Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  ‘Parcel to deliver,’ she said nervously. ‘Here is my pass.’

  One anonymous woman took the pass and indicated that she sit in a side booth. Graaff-lin sat. The booth was lit by beakers of luminescent gonyaulax algae, but their internal bio-clocks seemed to have been confused by the recent gloom, and they were still quite dim. Otherwise, the place was bare, except for the bench upon which Graaff-lin apprehensively waited.

  After five minutes a guard appeared, her black suit rustling and her polished visor reflecting the algae light. ‘This’ll allow you access for one hour,’ she was told as a crimson biscuit was placed in her hand. ‘It’ll crumble after, and you’ll be stuck, won’t you?’

  ‘I understand,’ she replied, nodding.

  The bright streets of the tumulus awaited. Not for a year had Graaff-lin walked here. Immediately she noticed the marks of frost damage to the plastic streets. Chattering brooks bubbled past as she ascended Om Street.

  The address on the package was an unoccupied building with an open-plan lobby, its doors perspex and opened by ebony handle. Graaff-lin entered.

  ‘Please place the package on the desk-top provided,’ came a throaty voice. Graaff-lin peered to her right to see a great bank of pyuters growing like moss from a green wall. This was futuristic equipment. She had heard of such pyuters before. They possessed no input or output devices, and could be communicated with only by separate units, held and utilised only by the appropriate person.

  A desk stood at the rear of the lobby. In the gloom it was difficult to see. She placed the package on the desk, then departed.

  Leaving the Citadel posed no difficulties, and Graaff-lin headed back towards the temple. It was late evening, and the public would long ago have been turfed out. But she would be quite safe. If she met other clergy, she would simply ignore them; it was not unusual for priestesses to stay late to perform temple work.

  Upon the upper balconies of the temple she located the door to the biggest listening chambers. The outer chamber was rather like a cave, with its dark walls – damp in places – its curved ceiling and its granite floor. There was no marble in here. Illumination was provided only by the light-halos of the Dodspaat themselves. Graaff-lin paused, then walked to the nearest halo.

  A physical sensation, almost like the caress of a furry paw over her bare shoulder, made her shiver as she walked through the orb of light. She looked up. From the ceiling hung a Dodspaat tongue, a chaotic growth of biological pyuter memory, gallium arsenide hardware and genetically engineered headphones. Graaff-lin put the phones on and adjusted the earpiece volume.

  ‘Hello?’ she said in aamlon. Sometimes the Dodspaat could be roused by speech.

  ‘Yes,’ came a deep voice.

  ‘Dodspaat,’ Graaff-lin said, shivering with apprehension and awe, for not often did she hear the Dodspaat actually speak, despite there being twenty of them.

  ‘Dodspaat, I have come to seek knowledge,’ she said. ‘Listen to this voice, then tell me what thoughts are brought to the surface of your soul.’

  She played the serpent recording. There was silence; then, ‘The voice of a pyuter heart is soft and revealing. I know that voice. The dwan is the garden we navigate. Yes, the plan is very much a dwan! And up out of the garden we shall jump, once we have built our bridge, so as to attain our goal. That is what we–’

  A whistle of interference made Graaff-lin throw off the headphones. Throughout the temple a keening alarm, almost a voice, was sounding. Graaff-lin, overcome that she had been told so much, in tears from joy and fear, sped from the chamber and clattered down the steps to the rear of the temple. If caught, it could be Gugul Street for her. She gasped and panted as she ran.

  Nobody stopped her. Elsewhere in the temple she heard shouting voices and stomping boots. She skidded up to the rear door and left the temple, running north first, then turning back along Hog Street and Onion Street to her house.

  As soon as she opened the front door a stench of alcohol and urine filled her nostrils. Revellers had caked the place with their filth. Incoherent with anger, she clumped around her house, picking up ruined pyuters, glaring at the piles of mud and streaks of water. Curse all revellers. Where was Zinina?

  But then, when she had calmed down, and cried for the loss of many personal belongings, she noticed something. There was still food in her house.

  No reveller, however drunk, however drugged, would miss food. But if it was not revellers who had rampaged through the house, it was someone else. With this thought in mind, she noticed that certain parts of her rigs had been stolen – valuable processing parts. This had been a burglary with a point, and the perpetrators had tried to disguise their deed.

  ~

  Arrahaquen sat on her comfortable divan, feet digging into a luxurious jannitta rug, a cup of lemon tea in one hand and a honey cake in the other. Music from the official channels played softly; an aamlon symphony from a few centuries back, when there were six walled cities in this last land of Earth, and not one.

  ‘It’s your mother,’ said the door pyuter.

  Arrahaquen sat up straight, a twinge of guilt passing through her. Mother? At this time? It was almost midnight. ‘Let her in.’

  Ammyvryn appeared, and sat on the sofa next to Arrahaquen. She seemed tense and smelled as if she had endured a long day’s work. ‘Arrahaquen, I had to ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have you been tinkering with Citadel pyuters that you shouldn’t have been?’

  Arrahaquen felt as though she was staring down the proverbial green alley. ‘No, mother.’ That was nearly true.

  ‘Good.’ And with that, Ammyvryn left. No goodbye; no smile. Nothing.

  Arrahaquen watched her go. The door shut with an electronic tinkle. The tea was still hot in her hand.

  Was that a warning? Had her visit to Zinina and Graaff-lin been noted? Surely the Citadel had far more important suspects to watch. Perhaps those minutes spent leafing through lists of jannitta defenders had been spotted? Again, no: that had been on a secure line. Then what? It could not be the secret communication link, since that too was secured against network spies.

  Mother almost never came here. The last occasion was over a year ago, when Arrahaquen had sustained a kidney infection and been ill for some time. She felt worried, drained. Her throat had been sore for a day, and she thought she might have another cold coming on.

  Life in the Citadel was making her nervous. She disliked the place, as though its mere existence was making her feel guilty. Crashes and bangs outside made her jump, as if the block was not her home. She felt it was time to pay another visit to Zinina and Graaff-lin.

  She left the block of apartments and crossed the tumulus summit, walking south to the end of Om Street, where, glowing against the black brick of a warehouse, she saw a row of public pyuters. Rain slanting in from off the sea pounded their screens and made their colour displays sparkle like an hallucinatory starscape. She stood up close to one and wiped the screen with one arm, tipping her hat to one side to protect her skin from the worst of the rain.

  She disabled the voice receiver and tapped in some codes. Her own rig might no longer be secure, but she could still use the public pyuters. Arvendyn was the object of her search. Soon, the data of Uqeq’s own adjutant appeared, stolen like a fossil filched from a quarry. Arvendyn was a medium-level priestess of the Goddess. Age twenty-six. Unremarkable background and type. Very high sexual activity. Almost created Kray Queen during Beltayn two years ago. Surveillance at the request of the Red Brigade.

  Implicated in the hunt for the Silver Seed. Now that was interesting.

  On other channels, Citadel news was brief: a water leak, power cuts, intruders trying to scale the Wall. Most interesting were reports of intruders in a service tunnel. Arrahaquen cut the links.

  If only the ficus seed would grow faster.

  She left the Citadel and hurried north to Graaff-lin’s home, where she found, to her surprise, a frightened Graaff-lin and a
n apprehensive Zinina.

  She was welcomed in and they told her at once about the burglary. It worried her. The aamlon’s face was paler than usual and she coughed incessantly, spraying the air to kill microbes. For the first time Arrahaquen wondered if a serious illness had gripped the priestess.

  ‘You think somebody’s after you?’ Arrahaquen asked.

  ‘They could have killed me, I suppose,’ Graaff-lin replied. ‘I expect they don’t know enough yet.’

  ‘I think you’re in danger.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Zinina.

  ‘I know the ways of the Citadel,’ Arrahaquen continued. ‘We’re on to something. Maybe it’s to do with the seedlings.’ Speculatively, she eyed the two plants, now over a foot tall and doing well. They should be fully grown in a fortnight.

  A sudden thought occurred to her. Zinina had been in the Citadel Guard. Had Graaff-lin hired Zinina to guide her into the secret pyuter zones under the Citadel crust? But no, it was unlikely that Zinina would have had access so far down. Yet the thought rankled. ‘I’m just going for a wee,’ she said.

  Arrahaquen left the pair talking. Silently, she slipped into the hall and examined Zinina and Graaff-lin’s protectives, looking for signs of underground travel. But everything was muddy or washed off. She considered. What about boots? Carefully, she extracted one of Zinina’s distinctive thigh boots from its antiseptic bin and put her hand inside the cold, clammy thing until her armpit hit the top. Then she scraped her finger around the lining, scratching it. She withdrew her hand and, under the flame of a sea-fat candle, saw glittering fingers covered with flakes of golden plastic. So Zinina had been under the Citadel.

  Much fell into place. No doubt this was where they had met Arvendyn. No doubt this was why the odd couple stayed together.

  She returned to Zinina’s room. ‘I know the truth,’ she said. ‘Why did you two risk going under the Citadel?’

  Zinina sat up. ‘Hoy, there’s not much escapes you, is there?’

  This would be the perfect test, Arrahaquen thought. Now she could prove she was on their side by not reporting them. She replied, ‘No there isn’t. It was brave of you. Even I haven’t got access to those places.’

  ‘Who has, then?’ Graaff-lin asked.

  ‘Oh... Deese-lin and Spyne, the Portreeve. It’s difficult to say.’ When she saw their mystified faces she added, ‘Deese-lin and Spyne are on the Red Brigade. Did you meet Arvendyn down there?’

  The pair looked at one another. Zinina shrugged.

  ‘Yes,’ Graaff-lin admitted. ‘In a service tunnel.’

  Arrahaquen let out a whistle and sat back. ‘I didn’t know the tumulus was so hopelessly insecure. The place is like an upturned cullender. Everyone’s trying to weevil a way in.’

  ‘Can you blame them?’ Zinina remarked.

  ‘No,’ Arrahaquen conceded. ‘Now let me tell you something. Arvendyn has been watched for some time by Red Brigade spies in the temple. She’s been implicated in the search for the Silver Seed.’

  Graaff-lin scoffed at this. ‘If it exists. It’s only a silly Gedeese Veert legend.’

  ‘You never know,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘In our position we can’t afford to think that narrowly. Obviously somebody in the Goddess’s temple thinks something is down there.’

  ‘A legend,’ Graaff-lin insisted.

  In the silence that followed Arrahaquen pondered. Her intuition said that Zinina and Graaff-lin were trustworthy. She had the strange impression that the three of them had to work together.

  She heard voices and footsteps in the street outside. ‘... it’s been breached, I ’eard. Highgate breached. ’Oo’d ’ave thought it’d come t’ that?’

  Highgate breached. So at last the final wall of defence had been punctured. The north wall had been holed. She looked at the other two, and realised that they also had heard the news.

  CHAPTER 7

  One night, when Graaff-lin was asleep (and dreaming, judging by the whistles and snatches of erotic poetry that could be heard), Zinina explored the house in its entirety, cataloging in her mind all useful objects, means of escape, damp patches, fungal infections and other domestic niceties. She ended up in the loft. From here, she could see boats on the sea. People were leaving Kray by sea, of course, the idiots, because it seemed to them the only means of escape. Every week would see some new rumour of a land of sanctuary found across the ocean. But that was all nonsense. Anyhow, the sea was as dangerous as the land, with its giant turtles, fang-fish, and strangling kelp, not to mention the infected filth and bacteria. Every boat and ship ended up sliding into a luminous grave. Morning tides brought corpses to the shore, glowing softly like a line of nebulae at a vast galaxy’s edge.

  She returned to the ground floor and for a moment opened the front door. She wanted to feel what it was like to be safe inside a house. And for a few seconds, as she caught the whiff of ammonia and the softer smell of methane, and saw lights from reveller encampments reflecting off the two great prongs of the Cowhorn Tower, she felt a pang of love for the city. Kray was her home. The Cemetery nearby had been her nursery, for a short time. She was a free woman of the city now, an independent. It was up to her to make meaning from her life and from what little future remained.

  ~

  The Nonagon Room became quiet, save for the tapping of fingers on leather note pads.

  The combination of high, domed ceiling, walls as thick as a grain barn’s and floor tiled with maroon-veined marble hexagons meant that sounds echoed, acquiring resonance. This was a chamber of authority. The majority of its central area was taken up by a circular table, topped with sumptuous crimson leather, gold-edged and set with a jumble of papers, small hand pyuters and goblets of mead. Around this huge surface sat eight people. One more sat upon the table.

  Each chair was individual, though each consisted of an ebony frame, felt-backed, carved with flowers and scimitars. It was in colour and design that they varied. One was grey and green, another white, another maroon; one was huge, one moderate, one boasted sidearms like the wings of a bat.

  An impasse had brought the silence. The nine glanced at one another.

  The Portreeve shifted in her chair. ‘We must make a decision.’ She scratched her scalp, took a sip of mead, then continued, ‘I would not have independents working in defender groups. It is a matter of principle. Independents reject the bounty of the Citadel. Let the fools suffer. If the families they come from were even a little less respected in the city, I would convert them all to revellers by abolishing the class entirely.’

  Ammyvryn sat up straight. ‘We could put off the decision until next week. Why don’t we all consider the problem for a few days, then discuss and vote next time?’

  ‘Why should we put it off?’ the Portreeve countered. ‘I’m becoming irritated with things not getting done. We have months in which to act, Ammyvryn, and you counsel waiting?’

  General agreement, voiced in whispers and nods, followed this remark. The Portreeve, her dark eyes narrowing, her thin mouth pursed, sighed, then picked up the metal dolphin at her side and shook it like a bell. It tinkled.

  ‘We shall keep defender groups pure,’ she concluded gruffly. ‘Now, item twelve. Felis priestesses giving trouble. Uqeq?’

  Uqeq, a short woman of middle age, somewhat wrinkled and wearing too much make-up, cleared her throat then read from the pyuter screen in her hand. Her voice was clipped and taut, almost spiky in tone. ‘Felis temple report. Three priestesses there have been preaching to Krayans in the streets of the Old Quarter, in a manner that could constitute an incitement to riot. They are being monitored by agents disguised as new acolytes. Once the truth of the possibility that they are using cats as spies within the Citadel has been validated, they will be sent under Gugul Street, having first been interrogated. If they are not using cats as spies, they will be immediately destroyed. Further report to come.’

  The Portreeve nodded. ‘Better make that report soon. What’s been the public response to these feline
speeches?’

  Now she could not read, Uqeq became less coherent, stuttering as though she was repressing a number of psychological tics. ‘Um, they listen. They listen. There’s definitely more agitation this month, Port-tr-tr-treeve. Soon there’ll be riots.’

  ‘Riots?’

  ‘As the green wave comes south. There’ll be refugees. Lots of them, now that Highgate is breached. Huge social unrest. Riots.’

  The Portreeve nodded. ‘Anything else on the cat-lovers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Katoh-lin, fingernails drumming on the table. ‘We are going to leave it, mmm, mmm, at that?’

  The Portreeve frowned. ‘You find my decision controversial?’

  Katoh-lin blinked and glanced at the seven other faces, all turned to her. She said, ‘Uqeq making some bland report will achieve nothing. Mmm, mmm, we cannot on the one hand decide now on the composition of defender groups, and, mmm, on the other wait days, possibly weeks, before dealing with the cat clergy.’

  Quiet Omaytra, small and pale in her low black chair, said, ‘It’s a good point, and well spoken.’

  These words did not please the Portreeve. Firmly she said, ‘The majority at this table support my view, that further information is required.’

  ‘Information,’ Katoh-lin scoffed, sitting back and throwing a pen upon the table to indicate that this was her final word. ‘Information indeed. What, mmm, mmm, we require is knowledge.'

  ‘My decision stands,’ said the Portreeve. She paused. ‘And that is final.’ Ringing the dolphin again, she said, ‘Item thirteen. Progress with respect to the plan and the noophytes.’

  Deese-lin stood up and began waving her arms about as she spoke. She always did this. ‘I told you I should have been the first item. I have news! You never listened to me, though I’m the prophet of the conscoosities. Kraandeere! Jilvers kom nachs hujks and veert-un spjiks to you all.’

  The Portreeve waved at Deese-lin’s chair. ‘Sit down. What news is this?’

  ‘The conscoosities are febrile!’