Arrahaquen said, ‘I think you’d better invite me in.’
‘Hoy, you rescued me up the Mercantiles?’
Perplexed at this response, Arrahaquen replied, ‘No.’
‘Then why should I invite you in?’
Arrahaquen had to laugh. ‘You will be answering some questions.’
Zinina, plainly confused but trying to conceal her emotions, paused, looked back at the aamlon, then said, ‘Just who are you? And how d’you know I padded here?’
‘I asked. Now are you going to let me in out of the rain? I’m unarmed.’
‘We are armed,’ the aamlon said. ‘Come in.’
Arrahaquen entered the house, shaking her plastic cloak in the green zone, placing her boots in a shallow tray of disinfectant, then removing her hood.
‘Arrahaquen!’ Zinina breathed.
Arrahaquen sprayed mild verticide on her exposed skin then inflated a pair of slippers. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed. The house was warm, and Arrahaquen noticed, looking through doors and internal windows, that the aamlon followed her culture’s tradition of pyuter excellence.
‘Cup of bilberry tea?’ the aamlon asked.
Arrahaquen smiled, taking a seat. ‘Thank you.’
Zinina sat opposite her. Clearly the jannitta could not believe that Arrahaquen’s appearance was a coincidence.
‘What’s all this about?’ Zinina asked.
‘Your friend...?’ Arrahaquen asked.
Zinina waved her hands in an irritated gesture. ‘Graaff-lin. What do you want from me?’
Arrahaquen sat back, trying to seem relaxed. ‘You and I have much in common.’
‘You’re full of the Portreeve’s crap,’ Zinina retorted. ‘Why’ve you followed me here?’
‘To ask you several questions–’
‘Graaff-lin!’ Zinina called. ‘Check this red bitch for pyuter dots.’
‘She’s free,’ came the reply. ‘And for the Dodspaats’ sake, do not be so rude. She’s my guest.’
Zinina glowered at Arrahaquen. ‘Well?’
‘So we’re both guests here?’ Arrahaquen said. No response. ‘I’m not here to ask you why you’ve not been in the Citadel this last week. I expect you’ve deserted, like many others. That’s of no concern to me. I’m here on my own account, because you and I have a common interest.’
‘I doubt that.’
Arrahaquen shrugged. ‘We’re both growing ficus illuminatus.’
Zinina said, ‘This is a trap. I’m not stupid. Get out.’
Graaff-lin entered the room with a tray. ‘If you are here to interrogate us, Arrahaquen, please do leave.’
‘I’m not. And to prove it–’
Zinina interrupted, ‘You’re here for Rien Zir, ain’t you? I heard about you and your Rien Zir worship.’
‘I am here solely on my account,’ Arrahaquen stated. ‘The heuristic devices that grow from ficus illuminatus seeds are used for deep-probing of pyuter networks. Allow me a guess. We both wish to access the Citadel’s data strata and learn the Portreeve’s plan.’
Neither woman made a reply.
Taking a perspex globe from her kit, Arrahaquen continued, ‘This is the seedling that germinated in my home. I can’t risk leaving it there unattended. I’ll leave it here, with yours–’
‘Ours isn’t here,’ Zinina interrupted.
‘What seed?’ Graaff-lin asked Zinina.
Arrahaquen saw from Zinina’s face that she had revealed a secret. Graaff-lin repeated her question.
‘It’s what was in my kit,’ Zinina muttered. ‘I was going to tell you.’
‘That’s not important now,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘Have you a flowerpot with some sterile earth, Graaff-lin? Pop this in and keep it for me, please.’
Frowning at Zinina, Graaff-lin took the precious globe and studied the tiny seedling inside; but by accident she dropped it. Luckily the seedling remained undamaged, though Graaff-lin cut her finger picking up the perspex shards. Turning quickly to face Arrahaquen, Zinina asked, ‘Have you just come from Rien Zir’s place?’
‘No.’
‘Hmmm. Know a priestess called Arvendyn?’
‘No.’
Zinina nodded. ‘Of course, you could be lying.’
‘I’m not,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘Why do you ask?’
Zinina declined to elaborate. But Graaff-lin, laying the seedling on a side table, said, ‘Arvendyn has contacts with the Gedeese Veert, whose acolytes I imagine you know. What do you know of her?’
‘Nothing,’ said Arrahaquen.
‘She’s lying,” Zinina told her friend.
Arrahaquen sipped her fragrant tea. ‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘Zinina, I’m not lying. You know as well as I do that only the Portreeve and the Red Brigade know what the plan is. I’m Ammyvryn’s daughter, but I’m not a member of the Brigade. I know nothing. But I want to know, now, before the whole race goes green.’
‘Nice speech,’ Zinina said, sarcastically.
‘Tell me some more,’ Graaff-lin encouraged.
Was this aamlon playing the good character? Arrahaquen thought they both sounded honest, though she had noticed certain things about Zinina that made her wonder about the jannitta’s childhood. She said, ‘I’m a parthenogene, Graaff-lin. That Ammyvryn is my mother has no consequence to her work. My other mother ignores me. Look upon me as a reluctant official.’
‘Are you really a parthenogene?’ Zinina asked.
‘Which one bore you?’ Graaff-lin added.
‘Miriquyn, who is now a hermit at the Observatory, just spying the stars and sleeping during the day.’
Zinina pounced on this. ‘How can she spy the stars with her telescopes when it’s always cloudy, eh?’
‘I believe she doesn’t use the optical spectrum.’
‘Hmmph.’
Graaff-lin said, ‘Are you telling us that you are preparing to turn against your own mistresses?’
Arrahaquen laughed with gusto. ‘No, no. I turned long ago. And now somebody tries to assassinate me – that’s how much I’m respected within the Citadel, Zinina.’
There was a long pause at this, and Arrahaquen decided it was time to ask a few questions of her own. ‘Zinina,’ she said, ‘how long is it since you changed from a reveller to a defender?’
Zinina just stared. Her face blanched. Graaff-lin stood back, as though Zinina had become blemished or infected with the pestilence.
‘Well?’ Arrahaquen insisted.
‘How did you know?’ Zinina asked in bitter tones. Her colour had returned, and so, Arrahaquen guessed, had her anger.
‘I’ve been watching you, and Graaff-lin too,’ Arrahaquen said, taking another sip of tea. ‘I noticed your reaction when Graaff-lin cut her finger just now. Some revellers have strict codes about blood, and you seemed almost frightened of Graaff-lin’s little wound... ah, you noticed that, Graaff-lin?’
The aamlon was confused. Caught between a friend and the truth, as though she did not know what to say, she stuttered, ‘At the Infirmary... well, inside, you know...’ She turned to Zinina. ‘I just remembered how you acted when Arvendyn’s jacket was removed, Zinina. I’m sorry.’
Zinina looked away. ‘And the other evidence?’ she demanded.
Arrahaquen continued, ‘That was circumstantial. But you said that you met this Arvendyn at the Infirmary?’
‘Never mind that,’ Zinina said, ‘the evidence?’
Arrahaquen finished her tea. ‘That was lovely, Graaff-lin. Well, your kit number seems very high considering your apparent age, which says to me that it was assigned to you well after you were born, perhaps even after puberty. Then there’s your manner, a sort of tense air that you have, which reminded me of some revellers. Then there’s the fact that you used to, and possibly still do, frequent inns very close to the Cemetery – the Spired Inn and the Hale Inn. So all in all it seemed to me likely that you were once a reveller. Am I correct?’
Zinina slumped back into her chair. ‘Yeah. But I’m not a reveller n
ow.’
‘You aren’t a reveller, I can see that, and I won’t think of you as one,’ Arrahaquen assured her.
Zinina grimaced. ‘And what have you learned of Graaff-lin?’
‘She is a priestess of the Dead Spirits, quite high up judging by the quality of the rigs in this house. I’ve also noticed that you two haven’t known one another for very long.’
‘How can you tell that?’ Graaff-lin asked.
‘I just know. Now, about Arvendyn. She was ill?’
‘We happened across her,’ Zinina said, her self-assurance gone. She seemed limp. ‘We took her in to be made better.’
Arrahaquen realised that now would be a good time to depart, in order to give the women a chance to recover. There would be time later to find out what they knew. ‘It must be well past midnight,’ she said. ‘Our two seeds will be fully grown by the time Vert Day arrives. I’d like us to use them together, if possible, though of course we’ll have to see what happens in the meantime. I intend to broadcast the Portreeve’s plan right across this city, before it’s too late.’
‘That seems laudable,’ Graaff-lin remarked.
Arrahaquen stood, then walked to the green zone in the hall, saying, ‘I’ll set up a code that you can call if you want to speak to me. It will be secret between us three. I’ll call it... ficus.’ She paused, then asked Zinina, ‘By the way, how did you come to know about the properties of the ficus seed?’
‘I was on patrol up the Citadel one time and I came across the body of a defender. It was one of Uqeq’s spies. Anyway, I found a crocus bulb in her kit. I forgot about it at first, but then decided I may as well see what it would grow into. It was a data packet. Yeah, I learnt a lot from that bulb.’
Arrahaquen pulled on her protective clothes, then opened the door. Outside, standing in the puddles, she said to them both, ‘I’ve risked a lot to find you. When I heard that you’d got a seed I couldn’t believe it. Anyway... that’s all done, now. I’ll be in touch.’
Zinina nodded, thoughtfully, but said nothing. Graaff-lin smiled, waved, and said, ‘Auveeders, Arrahaquen. Au nah site.’
‘”Until next time”,’ Arrahaquen translated. ‘Good-bye.’
She splashed through the garden and departed. It had stopped raining. Pausing in the alley, she gazed upward at a halo of light, a pale shape that gave silver linings to the lower clouds. It was the Spaceflower. Like the bell of an alabaster bloom it hung above Kray, apparently only a few hundred miles above the city, glowing softly with light reflected from the sun.
CHAPTER 6
Brought up by her cleric mother Veerj-lin, priestess of the Dodspaat, it was not surprising that Graaff-lin had come to believe that the key to her salvation lay with the Dodspaat, with their whispers and clues in the listening modules of the temple on Onion Street. Life in Kray was for her a great question that required a fabulous answer; and that answer she would find in the Dodspaat, as they revealed their secret knowledge from the other side of the grave and hence allowed the fittest of humanity to escape this doomed city. Of course, nobody except High Priestess Katoh-lin knew who the Dodspaat were, or had been, but to Graaff-lin, and to all the other priestesses and lay members of the temple, they represented the promulgators of historical knowledge.
So when Zinina appeared, and then Arrahaquen only a week or so later, both at this momentous time for Kray, she knew she must turn to the Dodspaat. And then there was the strange discovery of noophytes uncovered under the Citadel. The flurry of events had knocked her backwards.
The Dodspaat must explain everything. In particular they must explain what a serpent had told her when enquiring about the meaning of the word dwan. ‘This is the language of the hearts, of which no human may speak.’ She had recorded this conversation – and if necessary she would ignore temple customs in order to hear what the Dodspaat, in their wisdom, might have to say to her…
It was early evening. Zinina was out, Arrahaquen working in the Citadel. Dressed for the city and standing in her hall’s green zone, Graaff-lin mentally checked her gear. From her kit she took a small mirror to check her mouth. There was a line of painful herpes sores on her lower lip, which made her look ill. Her skin was bad, cracked and pale, and her eyes seemed somewhat glazed over. The bags under them had bags under them.
She opened the front door and stepped out, instructing the security pyuter as she did so. Alley floods had seeped into her garden, but these she overcame by means of wooden stepping blocks set out the previous evening during a lull in the rain. Once out she walked along two garden walls, then jumped down into the alley and set out eastwards for the temple. Living so close to the river was not easy.
During the morning blustery showers of chilly rain from off the sea had crossed the city, but now a brown drizzle had set in, smelling of salt and decaying vegetation. All the streets and alleys were under water around here, many with vegetable matter and human refuse floating about. Patches of yellow were not only caused by rain, Graaff-lin knew.
On more than one occasion as she walked along Onion Street she found herself dazzled by torches and reflections of light off the rippling ground, for, despite the time, the thickness and composition of the clouds today meant that it was dark as dusk. A thousand golden lines of rain fell illuminated by gyrating beams. People, as they went about their business, wore the usual plastic or treated cotton protectives, and long boots with elastics at the tops, but conditions today meant that some also wore face masks and one, Graaff-lin noticed, carried on her back a small respirator. Windows in houses showed the blue lights of bacteria tubes and vases with photoplankton in them, or the yellow of feeble gas lamps and burning wicks in sea-fat. Graaff-lin hurried on.
Arriving at the temple she walked up its alabaster steps, today muddied by streams of water pouring between the marble pillars, halting halfway to catch her breath. She entered through the great double steel doors. Two guards with silver halberds and peaked caps gave the religious finger-wave of recognition. She ignored them.
She stood for a few moments in the main concourse. Great white pillars – some, for this temple stood at the western edge of the Old Quarter, bearing Kray’s most ancient bas-relief leeks – rose up around her to the mural-covered groined ceilings. From all around came the breathy reverberations of a hundred voices, a morass of babbling sound with no single voice discernible. Balconies above seemed full of people. Down here though there were only a few, and the muddy tiled floor could be seen to its furthest extent.
Graaff-lin moved on to the clerical chambers at the rear, but a voice called out, and she stopped and turned.
‘Graaff-lin, Graaff-lin, a moment, mmm, if you please.’ It was aamlon, and spoken by the High Priestess herself.
Graaff-lin waited for her superior to approach. Katoh-lin was a small woman, bent by age, her head like a shrunken apple, her clothes so rich and ornate they seemed to hinder her movement. One eyelid flickered with a nervous twitch. Her right hand gripped a walking stick made from synthesised topaz and shod with gold; in her left she held the jewel-encrusted ear of her high office.
‘Haanjivree,’ Graaff-lin said, using Katoh-lin’s full title.
‘Come to my office,’ Katoh-lin said, her voice little more than a whisper.
‘Yes, haanjivree.’
They walked away from the central concourse and into a maze of marble passages, ending in a small square. Katoh-lin stopped at a door, made a motion with the ear, and walked into her office as the door opened. Graaff-lin followed.
Katoh-lin sat at her desk, a huge, leather-covered oak affair which dwarfed her like a toddler at table. With Katoh-lin’s permission, Graaff-lin sat too. The office was quite small, maybe three yards square, but it had a very high ceiling stained green with Kray-damp. By far the most unusual aspect was the wall-covering, which consisted of the carapaces of land turtles glued to the plaster, the interstices being filled by individually made pieces of enamelled copper.
‘I see you’ve noticed the, mmm, mmm, wall
s,’ Katoh-lin said. ‘They are symbolic of our presence – after all, the Dodspaat have taught us.’
‘Yes,’ Graaff-lin replied.
‘Now then, I called you here for a good reason. Mmm, I want you to take a parcel for me to an address at the Citadel. I trust your, mmm, moral character.’
‘Thank you, haanjivree.’
Katoh-lin opened a drawer at her side and fumbled inside. She withdrew a cotton pouch, but at the same time knocked out a bag of plastic phalluses. Graaff-lin looked at them with interest as Katoh-lin stuffed them back into the drawer.
‘Mmm, yes, here’s your pass.’
Graaff-lin took it. This must be important, for passes could only be made by the nine members of the Red Brigade. ‘You trust me,’ she said.
‘The box is that one by the door. It is, mmm, addressed.’
Graaff-lin picked up the parcel as she departed the office. It was very light. Outside, she paused and shook it, but there was no sound. It was almost as if it was empty.
Speaking to nobody, Graaff-lin departed the temple through a rear door. Her own business would have to wait. As she walked along Malmsey Street, she noticed the first signs of spring. Between cobbles, pale shoots emerged, while from ruined houses came the rampant growth of poison roses, vines and other dangerous plants. There had even been reports of moonflowers growing in the Archaic and Green Quarters of the city, way to the north, although Graaff-lin did not believe them because the reports were made by Gedeese Veert clergy. The winter just gone had been not only the worst in living memory but the worst in non-living memory, too. Old legends spoke of a final year after the world’s harshest winter. For five months, Kray had been gripped in ice and snow. The Citadel had been cut off for most of this time, and the city had tottered like a headless chicken.
As the Citadel neared, she stopped. The black mystery of the Wall was close. Graaff-lin feared the Wall, feared it almost as much as she feared the Clocktower.
She approached the gate. ‘Halt!’ came the synthesised voice.
She halted. From the dim interior of the post two figures emerged.
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