloomy blue light, rifle held high. Arrahaquen froze. The woman aimed, but then, with a grimace, flung herself into the corridor wall. The briefest image of an illusion behind her came to Arrahaquen’s mind, and in those moments she raised her rifle and fired. The Citadel woman jerked, screamed; fell and twitched. Arrahaquen dropped her rifle and, without looking at what she had done, ran on.
Throat sore, lungs sore, she rested, then continued.
She came to a three-way junction that had been opened out into a chamber, set with couches, pitchers of water and incense sticks. Two bodies lay surrounded by blood at the further exit. Everything here was destroyed by bullet and laser beam but a general dampness seemed to be smothering the smoking debris.
‘It will catch fire soon,’ she told herself.
Disconcerted by the sight, she stopped – despite the din all around – and thought. The whole place seemed wetter than it should be. Another defence?
And still no sign of priestess bodies.
An explosion nearby. Wood to her left bowed, splintered, but did not shatter.
Somebody coming. Nowhere to go. Arrahaquen tried to hide beneath couch fragments, but too late.
It was Tashyndy. She leaped over the corpses like a ballet dancer. She wore a green gown, plimsolls, and had tied her blonde locks with a black ribbon.
‘Come here,’ she said. She seemed calm. ‘Very soon the final battle will take place. I want you to leave this temple as soon as possible. I’m glad we met. I suppose the Goddess willed it, though we didn’t foresee it.’
‘But which way?’ Arrahaquen pleaded.
‘Follow that corridor,’ she replied, pointing to the corpses, ‘then take the first left. Carry on to the very end of the passage, where you will recognise the outer apple chamber. Run off if you can.’
‘Right,’ Arrahaquen said. She moved, but Tashyndy clutched at her arm. She breathed as if to speak, then hesitated.
‘Arrahaquen, um...’
‘Yes? What?’
Tashyndy was fighting with some inner impulse.
Suddenly frightened, Arrahaquen blurted out, ‘Speak up. Come on!’
‘The Citadel,’ Tashyndy said. ‘I really think you ought to go there.’
‘Why?’
Tashyndy ran off, and even in flight her inner lassitude showed through. As more bursts of gunfire sounded, the scream of a laser too, Arrahaquen turned and ran.
Seeing only corpses on the way, she reached the apple chamber and grabbed a handful of protective clothing, which she pulled on, almost tearing them in her haste. Adjacent lay a lobby, with a door leading out to the temple mews. She walked in.
A silhouette at the door. Arrahaquen stopped.
Something low and hunch-backed, something stocky and armed with a steaming rifle stood with its back to her. A guard. It had not heard her over the din. Arrahaquen crept back.
Examining it, crouched down and peering around the lobby door, she wondered what in Kray it could be.
The form was unfamiliar. It looked like a cross between a woman and a lizard – a grunting, hidebound thing, bandy legged, all muscle and boiled leather armour. Arrahaquen recalled the rumours she had heard of pyutonic assassins developed in the sunken perspex dungeons of the Citadel abyss.
The creature snorted, primed its rifle and took a pot-shot at somebody in the alley outside. Its laugh was a coughing splutter. It took a swig from a bottle and, seconds later, Arrahaquen caught the aroma of fresh blood. Disgusted, she sat back. What to do now?
Her pythonesque ability rescued her, as it had under Gugul Street. Without looking she reached up to a shelf behind the door, where she grasped a metal object. She looked at it. It was a pumpkin whistle.
Little remained now of the Carmine Quarter. The ambulatory pumpkins that had entered the city like victorious generals had doubtless moved south from their thickets and copses in the hilly Archaic and Green Quarters. Some could be lurking hereabouts. In earlier decades, whistles had been used to round up the pumpkin menace before destroying them in conflagrations of paraffin grease. Now one could save Arrahaquen.
She blew. Its ultrasonic pitch was to her inaudible, but the beast at the door jerked to attention and stared out into the night, rifle ready, wheezing to itself.
As if it had heard rustling pumpkins, it waddled outside, staring to its left along the temple mews. Arrahaquen crept forward, then slipped through the door into the shadows of the alley. She paused to glance back, then ran on.
At the end of the alley she turned to check her escape. Smoke drifted from the upper floors of the temple, but no flames. The whole edifice of the temple seemed complete, except for damage on the roof and uppermost level. Windows were momentarily lit by flashes of white and red.
Arrahaquen had to get to the Citadel. She knew that Tashyndy had advised her to do so for a good reason.
Through shrubs and thick clumps of gorse – Feverfew Street as it now was – she battled south, wading through floods in the Mercantile Quarter, then taking crooked alleys to the Pyramid Bridge, where she crossed over into Eastcity.
Further south, she stopped and stared. Fire on the tumulus.
Could there be battles within the Citadel itself?
Tiring, she made along Onion Street, down Min Street, then took Violin Street all the way to the Citadel.
An extraordinary sight awaited. Before the north gate there were no crowds. But there was no Citadel Guard either. The lower sections of the Citadel were aflame. Gunfire rang out and grenades exploded. Red fire leaped into the sky alongside the white and yellow sparks of destroyed power transformers and pyuter installations. The illuminated streets sparkled with especial fervour.
As she stared, people ran through the gate – ordinary Krayans by the look of them, but armed with rifles. Arrahaquen could not be sure, but it seemed as if the defence had collapsed and the crowds had simply stormed in. And now her sense of the future was beginning to intuit terrible events. She felt a dread of the tumulus, but knew also that she had to explore it. The mental chaos that she had tried to explore was far bigger than she realised. This night was not over yet.
For a moment Arrahaquen sensed a dark aura about her future, before her teeming thoughts were dislocated by the rat-tat-tat of gunfire on the tumulus.
The main streets would be where common folk would congregate with their arms and their grenades, no doubt fighting each other and the remnants of the Citadel Guard. Arrahaquen slipped through the north gate – unlit, even its pyuter screens showing random static – then climbed uphill by way of alleys only just wider than her body; then service channels, drone chutes, and some ordinary passages. Soon she was halfway up.
At a warehouse she decided to climb to the roof and survey the upper zones. She ascended a fire escape.
Every visible part of the Citadel below was plunged into chaos. Motes of light flew into the air, fires burned, the flashing red lines of laser weapons struck out and smoke columns rose into the sky. Gunfire was continuous. There were shouts and screams, amplified and reverberated in the night air. Every now and again a bullet would ricochet nearby.
She descended, wanting to make for the Portreeve’s palace, which lay on the summit, but as she crept along the alley the ground shook, and then a thunder louder than anything she had ever heard began.
Earthquake, she thought, falling to the ground.
The thunder roared on. The whole tumulus shook. Above her every pane of glass shattered, then dropped like crystal rain to the streets below. She rolled out of the way only just in time.
Arrahaquen saw bright light. ‘Goddess!’ she shouted, hardly able to hear her own voice.
On a column of flame and smoke something was rising from the summit. A rocket.
A rocket! The Red Brigade had been building a rocket.
Smoke and fumes billowed past her, making her choke, but still she stared. The rocket was slowing. Twisting.
An explosion rent it. Light brighter than day flooded the city in its entirety. Arrahaquen shut her eyes automatically, but managed to force them open when she held a hand in front of them.