Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  ‘Pass?’ came the pyuter-synthesised voice. She heard a whirr of electronic breathing above the din of rain.

  Arrahaquen handed over a scarlet card. The woman flashed it under a laser beam. Another pyuter voice: ‘Clear. Hurry along.’

  It was handed back and Arrahaquen was let through the Citadel Wall. She paused, glancing back. The Wall, the great black ring surrounding the Citadel, pierced only at the four cardinal points, was slick with rain. Lidded eyes and grasping arms transplanted from the bodies of wrecked pyutons studded its matte exterior. Two or three bodies held in a vice grip lay slumped against it, one gnawed by dogs. Arrahaquen hurried on up Malmsey Street then turned into Onion Street, passing the Dead Spirits temple then crossing the river and making north towards the Gardens. She tied on a mouth mask to conceal her face.

  Up Culverkeys Street she walked, past the Infirmary with its thousand photobacteria tubes and its incinerators smoking, through the maze of alleys between the Gardens and the Mercantile Quarter, until she spied the street that was her goal. A collapsed wall blocked her way, but she climbed over and splashed into the foot-deep flood waters behind. Leeches swarmed over the area. She counted down the Blank Street houses to number eleven, and knocked on its door’s chromium plates.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a phlegmy voice.

  ‘I’ve come to buy something off you. Is that Oquayan?’ The door opened and a rifle emerged. ‘I’m a defender,’ Arrahaquen said, showing the pale face behind the door her Citadel pass.

  ‘Hmmph. Come in. What do you want?’

  ‘Something from your remarkable garden,’ Arrahaquen replied, soothingly.

  Oquayan led Arrahaquen through her musty house into a conservatory hot as a furnace, and then out into the garden.

  ‘So, what do you want?’ Oquayan asked.

  ‘A seed off a fig tree.’

  Oquayan gestured her to follow. ‘Which species exactly?’

  ‘Ficus veritas illuminatus.’

  ‘Hmmph. That tree there, with the sprays of bean-shaped pods. Pick one off the lowest branch. One only, mind.’

  Arrahaquen did as she was bid, then showed Oquayan a roll of units to choose from as payment. A processor was chosen.

  ‘Rush of interest in ficus, then,’ Oquayan remarked.

  Arrahaquen frowned. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Some other gal after a ficus – the xenos illuminatus. Know her?’

  Arrahaquen felt her throat tighten with apprehension. ‘Um, who was this?’ she asked.

  ‘Gal who visited me not two days back.’

  ‘And her name?’

  ‘Didn’t get it, unfortunately,’ Oquayan replied; and her face assumed a dark expression. ‘Not a defender though, ’cos she was starving, with the look of some green marketeer.’

  ‘She wasn’t a defender? Surely only a citadel woman could have–’

  ‘She caused me lots of trouble,’ Oquayan said, face flushing pink. She began to walk back to her house. ‘I don’t know her name. I wish I did, and the name of the filthy scoundrel who attacked me.’

  ‘Couldn’t you even describe her?’

  Oquayan seemed to glower with rage. ‘If I give you an image will you never darken my life again?’

  ‘Never, I promise, by the mind of the Goddess.’

  Oquayan led Arrahaquen through the house and out into Blank Street, where she slammed the door. Two minutes passed by, Arrahaquen uncertain of what to do. Then a slip of damp paper was pushed under the door. Arrahaquen picked it up.

  She saw a tall, slender jannitta woman of striking beauty, complexion perfect, if a little tanned, with a haughty expression and mysterious eyes. She wore a nondescript jumpsuit splashed green. Most probably an independent, although she was possibly a priestess. The face, most peculiarly, seemed familiar – or was it the attitude of her body? If only the image could move...

  Suddenly Arrahaquen had a vivid mental image of Oquayan leading the woman through her garden. It persisted for some seconds, then left her mind. She blinked, stunned. The picture had seemed like a memory. But now she was certain she knew the woman.

  ~

  Back at her apartment, Arrahaquen went straight to her main rig. As it flickered with lights a movement in the corner of her eye made her glance away.

  Scorpion.

  A scorpion two feet long.

  It skittered at her, fast as a rat, and she screamed and kicked out. Luckily its claws did not cling to the leather of her boots. She rushed into the kitchen. The thing was so fast it was alongside her in seconds. Arrahaquen jumped on to the table, which skreeked across the tiled floor in response and almost made her lose her balance.

  It could not follow her. With futile stabs it tried to pierce her boots with its sting. Appalled, Arrahaquen stared.

  Wildly, she looked around the kitchen for weapons. She would not stand a chance if it got close.

  Knives – hopeless. Forks. Bottles of perry. A bucket. A bucket could be useful. She grabbed it from its hook.

  The scorpion was still jumping at her. She watched it, judged the moment, then dropped the bucket. With a clatter it fell over the scorpion.

  Terrific whacks made the bucket clang, and it jerked across the floor, but the scorpion was trapped. Arrahaquen ran into her bedroom, grabbed her laser pistol, and returned. She threw a book at the bucket then fired as the scorpion sprang out. Hit.

  Then pitch blackness. There was a rustle and the chirrup of a lock-breaker. So she had an enemy, and her enemy was no amateur. Arrahaquen readied a stun pistol and crouched behind the bedroom door. She saw a black shadow twist in the gloom. Had she been heard? It was difficult to see what was going on because now the outer door acted as a mirror, reflecting the image of the sea into her eyes. She pushed open her door and fired at random.

  There was a groan, then a thump. More rustling, then bootsteps on the stairs. Arrahaquen followed, firing down the stairwell at her quarry. People were now emerging from their own front doors. Arrahaquen caught a glimpse of a black-cloaked figure, a short woman it seemed, and she yelled for the escaping invader to be halted. But a gas bomb detonated, and then only coughs and sneezes were her answers.

  Arrahaquen thought fast. Rushing into her apartment she shook a rack of bacteria tubes to give light.

  Arrahaquen could not follow on foot, but she could use the Citadel network. Quickly she opened a link to the bank of camera images that the Citadel Guard used, and accessed a routine to control them. She focused on her block. Just as its front doors appeared on the sputtering screen she saw the short woman running out. It was not an unfamiliar woman: someone she knew, then. Fear and desperation began to well up as she realised that her enemy was a real person. Somebody really was trying to kill her.

  ‘I must follow her. Rosinante camera, you’re pointing the wrong way... lost her. Lost her.’

  Arrahaquen sat back. She heard heavy boots clomping up the stairs: Citadel Guard.

  At her door she waited, a damp mask over her face to avoid the effects of the now rising fog of gas. Two suited figures emerged from the white, billowing clouds, spectral and weird with their black visors and creaking suits.

  ‘What’s going on?’ came a pyuter voice.

  Arrahaquen showed them her card. ‘Intruder. She got away down Rosinante Street. I don’t know who it was.’

  ‘All right, we’ll clear up. Close your door. We’ll have the maintenance crowd up here to replace that smashed exit.’

  Arrahaquen did as she was bid. Inside, she noticed the dead body of the scorpion. It had discharged its venom like a bee, dying with fangs loose on twists of skin hanging out from its jaws. She threw it away.

  So far she had been attacked by a snake, a scorpion, endured two attempted poisonings and a deliberate water infection. Who was it?

  She knew of no enemies. Her mother had enemies – all members of the Red Brigade did – but why kill Ammyvryn’s daughter? She knew too few secrets to be valuable. And this had to be an inside attack. Nobody from outside th
e Citadel could make five such attempts. One, maybe, but not five.

  Her pyuter screen was still flickering, pulling her thoughts back to the woman who had bought a ficus seed. She sat at the rig and requested lists and portraits of known jannitta defenders. Hundreds passed by, none the woman portrayed in her picture. She called up lists of jannitta priestesses, these rather meagre because only defenders were accurately logged, but again did not locate the woman. She sat back, flummoxed.

  She lay back and tried to relax. It was impossible. She locked the door and every window, then checked each room again for assailants. Nothing. She took a green glass bottle of dooch and drank. Now she relaxed.

  Her mind wandered. She wondered what her mother was doing up at the Observatory. She wondered about the end of Kray. She navigated the streets of the Citadel with her mind’s eye, forcing nothing. The Westerly gate. Zinina.

  Zinina was the name. How it came to her, she did not know. Hadn’t there been a defender Zinina in the Citadel Guard? The pyuters said no. But Arrahaquen was certain there had been, though the insistent denials dented her belief.

  One last deed she performed before making for her bed. Emptying the bag of earth into the flowerpot, she planted the ficus seed, watering the soil well, then placing the pot on the south-facing window sill.

  ~

  A storm woke her at dawn next morning, but the brief meteorological tantrum brushed over Kray to leave rain set in, and a gloom so deep people were still using torches as night became day. As Arrahaquen prepared her breakfast – roast cashews, toast, minted honey and blackberry tea set on a silver salver – she made a decision. For now, she would forget the elusive jannitta and concentrate on her attacker. A pyuton replica would be made by Majaq-Aqhaj, the sentient mechanician used by the Red Brigade to devise their agents and technological sundries, and this double Arrahaquen would use to cover her necessary absences from the Citadel. But the whole affair would need to be kept secret. Only her mother and a handful of close friends knew of the four previous attempts.

  Locking her door, she called Ammyvryn. ‘It’s happened again,’ she said.

  ‘Number five. Mmmm. Somebody doesn’t want you around. All right, I’ll make enquiries.’

  Thanks, mother. ‘If you like.’

  ‘I hope you’re safe in there. Invite a friend around to keep you company. Oh – you are all right?’

  Arrahaquen smiled wanly. ‘Yes. A little shaken.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

  A tear escaped Arrahaquen’s eye as she closed the link. No sympathy there. But for the moment she did not want to speak with her friends. All she wanted to do was escape her lot in the Citadel. She thumped her chair in frustration. She had to uncover the truth. Only months remained, if the predictions were correct. But she felt like a child still, and she felt hatred towards her mother for keeping her so, and towards her mother for hiding like a hermit in the Observatory and ignoring her. Arrahaquen knew she was something of a loner, but knew also that she could enjoy the company of other people. It had to be the right people, however.

  And she could not resign her job – she was Ammyvryn’s aide. It simply could not be done. She sometimes wondered if she really had feelings. Often she was treated as if she had none, as if she was just Ammyvryn’s daughter, who performed such-and-such a job for the good of Kray.

  At Defender House, as she arrived two hours after dawn to begin the task of instructing defender groups, all was normal except for the loss overnight of the Jasmine Group. They had been caught in a landslide at the very northern tip of the city – at Highgate, the ancient gate of Kray that had long been deserted and left to rats and buzzards. Arrahaquen allowed herself a bitter laugh at this news, for it was the northerly walls of Kray that were expected to crumble first under green pressure.

  The day passed without incident. Arrahaquen felt irritable, lost almost. Her job carried responsibility, but she felt as though she was dreaming her day away. She cared little for the great maps of Kray, for their ladybird-mounted lights that signified defender positions within the city.

  She had been taught all her life not to be selfish, for the sake of Kray, but now she needed to act for herself. Her privileged access to unique Citadel networks would enable her to do just that.

  CHAPTER 4

  Zinina checked her augmented kit. It consisted of satchels made of leather and aluminium, individually numbered and tied to a Citadel record. Only revellers failed to carry them in the city, and only revellers failed to understand their worth. Zinina added extras to her kit; a length of nylon rope, two sachets of chemicals to make more rope if need be, various lamps, and a wallet of pyuter gadgets designed to circumnavigate irritating Citadel routines.

  It was midnight. Into the rainstorm she stepped, a subdued Graaff-lin at her side. Zinina pulled the draw-strings tight on her hood, checked the ‘ready’ light on her rifle, and headed out into the alley.

  They splashed up Hog Street. A unit of defenders, grime streaking their exhausted faces, jogged by on some errand. On walls Zinina noticed sniffer slugs – the great foot-long black products of some subterranean sewer in Ixia Street – following the slime trails of snails, noticing too how they trapped their prey, crushed their shells and ate them. Up above she noticed the orange spark of a hang-glider engine. And, far away, glimpses of black in the softly glowing sea indicated the arrival of giant turtles to the shores of Kray.

  They hastened north, passing through the Mercantile Quarter, then making along Culverkeys Street until they arrived at the border of Kray’s least populous area, the Gardens.

  Nearby lay nine dead solar mirrors and Kray’s ailing Power Station. This was an old area. Zinina stamped her feet and waited for Graaff-lin to catch up.

  She smelled menthol. It was just a sweet hint in the melange of methane and rot, but she recognised it. She peered through the rain. A few hooded figures splashed along the street, but nobody she recognised.

  The moment passed. Thunder rolled far off. Graaff-lin slipped from a passage and ran up to her. ‘You beat me to it,’ she said with a thick cough. Zinina noticed an antibiotic pad clipped to her mouth and two aerated lozenges in each nostril, a sure sign that Graaff-lin was ill. She wondered if her spluttering, pale, wasted-looking companion was up to the task ahead.

  ‘Are you fit?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s the sudden chill. I’m wearing a heated jumpsuit. I’m sorry I stopped, but I had to put this pad in my mouth.’

  Zinina nodded. ‘Got all your pyuter things? Odds and stuff?’

  ‘I am ready,’ Graaff-lin replied.

  Zinina led Graaff-lin to a narrow passage and pointed out the concrete rubbish dump. ‘This is a dead end. See that rusty steel cover? It’s our way in. Follow me.’

  Graaff-lin did as she was bid, swallowing a handful of pills while Zinina produced an iron rod to prise out the cover. Sheets of green water hindered Zinina, but most of it swirled into the hole created as she pulled up the cover. ‘Jus’ jump,’ she said, shining a bacteria torch into the hole. ‘It’s only a couple of yards. Go on, I’ll follow.’

  Once Graaff-lin had entered Zinina followed, pulling back the cover behind her. She looked around. In the azure light of her torch she saw rusty pyutons, wood cases, streaks of mould, and a quantity of water in puddles. The place seemed not too decayed, though, which came as a relief.

  ‘I’ll light a lamp,’ Graaff-lin said. Yellow light merged with the blue.

  Only one exit presented itself. This led into a similar room, dryer but dustier, and looking back they could see clouds of dust rising and settling. ‘On into that tunnel,’ Zinina said, leading the way. For five hundred yards they walked, until they entered a third room with no exit bar a trapdoor. This Zinina hauled up. She dropped herself into the room below.

  ‘How far now?’ Graaff-lin asked.

  ‘Long way. Come on.’

  The fourth room, a chamber that, judging by the smashed wall-mounted screens and the long, centrally p
laced table, seemed once to have been a meeting place, led into a fifth room. This too had a trapdoor. Zinina lay on the chilly concrete and listened at the plastic cover. A low hum. There seemed also to be a higher-pitched buzzing.

  She looked at Graaff-lin. ‘Let’s wait, eh?’

  A nervous Graaff-lin approached and crouched by Zinina, her knees creaking. ‘Why? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Sure it is. But I can hear the grumble of auto-pallets and other light stuff below. I’d rather wait ’til the tunnel’s clear.’

  ‘And the tunnel below us now is the one leading under the Citadel?’

  ‘Yeah. There’ll probably be quite a climb at the end. It’s basically a service link.’

  Graaff-lin stared into Zinina’s eyes, and Zinina caught a sudden glimpse of the aamlon’s religious intensity. ‘Just how did you come to know of this secret entrance?’

  Zinina shrugged, shifting her kit into a more comfortable position. ‘I was Citadel Guard, y’know. When you work in the Citadel you trade secrets. Secrets are the currency over there.’

  ‘And this is one of yours?’

  ‘I know the tunnel from the other end, and I later found out where those meeting shelters back there came out. This tunnel goes under the Andromeda Quarter and reaches the Power Station.’

  As Zinina placed her ear to the cover once again, Graaff-lin reached out to stroke her neck and head. ‘You are a lovely woman, Zinina. Did you really work as a guard?’

  Zinina paused, looked into the aamlon’s eyes. ‘I just did the job to get closer to the centre of things. And for the safety, of course.’

  ‘I am not sure it is safer within the Citadel,’ Graaff-lin mused, her eyes taking a faraway look.

  ‘Everything I’ve told you is true,’ Zinina said, wanting to make the most of the feeling that had come upon them.