Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  ~

  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.

  Zinina stopped Graaff-lin by the window. ‘Stand there. I’ll deal with this.’ She examined the fragments and the sill, saying, ‘The woman didn’t get in. No wet prints inside. Strip of cotton here from a suit – tough, good quality. Maybe a defender suit. And look, little wires, nice ’n’ shiny. Them’s from heated gloves, them is. You were lucky, Graaff-lin, you were almost burgled by a real professional.’

  Graaff-lin only managed a querulous, ‘But who? And why?’

  They entered the house. Zinina went to sit in the study. Graaff-lin was indeed an intelligent woman, yet Zinina felt sure that despite her orthodoxy there was a subversive side to the aamlon, timid perhaps, but there none the less. It was a trait Zinina could exploit... a trait Zinina wanted to exploit. She decided that, when Graaff-lin came in with the tea, she would declare her interests.

  ‘I gotta plan,’ Zinina said as they drank rose tea.

  ‘A plan?’

  ‘Well, more a mission. I need an accomplice. Honest, Graaff-lin, I’m here by accident, but I think I know how to find out about the Portreeve’s plan.’

  Graaff-lin must have been surprised, but she hid her reaction behind the soft, sad manner. ‘The Citadel,’ she mused, staring into her teacup.

  This sounded promising to Zinina. Graaff-lin, had she scruples, or at least those scruples the Citadel leaders would like its citizens to have, would have denounced the project. But she sounded intrigued. Graaff-lin closed her eyes, sat back, and seemed to go to sleep. Zinina slurped her tea, pouring more from the pot. Eventually Graaff-lin, eyes still shut, said, ‘I don’t entirely trust you, if I am to admit the truth, but I might be willing to make the attempt. We must know what the Citadel is planning. And it is true that with my pyuter skills and your street wisdom, we could make a formidable team.’

  Zinina stood. ‘Then we pierce the Citadel a week today, you and me.’

  ~

  Next morning, as the winds began to gust from the south and the rain intensified, Zinina donned her street protectives and left for the centre of the Old Quarter. At the end of Broom Street she noticed a free wall screen, flickering. There was a green patina over it in which somebody had scrawled ‘Live it up!’, but the pads were clean and smelled of alcohol, indicating usage. She tapped in a random destination address, then, having checked that nobody in the street was watching her, took a thick needle from her kit and prodded it into one of the data ports, thereby ensuring a secure line. Then she removed a small unit shaped like a snail from one pocket and eased it into the other data port. She tapped a pad and said, ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready,’ came the synthesised voice – warbling, Zinina noticed, which meant that the wall screen was failing.

  ‘Cut into any line. Order Q.’

  ‘Ready.’

  She heard a beep, then a voice – the voice of Qmoet.

  ‘Hello?’

  They spoke in the jannitta tongue. ‘It’s Zin. No bugs or snoops?’

  The screen flashed red: all clear.

  Zinina relaxed, leaning against the screen fascia. ‘I’m safe. I had an accident, but I’m safe. I’m with an aamlon nixie-worshipper called Graaff-lin.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cleric of the Hu Junuq.’

  ‘Is she safe?’

  Zinina paused before answering, ‘Don’t know exactly. We almost had a burglar – proper defender footpad, like. I wonder if she’s on to something? Dunno, yet. Anyhow, I’ll stay with her a bit.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  ‘Be careful,’ came Qmoet’s response. ‘We don’t want to lose quality like you. So, nobody from the Citadel got hold of you?’

  ‘I think I’m free. They almost had me holed up in a house. Listen, tell Eskhatos I’m about to set up the next job – the tunnelling one. Got that?’

  ‘Yes. Anything else?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll report later,’ said Zinina. ‘I’m an indep, now, by the way, network logged and all. Hoy, how’s Ky?’

  ‘Much better. We pumped her full of antibiotics, so she’s wobbly, but alive.’

  ‘Good! Look, kiss Woof for me, eh? Gotta go. ’Bye.’

  ‘’Bye.’

  Zinina unplugged her two screen fixers and walked away, deep in thought.

  She heard singing to one side of the street. Revellers. Better jump into a doorway and sit tight. She waited. There were five or six of them, dressed in sack-cloth and ripped breeches, skin filthy, clutching empty bottles and the stalks of mushrooms they had consumed. Zinina listened to them sing.

  The Earth is fighting back, we say,

  and we are all to blame.

  The Earth is having fun, we say,

  and we are all the prey.

  This place is full of rot, we say,

  goodbyes ring out today.

  So drink and sod it all, hurray!

  CHAPTER 3

  There was nobody else in the crimson-carpeted hallway. Arrahaquen paused at a gilt mirror to look at herself.

  She saw a woman, thirty years old, almost six feet tall with a figure best described as voluptuous, bald head shining, brown eyes round and sad and accentuated with kohl, lips full. All Kray blots covered by cosmetics. She twirled once or twice, to look from the other angles. Hmmm... The black shorts and blue woollen jacket that she wore seemed a little loose.

  Someone coming. She hurried back to the operations room, opening the door with her optical key.

  Pyuters chattered and sprays of bio-memory hanging from the ceiling throbbed with blue light. Underneath all this eight people worked, among them Ammyvryn, who today wore a simple blue jumpsuit. ‘I’m back,’ Arrahaquen said, smiling.

  ‘You’ve been a long time.’

  ‘Mother, this is Defender House. I’m not likely to be ambushed in the lavatories.’

  Her mother scratched a spot on her chin. She looked old, wrinkles beginning to acquire those lines of green that meant her one claim to Krayan beauty, the clear complexion, was gone. She had not depilated her scalp for some time, and a fuzz of brown hair made her look even more dishevelled. Only adepts of the Goddess could keep their hair in Kray.

  Eventually Ammyvryn said, ‘Never mind all that. Are we ready with the new defender schedules?’

  Arrahaquen glanced over at the wall-screen. ‘No.’

  Her mother thumped the oaken desk in front of her. ‘They get slower every day. It’s the pyuter hearts. Deese-lin and Spyne know how to steal all the pyuter power!’ And she thumped the desk again, as if that would solve her problem.

  Arrahaquen stroked her mother’s shoulders. ‘Just wait. I’ll slip into the gazebo if you like, to check progress.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Ammyvryn grumbled. ‘And me with a full meeting in half an hour.’

  ‘I saw Uqeq as I went out,’ Arrahaquen said.

  Her mother seemed flustered. ‘How did she look? Did she say anything?’

  ‘She looked pensive.’

  Ammyvryn got up and paced around her daughter. ‘There’s been an accident outside, in the city. A hang-glider crash. I think it’s serious, and the agent hasn’t reported back. Uqeq will harangue us about it.’

  ‘I haven’t heard any rumours.’

  Ammyvryn stopped, and Arrahaquen found herself staring into those watery green eyes.


  ‘Give your mother a call, Arrahaquen. Yes, call her on the networks, secure line, and ask her if she saw anything a couple of nights ago. Any gas flares, that sort of thing. Do it now.’

  ‘All right.’

  Ammyvryn tightened her creaky leather belt. ‘I’d better prepare for the Portreeve.’

  Arrahaquen departed for the communications cellar, but her mother was not answering calls and the Observatory pyuters refused to say what she was doing. So Arrahaquen left a message, then departed Defender House for her own rooms. A clock chimed the hour.

  She walked across the top of the Citadel, rain pounding the perspex streets, making the packets of light within them seem like angelic mercury rolling hither and thither on their speed-of-light errands. Here in Om Street, where the buildings were only a few storeys high, walls on both sides flickered, but as she walked downhill to the north, and entered Rosinante Street, the great towers to either side rose up into blackness and even seemed to curl over and threaten her. She reached the block of flats that held her own home, and walked to the top floor.

  She crept into the hall: silence. She made an electronic survey: nothing present. In the lounge burned an incense stick, inserted into the urethra of a gold phallus. The blue carpet was bald in places, but these patches were covered by jannitta rugs made circular in the shape of daisies. The place was full of furniture, but the effect was of opulence, not overcrowding. A window looked out over Rosinante Street.

  Arrahaquen washed her hands, knocking the hot tap to ensure its inner valve did not stick, then dressed for the city in plastic protectives, thigh boots with top-elastics to ensure nothing fell inside, a heated hat and, of course, her kit. As she walked towards the door she looked inside a cardboard box – one empty flowerpot and a bag of earth sealed with a crimson twist. So… now for her own plans. She departed, left the block, and hurried down the steep steps of Rosinante Street to the northern gate.

  At the gate she was stopped. It was a sturdy construction, all steel, flickering screens and automated laser rifles, occupied by five of the Citadel Guard; and even though she was Arrahaquen, known throughout the Citadel – and beyond for that matter – she felt a thrill of fear as she gazed at the jet-black visors, metallic one-pieces and huge cowhide boots shod with titanium. Who were they? It was not permitted even for her to know their identities, so that bribery and blackmail be impossible. Only her mother, Defender-in-Chief, knew.