Authors: Stephen Palmer
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Cyberpunk
Kytanquil did not like the sound of that it.
So they waited. After half an hour red and green lights outside the greenhouse indicated the arrival of guests. The rear door of the greenhouse opened and Kytanquil was confronted by something she had never seen before, not even in her worst nightmare.
In fact it was two beings. Standing beside an irregular lump of machinery blackened as if by fire, yet twinkling with red indicator lamps, was a grey-skinned human, eyes half closed, lips black, wearing a filthy robe and ripped boots. She – or he – was bald, with a limp body and none of the vitality Kytanquil associated with normal folk. But it was the grey skin that made her feel sick, marked as it was with livid bruises and scars as if from many operations. This person grasped two handles at the back of the machine and wheeled it forwards; and the castors squeaked like tortured rodents.
The pair stood before Kytanquil. Nervously, she addressed the grey person. ‘I gather you wanted to speak with me.’
Awanshyva cleared his throat, leaned towards her, and whispered, ‘It would be better if you addressed your remarks to the pyuton, not the pyuton’s chauffeur.’
Kytanquil stared at the lump of metal. Now it was closer she could see the lenses and grilles of its sense organs, and the twisted loudspeaker that served to project its voice. Appalled, she shivered, and found herself unable to speak.
In a buzzing voice the pyuton said, ‘We meet at last, Kytanquil. I have looked forward to this meeting for some decades.’
‘You have?’
‘Oh, yes. Your family is known to us.’
Again Kytanquil shivered. ‘Why?’
‘You are the daughter of Oq-Ziq, who was the daughter of Jizharaq and Nijdeere-lin. The traits of your family intrigue us, as do the tales of courage, intellect, wisdom and gall.’
Kytanquil did not know what to make of this. Pyutons of course could live for centuries. Had her family been watched for so long? ‘What exactly do you want of me?’
The pyuton replied, ‘It was I who ensured that a certain bracelet was given to you at your rite of puberty. It was I who asked Awanshyva to bring you into the Garden. You see, Kytanquil, I am one of the six members of the Association for the Promotion of the Chlorophyll Age. We wish to speak with the Venus Heart, that ancient entity, half plant, half machine – so it is said – extant in the Green Quarter. To do this we need to converse with the Slow People. To do that, we need one brave volunteer. You, in fact.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘The time for refusal is now past.’
Kytanquil retorted, ‘No it is not,’ and took a step back.
‘Tell her, Awanshyva,’ said the pyuton.
Awanshyva said, ‘Now you have seen one of members of the Garden’s secret societies, you are bound by their rules. To refuse is to die.’
‘But you gave me no choice!’
‘Death offers you no choice. That was why it was not necessary for me to tell you what would happen if you refused.’
Kytanquil felt she had been trapped by powers wholly out of her control. She blustered, ‘You can’t force me to do anything.’
‘But we can,’ said the pyuton. ‘However there will be no need for anything as vulgar as physical force. Our reward will be more than sufficient.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Like all Krayans, you wish to survive the demise of this last human city. There are two options. One is to escape Kray. Such a feat is impossible, as far as we know. The other is to escape death.’
Kytanquil did not believe this. ‘Immortality?’
‘You might call it that. One species of immortality can be obtained from the Venus Heart. Our offer is this. If you become the actuator of our plan, we shall allow you to share in the immortality of the Venus Heart.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kytanquil said. ‘Why don’t you fetch this immortality yourself?’
‘All pyuton expeditions have failed because the Venus Heart can detect the many varieties of sentient being in Kray. Only the Slow People have overcome its hostility. That is why a human being must go with the Slow People to converse with the Venus Heart. That human being, Kytanquil, is you.’
‘I’ll be killed.’
‘No you won’t. You will be a Slow Person.’
‘Never!’
Silence fell. Then Awanshyva said, ‘You are one already.’
~
Kytanquil sat next to her mother in the Spired Inn and sobbed, ‘They told me I’m a Slow Person. What have they done to me?’
‘You can’t be one of them,’ Oq-Ziq said, ‘because you’re speaking to me now. The Slow People, so I’ve heard, can’t talk or interact with us normal people because they’re devoted to plants. That’s why they’re green. There are many folk tales about them from the north of the city, where they’re occasionally seen.’ She paused to wipe the tears away from her daughter’s eyes. ‘Don’t worry. They were just trying to coerce you into something. The fact that they let you get away after all those threats means they aren’t serious. You stay here for a while. I’ll look after you.’
Kytanquil departed for her room, a small attic at the top of the inn, where she lit a fire, grabbed a bottle of red brandy and a glass, and lay back on her bed. After a while she pulled the sheets over her body and fell asleep.
~
Over the next few days all seemed well. Nobody came to the Spired Inn to disturb her, there were no messages, nor any visitors.
Then one morning she noticed something different about her body. Everyone suffered from patches of green on the skin; it was a hazard of Krayan life. Often these patches of algae were benign. If they were malignant, they could be removed with a low power laser. But this... this was different. She noticed a distinct sheen to her skin, as if she had covered her body with a pale green foundation. She took a mirror and examined her face. It was normal. Thank the Goddess: she was just imagining it.
But she was not.
At dawn next morning she woke up, and her mind seemed different.
It appeared to her that the sun was moving in the sky. As she lay on the bare floorboards she watched through her south-facing window as the sun rose, arced high at noon, then fell to the west into deepening cloud. Puzzled, she considered what she had seen. It had been an unusually bright day. The clouds that she had seen had raced across the sky, bubbling like froth pillows, deepening, darkening, vanishing.
She left her room and walked through the inn. It seemed empty; yet full of ghosts that whizzed by. The lamps flickered with electric rhythms that before she had not noticed.
Outside, she watched the now thickening storm clouds race across the sky. Through rents between piles of cumulus she saw the stars arc in time-lapse motion. She felt rain upon her skin, yet she saw only mist in the air and a sheen of pale water on her skin, like a sheath of the finest cellophane. Everything around her was blurred. The silhouettes of trees around her were defocussed. Far away, the hands on a distant clock had vanished.
Again the sun rose. It moved fast now, and she stood, somewhere in the Cemetery, and watched it reach its zenith, then become lost in boiling cloud that appeared as if from a distant black line on the horizon. Night again. Then day, this time gloomy with no sun. Then night. Day. Night...
After a while she lost track of the motion of the heavenly bodies. Kray was grey and green: empty. She saw nobody. Around her feet the beauty of botanic movement was revealed, intricate as an urban clock laid out for her to view, leaves expanding, flowers flickering into life then dying, like spots of paint dropped from some celestial paintbrush that were absorbed into the earth. Seeds grew from wrinkled lumps on the ends of branches as if inflated by an arboreal breath.
She walked into the Garden. She had forgotten about the danger at its heart; all she saw was the vibrancy of the growing plants, the blurred purity of the green, the fertility of the soil. That soil seemed to dance at her feet. It was writhing with power.
Earth/Goddess/Elapse/Move.
She found that her memory of human things was fading.
In the Garden she found a great screen, indigo like the eastern evening sky, furry as an antler. It was approximately square, and algae and other plant life crawled all over it, like green paint expanding on canvas. Upon it was written:
Welcome Kytanquil! Please do not touch this pyuter as you will later use it to communicate with us, bringing us the secret of immortality conferred by the Venus Heart. Go north when you have read this and meet the other Slow People. Speak with the Venus Heart, discover its secret, then return here. This pyuter has been devised so that it can read symbols left by you upon your own skin. Be concise. From our perspective, a hundred-word message will take some decades to receive. Good luck! (And please be quick.)
And Kytanquil thought, I am a Slow Person... Her consciousness had been altered so that, like a tree, she perceived time on a different scale, a botanic scale, in which years were like hours and aeons like years.
She walked north east through a landscape temporally smoothed, and yet full of detail, and she understood that this had once been the future of the last city on Earth. A future she had herself considered. Not any more. She was now on a quest to escape death.
As she entered the Green Quarter she saw other Slow People. Vaguely she recalled how, long ago (or so it seemed) she had mocked them as idiots, but now she saw that their movements were graceful, swaying like the boughs of a tree, oscillating like a reed in a breeze. Yet their motions were unhuman, botanic, tiny rhythms in their fingers combining to produce limb movements. Their expressions were vacant, yet possessed a sense of profound depth, and Kytanquil found herself thinking of the complexity of bark on the bole of Kray’s ancient oaks. She thought of that peaceful, archaic sense of beauty brought about by the sight of stars wheeling across the luminous sea.
Yet such memories were only just within her grasp. She was someone different now. She walked on, watching the other Slow People, noticing that they did not attempt to communicate with her. She moved ever closer to the Venus Heart.
Until she saw it.
And it was vast: a great hemisphere of sticky green gleaming amidst the blurred ruins of groves and buildings, hundreds of metres across, dark as yew, glutinous as cuckoo-spit. Kytanquil’s sense of passing time was still slow enough for her to see the random decay of stone, as surrounding buildings disintegrated under the touch of wind and rain and frost. The Venus Heart, however, was constant, unchanging, a botanic entity formed from the synapses of the Venus Fly Trap and...
Something else, something technological, or so the pyutons of the Association for the Promotion of the Chlorophyll Age thought. But Kytanquil could see nothing of technology, and she realised that the pyutons, in their narcissism, had presumed the influence of humanity. The Venus Heart was natural.
So she understood that she was not obliged to return to the Garden to give her message. She was free. No reward would be offered by the Garden pyutons.
Walking around the Venus Heart she saw Slow People tending to outcrops of twisted green flesh, and after a few thousand circumnavigations she began to see a pattern in their movements. The pyutons had suspected communication to be possible with the Venus Heart; this could only happen if there was language. What sort of language?
It could be sign language. Only a visual language could work, the audio sense being unusable. Immediately she wondered if she could learn it. For the first time she tried to communicate by gesture with one of the Slow People. After a few abortive attempts she simply copied what the other was doing, and she realised that communication with the Venus Heart was achieved by acts of gardening. This was something she could learn.
The invisible seasons passed. Years rode by on the wings of erosion. The subtler rhythms of nature – the changing heat output of the sun, variations in the atmosphere, the evolution of the landscape – impinged upon her consciousness. She absorbed them as she absorbed the language of gardening, which she learned by a combination of guesswork and gesture in the ever deep society of the Slow People.
The Venus Heart told of a richer, more profound state of consciousness, aware of long-term terrestrial rhythms, foreseeing a future in which even geological time would fold itself into the self-aware mind, so to reveal the final secrets of the Earth. This was the aim of the Venus Heart, and it had created the Slow People in order that its dream be accomplished. Alone, it was isolated. In communication it found freedom.
So Kytanquil lived in the still and depthless world between animal consciousness and plant consciousness, an aesthete of nature with a human base, yet beholden to the slow kingdom of botany. And in the end, as with everyone, her body was returned to the soil.
TALES FROM THE SPIRED INN
GRANNY
Translator’s note: Because of the difficulty outsiders have understanding reveller speech and writing I have translated this story, the Third Tale From The Spired Inn, from the original bio-rec audio files. The story was told to me during the annual Evening of Cemetery Culture, held on Vert Day in this, the final year of Kray.
It is my sincere hope that something of reveller mores can here be conveyed to you, the reader. Revellers of course are by their nature unpredictable, even chaotic. The tribes of the Cemetery on the other hand stand out as being the most stable social group in all Kray. To many this is an incomprehensible contradiction. But my tale shows how their fierce pride – their narcissistic desire to shape the world in their own image – creates from a filthy rabble the sort of social cohesion that our rulers in the Citadel only dream of.
Such cohesion brings life, long life, but it also deals out death, because it is so uncompromising. There is no contradiction here, rather the reverse.
Qmeela of the Spired Inn.
~
In a glade of tombstones and yews three people stand. One is Dieffery, of medium height and build, noticeable because of the yellow tattoos on her scalp; opposite her Kyne, tall, imposing, wearing black clothes to match her dark expression. Third is the grandmother reveller, wearing gown and slippers and a brimmed rain-hat.
Drizzle drifts down as granny coughs to clear the phlegm from her throat, spits, swallows a pastille, then speaks. ‘This is a duel to the death. I accept no alternatives.’ Here, she glances at Dieffery, and the look in her eye is not kind. ‘By the end of today I want a result one way or the other. It’s about midday, now. You can do what you like as long as you stay inside the Cemetery. If you leave, you lose, and your life is forfeit. I’ve got trackers all along the Cemetery wall ready to follow a coward. Got it? Apart from that, no rules.’
Granny looks to them both.
Kyne nods. But Dieffery is frightened, looking nervous, and she tries to peer into the mist swirling around the edge of the glade, as if for other enemies. ‘As long as it is a fair fight,’ she says.
Granny croaks a laugh. ‘Ain’t no such thing as a fair fight.’ She points to the east. ‘Off you go. I’ll send Kyne the opposite way. Ten minutes and the duel is on.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Dieffery says, ‘are we allowed to use any weapons?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Any weapons at all? Including anything we find lying around in the Cemetery?’
‘As I said,’ the reply comes, ‘ain’t no rules. If you don’t see that now, it’s too late. Now off you go.’
Kyne sneers. ‘You’re dead,’ she tells Dieffery. It is the first time she has spoken. Dieffery, pale, makes no reply and Kyne turns to walk away. Dieffery shrugs then walks in the opposite direction.
And granny grins.
~
When Geleshen and Dieffery took their daughter to the Spired Inn they were unprepared for its welcoming atmosphere. Its location in the north of the city and its proximity to the Cemetery meant all the rumours they had heard were bad, tales of strife and violence, raid and counter-raid.
It was early evening. Through rain, the lamps of the Inn were hazy aquamarine orbs, its roof hidden in low cloud. Geleshen glanced at his wife and said, ‘This must be the place.’
No reply.
He walked up to one of the windows and peered in. Three fires roared, there was a bar and many alcoves set with tables and chairs; only a few people drinking, but that did not imply danger. Geleshen returned to his wife and said, ‘Follow me in. It seems quite cosy.’
Dieffery muttered, ‘A coffin is cosy to a dead woman.’
‘Now, now, there’s no need to be glum. We’ve made our decision and we are sticking to it. We can’t call it off the night before, can we?’
Dieffery looked elsewhere.
‘Besides,’ Geleshen added, ‘our daughter comes first. Don’t you, Marashary?’
‘It’s what I want,’ came the reply, in a small voice. ‘I love him and I must be with him.’
‘Then follow me inside.’
Geleshen opened the front door and walked into a hall. Indicating the green zone, he let them take off their boots and place them in the antiseptic buckets provided, following suit, then waiting for them to hang up their coats and inflate their slippers before opening the door into the common room and striding in. He put a big grin on his face, though it felt like enemy territory. He wondered if he ought to make an effort to speak like the locals. No. They would feel patronised.
Behind the bar stood an old woman, hunched over gleaming tankards; dusty vest and thinning hair. This might be the owner. A dozen other locals raised their gazes to satisfy their curiosity, then returned to their drinks and games of chess.
Geleshen walked forward. At the bar he said, ‘You must be Dhow-lin.’
She nodded once.
‘I am Geleshen.’ He indicated his wife and daughter, introduced them, then said, ‘You are expecting us?’
Understanding changed the expression on Dhow-lin’s face to one of pleasure. ‘Ah, got you.’ She looked at Marashary. ‘This is the lady, then?’
Geleshen nodded. ‘My daughter.’
‘Then welcome to the Spired Inn.’
The atmosphere relaxed. Dhow-lin prepared hot drinks, told a serving lad to show them to their rooms, even introduced them to some of the locals. One, a dark-skinned girl called Qmeela, made conspicuous efforts to befriend Marashary. Geleshen was pleased. In this place they would need friends.
They passed a quiet, if difficult night. Sleeping was not easy. Though the inn was peaceful – none of the fights they had expected – all three of them felt on edge, aware that tomorrow would be the most perilous day of their lives. At least, of Dieffery’s life. But Geleshen, sitting alone at the window while his wife and daughter dozed in their chairs under woollen blankets, recalled the effort he had put into preparing weapons for the duel. Hope was strong. Where there was cunning, there was always hope. Alas that tribal code necessitated the duel.
Dhow-lin cooked a proper breakfast when morning arrived, courgettes and potatoes in a butter sauce, garnished with parsley; tea and honey biscuits to follow. The Goddess only knew where she found such luxuries.
And so they turned to their own preparations. Geleshen wore a one-piece jumpsuit of grey cotton, black boots and an antiseptic hat, Marashary white breeches and a white tunic. Dieffery, in recognition of the forthcoming duel, wore body armour under a leather jerkin, cotton breeches and lace-up boots. Two holsters on a belt, each home to a black weapon.
Dhow-lin had been left a map by the grandmother reveller. They departed the Inn, following Morte Street to the Cemetery wall, passing underneath a gate, then making for the cluster of tents marked on the map. Geleshen could not be sure, but it looked as if they had been drawn with green algae. A symbol for death.
~
Kyne decides her plan will be to strike as soon as possible, killing Dieffery quick so that everyone can have as much time as possible in the Spired Inn afterwards. She likes the dooch there. She likes the baqa and she likes the mootsflosser. Besides, she has an important speech to make and she will need courage out of the bottle.
Rain is falling hard from dark clouds leaning in from the south. That means Dieffery will be confused.
Because Kyne knows the Cemetery like the back of her hand she expects an easy task, but just in case – she did not like the look of the two hand-guns slung from that belt – she readies her laser rifle. Clunk. Snap. It is energised and ready to fire.
She stands with the Cemetery wall to her back. She can see the dark shadows of yews, a mausoleum; mist and rain all grey and smelly. Perfect conditions.
And she knows what Dieffery will do. Because Dieffery is in an environment never encountered before she will first want to find a hide, somewhere safe where she can watch for a while. Granny sent her east for a good reason; not fifty yards away from the starting point lies a ruined mausoleum. Dieffery will be there, scared, watching.
Easy.
Kyne moves down the Cemetery wall until she sees a single holly bush. She strikes out west, following a green glass path into the heart of the Cemetery, then heading around in a circle so that she approaches the ruined mausoleum from the unexpected eastern side. Laser rifle pointing ahead of her. Still raining hard.
The ruins loom up before her, a single hulk of green-grey set in curtains of rain, and she grins, knowing the time is close. At the back of the ruin is a hole where recently a window collapsed, and through it she will sneak.
Something small and black passes across her face. She looks to her right.
Dieffery!
Dieffery is stalking her.
Another shot, and this time it rips through one sleeve; fractional miss. Kyne runs forward, slips on wet grass, and so saves her life as a cloud of autonomous bullets fall out of the sky and slap like so many beetles into the ground.
Luck has saved her.
She runs like mad. Got to get away!
~
From the tent encampment a reveller usher led the trio to the Shrine of Eskhthonatos, the shovel-headed harridan of the underlands held sacred by the Cemetery revellers. It consisted of a green grove, holly trees to one side, laburnam to the other, between them two sets of wooden seats separated by an aisle. At the far end of this aisle Geleshen saw the grandmother, dressed in a black raincoat, behind her a twenty-foot effigy of Eskhthonatos: square head, clawed hands, hunched over like an old woman. Hideous, bulging eyes that gleamed like rubies.
Revellers sat relaxed on the right side of the aisle, two score or more, many drinking mugs of tea. Dieffery was led to one of the seats on the other side. These were empty.
Geleshen waited at the rear of the Shrine with Marashary at his side. What tore his heart was the sight of his wife sitting alone on her seat, head bowed, not looking at the grandmother or the revellers, as if steeling herself for the task ahead. Geleshen felt his guts churn in sympathy. Was his daughter worth all this? He glanced aside to see her expectant face, and he knew he must go on, for she was his only surviving child and she had to have what she wanted, at this time of all times.
Damn her, though, in the name of the Goddess, and damn Bansusen too.
A trio of grimy women began to play music, fiddle and zither and flute, that bounced jolly from one melody to another, causing the revellers to put down their mugs and sit up straight. Geleshen took the arm of his daughter and led her between the seats, looking straight ahead to where the grandmother stood hunched as if exhausted, lighting a stick of incense and poking it into her coat lapel. He tried to keep his bearing as noble as possible, but it was difficult in the presence of these rapacious low-lifes.
He stopped before the grandmother. To his right Bansusen stood up, and Kyne, the supporter. He found himself grinding his teeth. Now he was here he did not want to go on, not even for Marashary’s sake.
The grandmother began her pronouncements. She held no book or screen before her, the formulary clear in her memory. Dhow-lin had told Geleshen that the grandmother boasted of enforcing many ceremonies in her time. Enforcing: he did not like the sound of that word.
‘In the sight of Eskhthonatos I bring you, Marashary of southerly parts, and you, Bansusen son of our dear Korydiya, together before me, that a deed irreversible be performed.’
Geleshen closed his eyes. The rain stank of rotten fish and he felt sick. Standing up was all he could concentrate on.
‘Being a ceremony blessed by the Lady of the Underworld, who made us all from clay and sea-water and bodily fluids, molding us in her mouth and spitting us into the city of Kray. Being a pact agreed by both parties. All hail. This morning I say you, Marashary, though you be an outsider, and you, Bansusen, do you both swear to do reveller right before the sight of the other?’
A faint ‘I do,’ from Marashary.
One stronger from Bansusen, who was smiling.
‘And are there any here who know anything that might stop me from joining these two–’
Geleshen heard himself shout, ‘Yes!’
For a moment he did not realise he had spoken, so sudden was the feeling, so loud the cry. Then he opened his eyes and saw the venomous gaze of the grandmother locked into him.
‘Yes,’ he repeated.
‘But you are the father,’ she said.
Marashary disengaged herself from him. He ignored her as he replied, ‘There is something you do not know, something that means this ceremony can’t continue.’ He paused. He had no idea what to say next. All he could think of was the vileness of the revellers, their pillage, the murderous street-gangs, the constant battles. ‘The Temple of Youth,’ he said.
That was it! The way out. Everyone knew the depth of the enmity between revellers and the girls of Youth. Now everybody looked at him, the revellers muttering curses at this mention of their foe.
‘There is something you must know,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘Marashary was once a convert to the Temple of Youth. You must know this in case it is revealed later, and we are all shamed–’
‘Father, no!’ Marashary cried. She ran behind him and took Bansusen’s hands in her own. ‘Bansusen,’ she wailed, ‘he’s lying, honestly, it isn’t true–’
Bansusen said, ‘Quiet.’
Silence fell.
Bansusen glanced at the grandmother then told Geleshen, ‘Do you really think we didn’t check that out first? Do you think we would risk even a sniff of Youth in our precious Cemetery? You are a fool, Geleshen. You mock us with your false claim, you shame us. You are nothing more than a worm. Nothing more.’ And he looked away, hugging Marashary.
Geleshen bowed his head, shutting his eyes once again. The ceremony was going to be completed. His moment of madness had made it worse.
~
Kyne does not expect to lose, nor does she expect to be offered chances by the unpredictable woman from the south. The duel is taking an unexpected turn. She has two choices. Either she can continue alone and keep pure her reputation and her honour, or she can accept a small diminution of honour in order to send the woman to the worms.