Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  Escaping the crowning festivities, they wandered down Ash Lane. Final customs were being enjoyed. At the harbour, women threw wax effigies of men into the water.

  It was as the day waned that, returning north, they came across a street party composed mainly of jannitta women, and Zinina insisted that they stay to enjoy the last festivities. Zinina was tipsy, and starting to sing badly. Arrahaquen sat on a log and watched. She had not been there long when a short woman approached her, dressed in poor sackcloth, her scalp scarred, her face green-spotted and wrinkled. ‘Excuse me, would you be able to assist my poorly daughter?’

  ‘Um,’ Arrahaquen said, glancing towards Zinina but failing to catch her eye. ‘I’ll take a brief peep. I have to be back at the temple, you know.’

  ‘Most kind.’

  The woman led her into an alley, but turned almost immediately and took from her pocket a piece of paper and a pencil. ‘Do you know who this is?’ she asked, turning the paper so that Arrahaquen saw a face. Suddenly she was frightened, knowing that this woman was not what she seemed.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘More to the point, who are you?’ The woman smiled and pointed the pencil at Arrahaquen’s face. There was a hiss and an acid smell... then blackness.

  ~

  A cold rain fell from grey-black clouds. East of that dismal park where the Cowhorn Tower leaned over the Cemetery, from somewhere near the Gardens, came the sounds of gunfire.

  It was Beltayn evening.

  Two figures walked along a path nestling between the Cemetery wall and the pleasure garden which surrounded the Cowhorn Tower. The path followed a sinuous depression, its grit and glass surface crunching as the two pairs of boots passed by.

  One figure, Hains – a man – wore a plastic suit with the hood drawn tight, and leather thigh boots. He was tall and strong. Tashyndy, the new Kray Queen, glanced down at her own clothes, ensuring that he could not see her face under the cotton balaclava and cowl. Her robe was scarlet, trimmed with black leaves. Crimson gloves covered her hands.

  They turned off the lane and climbed a short path up to the Cowhorn Tower, where they paused. A hum emanated from its two prongs, caused by the wind passing through at a certain speed off the sea. Fifty yards up, these horns shed water. Below, the bulk of the tower, an irregular copper ovoid forty yards across supported on a pillar half as wide, showed verdigris through the rain. The horns, curving around, with their spherical end knobs, seemed like tentacles with eyes daring them to continue. They walked towards the tower’s only door, made of steel.

  It was not the first time that Tashyndy had entered the Cowhorn Tower. The smell of fish tainted with musk was familiar, bringing to mind a similar odour in the Fish Chambers. It excited her, and made her clutch Hains’ arm. The endometrial walls of the main chamber consisted of a spiral arcade of niches, reached by steps and a collection of spiral staircases, and lit by rows of yellow lamps.

  From above came cries and sighs, occasionally gasps. Every human voice was echoed by the same voice – the deep, rich voice of the Cowhorn Tower, a voice that often frightened newcomers away.

  Tashyndy said, ‘Shall we find a soft chamber?’

  ‘Yes... yes,’ replied Hains, head held back as he stared up at the structures around him.

  ‘Is this your first time?’

  He paused. She knew he had not been here before. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not the first. Though I wouldn’t say I was a regular.’

  As he told this lie Tashyndy’s mind was drawn to a package wrapped in leaves, carried in her pocket. She thought she could feel it against her skin. She shivered.

  ‘All right?’ he whispered.

  In reply she led him to a staircase, which they climbed, ascending to the lower bowl of the main chamber. Amidst the niches and alcoves set into the outer wall and curtained off from the gangways, she saw illuminated cysts and crevices, many ice-covered. Above and around she spied drones, ranging in size from insect to dog, ticking as they scuttled around on their unknown tasks. Many were damp, or covered with sticky fluid, while others seemed to be restricted in movement by ice as though they were rheumatic.

  The pair ascended further into the bowl, echoes following them. Drones clicked by, on legs, wheels, or squeaking treads, while others navigated the walls like spiders. The continual hum, the melange of sound and echo, drummed into Tashyndy’s brain and she longed to be behind a curtain, a thick curtain that would diminish the noise.

  At the left horn she located a chamber, pulled Hains in, and drew the curtain. She sat him on the couch.

  The alcove was warm, lit by a goblet of luminous plankton, with a sumptuous circular couch. ‘Now, wait here. You might like to get undressed now. Or I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘Maybe–’

  ‘I think I’d like you to undress while I’m out. But I’ll be back in a minute, ready for you.’

  He nodded, masking his confusion. Hains was a reveller, plucked last autumn off the streets and allowed to become healthy again in the secluded gazebos behind the Goddess’s temple. But it was important that he not be anxious, so she stroked him and made a cosy place in the couch, then took a flask of baqa from her cloak pocket and offered it to him.

  Outside, she removed her cloak, boots and underwear. She checked her reflection in a capsule cover dark enough inside to act as a mirror. Her skin was red, dyed during the night with a concoction of alizarin red, wine and oil, her lips were painted black, her hair was slicked back with ochre, and brown spots decorated her thighs. She stroked herself, then returned to Hains.

  He was shocked at her appearance. ‘Do all Kray Queens do that?’

  ‘That?’ she replied, her mind already becoming hazy.

  ‘Paint themselves.’

  ‘It’s a tradition,’ she said, pushing him down on the couch and sitting on him. A drone sidled into their alcove.

  He was not an imaginative enough lover to see that fun was the point of the day.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she murmured. ‘Relax. Trust me, you’re with the Kray Queen.’

  She wriggled under him and drew her cloak nearer to her right hand, plumping it up as he moved above her so that the package in the pocket was within reach, drawing her legs back and up so he could find a comfortable position. Other machines crawled under the couch.

  Then Hains began to reinterpret her wishes. ‘Why don’t I–’

  ‘Just... just enjoy yourself, Hains. Don’t get so bossy.’

  ‘I’m not bossy.’

  The machines under their couch ticked to themselves. Petulantly, he asked, ‘Don’t I get a chance to say what to do?’

  ‘No. That’s the whole point.’

  He rose up above her, his attention elsewhere. Tashyndy reached for the package, found the base of the cat-claw, and held it in its leaf glove while he lectured her. Then, as he ran out of things to say, she scratched his back. He turned, and saw the fluid on the point of the claw.

  With a shove of her thighs and belly, Tashyndy threw him off the couch. She had hoped this would not happen. But Hains had tried to dominate where there was no need to dominate. He lay twitching, staring at her, trying to say something. Slowly the haze of sex withdrew from her mind. Her senses lost a feeling of unity that they had previously enjoyed, and the heat, movement, colour, bodies, sounds, smells, touches were all fragmented.

  The drone pyutons sprang upon the bed like silverfish as she dressed herself and she watched them scrape at the damp patches. She reversed the cloak, showing an olive colour trimmed with black leaves. Opening the curtain let in a little light. Hains was dead. One drone lifted his penis and began cutting away at his scrotum. As Tashyndy pulled on her boots, the drone extracted his balls. She put on the balaclava, pulled up the cowl, and departed humming a sun-mantra. The drones followed later, placing their cargo in a capsule around which ice lay thick.

  Standing at the bottom of the Cowhorn Tower, Tashyndy sadly contemplated the failure of which she had been a part. Today’s
events had epitomised the disappointment of men and women of earlier generations.

  She watched other drone pyutons carrying their cargoes around the place. For forty years the Cowhorn Tower had stood here, storing human seed much as a gardener stored plant seed. She wondered how much longer it would survive, and why the drones carried on regardless.

  ~

  Graaff-lin found herself unable to cope with what had happened. Her deities, the Dodspaat, had collaborated in a Citadel plot. But she could not be angry with them. Not one of the twenty could she harangue as they lay remote, thinking their dead thoughts, ignoring her like a bad mother ignores a daughter. It made her feel sick.

  She knew she had no choice but to excommunicate herself from the Temple of the Dodspaat. Remaining a part of it would be tantamount to heresy. All she had to do was refuse to perform her ecclesiastical duties three times in succession and it would be done. So far, she had failed to turn up at the temple twice. She knew she could not return. Mysrioque would have her arrested and sent to the Citadel, for Graaff-lin did not doubt that the new High Priestess was in the service of the Portreeve, and very likely was Katoh-lin’s replacement in the Red Brigade too. How appalling that the faith of the Dodspaat should be so perverted.

  Her next official office was due some hours hence, starting on the first minute after Beltayn. If she did not appear to minister to the Dodspaat and to the public, she would automatically be recorded as excommunicated.

  She sat alone in the house. Zinina was out searching for Arrahaquen, who had not appeared since they had lost each other earlier that evening. Graaff-lin cared not where Arrahaquen had gone.

  Midnight drew near. Gunfire could be heard from the soggy groves and fungal alleys of the Green Quarter. It was expected that the north-eastern wall of the Gardens would soon collapse, and the Gardens and Green Quarter would merge to become one vast forbidden area, bordered to the north by the Venus Trap, to the east by the lonely, eerie ruins of the Andromeda Quarter, to the south by the Mercantile Quarter, and to the west by that narrow strip of land that was the Carmine Quarter. Soon, Graaff-lin realised, the entire north of the city would be uninhabitable. Automatic gunfire again disturbed her thoughts.

  Unsettled, she climbed into the upper floor of the house to look from the gable window, extending a hand-telescope to aid her vision. Along a distant section of Feverfew Street she saw scores of people fighting, an amorphous mass which could not be differentiated into defenders, revellers, or any group at all. No doubt local factions – now beginning to appear in response to the Portreeve’s unannounced plan – were warring.

  An orange flash eastward caught her eye. She looked east, towards the Power Station and the buildings around it, to see the silhouette of ridges stark against orange and black smoke. She saw too the ruined stanchions of towers and the blasted chimneys of dwellings. Destroyed machines spat white spark sprays into the air.

  And way south, though it was too far away to be sure, she thought she saw momentary lines of light, orange and green – the signs of laser weapons.

  She returned to her own room, her stomach roiling. She felt nauseous. To take her mind away from her ailing body she considered her plans once more. All contact with the Dodspaat via the temple being impossible, one option remained – the serpents. The thought reminded her of the prophecy given on the day she had met Zinina: “a green cushion falling upon a waif.” Katoh-lin. It had to be.

  It would be risky now to question the serpents in person, but Graaff-lin felt she had no choice. She must reach the Dodspaat somehow, to make sense of what had happened. They alone could dispense truth. And alone, untroubled by officious priestesses or nosy acolytes, she could perhaps utilise Kray’s serpentine links.

  She felt nauseous again. Suddenly aware that her body was working out of control, she dashed to the nearest basin to be sick.

  Angry at herself she returned to her room, but she could not sit still, and so wandered around the house. Midnight drew near. Still Zinina had not returned.

  Then it was midnight: Beltayn’s end. Graaff-lin linked up with the public pyuter of the Dodspaat temple and requested a complete list of priestesses. Her name was absent.

  Her heart beat fast and her throat tightened with emotion. She felt angry, not sad. She wanted to go to the temple and berate them for being so stupid. But she could not. She was trapped in a dangerous house with a heathen and a heretic.

  The front door slammed shut. Zinina huffed and cursed as she removed her boots and protectives.

  ‘Did you find Arrahaquen?’ Graaff-lin called.

  ‘No,’ Zinina replied, entering the room. ‘Tomorrow I’ll have to search the whole damn city. It’s your fault. If you had come I wouldn’t have lost her.’

  Angered again, Graaff-lin stood up. ‘You shouldn’t have got drunk.’

  ‘Everyone gets ripped on Beltayn, except straightjackets such as yourself.’

  ‘Have you been to the Gedeese Veert’s temple?’ Graaff-lin countered.

  ‘No. I’ll do all that tomorrow.’

  Graaff-lin nodded. ‘Then goodnight. I am going to bed.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Zinina woke with a headache. For a few minutes she lay in bed listening to the creaking of the house and the rustling of Kray, until she heard Graaff-lin speaking to a pyuter and decided to get up. She showered in medicated water, spread depilating cream over her head, wiped it off with a towel, then dressed.

  Breakfast consisted of the remains of last night’s Food Station meal – some grey stuff, some white stuff, and some carrots that tasted only of salt water. She dropped vitamin supplements into the mess as it bubbled over the gas burner.

  Food in hand, she went to see Graaff-lin, who was in her workroom. ‘Still no Arrahaquen,’ she remarked.

  ‘That is not my fault,’ replied Graaff-lin.

  Zinina said nothing. She watched Graaff-lin instructing her pyuters by squeezing the contours of a soft metal ball. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘she’s gone back to the Citadel, to her real friends. Maybe she was spying on us.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Graaff-lin, not looking up from her work.

  Irritated, Zinina said, ‘Don’t you care then?’

  ‘I simply do not know what has happened and I realise we cannot find out. If she is dead, she is dead.’

  ‘Well I’m going to do something. I’m not sitting round here. It’s like jumping in a green pool.’

  ‘You go out and look some more,’ said Graaff-lin, ‘but as sure as seeds is seeds I am not. I have work to do concerning our discoveries.’

  Zinina dressed for the city, pulling her protectives from their antiseptic bin and her boots from the tray of disinfectant. As she opened the front door Graaff-lin called, ‘If you do not find her, do not come back and vent your frustrations on me.’

  Zinina departed without a word.

  The nearest wall-pyuter was dead. She walked down to Pine Street, stopping at another wall-pyuter, this time one that worked. The rain beat against her ears as she keyed in a link to the Citadel’s public network, a constant patter, like an eternal drumroll signifying the demise of humanity.

  The crimson query mark appeared. Zinina requested knowledge of the independent Haquyn, then, when that returned a negative, of the priestess Haquyn. Nothing.

  Depressed, she walked up Hog Street then took back alleys leading to the Infirmary. Here, she noticed that a number of passages were blocked by barbed wire, and on some of these barriers were hung fragments of wood painted with green triangles, the sign for a green alley – in other words, the sign for ‘keep out’. She hurried on, the stench of atmospheric ozone on the wind making her choke.

  The Infirmary were not treating Arrahaquen, nor had she been in as a casualty. So Zinina walked the short lane that led to the Dispensary.

  Eight defenders armed with needle rifles and a laser bazooka greeted her. Because of its reveller problem, the Dispensary required continuous defence. Zinina noticed a charred corpse nearby, left u
ntouched to deter others.

  Arrahaquen had not been seen at the Harbour, nor at the Temple of Balloon Love. The priestess outside Rien Zir’s temple had not seen her. And nor was she at the Spired Inn.

  Zinina trudged back along Morte Street. She did not know what to do. Worry was beginning to consume her, and, over and over, she tried to think where outside the Citadel Arrahaquen could be. She glanced into the Cemetery, and saw a figure.

  It was a most unusual person. In fact, it looked like a man.

  A man! Most likely he was a reveller of course, but still, how often did anybody see a man outside of the Fish Chambers?

  Zinina climbed over the wall and, crouched low, ran to a line of hedge, along which she hurried until she could see him more clearly. It was indeed a man; sitting in a canvas chair, an umbrella over him to ward off the rain, and reading a book. He was dressed in dark knee boots with blue elastics, brown corduroy trousers, and the biggest, blackest greatcoat Zinina had ever seen. His scalp was hairless, but his cheeks grew stubble. He seemed to be eating something, and as she watched Zinina saw him extract a cube from a silver packet and pop it into his mouth.

  Zinina was intrigued. The man’s eyes were deep and brown, though rather rheumy, while his mouth was wide and thin-lipped, and his nose narrow and almost malformed with its high ridge.

  Standing, she took out a short knife from her kit, then approached.

  He heard her, and looked around.

  ‘Fear not, good woman,’ he said, glancing at the knife. ‘I am harmless. Replace your dirk in its receptacle.’

  Zinina stood before him. His voice was deep, resonant, and every word was enunciated with clarity. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘once I know who you are and what you’re doing in this tombgarden.’

  He looked around him. ‘The Cemetery? I come here for the nepenthic quality inculcated within me. Surely you too would wish to forget your every care awhile?’