Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  Arrahaquen felt isolated. She felt like a Citadel child once more, barred from friendship with these two women.

  DeKray, lighting a new cigarette, said, ‘There is a solution to this minor problem, which I shall suggest.’

  ‘I’m not staying with you,’ Arrahaquen said.

  ‘You sure ain’t,’ Zinina smugly remarked.

  ‘Please,’ deKray insisted, ‘allow me to speak. I used to reside in the Carmine Quarter. Though that part of the city is dangerous, it is habitable. Off Sphagnum Street, in Cochineal Mews, I own an empty house. It belonged to the independent who was my guardian. Arrahaquen, I would consider it an honour if you took it as your own.’

  Arrahaquen considered the merits of this proposal. Very quickly she saw its advantages and, for a moment, she caught mental images of what it might look like... as if she had already been there. ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘What about an acolyte disguise?’ Zinina said.

  Arrahaquen shook her head. ‘The Citadel has already forgotten I ever existed.’

  ~

  The house was decrepit. Rotting away, the Carmine Quarter was a maze of green alleys and ivy thickets, of local zones surrounded by barbed wire and vibration mines. Arrahaquen, standing at the orange-specked front door, heard automatic gunfire and the detonations of grenades. She smelled overflowing sewers, rotting vegetation, and the sickly odour of death-rose pollen. Around her, one house in three was a pile of bricks and mortar half concealed by luxuriant foliage. It did not bode well.

  ‘Inside, it is sealed,’ deKray said, looking embarrassed. ‘When I was here last all was secure. The roof does not leak much, as I recall.’

  ‘And when were you here last?’

  He hesitated. ‘We would be referring to a date last year...’

  Arrahaquen nodded. This would have to be home, just for a while.

  CHAPTER 15

  Taziqi, High Priestess of the Goddess’ temple, plucking a ripe grape from the bunch at her side, waited while the other three thought about what she had said.

  They were sitting inside Rien Zir’s inner sanctum. Around them, the wooden levels and mazes of the temple emitted a subliminal symphony of sounds, from the creaks and groans of joists, through the tap-tap-tapping of feet, to human voices. As a foundation to all this, a basso tone, resonant and almost too low to hear, rose and fell in volume as sacred pyuters picked up the ebb and flow of sap in the plants of the temple. But this particular room, hung with green and white tapestries and amply supplied with jugs of fresh water and plates of apples and oranges, also ticked and clicked in synchrony with the secret temple network next door.

  Tashyndy seemed as nonchalant as ever. The Kray Queen hardly ever departed the Fish Chambers. She possessed a keen mind, however. Maharyny kept her eyes closed and pressed her hands together in a steeple shape while she thought. A great academic, Maharyny – she had to be to make sense of serpent talk – but too logical a thinker. Arvendyn, nodding to herself and glancing across to Taziqi, also seemed calm.

  Taziqi plucked another grape. In response, the orange-peel flesh of her arms rippled, like water in a balloon. Her body was today sheathed in a lime green dress. The other three were naked, although Tashyndy wore strands of grass and ivy in her blonde hair.

  ‘Have we all decided?’ Arvendyn asked.

  Taziqi looked at the others. Maharyny opened her eyes and said, ‘I’ve decided.’

  Tashyndy nodded.

  Arvendyn said, ‘We must take the risk. I believe in Maharyny’s powers of deduction.’

  ‘That is a good opinion,’ said Taziqi. ‘So let’s hope it chimes with what Rien Zir is preparing for us.’

  ‘I agree, but with many reservations,’ replied Maharyny. ‘For example, we know the wyrm ball can see future truth, but how accurate is it?’

  ‘How accurate are the Eastcity serpents?’ asked Arvendyn.

  ‘They compare to our wyrm ball as a gibbon compares to a woman,’ Maharyny replied. ‘Do not speak of them.’

  Taziqi shrugged. ‘Remember the future is a gift from Rien Zir. We are Rien Zir’s quartet. Her gift must be accurate, else all we live for is an illusion.’

  ‘It’s not so simple,’ replied Maharyny, ‘for we are all part of the Goddess’ mind, we are all one. Even such as the noophytes with their partial future memories are part of the Goddess’ mind, and so I should be able to see something of them. But I cannot.’

  Taziqi bowed her head, acknowledging the fertility of Maharyny’s knowledge. ‘Tashyndy, what do you think?’

  ‘I say give ourselves up to the Goddess’ will,’ said Tashyndy, stroking one leg in an absent-minded gesture as she spoke. ‘But there is one factor in all this that we seem to have forgotten, and that’s Arrahaquen. We watched her for so long. She was so much a part of our future, or so we were told. Yet now she’s gone.’

  ‘She is without doubt hanging under Gugul Street,’ Maharyny said. ‘For the wyrm ball said she was caught. Now she exists nowhere that can be seen, and so she must be dead.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Let’s not grieve further for that one, taken away by Rien Zir,’ Taziqi said. ‘Let’s look to the immediate future. Soon, the attack will come, and in its aftermath we could take our place in Kray.’ She laughed. ‘Not for nothing do we live in the Carmine Quarter, where so many of the streets are named for the colour red. The colour of influence.’

  ‘I have foreseen some success,’ said Maharyny, ‘but still it is too murky to see details, and many will die here.’

  Taziqi nodded. ‘This quarter of Kray used to be the old centre of influence, at the time when Rien Zir’s temples were over in Eastcity, in the Andromeda Quarter. No, our time is now. We are at that eschatological point – the final year. This is our time and Rien Zir’s time. The Citadel is but a pimple compared to our great organ of fertility.’

  ‘Soon,’ Arvendyn agreed, ‘the Goddess’ thoughts will come down to us, like manna after rain, and humanity may face a better future. But how close do we live to death? The Carmine’s facing green difficulties right now.’

  Taziqi pondered this excellent point. ‘Let’s go to the earth pit,’ she suggested.

  Tashyndy, still stroking her leg, had made a green streak on her skin. She stood up. ‘Yes, let’s,’ she said, happily.

  So they walked into Rien Zir’s secret chamber. It was a wooden room, circular, with a high roof from which great pyuter sprays descended, pulsing with green light, connected by optical lianas to networks growing like fungus from the walls. Centrally placed lay a pit in the soil, and in this writhed a ball of serpents, their tails attached to a gold nub.

  This was their link with the noophytes. According to legend, a lone noophyte, now known only as the Silver Seed, had long ago separated from the others. The wyrm ball was a creation of Rien Zir, from whose belly-button the Silver Seed had emerged. It gave the priestesses of Rien Zir a vision of the future, a vision transmitted through the vehicle of the Silver Seed from the numinous mind of Rien Zir herself.

  If they could only locate the Silver Seed, then the future would be as clear as the past.

  ~

  Days passed, and Zinina grew ever more friendly with deKray. This upset Graaff-lin. Accusations flew. Graaff-lin felt she was doing all the work while Zinina dallied with a man. The fact that Graaff-lin had managed to find out no more concerning the noophytes only increased her frustration. Zinina pointed out how useful deKray could be, and how generous he was with his time and property. ‘How can you object to us being friends?’ Zinina would ask, time after time.

  ‘This is my house,’ Graaff-lin would usually respond.

  DeKray proved trustworthy. Soon there were stolen kisses when Graaff-lin was looking elsewhere. It became a game. Forgetting the debt she owed Graaff-lin, Zinina, out of perversity, tried to get away with as much as she could.

  A quiet day arrived, wet outside, humid in. With Graaff-lin out in the city, working at the alcoves of different serpents, Zin
ina took advantage of the fact that she and deKray were alone in the house.

  She teased him at first, feeling a thrill of power, as though her personal limits – her sexual limits – had been vastly expanded by their solitude. She left him uncertain as to what she wanted, then made it clear. He seemed confused about everything, poor man, although he obviously wanted her. It amused Zinina greatly that she could be so fickle and careless.

  After drinking watered baqa through straws, and taking much time on the bed to undress one another, Zinina found herself lying naked beside him, looking at him; and suddenly afraid.

  Erect, he was maybe as big as the best endowed man in the Fish Chambers. Zinina could not look away. He seemed relaxed – no doubt the baqa. They rather inexpertly kissed, and although it was fun trying different things out on each other Zinina found it difficult to touch herself, or him.

  She was afraid of what he might do. After all, he was free on the bed, charming, self-deprecating and slightly inattentive as usual, but still a loose man. Untied.

  She rose above him, allowing him to play with her breasts, which were now a little cold from sweat. ‘DeKray,’ she said, feeling genuinely sorry, ‘I can’t do it if you’re free. I’m going to have to tie you up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I really am. I’ve just got to do it. I can’t make myself fuck a loose man. Not that I don’t trust you.’

  He nodded. ‘Indeed not. Well... to save you the indignity, what about if I tie my ankles to the lower rail, and then one wrist, my left, leaving you with only one wrist to secure? That should save you three quarters of the ignominy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, uncertain as to whether the urbane tone had hardened into sarcasm. He seemed happy enough. While she refilled their glasses with baqa, and slung a blanket at the bottom of the door to prevent draughts, he took pieces of fabric and tied himself up. Laughing, a little embarrassed, Zinina tied his right wrist, kissing it as she did so, feeling between his legs at the same time to sustain his excitement.

  She tried to mount him, but found that she was still too dry.

  ‘Honey,’ said deKray. ‘It is admirable for occasions such as this, so I have found.’

  Zinina, heart sinking at how badly this all seemed to be going, and beginning to regret it, dressed in a gown and dashed to the kitchen. He was still excited for her. In seconds, she was ready and upon him, and he was inside her.

  They made love for what seemed to be hours. DeKray was demonstrative, though not especially vocal. For Zinina it was fun, though not ecstatic. Sincerely, she praised him, said how fond of him she was, and how glad she was that their paths had crossed. He was thrilled to be with her, that much was clear.

  ‘Would you mind untying that one?’ he asked, nodding towards the knot that Zinina had tied.

  ‘I’ll do them all,’ she said, now keen to release him.

  ‘The other three I secured using slip knots,’ deKray replied, twisting slightly. Zinina was amazed to see the three knots he had tied come loose. So he had been free all the time.

  For the briefest instant she felt anger that he had tricked her. He had betrayed their unspoken rules. But then she just laughed. It didn’t matter. He was safe. He was not going to attack her.

  He laughed, too.

  ‘Let’s make a wonderful lunch,’ Zinina said. ‘Let’s raid all the stores and cook up something, eh?’

  ‘That would be most good,’ he replied.

  They had built up a supply of dried and dehydrated food, as well as some in aluminium tins. Strictly speaking these were stores not meant to be touched – for Westcity Food Station still doled out food, albeit inedible mush – but Zinina felt it was time to relax traditional Kray rules. They spread everything on the kitchen table.

  Zinina chose apple sauce mix to start with, then a packet of stew mix that she could use with some old mushrooms and a parsnip, and then pulled out a tin of apricots and a packet of mint.

  Soon they lay on their bed again, each with a tray of food. Zinina refilled the baqa glasses. She was becoming tipsy. The apple sauce she placed at the edge of her steaming stew, and then they both tucked in. After weeks of eating insipid, textureless muck, it tasted almost too good.

  DeKray seemed to feel the same as her. His face creased with smiles as he ate and he swapped a mushroom for some parsnip. In fact he was just like her, not different at all, despite not being a woman. Zinina wondered if at any point she would run away from him, or if she would throw him out. This was new to her.

  The apricots and mint they ate last, deKray fetching uz from a cabinet and pouring a tiny drop in both bowls to sharpen the flavour.

  Afterwards, they sat on the bed and finished off the first bottle of baqa. DeKray’s speech was slurring ever so slightly.

  Zinina found herself wanting him again. Brashly, she pulled off the gown that he wore. They knocked the trays and crockery off the bed and kissed, passion making them keen for one another. Zinina pulled off her own gown, and let his tongue travel over her body. She played with him, her fingers becoming expert at the art of arousal.

  The room was very warm. Sweet sweat dripped from Zinina and from him, and she imagined what it would be like just having him on top of her...

  Suddenly excited, squirming around, she lay on her back, shoved him so that he crouched above her, then spread her legs, at the same time gesturing him down with her arms. He did not fail to gather her meaning.

  Ecstasy rarely experienced in the Fish Chambers took Zinina as he entered her. She cared nothing about safety; she knew he would not ruin these unique moments. Because of the strangeness of their coupling she quite lost control of herself. Before he climaxed she convulsed three or four times, or five, she lost count, and anyway did not care. She gripped his back when he ejaculated.

  Her senses seemed to have merged for a few instants. Now, exhausted and overheating – she was desperate for water but could find only more baqa – she was becoming aware of the world around her once more.

  Now she could think properly. This would never happen again, she knew. There could only be one second time. Of course, they could try the position again, but Zinina knew that equal or greater pleasure awaited her when she next mounted him, for all was now changed. She was one of the very few who had made love more than once with the same man. Maybe she was unique.

  ‘Let us open the other bottle,’ he suggested.

  They drank a toast to themselves. ‘To our bed,’ Zinina said.

  ‘I trust Graaff-lin will not return home and surprise us,’ answered deKray.

  ‘She should be home soon,’ said Zinina, not caring when Graaff-lin returned.

  ‘I do hope she is safe.’

  ‘She’s safe, she’s safe.’

  The afternoon meandered on. Although she wanted to bed deKray a third time, Zinina found that he was not up to the effort, so they dressed and drank much more, turning some music up loud until a power cut brought silence. Outside, the rain drummed against the shutters and the roof, and the sounds of water gurgling down gutters became louder. There were a few rolls of thunder as evening arrived.

  Graaff-lin arrived shortly after. She had spent the whole day with the serpents, but had also watched her old temple.

  ‘Do not be tempted to return there,’ deKray warned.

  ‘No, keep out,’ Zinina agreed.

  Graaff-lin slumped into a chair. The rain on her face seemed to be augmented by tears; it was difficult to tell. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ she said. ‘I don’t know whether the serpents will give us clues to the plan, or whether they will not. I thought I heard a new word, but–’

  ‘A new noophyte word?’ deKray broke in. ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to interrupt.’

  Graaff-lin ignored his apology. ‘Yes. I replayed a serpent prophecy directly back to it, hoping to set up a resonance. The thing said it lived in a place called Gwmru.’

  ‘Gwmru,’ deKray mused. ‘I have heard mention of that name in connection with noo
phytes. Mayhap it is in one of my ancient lexicons.’

  ‘Find out,’ Zinina said.

  ‘Indeed I will.’ Intrigued, deKray lit a cigarette and began puffing at it, walking around the room and glancing at Graaff-lin.

  ‘You need not,’ Graaff-lin said with a scornful look. ‘I have already done the work. The cobra I was working with said that a dwan was a garden of Gwmru. Gwmru is an environment – a land. I believe the conscoosities live there. We must at all costs find out where this land is.’

  ‘You have done well,’ deKray said. Zinina agreed.

  Graaff-lin sighed and sank back into her chair. ‘But we’ve so little time, and the connections are so poor, even for somebody as devout as myself. I can’t help losing confidence.’

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ Zinina said, a half-hearted attempt at comfort that she instantly felt ashamed of. She went to hug Graaff-lin. ‘No, really you are. You’ve been out all day, while we’ve just been, well, lying around. Yeah, you done well, Graaff-lin.’

  DeKray added, ‘You are a most valuable woman.’

  Graaff-lin tried to smile, but failed. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘We do,’ they chorused.

  ‘What I need is time and help. Talking to the serpents is dangerous, yet I must remain mobile. I’m sure the conscoosities are within reach.’

  ‘You need a pyuton,’ said Zinina, her mind recalling pyutons that the Citadel Guard used to use for dangerous work. Then an idea. ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘it’s not so tricky to worm your way into a pyuton’s mind.’

  ‘That is correct,” deKray said, ‘they all possess a third eye, or innerai. But how would Graaff-lin use that mental omphalos to control a pyuton?’

  ‘I wasn’t on about that. Don’t you remember? Arrahaquen’s got a pyuton replica up the Citadel. We could use that.’

  Immediately Graaff-lin said, ‘I will not work with a double of that woman.’

  ‘But the pyuton doesn’t worship Rien Zir. It’s just a replica, and it doesn’t even look like her any more.’ Judging by Graaff-lin’s hesitation, the point had been accepted.

  ‘How would we bring the pyuton down from Arrahaquen’s apartment in the Citadel?’ deKray asked.